A time in my life on Guam

Was it only yesterday?

Was that what happened just yesterday? Was there really bullets screaming past my ears? Was there really all of those calls for ‘Corpsman Up’ from almost all up and down the line? Was it just yesterday that the officers and the NCOs were shouting their orders, and that I was crawling in the muddy rice paddy; that there was blood spewing from to my fellow Marines? Was it only yesterday that I had the smell of rifle fire in my nostrils from the air all around me, and finally…, was it only yesterday, and did I hear that correct, “Fix Bayonets! Search the dead for ammo, we’re out!”

As I stood there on the tarmac of some naval air station on Guam, it was just another day here. The sun was shining, the day was clear, and I was here, and there was not a bullet in the air.

As I was boarding the bus, well, cattle-car they called it, for the Naval Hospital on the island, my right hand was bandaged and splinted at Battalion Med back in Chu Lai, and they sewed up the artery that left me in a pool of blood on the cot that I laid in after the initial bandaging was done when I came in on the med-evac that whisked me off of the battlefield of Operation Texas. They missed the artery that was cut in the initial triage, but the Doc that found me shivering and almost unconscious on the cot in recovery had found it, and he saved my life in doing so; I was bleeding to death, but, that is a whole other story.

It was March 22, 1966, and here I was on Guam, and no one was shooting at me!

I had been wounded through the right hand in a battle on March 21, 1966, and the next day I was flown to a Naval Hospital on the Island of Guam.

It was all done that fast. I went from living in mud and rain, in a trench half filled with water all the time to being among people, and to being able to sleep on white sheets, and this, all in one day.

Guam!

Guam was a nice place to be, if you just happened to have been shot. The hospital was relatively new, and the facilities were very comfortable. And, I can not emphasize this enough: no one was shooting at me!

I found out that Guam was the largest, most populous, and southernmost of the Mariana Islands chain in the western Pacific Ocean. The area of the island is about 210 square miles. The highest peak, Lamlam, is only 1,330 feet tall. The interior of the island is mostly jungle. There was one main road that circled the island. That was Guam.

Upon my arrival at the hospital, I was placed in a ward with six other servicemen. I was the only US Marine in the group, and as I was only shot in the right hand, I was what was known as an ambulatory patient, this meaning I was able to walk; it also meant that I was able to work. That is what the Navy does with its walking wounded. They put them to work.

Of the men in the ward, there were three men in the ward that were not able to walk. So, at first, we ambulatory patients kept the water and ice containers filled for our fellow wounded in the ward, and we did the runs to get a sandwich or anything that they might a have need for, after all, these were our brother combat vets, and we could not do enough for them.

The caring for combat wounded Soldiers and Marines can sometimes be difficult for the hospital staff, and there were certain rules for hospital staff applied to patients just out of the war zone: 1) No sudden noises from behind them; 2) Do not wake up a wounded man by touching him; and, 3) Don't expect too much military courtesy out of the wounded patients. Other than that, all else was acceptable.

The patients, like me, ambulatory, were assigned to work parties in the hospital. The assignments included working in different wards of the hospital, the hospital guard detail, and the general cleanup of the hospital.

I was assigned to the female ward of the hospital. Talk about wanting to get shot more often! This was not bad duty.
The ward was for female military patients, dependants of the military, and for some residents of the American Territories of Guam and the Marianna Islands.

I enjoyed the work, and it was nice to be around females for even a short time. It was a big change from the hairy chested Marines that I was used to. Sometimes, it was very difficult to remember my manners around the women, but I was able to adapt quite well to almost any situation that I encountered. Probably a language screw up would occur from time to time, but other than that, I was fine with the duty.

One of my favorite patients in the female ward was a Mrs. Love. This was her real name believe it or not. She was there, for want of better words, to use the facility to treat her psychotic behavior. She was terrible to the hospital staff, but she seemed to like me, and I would take the time to read to her from her books. She loved her books. They were her real friends, but her eyes were growing old at this time, and the strain of reading gave her a terrible headache, and when she got her headaches, she became a terror.

Mrs. Love was a nice old lady of about 50 (as I looked at age at the time). I believe she was a Philippina by birth and by background, but I never really found out for sure. She was always evasive as to her background, and she never talked of it very much. What I did know of her was that she was the widow of a US Sailor, and she was a very lonely woman. She had a heavy accent to her English, and I sometimes I had to strain to hear and to understand her requests. Usually a smile would calm her down when I didn't understand her right away, or when she became frustrated with trying to explain to me what it was she needed.

