Chapter 3 

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

The truck slid to a stop in the sand, thumping my shoulder up against the back of the cab. "Sorry about that," Ales said, as he jumped out of the vehicle. "I forgot you were back there. Wait here while I find the first sergeant." He trudged off toward a nearby building constructed in the same half-wood, half-screen mode as those at 22d Replacement. A sign over the door said: Headquarters Co. From where I sat I could see land in the distance across an expanse of water. Presumably, we were just across the bay from Cam Ranh. The PFC dismounted from the truck and came around to the back. His name, I discovered--when I could finally see the tag on his shirt--was Wallace. He was about 19. He stared at me for a long minute before speaking.

"Normally, we'd take you straight to Sergeant Greenley in personnel, but the first shirt wanted to meet you personally. You're kind of a special guy."

"Oh, really," I said, somewhat at a loss. "Why's that?"

"You're the first school-trained pay clerk we've ever had in the 14th," he explained. "All our guys are strictly OJT." When it became apparent to him by my expression that I didn't understand what he meant, he said, "You know, on the job training." Suddenly Ales reappeared. "I was just telling Horton here about our pay section being all OJT's," Wallace said to Ales.

"Yeah, God," Ales muttered, "it'll sure be nice to have someone around who knows what he's doing. C'mon," he said, waiving for me to come down from the back of the truck. "The first sergeant is waiting for you in his hooch."

We entered a structure built like the other barracks but so small that it had to be someone's personal dwelling. Ales' deference was apparent by the very quiet manner in which he opened the door and traversed the threshold. I followed, equally quietly. "Excuse me, Top," Ales said, as he took off his cap. "I've got Horton here, the new pay clerk."

"Oh, good," came the deep, booming reply. The first sergeant stood up from his table and turned around to face us. His name tag said "Johnson," and he had so many stripes on his sleeve that it required more than a few seconds for me to calculate that he was an E-8. Naturally, I was terrified. "Hello, Horton, welcome to Dong Ba Thin," he said, extending his hand. "Group command called me this morning and told me they were sending us a school-trained pay clerk. Is that true?"

"Yes, Sir--I mean, yes, Sergeant." I was already screwing this up. I had incorrectly referred to an NCO as "sir." I tried to regain myself. "I graduated recently from pay school at Fort Benjamin Harrison," I said.

"Good," he replied. "Have you ever done travel pay?"

"Yes, I have," I said.

"That should be a big help to us," the first sergeant said. "You see, our problem has been that no one here could make out the travel forms for our incoming personnel. As a result, we've had to send all our new people over to the finance office in Cam Ranh to process their travel pay. With you here, we won't have to do that anymore. That will allow us to get these people to their company assignments much faster."

"I'll do the best I can," I said in reply. "I mean, I don't think there will be any problems." As I said this, my mind was racing frantically to uncover any reason why I couldn't do what he wanted me to. I could find none, which relieved me somewhat. In fact, I had handled real travel vouchers for three straight weeks before leaving Indiana. Of course I could do this. On the other hand, it occurred to me that I had better not get too cocky about what I thought I could do. Better to wait and see how I did when the time came.

"I'm sure you'll do just fine," Sergeant Johnson said. Turning to Ales, he continued, "Take Horton down to personnel and have him get squared away with Sergeant Greenley, then come back here. I've got a couple of errands for you." With that, we left. I felt glad not to be the center of attention anymore.

The personnel unit was housed in a large tent about 80 feet long and 30 feet wide. An aisle down the center was flanked by desks, and the sides of the tent were rolled up about two feet above the cement floor to enhance ventilation. I could see why. It was very stuffy inside.

Sergeant Greenley was an E-7, and he was the NCO in charge of the personnel section, which included the pay clerks. I could tell right away by his relaxed manner that Sergeant Greenley was a laid-back kind of guy. Physically, he was close to five feet nine inches tall, 45 years old, well-built, and lean-waisted. He reminded me of the sergeants I had seen in all the army training films. "Hey, Steiger, Lew, come over here and meet the new guy," he yelled toward the back of the tent. Two men came up to us, one about 25 years old, the other about 21. "Men, this is Horton, our new pay clerk," he said. "This is Bob Steiger. He's in charge of the pay section, and this is Ron Lew, our number two man." I shook hands with Steiger first, the older of the two. Both men were specialists, fourth class. By now, another man had walked over to us, but he had hung back a few feet behind Steiger.

"Oh," said Greenley, "this is James O'Brien, our company clerk. He's with the pay section part-time. You know, to help out."

"Actually," Steiger said, "O'Brien's trying to get his MOS changed. He's tired of typing the morning report every day." O'Brien smiled sheepishly, as if to confess the truth of this last remark.

