Chapter 4 

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

Reveille sounded at 5:45 A.M., and I was so foggy-brained with sleep that it required a minute or so before I was completely sure where I was. I swung my feet over the edge of my cot and sat up. The air was damp and chill. Outside it was still dark, and the barracks lights had not yet been turned on. In both directions around me I heard the swoosch of carbonated gas as beverage cans were opened by pull tabs. Finally the lights came on. Since I knew I had to fall in at six o'clock, I dressed quickly. Putting on my clothes and lacing up my boots--particularly the latter--was very time consuming, yet I was finished and headed for the latrine with eight minutes to spare.

As I walked through the barracks, I noticed the others were still undressed, and many were drinking beer from cans, which accounted for all the popping and fizzing I had heard. With the formation only minutes away, I couldn't fathom why the others were not busy dressing. I found my way to the latrine in the dark. When I returned to the barracks, I was surprised to find all the others outside, lined up in formation. I came up from behind and fell into place in the rear. "Ten-Hut," barked an authoritative voice, breaking the pre-dawn silence. Scores of heels dragged through the moist sand as the assemblage came to attention. It was so dark I could not see the face of the man giving the commands. "Good morning, men," he said, "glad you could join me. No announcements today, so fall out. And don't be late for work." After this, the formation broke, and everyone trudged sleepily toward the barracks door. The purpose of this early morning get-together had now become clear to me: the army wanted us on our feet and moving, thereby manifesting some form of cerebral activity.

As I walked, I realized that everyone else was wearing a raincoat. Under the barracks' lights, it became apparent why earlier no one had been in a hurry to dress. These men were wearing no pants or shirts under their raincoats. Also, their boots had not been laced up properly. Instead, the laces had been hurriedly wrapped around the boot tops and tied off in front. Ales was standing at the end of his cot in his underwear as I walked past. "Have a pull?" he asked, extending his can of beer toward me.

"No thanks," I said. "I'm tempted, but I think I'll start with coffee today." He smiled faintly at me as he turned away. Perhaps he was thinking that it would not be long before I would be joining the others for a morning eye-opener. Maybe he was right.

I took my new aluminum pan to the water trailer behind the barracks next door. An oval-shaped tank on two wheels, this trailer could be hitched to a vehicle for towing. I filled my pan with non-potable water and positioned my metal mirror on the sandbags of the bunker next to the barracks. As I splashed it on my face, the cold water felt icy. I lathered up and began to shave. When my razor was covered with shave cream, I swished it around in the pan. Little gobs of shave cream floated atop the cold water, and I could see tiny black whiskers embedded in the foamy cream. All in all, this was a bleak sight in the cold light of dawn, and I realized with some sadness that it would be my fate to perform this ritual another 350 or so times, assuming I lived that long. Yes, there was a thought. Maybe I would come to relish this dreary chore if it meant being alive for another day.

Finished with my brushing, scraping, and scrubbing, I took my canteen cup to the mess hall where I filled it with the equivalent of several regular cups of hot, steaming coffee. Though it couldn't lift my spirits, the coffee at least would stimulate my nerves. I sat on my cot and drank quietly, feeling the warmth of the metal cup in my hands. Soon, everyone began to leave. I followed suit and walked to the personnel tent. It was 7:00 A.M. and completely light now. Maybe it was just the slanting rays of the warm sun, but I began to feel more alive and eager to face the day.

Inside the tent at a counter in the front, a specialist fourth class held the hand unit of a hard-wired field phone to his ear. "Goldfinch," he shouted, "Goldfinch, do you read me. Goldfinch, Goldfinch, do you read me." He slammed the handset back into the phone's base unit. "Damn," he said, "they cut me off." Without any hesitation, he stuck out his hand. "Hey, Horton, que pasa. Greenley told me about you. Welcome to the fighting 14th. I'm Sancho Alvarez, the head personnel clerk and grand communicator. You'll hear me screaming a lot on the phone, but don't pay any attention. Sometimes I have to go through four or five switchboards in a row with very poor connections. You'll get used to it. You won't even know I'm here." Suddenly, leaning nearer to me, he dropped his voice and said, "Say, you don't have a spare joint, do you?" Then he threw back his head and roared, "Just kidding, just kidding."

By now, Sergeant Greenley had walked up to us. "Well, I see you've met the jolly green giant," he said. "Santiago will deep you in stitches all day."

