RivRon 13

 

By Larry J. Kennedy

(tango13@cablespeed.com)

 

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Chapter 1

 

A Lesson In Physics

 

 

 

 

          For the most part my life in the third dimension is fairly normal, but occasionally, when properly stimulated, I find myself roaring through the universe, trapped in an inescapable time warp.  I am eventually deposited in an entirely different millennium for a short, very intense, period of time.  Some folks would call this a flashback.  I call it a ride on the Wayback machine.

          About every ten years I have a super fun Wayback ride, wheather I want one or not, and I never know when one of these crazy episodes is going to take place.  If it had not happened to me personally, I would not have believed that it was even possible.  Time traveling I mean.

My personal time warp mechanism is firmly locked in reverse and always lands me in the same place.  The last trip backwards happened a few years ago.  It was extra-memorableand, very stimulating, and seemed absolutely real.

          It all started one spring morning when I stepped outside the Post Office, where I worked, to check out the weather.

Outside I discovered an absolutely gorgeous sunshiny day.  I decided to seize the golden opportunity to take a quick break and was soon hunkered down in a sun filled area, between two large trucks that were backed up to a loading dock.  Before long, I felt the last remnants of our cold Michigan winter begin to melt from my bones.

The smell of cow manure and wet earth filled the warm atmosphere all around.  The airborne perfume drifted in from across the road.  The barnyard odor was a gift from agricultural students.  They were working in a Michigan State University cornfield, across the road, applying pungent barn scrapings by the trailer load.

I could hear their manure spreaders clacking in the distance, as thousands of Canadian geese circled noisily overhead.  The honkers were just waiting for an opportunity to land and dine on the stinky brown feast being laid out below.

Crystal clear skies created extra potent sunrays and the searing beams, beating down on my face, made me do an unusual thing.  I removed my shirt, lowered the front of my bib overalls, and let the hot light shine on my pale winter chest.  “Ahhh yes, that does feel good,” I thought, and fished out a cigarette to enhance my sunbathing pleasure.

When I bowed to light the smoke, sweat ran off my forehead, under my glasses and burned into my eyes causing me to inhale sharply.  The tobacco smoke, mixed with the odor of poop and fresh mud, sped into my lungs way faster than I expected.  My eyes watered even more.

At that precise instant, the trucks on either side of me simultaneously fired up their engines with a deafening roar and blasted me with heavy thick clouds of black diesel exhaust.

Panic engulfed me.  My streaming eyes slammed shut against the onslaught of the choking fumes.  I nearly jumped out of my skin when the big vans slammed into gear and raced off on a twisting route towards the exit. 

The time machine, with me on board, instantly achieved full backward escape velocity.

 

          After a few year-seconds, I opened my sooty eyelids and blearily made out that today's date had changed drastically.  As my vision slowly cleared, I saw chocolate colored water flowing right there in front of me.  I knew, immediately, that I was back in the Delta country of South Vietnam.  The Mekong River was as filthy as ever and thirty years had definitely not improved its smell.

          A dirty green blunt nosed boat, bristling with machine guns, motored along out in the current.  The watercraft was a United States Navy, Attack Troop Carrier, also known as a Tango boat, and it sounded exactly like the two trucks that had been beside me moments before.  Their R.P.M. mismatched engines throbbed with the same discordant rhythm as the riverboat that I now saw straining against the Mekong's powerful flow.

          Out beyond the Tango's foaming wake, I caught sight of movement in the tangled jungle tree line along the far riverbank.  No one aboard the stubby boat seemed to be aware of any danger.  With panic clawing at my throat, I waited for the opening salvo of the Viet Cong ambush that I saw materializing out there.  The crewmen of that boat would never know what hit them.  That’s what really sucks about an ambush.

          Suddenly, a mighty electric current surged through my body.  I was instantly on my feet stretching imaginary hands outward, to grasp the handles of a loaded 50 caliber machine gun that had magically appeared.  If it moved, I felt a desperate need to shoot it.  Like Now!

          Yeah right, just my rotten luck.  The weapon was jammed or something.  I could not get it to fire.  I thought I heard AK-47's rattling somewhere, increasing my alarm.  I violently mashed the 50's trigger, while repeatedly racking back the operating handle…. Nothing.

“You are one S.O.L. sailor now!” I told myself, as muzzle flashes blossomed and crimson tracers streaked towards me from the opposite river bank.  Bullets would be here soon.  I could feel their relentless search for my tender flesh.  “Man, oh man, this is really going to hurt BAD.” I thought.  I braced myself for the impending impact and pain.

 

          Suddenly, everything dissolved into tiny bright sparkles out in front of me.  My cosmic journey ended as quickly as it had begun.

The muddy Mekong River changed into a shimmering black parking lot, where candy wrappers tumbled merrily along in the spring breeze.  Enemy tracers turned into winking, red, brake lights, on the bumpers of two trucks that were waiting to pull out onto the highway.

Gunshots became noisy farm machinery across the road, and my see through hands fell gradually to join real ones, hanging at my sides.  The useless 50 caliber slowly faded from view.

The whining nuclear fusion drive of my machine wound down to a low hum.  When it fell completely silent, I was fully back in the "here and now" and felt tremendous relief at the complete lack of bullet holes in my sorry behind.  I just stood there and blinked for awhile.

  I eventually noticed that if my stupid machine gun had worked properly, I would have killed a Chevy Suburban, a John Deere loader and an empty semi trailer parked out in the truck lot.  If I had wasted those poor innocent vehicles, the term "Going Postal" might have taken on a new meaning, especially given my current condition.

Those "Osh Kosh Bagosh" jeans, unbuttoned earlier, had somehow slid to my ankles, exposing an absolutely immoral amount of ugly, paisley boxer shorts.  The breeze wafting up under the leg holes did feel rather nice though.

           Oh well.  Some things just never seem to change for me.  At any crucial moment, whether I am surfing in the space-time-continuum, or struggling along in the real world, I might be caught with my britches down.  As I hurriedly re-buckled my pants, I felt very lucky that they were not entirely missing.  I was in that drafty condition, more than once, when I sailed on Tango boats along the mighty Mekong, with River Assault Squadron 13.

 

Oh yeah…, and just where is the low intellect squid that had set up my weapon anyway?  He could only be the product of many incestuous unions somewhere within his minimally branched family tree.

I had an EXTRA large bone to pick with that sailor!

           

 

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Chapter 2

 

The Right Way. The Wrong Way. The Navy Way.

 

 

 

 

My very first thought, as I stood on the tarmac next to my inbound Vietnam bird, was that this place MUST be Hell.  Hades is the only location I had ever heard of that could possibly be this hot, and smell this bad.  The foul, sticky air, literally grabs a person, then immediately starts sucking the life out of them.

It was about nine o'clock on a cool Saigon morning when I mentally noted these pleasant facts.  I soon realized that much, much, worse was yet to come.  Little did I know how prophetic that warm notion would turn out to be.  Welcome to the 'Nam sailor.  The heating lamp is now lit.  Sweat 'em if you got 'em.

 

A few days after my arrival I flew south, on a C-7 Caribou, to a dusty Army/Navy base, along the Mekong River.  The place was called Dong Tam.

After collecting my gear, I transferred to a Tango boat for the ride out to a troop ship, where River Assault Squadron 13 was based.

Upon arriving at RivRon 13, I was assigned to an attrition division, rather than with a crew on a particular boat.  If an engine man or gunner became missing for any reason, (R & R, WIA, Clap etc.), I, as a member of the attrition division, would be sent to take their place until they returned, or until a permanent replacement could be assigned.  This insured that I would be highly forgettable.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Who was that greasy sailor anyway?

          I was kind of hurt that I did not have a boat to really call home, like most of the men in the squadron.  I wondered why I was selected for this type of wandering duty.  In the intervening years, since December 1968, I think I may have figured that particular mystery out.

         

        While being evaluated, with a barrage of Navy tests, before receiving final orders to the fleet, a strange thing happened.  I was required to take a standard Navy mechanical aptitude test, in a classroom on Treasure Island, in the San Francisco bay.

The test consisted of questions like, "If you turn this gear clockwise which way will the ninth gear in the cluster rotate?", "If you apply hydraulic pressure to this maze of pipes will the ram advance or retract?", "Which electrical circuit must be energized to make the fourth solenoid in the group active?".  Stuff like that.  I whipped out answers to the one hundred questions and carried on with my duties.

          The next day I was sent back, to the same room, and was told that I had to repeat the exam.  No explanations were offered, so I did as instructed and answered one hundred different questions of the same type.

          I was really confused the following day when I was sent, again, to the same classroom.  I had to take the same test over yet again.  I wondered if they had lost my previous results, or if I had screwed up so royally that they could make neither heads nor tails of my answers.  Oh well.  Mine was not to reason why, so I completed another, different set, of one hundred questions.  When I passed the finished paper to the instructor, I was told to sit down and wait.

          After my test was scored, I was waved by the instructor, a Chief Petty Officer, to the front of the room.  There were two flag officers, standing behind him, looking at me thoughtfully, as I approached his desk.

          When I once again stood in front of him, the Chief informed me that, “The Navy does not accept a score of one hundred percent on ANY aptitude test.”

          I did not understand how this could affect me.  Out of all those questions, I was sure that I had answered some of them wrong.  I blinked, and shook my head quizzically, as I tried to make sense of the whole situation.

        The instructor, seeing that I was very confused, lowered his voice a notch and said, “Look asshole, just miss one will you?”  The other officer types solemnly nodded in agreement, so I erased one of my multiple choice answers, then picked another at random.

          They all smiled like I had just given them a new puppy, and that is how I received a score of ninety nine percent on the Navy standard mechanical aptitude test.

All this proved to me that the Navy was stranger than science fiction.  I see now that they thought I was cheating on the exam and were watching me like hawks to determine if this was true.  After the third test, they must have been convinced of my innocence.  The only solution at hand for them was to have me cheat by deliberately missing a question.

Heck, I had been working on cars since I was a kid.  This stuff was easy, compared to fixing an automatic transmission, and I found out right then that the old three way thing concerning anything remotely naval was true.

There was the right way.  There was the wrong way.  There was the Navy way.

 

The next occurrence of note took place during river boat training, at a heavy weapons range, where all future river rats were evaluated for machine gun proficiency.

We were trucked to a shooting range on a hillside, overlooking a valley, that was about a quarter mile across.  On the far side of the rift stood a dilapidated Army tank, several household appliances, and an old car.  These were our targets.

 I stood in a line of men, with a link belt of 50 caliber ammo draped over my shoulder, waiting for my turn to test fire.  As I watched the sailors ahead of me run out their ammo, I noticed that the 50’s created a tremendous amount of barrel jump when fired.  Hardly anybody was hitting anything, as most rounds sailed way over the intended targets.  I recalled an instructor relating that you had to start a four or five shot burst well under, say, a refrigerator, and then depend on muzzle rise to bring the slugs to bear.

The smell of burned gunpowder intoxicated me.  I was excited when the time arrived for me to shoot.  Adrenalin buzzed in my veins as I stood behind the weapon.  I flipped up the loading door, hooked up my rounds, snapped the cover shut, pulled the operating handle to chamber the first round then set my sights well below the old tank.  I pressed the thumb trigger of the weapon loosing a short burst, then watched my tracers speed outward.

I was elated to see several white flash hits on the old armored wreck.  YES!  Straight out of the box, I was right on.  This was easy and Great fun.  I next scored hits on a car, a refrigerator, the tank again then felt a sense of disappointment.  After about thirty seconds, I was out of ammo.

Unbelievably I had lit up everything I shot at.  The other swabs, awaiting their turn, congratulated me.  So did the instructor, who gave me a verbal, “Outstanding sailor.”  Wow, I had no idea that I could do a thing like that.  I wanted to pay somebody for more ammo and get back in line again.  What a thrill.  Yeah. Right.  The color would fade from that bloom a little farther on down the line.

For my next powder smoke experience I lined up, with a twenty five round belt of ammo, behind a 20 millimeter cannon.  This weapon was much larger than a 50 caliber.  The 20 mm shells were about twice the 50’s size.  Each projectile was filled with explosives.  When they struck an object, they would detonate into a deadly cloud of fast moving, hot, metal fragments.  20 mm rounds had a few tiny drawbacks though.  They were not bore safe and were always armed.  They would explode anytime the tips were hit hard enough.  We were told that a 20 mm round would explode if it was dropped onto its projectile point from waist high to the ground.  The clumsy sailor who did this would be an immediate candidate for a new prosthetic leg or two.  Most explosive projectiles could not detonate until after exiting a gun barrel.  Then they would then be armed by ballistic spin.

A twenty five round belt of ammo, shot from a gun that fires around seven hundred rounds per minute, makes for about two, one second bursts.  I still made the best of the brief practice blasts by getting several hits on the tank.  I felt exhilarated.  Shooting belted ammo will do that to you.

I also test fired a 30 caliber machine gun, a Mark-19 40 mm grenade launcher, and handed clipped together shells up to a crew served 40 mm cannon.

I think the Navy, therefore, set me up to replace engine men, or gunners, because I could do well in either role.  I did not see this as a plus until well after I made it home and was out of the Navy altogether.  I was able to ride on a lot of different boats which produced many unusual experiences.  Ok, I don’t feel so bad about having been the odd man out anymore.

 

 

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Chapter 3

 

Baby Snake My Ass !!

 

 

 

 

Home base, for the RivRon 13 attrition division, was a berthing compartment aboard one of the converted LST barracks ships.  These were anchored in the miles wide Mekong River outside Dong Tam.  I did not spend much time on any ship once I started replacing men.  I was usually shuttled straight from one riverboat to another.  Only a few things remain in my memory about those early, "In Country", times aboard the mother ship.  However, what occurred just after I came on the scene does stand out.  Way, way, out as a matter of fact.

 

From Naval records.  Rach Gia: On the Gulf of Thailand coast approximately one hundred twenty miles west of Saigon. In mid-December, 1968, River Assault Squadron 13 moved into the Gulf of Thailand to participate in the 'Sea Lord' Campaign and operation 'Silver Mace I' involving the first open sea transit of heavy riverine assault craft.

 

Here is what happened on that very first open sea transit.

 

A few weeks after I arrived, the barracks ship, along with most RivRon 13 boats, hoisted anchor and set off down river towards the mouth of the Mekong, then out into the South China Sea.

When our convoy reached the open ocean we were met with Very rough water.  Fifteen to twenty foot waves battered us.  The huge slabs of ocean rolled the larger vessels right, left, up, down, or a sickening combination of those directions.

Inside the attrition division berthing compartment, with forty other sailors, life became worse than miserable.  It became downright intolerable.

The weird motions of pitch and roll had all of us new arrivals standing at the outskirts of "Barf City".  Some men, who had crossed the nausea limits into "Chunky Town" proper, hung their heads over waste cans and let nature take its retching course.

When you are thinking about doing it, hear it being done, then catch the unmistakable odor of it, you soon realize that your own sympathy puke is close at hand.  The next heavy roll could be the start of something big.

I quickly headed topside, out on deck, for some fresh air.  Once there I beheld a world of torn up monstrous brown waves, crashing and smashing everything.  Still, I immediately felt a little better, because even though the whole world was in motion, the horizon was kind of steady.  I focused on that for a short time then made my way to the leeward side of the ship, bearing in mind sailor rule number one concerning the wind.  Never spit, urinate, or vomit into the wind.  You will not like the messy results.

I could see that the riverboats were not doing well at all.  They ran up and were lifted by swells of steeply inclined water.  When they crested the huge rollers, their propellers came free briefly then dug back into the froth, which accelerated them downhill to SMASH into the bottom of the next wave.  This heaved great fountains of ocean spray twenty five feet or more above their top decks.  Audible ‘Booms’ traveled across the intervening water, each time a blunt Tango boat met an incoming solid wall.

I had no complaints about the coaster ride I was experiencing, after seeing the conditions that those smaller vessels had to endure.  The boat crews were filled with lots of new sailors that I had traveled to Viet Nam with.  I wondered if they were enjoying this first rip roaring ride aboard their newly assigned duty stations.  I bet they had all practiced Olympic Hurling by then.

We were beyond of the sight of land and so we must have been about fifteen miles east of the coast of Vietnam, out in the South China Sea.  The curiosity here is that the water was still the cocoa color of the Mekong.  I gained an awareness of the immense power and volume, (surpassed only by the Amazon), of this mighty river, as I gazed in wonder at the all encompassing, roiling, brown, silt laden water.

I stayed out on deck for a while as the sea gradually calmed to around six foot waves.  This gave the boats a much needed respite from watery collisions, allowing their bilge pumps to lighten the badly wallowing craft.

Time, also, to swab a few puke covered decks, no doubt, because the Tango boats were transporting a contingent of Vietnamese Marines.  I was fairly sure that they were well into the dry heaves by then.  I also figured that a lot of those Marines thought at first that they might die in the crashing waves.  After a few hours of riding tall water filled "Whoop-De-Do's", they may have wished that somebody would shoot them, and put them out of their misery.  I felt sorry for them.

At some point our convoy turned in a southerly direction, down the coast of Viet Nam which was still out of sight.  In the distance ahead, I saw a difference in the ocean's color.  Soon the ship steamed across a very distinct line in the water.  I watched fascinated as we went from the mud filled Mekong River into the clear light green of the China Sea.  It was one of the most striking comparisons that I have ever seen.  I looked astern as the mocha colored water receded from view.  I could not take my eyes from the exact spot where the river left off and the ocean began.  The powerful force of the Mekong stretching away as far as the eye could see, in both directions, kept me completely captivated.  It was truly awesome.

Some time later, near dusk, the ship slowed to a stop and made preparations to drop anchor for the night.  I went to the port bow to watch as the big hook splashed into the sea.  The huge chain links rattled out chasing the anchor for a very long time.  The deafening racket this created was terrible, and I thought the clamor would never end.  It seemed to be a very long way down to the ocean floor.

Eventually the noise subsided.  The world slowly spun as the ship gracefully swung its head into the wind.  The sea had calmed to a mild chop and the warm air smelled freshly salted.  What a difference.  It was like finding yourself on the other side of the planet, compared to the savage intensity of the crazy ocean world we had just passed through.

I heard the roar of diesel engines, off the starboard side, so I crossed the forward deck to watch the boats motor in and tie up to a long, ship length, pontoon dock.  Despite the raging storm, the thirty foot wide mobile pier had miraculously stayed attached to the side of the ship.  I also gained a new respect for the old World War II landing craft that our boats were created from.  The waves had cleaned them nicely.  They glistened with reddish orange reflections, from beautifully colored light, thrown off as the hot tropical sun dipped into the sea.  Soon they all were safely home alongside the mother ship, tucked in for the night.  All was finally well.  What a ride.

As the sound of the last engine faded, so did I.  I was still a little green around the gills, not ready for food quite yet, so I headed off to my bunk hoping that the smell of barf had cleared out of my bedroom.

 

I woke up at dawn the next day, well before the rest of the men in my compartment.  I dressed then went to the mess decks for a cup of coffee and smelled toast.  My tender tummy said, “Feed Me!”, so I gobbled a few of the half burnt slices.

At the coffee urn, cup in hand, I awaited my turn at the tap behind another early riser named Claudie T. Gaskins.  He was from Texas, had a cool pencil thin mustache, a smiling soft way of talking and was a general all around pleasure to be with.

As he drew his Java I recalled the last time that I had hung out with him.  A few days before our trip out the mouth of the Mekong, Gaskins and I were standing at the ships rail overlooking the muddy swirling river.  It was Very hot.  Gooey sweat completely soaked my blue dungaree shirt.  I had not made the switch to jungle greens yet, but Gaskins wore them.

We were occupied passing each other loads of manure about life in general, when he suddenly stopped, mid sentence to proclaim, “I can’t take this anymore Lare!  I can’t stand it!”

          I looked at him anticipating a forthcoming reason concerning his sudden distress.  Without another word he spread his feet a little, slid an enormous Bowie Knife from a scabbard on his belt, paused a second, bared his teeth, then Stabbed the big blade down the front of his pants.

I was shocked.  What in blazes was this man trying to do?  Turn him self into a soprano?  Strangely, even though the knife was in his drawers, everything in mine ran and hid.

Claudie worked the monster blade from one side to the other, sawing away madly.  A look of absolute concentration was etched on his face.

After finally withdrawing the ‘Bowie’, he reached down the front of his trousers and grabbed a handful of cloth.  Accompanied by a lot of bouncing, he pulled his ‘severed at the hip’ jockey shorts up out of his pants.  The object of his misery was now in hand, and by some miracle there were no hash marks or blood on the mangled underwear either.  Amazing!

 

Warning: Do not attempt that foolhardy act unsupervised at home kiddies.  Severe loss of bowel control or accidental dismemberment may result.   Oh yeah…, and one other thing.  My best advise would be to not ever get in a knife fight with Gaskins.  The man definitely knows how to handle a blade.

 

With a look of disgust that you might give a used condom, Claude flung the offending white underwear into the river.  They slowly sank from sight as they twisted away in the current.

Then he went into, "Claudie's Version", of the standard male adjustment process, by wagging one leg or the other while jumping, hip shaking, and tugging at his crotch.  The man made some very nice moves managing to narrowly prevent a few head on deck collisions.  (Anyone can imitate the Gaskins Dance by putting on pantyhose, while bouncing one legged on a beach ball.)

After things became aligned and positioned properly, a satisfied grin came over Claude's features.  He closed his eyes, smiled in obvious ecstasy, and said, “My Gawd Lare, that shore feels a Hell'va lot better!”

I could not have agreed more.  Haven’t you heard Mr. G?  Freedom IS the word.  I was already without skivvies.  I had given them up days before.  It sure did feel better.  It was too flaming hot to wear them anyway.

In a nutshell, that was my man Gaskins.  He was a great sailor.

 

Back at the coffee spigot, Claude and I decided to take our cups of stiff Navy brew out to the bow, where we planned to watch the sun arise from the ocean.  This was an event I had never witnessed, but much anticipated.

Rosy dawn greeted us above over smooth mirror calm seas below.  We wandered forward, over to the port side, next to the giant links of the anchor chain.

Once there Claude inserted, what had to be, a heaping tablespoon of Copenhagen snuff, which he then carefully worked it into a comfortable location.

I lit a Marlboro.  I had tried a teeny tiny pinch from his evil little tin one time.  I wound up with the worst case of, "I-Wanna-Die", hiccups ever recorded.  I could only imagine what a quarter of a can would do.

With everything now properly adjusted, we looked off the port side and were able to see down along the length of the chain, to where the murky depths finally hid the rest.  It was serenely gorgeous with the sky getting pinker, brighter on one side, the anchor chain gently curving, down into the emerald green water on the other.  We passed some quiet moments lost in our own thoughts, not needing to speak.  Peace and beauty will hush a person right up.

I was dividing my time between the sunup show and the majestic disappearing links, when something caught my eye way on down the chain.

At the very end of the iron tether, hundreds of feet under water, I detected movement, a very strange, peculiar movement.  There it was again.  Something was definitely moving down there at the edge of my vision.

"What in the world could this be?”  I wondered.

I brought the curiosity to Gaskins’ attention by pointing and murmuring, “What in heck is that Claude?”

