It’s muggy. The heat blasts through me the minute they open the door of the 707 that has brought its cargo of melancholy souls to this vast quagmire cleverly disguised as a nation fighting for its existence. It has been a typical MAC (Military Airlift Command) charter with the usual goat rodeo beginning at the departure station in the Replacement Depot in Oakland, California.
I arrived three days late for my reporting date because I finished off a 30 day pre-deployment leave with all the earmarks of a major bender. I was on my second tour going to the esteemed Republic of South Vietnam and had every intention of spending my last dime sucking up every deranged fantasy I could while I was still breathing and able. By the time I got to Oakland I didn’t have enough body fluids left to sweat properly. Actually going back to the war was looking pretty attractive. I had just enough of my uniform left (that I hadn’t given away as tokens of affection) to get in the front gate without the “Manners Police” giving me a hard time.
Oakland was the same as it had been since Korea, a warehouse full of scared teenagers with orders shipping them off to what they had been watching on the nightly news. The place smelled of fear with a capital “F.” You processed in and waited for your airlift, assigned to a holding company where you, as an NCO (noncommissioned officer), would be given charge of 40 or 50 junior enlisted to ensure they made it to the aircraft.
A couple of days babysitting the cannon fodder and you wanted to kill them yourself. Most of the poor bastards were infantry with a few other admin or techno-twinks thrown in for good measure. The kids going to line units tended to be of two personality types, the quietly resigned and the swaggering macho assholes. It didn’t matter which because underneath both types were scared shitless. The worst ones to put up with were the whiners going to tech jobs. They always had an excuse for any infraction. After a few judicious suggestions that you could get their orders changed to the infantry, the whining ceased.
While waiting for my lift, I spent three days going to the NCO club with some of the other Special Forces and Airborne types that were on their second or third tours as well. We avoided the cherries like the plague unless we were broke and they were willing to buy the drinks and not get too eager for combat stories. We also watched each other’s back so that some scum-sucking little Spec-6 from admin didn’t change our orders to the Ninth Infantry Division. This was a time-honored method of procurement by the Infantry for acquiring seasoned NCOs. They’d get some little dickweed in personnel to look for SF types and divert them at the Replacement Depot, thus they could avoid being accused of shanghaiing us at the reception point in Vietnam.
Airlift day came and we boarded TWA or whatever airline the Military Airlift Command had contracted. Regular airline, regular airline fare, this was during those heady days when they served decent food on American carriers and the hostesses were all pretty, perky, and didn’t look like your grandmother or have the attitude of a gut shot wolverine.
The 14 hour flight is a boring drudgery or drunken binge, depending on if you have money or not. NCOs can drink, but the lower enlisted swine are limited to two or three beers. The officer in charge of our lift is a major I knew from when he was a captain, so he and I are swapping lies with each other and watching the lieutenants trying desperately to get the stewardesses aroused, well, at least interested. Fat chance, Buckwheat. These girls make this trip twice a week, bringing FNGs (fucking new guys) in and taking survivors of their one-year tour out. They have heard enough lame lines to fill a set of encyclopedias. But the human libido is an amazing mechanism, and there is a constant stream of little pinheads taking shots at them. All part of the job; they take it well and still manage to be alluring little goddesses of the airways while serving up the food and drinks with good-natured grace.
The major is going up to some outfit called FANK, which is some sort of special project, working with the Cambodians. He offers to get me on the orders, but I’d worked with the Cambodes before and learned very quickly that the only thing faster at getting out of the line of fire than a Cambodian was a hero assigned to Saigon. Nope, that is not for me. I want to be surrounded by Iron Age warriors from the hill tribes, my kind of people. I politely decline and the hours drift between catnapping and quiet conversation. We start the descent into Saigon and the newbies all gawk out the windows as the ground comes into view. It’s raining outside, the beads of rain streaking the windows as we bump a few times and then we are on the ground taxiing to the gate area.
