All at Sea

<p>It was March 1969 and the three of us were sitting in a Boston Whaler a mile off the Viet Nam coast and two miles south of the Demilitarized Zone. The engine had died and the current was carrying us north at three miles per hour. I had been in-country for a little over a week and already my roommate had been med-evaced to Japan full of metal from a Chinese 122mm rocket. We didn't know if he would live or die. I was floating north toward a reservation at the Hanoi Hilton and my war wasn't even 10 days old. How in hell did I ever get into a fix like this?</p><p><br></p>