My life has changed in more ways than I would have ever perceived. From the narrow perspective of an inner city slum kid who never traveled (even within the state where he lived) to study and following of a philosophy conceived many centuries ago, half way around the world.

On my 22nd birthday, just a little over a month after mankind walked on the surface of the moon, I landed at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base, in extreme Northeastern Thailand on the Mekong river bordering Laos 230 miles from Hanoi and deep into the secret war in Laos. I was assigned to the 56th Special Operations Wing at the Tactical Units Operations Center. We were not allowed to tell our families where we were or what we were doing. When men died, their families were simply told they had died in the service of their country.

What follows are two of some of the memorable experiences of the war which this blog will share to who ever reads it, yet without my name. I write for my own healing and with the conviction to put to rest these experiences as a testimony, perhaps not unlike a tombstone carries in essence the shortest summary of our lives in final rest. The reader should be understanding we are all filled with contradictions and so these stories are filled with both hope and love as much as with death and despair.


Knowing the needs of the orphanage at Thai Rae 50 clicks west we all wrote home to procure items for more than a thousand orphans. Everything from shampoo and fingernail clippers to baseball equipment and over five thousand dollars in American money. Another Sgt and I started the ball rolling.....it's amazing how generous everyone was....writing to their families and churches at home to collect items and gifts. Hell, we even had a both a Christmas tree and snow from Colorado flown in on the sly. Father Khai at the orphanage had the Archbishop up from Bangkok and had somehow managed to procure three cases of American beer and provided dinner for twenty of us who came to distribute the gifts. It was the best Christmas I have ever known away from home. The pilot who brought Santa on the Jolly Green and I are friends to this day.


Then there was another evening of which the memories prevail even now. Nakhon Phanom was a very small base, yet the location of the largest military computer complex in the world. This unit, hidden underground, was known as Task Force Alpha; responsible for more deaths than any other unit in the war. A computer which analyzed the data from sensors providing the locations of travel along the trails in Laos. Once the information was configured, the B-52 Arc Light Strikes would pound the enemy into oblivion by carpet bombing. Hundreds of thousands died even after the North Vietnamese figured out how it was being done and where Task Force Alpha was located. We called Nakhon Phanom, Naked Fanny, because the only thing which prevented its destruction was reliance on its location in Thailand, jutting out into Laos like an unprotected butt.


Just a few miles on the other side of the Mekong River one evening there was heavy bombing by B-52 aircraft delivering Arc Light strikes. From our vantage point, we could see only a wall of flame from horizon to horizon, feel the earth shake and hear the depths of the earth groan from the intense bombing nine miles away. Those who have seen an Arc Light Strike on the ground never forget the awesome power and it lingers forever in the mind’s eye. In the morning what had been a lush sea of green jungle was now transformed into an empty wasteland filled with an uncountable number of brown craters which looked like the surface of the moon.

All this....for man to achieve what? This was merely a quest for material greed and power which had got out of hand, larger than life. Today I understand Thoreau when he said "I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work" for I have been a student of The Tao Teh Ching and it's philosophy for many years now. If you have never read it, nor understood it, I can best describe it as a celebration of the individual within the flow of eternal life.

The North Vietnamese today call the Ho Chi Mien Trails through Laos “The Land Of Heroes”. This year I drove and walked through the infamous areas of the trail which are once again quiet jungle ford streams which do not reveal the horror of their past nor the ghosts who haunt the stillness.



Traveling north into the restricted zone to Long Tieng; eight hours through rugged jungle on rough cut roads to the secret Air America headquarters during the war bringing school supplies, putting in bathrooms, a water system and evaluating further needs with the local officials for new desks and chairs (all delivered now) was truly an experience of a lifetime.


This all commenced in 1997 when I returned, found Father Khai and made a donation to the orphanage. At the former base standing alone on the last of the pierced steel planking by the former runway parking area at Life Support for the HH-53's and OV-10's I knew the presence of the ghosts who surrounded me and within me.

Transformed to those earlier days in an instant I could hear the Skyraiders cough to life and those who had flown "over the fence" into Laos and vanished in the most remote triple canopy jungle in the world. At that moment I had my epiphany and knew the mission I was being given to aid the children in their memory then they would rest easy with their mission continued aiding the people they gave their lives to help and would not be forgotten by them.


Growing slowly; the men who served found each other, created a non profit charity and expanded aid into rural villages providing medical aid, putting in water systems, fish ponds, repairing schools and many other humanitarian projects working hand in hand at grassroots levels each and every project in memory of those American soldiers who did not return home.


I now have friends all over Asia....even into the deepest heart of central China at the summit of Wudang Mountain, in The Golden Pillar Temple home of the Inner Style of Wudang martial arts, which in true Taoist spirit exerts force from within to master another without harm. Ten years ago my fiftieth birthday was celebrated in humility at Wudang Shan being honored to share an evening with the Yellow Emperor, the head Taoist Master, sharing stories with many masters, laughing and drinking Wudang Wine together. Is this not happiness