Blog 3740 – 10.21.2025
“You, Butterfly”
Yesterday, after a late breakfast with my wife in Jasper, Texas, I followed her out the front, little used, exit of the restaurant to look at the pretty yellow flowers there and to enjoyed a few precious moments of watching beautiful butterflies flit from flower to flower collecting nectar and pollinating those plants insuring that those beautiful blossoms would be reproduced.
I recalled the words of a young Vietnamese Mama-San which is what the housemaids were called who washed and ironed our uniforms, polished our boots, made our bunks, and swept the floors of the hooches that we used as barracks in Vietnam over fifty five years ago. As the latest FNG (F$&@ing New Guy) to arrive, I got the top bunk in one of sections of the hooch that was separated into four two-man cubicles by the placement of bunk beds and two side by side double lockers in each cubicle. My bunkmate was on his second tour in Vietnam and was called Phantom after the comic strip crime fighter because he resembled the silhouette of the costumed hero with his shaved head.
I was paired with Phantom because he too was awaiting a Top Secret Security Clearance. His was because he had married on his last leave to the States and his clearance had to be redone to his include his wife’s associations. I too had married before leaving for Vietnam. The difference between us was that Phantom had no intention of being true to his wife for a whole year and went to Saigon every night to avail himself of all the lovely young women who entertained men money.
Our housemaid was impressed that I did not spend my evenings in Saigon and that while Phantom decorated his portion of the cubicle with Playboy calendars, I had only pictures of my wife on the top shelf of my locker as this faded photo that Phatom took of me to send home depicts.
Sue, that is what her Vietnamese name sounded like to us, showing her disgust at Phantom’s and most of the G.I’s behavior said to him, “You, Butterfly” meaning that he flitted from flower to flower enjoying their nectar why doing his best to single handedly propagate the species. Sue was a woman of few, yet profound English words and also added, “You, see-saw” meaning he went up and down, back and forth.”
While I spent those eleven months away from my new wife in the words of Whitney Houston, “Saving all my love” she spent the time being a beautiful flower being pollinated by a guy who fluttered by. Her letters just abruptly stopped four months before I came home, no explanation, no Dear John letter.
Do I ever wish I had behaved more like Phantom and enjoyed those beautiful flowers who looked like lovely China Dolls in their black satin pants and bright tops? No, though they were lovely.
If I am totally honest I must admit that my good behavior was not motivated as much by my love for my wife as by my fear of catching something. Many guys did. One sergeant who very much wanted to be a D.C. policeman after getting out of the Army was nevertheless rejected for “moral turpitude” because he had seventeen separate documented cases of STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease) in his medical record. Thinking of Sue’s comment and watching those beautiful butterflies flitting from one lovely flower to another, I am reminded of a popular slogan from that time, “Sex, drugs, and rock’n roll – live fast, die young, and live a beautiful corpse.” Sadly too many of my contemporaries did. I wonder if Phantom survives. “I’m still here, Little Chief.” That is a line from another favorite movie – a blog for another day.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
Broken Vow
theencouragingword 