Phuoc Vinh

In the first place, I think that the Vietnamese war is nothing but a plot between the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese to get jeeps in the country.—Jack Kerouac, Firing Line (1968)

Out in the boonies these last six months one perilous day led to another, one place was much like another—the next sun could be my undoing. It had taken a long time to get used to fetid water, random bouts of violence, bugs and beefy loads. No world but the world of Charlie Company.

Imagine my surprise, then, when Capt. Martinez pulled me out of the field to replace Sgt. Barclay, our company clerk. Martinez had picked me because of my education, but first I had to assure him that I was up for a job possessing a not inconsiderable competition.

What a relief! I stripped off my backpack, grenades, Claymores, M-60 ammo belt and gave them to the guys, along with my M79 and .45. However, amidst the glowing send-off from my friends, I had genuine misgivings about performing the job, sight unseen.

Tay Ninh

I left the bush on a resupply chopper to train at scruffy Tay Ninh. Barclay started me with a crappy old steel typewriter you had to pound on, some beat up file cabinets and a run-down desk. The phone was a crank party line type; a land line, no radio.

You'll get it. They did the same thing to me eight months ago.

It was scary using my brain again. Where was it? It had melted down in the field. Heavy going at first. My head hurt, I couldn't even spell simple words. But in a couple of days I knew I could handle the job. And in time, it all came back. 

Meanwhile, Barclay made the rounds, saying his goodbyes. When he left for the world after two weeks, I'd have to figure out the rest. The job was now squarely on my shoulders—I was the warrior clerk of Company C, 2nd Battalion, 7th Calvary Regiment (C2/7).

Cambodia

At the end of April, word came down that the old gang of mine would be invading Cambodia and I would be moving to Phuoc Vinh along with battalion. Although everybody was curious how all this was going to go down, nobody seemed to care. After all, the army bragged that the 1st Cavalry Division could be anywhere in the world in twenty-four hours. We all laughed.

On April 30, 1970, President Nixon watched Patton (1970) before announcing the invasion of Cambodia in a surprise televised speech that evening:

If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.—Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia

State

On May 4, 1970, four days of angry, violent demonstrations in Kent, Ohio against the Cambodian incursion got a big knock. The Ohio National Guard killed it when they fired sixty-seven live rounds at a group of unarmed students on the Kent State campus.

The victims were a mixed bag—protesting, walking or watching. Four killed, one paralyzed and eight wounded to varying degrees. Fortunately, a geology prof talked the remaining students out of a full-scale counterattack and the guard left.

Halfway around the world, Charlie Company was already inside Cambodia. The chopper carrying our squad had been the second one in. They found a large cache of munitions in an enemy bunker. Supplies for another Tet? Easily enough Chinese SKS carbines for each man in the company. Genuine war trophies. Once they were evacuated to Phuoc Vinh, I picked out mine from the leftovers.

We heard about Kent State like everyone else and were just as confused. The students either attacked the guard—or not. Outside agitators and Communists were in Kent to destroy the university and the town—or not. The guard knew they had live ammo—or not. Claims and counterclaims were flying everywhere.

Lawsuits, commissions and investigations still haven't swept it under the rug.

In 2007, the Strubbe audio tape of the shooting turned up. Four pistol shots and a violent confrontation is heard on the tape. Terry Norman, a campus and FBI informer, was carrying a .38 that day.

A minute later, a male voice on the tape shouts orders:

Guard!

There is a pause.

All right, prepare to fire!

A shout from the students,

Get down! 

Then,

Guard! . . . 

A sustained volley of gunshots.

A nationwide student strike followed immediately. Five days later, President Nixon made an impromptu 4:15 am visit to the Lincoln Memorial to argue the merits of the war with a small group of protesters. Nobody won the argument, but he came away convinced that all war protesters were either bums or communists.

Later that day 100,000 protesters turned Washington D.C. upside down. Nixon took to Camp David and the 82^nd Airborne was ready in the basement of the executive office building.

The U.S. was at war with itself but we had other fish to fry. We were also in a war. Stateside events would have to wait.

Kent State won't let May 4 die. Numerous memorials have been erected on the site and a visitor center is maintained on campus. Commemorative speeches and ceremonies take place every year on the anniversary of that day.

Moving On Up

On moving day, designated army personnel loaded up the trucks. Everything was well organized, I didn't have much to do. They even packed some of my things. In order to minimize risk, we drove away in a convoy and arrived safely at firebase Phuoc Vinh, twenty-five miles northwest of Saigon, close to National Highway No. 1. The Black Virgin Mountain was out of sight but not out of mind in this flat, strange place.

Phuoc Vinh Firebase (Camp Gorvad) was a small town with an airstrip and gravel streets—a planned community of a hundred unmarked buildings, all with the same blueprint, spread across the base in a grid. It was home for many units, including our battalion.

The thousands of GIs in the 9.6 mile diameter clearing lived within a heavily defoliated, former tropical rainforest. Dioxin and other chemicals from the hundreds of thousands of gallons of Agent Orange, Agent White and Agent Blue had undoubtedly contaminated the water point (underground cistern) that provided drinking water for the base and assorted troops in the field. Medical histories of the vets who were present at Phuoc Vinh are likely to be startling.

Company headquarters was a single story, OD (olive drab) building about 8' high, 40' long, and 20' wide, topped by an overhanging pitched metal roof. Instead of windows, screens ran all the way around the upper half, providing airflow for fans—no A/C. Sandbags heaped four feet high against the wooden lower half, a bulwark against mortars and rockets. The doors at either end led to a central space, open to the rafters, which could be subdivided into rooms or partitioned any way we wanted.

