My mother spoke rarely of my father--the memories of love lost were just too painful--but here are the few facts she shared. Theirs was a whirlwind romance in the summer of & #39;70. My father, an aspiring actor, scored a few roles in low-budget horror films before getting drafted.
He was somewhere along the Ho Chi Minh Trail when she learned that she was pregnant. He& #39;d return to her after the war, they& #39;d write, but those dreams would never come true. My father& #39;s improv talents proved an unlikely asset on the battlefield.
His ability to adapt and plan saved his platoon from peril time and time again. He quickly ascended the ranks to Colonel, and his valor in a covert mission to rob the Bank of Hanoi helped bring the war to an end. It would also bring an end to life as he knew it.
War is chaos, and somehow in that chaos his crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn& #39;t commit. He and his men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground.