Chapter 5
THE COIN

ALTHOUGH THIS may seem a strange title for a chapter, it did fit into the overall picture, however small it may seem to be.

After we saddled up and arrived in Tay Ninh, I walked to a certain part of the perimeter and stopped. As I looked around and about, I happened to look down. There, standing almost on top of it, was a coin lying abandoned for who knows how long. Upon retrieving the coin, I noticed how dirty it was and proceeded to clean it. The inscription read, "Union Française." The opposite side read, "Federation Indochinese." It was minted in 1947. I remember turning to my best friend, Phillip Henderson of Freetown, Indiana and saying, "I wonder if the French left this coin?"

I kept the coin for good luck, and kept it on my person until my tour was up. Speaking of luck, if you believe in such, little did I know at the time that I had only one month left in Nam.