Many of the planes carrying returning soldiers landed at Travis Air Force Base,
California, and I’ll never forget the huge crowd of people there to greet
us at the airport. In those days, anyone could walk out onto the tarmac
and meet an incoming plane, and as we taxied to our parking ramp, I counted
over a hundred. A sea of faces, but far from a welcoming committee, these
people were war protesters, outraged at the return of the government’s
little criminals. So strange to see the long hair, beards, facial jewelry,
tie-died clothes and leather sandals, as though they all shopped at the same
store and if asked, would drink the same kool-aid. To my eyes, they looked
like automatons, vaguely human but certainly not American, and it suddenly
occurred to me, they thought the same about us.
As we stepped off the plane
and descended the stairs, their angry voices filled the air, and they waved
signs and banners in our faces and chanted peace slogans. Still
in my jungle fatigues and boots, I carried an old Chinese rifle – a war
trophy souvenir from my days with the Duster battery. When the crowd
got a look at that weapon and me, it was like deflating a tire. The air
went out of them, and for several moments, I heard only hushed whispers and
uncertain expressions of dismay and expectation. For them, a terrible
and frightening epiphany, the mentally deranged, blood-guzzling, baby-killing
Vietnam war veteran of their worst nightmares now stood in their midst – armed. When
I reached the tarmac, everyone’s eyes remained glued to the weapon and
several silent moments passed before someone in the rear of the crowd found
courage, and the chanting resumed.
At the time unaware he fit any portion of that unflattering description,
symptoms of his posttraumatic stress disorder would soon present Lance with
harsh reality.
My parents came to the airport to welcome me home, but in all the commotion,
I walked right past them. Funny, they didn’t recognize me, either. However,
we found each other at last, and Mom cried. Dad told me how proud he
was, and I shed a tear of my own. They told me Joan had been too busy
and couldn’t make it up from Los Angeles to greet me. Five days
later, I was discharged from the U.S. Army.
My
homecoming reunion with Joan was strained and sad. We’d last
seen each other in Hawaii on R&R six months earlier, and things hadn’t
gone well. I thought she’d changed from the person I married, and
she thought I had. I know now, of course, the truth lay somewhere in
between. Like two people who casually meet and never dream of exchanging
intimacies, Joan and I were strangers to each other. She’d long
since quit wearing her wedding ring, and I guessed she’d been fooling
around for months. Two hours after I arrived, we looked at each other
across her kitchen table and both knew our marriage was over. Nothing
more to do or say, I just got the hell out of there and never looked back. For
me, that part of my life was finished.
Many of the planes carrying returning soldiers landed at Travis Air Force Base,
California, and I’ll never forget the huge crowd of people there to greet
us at the airport. In those days, anyone could walk out onto the tarmac
and meet an incoming plane, and as we taxied to our parking ramp, I counted
over a hundred. A sea of faces, but far from a welcoming committee, these
people were war protesters, outraged at the return of the government’s
little criminals. So strange to see the long hair, beards, facial jewelry,
tie-died clothes and leather sandals, as though they all shopped at the same
store and if asked, would drink the same kool-aid. To my eyes, they looked
like automatons, vaguely human but certainly not American, and it suddenly
occurred to me, they thought the same about us.
