Chapter 9 

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

Several days after my return from Bao Loc, we began our move from the tent to the new personnel office. This operation, which should have taken no more than one day, was slowed considerably by heavy monsoon rains that pelted down on us, sometimes for hours at a time. The din on the metal roofs was deafening, and the volume of water coming from the sky was practically indescribable. During one downpour, an officer in a jeep with a canvas top pulled up about ten feet from the office door. Several of us were watching him, and we could see he was perfectly dry as he prepared for his dash to the screen door, which was being held open for him. It took him no more than two seconds to reach the threshold from the jeep, but there he stood, completely drenched, with water from his clothes dripping down around his feet. He looked totally amazed as he stood with his arms upright, like a surgeon after a scrub.

Our new building was 30 feet wide by 60 feet long with the usual screen and wood siding. This gave us much more room than our tent had, which meant we would no longer be working on top of one another. Undoubtedly, we would be much cooler than we had been in the canvas sweat box. Two doors opened into opposite sides of the building near the front and back, and my desk was the one nearest the backdoor.

After we finished the move, it was mid-afternoon, and I approached Sergeant Greenley to ask a favor. "Hey, Sarge," I said, "I'm pulling guard duty tonight, and I sure could use a haircut." Greenley looked at the side of my head suspiciously, trying to determine if I was putting him on. "I really need to be standing tall so I can ..."

"Yeah, yeah, okay. Work it out," Greenley said. "Just don't be gone all day."

Within minutes, Steiger, O'Brien, and I were on our way to Dodge City in a jeep, with Ales at the wheel. As we drove, O'Brien regaled us with stories about headquarters company business. One revelation struck me as particularly interesting. "Lieutenant Hart came in a couple of days ago, and he was pestering the first sergeant about getting volunteers to tend bar at the officers' club this weekend," O'Brien said.

"God knows that's how I like to spend my Saturday nights," Steiger said sarcastically.

"So what did Top say?" Ales asked.

"He just told him flat out," O'Brien said. "He just said, `That's not real popular with the men, Lieutenant.' Hart looked pretty disappointed."

"Christ, that's great," Steiger said, laughing. "The old man sure knows how to slam it to the officers." I listened quietly to this exchange and filed O'Brien's information away in my head for further reflection.

Dodge City was much busier today than before, and I had to put my name on a list and wait about 40 minutes for a haircut. To kill time, we went to the soda fountain and ordered a beer. I was introduced to a local beer in a brown bottle called Ba Muoi Ba, which meant "Thirty-three" in Vietnamese. "It's also called no-name beer," Ales said. "When they put the bottle in ice water, the label comes off. Come to think of it, I don't even know what the label looks like." It was true, none of our bottles had a label. Only Steiger refused to have the local beer, saying it wasn't American. Instead, he had a Budweiser. I suspected Steiger's real concern with the local beer rested more in the rumor, passed on to us by Ales, that Ba Muoi Ba contained formaldehyde. Whatever its ingredients, it sure had a kick.

Before we finished our drinks, a disturbance broke out at the other end of the bar, about twenty feet from where we were sitting. A Korean soldier apparently was trying to leave without paying, and one of the Vietnamese proprietors--a man--had run from behind the bar to stop him. They were shouting at each other, probably in their own languages. American and other Korean soldiers nearby were backing away from the scene as though they expected the confrontation to become violent. Indeed, when the proprietor grabbed for the man's shirt to stop him from leaving, the Korean pushed the Vietnamese to the ground and raised his rifle in the air as if to strike the man with the butt of the weapon. As he stood that way, continuing to menace the prone Vietnamese, a Korean lieutenant quickly strode up to the pair of men. The officer pulled a 45 caliber pistol from his holster, put it to the head of his countryman, and cocked the trigger. This was followed by a few words in Korean, spoken very crisply and harshly, which caused the soldier to lower his rifle immediately and walk directly to the exit. After a brief exchange, the lieutenant handed the Vietnamese some money and left. As the officer walked past us and the others who had stopped to stare, he kept his eyes straight forward and unapologetic. After a collective but inaudible sigh of relief, people began moving around again, and things returned to normal.

My experience at the Vietnamese barbershop was much more relaxing. After the barber cut my hair with the electric clippers, he brushed away the trimmings from my neck, removed the apron, and sprinkled my head with some sort of hair tonic. Then he began to massage my scalp with his fingers, starting at the temples. At first I was startled. No one had ever touched my head this way before, and it was quite unexpected. Gradually, the man worked his fingers to the back of my head and down to my neck, which was massaged for several minutes. Finally his hands fell to my shoulders, and these were kneaded for an equal time. He combed my hair and let me go. I gladly paid him a dollar, which was twice his going price. As we walked back to the jeep, I stopped and moved my head slowly from side to side. Steiger paused a few feet farther on and turned back. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Absolutely," I said. "That feels wonderful."

