Strange Fruit

At the crack of dawn, a wake-up call issued forth from the CP (command post) by the RTO (radio operator) to each guard at the perimeter. It was the last in a series of hourly calls by the RTO throughout the night. Some of them were like our 49er Mike, a cool cat, polling each platoon radio in a terse whisper,

Hey you guys out there in Nam Land, this is 49er Mike calling for a sit-rep (situation report).

Robin Williams made much of this in Good Morning Vietnam (1987).

The sentry then made a squelch (a trickle of static noise) when he hit the PTT (push-to-talk button) on his microphone.

The RTO had better get two squelches back tout de suite or there'd be trouble in paradise. No reply meant: a) the man's radio was not working, b) the man was asleep, c) the man's position was under assault or overrun by the enemy or d) all the above.

The radio itself weighed about twenty pounds, battery included. It would keep on ticking if dropped from fifty feet or submerged in water, but a wet handset would take it down in a heartbeat. One RTO even made a trip into town for necessaries—condoms which he stretched over the earpiece and microphone of the handset to prevent condensation and protect it from rain, mist, and the excessively humid jungle air.

Each guard would then rouse the men around him who would wake others domino like until everyone was up and focused on their morning rituals, and keeping an eye open for the enemy.

Faces splashed with water, boots on, teeth brushed. Out on the perimeter, wires taken down, flares and claymores picked up. Shits taken, sleeping gear gathered and bundled into backpacks. Bunkers dismantled, sandbags emptied back into the bunker holes dug the evening before, along with any trash. Envelopes, letters and empty parcels burned or stowed. No unit identification or home addresses left behind.

You could never know who might be watching or what you were up against, here or at the home front. You wouldn't want those little people in black pajamas showing up at your parents' home on Christmas Eve, would you?

Next,a light breakfast of hot chocolate or coffee, crackers with peanut butter and jelly or canned bread, maybe a warm beer or soda, as cool as could be by morning. Gear stowed in backpacks, ammo belts donned. We saved the best for last—wrestling a ninety-pound pack onto our backs. You would lie on it and fasten the shoulder straps, roll over onto your hands and knees, prop yourself up with your weapon and stand. Or someone would give you a hand up.

Weapons checked, magazines locked and loaded, muzzle covers removed. Another day at the office,

Who had point yesterday?

Breaking up was easier than making up—only an hour to get underway after waking, half the time of making camp the night before.

On this nice, sunny day, we had recovered from yesterday's march. Following our point man, immersed in the warm, humid air, no problems, no enemy contact . . . .

The Magic Forest

We humped the jungle, single file, through a beautiful mixed bag of fifty, sixty, seventy-foot slender, leafy trees and majestic bamboo. We walked on fallen leaves, black dirt and six-inch weeds stunted by the overhead growth. Easy enough for us in the jungle, a stroll in the woods back home. Machetes were stowed in their sheaths, handles poking out of backpacks, because today we had no need to hack and slash our way.

The high canopy of foliage made a convenient tunnel, deflecting the sunlight, throwing dappled patterns of shade and sun on the guys ahead. A National Geographic center-fold without the breasts.

Suddenly, we beheld trees saturated with a strange, dull-gray stringy substance, like alien taffy or moss. The Twilight Zone or Alice in Wonderland? Word passed down the line. Napalm! Odorless and unexploded. Spent or inert? That was the question! We had no idea!

Napalm-B (super-napalm, or NP2) is a nasty jell of 21% benzene, 33% gasoline, and 46% polystyrene. It burns between 1,500°F and 2,200°F, although it's more difficult to ignite (therefore safer) than the napalm from WWII. Thermite, a chemical that burns at a very high temperature, is used to ignite it. Napalm kills three ways: burning, heat, or asphyxiation. People have been boiled alive in rivers heated by napalm.

On the ground, it can be hand delivered by a flamethrower or spewed from a zippo (riverboat or vehicle). Most often though, it's dropped from low altitude in a large canister which cracks like an egg, exploding, rolling and tumbling along, creating the fiery blanket of death and destruction shown so well in Forrest Gump (1994).

As we prepared to pass through it, each guy relayed to the next in line,

For God's sake, don't light up! or do anything stupid.

đi đi mau (go go quickly, get out of here),

described our situation perfectly. We pushed forward like army ants, at a constant speed and definitely didn't stop to gawk. Or rubberneck. Even raw, unignited napalm is dangerous.

Thankfully, it covered only thirty yards. We moved on to the next section of jungle without a hitch and to our final objective that day. Whew!

Postscript

In the most famous picture of the war, nine-year-old Kim Phuc is running toward the camera, naked and screaming with napalm burns across half her body. She's fleeing with a terrified group of children and South Vietnamese soldiers. A South Vietnamese army unit had sent the request to napalm her village to U.S. Air Force personnel, who relayed it to the South Vietnamese air force.

It wasn’t until after AP photographer Nick Út took Kim's picture that she saw him and screamed, 

Nong qua, nong qua! (I'm too hot, too hot.)

He gave her water, scooped her up and drove her to Cu Chi hospital, ten miles and an hour away, where he browbeat the staff until they treated what they thought was hopeless. But she recovered and defected to Canada in 1992, where she runs the Kim Foundation, caring for the child victims of war.

Her photograph and Dow Shall Not Kill became icons of the antiwar movement.

President Nixon on tape,

I'm wondering if that [photo] was fixed.

Chief of Staff Haldeman shrugging,

Could have been.