By William “Billy” Higgins

When I returned from Vietnam in 1969, “Get Together” became The Youngbloods’ most popular single, re-released that year and reaching №5 on the U.S. charts. The song lyrics pleaded for us to love one another, “Right now”. In the 1960s, a person’s choice of music was a trust code for friendships, and the songs take me back to when I faced a choice: wait to be drafted into the Army or enlist in another branch of the military. I joined the Navy in 1966.

The Navy carries Marines to where they’re needed, and Navy corpsmen go with them to care for the sick and wounded. After Navy Boot camp at Great Lakes, Illinois, I completed six months of emergency medical and nursing training at the Navy’s Hospital Corps School. The Vietnam War was raging, and a young guitarist and singer was performing: “There’s something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man with a gun over there, telling me I got to beware. I think it’s time we stop. Children, what’s that sound? Everybody look. What’s going down? There are battle lines being drawn. Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong. Young people speaking their minds, getting so much resistance from behind. It’s time we stop. Hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look. What’s going down?” 1966 — Stephen Stills

My first assignment in the Navy was on an orthopedic ward at Jacksonville Naval Hospital. Many patients were young men in full-body casts, with severe, sometimes paralyzing injuries from motorcycle accidents. Once, as I entered an operating room, a surgeon handed me a young man’s amputated leg. The injury was so severe that the surgeon removed it in seconds. I hated motorcycles, but my interest in the operating room (OR) began in Jacksonville. I took a job in Surgical Supply, where I learned the instruments, assembled the packs, and cleaned and sterilized them for scheduled surgeries. Military service separated us from those we loved. For some, that distance also meant the painful end of a relationship back home. The head nurse in Surgical Supply always kept the radio playing in the background, and every hour or so we heard Mama Cass singing: “Monday, Monday.” Oh, Monday mornin’, you gave me no warnin’ of what was to be. Oh, Monday, Monday, how could you leave and not take me?” 1965 — John Phillips

Next, I trained as an operating room technician at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth in Virginia. Over several months, we attended classroom sessions and scrubbed in and circulated across every surgical specialty. From there, I was assigned to a station hospital in Bainbridge, Maryland, for about a year, doing the job I had trained for: OR tech. My closest friend and classmate was Tom Nalley from Fort Pierce, Florida. We met during OR tech training and served together at Bainbridge. Tom and his wife, Sandy, lived off-base and had been trying to have a child. With help from a fertility specialist assigned to the hospital, they became pregnant with twins! They asked me to be a godfather to their twins, and I was honored to accept.

Traditionally, being a godfather means accepting a special responsibility to remain part of a child’s life, offering friendship, guidance, and support as the child grows. That was my intention. But before any of us knew how life would unfold, Tom and I were headed to Vietnam. We were separated upon arrival and eventually lost contact for many years. The regret of being unable to fulfill the godfather’s role has stayed with me.

We received our orders for Vietnam. Before leaving, we were sent to Camp Pendleton, California, for Marine Corps training. We learned to fire weapons, and they got us in shape by running and hiking in the mountains. Across the street from our barracks was a club where we could get a beer after hours. Playing constantly on the jukebox: “Hey Jude, don’t make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better.” 1968 — Paul McCartney.

We flew from Sacramento, stopping in Hawaii and Guam on a comfortable government-chartered commercial airliner, and arrived in Vietnam in the middle of the night in November 1968. These aircraft later became known as “Freedom Birds,” especially when they carried troops home, and the flight crew offered cool, wet towels as they boarded.

After arriving in Vietnam, we soon learned that hospital corpsmen serving with Marines went wherever they were needed. Tom was assigned to an infantry unit. I was assigned to an artillery unit. Both assignments were far from any operating room.

I cared for 155 Marines southwest of Da Nang, including positions on Hills 55 and 65. (Hill locations in Vietnam were identified by their elevation in feet.) The corpsman I was replacing was elated to see me. A jeep was already waiting to take him to the Da Nang airfield for his flight home. His ten-minute tour of the sick bay covered a 12-by-32-foot canvas tent with a gurney and a small fridge, 200 feet from the artillery guns. He then said, “We got our ass kicked in Hue City, and we just arrived here on 55; you’re lucky we’re not still in Hue.” Then he was gone.

