Chapter 5 

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

The next two days passed uneventfully, even though one of them was April Fool's day. The general mood in the camp seemed so low that it would have been risky for anyone to play a prank. I attributed this sourness to the unpopularity of the war in general and to everyone's desire to be somewhere else in particular. During this time, I worked on company D's payroll by day and drank beer and watched movies by night. At work, neither Steiger nor Lew was especially friendly, though they grudgingly answered questions when asked. In the barracks, the mess hall, and other public places, no one that I hadn't already met was forthcoming with me or willing to introduce himself, so I was reduced to passing occasional comments with those I already knew--Ales, Wallace, Barnett, Alvarez, Steiger, and Lew. More disconcerting than this, however, was the habit everyone had of dropping his conversation whenever I approached even remotely, if only to pass by in the barracks. I began to feel like a pariah. Nevertheless, I attributed my lack of acceptance to the fact that I was still new here and considered an outsider by the others.

Sunday morning finally came, and with it some relief from the daily routine. On this morning, I joined the others in opening a beer before getting dressed, because I awoke with a terrible hangover. This can of beer was one I had brought from the EM club late the night before, and, of course, it was completely warm. I wasn't used to drinking warm beer yet, but it felt slightly daring, particularly at this time of day.

Sunday, I discovered, was not a day of of rest. Army regulations required us to be on duty for a half-day, though the duty was not our regular work. Therefore, we didn't report to the personnel tent. Those who wanted to attend church were permitted to do so, and a number of different denominational services were offered. Afterward, both the faithful and the heathen were required to attend a weekly program known as personal development. According to Ales, personal development consisted of little lectures usually given by the officers, though occasionally by the NCO's, about things like personal hygiene, avoidance of prostitutes, the proper use of condoms, and the importance of having a clean mind, whatever that entailed. I gathered from Ales' attitude that personal development was universally considered to be a joke and a waste of time. He did say, however, that "it beats picking up cigarette butts."

On this Sunday, the men of headquarters company, along with the members of company C, were gathered together in an open area, waiting to be addressed by several NCO's who were standing on a small raised platform. I estimated the attendence at 200 men. I was positioned about three-quarters of the way back in this group. Just as one of the NCO's began to quiet the crowd, a voice behind me shouted, "Shut up and drop dead, lifer." Another voice yelled, "Take six, moron. Re-up for the bennies." Mortified, I felt my shoulders slump in fear. God, I thought, we're going to pay hell now. I turned around to see who was yelling. To my dismay, everyone behind me was laughing or smiling quite openly and taking obvious delight at inflicting this verbal abuse on the career men. Still not convinced that this behavior could be considered acceptable, I looked back toward the front, half expecting to see a squad of MP's or other enforcers rushing to capture the offenders. Again, nothing. The NCO's, while obviously not pleased, were treating the incident as nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, it must not have been.

I suddenly realized how unruly these men were compared to those in my basic training. What a difference it made being in a war zone. There was an ugliness here in man's relation to man, an ugliness born perhaps of frustration at being in a country where no one wanted to be. I understood how this frustration could spill over into anger and hate.

After the assembly, we were released from duty for the rest of the day. I strolled back to the barracks with most of the others, wondering what I would do with all this free time now that I had it. Many of the men immediately took off their fatigue uniforms and dressed in civilian clothes. In a way, the donning of civilian dress probably helped many of the men to distance themselves from their situation. Personally, I was not inclined today to wear my civies since I didn't feel a psychological urge to put them on. Maybe after I had been here longer, I would feel the need to punctuate my weeks with a change of clothes.

As the afternoon settled in, some men read books or magazines, and some wrote letters. At the west end of the barracks, near the footlockers containing our ammunition, I heard a radio playing the song "California Dreamin'," and, thinking of home, I decided to write a letter to my wife. As I dug around in my locker for pen and paper, I noticed that some of the men at the other end of the barracks had lain down on their cots to sleep. When it became apparent to me after awhile that I had no idea what to say to my wife, I decided to lay down so I could close my eyes and think.

