Chapter 10 

(© 1996 Michael J. Horton. All rights reserved.)

Despite the fun I had going to Cam Ranh and goofing around on Monday, by Wednesday I was in a serious depression. It started when I decided to count how many weeks had elapsed from my year in Vietnam. While it seemed I had been here several months already, in actuality I had been in country less than eight weeks. That left another 44 weeks to be gotten through somehow, and the very thought of it weighed me down so much I wanted to cry. I was tired of the 60 hour weeks, with nothing to look forward to. Working such long hours ought to have made the time sail by, but it didn't. Nobody wrote to me except my wife, who sent several letters a week. But I had friends, co-workers, cousins, aunts, uncles, and a brother, none of whom ever wrote. Weren't these the people my draft board had referred to as my "friends and neighbors," those good citizens who had chosen me to serve in the army? Where were all these civic minded do-gooders when I needed them most.

Fortunately, this dark mood lasted only two days, for on Friday two things occurred to brighten my outlook. The first was, Lieutenant Hart sought me out at work to ask me to tend bar at the officer's club on the night of May 27, about eight days hence. Second, and more immediately, Snuffy from the motor pool asked me to ride shotgun for him on a trip that First Sergeant Johnson had requested him to make to Nha Trang. The purpose of this mission was to transport a donut dolly who had some business to conduct in the coastal city. At first I was reluctant to agree to the trip because it meant leaving the relative safety of DBT and venturing into the countryside to the north, which was known to be a hostile environment. Snuffy assured me we could make the 30 mile journey there and back in three hours without incident, though he himself had never been to Nha Trang. In the end, I allowed myself to be recruited for the job, more from a sense of loyalty to Snuffy than from a conviction that the trip would be completely safe. I told Snuffy that my going would be contingent on Greenley's approval, only to learn that Snuffy had already received the sergeant's permission.

On Saturday morning, the 20th of May, Snuffy arrived in a jeep at my barracks promptly at 10 A.M., as agreed. We wore our helmets and ammo pouches, and carried our M-14's. In addition, Sergeant Johnson had secured flack jackets for us especially for this trip, and he had also provided Snuffy with a sidearm that was holstered on the little guy's web belt. So accoutered, we drove to headquarters company to pick up our charge.

Miss Dolly, whose first name was Judy rather than Donut, wouldn't reveal her last name to us, probably from a fear that our knowledge of her surname would give us the means to stalk her and to make her life miserable long after our journey's end. Had she been beautiful, as I had hoped, her contempt would have made me crazy. As it was, her face was plain, and she was 30 pounds overweight, a combination that made her appear quite homely in her bibbed, blue and white striped uniform dress. Having been snubbed regarding her name, Snuffy and I decided it was prudent not to inquire about her business in Nha Trang. After some last minute refinements having to do with her hair and the contents of her purse, Judy was ready to go. Snuffy and I rode in front, and Judy had the rear seat of the jeep to herself.

In heading north on Q/L 1, we were covering ground that was completely new to me, and I felt both a sense of excitement and a sense of foreboding. The road north, like the road south, was full of potholes, making it impossible to drive faster than 25 miles per hour comfortably. Even then, it was necessary at times for the brakes to be hit quickly to lessen the shock of some of the unavoidable craters in the asphalt. About six miles into our trip, we came upon a small village on our right that was surrounded by scrub and boasted no more than 15 dwellings, roughly 100 feet from the highway. The little huts were no larger than 12 feet by 14 feet, with flat roofs that slanted downward from front to back. Because there were no doors on these dwellings, it was easy to see that the floors consisted of bare earth. The window openings, while quite rectangular, had no glass or coverings of any kind, at least none that were visible. The oddest thing, however, was the siding used in forming the outer walls of the huts. Fully eighty percent of this siding consisted of metal sheets that bore the name of American beers--Schlitz, Budweiser, Miller, Black Label, and other brands. Obviously, the material in question had been intended originally to be punched into beer cans, but being second quality, it had found its way into this third world market, where it became a cheap structural component.

