Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
China Beach Spring
Break
Long, long ago in a land far, far away, Rasmussen,
Mueller, Schutrumpf, I, and a few others sometimes took a few hours away from
the dispensary at Camp Tien Sha for a swim at China Beach.
The beach itself was a designated recreational area with barbed
wire, firepits, barbed wire, picnic tables, barbed wire, some basic sheds for toilets
and changing, barbed wire, someone in a tower with a firearm, barbed wire, beautiful
white sand, barbed wire, the impossibly blue South China Sea, and barbed wire.
And we had firearms too; we took turns sitting on the
tailgate of a pickup or in the front seat of a Jeep with an M-14 (which always worked;
the M-16 was the pouty Princess Phone of weaponry) or a .45 pistol.
And we didn’t like that part. No one wanted to take a
weapon to the beach; we wanted to swim and kick at a soccer ball in the sand and
forget for a while.
We didn’t think about looking like John Wayne or showing
off or, most absurd of all, “accessorizing” a weapon. Weapons just had to be
because there was a war on.
And now our American beaches of happy memory feature body
counts [https://www.bing.com/search?q=spring+break+violence&qs=ds&form=QBRE] while Viet-Nam’s China Beach is a peaceful
resort area [china
beach vietnam - Search (bing.com)].
Going to the beach for spring break is associated with
university students – the ones not working their way through college on the
night shift – but it is difficult perceiving the future engineers, attorneys,
writers, architects, philosophers, mathematicians, physicians, nurse practitioners,
and other professionals in those unhappy scenes of shown on the telescreen.
A reality is that many students double up their work
shifts during spring break and others, more comfortably fixed, volunteer with
all sorts of worthy causes because that’s how their parents raised them and it’s
the right thing to do.
I wish the networks would feature the CNA taking extra
shifts during spring break to put herself or himself through RN school, or the
future architect or engineer taking a week with Habitat for Humanity.
Yes, yes, “if it bleeds it leads,” blah-blah-blah, but it
doesn’t have to be so.
-30-