"I'll tell you what," Greenley said, looking at his watch, "you can get started here tomorrow. You'll need the rest of today to get your things squared away. Lew," he said, putting his hand on Lew's shoulder, "take Horton to the barracks and find him a spot. Then take him to supply and to Dodge City to get whatever he needs. You know the drill. And don't forget to tell him about the red alerts."

"Sure, Sarge," Lew replied.

The barracks was identical to the one in Cam Ranh--cement floor, half-wood and half-screen walls, and a sheet metal, pitched roof. There were no bunk beds though. Instead, wood and canvas folding cots jutted out from each side wall, forming an aisle down the middle. On all the cots were unrolled sleeping bags, some covered with blankets, some not. In addition, some cots had pillows covered or exposed, while some had no pillows at all. Needless to say, this was not a tidy sight. We walked down the aisle until Lew found a cot that looked empty. "I don't think this belongs to anyone," he said. Then he looked up at the wall. "Right. There isn't even a wall locker here." By wall locker, he meant an unpainted, homemade box with shelves on legs. This contraption was built from quarter-inch plywood and pine two-by-two's, which extended below the bottom shelf to form four legs. It was open-faced, with no doors. "We build the wall lockers ourselves, as you can tell," Lew said, laughing. "I don't know why they don't have doors. Maybe we don't have any hinges. Anyway, I'll talk to Morrisey in C company and get one made for you."

Telling me I was in for a treat, Lew led me to the supply room, where a short, stocky NCO about 40 years old provided me with one blanket, one pillow with case, three pair of jungle fatigues, one pair of jungle boots, a sleeping bag, a web belt, two ammo pouches, a helmet with liner, and a bayonet. "We're on the direct exchange system here in Vietnam," the supply sergeant said. "We refer to it as `DX.' DX means that if something wears out, you just bring it to supply and turn it in for a new one. Got that?" This last was a purely rhetorical question, since the man had turned abruptly from the counter and disappeared through a door at the back of the room. He returned with an M-14 rifle. As he carefully wrote down the serial number of the weapon, the sergeant said, "Remember, PFC, you lose this rifle and it's gonna be your butt. Sign here." There was no humor at all in his voice. He was very much like my NCO's in basic training.

Outside the door, Lew said in disgust, "Boy, isn't he a peach. I really hate him--the man's a pig. It's no secret that he and I don't get along. He's pissed off at me because he knows I've got an extra pair of jungle boots that I'm not supposed to have. He asked me to turn one pair in, but I wouldn't do it. He's never pushed me on it though. The rumor is, he's selling dollars on the black market."

"The black market?" I asked.

"Yeah, they say that once a week or so his wife mails him twenty-dollar bills which he exchanges on the black market for Vietnamese piasters at two or three times the going rate. Then he has someone at the finance office convert the P's back into dollars at the real rate. Like magic, his one hundred dollars U.S. turns into two or three hundred U.S."

"Isn't that illegal?" I asked.

"Sure it is," Lew replied, "but no one has caught him at it yet. If what they say is true, he must make $800 to a $1000 per month like that. That's about twice his regular pay."

"That's a dangerous way to make an extra buck though, isn't it?" I asked.

"Of course," he said, "but some of these lifers are just incredible opportunists."

We went back to the barracks to stow my gear. As I was arranging my new possessions next to the cot, Lew explained the procedure to be followed during a red alert, which would be announced by a loud siren. A red alert, he told me, occurred when we were under attack, or, on the other hand, it could be just a drill. The routine sounded simple enough: run to the barracks and secure your web belt, helmet, and M-14 rifle; run to the west end of the barracks and secure five magazines of ammunition; place one magazine in the rifle and the other four in the ammo pouches; run out of the barracks and proceed north toward the perimeter; cross the last road and jump into the adjacent drainage ditch; face north toward the barbed wire and bunkers about 100 feet away on the perimeter; and, finally, take appropriate action or await further instructions.

"Any questions?" Lew asked.

"Just one," I said. "Have you ever been attacked here in Dong Ba Thin?"

"Not yet," he said. "We sure have plenty of drills though. I guess they like to keep us on our toes." By now, I had finished fussing with my gear and I was sitting on my cot. "Okay," Lew said, "now it's time you went to Dodge City."

"Dodge City?" I asked. "What's that?"

"Oh, you'll see. It's just up the road a piece." He walked to a nearby wall locker and picked up a pan and a flat object, both of which he held up for me to see. "You'll need to buy an aluminum pan like this and one of these metal mirrors. Oh, you can get a glass mirror if you like, but they just get broken. The metal ones last forever. You see, we have showers here in DBT, but we don't have any facilities with washbasins. So, if you want to wash up without taking a shower, or when you shave in the morning, you need one of these pans and a mirror. But these items are not standard issue, so we have to get them on the local economy. And, around here, Dodge City is the local economy." In looking around the barracks, I noticed that most of the men had an aluminum pan.

