I watched him out of the corner of my eye.  His hands were trembling, and the suffering in his blue eyes haunted me.  His dark hair was a mess, yet he had the face of an angel.  I knew his story.  They had found him floating and tied to a piece of debris.  His uniform was in tatters and black with powder.  He had second and third degree burns.  Remarkably, his face was untouched, and he still looked like a young boy. 

"No!  Please!  I have to save them!  I have to save them!" He cried, when they fished him out of the water.  They gave him shots to calm him down, but for six months he cried and struggled every time, so certain that he must save his buddies.  When he finally came to, he had no memory of his buddies, his boat, or himself.  Of course, Naval Investigations filled in all the blanks. 

He was serving on a "riverboat," in the Mekong Delta.  His boat had been blown apart.  All were lost, except for this one boy.  He was nineteen.  I couldn't help wondering though, who had tied him to that piece of debris, and would anyone go back to find him?  No one ever did.

So, I watched him, thinking about the horrors that he had survived, and his quest to find his buddies and save them.  By the time I saw him in the diner, it had been nearly a year.  If there had been any other survivors, they were long gone.  His struggle touched my heart.  I was only twenty-one, but somehow I felt that the child within him was so much younger, and terribly wounded.

I heard them before I saw them.  The boy was just given his cup of coffee, and he was trying to bring it up to his lips, with trembling hands.  The coffee spilled down the front of his shirt.  With pained compassion, the waitress took the cup and filled it again.  The hoots and hollers from the guys behind me made me swing my head around.  They were having a riot.  They almost couldn't get the hilarious words out. 

"Look at the poor Vietnam vet taking a shower in his own coffee!  Want a towel buddy??!!" 

I jerked to my feet, and I turned towards the idiots with fists doubled, and then I heard the crash.  The coffee cup landed on the floor, and the young man began to weep.  I'll never forget his face.

Forgetting his tormentors, I hurried over, grabbing an empty ice-tea glass.  Taking the coffeepot from the waitress, I poured a cup of coffee into the twelve ounce glass.  Then I handed him his coffee, which he held tightly with shaking hands.  I sat down next to him.

"It's o.k.," I said, putting my arm around his shoulders.

"I can't drink!"  He cried.  "I get it all over me!"

"Oh, gosh! I do the same thing," I assured him.

Then I did something astonishing, even for me.  Taking the glass from his hands, I poured coffee over myself, drenching my best light blue uniform.

 "Some people are just so clumsy!" I cried.  "Gosh, I sure hope I can get past security, at the main gate!"  I grinned. 

Suddenly, he laughed.  Other caring souls followed.  A hush fell over the place, as one by one, the tormentors left the diner.  We sat there together for an hour, swapping stories about ourselves.  Mine always made him laugh.  The waitress brought coffee to me in a large glass.  As the locals finished their breakfast, one by one they came over, patting the young man on the shoulder or taking his hand.  They murmured their "thank-you??™s" and left.

When it came time to pay for our breakfast, there was no charge.  We parted, outside, two kindred souls who never saw each other again.  However, I believe that a healing began to take place in that little San Francisco diner, thirty-seven years ago.  One group of Americans began to look at the military differently, and today the ones who serve their country are treated like the heroes they are.

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Jaye Lewis is an award winning writer and soon to be Chicken Soup author.  Jaye is a Vietnam Era Veteran and she is married to a retired U.S. Navy Chief Electrician.  They have two grown daughters.  Jaye lives and writes in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia.  jlewis@smyth.net