The Dixie Diner Patrol
by Michael Green
www.jmichaelgreen.com
Marine Recon is an all-volunteer outfit and it
attracted a variety of characters. Some thought they
were the toughest men who ever walked, some needed
to test themselves, and some just wanted to be the best.
As bad as some of them were in Stateside billets, the
men of Team Dixie Diner were damned good Recon
Marines even if they were more motley than the normal motley crew of Marines.
Chester, our point man, was from Bar Holler,
West-By-God-Virginia. Coal country. He grew up
“huntin’ and fishin’ and trompin’ through the woods.”
Two hundred years earlier he would have been a
mountain man along with Kit Carson and Jim Bridger.
He joined the Army after high school and spent a few
years with 82nd Airborne. He went home and began
working in the mines and was miserable. Vietnam was
nearly at its peak so Chester decided he should compare the Army and Marine Corps. The man was a natural in the bush. He could read sign better than any man
in the battalion. More important, though, was the sixth
sense he’d developed during years of hunting. He was
not a big man but appeared larger than he was because
of his stature and confidence. “slack” or second point,
was from Denver. A tall, gangly, loose-limbed sort, he
displayed a lot of grace when we had time for sports.
His family spent weekends in the Rockies, hunting and
fishing in the summer and skiing in the winter. He had
a strong baritone and sang in a high school band and
always led our songfests when we had time for frivolity.
He joined the Corps right out of high school and heard
about Recon. He’s another natural in the bush and this
was his second tour in ‘Nam. He had been a corporal
twice and was a PFC for the third time: Booze and
fighting were his undoing.
Herb, a Navajo from Arizona following in his
father’s footsteps, was our radio operator. His old man
had been a Code Talker during WWII and had earned
a Silver Star on one of the Pacific Islands. Herb was a
cowboy, more comfortable on a horse than on foot, but
he could move through the bush like a spirit. The jungle was alien to him, but his childhood training in the
scrubland of Northern Arizona had taught him how to
The Warrior Heart November 2014 - 5