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.