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Dan was one of several on my drill team who became my good friend. He was from the Los Angeles area and lived with his mother in Santa Monica. Dan always struck me as being the perfect image of a Midshipman, and I expected him to have a long and successful career in the Navy. Dan was a year or two behind me in college and was still at UCLA in the spring of 1965. That was the point at which the decision was made to send the first Marines into Danang. I was in the desert at the time. The 11th Marines had deployed from Camp Pendleton to 29 Palms, California, for a month of field artillery training. I must say that most of us were ignorant about what was going on in Vietnam. But the newspapers and television evidently carried the news of the Marines leaving Okinawa for Vietnam and of the Marines who would be leaving Camp Pendleton to fill the void in Okinawa. And Dan sensed what was happening. He called my bride-to-be, Angela, in Laguna Beach and told her what he thought was about to occur. In a few days, we returned from the desert and began the preparations to deploy. My unit, "I" Battery, 3d Battalion, 11th Marines, was assigned to support the infantry battalion that had been designated the "ready" battalion. This meant that we would be the first artillery battery to leave Camp Pendleton, and, as it later turned out, the first from the continental United States to land in Vietnam. Angela and I had already started making plans to be married, but this turn of events convinced us to move up the date. A few days later, we were married in Laguna Beach, California. There were five of us there: Angela, me, Dan and his mother (as our witnesses), and the priest. Dan took our wedding photo with my camera: a single black-and-white print with Angela and me standing beside my 1965 Plymouth Valiant in the parking lot of the church. (The photo is included in Images from the Otherland.) That was the last I knew of Dan.
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