About 100 feet removed from the village huts was a series of black, domed mounds roughly five feet high and five feet in diameter. These devices, according to Snuffy, were earthen ovens used to make charcoal, that being the main item of commerce that supported this village. The only inhabitants I could see as we passed were clustered around the ovens.

Ten minutes further on, we passed on our left another village of about 25 huts, which, because of its distance from Dong Ba Thin, must have been the home of the employees who worked in our compound and most of whom smoked my cigarettes. Unlike the first village, this one was nestled in a clearing surrounded by tall trees and heavy green undergrowth. Again, few inhabitants were visible, although there were some grazing goats and chickens, whose presence lent an air of tranquillity to the place. After this last point of interest had slipped behind us, I realized that I had completely ignored our guest, Judy, who rode in silence in the back seat. Without turning fully around, I spoke to her over my left shoulder. "So, Judy, how long have you been in Vietnam?" I asked. There was no reply. Thinking she hadn't heard me, I put the question to her again. When I got no reply the second time, I turned to see if Judy was still with us. She was sitting bolt upright, staring above the windshield of the jeep, fixed on something in the sky. I looked in vain to discover what she was focused on up there in the air. Finally, Snuffy leaned over toward me and said softly, "You're wasting your time. She's completely out of it." I had no idea what he was talking about.

"What do you mean?" I whispered.

"Stoned," he said. "She's smoked two joints since we left DBT." I was dumbfounded by his remarks because I hadn't seen or heard a thing. I had no inkling that Judy had been smoking weed, but then I realized that Snuffy had a rearview mirror and I didn't. So that was it. No wonder she had been so quiet all this time. I directed my attention back to the road ahead and left Judy to her own devices, such as they were.

Soon the road took us near the coast, and we could glimpse the South China Sea off to our right about a mile away. Our elevation must have been several hundred feet because we were looking down toward the water. The coastline was only in view for half a mile, after which the highway turned sharply to the left and inland, taking us immediately over one set of railroad tracks, the first I had seen in Vietnam. So far during our drive, we had seen no more than ten other vehicles, mostly military. Vietnamese civilian busses did ply Q/L 1, and we had overtaken and passed such a bus earlier. I would have been more comfortable if there had been more traffic, probably on the theory that there is safety in numbers. Nevertheless, we seemed to be progressing as planned, having covered about 12 miles in 30 minutes.

Next, we hit a stretch of road that was dead straight, so we were making better time than usual. About a mile ahead, I could see that the road turned a full ninety degrees to the left, right at the edge of a large, flat plot of ground about the size of a football field. I could make out some sort of yellow equipment moving slowly back and forth on this spot. As we grew closer, approaching the side of the field near where the 50 yard line would have been, I saw that the terrain was littered with rusty cans and other pieces of junk. The equipment was a small, tread-driven bulldozer with a blade in front, driven by a Vietnamese man in civilian clothes. Ever so methodically, the man would push the rusty cans together from different directions until he had formed a pile about five feet high. Then he would hit the pile with his blade and drive in a straight line until he had smoothed the pile out completely and made the surface entirely flat again. Immediately, he started forming another mound of cans with his machine. The road turned again sharply to the right, so we were driving directly behind where the end zone would have been. During the several miles we traveled while I watched him, the man formed several piles of cans, one at a time, and demolished them all. I was completely mystified by this activity, and so was Snuffy. What manner of enterprise could this be? Snuffy allowed as how the man may have gotten the bulldozer for Christmas. Maybe so. That was better than any guess I could make. Needless to say, we didn't ask Judy for her opinion on the matter.

After another twenty minutes, several roads intersected ours, and traffic became much heavier, which led us to believe we must be somewhere on the outskirts of Nha Trang. Our speed was reduced to about ten miles per hour, and we continued at that pace for several miles until we came to a complete stop. We were sitting in a long line of vehicles that included 2-1/2 ton and 3/4 ton military trucks, as well as civilian cars, busses, and motor scooters. I couldn't see what the holdup was because the idled traffic stretched so far ahead of our jeep. There was traffic moving in the opposite direction in the lane to our left, however.