We both leaned out over the rail intently looking down the scope of the chain.  After awhile he Texas drawled, “Y'all got me bah the ass-air Lare.  Never seen anythin’ lie-cat bafore.”

We were fascinated at this point, unable to take our gaze from the object.  It appeared to be rising and was wound around the massive chain.  Very slowly it cork screwed up from the murky depths.

For the life of me, I could not figure out what I was seeing.  As it came closer, I did make out that it was wrapped around the chain about six or seven times.  It kind of looked like a thin worm, or a baby snake maybe.

Gradually, as the creature dizzily rose, I could see that it did appear to be a baby snake.  I could not really be certain though.  It was still way below the bottom of the ship.

Soon Claude and I were both riveted to this revolving wonder of the deep.  The closer it came to us, the farther our eyes widened, the lower our jaws dropped.  Up it swam, getting larger, ever larger, while it did relentless rising laps around the chain.

As it neared the surface, a few yards below us, my heart skipped a beat.  My already shallow breathing stopped entirely.  I tried to swallow, but could not because of my open, gaping mouth.  Hot coffee poured down my arm.  It ran off my elbow, onto my pants and shoes, from the forgotten askew cup in my hand.  I never felt a thing.

The beast finally screwed its way to the surface where it arose, towering over the ocean, bathed in brilliant cascades of sunrise colored spray, into the air above.

 

BABY SNAKE MY ASS!

 

This thing was HUGE!  The massive head was bigger than the side of a small bungalow and I don't think it would have fit into the bed of a Ford pickup truck.  I wondered if the ship's anchor had somehow upset the monster.

My blood ran ice cold.  I wondered if the monster would slither up the chain onto the ship.  My blood turned ice colder.  "Oh Man!" I thought, "What if it's pissed off or hungry... or pissed off AND hungry?"

I nearly added to my coffee stain with giddy relief when it swam away towards the ship’s stern.  It uncoiled from the chain as it went.  When the tip of its tail finally unwound, between thirty or forty feet of its glistening, greenish bronze, body was stretched out in the water, undulating like some Loch Ness monster.

It was actually hard to tell exactly how long it really was.  If straightened out completely, the enormous serpent was probably even longer.  At its widest, the body section appeared to be between three and four feet across.  Much wider than a fifty five gallon drum.  I am not completely certain, due to my visual overload at the time, but I thought the colossal snake had a faint pattern on its skin.

‘Mekong Nessie’s head dove under, with a splash, just beyond the fantail of the ship.  The super sized snake came up swimming right back towards us and passed its own tail still going the other way.

When the massive ocean asp showed its tongue, "Creepy Crawlies" shivered up and down my spine.  “Holy Shish-Kabob!” I thought, “It can taste us in the air!”

Then I noticed the eyes.  They looked like two of those large colored globes on pedestals that people put out in their yards.  Only these eye-globes were darker and bigger.

My mind flashed, "If we can see IT - Then IT can see us", and . . . ."

Man Oh man! … The thing was coming and looking straight back at us!

It did not matter.  I could not have moved a muscle anyway.  I was part of the deck.  Mesmerized, transfixed, enthralled, you name it.  The oversized snake could have eaten me for breakfast.  Its head was even bigger when viewed from this oncoming angle.  The mouth looked like it could easily swallow a Shetland pony, saddle, rider, and all.

Gaskins did not even bother pulling out his scrawny little Bowie knife.  I was relieved that he didn't, as matter of fact.  The best he could have possibly done was to stab 'Mekong Nessie' in the throat and madden it even more, as he passed down its massive gullet, on his way for a dip in reptile gastric juice.  Of course, I would have been gullet sliding and acid swimming right along with Claude, because I did not think the snake would have had any problem, whatsoever, swallowing two grown human beings at once.  My secret, abiding, all time biggest fear, of being eaten by a shark, made a super smooth transition into being swallowed by a pissed off snake.

When ‘Nessie’ reached the anchor chain again, directly below us, it dove UNDER (Thank you, Thank you), wrapped its huge body around the chain links, and cork screw swam its way back down into the ocean depths from whence it came.  Claude and I watched quietly, reverently even, as the giant sea serpent turned back into a baby snake, then into a tiny worm, then into nothing.

 

The world was deathly silent as Claudie and I slowly swiveled our own puny little human heads until our eyes absolutely LOCKED.  We just stood there, looked at each other, and blinked.  I don’t know for how long.  We just blinked.

Gaskins came to his senses first and without looking away he said in a slow, low, odd voice, “You know Lare?  They will Never..  (#@$%*&!)..  Believe us.”

That was Texas talk, straight to the heart of the matter.  Claudie was absolutely right.  Not any sailor on ALL the oceans, that had not been there, would EVER believe a story like this.  Not in a million trillion years.

We had obviously stumbled into a Japanese, Godzilla type flick.  Or maybe a celebrity would pop out doing a Candid Camera bit.  Everybody would have a hearty laugh and give a big round of applause, to the gullible sailor with the large, brown, crotch to knee, coffee stain, running down the leg of his pants.

As I stood there and blinked, I thought to myself, "This is not for real. This entire, ridiculous, sea serpent rising out of the ocean thing, could NOT have happened."

But I'll be dipped in baby snake sauce, it really did.

 

There were three questions that Gaskins and I discussed as we left the nose of the ship.

First: What kind of a weird ass place was this anyway?

Second: Did we have to fight snakes like THAT as well as the V.C.?  If so, Claude would need a bigger knife.

And finally: What in all of Lucifer’s Land did the Navy put in their coffee anyway...,  L.S.D?

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4

 

Rach Gia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shortly after my episode with the big snake, I was assigned a boat, Tango-131-13, to replace an engine man who was off on R&R.  It was a newer type riverboat, with an upper helicopter landing pad, just barely big enough for a single Huey chopper to land on.

          I packed a ditty bag with some essentials, Marlboros, ‘church key’, P-38 can opener, toilet paper, olive drab boxer shorts, and split the attrition division compartment in a hurry.  Finally there was something for me to do besides stand around, with a digit up my bum.

          I double timed over to Tango 13 and got an immediate adrenalin zing when I caught sight of her dingy green hull.  This was it.  I could feel my head sliding into the tiger's mouth.  I even looked forward to it.

That was totally backwards thinking I know, but I couldn’t help it.  The fear of death had already been compressed into a tiny little ball in the back of my mind, which I thereafter ignored.  My newly acquired machine guns would help me tame any other stray fears.

          When I reported aboard T-13, the crew did not take much notice of me.  I was just another warm body to fill out the number needed before a mission and was promptly ignored.  The crew probably thought that I knew what I was doing.  Yeah, right.  This was all new to me.

I decided to start by firing up the diesel engines, because they were my highest concern.  They checked out good after a test warm up.  The crankcase oil looked clean and the level was fine in both power plants.  The noisy beasts maintained a decent temperature while in operation.  The packing glands, around the propeller shaft, were not leaking.  The fuel tanks had no water in them.  The level of the bilges was kind of high however, which meant that the boat was slightly down at the stern.  There was nothing I could do about that right then, because we were moving out immediately.

 

          After casting off our lines from the mother ship, we motored toward a village on the southern coast of Vietnam named, Rach Gia (rock ja).  A short ride later, we came to a place that was high banked by rice paddy dikes which were lined with various tropical looking trees.  We beached Tango 13 next to some sister boats to wait for who knew how long.

          This was my first encounter, close up, with the jungle.  I was like a sponge, absorbing everything, soaking it all up.  I was finally seeing what the ‘Nam’ was all about and Green, Lots of Green was the predominant color.

          I decided to go topside, to the helicopter landing pad, so that I could absorb even better.  I soon stood on the tiny flight deck gazing out over the lush exotic landscape.

          My hunter-gather gene kicked in and I thought, "Well, well, will wonders never cease. Here are hundreds of bananas and coconuts, actually growing outside, free for the picking."  The only things that were growing outside in my Michigan hometown, right about now, were icicles and snowdrifts.  I momentarily missed them.

          With that cool happy thought in mind, I settled in front of the coxswain’s flat, (pilot house), with a Coca Cola and a can of fruit cocktail, hoping to create a sugar buzz that might enhance all the absorbing that I was about to do.

Groups of barefoot children gathered along the earthen mound fifteen yards off our bow calling, “You Numba One G.I., You Numba One.”  In Pidgin English, taught by soldiers, this meant you were the best, top notch.  However, if a native sneered and said, “You Numba Ten.”, this meant that you were lower than pimples on a snake's belly, spawned from Hell, not worth dung.  There was no middle ground there at all.

          A sailor on one of the boats carried a case of C-Rations to his landing pad and started throwing the goodies over to the kids.  This excited them greatly and the raucous group fought over each lofted donation.  A youngster would catch a food container, then immediately take flight, chased by a knot of other little vandals trying to rob him.  It was kind of like the way a flock of seagulls act when fed saltines.  No mercy.

          In no time there were quite a few men, on different boats, tossing food to now more than thirty or so kids.  Flights of outgoing cans sailed toward the beach in a near continuous barrage.  The native youngsters went bonkers.  Dinner was being air dropped by the Navy.

I saw one swab try to arc in an entire boxed meal set.  The thin cardboard blew apart in mid air, spraying its contents over the children shotgun style.  The food frenzy heightened when this happened.

          I noticed that one cute little guy was never in the right place at the right time.  He ran back and forth along the dike just missing every opportunity to claim a prize.  And when he did manage to get his hands on a container, he was always stripped of his booty by the larger kids.

          Sailors will always root for the underdog.

As the men became aware of Little Guy’s situation they tried, specifically, to toss him a treat.  Survival of the fittest doomed every effort.  Little Guy was robbed of them all.

The men, frustrated, stopped throwing and put their heads together.  They came up with a plan.  Here’s how it went.

One sailor made eye contact and kept pointing from a can of Ham and Lima Beans, in his hand, to our Little Guy.

Three or four other swabs filled their hands with goodies and started firing way to the left of the crowd.

The 'Ham and Lima' sailor, seeing the gang fall for the diversion, lobbed a high, fat, easy, under hander towards our ‘Little Guy’.

‘Little Guy’ stood like an outfielder.  Hands outstretched, fingers splayed.  Open mouthed, wide eyed, concentration etched his small round face, as the incoming chow approached.

Every single man watching that day cringed, winced, and knew *Exactly* how Little Guy felt, when he lost the C-rats missle in the sun, then took the revolving bean can right, smack, in the forehead…  Directly Between The Eyes.

‘Little Guy’ went down like he had been shot.  Ouch!  We had all been popped like that with a baseball when we were his age.  We remembered.  I wish the, 'Ham and Lima', sailor had chosen a box of Chiclets chewing gum instead.

We all started to rush to ‘Little Guy’s aid, but before we could do so a couple of kids ran over to him, stole his beans, stood him up, and wobbled him off into the jungle.  Man, I hoped he was ok.

The boat crews continued to toss treats, but now they sent them in low, so the kids would have to chase them as they rolled down the side of the dike.  This gave the children more of a work out and avoided another head-bean mishap.

Later on some teenaged kids showed up carrying loaves of, freshly baked, French bread.  Though the smell was absolutely delicious, I cannot say why I did not buy a loaf like some sailors did.  I guess that I recalled an instructor back in training telling us not to eat anything the natives offered.  He'd said something about microbes that our systems were not used to.  Maybe that held me back.  The bread sure smelled good however, and I was seriously tempted.

I sat there absorbing stuff until the setting sun went nuts, silhouetting the coconut palms and banana trees with sharp yellow rays, shot from a ruby red disk.  My Dad was right.  He had advised me to take note of the beautiful things in life, where ever I found them.  A wise man my father.  I missed him.

The next morning we were greeted with an incoming flight of Medical Evacuation choppers.  The Hueys landed on various Tango flight decks and lifted off with very sick sailors.  It was the lousy French bread, that had been probably made with dung infested Mekong River water, that had laid the men low.  Some seriously rotten microbes had infected the men's guts.  I wondered if the bread had been baked by nasty, short little butt holes dressed in black pajamas.

Thereafter, I ate a total of *One* non military provided meal in my entire tour of duty.  I consumed that at the airport restaurant the day before I left Vietnam.  That meal did not turn out so hot either.  Not nearly as bad as enemy microbes though.

 

Christmas 1968 arrived while we marked time outside of Rach Gia along the dike.  For Christmas dinner I had C-Rations and a Coke.  I listened to Bob Hope and Ann Margaret, on the Armed Forces radio station entertaining troops back at Dong Tam.  What a Bummer!  To my everlasting regret I had missed Ann Margaret.  Not to mention Bob Hope who had entertained U.S. soldiers all over the world.  I greatly admired Mr. Hope because he gave of himself at very crucial times.  He was there wherever a grunt needed a laugh, and a look at a pretty girl.

My Christmas C-Rat’s sucked too.  They reminded me of glorified dog food.  However the canned peaches and pound cake were terrific.  A delightful, taste bud oasis, in a Sahara Desert of really bad chow.

Other than that, not much worth describing happened during the next hot week, Boredom reared its ugly head as we awaited our time to do something, anything.

 

On News Years Eve, at the far edge of dusk, all the boats started their engines.  They formed up in a long column then headed into the dark mouth of a narrow canal that flowed from an even darker, pitch black, jungle.

I shuddered.  I got the same feeling that had come over me as a child, while lying ‘Bug Eyed’, over the monster ridden area under my bed.  “Something evil lives in there,” I thought, as we approached the spooky canal mouth.

The order came from our boat captain to, "Lock and Load."  I strapped on a helmet and loaded all six well deck machine guns in just a few minutes.  I also slid on a flak jacket for good measure.

I smelled wood smoke mixed with something sweet, like flowers, as we entered, engines roaring, into the dark channel.  Diesel exhaust soon drove that pleasant scent away when the boats bunched up, as they were supposed to, for safety, and to create a more concentrated field of fire.

A very dim red light behind me provided just enough illumination to safely move about the deck.  I stood back in the shadows scanning side to side, out past the machine guns, trying to find any visual input.  I saw only velvety, dense, blackness as Tango 13 plowed along into the night.

Every once in a while, during the next hour, the radioman, nicknamed ‘Homer’, stuck his head out into the weak crimson glow.  He would look around for a bit… then disappear again. I could hear his softly chattering radios.  Other than that I was wide eyed and alone.

All of a sudden, there was an intense flash of light from astern that starkly lit the tree line fifty feet away, on the port side.  A booming explosion immediately followed.

In the next instant, amid more bright lights and teeth rattling booms, twinkling flashes sent occasional green or red tracers towards us.  Those were AK-47’s, I found out later.

Within seconds the riverboats opened up with all weapons, which included 105 mm howitzers, 40 mm grenade launching machine guns, 20 mm aircraft cannons, 50 caliber machine guns and 30 caliber machine guns; all together dozens of jungle shredding guns, firing an ungodly number of rounds per minute, began to pulverize the beach along a one hundred yard swath that moved forward at about five miles per hour.

Wow!  A dizzying combination of strobe like muzzle flashes, tracers, and deafening noises completely filled my senses.  I stood there dumbstruck, in awe, lost in the powerful show.

Homer stuck his head out and hollered, “Shoot, man shoot!”

Before he finished the sentence, I had already jumped up to the port 50, flicked off the safety and started chewing up the tree line through the thickening smoke from all the weapons.  You were supposed to fire short bursts, in order to keep the gun barrel from burning up.  I held the thumb trigger down causing the 50 to roar nonstop through a one hundred round belt.

I couldn’t see if I was hitting anything or not, so it became my immediate obsession to put a bullet next to every air molecule along the beach.  I didn’t want a human being to be able to raise a finger without having it blown off.  That was also the Last time that anyone Ever had to Tell me to start shooting.

I was a cherry sailor once, but not any more.  My life had changed.

 

When the 50 ran dry, I moved to the right a few feet and got busy sending a two hundred fifty round belt, from the middle 30 caliber, into the jungle.  From somewhere behind me I heard Homer holler, “Cease Fire-Cease Fire”.  I was barely conscious of him because I was totally absorbed, focused you might say, on improving my bullet to molecule ratio.  My gun fell silent but a few along the column continued firing; ‘baking off’ their remaining ammo most likely.  A very hot machine gun will do that.

Breathing erratically, I hastily reloaded my weapons.  I recharged the 50 last with a pair of one hundred round cans linked together.  I had went through the ammo on it way too soon.  I didn’t care for that.  I now stood directly behind the weapon.  I wanted it to be close at hand.  No more wasted seconds.  A wasted second is plenty of time to kill you dead.  I knew that for a fact now.

We motored onward like this for about forty five minutes when the port side again erupted in gunfire.  I rapped out two hundred rounds almost nonstop with the 50, after the first enemy muzzle flash.  The barrel on the weapon began smoking and glowed dull red.  I had five spare 50 barrels, five spare machine guns and could care less whether I burned this one up or not.  If the slugs started to tumble after they emerged from the shot out rifling, so much the better.  The only thing that mattered was the bullet to molecule count.

I hastily switched to the middle 30 caliber and was working my tracers into the tree line when, I felt the boat thump hard on something, then hesitate.  Our forward momentum dwindled and the engine noise rose to a scream.  Tango 13, with all hands, coasted on in to "Do-Do City."  Our propulsion was out.  We were dead in the water.

I ran to the engine room and stuck my head in the hatch.  I listened as the motors wailed at top rpm’s producing an incredible noise.  The transmissions Slammed from forward to reverse a couple of times, then the tortured motors shut down completely.  The room went silent.  I turned and ran towards the gunfire.

Looking out from the well deck, I saw that we were drifting sideways across the canal, blocking it, halting the entire column.  Our boat, along with all the boats behind us, became sitting ducks.  Just like the little ducks in a carnival shooting gallery, only we were not moving.

Incoming portside fire intensified dramatically.  I heard the, "Fwhooosh", of several enemy B-40 rocket propelled grenades.  I felt the, ‘Boom’, that followed as they blew up against some unlucky boat.  I knew that it was only a matter of time until the enemy put something explosive into Tango 13.

Things were getting just a little too hairy for me right now.  I was at a total loss for a solution to our nightmare.  What is an engine man supposed to do when his engines are useless?  Paddle the 76 ton iron slug of a boat?

Homer appeared at my side hollering something about our propellers being gone.

"Well, No (kidding) Sherlock!!", I hollered back.  Like he was telling me something I didn't already know.  Homer then said that the boat behind us would come along our starboard side, tie up length wise and tow us out of there.

This sounded like a fantastic idea to me.  We had all practiced this life saving maneuver during our stateside boat training.

Just as Homer finished his shouted information, we were rammed heavily on the starboard bow by the boat behind.  Everything in our well deck became airborne at once, including us.

Our rescue boat backed off a ways and rammed us again.  Homer grabbed on to a vertical pipe on the other side of the boat.  I was forcefully thrown over with him as we were hit again.

Dozens of open ammo cans, many link belts of ammunition and piles of empty brass littered the deck in a tangled mass.  The cans had smashed open upon impact, after being knocked from the trays where they belonged.  More enemy metal began to strike Tango 13.  I heard it pinging and dinging in the overhead pipes.

Our wounded craft now faced, pretty much, in the right direction.  As the boat behind scraped its way along our side, Homer looked forward at the starboard tie up cleat, then back at me.  He said something like, “(To heck with) You Jack!  I am way to short (close to going home), and I am NOT getting up there.”

It took me only a split second to realize that if we did not move out of there, soon, we would all die.  I spun away from him and ran forward through the trash.

At the bow ramp, I climbed from the relative safety of the well deck, up to the exposed starboard tie up point.  Grabbed a two inch nylon rope, secured it to my cleat and pulled a six foot loop of line out the bull nose (rope passage).

I handed the loop to a sailor on the approaching boat as he slid into view, then I took up slack as the two boats came into line.  The twin Tangos were now bound tightly together.  The tow boat engines roared after our yells of, “GO, GO, GO, HIT IT!” and we began to ghost along, gradually gaining forward speed at last.

I had just turned to jump back down into our well deck, when the world was rocked by a tremendous explosion from behind me.  The leap down I was about to take turned into a short flight across the deck.  I landed with my arms and legs stuck through the open metal stairway that led up to Tango13’s flight deck.  My chest was firmly plastered to an aluminum stair step that ran horizontally across, about half way up.

It took a dazed ear ringing moment, for me to realize that outside of some pain filled areas, like legs, knees, feet, I was alive and able to function.  I untangled myself from the ladder then limped over to reload the port side weapons.

I did not have to look very far for ammo because link belts were strewn everywhere from the freshly smashed open cans.  I replenished the 50 then used it to again methodically eat at the tree line with tracers.  The starboard side was on its own.  I could not shoot from there if I had wanted to.  I hoped there was somebody left alive in the well deck of our tow boat that could handle that.  I was too busy to go check.

I saw green tracers descend on us from high up, slightly astern.  I swung the machine gun to bear on that source.  The jerks were up in trees spraying bullets down into our well decks with AK-47’s.  Several sets of red tracers mingled with mine for an instant in that area and the green tracers abruptly stopped, just as my ammo ran out.

I moved over to the center gun and emptied it.  Then I moved to the forward gun, which I kept emptying and reloading until I felt something pound me, HARD, on the back of my flak jacket.

It was Homer getting my attention.  I thought I was hit and that scared the snot out of me.  When I dropped the gun’s pistol grip and spun around, the remaining ammo in the hot gun cooked off spraying tracers crazily up into the night sky.

Homer was there screaming, “Cease fire!” again.  Apparently the shooting finally stopped.  I hadn’t noticed.  My ears were ringing so loud that I could barley make out what he said.  It was eerily quiet, serene even, on our dead boat without any engine noise, vibration, or gunfire.

That was the semi stable condition of the outside world.  I personally vibrated like mad inside.  I was breathing very fast and my throat was strangely raw.  Then I remembered that I had been wild eyed, screaming curses at the top of my lungs, as I emptied my machine guns into the jungle.  I had made the transition from normal human being to crazy man.  I was nuts and mad as a hornet.  Lucky for me this was exactly the attitude needed to survive this surprise attack game.

During the next hour we were ambushed again.  It lasted around two or three minutes.  Once again the enemy incoming fire had hit us on our port side.

Shortly after this fight, Homer appeared and said, “Watch the port side for purple smoke!”  He went on to say that purple smoke, with a flashlight waving inside, was the signal indicating that we were at the correct spot to take aboard friendly troops.  I guess this pickup was our reason for being in the middle of V.C. country at night in the first place.

Thirty minutes later we again took incoming fire from the same side.  Our weapons again chewed the tree line shredding everything.

I was halfway through a link belt of 50 cal when I saw the purple smoke.  It came from the MIDDLE of where our tracers were impacting.  What the heck?  How could this be?  Anyone in That area was in serious trouble.

I let up on the trigger, my gun fell silent.  "Oh my God. Oh my God." I murmured, as I realized that we were shooting into the good guys.  As awareness of this dawned, an absolute horror filled my soul.  I heard the radio and many human voices SCREAMING, “Cease Fire! Cease Fire! Cease Fire!”  Some inhuman sounding voices just screamed.

