It's 1965, and Frank Cordeiro, all of 19 years old, stands on the deck of the USS Allagash, anchored off the coast of Vietnam, watching as a helicopter thrums overhead, a wounded soldier in a stretcher suspended from its underside.

It's an image that haunts Cordeiro to this day."The thing that bothered me was the choppers flying back and forth all the time with the bodies, the injured, the dead. There was a hospital ship nearby, and that's where they were taking them, the injured and the dead," he says. "I thanked God I wasn't in the Army, in a foxhole."Sitting on the front porch of his Tamaqua home, Cordeiro recalls his decision to enlist in the U.S. Navy.He was living in Fall River, Massachusetts. It was 1963, and John F. Kennedy, who would die by an assassin's bullet that November, was president. Audiences flocked to movie theaters to see Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," and four longhaired lads from England had teenage girls in thrall with Beatlemania.Halfway around the world, political tensions were heating up faster than the jungle at high noon. As the Vietnam conflict gained momentum, Cordeiro watched as his buddies, one by one, were drafted into the military."That's why I joined the Navy. They were drafting all my buddies. I figured, if I gotta go, it was the best way. I grew up around water, and I like boats," he said.The only disappointment was when he learned that new sailors are on shore duty for the first 18 months of their tour."I didn't know that. I joined the Navy to see the world. I wanted to be on a ship. Instead, I was stationed on Rhode Island, 18 miles from home," he says, shaking his head.Cordeiro complained mightily to everyone he could."A year and a half later, they shipped me to Vietnam," he says. "I got my sea duty, all right."But it wasn't until the Allagash was anchored off the Vietnamese coast, Cordeiro says, that he knew where he was."We just hit our racks we had to be in our racks by 9 at night and heard this tremendous boom. The whole ship shook," he says.Cordeiro was afraid the ship, carrying large stores of fuel, had exploded."It was a floating gas station," he says.He and his shipmates hurried topside, only to be told by their commanding officer that nothing was wrong."He said it was just a little disturbance in the jungle," Cordeiro says. "Jungle?"He could see a big orange glow."Welcome to Vietnam," Cordeiro recalls the officer saying."I thought he was kidding. The next morning, I see the choppers with the nets with the bodies in them, and thought, aw, geez, I don't believe this," he says.He says he didn't know they were near Vietnam."I thought we were just on maneuvers. We went all over the place, fueling ships, planes, helicopters. That's what we did. That's what our job was," he says. "They lied to us."The USS Allagash was there 10 months, then was taken to Norfolk, Virginia, for repairs."I was glad to get out of there," Cordeiro says.While there, he was a boilerman's mate, working below deck in the engine room. Cordeiro says one major worry was that the ship would be attacked by Viet Cong, who he says would don frogman suits at night, swim out and place explosives on ships.Cordeiro recalls the time Navy Seals boarded a small boat occupied by a man, a woman and children that was floating close to the Allagash. Sailors later learned there were several high-powered weapons on the boat.Name: Frank CordeiroAge: 68Hometown: TamaquaBranch of service: NavyYears served: Three