I woke up more than an hour later with drool on my pillow and cheek. I realized I needed to move around and get some fresh air, so I walked out the door at the east end of the barracks. Actually, I had been wanting to stroll around the compound to better understand the lay of the land. With this in mind, I walked north along the service road, past the EM club on my right, until I came to the last cross road before the barbed wire, which formed the northern perimeter. The wire rose from the waters of the bay to the east and ran from there west to Q/L 1, the main highway, about four blocks away. Along this perimeter were three wooden machine gun towers and four sandbagged, covered bunkers, alternating with one another and evenly spaced about 100 feet apart. Beyond the perimeter to the north, the land was flat and sandy, covered moderately by scrub brush no more than three or four feet tall. In this direction, nothing else was visible as far as the eye could see.

Having satisfied myself with this perspective, I turned west and walked along the cross road toward the compound's entrance and the guard bunker we had passed the day I arrived. As I walked, I realized that the drainage ditch to my immediate right was the location Lew had told me to run to in the event of a red alert. When I reached the next intersection, I turned south and started down the road that ran past the west end of our barracks. I continued to walk until I reached the personnel tent, noting what lay on either side of the road. To my left as I walked, I passed two barracks, the headquarters company office, the mess hall, two more barracks, my barracks, the communications tent, the medical building with adjacent assembly area where we had convened this morning, the personnel tent, and just beyond that, the new personnel building which was still under construction. Between each of these buildings was a sandbagged bunker about five feet high with no roof. During mortar or artillery attacks we were supposed to take shelter in these bunkers.

To my right, as I had moved along the same path, I had passed the entrance to the motor pool and equipment yard, the EM showers, the first sergeant's hooch, the supply room, the latrine, and the movie screen area. Behind all these latter buildings and areas ran the motor pool and equipment yard, so that the view to the highway to the west was completely blocked off.

To the south of where I was now, beyond the new personnel building, were other structures that I took to be the officers' club, showers, and living quarters, though I couldn't say which building was which. As far as I could tell, none of the enlisted men ever ventured into this area, and I could not make out what lay beyond the officers' area. From this viewpoint, I certainly could not see to the south perimeter. Thus, I had no way of judging how large this encampment truly was. Conceivably, there were army units other than the 14th Engineers that were quartered to the south and possibly also to the west, near the highway, on the other side of the equipment yard. One thing was sure, the South Koreans were somewhere over to the west.

Turning east now, I passed between the personnel tent and the partially completed personnel building and walked toward the bay. This route took me in front of battalion headquarters, where we had replaced some of the sandbags, and out to the road on which I had started. This road, which passed my barracks on the east, ran all along the bay. Indeed, it followed the contour of the bay, about 50 feet from the water, as far south as I could see. Sandbagged bunkers were placed between the road and the bay all along the way, spaced about a block apart. Obviously, these bunkers were meant to protect against attack from the water. I turned back north and walked up the road I had started on. I went past my barracks to the EM club, where I crossed the drainage ditch to my right and strolled down as close as I could get to the water. There was at this point of the shoreline a hint of beach, where none could be found elsewhere along the waterline. I squatted down to rest and contemplate the bay. After several minutes, I became aware that somebody was standing behind me. I turned slightly on my toes to look around. A Spec-4 came forward and spoke. "Hello there," he said. "You must be new here in DBT."

"I am, yes," I said. "I've been here less than a week."

"I could tell by your chevrons," he said. "You haven't put the black ones on yet."

"That's true," I replied. "They haven't given me any." I noticed immediately that this fellow seemed much friendlier than anybody else had been. He was tall and slight of build, and with his glasses and his angular features, he appeared quite bookish. What was I thinking, he looked surprisingly like me. When he approached more closely, I could see he was in his mid-twenties.

