School and Beginning Work
I chose the University of Santa Clara because it was close, affordable and my application was accepted there. The business my parents engaged in at Lake Tahoe didn’t last. The partners didn’t get along well and so dissolved their business affiliation. Each traded their share of the partnership for a smaller commercial property and went their separate way. My folks ended up in Menlo Park owning and managing a restaurant and quaint hotel by the name of the Marie Antoinette Inn. It was close enough to Santa Clara for me to live at home, even though I preferred boarding at the university. I lived and worked at home during my freshman year, and then I bought an old 1948 Chevrolet convertible and became a boarding student at the university. It was more convenient and conducive to studying, and my father was willing to pay the boarding costs. Those college days constituted four long, hard and boring years with the exception of my writing, drama and military ROTC classes. I knew I needed a degree, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Perhaps I’d end up in teaching, or the military or who knows what. Anyway, the bachelor’s degree was an essential first step; it was a necessary ticket-punch for the professional life. That sheepskin was a mandatory requirement for a successful life in the 1950’s era. So I endured unto graduation and received my degree and lieutenant’s commission into the regular army.
After graduation, the United States Army took over my life. Wow! What a change. Since I wanted more than “three hots and a cot” to start off my military career, the first thing I did was to partner up and get married so as to start my family life just prior to entering the service. I won’t dwell on that mistake, since it ended in failure eleven years and two children later. Let’s just say I shamefully added to the divorce statistic and disrupted a few lives. I’m not proud of it, but it’s a fact, and I contributed to the mess. A decade later, after a bit of alimony and years of child support payments, the marriage was annulled. It was a very negative and disillusioning time of life for all concerned. The quest for the Holy Grail seemed all but halted. Even thoughts of motorcycles and the life of a biker were temporarily shelved. I was like a blind man groping in the dark for quite some time. I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel a number of years later and started living life again. The bottom line to this part of my life is that divorce or annulment is an episode to be avoided if at all possible. The best way to ensure that is to be wise enough to choose the right spouse to begin with. As Shakespeare once wrote, “All this the world well knows, yet few know well how to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.” Let’s leave it at that.
Acclimatization to Army Life
After attending Infantry Officer’s Basic Course and Airborne training, I was assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington for three years of Infantry duty with the 2d Battle Group, 47th Infantry. For another year, I attended the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California, and studied the Vietnamese Language and culture. Thereafter, I went off to war in Southeast Asia as a Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) Army Battalion Advisor. That lasted for half-a-year in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in II Corps at a place called Tan Canh near Dak To. Things experienced on combat operations in the highlands will fill another book some day. I finished my combat tour of duty at Tuy Hoa on the coast of the South China Sea as a Psychological Operations Officer advising the South Vietnamese Army G5 Section (Psychological Operations) at that location. That was “fun time” as well, but the telling of those experiences is reserved for a more appropriate time and place. The basic lesson learned was that war is an ugly and numbing experience best avoided if at all possible. It should definitely be a last choice in attempts to rectify the human condition. Yet, in a humble and belated defense of the Vietnam War, and in the words of a respected source, I dare to say:
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