BUCK DARLING

November 14, 2025

What a relief, to return to our shared enterprise of childhood development, without the interference of that young, so-called, reader.

At this point in our blogging, we are considering the first of life’s three stages; the STAGE OF ME. This stage comprises, more or less, the first thirty years of our sojourn upon this earth. The developmental task here, is to make a ME.

What talents and abilities come with us into this life? What interests? What limitations? What fears? We must figure these things out, work with what is there, work with what we want to be there, to come out the end of the three decade tunnel with a preliminary answer to the question …Who Am I?

In the opening two stories of our childrens’ bedtime stories book, we have been considering fears. Let us personalize this a bit. Here is a picture of us, age twenty one, performing our duty to Corps and Country at Combat Base Baldy, in the Republic of South Viet Nam (a nation now deceased). Now, as a laboratory for the study of late adolescent fears, Baldy was the place. Scenically situated at the foot of the Que Sanh Mountains just south of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), the North Vietnamese would come every night from across the border with Laos, and try to kill us.

However, all fears are not alike. At the age and stage of this picture the central fear is not what one might have thought; not the fear of death. That fear, mostly, comes later, in the third and last stage of life. At the place and time of which I am telling you the central fear was of dishonor. We had this fear, and we learned something about it from an iconic Marine officer one night, Captain “Buck” Darling.

If any of you have seen the 2001 movie with Jude Law, Enemy at the Gates, well, it was like that this night of which I am telling you. There was yelling. There was shooting. I was distraught; distressed; afraid that I was about to do the wrong thing, or not to do the right thing. But Captain Darling saved me. From across a certain night draped distance, he yelled out to me … “Relax Lieutenant! The situation is only critical! It’s not serious!”

I have kept those words with me throughout the passing years, and they have been a comfort.