360MEN MUGSHOTS and COFFEE - Dean Rush - Hawaiian R&R
360MEN MUGSHOTS and COFFEE - Dean Rush - Hawaiian R&R
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Original YouTube Description
In this MUGSHOTS and COFFEE episode Dean Rush talks about his R&R experience in Hawaii with his new bride Vicki Rush. Dean flew combat missions in Vietnam. They would regularly have shell and rocket attacks while he tried to sleep. It's hard to shake that kind of stuff off. Join the conversation with Dean at http://360MEN.net
Cleaned Transcript
Daniel: Welcome to Cinco Ranch, Texas. It’s a really warm day and come on inside — we get to have coffee with Dean Rush.
Dean Rush: Thank you, Daniel.
Like a lot of other veterans, I could say that there are no glamorous war stories, but this was one that turned out to be rather humorous in the end. But at the time it was kind of wild.
I had not seen my wife since departing for the war, and they used to give us a thing called R&R — rest and recuperation — and it kind of got you out of the theater. So Vicki and I decided to meet in Hawaii. I had a friend who had just been on R&R to meet his wife and suggested that we stay at this one certain hotel in Honolulu.
We set up reservations at that hotel. She was waiting for me when we arrived there. We were talking — we had about a day to kind of get to know one another a little bit — and we went to bed.
You must know that the week before I went on my R&R we had been shelled every night. I worked with a group of Special Forces and the enemy didn’t like us very much, and they sent these shells in every night and rockets. So I had tired of being awake every night and I had built sandbags around my bed. I thought if somebody’s going to hit me they have to hit me directly through the roof. And so every night when the shelling would begin I’d roll off the bed, get under the bed, and just go back to sleep. I had some blankets there and it was not comfortable but I was tired so I would go to sleep. I had to fly the next day.
So we arrived in Honolulu and we have time to kind of get to know one another and we’re asleep. Little did I know but next door they were building another hotel and they were blasting. And my wife, who had not seen me in six months, heard me scream when I heard the shells — or I heard what I thought were shells but it was actually dynamiting to build this other hotel.
She observed as I rolled off the bed and tried to get under the bed which was probably three inches above the ground and literally was fighting to get under the bed. She thought I had absolutely gone crazy and I guess I was because I looked up and she was fine, the hotel was still there, the room wasn’t shaking — which is normally a result of the rockets. And then I began to explain to her and she literally thought I had lost my wits.
We laughed about it later but that night it was pretty horrendous. That’s my story of R&R in Hawaii.
CODEX ENTRY
Date: 2018-05-04 File: 360MEN MUGSHOTS and COFFEE - Dean Rush - Hawaiian R&R.md Monomyth Stage: 06 - Tests, Allies, Enemies Gameboard: Camp 2: Tests, Allies, Enemies MA5 Domain: None Summary: Dean Rush shares a raw and ultimately humorous Vietnam R&R story: after months of nightly shelling, he instinctively dove under the hotel bed in Hawaii at the sound of construction blasting, terrifying his new bride Vicki who thought he had lost his mind. Key Insight: Combat trauma embeds deep, automatic survival responses that do not simply vanish when the war ends — even joyful reunions can be hijacked by conditioned reflexes, revealing the invisible, lasting cost of service. Narrative Significance: Episode 3 of Mugshots and Coffee deepens the 360MEN alliance by giving voice to a veteran’s unvarnished truth. It adds weight and authenticity to the peloton/podium vision — men sharing scars (visible and invisible) so others can understand, empathize, and build stronger community. Dean’s story becomes another living clue for how men heal and grow together in Scotomaville.
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