The engines wind down and the intercom comes on with the captain jocularly welcoming us to our destination. After we stop and the engines shut down, a squat, overweight sergeant first class comes onboard barking instructions, the usual litany of dos and don’ts. After this stirring bit of introduction, we soon disembark to walk the few meters to the holding area just inside the terminal. After a 30 minute wait in the sweltering heat, the pus-gut from the “repo-depot” comes up and officiously instructs me to get the troops in line. I look him over for a moment and tell him to take his fat ass out of my face and get to it himself. He starts to say something when the major tells him basically the same thing, but adds an extra comment about how a reassignment to a line unit might do wonders for his waistline. He stomps off to “arf” at the privates and we wait until the buses pull up and they start loading everyone on for the trip over to the in-country reception area. The kids are all wide-eyed from the exotic smells and crowded streets packed with moped and cycle traffic. In the stalls that line the roads all manner of consumer products are marketed. Thin ascetic looking Vietnamese hawk everything from WD-40 to stereos. There is a kaleidoscope of garishly painted signs and a proliferation of girls in brightly colored ao dais with the slit down the side, the Suzy Wong skirt dress of Vietnam.
A few of the replacements are astute enough to notice that the buses all have an armed guard and the windows are screened with mesh to keep the odd Viet Cong or drunk cowboy from throwing a grenade through the window. We wind through Saigon to the barracks and the in-processing point where we are issued our jungle fatigues and another clothing packet, US Army, Tropical, one set each, and processed to our units. With me is another old troop, Bernie O. Bernie had been in the original Air Assault which eventually became the mighty First Cavalry Division. He’s been around the military so long he’s developed the easy grace of a seasoned pickpocket in a crowded subway car.
Bernie has a round Irish face that speaks of too much blarney and liberal amounts of fine Irish whiskey, which season his outlook on the way of the world. He is in his mid-forties, has a gimp leg, and the exalted rank of Buck Sergeant. One would suppose, because of his age, that here is a former master sergeant who has fallen from grace and is working his sins off in order to retire, but this is not the case with Bernie. His is a simple case of getting out of the Army in the late fifties and pursuing a career in the then high-tech field of refrigeration. Bad location and even worse accounting skills left him with the only safe alternative of returning to the “Great Green Womb.” So here he is, back in the Army and absolutely thrilled with the prospect of soldiering again and, more importantly, away from the spit and polish of garrison duty. Add to that the certain prospect of picking up rank faster and the opportunity for a bit of larceny and what more could a man ask for?
After an afternoon of in-processing, we are assigned a barracks and the time is ours. I am lying on the bunk in the transient barracks as Bernie comes bustling through the door with a pleased look on his face and a net bag full of tepid Ba Mi Ba beers in the heavy gauge 14 oz. glass bottles. You get an extra two ounces of beer with the added bonus that the bottle, empty or full, is the perfect tool for adjusting the headspace on the odd marine or sailor who wants to get froggy.
He plops down in the bunk opposite from me and grins that lopsided, wiseass grin that the Irish have perfected over the centuries. He pulls out two bottles from the bag, hands me one, then pulls out a CO2 fire extinguisher that is obviously missing from someone’s wall bracket and sprays the beers liberally. Voila! Instant, chilled beer. I take a long slow pull, relishing the sharp tang of the beer and the ambience of brewing that uses formaldehyde in the aging process. It gives you a heady hangover, but it is still better than that swill, Black Label.
“I went over to see if we got orders yet,” Bernie starts and then smiles. I smell the conspiracy coming. “The Infantry guys managed to poach a couple of the new kids and they had us on orders to go to the Big Red One.”
I know tragedy hasn’t overcome us because he is in a really good mood. The Big Red One is the 1st Infantry Division. With our ranks, had we been shanghaied, we would end up as platoon sergeants. The proud members of this division put the emphasis on the last word in their nickname; those of us who never want to set foot in it put the emphasis on the second word, “red.” I’m waiting patiently for him to lay out the masterful stroke of wheedling and scheming that he has accomplished in order to save us from a fate worse than death.
He takes a long pull on his beer, belches, and then continues. “I ran into one of the E-8s that run the admin section. He was in Germany with me in ’58. I was his platoon sergeant and he was a Davy Crockett crewman.”
“Anyway, he owes me a few favors, so he tells me that the only way to get up to Nha Trang, to Group Headquarters is either know God and have him protect you from the press gangs from the infantry or take a voluntary to an outfit called CCN.”
I am beginning to feel queasy about this. For sure the guy he is talking to is another Mick and there is only one group that can outdo them in fucking each other and that’s attorneys. And if I remember rightly, the Davy Crockett System was a jeep-mounted device that fired a huge projectile, like a foot in diameter, which was a nuclear warhead. In fact, the manual said to put the jeep in gear, fire, and accelerate away keeping a ridgeline between you and the target. How quaint, Bernie’s E-8 is not only some fellow traveler, but is obviously not too bright.
