It’s the sort of craziness that can only happen on a battlefield: soldiers are battling out in a major offensive when out of the smoke emerges an incongruously familiar figure. It’s one of their buddies from back home, carrying cans of beer.
We’ve all done some wild beer runs in our time, but John “Chickie” Donohue’s 1968 mercy mission is easily the most legendary in the history of beer runs.
It all began, as these things tend to, in a bar.
In 1967, Donohue was a veteran Marine who finished his service before the Vietnam War got going, although he had visited the country twice as a merchant seaman, but dozens of his friends were still in the fighting. At least 28 people from his neighbourhood had died in Vietnam. So, watching anti-War demonstrators on the tv in his neighbourhood watering hole got his dander up.
So, when barman George “Colonel” Lynch, another veteran, suggested that someone ought to bring the boys from their neighbourhood fighting in Nam a beer, the die was cast.
Donohue set out on an ambitious four-month odyssey that spanned more than 8,000 seafaring miles. From New York City to Qui Nhon, he was armed with nothing but a list of names — and a trove of beer clanking below deck.
Lynch wanted to use Donohue’s seaman’s card to do the run, but Donohue decided to do it himself. So, he wrangled a job on a ship about to haul ammunition to Vietnam. Filling his dufflebag with beer, he headed to sea. He set out to find his boyhood friend, Rick Duggan, then fighting in Khe San. He told everyone he was Duggan’s stepbrother. Seeing him dressed in a plaid shirt and corduroy, most soldiers assumed he was involved with intelligence. “And I knew the lingo from being in the Marines. So it just worked.”
“It took two months to get there, so I drank all the beer,” said Donohue.
After restocking the payload of PBR and Schlitz, he embarked on a string of U.S. military convoys, planes, and helicopters to Khe Sanh. Donohue let low-ranking soldiers in on his mission and found them eager to help while mentioning they’d love a cold beer, themselves. He wisely kept quiet around high-ranking officers.
After tracking down another friend, Tommy Collins, Donahue set out to find Duggan. He hitched a helicopter ride to Qang Tri, which was in the middle of an NVA attack.
“Chickie! Holy s**t! What the hell are you doing here?!” Duggan said. Donohue casually replied: “I brought you some great beer from New York”.
When enemy troops began firing, Duggan threw Donohue an M97 grenade launcher. When the dust settled, Donohue watched as Duggan and two others on his list “popped the cans open and … took their first sip of beer in a while.”
It was the perfect moment for Donohue to tell Duggan his mom wanted him to attend mass.
Donohue shared rations and home gossip with the soldiers, until they reminded him that it was time for him to head back.
Donohue trekked to Saigon a few weeks later to catch a flight to Manila to board his ship back to New York. The Vietcong had overrun Saigon as part of the Tet Offensive, however, and were gunning people down in front of the U.S. embassy. Remarkably, the unarmed civilian made it out alive — and back to Doc Fiddler’s.
“The Colonel, who never drank on duty, poured himself and everyone else a beer and raised it,” said Donohue. “‘To Chickie,’ he said, ‘who brought our boys beer, respect, pride — and love, goddamn it.’”
His trip to Vietnam changed Donahue’s attitude somewhat: he realised that the government was lying about winning the war, and wanted his friends to get sent home safely.
His friends never forgot his act of crazy-brave kindness.
“He came through at a time when society didn’t want us and the protesters were on us,” said Collins. “But that’s Chickie. He’s one of the nicest but craziest guys you ever want to meet.”
All That’s Interesting
And that’s the true story of the most epic beer run in history.
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