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    Sammy and Me: How a Dog Saved My Life in Vietnam
    Sammy and Me: How a Dog Saved My Life in Vietnam
    Sammy and Me: How a Dog Saved My Life in Vietnam
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Sammy and Me: How a Dog Saved My Life in Vietnam

    By Carolyn Chambers Clark and Anthony Auriemma

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    About this ebook

    Sammy and Me: How a Dog Saved My Life in Vietnam is filled with my memories and photos of what happened to me during the Vietnam War. It gives my unique perspective of how a dog taught me a lot of things, saved my life and kept me sane in an insane and unpopular war.
    We had many adventures together and when my discharge time approached, I had to decide what to do about our friendship. He was a Vietnamese dog, used to going where he wanted, safe from the heavy traffic and cement city that I lived in in New Jersey. Should it be goodbye to Sammy who gave me the only real pleasure and sanity I found in time of war, or take the desert dog home with me to the unsafety of city life in New Jersey?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCarolyn Chambers Clark
    Release dateNov 12, 2012
    ISBN9781301916955
    Sammy and Me: How a Dog Saved My Life in Vietnam
    Author

    Carolyn Chambers Clark

    Carolyn Chambers Clark is a board-certified advanced holistic nurse practitioner with a master's degree in mental health nursing and a doctorate in education. She is a faculty member in the Health Services Doctoral Program at Walden University, and she hosts http://home.earthlink.net/~cccwellness and http://HolisticHealth.bellaonline.com.

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      Book preview

      Sammy and Me - Carolyn Chambers Clark

      Sammy and Me: How a Dog Saved My Life in Vietnam

      By Carolyn Chambers Clark and Anthony Auriemma

      Copyright 2012 by Carolyn Chambers Clark

      Smashwords Edition

      Chapter 1

      B.S. (BEFORE SAMMY)

      Before a honey-colored puppy with short, floppy ears and feet too big for his body stole my heart and taught me what loyalty and love meant, I was just a plain GI. Lonely, afraid, and fighting in a war I didn't understand. Most of the people around me thought I was crazy.

      It didn't matter what most people thought because GIs don't have a lot of control over what happens to them. Sure, we can act up and smart off, but basically, we're Government Issue. That's how they got the expression, GI, but it took me two years to find that out. What it means is that when you belong to the government, they can do whatever they want with you. Maybe that's why I sometimes stepped over the line and went off half-cocked. I had to do it to keep my sanity in an insane war. Sure, they gave me a rifle, but no ammunition.

      To make my point understood, sometimes I had to speak up loud and clear, when I was ordered to do something really stupid. My best way of doing that was smart mouthing and showing people what I meant in a dramatic way.

      My Italian father taught me to protect women and children. As a scrawny, nearly-blind kid, an underdog who had to learn early how to protect myself, I was always protecting other underdogs. I didn't like anybody picking on anybody. I'd had enough people picking on me.

      My biggest fault was my anger. To make my point understood, sometimes I had to speak up loud and clear, when I was ordered to do something really stupid. My best way of doing that was smart mouthing and showing people what I meant in a dramatic way. I guess you could call me cocky, but only about things I really believed in and knew I was right about.

      I was nineteen when I received my You Are Hereby Ordered for Induction in the United States Armed Forces letter. Yep, I was drafted. They don't have that anymore, but those days, if you didn't have an old man with pull or some other smart way of getting out of it, like being in college or having kids, you had to go. It was that or run off to Canada.

      My Dad served proudly in World War II and when my number came up, he must have thought it would be like it was for him, stopping some maniac who wanted to take over the world. Turned out Vietnam wasn't about that at all. I thought with my flat feet and bad eyes, I'd never make the cut, but I did.

      So, this is the story of what happened to me and how a dog named Sammy saved me from a crazy situation.

      My introduction to Vietnam came when an MP shouted from the doorway of our 707 jet as we descended to Saigon, Vietnam in 1966. We're taking sniper fire. Close the shades. Heads on your laps.

      Oh, shit, here we go. I pulled down the window shade, crunched down in my seat, and waited for bullets to go ripping through the plane.

      With the engines blaring so loud, I couldn't hear the gunfire or where it came from. Heart pounding and adrenaline surging through me, I had no idea what was happening outside or what might happen next.

      The plane landed with a thud and slammed me back against my seat. The door opened and I waited. Any second, I expected a grenade to come flying in the door.

      An MP stepped inside with a .45 in his hand. I waited for the enemy to run up the ramp behind him, weapons loaded and aimed at us.

      With no gun, I scanned the plane for any kind of weapon to defend myself. Trapped and worried, I just wanted to get the hell out of that plane.

      The MP glared at us. When you get to the door, don't look around, just down the steps and into the building.

      We all rushed for the door. This was no time for waiting in line. When it was my turn to run down the steps, the MP yelled, Go!

      I started down the steps, scared of what I was going to find or what was going to find me. A really big MP stood below me in a jeep. He had his helmet on and in his huge hands, he held onto a mounted M-60 machine gun, ready to fire.

      Three other MPs stood on the ground behind him, .45s or rifles in their hands. They looked left and right, scanning for the enemy, ready to shoot if anything moved.

      I bolted down the steps and ran past the MPs, following the guy in front of me. Ahead of us rose a huge warehouse.

      We ran inside and joined the rest of our buddies. As if she was announcing a flight arrival, a woman spoke in a soft voice in what I assumed was Vietnamese. I had no idea what she said, and nobody told us.

      At least she wasn't shouting and shooting. I felt a breeze on my face and when I looked up, I saw three ceiling fans wheeling. I'd never seen one before. That's when I knew I wasn't in New Jersey anymore. That was the culture shock for me: watching over my shoulder constantly to see if somebody was going to lob a grenade, hearing words I didn't understand, and being exposed to a fan that looked new and old at the same time.

      A sergeant paced in front of us, giving some kind of spiel, but I wasn't listening. I was more worried about getting killed than what he said. We'd been taught to be fearful wherever GIs gathered, because the enemy could toss a grenade into the middle of us. The enemy liked to do that kind of thing when we were vulnerable like we were at that moment. I glanced all around that warehouse, but no sign of a grenade. Whether the enemy was lurking there was anyone's guess.

      An MP pointed to a row of duffel bags lined up behind us with our name tags up. Find your duffel bag and go up to that yellow line and fall in with your belongings. DO NOT spend any American currency in this country because they take it on the black market and sell it to buy weapons. Your money will be changed into script. Do not eat the food or drink the water.

      His words only half-reached me. After a 28-hour flight, no sleep, and then being shot at, my mind was already spinning out of control. Somehow I managed to find my bag and stumbled toward the line.

      A Vietnamese guy in ragged black pajamas and worn flip-flops grabbed my duffel bag and started to run away with it.

      Hey! I yelled and chased after him. That guy was running away with everything I owned. I couldn't let him do that.

      He halted where I was supposed to stand, set down my bag, bowed, and put out his hand.

      I figured he must have been doing this to make money. He looked poor and like he needed food. I reached into my pocket and gave the guy fifty cents.

      Oh, shit. I broke the first rule already and I'm not even here ten minutes. I felt really stupid after I did that.

      Later on, I thought,

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