Unleashed
The rumor of a beach party took Dave and me on a long odyssey through the small villages that populated the northern end of Okinawa. It is mountainous country and the heavily forested vegetation is so thick that you could barely see what was in front you. The roads are so primitive and narrow that there is only one lane. Driving under the canopy of tall sugar cane bending over the road creates an umbrella under which one cannot see the sky.
After passing through a small village busy enough to have a stop sign at its only intersection, there is a road that leads into the jungle. We turned in and drove slowly over a deeply rutted unpaved road to a rocky clearing around which were various parked cars. Even coming out from under the thick foliage, the sky was an ink color as high clouds prevented the stars or moonlight from illuminating the clearing. We took our beer from the car and passing partiers, we walked up to the edge of the cliff.
The northern end of the Okinawa coastline is made up of rock and coral mountains while the white sandy beaches are located in the south. The northern terrain ends at sheer cliffs that are 300 feet above the sea.
The sharp cliff face falls straight down onto the rocks below. The high waves crashing onto the rocks are churning up a calderon of white foam and spray due to an approaching storm at sea. Soon the rain will blow in sideways and the howling wind will cause havoc by uprooting trees, flooding the roads, blowing debris all over the place and tearing roofs off of buildings. The music to this storm would be the crackling of lightning and the kettle drum roar of thunder. The aftermath will look like the island was subjected by a bombing run of B-52s.
The wind was already picking up as we stood at the edge of the cliff. Far out to sea we could see small flashes of lightning approach in the whirlwind. Each flash was accompanied by a rumbling sound of 500 pounders rolling over the land down south. Lightning and thunder were roiling in the heart of the typhoon. As the storm moved nearer, I knew it originated in Vietnam on its journey up the South China Sea. The storm moved nearer by the hour.
We stood talking at the precipice while listening to the waves, which like hurling fists were pounding the rock trying to batter apart and cut into the face of the cliffs. The jagged edges were indications that the surfaces had to take quite a beating over the centuries. We watched the violence of the black water hurling headlong onto the rocky walls which continuously turned the water from black to white. This fight would never end until all land was destroyed.
A teenager from one of the high schools for military dependents approached us in a panicked and agitated state to ask for our help. He said there was a guy from the Air Force down in the clearing threatening the kids and making trying to grope the girls.
I said to Dave; “Come on, let’s go have some fun with this guy.”
A large circle had formed in the center of the clearing with the loudmouth airman at its head shouting that he was either going to kick some ass or get some. Unnoticed, we stood opposite of him, partially leaning back on the hood of a car and waited to see what was going to happen.
Someone shouted, “why don’t you pick on someone your own size Judd?” It was then that I noticed how big he was.
He looked around the circle at each person as if he was sizing everyone up. When our eyes meet he paused then continued on declaring in a drunken and coarse manner “Naw I want to get laid.”
I thought he was an ass and a showoff. I immediately opened my mouth and told this drunken buffoon “Are you sure you would know it, if you got it.”
Silenced descended on the clearing. Eyeing me from across the circle he said: “I will fuck you.”
I answered, “I didn’t know they let queers in the Air Force now.”
Calmly, he entered the circle taking off his shirt. When it was off, he reached into his mouth and removed his false teeth. Putting the plates in the shirt pocket he handed to someone.
“Come on out here,” he said.
“What for I asked?” I asked.
“I want to talk to you.” he replied.
“If you want to talk to me then you come here.” I replied.
As he walked towards me, I could see that I underestimated the size and strength of my adversary. I weighed 200 lbs and stood just under 6” 2” tall. He had both a height and weight advantage and his easy walk moved his very broad shoulders from side to side looking more like a farm boy than a weight lifter. He was also very calm which is an unsettling feature in a man who is dangerous. It means that he is not afraid to fight. Besides, he wasn’t pretty. His face had little to lose.
I started thinking about ways to deescalate this fight and get out of it but in case I was unsuccessful, I backed up against the hood of the car behind me. My father always told me that if I find myself in a dangerous situation never let anyone get behind me. He also told me to keep my big mouth shut.
This would not be a boxing match. Out here there will be no rules, no points, no referee, no draws and no one will be saved by the bell. In the deserted back woods of this jungle, all hell can break loose.
He stood in front of me and leaning down to my face so close that I could smell the alcohol on his breath and see the clarity of intent in his eyes he said: “I am going to kick your ass.”
I said “no you aren’t, you are too drunk. Why don’t you just take it easy?”
“No I am not drunk” He replied.
Looking into his eyes for any sign of motion I said “yeah you are. You talk funny.”
