Take the Hershey Highway.

Kelly’s telling me that Craig “Speedy” is also known as “Shrek.” Speedy, a big, burly operator and former bail bondsman from Baltimore, is Kelly’s assistant intel guy. Kelly especially appreciates Speedy’s common sense approach to things and the stone-sharpened perspective of one who’s worked the street.

As this story unfolds, Speedy and the guys are in a safe house outside Jalalabad, building a source network. It’s tedious, time-consuming work. “Speedy picked up on this work real fast,” said Kelly.

They’d set up a matrix to systematize the work, checking and cross-referencing known Afghani contacts, informants, people of interest and the complex, overlapping interrelationships that easily confounded all but the most diligent research effort.

The language barrier was a deterrent, for sure. Of course, their terps played a critical role, but nothing was simple. Everything required multiple explanations. Most of the locals looked alike and obstacles to progress popped up like marmots in mating season.

Their top three informants were known to the team as the “Sopranos.” These guys helped the team sniff out nefarious locals or information about IED hovels – anything that could lead to SF action.

“We’d get some piece of information from the Sopranos about a local who might be involved in some interesting shit,” said Kelly. “That would be a starting point. We’d always have to verify and cross-check every piece of information and validate the sources. Most of the leads we got were useless bullshit. The locals will talk all day for American dollars – accurate or not.”

The old adage, “Follow the money,” doesn’t necessarily apply here. They learned it was best to follow the weapons. It was a clearer, more distinct trail, one that led to bad guys faster and more reliably.

One of the team’s key interests were the weapons bazaars. “Imagine going to your local hometown’s square to buy pistols, machine guns or RPG 7s,” said Kelly. That’s what it was like: these roving arms markets were carried out by bands of gypsies, hell-bent on making money, selling every killing device imaginable, so that our boys’d go home in boxes.

The team wanted to know where the band of gypsies would show up before they got there. Knowing that the U.S. forces would do anything to mess with their plan, roving arms dealers rarely stick to a route or publicized a schedule.

“Un-fucking real: we’d learn that the traveling bazaar price for a Soviet mortar round was 50 cents. Or, an asshole could buy a 50 caliber machine gun for just $7.00. AK-47s went for a buck.”

So the team spread the word through the Sopranos. There was a need at their location for guns n’ ammo. They’d pay the going rate, or better, for all weapons. “It wasn’t long before people were beating on our door,” said Kelly. “We had some local front guys that would answer the door and be seen. So we began to buy boxes of ammo, a dozen AKs, a crate of mortar rounds and some old, rusted Russian 107 mm rockets.”

The old 107s were a weapon of choice for killing US troops. “They’d usually set ‘em up with a mosquito coil, timer and a car battery.

Sweet revenge

Everything’s got a nick-name, a term of endearment. Somehow, the road from J-bad to the safe house won the name “Hershey Highway.” After all, good information led to sweet revenge.

In short order, bitter shit was coming in along the Hershey Highway. At the safe house, munitions were accumulating. Most of the goods were destroyed or given to the ‘Murphs’– talented CIA-supported, Afghani militia reaction forces, the equivalent of the South Vietnamese Montagnards, indigenous experts at engagement, fighting for the right side.

“One day a guy showed up who wanted to talk,” said Kelly. The translation went something like this: “I think I can provide rockets: big, long.” The team assumed old 107s . . . maybe. A week later, he’s back at the gate, knocking, wanting in. “I have rockets with me.”

The dude is telling team members that he wants money for his loot. Meanwhile, Kelly and Speedy slip out to take a look in the back of his pickup truck.

Damn! There are eight brand new 107s in there, still in original plastic wrapping. This, explained Kelly, was an oddity of the highest order. Most 107s they encountered were beat and ragged, having been moved continuously since the Russians occupied the dust bowl. Some were in almost unrecognizably poor condition. These rockets were brand spanking new.

It wasn’t long before the guy was kicking up dust on his way back down Hershey Highway, with an empty rear end and $56 richer (the team threw in an extra buck or two for good measure).

“The next day, here he comes with another load the same size,” said Kelly. “But then we were just as baffled when he didn’t show for a couple weeks, thinking it was just a lucky flash in the pan.”

Maybe it was just a fluke, but they were glad nonetheless to put the weapons into the Murph’s hands: badass gear that would no doubt wreak havoc among the Talaban and Al-Quaida.

The team was perplexed. Through the Sopranos, they wondered if they should they push the guy – now known as the Rocket Man – or let things play out naturally.

A few weeks later, there was another knock at the gate, this time urgent, incessant. The dude’s there, smiling and with arms open wide, saying “See my truck! I have many rockets!” Sure enough: there were 25 pristine 107s wrapped in the manufacturer’s plastic. He left with bulging pockets of American cash.

