Did My Stereo Survive?

What it took Leo Tolstoy 560,000 words to work out, I can sum up in one sentence: Peace is better than war. Many others agree with me. For example, the American Civil War, and both World Wars have famous stories, perhaps apocryphal, of opposing troops working out informal truces among themselves: during holidays, to retrieve dead and wounded, or just because they were tired of killing. I actually experienced such a truce during the latter days of the Vietnam War.

 

I was on a ship providing close-in gunfire support along Highway 1, and after a couple tours in-country Vietnam, being on such a ship stationed on the “gun line” as it was called, was like taking a leisure cruise to Cozumel. The worst thing that ever happened was that the salt water evaporators often couldn’t make enough fresh water for the crew to have regular showers. In fact, I was taking my regular “nooner” (nap during the noon hour) on top of the missile house, soaking up a few rays, when the North Vietnamese artillery battery cut loose on us.