CHARLIE DON’T SURF! How Robert Duvall, the Vietnam War, and a Yater Spoon Changed Surfing.

Oh, Colonel Kilgore, off you go without your Renny Yater Spoon. Your magical, trusty, beloved steed of a “very good board,” as you so plainly put it. And to have it pilfered by none other than a brother in fiberglass, foam, and fins? A professional, no less? What a crying shame. Yes, sir, we all know how hard it is to find a board you like, don’t we?

Here’s to Lieutenant Colonel William “Bill” Kilgore, United States Army Air Cavalry commander and bona fide surf nut. A wave seeker so devout and itinerant that he’d go to the ends of the earth—and his humanity—to land a helicopter, engage in heated combat, and ultimately napalm a village in order (at least in part) to sample its surf. Politics aside, how can you not admire that kind of conviction in a fellow surfer? And still with six hours of incoming tide to kill, at that. A true surfer wastes no time with getting priorities in line, and that you were, LTC.

From that very first exchange with professional noserider extraordinaire and (drafted) Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class Lance Johnson, we knew, instinctually, that not only were you one of ours, but you had soul.

You had the kind of intrepid spirit that deems no peak too hairy for a little waterborne R&R.

Apocalypse Now screenwriter John Milius, an avid surfboarder in his younger days, wrote Duvall’s incredible dialogue. He told Surfer magazine in 2010, that in his mind, “the Vietnam War was a California war. It was a clash of cultures between the United States and this far off Asian land. But even more than that it was a clash between California culture and Asian culture. There was California music, and Hells Angels flames on Huey gunships. It was a California war. I guess the surfer is a cliche for the Vietnam War in the same way that the kid from Brooklyn stuck in the B-29 tail-gunner position was the World War II cliche.”