Koh Tang—Then
T
he war was damn near over. After 10 years of sweat and blood, it looked like the Greater Southeast Asia War Games had run out of playing time. Nobody I talked to with half a brain thought the South Vietnamese could hack it on their own. Even the ARVN fans out here on Okinawa who’d done their bush time as advisors thought the whole thing was careening toward a very bad end. If not immediately after we pull the last roundeyes out of Saigon, then shortly thereafter. And the goddamn NVA were rolling south like crap through a tin-horn. It was so depressing, I couldn’t stand to read the papers or listen to the radio.
For some reason even I couldn’t explain, I wanted to be there at the end. Call it suicidal if you want, I told my Sergeant Major up at battalion. I had three tour
