Me#1You#10
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Joined: 06 May 2004
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 Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2011 12:33 am Post subject: "Vietnam veteran lives with his memories" |
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Posted for the benefit of any Swiftees who might remember Jim from their service years...
| Quote: | Vietnam veteran lives with his memories
Jim Reese served 16 years in the Navy, including time on a swift boat
February 27, 2011 9:34 PM
Wendy Victora
Daily News
MARY ESTHER — For more than 40 years, Jim Reese has lived in his small house on a quiet street just off Hollywood Boulevard.
Until February 2007, he had his wife Frances by his side. Since she died, Reese is alone with his memories.
The tall, gaunt Vietnam veteran loves to bake, make copies of his favorite music and reminisce about the ships he served on during his 16 years in the Navy.
Framed black and white photographs of each ship hang on the wall, each personalized with his name and the years he spent on each vessel.
“Jim Reese was on this ship in 1949-50,” he wrote on one.
There is no framed photo of the swift boat he lived on for 11 months during the Vietnam War. But he finds one in a stack of photos on his dining room table.
In it, he stands at the helm, shirtless, square-jawed and lean, looking more movie star than engine man.
“They was pretty fast,” he says of the 50-foot aluminum hull boat. “But I don’t think they should been called swift boats.”
He says he was lucky during those long months on a river near the Cambodian border. During their one firefight, he jokes that he was “too little” and they couldn’t hit him.
“Most of the firefights, the initial attack was what hurt,” he recalls. “They didn’t last but five minutes.”
The 80-year-old was “raised up” in Laurel Hill back in the days when roads in the north county didn’t have names, only numbers. The south county wasn’t much more advanced.
“Old (U.S. Highway) 98 was like an old country road,” he says.
His days are lonely now, although he goes to a hospice support group and occasionally to a gathering of Vietnam veterans.
Like others of that era, Reese came home without fanfare.
“We never did have any of this fancy going-on stuff back in those days,” he says.
Reese isn’t bitter, just more isolated than he’d like to be.
“I’ve just been hanging out here ever since,” he says, shrugging. “I just do what little I feel like and let the rest go.”
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