"Sancho, the name is Sancho," Alvarez said angrily, half in earnest, half in jest. "C'mon, Sarge, smarten up."

Greenley took me to a desk set off in a corner next to his own and introduced me to the personnel officer, Franklin D. Simpson III. Captain Simpson was a tall man, neat in appearance, and I guessed his age to be about 25 years.

"Welcome aboard," he said, sitting down again at his desk. "I think you'll come to like the 14th as much as we all do. We're a pretty close-knit group here. Of course, we expect every man to put his best foot forward, if you know what I mean."

"Yes, Sir," I said, "I'll do my best."

"Good," he replied. He turned his attention to the magazine he had been reading when we approached. Sergeant Greenley quickly steered me by the elbow away from the Captain's desk. As we proceeded back to the pay section, we were overtaken by a young PFC.

"Sarge," he said, "I typed up the ration card you asked for."

"Oh, thanks," Greenley said, taking the proffered document. "Horton, I'd like you to meet Allen Barnett, our orders clerk." As I shook hands with the young man, he turned his eyes downward, and I could see a tinge of red appear on his upper cheek bones. He moved his slight frame quickly away, back toward his desk. "He's very shy," Greenley explained in a low voice. "Sometimes I almost feel sorry for him. Best orders clerk I've ever had though," he added.

Sergeant Greenley instructed me in the use of the ration card. It was required only for purchases of cigarettes by the carton, cases of beer, and bottles of liquor at the PX in Cam Ranh. Packs of cigarettes or cans of beer bought at an EM club weren't counted against the ration, which consisted of six cartons of cigarettes, five cases of beer, and four bottles of hard liquor per month. Of course, I wasn't eligible to buy liquor until I made the rank of E-5. The card had three parts that folded over upon one another, so it could fit into a wallet. When purchases were made, the PX clerk would punch holes on the appropriate flaps of the card, thereby indicating how much of that month's ration had been used. The whole time Sergeant Greenley was explaining these procedures, I tried to decide whether the reason for the rationing was to keep us from consuming too much or to prevent us from selling goods on the black market. I decided it was probably a little of both.

I was given my own grey metal desk in the pay section, along with a reasonably new manual typewriter. Next to my desk was a two drawer filing cabinet which contained payroll records for men in the battalion. My chair was also made of metal, but it had no wheels. I immediately perceived the difficulty I would have scraping this chair back and forth on the cement as I stood up or sat down to work. Well, this was not a perfect world, obviously.

Steiger sat me down and explained in some detail the mechanics of the 14th's pay function, while Lew hung on his every word, as though he too were a novice. "Basically," Steiger said, "we have six payrolls, those being the officers, headquarters company, and companies A, B, C, and D. The total is approximately 900 men, including the officers. I'll do officers, headquarters company, and company A, which is the smallest line company. Lew will do B and C companies, and you will do company D, which is the largest line company. We'll start that way, and if you finish company D, you can help Lew with B or C. Are you with me so far?" he asked.

"Yes, so far I'm okay," I replied.

"Good", he said. "Now, unless the file contains a loose document like a promotion order or some other change, we type the new voucher just like the last one. That makes it pretty easy. Usually, it's just a matter of grinding it out. Also, we need to have all our payrolls finished and delivered to the 92nd Finance Detachment in Cam Ranh by the 15th of the month. They do all the new calculations, but we have to type in the dollar figures for each line item and the totals if there are no changes. We have all the pay and tax tables right here," he said, pointing to several binders on a table behind us. "Any questions?"

"I can't think of any," I said, "but I'm sure I'll have some as I go along."

I scraped my chair up to the desk and looked through the pay files, which were in alphabetical order, until I found the first one that didn't have a new voucher in the file. The name was "Hornsby, Roger (NMI)." That always killed me. When a person had no middle name or initial, the army required the abbreviation for "no middle initial" to be shown on the document. I typed up Specialist Fifth Class Hornsby's voucher, noting as I did so that he was a draftee, as indicated by the "U.S." prefix before his serial number. Also, Hornsby was not currently married--at least he was not drawing the $105.00 per month in basic allowance for quarters which he would be entitled to if married. Based on his date of rank, he had been promoted three months ago. Except for $50.00 per month in cash, Hornsby's pay all went by allotment to--according to the documents in the back of the file--his mother and father in Shreveport, Louisana. He had taken a payroll deduction for U.S. government E bonds in the smallest monthly amount possible. There was no deduction for federal income taxes because, being in a war zone, he was required to pay none. There was a deduction for social security taxes, shown on the voucher as FICA. In summary, Hornsby received $200.40 per month in base pay at the rate of E-5, foreign service pay at $16.00 per month, and hostile fire pay at $65.00 per month. Since he was unmarried and on the direct exchange program, he received neither BAQ nor the standard uniform allowance. Also, as far as I could tell, he was not qualified to receive flight pay or jump pay. After deductions for the allotment home, the bond, and FICA, Hornsby pocketed $50.00 in cash at the end of each month.

