Meeting Strangers

     This past Saturday, I ventured out to the J&J Flea Market on US Hwy 441 just north of Athens. My mission was to watch and photograph folks selling their treasures. I met a gentleman who was sitting on a bench outside one of the boiled peanut vendors areas, near the front door of the Flea Bite Cafe.

     I asked him if he minded if I photographed him, and he said, "No."  He asked me if I was going to publish his picture somewhere and make him famous.  I told him that I might want to publish his picture somewhere, but I doubted that I had the ability to make anyone famous with my photography.  He proceeded to tell me that he was already famous.  Of course, I had to ask him to tell me his story.  And, he did.

James Fielding, Chief Petty Officer, USN Retired

     This is Mr. James Fielding, retired Chief Petty Officer, US Navy.  James began his story by telling me that he lived just up the road in Madison County, and that he was a retired Navy man who had served in both Korea and Vietnam.  I told him that I, too, had served in Vietnam as a young Army Infantry Lieutenant, and asked him what he did in Vietnam and where.  He, then, commenced to tell me his story.

     James commanded a PBR (Patrol Boat-River) boat on the Mekong River near Sadec & Vinh Long provinces in what was once South Vietnam.  His mission was to block the enemy (Viet Cong) from running supplies up and down his sector of the river.  James explained that the Viet Cong made a lot of their money to finance their war effort by cultivating small, hidden fields of marijuana in the jungles adjacent to the Mekong.  This was really getting interesting, so I asked him did he have any specific occurance that he remembered about his Mekong River operations.  He went on with his story.

US Navy PBR on patrol in South Vietnam

     He recounted one river patrol in early 1970 in particular that was a joint operation with a couple of Army advisors leading a company of South Vietnamese Popular Forces to find and destroy some reported marijuana patches along the Mekong near Sadec Province.  He explained that the the two advisors, one an Army Infantry Lieutenant and the other an Army Sergeant, rode with him in his boat with the 80 man-strong Vietnamese combat unit following in 6 other PBR's.  James explained that that particular patrol was the only patrol he ever led as a joint Navy-Army operation.  I asked him what was so memorable about it.  About this time in hearing his story, I'm experiencing a little deja vous.  James continued to recount the experience.

     After dropping the advisors and their combat unit off at a suspected "target" along the river bank, James and the other boats under his command anchored close by to offer fire support if needed.  He and the other sailors observed what then had to be a very comical scene.  The Vietnamese soldiers did in fact locate a marijuana patch, seizing a large number of plants and piling them in a huge pile.  After the patch was cleared of the plants, the Army Lieutenant ordered one of the soldiers to set fire to the piled up weed.  The Navy Chief said that was a huge mistake.

     Once the fire got going large clouds of smoke from the burning plants began to hover low around the ground because of the heavy humidity of the day.  And, you guessed it!  The Vietnamese soldiers all forgot about the dangers of their mission and where they were, and proceeded to get high on the largest toke of weed in that part of the country.  James pointed out that if any enemy forces had been close by, the Army guys and their band of happy Vietnamese, would have been no match.

     The Chief' ended his story telling of  the safe extraction of all involved.  James and his Navy delivered the Army guys and their soldiers safely back to their village and bunkered compound to sober up and fight another day.

     It just so happens that I experienced a hauntingly similar experience in early 1970 while an advisor to the South Vietnamese Popular Forces in Sadec Province, South Vietnam.  But, I didn't inhale!

     I shook hands with the Chief and strolled on through the maze of vendors, thinking that James Fielding looked awful familiar.  Could it be...?