My proudest moment of being an American came when I wasn’t even in America at the time.
A show of support
It was 1969; He had taken a small group of sailors to a sea camp in East DaNang, South Vietnam. This was in the I Corps; the enemy was closed… and active. We were there to assist the First Radio Battalion of the Third Marine Amphibious Force. They were severely understaffed and had worked to exhaustion.
We knew these guys; As Sailors and Marines we trained together in Florida as part of the Naval Security Group. The men I worked with there (one of them became my brother-in-law) and what we accomplished, saved many lives and are among the most significant experiences…of my life.
go back to japan
When it was time for our group to bike back to Japan and let a group of sailors from the Philippines relieve us for a bit, I discovered that the Marines didn’t have tickets OUT of Vietnam, only IN. We had to wait for whatever jumps we could catch. We hung around the airport long enough and seemed miserable enough (which wasn’t hard) until we finally caught a flight on a medivac, a hospital plane filled with wounded marines.
We landed for the transfer in Okinawa. I checked the flights to Japan for myself and my men, and was told that there was an American plane headed there, but it was ready to take off. They radioed the plane and told them to wait for us, then shoved us toward the gate in the general direction of where the planes were and just said, “Hurry up!”
The flag that found me
In the dark, all planes look pretty much alike. We were racing down the runway, lugging our sea bags, trying to find a plane among what seemed like hundreds. We were half lost and exhausted.
That’s when Something told me to look up. A spotlight, or light of some kind, shone directly on Old Glory, an American flag painted high on the tail of the boat leaving Okinawa.
It’s still hard to put into words, but the sight of that flag brought an immediate sense of calm; She knew that everything was going to be alright. We quickly loaded through the plane’s tail ramp. I made sure my men were taken care of, then I buckled into a seat… and slept like a baby.
A gift of providence
To this day I can’t explain that light other than to say it was a gift from Providence at a time I needed it most but I NEVER see our flag waving but that doesn’t remind me of that night so long ago and of a little flag that seemed to find me.
God bless America and all of our uniformed men and women who carry the same flag, OUR flag, on their shoulders. For them, may you always be a beacon of comfort and tranquility.###