People say things like, "No good Deed goes unpunished", or "That good deed will come back to Haunt you." Things like that are said mostly in jest, or are they? Is there some truth to these mores? Let me tell you sometimes, maybe, sometimes there is more truth than you want. Feb/1964 The 3 of us were dropped off at the replacement depot in Nam. We have been through Basic and other training together. Bob, Jim and Me, pals, buddies, grunts. Nam was supposed to be a one year piece of cake, Just advisors, no combat.. The 1st few "outings" went fairly well as we never ran into the "enemy" All daylight patrols, guess nobody fought at night here. Night time we drew perimeter duty, and outpost watch. Ever so often you would hear someone shoot, in the morning we would hear stories about how someone tried to test the defenses of how Bill shoot that water Buffalo. All easy stuff. March 1964 We got word "Charlie" was spotted and 4 of us "advisors" and the ARVN went it. Landed in a clearing and took fire right away. Ran like hell for the opposite tree line. I started to fire back , but the 1st shirt told me we had to have permission to fire back, us only being advisors. I asked if the enemies bullets knew that? Called in and told them we thought maybe 10 to 15 going by the rifle fire and we were told not to return fire, let the ARVN handle it. Right then I knew if I got hit I was going to get me a 1st LT when I got back.. After 30 minutes they were still potting at us and the ARVN were getting a little leery. They wanted us to shoot, we did have M-2 Carbines. The choppers were late. We ended up spending the night there, pinned down. Let me tell you there is nothing darker than the jungle at night. You can't see crap in the heavy stuff. It's scary. Bad enough you have "Charlie" sneaking around, but you have snakes and God only knows what else. Oh yeah toss in the spooky, wet humidity and the ARVN who want to split and leave us there. Now the rain came. Ok lets do what the book says. Grab those big ass leaves and make a shelter. They started coming at us, the rain covering any sounds. Make a long story short, they broke through our skirmish line Jim was trying to fight against 3 "Charlie's". He got the 1st one, but the other two knocked him to the ground with 2 wounds. They were ready to finish the job when Bob nailed them. The rest slipped back into the jungle and it was silence, deadly silence. We never did get permission to shoot back. Got back to HQ. Told them what happened, swore we never fired a shot. Stupid rules. Well Bob saved Jims life that night and Jim always said "anything to repay you." June 1964. Jim got his 4th PH and he was sent back to the states. Bob and I were still together. August 1964 Bob got a real bad head wound. They are sending him to the Philippines for Surgery. Oct 1964 Wrote both Bob and Jim, like to keep in touch. Got Busted 1 rank because in the firefight where Bob got hit I returned fire without permission. They told me to change the report, but I told them to shove it. It was a stupid rule. Ok Punish me, send me back to the states. Nov 1964 They sent me back to the states and to Ft Lewis for discharge. May 1965 Still keeping in touch with Bob and Jim. Bob lives in New Mexico and Jim lives in New York. We call each other and always say we will get together, but I don't think that will ever happen. Bobs head wound changed him allot. He was quite now and loved to read. He was doing service for the homeless and other charities. Jim was running a gas station, got married and had a couple of kids. He named one of them Bob in honor for saving his life in Nam. March 1972 Lost touch with Jim but Bob still wrote. He got a couple of awards from his city for the work he was doing. Sent me some of the newspaper articles. He may never be rich but he had a lot of people who really loved him and thought the world of him. Me I'm getting by. Got my own business which sometime runs on the life support machine, but with a small business what do you expect.. Nov 1984 Heard from Jim, divorced, broke, life sucks. He had been in jail for a while then they came out with the post war syndrome and now he is getting help from the VA. Has no idea where his kids or ex wife are. Wished Bob had never saved his life that night in Nam. I don't know how to deal with that, so I didn't say anything. He asked about Bob but I said he was getting by. didn't go into detail cause it might piss Jim off. Over the years Bob had been working for gratis for the city, fixing this and that. Giving all the time he could to people who needed help. Guess thats the kind of person everyone wants to be, but..... July 1993 Got a phone call. It was a friend of Bob's. He said Bob had been killed in a hold-up at a Circle K. He asked if I would come as I was the only one they knew of that had any connection to Bob. I didn't know if he had any family, it had been so long since we talked about that. I got into Bobs town. The Police told me what happened. They had the young man locked up but were going to move him. The town really wanted his butt. Talking to people I found out Bob walked on water in this town. Too many people told me of how he helped them when no one else would or could. After all that I was ready to kill the guy myself. The funeral was over I took a few of Bobs things, said my goodbyes. I gave the city Bobs house, they could use it for a shelter. August 1997 It had been 33 years since Bob got the head wound. Over the years, the more I thought about Bob and what he gave to life and the little bastard that killed him, I knew that there was no justice. No Life wasn't fair at all. Something had been nagging at me, gnawing the hell out of me. I gave Jim a call, talked for a while. I now know that life is really rotten for some people, people like Bob. Then I also knew that Good deeds do come back to haunt you and that no good deed will go unpunished. The Killer didn't know Bob, he just killed him because he was a witness. I didn't know it then for sure, after I talked to Jim I knew. The guy that killed Bob was Jims Son.