The Kingdom

Kingdom Come - Southeast Asia 1969

“I got four little verses for you here Skip.” Jerry pushed his Bible towards me. I had many other names, militarily speaking, but it was “Skip” that Jerry chose to call me as did most of the other guys in the Headquarters company of the 502 Infantry, Phu Bai Vietnam 1968-69.

There were “four little verses” waiting for me every day.

There were a lot of reasons why I never rejected his efforts to reform me. But I guess the main one was he was the best friend I'd had since Kim and I had a feeling he would be the last one for a long time to come.

Jerry, wounded in a battle several months ago, served as a cook with me and eight other soldiers. He hoped to get healed up enough to rejoin his unit. In the mean time he was an agent from the Kingdom to remind me of the call that was on my life and the really, really, really big deal that it was to have such a call.

His contribution to our hovel was a picture of his Mustang Mach 1, a picture of his girl friend Sheila, a record player, an album by Johnny Rivers and another by the Kingston Trio. In addition he had acquired a guitar and a Woody Guthrie songbook, by which he had learned to play and sing one song. This song I eventually began to hear even in my deepest moments of sleep.

And of course there was his thirty-two pound King James Bible with which to enlighten my darkening soul.

“Alright,” I said, “What's so important today?”

“I thought about some of our conversations lately and I think you are making a mistake pealing off from the church.” Jerry was a church man. Like me he had grown up in church. Unlike me he was nearly a hundred feet tall and weighed almost 4 tons. He was clumsy with most things, but when crates, boxes and machinery needed to me moved he was a planetary force all his own.

His thumb crumpled the page before me, but I could see he was pointing to 1 Timothy 4:13 – 16 so I picked up the book and read it out loud:

“Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.”

I looked at my friend with “The Sneer” I had been practicing since joining the army but had thus far failed to perfect; so I suppose it was just my usual goofy stare.

“Yeah,” I said. “So what. Paul was writing to Timothy not to me or anyone else.” I started to close the Bible but the meaty palm of his right hand stopped me.

“Actually I think it is for you. It wouldn't be in the Bible if it was just a historical moment in the formation of the church. These verses seem to fit your situation perfectly.” Jerry picked up his Bible and stood up to his full gigantic height, his head just clearing the main beam of our hut. He read it emphatically back to me.

“I'm telling you man, maybe the church you grew up in was overloaded with self righteous bigots who couldn't discern something in the Spirit if they had too, but your pastor had enough on the ball to see the gift that is in you.”

A wry smile came over his whole face, like clouds clearing away before a full moon.

“So it wasn't the “laying on of hands” or a “prophecy,” you experienced, but what if God was actually using him to speak a truth right into the middle of your life? What then? You shared a burger and a milk shake didn't you? That's a most holy presbytery in my book?”

“Your a nut. You know that right?”

“And you're a tough case. But I've got another dozen verses that will prove my point. You believe the Bible don't you. That its the truth. God's word and all that?”

I wasn't sure. I certainly wasn't sure that something as holy as a communication from God would be coming from an ex-machine gunner like my friend Jerry. Besides I was pretty sure God was okay with my agreement with him that “someday I'd do what he wanted me to do.” At that moment I had one mission: to get back home with no additional holes in my skinny frame.


As I was about to make my position clearer to my friend, Sergeant Blaine stuck his head in the back door of the hut and hollered at us.

“Preach – you and Skip are on bunker 9 tonight. Relieve Delta's boys by 1800. Got it?”

“We got it,” Jerry replied putting his Bible away. “Let's get chow.”

Dinner was uneventful except that Jerry went back through the line three times, hoarding fried chicken parts and half a loaf of French bread in his back pack. I grabbed a couple of extra cupcakes myself. By 2200 hours we were content to listen to the guns firing a way off in the distance and finish up our early dinner. Flares had been popping off along the parameter since dark.

“You sleep first,” Jerry said.

This was my third watch with Jerry and I was comfortable with his direction. I had pulled guard duty with every other cook, clerk and motor pool guy in the battalion and they were all flaky in their knowledge of what to do if the enemy actually did show up some night. And with the growing acceptance of “dope smoking” and hard liquor drinking, I was truly glad to be on watch with the most sober person I had met in a long time.

The first five rockets came into Camp Eagle at a little after 0100 hours. Before I was fully awake, six more hit, knocking out bunkers eight and seven to our right flank. The two rockets intended for our bunker fell short blasting dirt and steel straight into the upper sandbags of our pitiful outpost. Jerry shouted something that sounded like: “Praise Jesus Boy!” But I'm sure that couldn't be it.

His weapon of choice was an M60 machine gun. He grabbed me up from the last garments of sleep and motioned to the pallet of ammo. “You keep the belts moving straight up out of those cans boy and reload the gun. Got it?”

“Got it!” I shouted, and he took the massive weapon that looked like a play toy against his massive frame and soon the dirt at the base of some bushes a hundred yards down range was plowed and then the bushes themselves were pulverized by 300 hundred bullets. As the steel left the red hot barrel the bunker filled with acrid smoke. In seconds another hundred rounds sprayed his field of vision.

“Do you see anything?” I yelled up to Jerry's position.

“No. But we'll keep laying down fire. Gunships should be responding in a few minutes.”

Actually it was seconds. Three Cobra gunships hovered above our bunker and the 2 bunkers to our right. They lit up the whole combat arena with the wrath of America and the frustrations of pilots too long away from home. Whole dragon-fly shaped dancing arsenals unleashed hell fury on whatever was left of the Viet Cong assault team.

Relief from the M60's smoke came as a soft breeze blew through Bunker 9. Jerry knelt in prayer too soft to hear above the whop, whop, whop of gunship rotors and the blazing gunfire, and occasional explosions. But it seemed as though he was praying the Twenty-third Psalm. I whispered it myself, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want...”

I had been spared, once again, a direct encounter with the enemy. I was a short-timer now (under 60 days before going home) and this would be the last time of being in harm's way. It was years later, long after saying good bye to my friend and comrade, that I realized God had given me another angel to save my life. And even now I smile at that revelation. Instead of the usual stoners, alkies, and hop heads I usually pulled guard duty with, God gave me a mighty warrior whose heart broke for the enemy under his weapon's scathing fire, but who never-the-less protected valiantly his brothers in arms.


So Jerry, my brother, even as you cruise California Highway 1 in your Mustang Mach 1 with your girl Sheila by your side, I remember you with this prayer and your favorite song.

May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, bless you and keep you. May He cause His Light to shine upon you, your children and your children’s children. Be prosperous in all you do and I will surely see you on the other side, as the Lord wills. Amen.