Who's Your Captain?

A late Veterans Day message from a Veteran.

Disclaimer - admittedly, I’m not a writer. Then what the hell am I doing authoring my second post on Substack? How could I dare try to mix it up with those real writers I follow and admire? My heroes of truth seeking, truth speaking are - Celia, Nickson, Icke, Rappoport, Watt, Kuntsler, and many more. I won’t even attempt to compete with them. But, I’m a veteran, and for the sake of my love for my grandchildren, I’m just going to try and tell the following story about War, my Captain, and Love. 

'FORGET WAR!’ is my polite anti-war cry. What a paradox. Why? Because every veteran, particularly those who served in and survived combat, will tell you there is no forgetting War. 

Even though my combat experience pales in comparison to those of my fellow vets who fought in the jungles, I will never forget those days and months off the coast of Nam. Of being shot at and missed. Praise God! I will never forget being a fleet sailor, a welder/carpenter/firefighter, on a fine ship, with a well trained crew, and under the command of the greatest Captain a wartime sailor could ever hope to have. 

We took our battle stations and were ready to fight at any given moment, not because we hated the North Vietnamese. We were willing to fight because we wanted to survive, to get back home to those we loved.

Not just on Veterans Day, I will always declare;

All honor and respect to my fellow shipmates and to all my fellow Vietnam era veterans.  

All honor and respect to my father who served, fought and survived WWII as a Marine on GuadalCanal and Okinawa, and to all of his fellow WWII vets. 

All honor and respect to my son who served six years in the Air Force and survived a year long deployment in Afghanistan, and to all of his fellow vets.

How did we get there? Where? To WAR … I will try to tell you how They did it in my time, the 60’s. Many of you already know how it worked. Bear with me while I outline the details here for the sake of the younger generations who have no personal experience in this realm.

The military Draft was the key. All young men in the U.S. in the 60’s had to sign up for the Draft on their 18th birthday. No exception. Because it was wartime, if you didn’t register for the Draft they would come after you, handcuff you and Draft you into the military on the spot. 

Yep, Wartime is Crazy Time. War is not only a Racket, it is a helluva demon Beast machine. 

Things were off the charts insane in our country by the time I registered for the Draft in Sept. of ‘66. Everyone I knew did not want to go to Nam. There were only a few ways you could get out of, or delay, being Drafted into military service;

#1 - Join up, volunteer - enlist in the Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, or Coast Guard.

#2 - Flunk your Draft ‘Physical’ exam. Be classified ‘4F’.

#3 - Prove you were ‘Psychologically’ unfit for military service. 

#4 - Apply for ‘Conscientious Objector’ status and if approved by your local Draft Board, serve some ‘approved’ alternative service of some kind.

#5 - Be granted a temporary ‘Student’ or ‘Occupational’ deferment.

#6 - Flee to Canada.

#7 - Have a high ‘Draft Lottery’ number.  

When you got your notice to report, being Drafted into the military, you had to go on the date specified in the ‘Notice’ to the Draft induction center you were already assigned to when you first registered for the Draft. Once at the center you were lined up with all the other ‘Inductees’ of that date and time slot. A military person would then commence to walk down the line of inductees and designate which branch you were being drafted into - simply, this person would point at each Inductee while he walked in front of the line, proclaiming, “Army! Army! Army! Marine…” and so on down the line until each Inductee was duly assigned. No choice. And, then away you went to Boot Camp to begin serving a minimum of 2 years in one of  the two branches to which you were assigned! 

Here’s where my own story gets really interesting;

Sometime in ‘67 I received my notice from the Draft board that it was time for my Draft Physical. Before you could be Drafted you had to have the Physical so They could determine if you were physically fit for service in the military. 

Let me set the stage - by 1967 the resistance to the War and the Draft were in full swing. I knew many friends and acquaintances who were trying everything they could think of to get out of being Drafted.

A multitude of them were dropping Acid regularly, doing a bucket load of other drugs in hopes of being disqualified for reasons of their psychological impairment. Many succeeded in that effort. 

Some flunked the Physical for legitimate, non-self induced, health issues. 

A few applied for and received ‘Conscientious Objector’ status. 

I knew a couple of guys who wanted to flee to Canada but I’m not sure if they ever followed through on it. 

Most of us were in College and as long as we were students we had the temporary ‘Student’ Deferment status. 

Never mind if you were in College, you still had to show up for your Draft Physical because They, The War Machine, had to keep running tabs on who could be drafted next if you lost your deferment status. 

Hence, even though I was in my 2nd year of college, I had to go for my Physical at the Draft Induction Center. In my case, that ‘Center’ was a huge one in Los Angeles. 

