Spending three days in Oakland Army was par for the course. Didn't know anyone, had no interest in going anywhere while I was there. San Francisco was just around the corner but it might as well have been in another galaxy.
That the Army saw fit to keep me busy was okay with me. Wouldn't have mattered if I didn't have KP or extra duty. I'd have done nothing different with my spare time than I was already doin', layin' on my bunk reading.
Twice a day a couple hundred of us stood formation in a big parking lot between the buildings waiting for our names to be called. The ones whose time had arrived grabbed their gear and headed off to an unseen location. Maybe a meat grinder to be made into c-rations for the grunts in the Nam for all I knew. The uncalled had time to kill till the next formation. I headed off to empty ash trays and mop floors or scrub pots and pans. No complaints, I'd made my choice and was happy with it. Three days of crap seemed a fair exchange for three extra days at home. Given the choice I'd probably have chosen a year's extra duty over a year in combat. Like I said, I was no hero. Had this been WWII, with a real reason to be in a war, I'd no doubt have felt different. Scared for sure but with the knowledge it'd be a better world when the war was over. Not so Vietnam. Being a year older and on the plane back home, war be damned, would've been just fine.
Not knowing anyone on the base, and not wanting to know any of them, I withdrew, pulled a shell around me. It never dawned on me that of all the men I'd been with in AIT, not a one was there. That they'd already come and gone never entered my little pea brain. So, during my hours at Oakland Army Base, I didn't much give a rat's ass about anyone beyond myself and the people I loved two thousand miles away.
Come the third day, Easter Sunday, my name was called. Sounds all biblical but that's exactly what happened. Grabbed my gear and headed off to another, as John Prine so aptly called them, warehouse of strangers. Only a few hundred walking yards away, it sure enough was a warehouse. Concrete floors and walls. Glarin' overhead lights. Made me feel like a rat in a maze. Dividers like those in an office building demarcated each man's temporary space. Inside each space was a bunk in case you wanted to be alone with your thoughts.
On one wall hung a bank of telephones that could be used, toll free, to call anywhere in the country. Above the phones were clocks showing the four time zones. Nice to know the time. A man didn't want to wake up the relatives needlessly to let them know he was on his way. What the hell, it was a private war, no lines to be drawn on a map for the folks at home, with an end that didn't seem to matter to anyone except the Vietnamese, so why wake anyone up if you didn't have to? One day you weren't there anymore, then a year later you were back. "Where you been Homeboy?"
Called home to my mom. In the background was the noise of the family over for Easter dinner. We talked for a few minutes then said our goodbyes.
Next, I called Lois. There was nothing to say. The weight of the moment was too heavy. What was there to say? Goodbye, see you in a year? Yup.
There's so much that could have been said in those few minutes. But what would it matter? Behind all the words would simply lie the fact that this could very well be our last phone call. Yeah, I know I didn't die. But back then, on that Easter Sunday in 1969, I didn't know that. Lois didn't know that. My mother didn't know that. But death was a very real possibility and was standing there next to each of us as we spoke, yet none of us brought it up. Like it was bad luck to admit the old boy existed. Death is something you talk about when it feels far away, when you're in a philosophical mood with a drink in your hand, not when it could be gettin' on the plane with you in a couple of hours.
We rode a bus to the San Francisco airport. Ain't that romantic? Great city to be in. Not so great to get on a plane with three hundred men in fatigues.
My brother-in-law Joe had been in the Korean War. Oops, that's right, it wasn't a war, it was a conflict. And according to the fat kid in charge of North Korea, it ain't over yet.
Back in Joe's war, like the early days of Vietnam, American troops were shipped overseas on ships. Guess that's where they got the term shippin' out. One thing he vividly recalled was watching the lights of San Francisco fade off into the distance as the troop carrier steamed west toward the Far East. That image was in my head as our TWA flight ascended, banked, and headed into the night. I tried like a son-of-a-gun to give my moment of leaving the World behind as much meaning as his. But I failed. Seems like the meaning of a moment is lost if you try to hard to find it.
Years go by. Memories of a specific moment fill up with meaning. So easy to see the importance of events in the rear view mirror, when you know how the story played out. But, at the moment, when I sat there on the plane watching a movie or trying to read, I felt no meaning beyond how screwed I was. Meaning? Piss on meaning. We had a saying in Vietnam that fit most every bad situation, "It don't mean nothing." Just our way of saying things happen and we have no control over how, what or why. Someone dies, "It don't mean nothing."
I recall getting off the 707 in Honolulu. Joe remembered having a two buck beer at Trader Vic's in Waikiki, so they must have been given shore leave. As for me there was just enough time to smoke a couple of butts and look at the artificially lit gardens around the airport grounds. The times they were a-changin'.
Troops flew to Vietnam in less than a day. Spent their three hundred, sixty-five days, then win, lose, or draw, nine out of ten grunts went home, most in one piece. A kind of commuter war.
None of the soldiers on the flight were known to me. Most were NCOs, maybe even some officers. All in all, they seemed a happy group. Those with some time in the Army were off to spend a year away from the wife and kids. Among them were troops of high moral fiber who believed in what they were doing, were there 'cause they wanted to be. And a handful whose object was making a fortune in the black market. Most were in-between. Might even have been some misplaced grunts like me.
Each time we landed on our cross pacific flight the crew of stewardesses - back then they weren't as yet flight attendants - changed. Each new crew was a little more mature than the last. The crew accompanying us to Bien Hoa had a touch of gray in their hair. The lady at the exit door had tears in her eyes as we left.
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