“Regrets, I’ve had a few; But then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption.”

— Paul Anka (lyrics to My Way)

 

You know, I never fretted over my decision to turn down the job at Stars and Stripes.

Frankly, I had forgotten all about it — until about 30 years later when I reread the letter I wrote home from Long Binh.

Yes, I was offered a job, as a reporter working out of the main Tokyo office. They knew me from my work; I was sending them plenty of copy and photos, and they were running them (the convoy to Bao Loc, combined arms training in Pleiku, Ranger training at Phu Cat, the light ship that patrolled the Long Binh perimeter, officer training at Dalat, the Montagnards deep in the Central Highlands and lots of small stuff).

I got word through the colonel, I think, that they wanted to hire me. I didn’t take it seriously, although it was a serious offer.

I just said no.

Here I was in an Army information office in Vietnam, being offered a reporter’s position in a civilian-managed professional newsroom in Tokyo … and somehow I turned them down.

Hey, I was a Specialist 4th Class, a draftee in the Army, serving in Vietnam at the height of the monsoons. I slept in a cockroach-infested hooch that would burn to the ground in three minutes, took malaria pills that would gag a horse, bribed the momma-son to do my laundry, walked half a mile to work each day and pulled guard duty once a week.

To do my job, I pitched story ideas to a captain from the Signal Corps who had no real notion of journalism, hitched rides outside the wire on truck convoys, helicopters and C-130s, returning to the information office just long enough to process my film, tap out a few stories and pitch another handful of ideas.

Why would I want to give that up?

I think my mind was in the same Twilight Zone it had been in when I signed the papers at Fort Leonard Wood saying my three training preferences were journalism, tank driver and helicopter door gunner.

What was I thinking?

Then again, maybe it had more to do with that old problem I had of not wanting to give the Army too many years of my life. One of the sticking points was that I would have to re-enlist for another year to get the job.

I told them no, I wanted to go home at the end of my tour, even if that meant staying in Vietnam.

More than 30 years later, in 2003, reading “My War” by Andy Rooney, who served with the Stars and Stripes in World War II and wrote how the experience molded his journalistic career, I realized the opportunity was one I should have appreciated, maybe one I should have taken.

I could have traveled all over the Pacific (Vietnam, Laos, Korea, Thailand, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, anywhere you find the American military). I would have worked for professionals, lived in a Tokyo apartment and seen more of the world.

Well, I didn’t take the job, never looked back, and never regretted it. Won’t start now.

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Dave Berry is editor of the Tyler Morning Telegraph. His Focal Point column runs on the front of the My Generation section each Wednesday. Tomorrow night, as guest speaker at the Historic Aviation Memorial Museum Christmas Party, his topic will be “Flights of Fantasy.”