What a bazaar scene that day was, and I’m sure it was that way every day during the crazy 60’s. When I got to the center they immediately told us to strip down to our undies (‘boxers’ in my case. I hate ‘tidy whities’!!). Then we were handed our ‘paperwork’ and told to follow the white line painted on the floor. We would be attended to along the way by staff doctors at a variety of stations of inquiry that would ultimately put their seal of approval, or disapproval, on our paperwork. If you passed all the tests, the stamp of approval is “1A” - meaning you were now available to be Drafted into the military if and when you received a Draft notice. 

Note *** having flat feet as I have, did not get me a ‘4F’ classification for having a physical problem.

At the halfway point in this lengthy journey following the ‘white line’ I witnessed one of the most disturbingly crazy events that were hallmarks of the times. 

I heard this guy up ahead of me in the line start yelling at the top of his lungs, “You fucking assholes are never going get me into the Draft!!!” He jumped out of line and started running as the white uniformed attendants took chase. He kept yelling as he ran, “You fucking goons can’t catch me! You fucking monsters!” 

Well, the ‘Goons’ did catch him. As they were wrestling him to the cement floor he was still yelling, “FUCK YOU!” They dragged him down a separate hallway, and I never knew what became of that draft resistor. Surely he was not the only one who attempted to get out of the draft by taking them on directly in such a dramatic, heroic, if not hopeless, fashion. 

The military doctors decided that day that I was fit to serve and the classification ‘1A’ was stamped on my Draft file. 

I returned home to my college roommates, and the scene there commenced to get even crazier than before. The amounts of pot, acid, uppers, downers and mushrooms were escalating dramatically, ruling our daily lifestyle in place of the previous carefree life of surfing, rock n roll, free concerts, flower-power, and the overwhelming aura of good vibes of love, peace and happiness for all. 

It wasn’t long before I awoke to the mayhem and said, I’m out of here. 

I quit school, moved back home, went back to work at the gas station and saved up enough money that summer of 1968 for my exodus. 

No, I wasn't going to Canada. It’s amazing that for the next nine months, being out of school and no longer having the student deferment that I didn’t get drafted. I can’t say I didn’t care, that I’d put myself in this precarious position. I was on the run. I was running from the entire populace of my peers that had gone bat-shit bonkers and I wanted nothing more to do with it, the whacked out 60’s drug culture.

I hit the road in Sept of ‘68 with a borrowed backpack and $150 in my wallet. I hitchhiked my way to the Iowa farm of my Uncle and Aunt to work the harvest for a few months, and then took up skiing and working all winter in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.   

I am eternally grateful to a lifelong friend that invited me to his family’s annual Christmas party in Dec. of ‘68. Had I not been to that party I would not have run into another high school friend who told me about her service in Appalachia and encouraged me to apply to the program she was in, to become a ‘VISTA’ (the domestic version of the Peace Corps, “Volunteers In Service To America”). 

I took my friend’s advice. I immediately applied, and in April of ‘69 became a VISTA. Thus became the most rewarding personal experience of my life. I was assigned to work with disadvantaged kids on the Yakima Indian Reservation in south central Washington state. I was paid $75 per month, plus room and board, drove a ‘48 Ford pickup I bought for $125, lived in the most remote, wild area I’ve ever known, and found redemption, reconnection to my own Spirit, and oddly enough pure joy, in the midst of the best, yet poorest of kids I’ve ever known. I had the option to stay on the Rez as a VISTA for a second year. I intended to do so, but in June of ‘70, at the end of my first year of service on the Rez, Nixon had other plans. He discontinued the Occupational Deferments for all of us Vista volunteers. 

Knowing I had been classified ‘1A’ two years prior, and my lottery number was a low one, I had no choice. 

My father’s advice throughout my youth was, “Son…if you have to go to War, don’t be a ‘ground pounder’ like I was. Join the Navy or Air Force.”

In June of 1970 I raced home to California. Knowing my Draft Notice would come any day, for once in my life I took Dad’s advice, and I joined the U.S. Navy.

The program I enlisted under allowed me to serve as a reserve and remain civilian for the first year of my enlistment commitment of six years. 

For that year, I worked for the U.S. Forest Service, and in Christmas of 1970 found myself once again at the annual Christmas party of the same lifelong friend as I mentioned before. At this party I met and fell in love at first sight with a young woman that would be The One that stood beside me during the months of my apprehension and dread over the looming day I would have to report to active Navy duty. She lived in Colorado. I transferred to a job on the Roosevelt National Forest so we could live together for 4 months before I had to ship out. 

I can’t begin to tell you how much she meant to me. We shared an old red cabin in those Rockies, hiked, backpacked, and fished all over those beautiful mountains. She gave me her love and caring like none I’d ever known before, at a time when I needed it most. I shall never forget her.  

(The rest of the story of the love she and I shared and lost shall remain private - suffice to say, 15 months later she came back to me and I, out of loyalty to a decision I’d made, shunned her and let her walk away. What a fool, what an idiot I was.) 