"The map at headquarters showed a single lane bridge somewhere along here," Snuffy said. "This must be it." As we waited patiently for some movement, an occasional jeep or other four wheel drive vehicle would pass us on the shoulder to our right going in our direction. After four or five more had gone by us, Snuffy pulled off the road onto the shoulder and proceeded forward as the others had done. "They must know where they're going," he said. "We'll just follow them and see what's what." After flanking the standing column of vehicles to our left for a quarter-mile or so, we came upon the bridge, where the shoulder we were on diverted to the right and down into the riverbed beneath the bridge. As we crested the bank top, we could see the jeeps and other four wheel drive vehicles crawling slowly downward along a well-worn path to the bottom of the ravine, where the route snaked under the bridge between the abutments and up the bank on the opposite side. The riverbed lay about a hundred feet below.

Since the going was steep, Snuffy eased downward slowly with his foot on the brake. We did fine until we were about twenty-five feet from the bottom, when, for no apparent reason, the traffic stopped dead in front of us. We were angled down to the right, so when Snuffy hit the brakes to come to a complete stop, the wheels slid sideways over a small drop, pitching the left side of the jeep up in the air as though we were going to roll over. I leaned to the left and grabbed the top of the windshield with my right hand to keep from falling out. At the same time, instinctively, I threw my left arm into the back seat to snatch Judy, whom I had visions of being crushed by the jeep as it rolled down the embankment. Fortunately, Judy had retained enough presence of mind to throw her weight to the left on the seat. As I glimpsed her in this frantic moment, she was hanging onto the up-heaved side of the jeep with both hands, and she had a wild look in her eyes. The only thing that saved us was some quick thinking on Snuffy's part, for he immediately cut the front wheels to the right, which turned our nose downhill and brought our center of gravity back under control. He then eased the vehicle lower until we reached a safe place to turn left and regain the original path.

"Wow, that was exciting," I said, when we were in the clear.

"Yeah," Snuffy said, "that was more fun than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick."

"Are you okay?" I asked our passenger. She seemed to have recovered her composure nicely.

"I'll be all right," she said. I could see her eyes were still red and watery from the marijuana, but her alertness had returned. She took a deep breath and let out a long "wheeeeeew." She did this several more times, all the while licking her lips as though she were very thirsty.

Once up the bank on the other side of the ravine, we cut back through the opposing traffic and continued on our way. Shortly, we passed a sight that almost made me rub my eyes in disbelief. On our right was a row of eight identical houses, all one story structures about 20 feet wide and 30 feet long with glass windows. Amazingly, the exterior walls were constructed of stucco. For a moment, I thought I was back in California. My God, it was a miniature housing development right here in Vietnam. The little houses were exactly alike, down to the last piece of trim. I wondered if any of them had reverse floor plans, probably not. What was the story behind these houses? Who would have built such houses in this part of the world? I would surely never know the answers to these questions. Neither Snuffy nor Judy commented on this sight, so I said nothing about it. The little suburb fell behind us, and soon we came into the business district on the southwest side of Nha Trang.

Judy had obviously been here before because she guided us rather skillfully through several turns and streets until we reached her destination. We parked parallel to the street, and our passenger departed on her errand, whatever it was. Snuffy and I stayed with the jeep so it wouldn't get mined, and we took in the surrounding sights. The streets were paved, and they were flush with the sidewalks, so there were no curbs. Locals busily walked up and down in front of the shops, which were small one story affairs built side by side like row houses. All had signs with large letters proclaiming their business, but that was lost on us, since we understood no Vietnamese. I thought I could see a pharmacy, a grocery, a coffee house, an ice cream shop, a bike shop, and something that looked like a money exchange. Others I couldn't distinguish at all. The streets themselves were equally busy, but mostly with bikes and motor scooters that sputtered noisily by. It was refreshing to see the city so full of enterprise, and it made me realize that Vietnam had a life of its own, beyond the war and the American presence. Here, no one but the occasional GI wore OD green. The Vietnamese were dressed in native garb, which for many of the women meant the "ao dai," a fashion I had heard of but never seen. It was striking indeed. This outfit consisted of a pair of rayon pants, all white or all black, surmounted by a high-collared dress, fitted tightly at the bodice and slit on both sides from the ankles to the waist. Many of the women wore the dress portion of their outfit in pastel colors. All in all, it was an alluring sight.

