For me Viet Nam was, my father gone 3 times flying air re-con, unarmed in a C-47, mortor attack on his initial approach to Saigon.
In my junior year at Radford in Honolulu, my grades were so piss poor that the Major made me withdraw from school and go into town and enlist in the Army, I was going to show him, I enlisted in the Marines instead,( I got college sophomore scores on the exams) I came home with my medical papers for him to sign, as I had just turned 17.
We weren’t calling it Viet Nam yet, it was still Indo- China, sure I saw hundreds of young GI’s coming through Hickam every day, but I was only 17 and wanted to surf, surf , surf.
My father relented and gave me one more chance, in his heart, he knew signing those papers was signing my death sentence.
My action for the rest of that year and my senior year was to continue getting D- and F’s.
I did manage to graduate, must have gotten enough D minuses to “pull me through”.
At the end of '64 he was transferred to Dover, Delaware and went for his last tour to 'Nam. I was off and exploring the east Coast by then, that was it for the Major, 200 missions in B-24’s in Europe, then to Japan for the rest of the war. The Berlin Airlift came next, flying C-47’s
He got out long enough to father me and my brother and sister, but Korea was on the horizon and he was recalled, flying C-47’s, air re-con behind North Korean lines unarmed.
There was a period of about 10 years that my Father was NOT at war somewhere, but with the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy assassination he was constantly on ready at high alert.
While Stationed in Hawaii, he delivered the nukes to Johnston Island and stayed there while they were detonated in the atmosphere.
I was a stupid, snot nosed kid and didn’t have a clue as to what war was.
How does this all add up? while evidently not a good student, I was learning how to build surfboards, not just surfboards, but Goddamn good surfboards and with this I build the boards that go with this movie, it is the least I can do for ALL the people who did serve.
After his last tour to Nam, his Commanding Officer came to him and said that he had done all he could do to keep him at Dover, but the brass wanted him back in Nam again, he had over 25 years active duty by then.
This was one of the very few Father and son talks we ever had, he told me he believed in WWII and Korea and went along with the rest of the conflicts he was sent into, but he said this is a young mans war and I am becoming an old man. He submitted his resignation papers and became Lt. Col.ret. Charles E. Phillips.
From that day on life changed for me and my Father, it became father and son, not Officer and his junior subordinates.
He saw I was really accomplishing my goal of being a surfboard craftsman, he died 6 months before I was inducted into the the Hall of Fame.