(REMF is short for "Rear Echelon M----- F-----")
I always thought I'd be in the military some day. My dad was in the navy during WWII. My grandfather was in the army during WWI. I had an ancestor who was killed in the Civil War. It was toward the end, when Grant had Lee cornered in Petersburg. Jubal Early led what was left of the Army of the Shenandoah for an attack on Washington so he could draw Union forces away from Lee. By that time there were very few Union troops left in Washington. My ancestor was one of a group of Union cavalry that was thrown together with some local militia to try to slow the Confederates down. The Union soldiers knew they would be casualties. They were outnumbered by 10 to 1. Early was moving fast and would take no prisoners. The Union troops were under orders to yield no ground. It was a death sentence, but they did their job. By the time Early made it past them reinforcements had reached Washington.
One of the things I learned from history was that 10% casualties are considered very high. I figured the odds were on my side. The only reason guys my age enlisted was to avoid the infantry. The only reason I would have enlisted was the get into a band. That was a four year gig, which was too long for me, so I just waited to be drafted. Meanwhile I got a job selling women's shoes for Dayton's. Who'da thunk that would keep me out of the infantry.
I moved into an old mansion behind the Guthrie Theater that had been converted to a rooming house for guys. One day we were given an eviction notice. All the houses on that street had been bought by a company that planned to tear them down and replace them with high rent apartments. Lo and behold, when I was drafted the guy that was assigned to the bunk under mine was a part owner of that company along with his dad. He once bragged to me that his business philosophy was "If you've a buddy and he's true blue, fuck him before he fucks you."
After basic we were given the same assignment. The army thought we'd make good supply clerks without all the usual eight weeks of training, just some OJT, or on the job training. We were sent to Ft Polk, LA. When we got there the battalion Sgt Major said "We don't need supply clerks. We need company clerks! Either of boys type?" I had been told that if anyone asks you that always say yes so I did. We both did.
He was assigned to a company that trained supply clerks. I went to a company that trained company clerks. Go figure. The outgoing clerk had two weeks to go and was drunk the whole time from the moment I showed up. They later brought in another short timer to fill in for me while I went to the same classes that our regular trainees went through.
The best part about my stay in Louisiana was the time four of us went to a big bar called The Evangeline, named for a book by the same name. When things got old there we drove to the nearby town of Mamou. There was a little bar there and when we walked in we heard music coming from the back room. We asked if the party was open to the public. The bartender shrugged his shoulders and said something affirmative. We went in. It was a week before Mardi Gras and some of the party goers were in old harlequin costumes. There was a band playing what I immediately recognized as old time, but with a French accent instead of a Swedish accent.
As our eyes adjusted to the light we could see that we were far from welcome. The glares that came from some of the men in the room were openly hostile. While at Ft Polk we had all heard stories about the local Cajuns and knives. We were getting a little edgy when a little butterball as round as she was tall came up to us and said "One of you has to dance with the groom's mother." She pointed to another cute little butterball. We looked at each other. The other three guys didn't have a clue what the band was playing. I knew right away that it was a waltz and how to dance it. I approached the designated woman and asked her if she'd like to dance. She smiled and we danced. I put on the charm and asked if the four of us could meet the bride and groom. We were accepted as though we were invited guests. It was my first exposure to Cajun culture and it reminded me of the Scandinavian bars in Minnesota that have old time bands.
My time at Ft Polk came to an end when, after 10 months in the army, I got orders to go to Vietnam. Not only that, but the guy from the bunk below me in basic training got orders for Vietnam the same day I did. The only difference between our orders was that I was to go through Oakland, CA and he was to go through Ft Lewis, WA.
I had a wonderful two week leave during which I proposed to Jenny every few minutes. Finally my leave was over and in the rush to get going I dug my dress khakis out of the laundry and ran an iron over them. That's when I realized the cat had peed on my shirt. There was no time to wash it so I made the trip surrounded by an aroma. WHEW! Jenny finally said yes when I was about to get on the plane. I was flying high long before the plane ever left the ground. As I looked out that window I said to myself 'OK shithead, you've got a year to get your act together.'
We were put on an airliner that sported a shark's mouth paint job and the name Flying Tiger. The trip to Nam took 23 hours with stops in Alaska and Japan. We knew we were over Vietnam because all of a sudden there were bomb craters as far as the eye could see in all directions. Just before we landed someone came on the intercom to talk about money. Among other things, he warned us to stay away from the currency black market. The enemy ran that market to help raise money for their war effort.
Moments later we were on the ground in Bien Hoa. As I walked off the plane I was struck by the smell. Something about it took me back to a time in high school when I read the complete works of Franz Kafka in a two week period. It was like living in a cloud of atomized urine. Then I noticed that there were tall, thin spires of black smoke all around the airport.We were put on buses for the trip to our first stop, a temporary layover where we'd stay for a couple days till we were sent to our permanent assignment. On the way the bus drove by an ominus looking corrugated steel stockade. A sgt in the front of the bus told us it was Long Bihn Jail, or LBJ, and that if we fucked up we'd end up there crushing rocks. I became aware that the roads were all lined with white crushed rock.
Night was falling when we got to the "repo depot". We were sent to the mess hall for our first meal in Vietnam. It was pancakes with sugar water for syrup. OK with me. I was hungry. The next morning it was pancakes again followed by assembly. I was put into a work detail that was sent to clean the NCO club. The work wasn't bad, but there were Vietnamese girls there who apparently worked there. Wow! They were wildly sexy women dressed in tight dresses and spike heels. It was at that time that I found out that those tall, black, smoke spires were the offal, collected by older Vietnamese women, from the latrines, doused with diesel fuel and burned.
After lunch there was another assembly. My name was called and I was told to report to the orderly room. 'Oh oh.' I thought, 'This could be bad news.
An old 1st sgt sat behind a desk. He was older than my dad, so he must have been in the army since before WWII. He looked up and I identified myself. He picked up a folder and said "You've got eight months experience as a company clerk?" When I said yes he told me they needed a company clerk and then he asked if I wanted the job. He ASKED me! I'm a pfc draftee and a grizzled old top sgt had asked me if I wanted the assignment! I said yes.
