I hadn’t known Tom Criser as he served in C/1/9 after I left the unit in November 1968. Tom was the radio man (RTO) for the infantry platoon that was part of the unit. While they often (and loudly) proclaimed they were an Airmobile Shit Detail their real assignment was to be inserted into the jungle first whenever we had a helicopter shot down (too often!) or wherever a super elite small squad of “Trail Watchers” called Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRPs) needed an immediate extraction because they had been discovered by the enemy.
Tom had found his niche in Thousand Oaks, Ventura County, California with the newspaper The News Chronicle. I had arrived in Thousand Oaks guided by an unseen destiny guide and the US Army in 1972 following my discharge from the Army. We had mutual friends who were in the local Kiwanis Club. Tom had already moved on to Corpus Christi, Texas at the time just prior to his retirement. Irish John Gore recognized my Vietnam unit, C/1/9, as Tom’s also. He is the person who orchestrated our first meeting one evening in thousand Oaks when Tom was back on personal business.
It was as if we were back in Vietnam again without the humidity and heat endemic to Vietnam. The dimly lit bar became our “hootch” and we were young men eager to talk about our military service to someone who had been there. We talked and exaggerated our impact in that ancient war, Tom as one of our enlisted BLUES and me as a Scout pilot and officer.
I don’t recall the two of us ever meeting again face to face. I think we talked through the “gossip line” of Irish John keeping each other appraised of current events and situations. Thanks to email and Facebook we have a more frequent and dependable (sometime) way of communicating today. In his retirement Tom became a published author, The Ghost in the Orange Closet detailing his service in the First of the Ninth and its aftermath. He sent me a copy. I didn’t read it all the way through – I don’t remember why. Maybe it brought forth too many memories, too many forgotten names, too many faces, some of which never returned home. Maybe it recalled too many things that I had safely stored away in some distant recess of my mind. I don’t know. I passed the book to another Vietnam vet, a friend, who needed it more than I did.
Nevertheless, we are friends separated by miles and times from one another. We are forever bonded together by war; we are comrades in arms, proud comrades, both wounded in unseen ways by our mutual service in that old conflict. We both have benefited from our military experiences.
We grew up in the same neighborhood – Vietnam.