One-Niner
Richard Stuart Lippert
Copyright 2018 Richard Stuart Lippert
All rights reserved
First Edition
Page Publishing, Inc
New York, NY
First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018
ISBN 978-1-64138-702-6 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-64138-703-3 (Digital)
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to all who suffer from PTSD, both civilian and military. And to my brother Marines, I am eternally grateful for granting me the privilege of serving with the Marine Corp.
for he who sheds his blood with me shall forever be my brother.
Henry IV
Prologue
A stiff, chilly wind is blowing down the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountain passes onto the flat coastal plains below the urban sprawl of Los Angeles. This offshore breeze is then propelled out into the vast, dark expanse of the Pacific Ocean, an earth process that is fundamental to patterns of wind and weather since the tectonic plates of the Pacific Ocean violently created the mountains of Southern California. These winds are also crucial to the development and form of coastal waves that are generated from giant ocean swells thousands of miles away in the southern or northern Pacific.
In the dark of early morning, Richard Strom slips into his winter wetsuit, still damp and cold from having been left outside overnight, shivering as the wetsuit slides up his body. His cold, stiff fingers then grasp the nylon string attached to the zipper on the back of his suit and slowly pulls it up, fastening the Velcro strap over the clasp. He gingerly attaches the leash to his longboard, then fastens the opposite end to his left ankle. Picking up his board, the seventy-year-old surfer carefully navigates around the rocks, walking the remaining fifteen yards to the waters edge.
The wind is brisk and cold. Although dark, he is able to see his breath when exhaling, reminding him of all those cold mornings in rural Minnesota when surfing and the Pacific Ocean were remote childhood fantasies. He winces as he steps into the knee-deep, fifty-five-degree water, then drops his waxed surfboard onto the swirling foam. Pushing off the rocks underneath his feet, he softly lies on his board and begins the paddle to his favorite surfing spotthe sandbar off the point at San Onofre. The frigid water numbs his hands and feet. He cannot see more than a few yards ahead but can hear the pounding surf one hundred yards away. Pushing through the first wall of whitewater the chilly water rushes over his bare head, producing an instant headache. Each successive wall of white water bleeds through the wetsuit and chills the body to the bone as Richard paddles ona cold, difficult, arduous encounter with the power and vastness of the Pacific.
Exhausted he finally reaches the calmer waters beyond the impact zone and now sits quietly on his surfboard, awaiting the next set of waves. Just south seventy-five yards away, he sees three other surfers who have also braved the cold and dark of a California winter morning to rendezvous with this primitive passion that all surfers share.
He glances over his left shoulder toward the east as the early morning light now outlines the hills of Camp Pendleton. He suddenly experiences a moment of amusement, remembering his moms comments about his surfing passion, saying that the many years in the saltwater and the multiple bumps on the head from his surfboard have surely caused brain damage.
Rapidly a giant five-wave set is bearing down on him. Quickly he lies down on his board and paddles furiously to the outside, adrenaline instantly pumping through his body, generating both fear and excitement.
Barely making it over the ten-foot wall of the first wave, he can make out the second and third waves close behind. Paddling over the crest of each massive wall, they both feather at the top, blowing salty spray thirty feet in the air generated by the brisk offshore wind. The fourth wave is a giant fourteen-foot wall of energy generated from a storm far away in the Aleutian Islands.
Instantly he whips his board around to face the shore and takes two strokes. As the surfboard shoots down the face of the wave at a steep angle, he instinctively jumps into a crouched position. Slashing across the powerful double-overhead wave, the space-time continuum ceases to exist, merging his body and the immense, raw power of the Pacific into an alliance of balance and unity, each encounter a reminder that the ocean has been one of the divine interventions that has saved his life.
Turning back toward the west and the thousands of miles of ocean between him and Asia, he flashes on those months and years after he returned from Vietnam when he truly believed that he was emotionally and psychologically scarred, maybe for good.
New Realities
Flatly, mechanically, the battalion chaplain climbs aboard the chopper that will transport him from Echo Company back to battalion field headquarters. He slumps into the webbed seat, not bothering to utilize the seat belt, dumping his pack and communion kit on the deck, then leans back, eyes closed, hoping this will blot out the collage of images going through his head. Last nights encounter with the horror of battle and the sleepless, anticipatory paranoia of more battle to come has left him bereft of energy. There are no emotional reserves left. He is close to physical and mental collapse, his thinking is blurred and fuzzy, and the only feeling that blasts out of his innards anymore is a crushing, shattering, all-encompassing primal fear when in combat. All other life feelings have been squeezed dry.
Just as the sun was setting, within twenty minutes of Chaplain Stroms landing last night near the command post, the enemy unloaded on the isolated Marines of Echo Company. Enemy mortars, then small arms firethe bullets and shrapnel whizzing through the trees and undergrowth, stopping only when hitting a solid object like wood or flesh and bonefusing life and death together in a crap shoot. Living and dying becomes a game of chance dictated by inches and fractions of seconds, and the natural instinct of the species to gain control of this kind of environment is a deadly game of illusion.
Of the remaining seven people left in the company that Richard knewhis good friend Sergeant Mac went home seven days agofour had been killed. First platoon had essentially been wiped out in an ambush two hundred meters away from the company CP, losing its platoon leader, a squad leader, and two veterans with less than three weeks left before being rotated back to the States.
At the time the devastating attack took place, Richard Strom was walking toward first platoon to speak with the new lieutenant about having church services the next morning before he left for battalion. The mortars hit first, shrapnel slashing into the platoon leader and four other nearby Marines. Then the small arms fire erupted throughout the area for the next five minutes, an ongoing wall of lethal bullets shattering any object in its path. The chaplain had immediately hit the deck and crawled toward two fallen Marines hit by shrapnel, lying motionless on the ground, one of them being tended to by a corpsman. Shortly Richard was holding the dying Marine in his arms as the veteran corpsman Jacobi crawled off to another body lying on the wet ground.