My bed was a cot in the back of the sick bay. A Marine warned if rockets started coming in, we should go to the ditch dug behind the tent. That night, wearing a flak jacket, I lay down as the Marines carried out an hours-long firing mission. With every outgoing round, shock waves shook the sick bay’s canvas walls. Sleep was impossible, but eventually I learned to sleep during a firing mission and distinguish incoming fire (bad) from outgoing fire (bad for someone else).

Having my own sick bay on Hill 55 also gave me room for a reel-to-reel tape recorder. After a few beers and as darkness fell, we listened to The Doors and Jim Morrison, thinking mostly about home and, hopefully, a woman waiting: “You know it would be untrue. You know I would be a liar if I were to say to you, Girl, we couldn’t get much higher. Come on, baby, light my fire. Come on, baby, light my fire. Try to set the night on fire.” 1967 — Roger Krieger, Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, and John Densmore.

Hill 65 was a prominent position in the war, southwest of Da Nang in Quang Nam Province. From there, we could look over valleys, villages, and rice paddies. The Vu Gia River ran below the hill. Across the river lay an area the Marines called the “Arizona Territory,” where enemy forces frequently operated. We had two guns on Hill 65 and four on Hill 55, and their range let them provide artillery support over a wide area. My jeep ambulance carried me between the hills, about an hour’s drive on dirt roads and dikes through the villages and rice paddies. I knew which roads were safe and which were cleared of mines daily. The villagers and others along the way were mostly friendly, until it got dark.

On 65, we had a fifty-caliber machine gun in a bunker carved into the hillside overlooking our wire and a “friendly” village and river below. The far side of the river was a “free-fire zone”, meaning any movement sighted there was considered the enemy. On a quiet day, the bunker was a good place to hang with the Marine on watch. One day, a Vietnamese fisherman rowed a small boat to the far bank of the free-fire zone, got out, and threw an explosive device into the water. The water boiled from the explosion, and the fisherman waded around in the water, picking up fish. We were amused at the scene until the Marine Gunnery Sergeant saw what was happening. He got behind the machine gun and fired about ten rounds that landed all around the fisherman. It was a miracle he wasn’t cut in half. He got in his canoe and rowed back to the friendly side of the river. His survival brought relief, along with the sad realization that life here held less value.

Hill 65 was a strategic location where fighting in the country had occurred for years. The guns were on the crest of the hill, and our living quarters, bunkers, were dug deep into the hillside by former generations of fighters. The bunkers were home to rats the size of cats. They came out mostly at night. A snack in bed, or crumbs in your bunk, was an invitation. I learned that lesson the hard way.

When I arrived in Vietnam, our unit had M53 155 mm self-propelled guns. Just before I arrived in country, they were replaced by the larger, longer-range M107 175 mm self-propelled guns. The 175s were impressive weapons. With a range of more than 20 miles, they could provide artillery support across much of the 1st Marine Division’s area of operations. Aircraft, forward observers, or ground units called targets into the fire-control center. A five- or six-man Marine crew could fire a shell every two to three minutes. When the firing missions ended, life returned to normal. Where our outgoing rounds landed remained unknown to me. Forward observers surely reported success or failure, but no one told me either way. And I never asked.

In March 1969, our battery headquarters moved to Hill 34, southwest of Da Nang. Our most serious nighttime threat was enemy sappers getting through the wire to destroy the guns, ammunition, or us. When on patrol outside our wire, the Marines walked the ground ahead of me and protected our perimeter. As their corpsman, on patrol, I was always last in the single-file line.

The event that remains most vivid from Hill 34 occurred on April 27, 1969, when a huge ammunition storage area near Da Nang airfield exploded. From our position, the explosions, fire, and smoke seemed right on top of us, though it was actually half a mile or more away. They looked like nuclear explosions. Ammunition and bombs continued to cook off for hours. The blasts were so violent that unexploded 500-pound bombs were thrown from the storage area and landed inside our compound. With each explosion, the earth shifted beneath our feet, followed seconds later by the blast wave. Running past unexploded bombs looking for the injured, I thought, “If they’re not going off after being blown from a half mile away, surely they wouldn’t explode now.” That proved right, but it was luck. The bomb squad teams took days to safely remove them.

