We still had each other…

“I am not so much delighted by my reputation for

wisdom…as I am by the hope that the memory

of our friendship will always endure.”

- Cicero, MT: On Friendship

I have met few people I disliked from the beginning, but Bob was one of them. I had finished basic training and after taking a leave, was assigned to Air Traffic Control (ATC) School in Biloxi, Mississippi. The U.S. Army was an odd place for an expatriate Canadian – Green Card holding – private first class to find himself, but find myself there I did (one of the things non-citizens can do is serve in the military).  The Army did not have a training program for air traffic controllers, so we were sent to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi…my first real exposure to the deep south, and Biloxi was about as deep as you could get.

The airbase was near the junction of highway 15 and coastal highway 90…its main gate some 2000 feet (400 meters) from the Gulf of Mexico. We were a small contingent on a compound of about 10 wooden, two story open-bay barracks, and a command building at the northwest end. The middle of the area was open, mostly the kind of shallow sandy gravel and a little grass so common to coastal regions of the South.

While it was wartime, or rather military conflict time, there were only so many instructors in the school. We trained along side Air force boys, which meant we had to wait until a slot opened up to start training. Integrating into the system took time…sometimes several weeks or more.

What to do…
What do you do with a group of testosterone filled boys in their late teens and early twenties and a little too much time on their hands? I’m not sure what other organizations do, but the military ‘makes work’ to keep you busy. Policing the yard, raking the sand and gravel ground, a little mowing between the barracks, physical training…anything to keep you occupied for several hours in a day. ‘Policing’ in this context: “…maintain order and neatness in (an area, as a military camp),” meaning to pick up litter and trash.

Every morning we would assemble for formation...order our ranks (line up in equidistant rows) and be called to attention. With mind-numbing daily routine, roll call would be taken, uniforms and personal hygiene inspected followed by morning assignments.

Typically formations were run by non commissioned officers (NCOs). Human nature, however, often dictates ‘do less’ rather than ‘more,’ so frequently the NCOs would delegate inspections and work assignments to lower ranking soldiers.

Enter Private First Class Bob
Bob… he was a ‘first class’ something all right, but as we got to know him better, it had little to do with his military rank. For some reason, two cosmic forces collided to bring us into proximity. He had a delayed class assignment, and he had caught the eye of the senior NCOs – meaning, they delegated some of the morning formation chores to him. He seemed to relish finding inspection errors, and speaking for myself, had a knack for assigning people – of his same rank – to tasks they particularly did NOT like. When my class assignment came, I was finished with Bob and could not have been more pleased!

After basic ATC it was off to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia for advanced training in radar approach control. In addition to a few hundred hours learning to guide helicopter pilots to a safe landings, I discovered that soldiers new to airfields were part of a broad practical joke conspiracy…sent on missions to retrieve buckets of ‘prop wash’ and yards of ‘flight line.’ Old hands seemed to never tire of sending earnest and naïve young men like me on these assignments. Everyone was in on it, so until someone took a little pity, it could go on for some time!! For the uninitiated, prop wash is NOT something you use to clean the propellers of aircraft; rather the slipstream of air formed by their rotation. Flight line is NOT rope used to tie aircraft down in the wind, but the parking and servicing area for aircraft.

The training ended…
At Hunter, I got my orders for Vietnam. All of us knew we would be going, but when the actual orders arrived, it became real. Next came a 30-day leave, a flight to Oakland, California and just like that, off to the war.

By the time I got to Vietnam, it had been several months and what seemed a lifetime from ATC School in Mississippi. Arriving in country, was a little like getting to Keesler. I was put in a holding unit until orders came for my in-country duty station. It took a week or so, but arrive they did. I hitched a ride on a helicopter that made its way to Vung Tau Army Airfield, on the edge of a small peninsula slipping into the pristine waters of the South China Sea – my home for the next 13 months.

I got off the aircraft and headed for Base Operations to report in and get my assignment. The exact sequence of events is not clear, but while getting organized I heard a voice, “Hey Dreisinger!” That voice – it had a familiar and unpleasant ring to it - ‘…slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch…,’ and there he was - BOB!! He made some comment about the place, a familiar face, etc., etc., etc., …All I could think of was, “Damn...Vietnam AND Bob!!”

Judging books and their covers
As disappointing as it was to see this guy, there was something different about him. He had an energy, a drive and he did not have the attitude I had so resented during the earlier days in Mississippi. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me!

You know how it is said, “… you may not be able to change your circumstance, but you can change the way you think about it?” Maybe that was it, or maybe it was just a couple of youngsters a little afraid of the unknown with the slenderest common thread of experience.

I am not sure how our relationship evolved, but it did and fairly quickly. He was a tower controller and I worked radar from a small unit on the other side of the main runway.  Often we worked the same shifts, and found ourselves grabbing chow together, playing a little basketball when off duty, exploring the surrounding peninsula, in spare time teaching English in a small school to Monks, children and prostitutes, taking R&R to Japan and Australia – and so many other things. In that year little happened to one that did not happen to the other. In fact, his presence and friendship was so natural it seemed that it had always been. There was comfort in the implicit trust of friendship. We became not just brothers in arms, but brothers in deed.

It’s hard to express the fidelity – the love that grows between men when uncertain circumstances are shared; it is hard to express the loyalty that becomes ingrained; the growth and depth of understanding from unspoken words that takes deep root. It is also very hard to express how satisfying it is to be in an unconscious rhythm with another human being that is so resonant nothing needs to be said...so it was with '...my first class friend...' Bob.

As the subsequent years unfolded, we found ourselves drifting in different directions and on to different lives. We lost touch off and on, but lately reconnected. Yet, in the realm of the inexpressible, Bob – who at a certain time was the last human being I would have ever have expected – became an icon of friendship, loyalty and love that remains ingrained in the depths of my heart and mind.

It is hard to imagine, as I look back on that period of my life, I would have survived without Bob at my side, but as he recently said in a brief note, “...we still had each other...”

Indeed we did Bob…in deeds we did.

- ted