Lew left the barracks and returned several minutes later riding in a 2-1/2 ton truck driven by Wallace, the PFC. Lew came down from the truck and motioned for me to get in. "Wallace will take you to Dodge City to get a pan and mirror," he said. He watched us start to pull away slowly. "Oh, Horton, by the way," Lew shouted over the noise of the engine, "do you remember what I told you to do during a red alert?"

"Yes," I shouted back, "I think so."

"Well, just remember," Lew continued, "if the alert is sounded at night, you do all the same things, but you do them in the dark. You see, the first thing we do is kill all the generators so the enemy can't aim at our lights." We were now almost out of Lew's earshot, but I cupped my hand to my mouth and yelled back at him.

"Thanks, I appreciate you're telling me that."

Wallace drove out past the guard post and turned south, retracing the route we had taken from Cam Ranh this morning. I noticed that the Dong Ba Thin compound extended beyond the road to the other side, where there was another entrance and guard post which mirrored our own. The highway apparently sliced right through the DBT facility.

Riding in the cab was advantageous because, now, I could see the potholes before we hit them. Some were practically cavernous. Wallace said nothing as he drove. We had gone only about a mile when we approached a sign beside the road that read: Dodge City. This "city" consisted of one large barn-like structure posted with the words "WELCOME YOU" in big red letters. Approximately 20 military vehicles of all stripes were parked in front and to one side. The building itself was one hundred feet long and equally wide, with a pitched roof. Strangely enough, the structure was of western design and no more than a few years old. It looked as though it had been built by Americans but lacked any signs of belonging to the military. No other buildings were visible as far as the eye could see. I put the obvious question to Wallace. "Who owns Dodge City?"

"Good question," he said. "I don't have a clue who it belongs to."

Inside, the floor space was divided into stalls of various sizes, each of which constituted a business. There were the center stalls that formed a square in the middle of the building. Around these ran the visitors' promenade, which was flanked on the outside by yet other stalls that abutted the outer walls of the building. Numerous skylights let in ample light, and, for night, there were evenly spaced fluorescent lights hanging from overhead, regularly interspersed with electric ceiling fans.

As we strolled around the circuit, I was able to identify a barber shop, a message parlor, a souvenir store, a bar and grill, a shop with tobacco and candy, a palm reader's table, and a stall with household utensils. All these enterprises, the unrecognizable as well as the recognizable, were crude affairs by western standards, though to be honest, the barber shop had a first class barber chair. Without exception, the proprietors appeared to be Vietnamese. Wallace and I stopped at the stall with the housewares and gazed at a stack of identical aluminum pans about five feet tall. "Not much selection," I said to Wallace, as I lifted the topmost pan off the stack. "No wonder everybody's pan looked the same. Still, there's a good supply."

"Yeah, this guy's definitely got a lock on the market," Wallace said. We were approached by the Vietnamese shopkeeper. "Mirror, mirror," Wallace said to the man in an exaggerated voice, at the same time framing his hands into a rectangle in front of his own face.

"Yeah, mea, mea," the man muttered, turning away to locate the desired item. The two pieces came to $2.75. Since I didn't have any of the army's funny money yet, I paid in American money, which currency the bird-like little vendor seemed delighted to accept. On the way out, Wallace informed me that everyone at DBT had his hair cut at Dodge City, since this was the only convenient barber outside Cam Ranh.

We drove back to the compound in complete silence. The funny thing was, Wallace seemed at times friendly toward me but at other times aloof. I didn't know quite what to make of that. It couldn't be a matter of rank, one way or the other, because we were both PFC's. He dropped me at the barracks and drove away, saying only, "Later."

My new wall locker had arrived in my absence. There it stood in all its unvarnished glory, complete--right down to the hook on the outside for hanging up my M-14. I pushed it back flush with the wall and started to sort through my duffel bag for essentials. In looking around me, I perceived that the scheme was to unpack only the three or four cubic feet of clothes and other necessary items one used on a day-to-day basis. These things then went into the wall locker in whatever degree of organization seemed to suit each individual. All the remaining items stayed in the duffel bag under the head end of the cot--that being closest to the wall. Another detail that I also imitated was placing my helmet and web belt on the very bottom shelf, alone, with nothing else around them. Lew's somewhat condescending comment about night alerts made me understand why these accouterments had to be readily accessible in the dark.

