A confession

They say confession is good for the soul. I hate to admit any of this but it has already started to leak out and I want to save myself and my family any more shame. So here goes: yes, it is true. Chelsea Clinton is my love child.

The year was 1979. I was an Army Ranger with 101st Airborne Seabees imbedded deep in the jungles of Viet Nam doing recon missions. I had been wounded by schrapnel after throwing myself on a gook grenade to save my squad and was layed up in the M.A.S.H. just outside of Bung Ho. Word came from headquarters that then Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton's wife Hillary was coming into Nam to visit the troops. With snipers everywhere, I knew that this area was much too dangerous for a woman of her status. There was only one man capable of handling all the snipers and I knew it so I pulled out my IV, grabbed my counter-sniper rifle and hit the jungle one more time. I had a mission.

Time:0800. Exact location: Confidential. Mission: Protect Hillary at all costs.

With my camo Ghillie suit erasing any visual from the enemy, I waited in the shadows. At just the appointed time, I heard the bird overhead approaching the LZ. Every sense was heightened. Every nerve on end. All of my years of training were coming down to this one moment. This was no time to think. Think...and people die.

I scanned the LZ with my binoculars and radioed the all-clear to the bird's pilot who quickly set the big chopper down on the tarmac. As the doors opened I thought everything was going as planned but as soon as Hillary's left foot hit the tarmac, I heard a shot ring out. She instinctively ducked and grabbed the young Vietnamese girl coming to greet her and ran for the nearest building but the sniper fire increased. The first sniper had barely pulled the trigger when I took him out. Swinging my rifle around, I took out the second sniper with a shot from the hip and then got my sights on another. Aim, breathe, squeeze. Another enemy hits the bloody dirt. After what seemed like hours, I realized that I had run out of ammo. Not a bullet wasted. I ran into the jungle and used my bayonet to kill the last three. Mission accomplished.

As I walked slowly back to the main camp, I realized that my schrapnel wounds were bleeding badly. I guess it was then that the whole situation finally hit my wracked body and I collapsed just outside the door of the ER. The pain woke me up several hours later and I sensed the presence of a person I assumed was a nurse next to my bed. I tried to sit up but fell back with a moan. It was then that I realized that it was not a nurse next to my bed but to my surprise it was Hillary herself. She carefully stroked my arm and assured me everything would be OK. I thought it must be the morphine playing tricks on my mind but then with her hand in mine, I blacked out again.

The nurses later told me that Hillary stayed by my bedside for three days hardly eating or sleeping and refusing to leave. When I woke on that third day she was there beside me. Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and stinking from not showering, she gazed into my eyes longingly. She said she was moved by my heroism and was going to insist to the President that I receive the Medal of Honor. I tried to politely argue otherwise saying I was only doing my duty but she would have nothing of that. As a side note, I did later receive the Medal of Honor and Medal of Honor II which is even better. But that day in the humid squalor of Bung Ho, I quickly realized that for Hillary a priceless medal would not satisfy her longing to show her appreciation. She ached with gratefulness and soon, as the sun set on this lonely village, I enveloped the extent of that gratefulness.

I am not proud of that day and it is with regret that I reveal those dark secrets I have repressed all of these years. I never saw Hillary again in person after that night and without a paternity test cannot prove that Chelsea is my love child but one glance at Chelsea's picture is all the proof I need. Look at those bug-eyes and double chin! I'm sure she will be bald soon. I say all of this in the hopes of reassuring Hillary. I want nothing from her. No money, no fame. Just to be able to reassure her in the same way that she reassured me all those years ago. Don't worry, Hillary, it will be OK. The truth will set you free!