By:Nicole Falco
Always a history buff, Jensen began writing a memoir in the late 1970s of the time he spent in Vietnam. So many people would ask him about the war and what he did while in service that it seemed natural to write it all down.
McFarland Publishers, based in North Carolina, has published Jensen-s writings, including some of the letters he saved and pictures he took while overseas. It-s not a blood-and-guts book, per se, Jensen says. Instead, Tail End Charlie: Memoir of a United States Marine in the Vietnam War is a record of what Jensen calls the luckiest and greatest adventure of his life, according to the publishers. Jensen even managed to find the humor in the horrors of war, which he credits with helping to keep him alive.
Jensen, a Valley Stream resident, never intended to publish a book. In 2002, his daughter, Jennifer, took her father-s notebook account of the war with her to Sacred Heart University and showed it to one of her professors. The professor told Jennifer, I think you-ve got a book.
To make his daughter happy, Jensen found a how to book on getting published at the Elmont Library. He opened a copy of Writer-s Digest, randomly picked out 12 publishers and sent a query letter to each one.
He received 11 rejections. (About half of the publishers he queried published only Christian-themed books and Bibles.) Finally, much to his surprise, McFarland asked Jensen for a copy of his manuscript, which he sent to the company in November 2002. Four months later he signed a contract with McFarland.
After Jensen worked with seven editors and fielded dozens of phone calls dealing with corrections and changes, the book was published last November.
Jensen-s book opens in Queens in the mid-1960s, and recounts how the naive 18-year-old enlisted in the Marines. He followed in his older brother Edward-s footsteps. Edward had been drafted into the Army in 1966 while on leave from college. He returned home safely a year later after serving as a helicopter door gunner. Edward was wounded two days before he was discharged, and two of his friends were killed a day after he left. Still, that did not stop his brother from enlisting.
The book details Jensen-s experience in boot camp and follows him into the jungles of Vietnam in April of 1969. He writes of being on the battlefield for months at a time without a break; the foot infections he suffered; the soldiers he saw killed, including Lt. John M. Joyce, to whom the book is dedicated; and the Christmas tree his mother sent him in 1969 which he still displays in his front window every year.
Jensen was wounded a week after he arrived in Vietnam but didn-t even know he had been hit. He was sprayed with shrapnel from an enemy grenade.
I got hit in three canteens [I was carrying], Jensen said. The water was leaking out and running down my legs. I had blood coming out from behind my ear. I didn-t even think about it. You just didn-t cry about it with all the dead that were lined up. As time went on you stopped worrying about it. Whatever happened happened.
Jensen considers himself lucky unbelievably lucky, he said.
Many times I sat down with the enemy and didn-t even know it, he recalled. I-d bend down and a bullet would go over my head. Once I came face to face with the enemy with no bullet in my chamber, and I had candy bars blocking the grenade in my pocket.
The night before Jensen was to be sent back to the U.S., he curled up in a foxhole, not wanting to test his luck any further. Now I was afraid I was going to get shot, he said.
But he arrived home safely on March 6, 1970, and he didn-t even flinch when a cab driver asked him for double the fare from the airport. He was glad to be back.
One of the first things he did when he returned was eat an Entenmanns-s chocolate-covered donut. I hate chocolate-covered donuts, [but] I had dreams in Vietnam of chocolate-covered donuts, Jensen said. When I opened up the fridge, sure enough, they were there.
He hasn-t ruled out the possibility of writing a follow-up to his debut, possibly a firsthand account of his experience when he got home.
Jensen always wanted to be a police officer, and he did wind up in law enforcement, though not as a cop. Six years after his tour in Vietnam, Jensen joined the Reserves. By the time he left the Reserves in 1986, he had worked his way up the ranks to staff sergeant.
Jensen lives in Valley Stream with his wife, Kathy, the district clerk for the Central High School District, and their two children, Jennifer, 22, and John, 18.
