TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

Departures
Goodbyes
Preface
Confederate General John B. Gordon had a knack for
jumping in front of minie balls. At Antietam’s Bloody Lane
he got tagged five times, twice in the leg, then left arm
and again in the shoulder, and finally right in the face.
His wife, Fanny, followed the army and was eager to
see him. The surgeons worried "whether the colonel's lady
is entirely prepared to withstand the possible shock under
the circumstances," what with Gordon’s face black, eyes
nearly swollen shut, an arm and a leg propped up on
pillows. Gordon scoffed, telling them to let her in. Seeing
him, she screamed. He tells her: Don’t worry dear, I’ve
only been to an Irish wedding…
A year in Vietnam was a long time. In fact, their calendar
appears to have had thirteen months. These days, time
between birthdays of your grandchildren clocks over pretty
fast. But when you were twenty­two and touring the
provinces? – not so fast. Understandably so: whenever time
is untethered, it begs for connections. Mostly to people –
people we love. Absent that, time wanders. As the moment
of embarkation approached, the wish for ties to someone
become more manifest.
One lieutenant unsuspecting of that innocently made
one last stop in route to TBS, out in the mountains of
Virginia, where a coed – one whom he’d known well for years
but for whom he had never harbored the slightest amorous
notions – worked at a summer camp for children. He’d just
say hello before getting on to Quantico. Sure. Thirty
minutes of chit­chat about school, friends, and whatnot and
he felt as if he’d been stabbed in the heart. When he lightly
kissed her cheek goodbye to head on east it hurt that bad. In
the final hundred miles to the back gate at TBS he realized he
had just cut all his comfortable ties to school, friends, and
pretty women. He was adrift in the world as he had always
known it.
Everybody who mustered up out in front of O’Bannon
Hall in 1967 would get sideswiped that way, sooner or later.
Was it harder for married lieutenants? You’d think. There
was, however, a second category of fellows who followed in
trace, pretty close. That was the lieutenant who had decided
exactly whom he should marry, leaving unresolved only the
question of when. Reason suggested, to many, that waiting
was the responsible thing. Nevertheless, in matters of the
heart, reason and emotion are inversely effected by the
length of time till departure. Reason shrinks with time.
Inevitably some lieutenants kicked prudence overboard and
started looking for a chaplain.
One of them was 1 st Lt. Kevin Phalen, Esq.
Kevin’s inamorata had tolerated his dithering as he
progressed through law school, further curtailed the
inevitable during Basic School, but buried all patience when
Kevin hit Staging Battalion. “Kevin Darlin’, you’ll make a
proper bride of me or die explaining,” she says in a
believable Irish way. Ever cautious of his health and wellbeing,
Kevin sought out a chaplain, and the grand unveiling
was scheduled, forthwith. Come the day, there may have
been family present – memory fails – but there were no
maids in attendance for the lieutenants to frighten. It was
A‐10