"Oh, the message thing," he said. "That is pretty relaxing."

When we returned to the personnel office, Sergeant Greenley called me up to his desk immediately, and I thought he was going to hold me responsible for all of us being gone so long. Instead, he handed me a piece of paper. "This note came from one of your men in D company," he said. I read the handwritten message, which said:

Dear Payman-- You got to stop sending my money to my wife. My mother write to me two times now and my wife is going around with some men. I want her to not get my money any more since she does not deserve it.

We had never covered this situation in pay school, and I was confused and at a loss for words. I looked at Sergeant Greenley, whose face appeared totally expressionless. "Well, what do we do about this?" I finally asked.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, we do nothing," he said. "The BAQ entitlement he receives because he's married has to go to his wife by law. He can't withhold that from her. I checked his file, and that's the only money she's getting now. All the rest of his pay is going to his parents."

"So, we do nothing?" I asked.

"That's right," he said.

"What if he wants us to stop paying him the BAQ?"

"We can't do that either," Greenley said. "Once he proves he's married, then the BAQ is paid to him for her benefit. The only way he can stop the BAQ allotment being sent to her is to get divorced."

"Which, of course," I concluded, "he can't do while he's in Vietnam."

"Precisely," he said. "But you should send him a reply and say that we can't do what he wants us to do because it's not legal. Just say that and nothing more. Don't try to explain it or you'll simply confuse him."

I wrote a reply to Mr. Waller along the lines suggested by Sergeant Greenley and dispatched it through the battalion mail, hoping that would be the end of the matter.

After dinner, as I was preparing for guard duty, O'Brien came around with mail delivered that afternoon. I didn't receive anything, but Lew got a large package about the size of a hatbox. Steiger and the others in our group became quite animated. "Oh, boy," Ales said, "goodies from home."

"Is it your birthday?" Steiger asked.

"Just about. May 16th," Lew replied as he tugged at the twine binding the parcel. After breaking open the box, Lew unceremoniously dumped its contents onto his cot. There were numerous candy bars, several bags of different chips, canned goods, chewing gum, magazines, and one round tin about nine inches in diameter by three inches high. Except for the canned goods and whatever was in the round tin, all these items could be purchased at the PX in Cam Ranh. Nevertheless, there was an added excitement when such presents were received from home. Lew picked up the round tin and methodically split the scotch tape that sealed the lid to the bottom. He removed the top gingerly to reveal the remains of what had once been a perfectly good chocolate birthday cake. During shipping, the outer dimensions of this confection had become co-equal with the innermost measurements of the can, producing an homogeneous puddle of cake and frosting. The inside of the lid was plastered with this mixture, as though the cake had exploded from within. "Well, it's the thought that counts," Lew said.

"Damn straight," Steiger said, as he dug two fingers into the chocolate puddle and brought them up to his lips.

"Want some?" Lew asked, thrusting the can in my direction with both hands.

"Not now," I said. "I just got cleaned up for guard duty. Maybe I'll have some later." Ales was examining a short can he had taken from the pile.

"What's this?" he asked. "It says bean dip. What's bean dip?"

"Let's open it," Steiger said. Within seconds, the top was off and everyone had poked in a finger for a taste. The contents had the color and texture of pumpkin pie. "Not bad," Steiger said.

"Not bad?" Lew said. "This stuff is great. Let's try it on some of those chips." Ales tore open a bag of corn chips, and everyone made a pass at the can, including me. They were right: this concoction was spicy, and it tasted delicious. In minutes the can had been wiped clean, and I made a mental note to ask for this item the next time I wrote home. Looking at my watch, I realized I was nearly late for guard mount. As I hurried for the door, Steiger shouted after me, "Hey, Horton, when's your birthday? I want some more of this bean dip."

"You're going to miss a good movie tonight," Ales added through cupped hands. "They're showing The Russians Are Coming."

"Coming to Dong Ba Thin?" I shouted back in jest. I arrived just as the guard formation was being called to attention. As luck would have it, I was assigned to a bunker on the northern perimeter with a man from C company and Snuffy from the motor pool. The C company man wanted the first watch, so Snuffy and I talked by ourselves behind the bunker until it was dark. We both agreed that trusting others on guard duty was a dangerous thing because everyone seemed so unreliable when it came to staying awake and minding business. So he and I made a pact that neither of us would doze off on our shift, and each of us could have a sound sleep while the other was on guard.