On patrol one morning with the Marines outside our perimeter, we found a Viet Cong enemy sapper who, the night before, had been spotted cutting our wire. He was shot in the side the night before by a Marine in our surveillance tower. Either he had acted alone, or others had left him for dead. The Marines stripped him. He was naked, alert, and staring into my eyes. I injected 16 milligrams of morphine into his thigh and applied a pressure dressing to his gaping wound. He was now a prisoner. We waited together for soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) to arrive. As the morphine eased his pain, he whispered faintly what sounded like “Thank you.” His eyes stayed on mine until the soldiers carried him away on a stretcher. No word ever came about what happened to him, but his youthful face and eyes have stayed with me.

By the fall of 1969, American policy in Vietnam was shifting. President Richard Nixon had begun reducing U.S. troop strength as part of the gradual withdrawal of American forces and the policy known as Vietnamization. My normal Vietnam tour was shortened by about a month.

In October 1969, in Da Nang Harbor, we boarded the USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2), a helicopter amphibious assault ship, for the trip home. There were about 2,000 Marines aboard. It was crowded. The crossing of the Pacific to California took 28 days. We slept in bunks stacked four high, and during the day we sat on the flight deck whenever the weather allowed.

Eventually, the Iwo Jima brought us to Coronado, California. After almost a year in Vietnam, it was hard to describe seeing California again. We had left a war zone and, after nearly a month aboard ship, suddenly found ourselves back in the United States. Our welcome home was tepid. Back in what we called “the World,” the Youngbloods were singing “Get Together”.

This story of Vietnam is not unique. Thousands of young Americans went there because our country sent us. We came from different places and backgrounds, but most of us were young, doing what we had been trained to do and trying to take care of each other.

Many of us wondered why we were there and whether all the killing and dying could accomplish what our leaders said or hoped it would. We did our jobs, supported one another, and tried to survive, but that didn’t mean we understood or agreed with every decision that had brought us there. As talk of negotiations, peace, and withdrawal grew louder, another thought hung over us: If this war was going to end, nobody wanted to be the last person to die in it.

Vietnam was a terrible and costly mistake. More than 58,000 Americans died, along with vastly greater numbers of Vietnamese and others. How much suffering might have been avoided if diplomacy had prevailed and our leaders had been less willing to believe that another escalation, another hill, another bombing campaign, or another year would somehow provide the answer? I still wonder. The courage and sacrifice of the men and women who went to Vietnam deserve to be remembered separately from the wisdom of the decisions that sent us there.

Perhaps that is one of the hardest things to explain. We could be proud of our service and still question the war. We could treat an enemy soldier who had tried to kill us because, at that moment, saving a human life mattered more than which side he was on.

More than anything, sending young men and women to war should be the most difficult decision any nation makes. Every reasonable path to peace should be exhausted first, because the greatest price is ultimately paid by the young people sent to fight, the families waiting for them at home, and those who never get the chance to come home.

Tom Nalley and I lost touch after Vietnam. Then, in 2025, we talked again by phone. We’re planning a reunion. Vietnam interrupted our lives, and we’re fortunate that time gave us the chance to reconnect. I wonder, “Is it way too late to be a godfather?”

For many of us, it took time to adjust to a peaceful world. Living in the thick of a war-torn country, you don’t realize the toll it takes on you each day to stay one step ahead of a killer on the road. “Mama, take this badge off of me. I can’t use it anymore. It’s getting dark, too dark to see. I feel I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door. Knock-knock-knocking on heaven’s door. Knock-knock-knocking on heaven’s door. Mama put my guns in the ground; I can’t shoot them anymore; That long black cloud is comin’ down; I feel I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door, Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door.” 1973 — Bob Dylan

I was one of the fortunate ones. Vietnam took up only about a year of my life, yet its memories remain. The Youngbloods’ song still brings them back, along with its enduring message: “Love is but a song we sing. Fear’s the way we die. You can make the mountains ring, or make the angels cry, though the bird is on the wing and you may not know why. C’mon, people now, smile on your brother. Ev’rybody, get together. Try to love one another, right now. Some will come, and some will go. We will surely pass when the one who left us here returns for us at last. We are but a moment’s sunlight, fading in the grass. C’mon, people now, smile on your brother. Ev’rybody, get together. Try to love one another, right now. Right now.” 1967 — Chet Powers