On top of that, wherever or whatever CCN is, it is obviously something someone wants to keep quiet or they would have spelled it out. A simple rule in the Army is that if it is called by its initials, it’s a bad start. You should worry even more if the initials are real short, because it indicates the speed at which your ass gets blown away.
Now, I had specifically sent Bernie over to the S-l to arrange that we get orders assigning us to the 5l SFGA (Special Forces Group, Airborne), which is what we had on our original orders and to use their phone to call Nha Trang and tell them we were at the depot. If he wasn’t able to do that he was to call House 39 and get someone to come over and rescue us from the clutches of the legs. These were pretty simple instructions, for Christ’s sake. Even a Mick could follow them. I knew we could get assigned to the Mike Force. They always needed bodies in the Mike Force because it wandered around out there where all the bad people were and picked fights with them. Besides, I knew a number of the guys and I wanted to go where there were people that I could trust.
I’m beginning to sweat because he says, “I got us both on orders to go up to Da Nang and,” he pauses, “I was able to get all those cherries freed from their infantry assignment as well. They are going with us.”
Suddenly I am fully alarmed. My warning bells are ringing and my memory banks are starting to wind up. This is starting to smell like bad, bad news. It’s obvious that this is an SF assignment, because anything that will get you away from the Division press gangs has to have some heavy priority on it. Add to that the fact that the cherries were able to get on the list, and the little voice in the back of my head is screaming, “Uh-oh,” in big red letters.
Bernie is obviously pleased with himself and doesn’t want to hear that if the assignment can spring guys right out of the infantry press gangs, it’s got to have some major priority. With priority comes bad operations, lots of people shooting at you, helicopters and jets falling out of the air, and lots of folks going home with missing parts or in body bags. This is not good. I reach over and liberate another beer from the bag and lower its body temperature with the fire extinguisher. Bernie is still rattling on about how lucky we are. This will be a real combat assignment, nothing but SF brothers, blah, blah, blah. I’m beginning to suspect that the O’Reilly in S-l had some sort of grudge against Bernie. Maybe Bernie was slapping leather to the guy’s wife in the distant past and now it was payback time. I can see him grinning like a shark as he types up our orders. Hail Caesar, we who are about to die….
I come back from nightmare land with Bernie saying, “Geez, you look a little pale, brother. Maybe you need to take a cold shower, get acclimated…” I’m spinning in a vortex of bad vibes and suddenly realizing why the Irish end up in every front line outfit since King Henry beat the snot out of the French nobility at Agincourt. It’s obviously a genetic thing that attracts them toward loud noises and screaming. They probably think it’s a wake in progress, ergo plenty of free booze, so let’s get involved.
It’s so hot that I am starting to melt, but the beer is giving me a mellow feeling. Well, mellow enough that I don’t throttle Bernie. I look at him and make sure I enunciate the words carefully.
“ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?” He looks at me with the hurt expression that only your family and ex-girlfriends who show up at your wedding seem to be able to pull off.
“What are you pissed about? We ain’t going to some leg infantry outfit; I tried to call the number you gave me but no one answered. Then Kevin suggested that we could guarantee not going if we wanted to volunteer for this MACV-SOG thing.”
I am trying to comprehend why my spine feels like I just pissed on an electric fence. Then it hits me, CCN, Chuckle Chuckle North, Command and Control North. Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds! Chaos! Oh yeah, now, I remember.
You see, with an operation where you are using company-sized maneuver forces, it’s go out, scrap it up, and the bad guys have 200 plus targets to shoot at. They move out of your way if they aren’t big enough or can’t get the drop on you. From what I remember, SOG is Recon with a capital “R.” It is deep penetration and no artillery support because you are in his back yard. There is nothing but air support, provided, of course, that it can get to you in time. You would have better luck getting help in the Bermuda Triangle. I have a couple of friends that are there. They are good men, lots of combat time; I remember something about it being voluntary. Ah, that’s better, that little caveat might be a possible loophole. By now I’m on my third beer, so I decide to let Bernie off the hook.
“Oh yeah, Kevin. I knew it, another O’Fitzfuckyerbuddy.” He is miffed that I yelled at him when he thinks he has done us both a great favor. Bernie can’t know what he is in for, so I smile my brightest scamming smile, finish my beer, pull another one out and frost it down. Then I lean back against the wall and fix him with my most sincere look.