I had seen the soft serve ice cream stand. The army wouldn't put all of us unarmed soldiers here if it wasn't safe. Those sexy girls at the NCO club wouldn't be there if this was a hot spot, would they? Those thoughts ran through my head as I ran to get my duffel bag out of the barracks. I was told to find an empty bunk upstairs behind the orderly room. There I found a buck sgt angrily packing his own duffel bag. He told me that he was being sent back home to Lubbock, Texas to face bigamy charges. Apparently one wife had found out about the other one. He didn't see what the problem was. He was supporting them both.
There was one other person upstairs, a teenage Vietnamese girl. She was far different from the girls I had seen that morning. She was plain, she wore black slacks and a print top and she had a sour expression. The sgt told me that she was the "baby-san" who would clean my quarters, make my bunk and shine my boots for $10 a month. I assumed that was the going rate and I didn't question it. I had to get back to the orderly room.
The XO, or Executive Officer, told me to get in the jeep and then he drove me around Long Bihn to get my paperwork done. It pays to have help when doing that sort of thing. Otherwise you can waste hours and hours. As were drove back through a bullet riddled village that the XO told me was the actual Long Bihn, we passed the Texan as he was driving a huge olive drab fork lift into an alley followed by a couple of locals. I said I had just met him and he was going back to Texas because he was charged with bigamy. The XO laughed and said he was supporting his two wives by selling anything that wasn't nailed down.
When we got back to the company area the XO pointed at a bare concrete slab in the midst of the other barracks and casually told me that was where the old permanent party barracks had been. I said "What?" and he said "Oh. Didn't Top tell you? We had a rocket attack three days ago. Lost our company clerk and three other guys that morning. It came in at breakfast time and we think they were aiming for the mess hall. That would have been really bad."
I was shocked! The war was suddenly much closer than I had thought. The XO stopped in front of a building and told me to get a haircut before reporting back to the OR. I went in and there was a sgt behind the cash register, but he was the only American working there. The barbers were all locals. I sat down and looked at the price list on the wall. Haircuts were $2. I told the barber I wanted a haircut and he smiled and nodded. He finished the haircut and proceeded to trim the hair on my ears. Then he went on give me a scalp massage. I was impressed. I thought this guy really wanted my return business. It was just like the barber shop at the Raddison Hotel back in Minneapolis. When he was done he handed me a bill for $7. Again I was shocked. Things were not as they seemed. When I complained to the cashier that I had only asked for a haircut he let me know that I had to tell the barber when to stop. That left me with $13 dollars to last till payday.
I realized that the reason I had been played for such a sucker was my brand new fatigues. The other permanent party guys I had seen all had faded, tailored fatigues with skin tight tapered pant legs. I had to get me some of those. Till then I would stand out like a sore thumb in my shiny, baggy new uniforms. I did, however, get a white helmet liner that set me apart from those lowly transients, which I had so recently been. I had learned in my last assignment that to be 'permanent party' in a company of trainees or transients was the same as outranking just about anyone under E5.
After I'd been in country a few days my baby-san asked me if I would buy her an alarm clock at the PX and she'd pay me back. I said sure but when I got there and saw they were selling Beefeaters gin for $4 a quart and cigarettes for $5 a carton. I forgot the alarm clock. Jenny had introduced me to martinis, so drinking gin reminded me of her. I was set for the month! Baby-san didn't seem to notice that I hadn't bought her the clock and I didn't bring it up.
The next day Top came in and asked me if my housekeeper wanted me to buy her a clock. I said yes, but added that I hadn't done it. Top said he was going to battalion and left. An hour later he was back with the CO and three ARVN MPs. They had Baby-san with them - in chains. She looked terrible. I watched as the MPs roughly put her into the back of a jeep and drove away. Something told me she did not have long to live.
Back in the OR Top and the CO were discussing what had just happened. It seemed she had asked four other guys to buy her clocks too. Not only that but she had just started working there a week before the rocket attack. The thing that convinced them the most was that the mama-san that worked for most of the guys hated her. She seemed to have said a few choice things to those MPs.
It was an inauspicious introduction to war. The first American I met was a thieving bigamist and the first Vietnamese I met was the spy responsible for killing the guy I replaced.
40 years ago there was a night when I felt like I was finally accepted in the company. It was payday and I was invited to play cards. I didn't have much money because I had arranged to send most of my pay home, but I did have a bottle of gin.
The next morning I didn't remember much about what happened the night before. I lost some money and had one too many gin gimlets. Ouch! During the day I suffered the usual amount, knowing the hangover would last till supper time. After coming back from the mess hall all I wanted to do was lay down on my bunk and read.
A bunch of guys were talking about the impending move to the new permanent party barracks. It would be made up of semi private rooms with clerks downstairs and cooks upstairs. They were choosing up room mates. One of the guys that everyone called "Chicken Man" asked me if I wanted to room with him. He was called that because he imitated a popular radio personality by the same name. You could hear him going "Prawk prawk prawk Praaawwwk!! all over the company area. Flattered by the gesture of someone who had been in country so much longer than me, I said yes. We had to build our own rooms, using material recycled from the old permanent party barracks.
Later on, one of the other guys, named "Bonehead" approached me with a brown paper bag in his hand. He asked if I wanted to smoke some pot. I must admit I was curious. "Sure!" I said, and we went outside. Soon we were laughing and stumbling into and out of a ditch. Later we went into someone's room and listened to music. I remember hallucinating looking at a cap hanging on a wall. I could have sworn it was a face suspended in air. The next thing I knew it was morning and I awoke feeling great. No hangover! I was amazed! That was some magical stuff. Tons of fun and no pain! M y life had changed.
We started the new permanent party barracks the next day. Chicken Man and I opted for the plain, four walls and a door look. However, one of the guys next door, Quarters, had some experience with a hammer and saw and it showed. Not only that, but he had an AIR CONDITIONER! Envy, envy, envy.
He and his room mate Bubba had arrived in country just before I did. I didn't know him and he hung out with two real short timers. They all worked in the receiving department and I heard that one of them had worked in the same department back in Oakland. My room mate had told me that one of them, a guy named Barnes, took the first quarter inch of tobacco out of all his cigarettes and replaced it with opium. They kept to themselves. They had coined a catch phrase, "What's the caper?", that was catching on throughout the company.