The nurses on the station remarked to me that she could become very violent when she went into one of her fits, and they remarked that they were surprised how well I did at keeping her calmed down at all times.

My general duties on the female ward was to make sure that all of the patient's water pitchers were kept filled with ice and with water, and I would help with the lifting of the heavier of the patients when they had to be moved from their beds to the hospital Stretchers to go to the operating rooms or to their doctor's appointments. I would also do what I could to assist the nurses on the ward with whatever would be needed to be done for the patients. Also, I would help to transport the patients to different appointments they had in the hospital in wheelchairs and wait for their appointments to be over with, and transport them back to the ward.

I became friendly with a 17 year-old Guamanian girl that was in the ward for an ailment that the local authority thought would be treated better at the Navy facility. Her name was Mary.

At first, she did not want to say too much to anyone in the hospital.

I would go into her room, and I would fill her water pitcher for her, and I would say hello to her. The first couple of times I said hello to her, she would look at me without a response from her, and she would lie there very still in her bed, but she would always watching me while I was in the room. She seemed to be mad at the world for her still being a breathing member of the population after she had tried to end it all with some pills one evening in the bathroom of her home. No one seemed to know why she did, and she was telling no one, so there was not much the hospital Psychiatric Doctors could do for her while she was there.

The second day I walked into her room, she said hello to me, and she did so even before I could say anything to her. I smiled at her, and said hello. She examined me up and down, and she said I looked a little young to be a doctor or a nurse in the hospital. I told her I was neither, that I was a patient in the hospital the same as was she. I showed her my right hand with the caste and the bandages on it.

"Oh my God, What happened to you?" She asked.

I told her I had been shot, when I was in South Vietnam.

Surprisingly, she only asked me if it hurt when it happened, and I told her it was something that she wouldn't want to find out about for herself. She could take my word for it, it hurt!

She laughed. She had a nice laugh and it transformed her face from the very sad mask she wore up to this point on into a very pretty young girl's face. A very nice face for sure.

"Oh! I see!" She said. "You are talking about this." Indicating her being in the hospital, and the reason therefore.

"I know! It was a stupid thing to do." She said with quite an embarrassed look upon her face. "I was just mad at my family, and I hurt myself, because I did not wish to hurt anyone else."

"Do you often do this kind of thing when you get mad at people?" I asked with a general concern.

"No! No! No!" She said with emphasis. "I will never do this again."

"That is good. There are not that many pretty girls in this world as it is, and to have one kill her self is a terrible thing to do the men of the world." I smiled at her, and I filled her water pitcher, and I left her room. She said goodbye as I walked out the door, and I said likewise to her.

Later, I asked the head nurse, Juniko (I believe was her name, she was a Japanese woman married to an American Sailor), what was the story about the young girl?

She laughed at me, and she said Mary was there for a 48-hour psychiatric evaluation, because of her attempt to hurt herself. Juniko also said there was nothing much they could do for her at the hospital, as the psychiatrist did not know very much about her condition, but that he seemed to think it was something she did to bring attention on to herself.

Than she looked at me and said, "You do know you are not here to fraternize with the patients, don't you?"

I said, "I didn't, but I do now!"

"That poor girl has a lot of problems. You don't want to make those problems any worse than what they are already, do you?"

I told her, no, I didn't, but I thought to myself of what it would be like with her.

The next morning, I was in the room with Mary, and she told me she was leaving the hospital at about four o'clock in the afternoon, and she wanted to know if I would walk her out to the front door of the hospital to be discharged.

I told her it would not be possible, because the head nurse, Juniko, was suspicious of what would happen between her and I should we be thrown together for too long.

She smiled, and she said, "Do you know that I told her I liked you?"

"Ohhh! And, what did Juniko say to that?" I asked.

"She said that you were only going to be here for a little while, and than you would be gone off to war again as soon as you were healed. And, she said you probably will never come back to the Island of Guam again. She also said she thought that you liked me too. Well! Do you like me?"

The girl was a straightforward kind of a girl. I'll give her that much.

"You are a nice looking girl, but we haven't been together long enough for me to know for sure about you."

She reached over to the drawer of the table by her bed, and she pulled a piece of paper with some writing on it out of the drawer, and she handed it to me.
"Here is my telephone number, Call me when you are out of the hospital someday. I will wait to hear from you, but don't be too long before you call me."

