2

Thirty-Nine Days

IT HAD BEEN a long year for Frank Doezema. He was heartily homesick. Each time he wrote home to Shelbyville, Michigan, near Kalamazoo, he would note the days left in his one-year tour in Vietnam. On January 21, he told his brothers: “It won’t be long now. Look out world, here I come! When I say world, I mean the good ole USA or Michigan or Shelbyville or just plain home . . . Let’s see, 55 days, that’s eight weeks.”

He knew exactly what he would do when he returned: work on his family farm and eventually run it, either alone or with his brothers. Cornfields and cows were all he wanted, careerwise. He’d collected his diploma from Kalamazoo Christian High in 1966, and that had closed the book on school. Like all young men with a clear vision of their future, Doezema was in a hurry. He had his eye on a girl he intended to marry, although she didn’t know it yet. He’d have been well along already, with farm and family, if not for the draft.

Every healthy male high school grad in the United States in 1966 without college plans was immediately draft bait. It was a stubborn reality, like taxes. Nearly everyone had a father or uncles who had fought in World War II or Korea, or both, and many had grandfathers who had fought in World War I. War was stitched deep in the idea of manhood. It was portrayed heroically in popular films and TV shows, books, and even comic books: stories of men bravely defying death and besting foes in faraway places for God, family, and flag. Doezema was not eager to be a soldier, but he didn’t question the call. In fact, knowing there was no draft deferment for farmwork, he’d sought out the most efficient way to meet his obligation. He took advantage of an army program—designed to meet the urgent need for men in Vietnam—that would halve his commitment from four years to two. And as he’d expected, he was in Vietnam within months of completing basic training.

He was an authentic Michigan cornstalk: tall and thin with a blond crew cut and a long square jaw. Trained as a radio operator, he spent the first six months in-country assigned to a marine captain named Jim Coolican, who worked as an adviser to an ARVN battalion. Coolican rejected Doezema at first. The captain stood about six foot five, and towered over the Vietnamese soldiers he advised. Enemy snipers targeted officers and Americans. An officer and his radioman had to stay close together—the radio was needed to call in artillery and air support—and Coolican worried that being with Doezema, who was nearly as tall as he was, would double the danger. It was especially dangerous for Doezema because a radioman carried the unit strapped to his back: it was bulky and had a high antenna. Coolican considered himself brave, but he wasn’t stupid. Still, Doezema pushed. He liked the captain and he liked the idea of seeing real combat during his tour. And from what he’d heard, the ARVN airborne troops mixed it up with the enemy often. Coolican eventually gave in, and the two had worked together seamlessly.

They saw action often. Their battalion,6 part of ARVN’s First Division, was deployed in I Corps, the country’s northernmost sector, which encompassed five provinces of South Vietnam and stretched from south of Hue all the way north to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and the border with the North. This was the easiest place for NVA troops to infiltrate, and it was obvious that Hanoi was planning something big, because many soldiers were coming. In the fall of 1967, there had been frequent violent clashes in this sector, and contrary to the poor reputation of South Vietnam’s forces, the men Coolican and Doezema served with were aggressive and competent. During those months, the two tall Americans saw far more combat than most of their countrymen, and despite their size, neither had been hit. In time, they felt lucky to be paired. They worked shoulder to shoulder in the field during the day, ate their meals together, and slept side by side, often softly talking into the night. They shared everything. At twenty-seven, Coolican was eight years older than his radioman, who always called him Captain or sir, but in time there was little barrier of rank between them. Coolican came to feel like Doezema’s older brother.

Americans who landed in Vietnam were strangers in a strange land. Few of them knew the language, the history, the culture, or even, except in broad outline, the nature of the conflict, which actually differed from zone to zone. Coolican and Doezema were having a far different experience. They lived and worked with their Vietnamese counterparts. The captain had been given some language training, but neither he nor his radioman spoke the language well enough to say anything beyond a few necessary words. And yet they had both developed a strong respect and affection for their ARVN counterparts.

To most American soldiers, the local forces were known as Arvin, and the name was not applied kindly. It suggested a caricature: a small Asian man in an oversize American helmet and uniform (cast-off American sizes often fitted Vietnamese men poorly), inadequately trained, ignorant of basic infantry tactics, equipped with Korean War–vintage weapons, incompetent, reluctant to fight, and all too often given to thievery and desertion. Some of the South Vietnamese men pressed into service fitted this mold, just as some of America’s more reluctant draftees fell short of the ideal. All too often, the officers who led them were incompetent and corrupt. It was an ongoing problem. Largely out of necessity, American combat soldiers were aggressively insular. When they were not on patrol they stayed behind defensive perimeters of barbed wire and mines. They ate American food, shopped for American products at the PX, watched American movies, and listened to American songs on the radio. Fraternizing with the locals was discouraged—although whorehouses did brisk business. So the only Vietnamese most soldiers encountered were scouts, translators, whores, workers hired to perform menial jobs on American bases, or those who peddled goods and services nearby—licit and illicit. Enterprising Vietnamese mixed basic mercantile lingo with simple GI slang, and added coinages of their own: “numbah ten” for the worst, “numbah one” for the best. The primitive dialect reinforced disdainful stereotypes, even if the peddler who spoke broken English had language skills that exceeded his customers’. And most Americans viewed the locals with suspicion. The contemptuous word “gook” was applied not only to the enemy; there were gooks who were the enemy and then there were “our gooks.” And even those more kindly disposed were often patronizing, seeing the “good gooks” as worthy little people stuck in a primitive past. Racism colored the alliance from top to bottom.