The new barracks was directly across from the mess hall. There was a landing between first and second floor and it became a gathering place for the cooks. Just past the mess hall was the perimeter and beyond that was an open field. I was shocked to learn that prior to Tet '68 that field had been a jungle. Charlie had infiltrated it and there was a battle during which the jungle had been bombed and napalmed flat except for the bomb craters. Vietnam was such a green place that by the time I arrived six months later the scars had been covered with greenery.
Beyond the horizon was an ammo dump, and at exactly 5 oclock every afternoon they blew up dud ammo. The explosions were sometimes big enough to make the buildings shake. Well, 5 oclock was also the beginning of the dinner rush at the mess hall and there was always a long line of transients waiting to eat by the time the mess hall opened. The off duty cooks congregated on the landing could time the explosions on their expensive Seiko watches and yell "INCOMING!" just before the big bang. They laughed as they watched all those newbies hit the ground. It was the most fun during monsoon when so many guys dove into puddles.
Cooks. It confirmed my belief that if the army didn't know what else to do with a guy, they made a cook out of him. There were, however, always a few, notable exceptions like Brownie or Dave. Brownie was a cajun with a college education. He was smart and articulate but he was a product of his heritage. When he was13 his daddy taught him the facts of life by taking him to his favorite whore house and turning him over to the madam. Dave, on the other hand, had once played with Jerry Lee Lewis and had the 8 X 10 glossies to prove it. God, he was good! He would take the EM club by storm, playing GREAT BALLS OF FIRE like Lewis himself. Once he played on Armed Forces TV, and it was such a beautiful ballad it was hard for a macho stud to watch. He was a rock - a - billy genius but when I had him listen to my album of THE RITE OF SPRING he was very impressed.
Life in Nam fell into a rhythm. The longer you had been there the shorter you were. It was all about surviving your year and going back to "the world". I figured out which direction was east-northeast and would gaze in that direction and think about Jenny. Meanwhile events were brewing about which I was oblivious. I was still just a believer doing my duty to my country.
One morning before breakfast Chicken Man came to me in the OR. He leaned over and said in a loud whisper "If you've got anything in your locker that you don't want them to find you better get rid of it now." I said "What?". He repeated himself and explained "There's gonna be a shakedown inspection. Barnes is gonna kill Miles so hurry!" I was stunned. Miles lived across the hall from us and he was Bonehead's room mate. "Go, go!" he said and I left the OR. All I had in my locker was a box of .357 magnum dum dum bullets that were already in my locker when I inherited it. They were illegal under the Geneva Convention.
Barnes' room was the first one on the left. Miles and Bonehead lived next door. When I walked into the building Barnes was sitting alone in his room. He said "What's the caper?" as I walked past. Still in shock, I replied "Good morning." as if nothing was wrong and kept moving. I got my room, went inside, closed the door and opened my locker. The next thing I heard was the sound of Miles voice followed a few seconds later by a deafening BANG! Then I heard Miles shout "Barnes, you motherfucker!"
For the first time in my life I was afraid for my life. Barnes knew where I was and knew I had heard Miles identify him. The silence was complete - I could hear my heart beating. Seconds dragged by like hours. I was torn between going to the aid of Miles and hiding from Barnes. I finally could wait no longer and cautiously opened the door. Barnes was nowhere is sight and Miles was on the floor right outside my door. I yelled "Medic!" as I bent over him. He was awake and asked me "Am I going to die?" I replied "Not if you can ask me that." with no confidence. I looked at his wounds, front and back. They were both small, with very little blood, right in the middle of his chest. As he was saying "I can't move!" the medics showed up carrying a litter, as if they had been ready and waiting.
They picked him up and carried him away leaving me to my thoughts. What the hell had just happened?
I walked, confused and dazed, back to the OR. Much to my amazement I saw Barnes sitting in the CO's office smiling and looking very smug. Top and the CO were in there with him. He looked like he owned the place. A few minutes later the MPs showed up and hustled Barnes away in cuffs. He never stopped smiling.
A trio of CID investigators came. They wear fatigues just like everyone else but they bear no tags. No name, rank, unit patch, no nothing. That's how you can spot them. It turned out that I was the only witness. They questioned me at length but I never told them why I had gone to my room in the first place. They never asked. Meanwhile Top and the officers did the shakedown and came back to the OR with a box of contraband including my dum dums. No one ever said anything to me about them.
I tried to get the Morning Report done but it was tough. The events of that morning had been pretty overhelming. I looked up in time to see that the MPs were back. "Now what?" I wondered. This time I was a bystander. Behind the lead MP were two SP4s and a buck sgt with 5th Cav patches. They were lean, tanned and wore faded fatigues. Behind them was another MP bringing up the rear.
The lead MP approached Top and said "We caught these guys stealing bunks out of one of your transient barracks. What do you want to do with 'em?" Top sighed. "You boys picked a bad day to pull a stunt like this." he said with a tired voice. "We just had a shooting here not three hours ago and the CID is still here. What the hell were you doing?"
The sgt answered that they knew we had a few empty barracks and we'd never miss a deuce and a half load of bunks and mattresses. All they had to sleep on was cots. Top shook his head in disgust. He sat for a few seconds looking at the miscreants and finally said "Put those bunks back where you found 'em and get outta here. If you ever come back you're in trouble! Now beat it!"
Ahh. Here was a caper that I could get into. History is full of tales about one outfit stealing from another. Patton had guys prowling the port of Antwerp commandeering portable bridges so he could be the first into Germany. Even my dad told about a time when his LST was carrying beer to the troops on Guam. The deck was piled high with cases of beer and someone found that a navy footlocker was the same size as two cases of beer. They replaced quite a few cases without changing the shape of the cargo and the marine guarding it was never the wiser. Those guys from the 5th were carrying on a great tradition.
The CID guys went through Barnes' effects with a fine tooth comb. They found some white powder hidden inside an empty 50 caliber shell casing. At one point I heard the XO ask one of the agents about guys that smoke pot. He was told "If we busted everyone who smoked pot, there wouldn't be enough people left to fight the war. That includes all ranks."
