R and R

I almost threw her to the ground. We were walking down the street in Sydney, when the automobile backfired. After almost eight months in Vietnam, my reflexes were tuned to react within nano-seconds. I had to apologize to the young lady and assure her that I was not trying to accost her. “I’m so sorry, Mary”, I said, “I thought we were being shot at.” I had met Mary at a church social, and we were on our way to the movies. She knew that I was an American G. I. on “Rest and Relaxation” (RR) from Vietnam, but she wasn’t expecting a crazy man.. I would like to say all was well between us, but after that incident, things just didn’t work out for us.

I was so happy just to be out of the jungles. After my arrival at Perth, Australia airport, I ordered a beer while waiting for my plane to Sydney. One beer almost knocked me on my ass. In Vietnam the beer was like water. It was 3.2 beer, very weak and one could drink it all day without getting drunk. After drinking the beer I went to the restroom. Wow! I must have flushed about ten times, it was an amazing thing to see a toilet flushing. Funny how I remember the little things.

Well… I still had most of my week in Sydney to relax and have some fun. What to do? What to do? The rest of the week I did the tourist thing. I took a ferry across the bay and saw the Sydney Opera House. I had good food and plenty to drink. The last night I decided to try the night life. I went to a club called the Peppermint Twist , where I drank too much, met a girl, and took her back to my hotel room. We were too drunk to do anything but sleep. The next morning she left and I never saw her again. Wow! That was fun.

Before I knew it the time to catch a plane back to Vietnam was upon me. I didn’t want to go back. I was becoming a “short-timer”. There was a thing in Vietnam called “short-time”. The closer a soldier got to putting in his time in Vietnam the more of a “short-timer” he was, and the more he feared something happening to him. I saw a few guys go crazy in the last days of their tour of duty. Oh… guys would go around saying things like, “I’m so short that I have to stand on a ladder to kiss a flea’s knees”, but down deep they were scared. I know, I was becoming a “short-timer”. No… I didn’t want to go back to Vietnam. But I did go back, and sure enough within a week I experienced the explosion that ended my time in Vietnam. Live and learn; learn and live.