Another week went by, another rushed transaction. Pounding at the gate led to a bigger, better discovery: 35 clean, untouched rockets and a greater reward for Rocket Man. By this time, the team and the Sopranos knew where he lived and who he was. They could tail him, hoping to learn more. But the collective decision was to give him more time; let it ride.

Two weeks later, Rocket Man reappeared. But something was different this time. The jovial mask had dissolved. Rocket Man was bewildered and fidgeting, avoiding eye contact. Quietly, Kelly invited him into his briefing room, a small space with candy, a sofa and chai tea.

Rocket Man gulped a tea and unwrapped several hard candies, savoring the sweetness. Gradually, his stress unwound. Red eyes and sweating, Rocket Man gathered his senses.

“I have no rockets!” he blurted. “And I need protection! My brother’s going to kill me! I stole rockets from him!”

The team’s terps awaited further explanation.

Rocket Man explained that, over the past couple of months, he’d stolen his brother’s weapons. His older sibling, apparently, had a large buried stash and was one of the key suppliers of weapons to Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the Nangar Province.

“That day, we learned his brother’s name and the names of two or three others who ran weapons with him,” said Kelly. “Damn, it was so nice to give that information to the Murph commander.

“That night, the older brother gun-runner and the others were taken into custody, said Kelly. “But we made it clear to the Murphs that, when they raided the compound, they weren’t to touch a hair on Rocket Man’s head.

“It’s a thinking man’s game,” concluded Kelly. “We could’ve trailed him and blown it. But the results were better than we could’ve expected – way better. You can’t make this stuff up.”

Sleepless in Afghanistan

We’re sitting around a small bonfire at Tom Kelly’s place in Central PA admiring the last summer sunlight as it breaks through enormous cumulus clouds, sending shafts of light diagonally into a Blue Mountain ridge a few miles away. Between our ring of fire and the mountains are big rolls of hay and a lush pasture with two of Tom’s horses, My Lady’s Hot and Kahlúa. A brood of chickens furiously compete for our seasoned shrimp morsels, tossed as we eat ‘em.

The sense of harmony we feel here contrasts to the story I’m hearing from Tom and his good friend Grant. We’re all working on big, smooth cigars, alternating between sips of Newcastle beer and a taste of Jack Daniels now n’ then.

The topic is Tom’s second rotation to Afghanistan. He was there with Grant and a group of other Special Forces team members. MSG Tom Kelly was the team sergeant. Major Grant Marks was the CO, or team leader. They were the two senior ranking SF guys.

“By the time we were forward-deployed, we had a bunch of amazing, younger SF guys with us that were freakin’ brilliant and super-motivated,” said Kelly. “We had a job to do and the team wasn’t about to let anything stand between us and getting it done.”

Marks, a West Point grad, entered the Army 15 years earlier. He was thrilled with the power and mobility of armor and pleased at becoming an M1 Abrams tank commander until the events of 9-11. Osama bin Laden’s attack became a crucible moment for Marks. He soon asked for a transfer to SFQC, the Special Forces Qualification Course, determined to make the war effort “close and personal.” Small team tactics would be a big departure from the 80-ton warhorse he’d soon leave behind.

Kelly and Marks met stateside a year before they deployed together in Afghanistan, summer of ’09.

“At first, they didn’t know where to put us,” said Kelly. “For two months, we were assigned to FOB Black Horse, about nine miles out of Kabul. And then the day came to pack up for our new operating base located in Sirkoni, Konar Province – an ‘X’ on the map with no facility of any kind, only 500 meters from the Paki border.

“It was a rugged pile of sand with goat shit, deep in ‘Indian country’ that we were to turn into an FOB overnight,” added Kelly. Marks said that they were to move out with a battalion of Marines, there to set up security for us.

The team learned quickly from ICOM chatter monitored by their terps that they were being observed ‘round the clock. “So, right from the start, we gave the locals a taste of our ‘busy bee’ syndrome. We wanted to make a big psychological footprint,” said Kelly.

Marks leaned toward the fire to aim a shot of Copenhagen spew into the embers. “What Tom’s saying is that, knowing the Taliban could be found in any direction from where we were, we decided to give them the impression that we were a bunch a really truly crazy bastards, not to be fucked with – and that we never slept.”

“So it wasn’t long before we were doing live fire exercises at one, two or three in the morning, and sometimes two or three times a night,” said Kelly, laughing. He leaned close enough to touch bottle necks with a smiling Marks.

