Next Stop Is Vietnam

Next door from where I lived with my immediate family in Durham, North Carolina, in the early 1970s, the head of household was a Marine chaplain who claimed to have been the first one wounded in Vietnam. He was a stern taskmaster who ordered his family around day and night. In turn, he was himself driven by obssessive compulsive disorder and God knows what else, or so it seems in retrospect.

The Chaplain's family consisted of him, three sons, a daughter, and a wife who used to drink a lot -- and I can understand why. My oldest sister briefly dated the oldest son but it didn't turn out well (she thought he was a dork), and he later went on to the Naval Academy. The next oldest son was a sadistic thug who became an MP along the 38th Parallel in South Korea. I later imagined that he was fragged by GIs, but in fact he died of some horrible wasting disease. The daughter (kind of weird) was friends with my second sister, and the mother (very weird) with my mother. I don't think my father got along with their father (for good reason -- he mostly avoided him, especially after the guy tried to move a line of bushes several feet into our yard and claim it was always his to begin with). I was friends with the youngest (and sanest) brother. My little brother avoided their family altogether (smart!)

It was creepy hanging out in the Chaplain's house, a big old brick thing with hidden rooms and underground coal storage chambers. The Chaplain himself looked like Lurch and acted like a bad rendition of the Great Santini. Not only was he a mean son of a bitch, but there was something phony about him, too. I didn't really believe he'd been the first Marine chaplain wounded in Vietnam, despite him repeatedly saying so.

The Chaplain provided a mysterious conduit to the war, which was still in its final convulsions as far as the American presence was concerned. He had an AK-47 proudly mounted in one room, next to a gigantic wall map of Southeast Asia with pins and stars on it. He also had maps of Germany all over the place -- even in the kitchen.

The Chaplain seemed particularly shady, though, because he had several German cars with Ohio plates, had lived in Durham for years, and yet "worked" at Camp Lejeune -- about 150 miles away, an almost three hour drive in those days.

Seeing the above photo for Werner Herzog's new film Rescue Dawn reminded me of the Chaplain for some reason. Maybe because it, too, gives me the creeps. The movie itself is about a gung-ho German-born U.S. pilot who gets shot down and captured in Laos during the Vietnam War and then escapes through the jungle with fellow prisoners. The recipe would seem to make it a good candidate for a wider audience than Herzog usually gets at first run. It's set for U.S. release on December 1, 2006.

As for the Chaplain, last I heard, he was dead.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Happy 50th Birthday to my sister Linda!

Xin chào tam biet!