The CO made a connection between what had just happened and the use of the catch phrase "What's the caper?" He ordered the company to stop saying it.
My work day was finally done and after a meal of fish sticks and veggies I went back to my room to find Chicken Man sorting through a box of photographs. There was a trash can on the floor with a pile of photos in it. He explained that he was worried about the investigation that was sure to come and he wanted to get rid of all photos with him and Barnes or Miles, or photos of him smoking pot.
Needless to say I had a question for him and he knew it. I wanted to know how he knew there was going to a shooting and this is the story he told. It all started before I even came. Barnes had found out that Miles was gay and had started to blackmail him. As time went by he got Miles' stereo, piece by piece, which he never listened to. Recently he had talked about killing Miles because he was "just a queer". No one took him seriously until last night when he produced a pistol. Someone called the MPs but they couldn't do anything because Barnes hadn't done anything yet. The MPs couldn't find his pistol and left after just talking to him. Miles knew nothing because he slept with his boyfriend on the far end of the battalion, no one knew for sure where.
The next day Bonehead came to me in great turmoil. Two of the "What's the caper?" trio were still there and Bonehead was worried that one of them, very short with only a week left, was going to do unto him what Barnes did unto Miles. I was receptive because of what Chicken Man had told me the night before. We went to the CO who went with us to the Battalion CO. The next day the guy Bonehead was afraid of was on a plane back to the world.
The two of us went to the hospital to see Miles. He was in good spirits even though he was a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. The bullet had damaged his spinal column but missed his heart by a fraction of an inch. He was being sent back to the world in a couple of days. The other guys around him looked much worse than he did. One guy's entire body was purple. It was an eye full.
A few days later the CID came back. This time they talked to both Bonehead and me, one at a time. I answered their questions but didn't tell them about Chicken Man's story. When I first became a company clerk back in Ft Polk I answered the phone and the caller asked for the CO. I said "I'm sorry, sir, Captain Smith is out to lunch right now but he should be back around 1300 hours. Can I take a message?" I hung up thinking I had been very business like and military.
The old Top looked at me and said "Son, never volunteer information." It was advice that I took to heart. The CID agent asked me what he wanted to know and I answered. Then, at the end of the interrogation the agent stepped closer and said softly "You should know that Gen Creighton Abrams has taken a personal interest in this case." Creighton Abrams! The name resounded on a couple of levels for me. During the Battle of the Bulge he had lead the relief of the 101st Airborne and 10th Armor at Bastogne. Now he was in command of all US forces in Vietnam. Why, with all the death and destruction in Vietnam, would he be interested in this case?
Meanwhile life went on. As i said, I was sending most of my pay home and what I kept was barely enough for cigarettes and beer. One day I heard they were looking for a bartender at the NCO club. I could do that, so I walked over there. The sgt I talked to was very direct: "We're here to rip people off. We weigh the bottles before and after each shift. We expect you to get at least 38 drinks out of a 32 ounce bottle. It's easy to short shot. It's all in the wrists. If anyone objects send 'em to me. Any questions?"
His bluntness was almost breathtaking but, what the heck, I needed the money and I figured I'd only be ripping off a bunch of lifers, so I took the job. They liked me, I'm ashamed to say. I could get 40 drinks out of a bottle and I only had one complaint. I referred him to the sgt and he disappeared. I only lasted a month. I just couldn't stand to be part of such a sleazy operation. By that time I knew the same two sgts who ran the NCO club and the EM club also ran the snack bar. There was a row of slot machines there that never paid off.
Life went on. I wasn't short yet, but I wasn't as long as I had been. Bonehead went home, then Chicken Man. The only insiders left from the shooting were Quarters and me. My new room mate was a young kid who worked in receiving. The Top went home to retirement and his replacement was an eagle beak who told me "I don't always go by the book." I wasn't sure what he meant.
Quarters and I became friends. After the other two members of the "What's the caper?" trio were gone he was more sociable and we found ourselves together more and more. He was an artist, and had won some national prizes. I was impressed with his room. He had built in two bunks, a table, a refrigerator, TV and a stereo, paneling, closet and air conditioner, all without a tape measure. He used a straightened out coat hanger. Compared to all the other rooms in that barracks it was the Taj Mahal.
One day the CO came into the OR with the latest news about Barnes. He had been shipped to Hawaii to meet with his wife. He had kidnapped her and was now hiding with her in the hills. It sounded too weird to be true. I called the company clerk over at LBJ and he looked up the case. He came back to the phone and told me "Something is going on here. I did the paperwork myself but it's gone. The entire file is gone." The plot thickened.
That night I asked Quarters about it and he described the events of the night before the shooting. Barnes was very worked up. He went into the CO's office and took it over. He got on the phone and spoke a code word that gave him an open line to the pentagon where his father was a high ranking officer. They talked for an hour. Shortly after he hung up a CID agent walked into the OR, gave Barnes $2000 in greenbacks, told him there was a freighter leaving Cam Rahn Bay at 0600 hours and he should be on it. He never left.
"Why" I asked, "did the CO order us to stop using the word caper?" Quarters told me about a paperback detective novel that Barnes had become obsessed with, in which "caper" was the word used to describe the perfect crime. Barnes' idea of a perfect crime was a murder where there was advance warning that it would take place, no question about who did it and the perpetrator got off scott free. Quarters never took him seriously until the night before the shooting when he actually used a top secret code word to call the pentagon. It was then that he realized that Barnes really was connected to the highest echelon at the pentagon, and that he could use his father's help to commit the perfect crime. "He's just a queer." rang in my mind's ear. It was a sobering moment in my life. All of a sudden Gen Abram's interest made sense. It was a good ol' boys network at the highest level.
One night at about this time a bunch if us guys were listening to sounds at Quarters room when Brownie abruptly asked me "So how much is the mess sgt paying you?" Huh? I didn't know what he was talking about and I told him so. He gave a look and asked "You know that head count number the mess sgt gives you every morning?" I did. It was a number that got put into the Morning Report every day, and rations were drawn based on that number. "Well, it's bogus." he said. "The mess sgt adds 15% to the real head count. The last company clerk was getting a kick back every month."