Coolican’s experience was the opposite of all that. With the ARVN troops he “advised,” he was the ignorant and inexperienced one. The very idea of a college boy from suburban Philadelphia having something worthwhile to impart about combat was laughable. The Vietnamese officers Coolican served were far better soldiers than he was. They had been at war for years. The only important thing he had to offer them was Doezema’s radio, the ability to dial up American air and artillery—a game changer. This was why he was important to them, not because he had knowledge to impart. Without his radio, he was nothing more than a tall marine who drew fire.

The realization was humbling. Coolican found himself defending the ARVN troops from knee-jerk American scorn. He had been an air force ROTC cadet at St. Joseph’s College before he opted for the marines. Vietnam had been his goal. He was an idealist, and a true believer. He had grown up trusting his elders, and accepted that just as his father’s generation had fought in Europe, Japan, and Korea to protect the American way of life, his generation had its own role to play holding the line against Communism. Kennedy’s inaugural address, with its evocation of the “torch being passed to a new generation,” had spoken to him. He completed boot camp and infantry training over summer vacations, and upon graduation he was commissioned a second lieutenant. His experience in Vietnam, coming up on a year now, had only deepened his commitment to the cause and his career. He was exactly where he wanted and needed to be.

He and Doezema split up toward the end of 1967. Coolican had sought and received a transfer to the Hac Bao (Black Panthers), an elite ARVN unit with a reputation for ferocity and skill. Hand selected, they wore distinctive black fatigues when they were not fighting in the jungles. General Ngo Quang Truong, commander of the ARVN First Division at Mang Ca, the military base in the northeast corner of the Citadel, used them as a rapid strike force.

For Doezema, the change meant his days of fighting were all but over. Parting from Coolican, he went first to a small American compound on the outskirts of Hue, and then to the MACV compound. He still worked as a radio operator, but now was surrounded by other Americans. The streets outside were comparatively safe. In the heart of this bustling city it was easy to feel that the war was a minor conflict at the wild edges of a thriving South Vietnam. There were regular convoys back and forth from the marine combat base at Phu Bai, eight miles south, and beyond it to the larger one at Da Nang. American vessels came and went from the boat ramp on the Huong’s south bank. The war had visited the old capital city so infrequently in the previous years that the compound was regarded as a rear post, well out of harm’s way.

He had downtime, and with it he had things to do. There were curbside restaurants to indulge his new taste for Vietnamese food, bars, museums, parks, and even historical sites like the old emperors’ tombs and the ornate royal palace. The beaches of the South China Sea were just a few miles east. Doezema tried out the smattering of Vietnamese he had learned with Coolican. He would sometimes use his radio to call the captain, still humping around the countryside with the Hac Bao, and they would chat at night like old times. The farm boy was coasting through the final months of his adventure, crossing off the days on his calendar until his real life resumed. He had friends who would stop by for two- or three-day visits, staying in his room. They noticed that the Vietnamese girl who cleaned up had a crush on the tall blond American who treated her with such respect and made an effort to speak her language.

Here was one more unusual thing about Doezema. He made Vietnamese friends. One was a twelve-year-old boy whose family had lived adjacent to his first post in Hue. The boy’s name was Quy Nguyen, and he lived in a big house with a walled garden just outside the city. He was the eldest of seven children. Doezema and his buddies would drive out to the Nguyen house with candy and teach the children English phrases and give them rides in the Jeep. In return, they were treated to large Vietnamese meals that put the compound mess to shame. On one of those trips in January, Doezema told Quy that he would soon be going home. He put his camera and his watch on a table and told the boy he could have his pick. Quy chose the camera.

The letter of January 21 to his brothers Ardis and Bill displayed both his homesickness and his sense of humor:

Here it is Sunday again and I have to work all day. It’s a pretty nice day too. The misquitos [sic] are getting pretty thick again. We still haven’t had much of a monsoon season or cold weather either like everyone told us we would. It’s OK with me though. I will be glad to get back to all that beautiful snow though.

Last Sunday afternoon Bob [Mignemi] and I went down to my friend’s house in Hue & visited with them a while. Yesterday afternoon we had a practice alert in the compound. Only about 1/3rd of the people were there so it really wasn’t very profitable.

It’s 10:00 already & a lot of late reports are coming in from last night’s activities. Just mostly small contacts like ambushes being ambushed while on their way to an ambush site. We’ve got a brigade from the 1st Air Cav in our area now. That should make the V.C. think twice. Phu Loc [an American base south of Phu Bai] still takes sporadic fire once in a while. They’ve got a lot of nearby mountains so it’s hard to locate the enemy.

I made it to the movie last night. I sure get homesick when I watch a movie with “round eyes” in it. It won’t be long now, though. Only forty-eight more days. A lot of new people are coming in & now it is my turn to laugh. I can’t hardly imagine what it will be like to get back. Alls I know is that it’s going to be great. I can hardly wait. I sure do dream about it a lot lately. I’m not the only one though. 3 guys in our hootch are going home soon & that’s all we talk about. Ernie Barbush is from Pittsburgh & goes home February 20th. Bob Mignemi is from New York & he goes home March 1. I go home shortly after Bob. Ernie gets out of the Army in July but Bob and I get out at the same time. That will be a happy day also.

How is everyone doing these days? Fine I hope. I imagine the guys aren’t doing too much in all that cold weather. Is the roof over the lot finished & if so how does it work? At least it will keep the snow off the lot in this weather. What else is new around there? Keep me posted, OK? I’m fine, just homesick that’s all. That will be changed soon though.

Well I guess I’ll close here. I’ll see you very soon. Your brother, Frank.

On January 30, his countdown had reached thirty-nine days. That evening he was expecting a visit from his friend Coolican. The captain’s Hac Bao unit was taking off a few days for the Tet holidays, so he planned to drive down to the American compound. There would be beer and barbecue and conversation. It was likely to be the last chance Doezema would get to see him before flying home.