Chapter 1

Four years earlier

1967 – Leroy’s DILEMMA

       “You’re dead.”

      “No, I‘m not dead.”

      “Yes.”

      “No.”

      “Yes.”

      “No.”

      “Yes. Says right here, see? Says you were killed in action,” explained the Veterans Administration clerk as he toyed with his prized Hawaiian hula girl snow globe souvenir paperweight that said Waikiki Beach on the front, then moved it to the other side of his desk. He brushed back a portion of what little remaining orange-red hair he possessed that managed to hang down over his heavily freckled pale-skinned forehead, then turned the file around so Leroy could read it and pointed to the entry on the first page.

     Leroy noticed a slight trembling in the man’s hand and quickly deduced it wasn’t nerves but more a natural thing, some form of character trait like that of an overly nervous Mexican Chihuahua dog. Oddly, the only time the trembling subsided was when the little man fondled the Hawaiian hula girl snow globe.

“See there,” said the clerk. “Says, Smith, Leroy Benjamin, Lance Corporal, United States Marine Corps, killed in action. See? Killed… in action. Okay?”

      “No, that’s wrong. I’m Leroy Smith and I’m here, right here in front of you, see? See? I’m sitting right here. I’m breathing, my eyes are open, I have a pulse, I can shit, fart, piss, get a hard-on, and I want my fuckin’ money and meds.”

      “Your G.I. insurance was paid to your mother.”

      “Not that money you dumb ass. You damn government people scared my mother half way to Havana when she got that. She thought I died again.”

      “So you admit you were dead?”

      “No, I don’t admit I was dead. I wasn’t dead. I’m not dead.  Look man, here’s my DD-214. See here, says Smith, Leroy Benjamin, United States Marine Corps, separated June 12, 1967, honorably discharged. Ya see? Ya see all that?”

      “Then what about the money?”

      “What money?”

      “The life insurance money. The dead money.”

      “Who said anything about dead money?”

      “You did. You said, ‘You wanted your money’, and I said, ‘It was paid to your mother’, and you said, ‘She took it to Havana’, and I said…”

      “No, I didn’t say that.”

      “Yes. You said…”

      “No.”

      “Yes.”

      “No, I didn’t say that. You said that.”

      “I didn’t say that. I mean, I did say that but I said that you said that not that I said that.”

     “Okay. But what about my money? And my meds?”

            “What money?”

            “My money. My disability money… and my meds.”

     “I thought you said you didn’t say anything about money.”

     “I didn’t. I said, look at my DD-214 because it says I’m not dead because I’m not dead, I’m right here.”

      “How do you know that isn’t a mistake?”

      “How the hell can it be a mistake?”

      “People make mistakes you know,” said the VA clerk as he again reflectively fiddled with the Hawaiian hula girl snow globe, remembering the only time in his life he ever got a blowjob. It was during the only time in his life he ever took a real vacation and went to Hawaii via some half-ass fly-by-night travel agency five-day package deal. The encounter took place at a luau after he had consumed a few drinks in the form of three tall Mai Tais and a Blue Hawaii. He was a 31-year-old virgin and she was a 62-year-old retired medical therapist from Missouri. The 19-second experience changed his life, leaving him to believe he had become an empowered man of the world and one of the beautiful people he had always heard about and seen on TV and in the movies, so he purchased the snow globe to commemorate the occasion.

      “I know people make mistakes,” said Leroy. “You VA people make mistakes, lots of mistakes, and you’re turning my whole life into a fuckin’ mistake.”

     Leroy touched his hand to his head anticipating yet another of his recurring migraines, a stress headache being brought on by yet another day of frustration resulting from yet another trip through the looking glass of the VA bureaucracy in an effort to obtain his disability payments, medications to combat the residual pain of his combat wounds, and the subsequent medications he needed to combat the migraine headaches resulting from his visits to the VA. It seemed to be a never-ending vicious cycle of having, each month, to convince the VA he was still alive and still in need of medical treatment. Each month a different clerk, each month a different doctor, each month a new migraine that seemed to last all month.

      “You don’t have to get ugly,” said the clerk.

      “Ugly? How the hell can I get ugly? According to you I’m dead. I can’t get ugly if I’m dead can I?”

      “Then you admit it’s a mistake.”

      “What’s a mistake?”

      “Your status.”

      “What status?”

      “Your status as a dead soldier.”

      “That’s right, exactly. My status as a dead soldier is a mistake because I’m not dead.”

      “Not that status. Your other status.”

      “What other status?”

      “You’re L.B. Smith status. L.B. Smith is deceased.”

