carrier ship floating in the South China Sea. The sun was beating

down on me as I was basking on the flight deck. The

"mso-bidi-font-style: italic">USS Tripoli was floating off

"Times New Roman">It had been a long time since I was this safe and

just warm, not hot. My tour of Vietnam had been with the Second

Battalion, Ninth Marines in the steamy jungles and sweltering

lowlands of the Demilitarized Zone. My various assignments had

taken me into harm’s way. At times, the combat had been very

in 1969 and had been re-deployed as part of an amphibious “ready

force” that was floating off the coast, prepared to land by sea and

as I remembered an earlier conversation. It revolved around the

fact that the officers were having turkey and dressing for

Christmas dinner while we lowly enlisted were relegated to having

only lobster, and with a limit of two. The injustice of it all!

Yeah, if that is all I had to complain about, it was a good

family and friends. I knew better than to do this. I was melancholy

now, feeling sorry for myself. I resented having had only lobster

would reach me, my family had mailed early and I had gotten my

Christmas box before Halloween. I had nothing to open that day and

was having a wonderful pity party thinking of where I was, and all

my loved ones having dinner and gifts without

heard my commanding officer speak my name. He was standing above

me. I started to rise, but the Lt. Colonel stopped me. “Stand easy

Marine.” He smiled as he said, “Merry

greeting. The colonel squatted down to be eye level with me, which

struck me as odd. Something was up. “I need a

volunteer. I sat still, hiding behind the security of my

sunglasses. The colonel stared right back. The sunglasses did no

village of Cau Viet who is wounded and needs to be evacuated to the

ship here for surgery. I guess it’s our Christmas gesture. A show

suspected, he confirmed. The village had been “pacified” by the VC

again, this girl’s parents had been killed and she was left for

silent, still wallowing in my pity, now made more pronounced by the

request to go back into combat. This just was not fair and I let my

petulance show by asking, “Why me?” I was mortified as soon as the

words had passed my lips, but there was no taking them

over six weeks and know the area and its people better than anyone.

seconds. The mission wasn’t going away and the colonel felt it had

the best chance of success with me, and he wasn’t given the

opportunity to volunteer, and could have ordered me as easily as

details, and within an hour I was airborne and bound for the coast

of Vietnam with five other Marines, one a lieutenant who would have

ground control while the colonel stayed airborne with the

helicopters. We had a Navy corpsman along to give whatever aid the

zone I had chosen and met no resistance. We began to move into the

village. It was eerie quiet. All the villagers were in their huts,

hiding underground. There were occasional faces that you could

catch a glimpse of, but the villagers, after the pacification

through the village, conscripting any young men for military duty

and killing a few citizens who they accused as being U.S.

sympathizers just to show who was in control. That is what had

happened to this girl’s family, and I knew where it would have

with the village “honcho,” the local leader, at the “town hall,”

the only permanent structure in the village made from salvaged

lumber, and other materials scavenged from our operations in the

area. This building had been the scene of other murders, and the

normally white sands of the area were packed hard and made dark by

the blood that had drained into them in front of the

village honcho, “You take,” gesturing toward the building, “you

hurry, VC come, you hurry, you go.” He was a master at straddling

the fence. That is how he and the village had survived for so

we entered. I led the way and saw an old woman sitting in a chair

made from an oil drum, rocking back and forth, staring off into

space. There was a resolved sadness to her as if she had done this

many times before. An ancient man stood by her side. It was he who

directed our attention to the bundle in the woman’s

corpsman. The honcho was dancing around jabbering for us to get the

little girl and go. I slung my rifle, bent, and took her. The old

woman’s expression never changed. My heart was aching for

hardly knew she was there. I guessed her to be about five. All I

could see was a thatch of jet-black hair sticking out of the top of

a shabby, dirty blanket. There was dried blood on both. The

corpsman lifted the blanket to look at the damage. Most of her head

was swathed in a crude, but clean bandage covering the right side

of her face, the side with the damaged eye. The other eye fixed on

happened, had happened, and what was going to happen, would, and

she was at the mercy of all. I smiled to reassure her and said,

“Friend.” Most Vietnamese knew some English. It was near their

second language, close behind French. The little girl’s hand

reached up to me and took hold of my fatigue shirt. She looked me

in the eyes and said, “C

style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: VI">ảm ơn

building. Everything was blurry. I noticed that the corpsman had

something in his eye as well as he kept rubbing at them. He wanted

to take the girl from me, but she clung to me with surprising

strength and he deferred any medical exam until

and made a dash for the LZ. I had covered the little bundle with my

olive drab green towel that I wore around my neck. When we were

safely aboard and airborne, I took the towel off her face and she

was still staring at me, saying, “Thank you, thank you,” over and

over. There wasn’t a dry eye on the

It was beautiful as the orange, setting sun behind us cast a golden

glow throughout the chopper. It was as if we were bathed in gold

and the hand of God was blessing us on this Christmas

how much I had grown. Earlier, I had been lamenting the fact we

were having lobster for dinner. Peanut butter sandwiches were

shared around the chopper, and they were better than the lobster,

"Times New Roman">Christmas is about giving, and we had given that

little girl a fresh start in life, although a tough one. I know the

surgery to save her eye was a success, but I don’t know what

happened to her beyond that. There isn’t a Christmas goes by that I

don’t hear that tiny voice telling me, “Thank you,” over and over.

If only we could be that grateful as we are held in His