“Jesus, I’m sorry Bernie, I must still be affected by the drop in pressure from the long flight. Great! You got us a SF assignment. What the hell, I didn’t want to go to the Mike Force. I would just as soon play this tour out in some cushy job. It’s probably one of those show camps. You know, where all the bunkers are covered with cement and whitewashed, complete with a stencil of the unit crest on each one. Yes, that’s it, probably right outside, where’d you say it was? Da Nang? Yeah, great place. All you do is let visiting Congressmen and reporters and Donut Dollies fly in and you give them the grand tour of a real SF A Camp. Probably has its own laundry with starched tiger stripes for the uniform of the day. Shit, we’ll probably be able to drive into Da Nang and go to the whorehouses, every night we aren’t being interviewed by Huntley and Brinkley, that is.”
He is trying to get that Gaelic mush that he calls a brain around the fact that apparently I am no longer mad, but I can see that he is nervous about the flash of panic and terror that had been me a mere thirty seconds before. He gets into the swing of it, though, and spills what “good ol’ Kevin” had told him.
“Yeah, uh maybe. Uh, I don’t know. Kevin said that they run combat missions out from bases they call launch sites, so, uh, I guess we will get a chance to go in the field sometimes. It can’t be too bad, ’cause Kevin says that he has a waiting list of guys that want to go there.”
Yeah, I’m thinking about good ol’ Kevin. I’m going to find good ol’ Kevin and shove a good ol’ fragmentation grenade up his ass as soon as I can get him isolated. Bernie is still pleased as punch. Should I tell him that there isn’t any place in this bloody country that has a waiting list, unless it is the airport, and has to do with a flight out of here?
I drift back from my thoughts and Bernie is asking about whether I’ve ever heard about CCN. Oh yes, I think to myself, and if I share it with you, you’re going to shit yourself, you dumb Mick. But I have a sweeter disposition than that. I look at him and give him my best “dealing with a lieutenant” look and tell him blandly, “I’ve heard a few things. I think Hardy’s brother was in CCN or something.” I look at him innocently. He cocks his head as he tries to connect the name with a face and history.
“Do you mean that guy in the Seventh that’s all fucked up with wounds and is half crazy?” You can see that the thought of wounds and insanity are bringing back bad memories from Korea.
“Yeah, that’s him, but I think he got all screwed up on his second tour in some A Camp, like up North. I’m sure he wasn’t in CCN when all that bad shit happened.” Yeah suffer, you dumb Mick. I knew Bachelor and he hadn’t been up at CCN he’d been in CCC (Command and Control Central). Not only was he shot up like the lead dove on opening day of hunting season, he was mad as a March hare as well, and I’m sure it didn’t come from his upbringing, even if he did come from Arkansas. And supposedly, CCC was a quieter operational area than CCN.
Maybe I will go find this Kevin O’Fuckyou and kidnap him. I dream about making him get out of the chopper dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit and run around with a boom box playing very loud soul music, deep inside Laos. At gun point. That will drive the little pissers into a murderous rage. And he won’t be hard to find or miss ’cause I’m personally going to set fire to the bamboo so they know exactly where he is. If he ever gets back, bet he won’t screw over a real soldier ever again. This has been another lesson in survival. It is normally someone else’s idea that puts you in harm’s way, not your own. Never, never hang around with the Irish if you want to keep your skin intact.
About the time I am finalizing the great “sell Kevin to a cannibal tribe” scenario in my head, our pastoral respite is interrupted by the loud entry of eight or so of the shining faced liberators of the oppressed, graduating class. They are resplendent in their Tropical Worsted and berets screwed on their heads, like little molded green hero toppers. They are a bit hesitant about interrupting at first, probably because we are in conference, but I flash them the same ether smile that has the Mick under control.
Bernie talks to them and comes back. “Hey, those new guys right out of training group want to go downtown tonight. They said they’d treat if we showed them where to go. They’re real happy to be going with us up to Da Nang and all.”
Our aircraft will be in tomorrow. We are restricted to the reception billets until then. To any red-blooded American fighting man worth his salt that is an open invitation to find the nearest hole in the fence and get himself downtown. After all, we are here in “the Nam” up to our eyebrows with all you’ve ever heard about in Far East exotica. We are separated by a measly wire barrier and a legion or two of MPs. What the hell are they going to do if they catch you? Send you to Nam?