      “Yes I know. What‘s the difference?” asked Leroy.

      “What do you mean?”

      “Deceased. What‘s the fuckin’ difference?”

      “It means you’re dead.”

      “No, that was another L.B. Smith. He’s dead.  I’m alive.”

      “No, says here he’s MIA.”

      “No, he’s not MIA. He was a black guy from Detroit and he went home in a box. He’s dead. I‘m a white guy from Virginia, and I‘m alive.”

      “Says here, disposition unknown. MIA.”

      “MIA my ass. I saw him get his head blown off.”

      “Well, if he didn’t have a head then how do you know it was him?”

      “Because it wasn’t me.”

      “So, L.B. Smith is dead?”

      “Yes.”

      “Then how can you be L.B. Smith?”

      “Because I was born L.B. Smith, you stupid shit. Who the hell were you when you were born?”

      “I don’t remember. I was too young at the time. I don’t remember any of it,” replied the VA clerk as he once again admired and slid the Hawaiian hula girl snow globe to the opposite side of his desk.

      “Then you believe your mother?” asked Leroy.

      “Of course I believe my mother. Why shouldn’t I believe my mother? She wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.”

      “Well, I believe my mother too and she says I’m L.B. Smith, her son, and she says I‘m alive.”

      “How can you believe your mother if she ran off to Havana with your dead money? I wouldn’t believe someone who ran off to Havana with my dead money. Is she a communist?” the clerk asked suspiciously as he again moved the Hawaiian hula girl snow globe back across the desk.

      “No, God damnit. She’s not a fuckin’ communist and she didn’t run off to Havana with my dead money. She sent it back but they wouldn’t take it. And if you’re dead then what’s the fuckin' point of believing anything anyway?” reasoned Leroy as he stared curiously at the little man's Hawaiian hula girl snow globe paperweight with Waikiki Beach embossed on the front, wondering who the hell would put a hula dancer and a palm tree in a snow globe, much less buy one. The thought was as confusing to him as their conversation.

      “But I’m not dead. You are,” said the little man.

      “I didn’t say you were dead.”

      “Yes, you said…”

      “No, I said…” Leroy paused in frustration, seriously considering some form of violence that would drive home his point but decided against it. “Shit man, listen,” he continued. “If I’m dead, then why am I here?”

      “Because you’re MIA.”

      “No, L.B. Smith is MIA, the other L.B. Smith. But he’s really not MIA because he’s dead.”

      “So, what’s the problem?”

     “What’s the problem?’

     “The problem. What’s the problem?” asked the VA clerk as he fondly stroked and again contemplated moving the Hawaiian hula girl snow globe to the other side of his desk.

     “What’s the problem?”

     “Yes. What’s the problem?”

     “What do you mean, what’s the problem?”

     “I mean, what’s the problem?”

     “What’s the problem?”

     “Yes, the problem. What’s the problem?”

     “The problem is I’m gonna’ frag your fuckin’ ass if you don’t grow a fuckin’ brain in the next ten fuckin’ seconds! And if you move that fuckin' snow thing again I’m gonna’ take it and shove it down your fuckin’ throat. Jesus Christ man, where do they find you fuckin' people anyway?”

      “I’m a fully qualified civil servant Mr. Smith. An official functionary of the federal government, and as such I am not required to take verbal abuse.”

      “What did you call me?”

      “Mr. Smith.”

      “Ah hah! So you admit it!”

      “Admit what?”

      “That I’m him, I’m Smith, L.B. Smith. You called me, Mr. Smith. You admit it. I’m alive.”

      “I’m afraid I’m not qualified to make that distinction.”

      Leroy sat there for a long silent moment of serious deliberation until he finally said with low slow intent, “You know, if I’m dead they can’t really convict me for killing someone can they? Not even if I kill a fully qualified civil servant and functionary of the government. Can they?”

      “Um… would… would you… like to speak to my supervisor?”

      “Before or after I break your fuckin’ neck?” smiled Leroy.

      “What…what… Are you trying to be humorous?”

      “Humorous? Humorous? No. Hell no. Oh hell no! There’s nothing fuckin’ humorous about gettin’ fuckin’ killed! And I should fuckin’ know! Don’t you fuckin’ think I should fuckin’ know? Because according to you I'm already dead so I should fuckin' know, right? Right?”

      Leroy reached out and wrapped his large ex-Marine Corps hands around the feeble little Veterans Administration bureaucrat’s neck and yanked him over the top of the desk, sending all the desktop paraphernalia crashing to the floor, including the VA clerk’s precious little commemorative Hawaiian blow job hula girl glass snow globe that said Waikiki Beach on the front. It shattered sending the snowy liquid spilling out in all directions with the little hula girl's head popping off and shooting across the floor.

