It’s one of those nights in Da Nang when the city seems to be bursting with more life than any city has the right to. Thousands of people, including my family, were down at the beach to see the full moon.  Today was a Buddhist holiday, it’s a Friday night in May, the weather is perfect, let the good times roll.

I would like to be able to report that I spent the day toiling on the book, but that, my friends, is not the case.  I did some writing, some intriguing research and a follow-up interview.  Didn’t exactly bust my hump, but made some headway.  I’m just gonna chalk it up to one of those days where your expectations far exceed your output.

One of my uncles in Quang Ngai drew me a picture of the insignia on the beret worn by his long-dead brother. Said there was a tiger leaping across the parachute, that the beret was sometimes red, sometimes green.  I spent a fair amount of time time today in pursuit of his brother’s unit as it has a specific bearing on the storyline.

His brother was clearly a member of an elite Airborne Battalion.  I know he was stationed near Chu Lai in 1968, the rest is going to be an interesting puzzle to solve.  Here is the drawing I was given in Quang Ngai and here is one of the badges that comes close:

One of the fascinating challenges about doing research on specific South Vietnamese soldiers is that it was apparently commonplace at the end of the war in 1975 to burn any evidence of any connection with the Republic of South Vietnam.  I have interviewed a number of people who have said, “oh, he burned all of that”, or “his mother burned all of the pictures and papers”.  Must have been a lot of little bonfires in those days.  I have yet to see a photo of a relative in uniform, including photos of myself.  Only one photo of me exists that the family kept after 1975: my high school senior yearbook picture.  I must admit that I didn’t look terribly intimidating in my rental tux.