Our boats immediately turned toward the blasted smoke filled beach.  I raced forward to undo turnbuckle clamps in order to lower the bow door.  Just as our tied together Tangos contacted the canal bank, I eased my ramp down.  Then the rescue boat alongside lowered theirs.  For a few seconds nothing moved.

Slowly human forms appeared from out of the smoky haze.  A soldier here, another there.  Some had weapons, most did not.  They walked into our well deck like zombies, or were carried, or were dragged.  They were Vietnamese Marines with American Marine advisors.  We had hurt them very badly.  Our guns had killed or wounded more than a few.  I could feel it in my heart.

An American Marine lieutenant with no helmet, no weapons or gear, just the clothes on his back, worked on bandaging what was left of his shot up squad.  I raised and secured the bow door.

When the lieutenant had finished, we sat together against the bulkhead at the rear of the well deck smoking hand cupped cigarettes.  I did not know what to say. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to kill your men.” just would not cut it.  I was at a complete loss for words.

Eventually he started to talk.  There were no accusatory tones in his voice, just a matter of fact sadness.  His opinion was that one or two enemy soldiers had started the shooting close to his position, hoping that our boats would fire into his friendly troopers, … just like we did.

I told him about our trip through the canals to extract his people, relating the different fights that all came from the port side, the left side, .. his side.  I mentioned how jumpy we were after all the shooting.

He said that the whole thing looked like a well planned setup, and that maybe the enemy had suckered us in all the way.  Upon realizing the truth of that, I felt like crying.

The Marine also mentioned that nobody, the enemy or us, were supposed to be moving during the holiday cease fire that was in effect.  Holiday Cease Fire!  What, 'Holiday Cease Fire', was this crazy man talking about?  Right about then I came to understand just exactly where I stood on the Navy's, "Need To Know", list.

We traveled on for some distance until the boats stopped and lined up along a six foot high dike where we tied up for the night.  After the troops departed, I saw slight flashes of dim red light in the dry rice paddy out front as the Marines settled in.  Otherwise, everything was pitch black.

I went to Tango 13’s small berthing compartment and collapsed on a bunk.  I was exhausted in almost every respect.  Physically and mentally for sure, but not emotionally, because I had plenty of wild emotions running loose to last a while.  I tried to sleep but could not as scenes of the battle, and the resulting terror played like a movie in my brain.  I was transformed from a boy of twenty years, into an old man of at least ninety in those few moments.  I could actually feel my youth drain away to be replaced by anger, rage, and sadness.  The urge to KILL was also upon me.  Someone needed to pay, in blood, for the tragedy that had just happened.  Talk about a tortured individual.  I was a mess.

 

I had somehow forgotten that it was New Years Eve 1968.  The magical midnight hour must have been crossed, because the radio suddenly came to life with a barrage of holiday revelers passing out "Happy New Year" messages, in all sorts of strange American and oriental voices.  This went on for boisterous minutes in which time I heard from Uncle Ho, the NVA, and many VC voices (American impostors no doubt.), wishing us 'Happy New Year', in the most crude sailor lingo that you can imagine.  I smiled and listened on as the intensity of the recent fire fights slipped away.

In the middle of the radioed festivities a very serious voice broke in advising that this was a military combat frequency, and all unauthorized traffic must cease immediately or court-martials would result.  The buzz of well wishing ceased abruptly.  After a few seconds the serious voice came back over the radio cackling with glee at having fooled everybody and made reference to the gullible, low intellect of all the rectums that were listening.  The chatter then resumed and increased in volume, carrying on for five or ten more minutes.

As the last responders dwindled away and the transmissions faded to silence, the radio came alive one more time with:

 

"Batman, Batman, this is Robin, how do you copy (how do I sound)? over"

 

"Robin this is Batman, read you Lima Charlie (loud and clear)."

 

"Batman, this is Robin, interrogative (my question is) the location of the Batmobile?"

 

"Robin, Batman, ah, the ah, Batmobile is not at its usual co-ordinates at this time."

 

"Batman, this is Robin, I say again, Interrogative the location of the Batmobile?"

 

“Robin, this is Batman, ah, ah, Catwoman has the Batmobile on route to the Safeway to secure a supply of white mice and manhole covers.”

 

“Batman, Robin, say again your last.”

 

“Robin, ah, white mice and manhole covers, over.”

 

Then after ten seconds of silence…

 

“Batman, this is Robin, Please note that I will NOT be at my present location until further notice, Robin out.”

 

“Robin, Batman, ah, Roger that, Batman out.”

 

The radio traffic ended and although I didn’t quite understand the gist of the conversation, it had served to divert my maddened thoughts, enabling me to drift off to sleep as visions of albino rodents, flanked by heavy cast iron lids danced in my head.

 

The next morning a U.D.T. swimmer went over our stern to inspect the screws and survey the damage to Tango 13’s underside.  The frogman surfaced after a few minutes shaking his head side to side.  He said that all our propeller blades were totally missing, also that both propeller shafts were bent.  We were not going anywhere under our own power anytime soon.

This turned out to have a huge affect on my immediate future, because nearly every boat that was seaworthy started their engines, formed up into a column and headed back into the jungle canals.  Their mission was to retrieve V.N. Marines that we had scattered the night before.  Tango 13 remained tied to a coconut tree along with some other stricken boats.

About this time my feet started to bother me.  They felt sticky and unreasonably hot, so I sat down to removed my boots.  To my surprise I found that my feet were coated with blood.  I knew that I had been banged up by the ladder, but had no idea that I had been perforated.  Small pieces of shrapnel had gone through my boots and were lodged in the tops of my feet.  I decided that fragments, from the enemy strike behind me during the previous night’s action, had somehow bounced from the overhead to account for the curious wounds.

The boat captain told me to report to a hospital corpsman over in the dry rice paddy.  He did not want me getting infected, and was quite insistent despite my assurances that I was fine.  I really did not want to obey this order, but I did as I was told anyway.

Homer, who had also encouraged me to seek medical aid, now walked with me along the dike to where an aid station was set up.  I looked out over the football field sized paddy and saw a sight that will never leave my memory.  Wounded men on stretchers, mixed with the black bagged bodies of the dead, littered the dusty area.  It looked like a slaughter house.  Med Evac choppers came and went on the far side of the field carrying the wounded off to other places.  I have never felt such deep, profound, remorse and shame.  I wanted to turn, run from the sight.  I continued on instead.

We came upon a corpsman, smoking a cigarette, in the paddy below.  This man was totally covered in blood.  He appeared to be exhausted and must have been working the entire night trying to save these men.  He looked up at me standing above him on the dike for a few seconds then asked what I wanted.  As I told him of my injuries, a disgusted look came over his face.

I do not know why I got so angry so fast, (Because I’m Irish?), but I did.  Sure, I totally agreed with him that one wounded as slightly as I, should not even be standing in front of him in the first place, but the only thing a peon like myself could do, while in the Navy, was what I was told to do next.  I said something to that effect and set off to find my boat captain.  I wanted to tell him what I thought of his lousy idea that had placed me in such an embarrassing situation.

The corpsman loudly ordered me to return to his presence by saying something like, “Get your ass back over here sailor.”  This fell well within my God-Peon theory so I returned to stand with him looking up at me once again.  His face softened as he wrote down my name, rank, and serial number.  After viewing my chewed up shins, from about fifteen feet away, he gave me his expert medical opinion.  “Wash it.”, he said, then turned and walked away.  I headed back toward Tango 13 to look for a hole to crawl in.  Somewhere I could hide.

          After several hours of broiling in the harsh sun, I heard the far off drone of diesel engines.  I went up on the flight deck to look with several other men.  We saw the column of boats returning with their loads of lost soldiers.  They were about three hundred yards down the jungle lined, high banked, water way, making a huge roaring noise, blowing clouds of black exhaust out to their sides.

          Suddenly the returning boats came under very heavy enemy fire from both sides of the canal.  Instantly, all the guns, on the all boats, opened up in a ferocious volley of return fire.  Despite the outgoing defensive rounds, I saw scores of enemy tracers and smoky rocket trails intersect the boat column within seconds.  Our guys were getting creamed, caught in a terrible cross fire.  I stood rooted to the deck, horrified, stunned, watching the slow moving boats plow through the intense gun and rocket fire.

          It was an agonizing, gut wrenching thing to see.  I finally could not stand helplessly any longer.  I grabbed a 12 gauge Ithaca pump shotgun loaded with buckshot and scrambled over to the top of the paddy dike.  There I joined a few other like minded armed sailors in a foot race toward the roaring fire fight.  I didn’t know what I was going to do once I got there, but I just HAD shoot some of the evil scum that were killing my friends.

          We had only ran about fifty yards when a first class Petty Officer, clad in greens, with a 45 automatic pistol in his hand, climbed to the dike mound ahead and called us all to an angry, red faced, well versed, cursing halt.

I skidded to a stop and stood there kind of shocked.  I had assumed, as I watched him and the 45 Auto climb the dike ahead, that he was going to help us with the killing.  I was so wrong.

He yelled, “Get the (FOULWORD) back to your boats, and prepare to defend them!”

He was absolutely right, because if the ambushers were to follow the boats headed in our direction, Charlie would be in our faces momentarily.  I believe he also knew that, had we continued running upright along the bank, we would have been mowed down when we approached the enemy position.  We were not trained in any sort of land warfare.  We knew nothing about attacking an enemy on the ground.  I was just about as scared of this pissed off E-6 with a gun, as I was of the enemy.  However, the mad first class did save our lives.

Encouraged thusly, I flew back to Tango 13 and took a defensive position up along side a 40 mm grenade launcher, high on the stern, and continued watching the fight.

The entire scene was obscured by smoke.  A terrific fireball followed a loud, ‘Boom-Blam’, every once in a while, as a 105 mm cannon, on one of the heavy boats, sent acres of jungle real estate spraying into the sky.  Enemy tracers relentlessly raked both sides of the turtle paced column of boats.

I stood with the shotgun in hand as the firing gradually stopped.  The devastated boats came on to motor past in front of me one by one.  I looked down into each of them and saw machine guns blown from their mounts, hanging at weird angles.  Shot up soldiers crumpled in the well decks, hurt sailors slumped on huge piles of empty brass casings.  50 caliber gun barrels, still cherry red, bent, twisted from the heat of countless rounds.

I saw the still living stare up at me through the lingering smoke. Slack jawed, vacant eyed, and exhausted.  This is what men look like when they return from the brink of extinction.  I wished in that instant that I had been born blind rather than gaze at the horror that painted their smudged and bloody faces.  I shook like a leaf with a consuming rage and was sorely tempted, despite orders, to race back along the dike with the 12 gauge, so that I could blow away the filthy, rotten, low lifes, that had done this.  (Forty years later, I Still, forever wish that I had.)

Incoming Med Evac choppers started landing again, amid billowing clouds of dust, on the other side of the dry rice field.  The newly wounded were flown quickly away.  The rows of black body bags grew even longer.  The sun got even hotter.  Now I knew for certain that I was truly in Hell and felt that I would never get home alive.

A day or so later the boats cast off, formed up and headed for the far off Dong Tam Navy base.  Cross country.  Up the bottom of Vietnam, through miles and mazes of canal waterways lined with the densest, most forbidding vegetation imaginable.  I scanned the tree line, constantly on the outlook for something to kill, but the rest of the long winding trip was uneventful, which left plenty of time for a retrospective look at my first month in Vietnam.

 

If the crazy ocean did not drown you,

Giant snakes might eat your ass.

If the lousy microbes or crummy C-Rations did not tear up your guts,

The inferno of a sun might cook your brains.

If your own men did not shoot you during a cease fire,

And if you manage to live through your first encounter with native hospitality,

You could continue having this kind of fun filled adventure, for eleven more wonderful months.

 

Whoop De Do… Happy (FoulWord) New Year!

 

                                                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Authors Note:

That January 1, 1969 New Years Day ambush turned out to be one of the most ferocious fire fights that the Navy endured while in Vietnam.

The boats that went out on the troop retrieval mission were undermanned, because of the rotten microbes in the French bread.  The gunners were all low on ammunition because of the violent ambushes during the night before.  Some boats were completely out of 20mm and 40mm ammo, before they even left on the mission.  They were attacked within sight of home base, when one tends to let ones guard down, and I still hate those NVA assholes for what they did.

Losing our propellers on river trash, which nearly killed me, wound up possibly saving my life.  Tango 131-13 and I would have been somewhere in that column of boats, that was shot up so badly, had she been able to move.

         

About fifteen years after Rach Gia, back home in the U.S.A., I went to a tool rental agency in town to obtain a Roto Rooter.  I needed to clear an obstruction in a sewer line that ran from my house to my septic tank.  As I was filling out forms and arranging payment the owner of the rental shop said, “Looks like you’ve been attacked by white mice and manhole covers.”

          This made my brain itch as the old radio transmission came to mind.  I must have had a very weird, quizzical look on my face, because then the owner said, “You know, white mice and manhole covers…, Tampons and Kotex.”

          Sparks flew as the ancient connection was made.  An old dim bulb started to glow in my head.  I made unintelligible choking sounds as I stood there, amazed that I finally understood Robin’s reaction to Catwoman’s P.M.S. induced use of the Batmobile.  I would NOT have been at my present location until further notice either.  There’s nothing like eventually getting the punch line of a fifteen year old joke to make your day.  By the way, it was white mice that the power snake sent scampering from my sewer pipe.  I laughed like a (FoulWord) idiot when I saw them.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

Chapter 5

 

A Man Called ‘Boats’

 

 

 

 

A sailor we all called 'Boats', and I, went through River Warfare training together at Mare Island, across the bay from San Francisco.  Our class of riverboat trainees was there from August 1968 until November 1968.  'Boats' was an Alabama, deep-south, squared away, type of guy and tended to adhere to military regulations.  He was also at least twenty years older than I, which made him an ancient forty something.

I did not see him again, after training, until we were both ordered aboard Tango-131-11 around mid January 1969.  He was an E-6, first class boatswain's mate which made him God, the boat captain.  I was his greasy E-3 peon.

We were truly from different worlds, Navy wise, because he was a topside, deck force sailor, that dealt with ropes, anchors, chains, lifting booms and such.  I was a slimy creature from below decks where the machinery lived.  There I toiled in grime to care for and feed the oily, rotating, beasts.

Our occupational paths, which seldom crossed, got mixed up once causing a serious rift in our budding master-slave relationship.  My opinion of the Navy and its command structure had changed greatly during my first few months in Vietnam, due to my previous nasty encounters with the locals.  I had actually spent a month more time than 'Boats' on the river.  He was senior in rank, I was senior in dodging bullets and bad attitudes.

One afternoon as Tango 11 was tooling along at top speed on the way to somewhere, 'Boats' decided to put into practice some advice, concerning the engine cooling systems, that he had overheard aboard the mother ship while spreading manure with his fellow boat captains in their air conditioned berthing compartment.

 I drifted towards the engine room on this ride, because I liked to listen to my diesels run periodically.  I could instantly hear when something was not right once I became attuned to the different rhythms of each machine.

As I approached and looked through the low, head smashing, engine room hatch, I was dumbfounded to see 'Boats' unscrewing the valve cap on the starboard, four inch, cooling water induction pipe.

          Was he NUTS?  There was a seventy six TON boat pressing that pipe five foot under the water line.  The pressure inside it had to be enormous…. It WAS enormous because as he cleared the last bit of threads, the cap assembly was blown out of his hands by a column of solid water that was as hard as a steel bar.  Tango 11 began to sink immediately.

I Flipped and Freaked.  If the rising water reached, and was drawn into the howling superchargers that fed the engines, they would explode like shrapnel bombs.  'Boats' and I would be killed just a little before Tango 11 went to the bottom of the Mekong River.

I charged in, tossed him out toward the hatch, then frantically looked for the valve and cap, but it was nowhere in sight.  This meant that it had to be down in the rapidly filling bilges, which were currently being whipped into a foaming, stinking, froth, that was just starting to lap over the deck plates.

I took a mighty breath and dove into the greasy crap, Buddy Holly glasses and all.  I blindly pawed around in the slippery, convoluted, maze, finally located the crummy cap under the port engine, surfaced, and quickly staggered toward the powerful incoming geyser.

I somehow wedged my feet under a pipe below the water and made a C-clamp out of myself, with as much of my weight over the cap as I could manage.  I did not know if this would work or not.  This maneuver was the only thing I could think of.  It HAD to work.

Slowly, under my full concentration and strength, the cap was forced sideways gradually slowing, cutting off the stream.

Now here was a tricky spot in which to be.  Directly over a cannon that has already been fired (four inch pipe), holding back the projectile (valve and cap), that would take my head off if I lost it.  When my arms began to shake, I figured I had about a meatball's chance in a hungry lion's cage at reattaching the thing.  My muscles were about shot getting me this far and my foot tops were rapidly assuming the shape of the plumbing below.

I gave it everything I had left.  I rotated my entire body along with the cap, got lucky, caught the threads quickly, then me and the Big Man, (God), made a turn on that cap… then another… then another… then we spun it home.

I hung like a wet dishrag staring straight down at the valve, smeared with sludge, dripping foul water, body wasted, twitching, nearly blind, and savored the immense joy of breathing.  The sight of the bilge water pumping down below the air intakes wasn’t bad either.

I needed to somehow impress upon 'Boats', standing forward by the brain scrambling hatch, that he should discuss his maintenance urges before messing around in, MY, engine room.

Coincidentally, quite by accident, as I was tightening the valve cap with my hatchet, the hand axe slipped from my fingers and flew in his direction, clanging on the metal wall near his head.  This probably happened due to my 'wet noodle' arms and 'baby grip' hands.  Oops, sorry 'Boats'.  I planned to steal a big pipe wrench as soon as I possibly could.

The deeper portent of the incident, no doubt, was lost on 'Boats'.  I’m just a more sensitive guy I guess.  I would have been Dead, but still Terribly embarrassed if we two F.N.G’s (new guys), had managed to kill the other good crewmen on Tango 11 along with ourselves, especially since they had made it this far and the enemy had not managed it yet.

'Boats' and I arrived at a kind of truce after that.  I played the entire thing down and never said much about how close we had come to sucking bottom.  'Boats' never mentioned the hatchet, because, I think, he did not want anyone else to know how close he came to taking us there.

'Boats' was, obviously, very afraid of burning up a motor for some unknown reason.  Maybe he had an old, oil mix, two stroke, lawnmower engine seize on him somewhere back in his youth.  Do you think maybe he used straight gasoline?  Yeah, that sounds about right.  That scenario explains why he felt the need to clear the Tango's fresh water intakes when the motors were running as cool as a pair of diesel cucumbers.  I always watched my engine temperatures like a hawk.

 

Thereafter, for a while, the Tango 11 Boat Captain and I managed to stay out of each others way, but eventually, inevitably really, we ran afoul of each other again.  The next encounter, however, turned out different.  That particular occasion contained a little thing called 'Peon Payback'.

 

Out of the clear blue sky one day 'Boats' decided that I needed to paint my engine room.  I tried to explain to him what a giant waste of time his idea was, that within one week the smoky motors would have the compartment looking the same dingy color as now.  He was insistent however so I decided to oblige.

          I made a trip to Navy stores where two five gallon buckets of white, oil based paint were obtained from the millions of gallons kept in there.  These were then lugged to just outside the low, head crushing, engine room hatch.

          'Boats' stood by, to offer sage Boson’s Mate painting tips no doubt, but I ignored him.  I knew exactly how this room should be painted.

I opened both cans and stirred them with a look from my eyes.  Rags and torn up old jungle greens were placed on all surfaces not intended to be white.  I thoroughly cleaned the areas to be painted, with another short look from my eyes.  Then I picked up my paint applicator, which happened to be a tin mess cup, (Imagine Jimmi Hendrix’s Purple Haze kicking in right here).  It was time to rock, paint and roll.  RivRon hot and nasty coming right up.

The pigmented medium was applied, by the cupful, starting at the rear of the compartment and continued forward until all ten gallons were consumed.  Carefully flung fans of white rapidly worked a luminous wonder, and soon the entire space was transformed into a glistening, running, sagging, toxic, WHITE, palace of a room.  I marveled at the inches thick layer of white that now floated atop the dirty bilge water.  Picasso would have approved, I'm sure.

'Boats' was right.  This did look better.  The man was almost as bright as the dripping engine room.  He certainly had the more talented eye in this particular area of artistic expertise, I had to admit.

          I disposed of the rags and depleted containers in accordance with Navy approved practices (over the side), fired up the engines to dry and cure (congeal?) the new coating, then I sought solace in the one place a river sailor can escape most criticism.  That location was on ‘The Bucket’, back on the stern.

The bilge pumps ran for quite a while creating twin streams of white, which formed interesting squiggly, marshmallow on cocoa shapes, as the paint slick chased the rags and containers down the current.  I lowered my newspaper to study the overall effect then added a touch of ocher and burnt umber from the bucket.

Ahhhhh… Perfecto!  It was a masterpiece flowing off into the purple jungle sunset.

          Over night another wondrous happening took place.  There appeared hundreds of three to six inch paint-cicles flapping and shimmering from the over head of the engine room.  I had the kind of feeling you would get if you found out that the girl you were dating owned a Corvette with duo-quad carburetors and a four speed.  That little added something.  There was also lots of sensuous movement when we were under way too, which was very cool.

One other curious thing about the new paint slowly became apparent.  After a week, as the white surfaces got filthier, strange twisted patterns emerged from the grime highlighted wrinkles and sags.  I gradually added finger painted eyes, noses and mouths to the more interesting formations, creating a gallery of weird faces on the surrounding bulkheads.  Again, I bowed to the superior artistic taste buds of my captain.  ‘Boats’ did not seem to share my enthusiasm.  It must have been a satisfactory job though, because he never asked me to paint again.

 

Speaking of ‘The Bucket’, let me back up a bit and explain.

         

Relieving oneself in Viet Nam was a major hassle and the hand pumped toilet on most of our boats was an Evil, worthless, object.

In full view of the whole world you had to drop your drawers, assume the position, then sit there chatting with someone on their bunk while you did your thing, trying all the while to remain cool.  Then, when the daily deed was finished, you could pump that lousy handle till the cows came home, but not a turd would ever stir.

Impossible!  It was a BAD scene all around, hence 'The Bucket', out on deck.  A vast improvement in privacy let alone fresh air.

The first time I used, ‘The Bucket’, I added some anti-stick priming water, then eased my fanny to the rim.  When I sat all the way down my skinny buns slid in way too deep.  I had to go urgently, and did so.  When I stood the bucket came up with me until my straightening motion popped it off my butt, whereupon the thing clattered, on its side, to the deck, spewing its contents on me and the mine sweeping gear.

Looking down, I said what I saw.

I used the bucket to clean up and as I worked I reflected, in sailor’s lingo, on the Navy’s inability to provide even the simplest, most basic, human needs.  This situation was not civilized.  Something had to be done.

Later on, after we tied up to the barracks ship, I marched (squished?), up the boarding ladder with Anger in my heart, Resolve in my mind, and a borrowed Hacksaw in my hand.  I was an odorous man on a very serious mission.