“We put every weapons system to use and, for extra impact and some of the best freakin’ fireworks you can imagine, we’d occasionally call in the 155 illum[ination arty rounds] from howitzers at the big fire base in ‘A-bad’ 20 clicks away,” said Marks. “For base defense, we knew exactly where their best hilltop and mountain ledge observation posts were, some too close for comfort. These target reference points (TRPs) were already GPS-programmed . . .” known to team members simply as TRP1, TRP2, etc.

“So we’d call A-bad saying, ‘This is Team Sirkoni. Fire mission for 155s’ and then we’d give ‘em the grid and TRP with instruction to go ‘live fire’,” added Kelly. “We’d fire our TRPs as a total psychological package as we beat the hell out of those little Taliban mountain observation posts. Of course it was fully applicable to our mission.”

“And there were times we’d do just the opposite,” said Marks. “We slip outa’ firebase at O-dark 30 with nigh vision gear and hike into many of the local villages in the valley.”

“This was always an adrenalin drip trip,” added Kelly. “When we get near the villages, the freakin’ dogs go crazy. Every compound had dogs – one helluva’ security system – and they knew we were on ‘em in a hurry.”

The dogs would bark and yammer fiercely, but this is exactly what the team wanted: for the locals to know that someone was out there, potentially a threat. If a village wasn’t their destination for the evening, they’d drift through it like wraiths in the dark, just long enough to agitate the dogs into full alarm.

“At two or three in the morning, no one ever came out to investigate,” said Kelly. “But they sure as hell knew someone was out there, and it made for a bad night’s sleep after that, for sure.”

It wasn’t uncommon for the team to set off a string of canine alarms along a jagged three, four, or six-mile path. A few hours before daybreak, they’d occasionally settle
into concealed positions within a village as every dog hit fevered pitch. Eventually, the animals would settle down, but buy this time the villagers were sleepless in Afghanistan.

“In those instances, we concealed ourselves while maintaining radio communications with other team members,” explained Marks. “Eventually, we’d come out of concealment to ‘be discovered’ by someone in town, or we’d just come out of hiding and walk away in full daylight. This was usually just short of a heart attack for them, but the impact was the same: shock n’ awe, you know? And then, no doubt, the rumor mill buzzed for days as villagers compared stories.”

“We don’t wanna’ mess with those crazy bastards!” shouted Kelly, the most fitting punctuation to the story.

During the heat and blinding light of day, just as unlikely a time for live fire exercises, they’d go out to do gun drills, soon drenched in perspiration. They were active on the range, always shooting, always working in tandem, sweating bullets.

The idea, said Marks and Kelly, was to be as unpredictable as possible, badass to the core. Sort of like the pooch that swaggers up to a skanky half-rotten corpse and rolls in it to say: “Sure my shit stinks. I’m a nasty m’fer.”

Submitted January 28, 2014

©C. David Kramer, Lititz., PA

I’m a former U.S. Marine and a Vietnam War combat veteran.

I have the ribbons and medals and a DD-214 to prove it. I even have a souvenir pair of genuine Ho Chi Minh rubber tire-tread sandals. Not as good as an AK-47 or a VC battle flag, but not a bad war relic either.

The VA says I suffer from Agent Orange exposure. I doubt it, but that’s what they say.

I survived a lot of VC and NVA Chi-Com rockets, mortars and small arms ground attacks; an ammo dump detonation, and a napalm conflagration that lasted a week; the historic Tet Offensive and a 235-lb. Staff Sergeant who swore on Dan Daly’s sacred memory to kick my ass.

I had trench mouth, trench foot and a case of dysentery so severe I could’ve bent over, squeezed and filled a horizontal Coke bottle from 3 meters without even touching the rim.

Oh, and I nearly forgot: I got nailed by a Charlie sniper round that blew the heel smack off my right jungle boot. Thankfully, no Purple Heart. To this day I remain indebted to a poor shot who apparently didn’t grasp the finer points of elevation.

Notwithstanding such an impressive warrior résumé, I’ve never liked telling tales about what daddy did in the war. And I don’t much like hearing war stories, either.

There are a few reasons for this.

Here’s the first: I have precious little time for braggers. Most war stories are, to be generous, at least implicitly boastful. In the overall, it’s my view that a dude who feels compelled to crow about virtually any kind of personal exploit (war, sex, business, sex, golf, sex, etc.) should chat with someone who cares. Like his dog. Or a shrink. Or himself and then a shrink.

Next: Far too many war stories—and I’m wearing my nice hat, now —are rather overstated. The majority should start with, “Once upon a time…” Most are so embellished and embroidered you’d think they were mouthed by a Congressman.

