Rumors II

     By the time those rumors reached us most everyone back in the U.S. of A. probably knew the whole score. Top to bottom. For sure the brass did. Down to names goin' and poor fools stayin'. But, like I said, those of us who actually pounded the paddies, didn't know shit. All we had to go on was word of mouth and those words from a mouth that was wanderin' around in the dark as much as us. And the word we heard changed every day. What didn't change was goin' to the field and tryin' to make contact. Sure was a joke on the men who died not knowing they were short-timers. Yeah, a real laugher.
     On the other side of the coin, the oddest thing began to happen long about the middle of July. We kept goin' out but it seemed Charlie had gone into hiding. Looked like he knew the score. Probably better than we did. Why not? The accommodating lips of the Vung Tau hookers might just have loosened the lips of a few big boys. Woulda been fun to capture one of the VC just to ask him if I was goin' home or not.
     Pull out was the big news in the Delta, the only news. For sure bigger than the moon landing that July. Can't even say that we were aware of Americans on the moon. And if we were, we sure didn't care. Moon landing? What the hell was that to a grunt with leeches on his ass?
     What we came to believe for absolute sure was two of our three brigades were going home. One wasn't. Didn't know which one we were in. But the boys in the know said we were in the First. Or so they'd heard from one of the assistant cooks in Delta Company. The best guess as to who was goin' finally brought it all down to time in country. Wasn't so much that I wanted to be in the lucky two-thirds, mostly I didn't want to be in the stayin' in country third.
     For me it was now math time. Turning our rumors and guesses into numbers was something for me to lean on and believe. Kinda like a religion. Put your faith in a future based on something that was made up but sure sounded good.
     So, a third of us were stayin' and humpin'. The question was how long did I have to be in country to say the hell out of that group. Simply enough a third of a year became the golden figure in my mind, four months. 122 days. Easy enough but more and more unknowns kept popping up. By what day did a GI have to get his four months in? How should KIA's figure into the mess? No doubt they were all goin home. And about as fast as they could be wrapped and boxed. The story back in AIT had it that ten per cent of all grunts in Nam magically turned KIA's. Figurin' the dead didn't count, I first subtracted 12.2 from the 122. Then realized not all the Ninth Division troops goin' home were grunts, some were pencil pushers and underwear distributers, so I cut the 12.2 in half, 6.1. That made the magic number 115 days, 21 hours, 36 minutes. Finally it all depended on what the actual, official, final pull-out date was for the Division. And for that I naturally added that the magic day to count back from was Durwood Kirby's birthday, August 24. So that's the rumor I start in full detail. The gist was that on, or about, April 6th at 2:24am, if you left the World after that, you were stayin'. No doubt about it.
     Seven hours later the rumor came back. Hardly changed at all. Except Durwood Kirby had been changed to Spiro Agnew, the Vice President. I immediately sneered that whoever made that change was a first class idiot. Spiro's birthday was November 9th. Then I got scared. What if they were right and you had to be in country before November 9th and the Army was gonna bring in ringers from all over the country? Or maybe even some from stateside who'd be brought over just so they could be sent back? Only solution was to start another rumor. That Spiro Agnew didn't really exist but was Durwood Kirby in disguise. That did 'er.
     What I did come to realize was there weren't a lot of short-timers in an infantry company. 'Spose that had to do with bein' killed or wounded. The longer you were in country the better the odds you'd been pulled out of country 'cause you'd sprouted a hole in something important. That was why we were there, wasn't it? Walk around, draw fire, then bring in the big guns. Artillery, napalm, gunships and B-52s. Lose one of us here, two of us there. The kaboom! Whole village gone. Mama-san, baby-san, dogs , pigs and little altar with pictures of Grandma and Grandpa on it. All gone. That's what we were alright. Cannon fodder. Just like all the modern wars. And we were the lucky ones. Charlie didn't have any napalm to drop on our asses. Just shit dipped sticks in the bottom of a hole. Talk about lo-tech.
     And if we were killed, so what? If we'd been smart, we woulda been back home with a college deferment. 'Course if you weren't smart enough or had enough money to go to college then, what the hell? Small enough price for a country as big, rich, and powerful as ours to lose a few dumbasses now and then. Floor sweepers and bolt turners were a dime a dozen. Lose a few in war and there's a bunch more outside the door waitin' to take their place.
     When I came to realize nearly all of us with a pack on our backs had less than six months in country, I got scared again. This time 'cause maybe none of us were goin' home. Only the clerks, supply dudes, upper level officers and other useless sonsabitches who never saw the field. Oh me, oh my.

