I headed back toward An Khe, hurrying to make it back to the airfield. I was walking alone on a dirt road through the jungle. They had closed the road, and the whole outfit had been moved out, so there wasn’t any traffic. In fact, there was nothing: not a shack or any sign of people along the way. When I heard an engine, I spun around and saw a jeep coming my way. I waved it down.
There were three men in the jeep, the driver in civilian coveralls and the other two in military uniform. They stopped ahead of me. The driver said, “Hop in.” He didn’t even turn around. I jumped in the back.
“We gotta get to the village quick, man,” the good Samaritan said as he drove. “But we have a cardinal rule over here: never pass an American. Where’re you headed?”
“North,” I answered. “I’m lookin’ for somebody.”
“What?! This is a nice place to be looking for somebody,” he remarked.
I started to elaborate, and the guy whipped his head around and screeched to a halt.
“Holy Christ!! Chick!! What the hell?!!”
“Kevin?!!!!”
The good Samaritan was my friend Kevin McLoone, who was on my list! I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t even looking for him yet!
“What the hell are you doing here?!” Kevin asked, on the verge of shock.
“I’m here to find you!” I said. “And Rick, and Bobby, and Tommy and Joey and Rich and the other guys. I brought you some great beer from New York; because the gang wants you to know how much we appreciate you.”
The two soldiers in the jeep looked at each other wide eyed, and Kevin shook his head in disbelief. After a few seconds, he said, “Wow! That’s a helluva beer run!”
Luckily, I had enough of the local New York brands in my backpack to share with them and still have some left for Rick Duggan and some of the GIs with him, not to mention Bobby and Joey and Rich.
“Okay, Chick,” Kevin said. “What do you want me to do?”
I told Kevin I wished I could hang out with him for a while longer, but I’d never find all the guys on my list in time to return to my ship if I did.
“Can you get me to the airstrip as quickly as possible?”
“You got it, buddy,” Kevin said, flooring it through the jungle.
I passed out cans to Kevin and his buddies, whom Kevin introduced as Jim and Tony.
“I know they’re warm,” I apologized.
“Who cares?!” Jim exulted and popped open the can.
“Love that sound,” he said as he passed one can to Kevin. Then he opened his and took a long sip with closed eyes. Meanwhile, Tony chose to chugalug.
“Mmmmm. I haven’t had Rheingold for a year,” Jim noted.
“Dare I drink and drive?” Kevin asked rhetorically as he savored a sip.
Kevin had served four years in Vietnam in the US Marine Corps’ HMM-261 helicopter squadron known as the Raging Bulls, starting in 1963 up in Da Nang. President Kennedy was still alive then, and the American presence was on the downlow. The Raging Bulls were the third US Marines unit to arrive in Vietnam—only about 250 men, including pilots. They stayed in an old French Foreign Legion compound in Da Nang with two US Special Forces A-teams—also known as Green Berets—as well as two to three hundred ARVN (Army of the Republic of [South] Vietnam) paratroopers, and the tribal hill people known as the Montagnards.
The Montagnards were fiercely loyal to the US Special Forces, who were training them, even as they were treated like dirt by the South Vietnamese because they were ethnic minorities. Kevin said the Montagnards were still wearing loincloths when he first got there. They sensibly refused to eat C-rations and would hunt monkeys with small crossbows and poison-tipped arrows; or they’d convince a chopper pilot to pick up a pig or some chickens in a basket from their village in the mountains. Even though they were good fighters, every so often the tribal chief would declare that it was their time to drink a wormwood mash out of a communal bowl. It tasted like anisette but had a narcotic effect like absinthe—“like the crazy French painters used to drink,” Kevin said. They’d be out of commission for a couple of days, then it was back to fighting.
My friend had finished his tour the year before, but he’d learned so much about helicopters that now he’d come back with the private contractor Dynalectron as an aircraft electrician to help stop so many from being shot down, resulting in terrible casualties.
“The NVA and the VC were picking up the pilots’ radio signals on the FM band,” Kevin explained. “It was as if the pilots were announcing their imminent arrival.” He and his cohorts were installing signal-scrambling systems on every single chopper radio, eliminating the problem.
The last stretch was up a steep hill, and when we came over the top, I was so happy: the two-engine prop plane doing the 1300 mail run was there. But I couldn’t just walk on. Kevin escorted me to the pilot.
“I need to hitch a ride up north,” I said to him.
“Fine,” he replied. “Go into operations and show them your orders.”
“I don’t have any orders,” I confessed. The pilot sized me up for a minute, then said, “Well, at least go put your name on the manifest”—the flight’s list of passengers and crew.
So, I went inside “operations,” which basically consisted of a Quonset hut with a GI sitting at a folding table. I addressed him in that authoritative voice that had worked so well with the lieutenant in Qui Nhon:
“You’ve got a flight going north at 1300 hours?”
“Yes, sir,” the GI answered.
“Good,” I responded. “Put my name on the manifest: John Donohue. Put down . . .” I paused for effect. “‘Civilian.’”
He frowned as he squinted at me; then he nodded and wrote it down.
I went out with Kevin, and about a dozen GIs and two or three officers were waiting. Moments later, a GI with a clipboard arrived and read off the names, calling the officers onboard first. Then he said, “Wait a second. We got a civilian here?”
Gulp.
“Donohue!”
“Yeah!”
“Go ahead, sir, you can board now.” You know, like when the airlines board the priority-seating people on the plane first. Whew.
I turned to Kevin, who looked me right in the eye and said, “I gotta tell ya, Chick, in all my time here, I haven’t met anybody who’s not in the military or a civilian with work orders. Even the potheads avoid this place—they’re all hanging out in Chiang Mai over in Thailand. But you’re the first guy I’ve encountered who’s roaming around Vietnam looking for somebody. Good luck with your search, Chick.” We shook hands.
“Thanks, buddy. I’ll see ya back home,” I said and walked to the plane. As with Tommy, I prayed silently that we would meet up again.
I hopped on, followed by all the GIs, and we took off.