I went to the nearest head (bathroom) and walked up to an unoccupied stool.  I flipped up the toilet seat and violently sawed the retaining bolts in half.  A couple of sailors paused in their own endeavors to check my work.  I hung my prize around my neck, glared at them, and marched defiantly back to Tango 11 where 'The Bucket' patiently waited for a new ass to grab.

I snatched up my hatchet, one of three tools, (hatchet, crescent wrench and screw driver), that the previous engine man had somehow forgotten to steal.  Two short nails later, we had a nice press fit onto the bucket’s rim.

Voila!  Perfection!  A thing of pure beauty!  Now there was a Comfortable place to sit reading the Stars and Stripes newspaper, while watching a Vietnamese village go by.  I remember natives forming curious facial contortions as they observed 'The Bucket' and I crawl along at nine miles per hour, past the front door to their homes.  I always shot them a proud American look that said, "What?  You never saw a man in a boat, sitting on a bucket, taking a dump, reading a paper before?  Get a life."  I know it was kind of like pooping in their living room, but hey, sometimes you just had to go and besides, the next boat in line might have a soapy, naked, sailor on display for the viewing pleasure of the entire riverbank population.

Oh yeah, in case you have not figured it out yet, that was the same bucket we all used to take a shower with.  After, of course, it was dragged, tied to a line, in the sandy Mekong for ten minutes or so.  It always came out clean as a whistle.

 

“Gee!”, you might ask yourself, “Why do bucket stories always seem to come in pairs?”  I don't know the answer to that either, but here is my other one.

 

One evening Tango 11 and about eight other riverboats nosed into a canal bank and tied up to coconut palms for the night.  After awhile, when things looked quiet, the urge to refresh myself came calling.  The bucket and seat were available, so I retired with them in hand to my favorite location on the stern, next to the mine sweeping gear.

The sweep gear location made sense.  If a P.B.R. (fast boat) or A.S.P.B. (powerful boat) went past throwing a heavy wake, there was something to grab before bucket and sitter (sp?) were pitched over the side.  You can never be too careful.  A sailor always has to think ahead, prepare for the unexpected.  Yeah, right.

About three paragraphs into a front page article, I heard a heavy explosion that came from the beach in front of Tango 11.  Trees and debris flew skyward.  I finished my job RIGHT then.

Two quick explosions later, I realized that we were under mortar attack.  Men on all the boats were running to battle stations, slapping on helmets and flak gear, creating a scene of general fear driven chaos.

I stood and turned, forgot about the underwear around my ankles, kicked over the bucket, tried to take a step, then fell, spread eagle onto the deck.  An aircraft carrier is NOT the only place in the Navy that you can find a fouled deck, believe me.  I jerked up my shorts as I stood again then ran forward, along the starboard side, to drop into the well deck.

A group of American 9th Infantry Army men were hunkered down in there, moon eyed, locked, loaded, and ready for war.  I cruised right on past them to the engine room, in case we needed to fire up the engines.  My General Quarters station was manned and ready.

The incoming mortars stopped as suddenly as they started with all rounds having landed on the beach.  Bow ramp paint was our worst casualty.

I left the engine room and stood among the Army soldiers looking out at the jungle, taking in the splintered trees, smoke and destruction.  Gradually, as they became aware of my Powerful presence, all eyes shifted to me.

The troopers had painful, squinted expressions on their wrinkle nosed faces.  The kind of look you might give a dead skunk on the highway.  I think I started turning red at about my belly button.  I desperately tried to find words to convey that, no, it was not fear that made me smell like this.  I had merely tripped and fallen in my own ‘do do’.

This was a very bad day for the Navy’s pride.  It was a rotten deal any way you looked at it and the incident also summed up my young sailor life.  This was definitely another ‘Lose – Lose’ situation.

I remained silent, trying my best to look warrior like as stinky fumes wafted about.  Knowing smirks and smiles slowly crept over the soldier’s faces.  MAN that sucked!

'The Bucket' cleaned things up once again.  I slept out on deck in the rain that night, wounded to the core, smelling to the heavens, while the sounds of laughing grunts echoed in my head.

 

Events such as my bucket encounters seemed to occur with a strange regularity.  I soon began to realize that I did not have a clue as to what the Navy's overall game plan might be.  I was peacefully stupid mostly, blissfully stupid even.  Usually the first thing I knew about an upcoming operation was when some member of the crew prodded me awake in the wee hours with, "Up and at ‘em, Sailor… Drop your Cokes and grab your Colas... We need to split in thirty minutes."

Snipes, (engine men), like me, had to fire up twin, six cylinder, G.M.C-671, supercharged diesel engines that were housed in a steel engine room measuring about ten feet by ten feet square and six feet high.  The overworked machines smoked a lot and the big superchargers were very noisy.  The racket when underway at WFO, (wide open), promoted lip reading as a way to communicate.  That and sign language were the only way.

          I was awakened, in this usual manner early one A.M. and went on auto pilot.  I was already in my 'Uniform of the Day', O.D. skivvies and shower thongs.  Shower thongs are easier on badly sunburned foot tops.

          Blearily I dropped to the well deck from my overhead rack and cursed, (Ouch! Watch the feet stupid!), then went aft past snoring sailors, (Enjoy it while you can suckers.), and ducked through the low engine room hatch.

          The first order of business was to locate my custom made thermal transfer device.  This was a cleaned out, ‘Long Range Patrol Ration-Spaghetti Dinner’ pouch, (tin foil with a heavy, brown plastic outer covering), formed into a long tube.  I removed the expansion tank (radiator) cap from the starboard engine, inserted the device and filled it with fresh (yellow?) water.  After a quick stop in the coxswains flat to start the engines, I was off to the stern to check the bilge pump output plus add another thin yellow stream for a short, satisfying while.

          The fuel tanks had been topped off and the condensation drained from them the previous evening.  Humid tropic air sometimes added up to a quart of water a day to the tanks.  Tango 11 was now ready to get under way.  Well, semi ready anyway.

As the engines warmed, I prepared breakfast for the crew by sticking the slotted flash suppressor of an M-16 rifle over the wires that bound a new case of C-Rations, twisting until they popped.  I selected some items that might taste a little less like dog food and three packets of instant coffee.  These goodies were taken atop the coxswains flat where the powdered coffee, along with a few pieces of sugar coated chewing gum, was placed in the bottom of a tin mess cup.  Time was marked until the engine temperature gauges reached one hundred seventy five degrees.  When that magic number arrived, a trip to the starboard engine was made.  There the steaming thermal transfer device was emptied into the mess cup creating this river sailor’s morning liqueur, ‘Mekong Coffee Au'Chiclet’.

Back over the coxswains flat, the mess decks were now open for morning chow featuring today, beans and wienies, peanut butter crackers and peppermint coffee, overlaid with diesel exhaust to compliment the raw, slightly rotten, muddy, smell of the river.  No wonder my weight had dropped to one hundred twenty pounds from my normal one seventy five.  I had not weighed one twenty since junior high school.

          The rest of the crew, aroused by now, made their way about the boat sleepily scratching their nuts and butts.  Some went to the opened C’s, some to add to the bilge pump output.

          'Boats’ came aboard from his berth in the E-6 quarters aboard the mother ship.  He declined to sleep on the boat with the crew.  I do not think he liked the atmosphere.  He was a cherry interim replacement put in with an already combat hardened crew, as was my own case.  We were the ‘Square Peg - Round Hole’ theory, in spades.

          I fared better at getting along with Tango 11’s salty crew because John, a Gunners Mate from Chicago, guided me in the finer points of being a river sailor.  He had been there for eight months already and knew everything from painting to partying.  I paid close attention to him and learned all the tricks I could.  Like how to barter C-Rations with natives in sampans for beer, pop, ice, and whiskey.  He taught me when to shoot and when not to shoot.  John knew how to make an ice chest cooler from a giant stolen block of Styrofoam.  He showed me which C-ration items were good when combined in a cooking pot over burning C-4, or which tasted like Ca Ca when included, (Beef with Spice Sauce, yuk!).  Important stuff, you know?  He also knew how to raise hell with a 20 mm cannon.  He was an outstanding gunner.  One of the best I ever saw.  Good man.

         

          There was some kind of commotion going on, this particular morning, around a boat tied up in one of the rows behind us.  Soon a shouted command to cast off was passed from boat to boat and we obeyed.  As the radio came alive, we were informed that a boat was sinking.  Scuttlebutt said that a rubber propeller shaft packing had failed, possibly due to concussion grenades, thus letting the Mekong pour into the engine room.

Sure enough, one of the Tango boats I observed behind us had settled by the stern.  The red lead bottom of her bow could be seen rising in the air.  Sailors ran to her with pumps but she was headed for the riverbed.  I heard her heavy stern mooring lines snap and saw the boats that she was tied between take on a tremendous strain.

It was time for Tango 11 to move out so we formed up in a column with several other boats and headed upriver.  The stricken Tango rotated her dingy red bottom slowly toward the heavens as she receded from our view.

          I hated anything that smacked of bad luck at the start of a patrol.  You can sense my paranoia after watching a Tango slide under the dirty brown water, can't you?  I immediately put on a full set of flak gear including the stupid looking pants.

 

          Flak gear was a two piece, fiberglass layered, supposedly bullet proof, body armor ensemble in dull forest green, created by those swank military fashion designers back home.

          The jacket weighed a ton.  It made sore spots then calluses on my shoulders.  This was a small price to pay for protecting my heart and lungs.  Helicopter pilots sat on their flak jackets to ward off a dose of hot metal in the buns and ultra sensitive surrounding area.  In its other important role, when used as a pillow, flak jackets have cradled many a Vietnam G.I.’s sleepy head.

The flak pants looked like thick, green, diapers, on steroids.  They were Very un-manly, Very un-warrior like in appearance, and yes, they protected another one of my very highly thought of delicate regions.  I wore them when ever I felt particularly vulnerable.  The fiberglass briefs were also pretty heavy, made calluses on my hips and tended to slide south.  Their sink rate was determined by the amount of constant sweaty lubricant that poured from beneath the airless, clinging, jacket above.  When all the gooey liquid collected in the sweltering atmosphere of the pants an evil fermenting process usually took place.  This produced a kind of putrid grease which, incredibly, kept roving mosquitoes at bay.  I suppose the bloodsuckers thought that there could be no nutritional value in something that smelled as longtime dead as that.

 

It was very hot, this day, and I must have been edgy because of the sinking Tango.  I had my flak jacket secured using every available snap and strap.  The pants were cinched up so tight that only about a half inch of white butt crack showed in the rear.

Periodically they still had to be tugged upwards and had a medium rate of decent, I’d guess.  I soon had a rhythm going with my camera.  I would…, click a picture pull up my diapers and wait…, click a picture pull up my diapers and wait…, and so on.  Not a mosquito in sight either.

Our engines droned tediously on through an unending convolution of rivers and canals.  Mile after mile of jungle slid serenely past, broken by the occasional grass hooch, grazing water buffalo, red flowering vines, a passing sampan or two, drooping banana trees, muddy riverbank and yet more muddy riverbank.

‘Boats’ came below to watch the panorama from the well deck with me.  Shortly after his arrival, he drew a Buck hunting knife from its sheath, removed a whetstone from one of his many jungle green pockets, snorted up a huge gob, spat it on the hone and commenced to waste away the dragging hours performing his favorite pastime, which was sharpening an already sharp knife.  He was so consumed with this endeavor that I bet he wore out a good Buck knife every month or two.

I knew the blade was, ‘Like a Razor’, because he loved to test its edge by dry shaving a patch of hair off his arms or hands every once in a while.  After studying the bare spot and as tufts of fur floated to the deck, he would say, in his Alabama twang, to anyone around, “Shop Mutha, Hain’t it?”  Very curious behavior but it did eventually show off his forearm tattoos to great effect.

I preferred to pass my countless hours of idle time by taking pictures of, well… anything.  Such as snakes, birds, flowers, trees, monkeys, natives, just anything.  I should have owned stock in the Kodak and Fuji companies.  The sheer amount of film I consumed probably caused their market values to spike nicely.

Eventually the engines slowed then idled, signaling our arrival at wherever we were.  The jungle had opened up into a large body of water that was fed by five different canal mouths.  The small lake was alive with native watercraft moving about.

A surrounding native village bustled with pedestrian activity.  The collection of claptrap multilevel houses were mostly combinations of palm fronds, wood, and corrugated metal, with a few better looking stone buildings mixed throughout.

Sampan docks, on rickety askew pilings, stuck out like undulating, gnarled, fingers from the soft clay river bank.  Half naked and totally naked round faced kids milled in groups, on the warped boards, trying to get a better view of the noisy green monsters that had just invaded their front yard.

Our boats all halted near the middle of the waterway allowing the strange mix of water flows to turn them about.  It was very difficult to maintain position and boat operators gunned their engines as they fought the weird cross currents.  Tango 11 spun slowly in a circle.

           I noticed that our boat was being approached, portside, by a small sampan that was paddled by an ancient looking woman in back, carrying a baby in front.  Just as the old lady started to pass across the bow, our engines slammed into forward then roared full blast for about five seconds.

Grandma, who was looking elsewhere, paddled right into our port side which capsized her sampan and dumped her, along with the baby, into the swirling murky water.  The elderly lady clutched the overturned sampan as it spun away in the current.  The little baby sank like a stone.

‘Boats’ and I stood frozen, horrified, as the child disappeared.  He looked at me, with panicked, beseeching, eyes and shouted, “Git the baby!”

I started tearing at my flak jacket.  I knew that if I jumped in wearing flak gear I could never make it back to the surface, with or without the baby.  We would both die.  Precious seconds ticked away as I continued my frantic attempts to remove the heavy body armor.

I saw that 'Boats' did not have on any flak gear and in fact he never wore the encumbering protection.  I looked at him with my own 'Nutso' eyes and screamed, “YOU gotta’ go man, YOU gotta’ go NOW!”  We were out of time.  The baby had been under for about thirty seconds already.

He must have agreed because as I finally cleared my chest protector, ‘Boats’ kicked off his jungle boots, climbed up next to a 50 caliber machine gun and plunged in, feet first.

I clambered up next to the weapon myself and looked over the side.  I saw nothing but brown, dirty water and I felt totally, utterly helpless.  My heart started to fill with dread and a terrible despair welled up from within me.  I could hardly breathe.  Seconds became agonizing hours.  I still had the lousy flak pants on.

But Wait… There… Just below the surface… I saw a light colored blob that slowly turned into a child's squinted face as it steadily rose towards me.  Gripping a wad of clothing, at the young ones back, was a clean shaven Alabama hand which pushed the toddler steadily upward.

Another hairless hand appeared clawing its way up Tango 11’s bar armor.  ‘Boat’s head broke to the surface and I hung by my toenails, from the guard rail, to grab the baby’s arms.

This could not be believed.  Oh thank you merciful God.  The man had done it!

Another crew member arrived on the scene so I handed off the drenched child, then reached down, latched on to ‘Boat’s jungle tunic and with all the strength both of us could muster, heaved his half drowned river rat ass back on board the boat.  We tumbled together into the well deck, where he went to his knees gushing brown water from nose and mouth.  He shook furiously as if chilled to the bone in the well over one hundred degree heat.  He was Alive, however, and there was another urgent matter now at hand.

The old mama-san had righted her fragile craft and was along side madly chattering, non stop, sing song, curses.  I assumed she was cursing because her demeanor gave the impression that she was mightily pissed.  Someone handed her the baby.  She placed it in the bottom of the sampan, graced us with a last, hateful, withering glare and paddled away.  If she had known how, I am sure she would have flipped us a departing Mekong bird.

My attention returned to Boats who had, by now, regained his sea legs.  He stood trembling, streaming rancid river water from his many pockets onto the deck.  He also kept repeating something.  I could not make out what it was through his Alabama drawl mixed with the gagging and puking noises he was making.  Gradually his retching abated and as his breathing slowed to near normal, I could finally make out his garbled words.  He was saying, “Sun a Ma Bee-itch, At Air bayba head it's bray-yath. Ah Bee a Sun a Ma Bee-itch.”

He was right, I realized, amazed.  The youngster had not made a peep throughout the entire ordeal.  I suppose it had been raised, since birth, next to the steamy river.  It had probably learned to hold its breath as its mother took it to bathe and play in the chocolate colored water.  “Sun a Ma Bee,” indeed ‘Boats’.

I shook out and lit a pair of Marlboro’s for us.  Someone else ‘church keyed’ a cold can and handed it to him.  He gave a priestly, ‘Thank You My Son’, look to that sailor.  He puffed and chugged for a few seconds then looked at me reproachfully with a slight scowl then spoke in his low, slow, down home, drawl and said,

 

“She-Yit ... Doan Yall Know Ahh Cain’t Swee-Yumm?”

 

My eyeballs enlarged slightly and my already shocked countenance took on a profound, "DUH !", look as I absorbed the full impact of his quiet southern words.  I failed to comprehend how a man that did not swim could ever save himself, AND a baby, from the wicked river currents that swirled beneath our boat.  The Big Man above had surely intervened somehow.

I slowly shook my head at the wonder of it all.  Then I started to glow with immense relief at the way it had turned out.  How terrifying yet wonderful the hellish, nightmare war could become at times.  Suddenly you found yourself in need of a sailor with guts and like magic one appeared.

          ‘Boats’, the unsung hero who had preformed the most selfless act I was EVER to witness, peeled off his soggy uniform and clad only in dripping skivvies, wandered off to scrounge up some dry clothes.  A simple Alabama man, barefoot once again.

          I honor him by humbly saying, “Who’d a thunk it.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6

 

The Crossroads

 

 

 

 

I remember one notoriously bad location, not far from our home base at Dong Tam, that we all called the "Crossroads".  The Navy powers that be sent us there often.  Someone would get hurt, or worse, most every time.

          On the way to the Crossroads, I would automatically open extra cans of ammunition.  I always threw the covers of the ammo containers over the side because I was not going to need them any longer.  More than likely the link belts would be expended and I would have to open even more.  If not, I would always deep six any unused ammo over the side after the inevitable fire fight that the Crossroads seldom failed to produce.  This might seem wasteful, but I absolutely refused to load anything but freshly opened ammunition into my guns.  If left exposed to the humid air, the brass casings would quickly turn green with corrosion.  If you used this tarnished ammo, sooner or later a shell casing neck would snap off in a chamber, because of the built up green grunge, disabling your weapon.  You would be somewhere up an old smelly creek without a paddle if this occurred.  I had that happen to me, one time, during a test fire.  Lesson learned.  New ammo belts, every time, Period.

On the way to the Crossroads the riverboats would pass a village in the jungle.  We sailors always tossed candy to the children that lined the bank of the narrow canal.  We called them, 'Charlie’s Kids', referring to their daddy's other part time job, besides rice or banana farming, which was shooting at us on the way in, you could hear us coming for miles, or on the way out, more time to set up a really good ambush.  I'll bet 'Victor Charles' even ripped off the kids' goodies to munch on as he patiently waited to take us under fire.  Talk about a low life.

If there were no children in sight as we motored past, we knew that, with out a doubt, RPG rocket and AK rifle fire, or worse, awaited us somewhere CLOSE.  Flak gear and a focused mind were put in place, *Fast*, if the youngsters did not show up at all for our handout.

The actual intersection of canals that made up the Crossroads was just past the village.  Any direction from there was a V.C. favorite, because all boats had to eventually do a one hundred and eighty degree about face, after a few miles, when the canal became too shallow for maneuvering.  In other words we all came to a standstill.  The delay involved in coming about, then regaining forward momentum provided a wonderful opportunity for the enemy to strike us.  This was like pausing then hollering, “OK… Shoot Meeeeeee..... NOW!”

Motoring straight through the crossing was the worst, I thought.  The same scenario existed up there but the shallow water was farther into the jungle and it took much longer to make the round trip.

 

A newbie Navy Captain paced the pontoon dock one day, proudly displaying his brand new, loop intact (signifies no combat experience), camouflage beret.  His mirrored sunglasses reflected twin slightly twisted images of the US Army 9th Infantry streaming down the gangway of our barracks ship.  This was his big show.  He anxiously strode the deck amongst the milling soldiers while his, ‘Command for a Day’, found their assigned boats.  When everyone was aboard and accounted for, we could all finally set off on a little ride to the "Crossroads", with him, literally, calling all the shots.

Around eight grunts, with assorted weaponry, soon took over the well deck of Tango-11.  The soldiers sprawled about, amid their gear, where several appeared to go instantly asleep.  Those were casualties of last night’s Conex box party or victims of an extra long running poker game, most likely.  Our crew, affectionately, called them all “Doggies” (dog faces).  They in turn called us “Swabbies” (deck wipers), a name I always figured I had proudly earned by having done so very much of it.

The 9th, I felt, were MY Doggies.  I greatly respected them and their fighting abilities.  There was not much that I would not do for those guys.  They were the point of our military spear and hounded the enemy through the muddy jungle which was a dark, dank place that I greatly feared.  These men slept in and slogged through literally hundreds of miles of the tangled, green, nightmare.  It was also not good for anyone's health to be in front of these soldiers if we had to beach them during an ambush.  They attacked like Tigers and charged from our boats with pure, unadulterated, 'John Wayne', style guts.  It gives me shivers to think about it.

 

I tossed this group of Doggies a few new cases of C-Rations, which they promptly opened and rooted through.  All the Toilet paper disappeared in a flash.  The smell of Alpo soon filled the air.

I told them to grab as much 7.62 / M-60 ammo as they wanted from the cans stacked under my weapons and a few two hundred fifty round cans quickly disappeared.

I asked if anyone needed M-16 ammo, M-79 grenades, fragmentation grenades, C-4 plastic explosive, 45 automatic or 12 gauge 00 buckshot rounds.  We always carried some of each.  I offered water and they just snickered.  Nobody drank our diarrhea inducing water.  I passed out a few packs of Marlboros and fetched a few cold sodas.

I had a short chat with the M-60 gunner and asked about the condition of his gun barrel.  I offered a new replacement piece if he so desired.  What the Army lacked the Navy would supply.  I tried to make sure of it.  I was your basic friendly ‘Tango Cruise Line’ stewardess, although with an uglier bespectacled face and smaller frontal appendages, I will admit.

I asked if there was anything else they needed.  To a man they instantly answered, as they always did, “Round Eyed P(sex)y.”  I laughed and told them they had to handle THAT situation themselves.  Then we all laughed.  These were VERY good men.

After getting under way, our boats assumed predetermined, (by somebody), positions in a long line heading down river.  Black diesel smoke billowed into dense, temporary smog as we powered along at about 12 miles an hour.  We always gained a little speed if we went with the current as the tide was going out.

When the column approached then swung towards the entrance to the Crossroads, one of the soldiers hollered, “Lock and Load.”  A chorus of snicks, clicks and snaps followed as the men prepared their weapons for business.  I had set up my weapons with a two hundred fifty round ammo belt for each of my four 30 caliber guns and a 200 round belt for each of my two 50 caliber guns.  When I saw that we were making a ‘Bad News’ turn to starboard, headed for the Crossroads, and heard the Army’s, “Lock and Load”, I uncapped an additional five hundred rounds of 30 caliber slugs plus two hundred rounds 50 caliber.  This represented well founded paranoia.  I hated going in there.  My eyes narrowed to intently study the passing tree line for movement.  We all watched and waited.