Herein dwelt the supply Sgt., the mail clerk, the armorer, and me, while at the same time providing a temporary residence for soldiers coming in from the field to see a doctor, a dentist, to go on leave or go home. For the rest of Charlie, the jungle was home.

The nerve center of the company comprised a single room with a desk, a typewriter, file cabinets, crank telephone, and a triple-deck bunk bed. A safe for storing valuables of the guys in the field sat on a table in back. Last in line was the locked arms room—heavy-duty wire mesh on the upper half—for keeping extra weapons and any we had confiscated in the field, such as AK-47s.

Mi, a nice girl, daughter of a 1st Sgt. in the ARVN (South Vietnamese Army), cleaned it every couple of days—what the doctor ordered in a dust-pile like Phuoc Vinh.

J.R. and Mi

I took daily attendance, adding FNGs, subtracting WIA, KIA, TDY and those on leave, on sick call or going home. The rest of the personnel were presumed to be in the field. Also, promotions, travel orders, awards and decorations.

The principal daily humdrum involved typing a tedious five page numbered roster sheet on all personnel in the company including rank, birth date, R & R date, DEROS (date estimated return overseas), etc., and then mimeographing it, another time consuming process (we had no copy machines). The report circulated only to me, the CO, the 1st Sgt. and the battalion executives. The numbers were used in radio traffic to avoid mentioning soldiers by name.

I kept things hopping while my bosses, the CO and the 1st Sgt., were slogging through the jungle.

Our battalion boasted its own building. I got to know our battalion clerk so well that he let me work out in his weight room.

Using a 4-wheel mule—a steering wheel, seat and motor on a flatbed—our supply Sgt. would drive around the base requisitioning, trading, scrounging, stealing and hoarding supplies for the next log bird (logistical or resupply helicopter). He did whatever he had to. When the supply chopper arrived at the dirt pad outside our back door, a detail helped him load it up and off it went into the jungle.

A short distance beyond the pad, a barbed wire fence separated the base from the town of Phuoc Vinh. Because the base was on a clearing at the top of a hill, we could see the town church, plain as day, as well as a few other buildings of unknown utility ouside our back door.

The outhouse across the street held four 55 gallon barrels cut in half fitted with a lift-off wooden seat on top. Each day, a detail would take them out, pour in diesel fuel and burn everything inside. We pissed outside into artillery canisters buried 1-2 feet deep, trying not to miss too badly.

We also took showers outside, in an improvised structure fabricated from ammo box wood. You stood naked under a barrel of water filled by water trucks—one of them driven by our former platoon leader, demoted Lt. Eggleston—and heated by the sun. When you yanked the chain, warm water gushed over you. It was great!

In Sickness and in Health

In the field, Doc handed out big, orange malarials—horse pills—once a week. Soldiers gulped them down, but something about Bobby Parris—maybe his fair skin or freckles—made him especially susceptible to malaria. He came down with both species: P. falciparum and P. vivax. Once the guys threw him into a bomb crater filled with water to cool him down before he was medevaced out. Each times he looked like shit when he came into the base hospital with a high fever. And both times he was sent back to the bush after a week's respite.

I even played doctor with the hoard of penicillin pills acquired from medics dropping off their supply before they went home. All the single guys heading out or coming back from leave took a few of these pills as a precaution against the clap. They figured it wouldn't hurt. Neither did I.

The Redhead

The married guys met their wives in Hawaii, but the single guys went to Hong Kong or Bangkok where the beautiful girls would line up. You took your pick.

One of our combat vets, a redhead, met a prostitute in Hong Kong who was hooked on the U.S. and fixed herself up with the name Margaret. After he came back he declared,

I'm engaged.

We consulted our shockopedias.

Why would you do that?

It wouldn't be easy for him to marry her; the army goes to great lengths to persuade GIs not to bring problems home. It erects roadblocks for the pair and makes them jump through hoops. Physicals, background checks, on and on. Exhausting if you want to go all the way. Klinger married his Korean girl friend Soon-Lee in Mash, but I never found out if the redhead and Margaret tied the knot.

The Blond

The blond, good-looking radio operator (RTO) from St. Barbara fame was still in high demand. Whenever he came into Phuoc Vinh from the field, the girls would queue up outside our barracks, waiting to have a crack at him. He was a platinum blond and they all wanted a chance to have a platinum baby. To his credit, the RTO took it all in stride.

Oh well, some of us have a cross to bear.

The Leech

A courier dropped in every afternoon with the daily casualty report and laid it on my desk. One of my chores as clerk was to review the very informative report to see what was happening to all the units in the brigade. No action on my part was required, but I read the condensed report with great interest, the same way people read the obituary column in the newspaper. Did I know anybody? Was he in my company? Did I go to school with him? etc.

I still can't forget the item, “Leech in penis.” Honest to God, that's all it said on the casualty report. I stared at it and read it over and over. How do you manage to get a leech in your penis? It was no joke because the soldier had been medevac-ed. How do you get it out? Do you use a catheter hooked up to a Hoover? I guess I'll never know.

The Dentist

Around the middle of my term as clerk, I acquired a chronic dental problem. Periodically, I would get severe, stabbing pains in a tooth lasting twenty to thirty minutes. I would grab my jaw and press hard until the pain went away. After a few of these little episodes, I made an appointment with the dentist on base and waited. When I finally got into the chair, there was no dental assistant, no x-ray machine, no dental tray. Just me and him. I held the instruments in my hands and forked them over as he poked and probed. 

That mirror in your right hand, hand it to me.

Give me the scraper in your left hand. The double-ended curved thing.

When the exam ended he said, 

I'm sorry, I can't find the problem. Can you live with it for awhile?

