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A war story Ollie North missed
On 12/27/1971

Contributed by: Fran Miller on 11/17/2007

I like Oliver North's "War Stories" but here's one he missed.

People always complain that veteran's won't talk about their war-time experiences. In revealing even a miniscule part of myself to the grandees of Douglas County I run the risk of destroying the public image it has take a lifetime to carefully craft.

In late June, 1971, I was sitting in the balcony of the Babcock Theatre in Billings, Montana, smoking and drinking a smuggled-in beer with my best friends, Scott and Larry. The movie du jour was MASH and the opening scene was a helicopter carrying incoming-wounded to a battlefield hospital. It hit me like a punch below the belt because of what had happened that very day--a notice I was being drafted.

In 1968, during my senior year in high school, the TET Offensive had brought graphic images of the Vietnam War into my home. One night I came to the not-so-brilliant conclusion that I was dead-meat unless I went to college. Being a stellar under-achiever at that point, my only option was to finagle a way into the local community college.

In the second quarter of college, I experienced the second great epiphany of my life. I figured that if I had three majors running consecutively I couldn't possibly accumulate enough credits to graduate before the war was over. Oh contraire, private, yet to be!!. On my 21st birthday on June 21st, 1971, I received my draft notice to report by August 15. Seems the draft board used a different formula than I did.

That led to the 3rd most brilliant strategy of my life. I decided to avoid being a ground-pounder in the Army by enlisting in the U.S. Navy Seabees, a unit I knew nothing about. By October, I not only found myself a bulldozer operator in the Seabees, (one of the most dangerous jobs in the military, it turns out) but also wearing a Marine Corps combat uniform and participating in advanced combat training at Camp Pendleton. I had just finished embarkation training in the surf at Port Hueneme with the Navy Seals, getting ready for a planned invasion of North Vietnam that never happened. So I had jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

The military being the caring organization that they are, I was unexpectantly sent home on Christmas leave and returned to Montana with my friend Larry Kaufman, another brainiac who had joined up with me. Larry always figured he would somehow die of natural causes in his sleep and decided to drive a car back to California and store it while we were in Vietnam, building latrines and irradicating communism. We left Montana in a blizzard with the temperature at -25 degrees and headed south-by-southwest. We spent the first night at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas.

At this point, I need an aside before I bring the story to a climax.

This past week, the Frontier Hotel entertained visitors on the Las Vegas strip for the last time as the building, built in 1942, was imploded to make way for a new billion dollar casino complex. In the crowd was Yitzhak Tshuva, an Israeli billionaire who orgasmed as a dust cloud opened the way for his latest financial opportunity. For me it was the closing of one door and the opening of a new one.

You see, that night at the Frontier Hotel, back in 1971, Larry and I smoked, gamboled and drank ourself into oblivion. As the child of a working class WWII veteran, growing up in Montana, I had never ridden on an airplane or much less left the state before being jerked out of college and put in ranks. While in Las Vegas, Larry and I wore our field jackets and levis. We were spat upon and called baby killers. What stays in Las Vegas may stay there but its perversions are largely imported from the popular culture at large. Soldiers in uniform were despised back then. Anyway, we didn't care much because we knew our life only had about three months to go. From boot camp that had began in August up to Christmas we had not had intimate relationships with anything but an M-16 and a bulldozer.

So, on about December 30, 1971, there we were having breakfast in the Frontier Hotel, getting ready for the last day's drive back to the base in California. Across the restaurant strolled the most beautiful woman I think I have ever seen then or since. She sat down and began to look at the menu. My trance state was broken when our waiter came over and asked me if I liked what I saw. "What's not to like", I said in my Gary Cooper drawl. " Well, for $100 bucks she is your's". It immediately became obvious she was a prostitute. My whole world view collapsed, just like last week's physical implosion of Yitzhak's hotel. You see, I was still a virgin and I idealized women as goddesses.

My waiter, now revealed to be a procurer, had delivered a shocking blow greater than watching that opening scene to MASH. I just couldn't reconcile in my own mind how a beautiful woman, who could have anything she wanted, just by wiggling her finger, would decide to become a lady of the night. To this day, it is hard to fully understand and accept. But, being drafted took a chunk out of my naivete, and life over the years has not had a reason to restore my innocence.

While Yitzhak Tshuva may have blown up a landmark in Las Vegas he didn't erase an indelible memory in my veteran's mind. I can't wait to spend a night in his new hotel and put a few sheckel's into his pocket.



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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Fran Miller

Parker , CO

Fran Miller has posted 106 stories and 14 comments since joining on 9/28/2007. Fran Miller 's average story rating is 4.78.
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