     The man began desperately calling for help through Leroy’s chokehold but with little success, being his garbled cries were hardly audible. It was a useless effort anyway since the little bureaucrat’s fellow workers barely noticed, most of them with their heads down, pretending to be awake or hypnotically focused on assorted papers and files, nearly unconscious in their own little foggy world of routinization. One small middle-aged woman, however, who wore her graying hair up in adolescent pig tales with green bows that said Age Of Aquarius on them, did look up to discover Leroy easily handling and twisting the little man back and forth like a long experienced janitor would work a heavy, wet, limp, well seasoned mop. She stared a moment, twirled one of her pigtails around her finger with concern, then looked about the room to gauge the response of her thirty-seven fellow Veterans Administration employees, and seeing no response whatsoever from any of them, she nervously returned to her own pretense of work.

      Leroy finally dropped the little bureaucrat on top of the desk.

      “I’m… I’m…” choked the desperate little man. “I’m going to have you arrested.”

      Leroy leaned in nose-to-nose with the whimpering little man, his broad trademark shit-eating smile growing wide.

     “You sorry little bastard, you don‘t have the balls to call the pigs on me,” he said, knowing that to be arrested and prosecuted he first had to be alive and identified as such.

     Unfortunately a few hours later, after a great deal of debate and confusion, the responding police officers departed with the following advice to the babbling traumatized Veterans Administration desk jockey.

      “Listen buddy, thirty-eight people here say they didn’t see a thing,” offered the reasonably intelligent cop. “And besides, you can’t charge a dead man with a crime and according to you this man is dead. Maybe you should take a vacation or get some therapy or something.”

     When the cop turned to leave he winked at Leroy with a salute and a, "Semper Fi, bro."

      Though well intentioned, Leroy wasn't impressed by the favor of this fellow ex-Marine. While he observed the little VA man’s supervisor curiously inspecting the now headless little hula girl, he again wondered to himself just how much more of this he could tolerate before he’d finally toss in the towel. Although Leroy may have appeared triumphant in his minor divergence involving the little Veterans Administration bureaucrat with the contradictory Hawaiian hula girl snow globe, from his point of view it was just another set back, another defeat, one of many. The reality was Leroy Benjamin Smith had once again lost. He once again lost the opportunity to be identified as Leroy Benjamin Smith. He once again lost the opportunity to be officially identified as a living breathing functional ex-Marine. And he had once again lost the opportunity to obtain his disability money and medications without a hassle equal to or greater than a catastrophic act of God. So went my friend Leroy’s dilemma nearly every day of his post combat life. He was perhaps the most frustrated dead man I had ever known and as far as I know he remains dead and frustrated to this day, unable as they say, to even get arrested.

      Leroy was a friend of mine and was pretty much my personal introduction to the Vietnam War. He had become a Marine after being expelled from a South Georgia parochial boarding school for the unforgivably sinful offense of shooting a moon at a passing high strung air-headed red headed coed from the second floor dormitory window. And it wasn't just your normal moon, it was a full fruit basket that caused her to become so upset and traumatized that she went directly to the dean of students in tears. I know this because I was there, and I know she was a high-strung airhead because I married her a few years later.

      I’d known Leroy since we were kids. We met at a church sponsored summer camp in Virginia named Camp Mawava where one day while playing a pick-up game of football we caught the eye of the camp athletic director, who by chance, was also the football coach at a Jesus boarding school seven-hundred miles away in South Georgia. Seeing diamonds in the rough, the coach immediately went into a recruiting mode, spinning our heads with visions of gridiron glory and telling us that going to his Jesus school was so much fun it was just like going to Camp Mawava all year long. It sounded so appealing that a half dozen of us bought into his sales pitch and headed south, discovering after our arrival that the coach who recruited us had now deserted us, moving on to greener pastures and bigger and better things, like a paycheck that didn’t bounce. So there we were, left with a part time preacher teacher coach who had never played football and with a team that had never won a game but had in fact gained national fame in its inaugural season the previous year when it made the news and the pages of Sports Illustrated by being shut out with a high school record score of 129 to 0. The only reason the score wasn't any higher was because someone was merciful enough to let the clock run continuously during the fourth quarter.