I’m mulling this new possibility over in my mind, one last little fling before they march us out into the arena with the big cats, and at the same time, fighting the inclination to operate on that plan to do something particularly nasty to Kevin. I decide that the idea of being paid for howling, and the prospect of being next to something that doesn’t smell like Aqua Velva is better. We will have to borrow heavily from the new guys. Shit, in a month, half of them will be either dead or shot up, so it’s pretty good odds on the pay back.
Bernie and I sozzle our way to the shower with a cold one retrieved from the diminishing supply of beer in the sack. I stand under the spray reflecting on the situation and figuring out some sort of scheme to get out of it without demonstrating to all and sundry that I am more interested in breathing than in furthering the myth of The Green Berets. I already have all the medals I want. In fact, if I can give a couple back and pretend that I am in danger that will be just fine with me.
The water is hot and the pressure blasts most of the angst from me so that by the time I emerge I am actually feeling quite smug and happy. Fuck it. I might as well have some fun. Saigon is one of those cities where it is a perpetual Friday night. With every possible vice you could imagine and thrills, good food, and ambience to boot. I’m in the place that has shaped my adulthood. The place grows on you.
We get dressed in Tropical Worsted uniforms, or TWs, with all the good stuff, as we say, fifteen dollars worth of assorted ribbons and shiny stuff, then make our way down the hillside to a hole in the concertina wire which will provide entry to our fantasies. Hole is a misnomer. There is a well-beaten footpath out past the bunker line where the REMFs (rear echelon mother fuckers) are pulling their guard shift. The trick is to find the area that isn’t guarded by the MPs, but rather by the clerk typists and admin bunnies who are doing their punishment tour. MPs are the same the world over, little self-important assholes who, when given a whistle and an armband, feel it’s their duty to fuck with anyone they can in order to prove they have a dick. I hate MPs. It has always been my opinion that we should be joining forces with the VC to fight MPs. I bet they have the same type of road guard assholes in their army. Let’s make the world a better place; let’s kill all the MPs.
We wind our way through the wire quick as Jack is nimble and flag down one of the garishly lit tricycle buses. I tell the driver to take us to Mama Bic’s. Everyone knows where Mama Bic’s is. From this bordello-bar-safehouse unofficial Special Forces headquarters, we can get to the rest of what Tu Do Street has to offer. We are snuggled into the pedi-cab like sardines, so the driver flags down another and, after a quick exchange of dollars, four of the guys pile into it. I tell all of them to keep their arms inside and take off the big Seiko watches because the street cowboys will strip them off your arm faster than you can blink. Besides, we can always use them for trading material if the night gets really interesting.
After about 20 minutes we pull up to Mama Bic’s. The place is a pulsing shifting tide of GIs and hookers, mixed with the odd construction crew, CIA spook, war correspondent, and a sprinkling of minor functionaries from the embassies. The big dogs don’t come here; they have their own set of upscale establishments that sell the same thing with a more sedate face on it. Besides, who wants to be around that crowd? In fact, hanging around with that crowd is a good invitation to get caught by a bicycle bomb. You don’t have to worry about that at Mama Bic’s. She has paid off everyone who might have a grudge against each other; bombs are bad for business. Also, this is the unofficial meeting place for Special Forces in Saigon, so I can catch up with buddies and scout a prospect for getting out of going up north to be sacrificed on some weird altar of certain death.
As we weave our way inside and find a place big enough to seat our little band, there is a Philippine band rocking out a rendition of “Ploud Mally.” My ass hasn’t even settled into the vinyl seat when a waitress arrives wanting to know what we want. Eight or nine of Mama’s girls imploring you to buy them “tea” accompany her. I’ve already told the new guys to not waste money on the tea because it costs what champagne costs at a San Francisco cafe and it really is tea. If the little darlings want to drink buy them a beer or whiskey, or if you are a classy guy like me, feed them cognac in the hope they get drunk and are in the freebie mood. Save your money for the more important stuff boys, mainly getting Uncle Nick drunk and laid.
The place is like old home week. Within a few minutes we are safely nestled in our booth with the crowd washing around us like a sea of uniforms, and an equal number of brightly colored, undulating hips of oriental femininity. My lethargy has been supplanted by cognac and coke, tepid, just right for the mood I’m in. Bernie and I hold court with the newbies. I am imparting my vast knowledge of the etiquette of nation-saving graces and how not to get robbed by the flotsam of beggars and Saigon cowboys. Bernie is off in some dreamland of having “arrived,” so the world is perfect.
