Last Man Out by James E. Parker Jr

Author:James E. Parker, Jr. [Parker Jr., James E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48697-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Minh Thanh Road

We returned to the base camp later that week. Bob had a calendar above his cot. In seventy-six days we would be eligible for rotation, after being in-country for one full year. That night in the makeshift battalion officers club, I sat with Dunn, Duckett, and Bradley at a rear table. Bradley, a replacement, would be around for several more months. Duckett’s convalescence time counted toward his year, and he would rotate home with Bob and me.

We were talking about what we would do when we got back to the States when Dunn mentioned that Colonel Haldane was returning to the States through Europe.

Bradley said we all could. Any active-duty person could book passage on a scheduled round-the-world U.S. Air Force charter called the Embassy Flight. It was used primarily by Defense Department attachés, diplomatic personnel, and couriers, but seats were available for military personnel with legitimate reasons for travel, like us. He suggested that the three of us try to go home on Air Force One, like Haldane.

In our typical, grateful fashion, we told him he was full of shit: Haldane’s a colonel. We’re second lieutenants. There’s a little difference there.

“Fine,” he said, “don’t believe me. But the next time you’re in Saigon, go to the Travel Section at the U.S. Embassy, and ask about seats on Air Force One.”

Dunn, intent on getting back to Linda in California on the fastest plane going, had no interest in traveling through Europe. But Duckett and I liked the idea, we just didn’t think it was available.

Later that week, Haldane authorized in-country R&R and Duckett and I took off for Saigon.

We stopped off at division headquarters on the way down and I sought out a friend of Crash’s at the Administration Section, and we asked him about our exact departure-from-Vietnam date and orders.

“Ah,” he said, “the magic ticket. DEROS orders. The Date of Estimated Return from OverSeas orders. Very, very valuable. The keys to heaven. You don’t leave Nam without it. I have yours here. Burke told me you were on the way and to look after you, so I have taken the liberty of running off a couple of extra copies for both of you.”

I was authorized to leave 13 September 1966. Joe was authorized to leave on the fourteenth. Signed, stamped, mimeographed, in duplicate, everything. Legal. Some people didn’t get their orders until the day they left, and we had ours two months early. Crash Burke, I thought, you and your friend are very good people.

On the afternoon of 2 July, we were standing in front of the Marine guard post by the main entrance to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Throngs of people were coming and going. We felt out of place. We looked out of place. Our uniforms, though clean, were not starched and tailored like others that we saw, and we were leaner than most military personnel on the streets of Saigon. I had a funny steel-pot tan—my forehead white and my cheeks tanned. And we must have looked unsure of ourselves.

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