I was past being surprised, but I was pissed off. I was being used to help the mess sgt, a sleaze ball. I already knew that he forced his cooks to play poker with him every payday when he would "win" a part of everyone's pay. Brownie asked if I'd ever seen pallets of frozen T-bone steaks being unloaded from trucks and taken into the walk-in freezer. Come to think of it, I had. "Every guy coming into country is supposed to get one of those steaks for his first meal in Nam. You ever had a steak since you been here?" I had not.
Brownie went on to tell how the mess sgt had paid $3000 dollars for his assignment and another $3000 for'' the old mess sgt's phone book. All those steaks, tons of them, had been sold to the highest bidder. We got fed pancakes with sugar water for syrup, powdered eggs and fish sticks.
I was pretty depressed when I left Quarter's place that night. It wouldn't have been so bad but for all the history I'd read in my childhood. When I was in seventh grade speech class my very first speech was two minutes long and titled "World War Two in a Nutshell". So many of my friend's dads were veterans and as I grew up I learned that many of them were involved, like my dad, in historic battles. They were heros who did their duty for "three hots and a cot." They lost friends who died with nothing to show for their service. I remembered that Benedict Arnold had been busted for corruption a few days before he changed sides. Historians talked about war profiteers like they were lower than pond scum. When Truman was in congress he uncovered four billion dollars in defense department graft and that's where he got the money for the Marshall Plan.
I was hungry so I headed for the mess hall. They served a midnight meal every night and I still liked pancakes. As I approached the mess hall I saw a bush, on fire. I was transfixed. As I watched, the fire did not consume the bush. I had an epiphany. We were not in Vietnam to defeat communism. We were there to make $$$$$.
The next morning I tried to do the Morning Report but could not bring myself to do it. I didn't do it any more at all. A week later Top came in and told me to clean out my desk. I was sure I was going to be transferred to Dong Tam or Cu Chi or some other hell hole.
Well, I wasn't transferred to some hell hole. They may have thought I knew too much and they wanted to keep an eye on me, so I was just sent over to the shipping shed. That place was run by sgt Wilson, a bully and a mean drunk, which he was most nights. On the plus side we worked 12 hour shifts, of which we only actually worked three hours.
A typical day's work for me involved walking down to the orders shack where the individual orders were printed out. I would pick up a big stack of computer print out lists of names and service numbers divided by destinations, each six carbon copies thick. When I got back the first thing I did was tear off the bottom three copies and throw them away. Then I would put our own six copy carbon pack into a typewriter, copy the lists and throw the bottom three copies away. Go figure.
Another duty involved calling out those lists over the PA system when it was time to ship those soldiers to their units. One day I was reading a list of guys going to Cu Chi when I came across my own name. When I was done reading the whole list I paged myself to come to the window. When he arrived it was a face from the past.
Before I was drafted I worked at the Dayton's Brookdale store and he worked at the Dayton's downtown store. We discovered each other when our checks got mixed up. I invited him into the shed. He was wearing faded fatigues and carrying an M16 - obviously not a new arrival. He said he was being transferred because "I shot my CO's nuts off in a fire fight. They couldn't prove I did on purpose so they transferred me to Cu Chi." I wished him luck as he climbed aboard the truck.
My room mate had a visitor one day, his uncle. It was a happy reunion. It turned out the uncle had been waiting for him to show up at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon. When he found out that his nephew was coming to Nam he paid someone at the 18th Replacement Company at Tan Son Nhut $1000 to get him assigned to Saigon so they could be close. What he didn't know was that the18th in Saigon was only a small part of the 18th, and all they did was handle guys going and coming on R&R. His nephew was sent to Long Bihn. It wasn't a total loss, though. Long Bihn was only 16 miles from Saigon.
The uncle was a colorful character, to put it mildly. He was what is known as a camp follower. He lived off soldiers by playing cards with them. Fat and greasy, with a pencil moustache, he was very friendly to his nephew's friends. Like his nephew he was from Nashville but it had been many years since he had been there. He was wanted in too many states to ever go there again. That's why he was so happy to have his nephew so close. He invited all of us to visit him in Saigon. It sounded like an interesting thing to do.
Four of us made the trip. Quarters, my room mate, Chamberlain (a truck driver) and I rode in Chamberlain's deuce and a half. He was amazing. He could handle that truck, no power steering, like a sports car. He knew Saigon like the back of his hand, even the so called enemy territory of Cholon and he did it while smoking two packs of joints a day.
FYI: You could buy pot in two ways around Long Bihn. In bulk, cleaned, no seeds or stems, for $40/ kilo or by the pack ($2) or carton ($18) . The vendors would take the tobacco out of cigarettes (Kools) and refill them with pot, put them back in the pack and reseal it.
Chamberlain drove us to a white French villa in a ritzy part of town. You'd never know there was a war going on. Hedges, flower beds, ornamental trees and lawn sculptures made it look like a nice neighborhood back home. We were greeted by the uncle and one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She was Phillipine, dressed in the Vietnamese style with a full length tight red silk dress slit up to the waist with tight black silk slacks and spike high heels. Wow! Wow! Every move she made was a sensual, visual delight. Long, red fingernails, long, black hair, full, red lips, she was a slender, delicate vision of woman. She liked us too. We were young.
She was the uncle's mistress/bodyguard. He had her demonstrate her martial skills. Faster than my eye could see she produced a 12" Phillipine switch blade from somewhere on her person. My mind went back to the old comic strip TERRY AND THE PIRATES which featured an oriental femme fatale called "The Dragon Lady". I was bewitched as she showed us a new way to play solitaire, but then we got around to the business part of why the uncle paid $1000 to have his nephew so close. He needed a reliable contact within the US military.
He handled millions of dollars of MPC, or military payment currency either by winning it or playing the currency black market. He had to get that changed to real money before he could spend it. He was paying 15% to do that but he thought 8 or 9 % was fairer. That's where his nephew came in. You see, US officers could buy unlimited postal money orders with MPC which were then redeemed in real money. Enlisted men could only buy $300 worth per month so my room mate would need to recruit officers to handle all that MPC.