We had whiled away about 25 minutes when Judy returned to the jeep, apparently done with her business. She showed us a brass plaque mounted on wood and engraved with several lines of text. This, she explained, was a going away memento for another donut dolly who was returning permanently to the United States. Handing me her camera, she asked me to take her picture in front of the nearby shops. When she moved out of earshot to pose, Snuffy whispered to the back of my head, "We could of bought that damn plaque in Cam Ranh, in the village. We didn't have to come all the way to Nha Trang." I didn't say anything because I was busy looking through the viewfinder, so Snuffy concluded by saying, "She's crazier than a loon."

The trip back to DBT was fairly uneventful. Since there was no wait, we crossed the bridge on top in the normal manner. The bulldozer had fallen silent among the rusty cans, yet it stood there in the field, awaiting the guiding hands of its owner. When the highway crossed the railroad tracks and turned south, near the coast, we encountered another jeep with three U.S. soldiers. They were heading north toward Nha Trang but had pulled off the road to fix a flat tire. Snuffy stopped on the shoulder directly across from them. "We should wait here until they get moving again," he said. He was right, of course, to stop and to provide them with additional cover so they wouldn't get bushwhacked, but I would have been more comfortable had we kept moving, rather than sitting still here in the middle of nowhere. Nevertheless, I didn't counsel otherwise.

While we waited, Judy stayed in the jeep, and Snuffy talked to the men changing the tire. For my part, I satisfied my curiosity by walking back to the point where the road crossed the train tracks. I stood between the rails and looked down their length for about a mile, during whose course the tracks ran absolutely straight but seemed to converge at the most distant point. They had been well laid out. The gauge was smaller than the U.S. standard, and the ties less massive as well. The same white ballast was present in the track bed, but weeds and grass grew plentifully through this rock, suggesting there was very little train traffic. This was confirmed by the rust on the rail tops. The weight of a single locomotive passing only once a month would normally be sufficient to oxidize all the rust and keep the rails silvery clean. When I realized how nostalgic I was beginning to feel, standing there looking at the train tracks, I hurried back to the jeep, where the others were just pulling the jack from under the disabled vehicle. We said our good-byes and departed on the last short leg of our trip. When we finally drove past the guard post at DBT, I felt a sense of relief that our journey had been completed without mishap. I knew one day I would be glad I had seen some of the world outside our little compound, but for now I appreciated its sanctuary.

Wednesday night after dinner I received a letter from my aunt at mail call, and I was quite surprised since I hadn't expected her to write me in Vietnam. The letter contained grievously bad news for me. My grandmother had died. When I read this, I felt a great sense of loss and an overwhelming sadness. Though I didn't want to, I cried. I loved my grandmother far more than anyone else in my family, probably because I had lived with her as a young child for six years, and I had often slept in her bed. During the winter she was big and warm, and she would sleep with her arm around me. Her acceptance of me had been of the most unconditional kind, something I desperately needed at the time, given the problems my parents were having and their self-absorbed personalities. According to my aunt, my grandmother had died because fluid had enveloped and overtaxed her heart, as a complication of an entirely different medical problem.

Besides sadness, I also felt guilty that I hadn't been with my grandmother during her final hours, as I surely would have been had I not been halfway around the world. Somehow, I felt I had let her down. I was also a little ashamed that I hadn't thought of her or written to her since I had come to Vietnam. Preoccupied with my own problems, I had completely neglected her. Then it occurred to me what a pathetic creature I was to belittle myself now for all the things I couldn't undo. And, as if these emotions weren't enough, I was also enraged at my aunt for her incredible presumption. After informing me of the fact of the death, she had written, "Your grandmother actually died two weeks ago, but I decided it would be easier for you if you didn't find out right away." If my aunt had been with me in the barracks, I would have killed her, I was so angry. How could she possibly know what would have made this news easier for me, when she had absolutely no way of knowing how I felt about my grandmother. And who was she to decide when I should know this? Beyond that, only a dimwit could believe that delaying such news would lessen its impact.