"Thank you! I think I will call you." I said, but I don't think that I really meant it.

"Good!" She got up from the bed, and she walked over to me and kissed me on the cheek. "I do like you very much. You are nice. You are not like the boys here on the Island."

I put the telephone number into my pocket, and I started to walk out of the room, and she giggled at me.

"If only a little kiss on the cheek does that to you, I am sure I will like you very much." She pointed to my pants. "You had better not let Juniko see that."

She was right. Damn these military scivvies. I was excited by her kiss. Hey, I was young, and I was a male, and if a woman smiled at me in those days, I got just about the same reaction, but I smiled at her a little embarrassed by my not being able to control my body. I put the tray of water pitchers a little lower to cover the front of my pants and I slowly left the room.

At that time, I had been on the island for approximately 30 plus days. My routine was that I would do my hospital work in the mornings, and then, the afternoons were mine to do with as I saw fit.

My first day out of the hospital, instead of going to the local Hotel that was the drinking spot for the Marines at the hospital, I optioned to take a walk into the hills of the interior of the Island.

I followed the road out side of the hospital up the hill to see what the population of the island looked like, and how they lived. On one of these walks, I found a little soda stand in a village of Afonme (I am not sure of the spelling of the name, as I have never have seen it spelled out, even on a map).

The place was a little roadside stand made of a couple of pieces of plywood with a front awning window that hung down from hinges attached to the roof of the shop. The family that had built the stand in their front yard also lived on the same property in the bigger house near the stand. They had stocked the little shop with local delicacies and sodas as well as sandwiches, and in this way they eked out a living for themselves.

Like I said, they built the stand right next to their front porch of their home, which was also constructed in the same manner. The area around the buildings was filled with jungle plants and banana trees, and other such growth of the island, and the vegetation was thick enough that I could not see more than a few feet into the growth of it all.

There was a young girl in the window of the soda shop that I was talking to from the first day I ventured up the hill, and I bought a soda from her as my routine. I told her of where I was from, and of how I got to be on their island. The girl's parents would come out they too would join in on the conversation, and I found them to be very friendly people. I liked them a lot. The family's name was Borja I believe. They were really very nice people. I guess I just needed someone to talk to that did not have a buzz-cut hair cut, or a military background. They were full Guamanians, and they made me feel right at home to talk with them.

From time to time a neighbor would come to the stand, and after they got to know me, some of the older men would tell me of the events that happened on the island when the US Marines and the US Army had come ashore to liberate them from the Japanese forces. This usually happened when I told them that my father was one the Marines that came to the island in 1944, and landed there on the first day of the battle.

It was interesting to listen to the islanders, and to hear how it was that they saw the events that would unfold in those days of World War II. This is the general idea of the stories they would tell me. It has been a very long time ago, but, I will try to explain it the way a self proclaimed old US Army Gaumanian Scout explained it to me.

Roberto was his name. He told me that when the Marines and Army came ashore, he was a very young man. He said he went to the landing area of the Army to see what he could do to help the Americans. He volunteered his services as a scout to the interior of the island, and was accepted by the Army.

He told of things that occurred that I never really was able to verify, because I never really looked into it, but for a few things about what he had said, I was curious. Through my father, who was with the Marines that invaded the Island of Guam, during the liberation of the Island from the Japanese Occupation Troops stationed there, I found that the stories told by my father and Roberto were actually very close to what my Dad would tell me of the things that happened on the island during the invasion, but I'll have time to write of that later as I can a little research on them.

In the meantime, there was also Joe and Ray Borja, who were the sons of the people that owned the sandwich hut. Joe had a car, and we would ride around the island together. They showed me the island that they were so very proud of, and some of the famous places on the island. We would sometimes pick up girls and have a lot of fun together. Sometimes, we would even load the car with beer from his father's store, and we would meet with other people on the island, and we would find a beach to have a party right there in the sand and under the moon. It was all very good times on the island for me.

It was about this time that I had again thought of Mary, and I talked to Joe about her. He said that he did not know her, but there were a lot of people in Tumuing he did not know. He said that many of the people that lived in Tumuing were from the Philippines, and there were cultural differences with the Guamanians, and sometimes there was strife. He told me to go ahead and to call her on the telephone, and see what she had to say, he saying, "It couldn't hurt to say hafaday (I am not even sure of the spelling of this word, but I think it means hello)!"

