Sargent Rick(James brown) I heard Mike tell the Sargent Rick Story myself but my friend Craig Little heard it most and tried to help Mike much more so the following is his edited story.

Craig Little

After graduating from college in1968, the 2-S typed on the tattered draft card the Selective Service required me to carry in my wallet at all times since turning 18 ceased to be valid. I switched to I-A with no need to inform the authorities. The university would. I was in limbo until the letter from Selective Service told me to report. I knew an unknown fate was marching toward me but did not know the when, where and what. I did not know the why either but I did not ask that question. The why back then was, young men were drafted.

Young and invincible, I wasn’t afraid of going to Vietnam. As a rock climber, I knew I’d not slip off the end of my rope. I thought only about each day as it arrived and didn’t worry about the long term. Despite my indifference, I was exposed to a personal causality of the war. The names on the Vietnam War Memorial chevron wall do not include all whose lives were lost, just killed. Many lost lives but didn’t die. My friend Mike was one.

In college, I visited him at Letterman’s Military Hospital in San Francisco until he was released. He’d been shot in the face, undergone reconstruction surgeries, and could walk in the mall and not be a freak. The bullet which hit him was from an old WWII French MAS-36 rifle, left by the /French, which used a 7.5 full metal jacket cartridge. It struck him just below the right eye and exited behind his right ear. He lost the hearing in that ear. If it had been from an AK-47 or an M-16 it would have taken off half his head.

Mike and I were neighbors in San Jose, California. We’d done some rock climbing together at the Pinnacles National Monument near Hollister and stayed friends even after he ruined my climbing rope pulling his 1954 Chevy out of a ditch. We worked together at an amusement park to pay for college once out of high school.

We started college together at San Jose State in September of 1963. We would meet between classes, lie on the lawn, and watch coeds who were beyond our grasp stroll by with their books and mini skits, then in vogue. We both were in the limbo of waiting to be drafted with temporary student deferments. Mike, after a semester, decided to quit school and join the Army. Once in, he volunteered for jump school to be an airborne paratrooper and was assigned to the 173rd and subsequently stationed in Okinawa. From training his indoctrination, he knew there were two kinds of people, those who jumped and everyone else, known as “legs”. His pride was being a “Sky Soldier”, and the first time he awoke in the hospital after being shot he wondered if he could still jump.

His Brigade was the first major army combat unit sent to Vietnam. They rioted at their base in Okinawa when they heard they were being sent to Vietnam. Not because they had to go but because they were excited to fight in a real war. The 173rd arrived May 7, 1965, at Bien Joa, near Saigon. Mike was shot on May 15th only a week later.

After climbing out of a helicopter on a hot landing zone, Mike ran up a trail to where the action was. He was shot by a Viet Cong youth in a tree who was then shot by Mike’s fellow sky soldiers behind him. Mike would have died in any other war. The reason he made it was, he received immediate medical attention, dusted off in a Medevac helicopter to a field hospital, then airlifted to Clark Air Base in the Philippines. He was eventually transferred to Letterman’s for long term convalescent treatment.

When I visited Mike in early 1966, it was in a locked psych ward at Letterman’s. He was experiencing mental head trauma which was exacerbated by opening Life magazine and seeing pictures of dead from his platoon including Sergeant Rick when they were caught in an ambush.

The greater adjustment was undergoing de-indoctrination. Mike still believed he and the 173rd were invincible.

Mike was an impressionable 18 when he became “airborne all the way”. He believed he could walk through a mountain if he wished it hard enough. The airborne taught him this. In the psych ward he struggled with it not being so.

One minute he would talk about collecting Viet Cong ears and then drop into rage about a paratrooper blown apart by an enemy 50 caliber machine gun. He talked about sweeping the Viet Cong out of a village but when learning U.S. causalities were “light” with three KIA’s he raged how the stinking village wasn’t worth the lives of three paratroopers.

Eventually, when allowed home leave, we’d drink in the evening and his stories would bubble up and be released like belching gas after too much beer. One story became a mantra told over and over without his realizing it.

It was Sergeant Rick, Mike’s squad leader. Mike carried on a conversation between himself and Sgt. Rick switching back from Sgt. Rick asking questions and Mike answering them until finally Mike asked a question of Sgt. Rick.

To start Sergeant Rick would ask Mike,

“Mike who is the best and toughest military in the world?”

Mike would answer,

“Definitely the U. S. military, Sergeant Rick!”

Next Sergeant Rick asked,

“Mike who is the best and toughest in the US military?”

Mike would reply,

“Definitely the US Army, Sergeant Rick!”

