I awaken in the land of the Philistines. I am in a C-130 winging my way to Da Nang with thirteen cherries for Christ’s sake, what could be unluckier? I look over at Bernie as we begin our descent into Da Nang Airbase. He is sleeping with his head propped against the pallet on the back of the ship. He looks very Leprechaun-ish, with a line of drool coming out of the left comer of his mouth. Charming. He is probably dreaming of some sort of boiled stew dish and a pint of Guinness.
As we begin our landing approach, we hit thermal turbulence at about a thousand feet. Bernie wakes up and the newbies stir as well. There is nothing like taking a nap on a C-130 to refresh you. Welcome to the answer to insomnia conveniently provided by the US Air Force and built by the lowest bidder.
Bump, bump and the snarling of the engines becomes a crescendo as the crew of highly paid aerial truck drivers reverses the props to slow us down. The plane taxis to the ramp. The crew chief lowers the back ramp with the screaming of hydraulics as a backdrop and a blast of hot humid air replaces the cabin atmosphere. Mixed in with the fetid air is the aroma of burning kerosene. Ah, just right. This is a warm comforting smell.
The bird never winds down completely. It will refuel here, take on more passengers, and then go north to Quang Tri. We grab our gear and file off the rear of the bird. The exhaust from the engines and backwash from the props pushes at us as we walk over to the lee side of the nearest bomb revetment.
The noise of the idling engines is supplemented by the laboring sound of a deuce and a half which rounds the comer of the ready ramp and pulls up next to us. The truck is painted black. There is no canvas top over the driver’s cab and on the back are two Americans and about twelve of the most evil-looking Chinese Nungs I have ever seen. They are armed to the teeth with CAR-15s, lots of ammo, grenades, claymores, and wearing some sort of sterile fatigues for a uniform. They also appear to be seriously impaired by the sheer amount of equipment they are carrying. Armed to the teeth doesn’t completely describe this crowd. They have a very strange looking set of combat harnesses. What I notice mostly is that six canteen covers have replaced the ammunition pouches, and there appear to be six or more magazines shoved in each one. The two Americans jump down, and as one peels off to go into the flight office, the other directs the Nungs to get all their gear on board the plane we just vacated.
The American that went into the head shed comes back and as he nears us he looks us over like we were fresh steaks at the butcher shop, laughs to himself and says, “Welcome to Chuckle Chuckle North. If you’re lucky you will have a bad accident on the way to the camp and get medevaced before you get to Recon Company.” Then he walks up the back ramp of the bird. The C-130 closes and the engines wind up as it pulls out to the taxiway. The noise abates and I turn to look more closely at our transport. The truck is so ratty that it looks like someone retrieved it from the scrap yard.
Our driver is dressed in the same style uniform, but has what appears to be a water polo helmet on for headgear. It’s bright red with the number 666 in white across the front. He is in his late thirties or early forties and is as bizarre as the team that just departed. He looks crookedly at us, then horse coughs from underneath the biggest handlebar mustache I’ve seen in awhile.
“You waiting for a fucking invite?” he growls. “Get your gear on board. I’m your duly appointed official greeter, driver, and protector of your sad asses until we get to the camp.” With that last bit of information, he pulls out a Thompson submachine gun with a drum magazine and waves it in the air for emphasis. The cherries load their gear hastily onto the back of the truck and I follow suit. The newbies settle into the back while I climb into the cab. All are ready to go, except Bernie, who is standing next to the driver’s side of the deuce. The driver is looking over Bernie like a panel of mothers-in-law. He is apparently trying to place the round Irish face with some distant past association. The light must have come on because he sighs and then squints real hard.
“Were you ever in the Eleventh Airborne? Or in the 502n? Yer sad sack Irish mug looks familiar.” Bernie looks at him, throws his bag up in the truck and starts to climb into the cab.
“Fuck you, Stevie boy. You always was a loudmouth sorry excuse for a bowel movement. I must have fallen from grace if you are part of this outfit.” They both are grinning now as Bernie sits in the cab, squeezing me between them.