The next afternoon, I went to the payphone outside of the hospital, and I deposited a dime into the pay slot, and I dialed the telephone number that was given to me on a rather wrinkled piece of paper by this time. It was a short number, something like six numbers I believe, and, when the telephone was answered, I heard an older female voice, and I asked for Mary. The woman who answered the telephone said, "Is this Joe, the Marine from the hospital?"

I said a little hesitantly that it was I, and the lady said that Mary lives a couple of houses away, and she would have to go to get her. She told me to call back in ten minutes, and I said OK to that.

I waited patiently for the next ten minutes to go by, and they seemed longer than they should have been, but finally, I telephoned the number again. This time, a younger voice answered the telephone. I said hello.

Mary said, "Hello, Hafaday! Is this Joe? Yes, it is! How are you, Joe?"

"Hello Mary! You said to give you a call."

"Yes! I did! Can you come over to here? I would like to see you again."

I told her that I thought I could go over to there, but I would need directions to her home.

She said that I could not go to her home, but her friend wouldn't mind if I went to her house, and she gave me the address and directions for her friend's home.

I walked out to the front gate of the hospital, and I hailed a taxicab that was just dropping off a fare at the hospital. I gave the address to the driver, and off we went. We rode down the hill towards Agana, the capitol city of Guam, and we came to a stop a short distance west of the capitol.

I paid the cab driver his fare, and I got out of the taxicab.

There were several small houses around in the area where I was left off. The homes were wooden frame houses, and they all appeared to be some numbers of years old, and sort of rundown, and in need of a painting. I looked for the house number on the mailboxes in the front yards of the homes, and I found the number I was looking for. I did not know what to expect, but I walked up onto the rickety front porch of the house. There was an old birdcage without a bird in it, and it looked like there may not have been a bird in the cage for many a year gone-bye. The floorboards of the porch were worn out old wooden slats that just barely held my weight. There was some Rattan furniture upon the porch, and it looked like it had been there for many a year as well. The front porch was covered in vines and tropical flowers and various types of plants of pretty colors. Every once in a while a lizard would scurry up and down a wall or a post of the porch nearby me as I stepped onto the porch.

I stood there for a minute surveying the porch for the time, and I saw the front door half opened. It also was of very old wood with a torn screen in the top and the bottom, and it looked like the hinges would not hold it to the frame of the doorway for another five or ten minutes. One quick tug on the handle would be all that was needed to pull the door out of the frame.

I took a deep breath, and I reached out to knock on the door, but I noticed by this time that there was someone standing there in the shadows beyond the screen. I froze rather suddenly.

"Are you Joe?" I heard a gentle voice say from the shadows of the house. It was the voice of a woman with a heavy accent I had talked to on the telephone. The most I could tell of her appearance behind the door was that she was short, maybe Five Feet tall, with long hair, and she was slender of size.

"Well, the cat got your tongue? I didn't ever think I could scare a Marine!"

A happy laughter followed her remarks, and the door swung open to reveal a woman of about Thirty-Five years of age, and rather a very pretty woman she was. Her long black hair was just beginning to show her age with single strands of long silver running alongside of midnight-black shiny hair. A very pleasant smile was on her face as she looked at me from the shadows within. Her face was shiny and brown, and her eyes were deep and they were dark.

"Well, I am not going to bite you, least wise, not yet. Hafaday Joe! I have been waiting for you. Mary said you would be coming here to meet her." Her laugh was infectious, and I smiled at her. "She was right! You are a good-looking man. Come in! Come in! Welcome to my home."

She motioned me into the door, and I walked past her, and as I did, I could smell the heavy perfume she was wearing. As my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness of the house, I saw that she was a very lovely lady, and a very happy lady too. She was wearing a pretty flower designed housedress, and, all the time, I could see her bright white smile no matter how dark it was in the house.

"Come sit with me in the kitchen, and I will give you something cool to drink. What would you like? Would you like a beer maybe, or something like a lemonade?" She looked as if she were studying me as she said this, but she still had that wonderful smile on her face.

I told her I would like the lemonade, if it was all right with her. I didn't think it was possible, but her smile got bigger. She asked me to have a seat at the table while she went to the refrigerator, and there she pulled out a pitcher of freshly made lemonade, and she placed it on the counter near the sink. When the door light of the refrigerator was opened, I could see into the refrigerator, and I noticed that there was a bottle or two of beer, and some different assorted foods and things inside.

