CHAPTER 17
If the Vietnamese thought we were crazy, we certainly did little to persuade them otherwise. The beach, the sauna, the blowing of the outhouse, and our general antics, when viewed objectively, would cause anyone to look askance. I think some of the Americans who dealt with us likewise thought we were a click or two off windage.
At this point I must confess my own notable contribution to that reputation. Shortly after construction of the beach, I noted that the right half of our backyard was overgrown with a tall tropical grass. It ran from the generator shed along the rusty barbed-wire fence that separated our compound from that of the National Police, up to within several feet of our team house—about sixty feet—and extended about twenty feet into the compound. The grass was about seven feet tall and was tough, thick, and razor sharp. Earlier efforts to cut it back from the beach area had been difficult and were soon abandoned. Over the years the grass had accumulated a lot of trash, and I was certain it was the nesting place of all sorts of unpleasant varmints, most notably an uninvited snake visitor that had terrorized our team house.
In what could only be described as a fit of brilliance, I concluded that burning was the solution to our perplexing grass problem. It was all so simple that I was amazed no one else had thought of it. The following afternoon I assembled the team out back and briefed them on my plan. They, like me, thought it was a great idea. We rounded up rakes and shovels to help us control the fire and filled some buckets with water—just in case we needed them. We had decided to direct the flames from south to north so that the fire would burn away from the team house. With the calculated precision of professional forest-fire fighters, we carefully lit the grass.
I don’t know what I had envisioned, but what happened next clearly wasn’t it. Within seconds flames were leaping 15 feet in the air. The fire was raging and totally out of control! The heat was so intense you couldn’t get near it, and tossing our meager buckets of water on it was like spitting into a forest fire. At the same instant that I realized the fire was running wild, it occurred to me for the first time that sitting squarely at the far end of the fire’s path was the generator shed holding ten 55-gallon drums of diesel fuel. This terrifying thought was suddenly interrupted by the screams and shouts coming from our National Police friends, pointing out one other slight oversight. The family housing for the National Police, a cluster of small wooden buildings, was right up against the single-strand barbed-wire fence that was the only barrier between the wall of flames and them. The grass, in fact, grew right up next to these buildings. I remember thinking, “Oh my God! I’m going to burn down the whole fucking compound!” There wasn’t a thing we could do. We watched helplessly as the flames soared on until, in a clear demonstration of the old adage, “God takes care of drunks and fools,” divine intervention took sway. Whatever breeze had been blowing suddenly ceased. The flames roared up to the fence line but miraculously did not cross. (Of course, the fact that the entire population of the police compound was throwing water on the houses to wet them down may have contributed somewhat.) Meanwhile team members had frantically hacked away at the grass nearest the generator shed so when the flames reached that point they merely burnt themselves out. It was all over in a matter of minutes. We proceeded to stamp out and water down any remaining embers. Fortunately no one was injured, and the police housing amazingly escaped serious damage. It took quite a while longer for my heart to stop pounding!
My “great idea” had terrorized ten families, totally pissed off the National Police, nearly blown up my own generator shed, and threatened to burn down the entire compound—not the sort of actions that instill trust and promote the rapport necessary for an advisor. It took a heap of apologies and an offer to pay for any damages to calm our neighbors down.
Of course, it did get rid of the grass and any resident critters, and it allowed us to clean up that section of our compound. There was, however, an unanticipated cost—a major loss of privacy. We hadn’t realized it before, but the grass screened the outhouse, the open-air piss tube, and the beach from the National Police housing. With the grass removed, the view from their back windows now encompassed it all. We slowly let the grass grow back, and my subordinate team members wisely and tactfully refrained from ever mentioning this misadventure in my presence.