Larry

I came to love him, my friend Larry from West Virginia. Actually, his name is Richard, Richard Moore, but he preferred to be called Larry, not Dick or Rich or Rick. I know that he told me the reason once, but I’ve forgotten; most likely his middle name was Lawrence. Larry was a Green Beret, a small, slender young man in excellent condition. He was very agile and very lithe; he could stand in a doorway and effortlessly kick the lintel directly above his head without loosing his balance.

Even after I got to know him well I could never quite reconcile the warrior at his deadly business off on patrol in the dense green jungle with this gentle kid who loved to play the guitar and sing. He somehow got left down in Tay Ninh one evening and walked the five or eight miles back to Trang Sup by himself in the dark. He was carrying a .45 automatic and an M-16 and had a grease gun slung down his back. I asked him why he hadn’t gone to the B Team in Tay Ninh to spend the night and he looked at me expressionlessly and said, "Because I don’t belong to the B Team; my team is here." I had no response to that. Actually, I felt a little stupid for having asked. Apparently, he didn’t care that Charlie was supposed to own the night.

I would wait for them to come back from one of their forays into the jungle and pretend that I wasn’t really concerned during his absence. It was as if to actively worry would somehow bring on some unseen calamity. I did say something once, and he laughed, punched me lightly in the chest and asked if I wanted to come along next time and hold his hand. He once said that he would prefer to have me with him than any of the Vietnamese troops who accompanied him and his teammates on their hazardous trips across the paddies and through the jungle. He said that to me even though I was an Air Force Zoomie not trained for combat. I was inordinately pleased, although I contrived to hide it.

We were an unlikely pair, the Green Beret and the Air Force radar repairman; he was in his early twenties, and I was thirty-one. I was always mildly astonished that we had become such close friends and often wondered why he had singled me out, although I was content to accept his companionship and never asked. I also could never tell him how much I valued his friendship; I was somehow certain that if I did, something bad would surely happen to him. He had already been wounded twice.

Sometimes when he was in camp we would sit together in his hooch room while he strummed at his guitar and sang softly, half to himself. We could sit that way for a long time without talking. At other times we would sit up on top of one of the mortar pits near the perimeter fence and talk about everything and nothing. We embraced once; we had been sitting on the mortar pit and jumped down to go back into the main part of camp. Without speaking, he suddenly put his arms around my neck. Surprised, I put my arms around him and we stood there silently for a moment, then we broke apart and walked back as though nothing had passed between us. But I knew that I would always be his friend as long as I lived

He left eventually, shipped out to another camp, and I never saw him again. There was some mildly superstitious concern over his leaving because it was rumored that the last three camps he’d left had been over-run within a month of his departure. I suppose that in our case, the fourth time was the charm, because nothing that bad happened to us although we did get attacked. When my year was up, I went to 5th TAC in the Philippines.

I had his sister’s address in West Virginia, and when I finally returned to the States three and a half years after leaving for SEA (Southeast Asia), I wrote to her planning to visit. But she didn’t respond and I didn’t write again. I checked The Wall and his name is not there, so at least I know that Larry made it back. I wonder if he ever thinks of me; I have never forgotten him, but while I am now sixty-six, he’s still in his twenties in my mind’s eye.