We are indulging in the finely honed practice that follows every army since the boys from the Tiber marched over the Alps, or good old Hammurabi’s cousins mounted a chariot and whisked off over the sand dunes, that time honored practice of planting of the seed. Praise Bacchus! Fermented juices to numb the mind are what we need, and to top off the evening, something soft to prove that you are a man. Shit, I’m getting philosophical. Within the space of ten minutes semi-drunk and totally drunk, familiar faces come, stop, and exchange the complimentary “What the fuck are you doing back here?” salutes.
I spend a few moments with each old friend discussing the usual: Who bought the farm? How? What’s going on up-country? Who’s where? What is open, project-wise? Within an hour I am up to date on the situation in-country, and what I haven’t heard, Bernie has.
We are comparing notes and I still haven’t told him the royal fucking we are in for when we get to Da Nang. What the hell, he didn’t do it out of malice. But, Kevin? Kevin is a dark ember in my heart.
Bernie is still basking in the awed gapes when he tells people that he is going to CCN. Thank God he is so trashed that he can’t discern the fare-thee-well looks. The new guys are soaking up the ambience and a couple have already slipped upstairs and been relieved of their pent-up passions. From the looks on their faces it hasn’t been a Pearl Buck experience. You quickly learn that heaven has claws. In a combat zone, there isn’t any romance about it, just plain old needs to be taken care of clinically for the exchange of dollars. Soon we are back to the only family you really have, your own kind. One of our heroes has the mistaken assumption that fucking has given him ownership rights and we have to drag some 230 pound zoomy off him when he protests the attentions said airman is paying to his recently enjoined spirit.
Mama Bic shows up and starts hollering about me being “numbah ten,” me “long time Vietnam no bling trouble,” the usual litany of recriminations. The use of the number ten connotes the basement of the scale, in behavior or situation, anywhere in Vietnam. It is all high entertainment. We get the airman back to sanity with a couple of well-placed kidney shots and a good stiff kick to his solar plexus. While he’s gasping for air, Bernie stomps on his hands for good measure. You have to love the Gaels; if his hands are broken he can’t fight that well. We are out the door and down the street. We stop at a French restaurant and have a sumptuous meal, complete with wines and brandies. A couple of the kids have passed out in the soup, so they miss the excellent duck with saffron rice. By the time we leave we are well within the limit of destitution. We are swaying back and forth like a huge animal, half of which keeps collapsing in derision and an occasional regurgitation stop. We have gathered up other fellow comrades in arms, fellow brothers in our revelry. There are several regular infantry types with us, four or five marines and the odd Navy guy, by the time we begin to start working up the logistics of getting back to the base. Just when I have exhausted all the fresh ideas I had in that quarter, entertainment and transport arrives in the form of three jeeps of Military Police and their White Mice counterparts (White Mice is our pet name for the Vietnamese MPs). Three jeeps and there we all are, needing a ride. We are musketeers; all for one, one for all. I am certain that these fellows will assist us in getting back to the base, all of us. I am sure. This is perfect.
The staff sergeant in charge of this band of society’s finest, jumps out and starts demanding passes, IDs, and berating all for shoddy uniforms, all the while babbling threats like, “We are going to arrest you and haul you in, by God.” He doesn’t even clear the sidewalk before Bernie short jabs him in the face and makes his nose look like a liquid rose. The prick drops like a ton of bricks and there is a nanosecond of shocked silence as everyone freezes.
The “gyrenes” are on the other five before they can react. They go through the MPs like a school of piranha. Seconds later, it is all over and the entire shiny helmet liner crowd is down and out.
The Marines are considered in many quarters as the finest assault force on the planet. You have a beach that needs to be taken, an island to be leveled, some banana dictator that needs to be peeled? Call up the Marines. That’s what they are for. And even though there is always intra-service rivalry we have taken them into our little band of brothers and nary a bad word has passed between us. The nearest I could figure is that they were returning the favor by clearing obstacles ahead of our return to base. Besides these were Army MPs, so they didn’t count much in their book.