After I made my way carefully through the first several vouchers, the following ones were easier to prepare. One file contained a set of special orders promoting the man from specialist E-4 to specialist E-5, which required the base pay to be increased and prorated based on the date of promotion. In another case, a sergeant exceeded one year in rank, resulting in an increase in base pay, prorated from the anniversary of the date of rank. I had completed ten vouchers just prior to lunch when Steiger came over to my desk to look at my progress.

"Well, let's see how you're doing," he said. He examined each voucher carefully. When he reached the file with the promotion orders, he said, "I see you picked up the promotion." Then he continued his review. When he came to the file with the pay increase due to time in rank, he said nothing, but I could tell clearly by the look on his face that he was not pleased that I had caught this change on my own and properly adjusted the base pay. It was precisely at this time that I realized something was wrong. I represented a problem to Steiger, though what the problem was I had no way of knowing. I suddenly felt I had to be very careful of my comportment around him, and possibly Lew as well, at least until I had a better notion of what was happening.

After Steiger finished his review, I went back to my task. Moments later, O'Brien came into the tent and went to Steiger's desk. I couldn't hear what was said, but O'Brien turned abruptly and left, looking downright dejected. I was certain that my arrival at the 14th Engineers had spoiled O'Brien's informal plan to become a pay clerk, now that his part-time assistance appeared to be no longer needed in preparing the payrolls. I could see that I might not be a very popular guy as far as O'Brien was concerned. I wondered if my presence here had offended anyone else.

After lunch, I walked from the mess hall back to the personnel tent under a grey, clouded sky. It was quite cool outside. Back at my desk, I continued to prepare vouchers for D company until Steiger interrupted me to explain the morning report. Every morning, each company clerk in the battalion was required to type up a document called the "morning report." This report summarized the events of the previous day that had operational significance. As payroll clerk for company D, it was my responsibility to review the finance copy of the morning report to determine whether any of the reported events had any effect on anyone's pay status. For example, any man reported AWOL would have his pay docked during the entire period he was absent without official leave. Also, if a man were put on TDY to another company within the battalion, we had to ensure that his voucher was included with the payroll of the unit where he would be stationed on payday. Otherwise, his pay would be delayed. Because the battalion had platoons and companies all over Vietnam, it could take weeks before a man would get paid.

I was glad that Steiger had taken the time to discuss this with me since I had begun to get bored with typing vouchers. Unfortunately, reviewing the last week's morning reports took only a few minutes, so I returned to my typing. I stopped work occasionally to listen to Sancho Alvarez trying to place a phone call. This usually provided about five minutes' worth of entertainment, though some of the calls went through immediately. Near three o'clock, Lew asked Steiger if he could go to Dodge City to get a haircut. "Sure," Steiger replied, "if you can find a driver." Lew came back to his desk, next to mine.

"Don't you drive?" I asked Lew.

"Of course, I drive," he said, somewhat annoyed. "But I'm not allowed to--and neither are you. Except in emergencies, the only people authorized to drive in this battalion are people who have that job. You know, their MOS is driver. Ales, he's a driver, and so is Wallace. Other than drivers, only hard stripes, corporal and above, are permitted to drive anytime they want. Me--I've been here five months and haven't even driven a jeep."

"I didn't know that," I said. "That's a drag."

"I hate it," Lew said. "I love to drive." He left in search of a driver to take him to Dodge City. An hour later, Steiger came over to see how I was doing.

"By the way," he said, "I don't know what they taught you in pay school about hostile fire pay, but you know you're not supposed to prorate that. It's not like foreign service pay. If a guy is in country for only one day a month, he gets hostile fire pay for the whole month. Did you know that?"

"Yes," I said, "I think I remember that. Except...."

"Except what?" Steiger asked. I suddenly wished I hadn't said anything more.

