A Navy Seabee from Feb. 1966-Nov. 1969; Mike was wounded in Khe Sanh, Vietnam where he had been sent to work on an air strip and portable, floating bridges.
Mike was awarded a Purple Heart, and a Bronze Star. This much I know from papers I found in his things after he died.
He once thanked me for never having asked: “did you kill anyone?” He never wanted to talk about Vietnam. But sometimes he would be reminded of it and volunteer something;
like how he arrived in Vietnam under heavy fire and how men died there beside him on an airstrip barely having stepped out of the airplane.
How close Khe Sanh was to Laos where snipers hid and fired into Khe Sanh.. And that they were not supposed to shoot back into Laos. And how the wounded and the dead were packed and transported in helicopters. How his less fortunate traveling companions were fork-lifted from the plane and stacked in their body bags.
I did not know about the Bronze Star until after Mike died. I have never seen it.
There were other things I learned after he died. He was an organ donor. I had never had reason to look at his driver’s license. But there it was. And I learned about many kind things he had done for people; things which he never mentioned to me for people I never met until after he died.
I know Vietnam is part of what made Mike who he was: inexhaustibly magnanimous, generous, kind and humble. He even carried bugs out of the house instead of squishing them. And he was strong. I can't recall a single time he complained of his wound, even when his knee had swollen horribly and he walked with obvious pain.
Mike, it was an honor and great privilege to walk with you a while.