From what I had seen that wouldn't be hard. Every career soldier I knew had something going on the side and this scam took no effort at all. The uncle showed us some of his muscle, just in case someone tried to rip him off. There was a false back in a closet and inside was an arsenal with guns, grenades, rocket launchers and claymore mines. He had passports from four different countries. He carried a pistol in his pocket along with a roll of greenbacks that included $100 bills. The largest legal bill in Nam was a 20.
Before we went back that day the uncle had to show us how he stacked a deck to play black jack. Bicycle makes two different cards that are identical except for the finish, which are either matte or gloss. He took all the cards under 10 out of the matte deck and replaced them with gloss cards. Then he had the lighting in the room set up so he was the only one who could see the difference. He told us about winning hundreds of thousands of dollars from American officers who were only being paid a few thousand a year. Remember, this is back in the '60s.
By this time I was one disillusioned patriot. I remembered my church sending it's young men off to war with steel jacketed New Testaments to fight the godless communists. "Kill a commie for Christ!" was the war cry. I remembered the conventional wisdom was "Those Vietnamese don't have the respect for life that we do." Meanwhile we were the ones who traveled half way around the world to wage mechanized war on a country that never attacked us. I was surrounded by people who Benedict Arnold would have been proud of.
I felt sorry for our Mama-san. She was a middle aged mother of three whose husband was an ARVN soldier stationed in Saigon. She was basically a single parent. She worked hard, did a very good job for all us guys and she could drink a beer faster than anyone I've ever seen. I'm still haunted by something I saw years later. There was a series on TV about the Vietnam war. In the last episode, when the communists were closing in on Saigon, there was a film clip of women digging a tank trap. There she was. It must have been a desperate time for her. She had worked for the Americans and her husband was an ARVN..
One day I was walking past the battalion chapel when I saw an "Organist Wanted" sign. I went in and got the job. I was happy to get away from the sewer that military service had become. It paid $10 a service and all I had to do was play four hymns per service, two services a week. The organ had just been donated to the chapel and it was a Hammond B3 with a big Leslie speaker - an iconic jazz instrument. I knew it had never been in a jazz club because it didn't smell of booze and cigarettes. It was a nice part time gig, about three hours a week. One day I was in the organ loft practicing when the chaplain came in carrying one of those aluminum camera cases. He opened it and showed off the contents to his assistant, who asked how much he paid for the two cameras, lenses, filters and tripod. The chaplain said "Well, you know that orphan jeep that someone left up by receiving? I took it over to the PX and traded it for all this stuff." Suddenly I lost interest in being an organist.
I found out that my CO and the battalion CO were helping to launder money for my room mate's uncle. I remember sitting in a bunker one night wondering if that rocket that just came in had been paid for by my CO. My room mate came back from Saigon with the news that the sargent major of the army and a bunch of his friends were about to be busted for running crooked EM and NCO clubs, etc. He speculated that someone had welched on a gambling debt.
I was getting short. Quarters left and sold his room to my room mate, so I moved in with him for the few weeks I had left. One day there was a knock at the door and when I opened it there was my bunk mate from basic training! He had tracked me down somehow and stopped by on his way to Saigon. We had started out two years before with the coincidence of his buying the house where I lived. We went on to be the two guys out of 200 who were shipped to Ft Polk to be supply clerks but were made into company clerks. We were sent to Nam at the same time but I entered through Long Bihn while he came in through Cam Rahn Bay. That much I knew.
He brought me up to date. While I never made it past the repo depot, neither did he. He became the company clerk of the company in Cam Rahn Bay that welcomed new troops. Again, we were two out of many to get the same jobs in the only two of their kind companies in Vietnam . The coincidences ended there. While I was disgusted by the corruption swirling around me, of which I've only told you a fraction, he embraced it. He made money off the EM and NCO clubs, he ran a whore house, and he was on his way to Saigon to line up a sub contractor gig for when he got out the same day I did. "I'll be able to retire in three years!" he bragged. That was in 1969. The Americans were out of Nam in '72. I wonder if he achieved his goal.
Why did all that graft bother me so much? The millions of soldiers who gave it all for their country deserve better. What’s more, I believe the corruption cost us the war. The enemy got a lot of comfort from our crookedness. They knew we were too dishonest to prevail. Our very reason for being there was a sham.
I always thought I'd be in the military some day. My dad was in the navy during WWII. My grandfather was in the army during WWI. I had an ancestor who was killed in the Civil War. It was toward the end, when Grant had Lee cornered in Petersburg. Jubal Early led what was left of the Army of the Shenandoah for an attack on Washington so he could draw Union forces away from Lee. By that time there were very few Union troops left in Washington. My ancestor was one of a group of Union cavalry that was thrown together with some local militia to try to slow the Confederates down. The Union soldiers knew they would be casualties. They were outnumbered by 10 to 1. Early was moving fast and would take no prisoners. The Union troops were under orders to yield no ground. It was a death sentence, but they did their job. By the time Early made it past them reinforcements had reached Washington.
One of the things I learned from history was that 10% casualties are considered very high. I figured the odds were on my side. The only reason guys my age enlisted was to avoid the infantry. The only reason I would have enlisted was the get into a band. That was a four year gig, which was too long for me, so I just waited to be drafted. Meanwhile I got a job selling women's shoes for Dayton's. Who'da thunk that would keep me out of the infantry.
I moved into an old mansion behind the Guthrie Theater that had been converted to a rooming house for guys. One day we were given an eviction notice. All the houses on that street had been bought by a company that planned to tear them down and replace them with high rent apartments. Lo and behold, when I was drafted the guy that was assigned to the bunk under mine was a part owner of that company along with his dad. He once bragged to me that his business philosophy was "If you've a buddy and he's true blue, fuck him before he fucks you."
After basic we were given the same assignment. The army thought we'd make good supply clerks without all the usual eight weeks of training, just some OJT, or on the job training. We were sent to Ft Polk, LA. When we got there the battalion Sgt Major said "We don't need supply clerks. We need company clerks! Either of boys type?" I had been told that if anyone asks you that always say yes so I did. We both did.