Well, dental issues don't go away by themselves. But since the pain came in spurts, I would forget about it until next time. When I took a week's leave in Hawaii to see my wife, I had a sweet, tropical drink right away. Bad move! The pain came on instantly. I was in agony for a half hour. I should have looked for a dentist there, but I had more urgent things on my mind. The tooth kept bothering me until I left Vietnam, but I was a vet, I could take it!

The first thing I did was to find a real dentist when I got back to the states. He found a pinhole in one tooth with his x-ray and filled it. A miracle!

Since then, I've told my story to many dentists in the states. Without exception, they react in shock and disbelief when I tell them how I held the implements in my hands and assisted in the exam.

The IG

The day before I left Hawaii to return to Phuoc Vinh, I interrupted my R and R (rest and recreation) to call the office to see how it was going in my absence. My substitute declared that 1^stSgt. Luther O'Neal was on a rampage. He was running around telling everyone that the office was a disaster and he was gonna send me back to the field. Actually, I would have settled for Arkansas at the time.

While I was gone, he left the field and rummaged through my office. He was particularly upset by discrepancies which gave soldiers extra leave. I thought it was ubercool. It wasn't all on my watch but according to O'Neal,

This can't be tolerated.

That's all I needed because O'Neal had a mysterious hold on Capt. Martinez. But by the time I got back, things had quieted down because, apparently, I was the only one who could do my job. More importantly, something bigger had popped up to set O'Neal on the warpath—an impending visit by the IG (Inspector General).

To those who have never been in the army, let me say this: the IG can ruin you.He will put you under the Klieg lights and tear you up. The IG's main function in life is to criticize. He's the one man with the power to make your life wretched before he arrives and after he departs. He breeds epic fear with awesome pomposity. He takes no prisoners.

In short order, O'Neal suddenly materialized in my office, as if beamed in from the bush. Battalion planned to stage its own inspection before the dreaded IG inspection. He took one look around,

We're way behind.

I decided to ignore O'Neal's temper tantrums and let bygones be bygones. We worked together to get a place for everything and everything in its place.

We came in last.

If we were ever gonna skate on this, we needed to improve big time, bring things into real compliance. But that was O'Neal's strength.

The 1^st Sgt was a southern boy—a short, thick, no-nonsense guy with a chew. Talk low, talk slow, don't say too much. He was married to the army. He knew how to negotiate the labyrinth of army regulations. He could quote chapter and verse from memory.

In fact, shortly after he retired from the army the first time, he realized he couldn't handle the real world and re-upped (reenlisted) at the bottom. This was the second time he had advanced through the ranks to an exalted noncom (noncommissioned officer) position.

He also had to know a bad IG report would be an albatross in his file. Forever.

We're in trouble,

was his expert assessment of Charlie Company's readiness quotient.

No shit.

We worked night and day to bring things into compliance. We only had a week. The right documents must be present in the right binders and in the right sequence. Same for manuals and books. Army regulations had to be followed to a “T”. Anything out-of-date had to be brought up-to-date. We sent for updates through the proper channels and procured any missing items. Unauthorized items had to be hidden away or pitched.

In his fanaticism, O'Neal even went as far as trading two of our captured AK-47s to the air force guys for two new file cabinets and a case of new binders. Highly illegal, but the air force had the wherewithal to smuggle guns out of the country. For all we knew, they wound up on the streets in Chicago.

One last thing. Unlike IG inspections in the states, cleanliness wasn't paramount. No white gloves. Dust everywhere.

When the big day came, our office looked pretty spiffy thanks to O'Neal. The IG found only one flaw and gave us 15 minutes to fix it. We did! It was unbelievable. Charlie Company came in first when the chips were down. O'Neal was ecstatic. Capt. Martinez was elated. They even put me in for an army commendation medal, the army's term of endearment.

I never heard anymore about the field. O'Neal went back to the bush and I went about my day.

Pay Day

Once a month, we stood in line patiently when the payroll officer arrived with his satchel. Upon presenting yourself, he checked a print-out and counted out the amount of MPC (military payment currency) due you, bill by bill. Although this “Monopoly money” was illegal off base, in fact it could be used on or off base to buy anything our little hearts desired. Consequently, MPC accumulated off base in the black market along with illegal greenbacks.

Every now and then, in order to get the MPC off the black market and prevent the total meltdown of the local currency, the powers on high announced a surprise C-Day (conversion day). Anyone still holding the old currency after the music stopped was SOL.

On that fateful day, the base was closed to the civilian Vietnamese. While we stood in a long line to exchange our currency, they flocked to the gates trying to entice the security guards to exchange MPC for them. They were left holding the bag because no GI wanted to be court marshaled for changing money.

GIs converting large sums of money had to explain where they got the money. Winning big in a poker game was a good story. Buying cigs and alcohol from the PX (post exchange) and selling them for three or four times more on the street was not.

As company clerk I kept valuables in the safe for the guys. When a soldier gave me $100 in MPC for safekeeping while he was in the field, it was no biggie. It died in the back of my mind. Wouldn't you know, I forgot it on C-Day! When I discovered it, I felt the pangs of embarrassment but I also felt I needed to make good on it. Before he went home, Bobby Parris lent me $100 of new scrip to put in the safe. The day I ate the old scrip was one of the regrets in my life. I never mentioned it to the soldier.

John Steinbeck IV

VIP John Steinbeck IV made a surprise visit to headquarters to study the infamous Charlie Company. He held bull sessions with everyone in the barracks while he was here. I participated whenever I could. A nice guy, a civilian day tripper, so I thought.

