The Army lost my Cookies at the tender age of 19.
It was spring, 1972. The Easter Offensive was hot and heavy. The Army who operated the Port at Tân Mỹ had pulled out and turned it over to the ARVN. What we didn’t know was the Army took our mail address with it. Our mail was being marked “no such address, return to sender.” They were seeing the Easter Offensive on TV and realized the NVA were farther South than I was. At a loss as to what to do with the stale cookies and cigarettes that were coming back, my parents did what every South Carolinian did back then. They called Senator Strom Thurman’s office.
We were doing long hours. At 8pm we went to post, usually a tower or bunker, or sometime roving patrol. At 8am we went to chow and either filled sandbags/repair bunkers and perimeter flares etc. or mail/scrounge runs. Either way it was afternoon before getting some shut eye.
It was mid-afternoon when I awake to some Coastie (short for USCG personnel who ran the electronics for a Loran tower), telling me, my Mother is on the landline. The only thing I remember is saying something about the possibility of this being his last day in country. We were in the middle of nowhere. Some 30 miles south of the DMZ. Miles from a base or city. There is no payphone at the corner. He was gone and I was happy.
Just as I fall back to sleep, some jerk is banging at my door, walks in and says “Airman Thomas--your Mother is on the landline.” It was the Coast Guard Captain and he wasn’t playing. My Mother was on an old hand crank field phone With the Easter offensive well underway, we had trouble getting any supplies. What we did get came in a net under a Huey. Yet, here’s my Mother, on a crank phone in a sandbag bunker.
I don’t remember much about it. Shortly after they contacted Senator Thurman, he had them on the phone with me and my cookies on the way. I have to be the first person able to ask their Mom to “please come get her baby boy” from a sandbag bunker in the middle of a war zone.
I Never did know how that worked, but I got my cookies and Thurman got reelected.
