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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 30, 2016)
LIFESTYLES WEEKEND, JULY 30-31, 2016 Mike Morehead and Jack Clay served as Navy radio operators on Tango boats, which patrolled Vietnam’s waterways and canals and carried Army troops. Contributed photo Two Vietnam veterans reunite after 47 years Online photos rekindle battle-forged friendship By KATHY ANEY East Oregonian M ike Morehead and Jack Clay bonded while patrolling the murky canals and rivers of southern Vietnam. The two Navy radiomen got separated in 1969 and returned home from the war — Morehead to Pilot Rock and Clay to Springfi eld — never knowing if the other had survived. Instead of trying to reconnect, they concentrated on building families and careers, leting their war memories fade. Forty-seven years after last seeing each other, Clay spotted photos posted by Morehead’s wife Barbara on the internet. One showed a Tango boat and another a Contributed photo Jack Clay on a Tango boat during young sailor in camoufl age holding a M14 the Vietnam War. sniper rifl e. The sailor looked familiar. Clay had forgotten Morehead’s name by then, but he recalled the bond they had forged while “I liked Jack then and I still carrying out night ambushes on canals near the Cambodian border. like him. We’ll be friends After digging into a dusty box of photos, Contributed photo for the rest of our lives.” Clay discovered another image that looked to Mike Morehead and Jack Clay reunited 47 years after serving be the man in the photo and him together. Clay together in the “Brown Water Navy” in Vietnam. — Mike Morehead, Vietnam veteran instant messaged the photo to Morehead’s wife Barbara with the question, “Is this Mike?” and easygoing approach to life were still in high gear. enemy combatants — the light from a single fi refl y It was. The men reconnected by phone and The men took longs drives and talked about could disable the scopes for several minutes. They Facebook. On July 10, Morehead knocked on their lives. Clay had retired after years in research remembered the poisonous snakes that dropped Clay’s front door in Ocean Shores, Washington. and development with Boeing in Seattle. Morehead from trees and the rat-sized spiders they killed with The veterans stared each other for a long moment, recently fi nished a second career at the Umatilla two-by-fours. struggling to detect a glimpse of the young soldier Chemical Depot where he regularly wore an infl ated They talked about Operation Giant Slingshot, the other had once been. protective suit and three pairs of gloves to inspect an effort to stop the Viet Cong from resupplying “I hadn’t seen him since September of 1969,” containment rooms and the robots that destroyed the weapons. They remembered stopping small fl at-bot- Morehead said of the 67-year-old Clay. “He’d aged. deadly chemicals. tomed wooden boats called sampans and searching After about fi ve minutes, I could see Jack Clay.” They spoke about hobbies, such as Clay’s passion them — even reaching into crocks of fi sh soup and Clay experienced a similar shift. His buddy’s thick for digging razor clams and Morehead’s love of running ropes under each boat to dislodge weapons. brown mane was mostly gone, but the man’s dry wit hunting. They remembered chaos of the war and coming Eventually, they talked about Vietnam. to terms with the idea of killing other human beings. “We went to the man cave at night and sat and “It was everyone for himself when the shooting talked,” Morehead said. “We reconnected. It brought started,” Morehead said. “After the fi rst time, there is back all the tapes that had been fi led away.” no doubt in your mind, it’s either you or them or you Upon arriving in Vietnam, the Oregon boys hit don’t go home.” it off immediately. They were assigned to different Clay said he got through the experience by Tango boats that operated in the same unit. focusing on one moment at a time. As radio operators, they manned the radio, “Back then, you lived every day as if it could be but also served as navigator and “holder of the your last,” he said. “You looked at the sunset and morphine,” said Clay. you didn’t know how many more sunsets you’d see. The Tango boats, joint Navy/Army vessels, got If you really worried about it, you’d go crazy. So it ambushed often by Viet Cong fi ghters concealed was in God’s hands. If you made it, you made it. If in the jungle. Each Tango had a layer of rebar you didn’t, you didn’t.” and Styrofoam beneath to serve as armor against Both made it home, though the homecoming was rocket-propelled grenades. The RPGs generally hit a shock, especially for Clay. the rebar and exploded on contact. The two-foot- “Coming home, we weren’t respected. We deep wall of Styrofoam repelled the shrapnel. The weren’t welcomed,” he said. “Most of us buried our Viet Cong almost always shot fi rst. experiences away, raised our families and started our “The Viet Cong would sneak up to the boats and careers.” fi re on us,” Clay said. Morehead did much the same though he said his “When we got ambushed, we’d return fi re in the rural homecoming was kinder and gentler. general direction,” said Morehead. At that time, neither knew what had happened American response sometimes included long to the other and maybe didn’t want to know. They streams of fi re powered by jellied gasoline, or returned home with scars but no lasting injuries and napalm, from fl amethrowers. Occasionally fl aming both marvel that they made it. insurgents would run from the jungle and jump into Now that they have reconnected, they don’t plan the river. When they popped up to breathe, they to lose each other again. reignited. The stuff of nightmares. “I liked Jack then and I still like him,” Morehead In Clay’s man cave, their memories included said. “We’ll be friends for the rest of our lives.” the good, bad and the ugly. They remembered the ——— Contributed photo nighttime stakeouts along the rivers and using early Contact Kathy Aney at kaney@eastoregonian.com Mike Morehead poses with his M14 sniper rifl e night vision devices called starlight scopes to detect or call 541-966-0810. while serving in Vietnam in the late 1960s.