Oh great, fallen in amongst the poetic tragedy crowd. The mere act of being with two Irish in a combat zone is a patent solution to worrying about a long and peaceful life. I am trying to remember if the name on the uniform is an Irish name. It doesn’t matter, because the name sounds like it has been infected by Gaelic, and that is close enough. As the truck winds through the streets of Da Nang, I find out that Bernie and Stevie, here, apparently had been in Korea together. I also find out that our escort is a Distinguished Service Cross winner from that late, great, police action.
But there is more good news about Stevie. He apparently has a steel plate in his head from wounds suffered in that last one. As a result, he has express written instructions from every exalted medical facility connected to the military that he is never, never, to consume alcohol, a fact which the good sergeant has chosen not only to ignore, but to flaunt in the face of reason. I am quickly pulled into the warm embrace of veterans; our escort has kindly brought some beer and a bottle off Bushmill’s to make the journey less tedious. The cherries are relegated to gawking at the scenery.
I notice that there appears to be two rules to the good sergeant’s driving. They are: go as fast as you can and, if anything appears to be on a collision course with the vehicle, honk the horn. The “horn” is some hurricane powered air horn, concealed beneath the hood. When the scenery gets a bit more open with paddies off to the right, he punctuates the sound of the horn by using the Thompson to fire a couple of short bursts into the air or off into the rice paddies. This gives him great pleasure and after awhile he lets Bernie be the horn honker, which seems to give Bernie a feeling of old home week. Me? I just suck on the beer. I want to stay away from the rye. It’s far too early to get into that sort of suffering. I am drifting over the rationale of acting like this in broad daylight. I know what it is like out in the boonies and on the A Camps. This kind of behavior is commonplace with those little rascals, but this is a major metropolis. You could get away with these sorts of indiscretions in the backwaters, but not here.
There is no sense of guilt or apprehension. It would appear he does this with impunity; ergo he must know something I don’t. Besides, it is too weighty a problem to worry about in the hot sun. I glance back at the rear of the truck where the cherries are; they are quite obviously flabbergasted by this behavior. Give them a few weeks. This ain’t Smoke Bomb Hill. This is the Nam. God, I love a war zone. It encourages the eccentricities in all of us.
We wind over the I Corps bridge and out towards the east. Our driver is droning on as if he were a tour guide in Hollywood. Here is the China Beach Hospital where all the round eye nurses are. That is the German Hospital ship where all the round eye nurses that speak German are. Hmm, German nurses, I like this place already. We make a turn and start south on the main hardball. We come to a wide spot in the road with a rat’s nest of shanties to the right. He down shifts and informs us that this is “Gonorrhea Gulch.” He drones on as we pass a large American compound on the left, the Eightieth Group where the MPs are. We roar down the highway. In the distance we can see a mountain that seems to grow right up out of the seaside and after about twenty minutes, we come to the front gate of a compound that is right on the beach. To our right is a huge trash dump with hundreds of Vietnamese picking amongst the garbage and trash. The dump appears to be run by Americans and there are several Army skip loaders and a D-7 Cat moving the trash around.
We turn into the compound and go past a machine gun post in a sandbagged bunker. Bru and Sedang Montagnards man it. I recognize them by their bracelets and features. They are short, compact little tribesmen. Their uniforms are a mixed bag but their weapons and gear are all well maintained. This evokes a flood of memories from the past. I am starting to feel more comfortable with the idea of this assignment, mostly because these men are obviously the backbone of the strikers, or troops, that we will be using. I know these people; they are the finest fighters in the country. With that and a heavy dose of karma, we might even survive this tour, that is, if I can get away from this magnet-headed master sergeant. Isn’t 666 the mark of the devil or something? It is too hot and my brain is fuzzy from the heat, and of course, the beer. I will not ponder that one any longer than I have to. I decide I don’t want to know about the water polo helmet.
The truck skids to a stop just past a PSP (perforated steel plate) landing pad and in the front of what appears to be the Headquarters shed. There are two staff cars and a few jeeps outside. All are painted black. Stevie yells toward the back.
