Zippo Boys, A Legacy of Pride

Dave Lara — Zippo Boys, A Legacy of Pride

In the olden days, it was mostly men that went to war. And in fact, the term Band of Brothers comes from that old time period. They were men that had similar life experiences: wives, children, regular jobs, they were drinking buddies.

And you can depend on these band of brothers to get you through the worst that war threw at you. My mother died, and an absent father made a life-changing event for me. I was seventeen, and the juvenile courts of Los Angeles declared me an adult. They called me emancipated. So I took my emancipated ass and I joined the Navy. But I didn’t have a band of brothers. I was a criminal. Being gay had laws against my existence. There were penalties that included jail. Whether I was in or outside of the military. There were witch hunts looking for me and my kind.

But I had no choice. I made it through boot camp and was assigned to hospital corps school to become sort of a nurse, not quite a doctor, but most definitely a bad pan washer. I joke, of course. A hospital corpsman does what a doctor does to save a man’s life in the field. After I finished, I got orders to the USS Repose, a hospital ship off the coast of Vietnam. Most of my time would be on that ship. I was lucky. I remember it was raining when I landed in Vietnam. And with the red mud and green uniforms of the Marines, everything became sepia toned.

Like in the movie Wizard of Oz with its friends of Dorothy’s. Two corpsmen, Matt and Joe, got me up to speed on my temporary duties. Matt was a short, stocky blond, cute — and he was battle-hardened and strong. I was in love.

Joe, a big burly Polish guy, well, he had a droll sense of humor. He was so much fun to be around. They happened to be gay. Yeah, even then we had gay dar. It usually started with the question: so, do you have a girlfriend? In war, you make friends fast. And so, as I reported to my ship, we agreed that we were going to get together somehow, and that opportunity came quick. The repose, my hospital ship, was scheduled to spend RR in Hong Kong for New Year’s Eve. Joe and Matt got the time off, joined me and two other gays that I’d found on the ship at the Hong Kong Hilton.

We rented a double suite, and we spent the whole night talking about what it was like being gay. It was the first time we had ever been around our own kind. When the others went back to bed, finally, Matt and I stayed up talking seriously if two men could make a life together. Society said that we were either insane or criminals. We didn’t even know if our love was valid. Matt eventually went to bed saying he just wished he could find someone to love. It was there that we called ourselves The Group, and that’s with a capital T based on a novel by Mary McCarthy.

The group became our band of brothers. We had shared experiences, things that we knew about. And like our straight compatriots, our band of brothers got us through the worst of war, the pain, the suffering, and the dying.

It was a tradition at the time for sailors to buy Zippo lighters and have their ship name, their job title, their base etched on those lighters. We had ours etched with the group, and our bond was sealed. I mentioned Band of Brothers because we were seeing the worst of war. Matt and Joe every day at Dong Ha were under constant rocket attacks. My 13 months were up, and I once again joined Matt and Joe at Dong Ha to spend my last week in Vietnam before going back to the world. Second day I was there, Matt and I found ourselves alone as we came off a shift.

And he said, David, why haven’t we ever made love? I laughed and I go, dude, we haven’t had a chance. But he asked, You want to, don’t you? And I leaned in and kissed him. A few days later, a dust off, a Medevac was needed at a base very close to the DMZ. It was called Contien. And the unit up there were known as the Walking Dead. Matt went on one chopper, I went on another. Joe was already up there. We landed and we began to load the wounded. A rocket hit the chopper that Matt had come in on. And he was standing at the door and was blown several feet.

I ran to him. I knew he was dying. And as I looked at him, he had glistening tears in his eyes. And I told him, I wish we could have been lovers. I love you, Matt. I love you. Joe and some Marines were gathered around. Nobody cared that two men could love each other, not there. And then Matt died. He just died. I bent my head on his chest crying. I could hear Joe say, Come on, Dave, you gotta go. He pointed to the chopper I’d come in on. He said, It’s a rotor blazer spinning like crazy. If you don’t get going, it’s gonna get blown up too. I just stared at him.

He grabbed my chin and he made me look at him. He goes, You’ve been here long enough. You know how this works. And then he whispered, the friendship’s over. Now go. I searched Matt’s pockets looking for that zippo, the one inscribed with the group and its capital T. It was 1967, and when I went home, I was alone and in pain, and I don’t remember anything of my trip going back to the world. In 1970, the witch hunt had caught up with me. I was stationed at Quantic over Virginia, and I was discharged for the crime of being a homosexual.

It was less than honorable. I packed my uniforms and the five medals I had been awarded into my sea bag. And as I left the base for the last time, I threw it into a dumpster. I had been so proud of my medals, but my less than honorable discharge erased them from my service record. I went to Arlington, where Matt is buried, and I promised him I would do something to change the world so that men like he and I could serve honorably. In the 1970s, I became a soldier in the gay rights movement, and I helped establish the first gay men’s service center in Los Angeles.

In the 80s, I joined an AIDS activist group called Act Up, and we were petitioning the government to find treatments for the disease. And in the 2000s, I became members of veterans groups of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to show by my presence that you could survive what war does to you. I still have Matt’s Zippo. It’s the same shape as his tombstone, like all the headstones there at Arlington. You know what? I’m not bitter. The Navy gave me more than it took. It gave me wisdom. It gave me Matt.. And I have kept Matt’s lighter as a reminder of the best time of my life. And of a man I still love.