I hate having to lie -- I'm terrible at it. I also hate being in a situation where someone thinks I'm lying, because I'm so bad on the true details that no one believes me. So I'm getting out.

This much is true for sure: Besides the year I spent in Vietnam (1970-71) nothing happened to me that was interesting enough to be confused with a lie. However . . .

Statement 1: I posed for a photo with a corpse of a North Vietnamese soldier. It was stiff from rigor mortis and horribly decomposed. We stood it upright for the picture, and it looked like something out of a zombie movie.
AussieStu wrote:
...Statement 1 is false, rigor mortis goes 24 hours after death before decomposing really kicks in.


Statement 1 is true. We were returning to an area we’d stayed in three days previously. We found the body in a clearing. I realize that rigor mortis was the incorrect term to use – I’ve seen enough cop shows for that (“The body’s just coming out of rigor.”) but It had been out in the 100-plus-degree heat for probably two days. It was stiff and it smelled, I guarantee that. We couldn’t reposition the arms to fit in a body bag. We called for a chopper, but before it arrived we stood the corpse up like a wooden plank and had our pictures taken with it.

Looking back, it was not one of the finer moments of my life. I think the legal term is "desecrating a corpse." But after four decades I'm able to look back and excuse myself by remembering that I was a stupid kid, and at least I wasn't shooting innocent civilians.

Statement 2: I lost all respect for Bob Hope, one of my favorite performers, while watching his 1970 Christmas USO show. He seemed to be performing exclusively for the TV cameras filming the show for his production company, and showing little concern for the G.I.s in the audience beyond what was getting on TV.
Binecon wrote:
I was tempted to say the cliff thing was a fib, and like Stu's thinking on Number 1, but I'm gonna go with the Bob Hope thing. He was a ham, but a sweet one, and he loved a live audience. It would be unusual for him to play to a camera before a person.


Statement 2 is also true. Yeah, I used to think the same thing about Bob Hope. I was a big fan. I watched the old Road pictures he and Bing Crosby made and laughed my butt off. I saw him perform twice at Ohio state fairs. Both times he was the sweet ham, indeed, and he did seem to love us. He was terrific. I stood and applauded. A couple years before I went into the army I read an article in Readers’ Digest about Hope’s USO tours that had been going on for a quarter century. I used to joke that it was the only reason I’d ever want to go to Vietnam was to say I’d seen one of his USO shows.

Next thing I know, there I was – 101st Airborne’s Camp Eagle, Vietnam, front row center, two hours early to get a good seat. It was an arcing “amphitheater” bulldozed out of a sloping hill with wood-plans for benches. Soon the entire place was packed, Not long after, trucks rolled in and a crew began erecting scaffolds several rows back from the stage. They put large cameras and huge panels to reflect light onto the stage. All this equipment effectively blocked the view of anyone sitting in the center.

We all started scrambling to get seats at the side by jamming ourselves in to already crowded benches, and all the while we cursed the sumbiches at NBC (later I found the Bob Hope’s production company delivered the whole program as a package to NBC, who only paid for the broadcast rights).

Throughout the show, the other performers – Lola Falana, Gloria Loring, baseball’s Johnny Bench, and others I don’t remember – were giving us a live performance with no interruptions. Hope, however, on several occasions in the middle of a song or skit would wave his golf club at the director and walk away. A couple times it was to greet arriving army brass (who had seats in the center in front of the scaffolds). Other times he merely walked off the stage for a moment and returned. With no explanation or apology to the audience or performers, Hope just asked, “Where were we?” The director told him where to pick it up so the break could be edited out of the film.

At the finale, Hope (or one of his henchmen – I no longer recall) asked us all to stand and join in singling White Christmas, a real crowd-pleaser for the folks at home. We did. Then we began clapping and chanting for an encore of some kind, a common practice at USO shows. The crew began tearing down the camera equipment, and little by little we all realized that that was it. Elvis, or Bob, had left the building.

It was sad over the years to learn that Hope and Crosby weren’t really the people they presented to the public. I became so disillusioned that I stopped reading anything more about these legends. Luckily, I can still watch the Road to Morocco and laugh as much as ever.

Statement 3: I slipped and fell over 200 feet down the side of a cliff, bouncing off limbs and branches all the way before landing in dense foliage at the bottom. I was bruised everywhere, torn up and scraped, but nothing was broken. A little disinfectant, gauze, and tape, and I was ready to drive on.[/quote]
Finally, the lie; or the exaggeration; or the extrapolation. I did slip and slide down an embankment leading to a 200-foot cliff. When I fell, my helmet fell off my head and rolled along next to me as I vainly grasped at the hard-baked ground around me. As I slid to the edge, I could see the bottom so very far away and realized that this was how I was meeting my end in Vietnam. Not shot, blown up or shot down – I was going off a cliff like Wiley Coyote. How heroic.

Then, much too near the very, very edge, my heel found a rock and grabbed hold. As I stopped, my helmet continued on it way over. I watched as it bounced off rocks and trees a-a-a-l-l-l the way to the bottom. So precipitous was the hold I had, I was afraid to breathe for fear I’d head off again. Soon I was thrown a rope, and was able to scramble to safety.

Later someone who had still been at the bottom of the cliff brought me my helmet. Despite it being a “steel pot,” that thing was so dented and deformed, I wasn’t able to get it back on my head. It could have been me.