The day after Veterans Day (11/11/11) I was attending a gathering of folks who are involved in the Cursillo Ministry.

Most readers know that Betsy and I have been involved for two decades in the Kairos Prison Ministry (which is now the world’s largest prison ministry), which sprang from the Cursillo Ministry that began in Spain after WWII. This day there was a series of short (well, supposed to be!) talks from several speakers, and the third or fourth one was a guy about my age, who asked for the Veterans to stand to be recognized on this special day. There were five or six of us Vets in the room of 40 to 50 people.

The speaker asked for a round of applause for those of us standing, then went on to comment that he had served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, and were any other Squids in the group? Two of us raised our hands. At the break for lunch, the three of us naturally got together to compare recollections.

All three of us had served during Vietnam, and been involved with the Swift Boats! One had attended Swift Boat training in Virginia, apparently at the same time I did.  

One had actually been aboard the USS Okinawa, a helicopter carrier that I served on in combat operations. We all had been assigned to Swift Boats or PBRs (Patrol Boat, River) in the Mekong Delta. What are the chances of that?

The old Okie-Boat has been a significant center of recollections for the past month or so at my house. My son-in-law John, the compooter whiz, set me up on Facebook, but I never have gotten the hang of it. I’ll get an e-mail saying, “Old Fred Fodrod wants to be friends,” so I’ll click on the “Confirm Friend” button, and get an answer back, “You are now friends with Fred,” but that’s the last I hear of it.

Therefore, when I got a Friend Request from Tony Rogers, I agonized over clicking on, then losing, an old shipmate I’d not heard from in over forty years, but finally Confirmed Tony, who sure enough, disappeared into the etheric.

However, Tony had contacted another shipmate, Jack Spradlin, to say he’d found Neill (“The Bull Ensign” back then), and Jack found my roberthittneill.com website, and sent me an e-mail. Therefore, I was able to communicate with Tony via Jack, and we three had the best time exchanging, “Do you remember when…” messages about those days on the Okinawa. Somehow I had ended up with a copy of the Okinawa yearbook that neither of them had, so I mailed that to Jack to send on to Tony.

Five years ago we had an insurance adjuster from south Mississippi who came up to view some roof damage I’d had from the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita winds (and I’m 250 miles from the Coast!).  He walked around the yard, took some pictures, then I invited him in for a cup of Slung Coffee whilst he filled out the paperwork. As he walked by a bookcase, he suddenly halted and exclaimed, “Who was on the Okinawa?!”

I confessed that I’d served aboard the Okie-Boat.

“I was on the tender that relieved y’all after the Santo Domingo fracus!” he declared. “Our skipper had us line the rail and salute y’all as we passed entering the Bay. We cleaned up the crashed choppers and battle debris y’all left and had a special memorial service for the men who had died, many of whom were in the reefers (refrigerated compartments) of your ship.”

Clayton ended up staying all afternoon, drinking coffee and exchanging stories.

When he left just before dark, he charged me, “That was a secret operation, but those men deserve to have their story told. You are a writer. TELL THEIR STORY!”

I never have. It was a Classified Operation back then, and we ain’t supposed to tell that story, even after all these years. This is as close as I’ve ever come.

Christopher Boyd, a Lake Village boy who grew up hunting with my son Adam, paid us a visit after his Navy tour a few years ago, and saw the Okinawa yearbook, too. He’d been a member of the last Okinawa crew, which had scuttled the old Okie-Boat for an artificial reef off the West Coast. He’d laid her to rest in a watery grave. But her memories still continue to surface; maybe I should write the story, as Clayton charged me to do. Who knows?