I knew I could trust Snuffy because I had discovered that he was as cautious about danger as I was. About a week before my trip to Bao Loc, the sirens had gone off on red alert around 11 A.M. All of us in the personnel section had raced to the barracks to get our gear and go to the perimeter. As I was about to run past the last barracks on the way to the drainage ditch, I had felt myself involuntarily slowing down. Someone had grabbed a handful of my shirt and was dragging me to the ground from behind. I had gone down with a crash in the sand near the center of the last barracks and Snuffy had gone down with me. "Where are you going so fast?" he had asked.

"Out to the perimeter," I had replied. "Where do you think?"

"Remember," he had said, "in the daylight, when you pass this last building, there's no cover at all until you reach the ditch up yonder. The best thing to do is stop here and see what's happening out there, before you run into a bunch of bullets. If things are bad, I reckon you might want to low crawl all the way to the ditch." He had then run to the corner of the building, where he crouched momentarily and surveyed the intervening terrain. "Okay," he had said, "the perimeter is clear, let's go for it." That incident had made me realize I wasn't the only one in Vietnam who was constantly looking over his shoulder.

Tonight, Snuffy and I hit on another plan to increase our odds of survival. We offered the man from C company an alternative to the usual two hours on and two hours off. If he would take the watch until 11 P.M., Snuffy and I would split the remainder of the night between us, and he could sleep till dawn. Naturally, the man agreed. To be on the safe side, Snuffy and I took turns sleeping until 11 P.M., when he went on guard. He jiggled me awake at 2:30 A.M., and the air was cold and damp. He refused to lay down immediately. "Are you still awake?" he asked.

"Trust me," I said. I stood up, walked to the front of the bunker, and ducked down below the opening to light a cigarette. I always bent over when I drew on the cigarette so the sandbags concealed the red glare under the ash, which otherwise could be seen from a distance, making a perfect target. Seeing me move around apparently reassured Snuffy, and he lay down on the cot and covered himself up with the blanket.

When I wanted time to pass quickly, it always seemed to drag, and such was the case tonight. Around 4 A.M. two flares were shot off on our side of the perimeter, west of QL/1, but nothing else happened. Later, the Koreans opened up on the western perimeter with machine gun fire that lasted about ten minutes, off and on. This far into my year, I had come to expect such indiscriminate shooting on their side of the compound, so it caused me no concern. As my mind wandered in the ensuing silence, I remembered the question Steiger had asked earlier that night. When was my birthday? I realized with some annoyance that my birthday had occurred shortly after I arrived in Vietnam, and I had missed it completely. I had no idea what I was doing that day, or even what day of the week it had come on. When I went to the office tomorrow, I would figure out the day and try to reconstruct the events, if I could. I continued to stew about this mental lapse.

An hour later, I observed small yellow flashes far away and slightly to my left. Because they occurred at a fair elevation, I concluded the explosions were taking place in the mountains west of QL/1. I stared in that direction, trying not to lose the point of focus in the dark. The flashes continued intermittently, anywhere from 15 to 40 seconds apart. During one lull, I suddenly noticed a red ribbon hanging down vertically from the sky at the location of the explosions. That struck me as very odd. Why would anybody hang a ribbon in the air? As I watched, the ribbon dropped to the ground and disappeared. Seconds later, another ribbon appeared, hung in the sky briefly, and then fell to the earth. I puzzled over this phenomenon for several minutes until it dawned on me that the ribbon was actually red tracer fire coming from a mini-gun mounted on a helicopter. God, what a frightening thought. It must have been laying down a thousand rounds a minute. I pitied anyone on the ground below.

This distant battle lasted no more than fifteen minutes, and all was darkness again. I began to feel very sleepy, but I knew it would be light soon and time to leave. When dawn came, I woke Snuffy and congratulated him on making it through the night.

After breakfast, I left for the office early and stopped by battalion headquarters. I looked through the screen door to see if Lieutenant Hart was on duty yet, and when I saw him, I slipped into the Quonset hut as unobtrusively as I could. "Sir?" I said, speaking more or less to the lieutenant's back, as he stood at the blackboard.

"Yes," he said as he turned around. "Oh, Horton, it's you. What can I do for you?"

"I was wondering...," I said. "I heard you were looking for volunteers to tend bar at your Saturday night parties."

"That's true," he said. "Are you interested?"