She came to the tabled with a glass and the pitcher, and she placed the glass in front of me, and the pitcher in the middle of the table. She than went back to the sink, and she reached high up to the cabinets above the counter, and, as she did so, her dress rode up behind her exposing her legs and buttocks and her panties. I watched because she was a nicely shaped woman, and I felt a slight excitement within me, but I could not look away.

She retrieved a glass, and she came to sit across the table from me.

"Where are my manners? I am so sorry! I am Amelia! I am a friend of Mary. She will not be here for another half an hour, and she asked me to keep you company. I am from the Philippines. I was married to an American sailor, and this is where we became divorced. I work at the US Naval Base, in the PX on the Navy base."

"Hi! Amelia! I am Joe!" I said.

"I am Mary’s friend. I really am glad to meet you first before she arrives, so as I can give you a look over." Her smile was now gone, and she looked very serious. "I would not like to see my friend hurt by you 'come-in-the-night-time' Marines. She is a very nice girl, and she is having problems that all young girls have at this age, and she takes things very seriously. If you are not serious about her, I do not want you to be playing with her feelings, nor her body just for your entertainment, and than you will be gone in the morning and you will leave her with a child and a broken heart."

I looked at Amelia, and she was staring straight into my eyes. Her face was very pretty. I cleared my throat, and said to her, "I know exactly what you mean. Remember, I met her in the hospital, and she had tried to hurt herself once already. I would not like that to happen to her again, and especially because of me. I would not want to be responsible for it happening. She is a very nice girl, and she is a lonely girl, I could see that. I am lonely too. We are good company for each other. I will promise you this; I will not go to bed with her, if I can help it at all. It is all up to her though."

Amelia looked at me, and a sly smile came over her face, and her eyes lowered a little, and she looked up at me. "I can accept that from you, but, if you must have a woman, you come see me. I will take care of you big time. Don't make love to her. She is still a virgin, and she wants to go to UCLA this coming Fall Term. She can't do that if she is expecting a baby. She likes you very much, and I can see why she does. You are a very nice man. You promise me you will not make love to her, and leave her sad and lonely." She reached out and placed her hand upon mine. "You promise me this, and I will be very good to you if you need a woman. My heart will not break when you are gone, because I know the world better than she does."

I could not believe my ears. I didn't know what to say, and it sounded more goofy for me as I said, "Thank you Amelia. You are a very good friend to her, aren't you? Wouldn't she expect you to tell her of this kind of a deal?"

Just then the front door opened, and Amelia pulled back her hands, and she got up from the table. I could see that her face was flush, and she had that look of a woman with a secret to keep.

"Hello Mila!" I heard the familiar voice of Mary. "Has my friend come yet?"

"We are here in the kitchen Baby." She said.

Mary came into the room. She was dressed in a summer skirt and a button up multi-flowered blouse. Her hair was combed away from her face, and she looked very pretty, and very innocent, as she came through the door.

She hugged Amelia, and then she reached over the table, and put her arms around me. "I am very glad to see you Joe!" She said, with a big smile on her face.

Amelia told her to sit down at the table, and she gave her a glass of lemonade as well. She really looked very happy to see me.

I looked from her to Amelia, and I said I was happy to see her too.

"Baby, I have to go to the store to get some things. I'll be gone about an hour. You and Joe sit hear and talk for a while. He is a nice man. I talked to him, and I trust him with you."

With that Amelia hugged Mary, and she leaned over, and she hugged me as well, and she whispered into my ear, "Remember what I said!"

There was no time to answer her as she stood up immediately, and she walked to the front room, and then through the rickety front door of the house. I heard her footfalls as she walked away from the front of the house, and towards the town nearby, and she was gone down the road. Now, it was just Mary and I in the house, and we were alone.

"Do you want some more lemonade?" She asked.

"No thanks, I still have some."

"I am so surprised! Mila doesn't usually trust anyone in her home alone."

"Well, how are you Joe? I was worried that I would not hear from you again. I thought that you may have been afraid of me because of what happened that brought us together in the first place. You know that I am not a crazy woman, don't you?"

"No body ever told me why you tried to hurt yourself. I guess that the best person to ask would be you. Why did you want to hurt yourself? Was it over a boy? Or something like that?"