      Leroy, two years ahead of me in school, had a dry but great sense of humor, a broad shit-eating smile, was physically capable, confident, and intelligent. Well, I now have my reservations about the intelligent part, after all, Leroy did join the Marine Corps, and fate and the Marines being what they are, it led to his demise. For not long after enlisting in the Marines, Leroy ended up getting blown away in some oddly named dank jungle on the other side of the planet. But that was just the beginning of Leroy‘s dilemma. In typical military fashion Leroy’s parents were respectfully notified of his death and the pending delivery of his remains for burial. Accordingly we all mourned and waited the morbid moment of his arrival. Someone in the bureaucratic military system, however, failed to inform Leroy that he was required to attend the funeral as well.

      At first Leroy‘s lack of participation was puzzling but naturally understandable. Let’s face it; nobody really wants to attend his or her own funeral. And then there was the confusion and fog of war, and the logistics of transportation, and all the other excuses the Marine Corps could conjure, creating a situation not unlike lost luggage at the airport or a special-order sofa from Sears where everybody knows it’s coming but who the hell actually knows when, and for that matter, if it will even be the correct color, a true mystery indeed. In time when it became obvious Leroy wasn’t going to show, the situation inevitably evolved into a traumatic experience for his family. This required that serious inquiries be made, inquiries that resulted in the conclusion that Leroy’s loss was, well, truly a loss, and neither L.B. Smith nor L.B. Smith ever showed up for L.B. Smith’s funeral.

      Then one afternoon as Leroy’s mother sat in quiet bereavement in a dark corner of her home pondering the tragic loss of her only son, another government organization, the United States Post Office, showed up with a letter that inquired as to why Leroy had not lately received any mail and stating that some correspondence from home was much needed and would be more than appreciated. The letter was from Leroy of course, whom it seems had been all shot up, laid up, and a little down and out in a hospital somewhere in the Philippines. As it turned out, Leroy’s entire squad had been wiped out in an ambush, including, according to the Marine Corps, L.B. Smith, and not having the identifiable body of the other L.B. Smith, declared him, L.B. Smith, to be MIA. You have to wonder as to what the odds could have been of having two Leroy Benjamin Smiths in the same squad, but more incredibly you have to wonder what over-striped genius could have maintained that situation long enough to create such a confusing post mortem state of affairs in the first place. It just goes to prove how difficult it really is to remove a square peg from a round hole once it's been forced in, at least in the military.

      As we all know, the Marines are famous for extracting recruits brains and identities while in boot camp and replacing them with a cookie cutter mentality, a mentality that instills the ability to kill and die on command without question or hesitation, leaving the rest to be sorted out by God and historians - and hopefully the Corps. As for what they do with those brains and identities until the point of an individual’s discharge and return to the civilian world is a mystery. Considering Leroy was a little more independent than most, as demonstrated by his willingness and ability to hang his bare ass out a window while attending a Jesus school, it’s entirely possible he failed to learn this and as such failed to realize he was, by Marine Corps decree, supposed to be dead. And military paperwork being what it is, with an emphasis on quantity rather than quality, and being unable to match the correct tag with the correct toe, some future McDonald’s burger bagger passing as a graves registration specialist in Vietnam decided one L.B. Smith was just as good as another L.B. Smith, the result being a KIA notice going in one direction, an MIA notice going in another direction, and a headless body going who the hell knows where but certainly not to Newport News, Virginia, or Detroit. 

      Okay, so war doesn’t always come wrapped in proficiency.  I'll be the first to admit that, especially when those performing forces involved are comprised mostly of unwilling conscript talent. Fortunately however the Hey, why isn’t anybody writing me? letter was the ultimate responsibility of the U.S. Postal Service, not the U.S. military service, and was correctly delivered to Leroy‘s mother, resulting in things finally working out for the best, or at least offering up some clarification. For when Leroy did finally come home, he arrived a mental mess destined to eventually end up in hiding as a post-traumatically stressed out hermit in some old growth high altitude wilderness in Oregon. Honestly speaking, I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same. After all, how long can you fight the bureaucratic fog of the Veterans Administration for much needed meds and benefits, especially when you’re dead and no one wants to listen to you?  Only Leroy’s congressman offered a sympathetic ear, because as we all know, politicians have long appreciated votes from the netherworld. Unfortunately for Leroy, however, the joyful anticipation and belief that his congressman would right all wrongs was short lived because soon after their meeting in the great halls of Washington, Leroy’s Capital Hill hopes were shattered when that same congressman was caught in an illicit affair with a young congressional page of the same gender. This not surprisingly resulted in the congressman’s loss of all credibility and clout necessary to intimidate bureaucracies into admitting and correcting mistakes such as the defunct Marine Leroy Smith. After the Page Petting debacle no one inside or even outside the beltway would take the congressman’s calls, not even Leroy.  After all, he was a Marine. 

