Conversation About a Ring

What's so special about this ring and that one little year in Vietnam? Must be a failure to communicate, Roger. :-) Well, I've worn many other rings, including a different Air Force ring which I actually wore while I was in Vietnam. If you look closely at the picture of me sitting on the ground in Tay Ninh among a small group of American and Vietnamese GIs, you can see it on my right hand.  

It was adorned with a humongous blue star sapphire. Unfortunately, it was stolen from me in the great state of Minnesota and it didn't have my name engraved on it as this one does. I waited all these years before I bought another Air Force ring.  

I believe another airman, the son of an Air Force colonel, stole it but I can't prove that. Hell, I know he stole it. The ring was in a pocket of my fatigue jacket, which I absentmindedly left in the Search tower one day. Light Fingers was alone with the jacket all night, and he had a reputation for pilfering. 

Seriously, I've been in many places, Roger, and I've had many experiences - mundane, joyful, scary, and sad - whatever. But you're right, that one year I spent in Vietnam stands out above any other place I've been stationed. Possibly it’s because, among the routine aspects of daily life, nobody periodically tried to deliberately kill me all through my other tours. I know I certainly never deliberately tried to kill anybody anywhere else. 

I've seen death and danger as well as senseless acts of violence in places other than Vietnam. But, Roger, nowhere else was there anything to compare with the omnipresent, soul-permeating sense of personal, imminent peril associated with just existing in Vietnam. I don't really need the ring to remind me of that time. 

But there was more than just danger. There was also that unique closeness that develops among people whose lives literally depend on one another. It was a singular bonding and sense of togetherness. It was, after all, 'us against them' in the deadliest game of all. Some indelible friendships were formed there in Vietnam.  

But nobody that I can think of sat around worrying that they could die at any moment. If they did, they kept it to themselves. People laughed, joked, sang, and played stupid tricks on one another just as they would have in any other place.  

To be honest, I must admit that, in my heart of hearts, I believed it would be 'the other guy' who would get injured or killed, not me. Somebody over in one of the mortar pits, somebody out in a listening post, perhaps, but not me. I always believed that I'd survive even when I was most afraid. I think other guys had similar feelings. Perhaps that has something to do with the development of survivor's guilt. Who knows?

Nevertheless, despite that perhaps irrational belief in my own survival, somewhere in my mind, the realization existed that maybe, just maybe, I might not make it.  

And of course, there were the people who liked living on the edge, the vigilance, the heightened perceptions, the pulse-pounding excitement of it all. I don't guess you're ever more alive than when you're faced with death waiting out in the darkness on the other side of the wire, or in the trees somewhere up ahead.

I'm afraid I really wasn't much of an adrenalin junky, though. A guy named Roberts tried to get me to extend another six months with him. I politely declined and rotated out on schedule. I hadn't lost anything over there I wanted to hang around looking for.