"No! It was a very foolish thing to do, and I am not proud of it. It had to do with my family. My father, he is German, and he can be a very stubborn man. I have a chance to go to UCLA next Fall term, and he said he had to think about it, before he gave me the money to go. We argued, and he said he was not going to give me anything. My mother, who is Guamanian, started to argue with him about it, and I became worried and I was so upset. As my father never married my mother, he really does not have to do it. I thought that everything was lost."

"That night, I was sitting in my room, and I thought about what it would be like to stay here the rest of my life, and to never get to go any farther than the waters that surround the island. I became so sad that I cried and I cried, and I felt so sorry for myself. I felt that I wanted to die. So, I went to the bathroom, and I found my father's pills, and before I knew it I was in a hospital."

"I became worried after I took the pills, and I stayed in the bathroom. My mother and my father were awakened from their sleep when they heard me fall onto the bathroom floor, and they came to the bathroom and found me there all dizzy."

"I never saw my father so worried before. He was always so big and so strong, and nothing ever seemed to bother him. He really never showed his emotions. I did not know that he really loved me before. I always thought that he was a shamed of me, because my mother was not white like him."

"My father grabbed me up in his arms, and he ran with me to a neighbor's house, and he had the neighbor call the ambulance to come and to get me. He never let go of me until the ambulance came, and than only to allow the ambulance crew to put me on the stretcher. He rode with me in the back of the ambulance to the hospital in Agana. My Dad was crying. I never saw that before."

"At the hospital, my Dad stayed with me in the emergence room, and he cried all the time for me. I could not help it, but he made me cry too. It was not because I was hurt, but rather that I hurt him. I never really knew how much my Dad loved me until that night."

"Well, when the doctors were done doing what they had to do to me. They said that there was nothing to worry about, but that they would have to hold me for a psychiatric evaluation for three days. My father almost had a fight at the hospital when they told him that I would not be released. The doctors and the hospital staff were worried because my Dad is a very big man, and he is known for his bad temper. So, they transferred me to the Naval Hospital where my father could not go, and that is how I met you."

She started to cry, and I got up from my side of the kitchen table, and I put my arms around her. She got up from her chair, and she held me tightly to her. She cried like that for maybe five minutes of so. She than asked me to sit, and she sat on my lap. She had her arm around my neck and her face deep into my neck.

"I thought you would be like this." She said.

"What do you mean by that?" I said.
"I could tell you were a kind man. I feel safe in your arms. I feel warm and I feel safe, and I am happy. I even like the way your heart sounds."

She was rubbing her hand up and down my right arm, and I could feel the warmth of her tears running down my neck and my back. She pulled my right arm down across her waste, and put her arm around me and held me tighter to her.

"You know I have never been with a boy before. Have you ever been with a girl before?"

"Yes, I have."

"Did she get pregnant?"

"No, she never got pregnant!"

"Was she the only one?"

"No! She wasn't!"

"Who were the other girls? Is there anyone that is special to you?"

"Yes, but lately she has not been writing to me. In her last letter she said she did not want to write any longer. She has become involved in the Anti-War Movement back home, and she thinks I am a murder of innocent people. Her name is Patti Wong."

"Do you still love her?"

"Yes!"

"Do you think you could love me?"

"I would have to get to know you first, Mary."

"I want you to make love to me. I want you to be my first and only love."

"Let's talk about this, Mary. You do know that I will be gone someday. I may have to go back to South Vietnam, and I may be killed there. It would not be right for me to leave here with you in the belief that I will come back to you. You have something very special in you, and it would not be fair to you."

"I want to have something of you stay with me. I will never feel this way about a man again, and if you do not come back, you will live on in me."

She kissed me gently on the neck. I felt the hair on the back of my neck and my arms stand up, and I was immediately aroused. She kissed me again, and I felt myself grow. She shifted in my lap, and felt below her with her hand, and she smiled at me.

"I think you do want me very much. You have grown some down here."

"Of course I have. You are a beautiful woman, and you are kissing me on my neck, and now I am about ready to jump out of my skin."

She brought her face out of my neck, and she reached up and she kissed me on the lips. It felt so good. I kissed her back. Her tongue came into my mouth, and mine into hers. She turned in my lap to where she was facing me and straddling me, still with her hand between my legs, and she stroked me gently up and down with one hand while she ran her hand across my hair and my neck. I felt great. Her mouth was so hot and so hungry. Her other hand came up from my lap and went around my neck and she moved her hips backward and forward in my lap. I was ready to bust. She kissed me harder and harder.
Finally, I pushed her away from me.