“End of the line, ladies. Get off my fucking truck. Go inside and they will process you in. Get a move on it, because it’s hot out here and I am out of beer.” He looks over at Bernie, then me, and belches something about catching up with us later. I am already formulating a plan to avoid that, but Bernie looks like he just found his long lost brother, which is a double reason to avoid that particular liaison.
We dismount, pull our bags off, and the truck roars off down toward the beach along a line of barracks hootches, all identical. There is a well maintained trench line that surrounds the camp, with bunkers interspaced every few meters. Lots of barbed wire and an apparent mine field beyond that. All in all, this place has the appearance of a normal Special Forces camp.
Bernie looks around, and spots what is obviously a crashed Cobra gunship just at the edge of the PSP pad, takes in all the bunkers, the wire, and the fact that the place is crawling with armed Yards. He turns to me and blurts, “Jeez Nick, this don’t look like no show camp.”
No shit you mallet-headed Mick, this is CCN. This is the place they ship you to when you are too fucking crazy to be in any other unit. Well, I don’t say it to him, I just think it, but I just can’t resist checking to see if his headspace is working, so I ask, “Bernie, what exactly was Stevie boy like when you knew him in Korea?”
“Mary, Mother of God, he was a lunatic. When we were in Korea he was always in the shit except when we were at the front. We were in a Regimental Combat team and…”
I don’t let him finish. “Sort of like the Rangers in WWII? The kind of outfit where they sent you out sneaking, peeking, raiding, and generally doing mischief in miserable weather while getting your ass shot off?” I smile at him; well, actually it’s a half smirk. He looks at me and cocks his head to one side. His eyes keep darting over to the crashed helicopter that graces the front of the compound like some kind of weird war sculpture. “Well, yes?” He still says nothing. He doesn’t get it. I’m going to have to draw stick figures here. So I lean forward to emphasize the next question. “And do you suppose that your bosom buddy would be assigned to anything that might even resemble a normal unit? I realize that we are in Vietnam, but in your mind, think about this for a moment. How long would he last in even a normal Special Forces Unit?” I see the lights go on in Bernie’s head.
“Oh shit,” he says, kind of sighing. His cheeks puff out and he emits a low whistle. He has this look like the nightmares of his youth just caught up with him. All sorts of memories about Korea and his reunion twin are flitting across his memory banks. He really looks a bit pale.
Our trip down memory lane is interrupted by a new master sergeant who comes out and directs us inside, telling us to bring our gear with us. This one is the normal model, complete with pressed uniform and shined boots. I have been so busy with Bernie that I haven’t noticed the few Americans that are standing about the area around the front of the building. They are eyeballing us with the practiced eye of a Roman centurion looking for replacements. Some are truly disreputable looking and more are drifting over from the area around what appears to be a jail compound inside the main camp. It is a fenced enclosure containing one long building. Uniforms seem to be, well, on the ones that look like they are actually field types, they seem to be whatever is thrown together. There are the usual headquarters pukes with their starched fatigues and patches and shined jungle boots. But more and more of the brigand crowd is showing up and giving us the eyeball.
One in particular shows up with a fatigue shirt that is cut off at the shoulders and cut off jungle fatigue shorts with what appears to be a bottle of wine protruding from the pocket. He is blond, tall, and looks like a recruiting poster for the SS. Someone calls him Dai Uy, which is Vietnamese for captain.
There is a short, dark looking little Cuban individual who the others call Castro. I notice he has a nametag that says Castillo. Both of them look like extras in a bad “B” melodrama. The Cuban looks us over and snorts; he casually retrieves the captain’s wine bottle from his pants pocket as he goes by.