"I'm from C company," he said, sitting down on the sand near me. "My name is James Sherman." After I introduced myself and explained who I was, he just sat for a minute gazing out at the bay. "We had a man drown in the bay about four months ago. It was about 300 feet up that way," he said, pointing south.

"Gee, that's a shame," I said.

"Yeah, well, he was drunk. It was late at night and dark, and I guess he just decided he needed to take a swim. Of course, they wrote his parents and told them that he died in the line of duty. They always do that, you know." When I didn't say anything, he went on. "Too bad, really. He was just a kid--maybe 19."

"Is that the only casualty the battalion's had?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "We've had two other deaths--both construction accidents. It's funny when you think about it. We've been here five months and nobody's been killed by hostile fire."

"You came with the battalion, then?" I asked.

"Oh, you bet," he said. "Originally, the battalion was stationed at Fort Bragg. When we shipped out, our equipment was all loaded at Charleston, South Carolina, on two old ships from the moth ball fleet. We boarded a troop ship called the USNS Wigle at Oakland, California, and sailed from there on September 28th, last year. Boy, was that a mess. We had to sleep in hammocks below decks. Half the battalion was seasick--puking all the time. And the smell of the vomit below decks made everyone else sick. On deck it was much better in the fresh air, but there were still people hanging over the sides throwing up. It took us a little over three weeks to get here. Boy, what a relief that was. You know, it was funny. All the time these lifers kept saying to us, `Look on the bright side, every day you spend on the boat is a day less you spend in Vietnam.' That was enough to make anyone puke."

"That's interesting," I said. "Nobody has told me anything about the unit so far. In fact...." I hesitated to say what was on my mind.

"In fact," he said, "nobody wants to talk to you. Right?"

"Exactly. How did you know?"

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I've seen it before. Everybody's paranoid. A lot of people here are doing drugs--you know, marijuana and heroin. Mostly just marijuana. But the drug users suspect that everybody new to the battalion is with the CID, the criminal investigators. So they all think you're some kind of undercover agent. And the drug users are so paranoid that it rubs off on the non-drug users too, and they get nervous as well. The result? Nobody talks to the new guy. Don't worry though. After a while, they'll loosen up and accept you. It might take a month or so, but it'll happen."

"I'm glad you told me that," I said. "I don't feel so bad now--I mean, if it happens to everyone."

"Well, it was nice talking to you," he said. "I've got to go and pack my things because some of us are leaving early tomorrow for Dalat. We're going to work on some radio relay stations on Long Bian Mountain."

"Well, good luck," I said.

"Thanks," he replied. As I watched him walk away, I wished he could have stayed longer to talk. I wondered if I would run into him again.

I went back to the barracks and wrote a letter to my wife. I really wanted to tell her that I wished I were home and not in Vietnam; that I was not having a good time; that the war didn't make any more sense to me now than it had before; and that I was still very much concerned for my safety. However, I didn't say any of those things because that would only have made her situation worse. Instead, I described for her the layout at DBT. I expressed my hope that everything was going well at home, and I told her that I thought I was in a fairly safe place for the time being. Of course, I had no way of knowing how safe I was at any given time, but I knew that telling her I was in no danger would help.

When it grew dark outside, I went to the movie area to see what was playing. There was no feature movie, but in its place we were shown highlights from recent NFL football games. Though usually not a sports fan, I was intrigued by these so-called highlight films. Many plays were reshown in very slow motion, motion so slow that you could almost see on a runner's face the moment of decision that preceded a shift of weight on the leg or a spin in the opposite direction to avoid a tackler. How beautiful the body in motion can be was revealed through this slow motion technique. Equally mesmerizing was the slow rotation of the football in flight as it spiralled toward the outstretched hands of a pass receiver suspended horizontally for a moment above the ground. As I watched these films, I realized how beneficial it was for me to get my mind off the war, even for a short time.

Overall, I concluded that Sundays would prove to be a mixed blessing for me. They provided some respite from the 60 hour work week, but they also left too much time to think about home and happier times.