But now we have a problem, actually several, but we do have the ability to get away if we use a little savvy. We need to detain the gendarmes until we can get away and before more of their little companions stumble onto this particular indiscretion. So we get organized and drag them out of sight. After delivering a couple of judicious kicks to make sure we have getaway time, we handcuff them all to a stout drainage pipe in an alley. Their guns go in the nearest canal. We load as many of us as we can into the vehicles and take the back streets to the edge of the sprawling base we had left many hours before. Along the way there is the temptation to try out the sirens and lights, but sanity breaks out. We creep along the outer perimeter of the base’s defenses as we try to find the particular hole in the fence we came through earlier.
After what seems like a very long time, we finally find the hole. Actually, we stumble onto the entrance by almost running over a perfectly good staff sergeant who had passed out going into the wire. We get all the lads out, pick up the poor sod from the Ninth Division, and start through the wire. I figure we have probably roused the entire Provost from all of Saigon, so Bernie and I are last going up. In a stroke of tactical genius Bernie suggests that we torch one of the jeeps. That ought to give us breathing room he says; they won’t come too close until they figure out if it’s an ambush. In fact, he is all for going back and getting some more MPs and leaving their bodies around the jeeps to dress up the scene. This of course endears him to the “Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children” crowd. I manage to get him calmed down, but I have to promise him that we will do something particularly nasty to the MPs in the future; I think I also agreed that we would adopt two of the gyrenes as well.
The kid at the bunker is some clerk from Ohio. Bernie and I stop long enough to tell him to keep mum. No problem, everyone has had a bad experience with MPs.
Lingua franca. Everyone hates them. It’s almost dawn when we get back to our barracks and we have to catch an early flight. We crash on our bunks and before I drift off in the haze of alcohol and camaraderie, I’m of a mind to let Bernie in on the disaster that waits for us in Da Nang.
* * *
The heat is oppressive. Even with two of the big GI floor fans on me I am a sodden mess. My head feels like someone wrapped it in aluminum foil, and then took a hammer to it. I am drifting in that state that is not quite awake. I don’t want to wake up because that would only make me feel worse. There is nothing nastier than sweating cognac and rum and whatever else I may have consumed last night. I swallow and it feels like sandpaper on my throat and there is the distinct taste of something only a lizard would pass.
I climb out of the fog and realize where I am. I look at my watch, trying to get my eyes to focus. It’s 5 AM. I lie back onto the pillow and start to stretch. God, that hurts. Why do I do this to myself? I slowly get into the mode of rising and think how good a hot shower will feel. I sit up.
“Gagh!” I gradually force myself into the shower and take a long hot one. I shave without cutting my throat and get dressed in a set of jungle fatigues. The buses will be here at eight to take us out to the airport. We will travel from here to Nha Trang. Good old SFOB (Special Forces Operational Base). At least by the time we get there we can get a cold beer. I go down and roust Bernie from his bunk. He looks like something the dogs have dragged in from an Algerian alley. We go to the mess hall and wolf down breakfast and what seems like several quarts of hot black coffee. By this time we are the most wide-awake corpses in Vietnam.
The bus ride out to the airport is punctuated by the arrival in my life of one more idiot. This is in the form of a certain Staff Sergeant Booth. Right out of Appalachia, about twenty-five, dumb as carrots. He lists off all the dos and don’ts, and a litany of dweeb rules that are meant to impress the privates with how important he is. I am too worn out to cause trouble. Bernie and I can only snicker at the little prick. I haven’t got time for this. I am too busy vacillating between a wish to die right now and a wish to regurgitate the horrible slimy weasel that has crawled down my throat.
Our flight to Nha Trang is a short hop. We are on the ground before noon. A short ride to the SFOB and then we spend the afternoon in-processing. We are going up to Da Nang tonight. They must be in a hurry to kill us off. By the time the evening rolls in I have consumed enough aspirin to deaden the San Andreas Fault.
I am in the transient barracks, which is behind the NCO club, with the large floor fan driving a hot sirocco across the room. I hate air conditioning, preferring to get acclimated to the heat. I have shut the air conditioner off in the two-man room and ventilated the place by forcing the window open. Bernie comes in and says we have an 1830 lift to Da Nang. It is about a four-hour wait until they take us to the airfield so we spend the time just kicking back. We have a few beers with some guys coming in for a promotion board from one of the outlying A Camps. I hadn’t been in the U.S. long, but it seems to me that the war has taken on an intensity and a frenzy that wasn’t there before I left on leave. We hear about some of the leg units refusing to fight. Not good. Of course with the drug problems and all the other breakdowns in discipline, it was bound to happen. The military can only be efficient if it maintains its order.
