Page 79 - Stand Down Vietnam

Right away, I discovered that a lot of them were
unhappy. I made up my mind that I was going to make
the most of it. “I’m going to be happy where I’m
planted.” I did better than a lot of the Marine wives.

We had our second child, a son. When he was not quite
a year old, we got orders to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
There would be “not a friend in the world”. I started

researching Haiti; Kenneth had me believing that
everybody lived in tree houses or something. I was
that naïve.

We were in Haiti; it was all wonderful. Kenneth was
attached to the Embassy and we did a lot of wonderful
things with Embassy people.

We met the woman who had been married to Papa Hemingway
at one time. The most important thing I remember is
she had orange hair and orange shoes that evening.

Everything was going along good until just after
Christmas; we went there in June. So, just after
Christmas, it started getting kinda rough.

The main street had gates we had to go through to be
checked. The people at the checkpoints were very happy
to see us. They had been friendly, but suddenly became
rather sullen, there were times the guards became rough

with the Americans. It was rough; we’d sit on our
friend’s porch and watch houses burning. Supposedly,
if you weren’t for Papa Doc and you were Haitians, your
houses would be burned with you in them. That was the
story we were being told. We saw the houses burning,
we knew that part of it.

On New Year’s we went out with some friends to a beach
house. There were three couples of us and our
children.