Soon the village came into view.  ‘Charlie’s Kids’ were nowhere in sight, in fact the entire place appeared to be deserted.  Anxiety heightened and butt cheeks tightened, as we roared straight through the Crossroads intersection.

We soon arrived at a place where the canal widened out considerably, creating a bubble of water about two hundred yards across.  A flat grassy plain, with bushes here and there, fronted the tree line for approximately one hundred yards off our port side.  The tide was near half finished running out exposing six foot of muddy riverbank.  This gave the upper gun mounts a clear line of sight across the grass plain to the tree line.  We, in the well decks, were just under the edge of the canal bank.  We could see none of the plateau or the trees.

The radio on Tango 11 came alive as an excited voice reported movement to port.  The boat column tensed for an ‘Open Fire’ command that should have immediately been given.  The F.N.G Captain, however, required more details.  He was informed that several bushes were moving around on the flat savanna to port.  He then threw away a golden opportunity to fire the first shot and completely doomed that chance by commanding all boats to, “Hold your fire.”

What an asinine thing to do.  This was contrary to our usual, self preserving, habit of shooting at all suspicious movement in a free fire zone such as we were now in.  You can not imagine how badly we wanted to get the first shot off just ONE lousy time.  It was with much trepidation that all gunners heeded this stupid order.  Those who still had a clear view watched as the running ‘bushes’ disappeared into the jungle.

While the boats cruised onward I knew that we had blown it.  We were set up for a later hell because there was only one way out of the ‘Crossroads’.  Back past the galloping vegetation, the way we had come in.  It was just a matter of time and now the enemy got to choose that upcoming moment.

The boats were able to travel up the canal for about another forty five minutes before the water depth necessitated the required complete one eighty.  By this time the outgoing tide had eroded what was left of our remaining elevation.  On our return trip we faced about fourteen feet of near vertical riverbank plus super shallow water in which to navigate.

The Viet Cong happily accepted our gift of high ground and added time, using both to prepare an exceptional lead filled party for our run past their now commanding position.  Enemy battle plan wishes must have been perfectly implemented.

Just after our boats entered the wide area, on the return trip, they were greeted with a stupendous barrage of enemy rocket and machine gun fire.  The hellacious volume of incoming ordinance slammed into our boats like a hurricane wind, shredding all in its path.

I immediately sent a two hundred fifty round belt of ammo towards the beach.  I saw my tracers either impact the tall slope, or sail harmlessly upwards past its upper edge.  The attackers were able to shoot directly down onto us, peppering our boats at will from their lofty positions.  What a Giant cluster thing this situation had evolved into.

Enemy bullets whizzed, zinged and pinged all along our starboard side.  Rockets ‘Whooshed’ towards us leaving smoky, snake like trails, as they flashed and ‘Boomed’ into the bar armor of hapless unlucky boats.

I emptied the three starboard machine guns then reloaded the 50 to pump round after round, ineffectually, toward the enemy positions.

One adrenaline crazed infantryman clipped new one hundred round link belts on to my depleting one, enabling me to continue returning fire nonstop.  Good man.

Another soldier reloaded one of the 30 calibers and started blasting away at the beach.  All for nothing.  He was only able to fire uselessly into the mud wall a few hundred feet away.

The radio issued a ‘Cease Fire’ so I let up on the trigger of my weapon.

The boats maneuvered to open a lane so that a Command Control Boat, with a 40 mm ‘Pom Pom’ gun up front, could pound the area with about one explosive round per second.  Several minutes passed as the exploding shells blew mud and debris high into the air.  The 40 mm was a fantastic weapon to have along in a firefight, let me tell you.  Too bad about the elevation thing this time though.  The furious big, hot, rounds accomplished ‘Zip’.  Low tide and all that you know.

Air support must have been called in because as the Command Control Boat finally fell silent, two BEAUTIFUL Cobra helicopter gun ships swooped down raining murderous Mark-19 grenade, rocket, and mini gun fire onto the enemy positions from above.

As the choppers continued a coordinated, one after the other, attack into the VC resistance, I heard the order to “Insert Troops,” over my sound powered headphones.  I relayed this unwelcome news to the Doggies then set about unfastening the turnbuckles that secured the bow ramp.  Once the enormous steel door was lowered our well deck would become the small end of a giant funnel into which hostile gunfire could enter at will.  We were about to jump, literally, from the frying pan into the fire.  I did not like this particular part of my sailor duties.  I was scared spit less.

Tango 11 lined up pointed at the shore and eased in toward the slippery mud bank.  I applied a hand brake against the ramps tremendous weight, to keep the operating cable from snarling into a tangled, winch jamming, back lash.  This would prevent closing the massive thing when the time came to pull out.  A very bad scene would result should this happen.

The boat operator kept our forward (baby walker) speed down to prevent the heavy boat’s lowered door from stabbing too far into the sheer mud wall and maybe trapping us…, with the door down…, amid angry little piss ants…, who shot from above.  This was another Very bad scene that had to be prevented.

Our progress was about right.  The Cox’n’s approach was cool.  I told him so over the phones.

The soldiers hastily rechecked their equipment as I set the bow door at about a forty degree up angle.  This would give the infantry men an eight foot, slightly uphill, running start, in their difficult task of scaling the slippery face of the mud cliff ahead.

The Army troopers were keyed up well into the, ‘Wild Horse Sees a Snake’, range.  I tried to hold them in check with shouted calls of, “WAIT! WAIT!”, as I held up a restraining hand.  Timing, at this point, was important.  I focused on the slowly narrowing strip of water ahead of us.

While I was occupied with all of this, the M-60 machine gunner of the squad danced from one foot to the other, hyped to the max with anticipation of the assault.  He had to go first, without covering support, in order to rake the immediate area with suppressing machine gun fire that would allow his comrades to deploy somewhat safely.  This dangerous job required enormous testicular fortitude.  I do not know how men like him were ever able to sit down comfortably without crushing their Giant, Brass, B(underpinnings).

We still had about ten foot of distance to close with the beach.  As I continued to holler, “Wait!”, this superb United States Army warrior, My Doggy, decided that, NOW, was his best time to fly.  I guess he wanted to be five steps in front of everybody else.  Like I said, HUGE.

The impatient trooper charged, alone, up the slanted ramp carrying his M-60 pointed forward, ready to rock.  He took a great flying leap off the six inch, round, steel pipe, at the very end of the bow door, and sailed toward the muddy beach.

The gunner never made it.  He fell well short and landed, instead, smack dab in the middle of 'Out House City'.  He rolled onto his back facing us, feet in the water, low on the steep mud slide ahead, and was now mere seconds away from being crushed to death, by a seventy six ton chunk of slow moving iron.

I began shouting, “Man Overboard!  Man Overboard!  Back Down!  Back Down!”, into the intercom microphone, but momentum, even at this slow speed, held us, despite roaring, reversed engines, in non-stoppable forward motion.

The soldiers all began to yell and scream with me as the ramp end pipe pressed in gently on the gunner’s neck, pining him by the throat, mashing him back into the mud.

He disappeared from our view, as the ramp slid over top of him, with his face set in a mask of total horror.  Mine was too.  Talk about agony.  It makes me want to cry to remember it.  He was a dead man.  I could feel it in my soul.

As we all surged up ramp, the Tango’s churning propellers finally took effect, just as the lowered door kissed the beach.  The boat very slowly inched to the rear.

The doomed mans mud covered face slowly came back into view.  We looked at his face and saw that his eyes were…., WIDE open, Staring Intently, ALIVE !

The gunner *SCREAMED* two VERY bad words, concerning mother son procreation, as we pounced on him.  Ten hands, at least, reached out to grab a handful of his uniform.  I heard a ‘Wet Fart’ liquid sound as he broke free of the gooey suction.  He was lifted, bodily, by us onto the ramp and stood on his feet.  He shakily wobbled back down into the well deck, under his own power, repeating those very bad words over and over.

His buddies hearing, then seeing, that he was hale and hardy, immediately scrambled up the steep slope and were gone, over the bank edge, in very short order.  I could hear their M-16's rapping as they bored in to kill our ambushers.

Looking ahead at the mud wall, I saw a perfect human imprint in the clay bank then noticed two inches of the gunner's M-60 machine gun poking out of the slime.  I latched on to the weapon as the boat backed away.  The machine gun slid horizontally out of its sticky encasement with another fart like sound, which was appropriate, because it looked more like a three foot brown turd, than it did a weapon.  This gun was wasted, barrel packed full, totally useless.

I carried the unrecognizable object to the gunner who was just finishing blowing snotty mud plugs from his nose.  I uttered a very bad word, or two, myself and pronounced the M-60, with out a doubt, absolutely dead.

I then suggested that he call it a day, explaining that he could ride with us back to the ship and get checked out by a medic.  I frankly failed to understand how he could be standing here in front of me, one hundred percent encrusted in mud, one hundred percent alive.  I mean, I had just watched him die, in slow motion, moments before.

He told me that he, most emphatically, HAD to catch up with his squad.  I quickly went into action, ever the accommodating Navy hostess.

I removed and handed him my helmet then opened two cans of M-60 ammo.  After he put on the head gear, he broke up and secured the brass belts across his chest, ‘Poncho Villa’, style.  I went into our small armory and selected a brand new, well oiled, Navy M-60 for him.  I laid the glistening gun at his feet, opened the loading door, popped in a one hundred round belt, made the 60 ready and safe, then stood to hand it to him.

As he took the pristine weapon from me I said, “Good luck my man.”

His eyes quickly locked with mine.  He nodded slowly…, one time…, then turned, ran up the ramp and disappeared over the muddy bank edge.  No problem.

As I raised then secured the bow door, I gave the Cox’n a few words over the sound powered phones.  We reversed out, formed up with the other boats and headed for home.

I have absolutely no memory of the trip back.  I just stared vacantly into the middle distance and blinked.  I watched the whole thing play in my brain.  Over and Over and Over.  Then the, ‘What ifs’, set in.

What if a rock had been behind him?

What if a tree branch had been buried in the mud?

What if the Cox’n had been a tad slower or a tad faster?

What if........ ???

 

The 'What Ifs' lasted all the way back to Dong Tam and they have continued all the way forward to now.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7

 

Donut Dollies

 

 

 

 

            Along about mid afternoon, one Mekong River day, as the temperature sped past one hundred degrees again, I was sacked out on a bunk, in the shade, reading a Mad magazine for the umpteenth time. The cover was so wrinkled that Alfred E. Neuman looked a thousand years old with all his teeth broken.

On the other side of Tango 11, John, a gunner, assumed the same posture as I.  He was intently scanning a many months old Playboy.  His choice of reading material was terribly ragged and looked as if it had been used as bedding in a dog kennel.  It was dirty, used, much abused.

I recognized his sad looking magazine.  I had already read it many times myself.  I even read it upside down one time because I got bored reading it right side up.  Most of the good parts were either ruined or had been torn out to be used as wallpaper.

I was into the comic ‘Spy Vs Spy’ when my cartoon espionage enlightenment was interrupted by James, the radioman.  He’d scrambled down the ladder from the coxswain’s flat to the tiny berthing compartment beneath and was shaking my sandal clad foot with great excitement.  He had an intent look on his face and kept repeating, “Quick! Fire up the engines! We have to get under way!”, as he wrangled my foot side to side.

John sat up, instantly alert and said, “James, my man, what’s happening?”

The agitated radioman related that a message had just come in ordering our boat to proceed to a particular river location post haste.  We also had to be prepared to land an incoming Huey, on the helicopter deck, when we got there.

James giggled with delight as he told us that the Huey was carrying “Donut Dollies”.  These were young American girls that went out to entertain and uplift the moral of frontline troops.  Tango 11 was to hook them up with a squad of U.S. Army 9th infantry soldiers somewhere out in the bush.

James went on to say that the aircraft concerned could not find a good place to offload their female cargo anywhere on land, because heavy monsoon rains had turned the entire countryside into a knee deep sea of mud.

At the end of this rundown James’ face took on a hopeful vacant expression.  He swallowed hard twice then frivolously wasted our ‘Father in Heaven’s’ time by solemnly intoning, “God! I hope they have dresses on.”

I caught his meaning immediately and we raced to get underway.  James and I cast off the mooring lines just as John started the motors with a teeth rattling roar which ejected a huge billowing cloud of blue black smoke in the process.

Having absolutely no mercy for a cold engine, John slammed the transmissions into forward then twisted the throttles wide open.  I would have been whole lot quicker at it myself.  This was already Much better than reading torn up magazines for the millionth time.  Pedal to the metal my man, and do not spare the JP (diesel fuel).

James and I then went topside to bend back the radio antennas which we secured out of the way of any spinning helicopter blades.  Our blunt nosed boat rocketed over the brown water at the breakneck speed of about nine miles per hour, as fast as she would go.  What the heck, the diesel injectors probably needed cleaning off anyway.

We roared along for forty five minutes or so then reduced speed and started to circle at the intersection of two canals banked by rice paddy dikes.

Soon a six man squad of muddy 9th Infantry doggies appeared along one section of dike where they set about dropping their heavy equipment.

You can usually hear a chopper well before you can see one.  I heard then saw one approaching Tango 11 from high over the starboard side.

The furious bird “Wop! Wop! Wop!’ed” its way down to us as James and I took up positions on the flight deck access ladder with our heads poking up just above the landing pad.

The coxswain was a master at the boat controls.  He held the Tango steady against the current as the Huey’s skids settled onto it, driving the bow down into the water several feet.  We took on a sizable list to one side where the tail of the aircraft protruded.  The front of the chopper jutted out over the portside. The back end hung way out past the starboard.  Imagine balancing a running, upright, 750 Honda motorcycle across a canoe.  It was scary and dangerous to say the least.

The noise that accompanied the howling wind was unbelievable. We turned our backs while the air blast from the thundering rotor scoured the undersized helicopter flight deck free of sand.  James had on his usual sunglasses.  I wore my standard black framed Buddy Hollys.  When we turned back toward the oncoming cyclone, thus protected, we had a magnificent view from below, up into the side door of the helicopter.

James must have been in real tight with the Big Man, because as we looked on, two gorgeous American girls emerged from the chopper.  They were dressed in light blue skirts, which were immediately blown straight toward heaven, then held there by a continuous up-rushing jet of air.

James and I stood stock still and watched a true miracle unfold as the females above us tried vainly to hold down their clothing.  They came towards us escorted by a crouching door gunner carrying their equipment.  The girls were bent over at the waist giving us a spectacular, bra filled, panorama.  My respect for James’ religious clout climbed several more notches.

When the Dollies reached the top of the stairway they, amazingly, turned around to back down the steps directly in front of us.  They stopped with their rears just a few inches in front of our gaping, imbecilic, faces.  James and I had suddenly become two smiling fruit of the loom inspectors.

We immediately took our jobs very seriously and did our utmost to detect any flaws in the material displayed, but I must say, everything appeared to be completely faultless to me.  Just to be sure, however, I, being the diligent sailor that I was, quickly double checked my work a few times, and Yes!  Everything that I saw was absolutely perfect.

The chopper changed pitch and the noisy green beast “Wap! Wap! Wap!‘ed” up and away into the sky.

I did not actually see the chopper lift off.  My attention was firmly locked on the firm round sight firmly ensconced in the very firm front of me.  My mind was also firmly in shock.  To addled to even form lewd thoughts, a thing that had never happened to me before.

James snapped out of his fantasy first.  He awkwardly climbed outside the ladder rails up onto the landing pad and offered his hand to each lady in turn, assisting them back up to the top deck.

I followed, visually chained to the bouncing, white cotton, vista ahead, until I regretfully rose to the level of the deck myself.  Regretfully, that is, until I finally looked at the faces connected to those magnificent posteriors.  “Wow!”, I thought, “Round eyed girls are not extinct after all.”

James, ever the handsome gentleman, led the lovely duo forward to the bow door at the very front of the boat, chatting up a storm as if he had known them for years.  I struggled along behind doing a very realistic imitation of Chester, the stiff legged deputy on Gun Smoke.  “Hey! Wait for me Mr. Dillon!”

The coxswain throttled up slightly easing in toward the waiting Army troopers standing along the beach atop a semi dry patch of dike.  Six of us waited at the Tango’s bow facing the approaching men.  Two flushed faced Donut Dollies, two combat sailors wearing flip flops and two other dudes both named Woody.

The boat slid gently up to the beach which provided an easy step to shore for our female guests.  A grinning pair of Army soldiers assisted them as our engines shut down.  I helped set two anchors in the mud securing the boat then joined the crowd atop the earthen mound.

The ladies got right down to business.  They introduced themselves while the soldiers and sailors all lowered their vantage points by sitting.  The men also immediately shifted their brains to a more favorable alternate location somewhat lower on their bodies, which quickly took over all male thought control.

The entertaining girls produced poster display cards depicting cartoon characters and a large box of cookies.  One of the Dollies passed out the confections with a brilliant smile.  When all had been served the other Dolly told a poster board story to a totally enthralled audience of American sugar lipped warriors.  The goddesses had our undivided attention.  Nothing short of a thousand pound bomb could have made an impression on our intently focused minds.

Every once in a while Dolly number one made us eat another cookie which we chewed mechanically like robots.  We were eating the cookie but our thoughts were somewhere else altogether.

The ladies wound up their little show after twenty minutes or so.  By that time most of us men were shifting from one bun to the other, in a vain attempt to find a compromise sitting position that was comfortable without stating the obvious.  A few squirming souls had given up completely.  They now stood hopping from one foot to the other in acute distress.

The treats probably tasted good just as the story was probably cute, but I really could not say for sure.  Those particular memories are lost in a testosterone induced haze.  The shapely donut chicks could have been speaking Chinese while handing out chunks of cow pie for all we knew or cared.

When the show was over we gave the girls a very hearty round of well deserved applause.  Everybody smiled.  The American lovelies had managed to uplift everything in sight, including our moral.  They were masters of their craft, true naturals in every respect.

The sound of an inbound chopper intruded above so the ladies packed their gear and stepped back aboard our boat.  Tango 11 again took up station away from the bank to land the approaching bird.

The Donut Dollies departed in the same exotic manner that they had arrived.  Skirts held aloft by the benevolent wind from rapidly whirling blades.  We waved as they flew off into the wild blue yonder in search of yet another group of grimy soldiers to dazzle with their show.  Nice piece of work ladies, very nice indeed, job well done.  All in all it was a pleasant experience for every man involved.

I think that Congress should bestow a special medal unto the truly heroic women who put on those kinds of selfless, courageous shows.

Perhaps the award should be in the form of two intertwined golden glazed donuts with crossed, uh, pink helicopter blades behind, all hung from a light blue ribbon.  Yeah, that would be a nice way to say thanks to All those pretty girls that actually came out into the bush and visited with us muddy grunts.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8

 

On The Beach at Dong Tam

 

 

 

On March 26, 1969, my 21st birthday, you would have found me with a group of river boats, up a narrow canal, somewhere in the vast Mekong Delta, surviving my 21st ambush.  This gun battle came after three months worth of harrowing missions hauling US Army, VN Army and VN Marines around the Delta.  Those bad times were interspersed with mind numbing night patrols protecting the river fleet.

After doing that routine continuously from mid December to the end of March, I decided I needed a little break, so I requested an overnight shore leave in Dong Tam for a little impromptu R & R.

Everything was cool and with permission granted, due to no upcoming river operations involving me, I hopped aboard an A.S.P.B. (Assault Support Patrol Boat) for the half mile ride to the beach.  The morning sun was beautiful and I sat back on the stern of the boat enjoying the short trip.

Dong Tam was home to a Navy river boat base, the US Army 9th Infantry, many Army Aviation personnel and lots of various support groups.  There were a few of us sailors as opposed to many hundreds of those soldiers, airmen and hospital workers.

The encampment was split into two unequal sections called Navy Side and Army Side.

Navy Side consisted of a harbor area with pontoon docks, a boat repair facility, mess hall area, personnel living quarters (plywood hooch’s), plus an Enlisted Men’s Club.  Close by was an Army artillery unit containing a few 155 mm cannons.  Further away toward the river was supposed to be an ammo dump.

          Upon entering Dong Tam harbor, I noticed that the rumors I had heard about the ammo dump getting hit were true, and How.  There was a large hole in the ground where five hundred thousand pounds of explosive ordinance used to be.  The V.C. had gotten lucky with a mortar round or rocket that blew it all up.  Guess when that big bang took place?  Yep, you got it.  It happened On March 26th, my 21st birthday.

 

Navy Side was badly torn apart, due to its close proximity to the blast, which must have made one HUGE boom.  Warehouses were ballooned outwards with large sections of corrugated metal loosely flapping or missing entirely.  There were also brand new hooch’s where older sun faded ones had once stood.

After tie up, I took a look at a Tango boat that had sunk at her moorings one morning as I was leaving on patrol.  She sat next to the pier, up on large blocks with her bow ramp gaping open.  Her crew was busy cleaning out stinky river bottom goop scraped up during her recovery.  Scuttlebutt said that the men had to recondition the boat then turn it over to the South Vietnamese Navy.  What a nasty job.

I decided to take a walk around the general blast site to inspect the current conditions.  Soon I came upon an area that was covered in mounds of unexploded munitions.  Large projectiles canted at odd angles from the dirt along with various other jumbles of unexploded ordnance.  The place gave me the willies so I left to take a look at the 155 mm artillery pieces that the Army operated next to Navy side.  I had not checked these weapons out on any previous visit ashore.  They were an impressive sight with crews of men moving about servicing the big guns.

Something caught my attention on the ground behind the 155's so I walked on over for a better look.  To my delight, there before me, were two dogs in the midst of propagating their species.  They were going at it for all they were worth, totally unaware of everything around them as they single mindedly satisfied a few primal urges.  This was definitely not something you see everyday out on the river.  I was starting to enjoy my vacation already.

Beyond the lusty pups I noticed the howitzers being loaded by the bustling Army men.  The huge guns were apparently going to be lit off.  I put fingers in ears, anticipating the impending thunderclap, and watched the dogs for their reaction to the upcoming blast.

Soon one of the guns emitted a hellacious ‘BOOM’.  The female dog took off running frantically in circles while the now hung up male dog hopped on his back legs, just as frantically, trying to keep up with her.  Whining and barking, the pair painfully dashed about.  I started to laugh at the comical sight, doubling over with glee.

Right about that time another cannon ‘BOOM’ed loudly.  The girl dog went absolutely Nuts, breaking into terror filled yips, running in figure eights.  The boy dog fell screaming on his side to be towed horizontally behind her by his firmly ensnared fifth appendage.

I cringed while I laughed myself nearly sick as the female pup made a beeline out of the area dragging the unfortunate yelping male, bouncing him over rocks, tree branches and other debris.  I could not catch my breath until after the crazed canines disappeared in a squealing cloud of dust.  I laughed so hard that I got light headed and saw stars in front of my eyes.

After calming down slightly, I felt somewhat guilty at having carried on so much because, Wow, that REALLY must have hurt the male dog.  I did have a fair amount of sympathy for him.  You see, as his unit was being unmercifully stretched, mine had been shrinking in abject horror.  It is a guy thing, I guess.  Like cold swimming pool water, only in this case much, much worse.

