Almost forgot. It was definite, we were going to Hawaii. Wasn't that a kick in the pants? Not for me exactly but for all those helpless dudes in my AIT company who'd shown up on time back in April. At the moment they were in the 101st Airborne up in the Au Shau Valley. Dyin' like flies on Hamburger Hill. Jeez, think about it for a minute. If I hadn't been a three days AWOL somebody really cool coulda played me in the movie by the same name, Hamburger Hill, in case you forgot. Coulda been immortalized on film with my head splatterin' all over the screen from an RPG. I'd have made one fine tragic dead man in the movies. Maybe played by Willem Dafoe all shot up with angst. But that wasn't in the cards.
Can't say for sure why I showed up at Oakland three days late. There were a lot of reasons. Maybe too many. Love, fear of misery and death, a deep down part of me knew it wasn't a good idea to show up on time. A guardian angel? A whole lot of reasons. Whether it was a moral war or not sure wasn't one of 'em. When you're off to be a grunt, it don't matter one bit if it be a good war or a bad one, all wars are shit holes. Man, let's say I just didn't want to go or even closer to the truth, being home was a nice place to be. But I went. And lucked out. On my way to Hawaii and the Army was pickin' up the airfare. Woulda been nice if they'd picked up a little of the guilt. But that was mine to fester over all by my lonesome. Poor me, I was goin' to paradise.
Last ironic moment, for the moment: Back in AIT, sometime around the seventh week, us guys with bad eyes were issued sunglasses. Mine were too small but that was no big deal. Anyhow, we all strutted around sayin' as how we were goin' to Hawaii and had the glasses so we could look cool on Waikiki beach and wow the surfer girls. None of us believed it. Now, one of us was havin' it come true. Like I've said time and time again, I was the Golden Boy.
Kinda odd how being in a combat unit ain't like being in the Army. That might sound a little squirrely but it sure as hell is true. Maybe still is. When you're in the field and the bullets start flyin', the whole world turns into a democracy. Yeah, the guy with the bars still calls the shots but most of the time his ass is somewhere else. In the line of fire it's every man for himself. The heroes watched out for others. The rest of us were simply hopin' for a heartbeat when the smoke cleared. Out in the field, no one wore rank and we all treated each other like human beings. Even if they were total assholes. Gotta remember, each of us carried a gun and that called for respect. Watch your tongue. Laugh at their jokes.
Wasn't like that back in Dong Tam when we started to become MPs. Shine them boots. Starch them fatigues. Take classes and do PT. PT was shameful. But we got used to it. Even the double timing through the post. In formation. Bein' hooted and hollered at by the idiots we passed. And they were idiots. Total frickin' idiots. But we sucked it up 'cause we were goin' home. And 'cause Davy Heath was up front, trottin' and bein' hollered at just like us. Bein' laughed at made us feel we weren't half as much the fool as the scumbags we passed. Go figure.
Heath didn't come down hard on us like most any other non-com woulda. Like I said earlier, he was the kind of man who led by example. Cut through the BS. Said simply, "This is the way it's gotta be. Get used to it."
One of the classes we had was weird. Ingmar Bergman weird. You know, the kind of weird where some near albino Swede's strollin' down the beach in a snowstorm. Waves crashin', total whiteout and all. Of course he stumbles on a figure of death. Black hood, boney fingers and sickle. That kinda shit used to happen to me all the time so I was hip. Anyhow, the figure of death pops open his cape, kinda flashes the Swede like your typical, run of the mill pervert. 'Spose to cause the albino to drop dead on the spot. Only the Swede ain't your typical cold blooded Scandinavian. Got some Latin blood in him from back in the Viking days when his great-great-ect.-grandfather brought himself home a harem of Italian slatterns. Anyhow, instead of dying, the Swede just gets a hard on. Only it ain't a hard on. Simple case of rigor mortis in his dick. Now he don't know his willie be dead, just thinks he's now God's gift to the ladies. And they seem to think so too. Except now on those cold, far north winter nights. He chills 'em off about the same time he warms them up. The flick finishes up with just another confused Bergman non-ending that impresses no one except the film critics.
Our class wasn't quite that strange 'cause Sgt. Heath was an African-American. The skit was a fast hitting, shoot 'em up with the hand gun held sideways that's over about two seconds after it starts. Whole lotta shit going on at once. Cast of thousands. Then we're supposed to be able to say what just happened. Me, I said, "Can we see it again?" And was hopin' nothing like that ever happens to me when I'm on duty 'cause there's no way I'm hangin' around when the guns get pulled. I'd been in combat and had seen the bullets fly. Don't let anybody tell you different. Bullets can kill you.
Best part about our trainin' was time off. Almost like it was a stand down every day. Duty done, we pitched horseshoes or shot buckets. Horseshoes was the game of choice. American as all get out. We had this E-6 who liked to do his pitchin' with a bottle of Crown Royal handy. Not sure how easy that stuff went down in the heat but he didn't seem to mind.
It was there I saw my first gay GIs, only we didn't call them that back then. Didn't even realize they were gay for that matter. Who knows? Maybe they weren't. At the time I just thought of them as a little strange. It surely did strike me as odd that a couple of bunk mates could be so dedicated to gettin' a good tan, 'specially on their backsides.
Shootin' buckets one day we had to bag it after twenty minutes. Couldn't figure out why we were so bushed. While we sat there huffin' and puffin' the guy on the Armed Forces station out of Saigon lets us know the temperature is a hundred-fourteen. Shit-fire, literally. And us bein' in a river delta. Must have been some terrible kind of dew point, that is if they'd had that back then.
Almost forgot. The month before, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. 'Course we were out in the field and didn't know that. Not aware of it in the least. Wouldn't have much cared even if we had known. Two men on the moon, a half million in a shit hole of an unwinable war. Maybe that balanced out but I don't think so. As Forrest Gump's mama said, "Stupid is as stupid does." Not hard to figure out what that made us.
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