The U.S. military did things back-asswards. The British army sent out a full major with five or six years’ experience in artillery to locate enemy positions and direct accurate fire on them. The American army sent out a second lieutenant so green he could barely read a map and couldn’t find his behind with both hands, who had only directed artillery fire five or six times in practice and who, consequently, sprayed the whole countryside. Although we officer candidates at Fort Sill were kept mostly in the dark about what was going on in the outside world, busy as we were JARKing up MB-4 Mountain to atone for demerits, marching each other around, standing inspections and practicing our “leadership,” we still heard enough to know that the reason for the big buildup in OCS classes was because we were losing so many lieutenants in Vietnam. You had to keep the fodder coming to keep the machine running.
The classes were enough to chill your blood. The different ways men devised to blow up, rip apart, tear asunder, and bring death and destruction on each other. Big bullets, little bullets, shells, grenades, rockets . . . Booby traps, punji stakes, Bouncing Betties, snares, tiger traps . . . Ambushes, search and destroy, recon by fire, body count. . . An entirely new lexicon of war. The phrase “In Vietnam” preceded almost every lesson.
“Now, in Vietnam,” TAC instructors began, “if the dinks capture you, you’ll be tortured in the most devious ways imaginable outside the fires of hell”
I shuddered.
“They’ll hang you upside down by the tendons in your heels and skin you alive They’ll cut off your dick and stuff it in your throat and let you suffocate on it They’ll dump you in pits of human shit. . . .”
Damn. Damn!
During E&E, Escape and Evasion training, we found ourselves dunked gagging into pits full of pig shit, a reasonable substitute. For somebody like Acree, the tall, skinny redhead from Tennessee, it wasn’t as big a deal as it was for men like Mike Cohen and me. The level of pig shit only came up to Acree’s chest, which gave him a foot or two of breathing room. Cohen and I found yet one more drawback in being vertically challenged. Cohen was an inch shorter than I and had to tiptoe to keep his mouth and nose out of deep shit. I didn’t have to tiptoe, but the fragrance was still right there at chin level.
“Now I understand why good Jewish boys don’t eat pork,” Cohen said.
“At least it’s pig shit and not from the enlisted barracks,” I rationalized. “I wonder when they start hanging us up by our heels and cutting off our dicks.”
“Don’t tempt them.”
It became increasingly apparent that the war wasn’t about to end as quickly as I initially anticipated. Quite the opposite; the war was escalating. It also became apparent that we officer candidates were being groomed to have our butts packed off to Vietnam as soon as we graduated OCS. The thought was enough to give you nightmares. All these green second lieutenants with maps stuck out in the jungle to direct artillery fire.
“I heard directly from the clerk in the commandant’s office,” Candidate Oldham relayed with all the authority the source demanded, “that every swinging dick in the class ahead of us was shipped over—and that the same thing is going to happen to us. Alexander, I hope you like rice and slanted pussy.”
By this time the war was regular TV dinner fare: Six U.S. Marines died today in a firefight near Cu Chi, Vietnam. . . .And, oh, by the way, would you please pass the scalloped potatoes? Campus protesters were already learning how to chant, “Ho, Ho, Ho. Ho Chi Minh is going to win!”
Even Sandy, who knew little about the military and assumed on faith that I knew what I was doing, grew a bit anxious. I only got to see her on the weekends and then for only a few minutes at a time on the parking apron. Discipline required that I stand stiffly at parade rest and not touch her while we talked. I lost even the privilege of seeing her if we touched.
“Are you going to Vietnam?” she asked in her direct, nononsense manner.
I brushed it off. “Leave it to me. I’m working on not going.”
“You’d better not go, you little short shit. I love you and don’t want to lose you.”
Marriage presented me with an entirely different outlook on going to war. Santo Domingo had been an adventure; I looked upon Vietnam as an intrusion. It occurred to me that there was one sure way to make war obsolete. All you had to do was pass a law that required all young men to get married and stay home to work.
If nothing else, I learned one thing as an enlisted man: There was always a way out if you wanted out. An old officers’ saying went something like, “The enlisted are deceitful and cunning and not to be trusted.” I was still an enlisted man until I graduated from OCS.
I commandeered every ounce of deceit and cunning I possessed trying to honorably avoid going to Vietnam, but things weren’t looking good. I could almost see myself all alone with a map in a foreign and exotic place where little bitty guys like myself tried to kill me. It wasn’t until I reached Happy Battery, however, which was the last week of OCS before graduation, that an out unexpectedly presented itself. From out of the blue, so to speak. TAC officers showed up one afternoon.
“The army needs helicopter pilots,” they announced. Apparently more than it needed artillery forward observers. I also thought most chopper pilots were warrant officers. “The army needs commissioned pilots to command units as well as to fly. If you want to go to flight school, raise your hand.”
I did some quick math in my head. Say I hung around a couple of months waiting for flight school, then pissed off another nine months learning to fly. That was almost a year. Vietnam would surely be over by then.
Otherwise, I was out of here in a couple of weeks with my ticket punched Destination Vietnam. Just me and an RTO—radioman—alone out there in the middle of the jungle calling in fire missions. You could get shot! Or snakebit! Even on the long shot that the war lasted longer than expected, I had much rather go over as a helicopter pilot up above the jungle than an FO—forward observer—for artillery inside the jungle.
My hand shot up.