... I remember you and recall you without effort, without exercise of will; that is, by natural impulse, indicated by a sense of duty, or of obligation. And that, I take it, is the only sort of remembering worth the having. 

When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy -- 

That it is built upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.

Samuel Clemens

As I watched the Continental Airlines flight touch down, I knew Nguyen Cong Hiep was aboard and suddenly I was no longer at John Wayne airport in Orange County ; I was back in Laos in 1968, surrounded by the North Vietnamese Army.

   On Oct. 7, 1968 , our six-man Special Forces reconnaissance team paused on a hilltop in the Laotian jungle, looking for an American POW camp. As I opened a can of apricots, Hiep and Nguyen Van Sau opened fire on more than a dozen NVA soldiers climbing the hill to kill us. My back was to the NVA as Hiep, Sau and the remaining three men on Spike Team Idaho cut loose with a deafening blast of full automatic gunfire.

   As I watched the Continental plane roll along the tarmac, that moment 33 years ago remained burned into my memory as though it were yesterday, when Hiep and Sau protected my back, blowing the NVA soldiers back into the jungle, down the hill, as we fought side by side in America 's secret war in Southeast Asia . I still smell the pungent mix of burnt gunpowder, fear and adrenaline thundering through my veins during that firefight and the ensuing hours when the NVA fired upon us from behind the stacked, dead bodies of their comrades. That was the first time I smelled human flesh burned by napalm.

   The last time I talked to Hiep was April 1970, at my farewell party with the men of Idaho . As the interpreter for Idaho , Hiep and I were the last men standing after that long, noisy and emotional party. He passed out in the sand. I picked him up, dusted him off and put him to bed in the team room. I left the compound before sunrise and never saw him again.

   When Saigon fell on April 30, 1975 , I had feared the worst for Hiep, Sau and the other Vietnamese men of Spike Team Idaho .

   REUNION

   A quarter of a century later, on a recent Thursday night, I was nervous and excited. Hiep's nephew had seen a picture of him on a History Channel documentary. He contacted me; I called Hiep and now I was waiting to surprise him at the airport.

   I recognized him even without the sunglasses he always wore in Southeast Asia . I approached him through the crowd. "Number one interpreter, welcome to Southern California ."

   "John Meyer! Is that you?" And without missing a beat, "You have much more gray hair now than when we were at Phu Bai." We shook hands, then embraced.

   "Hiep, I'm so glad you're still alive. I always feared the worst."

   "Meyer, can you believe we're still alive? It's good to see you again after all of these years."

   As the crowd moved past us, we shook hands again, silent. I hugged him a second time, joyous that he was alive. Again, Hiep asked, "Can you believe we're still alive?"

   We asked each other that question several times during a recent weekend, while Hiep and I went to Little Saigon in Orange County for some Vietnamese food, then attended a wedding reception with his family. On Sunday, I met some of his relatives and friends at a dinner my wife prepared in our Oceanside home.

   During that short time together, the conversation bounced back and forth from our days in the secret war to our lives since 1970 and our families. We remembered about how Hiep, Sau and I met in May 1968, at FOB 1 in Phu Bai , South Vietnam . I had completed my Special Forces in-country training and had volunteered for the secret war, in which Green Berets ran top-secret missions into Laos , Cambodia and North Vietnam with indigenous troops. Vietnamese men like Hiep and Sau volunteered for the most hazardous duty in Southeast Asia , running six- or eight-man recon teams deep into enemy strongholds. There was no conventional Army, Marine or Navy support, no artillery. We had Uncle Sam's Air Force, brave Army and South Vietnamese helicopter crews and Marine gunships for support.

    At the time, Hiep and Sau, each of whom weighed 95 pounds soaking wet, had been running those deadly mission for more than two years. I was green as grass. Hiep was the most important member on the team, as our interpreter. I understood no Vietnamese other than a few profanities. Hiep spoke three languages and understood the North Vietnamese dialect. I was placed on Spike Team Idaho because the entire team had disappeared in Laos in May 1968 ---- four Vietnamese and two U.S. Green Berets, never heard from again. Sau was the Vietnamese team leader and I was radio operator. By October 1968, I was promoted to U.S. team leader.

    We ran missions ---- including targets in Cambodia on Thanksgiving Day and in Laos on Christmas ---- until late April 1969, when I returned to the states. In October, I was back with ST Idaho and we ran more missions, trained to do prisoner snatches, wiretaps and to insert Air Force sensors into NVA areas.

   Sometimes we'd rappel into targets from hovering helicopters. We always left the targets under enemy gunfire. The only question was how much gunfire and anti-aircraft fire there would be, and whether we'd have any ammunition left to return fire during those frantic seconds waiting for the chopper.

   I left Vietnam for good in April 1970, after the party where Hiep interpreted until he passed out. The GIs on that flight were hooting and hollering because they were going home. I was solemn. My emotions were

torn: I was amazed and glad to be alive. I was worried about Hiep and Sau and the brave Vietnamese men of ST Idaho.

   HIEP'S ESCAPE

   Hiep left Saigon on one of the last planes out of Vietnam , on April 30, 1975 . A relative arranged for him to get to a military C-130 leaving from Tan Son Nhut Airport on what Hiep calls "Black April."

       When he arrived at the airport, he said, he found bedlam. Communists gunners were lobbing artillery shells into it as hundreds of Vietnamese were frantically trying to board the C-130s. By the time Hiep reached the aircraft, the tailgate had been raised several feet off of the ground.

     "I was desperate," Hiep recalled. "I threw my youngest child to a complete stranger into the plane." He threw his second child to another stranger. The tailgate was raised so high he had to lift his wife up and over the edge. During that tumultuous moment, "I realized that people were running up my back and using me as a ladder to get into the plane," Hiep said.

     He fell to the tarmac, collapsing under the weight of desperate humanity.

   "To this day, I don't know how, but I managed to get up, back on my feet," Hiep said. "There was a moment I'll never forget: As the plane started to move away I thought I'd never see my children or my wife again. ... I knew that the NVA knew I had fought with Special Forces, and that they'd get me. I thought I was a dead man."

   Then someone inside the moving plane reached down and grabbed Hiep by the shirt and pulled him up as the plane rolled down the runway. "To this day, I don't know who did that, but, I'll be very thankful to him forever."

   Hiep and his young family left Saigon with only the clothes on their

   "We came here empty-handed," Hiep said. "The American people we met along the way helped us get back on our feet. ... People here take things for granted. They don't realize how difficult it is to get a hot meal on the table every night. ... I'm so glad to be here, to have our freedom."

   Hiep's two daughters are accountants in Houston . His son is a computer science major in Cambridge , Mass. , and his stepson aspires to be a doctor.

   A few days after Sept. 11, I telephoned Hiep at his pet shop in Houston to see how he was doing.

   "I'm angry. I can't believe what they did to America ," said Hiep. "It's so sad. How could anyone do this to the United States ?"

   I said, "Hiep. Are you ready?"

   "We go to Afghanistan ?" he said. "First, we go to Ho Chi Minh City , get Sau, maybe get (former ST Idaho member Lynne) Black, and then we go get the son of a bitch who did this."

   J. Stryker Meyer is a North County Times staff writer and former 1-0 of ST Idaho