We go inside and are greeted by blessed air- conditioning. It is a normal head shed, with the place bustling with paper shufflers, typewriters, and telephones. Sure enough, a normal looking sergeant major comes out after a while and tells us our assignments. Bernie and I, and all but three of the FNGs, are going to Recon Company. The others are going to what they call a Hatchet Force. From what I can gather, this is a scaled down Mike Force or an assault company. We are fucked. Our assignment is like getting the Order of the Purple Shaft with barbed wire clusters. Bernie and I pick up our gear after we are done and go back outside. The heat hits us like a wall of flame. There is a three-quarter ton truck sitting there and the driver is wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sporting what appears to be a Civil War kepi. It’s gray, of course, with crossed sabers, and a really ratty, grease-stained one at that. He drawls a quick, “Load yer gear up,” and we get in the back. We whip down the fence line about two hundred yards and pull up outside of Recon Company. There is a white picket fence in front of the crosswalk. A lopsided sign hangs from the upper crossbar, “Nurses Quarters—off limits to all male personnel.” It has two bullet holes in it as punctuation. There are chain marks on one end of the fence where it has obviously been wrenched from its former resting place.
The entire camp is built on the sand and we can see the ocean just outside the east wire. There is a barrier of concertina wire with a minefield beyond that surrounds the camp, which lies in front of the main trench line. Inside this enclosure are the metal-roofed buildings that make up the barracks and various buildings like the mess hall, etc.
There seems to be one area for the Americans and a second area for the Yards which are comprised of longer buildings. All have corrugated metal roofs. The ones in the American areas have a cement revetment extending up the outside of the buildings to chest height. These are grenade revetments and, in effect, make each hut a fighting position if needed. All in all, it’s pretty cozy.
We get down and our escort points us at the second line of hootches and tells us to report to the Company Commander in the company office. Next to where we parked is a guy sitting in a blue lawn chair, apparently sunning himself. He is asleep and is snoring loudly. There is a claymore mine next to the chair and he has the detonator in his hand. His only attire appears to be some sort of Montagnard loincloth affair and a “Do Not Disturb” sign from the Bangkok Hilton on a string around his neck.
As we walk up to the orderly room dragging our bags with us, our guide drawls something about waiting outside in the shade until the Company Commander has a chance to talk with us. He sticks his head in the door and says something to those inside. He suddenly jerks himself out of the way just as the door bursts open and a body flies out, landing in front of us. The man begins to pick himself up, then falls back face first in the sand. He then manages to help himself up and staggers off toward the back of the company area. We stare at the retreating form wondering what this is all about and then our heads swing up as the door opens a second time. A short, squat blonde captain is standing in the doorway with his fists balled up. Without blinking an eye he surveys us. He looks around as if expecting the body that had preceded him to still be there.
He has all the charm of a bouncer at an orphanage. He sticks out his jaw, apparently in an attempt to punctuate his next statement, but it fails to delineate if this troll actually has a neck. He takes a breath and starts in.
“Welcome to Recon Company. I’m Captain Manes, but you may call me Sir, or Motherfucker Sir, or just hide when you think I am looking for you. I will be assigning you to a team just as soon as I can because we need warm bodies. This is a volunteer assignment. If, at any time, you feel that you can’t hack it, all you have to do is come in here and tell me or the sergeant major and we will reassign you somewhere else. Gentlemen, this is real important so I hope you have been picking your ears instead of your ass. If you are too shaky to do this job, you don’t need to be out there where you can get someone else killed.” He pauses, which is good because I am trying to figure if this is actually a human being. He gulps a breath, his mouth settles into some sort of grimace that slashes across the square features like a water mark and continues. “That is the extent of the briefing, welcoming speech and pre-dark pep talk. Are there any questions? If there are, they better not be stupid questions, because question and answer time cuts into my leisure activities.”
I look at the sand where the man had struggled up and walked off and figure, what the hell, I might as well test the waters. After all, as weird as the events that have transpired seem, I am not about to be intimidated by some officer. I have the sneaking suspicion that this particular one probably has the shadows of NCO stripes still on his uniforms. He has all the mannerisms of the recently anointed.
“Uh, Sir?” I say it loud enough to get his attention.
“Yes?” he fixes me with a benign look. This is, I am sure, a veiled sarcasm thing. I know he is a retread now. I use this same stalling tactic from time to time. Fuck you squat bread, I am not about to be intimidated by some kind of alien life form masquerading as a captain.
