“Lt. General Thieu and his running mate, Lt. General Ky, shared the platform with rival civilian presidential tickets in My Tho for the first time. Thieu said they “do not promise to do everything in the next four years.” My Tho is a war-shabby Mekong Delta city of 67,000. Meanwhile, a bus hit a mine on Provincial Road 26, 12 miles to the southeast.”
—New York Times, August 27, 1967
August 25-26, 1967
Humiliated by my episode with the cleaning lady’s lunch, I did not want to be seen leaving the room, so I climbed back onto my top bunk and pretended to sleep. I discovered that the exertion had caused me to start sweating again in the heat and humidity, so I just lay quietly on my damp sheet and tried to attract all the air I could from the whirring fan above. Discordant sounds of Vietnamese music circulated with the stale air. The shrill music was disagreeable to my senses, but I would eventually grow accustomed to the sound, and even learn to appreciate it.
The noise of other Americans moving about in the morning light increased, and mounting hunger trumped my embarrassment. I convinced myself that I could blend in with the others and that the bomb incident would soon be forgotten. I made a mental note to move to another bed lest the cleaning lady have a Viet Cong friend. I eased into my smelly khaki uniform, rummaged around for a shaving kit, and walked in the general direction of the common bathroom. As I shaved the aroma of cooking food drifted into the latrine.
I followed my nose to the nearest excuse for a four-star restaurant on the premises. It turned out to be a snack bar run by Philippine laborers. As I entered the door, grease from the grill attacked my nose while steam watered my eyes. The grill was covered with eggs, bacon, and hamburgers, cooking together with hamburger grease running into the eggs, and bacon grease oozing onto the hamburgers.
In the food line, I ran into 1st Lt. Mike Jefferson, with whom I’d served in the 101st Airborne Division until he preceded me to Vietnam. We caught up on old times, quickly getting to the present, as we waited for chow.
“How long have you been in country, Mike?”
“Four months.” I noticed he had lost weight. “I was with an ARVN infantry battalion, but a position opened in the Vietnamese airborne, and I got it.”
“So you’ll get jump pay again? Lucky!” An extra $110 a month came with the hazardous duty. I thought it odd that he would get $110 a month for jumping out of an airplane, but only $55 a month for being shot at.
He nodded. “Yeah, but I’m looking forward to it for other reasons. The ARVN weren’t too bad, but the airborne is a cut above, as you know. I like being with the best.”
“I know what you mean. I really wanted an American outfit.” Still, I was envious of his assignment to the airborne.
As we approached the head of the chow line, I felt green for another reason—the eggs. “Don’t touch those,” Mike advised. “They’re duck eggs and chewy to begin with, but the hamburger grease mixed in will make you sick all day.”
“What are you eating?”
“Sliders. Stick with the sliders every time.” He reached around me for a tray.
“What the hell are sliders?”
“Hamburgers. You don’t even have to chew ‘em. Take a bite and they slide right down your throat. It’s probably better not to chew them very much, anyway, you might actually taste ‘em. And don’t even ask about the meat!”
I did stick with the sliders, covered with mustard and ketchup, for every meal in the compound. My stomach never felt very secure, but I never threw up—and that was something. After a day and a half of greasy hamburgers my palate begged for variety.
The next several days were spent drawing jungle fatigues, jungle boots, attending orientation briefings, and watching the bulletin board every few hours for new orders. The army way was to allow enough time to recover from jet lag, stabilize your legs under you, and generally make you anxious to get the hell out of there to join a unit—any unit—before announcing your actual assignment. No matter where you were going, you would just be happy to be going somewhere—that was the army way, and it wasn’t invented just for Vietnam.
My time was not so fully consumed that my mind didn’t wander to other matters. My thoughts returned to Peggy. She had come into my life so unexpectedly that I sometimes wondered whether she was a dream I had conjured up to fill my loneliness. She had vanished just as quickly as she had appeared, but I knew she wasn’t a dream because her perfume lingered on the shoulder of my uniform all the way to Saigon. The night before, I had pulled the dirty khaki shirt from my bag and sniffed the perfume. It was gone.
Her eyes had said so much to me and yet had defended the passage to her own heart. Tuesday was the day she was scheduled to fly into Saigon aboard another plane filled with arriving soldiers, and then return to the Philippines with a group returning home alive. I wondered about those who would be in metal boxes on cargo runs and others on stretchers aboard medical evacuation flights. But my heart ached to know whether Peggy had ever thought of me after that night at Clark. She was etched into my memory; I would find her someday, somewhere. I had to.
I needed a change of pace, and taste. Several experienced officers on second tours in Vietnam suggested taking a taxi to the Rex Hotel for dinner and drinks that evening. I was wonder-struck that there might actually be such amenities in a war zone’s capital city. And the idea of taking a taxi into the same city we had sped through several nights before on a wild bus ride was a little unnerving. Nevertheless, my urge to find something digestible to eat was stronger than my doubts about the safety of the adventure, so I happily joined the party with a pocket full of newly converted Vietnamese piastres.
I was not disappointed. The Rex Hotel was an old French Quarter grande dame, showcasing an elegant foyer and a winding staircase that led to a popular rooftop restaurant, which had been fully Americanized. The bar was a popular spot to drink American beer or the French-owned beers, La Rue or 33, brewed right in Vietnam. Both the grand hotel and the beer were vestiges of the former French colonial period.
La Bière 33 was good, but La Rue was formaldehyde based. I really didn’t want anything with formaldehyde in it. One of the old hands advised, “Bière 33 is the one beer to have, if you’re having more than thirty-two!” I had more than that, but not that night. Ten years later, I ordered a beer in France on the Côte d’Azur and flashed back to that moment when the waiter delivered the familiar brand.
Mixed drinks were sold at the bar. Gin and tonic was most popular, inasmuch as it was rumored that the quinine helped in to prevent malaria. The rumors were good enough for me, so I opted for a heavy dose of preventive medicine.
Entrees were not French cuisine, but they were certainly superior to sliders. You could select your own steak from a cold display case, then grill it yourself on one of several open grills made from 55-gallon oil drums cut in half. While my steak sizzled, I watched lights from artillery bursting in the distance. Airstrikes were being inserted on the horizon, and I saw the thrilling trails of red tracer rounds spewing from U.S. Air Force C-47 cargo planes converted into warbirds named “Spooky.” This was exciting, and exotic!
This was war as kings intended it to be waged.
A baked potato accompanied my steak, along with cole slaw, baked beans, and ice-cold beer. The rooftop cafe was covered with reporters, generals, U.S. State Department elders, wide-eyed first-timers like me, and most likely Viet Cong spies, all mingling as if we were of the same species.
I had discovered the romantic form of war that I always dreamed of but never anticipated finding. My mind ran away as I considered where this place really was. I wondered whether I might have traveled outside my own realm, but one thing I knew for certain: I was nowhere near my high school hometown of Thomasville, Georgia, or for that matter our temporary residence in Jacksonville, Florida.
Somehow everything seemed temporary now.
I wondered whether I would ever return to those places—or whether I even wanted to see them again.