"You have got to stop Mary. I can't take this any longer. I am very sure that I will be in you in a matter of minutes if you do not stop. Please stop. I like you too much for this to happen."

She was straddling my lap with just a skirt on, and I could feel the heat of her vagina against me and my very aroused dick. My hand had gone beneath her skirt, and I felt her there, and she was so completely wet. I was so excited by her. She was breathing hard and she looked into my eyes as she unbuttoned her blouse in front of me one button at a time. I was hard enough to rip through my zipper, and very nearly did.

"Mary, get a hold of yourself. What are you doing? This is not you. You are not like this. Why do you want to make love to me? Mary, Mary, Please wait. I want to tell you something first."

She stopped and she looked at me. I lifted her up from my lap, and I stood up. It was very plane to see that I was very much aroused by her. She touched me with her hand between my legs, and I almost screamed it hurt so much for me. I took her hand away from me, and I put my arms around her to stop her from touching me any longer. I was breathing a hundred times a minute. Finally, as I held her in my arms, we both calmed down.

"Mary, you are very lovely, and you are very sexy, and you are most desirable. I want to be in you more than you could possibly know. I want to make love to you all through the night, and than the next day too, but I can't do this to you, and I can't do this to me. I will worry about you all my time in Vietnam, and that is not a place where one should have his mind on anything except what is going on around him, or he will be dead."

"What is wrong with me? Is it because I am brown and you are white? Because I am an Islander, and you are a holly (I don't know the spelling)?"

"No, it is nothing like that my dear Mary. I would be most proud to have you as my lover, and my wife, but I may not be alive a month from now. If I did this with you, and we had a baby, you would be all alone without anyone to comfort you. I want to have children, but I want to see them grow up to be adults, and I want to make love to their mother for the rest of my life. I don't want my children to be without a father, and I don't want you to have children without a husband that you can count on to be there for you."

"I love you." She said.

"Oh! Mary, why do you want to say that? Please get dressed and come with me for a walk. Please, I want to talk to you. Please, come with me."

We straightened out our clothing. For me it took a few minutes longer than it did for her. I felt a pain in my groin that I had never had before this day, nor since that day. I could hardly walk straight. She looked at me and she asked if I was hurt, and I turned red in the face as I explained to her what had happened to me.

She laughed and then she smiled shyly and she said, "We could still do it, you know."

I said, "No we couldn't, Mary. Let's get to know each other first."

She put her arms around me and she squeezed me very hard to her.

"I was frightened when I wanted to make love to you, but now I see that you are a good man, and you do care for me a lot. I was right about you. I do love you."

I kissed her on the lips, and it still felt sooo good to me, but just that little kiss made me start to grow again, and I stopped.

"I liked the way your hands touched me. It felt good." She said.

She held my hand tightly in hers, and we walked from the kitchen to the front door. Amelia was just coming in the door.

"Baby, where are you going?"
"We are going for a walk around the bay to talk."

"You had better go upstairs and wash your face and comb your hair first. I am sure that Joe will wait for you."

Up the stairs she went.

"I was standing by that door for fifteen minutes, and I heard you talking to her. You kept your word." She smiled and she looked towards the crouch of my pants, and she smiled wider. "It was not so easy was it? I will make you feel better tonight, and I will feel better too. You are a good man. Thank you." She leaned up and she kissed me on the lips, and than looked at me again, and she smiled more as she saw what she had done to me.

Mary came down the stairs.

"Thank you Mila. I looked a mess."

"I don't think that Joe thought that you were a mess at all."

Mary and I walked for hours on the beach. We talked. She told me about her life, and her schooling, and what she hoped to be when she graduated from UCLA.

Her father had said she could have all the money she needed for school. We talked about things that boys and girls talk about, and not once did the talk of war come into our conversation. We carefully avoided it all together. We kissed and she hugged me, and we touched each other in those very personal ways, and we felt comfortable with what we did to one another.

She may have been a virgin in one way, but there was another way that she felt very comfortable with, and we made oral love to each other on the sandy beach of the bay that night, and we held each other naked under the biggest full moon I had ever seen in my life. The waves were rolling in and out as we lay there in each others arms with just the heat of our bodies to keep us warm. We swam naked in the dark lagoon near the house. I wanted to stay there forever, but she had to get home, and we dressed on the beach, and we walked back to Amelia's house, and from there she went to her home with a promise to see me the next day.

