(14 April 88) Thomas Bailey* has two purple hearts and was court-martialed once, but successfully defended himself. The fifty-three- year-old Navy retiree boat driver doesn’t look the part of a warrior but it’s all there in his files. He’s been a member of the Kwaj police at Roi Namur since he arrived at the atoll.
The slightly-built Thomas, a heavy smoker, runs two miles and swims a mile each day. His basic training haircut frames a massive scar on the right side of his head, the result of a phosphorus grenade explosion during a firefight. Another scar on his upper right leg was courtesy of an AK-47 round during another battle.
Thomas spent time as an instructor to the Saudi Navy before taking a job with a sheriff’s department in the San Joaquin Valley of California. The reason he came to Kwaj is because of a complaint by a California migrant worker that his civil rights were violated. Thomas’s version is simple and straight-forward.
“He spit on me and I hit him with my PR-24. Broke his jaw in a few places. The sheriff suggested I resign.”
His two years in South Vietnam included 1967, the beginning of increased fighting. He worked in SOG (Studies and Observation Group) and drove wooden Chinese junks on the rivers and waterways of Vietnam. His job was to intercept and destroy Viet Cong and NVA troops. The junk had a 50 caliber machine gun, covered up as they cruised the waterways.
Bailey: “We used South Vietnamese as crew for awhile. But they wouldn’t fight so we hired Cambodian mercenaries. We set up an ambush one night near the Cambodian border. We were on a bluff at the river’s edge. The trail passed right below .”
“Later that night a force of twelve approached our position and we destroyed it. When we checked the bodies we found out they were South Vietnamese. I told one of the Cambodians we would have to report our mistake.”
He said to me, “Why Dai-uy? (Captain). They are only Vietnamese.”
When he returned to the states, the navy made Thomas a drill instructor at San Diego. Out on the drill field one day a recruit with an attitude started to gave him a hard time in front of five hundred other troops. After a few seconds of listening to his unsolicited comments, Thomas decked him.
At his court martial, his lawyer made sure only combat veterans served on the panel. And when he showed up for his trial in his dress uniform, medals displayed proudly and the grenade scar painfully evident, the verdict was already in.
*Not his real name.
Filed under: Almost Paradise Volume 3
Trackback Uri