I wondered how much time it would take for the poor boy dog’s pecker to return to its normal size.  I thought it would be appropriate if he was somehow rewarded with a few additional permanent inches after his terrible ordeal.  That wish for the abused pup is another one of those guy things, I believe.

Next I ambled over to the mess hall and topped off with better than normal chow.  Then I ambled over into a brand new hooch where I stashed my gear.  I was home and had my choice of two story bunks because it appeared that no one else lived in there.  It was completely vacant.  Cool!  I had sole possession of my own little wooden house.  I was finally on top of the old "Be there or Be square" thing.

I popped a Joan Baez tape into my, neat-o, portable eight track player and sang along to ‘Cum by Ya’ as I stripped, donned a bath towel, then flip flopped my way over to over a much anticipated, CLEAN, warm water shower.  It proved to be as pleasant as I had dreamed it would be.  Way better than bathing in filthy river water that stank.

Ahhhhhhh… Heaven at last!

After a song and soap filled half hour I went back to my bunk.  Seeing as how I was the only one in the place, and that it was easily over one hundred flaming degrees, I sprawled naked on top of an upper bunk on my back, crotch covered by only a corner of the damp towel.

Having achieved near maximum air flow and feeling contentedly sanitized, I drifted off on a nap like trip to a distant country called "La La Land”, one of my all time favorite travel destinations.

I was out for awhile when suddenly my peaceful sleepy kingdom, erupted with a continuous series of Earth shattering “KABOOOOOOMMMM's!", which wrapped me in a massive bear hug with each blast.

All the bunks, including mine, danced as if alive on the jumping floorboards.  I had to hold on for dear life just to keep from being physically thrown off the bucking bunk bed.  In a blink I had traveled from pastoral faraway "La La Land" - to downtown "Ca Ca City", Vietnam.

 

“MORTAR ATTACK!”, my mind screamed and I hit the bouncing deck running.  I lost the towel with my first stride but didn’t even care.  My mind was focused *Only* on saving what it had been covering.  I flew like the wind to the exit of that plywood death trap.

I smashed the screen door open and stood hand to brow, Greek God like, on the top step of a short porch.  I desperately sought an object that would save my miserable life from the deadly metal that had to be whizzing about.

There it was, I saw, at the end of a lane between the buildings.  A Beautiful underground bomb shelter about forty yards away.  Hot Diggity Dog!

I lit out like a bare ass Olympic sprinter, full tilt, for the sandbag covered pit.  Slim Jim and the two prunes flip flapped, thigh to thigh, like the ball in a hot Chinese ping pong match.  My pumping arms punched rapid holes through the humid air.  I was one highly motivated individual right then.

I vaguely remember passing men that stared quizzically, as they watched my progress, with slowly rotating heads, like fans at a slow motion tennis match.

I thought to myself, “They had better get their butts moving or they are ALL going to die!”

As I approached the bunker, I must have concentrated on timing, because about eight foot out from the low entrance I executed a perfect, headlong, arms extended dive, and sailed through the opening with room to spare on all sides.

I landed in a ball of dust at the back of the space then spun around to watch the entrance hole.  I expected to see the guys that I had ran past come to their senses, like me.  I knew, at some point, they would have to seek cover from the shrapnel filled atmosphere outside.

After a few pensive moments the explosions stopped.  Soon four or five smiling faces slowly swam into my vision, quizzically peering at naked me, crouched down in the dark hole.  As the grins turned from snickers to full fledged guffaws, I sensed that something was Very wrong here.  Why weren’t those idiots dead anyway?  I had a Bad, Bad feeling about this.

As I cautiously emerged from my gloomy cavern and as my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I saw the reason for the now riotous laughter.  I also understood why I was able to have that particular hooch all to myself.  The darn 155 mm cannons were all now trained Over the roof of my hooch, making the place unlivable during a fire mission in that direction.  I got my incomings mixed up with my outgoings at the worst possible moment…  Nuts!

And bare ones at that because worst of all, I now faced a fate much more terrible than getting wounded by enemy mortars, (I wished I would have been hit with shrapnel, at least the blood would have offered Some covering effect.)

Yeah, Yeah…, I had to walk buck naked, dirt encrusted, Back to my bunk through a gauntlet of jeering, belly laughing sailors whose mothers had obviously never taught them how terribly cruel it was to make fun of the mentally challenged.

Men were snorting, gasping for breath, hee-hawing so hard that they had to lean up against building walls for support.  Didn’t they have anything better to do?

A few disgusting jerks even insulted my manhood implying that it was somehow inferior, smaller than the norm.  I guess at that particular moment they may have been correct in their assessment, on account of the cold pool water, boy dog-guy thing that I had witnessed earlier.

And yes, I even thought that I heard barking dogs mixed with the men's laughter.  Where were those two misfit mutts anyway?  They could not have planned a better payback.  Talk about embarrassed.

After re-showering and moving my stuff to a calmer location, I headed over to Army side mainly to escape the still snickering, finger pointing sailors.  I figured it would take awhile before the "Naked Running Man" story made it through to the many souls that lived over on Army side.  I pulled my boonie hat low over my face anyway, just in case.

 

Dirt is what impressed me when I entered Army Side.  Everything, buildings, vehicles, and people were covered in dry layers of fine, powdery dust.  Inbound and outbound choppers blew massive amounts into the air at the helicopter landing pads.  Jeeps running around the streets raised blinding clouds in their wake.  Hundreds of tramping feet added a thick lower layer.  The dirt got on and in everything.

The odor of the large encampment was another captivating thing.  The dust smelled, well, dusty but blended with this was the sharp tang of burning poop cans.  Military latrines in Dong Tam, and Vietnam in general, were screened in, multi holed affairs with half a fifty five gallon drum beneath each seat to catch the deposits.  Every few days the drums were pulled out from under the latrines with long steel hooks.  A gallon or so of diesel fuel was added, stirred with a stick then all was set afire.

This burned the, ah, stuff out of it and reduced the lumpy mix as well as sanitized the drum.  Wheweee!  Imagine the lovely fragrance wafting around Dong Tam as maybe twenty or more of those flaming, toxic, tubs were being torched together.  The air smelled like the exhaust of a diesel engine that runs on burnt manure.  Once experienced, it is a thing never forgotten.

 

I eventually made my way into the bustling Army PX store to pick up a few necessities like soap, razor blades, comic books, stationary, camera film, batteries etc.

When I left the military emporium I walked by a life sized, cardboard, figure of a woman.  She was standing outside the entrance advertising some kind of camera.

As I gazed at her well printed breasts I noticed that she had creases at various strategic folding locations.  She could quickly be reduced into a small unobtrusive package.

“Well isn’t that neat.” I thought.

The devil made me do it.  I quickly folded her up, tucked her under my arm then went on my way back to the hooch where I dropped off my purchases.

I displayed my cardboard woman to some sailor buddies at the pier which kicked off a round of picture taking.  After that I folded her up and she accompanied me on a tour of the sprawling Army base.

I wandered, with my new girl, all over Army Side.  I strolled past long lines at the Bath and Steam house which was the on base massage parlor.  I plodded up one street then down another taking in the strange Army way of life.  It felt like a Hollywood military movie set where no actors were allowed, only real soldiers.  There was a kind of exciting, aura around the place.  It was very exotic, very alien to a water bound sailor like me.

At one major road intersection, a jeep zoomed past without a driver or passengers.  Everyone around stopped to do a double take as the empty vehicle continued on for a ways before nosing over into a ditch.  The consensus of the men thereabouts was that the jeep had been stolen.  The thief must have bailed out upon sighting MPs along the way.  I thought this a unique way to break the boredom of dirty living in a dirty place.  I personally had not driven a car for over a year.  I wondered if I even remembered how.

Fleetingly I entertained the notion of nabbing a jeep for a spin myself, but the thought of spending time in a military stockade propelled me instead into a nearby Army Enlisted Men’s club for an ice cold dust cutter.

Upon entering the dimly lit place, I nodded to the few men that were there and took refuge at an empty plywood table.  I unfolded my date, bent her at the appropriate places, sat her in a chair then went to the bar to buy us both a drink.

She looked radiant perched there in a black swimsuit that exposed gorgeous legs.  Dark eyes, long brunette hair and a lovely smile rounded out her other features.

Speaking of rounded things, depending on ones angle of view, she had either enormous knockers or none at all.  It was just a matter of perspective.  She did look fabulous, however, for a girl with a quarter inch wide body.

She was a great conversationalist too.  She didn’t prattle on or say stupid things like, “If you really, really loved me…”  She was refreshing to say the least.  Being married, I kept my end of the banter kind of light with stuff like, “Groovy, what’s your sign?”

          We were soon joined by a few horny Army types who pooled their money and offered me ten dollars for her.  A paltry sum for a woman of her high lithographic quality, I thought.  I informed them that she was not ‘That' kind of a girl, but if they bought her a cold one, she would allow them to dance with her and then they could fondle her paper attributes at will.

Chilled beverages appeared like magic.  Rock N Roll tunes filled the air.  The soldiers and my life sized honey literally hit the floor dancing.  The groping commenced.  I smiled at the free offerings in front of me and set off down that dusty road to serious R & R.

          The Cardboard Chick didn’t even miss me.  She loved every minute of the Army’s attention.  It seemed as if her smile got even wider as the men whispered their grinning, crotch felt desires in her ear.  Her eyes brightened when they pawed her unmercifully.  She wore the dusty hand prints that, soon covered her flimsy body, like medals won in hard battle.

She had her limits though and allowed no artistic pencil-pen enhancements, puncture wounds, actual genital contact, or mucus of any kind.  Dry, ‘No Tongue’, kissing was not, however, a problem with her.  She was a smart lady.  The randy GI’s would have licked her down to her corrugated innards in no time.

 

Watching a major grunt party explode in your face is a wondrous experience.  The sheer speed with which it comes about is staggering, making it one of the most efficient happenings in the entire United States military. It is also a thing of sheer beauty.

As word spread through the camp that there was a ‘Round Eye’, a real American woman, at the EM club, soldier after soldier Burst through the entrance door madly seeking the reported babe, then smiling broadly as my date caught their eye.  They all knew her well.  In fact, everyone on the entire base had ogled her boobs at one time or another, while entertaining a short fantasy about the box bodied lady outside the PX.

Many new arrivals hollered back out the door, at the top of their lungs, “Round Eye! Round Eye!”  This brought on a tremendous stampede.  Soldiers started Pouring through the door.  The music volume instantly cranked up to wide ‘foxtrot’ open.  The club became filled to the brim, solidly packed, with wildly dancing, love struck G.I.'s.

Raunchy sex talk flowed like the Mekong itself and every square inch of my table top quickly became covered with opened, sweat beaded, dance payment cans.  When the number of chilled canisters grew to over a hundred, I declared the area a free fire zone and the brave, thirsty, Army men pitched in, with a foaming vengeance, to help reduce that vast amount.  Drink up my men.  The Cardboard Chick is buying.

My parchment woman showed unbelievable stamina and proved herself definitely up to military orgy standards.  In fact, she had obviously been to flight school.  When the party went “KaBoom”, the girl became airborne and could be seen, at times, whizzing through the smoke filled atmosphere above the writhing mass of dancing men, until she was Snatched out of the air by a gyrating new partner.  I was so proud of her.

While she danced her inky ass off, I enjoyed the fruits of her labor.  I guzzled and hooted so hard for so long, at the lusty antics, that I thought I’d die of mirth poisoning.  Other types of poisoning were another definite possibility.

 

Many hours later, about dusk, my date and I caused a near riot when we got up to leave.  I wanted to be able to find my way home to Navy Side, without encountering any razor wire or setting off any Claymore mines.  I needed what was left of the sun to guide me, due to my worsening direction finding capabilities.

However, I truly did sympathize with the love starved soldiers.  I thought about it again and finally decided that since she had started out as an Army babe, maybe that’s where she should stay.  I already had my picture taken with her.  I was not likely to ever forget her, or the fantastic party she had spawned, so I entertained purchase offers once again.  A hat was passed and returned accruing about thirty dollars along the way.  This equaled ten cartons of cigarettes, which I thought rewarded me nicely for having the orbs to kidnap the pretty pasteboard princess in the first place.

She was also showing signs of serious wear.  The sides of her head were crumpled from being used as love handles.  In a blatant breach of the ‘No Spit’ regulation, she had soggy, runny, worn ink in the breast sections and was showing a waffled, cardboard colored nap, at the licked through nipple spots.

The abused lady had suffered some serious loss of dye, with heavy bruising, in both upper and lower lip areas.  Each of those most popular erogenous zones had assumed a dimpled, wet, concave shape.  Pelvic thrust effect combined with drool had been the culprit at these sites, I suspected.

I guess there was not a rule against humping.  Maybe that was her ’Thing’.  Only my date knew and she was not talking.  Actually she could not talk because her mouth had disappeared into a sodden mess that threatened to break through to the back of her head.

Speaking of her poor noggin, she also had trouble holding her head erect.  It either flopped back ninety degrees or forward at the same angle.  Her neck had been broken in a few overly passionate oral incidents, no doubt.

Her derriere was ripped from having her brown, cardboard buns clutched so tightly while dancing, nonstop, for so many hours.  She’d had more partners than a Kentucky Derby winner on a stud farm, poor gallant lady.  She was Very shop worn to say the least.

Well, you know what happens when a guy figures this out about his Cardboard Chick.  Yeah, I left her there, took the thirty bucks, grabbed a dripping travel can and split for home.  Typical male behavior, Right?

I was smiling like a paper pimp who has just sold his first piece of pulp.

 

Contrary to popular geometric belief, the shortest distance between two points is sometimes a zigzag line.  I proved this modified mathematical theorem on my walk back to Navy Side.

Eventually my wandering course took me past the Navy Enlisted Men’s club where the familiar, music laced, din, sucked me in like a vacuum cleaner swallowing a dust bunny.

The interior of the Navy bar looked much like the place that I had just left over in Army Side, lacking of course a well printed ‘Round Eye’.  I missed her suddenly.  I suffered at least three seconds of remorse at not sharing her with more of my sailor buddies.  Three seconds is how long it took me to remember the thirty dollars.  I forgot her as I became engrossed with the party in the Navy club.  An elbow bending fog of war settled about me as I swapped lies with that great bunch of swabs.

 

“Last Call Assholes!” the bartender eventually shouted above the din.

I recognized my name and proceeded to the line where a final dose of suds could be purchased.  I think only one was allowed, but nobody kept track of how many times a man went through the line, so you could actually buy as many ‘Last’ cans as you wanted.

Another rule of the establishment required that each can be opened before it went out the door.  The cardboard lady was still buying so I obtained a pack of Marlboros and a ‘church keyed’ can for every pocket of my jungle greens.  This, along with a container in either hand, allowed me to leave the place a sloshing, wobbling 12 pack.

As I stood outside under the stars, I worked at draining the containers in hand.  I had to stand because sitting was impossible.  When I walked, even with baby steps, the cans in my back pockets slopped beer down my butt crack.  (Maybe this was why the bartender had wanted only ‘assholes’ for last call.)

The ice cold rectum rinse brought me to my tip toes a few times.  It was very refreshing but seemed a terrible waste so I tried to stand quietly.  Still, I kept losing liquid due to the slow, insistent, swaying, of the entire Asian continent.  It felt that way to me anyway.

 

Two Army men suddenly ran up, saw the closed doors of the club and started to curse.  They were obvious victims of the always rotten ‘B there-B square’ thing.

I truly sympathized and made fast friends of the pair by sticking my buns out towards them saying, “Help your selves.”  (A sober sailor would NEVER do a Crazy thing like that.)

Large smiles beamed from their faces and they greeted me like a long lost cousin as they relieved me of my rump cans.  I think they counted wet spots on me as we sipped, because between slurps and burps they revealed that they were dump truck drivers pouring gravel around the Dong Tam airstrip.  They invited me to ride along with them as ‘Shotgun-Cooler’.  I eagerly accepted the honored position.  Everything sounded like fun to me right then.

The Army guys thirstily drained their cold beverages in a few short minutes and flipped their empty cans under a nearby hooch.  As any good cooler should, I re-supplied them from my thigh pockets.  Now I was able to follow them to where their loaded, ten ton, gravel trucks idled.

The two grunts hopped up to the drivers seats of the rumbling behemoths.  I passed them each a back up can which they tucked between their legs for future reference.  This emptied the last of my pants pockets enabling me to now sit.  I proudly assumed the esteemed shotgun position in one of the vibrating cabs.  Man, this was cool.  I had never been in one of these huge machines before.  It was awesome.

We took off with a roar and wound our way around a few dusty streets on our way out to the airstrip.  I did not really know what to expect, but I was starting to get keyed up with anticipation anyway.

The two huge stone haulers finally stopped at one end of the runway, lined up side by side.  The G.I. truck jockeys stood hard on their brakes while flooring the accelerators.  This caused the pent up automatic transmissions to shake the daylights out of us as the exhaust turbochargers wound up to a screaming, whistling, crescendo.  Alright, this was getting GOOD.

With a simultaneous nod, the Army madmen started their dump hydraulics as they released the brakes.  We all bellowed off on a turtle speed, dump truck, drag race, each driver hunched over their steering wheels, accelerating faster and faster as the spewing gravel lightened the loaded trucks.  The rush was Tremendous as was the noise.

YEEE HAAA !!… Ride ‘em Cowboy !!

At about fifty miles per hour, when the dump boxes were empty, the drivers lowered the truck beds and let up on their throttles to begin compression braking, with a long ‘Braaaaaaaappppp’ sound, winding down to a lower speed.

My truck took the point position and led us to a big yellow front end loader that soon filled us both with another pile of gravel.  That was ten tons of fun too.  When the big loader bucket emptied into us, we bounced all over the place.  I would not have minded riding with the loader operator either.  I wondered if he needed a drink.  Even though we were running low, I could always wring him half a can out of my socks.

I do not remember how many dump runs we made or who won any of the drags.  I guess it really didn't matter.  The enjoyment was in the racing.  It was Great fun to abuse the crap out of someone else’s government equipment, I must say.  After all, the drivers did not own the trucks or buy the fuel.  What a satisfying job they had.  I envied them.  Of course, I was able to dent and smash large boats sometimes, which was always a source of enjoyment to me.

 

After a few hours, when the golden liquid had dwindled to the last flat dregs, my cooler duties came to an end.  As with the cardboard chick my usefulness was over.  So was my stamina.  It had drained along with the beer supply.

I vaguely remember my driver returning me to a Navy Side hooch.  He walked me inside and tucked me into a corner, on the deck, for the night.  Good man.  He saved me the trouble of falling there.  I never heard him leave.  I went to sleep as soon as my eyes closed, out like a light, making some serious Z’s.

A basketball sized bladder woke me at about eleven o’clock the next morning.  I reduced that volume at a piss tube, (a large pipe driven into the ground at an angle).  I next went into the showers fully clothed, jungle boots and all, to cleanse the stale yeast stink from my greens, then stripping those, from my skin.  I rinsed a few cobwebs from my throbbing brain at the same time too.  After the refreshing bath I donned my wet clothes.  They would dry in no time in the building heat of the morning.

I made my way back to the hooch where my gear was stored and had a breakfast of six aspirin, taken with lots of water.  Then I packed my gear for the trip back out to the squadron.  My mission here was accomplished.  R. & R. had been fully achieved.

I fervently hoped that no one would fire any guns around me for a little while.  Another 155 blast would have been Bad, Bad, news for the old head.  I bet those humping dogs would have really gotten a hoot out of that.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

Chapter 9

 

 

Heavy Metal

 

 

 

 

            I was sent, onetime, to a Navy base near Saigon called Nha Be, (knob bay).  I had to help put a new Monitor boat, sporting a 105 howitzer, into commission.  I caught a ride on a five boat patrol that was headed in that direction.  It was going to take two days, traveling on small canals, before I would be dropped off at the Navy base.

          The overnight time frame was because we were hauling a PsyOps, (Psychological Operations), team.  Somewhere among the boats in our formation, we carried a huge amplifier and large multi directional speaker horns.  Two or three medical personnel with their equipment made the trip too.

A Navy Lieutenant, serving as the PsyOps officer, rode along on my boat.  He was dressed in a crisp, new, tiger stripe, camouflage uniform.  Camo’s were very cool.  Lots of sailors bought them, but at the rate that the sun and I destroyed clothes, I couldn’t have afforded to wear them.  I changed clothes about once a week when they rotted out from under me.

          During the long ride, I took pictures of the villages that we passed through.  When the urge to burn film faded away, I sacked out with an iced pop, a few ragged comic books and a can of beans and wienies.  After dealing with those items, I drifted away on an empty bunk for a peaceful nap.

          After snoring blissfully for a period of time, I was rudely awakened by the sound of an incoming B-40 rocket.  At least that’s what my sleepy befuddled mind said it was.  After a terrorized moment or two, scrambling around for a helmet and something to shoot, I saw that nobody on the boat was at General Quarters, I didn’t hear any gunfire.  Then I noticed the Lieutenant standing up next to the bow ramp.  He had a smoking night illumination flare tube in one hand and a short piece of wood in the other.  He flashed me a broad, dung infested grin that seemed to say, “Gotcha Asshole.” 

I ambled over his way to try and figure out why we needed night illumination during the daytime.  He flipped the used flare tube overboard, picked up a fresh round, pointed it over the side and smacked the butt end with the chunk of wood.

Wow, those darn things did sound just like an enemy rocket!

However, this flare did not spit out a brightly burning chunk of magnesium at the far end of its whooshing, upward trajectory.  Instead, it ejected a blizzard of small paper sheets which spread out over a wide area and floated down into the jungle.

The papers turned out to be “Chu Hoi” leaflets.  These were flyers printed in Vietnamese and French that begged an enemy reader to come over to our side.  I think the leaflets also guaranteed protection if the bearer chose to take advantage of the ploy.  I’m not to sure how well that would have worked though.  The small chits didn’t look like they would stop a bullet, and napalm was sure to make them worse than useless.  At any rate, the cammo clad officer blew his psychological confetti into the air for quite some time.  I flopped back down on the bunk and tried to ignore the sound of rockets.

Eventually, we beached the boats somewhere along a small canal for the night.  Because I had taken a pleasant afternoon nap and was not sleepy, I decided to stand the eight to midnight watch with the Tango’s radioman.  We were engrossed, cordially swapping lies and sharing a case of C-Rations, when around ten o’clock the huge amplifier and horn speakers made their presence known.  The mammoth audio set up blasted our eardrums with Vietnamese gibberish which was Loud to the point of being painful.  The only words that I understood were, “Chu Hoi! Chu Hoi!”.  This maddening torture carried on for a couple of hours.

I guess that all the previous leaflet spraying and ‘Chu Hoi’ racket must not have worked, because out over the darkened jungle canopy helicopters opened up with machine guns.  We could see their red tracers spiraling downward into the blackness.  The choppers expended their ammo and left the area.  All was quiet for a while.  Then the real show began.

From up high, a solid red bar of light beamed down into the earth like a giant death ray.  It appeared kind of liquid, like it had been squirted from a hose.  I had heard about this weapon but hadn’t actually observed it in action until now.  This could only be what soldiers, observing the hot lead flow from below, had dubbed, “Puff the Magic Dragon”.

