JOHN WAYNE NUI BA DEN VISIT

John Wayne came to Nui Ba Den in June of ’66, sometime around the 20th — three years before I did. He was scouting, they said, gathering material for a movie he hadn’t made yet. Colonel Kirby didn’t exist. The Green Berets was still just an idea Wayne was carrying around Vietnam like a notebook.

By the time I got to the mountain in April of ’69, the movie had already come and gone — released, reviewed, and picked apart. Wayne had his version on film: Fort Benning standing in for the jungle, a mission that resolved, a war that ended in ninety minutes. Mine didn’t come with a script. Mine ran April to October, and nobody yelled cut.

I never met the man. But we’d both stood on the same granite, three years and one Hollywood ending apart.