When she left, Amelia took a bottle of wine from her refrigerator, and we drank together for a brief while. She took my hand, and she led me up the stairs to her bedroom.

From that night at 11:00 o'clock, until 4:00 in the morning, we made love in so many ways that words could never describe what we did. It all blurred together. When I thought I could do no more, she found a way to arouse me again and again. I truly never had such a day again for many a year to come.

That morning, I took a taxicab from Amelia's house to the hospital, and upon reporting in to the hospital, I was told that I had orders to go to Okinawa. I was going back to South Vietnam. I had two days to get my affairs in order, before I flew out of Guam Air Force Base.

My next two days on Guam, I had no duties at the hospital. I said my goodbyes to the Borja Family, to Mary, and to Amelia. They all had come into my life, and they were gone again in a matter of days. I went back and I saw them again, Amelia and Mary, and I told them it was my time to go back. They both were very loving to me those two days, but I kept my word to Mila, and she kept her word to me, and Mary was sad, but not pregnant, and they were never forgotten by me to this day.

Strange enough, it was Amelia that wrote to me in Vietnam, and it was she that wanted to come live with me in the USA when I got back, but she was Fifteen Years older than me, and things were just not like that back then, older women and younger men were a taboo. Still, she wrote on that she would find work and she would take care of me, but I did not have the courage to allow that to happen, and from my hospital bed from my next wound, I wrote and I told her that my wound had taken from me my sexuality, and I would be no good for her in that condition, yet she still wrote on. Finally, I stopped answering her letters.

It was a shame, she was a great woman, and I did want her so much. And, as for the wound, it was a thigh and a knee only, and no problems with having children or anything else. I lied to her, and she still wrote to me. Yes, she was some kind of a woman, and I was not man enough to have her.

On that day, the day I left the Naval Hospital at Guam, I was loaded onto a MATS Transport Plane (Military Air Transport), and flown to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippine Island. I was wearing our standard issue United States Marine utilities, for I was never issued a new set of uniforms at Guam, and my sea bag had been shipped to me from my unit in South Vietnam, but my uniforms were ruined by mildew and rot, and the seabag had been inspected so often by the different quartermasters that it went through, that half of what I had was gone now, due to pilferage, and out right thievery along the way.
Here I was going back to where I had started with even less than what I had in the first place, with exception of a hole that had never healed correctly in my right hand. I did not even know if I could hold a rifle in combat, but I was willing to try. Again, I had to clear my head for battle. But, now, I also had a hole in my heart that would not heal too.

There were four of us on the way to Okinawa. We all were dressed the same. We all had battle wounds that had somewhat healed and we each had deeper wounds not yet able to be bandaged by standard medical wisdom.

We had a one-night layover at Clark Air Force Base, and the four of us went to the local enlisted man's club on the base. We had very little money on us, but as I sat there in the darkness of the EM Club, and I sipped my one San Miguel Beer most of the night, I watched the women of the Philippines perform upon the stage, and I thought back to a very amazing woman that I had met on the Island of Guam. I shed a tear in my drink, and a girl with that familiar sound in her voice came over to me and asked if I would buy her a drink. I looked at the pretty girl, and I pushed what money I had from my pockets and all that was left on the table across to her, and said, "That is all I have. It is yours. I will not need it in Vietnam."

She smiled at me, and she sat by me, and I told her to take the money and to go away. Of course, she took the money, and she was gone. I walked back to the barracks, and in the morning I boarded the plane for Okinawa.

Well, when the plane landed in Okinawa. I got off the plane. Okinawa was a lot busier than I remembered it the last time I was there. I walked from the plane to the Marine Corps receiving area, and I was asked for my orders, and when the office Marine saw the orders, he looked at me and asked, "How long do you want to be here on Okinawa Marine?"

I told him I wanted the first available transport back to South Vietnam. He had a weird look upon his face. "Is tomorrow too soon, Marine?"

"It is as good as any. Thank you very much." I was set to fly out the next day at 0900.

The next day after that, I was with the 7th Marines again. I was back in the war.
I hope you enjoyed reading.

I am still thinking of how Amelia must have felt. Life does come back to bite you on the ass for all the wrongs you have done, and I have been bitten too. Life has a pretty fair way of dealing with those that hurt others.

Still thinking of ...