The streams of red light were tracers from three, six barreled, Gatling type guns, brought to bear on the target by an Air Force AC-47 gunship banking overhead to circle that area.  The continuous red tracers, streaking to the ground, represented only one fifth of the bullets being sprayed by the airplane.  Normally, only every fifth round was a tracer.  I later found out that the rate of fire this weapon produced was an incredible 18,000 rounds per minute.  Rumor had it that a one second burst would pulverize an area the size of a football field.  The aircraft, (I think its call sign was “Spooky”), spewed crimson devastation several times before leaving the area.  I thought that this was more than enough incentive for any rational human being to “Chu Hoi”. 

 

We all got under way the next day and continued on our journey.  Sometime around mid-morning our boats beached at a village that featured a large, domed, brick kiln, located next to the river.  Our team of Navy corpsmen set up an aid station there.  Vietnamese people lined up to be treated by the medics for a variety of maladies, like worms, skin diseases, etc.  Bars of soap, toothbrush-toothpaste sets, along with other sundry items were passed out to the villagers also.  This was a sort of goodwill stop to help the country folks, as well as enhance the local population’s image of the U.S. Navy.

At the brick factory-doctor's office, we were told a story about an old lady who was carried to one of these impromptu aid stations a few days earlier.  She suffered from serious wounds incurred when she defied a Viet Cong order to give up her family’s rice for their cause.  The V.C. scum had gut shot her with an AK-47 rifle, broke both her knees with butt strokes from the same, and left her for dead.  She had fooled them though by remaining alive.  I hated the inhuman slime balls that would do such a thing to an old grand mother like her.  The tough lady probably beat the V.C. by living on to curse them to the end of her days.

 

After the crowd at the kiln were attended too, we pulled out to resume our travels.  In due course I was dropped off at a pier at the Nha Be naval base.  It was my job to setup two new 20 mm cannons, in their respective periscope mounts, aboard a brand new Mike boat tied up to the wharf.

The 20's came from the factory coated in Cosmoline, which is a stinking kind of greasy glue that protects the metal from corrosion.  The machine guns needed to be completely disassembled, soaked in diesel fuel, wiped clean, re-oiled, and put back together before they were attached to their mounting assemblies.

There were hundreds of parts comprising each six foot long 20 mm, which made the task quite complicated.  I had the rest of the day to complete the assignment, but I figured to have it done in four or five hours leaving the rest of the time to explore the base.

I got right with the program and soon had the two cannons bedded in their mounts, ready for General Quarters.  My only concern was that the weapons needed to be test fired.  I knew that the newly assigned crew would do this, but I wanted to test the guns myself.  Call it professional pride.

I reeked with the smell of diesel fuel and Cosmoline, after the greasy job was finished.  Sadly, I had not brought any clean jungle greens along.  I went to the E.M. club anyway smelling like the stinking engine man that I was.

Outside the establishment I sipped a cold soda while taking in the bustle around me.  It was quite a place.  It was not much like Dong Tam at all in that it lacked about a thousand rowdy Army men.

At my next stop, the base PX, I bought a five dollar Zippo lighter, along with a new, twenty dollar, razor sharp, twin blade, folding Case knife.

I had lost my original knife and cigarette lighter over the side of a Tango boat, while chasing a snake that had come aboard for a brief visit one night awhile back.  That snake cost me twenty five dollars and I never got to lay a glove on him either.  He was too fast.

Snakes hated me.  I hated them too, mainly because they were way too quiet.  You never knew the poisonous beasts were around until they just appeared from out of nowhere and scared the horse hockey out of you.  I pocketed my new knife hoping that the next time one popped up I could kill the thing.  Then I would maybe fire up a big ball of C-4 with my new Zippo, cook him and eat him.  Survival school had taught me all about eating snakes.

My inspection of Nha Be finally ended sometime around sundown when my eyes started to slam shut.  It was time to hit the rack for the night, and now I had a decision to make.  Should I sleep in a sweltering hooch with a bunch of farting, sweaty sailors, or crash alone on the steel deck of the new boat?  I headed for the boat.

After making my way through a hatch to an interior bulkhead, I settled down against it and fell asleep.  What woke me up hours later, was my falling over sideways on a deck that now tilted at about forty five degrees.  If I would have slept outside, I’d now be in the river.  Talk about a rude awakening.

I crawled my way out on the severely tilted deck and used the bar armor to scramble over the top of the boat to the pier.  The outgoing tide had lowered the water level by at least seven or eight feet.  The heavy boat hung, at a precarious angle, by its two nylon mooring lines lashed fore and aft.  It looked like the outboard guard rail was underwater.  The whole setup creaked and moaned, as the river receded still more, causing the lines to hum like giant rubber bands.  There had to be around thirty or forty tons pull on them at that moment.

I ran to the forward tie up point and put my hand on one of the lines that stretched about two yards to the forward deck of the boat.  It felt hot.  Then I noticed that the rope turns around the mooring cleat were melting together from the incredible strain.

There was about forty feet of unused line piled at the base of the cleat.  I quickly secured a twenty foot double run from boat to pier.  Lots of slack was called for here.  I whipped out my new Case knife and started to saw on the short melting hawsers.  They parted with a loud twang.  The boat splashed loudly as it leveled and swung outward to be snubbed by the new line.

At the stern mooring point, I repeated this successful process getting the same favorable results.  I breathed a long sigh of relief.  It would have looked bad on my, so far, sterling Navy record, to have allowed a boat to sink out from under me while I slept.

The sun covered me in its yellow morning light while I used the new knife to hack the old welded ropes from the mooring cleats.  By the way, where was the swab that had set these mooring lines anyway?  He had done an extremely poor job and exhibited very un-sailor like behavior.  He had also screwed up my last few hours of rest, which was the most unforgivable aspect of this episode.  I loudly described his entire inbred family as I worked.

 

Later on, during June 1969, I served aboard those Monitor (Mike) boats that had a 105 mm cannon for its main gun.  The turret appeared to have been lifted from a tank then welded to the bow of the boat.  It was a good setup.  105 mm is a nice sized hole to have in the end of your pea shooter.  It makes for a very serious weapon.

I crewed in the 105 gun mount as second loader.  I handed up the huge rounds to another sailor that slid them into the cannons breech.  Two Gunners Mates, one on either side of the barrel, aimed and fired the monster gun.

My job was to lounge in a corner, below the rotating gun deck, until the 105 spoke.  This signaled that I had coasted, yet again, past the city limits into that old familiar smelly town.  You know the place I'm talking about.  Entering that malodorous metropolis with a loaded, ready to rock, 105 Howitzer, however, just tickled my gunpowder heart.  I had surpassed the puny weapons of my childhood and was now part of "The Gun".

The contestants for, 'Best' of the projectile types available, for use in the 105 were:

“HE-High Explosive” - is pretty much self explanatory. A fond memory is all that remains if you happen to be within sixty yards when one of them detonates.

“HEP-High Explosive Plastic” - gave even more 'Ka-boom' for the 'Ka-buck' and was a most popular choice.

“WP-White Phosphorus” (Willy Peter) - burned relentlessly and was extremely fearsome.

“Beehive” - the bad nastiest of the whole collection, in my humble opinion.

 

The Beehive round contained thousands of small steel darts that sounded like a swarm of angry bees.  They shredded everything.  When one of these things was fired into a solid wall of jungle, it created a hole big enough to drive a semi through, after it turned everything in its path to confetti.  It was the biggest shotgun shell that I had ever seen.  A Beehive was usually kept in the 105 tube when we passed through certain villages where our boats had been shot at previously.  Any snipers and whatever shielded them just plain disappeared after a Beehive was sent their way.

Mike boats usually occupied the lead position, in a column of riverboats, which gave the main gun about a two hundred seventy degree field of fire out front.  Because of this advantage the Mike boats did a lot of recon (reconnoitering) fire while underway in bad locations.  Recon fire consisted of launching HE rounds at anything considered suspicious, and if a secondary explosion resulted another usually followed immediately.

An intense firefight developed once while I was at my G.Q. station, between some ammo racks below decks.  The 105 went ‘BOOM’ and scared the snot out of me.  I danced around in flying, hot, spent casings, like a madman, trying to have a waist high shell readily available when the loader dropped his hands for it.  The contact lasted about a ten round minute which was way more than long enough for me.  Chasing the moving gun breach, while humping forty pound bullets in the stifling ammo locker, was not my idea of fun.

 

On one mission aboard the Monitor, we journeyed, accompanied by a few other riverboats, through miles of muddy waterways to somewhere along the Cambodian border.  We were there to provide blocking artillery support for American Marines.  The Marines’ mission was to drive the enemy into our field of fire.  Our job was to hit them with a 105mm hammer.

The countryside was flat as a pancake wherever we were, not a tree in sight.  Dung piles reached above grass hut rooftops to claim highest vantage point honors.  The Vietnamese wasted nothing, especially valuable manure.  The size of a crap heap was an indication of a rice farmer’s future success.

Along the way, we stopped to re-supply a tiny Army artillery unit.  The place looked like any two story, rural American farm house, with a screened in porch.  The lofty residence was also the only thing taller than a blade of grass within a fifteen mile radius.  It was a light house standing in an ocean of weeds.

The lonesome firebase was manned by one U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant, armed with a single 105 mm field artillery piece.  The special warrior greeted us from his veranda clad only in dark olive boxer shorts, flapping jungle boots, and a green beret.  The noncom also displayed a wide smile and a good sized pot belly as we walked up onto his porch.  He was obviously glad to see us.

We provisioned him with about one hundred cannon shells, fifty cases of C-Rations and twenty cases of beer.  We also rolled over two fifty five gallon drums of gasoline.  The go juice was used to fuel a generator, which provided electricity to his lights and radios.  The dynamo also powered an ancient refrigerator that clattered away in a corner of the kitchen.  We stacked the new provisions against the wall because the noisy fridge was already completely filled with cold beer.

The friendly Green Beret chatted with everyone for a while, obviously enjoying our company.  The feelings were mutual.  When it came time for us to shove off, he treated us all to an icy, sweat beaded travel can.  A new "Ballad of the Green Berets" should have been written with him in mind.  Not in a derogatory sense though, because I thought the man had enormous cajones for single handedly holding down that forlorn fort.  He earned the ice box full of beer every day, in my estimation.

 

Oddly, a U.S. Marine Corps officer rode along with us to Cambodia.  His job was to co-ordinate 105 fire missions called in by other Marines out in the bush.  I think he was a Captain.  He was shorter than my five foot ten, weighed around 110 pounds, was a cocky, gung ho, jerk and was very vocally disdainful of us lowly 'Squids'.  In fact he vocally disdained sailors in general for the entire time it took to get to our destination.  He strutted fore and aft giving goofy Marine insights into all things pertaining to our naval operations, treating us like we were his own personal little battleship crew.  I do not think he approved of our uniform of the day either, cutoffs with shower sandals.

After we arrived at our destination, his misguided efforts, with protractor and compass, made it take twice as long as normal to base align the 105.  I imagine the two Gunners Mates assigned to crew the weapon wanted to stick a primer in his buns, chamber him, and fire His ass as far away as possible.

          In fairness, I must say that he did have a very difficult job to do.  The consequences for any screw ups might be accidentally shelling other Marines.  A practice that would be universally frowned upon by his fellow Marine grunts stuck out in the mud, I’m sure.

But, Grrrrrrrrrrrr…… We were all SICK of this man.

We received our first fire mission and were required to put some Willy Peter into a line of grass huts about two klicks (2000 meters) out.  I was standing on the starboard side, just back of the 105 mount, on the Mike boat’s main deck.  I could hear the crew inside prepare the cannon by sliding a round into the weapon, and securing the breech.  Normally, I would have retreated to the stern of the boat, to put as much distance and metal, between the gun and myself as possible.  I should have done so on this occasion, but I just had to see how the Captain's first shot went after so much hassle.  I covered my ears, opened my mouth, and lowered my profile.

I looked on as he climbed up, on top of the 105 mount.  The muzzle of the howitzer was ten feet in front of him, level with his stomach.  He assumed a, feet spread, hands on hips, pose, raised a finger, pointed along the 105 tube and hollered, "FIRE", as loud as he could.  I could visualize the sailors in the turret grinning gleefully as they followed his direct order.

The 105 "Boom"ed and belched a six foot flame from its stubby barrel.  What a tremendous blast.  I can not adequately describe how loud and powerful it was. It rocked my World.  Holy Moley…, what a noise.  It felt like the ‘Jolly Green Giant’ had crushed me in a momentary embrace.

I squatted entranced as the back blast and concussion flung the Captain from his feet.  He tumbled backwards off the turret, into the bar armor below the coxswains flat.  He impacted the horizontal, round rods, well before his hat and sunglasses landed, oh, some where on past the stern of the boat out in the water.  He kind of dribbled to the deck in slow motion, like molasses flowing down a cold bulkhead.  He had been knocked out, cold as a mackerel and I was slightly concussed myself.  My eyes momentarily had trouble regaining their complete focus.

After a few seconds, I went over to The Captain to find that he was bleeding from his ears and nose.  His half open eyes were slightly crossed.  His tongue hung partially out of his slack mouth.  I checked and found that he was breathing alright and had a pretty good pulse.

After a minute or so the rest of the boat crew gathered around his supine form, shaking heads, smiling ear to ear.  I made a grinning vocal reference to his low intelligence level, combined with his maternal incest tendencies, as I related the Captain’s flight path to the rest of the crew.  They congratulated his performance, with more sailor lingo, in a way that only Him being Unconscious allowed them to do.  Semper Fi Bro!  It was perfect.

The radioman called for a 'Dust-Off' (medical helicopter evacuation) which arrived shortly over on the beach.  The Captain was unceremoniously grabbed by his camouflage greens and tossed on board the Med Evac chopper.  We 'Squids' all gave a hearty, "Bye Bye Birdie", salute to the leatherneck as he was spirited away, still out like a light.

I often wonder what kind of story the Captain made up for his Marine buddies.  I certainly would not have told the truth.  The entire incident proved to be retribution at it's finest.  Swift, sweet, and initiated by his very own hand, no less.  My goodness, I never saw a 'Squid' do anything quite so stupid.  Well, let me think about that for a minute.

 

The Mike boat continued to receive and execute fire requests from grunts in the bush for several weeks after that.  During the long boring days that we stayed there, a fellow river sailor and I developed a unique mixture of compounds that enhanced the human skin's ability to tan quickly.

A fresh quart of crankcase oil, combined with a small vial of red tinted Merthiolate, magnified the sun's already powerful rays, plus laid down a nice cherry colored stain to start with.

The concoction smelled a little funny and at first we looked like turkeys that had been basted with red dye, but after a few days of soaking up sunshine the overall effect became quite pleasing to the eye.  For a better scent, we had considered replacing the refined crude with peanut oil, drained from C-Rations peanut butter, but eventually went with the more abundant Quaker State base.

The Merthiolate-motor oil blend also greatly enhanced my American Indian heritage, which I had always been proud of anyway.  Distant grandfather, half Indian, Sam Norris would have instantly recognized me as a member of his tribe.

 

A very disturbing incident occurred, while we were stationed out along the Cambodian border, that I am at a complete loss to explain. Mainly because I did not understand more than a few words of the Vietnamese language.

There was a native teenager that came to visit nearly every day.  He arrived by swimming over from the opposite bank of the canal.  We sailors called him Frog, because he looked like one as he swam up to the stern of our boat for a hand out.  We would invite him on board where soon he would be pulling on a bummed cigarette and sipping from a cold can.  He may have been Viet Cong, we didn't know, but he was always unarmed, acted like one of us and we liked him.

One day, as Frog was engaged in a puffing, slurping, Pidgin English conversation with us, a frocked man of the cloth and a rifle toting Vietnamese Army soldier strolled by on the canal bank out front.  When the padre caught sight of Frog he went ballistic and started screaming at him.  Frog dropped his brew, dove over the side into the water and swam, like his name implied, toward the other shore.

The angry friar ripped the M-16 from the V.N. soldier's grasp and started blazing away at Frog, splashing bullets all around his churning body.  The gunfire evoked a frenzied rush to battle stations from us sailors, and in a heartbeat we had machine guns, rifles, and grenade launchers pointed in his direction.

The priest saved his own life, right then, when he quickly handed the empty, smoking weapon back to the stunned soldier.  The VN trooper turned to face us with one arm held high in the air, as his other arm gently lowered the M-16 to the ground.

The native reverend paid no attention to us at all.  He ran along the canal bank jabbering and throwing large chunks of clay at Frog, who was rapidly vacating the area.  The furious father pursued Frog like that until they both disappeared from sight.

After a confused moment or two we hollered, "Dee Dee Mau" (go away now), to the terrified soldier who stood like a statue, hands held high, in front of us.  He slowly retrieved his weapon then walked away from Frog, the priest and us, in the opposite direction.

We discussed the matter between ourselves later, deciding that the Holy Father may have taken acceptation to Frog's underage use of stimulants.  A most terrible sin apparently.  We, in turn, took acceptation to the heavy handed penance, meted out by the lunatic monk, for such a minor religious infraction and felt that a few 'Hail Mary's would have been more appropriate.

The pissed off priest and the 'Big Man' above prevailed, however, because we never saw Frog again.  We knew he liked his suds, but agreed that the nasty tasting, preservative loaded, liquid that we drank was definitely not worth taking a bullet for.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

Chapter 10

 

Viet Nam Sucked

 

 

 

 

Here is a written flow chart of things that REALLY SUCKED about Vietnam.

 

This Sucked…

 

BAD CHOW   C-rations were glorified dog food.  They lacked variety, created gas and were Dangerous when eaten in certain combinations.  After a while anyone that subsisted on them could recite, verbatim, the entire contents of a case of C’s.  Every man had his likes and dislikes.  The following opinions are my own based on my experiences.  Most times I would open a fresh carton and remove from the individual meals, all of the:

 

Toilet Paper… Always in short supply.  A newspaper or comic book page would do in a pinch, however this tended to transfer short articles and an occasional cartoon characters’ face to odd places on the buns.  (See humidity below.)

 

Cigarettes… Slim, boxed, 5 packs of weird, unheard of brands. (Wings?) I saw C-Ration manufacture dates as old as 1945 and as new as 1958.  I made a joke once about river rats eating their way from WW 2 clear into the Korean conflict.

 

Chiclets… Candy coated chewing gum squares.  Three or four in hot coffee is a good pick me up.  Don’t consume too many in a day however. (See Cheese Spread below.)

 

Peanut Butter… Almost all tins of peanut butter were separated into oil on top and peanut sludge underneath.  Mix for thirty minutes and eat the product.  Can’t see because it is too dark?  No problem.  Open a short slit in the tin then pry open a small orifice.  Roll a short piece of paper or cloth into a thin tube then insert it to the bottom of the little can.  After the peanut oil soaks the makeshift wick, apply flame to create a candle that will burn for many hours.  If you poured the peanut oil off the small tins, the wafer of peanut butter remaining could be eaten like fudge.  The exception was Cinderella brand peanut butter, which stayed wonderfully emulsified.  Cinderella was the back home ‘Skippy’ of C-Rats peanut butter.  Save the peanut butter oil though, it works great as a sunburn reliever.  Much better than motor oil and smells a lot better too.  I think it attracted mosquitoes though.

 

Crackers… These swelled from a quarter inch to sometimes two inches when they came in contact with ANY liquid.  God help you if you ate them without eating fruit, especially if you were a little constipated already. (See wounded snake below)

 

Cheese Spread…. This offering was kind of a rarity.  It tasted ok but the tin should have had a skull and crossbones, 'Poison', label on it somewhere, stating that if combined with the crackers above, in the absence of fruit, in a human intestinal tract, Death could occur.  I know this for a Fact.  After making this dietary error, ONE time, I vowed to Never again attempt ingesting this combo without a loaded, ‘ready to rock’, 45 auto in my hand so I would be able to blow my own brains out when the gut wrenching, pent up, gas pains reached a certain unbearable pressure.  This was a VERY BAD scene.  A Fart caught crosswise.  A big bubble of trapped gas will make you slither on the deck like a wounded snake.  Relief comes with Finally attaining a pain ending, long awaited, Epic level, Foghorn blast.

 

Lemonade Mix… 'Pucker City'.  Add half box of Chiclets or half a can of Fruit Cocktail syrup at least.  Mixed to a paste with water this powder was great at cleaning metal gun bores, and burned like battery acid when sprinkled on the tongue, which woke you up if you were pulling a sleepy midnight to 4 A.M. watch.

 

Instant Coffee… Took at least 3 packs per mess cup to overcome the chlorine taste of the water and make a semi decent cup.  Fruit syrup or Chiclets may be added for a little caffeine-glucose zip.  It also did other things and could be used or ingested directly from the packet.  Mixed to a paste with water this powder was also great at cleaning metal gun bores.  It too burned like battery acid when sprinkled on the tongue, which helped keep you awake during the extra sleepy 4 A.M. to 8 A.M. watch.

 

Chicken Noodle Dinner... My favorite.  Pretty close to Campbell’s soup.  I’d give it the 'Third Place Ribbon' in the ‘Best of Box’ category.  It kept me alive.

 

Beans and Weenies… Not bad overall but needed ketchup plus more mushy weenies.  Made Long brassy gas explosions with medium hang time.  A good choice if you wanted to show off or were in a contest.

 

Ham and Lima Beans… This offering was kind of pasty and also needed ketchup, plus at least ONE piece of ham in order to live up to its name.  The surefire gas was Voluminous, BAD smelling, nose wrinkling, and an eye burner.  The noxious cloud usually had great hang time too.  However, if you Ever get Ham and Limas crossed up in a Cracker, Cheese Spread, No Fruit encounter and Have the 45 auto in your hand, point it at your head.  At the first sign of pain pull the trigger.  Why wait?  If you do miraculously live through such a brush with death and somehow manage to achieve ultimate release, Without using the pistol on yourself, be merciful.  Shoot all your buddies in sight.  You’ll be doing them a BIG favor.

 

Fruit Cocktail… I had a problem with the name here.  An absolute must in a C-Rats diet, however. (See references to constipation above.)

 

Peaches and Pound Cake… These were actually two separate cans.  Not many to a case either.  Each alone could have easily won the 'Blue Ribbon Best of Box’ award, but when eaten together they gave immediate confirmation that this is what food is supposed to taste like.  The combination made you think of mom and home.  My favorite recipe was pouring Peaches over shredded Pound Cake in a mess cup.  It was delicious, easily on a par with sex.  I would have kicked Superman’s butt for touching My cans of Peaches and Pound Cake… Or Cinderella peanut butter.  I did, in fact, see a fist fight break out over the theft of Peaches and Pound Cake.  A low life crook like that deserved to have both of his arms broken.  I’ll hold him down; you can kick the disgusting puke.  I hate a cake thief.