Soon men began to drift into the barracks one or two at a time. Since my watch showed it was shortly after 6:00 P.M., I concluded that the workday must normally end at that hour. Steiger and Lew arrived together and sat on their cots about eight down from my own. Ales was also in his area three cots away in the opposite direction. Many other men who I didn't know looked at me curiously as they passed by, but they said nothing, making me feel out of place and uncomfortable. Ten minutes later, I took my cue from the others and left the barracks to walk to the mess hall. I fell into line holding the inevitable stainless steel tray and taking what was offered: meat--presumably beef--in brown gravy, thin mashed potatoes, creamed corn, bread, and a glass of milk. Though usually unpalatable, this fare was welcome now since I hadn't eaten any lunch. For some reason, I thought about the hamburger I had been given on the plane, and I wondered if I would ever have another.

I finished my meal without speaking, practically unacknowledged by those around me. Afterward, I returned to the barracks to write a letter to my wife. The sooner I wrote to her, the sooner I could hear from her, obviously. Beyond explaining what my new address was, I hardly knew what to say. I couldn't tell her how apprehensive I was without alarming her, yet nothing else occurred to me worth discussing. I finally said simply that I was all right and that things were going as well as could be expected.

When I finished the letter, I sat idly for a while. Nearby, someone's radio was quietly playing the lyrics to the song "96 Tears." Except for an isolated person or two scattered throughout the barracks, the place was empty, leading me to believe that something was going on that I didn't know about. I went to the door at the east end of the building and walked out to the road that paralleled the bay. The day was beginning to fade into twilight. To my right was a sandbagged bunker where guards had been posted. To my left, across the road and a block away was a small structure built like our barracks. I saw four men enter this building, laughing and pushing one another as they did so. A few minutes later another small group went in, and two men walked out. Finally, it occurred to me that I probably was looking at the enlisted men's club, which no doubt accounted for everyone's whereabouts.

Smoke filled the air, and the club was noisy and crowded, but everyone was having a good time. Despite the dimness of the incandescent bulbs, I could make out a raised stage at the far end of the room, a jukebox against the back wall, and a bar directly opposite me. I went immediately toward the bar, weaving through small knots of talking people. I felt I could use a particularly strong drink.

"What'll it be?" asked a young NCO behind the bar.

"Well, I don't know," I said. "Do you have any bourbon?" He looked at me skeptically.

"You're new here, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes, why?"

"Well, see, the thing is, you can't drink hard liquor unless you're an E-5 or above. Being a PFC, the only thing you can have is beer. Now, today, I've got Budweiser, Black Label, and San Miguel."

"Oh, okay," I said, "I'll have a San Miguel." At least I could have a foreign beer. I was very disappointed about this liquor situation, particularly since I was not a frequent beer drinker. I preferred wine and liquor.

"That'll be ten cents," the NCO said. What a deal, I thought to myself. This beer thing might not be so bad after all. Back home, a beer at the EM club had cost $0.50. Here, you could get half in the bag for $0.50.

I looked around the club but didn't see any of the few people I had met today. No one talked to me, so I stayed by myself at the quiet end of the bar, next to the wall. It did feel good to have a beer and simply relax, after what had been for me, at least, a very eventful day. Only this morning, I had still been at Cam Ranh, unassigned.

Country music alternated with rock and roll on the jukebox. I was unfamiliar with the country music, and, among the rock groups, the only one I recognized was the Beatles. Even now, the machine was blasting out the lyrics to "Paperback Writer." I genuinely liked the Beatles' songs, though I sometimes found the group's popularity to be a little cloying. I had another beer and then went back to the barracks. By now it was dark. As I crossed the footbridge over the drainage ditch and approached the east end of the building, I heard people arguing just inside the screendoor. I could see Ales trying to wrest a mess kit away from another man whose back was to me. The utensils inside the kit clattered around as the men struggled against one another.

"Give that to me," said Ales in a loud voice. The other man muttered something I couldn't hear. "No, you're not," Ales said vehemently. Then, suddenly, Ales released his grip on the mess kit, causing the other man to lurch backward violently against the screendoor. It opened with a bang, and the man brushed past me in the semi-darkness. After a pause, I went inside. Ales was standing where he had been, still gazing out the door. He focused on me finally where I stood, and said, "Don't mind that. That was just O'Brien. Everytime he gets drunk he tries to resign from the army. He takes his mess kit down to the first sergeant and turns it in and resigns. It'll be okay though. Top always consoles him and sends him back here to bed." He turned and walked back to his cot.

Though it was early and the barracks virtually devoid of people, I decided to turn in. Tomorrow I would be a pay clerk in earnest. Despite everyone's ballyhoo about my pay school credentials, I had never worked an actual payroll, and I was a little anxious about how I would do.