Third: There’s so little challenge in telling them. And without some rigor where’s the fun? It’s truly effortless to B.S. your 4-F neighbor, a Facebook friend or a beer-drinking VFW social member perched on the edge of his barstool whilst hanging breathlessly on your every blood curdling revelation. You have to take care, though, to know both your audience and those within earshot. Any combat-hardened vet nearby can pinpoint a little fib or a giant whopper quicker than a boot camp shower. Such untruths rarely lead to pleasantries.

But the final – and arguably the most important and telling reason I head for the head when “This ain’t no s_ _ t, but when I was in ‘Nam (or Iraq or Afghanistan or, hell, at Bull Run),” comes tumbling out from between some vet’s lips like he was confessing to Dr. Phil – is this: Within the genre, my war stories are rather run-of-the-mill.

I never charged a machine gun nest, parachuted behind enemy lines, or dropped into a hot LZ hangin’ out of a Huey firing a 30-cal machine gun on Medevac missions (although I did volunteer once for the latter. What was I thinking?).

Like nearly everyone else, I wasn’t interested in heroics. I just wanted to survive and come home.

And besides, for more than 40 years, nobody wanted to hear my yarns anyway.

Within a month, I went from in-country combat to college freshman on a full-ride “McNamara Scholarship,” the name cynics like me stuck on GI Bill education bennies in honor of the then-Secretary of Defense. From academia I leaped straight into the corporate world.

The first two companies that tolerated me were Fortune 500 corporations. You have to look really hard to find any former enlisted Vietnam-era jarheads residing along corporate America’s Mahogany Row. For a long time I thought perhaps that was because high-powered exec-types were smart enough to have gotten out of having to go to Vietnam.

Time has not dramatically diminished the plausibility of that theory…

I can count on one hand the number of Vietnam-era combat veterans I ever worked alongside in 30 years of plying my profession from coast to coast. The subject of, “Were you in Vietnam?” rarely came up in polite conversation among colleagues. And when it occasionally did, any response by me was met with some variation of, “Oh, how nice,” followed by a downward cast of the eyes, shadowed instantly by a fearsome facial expression that was actually much more articulate:

“OMG, RIGHT NOW this a-hole’s going to have a flash-back and stab me repeatedly with a Punji stake while simultaneously toking a joint and strangling me with his dog tags.”

Now where in the world would, for example, a peer group of rather clever college educated, pin-striped desk troopers have gotten an idea like that? Well, other than from most of their draft-dodging professors, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, ABC/CBS/NBC News and countless other media, here’s an inkling: Look to the Left Coast.

It’s there amongst the Lamborghinis and palms of Sunset Boulevard and Beverly Hills that a keen observer will, even today, find the graying unrepentant remnants (and philosophical offspring) of an authentic anti-American clique. A cabal of elitist Hollywood liberal writers, producers and actors that aided and abetted the defaming of an entire generation of American patriots.

A cohort that remains guilty of a near-criminal act of character assassination that lingers in the national conscience half-a-century later.

Are you paying attention, Ms. Fonda?

Notable cinematic trash like “Full Metal Jacket,” “Platoon,” “The Boys in Company C,” “Born on the 4th of July,” ad nausea have since the 1970s helped shape American public opinion, and in many respects its 21st Century leaders and resulting foreign policies. If John Wayne hadn’t died naturally in 1979 (from either cancer or embarrassment for his industry; no one is certain) he’d probably have eventually hanged himself.

For decades, this nation’s news and entertainment media did its level best to dishonor the more than 58,000 American men and women who lost their lives in Vietnam, as well as an untold number who are MIA and will never be fully accounted. They defiled countless surviving Vietnam warriors who to this day bear the physical and emotional scars of warfare, many of whom will go to their graves battling the recurrent demons of combat.

But with no disrespect to the memories of those who sacrificed their lives or continue struggling, the overwhelming number of returning Vietnam War veterans – despite the media-generated image – are not plagued by PTSD, have never been addicted to illegal drugs, love their wives, cherish their children and give generously to their favorite charities.

As B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley detail in their excellent 1998 hardcover expose, “Stolen Valor — How the Vietnam Generation was Robbed of its Heroes and History,” we’re explicably normal.

We’re Mark next door, the insurance sales guy who still hasn’t returned the power drill he borrowed from you six years ago. We’re Carol, the RN at the local medical center who just retired and you never knew comforted the sick, wounded and dying aboard the U.S.S. Repose hospital ship off Chu Lai. We’re Bill who retired from IBM after 35 years of international service. We’re your co-workers, marching steadily toward the autumns of our lives, who quietly and proudly did our patriotic duty, shut up and went on about our lives.

The tarnished reputation too many Vietnam War veterans have endured all their adult lives is a national disgrace.