 

The thoroughly scrounged C-Ration remains would then be routinely tossed over the side.  Of the jettisoned items that floated down stream, some ‘Worst of Box’, rejected items were:

 

Beef and Spice Sauce…. One of The most hated meals.  A half inch of semi congealed grease floated atop the crap, with many rancid globules hidden below for a future gagging surprise.  It had a taste in the U’s.  Somewhere between Unsavory and Upchuck, because, I believe, the 'Spice' part of the dinner was actually armpit scrapings.  It did make great fish bait though when sprinkled onto a section of submerged hooch screen.  Lacking bait some un-sportsman like sailors fished with explosives.  It was easy to catch your limit that way.  Fishing was usually catch and release, except for the concussed ones.  They had a problem achieving forward momentum after floating belly up for awhile.  I would have paid cash money for a Zebco ‘Snoopy’, rod and bobber set, baited with Beef and Spiced Sauce.  Now that’s the way to fish.  I’d also have been the envy of all my fellow river rats.

 

Scrambled Eggs… Anything that had the Evil word ‘Eggs’ in the ingredients needed to be pitched over the side, Pronto.  They tasted like rubber bands dry roasted over a railroad flare.  C-Rats eggs were wildly unpredictable when mixed with other stuff.  You were in for a BAD trip if you did manage to get them down and keep them there.  Remember the ‘Ready to Rock’ 45 auto?  Trade that for a one pound block of C-4 plastic explosive and a grenade fuse, because No One…, Including you, is going to want to live, if you make it to final noxious release, through a No Fruit, Cracker, Cheese Spread, Ham and Lima, Scrambled Egg ‘Fart Caught Crosswise’ episode.  Throw the Eggs away NOW.  They are dangerous.

 

Tropical Chocolate Bars… I do not know what Tropics the inventor of these disgusting morsels was talking about, but in the Tropical paradise I inhabited they tasted pretty barfing Bad.  BLAH!  The consistency sucked most of all.  I thought it akin to eating moldy, flattened birthday candles.  An Army acquaintance of mine thought it was like biting off a hunk of gypsum wall board.  At any rate there was NO real flavor there that could satisfy even a miniscule chocolate craving.  The bars were actually re-formed escapees from display bowls of fake, wax fruit.  The Vietnamese would not touch them with a ten foot pole and some of the things that they ate would gag a maggot.  Unlike Real chocolate these would Never melt in your mouth, or your stomach or anywhere else for that matter.  If you ever get caught with a whole mouthful of Tropical Chocolate Bar, Remember … DO NOT try to breath.  DO NOT try to swallow.  Here again, Death could result.  Think SPIT!

 

I probably left out a lot of other items in a case of C-rations. I remember only the high and low points.  It may have been what we drank to wash down most meals that caused the various reactions.  Substituting our yellow drinking water would have only made matters much worse.

 

Another thing that Sucked…

 

SCORCHING SUN Old Sol was a sometimes gorgeous, sometimes devastating weapon in itself.  Fantastic, soul stirring, sunrises and sunsets were a daily event.  However, the ability to burn exposed skin into a purple mass of puss running blisters was a minor detail on the Sun’s list of not so wonderful effects.

I was once lazing in the shade on a pontoon pier, somewhere, with a couple of other river sailors.  We were shoveling manure between ourselves in the one hundred fifteen degree heat.  Salt crusted sweat stains covered our jungle green uniforms.  Within our range of casual observation was a another sailor standing in the sunshine, winding the handle of a rotary hand pump, transferring oil from one container to another.  He appeared to be making no great effort.

Without warning he suddenly crumpled to the deck and lay motionless.  This was a bad sign.  We rushed to him with yells for a Corpsman, but when we got to him we found that he had no pulse.  He was dead.  We had all been through CPR training and we tried to revive him, but it was hopeless.  Heat stroke was the culprit, sure as the Sun that killed him.  We silently and sadly watched as his limp, still body was borne away on a stretcher.  What a lousy way to loose a sailor.  There were So many things that could kill you.  So many.

 

This also Sucked…

 

HUMIDITY 99.999% at least.  Sticky does not begin to describe it.  I equate the effect of Vietnam’s humidity to being continually bathed in non drying Elmer’s Glue.  It felt like you were wrapped in a wet, sticky, oppressive, hot, wool blanket… All the time.  The fish in the river even sweated.

 

Another main thing that Sucked was…

 

MUD Grind several trillion tons of rock from the Himalayan mountain range into very fine powder.  Mix it with several million trillion gallons of warm monsoon rain water.  Add in a dash of goo, a pinch of rotten vegetation stink and a touch of sewage.  Place these thoroughly blended ingredients in a red hot environment near the equator, then steam the mix for approximately a billion million millennium or until sticky.  What pops out of that steamer is Mekong Delta, Mud Pie Supreme.

We lived in the mud, we ate in the mud and sometimes died in it.  Mud was everywhere, like the air.  Mud covered us, sucked at us, and sometimes swallowed us.  There were many things made of it and many things buried in it.  We were ‘One’ with the mud.

Mekong River mud was not generic.  There were many different varieties.

There was:

Soupy mud where a squad of men would slowly sink clear out of sight.

Super Sticky mud would remove a man’s boots and pants as he struggled to escape.

Chunky mud made weird bruise patterns on a man’s body.

Putrid mud held a wicked olfactory surprise beneath its surface.  Do not try to find the source of that smell; you do Not want to know.

Kleptomaniac mud stripped a man of his belongings, wristwatch, wallet, cigarettes, or shoe strings.

Mystery mud would appear on a man that had not been near any mud.

Living mud had a layer of slippery green algae snot on top.

Vampire mud left dozens of bloody pinpricks when washed away.

Infested mud left rapidly filling leeches or other blood suckers on a man’s legs, thighs, between toes, along the butt crack, under the scrotum, inside armpits, and on other sensitive pieces of anatomy.

Sometimes different mud types would get together for a party then you would have Super Sticky, Infested, Kleptomaniac, Vampire mud, or some other equally nasty hybrid.

Yeah, Mekong mud truly sucked. So did its dry powdery brother, Dust.  Dust blown up from Living, Putrid mud was particularly bad stuff to inhale.

 

These Sucked to…

 

INSECTS You name the insect and I have probably been bitten by it.  Mosquitoes, gnats, flies and all manner of unknown pests swarmed by the ka-zillion after nightfall.  Their type sucked blood then left raised lumpy, itchy, skin behind.

Once we pulled up to a beach somewhere with the bow of our Tango boat under some overhanging trees.  I did not notice the swarms of large biting ants that fell from the trees until I was chomped a few times on the stomach.  I got down to buck naked in a hurry and started picking the nasty critters off my person.  I looked like I had been hit with bird shot by the time they were all hunted down from the crevasses of my body and killed.

I remember sleeping with a towel over my face to keep from choking on inhaled gnats and mosquitoes.  This was a partial solution at best, but nothing really kept them at bay.

Insect repellent actually served as salad dressing for all the various biters and crawlers.  The only thing I ever knew it to repel was other people.  You had to be careful with repellant.  Wash your hands Before you take a leak, because it burns like a blowtorch on contact with your genitals.  If you get some in your eyes, grab a knife and gouge them out to stop the pain.  You will feel better quicker.  Do not get any on your lips.  Everything will taste like insect repellant for days.  I also think military insect repellant worked better if you squirted it directly on mosquitoes and gnats.  This saved them the trouble of licking it off your skin.

 

A big Sucker was…

 

BOREDOM Many more battles were fought and lost to boredom than against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army combined.

There were only two mental states that were available for boat crews.  Scared spit less or bored to tears.  Of the two, boredom was the hardest to deal with because there was so much of it in a day.  Ten percent of our time was spent being terrorized, but there was a lot to do then.  You know, trying to shoot the enemy before he shot you, that kind of thing.  Ninety percent of our time was left for creative mental endeavors to relieve the stress of doing, absolutely nothing.

Sometimes a group of boats would spend an entire day reaching some far off destination, with the crews nodding and bleary eyed from hour after hour of listening to droning engines.  Maybe a fight would erupt that would last an adrenaline charged minute or two, then everyone would motor all night back to where they came from.

Sleeping was a great thing to do with our loads of spare time, but a body can only use so much before sleep itself becomes boring.

Some men painted their boats over and over, never seeming to finish, adding dozens layers.  This was not my thing.  To me Painting was boring, not to mention smelly and messy.  The guys that were incessant painters probably had their reasons for enjoying this mundane task.  Getting a buzz from the fumes would be my guess as to that.  Yeah, that Does sound kind of sailor like.

Reading became a way of life during dead time and it took on many strange twists.  A man with a new paperback novel would be constantly hounded by others so a way of letting four or five guys read it at the same time developed.  The owner would finish a few pages, rip them out of the book, pass them to a crew member who would read them then pass them on, etc.  This worked rather well except that I am not sure that a complete book was ever finished, because once a novel was torn up, in this manner, it was hard to find the correct set of pages to follow the story line.  Some pages were passed out of order, some used as toilet paper, some hoarded while trying to keep up with more than one book, some might be passed to a reader not in the chain for that story.  You probably already figured out that any book pages with even the barest reference to sex, were either lost forever or in a totally unreadable condition.

Comic books as well as Mad magazines made the rounds until they were ragged and useless.  A Playboy magazine was quickly reduced to torn up shreds, without pictures, but with care the articles could be read.  An event never undertaken in a normal Playboy readers’ world.

Drinking, smoking, partying and playing cards were high on the list of great boredom fighters.  The longer that any of these tasks could be drawn out the better, thus creating a more uplifting experience, plus it killed more time.  Here again the human body and wallet imposed limits on the ability to use these venues as day wasters.

One crewmember, a simple farm boy, used to create an insect airport by tying sewing thread to the legs of flying bugs.  The threads were weighted by screws or washers so that the captives could not fly off with their tethers.

He had the creatures lined up on his bunk and would select a bug, thump it with a snap of his finger to get it started, then would fly the thing around the deck until it got too tired to flap anymore, whereupon he would trade the fagged insect for a fresh one.

At first I thought his activity incredibly juvenile, but after a few months of brain atrophy I became SO bored that I asked to join him on a few trips.  I soon saw that he had hit upon a great idea and we enjoyed many happy hours of flight time.  My favorite insect-plane was a thumb sized black creature with red spots on its wings.  Employing some favorite airplane motor noises, used in my childhood, gave added drama to the diving, looping antics of my agile bug.  Now that’s what I call ‘Over the Edge’ bored.

 

A great many other things about Viet Nam sucked but I have only listed the items that I felt particularly strong about.  I guess just being there in general sucked the most of all.  How could it not.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

Chapter 11

 

One Handed Softball

 

 

 

 

After many months of alternating between ‘Bored to Tears’ and ‘Scared to Death’ a man’s mind will turn into grape jelly.  It is hard to find any enjoyment in either state, but you know, too much ‘Bored to Tears’ time can cause a terrible over reaction when monotony relief is finally achieved.

A few months before I arrived on the river, enemy sappers paddled out, one night, to place an explosive charge between a mother ship and the stem to stern pontoon dock tied alongside.  The pontoon housed several Army buildings and the blast resulted in many Army and Navy casualties.

Basic Interdiction & Defense patrols were used to prevent those kinds of attacks.  Most Tango boats, at one time or another, participated in BID patrol.  The sailors aboard those boats preformed the same routines, day in, day out, for weeks at a time.

The nocturnal patrols usually involved at least two boats per barracks ship.  The assigned crewmen slept or otherwise wasted away the daylight hours until dusk.  One of the duty Tangos pulled alongside the very bow of a mother ship, facing aft, and tied off at the stern.  The engines and transmissions were then set to spin the propellers forward at an elevated RPM.  The strong, counter flowing, prop wash this created, was aimed up current from the bow to force any floating mines aside.  This was called tying up "Chinese" and it was beyond bad, because with the engine exhaust ports permanently fixed up wind, heavy diesel fumes filled the boat and choked everyone on board, without let up, all night long.  My bunk was tied in the overhead, under the flight deck, but the exhaust was still thick enough to cut with a knife even in that well ventilated location.

The other Tango, assigned BID patrol, made out a little better as far as air quality is concerned.  Their job was to randomly circle the river flotilla, all night long, while a sailor on the roving boat tossed grenades into the river, every ten minutes. The underwater detonations would, hopefully, concuss any enemy frogmen to death.

I know, it does not seem possible that a person could get bored throwing grenades, but after heaving three or four hundred of them, the excitement turns into a tedious chore, with a sore shoulder to boot.  In fact, so many grenades were flung that we frequently ran out of the black concussion variety, which were about the size, shape and weight as a full sixteen ounce can.

After the concussion grenades were exhausted regular ‘pineapple’ fragmentation grenades were used.  These we assembled from ‘pull the pin’ fuses kept in one container, screwed into green, explosive filled, cast iron ‘pineapples’ from another container.  It is much safer to transport the deadly things that way.

Sometimes, on BID patrol, we ran out of both types and manufactured our own flavor of RivRon concussion grenade.  This was a hand full of C-4, plastic explosive, kneaded into a baseball with a ‘frag’ fuse jammed into the center.  Wow, that stuff was powerful.  It had to be heaved well away from the boat to keep the pressures of detonation from blowing out the boat’s rubber propeller shaft seals.

Some of those C-4 concoctions would create quite a nice geyser if they blew up just under the surface of the water.  I used to practice intentional high lobs in order to get the ‘Old Faithful’ effect.  I had timed the fuses.  I would pull the pin, release the spoon, count one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, then throw the thing as far out and as high I could.  Hard to believe I was that stupid, really.  Can you imagine ever becoming brain dead enough to actually play with hand bombs?  That is ‘Bored Insane’ which is WAY beyond ‘Bored to Tears’, and is a very dangerous state to be in.

 

One day, after several months of this mind numbing type duty, our Tango cast off from the barracks ship and joined up, mid river, with a few other boats including two PBR’s.

PBR stands for ‘Patrol Boat River’ in convoluted Navy jargon.  They were thirty two feet long with twin two hundred fifty horsepower GM V-6 diesels driving a pair of Jacuzzi pumps, that put out up to ninety thousand gallons per minute each.  Did I mention that these fiberglass boats were very fast and maneuverable in the extreme?

          PBR’s did very well out on wider rivers where their speed, and 50 caliber machine guns, could be used to maximum effect.  However, on smaller jungle choked waterways they lost those advantages.  A slow nasty gun battle favored our heavily armored, low speed, river assault craft.

          I was not sure exactly why we were going on an operation with PBR’s, which wasn’t anything new, because a lowly snipe, like me, was dead last on everyone’s ‘need to know’ list.  In ignorance, as usual, I went into my standard underway routine of scanning tree lines to the background drone of straining engines.

          One PBR led our group at a sedate pace while the other zoomed back and forth along our column executing fifty mile per hour one eighty’s.  That was a sight to see as the agile craft instantly turned and went in the opposite direction, an action that threatened to toss everything inside the boat overboard.  It looked like tremendous fun, which was, as it turned out, the very thing we were all wasting so much Navy fuel in search of.  Fun that is.

          Our small task force traveled upstream for about an hour then turned left at a river junction and motored on for about another hour.  As we rounded a bend in the river I was astonished to see a big, gray, ocean going ship.  It was a U.S. Navy LST riding serenely at anchor in the middle of the quarter mile wide waterway ahead.

          An LST is a flat bottom, armed, cargo/transport/jack of all trades ship with large bow doors that could open at sea to launch boats, or when beached, to disgorge troops and materiel directly onto land.  I never saw them do this.  I just knew that they could.  I had also never observed one of these alone out here in V.C. country.  They usually hung around with the support contingent we were guarding at Dong Tam.

A Tango boat, with a helicopter deck, peeled off from our column and went alongside the LST while the rest of us idled in the current.  In a flurry of activity about twenty cardboard boxes were lowered to the waiting Tango's flight deck.  Upon receipt of the mystery merchandise all boats sped toward a palm lined riverbank where a dry rice paddy and two rusty fifty five gallon drums awaited us.

After beaching, shutting down and tying off to a coconut tree, I trotted to the parcel pickup boat along with a hoard of other sailors to help offload cargo.  I should say treasure, because there before me being stuffed into a giant, ice bottomed, cooler were two large boxes, (one hundred pounds), of U.S.D.A. Prime T-Bone steaks, many cases of American canned beverages, heaping crates of real, still in the rind, mixed fruits and Wonder of Wonders…, Two enormous cardboard cylinders of strawberry ice cream.  My eyeballs popped right out of my head when I saw those.

I finally caught on right about then.  We were having a real live, down home, Bar B Cue!  Yee Hah!

Dead cow, cold beer and pop, lots of sugar, plus fruit fiber, to keep everything moving in the right direction.  This was, literally, a dream come true for half starved men such as we were.  Many months of bland, pasty C-rations had us down to skin and bones.  I started to slobber like a rabid dog.

Right about then, a tiny bell went off in all our little sailor heads at the same instant.  It was easily over one hundred ten humid degrees and our thirst was much worse than our hunger.  An immediate, cheering, beeline was made by all hands to grab a cold drink.

One rotund PBR crew member, got the jump on everybody, church keyed the first can then poured it into his mouth so fast that most of it ran down his hairy, barrel chest and formed a large piss like stain on the front of his pants that grew steadily downward toward his knees.

Way to go, Bro!  We roared our approval for his mood setting manly show, then tried our best to emulate his magnificent performance. Soon my own crotch was bathed in a cool, liquid flow then I really tilted my head back and let the icy refreshment wash up over my face.  I am not sure I have ever had a more satisfying drink or one which I enjoyed that completely.

Someone yelled, “More!”, because someone always does.  This accelerated the party like Richard Petty flooring old 43 at the start of a Daytona 500.  It is the violent rubber band snap from mass brain dead to legendary party level, with no cushioning fun in between, that really gets a shindig off the ground.  This causes a gathering of usually responsible sea warriors to go absolutely, straight jacket, crazy when in the presence of beef, libations and ice cream.  Then again, maybe we peaked so fast because we were river sailors and were very good at partying.  Suffice it to say that Quite a few cases of carbonated delight were swilled in the next ten minutes as church keyed cans popped like sporadic gunfire.

Presently the other little bell went off in our noggins signaling that we were now hungrier than we were thirsty.  This prompted a rapid gathering of wood which soon filled the fifty five gallon drums to the top.

All eyes became focused on the man that stood pointing a magnesium night illumination flare into one of the drums.  He smacked the business end of its silver tube with a chunk of wood and the rocket propelled device streaked downward where it whizzed crazily around inside the drum.

To everyone’s startled surprise the hissing, smoking, snake, flew out of the fifty five gallon drum, then took off like a mad hare, just above the ground, zipping around and bouncing off the men’s legs.  They reacted like a typical bunch of little girls.  Dancing, falling down, squealing and laughing as if trying to avoid a mad mouse.  Men that would have normally taken a bullet for each other now trod on their shipmate’s heads, carelessly stomping faces into the freshly created beer mud as they tried to avoid the maniacal, smoking missile.  The U.S. Navy was in full retreat.  Long dead Admirals were probably turning over in their graves right then.

After a short exciting period of time the errant flare zoomed straight up into the sky for about forty feet, then with a loud, “Pow”, ejected a small white parachute off to its side.  The chute fluffed open to reveal a brightly burning piece of magnesium dangling underneath.

The pesky nightlight then floated ever so gently to the ground.  A courageous sailor took the crazy rocket by the shroud lines and swung it, also very gently, into a wood filled drum.  We all scrambled up from the mud and gave a rousing cheer that offered homage to his brave deed.  The Mekong kitchen range was now lit. Cook ‘em if you got ‘em.

I stood munching a banana as I carefully tended a T-bone with my folding Case knife.  I had to eat something because the wonderful aroma of the sizzling meat was driving my stomach into a gurgling frenzy.  A few more flips of the blade and the main course was ready.

I attacked the dripping, half done, morsel like the true carnivore that I was.  I waded in with a hand held, teeth first, chomp that brought out the hungry beast in me.  Grease flew up onto my Buddy Holly eyewear and dripped down onto my muddy chest.  I have never felt more proud of being at the top of the food chain as I did right then.  It was a moment of caveman dining delight that I have never forgotten.

I crunched through an apple and slurped through an orange as my second steak warmed.  It was a burnt skinned, taste bud wonder in itself.  Soon steak number two met the same masticated fate as number one and then, of course, it was time for desert.

After gorging myself on eight or nine handfuls of frozen strawberry heaven I waddled, stuffed to the gills, over to a coconut tree where I sprawled, with sticky, pink arms, greasy eyeglasses and a new cold can balanced on my severely distended gut.

Fart followed belch in a reaffirmation of that culinary law that states that food must noisily displace foul air.  This gassy trend was rippling among us bloated swabs when one of our gluttonous number thought to compliment the provider of our feast with a foamy can hoisted towards the LST, and a heart felt shout of, “Aww Right!!” and “My Man!”, directed at the commander of the vessel.  This started another trend.  We all lifted a toast to the benevolent Captain of the LST.  What a man.  He had committed one of the most meritorious acts of the whole war in my opinion.  He fed his hungry men and eased their tortured minds.  God had to love a Captain like that.  We sure did.

I hovered in and out of 'Slumber City' while languishing under the palm trees.  During my more cognizant moments I gazed out over my fellow swollen river rats.  Some snored loudly.  Others talked quietly in small groups.  The squared away types, of which there were very few, washed greasy pink goo from themselves in the river.

The sky had just started to blacken with thunder heads when someone appeared carrying a ragged old softball and a couple of splintered bats.  This immediately rejuvenated the party.  The whole crew crowded around excitedly to get a better look at the old familiar equipment.  Man, the fun times we had all had with a bat and a ball.  Memories of noisy games on dusty diamonds flooded our brains, as we reached out to touch those precious, timeless objects.  We were all dead, we had gone to little boy heaven.

New drinks were tapped while cardboard bases were placed in the well known diamond configuration.  Sides were chosen and rules established, which varied, somewhat, from the normal rules of softball in that ours were custom made for a one armed contest, solely to accommodate can holding players.

There were no strikes.  There were no balls.  Only hits, no matter how long it took to get one.  A runner was deemed out only when he was hit by the ball.  This cut down on a lot of catching and ball handling.  There were no foul lines.  There were no baselines.  A runner could go anywhere in order to escape being put out.  Positions were rotated each inning in the field so that everybody got a chance to play first base, which was closest to the big cooler.

A paper MPC, (military payment certificate), was flipped into the air and landed lady side up indicating that my team had lost the toss, so I sprinted, can in hand, to first base, managing to beat everybody else there.

As the first batter stepped up to the plate another miracle happened.  The sky opened up and a drenching monsoon rain set in.  The clay playing field became an instant quagmire, as slippery as oil on glass.  The heavy downpour felt fantastic though, which raised a cheer from us as our three childhood favorites, playing ball, playing in the rain, and ice skating all became rolled into one glorious mess.  I ditched my flip flops because they were useless in the slick mud, besides, barefoot felt better.  Many others did the same.  Just standing upright took a huge effort and men fell for no apparent reason at the rate of about one every fifteen seconds.

After a loud, “Play Ball”, was shouted, the wobbling pitcher sent in his first offering, then fell flat on his back.  The batter swung, connected and fell face down.  The rest of the infield went on its butt trying to run toward the ball, which had dropped in just past the pitchers mound.  The scramble was on as infield players found out that it was easier and faster to crawl after a grounder.