Welcome Home, Wayne

The children rode their bicycles in a circle in the street in front of the tiny house on Billings Avenue.

"Welcome home Wayne! Welcome home Wayne!" they chanted.

A good size crowd of family, neighbors and well-wishers milled about on the sidewalk and curb. Several more were inside the house.

In a few minutes a car pulled up to the curb, and a 20-year-old Marine, in full dress uniform, stepped out of the vehicle to cheers and applause. People from the crowd came forward to embrace him or shake his hand. He was led by family to the front porch, over which a huge homemade banner was hung. The banner said WELCOME HOME WAYNE in huge, orange block letters.

As he climbed the porch steps and ducked into the front door, he was passing from one world to another. He had just completed a 13-month combat tour in the jungle hell of Viet Nam. And now he was coming home.

· · · · ·

The platoon had been pinned down for days, surrounded by North Vietnamese regulars. There was no water, and, most likely, none coming. The daytime temperature was a brain-baking 100+ degrees, with almost 100% humidity. Finally, in a frenzy of thirst, the 19-year-old Marine, now several months in combat, began to lick the dew from the leaves of the jungle bush.

· · · · ·

Back home in Paulsboro, New Jersey, on a gray Sunday morning, a worried mother bundled her five small children and trudged to the little Wesleyan church less than a block down the street. Between hymns, she stood nervously, and in a small voice made dear by its humility, she asked the congregation to please pray for her son, Wayne, who was a Marine in Viet Nam.

· · · · ·

Private Kopko shivered against the cold, and thought of the line from the famous Jack London story, TO BUILD A FIRE. Cold, cold, exceedingly cold, and cold.

"I'm probably the only grunt who's read that," he thought to himself somewhat conceitedly. In Korea only a month, he already hated it with a passion. Korea, the Army….he just about hated everything.

He lit another Kool and sucked the smoke deep into his lungs. How did he get here? he wondered.

This guard duty was murder.

· · · · ·

The young Marine had seen most of his squad killed or wounded in action. He wondered when it would be his turn. Indeed, he would wind up being the only Marine from his original squad to complete the entire 13-month combat tour. Everyone else was either sent home wounded or killed. (Most military units did a 12-month combat tour in Viet Nam. The Marine Corps did 13-month tours. And it was (and still is) their tradition to never leave behind any Marine dead in a combat zone, even if it cost more casualties to get them all out).

The explosion rocked the truck suddenly, and he was thrown from the back of it….

· · · · ·

Back home in Paulsboro, his worried mother attended the little Wesleyan church on the corner faithfully each Sunday morning. Before this, the closest thing to a Bible she read was psychic Jean Dixon's autobiography. Jean Dixon couldn't help her now…..

· · · · ·

Private Kopko finally made it to where his platoon had last been. They were gone. He spouted obscenities aloud and lit yet another Kool. These things were turning his lungs to glass, and his morning coughing fits were getting worse. He was 18, but felt like 40. The weight of the whole world was on his shoulders, the whole world, and that stinking backpack. He hated carrying it. He hated everything.

· · · · ·

The year dragged on for the young Marine, and finally, after enough horror for a dozen lifetimes, his combat tour was ending. He would be going home. He was warned by his grand-pop Rudy (a veteran of both World Wars) to never worry his mother in his letters home. He did not.

· · · · ·

Private Kopko shivered uncontrollably as he lay on the bare freezing ground and tried to sleep. His teeth chattered like one of those plastic wind-up sets. At least he was in a tent, but it was full of holes, and the useless stove stood unlit and cold in the middle of the tent, broken. His sleeping bag was locked in a vehicle nearly a quarter mile away, and uphill. Forget it. He would sleep right here on the ground, not taking anything off.

He had finally been reunited with his platoon after stumbling onto another Company's area of operations. He had that nitwit of a platoon Sgt. to thank for this. First forgetting their tent and stove and C-rations, so everything the platoon had was cast-offs from other units…. Then leaving him on guard duty and pulling out of the area without taking a head-count.

Korea. The Army. "Second Division—Second to none!" How he hated it all. He would tell his mother in his next letter home.

His older brother had admonished him about the graphic language and use of four-letter words in his letters home to his mother. But Lenny Bruce, his favorite comedian, said that there were really no such things as dirty words. And besides, his older brother wasn't here in the armpit of the world freezing to death. He wished he were at home drinking his morning cup of tea.

His mother would hand him the stack of letters he sent her that year in Korea. Most of them were unopened and unread. The profanity-laced whining in them had gotten to be more than she cared to read. She still wrote to him faithfully once a week, but stopped reading his replies. The letters were in a neat bundle with a rubber band around them.

He felt a little ashamed when she handed them to him. He had slipped in the car on the way home from the airport and used profanity. His parents just stared straight ahead at the road and said nothing. He was 19 years old. And home from a year in Korea.

· · · · ·

The relieved mother told the congregation that her son Wayne was coming home and she thanked them for their prayers. They all thanked Jesus for the miracle. Her son had beaten overwhelming odds to be coming home alive, with no injuries. He was 20 years old. And home from the war in Viet Nam.

The mother and small children stopped going to church once Wayne was safely home.

One of the children, a second-grader, would hide in the back of Miller's store behind the Drake's cupcakes rack every time he saw his Sunday school teacher come in.

He did this for about three years, until it dawned on him that after this much time, she wouldn't still be his Sunday school teacher anymore, anyway. He felt relieved.

· · · · ·

There was a big party for Wayne in the little house on Billings Avenue. In a crowded kitchen with lots of food and drink and good company, he showed slides he had taken in 'Nam. His two little brothers, Kevin and Kirk, ages seven and five, were supposed to sing a song they had rehearsed. But Kevin chickened out, and so Kirk sang it solo. It was from a MAD magazine parody sung to the tune of FROM THE HALLS OF MONTEZUMA.

From the ants in our petunia bedTo the crab-grass on our lawnWe will fight them off with chemicals'Til the bugs and weeds are goneWe'll use quarts and quarts of poison sprayAnd we won't stop 'til we're throughAll the bugs and weeds are dying nowBut the plants and trees are too

Wayne laughed as Kirk sang the little song. It was good to be home.