What you don't know! I found out later he'd been drafted in 1965 and spent his time in Vietnam as an army and DOD (Department of Defense) journalist. He returned on his own in 1968 to cover the war like his illustrious father did in WWII. He spoke fluent Vietnamese and had already published a book about his experiences, In Touch (1969),before he rolled in to Phuoc Vinh.

Bob

J.R. had been pulled from the field to be company mail clerk. He hit a home run when he became battalion mail clerk quartered in his very own little brick building. Capt. Martinez wondered if we still needed a company mail clerk. I reminded him that there was no way I could do my duties, do the mail and do awards, decorations and promotions. 

Some awards were automatic, like the coveted CIB (combat infantry badge) and the air medal.  You put in for commendations, the Bronze Star and the Silver Star. You had to work hard and make a case for them. Two soldiers in our company received a Silver Star. 

It doesn't sound like much, but the wording has to be just right. Lots of vets deserve a medal and don't have one. Likewise, plenty of others have a medal they didn't deserve.

Martinez asked me who I would recommend. I said Bob. He has the smarts and the education. Although Martinez didn't want to lose one of his best point men—Bob and Sam had acquainted me with the dark art of point—he wanted the troops to get “everything they deserved.”

That's how my old squad buddy Bob came out of the bush to join me at Phuoc Vinh. Besides mail clerk, his secondary responsibility would be to help me process awards and decorations. 

Bob and I studied the successful award applications. We used them as boilerplate and lifted some of their flowery phrases to spice up our description of the valorous action that took place in the field. Martinez reviewed our work and heartily endorsed our methods. You must be nothing but meticulous if you want brigade to approve an award and send it on to Washington—if you want it to fly.

“GI want soda?”

I was tired of hearing that cry from the Vietnamese vendors, but it gave me an idea. I decided to become my own entrepreneur-in-residence. I talked the guys in the barracks into pooling our money to buy a small refrigerator, stock it with beer and soda from the PX (Post Exchange), and sell the cold drinks to anyone on the base.

I put a sign outside the door, “Cold beer and soda, 75 cents.” Soon our little lemonade stand was making enough to pay for the fridge, recapture our initial capital and generate a little spending money. We even bought a new typewriter for the office.

Our business went into high gear when Bob suggested we extend it to the guys in the field. In order to do so, we collected their ration cards. On logistics day, the supply Sgt. used the cards to acquire cases of beer and soda from the PX. We're talking 300 cans at a time. He cooled them in the fridge and loaded the cold cans on the chopper with the rest of the supplies when the time came. Voilà! The troops had cold drinks in the jungle.

No other company did this as far as I knew.

By the way, there was no profit from supplying the Charlie Company troops with cold beverages. Making the guys happy in the field had become our number one goal and our only reward.

  

Wilson

A pack of wild dogs—led by a female answering to “Bitch”—had attached themselves to Phuoc Vinh. Despite roaming freely throughout the base, day and night, Battalion had purchased their allegiance by feeding and befriending them. I paid them no mind.

Another busy day. I hit the sheets and passed out, sleeping soundly until my bunk mate Bob shook me awake in the middle of the night; the battalion dogs were barking like crazy.

Look out! Look out!

Bob and the supply sergeant led me outside. To my astonishment, a line of hand grenades lay atop the sandbags outside my window, daisy-chained together with det cord (detonating cord).

Who ordered the anchovies?

As I shook the sleep out of my eyes, the enormity dawned on me. Six feet from my bunk sat enough explosive force to blow the barracks to kingdom come!

The tops of the grenades had been carefully unscrewed, the blasting caps and fuses removed, so they could all be chained together. We stared at the blackened end of the det cord. Someone had lit the cord but the apparatus had failed to go off because the cord had stopped burning. Sheer luck!

We looked at each other, then back at the contraption. Our assailant had only to roll one of the six grenades down the hall to kill us all in our sleep.

     

Vietnam era Mk 2 grenade

Shook, rattled, and woke, I sought the familiar interior of the barracks with my comrades and turned to them for some kind of explanation and assurance. Bob filled me in:

The dogs woke me up and I stepped outside the front door in my bare feet.

I saw a shadowy figure next to our building.

I couldn't tell if it was U.S. or Vietnamese.

A couple seconds later the supply sergeant came out and he ran off.

Another Maalox Moment awaited us at the rear of the building—a Claymore perched on its spindly legs, staring us in the face, aimed squarely at anyone trying to escape through the back door. Fortuitously, the perp didn't have time to hook it up.

The curious incident of the dogs in the night-time saved our lives.

We collected ourselves, cataloged the objects, called the base CID (Criminal Investigation Division) on the company phone and posted a guard over the whatsis. I stumbled back to my bunk and tried to catch a couple hours on my rumpled covers.

CID showed up early the next morning to dust for fingerprints and collect evidence but the rough surface of the pineapples (grenades) made fingerprint identification impossible. No matter. I linked together the events of the past twenty-four hours and circled back to—Wilson.

     

Wily Coyote

You might not think company clerk was a sexy job, but it's key to combat operations. Orders for all activities, requisitions for fuel and supplies, equipment, transportation, and men required written documents. And when the guys came in from the field, Bob and I would listen sympathetically to their problems and do them favors all the time.

Can you get me a pocket knife? A watch?

We were the kind of guys who could get you things, but some requests were outlandish, like the previous afternoon. Wilson, a grunt from the South side of Chicago who had escaped from the field in—some said—a hijacked log bird. There he stood, sporting a bushy Afro, pleading with me to type papers to send him home.

This can't be Wilson. Did he fall through the cracks? Higher priorities for the chiefs?

I'd never seen the man before. If I half-understood his frantic rambling, his wife was cheating on him, messing around. The gears in his head were cranking overtime, but his logic wasn’t:

I'm stuck here. I gotta get the fuck out. This guy types up the orders. He can fake them!

