Then, as July turned into August, some of the real newcomers began to disappear. And older, not necessarily wiser ones, came to take their places. The swap of bodies by time in country and count down to leavin' had begun.
Best part was the rookie officers. 'Specially one we'd had for a couple of weeks and knew to be a total screwup. Snap! Gone. Not our problem anymore. Tough part was he was gonna get other troops killed for sure. Unless they got him first.
Now that's an odd thing. We had a good run of platoon leaders. And our sergeants, outside of Rayer who was more of a jerk than a threat, didn't seem much different than the rest of us grunts. Mostly good boys, one and all. Don't remember if I was aware of fraggin' back when I was in country. If so, it never crossed my mind. 'Course about the only thing that crossed that no man's land in my head was goin' home. In First Platoon we were mostly one big happy family. Even the little sergeant who said he'd kill me. Never thought of doin' him in in his sleep. Guess the idea was we were out to kill the guys in the black pajamas not the guys we took showers with.
The other thing was dope. You know, the devil's weed us GIs were supposed to smoke every chance we had. Funny thing about it was that I saw it but twice in country. First time was in orientation. There an E-6 held up a pack of Marlboros with the end of the cigarette papers folded over.
Said, "This here be some bad shit. It get you thrown in LBJ - that was the Long Binh Jail for all you outsiders who don't know where the main army stockade was and what it was called in the Nam - faster than an AK round would pass through your too slow ass. Papa-san try to sell you this shit you best bid him a fond farewell. Or at least buy some for me. Heh, heh."
Oh, our E-6 instructors were some funny boys. Mostly because they were super short, knee high to a micro. That kinda short. What they thought was most funny was that they were goin' home in a week or two. And we weren't. And that they weren't dead or maimed. Like we would be for sure. Funniest part to me was that most of us survived. And they stayed in the Army. And became alcoholics, had three wives and six kids. Hen pecked and miserable. Hoo-hah.
Oddly enough the other time I came into contact with marijuana was out on the Cambodian border. Sure enough a papa-san, goatee and all, came peddlin' up on a bike and had a baggy full of weed for sale. There we were, shirts off, pants rolled up, beach party. Outside of the concertina wire stringing' that is. And, oh yeah we were out of artillery range. Should Charlie come crawlin' in the middle of the night and it was stain your drawers time with no one to provide you with a fresh pair.
The weed was three dollah for a baggy full. Numbah one fo' dinky dau. We bid him a fond farewell. No way we were gonna smoke the devil's weed out in the middle of nowhere land. Not that we were over the top straight pussies. Seemed more like if we were gonna die it'd be nice to know which dimension we were kickin' off from.
Seemed weird that in a war zone old men with dope and young boys with popsicles were out peddlin' around on bikes tryin' to hustle a buck. What the hell was that all about? Didn't they ever see The Sands of Iwo Jima? No old coots there tryin' to sell John Wayne a bag of shit. 'Course the Duke wouldn't have smoked any.
Anyhow, that was it for me and pot in Vietnam. Didn't know anybody that smoked it. Nada. From what the movies have shown us all, that's about all GI's did, smoke dope and drop napalm on baby hospitals. Sometimes it seems like I was in the wrong war.
Back in Dong Tam the exchange of bodies continued. Who were these new people? And why did they want to come join us? Bravo Company beefed up like never before. Went to the field with near a hundred grunts. Like I'd said earlier we slowly stopped making contact. Ol' Charlie knew what he was doin'. Don't mess with the Yankee Doodlers 'cause they know how to put a hurt on you. Wait 'til they go home and then we take on the ARVNs and wipe the paddies with their sorry asses.
Can't say I blamed the ARVNs. Most of them were draftees just like us. And it seemed this was our war more than it was theirs. Yeah, the handwriting was on the wall. And the words scrawled out the boys from the north were gonna win. And us GIs weren't gonna be there to see it come tumbling down. Unless it was on TV back in The World with Walter Cronkite tellin' us just how big a mess it was. Or a few years later in the movies with the Hollywood take. Underneath the handwriting was Ho Chi Minh's signature.
Then for about ten minutes we became stars. We returned to FSB Moore one day to find a reporter from Time magazine, or maybe the New York Times, I forget which. He was dressed just like a real GI. I could understand that for we were real snappy dressers. Looked just like Sergeant Rock.
Anyhow, he was snooping around asking questions. Don't remember any officers around makin' sure we gave the right answers. Like that would have made any difference. Finally he gets around to me 'cause I wear glasses. Logical assumption. A man who wears glasses no doubt burned his eyes out reading intellectual literature. Gotta be smart and might even give a snappy answer or two. Win me the Pulitzer Prize. Marry Joey Heatherton and be a happy man.
So he asks me, "What do you do?"
Naturally I answer, "I'm a student."
Now that might sound like a pretty dumb answer. But it was true. It's not like I was trying to be a wise ass. I didn't have to think about it. That was just what came out of my mouth. And just 'cause I was wearin' the green costume and had dirt on my face didn't mean I actually was what I looked like I was.
"No. No. I mean what do you do in your Company?
"I'm an RTO."
"So, what do you think about the pull out and what do you think will happen as a result?"
I had no idea what he wanted me to say or where the hell he'd been in Vietnam but down in the Delta the answer to that question was well known by every grunt who'd ever gone to the field with the ARVNs.
"Well, we're gonna leave and this whole mess will fold like a house of cards. Plain and simple."
Hooh boy! How about that? Not often does a guy get the correct answer right off the bat. But that was one of them. There's a lot more us grunts could have come up with but the truth was enough. And it did fold. Like a house of cards and our allies, both Hmong and Vietnamese, now man the farmer's markets in Minneapolis. And the kids get straight A's in school, except for those in gangs. And down South they haul in our shrimp. All part of the community. And like us Vietnam vets, the southeast Asians are starting to make the pages of the obits. Time passes.
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