Rumors

     We didn't know shit when it came to reality back in The World. The Army saved us from all the worry about protests, free love and the music that went with it. Mostly all we had was rain and its buddy mud, leeches, drippy dick from R and R in Bangkok, how many days left in country and your buddy with a peep hole, like a single eye-piece View Master though which you could see to the moonin' end of time, blown through his head by some guy who'd rather be home in bed with his wife . Yup, life was simple in the Delta.
     Then, out of the blue where tomorrows you dream about but never happen live, 'bout the end of June, word filtered down that the Ninth Division might be gettin' pulled out. Pulled out, now those were fine sounding words. Way better than rammed in deep and broke off that us grunts were used to hearing.
      For a while that's all we knew. And even that much wasn't certain. Hard to believe that stuff could really happen would be more on the money. Fit nicely into Too Good to be True land. You know that place. It's the land that only exists between your ears. Never, ever sees the light of day. Then again, nearly every man jack of us had been living between our ears since the day we got ready for it when we spread our cheeks at the induction physical. Didn't know it at the time but some of us would end up in Between the Ears Land for the rest our lives. That means me too. Someday I oughta draw me a map of that place. Or get me some kind of psyche-GPS to find my way out.

     Funny moment happened the other day. The same in-law guy who got me started again, David by name, has known me for close to twenty years. Fifteen anyhow. He blew me away when he said he didn't know I'd been in Vietnam. Shit, I thought everyone and his dog knew that. First thing when I got home yesterday I took a peek in the mirror. I sure looked like I'd been in Vietnam. That crazed twinkle in my eyes, the what the hell was that all about? tick. Maybe I need a tattoo on my forehead? Or a Harley with a dozen American flags on the back and a MIA/POW one in the middle. Lead the parade and have me a butt length pony tail.
     Some things you live with every day. Get deep lost in thought and forget nobody can read your mind. You think you're talkin' out loud about it all the time. But you ain't.
     I know my little piece of the asshole of life wasn't much. Barely anything at all really. But it was enough for a fatherless child like me. Bent my twig way over in a direction I never figured to venture. Guess I owe a prayer of thanks the twig didn't snap like it did for so many others.


 

Apology for Stopping or Restarting

     A couple of weeks ago I wiped out this blog. Lock, stock and shinny-wah-do. Probably did it 'cause of lingering mixed emotions about the war and my involvement in it. Not that I did anything more evil or stupid than most of the grunts over there. But the entire affair was a 'whole lot of shit" per the real Forrest Gump. You know, the one in the book who went into space with a woman and an ape named Sue. That one.
     So, there we were, sittin' at a lake up north of the cities. Up there crashin' a family birthday party for a real good friend. And one of the in-laws, a good man at least as far as everything but his judgement of writing, asks me about the Army blog and how it's comin'. Seems he'd been reading it. And enjoying it. How weird is that? And why in the hell did I stop writing it? 'Bout that time I was ready to ask him if most of what he read came with hand-drawn pictures. With ducks as heroes.
     Don't mean no offense with that but I've read what I've written. I like it but then am old enough to know my shortfalls in life. How my favorite character from fiction still is Pud who starred in the tiny comic that came with Dubble Bubble. And I'm not talkin' about the cleaned up skinny kid from the '60s. He looked way more like a Gary if you ask me.
     Long story short,  I was shamed into finishing this epic of Western literature. Or condemnation of the American educational system. Take your pick. And will again do it in the style of Andy Griffith as stand-up comedian from the 1950s mixed in with good ol' Forrest in which it started. So here goes ... again.