7/9/2025

 Wednesday, July 9, 2025

D+243/171/1290

1965 I left MCAS IWAKUNI for Danang, RVN via Chu Lai

In bed before 9, up at 6:15, after a night of hourly pit stops.  65°,  high of 73°, partly cloudy. BP=125/75

Sixty years ago today, I boarded a C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft to fly from the Marine Corps Air Station at Iwakuni, Japan, outside Hiroshima, to the huge Marine and Air Force base at Danang in the then Republic of Vietnam.  I was 23 years old. 2 years out of college, 60 years younger and 60 pounds lighter than I am now.  I had just started my third full year of active duty as a Marine, and most of it would be spent in Vietnam, with some of it in cushier billets in Iwakuni and on Okinawa, then still legally an American-occupied territory following World War II.  My fourth and last year of active duty would be spent at a Naval Air Station north of Philadelphia, where, among my duties, would be notifying the next-of-kin of other Marines who would be wounded or killed in Vietnam after I left the country.

Today I am thinking back to July 9, 1965, to who I was then and to what I was thinking during the long, lumbering flight over the East and South China Seas.  I remember hours sitting on the passenger straps along the fuselage of the aircraft, staring at the tons of military equipment and supplies loaded into its belly, the principal reason for the flight; I was just a hitchhiker.  I don't remember much of what I thought that day, other than having a sense of the Great Unknown.  What was Vietnam like?  What were the security conditions at the big airbase?  What would my new duties be at the Air Wing's headquarters, where I was headed?  How would I perform in a war zone after years of training in peace?  Why exactly were LBJ and the Pentagon sending tens of thousands of Marines and soldiers to this exotic country?  How long would this Vietnam-thing go on, and how would it end?   I knew that a "communist insurgency" had been going on for many years, but I don't recall thinking of it as a civil war in which we were intervening for one side against the other.  For us, the government in Saigon and its army were the good guys, and the commies were the bad guys, though we didn't understand much, if anything, of the country's long history of colonization, foreign exploitation, and oppression that the communists fought. 

What I am remembering mostly today is the opinion shared by many of us by the end of the year that 'this is not going to end well.'  We had no confidence in the Saigon military government and no confidence in the ability of its army to outlast the other side.  Of course, as it turned out, our pessimism was spot on, though it took many years, many lives, and immeasurable suffering, mostly by the Vietnamese but also by our guys, to see what was clear to many early on. (We now know that among those 'many' were LBJ himself and Robert McNamara.)

After 8 months in-country, I left Vietnam for a remote infantry staging and training base on northern Okinawa.  My air control unit managed the base, since there was little air to control with all combat squadrons deployed in Vietnam.  We watched the young Marine infantrymen engage in their last training exercises before deploying to Vietnam.  We watched as they got drunk and got into fights in the local "ville" the last nights before deployment.  We knew that some of them would be killed, some wounded, and none would escape unchanged.  I feel sadder today thinking back on those few months on Okinawa with those young "grunts," than thinking back on my time 'in-country.'  I feel sadder still remembering my return from Okinawa and Vietnam to the U.S., where Americans were at each other's throats over the war while I hoped beyond hope every six days not to receive a next-of-kin casualty call.

I think these thoughts today, on this personal anniversary, as I think of where we have come over the last 60 years.  When I flew off to Vietnam, our government told me (and you) that I was on a mission to protect a brave young democracy from a Godless dictatorship operating out of Hanoi, but with the strings pulled in China and Russia.  That wasn't true, or at least not entirely true, but it served the purposes of the government to say it was true.  We weren't there to protect the corrupt government in Saigon (never a democracy), but only to fight a perceived Chinese and Russian proxy in Hanoi, to protect our markets and sources of raw materials in SE Asia, and the international sea lanes in the South China Sea.  Most Americans believed most of what the government told us, at least until it became clear that we were being duped. 

 Today, the struggle for democracy is occurring within our own borders, and to my old eyes, it looks like a battle we are losing.  Vietnam happened on the way to today, as did Iraq and Afghanistan.    In all our military adventures and misadventures, we claimed to be fighting for democracy, freedom, and to protect America's core values.  Looking back over these past 60 years, since I stepped onto that C-130 in Iwakuni and stepped off in Vietnam, and looking at where we are today, I wonder what I am to think of democracy, freedom, and core American values.

The office

Morning meds at    If I don't try to keep track of all the meds on these pages, I now almost invariably forget to take them, and to use the eye stuff.  I've been doing this stuff for so many years, really decades, and I am tired of taking care of myself.  Medications, vaccinations, blood tests, glucose counts, blood pressure measurements, office examinations, etc.  Why don't I follow Zeke Emanuel's advice and just stop all of that activity that isn't related to the avoidance of pain and discomfort?  Although as Zeke gets nearer to age 75, I wonder whether he may be rethinking the advice he so confidently gave the world at age 57.  My looming concern is what to say to the surgeon or the anesthesiologist when he asks me about my DNR order before my surgery on 8/5.  What will Geri say when we discuss it?

I had a thought this morning that if I were a non-human animal, one of the ones that live in nature, in the wild like the white-tail deer, wild turkeys, and squirrels, I would be gone by now, dead and eaten by a predator or starved to death because of my inability to care for myself, find nourishment, etc.  In a 'state of nature', like the one described in Peter Freuchen's Alaska, when the grandma's decrepitude threatens the ability of the hunter family to keep moving, looking for life-sustaining prey, the family builds an igloo for her and leaves her in it to die.

My iPhone talks to me and says: "Your Walking Steadiness continues to be very low, and you may be at high risk of falling in the next 12 months."  

Pleased and pissed.  It appears to me that the edema, i.e., swelling, that has plagued my feet, ankles, and lower legs for several years has abated and hopefully disappeared.  The condition required me to wear compression socks all those years.  Wearing compression socks was never a problem; once the sock is on, i.e., covering the entire feet, ankles, and lower legs, it's just a snug sock; putting the socks on and taking them off, on the other hand, can be quite a challenge.  In fact, it can be damned difficult, especiallyfor a person with weak hand muscles and stiff, painful joints.  So, if the edema problem is fixed, I'm delighted and will celebrate by going to Target or Meijer's, or Marshall's, and buying some ordinary socks.  I got rid of all my old socks years ago, ignoring my usual rule of holding onto clothing you no longer need or can fit into, because you never know when you may need them or fit into them again.  On the other hand, I note that this great reduction or disappearance of the swelling occurred when my VA doc, Dr. Chatt,  took me off the BP med amlodipine besylate, which, she said, can cause foot and ankle swelling.  I've been on this medication for years and can't help wondering why it took until June 2025 for Dr. Chatt to note a possible connection between this med and the "lymphedema" affecting my feet, ankles, and lower legs.  Or for the lymphedema specialists in the Physical Therapy Clinic to note a connection, or for the docs or the pharmacist in the Geriatric Clinic to do so.  Mumble, grumble. Piss and moan.