With the band

 

On April 22, 1969 (my 21st birthday) I started a year-long assignment at the U.S. Naval Communication station, near Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. A group of my friends and shipmates and I were transferred together from the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany.  We lived, played and worked together in a small U.S. Navy base built in the sand near a beautiful beach on the central coast of South Vietnam about 240 miles north of Saigon. I spent the year missing my life and my new wife, making lifelong friends and marking time until the day I could return to "the world". And, oh yeah, my  blue Navy working uniform sometimes clashed with the Olive Drab of the soldiers on the “Army side” up the road a bit from our little Navy base.

With the band I wonder who was this shadowy boy tucked, for a year, on a shelf … wearing the blue in the midst of the drab, and sharing the joke with himself? Going through motions and flubbing his lines, enduring mysterious rules, he cared for nothing but breathing the air, just one of the government’s tools. Living was something he’d do in his sleep, safe in his comforting nest, dreaming the future, ignoring the past, shunning and doubting the rest. His singular focus was joining the world, escaping his prison of sand … closing the circle and purging his mind ... surviving to leave with the band. ~Dean Neighbors ~

They DID issue us Army Drab Green uniforms for some reason …but I didn’t wear them much.