He was assigned to a company that trained supply clerks. I went to a company that trained company clerks. Go figure. The outgoing clerk had two weeks to go and was drunk the whole time from the moment I showed up. They later brought in another short timer to fill in for me while I went to the same classes that our regular trainees went through.
The best part about my stay in Louisiana was the time four of us went to a big bar called The Evangeline, named for a book by the same name. When things got old there we drove to the nearby town of Mamou. There was a little bar there and when we walked in we heard music coming from the back room. We asked if the party was open to the public. The bartender shrugged his shoulders and said something affirmative. We went in. It was a week before Mardi Gras and some of the party goers were in old harlequin costumes. There was a band playing what I immediately recognized as old time, but with a French accent instead of a Swedish accent.
As our eyes adjusted to the light we could see that we were far from welcome. The glares that came from some of the men in the room were openly hostile. While at Ft Polk we had all heard stories about the local Cajuns and knives. We were getting a little edgy when a little butterball as round as she was tall came up to us and said "One of you has to dance with the groom's mother." She pointed to another cute little butterball. We looked at each other. The other three guys didn't have a clue what the band was playing. I knew right away that it was a waltz and how to dance it. I approached the designated woman and asked her if she'd like to dance. She smiled and we danced. I put on the charm and asked if the four of us could meet the bride and groom. We were accepted as though we were invited guests. It was my first exposure to Cajun culture and it reminded me of the Scandinavian bars in Minnesota that have old time bands.
My time at Ft Polk came to an end when, after 10 months in the army, I got orders to go to Vietnam. Not only that, but the guy from the bunk below me in basic training got orders for Vietnam the same day I did. The only difference between our orders was that I was to go through Oakland, CA and he was to go through Ft Lewis, WA.
I had a wonderful two week leave during which I proposed to Jenny every few minutes. Finally my leave was over and in the rush to get going I dug my dress khakis out of the laundry and ran an iron over them. That's when I realized the cat had peed on my shirt. There was no time to wash it so I made the trip surrounded by an aroma. WHEW! Jenny finally said yes when I was about to get on the plane. I was flying high long before the plane ever left the ground. As I looked out that window I said to myself 'OK shithead, you've got a year to get your act together.'
We were put on an airliner that sported a shark's mouth paint job and the name Flying Tiger. The trip to Nam took 23 hours with stops in Alaska and Japan. We knew we were over Vietnam because all of a sudden there were bomb craters as far as the eye could see in all directions. Just before we landed someone came on the intercom to talk about money. Among other things, he warned us to stay away from the currency black market. The enemy ran that market to help raise money for their war effort.
Moments later we were on the ground in Bien Hoa. As I walked off the plane I was struck by the smell. Something about it took me back to a time in high school when I read the complete works of Franz Kafka in a two week period. It was like living in a cloud of atomized urine. Then I noticed that there were tall, thin spires of black smoke all around the airport.We were put on buses for the trip to our first stop, a temporary layover where we'd stay for a couple days till we were sent to our permanent assignment. On the way the bus drove by an ominus looking corrugated steel stockade. A sgt in the front of the bus told us it was Long Bihn Jail, or LBJ, and that if we fucked up we'd end up there crushing rocks. I became aware that the roads were all lined with white crushed rock.
Night was falling when we got to the "repo depot". We were sent to the mess hall for our first meal in Vietnam. It was pancakes with sugar water for syrup. OK with me. I was hungry. The next morning it was pancakes again followed by assembly. I was put into a work detail that was sent to clean the NCO club. The work wasn't bad, but there were Vietnamese girls there who apparently worked there. Wow! They were wildly sexy women dressed in tight dresses and spike heels. It was at that time that I found out that those tall, black, smoke spires were the offal, collected by older Vietnamese women, from the latrines, doused with diesel fuel and burned.
After lunch there was another assembly. My name was called and I was told to report to the orderly room. 'Oh oh.' I thought, 'This could be bad news.
An old 1st sgt sat behind a desk. He was older than my dad, so he must have been in the army since before WWII. He looked up and I identified myself. He picked up a folder and said "You've got eight months experience as a company clerk?" When I said yes he told me they needed a company clerk and then he asked if I wanted the job. He ASKED me! I'm a pfc draftee and a grizzled old top sgt had asked me if I wanted the assignment! I said yes.
I had seen the soft serve ice cream stand. The army wouldn't put all of us unarmed soldiers here if it wasn't safe. Those sexy girls at the NCO club wouldn't be there if this was a hot spot, would they? Those thoughts ran through my head as I ran to get my duffel bag out of the barracks. I was told to find an empty bunk upstairs behind the orderly room. There I found a buck sgt angrily packing his own duffel bag. He told me that he was being sent back home to Lubbock, Texas to face bigamy charges. Apparently one wife had found out about the other one. He didn't see what the problem was. He was supporting them both.
There was one other person upstairs, a teenage Vietnamese girl. She was far different from the girls I had seen that morning. She was plain, she wore black slacks and a print top and she had a sour expression. The sgt told me that she was the "baby-san" who would clean my quarters, make my bunk and shine my boots for $10 a month. I assumed that was the going rate and I didn't question it. I had to get back to the orderly room.
The XO, or Executive Officer, told me to get in the jeep and then he drove me around Long Bihn to get my paperwork done. It pays to have help when doing that sort of thing. Otherwise you can waste hours and hours. As were drove back through a bullet riddled village that the XO told me was the actual Long Bihn, we passed the Texan as he was driving a huge olive drab fork lift into an alley followed by a couple of locals. I said I had just met him and he was going back to Texas because he was charged with bigamy. The XO laughed and said he was supporting his two wives by selling anything that wasn't nailed down.
When we got back to the company area the XO pointed at a bare concrete slab in the midst of the other barracks and casually told me that was where the old permanent party barracks had been. I said "What?" and he said "Oh. Didn't Top tell you? We had a rocket attack three days ago. Lost our company clerk and three other guys that morning. It came in at breakfast time and we think they were aiming for the mess hall. That would have been really bad."
