Dear Lord it was hot. An all encompassing hot that surrounded, hugged and smothered me like a lonely, long lost aunt drenched in two buck cologne who lived with a hundred and seven, one-eyed cats. Maybe it was the temperature difference between Vietnam and Minnesota that was doing me in, maybe the angle of the sun. Didn't matter. War zone be damned, heat ruled the day.
My second thought was to find me some water to put out the fire. The first I came upon was in a lister bag hanging from a rope strung between poles. Lister bags worked on the cooling effect of evaporating water. Canvas bag soaked through, breeze evaporated liquid, and cooled down the water inside. Simple, neat affair. Would have been nice had there been a breeze. Would have been nicer had the water I drank been cooler than the sweat soaking through my uniform. My mind was made up then and there that I'd fight my next war in Hawaii while wearing shorts, t-shirt and a pair of flip-flops. Maybe with a pina colada in my hand. No doubt about it, I was dressed wrong for the tropics from the genes up.
A few minutes later I found myself on the way to the 90th Replacement Battalion in the back of a deuce and a half. And was beginning to feel like a steel ball in one of those Japanese Pachinko machines bouncing down from pin to pin not knowing where I'd end up till I reached bottom.
No doubt about it, the trip through Saigon was an eye-opener. To that point I'd dead-brained my way from the time I'd left Minneapolis. Now, as the truck rolled through wherever the hell in Saigon we were, I started waking up. Seemed like we were passing through a massive junkyard. Never ending piles of trash on both sides of the road.
Don't recall the exact moment but it suddenly dawned on me that one of those piles was a kind of house made from boards, sheet metal, and cardboard. What in the world was going on here? Why were people living like that? I began to get the feeling that there was a lot more misery happenin' in Vietnam than the itty-bitty pissing and moaning in my head. Not that such a thought actually passed through my head at the time but becoming aware of that first shack began to awaken in me a feeling for the depth of the tragedy that was Vietnam. And that shack was one of hundreds. Call me slack-jawed.
The 90th Replacement Battalion was a holding and sorting station for American troops entering the country. This time no names were called, no formations to stand. Names were simply posted on a bulletin board along with destination. Simple enough. Even a bozo like me could figure it out. Didn't have a clue as to where any of the destinations were. But that didn't matter. I figured I'd end up where they sent me. Simple solution for the simple minded, thank you.
I looked her up on the internet one day and found a video of the 90th Replacement with a formation of GIs having their names called out, one at a time. Might have been that way for some. Not so when I was there.
My first night in country we took a B-52 strike outside the perimeter. Like I knew where that was. The ground rumbled, buildings shook, yup, the earth moved and stuff fell off the walls as the five hundred pound daisy cutters thundered down in clusters. Everyone except me headed to the sandbagged shelters outside our barracks. Learned that night it'd take a lot more than a few dozen tons of high explosive ordinance to wake this boy up. I slept like a baby.
This was my introduction to night in Vietnam. Over the next few months, regardless of situation, when it was my turn to hit the sack, even if that sack was a concrete hard rice paddy floor or under a hay pile during a downpour, I slept the untroubled sleep of an infant. The idea of being stirred awake by a mouse fart of noise only to stare eyeball to eyeball into the muddied face of some guy about to slit my throat and turn me into a geyser of blood just so I could have the chance to crap my pants out of fear before dying, held no appeal. No sir, not me. Sleep baby, sleep.
It was there at the bulletin board that I met Earl. Seemed he'd been an AWOL also. But only for two days instead of my three and his day less churned up major consequences. Turned out that was his bad luck. As I recall he was off to rejoin the troops from our AIT company. It was good that he'd be among friends. On the other hand, those friends were off to play in the Au Shau Valley as members of the 101st Airborne. In my mind that upped his body bag chances a couple of notches. Bye-bye Earl. He's not on the Wall so he must have survived.
I also ran into the another straggler, the Zen Soldier. On some deeper level the three of us shared a similar bent in our lives. Cogs that didn't fit well in the machine. Don't believe I ever knew the man's name. Also wouldn't mind having a beer with him to talk about his time in Vietnam and the years since. All I knew of the man was his unique cadence and that he'd been briefly AWOL on his way to a war. To me that was enough to form a bond.
Somewhere along the line I turned in my stateside fatigues for a set of the jungle kind just like the set John Wayne wore in a propaganda film we saw in AIT. You know, the one where he tells us diamonds in the rough that fighting Communism in Vietnam was a great way for him to make a whole lot of money. Sportin' our new duds, and in formation mind you, we brushed our teeth in unison with a compound normally used to sterilize rats or remove rust from sewer lines. Actually it tasted pretty good and the glow coming off my pearly whites for the next few months was bright enough to read by at night.
I recall it being the third day when I saw my name on the bulletin board. Show on the road time. Seemed I was heading to the 9th Infantry Division in a place called Dong Tam. Could have been excited by the news, or I might have been depressed, had I known where the hell Dong Tam was or had ever heard of the 9th Infantry Division. Turned out they were named The Old Reliables. Sounded to me like a dog snoozin' under the porch on a hot afternoon. Figured that beat the hell out of bein' a screamin' eagle.
Immediately I started asking around. A true case of the blind asking the blind directions to the nearest Starbuck's in a country in which neither had ever been. Finally, someone said it might be down south somewhere. Made me wish Metcalfe was there to fill me in on location, per capita income, and my chances of survival.
Once again I grabbed my gear and headed off to a point unknown, this time via a two propellor plane lacking any form of civilized seating, movies, and worst of all, no stewardesses. A fifteen minute bounce and slam the body ride found us landing on an ocean of sand filled with a hundred bare board buildings alongside the Mekong River.
No comments:
Post a Comment