Really? Who did he think I was—Radar?

If you can find a higher rank, I'll type up the orders.

Each time he repeated his demands, his frustration level rose. I thought,

Go away and accept Jesus in your heart.

Finally, he stormed out.

Just another day in the life of a E-5 company clerk, but Wilson couldn't put it from his mind. In a willful denial of what the rest of us call reality, he aimed his fury at me and my bed.

Until CID took him into custody, I retrieved my trusty Colt .45 from the arms room, loaded it with a full clip, and kept it near. It was always on my desk at work, on the table in the mess hall, beside me in the shitter or the shower, under my pillow or in my holster.

Let the weapon decide.

Desperate people do desperate things but Wilson had gone too far. He had sacrificed everything to his passion and laid himself open to the charge of attempted murder. One spark and my story would have been over. However, they couldn't prove anything and rather than a trial, they offered him a dishonorable discharge and dumped him back into society. He got to go home after all. A win for him and for the army but not for me.

No harm, no foul? Just because nobody died, it don't mean nothin'.

What is this place? What else will I have to dodge before I get out of here?

Pizza

Bob and I heard about these air force guys over at the airstrip selling toaster oven pizzas. Hungry for a delicacy we hadn't had for a dog's age, I made up the orders. That evening we checked out a jeep from the motor pool and drove there in the dark with slotted covers over the headlights to deflect the beams down to the ground. We found the place, came back with the pizzas, turned in the jeep and acted like nothing had happened.

The Ticket

When Capt. Martinez found out Bob had a military drivers license, he asked Bob to drive him and his cronies to the officers club in Bien Hoa. Bob checked out a 3/4 ton cargo truck with a canvas top for the trip. They headed out on Highway 1 with Martinez next to Bob and the others on benches in the rear. But when they got there, Bob wasn't invited to go in with them—he had to fend for himself.

The next day on the way back, a siren went off. A black MP pulled Bob over for speeding—you gotta be kidding, I seriously doubt if any 3/4 ton ever saw 50 mph. When the MP handed Bob the ticket, Martinez said, 

Come over here son. Let me see that. 

Martinez took the ticket, tore it up into little pieces and threw it back at the MP. 

Now, let's get going.

Bob still grumbles about forfeiting a valuable war souvenir.

Saigon

The battalion clerk had asked me to take my week of leave and go to Australia with him.  

I'll arrange it. The girls are unbelievable and you get a steak dinner every night! 

I just couldn't do that. I didn't feel like taking advantage of my position as clerk. I thought I would be more valuable here.

However, if I wasn't going to Australia, I felt I should go with him on a mission to Saigon. We typed up orders and took off in a jeep. He was driving. Took about an hour to get into downtown Saigon. The streets were clogged with bicycles, pedestrians, and Mopeds. Sure enough, we sideswiped a Moped, breaking the parking light and sending glass into the street.

The Moped pulled off onto the sidewalk. We stopped on the side of the busy street as a courtesy. 

Is everybody OK? 

We were one polite bunch, I tell ya. Instantly, a hostile crowd gathered around us, screaming bloody murder and smelling money. We couldn't move. They stopped jostling us when they noticed my .45. 

Before the White Mice (South Vietnamese police) or the Cowboys (roving gangs of armed Vietnamese teenagers) arrived, our MPs came to the rescue. They criticized us for stopping and told us to get the hell out of there.

We continued on into the dodgy parts of town, stopping often and proceeding on foot. The battalion clerk knew his way around and I followed close behind. I was a bit scared, walking through buildings, rooms, hotels, and constantly running across GIs in doorways and alleys. They were friendly enough, but they were stoned out of their minds on heavy duty drugs. They had chosen this life. They wanted out. Some were caught, others not.

We spent the night in Saigon. He had his own room, undoubtedly with a girl, but I had a wife (and a toddler) at home and didn't want to bring back STDs. From boot camp on, there was a lot of bugaboo about STDs—especially the ones you could catch here.

I didn't know his orders, but mine didn't cover an overnight, so I was worried. Nevertheless, we stayed in Saigon drove back the next morning. Highway 1 was a paved two-lane road like back in the States. We maintained a steady 45-50 mph, passing army convoys and civilians in goofy buses with a family and a goat inside and  a water buffalo trailing outside. We saw no enemy, lucky for us since we had only my .45 between us and trouble. Not the smartest thing to do. The weirdest things we saw were the swastikas carved on stone markers set along the side of the road by Buddhists for good luck. Swastikas? In Vietnam? It blew our minds.

When we got back, he turned in the jeep and within half an hour we were back in the swing of things.

At the Movies

One fine, warm evening, all was quiet in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Earlier, Doc Walsh and Charlie, his pet spider monkey, had dropped in at headquarters to see us. Doc had left the bush after the fiasco on the trail for a job as a door gunner on a chopper—completely out of character. Charlie was a company mascot with the rank of Sgt. He rode on Doc's shoulder and had his own hooch in Doc's room. Charlie kept staring Bob down, unnerving him with the evil eye.

After Doc left, Bob and I were shootin' the shit. It was dark enough to require lights. In the block across the street, it was movie night.

All of a sudden we heard a loud whooshing noise over our roof, immediately followed by a loud explosion too close for comfort. Rockets! Shrapnel hit our building, bouncing off the tin roof.

My mind started racing a hundred miles per hour. We wouldn't even consider going outside into our underground bomb shelter filled with water and rats. Swim with giant rats in a filthy piss hole? Forget about it! We gathered up a couple mattresses from spare bunks, threw them over us and crawled under a table. By that time, the nasty birds had stopped. Four altogether.