After moping around for a half-hour, I realized that only time could fill the emptiness I was experiencing, so I went to the movie area to see what was playing. It was a comedy revolving around a Japanese film that had been dubbed in English with words that were wholly inappropriate to the action, but it did entertain me and take my mind off my grandmother's death. I even laughed out loud when a character with a tiny floor plan in his hand said, "This is Shepherd Wong's house," and the other character said, "You mean he lives in this little piece of paper?"

By the weekend, I had put the family death behind me, and I was eagerly awaiting my bartending duties at the officer's club. I arrived there ten minutes early, to be greeted by Lieutenant Hart, who was already having a little nip of something. We waited for the second bartender, a Spec-4 named Pagano, and when he arrived, the lieutenant filled us in on procedures: where the ice was kept, how much liquor to use in each drink, where to dispose of the empty bottles, and why we shouldn't talk to the officers unless they asked us a question. Lieutenant Hart told us that this would show that we knew how to behave "like professionals."

The club itself was in a small building about 30 feet square, and the bar was a six foot semi-circle in the far corner with no stools, making it highly unlikely that any of the patrons would hang around and chat with us after procuring their drinks. The club's stock consisted of American beer in cans and only the basic hard booze--vodka, gin, scotch, and bourbon--which we would serve in plastic glasses and dilute with a limited selection of mixes. That suited me just fine, since I was convinced I could handle that limited repertoire even if I were half in the bag. I little realized when I started the evening what an interesting sociological event I would see.

The first officers to arrive were the lieutenants, all fairly young. These were the officers least likely to be career material, and their laughter and zest for drinking seemed to bear this out. Two in particular, Lieutenants Hanson and Brigwight, seemed in a mood to party, although several others who sat at their table were not far behind them in consuming drinks. Hanson and Brigwight took turns getting rounds for their table, and each time they walked away from the bar, they left us a wooden nickel as a tip. This wooden coin was about the size of a silver dollar and had a red buffalo on one side and a red 5¢ on the other. Of course, these coins were totally worthless, but it was a cute joke.

An hour later, several captains entered the club, and they joked with the younger officers, who were careful to show the proper deference and respect. So on it went, the arriving officers becoming more senior in rank as the night wore on. For my part, I managed to hide a glass of straight scotch between the liquor bottles and the front panel of the bar, where it couldn't be seen by those on the other side. Every so often, when no one was present to be served, I picked up my glass and took a sip of the dry tasting liquid. The experience was exalting, probably because I had been deprived of hard liquor for so long.

The majors arrived next. Shortly thereafter, the battalion commander--a lieutenant colonel--put in his appearance to chat with his staff. At our peak attendance, we had about 15 officers present, which nearly filled all the chairs. The boundless collegiality displayed by those assembled struck me as forced and ritualistic. In a way, it seemed that the officers all knew their places in the hierarchy, and when it came time to dance, each did his jig according to the plan. But who was I to criticize, being an outsider. They could flatter and patronize one another all night as far as I was concerned, so long as I had my scotch.

The amount of time they spent in the club that night was inversely proportional to each officer's rank. The battalion commander came last and left first, with the others following suit. Next departed the majors and then the captains, until only the first and second lieutenants were left, and they, of course, were the drunkest. It shocked my tender sensibilities to see our trusted leaders imbibing so much booze, but I understood now why Lieutenant Hart had confided to us earlier that he only picked enlisted men "who could be trusted."

We shut the bar down at 11 P.M., and I managed to slug down one last shot of scotch. By the time I made it back to the barracks, I had a fair buzz going, and I augmented it with a warm beer. As unobtrusively as possible, I joined Steiger and the usual crowd in the bunker. I had no way of knowing whether my absence this evening had been noticed, but no one said anything, so I didn't volunteer any information about the officers' party. I knew this was a sensitive subject, the discussion of which could only lead to disputes, probably noisy ones at that.