The questions and answers continued down from “Definitely the 173rd Airborne, Sergeant to Mike’s platoon and at last to his squad. Then after affirming his squad was definitely the best and toughest Mike would murmur,

“Are you dead Sergeant Rick?”

Sergeant Rick would reply,

“Yes Mike, I am definitely dead!”.

Then Mike would start to drunkenly sob.

After his release from Letterman’s hospital he tried to re-connect with his airborne buddies. One night Mike and I and a couple of his army “brothers” drove Mike’s new burgundy Pontiac, from San Jose to Sacramento’s Travis Air Force Base, a long ride so we could drink cheap in the Enlisted men’s club.

I had about 10 black Russians, my drink at the time. We then went back on the road south. One of the guys had a “traveler”, an open bottle of Bourbon. I was a bit more sober, so I drove. We sped down Interstate 80 southbound to Camp Hunter Liggett, an army base south of Salinas to visit one of Mike’s 173rd airborne friends. The distance between Travis Air Force Base and Fort Hunter Liggett is over 200 miles.

I put the pedal to the metal, and we traveled 110 mph in his new Pontiac until Mike told me to stop to satisfy a call of nature. I hit the brakes and slid across three lanes, struck the rear quarter panel of the car on a mileage marker, and skidded on the rain-soaked road to a stop at the side of the road. Mike was too drunk to notice the damage to his new car.

When we got out, we discovered the field alongside the road was flooded with 6 inches of water. After Mike finished adding to the water, his demeanor changed. He began yelling at me and then tried to punch me by taking a haymaker swing. Mike was a better boxer, but I was more sober and able to duck. I then tripped and dragged him down into the water where I had help from the others restraining him. I did not want to hit him as I knew his face was a mass of reconstruction surgery behind the grafted skin.

A few minutes passed, and we were again flying south on Interstate 80 with the car’s heater at full blast to warm us and dry our clothing. Nothing more was said about the fight. The others already knew Mike had unresolved issues and they chalked it up to his adjusting back to society. I imagined his assault was due to a Nam flashback with me a Viet Cong in a rice paddy.

We arrived at Camp Hunter Liggett at 3AM. The gate sentry felt sorry for Mike after he explained he had not seen his friend since Nam where Mike was shot. The sentry bent the rules and let us in the gate.

The four of us crept through a darkened Quonset hut along a line of army cots full of sleeping GIs. Using hushed voices, we called for his friend as quietly as we could. Finally, a sleeping form sat up and asked us what the hell we were doing. We found his friend. Mike tried to entice him to go drinking with us.

We were reminded it was 3 in the morning, we were in the middle of an army camp, and he only had a few weeks left in the army and wasn’t going AWOL. With dampened party spirits we drove the long way back to San Jose to greet the morning. All we had to show for our adventure was a dented car fender, hangovers, and damp clothes.

I felt for Mike but all I could do was be his friend and visit from time to time. I tried to talk to him while he was at Letterman and afterward when he was released but he was irrational. Eventually he married a pretty and understanding woman, got a job with the power company and had three children. The demons, however, kept coming back and the military doctors told his wife to divorce him and only allow his visiting the children under close supervision.

He never recovered. He tried suicide several times. Once he purposely drove off the road at high speed to kill himself but survived. He yo-yoed back and forth from living on his own to being locked up. He spent most of his life drugged in a veterans group home, his only sober employment driving his rippled “brothers” to medical appointments.

My wife, Mike and I recently attended an annual reunion with the 173rd airborne members Mike served with. As I entered the conference room I was “welcomed home soldier” by a sky soldier who knew I had helped Mike over the years. I forced myself not to cry in this public place. I did not know saying “Welcome home soldier” was a tradition started with Nam vets meeting one another until that moment. It was said to overcome the not so welcome homes we received as perceived baby killers.

Later that night I had the pleasure of standing in front of the group and announcing our 4th Infantry Division Unit stating when and where I served. Each soldier took his turn. Some of the Airborne present actually “dropped in” and fought in Nam during the famous “Operation Junction City”, which involved a WWII type parachute drop on February 22, 1967.

I was impressed by the 173rd’s deference and kindness demonstrated to “Gold Star Mothers” who had lost their sons in Vietnam. Mike and I remained friends and I’d talk to him now and then. Our discussions revolved around family and our Nam days, the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 4th Infantry Division.

I received a call recently from a veteran’s hospital. The caller regretted to inform me my friend Mike had died. Up until the end still called me a “leg”. I thought of Sargent Rick and lives wasted.

Thanks for reading

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