"I am, but I don't know how to mix complicated drinks or anything," I said. "I can do easy stuff like screwdrivers, bloody marys, gin and tonic, that sort of thing."

"That's all we need," he said, putting his arm around my shoulder. "We have some volunteers lined up for this Saturday, but I'll keep you in mind for the future."

"Thanks," I said, "I appreciate that."

"Not at all," he said. "It's nice to find people willing to help." So far so good, I thought, as I walked back to the personnel office. At last, I might be able to get my hands on some hard liquor. With a little ingenuity, I should be able to slam down three or four stiff shots while performing my duties as bar tender. I hoped my opportunity would come soon.

On Monday, the 15th of May, I cajoled Steiger into taking me with him when he delivered the payrolls to 92d finance. Wallace drove the big deuce-and-a-half, and Sancho and Steiger rode in the cab with him. Barnett and I, ranking lowest in the group, were consigned to the back, where we rode standing up while hanging onto the side rails. Everyone was armed. At least I had a good perspective from which so see how incredibly pockmarked the highway was with potholes. According to Sergeant Greenley, QL/1 had been paved with asphalt about a year ago by the army engineers. The highway's serious state of disrepair, however, prevented us from driving more than 25 miles per hour, and, even though Wallace was swerving to miss the largest holes, some direct hits were inevitable, with truly jarring results. The road was crown construction and barely wide enough to allow two large trucks to pass safely. The inadequacy of the clearance became dangerously apparent when another 2-1/2 ton truck belonging to the Koreans came barreling down on us from the opposite direction. They must have been returning to a small, isolated compound we had just passed on our right. The Koreans were taking their half of the road directly from the middle, and they seemed disinclined to give way at all until the very last minute, when they edged over to their side, but not before Wallace had hit the brakes and steered the right half of our truck onto the shoulder of the road. Some men in the back of the other vehicle smiled and waived as they passed, indicating their satisfaction at having won what they evidently took to be some sort of game. Wallace swore profusely and shook his left fist out the window, quite ineffectually, of course, since the Koreans were well past us by the time he could take his hand off the wheel.

We lined up at the My Ca float bridge to wait our turn to cross. The bridge, about a quarter-mile long, was built on floating pontoons and was anchored at each end by thick, twisted-strand wire cables which were secured to I-beams sunk into the banks of the bay. Traffic was permitted only one way over the single lane bridge, and its flow was controlled by MP's stationed at each end, in radio communication with one another. Our vehicle was third in line, so we were near the control shack, and we could see the MP's up close. They carried 45 automatics and wore shiny black helmet liners with the designation "MP" in large white letters. Each of the three policemen near us was at least 6 feet, 4 inches tall and as wide as a door, such massiveness apparently being a job requirement.

Soon the bridge was clear, and we were waived forward. As we crossed the floating pontoons, I could see the water swirling around them as though there were a strong current running south toward the mouth of the bay. Once across, we drove east a short distance, and then the road swung south past the end of the Cam Ranh airstrip. "God, that's impressive," I said to Barnett, who just smiled back. The runway stretched beside us about two miles up the peninsula, and heat waves shimmered above its broad surface. The beginning apron of runway was no more than 100 feet from the road, which closely paralleled the shore of the bay at this point.

"Maybe Steiger will let us stop on the way back," Barnett shouted, putting his lips close to my ear so I could hear him through the wind. The smoothly paved highway on the Cam Ranh side of the bay was more hospitable to high speed driving, and I estimated we were whizzing along at a good 50 miles per hour. Soon, however, buildings sprang up on the right and left, and the traffic thickened, so we slowed to accommodate it. Twenty-five minutes after crossing the bridge, we pulled up in the parking lot of the finance center. The building itself was barn-like and huge, probably a block square.

"Wait here," Steiger said. He and Sancho made their way into the building with two boxes containing the payrolls, and soon both emerged empty-handed. "To the PX, Geeves," Steiger shouted as he jumped onto the running board of the cab. The PX was also of grand proportions, being roughly the size of an airplane hangar. Ten men were coming and going at once through its entrance, which was serviced by actual concrete sidewalks running away in several directions. As we approached the building from the parking lot, Sancho held up his hand abruptly.

"Hold it," he said. "Dirtbags at one o'clock." Everyone froze in his tracks. The others had fixed their gaze on several men standing in a small group about 50 feet from the entrance in our direct line of march. I tugged on Barnett's sleeve.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"It looks like officers handing out DR's," he said.

"DR's? What's that?" I asked.

"Delinquency reports," he said. "If you need a haircut or your boots are dirty, the officer gets your name and sends a delinquency report back to your commanding officer."