But the image of the American Warrior of all eras has improved considerably in the last 15 years. Patriotism is making a comeback.

Seems to me things began moving in the right direction with NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw’s 1998 discovery that his Constitutional right to spin the truth to fit liberal ideology was won for him by, among others, “The Greatest Generation.” Three years later on September 11, 2001, all of America was more graphically and tragically reminded that some clichés are eternally true: Freedom is not free.

As George Orwell taught, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” In the post-911 world, America is gaining renewed respect for, and placing a higher value on, these rough men – and rough women – be they active duty or veteran military.

It was in 2004 while at a restaurant waiting for a table with my family that a young man noticed the U.S. Marine Corps ring I was wearing. He ordered two drinks and gave me one. He raised his glass and thanked me for my service. That was the first time anyone ever did that. At the time I was unable to adequately express my appreciation for his thoughtfulness. I always find it hard to speak with tears streaming down my face.

Anyway, it’s going on 50 years since I hopped a Continental Airlines Boeing 737 at Da Nang air base with about 150 other dirty, smelly and grateful Marines, hung a hard right over the South China Sea, headed east and rotated my skinny 20-year-old behind out of WESTPAC (that’s Western Pacific to you civilians; Vietnam and Cambodia to the rest of us) and back to The World. Like the nasty memory of a bad blind date in high school, over time most of the grimy details of my war experiences have mercifully drifted away.

In fact I can barely recall that dark moonless night in February ’68 – the third of the Tet Offensive. We’d already been battling for a straight 48 hours without rest. Then incoming rockets died down; mortaring took a pause. Ground fire became sporadic. That usually signaled an imminent ground attack. I was leading a fire team stuck on an LP (Listening Post) somewhere beyond our perimeter. It was quiet.

Too quiet. A small gaggle of chopper gunships flew over and dropped parachute flares to illuminate Injun country. Suddenly we heard movement.

After no sleep and constant assault, nerves were taut. I whispered an order to a PFC, “Challenge.” He looked at me with an “Are you f-ing kidding me???” expression. I countered with a low growl, “Now.”

“Halt, who goes there?” he haltingly hailed.

Ten tired, pissed-off Marines were locked and loaded with safeties off when from out in the bush came a reply…a response that has haunted my soul and echoed at the edge of my conscience all these many decades later…a brash retort carrying a distinctly Brooklyn accent:

“AW, GO F_ _K YOURSELF.”

And that ain’t no s_ _t.

Half way through his 18-month tour in Vietnam, Bob McDowell was a forward recon artillery staff sergeant attached to units from the Army’s Second Field Forces. A year earlier, he’d graduated from the advanced combat training academy “scout school” that produced the first soldiers to wear the camouflage beret.

They were based near the village of Lộc Ninh, not far from where the southern tip of the country stuck its toe into the South China Sea.

At the time, most of the days on base – when they weren’t out on long patrols – were fairly quiet. They were always preparing for the next patrol, fortifying and digging in, resting whenever they could. And storing supplies, including some of the more important provisions: Pabst Blue Ribbon and Red Cap beer or Jim Beam bourbon. Most of the time, that’s what they had to choose from while out in the field.

There was a lot of drinking when troops weren’t on duty, or on the front lines. Another means of recreation was in herbal form. After all, some of the world’s very best marijuana grew in the tropical paradise of Vietnam.

In the spring of 1968, McDowell and other members of a small patrol were returning to Lộc Ninh after a brief encounter with the enemy. Fortunately, all members of the group were intact and smiling, knowing that refreshment was just minutes away.

Each soldier was eager to empty the foul silt water from their boots and pull the leeches from their legs. Shower and a shit, some dry clothes, then everyone’s choice of fine refreshment:

“When we weren’t on duty, we’d drink, mostly at night,” said McDowell. “None of the guys I patrolled with were ‘heads’ – the guys we knew were often doping with pot, hash . . . whatever.”

But something was different about this night.

“We were out at a favorite spot near the perimeter and began drinking, just talking about the patrol and busting on one of the guys for something stupid he’d done . . . when one of the guys held up a couple of joints,” recalled McDowell. “He said, ‘Hey, let’s smoke this.’ ‘No way, man,’ most of the guys were saying. Others said it’ll only make you hungry. It was back and forth like that with the guys amused, but undecided about what to do.”

Before long, the sweet smell of fresh Vietnamese weed was teasing its way through the group. Eventually, all of them were sampling it, some more enthusiastically than others, holding it in against the urge to cough – just as they’d seen the ‘heads’ do.