      And so it went for years until Leroy finally decided to check out altogether and move to another planet, leaving behind his money, his meds, and many unanswered questions, including who the hell actually ended up with an occupied body bag labeled Lance Corporal L.B. SMITH, MEMBERS MISSING. That’s the MIA Lance Corporal L.B. Smith who was but wasn't actually the KIA Lance Corporal L.B. Smith, not the KIA Lance Corporal L.B. Smith who was convinced he was still alive and kicking and now voluntarily MIA somewhere in the Northwest mountains of Oregon with a case of Jack Daniels and a lifetime supply of medical cannabis, and bending the ear of a smelly sympathetic Sasquach who most assuredly knows, understands, and appreciates what it means to be overlooked, forgotten, rejected, neglected, and completely misunderstood.

      Now, I only mention Leroy because Leroy’s dilemma was my first real exposure to the inner workings of the military and, of course, that non-declared non-war war in Southeast Asia, or the Vietnam Conflict or Police Action, as some politicians in Washington referred to it in a Pontius Pilate sort of way. The entire L.B. Smith circus of events should have given me a heads-up of things to come, as well as an insight as to how the world and the U.S. Military could mess with your destiny. Like most young American boys of the time, however, and I suppose most prior times, I was ignorantly and excessively trusting of all my elders and my government.

      My father, a decorated Army combat veteran of World War II, told me as I left to join the green machine, “Son, there’s nothing wrong with the Army, just most of the people in it”. As I would realize later in life, my father was usually right about most everything and this time was no exception. He was a very pragmatic individual who rightfully believed in the theory; a lesson earned is better than a lesson learned as long as it doesn’t kill you. Later, when I was leaving for Vietnam, he volunteered an additional quip of wisdom. “Remember,” he said, “there’s no such thing as a dead hero, just some dumb son of a bitch who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

      Quite natually I took these practical words to heart, being they were coming from a well decorated veteran who survived some serious combat and near death on multiple occasions with the 2^nd Armored Division in North Africa, Sicily, and Europe, and in addition, had the guts to tell General George Patton that in a combat zone it was a stupid-ass idea to polish tanks and combat vehicles to a high sheen just for the sake of looking spiffy. Tanks, my father argued, that were originally and intentionally painted a subdued olive drab for obvious reasons. Naturally, being only a Sergeant, he lost the argument with Patton and everyone had to polish their tanks anyway, but they subsequently won a moral victory by bathing them in dull mud at the first opportunity. The only dumb ass in the unit who didn’t mud-up his clean shiny tank was the first one to be blown away in the very next engagement. Apparently his Sherman was shining in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Army made him a hero, of course, and gave him a medal, posthumously, which my father was quick to point out didn’t mean a damn thing and didn’t do anybody any good except maybe the undertaker who would have gotten the business sooner or later anyway. As I said, a very practical man. 

      My father and his four Dago brothers all survived some intense combat with every branch of the military in both theatres of the war, the youngest again with the Marines in Korea. And they all seemingly took it in stride. But then why not, it was their duty, their generational legacy, and in their minority first-generation kick-ass immigrant nature to do so. So who was I to argue with their advice and my legacy?

      I on the other hand, was the product of a whole new generation and a whole new generational mindset. Part of a generation that actually had the audacity to believe that people in their own country should take care of their own problems, or at least try. In addition, I thought someone should at least clearly define what those problems might be before they put my ass on the line on their behalf. Hell, was that asking too much? It’s not that I was unpatriotic and I was no coward, and certainly more than willing to defend my right to pay taxes, listen to imported British-American rock and roll, drive little foreign cars made by our former enemies, and defend democracy and my country in general. The key phrase being of course, my country. And as I would later learn, one does tend to acquire a few doubts defending and/or dying for people with which one can’t communicate, who don’t seem to really give a shit, and who’s only apparent purpose in life is to hustle or steal whatever isn’t tattooed or super glued to my body.

      So I eventually found myself heading for Asia on a government chartered commercial airliner, consuming a bag lunch and watching, but paying little attention to, the in-flight flick Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which two famous Hollywood non-violent peacenik actors ran around killing people. I was soon to be stepping onto a searing tarmac in a hot confusing unventilated country I’d hardly ever heard of, and to which I had paid little or no attention while attending that live-in parochial Jesus school where there was no TV and a general attitude that all is in God‘s hands and right with the world as long as you can‘t hear it, see it, or smell it, and it doesn’t dump in your own front yard. And that pretty much held true - until Leroy Smith that is. Now I found myself wondering if I was destined to share a similar fate.

 - end chapter 1 -

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