Everybody Has a Story: Friendships, appreciation of all greatest gift from Army

In 1968, I lived in Bellingham. I wasn’t doing much — drinking beer, smoking pot, listening to The Beatles and The Buffalo Springfield, hanging out with friends. I graduated from Sehome High School in June, but I had checked out of school by about fifth grade. Of course, this did not bode well for college. On graduation day, I was not bound for Harvard, nor even Western Washington University.

One afternoon I had a brainstorm: Why don’t I join the Army? Then an even bigger brainstorm: I’ll volunteer for the draft. Two years’ service instead of three! Pure genius! I drove downtown. And volunteered to be drafted.

That evening I went to my parents’ place. I made my announcement. My mom, a flaming liberal, hollered, “What have you done? There’s a war going on!” I don’t think I had been considering serving my country, touring Southeast Asia or going to college on the G.I. Bill., I was thinking about doing something that no one else I knew was doing. (I’ll always remember what Phillip Caputo wrote in his book “A Rumor Of War”: “War is always attractive to young men who don’t know anything about it.”)

I did basic training at Fort Lewis and then went for training as a communications specialist at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Ga. Bellingham was a very white community, with only one black family that I recall. Few Hispanics and Asians. And now I was in Georgia. With guys like me. And guys not like me. White guys from Frisco, Denver, L.A., Portland. And black dudes from Detroit, Hispanics from Houston. And fellas from Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina. Huge diversity. Getting to know these guys, learning about them, hearing about their life struggles, hanging out, becoming friends, became the greatest gift to me of my time in the U.S. Army.

One time at Fort Gordon, we got a three-day weekend. Four of us rented a van and headed to Savannah! That night we slept in the van, got up in the morning and wandered into a diner. The waitress said, “I can’t serve you.” Why? Because one of us was black! I’d heard of this crap, but had never seen it before. We all walked out, angry. But our black friend, he wasn’t so angry. He had seen it before. Sadly, many times.

Then, on to Vietnam. In his series “The Vietnam War,” Ken Burns identified race relations as one of the largest problems with troops. Well, not for me. On my first day in Can Tho, a major city south of Saigon, I walked into the room where I had been assigned. No one there. I looked around. A record player! LPs! And the first one I saw — The Beatles. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band!” A while later my roomie came in. A black guy. Robinson. We all went by the names on our jackets. I was Newport.

We bonded over The Beatles, Otis Redding and others. Robinson had been there for a few months. Many of his buds came by each day. Some became my buds. And it was Robinson and his buds who initiated me into my new life. As Tim O’Brien wrote in “The Things They Carried,” “The war wasn’t always about terror and violence. Sometimes things could get sweet.”

I was reassigned to Moc Hoa, a small village near the Cambodian border, where 45 Americans were stationed. My work shift was 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. While working I read, wrote letters, listened to the radio, played solitaire and took naps. Once or twice each day, I also received and sent messages. Every night, at midnight or so, there was a knock on my door. I opened and someone handed me the message.

One night, the usual knock. I opened the door. Standing there was Mickey Beatty, a guy who graduated from my high school in the same year as me. “Beatty?” “Newport?” We had not known each other in high school, but now we quickly became good friends. We moved in together. We talked about the girls in our high school class and laughed about teachers.

We listened to Armed Forces Radio with our new pals from Birmingham, Memphis, Mobile, Chicago or some other place we’d never been. Most of the guys I worked with were from the South, like Clyde Sams, a cool guy from South Carolina. Clyde and I swapped books and music. We learned about each other’s families, schools, communities, hopes and dreams. “Comradeship” has often been identified as the war’s only redeeming quality. It’s certainly at the top of my list.

I never fired my M-16 during my time in Vietnam. Only two or three times was I under fire. One night, there was an attack on our weapons depot. Rockets launching, grenades detonating, bullets blasting. Viet Cong on the perimeter. We huddled in a bomb shelter, whimpering. The blasts continued. More whimpering. We were scared spitless. More blasts. We began to whisper. More blasts. We began to chat. Finally, we began to laugh. We lay there for hours until the safety alarm sounded. My most significant conclusion from this adventure: When terror surrounds you, the color of the guy lying next to you doesn’t matter at all. He’s your friend, you’re his friend!

Now, 50 years later, I smile and say hello to blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims and others. In my heart I thank them for being in my life. And I greet, shake hands and chat with any Vietnam veteran that I encounter. That’s the great gift that my time in the Army gave to me.

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