In 1961 I was sent to Vietnam as what they called a “military advisor.” Most of my advice was to my commanding officer, in the form of reports about what the Viet Cong were doing. My job was to sit in the woods on a hill in the middle of nowhere and listen to the radio for days on end. Every night I would radio back to my CO with a summary. Sometimes he would have specific things to listen for, and I’d make notes to listen for those the next day.

One night at sunset I thought I saw something move in the trees. I moved into off at an angle and saw a VC with a rifle creeping up the hill toward my station. He poked around in my gear for a minute, then put his rifle to his shoulder and started scanning the woods.

I didn’t wait for him to find me. I shot him. As he fell I heard a gasp behind me. I whirled and there was another VC staring at me in horror. I pointed my gun at him and he put his hands in the air.

Then he dropped to his knees and… I don’t know how to describe what he did. He squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his mouth open. He moved his hands a little bit in front of him like a bad mime in a box. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to take a dump or meditating or praying or what. Whatever it was he was concentrating intensely, and it took all of his attention.

As far as I could tell he didn’t have a gun or a radio. I went over to where his buddy lay dead on my gear and took his gun and my radio. Then I ran.

I radioed back to base that I was coming in, but the guy there kept asking for my code name. I gave it to him three times, and each time he asked for it again as if I had given him the wrong code. Finally in frustration I yelled my real name and tag number over the radio to the guy. Yelling was probably a stupid idea, but I didn’t see another VC on my six hour run back to the base.

Yelling my real name in the clear wasn’t smart either, because if the VC were listening that could give away information we’d rather they not have. I was supposed to be just an “advisor” after all, but here I was spying in VC territory.

But the radio guy at the base never responded. I didn’t know at the time whether he had cut me off to shut me up, or what. Whatever reasons he had, I decided to stay quiet for the rest of the run.

When I got back to the base, I was greeted at rifle-point by six MPs who wanted to know who I was, what I was doing there, and why I was wearing a U. S. Army uniform.

I spent the next three weeks in a cell, except for the few hours every day they were interrogating me in a room significantly less pleasant, Jeremy, than the one in which Officer Andollo grilled you.

The Army, my interrogators said, could find no record of my mission or of me. I gave them the particulars of my enlistment, including the name of my recruiter and the the diner where he took me for franks and beans as he made his sales pitch. As far as the Army was concerned, I did not exist.

Eventually there was nothing else they could do with me. They had no interest in sending me home. They couldn’t find any evidence of me back home, either.

I think if they had remembered my mission I would have been in big trouble. It’s not healthy for strangers to know the details of secret missions. But they had no idea what I was talking about, and that, I supposed, convinced them that I was nothing more than a loonie American wandering around where he shouldn’t be.

So they sent me on my way, after my repeated and sincere assurances that I would not ever “try a stunt like that” again.

I made my way to Saigon where I did odd jobs until I could so enough money to go home. I tried to call home a few times, but the telephone system was abysmal. So I wrote letters, and the letters were not answered.

I arrived in Los Angeles in April, 1962. My passport still had my picture on it. Looking back on it, I wonder that it was not wiped out along with the memories of my loved ones and my boot camp graduation photograph in the newspaper.

At the time I entered the country, of course, I would have no reason to think my passport photograph remarkable. But after what happened in the next few days, after thinking about those events for the last forty years, after what happened to that poster of Jeremy, I’m surprised that my passport still had my picture on it. But it did. Maybe it’s because the passport was on my person the whole time. Or maybe it’s because the government would have no records of my passport, so anyone analyzing my passport would conclude that it was a very good forgery. Whatever the reason, I still have that passport. It’s the only bit of hard evidence I have that I existed before that day on the hill in Vietnam.

Six days later I arrived in Chicago and took a taxi to my home. I won’t bore you with the details, which I have no doubt are essentially the same as the ones you’ve heard from a dozen suddenly and involuntarily homeless children.