"Well, I think if a man dies or gets killed, then he only receives hostile fire pay up to the date of death, not for the whole month."

"No," Steiger said, somewhat agitated, "that can't be right."

"Well, that's my recollection," I said. Steiger took me to Sergeant Greenley's desk to settle the question. Greenley told Steiger I was correct that hostile fire pay terminated at death, and it was therefore prorated during the month of death.

"But we didn't do that when uh...uh...what's his name from company C died," Steiger insisted.

"Didn't we?" Greenley asked. "Think back. What did we do?"

"I don't remember," Steiger said, puzzled.

"That's because we didn't do anything," Greenley said. "We sent his pay records to 92d Finance, and they closed them out. Remember?"

"Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot about that," Steiger admitted. Then, after reflecting for a moment, he continued, "Even so, that's not fair. If a guy can get hostile fire pay for the whole month just by being in country one day, why would you prorate it if he gets killed halfway through the month? That doesn't make any sense."

"I know," Greenley said, "it doesn't make any sense at all. But then, I don't make the rules, congress does. Hey, there you go. Write to your congressman and complain."

"Yeah, sure," Steiger said, shaking his head.

"By the way," Greenley added, "Captain Simpson wants three men for sandbag detail at the HQ tonight for one hour after dinner. So I thought I'd send you, Horton, and Barnett."

"Oh, c'mon, Sarge," Steiger cried in disbelief. "I was on sandbags at the barracks the night before last. Can't you get someone else?"

"Okay, okay," Greenley said, "take it easy. I'll put Lew on it then, but you have to tell him when he gets back."

"No sweat, GI," Steiger said, sticking his thumb up in the air. Steiger and I went back to our payrolls. I could tell by Lew's reaction that he wasn't thrilled about being put on sandbag detail after dinner. Nevertheless, he didn't complain too much. My suspicion was that Lew didn't like to displease Steiger. Finally, it was six o'clock, and, for my part, I was glad to see the day come to an end. This payroll routine had been more tedious than I had anticipated.

After dinner, I reported for the sandbag detail outside the Quonset hut that housed battalion headquarters. Through the screen window I could see the duty officer and the duty driver sitting near a blackboard chatting together. I couldn't quite make out what was on the board, but it appeared to show the current deployment of the 14th's companies in the field. Barnett arrived immediately after I did. "Good evening," I said.

"Hi," he said, awkwardly raising his hand in a little waive, almost as an afterthought. We stood, waiting for someone in authority to come and give us some instructions. Barnett acted as though he wanted to talk to me but didn't feel comfortable initiating a conversation.

"Where are you from?" I finally asked.

"Michigan," he said, "just outside Detroit. How about you?"

"Oakland, California. That's across the bay from San Francisco."

"Oh, yeah!" he said, somewhat animated now. "Lew is from California too. Modesto, I think."

"What's with his name, anyway?" I asked. "Lew sounds like an oriental name, but he's obviously caucasian."

"Yeah, that's funny, huh?" After some thought, Barnett continued, "I think his family is from Russia or something. I think that's what I heard him tell somebody."

"Speak of the devil," I muttered. Lew had just walked around the side of the personnel tent, which was about 100 feet away. Over his left shoulder he carried two shovels, and from his right hand hung a small bale of empty, burlap bags. He strode up and dumped everything in a heap, causing the two shovels to clang together loudly.

"Wait here," he said. He walked slowly along the outside of the building, examining the wall of sandbags that rose above the ground about four feet. A space of two feet separated the wall from the building. Halfway along the wall Lew paused and bent down to look closely at the sandbags. Then, standing up again, he gave the lower part of the wall a kick with the toe of his boot. One of the bags split wide open, and sand ran out onto the ground. "We'll start here," he said. "The bags in this section are almost all rotted away."

We started by pulling a section of the old bags down and emptying them onto the ground. The sand from the old bags was then shoveled into the new bags, one at a time. I suggested that we simply put the old bags into the new ones to save time. According to Lew we couldn't do that because it caused the new bags to rot too fast. Lew appointed me to hold each bag open while he and Barnett filled it almost to the top. The bag was then tied off with twine. Slowly, we replaced the torn down section of the wall. Because the air was so humid, we all began sweating profusely. Added to that, I had sand stuck all over my wrists and lower arms from where the shovels had missed the bag.

"What did you do in the real world, Horton?" Lew asked, as I tied off a bag.

"I worked for the U.S. Customs Service in San Francisco," I replied.