The regular units are full of draftees and, of course, McNamara’s 100,000. These are draftees and enlistees that came in under a program that lowered the IQ and several other inductee requirements. Now even the poor and deranged will get their chance to die for God and country. The results have been enlistees who are unable, and in many cases, unwilling to become soldiers. With the waning popularity of the war comes the concept that, as a soldier, you can refuse to do what you are ordered to do. Sorry boys, this is the United States Army and that particular fantasy is called mutiny. Then there is the new term “fragging” that has become the watchword for NCOs and officers in conventional outfits. Fragging is when someone who disapproves of you rolls a fragmentation grenade into your bunker on a dark night.
I’d love to be in a unit where some loudmouthed creature threatens me with a fragging. I would wait until some dark night when they are all sitting there smoked to the gills and I’d roll a couple of frags in on them. After the smoke cleared, I’d order any that may have survived to haul the corpses out. If a survivor so much as blinked I would cap him. Two can play that game. There are stupid officers, stupid policies, stupid operations, and a host of other stupid situations, which go along with the other rigors of this occupation. That’s the Army. Your job as an NCO is to accomplish the mission and get your men back, in one piece if possible. Nothing is more destructive to that effort than one troublemaker who gets away with it. It only leads to more miscreants thinking they can do the same.
Everyone is afraid to confront the problem of fragging head on. Too bad, that crowd will come back to haunt this country later. Of course, the McNamara 100,000 program mostly encompasses the minorities, so you have an even larger pool of the bizarre and the unwilling filling the ranks. Everyone is becoming “sensitive” to the voice of the minorities. I don’t see myself as what they call “whitey.” I personally had nothing to do with oppressing anyone. And as far as the historical record goes, the attitudes that the races had prior to my being delivered onto this mud ball are just that, history. I was called; I came to serve; and I get the same opportunity to get my ass shot off as everyone else. That is what citizenship is all about. I don’t understand this jive about inequality. Not that the problem doesn’t exist in Vietnam, but that fight isn’t to be fought here. We will settle that when we get done with the job we are here to do.
If someone wants to change all that by refusing, well, kick the shithead out and strip him of his citizenship. You don’t want to fight? Good, go to some third world shit hole and live, but you aren’t going to enjoy the fruits of my labors. I have watched the Army and the country change over the last ten years to the point where it seems that anyone with a bitch, who whines loud enough, has that spineless crowd in Washington pissing all over themselves. The people that inhabit Special Forces have the same ideals and outlooks that exemplify a volunteer outfit. They’ve got the same job, the same danger, the same bullshit to put up with, OD (olive drab) green in color. Of course, the people that make up Special Forces are probably not a good barometer for social tolerance, since most would heartily agree that anyone not in Special Forces is a sniveler.
Bernie and I spend the afternoon gathering information on CCN. It isn’t rosy. But it is voluntary. It doesn’t much matter; we have orders to go and we will go. I have never found anything to be as bad as it is normally reported. Besides, I have always been a volunteer and that’s SF—triple volunteers. How bad could it be?
I am soon to find out that I should sometimes listen to the majority. We spend the time at Nha Trang getting processed in and as the day wears on I am actually starting to feel human again. The SFOB has all the comforts of home and is a bustle of activity. This is the nerve center of SF operations in-country, so at some point you see everyone coming through here. We are just faces in the crowd here, just another batch of personnel being moved up-country to an assignment. I have always hated this place because it is too much like the stateside forts. There are plenty of self-important little assholes with their rulebooks clutched tightly to their chests. I am impatient to get where we are going. It’s an old adage that the farther from the flagpole, the less chicken shit.
The truth is that any time the Army gets somewhere they can put up permanent buildings or stretch out the tents, there is a hurried rush to make it all neat and trim. This goes with the ordered mindset of militaries. Everything must be in line and dressed in the right dress. This, of course, attracts the worst sort of people, like MPs, staff flunkies, rising stars of the rear echelon, and worst of all, those parsimonious souls that feel it is their duty to instill discipline in those beneath them. Thank God for the VC who trundle out occasionally and drop a few 122mm doses of reality into this place and kill a few. If they weren’t out there, this place would be full of REMFs. All the more reason to go to some remote outpost and spend your nights hunkered down in a bunker, shooting rats with a silenced twenty-two for entertainment. None of the aforementioned riffraff out there, it’s much too messy.