Soon, the mood changed. It started with a weak smile, then a snicker. Suddenly, one guy said, “Shhh! Shuuuuuut up. What was that? I hear . . . dogs!”

There was wild laughter when the guy got serious and quiet, intent to know if the dogs he thought he heard were coming closer.

“Shhh! The dogs – they’re out there!” By this time, everyone was laughing uncontrollably. “Then the guy began to bark and howl and we couldn’t stop laughing; it was a freakin circus,” McDowell said.

McDowell added that the guy went on and on with every variation of barking, howling, whining and scratching. Then he jumped up and made a big production of hiding from them, performing all sorts of antics to show that . . . if they came through that opening in the underbrush, right there . . . he’d make a run for it thata’way. He was fast, but tripping over his own feet. He leapt to the side then ran around the corner and – wham! – busted his nose on the corner of a bunker.

Blood spurted out of his face to the great enjoyment of everyone there and tumultuous laughter. Wave after wave of it, as other members of the group reenacted the nose-busting scene and the facial expression of the guy with the swollen, bleeding nose.

Eventually, they quieted down so as not to arouse too much suspicion. After another joint made the rounds, they hatched a plan to raid the mess hall. Sure enough, the munchies had hit.

Like a band of youngsters with arms outstretched and bent legs to “absorb sound,” the men made sneak on the food supply a hundred yards away. They padded through an encampment of sensibly sleeping soldiers as muffled laughter rolled forward, then back again.

At last, they slipped through a door that wasn’t nearly secure enough for the now fully-starved soldiers. Inside where the food was stored, they hungrily devoured all type and variety of snack, making quite a mess in the process.

“Damn, it’s almost 0400,” said one of the guys. “We gotta’ go out on patrol again soon.” That news wasn’t greeted happily by anyone.

“I gotta shit,” said McDowell. As he gradually slid from his altered state, he wasn’t going to let the reality of patrol duty get a grip on him yet. He had to go bad, pressure was building down there, and he looked forward to it.

“I had the shitter all to myself so I propped the door open to see the stars,” he recalled. “It was the most beautiful night I’d ever seen, quiet and peaceful. There were a billion stars. They looked so close I actually reached for them, moving my hand in the air; it felt so good.

“Sitting there with the fresh air on my face, I had an absolutely luxurious shit – the best I’d ever had,” he added. “I just kept shitting and had this smile on my face. Of course, I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it and, oh, the warmth and goodness of really fine shit – it felt sooooo good.”

McDowell was there in the shitter for a long time, having a near-religious experience. Hey, he’d earned it. Soon, he’d be back in the jungle, quiet as a mouse and undetectable, an alert soldier ready to spring into action.

“Eventually, I had to get up and get back to the hooch for a nap. And then – after some sleep – the guys’d be forming up again for patrol,” he said.

As he made his way to the hooch when a friend (the guy whose idea it was to raid the mess hall) stopped him with hand outstretched.

“He said to me, ‘Bob, I love you like a brother . . . but man, you smell like shit! You stink like a son-of-a-bitch.’”

Dreamily, McDowell looked down toward his ankles, and on to his flip-flops and saw – what?? – clumps of shit hugging his legs and feet. Was it shit? Damn: It looked like he’d shit his britches. And then the realization snuck up on him. Back at the shitter, he hadn’t pulled his pants down!

No wonder he’d enjoyed the peaceful feeling and the warmth of that shit so much. It didn’t go anywhere, so it just collected, then gently rolled out whenever it wanted to after he stood to leave. But now as it cooled and drew attention to itself, by golly, it was beginning to get just a bit unpleasant.

And that’s when the group, alerted to his predicament, had a new round of laughter, just like the party had started all over again.

Out of the laughter – and he had to laugh, too – one guy was able to communicate the urgency to get some sleep before the next patrol.

He said, “You’d better get yer foul ass in bed . . . Stinky.” New round of laughter and backslapping.

McDowell ran straight to the trash barrel; somehow, wagging his junk in the open air, the smell was getting worse. Peeling off the pants and underwear, he tossed the soiled clothes in, then hustled toward the shower.

“All we had was a jungle shower,” he explained, “and it was freakin’ cold.” A five-gallon bag of water hung on a nail, with a nozzle that twisted to let out a spray of water.

He stood on a wood pallet, working frantically to put the water to best use, deciding that one bag wasn’t enough. Caked shit was still running down his leg and clumped-up at his toes. He looked down at his feet, still in the flip-flops that he hoped to save.

Another bag of water, soap, scrubbing. Not enough, not nearly. One more, then another. The shit was gone but he could still smell it. Maybe it was just the smell was coming up from below the pallet.