After four months of Rocky mountains and the love of a wonderful woman, in Sept. of ‘71 I ‘shipped out’, as they say in the Navy. By November I was serving aboard the USS Mobile LKA-115, homeported San Diego, but now overseas on a WestPac assignment that lasted 10 months. 

Much of our time in the South China Sea was spent off the coast of Nam as part of the amphibious fleet. We were involved constantly in support of naval and army combat ops. Ironically, Pres. Nixon would play another role in my fate, that of my ship, as well as the fate of 1000’s of others during that time in the War. 

Our ship carried 300 combat ready Marines and all of their equipment. Marines had not been used in ground fighting in Nam since ‘68. We never got the orders to land our Marines. The decision at that time to reinsert the Marines into the War, or not, came directly from the Whitehouse/Nixon. Had we been ordered to land our Marines it would have been bloody Hell, most likely on the coast of the DMZ. We surely dodged a potential ugly combat barrage with that decision on high. And, by ‘on high’, I don’t mean Nixon. I was grateful then and to this day to God Almighty that we never had to land our Marines. 

We went on to survive the remainder of our Nam duties intact. As I mentioned they tried to take out our ship at one point with a really big gun, but the mfr’s missed us by some yards in that short volley. We had no missiles or big guns to shoot back with, and Captain Burke gave the right orders up on the bridge to get us the hell out of range. Praise God. 

My Captain was the most incredible Commander that a wartime sailor could ever hope to have. Captain E.J. Burke’s standard of leadership is that to which I hold all would be leaders to. To this day, None, Zero, Zip, Nada, politicians, Presidents, or others, have ever come close to matching Captain Burke’s example as a true leader. He was an extraordinary Master and Commander. We returned home safely to San Diego in August of 1972. We were the lucky ones. Not only do I credit my Captain, but I know the prayers of my mom, dad, and countless others, including my loved one in the Rockies, kept us from greater harm, and made the difference in not losing any shipmates off of Nam, in surviving against three huge typhoons in the open sea, and safely navigating 10’s of thousands of nautical miles in the Pacific and the Indian Oceans.  

It was the greatest day of my life, second only to the births of my 4 children and my 10 grandkids in the decades to follow, when we were safely home and tying up to the pier in San Diego. There on the pier a brass band was playing amongst hundreds of our loved ones yelling and waving to us, including my folks and my sister.   

My War experiences, my Captain’s standard, combined with being raised in part by rugged individualists, has motivated me throughout my adult life to put my Faith in God, not into politics and politicians. 

Freedom is not earned via politics and laws of man. Freedom is our Divine Sovereign Right embedded in our Spirit that we are blessed to ride in with when we are launched into this Earthly realm, this brief experience called being Human. 

Here we are then. I’m seventy six years into this human experience and nothing has changed. 

War is still absolutely good for nothing. 

And, what I authored as our ship sailed home in ‘72 still rings true like never before. 

“War is the immutable, unremitting absence of sanity.”

A War today is being waged throughout our country and the World like none we’ve ever known before. 

There are new, yet old, evil forces led by greed, by their own egomania, their god-complexed twisted minds, who want to control all of humanity. Billionaires and would be tyrants who want to own us and everything else, all the land we hold dear. 

In the inner core there are those demons who want us all dead too. And just like when we uncovered the lies and denials that had been told, and discovered the massive deaths that Agent Orange caused to soldiers, sailors and civilians alike, we now know, and it is being revealed the untold harm and death that was planned with the release and forcing of the MRNA vaxx upon humanity. 

While no one can ever take away from me the pride I have for those I served with and under, being in War etched some insights into my being and enabled me to recognize these evil, insane plans that were being thrust on humankind again. So much so that I saw, I sensed in my gut, what was coming in March 2020. How? I’m no scientist or doctor, or so called expert, but I sensed a sinister hand, a military hand, at work amongst the other demons.   

If called upon again to fight, I will not do so for me, for my sake. I only care to do what ever I can for the Sovereign Freedom of my grandchildren. My warnings in 2020-21, my pleading, do not take the jabs!, or give them to my grandkids, caused me to be estranged, shunned and derided to this day from most. Now I proclaim, we are all veterans and combatants in this ongoing new War. 

I am not ashamed. I am not sorry. I will not go quietly into my own enslavement, nor keep quiet in the face of the enslavement of those I love. I will continue my resistance, my appeals to all, to the resurrection of sanity.

Despite the present lull on some fronts of this battle that has raged for 5 years, the forces of darkness still plan death and destruction and mayhem by whatever godless forces They can muster. Do not Comply with Their evil plans.

Are you ready? Who’s Your Captain? It’s a question of choices, always.

Bob Dylan said it best once, years ago in a song, “…you’re gonna have to serve somebody. Yes, indeed. You’re gonna have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord, but your going to have serve somebody…”

I wouldn’t begin to try and tell you what or whom your Captain has to be.  

Yet, I know from history, that governments, nations, leaders, come and go, but our Creator reigns forever. 

May God Bless you in all ways, and always.