After a few seconds of silence, we stayed put in case of a short round. Then we figured it was over. The instigators were probably long gone since the army would be hot on their trail.

Bob ran out to see if he could help. I stayed at headquarters. This would be the classic time for someone to clean us out. We had valuables in the safe.

Bob wasn't gone long before he came back in a blue funk. When he first got there, he saw at least twenty GIs down. He ran over to a soldier and turned him over. He was a blond kid and obviously dead. His body was torn up and his eyes were wide open. By now, the medics were running around checking for wounded. We were only a block away from the medevac pad. Everything was under control. There wasn't much Bob could do. Fifteen to twenty wounded, five to ten dead, a huge disaster.

The rockets had come from the village behind us. During the day, someone on base had paced off the distance from the wire to the movie house. Not only that, they had to know how long the movie was gonna be. Only insider information or awfully good guesswork would deduce exactly when the troops were getting out.

Neither Bob nor I were hurt because the movies didn't float our boat.

Oops! Charlie had been down at the medevac pad. He received a shrapnel wound and a purple heart.

Another close call. Another reminder it wasn't all rainbows and butterflies here at Phuoc Vinh. At least in the jungle you always had cover.

Refusal to Bury

On a sunny August 8, 1970, Charlie Company was investigating a chosen area when Capt. Martinez set up an LP (listening post), well beyond the safety of the camp perimeter. It was advanced guard duty, designed to pick up enemy traffic and radio the information to the CP (command post).

An LP in historical parlance would be termed a picket, consisting of a small number of soldiers outside the main camp in which one soldier at a time is put on watch. Like sentry keeping.

LPs were rare in our company, but Martinez inclined toward the unusual. They were the least popular assignments—seriously dangerous and highly stressful—the enemy owned the night. Two of the newest men in the unit, SP4 Pondextuer Eugene Williams, a vet from The Big Red One, and an FNG were stationed out there alone.

It's easy to become bored on guard duty. While they were huddled around their radio listening for activity over the night-time jungle noise, a VC snuck up, planted a mine and slipped back to detonate it.

The blast took Williams’ head off and critically wounded his companion. Luck? Training? Experience? Nonsense—if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, poof!

Doc Gerrits went out to check on them. Since Williams was done for, he treated the wounded man.

Taking care of your buddies is most important. Williams’ black friends were shaky because of recent enemy contact; they wouldn't go for his body, so a group of fearless whites fashioned stretchers out of ponchos and bamboo, brought the two men back from the outpost and loaded 'em onto the medevac. (Don't get the wrong idea—we had continuous black/white jibing, but no racial issues in our company.) In any event, the other man soon died from injuries inflicted in the blast ring.

As company clerk, it was my job to type up a letter to each of their families, describing the action and assuring their loved ones that the two men died bravely, surrounded by their friends. I used proper, dignified language throughout the one-page document; not a single white-out, smudge, erasure, or typo. It had to be redone until it was perfect. The battalion executive signed off and the letter went out.

Meanwhile, back in the good ol' U.S.A., Williams' mother, Mrs. Mary Campbell of Fort Pierce, Florida, had been told of an ad circulated by Hillcrest Memorial Gardens in her local paper, The News Tribune, offering a free burial plot in the Garden of Peace.

As an honorably discharged Veteran of the United States Armed Forces, you may be qualified for free burial space, however you must register for this.

According to Mrs. Sarah Peek, funeral director of Lee-Peek Funeral Home in charge of local arrangements,

like it [the ad] would apply more to one who had given up his life than a discharged veteran.

Mrs. Campbell called privately-owned Hillcrest, but cemetery manager Mr. James Livesay refused, citing contractual and legal issues with over five thousand property owners. Instead, he offered to purchase a plot in Pine Grove, the black cemetery.

That wouldn't do—Mrs. Campbell wanted Hillcrest, a well-landscaped cemetery on a hillside that was much more attractive than Pine Grove.

It [Hillcrest] is such a beautiful cemetery and I want the best for my boy.

Besides,

I realized that because he had eaten with them, slept with them, fought with them, and died with them, why couldn’t he be buried with them?

Mrs. Victoria Roberson of Lyons, New York, said her nephew,

had a busted eardrum. They never should have sent him back—he should have been sent home.

When Mayor Dennis Summerlin said the situation was an “embarrassment” for the city but his hands were tied. Mrs. Campbell was at her wits end,

We know there's going to be a burial Sunday, but I'm just not sure where, yet.

While twenty-year-old Williams lay in his GI cardboard box, awaiting further developments, she submitted a formal application to Hillcrest. Livesay turned it down, writing back that per Hillcrest bylaws,

burial would be strictly limited to members of the human race, and the Caucasian race only.

Another day of infamy in Fort Pierce.

In case salvation was for sale, she countered with an offer to purchase the plot outright. Livesay turned that down, too, and blocked an offer by Mrs. John R. Diehl, a seventy-two-year-old white woman, to use one of her plots instead. Livesay stood fast,

Only a court order would permit Williams to be buried there.

Ft. Pierce Legion Post Commander Virgil Hayes concurred,

As far as I'm concerned personally, there's no action contemplated on this whatsoever. There's a Negro cemetery down there, a very good cemetery, I'd say.

Mrs. Peek demurred,

They've been told he was fighting for his country, for freedom and democracy, and now he can't be buried where his mother wants him.

and intended to bring the matter before the mayor's Biracial Committee. Neither she nor others in Ft. Pierce's black community could understand the controversy.

His mother is still in a state of shock, and a lot of the young men in the community are getting uptight about it.

Also,

There may be a matter of false advertising. There was no stipulation in the ad that the veteran had to be white, black, green or purple.