Never taking his eyes away from mine he said: “I talk funny because my teeth are out.” I could see that I would not be the bully out here.”
I said “Oh yeah. Well, you talked funny when you had them in too.”
The storm arrived instantly. I saw his eyes move and his head jerk but had no idea of where he was going to attack me. Suddenly, I felt his ham fist under my chin with a right uppercut. The car kept me stationary and once feeling the blow, I jerked my head up high to the right, rolling the punch and sending it skyward.
With his arm high in the air, I ducked under it moving behind him in a flash. Pulling both of his arms down around his waist and holding him tightly, I hoisted him up and threw him on top of the hood of the car. He twisted hard when he landed until he managed to get on his back at which time I started punching him. Sitting on top of him, I straddled him and contained his movement with my butt on his stomach and knees pressing his thighs as tightly as possible. I was careful not to sit too high up on him where he could flip me off of him by arching his back or too low where he could scoot away, I kept my balance dead center on him so he could not knock me off his body. It was all about control now.
Now my head was vulnerable to his punches as I sat over him. He kept trying to pull his head away to land a good punch but I bent forward on him, chest to chest and clenching his ear with my teeth, I kept him close. Being unable to move his head away from me as we were cheek to cheek, I kept slamming punch after punch into his face.
We rolled off the car onto the rocky ground with my punches coming in as fast as I could throw them.
Finally, he stopped moving but I was not about to give any ground to him. In the forefront of my mind, this is a dangerous guy and being out here in the middle of nowhere could be a trouble for me if the table turns. I had met many dangerous men before and knew enough to know that any advantage I gave them will quickly come back and hurt me. Deep down I was afraid of him. I knew I had to finish this guy off to be safe.
My emotions overwhelmed me. My reason and judgment melted into the molten lava of fear, passion and the violence of the moment. A vent inside me had opened, allowing the compressed violent nature that I suppressed for so many years to burst through and inflict all the pain and fear I had suffered in my life upon his battered face. I broke free of any restraints that could possibly contain me. This is not a boxing match or fight behind the school gym. Consequences would come later but right now, all I wanted to do was kill this guy.
If he gets the chance, he would pay me back for every kick and punch I gave him. The very thought terrified me. For a moment, I regretted my big mouth and cocky attitude. It always got me into trouble. This time I was in over my head with this guy.
I stood over his motionless body lying on the ground and stomped my foot in his face a couple times and then kicked him in the side of his head like a football. His head sat in a puddle of dirt and blood, His face all battered with blood coming out of the cuts in his scalp from all the times, I beat his head on the rocks.
I stood over him trying to quickly get air into my lungs. It all happened so fast. I watched him carefully, waiting for some sign of life but there was none. He was either dead or knocked out cold. I reached down and grabbed his belt and started dragging him to the cliff. Dave was trying to hold me and reason with me but I was not going to be satisfied until this guy hit the rocks below. I had no awareness any longer of where I was and what I was doing. I was possessed with the urge to remove this guy from the face of the earth.
All of sudden from out of nowhere, a spotlight hit me and the voices of two Air Force MP’s rolling up in a jeep hollered “Everyone stays where you.” One of them looked at me holding the belt and said: “put that guy down.”
I shouted, “you get this guy out of here or I will kill him.”
Thinking that authority mattered to me at this moment he said: “Calm down, you are not going to kill anyone.”
I said “I will kill you son of a bitch. Get this guy out of here.”
What in the hell are two MP’s doing up here anyway? I thought. I could not believe that they would patrol this far north. Just what I don’t need right now are two are two God damn MP’s.
With the spotlight still on the two of us, the other MP was quickly gathering information after calling for an ambulance. Everyone scattered in all directions but two witnesses he spoke to, told him how Judd attacked me and I fought in self-defense. He walked over and asked to see my ID card. He showed the card to his partner who said. “Ok, take it easy here Marine." "What happened?”
I just repeated the same story as the two witnesses and he handed me my card back and said to get the hell out of there before the ambulance and police arrive. As he talked with the other MP, I looked down at the body and became fearful that I had killed him. The body was lifeless and showed no sign of breathing. With the toe of my shoe, I gave him a little nudge in the ribs to see if he moved: he didn’t. Now I began to worry. I decided to give him one more kick to be sure. Reared my foot back I kicked him hard once again in the ribs. He moaned and tried to turn over but he was still unconscious. He is alive, I thought and I better get the hell out of here.
Racing back towards the military bases, I thought about the risk of having this guy around looking for me. I knew I got lucky tonight and I may not be able to get the right combination again if I ran into him somewhere and he wants a rematch. I told Dave take to me to the emergency room at Camp Kue Army Hospital. “I gotta find this guy and finish what I started.”