The Florida Bright Futures Scholarship Program, supported by the Florida Lottery, offers scholarships based on high school academic performance. Lottery windfalls have provided funds for 90% of incoming freshmen in the University of Florida and over 40,000 state college scholarships per year. Students must score in the top 10% nationally on SAT or ACT tests to earn the Bright Futures Florida Academic Scholars award. With financial need not an application criterion, lower income and minority students benefit less from lottery revenues, largely originating from low-income Floridians. One can argue the program takes from the poor and gives to the rich, Robin Hood in reverse.
That withstanding, Florida’s state universities are doing a lot of things right, including being named the nation’s top higher education system for the fifth consecutive year by U.S. News & World Report. Rather than working to make Bright Futures more accessible and equitable to those with financial need, Florida State Senator (Rep) Dennis Baxley, is sponsoring a bill with his goal to “redesign the Bright Futures program to connect the world of work and the world of education.” Baxley wants Florida Republican Legislators to cherry pick their version of job producing majors and minors considered worthy of Bright Futures scholarships.
This Florida Republican Legislature has proven they can’t comprehend anything more intellectually rigorous than tax cuts and gun carry permits on campuses. I say smack them with a ruler if they put their hands on our state college curriculums. Turn over authority to them and say goodbye to Bright Future scholarships for the tough-to-find-work majors in Philosophy, Liberal Arts, English Language, Fine Arts, Religious studies, Art History, Art, Anthropology/Archaeology, Parks Recreation, Film, Video and Photographic Arts, Music, Fashion Merchandising and History? It may be tough to find a job in these fields. Yet many who persist live creative and fulfilled lives, sharing diverse experiences and talent that enrich our culture and make life worth living.
Every parent wishes for their children an education that will result in their child’s independence and making a good living. A wise parent also knows forcing an unwanted career on a child can lead to unhappiness. Parents and colleges wisely offer many paths. We need Republican legislators to stick with the equity issues for Bright Futures funds and stop mucking around with college curriculums. If not, we’re likely to see our colleges graduating students reflecting some Legislators’ recently demonstrated values, such as majors in Voter Suppression with minors in Disenfranchisement and Applied Misinformation.

The Florida Bright Futures Scholarship Program, supported by the Florida Lottery, offers scholarships based on high school academic performance. Lottery windfalls have provided funds for 90% of incoming freshmen in the University of Florida and over 40,000 state college scholarships per year. Students must score in the top 10% nationally on SAT or ACT tests to earn the Bright Futures Florida Academic Scholars award. With financial need not an application criterion, lower income and minority students benefit less from lottery revenues, largely originating from low-income Floridians. One can argue the program takes from the poor and gives to the rich, Robin Hood in reverse.

That withstanding, Florida’s state universities are doing many things right, including being named the nation’s top higher education system for the fifth consecutive year by U.S. News & World Report. Rather than working to make Bright Futures more accessible and equitable to those with financial need, Florida State Senator (Rep) Dennis Baxley, is sponsoring a bill with his goal to “redesign the Bright Futures program to connect the world of work and the world of education.” Baxley wants Florida Republican Legislators to cherry pick their version of job producing majors and minors considered worthy of Bright Futures scholarships.

This Florida Republican Legislature has proven they can’t comprehend anything more intellectually rigorous than tax cuts and gun carry permits on campuses. I say smack them with a ruler if they put their hands on our state college curriculums. Turn over authority to them and say goodbye to Bright Future scholarships for the tough-to-find-work majors in Philosophy, Liberal Arts, English Language, Fine Arts, Religious studies, Art History, Art, Anthropology/Archaeology, Parks Recreation, Film, Video and Photographic Arts, Music, Fashion Merchandising and History? It may be tough to find a job in these fields. Yet many who persist live creative and fulfilled lives, sharing diverse experiences and talent that enrich our culture and make life worth living.

Every parent wishes for their children an education that will result in their child’s independence and making a good living. A wise parent also knows forcing an unwanted career on a child can lead to unhappiness. Parents and colleges wisely offer many paths. We need Republican legislators to stick with the equity issues for Bright Futures funds and stop mucking around with college curriculums. If not, we’re likely to see our colleges graduating students reflecting some Legislators’ recently demonstrated values, such as majors in Voter Suppression with minors in Disenfranchisement and Applied Misinformation.