“What did this fellow here do?” I point at the disturbed sand where the man had landed. I figure that I will give him the double litmus test. That being an obvious question which will either lead to explanations or indicate the level of chickenshit potential in this outfit, if there is any. I don’t have long to wait. The captain sets his shoulders and sticks out that bulldog jaw before speaking.
“He came in here and wanted to quit,” Chunky hisses as if someone showed him something unpleasant, like his own visage in a mirror. “Are there any other questions?” He glares at the crowd with impatience. A clipped answer of that sort is not what I had in mind, so I press the issue.
“I thought you said this was a volunteer outfit, Sir?” I ask this with a bit more demanding tone, careful not to appear to be disrespectful. He looks me over as if I represent some tedious task in front of him.
“I did say that, numb nuts.” He punctuates that with a grimace.
“Then why did you hit him?” As he fixes me with one eye, well, the bloodshot orb that passes as one anyway, everyone is sliding away from me as if I suddenly developed leprosy. Survivalists all, they figure that I am going to be on the shit list and none of the pussies want to be guilty by association.
“What’s your name?” he barks at me.
“Brokhausen, Sir.”
He looks over his shoulder and calls back into the orderly room to someone. “You hear that you ignoramuses? I have to run into a new guy before someone shows me the respect that befits my exalted status and rank in this here goat-fiick of an outfit, someone that puts ‘Sir’ on the end of a sentence.” He turns and puts his hands on his hips as if he were setting himself for a difficult task. I have already spied a loose iron fence post lying in the sand. I figure if it looks like he is going to swing, I am going to take that post and drop him as hard as I can. He smiles at me and looks right at the post then back at me, still smiling. I am positive now that he is an ex-noncom. He isn’t some strutting little martinet. This is merely chitchat for information’s sake, sort of an informal mental sparring match. I am starting to have doubts that the iron fence post will be adequate for the task.
“I did say that this was a volunteer outfit. I hit him because he is a whiner. I won’t have a whiner around me. He wanted to quit and he hasn’t even been on a mission yet. Well, not a real mission, yet. So unless you are a dimwit, a three year old, or just a barracks lawyer, does that explain it?”
“Uh, yes Sir, I just don’t wants to be doin’ sumfin dat upsets yo.” I give him my best Rastus act and shuffle from one foot to the other. There is a collective gasp from the crowd I arrived with, but the captain looks at me and points a sausage-like finger in my direction. Everyone else has taken refuge in the act of trying to look invisible.
“I am assigning you right now, Brokentrout, or whatever your name is. The rest of these gents I will interview this afternoon after dinner. But since you have demonstrated very plainly to me that you are obviously a frustrated comic and wit, I am assigning you to Recon Team Habu. You can fit in with the rest of those degenerate, insubordinate excuses for a waste of taxpayer money. They will appreciate your finely tuned sense of humor more than I will.” He turns to the crowd that came with me. “I will be interviewing each of you later, so after you go inside and get assigned to a team, you can drop your gear and stand by until I call for you.” He looks at me, grimaces in my direction, and then shakes his head as if he were in on some secret joke and laughs.
With that he stomps back through the doorway of the orderly room and shortly afterwards a head peeks out and points me to a hootch with RT Habu painted on the front door. I look at Bernie and he shrugs and laughs. I figure he is indulging his humor at my discomfort. Well, have your chuckles now, Bernie. I hope they assign you and Stevie together, just for old time’s sake.
I pick up my stuff and walk the few meters up the sidewalk to a hut that has a garishly painted skull with a Green Beret on it and the words RT HABU on a scroll above it. I knock on the door and then wait for a few moments. No one answers so I open it and heave my duffel bag inside. It takes a moment before my eyes fully adjust to the light. There are two guys sitting inside. One is bare-chested and looks to be about fifteen years old and has a small patch of hair growing in the center of his chest. Jesus, they are robbing the cradle to fill up the ranks. The other one is positively the homeliest-looking excuse for a human I have ever seen. His head looks too big for his emaciated body and he has ears like Dumbo. Both are drinking beer and quietly cleaning what appear to be silenced pistols. I start to introduce myself, but the short adolescent one stands up and goes over to a small Sanyo refrigerator and fishes out three beers. He hands one to the mutant, then holds another out in my direction.