"Oh, a Fed, huh? What did you do for Customs, inspect people's underwear at the airport?" he asked.

"Not really," I said. "That was the other guys. My group classified and appraised imported commercial cargo."

"Like what?" he asked.

"Well, like men's dress shirts," I said. "A large importer might bring in a half-million dollars worth in one shipment. We determined the proper duty rate and the total duties owing to the government."

"And about how much might that be?" he asked. I had to think for a moment and do a mental calculation.

"Roughly $175,000," I said.

"Gee, I'm impressed," he said sarcastically. "Why don't you pick up another bag there, so we can get this finished. I think the sun's gone down." About five minutes later, Sergeant Greenley came around the corner of the Quonset hut, apparently to check on us. We stopped working momentarily.

"Making any progress, fellas?" Greenley inquired.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lew asked petulantly. "We're doing this job, so just don't start with me, Greenley. I'm not in a good mood." I could tell that Sergeant Greenley hadn't meant any criticism by his question, but after Lew's reaction to it, he himself became angry.

"Just keep it up, Lew," Greenley said. "You're asking for it."

"Yeah?" Lew shot back. "What are you gonna do, Sarge, send me to Vietnam?"

"No," Greenley snapped, "I'm going to article 15 your ass for insubordination. That's what I'm going to do." Both men glared at each other for awhile in a kind of non-verbal standoff. Finally, the sergeant turned and walked away, saying as he did so, "Knock off in fifteen minutes."

The three of us set about our work again, speaking to one another only as necessary. I could sense that Barnett was upset by what had transpired. Although the light was fading rapidly, we continued another twenty-five minutes until we had completely replaced the section of the wall we had pulled down earlier. None of us wanted to leave the job unfinished.

Afterward, I went immediately to the enlisted men's showers to clean off the sand and grit. The showers were in a wooden building roughly 20 feet square, with no screen in the walls. Perched atop the structure was a water tank that held about 2000 gallons. Inside, 16 showerheads hung down from the roof, in four rows of four. The room was unpartitioned in any manner. The shower system ran purely on gravity, and the water flow was started by twisting a valve handle near the showerhead. As I waited my turn, I saw that the procedure was to get wet, and then turn the water off to soap up. After that, the water was turned on again to rinse.

When it was my turn to wet down, I discovered another fact of life here in Dong Ba Thin. The water was not heated. Instead, it assumed the ambient temperature of the air. I was shocked by the coldness of the spray, but, considering my filthy condition, I welcomed the chance to get clean, even if my lips did turn blue. It occurred to me as I was rinsing off that there was no way to tell when the tank would run out of water. No wonder everyone else seemed in a hurry to get the soap off.

Back at the barracks, I put on clean clothes, which also felt good. It was funny how these simple things began to take on importance. I walked to the EM club to have a beer. While drinking, I overheard several men talking about movies, and I gradually realized they were discussing a movie to be shown tonight somewhere in the compound. When they left, I left also and followed them to the site of the movie screen. Completely outdoors and built of wood mounted on telephone poles, the screen was very large--about ten feet high by twenty feet long. There were no chairs at all, so everyone simply sat on the sand. Some, I could see, had brought blankets or ponchos to put on the ground. I sat down near the back of the lot. Turning around, I could see that the projector was resting on a long folding table. In another ten minutes the movie started, and I was surprised to see that it was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which I had seen only recently at a theater at home. I hadn't expected the movies in Vietnam to be so current.

About midway through the film, I experienced some very tense moments. Above the area behind the screen, there suddenly appeared an array of terrifying red tracer fire fanning out through the night sky. At first came the light, then several seconds later came the dull crack of machine gun fire. That was followed by distant flashes of white light on the underside of the clouds and the delayed boom, boom, boom, of what sounded like handgrenades. I sat bolt upright, not knowing whether to run for cover or what to do. I looked around me quickly to see how the others were responding. Almost everyone had turned their eyes skyward, but no one had moved. After ten seconds or so, everyone seemed to have assessed the situation and to have gone back to watching the movie. I pulled myself on my elbow a foot or so across the sand until I was within speaking distance of the man sitting next to me. "What was that?" I asked. "That gunfire."

"That's just the Koreans," he said. "They have the western side of the perimeter, and they shoot at anything that moves. They blaze away like that all the time. It's nothing to worry about."

Yes, right, I thought to myself, it's nothing to worry about.