I met Jim Hinkle when we sat next to one another on a Pan American Flight from San Francisco to Hawaii.

Tuesday, May 02, 2000

I met Jim Hinkle when we sat next to one another on a Pan American Flight from San Francisco to Hawaii. It was April 1967. Most of the passengers were heading to Hawaii for vacation. Hinkle and I were going to Schofield Barracks, part of the 11th Infantry Brigade.

I remembered Schofield Barracks from the movie "From Here to Eternity" with the classic love scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach.

Hinkle was from Tulsa, Okla. He was coming from Ft. Sill, Okla., an artillery training center. I was coming from Ft. Polk, La., where I had administrative training. In other words I was a typist.

I remember noticing right away that Hinkle had a finger that he couldn’t straighten out. His impairment was not enough to warrant 4F.

I had shared everything I did wrong in my life and I included my flat feet and being color blind. None of this was enough to exclude me from active duty either. Even the letter the school district I was teaching in asking for a deferment didn’t convince Dolphine and the others from Austin’s local draft board that I should be.

This was also the time President Johnson was increasing the forces in Vietnam to now more than 500,000. This, after saying earlier, "I will never send our boys 8,000 miles to fight another nation’s war."

The sky was pretty much free of clouds that day we crossed the Pacific. Occasionally a fleet of marshmallow clouds passed softly below. The Pacific was beautiful.

When I wasn’t talking to Hinkle or drinking complimentary champagne, I was busy looking from the window – wondering what to expect in Hawaii and the bigger question of whether we would end up in Vietnam.

Schofield Barracks was the home of the 21st Infantry Brigade. They were already in Vietnam.

We came to be part of the 11th Infantry Brigade, the "Jungle Warriors," part of the Pacific Reserve.

The comfort of "civilian-like life" on the flight came to an end when we departed the aircraft in scorching heat with humidity that almost takes one’s breath away. The tourists were off to Waikiki and those of us in uniform were off to a staging area where we waited for transportation to from Schofield Barracks. It came in the form a deuce and a half (the army limousine).

When we arrived at Schofield we were told it would be anywhere from two months to two years before our brigade would deploy to Vietnam.

We hoped it would be two years. It was eight months.

Hinkle and I were both assigned to the 6th Battalion, 11th Artillery, 11th Infantry Brigade, a 105 artillery outfit.

Hinkle joined the fire direction center. I became the operations clerk.

Hinkle knew many at the quad we were assigned to and I became part of that group.

Working for a short time in the battery commander’s office, I was able to type up passes for all of us soon we were on our way to Waikiki for weekend fun ourselves.

We defeated the Oahu Cong in war games on the Big Island six months later and Colonel Luper announced we would be going to Vietnam.

We left Schofield Barracks eight months into our stay.

Hinkle and I sat beside each other again, this time on the yellow school bus, one of many, that secretly convoyed most of the brigade down to the docks.

There we boarded a troop transport in the wee morning hours. Everyone in Hawaii was sleeping except for two young ladies who somehow got wind of our secret departure.

They stood on the docks for a hour waving goodbye.

Two weeks later, after a near collision at sea and a newsletter we put together with a cover cartoon depicting the Statue of Liberty leaning up against a bar in Saigon with the bartender asking "What’s a nice lady like you doing in a place like this?" we arrived at predawn in Quin Nhon.

"Hinks" was later assigned as the artillery liaison to the popular forces in Duc Pho, the little village near our Brigade Headquarters, on Highway 1.

One day Hinkle and three others were riding in a field ambulance on their way to the dump when they hit a command-detonated 155 artillery round.

The dud round, the wire extended into the bush, and the batteries that set it off were all probably made in the USA.

Jim died two weeks later in a hospital in Japan.

President Kennedy said in the early 60s "You can’t fight another nation’s war." Maybe he meant it. He was assassinated Nov. 22, maybe for saying that.

Hinkle and I were both drafted on Nov. 22.

Twenty years later I left some wine at the wall below Hinkle’s name and said goodbye.

Bob Vilt’s column appears Tuesdays