Another Place - Episode 17

Another Place Another Time

Book One

Jake and Whispers

Episode Seventeen

The following day, I got a letter from James Beck. James was a family friend and he had been my parents’ attorney for as long as I could remember. He expressed his condolences for my loss and then told me that my parents had left everything to me: the store, the house, and some commercial rental property in Valdosta. He told me that he could continue to run the store with existing employees and manage the business for me, or he could liquidate everything. He asked me to write as soon as possible and let him know my wishes in the matter.

I wrote that evening and directed him to liquidate everything. A month later I received a statement from him saying that he had sold everything and deposited almost $600,000.00 in my saving account, after deducting his fees. He included the deposit slip and my savings account record book.

I asked Whispers what he thought about extending for another tour, and he had said it was fine with him. I understood. Scouting was all we knew, and there was no demand for it outside Vietnam. The following day, I asked Riley to put together the paperwork to extend both my enlistment and my Vietnam tour by twelve months

Betty Ann had been in-country for almost a year. Like GIs, that was a full tour for Doughnut Dollies. She was a recent college graduate who wanted to do something that mattered and found Red Cross service as a Doughnut Dolly the perfect way to fulfill that wish. Unlike her friends, Betty Ann had decided to stay in Vietnam for twelve more months. A month earlier, she had begun her second tour.

We only had a few minutes to talk that day, because in two hours her group was flying to a remote firebase where they would serve coffee, doughnuts, and smiles. I stayed until she left and, even though I had no experience with girls, I felt like she was as interested in me as I was in her.

For the next eleven months, Whispers and I took every available opportunity to get to Vung Tau for a day, sometimes two. Since Betty Ann never knew where she would be in time to let me know, Whispers and I made some trips when we only saw her for a few minutes. We didn’t care; seeing her for just a second sure beat not seeing her at all.

A thirty day, non-chargeable leave, came with the extension. The leave could be taken anywhere in the world, with transportation provided by the military. I chose not to go anywhere, since I didn’t want to leave Whispers.

Instead, Whispers and I went to Vung Tau, for an extended in-country R&R (rest and recuperation). We spent five days and six nights there, mostly walking on the beach beside the South China Sea. We spent the nights at the transit personnel barracks which was always empty since the GIs who came to Vung Tau for a three-day, in-country R&R stayed in the massage parlors or brothels in downtown Vung Tau.

On our last day in Vung Tau, I decided to go for one more walk on the beach. Whispers decided to do something else, something that changed our lives, again.

We left the barracks, walking toward the main gate. I turned down a couple of rides as we walked, since walking wasn’t an issue for either of us. It was what we did for a living. Besides, it was refreshing to walk in a place where we didn’t have to watch for trip wires and booby traps.

We were close to the main gate when I noticed several men moving quickly across the road ahead of us. They were heading into the company area of what appeared to be a medical company. When we got to the place where they had crossed the road, Whispers, who normally stayed by my side, made a sharp right turn and began following the men toward something I couldn’t see. Attached to his lead, I naturally followed.

Since he’d never done that before, I was curious and didn’t put up any resistance. He made another sharp right in front of a row of ambulances, and I saw something that I’d only heard of from Riley and a few other fortunate souls.

In the middle of a small, otherwise empty parking area, was a deuce-and-a-half. Not an ordinary, olive drab, U.S. Army deuce-and-a-half, but a solid white version with a large red cross painted on the door and a gleaming white canvas roof over the rear. There were long tables beside the truck and on each table there was a 30-gallon coffee canister and boxes and boxes of fresh doughnuts. Two Doughnut Dollies were behind each table serving coffee and doughnuts to a large gathering of troops who had appeared from nowhere.

I stood in shock for a moment, until Whispers started moving again. This time he headed directly for the table on the end. There were two young women behind the table…at least I think there were two. I saw only one—Betty Ann Luther from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Whispers didn’t take a place in line. He never was much for lines. He went around the table, sat down beside Betty Ann, and whined. She looked down at him and laughed. I can still close my eyes and run that scene in my mind.

She turned directly toward Whispers, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Didn’t I see you break in line, Soldier?”

Whispers barked.

“Yes, that’s just what I thought. Do you want a doughnut that badly?”

He barked again. She took a doughnut from the tray in front of her and held it near Whispers’s mouth.

“It’s all right. You can have it,” she said.

Then wonder of wonders, he took it as daintily as an English gentleman taking a cake at high tea. We both laughed. Whispers swallowed the donut whole and barked, as I fell in love for the second time.

I sat beside the deuce-and-a-half, behind the table where Betty Ann was serving coffee and doughnuts and the most dazzling smile that had ever seen. When the coffee and doughnuts ran out, and the men wandered away, Betty Ann and her colleagues started packing up. I helped, and while we were breaking the tables down and packing the truck, Betty Ann and I talked as best we could. With everything loaded, she told her supervisor that she would walk back to their barracks.

The Red Cross office and barracks were at least a mile away, but we walked it in what seemed like ten seconds. It must have been longer than that because when we got there I knew her name, where she was from, how long she had been in Vietnam, when she was going home, and, best of all, I had her address.

I post two episodes of Another Place Another Time every week

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