When I walked into the emergency room, I spoke to a nurse about a friend of mine who might have come into emergency after falling down a cliff. She looked at me skeptically and said “You wait right here. Don’t you go anywhere” and she walked off through some double doors.
I looked down at my shirt and saw all the splattered blood on it. It was torn and all the buttons were ripped off. My knuckles were cut and bleeding from holding his head as I beat it into the rocks in the clearing. Quickly walking outside and getting into Dave’s car, I said “Get out of here. They are calling the MP’s. Take me to the hospital at Camp Kadena.”
We drove to the air force hospital. I walked inside and asked the receptionist if they had brought anyone in tonight who had been severely hurt. She said that he is in the emergency room. Walking into the emergency room, I saw a couple guys from the party. One was holding Judd’s shirt and teeth.
Judd was lying unconscious on a table under a bright light in a small operating room. I walked in and bent over his face. His eyes were shut. He was still unconscious. I waited and watched him inches away from his face looking for even a muscle to move and rip him off that table and pummel him right there in the emergency room. Slowly he opened his eyes and staring at me he lifted his head an inch or so and tried to speak. In seconds his head fell back onto the table. He closed his eyes and passed out.
Suddenly the doctor who had been washing his hands preparing to work on him saw me over the body and yelled “What in the hell are you doing in here? Get out of here.”
A new rumor now circulated the clubs and barracks that there was a air force GI called Big Judd, who was looking for the Marine who beat him up. I was weeks away before coming back to the states but that was enough time to find me.
I decided to go to him first. Taking one marine with me who I could count on to completely back me up, we went off to find Judd.
We got out of our car outside a barracks on Kadena Air Force base. Dressed only in our boots, utility trousers, t-shirt, ID, no dog tags hanging around our necks and no jewelry and walked into his barracks. Down the hallway, we walked and looked at every door for Judd's name.
Finding it, I knocked and from behind me in another room, I heard a loud voice say “I am over here.”
I opened the door to find three airmen watching a football game on TV. Judd was lying on the bunk. He looked up at me but he didn’t recognize my face. I said to him “I understand you are looking for me.” That is when he knew who I was.
With that introduction, the two other guys ran quickly past me and gathered the barracks together to come and see the man who had beaten big Judd. With the hallway crowded with onlookers but with Coombs at my back, I knew I didn’t need to worry about any of them.
The worry was lying before me. As he slowly climbed out of the rack, I could see the scabs from the stitches, black and blue bruises across his face, forehead, and nose and he moved with great difficulty because his ribs were still wrapped. Backing into the hall as he approached me, I set my stance, assessed the distances, the location of the walls and how close would I let him advance until I launched into him.
He sensed that and raising both open palms said. “Take it easy Marine. I am not looking for trouble here. I just wanted to talk with you. Let’s go in my room and talk in private.”
We went into his room where he produced a bottle of Southern Comfort. As we drank, I asked him “what's on your mind, Judd? I heard you were looking for me.”
He said he only had one question to ask: “Take it easy Marine. I just wanted to know what I did that caused you to beat me so badly. What happened out there?”
I told him “You fucked with the wrong guy that’s what happened. I gave you what you wanted to do to me if things had gone your way. You had it coming. And if you fuck with me again, I will do it again.”
We drank some more and moved over to the other room to watch the game but I noticed that the more he drank the more he eyeballed me. I could hear the gears turning in his mind as he began to think he could have taken me. He was rerunning the scenario with a different outcome. Perhaps he thought I just lucky. Losers are always thinking “if”. If I had done this or if I did that, things would have been different.
I decided that it was time to leave as his comments were starting to get sharp. With that I got up and said “this party is over. Maybe I will see you sometime Judd. Let’s just hope not.”
Two months later, I left Okinawa and returned to the states in the midst of another storm to attend college. In this storm when the lightning cracked, it was gunfire assassinating the leaders who were the agents of change or National Guard shooting students. The roar of thunder would be the riots and demonstration against the war, racism, sexism and a powerful federal government out of control. All institutions, from colleges, marriage, the draft fueling the fire of war with men, commonly accepted values and social behavior were under fire from the youthful political left demanding change.
I came seeking a new direction in my life. I learned that without a college education I would be just another enlisted man as a civilian. I got tired of being a 20-year-old corporal saluting 22-year lieutenants. Always taking orders and never being a leader. Most importantly it was my opportunity to move off the path of being a hoodlum. I was thirsty for an education and desperately in need of change. Landing dead center of the social hurricane I arrived to register for college at Foothill College in Los Altos in June of 1969.