Gi Jo

Twenty years ago, Vietnam was a distant domino, a reddening spot on the map that some of us couldn't find if we tried. While Gemini VII orbited the earth, Doctor Zhivago opened down the block and the American Foot-ball League was challenging the N.F.L. to something called a Super Bowl, Hugh Hefner opened his mail and found the following letter, dated November 1965:

This is written from the depths of the hearts of 180 officers and men of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade (Separate) stationed at Bien Hoa, Republic of Vietnam. We were the first American Army troop unit committed to action here in Vietnam, and we have gone many miles---some in sorrow and some in joy, but mostly in hard, bone-weary inches. . . . We are proud to be here and have found the answer to the question "Ask what you can do for your country." And yet we cannot stand alone---which brings me to the reason for sending you this request.

The loneliness here is a terrible thing--- and we long to see a real, living, breathing American girl. Therefore, we have enclosed with this letter a money order for a lifetime subscription to Playboy magazine for B Company. It is our understanding that, with the purchase of a lifetime subscription in the U.S., the first issue is personally delivered by a Playmate. It is our most fervent hope that this policy can be extended to include us. . . . Any one of the current Playmates of the Month would be welcomed with open arms, but if we have any choice in the matter, we have unanimously decided that we would prefer the 1965 Playmate of the Year---Miss Jo Collins.

If we are not important enough . . . to send a Playmate for, please just forget about us and we will quietly fade back into the jungle.

The letter came from Second Lieutenant John Price. Price and his buddies in Bravo Company had each kicked in a dollar to pay for their subscription, with an eye on the deal we offered potential subscribers. A few years before, we had published a special Christmas gift offer in which we promised to send a Playmate to deliver the first issue of a $150 lifetime subscription to anyone who lived in a city where there was a Playboy Club. (Lifetime subscriptions are now $250, but personal delivery is out. It got to be expensive, as you will see.) Moved by the lieutenant's request, Hef consulted with the Defense Department and received clearance for Project Playmate in January 1966. He called Jo, and the rest is a side light to history. When the men of the 173rd Airborne got together in May in Washington, D.C., to mark the 20th anniversary of their deployment, remembering Project Playmate was a highlight.

Price, now 43, left the Army in 1970 as a captain after a second tour of duty. He works in the diamond business in Huntington Beach, California. He doesn't dwell on the years he spent in combat or the year and a half he spent Stateside recovering from "having my left arm nearly blown off" not long after he wrote his letter to Hef. Some things he remembers fondly, however. One of those is a visit from 1965's Playmate of the Year.

"I think of it as a shining spot in the war," he says of Jo's good-will tour. "We were constantly in combat, taking a lot of casualties, and her visit was the flip side of the coin for us."

What was welcome relief for Price was an eye-opening assignment for Jo, now an executive recruiter for direct marketing with Chicago's Judy Thor Associates.

"That trip was the most wonderful, exciting experience of my life," she says, "but it was frightening. I didn't even have time to think about it when Playboy called. There was only time to get my passport and get on a flight to San Francisco. What I was doing---the danger of it---didn't make an impression until we landed in Vietnam. There were mortar shells being fired at us. But the whole thing didn't really hit me until I visited the field hospitals."

"There were an awful lot of guys in there who were badly shot up, and she was only 20," says Price. "But she did very well---like a light in the darkness."

Jo and her entourage also toured non-regulation "Playboy Clubs" from Bien Hoa to the Cambodian border. Jo rode in the Playboy Special, a brigade helicopter named in honor of her visit. She signed hundreds of autographs and was dubbed an honorary sky soldier by Brigadier General Ellis W. Williamson.

Still, mortar rounds in the distance kept Jo from forgetting where she was. Her first ride in the Playboy Special set the project's tone.

"It seemed as though we'd hardly arrived, and there we were over hostile country, being given our first taste of what they call contour flying," she reported. "That's when you skim the treetops to prevent enemy snipers from getting a clear shot at you and then, suddenly, shoot straight up, at about 100 miles per hour, to 3500 feet, so you can check the area for Viet Cong troop movements from outside their firing range." Only when the next day's activities ended did she realize how close to battle she had been. "We were all standing outside the Officers' Club in Bien Hoa when I heard the sound of shots coming from fairly close by. Then, right before our chopper lifted off, a series of flares went off and lit up everything for miles. I kept thinking how great it would have been if all those boys had been back home watching a Fourth-of-July celebration, instead of there in the jungle fighting for their lives."

Some of them lost the fight. "At one of the field hospitals," Jo said, "there was a man who had just been brought in off the helicopter. He'd been blown up. They asked me to see him, and I went in. He said, 'I'm so glad you're here, sweetheart,' and with that he died."

Twenty years later, she shakes her head. "I will never forget that---never."

In May, when the 173rd Airborne held its reunion, Jo Collins was an honored guest.

Shortly before the reunion, she and Price met in our Chicago offices to celebrate on a smaller scale. "I told her we were going to have to do this every 20 years," laughs Price.

Jo's reaction: "He's a delight. Listen, his arm was shattered and they wanted to send him back to the States, but he wouldn't leave Saigon until I arrived. It gives me such a good feeling, seeing him again."

It's been a long time since the new year of 1966, when Playmate of the Year Jo Collins took off from San Francisco on the most memorable, heart-rending few days of her life. Today, one of those men in Gemini VII runs Eastern Air Lines. Doctor Zhivago turns up on the afternoon movie, crushed in the ratings by the Super Bowl. Jo doesn't brood over her Vietnam experience any more than Price does, but sometimes she leafs through her mementos.

"I've got more flags," she says, "and trophies, too. There were articles in newspapers all over the world, so my scrapbook is pretty heavy. It's gone through a lot---water damage from moving, this and that---but once in a while, I'll go through the pictures. And I'll think, My gosh, it's hard to believe I was there."

Price has two Purple Hearts and one badly scarred arm to remind him that he was there. He also has memories of a Playmate who flew 8000 miles to deliver a lifetime subscription to him and his buddies. That's not a fair exchange; but for a bunch of lonely soldiers, Project Playmate was at least a happy diversion.

"Before our reunion, the last time Jo and I had met was a lifetime ago," Price says today, "on the other side of the world. It's good just reaching out and touching again."

Way to go, Gi Jo. This month, we salute you, John Price and all the men who served in a dark, trying time.