“He that speaks truth must have one foot in the stirrup.” — Turkish proverb

Stirrups are sorta rare in these here parts, except for fair time. Then they are plentiful. I suppose there are a few grave sites people walked past on Memorial Day that wouldn’t have been dated when they were if the person buried there hadn’t had “one foot in the stirrup.” That probably holds true in the old “wild west” days or the days of Al Capone.

Then there are the fallen warriors and I think about my friend Jim Hinkle who was from Tulsa, Okla.; the soldier I met on our flight from San Francisco to Hawaii. We became acquainted with one another on the flight to Oahu, a commercial flight, not a military flight.

Jim, too, had been on a short leave back home with his family and friends. We exchanged stories. I think we even had a couple of drinks on the flight. It was a beautiful day outside the window flying above the Pacific Ocean below. However our thoughts were a little less relaxed then many of the passengers either returning to Oahu from their own vacation or business. Hinkle and I had military orders for assignment there, somewhere there. We weren’t really sure what was waiting for us. Jim had completed his advanced training at Fort Sill, Okla., famous for artillery training. Jim was trained to be a surveyor and I was a 71 bravo, a clerk typist. I was relieved to have that MOS as opposed to the 11 bravo that meant infantry. At Fort Polk, La., where I took my basic training and advanced individual training, the greatest number of soldiers there were in the infantry.

I wasn’t clear what a surveyor’s job was even after Hinkle explained it. Hinkle also had a bent finger, I believe it was his ring finger that he couldn’t straighten out. I thought that would keep him out of the draft. I guess not.

We discovered we had both been drafted on the same day — Nov. 22. The day President Kennedy had been assassinated and also the day my sister got married. That I felt better about.

I think we both hoped that we would be assigned to the Pacific Headquarters in Hawaii, however, this was not the case. We were trucked up the hill in a duece-and-a-half to Schofield Barracks, home of the 21st Infantry Division who were then serving in Vietnam. We would become part of the 11th Infantry Brigade. We were assigned to the 6th Battalion, 11th Artillery. A 105 artillery outfit. I helped out in headquarters battery the first few days where I was able to type up passes for Hinkle, myself and others that Hinkle had trained with. Then I became the operations clerk in battalion headquarters. This was in April.

Months later we were flown to the Big Island for “war games” against the ‘Oahu Cong’ and we defeated them according to Colonel Luper. I disagreed, but I kept that to myself. And that was when Colonel Luper told us we would be going to Vietnam soon and not to tell anyone.

I got a short leave in between and flew back to Austin and spent time with my family and told them nothing. I wrote them a couple weeks before we were activated in Vietnam. We had up until that time spent many Saturday afternoons and Sundays hanging around Waikiki trying not to look like soldiers and not having much money to spend.

We bought our Primo Beer on post at a savings and carried it down with us on the bus in a suitcase. We stayed in a Motel 6 across the street from Waikiki for a reasonable price. And some Sunday mornings we sat on the roof dangling our feet over the sides people watching.

Then, some weeks later, in the quiet of the night the yellow school buses pulled up into the quad to transport us to the troop ship waiting at the dock where two young attractive women standing nearby were waving us goodbye. I had to think that someone or “ones” had leaked out that we were heading to Vietnam or perhaps the officers decided it would be in the best interest of the troops to be waved off by a couple of young ladies. When we finally pulled away there was little to see except for Honolulu City Lights.

By then we were called “Jungle Warriors” by the Gen. Libscom and I was “Jungle Frank” — that sounded better than “Jungle Bob.” We set sail. I think it was an eight-day sail. We put together a newsletter on the boat ride over including a reproduction of a political cartoon from the Honolulu Advertiser of the Statue of Liberty leaning against a Saigon bar with the Vietnamese bartender asking: “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” We also included a Mark Twain quote: “You can take a starving dog and make him prosperous and he will never bite you. That is the difference between a dog and a man.”

About four months into our stay at Duc Pho, Hinkle was in a jeep with three other soldiers going to the dump when they rode over a command detonated 155 artillery round. Hinkle died two weeks later in Japan followed by a letter home saying, “Your son died in line of the duty.”