He jumped from the shower, toweled off and ran to the hooch. All he could recall was that he slept well, dreaming of a heavenly latrine and a starry, starry night. He awoke to the sounds of guys gearing-up. He’d have just enough time for a quick bite to eat. He threw on some fresh underwear and pants. He then grabbed his rucksack, general hat and M16.

His greatest fear at the time wasn’t the enemy: “I was afraid that team sergeant Ramsey was gonna’ kill me for smelling this bad.”

The other guys confirmed it. They put him at the rear end of the patrol for good measure. As luck would have it, Ramsey didn’t hear about it or get a whiff of him that night.

But the name “Stinky” held for the rest of his tour in ‘Nam. And, for McDowell, it was a first and last experience with the evil weed.

“That shit wasn’t for me,” he said.

Bob McDowell grew up as a scrapper in the Philadelphia housing project, Bartram Village, on the southwest side of town. Life in the project was tough, but like a sapling in the wind, it toughened the tree.

A big challenge was the situation at home. After four years in New Guinea during WWII, his father’s heavy drinking routinely unleashed a demon inside. He beat his children angrily with little or no warning or provocation.

Bobby’s mother was resourceful – she was the equal and opposite reaction. To support the family, she took odd jobs of all kind, sometimes walking great distances to wash a family’s clothes for meager pay – yet it’s what put food on the table.

“Life was harmonious though,” he recalled. The surrogate family was the many kids nearby. “We were all in the same boat. There was no discomfort or any sense that we were a poor family surrounded by a lot of other poor people. I never had any worry about material things. We adapted.”

Bobby and his classmates from the project – blacks, whites and Puerto Ricans –walked a mile to school through neighborhoods where the other kids would routinely ambush them. They were the reviled “Village rats.”

Passing through the four-block-long “Little Italy” always bore great risk, regardless of age. The kids whose territory they moved through were always on the lookout for the Rats, eager to fight. Getting through the Irish/Polish neighborhood, an area of about the same size, wasn’t much better.

Bobby grew older and tougher. Eventually he was one of the bigger kids, admired by the small fry for his willingness to defend them. He earned those stripes. He acquired nicks, cuts and bruises on the way to school and on the way home.

In school, what should have been a safe haven, wasn’t. In ninth grade, as a smartass, Bobby initiated conflict with Mr. Dochery, a teacher who didn’t take well to being called “Vick’s cough drop.”

“His head was shaped just like a cough drop,” said McDowell with a smile. “When I called him ‘Vicks’ in front of the other students, he told me to be quiet. I replied, ‘Sure, cough drop head’ or something like that.”

By that time, there was raucous laughter at Dochery’s expense. Bobby could see it build: a seething anger percolated, topped off with a glare that told him he was on thin ice. Later that day, with no audience, the teacher beat him like no kid in Little Italy could. “But now that I look back on it, I brought it on and deserved the lesson,” he said.

A year later, the vice principal, Mr. Goldblatt, made it clear to the young McDowell boy that they were parting ways, and that the school administrator wasn’t planning to go anywhere. “Die, move, or join the Army,” were his words. McDowell left school after the tenth grade.

At 17, his best hope of leaving Philadelphia was to enlist for military duty at a time when young men were hurdling into the firestorm of Vietnam. “But I wanted make something of my life, to find an honest way to support the family I wanted to have.”

McDowell first went to Korea for a year where he met and trained under a young Army major, Roger Donlon, at the 2nd Infantry Division’s Imjin scout school. The captain’s mission was to teach young soldiers forward reconnaissance techniques, the art of stealth war tactics and guerilla maneuvers. (Donlon was the Vietnam war’s first Medal of Honor recipient, and the first member of the Special Forces so honored.)

The rigors of Imjin Scout School training, recalled McDowell, were tough as nails. Most memorable, he said, were the night patrols along the infamous DMZ.

After nine months in Korea, with newly-honed skills, McDowell volunteered to go to Vietnam. But before he was to serve there, he caught a flight home, via Japan, on a giant C130, its bowels filled with dead soldiers in caskets. The 30-day leave went quickly.

Three weeks after his arrival in Vietnam – with credentials as a forward recon artillery observer from the Imjin scout school – McDowell got his baptism by fire.

A Vietcong RPG made a direct hit in front of a soldier, a friend, standing just a few feet away. McDowell was burned by the blast, taking a hot splash of aluminum slivers that sliced into him. But he refused to leave his unit after seeing the chopper’s tethered basket haul-in the dead soldier. It wasn’t the last time he’d see a friend leave the field in a body bag.

“I couldn’t stand the thought of going up in a basket,” he said. “That was worse than staying right where I was, and I didn’t want to abandon the guys.” A medic patched the wounds, telling him he’d need to get to an aid station.