"You're kidding me," I said.

"No," Steiger said, turning around. "These Cam Ranh officers have a quota of DR's they have to fill every month, so the easiest place to do that is here in front of the PX." As we watched, the three young lieutenants walked purposefully toward a group of unsuspecting EM who had just tumbled out of a shuttle bus parked to our right.

"Let's didi," Sancho said, and we all scurried along the sidewalk behind the officers and into the PX.

Inside, there was every manner of thing. In addition to the junk food that I had come for, there were cigarettes, toiletries, books and magazines, clothing, cameras, stereo equipment, and sporting goods. "Who buys this stuff?" I asked Barnett, who was looking at the price tag on a pair of large stereo speakers.

"It's not for here, dummy," he said. "People buy these speakers to have them shipped home. Look at these prices. It's like 50% off." He was right. In the camera case I saw a Japanese 35 millimeter single reflex for $250.00 that would have cost me $600.00 at home. Thank goodness I was carrying only a little cash. I wandered over to the book section because I desperately needed something to read besides the Stars and Stripes. I read the covers on a hundred titles of fiction, but decided against them because I knew I could never concentrate on, or remember, a plot, given my current state of existence. My brain would rebel against any long-term commitment to details, so I went to the nonfiction section. From a meager 20 or so titles, I selected a book on Etiquette by Emily Post. This was just the ticket, I thought. Not only might I improve myself, but I could while away some time absorbing a subject that was as far detached from reality as the war itself. The incongruity of the thing was so perfect that it became irresistible. I bought the book and a shameful quantity of junk food, after which I joined the others back at the truck. All of us had managed to avoid the "death squad," as Sancho called the officers who lurked along the walk.

On the way back to the bridge, we were delayed ten minutes while all traffic was stopped on the road in both directions to allow some large pieces of earth moving equipment to cross the highway. Off to our right, the terrain was dotted with hundreds of surveyor's sticks jutting out of the ground at regular intervals, and these markers were made more visible by bright orange and yellow strips of plastic tied around their tops, about waist level. The heavy machinery excavating and leveling the dirt to our right seemed to be following the lines laid out by these sticks. Oddly enough, the men operating the equipment and those on the ground supervising them were wearing civilian clothes, not fatigues, which led me to conclude that a civilian contractor and not the army was in charge of this project, whatever it was. This notion was consistent with the lettering on the sides of all the earth movers and other vehicles that read: RMKBRJ. I leaned as far as I could to the right, over the top of our cab, and shouted, "Hey, Steiger, what do the initials RMKBRJ stand for?"

There was some muffled discussion among the three men inside before Steiger replied, "Sancho says that the R and the MK are the initials for Raymond International and Morrison-Knudsen. We don't know what BRJ stands for. Why do you want to know? Are you going to apply for a job?" This was followed by sounds of laughter from the cab. Even Barnett cracked a smile. Typical, I thought. Asking these guys anything intelligent was like casting pearls before swine. Thank God I had my Emily Post.

Once past the construction site, we moved quickly, and traffic thinned out considerably the farther we drove up the peninsula. I suspected that few of the GI's stationed in Cam Ranh had any reason to come this far north. As we approached the main air base, our truck was almost alone on the highway. We slowed and came to a stop on the shoulder, directly adjacent to the end of the runway, which was so close I could have hit it with a stone. Wallace, Steiger, and Alvarez left the cab and climbed into the back of the truck to get a better view. The first three aircraft to come in for landings were all Phantom fighter jets, spaced about an eighth of a mile apart. As they descended toward the runway, the planes were no more than 50 feet directly above us, and the roar of the jet engines was ear-splitting during that instant they were straight overhead. The exhilaration I felt looking up at the underbellies of the planes was heightened by the sound of the Doppler effect. In the wake of each passing jet came a rush of hot exhaust and the smell of burning jet fuel. This experience was a complete assault on the senses, and because it was so thrilling, I loved it. I could see now why Lew had been so excited when he spoke of this that night in the bunker.

The fighters were followed over a period of ten minutes by a C-130 cargo plane, a Boeing 707 passenger plane, and a giant Starlifter cargo plane. With the landing gear of the Starlifter no more than three feet below its fuselage, it looked as though the belly of the mammoth plane would scrape along the runway as it landed. I was relieved when it touched down without a shower of sparks.

"Okay, gang," Steiger said, clapping his hands together, "let's get out of here before someone comes and runs us off." On the drive back to DBT, I couldn't get the image of the planes from my mind, and I was still thinking about them as we pulled into our compound.