The U.S. Attorney in Miami pirouetted,

I don't blame her. After all, he got killed in Vietnam. What more can he do for his country?

but proffered no official opinion on a potential civil rights violation. Public sympathies were with Williams, a popular church-going athlete who had integrated the local high school four years earlier. The three major TV networks, five hundred blacks and forty white friends, members of the American Legion and VFW turned out for a first-class funeral at the armory. As she was assisted in, Mrs. Campbell sobbed,

Oh my God. Oh my God! Why did this happen?

The Rev. C. Byrd of Bethel Baptist Church intoned over Wilson's flag-draped coffin,

He has no home to go to. I don’t think we should squabble about where he should be buried because the earth belongs to God.

While the rifle squad scheduled to fire a 21-gun salute over Williams’ grave remained on the bus, Lt. Col. Weldon Wright, a white chaplain from Hunter Field in Savannah Georgia, told the audience,

We’re here to stand beside you because our hearts beat in tune with yours. There is no discrimination in military cemeteries. If it had been our decision, we would have decided to bury this young man in the cemetery of his mother’s choice with full military honors.

After the service, Williams was returned to the funeral home and put back on ice where the 24-hour vigil resumed.

Willis Edwards, a Vietnam vet who dropped his studies and came all the way from California to get the ball rolling,

I am calling today on the leaders of our country to stop this injustice.

The quest continued. Mrs. Campbell's lawyers, the ACLU and the NAACP got on the stick. The news of William's troubles traveled fast, provoking universal disgust in Vietnam, the Nixon White House, and the Justice Department. Attorney General John Mitchell asked the U.S. Southern District Court of Florida to declare invalid the racially restrictive sections of the cemetery's charter.

In the end, Mr. Livesay got his court order—Judge William O. Mehrtens, a Lyndon Johnson appointee, declared that Williams' burial at Hillcrest proceed,

immediately, without delay.

In the courtroom, dressed in black, her face covered by a veil, Mrs. Campbell wept,

God has heard my prayers.

That wasn’t the end of it. Livesay continued receiving hate mail calling him an “animal”, a “racist pig” and “despicable” among other epithets. Peek got a call,

If you bury that nigger in that cemetery, you’re going to have trouble, baby.

The Hillcrest burial was a media spectacle attended by a much higher percentage of whites than were at the funeral, including a contingent of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Dennis Shortt, a member of the Peace Revival at Ft. Pierce Jaycee Park, had only this to say,

How many more?

My greatest debt for the Fort Pierce portion of this story is to Dorothy Blair, Reference Department, St. Lucie County Library, who provided an abundance of clippings from local papers and national news services.

The Wall

I flew out from freezing Minneapolis to DC for Charlie Company's 1990 Veterans Day reunion. Bob drove in from New Jersey. Bobby Parris, who had hung on for dear life in hell-bent helicopters, had enough flying. He drove in from Georgia.

Doc Gerrits organized everything. The rest of the company medics were present, too. Our squad made it except for Sam and Sgt. De Greef, our squad leader, who had been killed in a motorcycle accident.

Sgt. Dunnuck died from lung cancer three months before the reunion.

The Wall was already eight years old when we arrived at the park. It was my first time. The Wall consists of two enormous sections of black granite, set in the ground and joined at an obtuse angle. One section points to the Washington Monument, the other to the Lincoln Memorial. Each section is a linear affair 250 feet long and ten feet high assembled from seventy panels. The names of the dead and missing are etched in chronological order.

The Wall was as controversial as the war itself. The “nihilistic” design provoked a storm of negativity from vets, civilians and government officials. Many withdrew their support altogether when they learned that a 21-year-old Asian American girl won the design contest. Today it's considered a classic.

A lady custodian remarked how unusual it was for so many members of a squad to be together at the Wall after twenty years. We were still close.

As I approached each individual panel, I saw my reflection very clearly in the highly polished surface. Why am I down here and they're up there? Nobody could keep from breaking down. It still hurt. Too much to handle.

The mementos and letters left at the base of the Wall by friends, wives, brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren only deepened the feelings of irresolvable loss, gratitude and regret.

In my reverent and melancholy mood, I located Pondextuer along with several others. So upsetting to see the names of those I knew. All manner of feelings arose from my mind and body. 

The names are the soldiers.

Pondextuer fully deserved to be up there with the rest of them.

Tributes for Williams are posted on the Virtual Vietnam Veterans Wall of Faces.

McCarty

On August 3, 1970, Hurricane Celia made landfall in Texas. The powerful storm caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and killed twenty people. Shortly thereafter, Michael McCarty, a nice guy from the headcase mortar platoon, heard from his mother in Houston. Her house had been damaged and she was distraught.

McCarty wanted to go home. He thought helping her was more important than Vietnam. So he took it upon himself to go back home although he had no such orders. He hitched a ride from the field to Phuoc Vinh on a log chopper, figuring on some way to get to Bien Hoa and then a flight home.

He only got as far as Phuoc Vinh before he was grounded.

That's when I got involved. I was at the end of my tour in Vietnam, busy training my replacement when the battalion executive officer called me on the phone. He told me to get ready to draw up charges against Michael McCarty. Personally, I liked McCarty. He never struck me as a troublemaker and I felt bad for him.

I did some research on my own and found two applicable court martial charges. I carefully framed his transgressions within the lesser charge and submitted the paperwork to battalion.

Guess what? Battalion wanted the Full Monte.

McClish, it's more serious than you think. You're going to have to redo it. 

I ripped up my work. Pissed me off to no end.

