The lookout slowly lowered his binoculars and touched the button of his head phones, Bridge, lookout--contact off the port bow. Range 1000. Its.... He looked again, ...its a kid hanging on to a palm tree. It is April 1972 and the Navy light cruiser is making a high speed run to pick up downed pilots off the ravaged coastal city of Haiphong. The first invasion of South Vietnam, a massive tank spearheaded assault called The Easter Offensive, is underway. War, like a forest fire, burns its way south along the coast, engulfing villages, sending refugees running toward Saigon. South Vietnamese infantry units, fighting with their backs to the sea, send out desperate calls for gunfire support. American naval units, coming in from all over the Pacific Ocean, respond--moving into shoal water, kicking up mud and firing steadily. Into this chaos floats a little girl tied to a palm tree. No time to put a boat in the water. The rescue swimmer is called. The little girl is crying....her little face contorted, black hair wet and in her face. The sea sloshes salt water in her face as the swimmer arrives alongside her and cuts the rope holding her. She clings to his back as he swims back to the rope ladder. As they come aboard, she is gently, ever so gently, taken in the arms of the senior hospital corpsman who murmurs, There, there, little miss. They move aft toward sick bay, the little girl still sobbing, as the palm tree floats away and the ship turns, engines beginning to hum again, and continues the search for pilots. If there is any one thing that ties American sailors of the Vietnam War to Union sailors of the Civil War, it is refugees....we saw so many of them, along two widely separated coasts.....usually kids, usually wet, hungry and scared. Thats why a little girl, a composite of the children of both wars, forms a central character in my tale of the American Civil War.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 09:15:45 +0000
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