When I look back on it from a historical perspective, 1968 was a key watershed year, both for this country and in my own life. I had just graduated from Sacramento State College and was looking forward to working on Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign that summer. I had been chosen as an alternate candidate to attend a summer pre-law program leading to enrollment at UCLA School of Law. The program was sponsored by the Mexican-American Indian Legal Defense Fund which was seeking qualified college graduates to bolster minority law school entrants. I remember when they told me that I had a good chance to get into the program as an alternate candidate as a lot of the male college students were being drafted. Well, so was I! It was in late Summer of 1968 and LBJ's greeting card turned my life upside down. What do I do? Do I run to Canada? My thought process was long and intense. I came to the gut decision that I was not going to be chased out of my own country! So, the alternatives? The Army at that time was taking college grads and using them as infantry field second lieutenants, where their fate was to get shot in the front by the enemy, or get shot in the back by disillusioned American GIs. American soldiers, in country, did not like some snot-nose college kid coming in and leading them to their deaths-better to eliminate the problem right away-so, that's when I decided to enlist in the Air Force and avoid combat and killing; or so I thought!

The thing I remembered most about Travis AFB (Fairfield, CA) was the overwhelming onion smell that permeated that area. There was an onion processing plant in Vacaville, near the base, and that smell still turns my stomach-reminding me of Travis and that dirty little war! To GIs in country, it was napalm and the smell of burning flesh. To me, it was onions! After being AWOL three times, I would always have to turn myself back into the war at Travis, and that fucking onion smell!

When I first got to Travis AFB in the Summer of 1969 it was like entering the Grand Central Station of hell. We had just got our ass kicked in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive of 1968, so a huge build-up was underway and it was all going through Travis. History would record that the war in Vietnam was fought out of Travis-most of the troops and the supplies were shipped out of there and the torn remnants of what was once humanity came back to Travis in aluminum coffins, or shattered bones and flesh assigned to David Grant Military Hospital. I remembered talking to one of the Air-Vac medics one night, he told me he made a mistake of going through the amputee wing one time-only once he said! During the Summer of 1969 we broke all cargo records at Travis-both war materials and green soldiers from the Oakland Army Terminal. They were fresh meat for the grinder and we ran the meat shop. Day after day-night after night-around-the-clock full-time we Fed-Exed those sad-sacks. A gruesome affair it was-a midnight dance through the cemetery-the military ball to end all balls. We, at Travis, were the orchestra at this macabre Halloween ball.

When I think back on Travis I always have the image of this grotesque Satan's ball-a dance of zombies and ghouls. The image of a ghoulish giant green beetle with black stripes, whipping a long line of green slave-like beings toward the death ships heading toward Nam. This will always remain with me-this nightly precession. My roommate, Skip, was beaten on one night by the wife of a soldier being shipped out. She was beating on him, asking over and over again, "Why?" Why was he shipping her husband to Vietnam? Skip was just a young jazz guitarist from Kansas City, gobbled up by the war machine. He was just doing his job, as we all were. We were all guilty! That Summer I decided to file for a conscientious objector discharge.

Twice I was ordered to Vietnam, three times I went AWOL-I was up for a court-martial (6 months hard labor, dishonorable discharge) when I was discharged from the military with bad paper. I was earlier denied my CO status because of a hypocritical military chaplain-a captain of God-who probably couldn't rectified his own guilt of being part of the killing war machine. The rest of the CO process and the chain of command believed I was sincere, including the base commander and the squadron commander.

I left Travis with only the clothes on my back, no money in my pocket, hitchhiking to the East Bay to begin a new life of freedom. Now I know what freedom is.