A day after the RPG attack, McDowell and a few other soldiers, trying to reach base camp, almost walked into an enemy battalion. Immediately, they called in an arty strike from several 155 howitzers a few miles away. The enemy casualties were substantial.

Back at camp, and with a brief layup at “Bearcat” hospital, McDowell snuck away from the nurses and into the local bar. Cold beer was served in Vietnam, and it was a good friend in time of need.

Within a few months, he achieved the rank of Staff Sergeant. When his time came to leave the tropical paradise, he considered reenlistment, but instead chose to leave the Army with an honorable discharge.

Sadly, issues haunted him: a psychologist verified PTSD. And an immediate result of exposure to Agent Orange defoliant was chloracne, a rare skin eruption of blackheads, acne and cysts linked to dioxin exposure. Eventually, the acne disappeared, though McDowell is still haunted by the war.

On September 29 2012, a day after his release from the PTSD ward, McDowell went for a workout at the gym in the Philly area. He was thirsty and light-headed and wanted a GatorAid, so he stopped at a 711 store.

When he walked out with his drink and turned the corner, his world went black. The ex-soldier’s greatest threat to his life was just a blur – all he could remember of a brutal attack by a group of thugs. They beat him so badly that many of the bones on one side of his face were crushed.

He woke minutes later in a pool of his own blood to find himself surrounded by caring people. Initially, most of them were sure he was dead. He refused ambulance and hospital service because he knew how expensive the emergency care would be.

What others around him saw was a terribly beaten man. Flaps of skin hung as face swelled and bled. The left eye was swollen shut, needing surgery. But at the moment Bob was only aware of a dull, throbbing pain in his temple, and the blood – with realization that a trip to the hospital would mean an inability to care for his wife of 43 years. Virginia was at home – blind and deaf as a result of her battle with brain tumors – and he was her caregiver. A man and his wife gave him a quick ride home.

At home he cared for one hand that hurt especially bad. He pulled a tooth out, lodged in a knuckle.

Three days later, with infection setting in around his eyes and cheek, McDowell accepted a ride to the hospital and was there for a week. He was stitched up and pumped full of liquid gold – some of the most advanced antibiotics available. Fortunately, family and church friends helped “Ginny” while he was away.

Eleven months later and after numerous reconstructive surgeries to help redefine his face, McDowell’s artificial cheek and jaw still hurt, his left eye was bruised and red. Both eyebrows are stitched, hairless furrows, protruding in an arc above each eye, a suggestion of the features he lost in the beating.

Yet, McDowell’s face is radiant and engaging. He’s pleasant and cheerful, a soft-spoken man with telltale scars and pearly white teeth; the sort of guy you’d immediately trust.

There is a wariness to his knowing gaze, having been there, having seen so much. There’s also a sense of caution that dissolves when he accepts you.

Concentrating on a specific topic for more than 10 minutes gave him difficulty and – a new habit developed after the beating – he blinks and nods forcefully to realign his concentration.

The attempted robbery and attack (netting the thieves not a penny) was so brutal that physicians told McDowell shortly after recovery from the first operation that he surely would have died – if not from trauma, from the infection waging war with his immune system, overwhelmed and failing.

Today, he laughs about it with a sense of ease that comes with an acknowledgment that bad things happen to good people. He dismisses concern, as though any level of attention to himself is too much – a learned behavior stemming from years on the street (looking out for/supporting the other guy), having a key role within a small combat team where everyone has each other’s back, and devotion to a marriage vow, for better or worse.

“I’d have it no other way,” he says without hesitation. “It could’ve been me that she was taking care of so many times. But I was chosen for that. Love is powerful ointment.”

About the attack that almost took him out, he dismisses that too with a quick remark that Philadelphia’s worst weren’t good enough. “I guess I’m tougher than that, but as I grow older, I think I’ll do my best to avoid those sorts of things.”

Seeing him today at 64 – on arms that still have considerable width and musculature – his tats draw attention. They include “Special Forces” with beret and skull; a deck of cards; and one he’s worn since the age of 15 with a green bird and heart. The latter also has the name “Bibbles” in it, Virginia’s nickname.

McDowell says that he now looks to each new day with a sense of purpose.

“I turned my back on God for 35 years,” he said quietly. “Now, I’ve given my life to Him and have no worries. He’ll take care of me and Ginny. When it’s our time to go, we’ll do that with no struggle. But for now, I still have Ginny, my daughters Kimberly and Bobby Ann, and three grandchildren, one of whom is now serving in the military.”

“I thank God for the life I’ve lived and have shared with Virginia. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Bob McDowell can teach us all a thing or two.