You can be all you can be, but you can't fight the army. With a heavy heart, I started from scratch. I typed up a charge of desertion with the draconian “leaving the company in the face of the enemy” proviso. Technically they could do that because the company had minor contact in the morning of the day he left the field on the chopper.

McCarty continued to weigh on me in my final days at the base. After I got out, I made numerous attempts to ascertain McCarty's welfare and whereabouts through my contacts, but struck out every time. 

The Officers' Club

As my days wound down at Phuoc Vinh, I heard about strange happenings at the Officers' Club. Very attractive, scantily clothed Asian dancing girls were mingling with the officers.

The officers are going crazy, dancing with the girls. The girls are sitting on their faces. Money is changing hands.

Are you sure?

Yeah, yeah!

How can they get away with that? They could be court martialed.

Extreme lap dancing in today's parlance. It got a Sherlock Holmes rise in me.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.—Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet (1887)

I had worked extensively with the Battalion Executive Officer and was friendly with him. He was a busy guy, a 1^st Lieutenant responsible for the administrative affairs of five companies, about five hundred men. He did a pretty decent job. I asked him about the rumors only because I was curious. He floored me with his response.

I doubt it, but why don't you check it out?

How am I supposed to do that?

I'll lend you one of my shirts. It's no big deal. They won't know you in there anyway.

I wanted someone else with me in case I got hauled in for impersonating an officer.

Could someone go with me?

I'll give you two.

I couldn't wait to find out if the rumors were true.

I took the OD green jungle shirts back to the barracks. Black 1^st Lieutenant bars were sewn on the collars and his name on the front was black, hard to read, especially in dim light.

I approached the Supply Sergeant, a married man like myself. He was available. I asked him if he was interested.

Yeah, I'll do it.

I was a clerk. My bottoms were halfway decent, starched and creased. My pants and the Lieutenant's top. I looked like a Lieutenant. I was starting to feel like one. It was the middle of the jungle so we could go bareheaded. One less thing to worry about.

The game is afoot.—Sherlock Holmes, Adventure of the Abbey Grange (1904)

We picked that same evening to go undercover in case the Lieutenant had second thoughts.

At 2000 hours the Supply Sergeant and I walked ten blocks to the Officers' Club. We stayed in the shadows as much as possible to avoid returning too many salutes.

It's nice to know that the officers look after each other. Their club was in a building twice as big as the regular buildings on the base. Twice as large as our barracks.

It wasn't low grade either. Lots of lights inside. A night club atmosphere. Loads of brass walking around. The young sexy girls were disco dancing on stage. An Asian band was doing their best impersonation of American rock and roll.

Are we walking into doomsday? A compromising situation?

Big surprise. Everyone seemed well behaved. If the word had got out, their act got cleaned up.

We sat down at a table. We ordered a beer from the waitress. It was nerve racking. We were shaking on the inside, acting cool on the outside.

Overreacting? We were totally illegal! Luckily, nobody talked to us because we were low ranking officers. We were ignored.

However, I looked around and saw one risk. I recognized a 1^st Sergeant from another company in our battalion, a guy who liked to hang out with the ladies! He apparently didn't recognize us. If he had, he was in there illegally, too.

All I needed was, 

Hey McClish what the hell are you doing?

I didn't recognize anyone else, but forty-five minutes later we decided to leave. We had experienced it, found out what it was like and what was going on. Pretty tame, nowhere near what the guys had said.

We nonchalantly worked our way out of the building.

On the way back, we tried to be inconspicuous again, staying away from the bright lights and the buildings, remembering the rocket attack on the movie house. We stayed in the darker areas.

No MPs.

It was an uneventful stroll. We only had to return salutes a couple times. It felt normal. We were in character.

By 2130 hours we were back in the barracks.

We pulled it off! We didn't run into anybody we knew. We removed the evidence (shirts) and acted like nothing happened.

We shot the shit and recounted our adventure to whoever was in the barracks. They couldn't believe it.

The next day I returned the shirts to the Lieutenant and told him what we found. I thanked him for making it possible.

Well, you tried. If you want to do it again, you can borrow them again.

I was too short for six months in the stockade. It was the last thing on my mind now.

Always let sleeping dogs lie.

Last Days

Toward the end of my tour in Vietnam, Capt. Martinez had told me,

McClish, you better come out and see me and shake my hand before you leave country or I'll kick your ass.

So on a rainy day, a couple of days before leaving Vietnam, I took a helicopter to a firebase close to where Charlie Company was operating. I wanted to say goodbye to Martinez, who had made me a clerk and a sergeant, and to 1st Sgt. O'Neal, whom I got along with and respected.

I told the pilots I needed a lift to Charlie Company. They flat refused. 

No way. They had contact today. 

I hung around but when I saw they weren't going to change their minds, I returned to Phuoc Vinh, highly pissed.

To make me feel better, that night the guys broke every rule in the books. They snuck a prostitute through the fence into the barracks and threw her into bed with me. I woke up dazed and disoriented with a pretty girl staring me in the face.

What the hell?

She was nice and friendly and attractive, too. In a man, few urges are as strong as seeking sex late at night, but I was married. I wasn't going home with STDs.

I'm sorry Miss, I'm not interested.

But a girl has to do what a girl has to do—she went down the hall to the supply sergeant's room looking for a customer. He was a quiet guy who could be talked into taking a chance—like the night we crashed the Officers Club. 

He took care of business that night, but had a regretful morning. 

Oh God, I broke down and had sex with a prostitute!

I felt good. He didn't. Better to go to bed alone than to wake up guilty.

McClish, I don't know why I did it. I think I really screwed up my life! I have to meet my wife in Hawaii tomorrow for R&R!

Years later on a business trip to Chicago, I called his house to see what happened, but couldn't make contact with him.