“Have a beer. I see you have met charming Larry already, and you must have attracted his attention from all the ruckus we heard out there. Let me see if I can follow the chain of events. After you attracted attention to yourself, “the Midget” decided you needed to be assigned right away and that’s why you are here, right?” He takes his seat at the table. I pull up a chair and look them both over again. What the hell. I go into the discourse of the conversation which seems to amuse both of them.
I finish up and then ask them, “Is this where they send the fuck ups?” They both look at me with a mixture of hurt and incredulity and then laugh.
The mutant looks over at me and drawls, “No, you are here because you stood up. Larry doesn’t respect ya unless ya stand up. If you are timid around the Dai Uy he will get rid of you. He also probably sent you over here because he wanted to annoy us with a Yankee. I’m Jimmy Johnson and this here runt is Lemuel MacGlothren.” He sticks out his hand and so does the other one and they both say, “Welcome to RT Habu.” I introduce myself and get back to the Midget, who is obviously the captain.
“Shit, he swears and looks like a fucking NCO. Is he a retread?” I ask.
“Yep, used to be an E-7, but then they sent him off to ossifer school to keep him from scratching his nuts with the salad fork at dinner, and now he’s in charge,” the one called Mac answers.
I take another beer gratefully, sit down on the bunk they point to and settle back. This is it, I am home. These two will be my new family and this humble hut will be my new home. We start shooting the shit and I begin to find out what I have gotten into. It can’t be all that bad. At least you can run amok apparently, and the commander is as crazy as the rest of them. I think I am going to like it here. One thing is apparent, this unit is what we call “tight” in the military. That means it is competent and the members take care of each other. They may call the Commander by nicknames, but there is obvious liking and respect behind it. We continue to talk as I start to unpack my gear and get it stowed in one of the wall lockers at the far end of the hootch. The door opens and the swarthy looking little Cuban saunters in and snags a beer out of the refrigerator. He looks at Mac and then Jimmy, then at me, then takes a drink and belches.
“You guys got new meat, huh?” he says and swills the beer around in his left hand. Jimmy looks up at him; Mac just keeps cleaning his pistol and reassembling it. As he is screwing the end cap on the silencer he looks over at me then back at the Cuban.
“We not only got a new guy, but he is obviously the cream of the crop ’cause smilin’ Larry didn’t even interview him before he sent him over here.” He and Johnson giggle for effect. The Cuban looks at them and snorts, which is real charming because it causes some beer to shoot out his left nostril. He picks up one of the oily cleaning rags and wipes his nose with it before he comments.
“Sheee-it, he sent him over here because he probably figures to raise the collective IQ in this place to three.” Then he turns to me. “Run! Run as far and as fast as you can so you don’t get tied up with these two, permanent.” He laughs and tosses the now empty beer can into a trashcan and deftly hooks a new one out of the fridge. At just about the same time, Mac finishes assembling the pistol, slaps a magazine in the weapon and pops a cap in the space between the Cuban and myself. There is a “pfffft,” and the beer in the Cuban’s hand springs a leak about half way down. It doesn’t even faze the Cuban; he continues to gab along as if it were an everyday occurrence. The beer is leaking out like the can is pissing.
“Oh that was clever,” he says to Mac, then turns back to me. “Don’t have anything valuable around these two. If they can’t skin it and eat it, they just ‘bubbafy’ it with guns.” He finishes his beer, belches and sticks his hand out. “I’m Bob Castillo. Welcome to Recon.” He saunters to the door before I can answer. “See you over at the mess hall. Tonight is steak night.” Then he is gone.
Jimmy looks over at Mac and says, “Pretty good shootin’, Mac. You drilled that can almost dead center.” Mac laughs. “Nah, I was aiming at him. I figure if we wounded him we might keep some of the beer.”
Oh, I am going to love this place.