This is about an experience I had for which I have no explanation. I've told only a few people this story; the first was my mother on her deathbed. She was terrified of dying, terrified of the unknown. A few minutes after I told her this story, she died with a calm smile on her face.

This story takes place in the Mekong Delta during one of the bloodiest battles of the Viet Nam war. On the Easter Sunday weekend of 11 April 1966 during Operation Abilene, I was the team leader on an M-60 Machine Gun with Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion of the 16th Infantry Rangers, 1st Infantry Division. Near the village of Xa Cam My, a short distance from the Courtenay Rubber Plantation, about 40 miles east of Saigon, Charlie Company was drawn into an ambush by an NVA Battalion called D-800. We were completely surrounded, outnumbered three to one. We lost. Of 134 men in Charlie Company, we had 106 casualties. I was one of just 28 men not to be either killed or wounded in that battle. Dead or wounded soldiers of both sides of this carnage lay all around me.

Late in the night, several hours after the fighting had ceased, while lying in the quiet and pitch-black darkness, I suddenly found myself being pulled into a bright light. This light was amazingly .. overwhelmingly beautiful. I haven’t the words to truly describe it. Within this light .. this place .. at this moment .. I felt at peace. Totally at peace. I didn’t see any people within this light, nor did I see my dead relatives or winged beings, but I was not alone. All around me were other lights similar to the one that surrounded me. They were of many different colors, hues and sizes. We were all moving toward an even more beautiful field of light in the distance. For lack of a better description, “The light at the end of a tunnel” will do. But it was more than just a light at the end of a tunnel. Much more. I had no feeling of this being a religious moment, nor did I seem to hover above the scene. I was being carried by the light toward a new level of existence, a new beginning. From the first moment of this journey I knew something of its destination. The closer I came to the distant light, the more feeling I had of this being .. right. I was going to where we will all go when we die. I don’t know how, or by what means I gained this feeling .. this knowing what will be, but I know it is true. It is a truth to me. I was given another truth that night as well. I know that when we die, every one of us will go to where I was going .. except suicides. I had the strong feeling that the taking of ones own life .. to give up on the life we have .. without good reason, will somehow prevent us from going where all others will go. Suicides may go somewhere, but not there. I don’t know how long this experience lasted, but I suddenly found myself back where I was before, laying in the darkness, surrounded by the carnage of battle.

I was just a 19 year old kid fresh out of High School when this happened and I remember little of the battle. But the light, the journey .. the feeling of it being so right .. these things I remember as though they just happened. I know this story sounds crazy, that’s why I’ve rarely told it. But I know that what I saw was real. I had never done drugs before, I had never had hallucinations, and I was not wounded. Why I was privileged to see what I saw .. I do not know. But from that moment on I have not feared death. I fear suicide. I fear 6 months of agony lying in some hospital all shot up waiting to die, but I do not fear death. Death is easy .. die'n is hard! I tell this story as I saw it. I make no guesses why I saw it, or what I saw. But it is true.