I was shocked! The war was suddenly much closer than I had thought. The XO stopped in front of a building and told me to get a haircut before reporting back to the OR. I went in and there was a sgt behind the cash register, but he was the only American working there. The barbers were all locals. I sat down and looked at the price list on the wall. Haircuts were $2. I told the barber I wanted a haircut and he smiled and nodded. He finished the haircut and proceeded to trim the hair on my ears. Then he went on give me a scalp massage. I was impressed. I thought this guy really wanted my return business. It was just like the barber shop at the Raddison Hotel back in Minneapolis. When he was done he handed me a bill for $7. Again I was shocked. Things were not as they seemed. When I complained to the cashier that I had only asked for a haircut he let me know that I had to tell the barber when to stop. That left me with $13 dollars to last till payday.
I realized that the reason I had been played for such a sucker was my brand new fatigues. The other permanent party guys I had seen all had faded, tailored fatigues with skin tight tapered pant legs. I had to get me some of those. Till then I would stand out like a sore thumb in my shiny, baggy new uniforms. I did, however, get a white helmet liner that set me apart from those lowly transients, which I had so recently been. I had learned in my last assignment that to be 'permanent party' in a company of trainees or transients was the same as outranking just about anyone under E5.
After I'd been in country a few days my baby-san asked me if I would buy her an alarm clock at the PX and she'd pay me back. I said sure but when I got there and saw they were selling Beefeaters gin for $4 a quart and cigarettes for $5 a carton. I forgot the alarm clock. Jenny had introduced me to martinis, so drinking gin reminded me of her. I was set for the month! Baby-san didn't seem to notice that I hadn't bought her the clock and I didn't bring it up.
The next day Top came in and asked me if my housekeeper wanted me to buy her a clock. I said yes, but added that I hadn't done it. Top said he was going to battalion and left. An hour later he was back with the CO and three ARVN MPs. They had Baby-san with them - in chains. She looked terrible. I watched as the MPs roughly put her into the back of a jeep and drove away. Something told me she did not have long to live.
Back in the OR Top and the CO were discussing what had just happened. It seemed she had asked four other guys to buy her clocks too. Not only that but she had just started working there a week before the rocket attack. The thing that convinced them the most was that the mama-san that worked for most of the guys hated her. She seemed to have said a few choice things to those MPs.
It was an inauspicious introduction to war. The first American I met was a thieving bigamist and the first Vietnamese I met was the spy responsible for killing the guy I replaced.
40 years ago there was a night when I felt like I was finally accepted in the company. It was payday and I was invited to play cards. I didn't have much money because I had arranged to send most of my pay home, but I did have a bottle of gin.
The next morning I didn't remember much about what happened the night before. I lost some money and had one too many gin gimlets. Ouch! During the day I suffered the usual amount, knowing the hangover would last till supper time. After coming back from the mess hall all I wanted to do was lay down on my bunk and read.
A bunch of guys were talking about the impending move to the new permanent party barracks. It would be made up of semi private rooms with clerks downstairs and cooks upstairs. They were choosing up room mates. One of the guys that everyone called "Chicken Man" asked me if I wanted to room with him. He was called that because he imitated a popular radio personality by the same name. You could hear him going "Prawk prawk prawk Praaawwwk!! all over the company area. Flattered by the gesture of someone who had been in country so much longer than me, I said yes. We had to build our own rooms, using material recycled from the old permanent party barracks.
Later on, one of the other guys, named "Bonehead" approached me with a brown paper bag in his hand. He asked if I wanted to smoke some pot. I must admit I was curious. "Sure!" I said, and we went outside. Soon we were laughing and stumbling into and out of a ditch. Later we went into someone's room and listened to music. I remember hallucinating looking at a cap hanging on a wall. I could have sworn it was a face suspended in air. The next thing I knew it was morning and I awoke feeling great. No hangover! I was amazed! That was some magical stuff. Tons of fun and no pain! M y life had changed.
We started the new permanent party barracks the next day. Chicken Man and I opted for the plain, four walls and a door look. However, one of the guys next door, Quarters, had some experience with a hammer and saw and it showed. Not only that, but he had an AIR CONDITIONER! Envy, envy, envy.
He and his room mate Bubba had arrived in country just before I did. I didn't know him and he hung out with two real short timers. They all worked in the receiving department and I heard that one of them had worked in the same department back in Oakland. My room mate had told me that one of them, a guy named Barnes, took the first quarter inch of tobacco out of all his cigarettes and replaced it with opium. They kept to themselves. They had coined a catch phrase, "What's the caper?", that was catching on throughout the company.
The new barracks was directly across from the mess hall. There was a landing between first and second floor and it became a gathering place for the cooks. Just past the mess hall was the perimeter and beyond that was an open field. I was shocked to learn that prior to Tet '68 that field had been a jungle. Charlie had infiltrated it and there was a battle during which the jungle had been bombed and napalmed flat except for the bomb craters. Vietnam was such a green place that by the time I arrived six months later the scars had been covered with greenery.
Beyond the horizon was an ammo dump, and at exactly 5 oclock every afternoon they blew up dud ammo. The explosions were sometimes big enough to make the buildings shake. Well, 5 oclock was also the beginning of the dinner rush at the mess hall and there was always a long line of transients waiting to eat by the time the mess hall opened. The off duty cooks congregated on the landing could time the explosions on their expensive Seiko watches and yell "INCOMING!" just before the big bang. They laughed as they watched all those newbies hit the ground. It was the most fun during monsoon when so many guys dove into puddles.
Cooks. It confirmed my belief that if the army didn't know what else to do with a guy, they made a cook out of him. There were, however, always a few, notable exceptions like Brownie or Dave. Brownie was a cajun with a college education. He was smart and articulate but he was a product of his heritage. When he was13 his daddy taught him the facts of life by taking him to his favorite whore house and turning him over to the madam. Dave, on the other hand, had once played with Jerry Lee Lewis and had the 8 X 10 glossies to prove it. God, he was good! He would take the EM club by storm, playing GREAT BALLS OF FIRE like Lewis himself. Once he played on Armed Forces TV, and it was such a beautiful ballad it was hard for a macho stud to watch. He was a rock - a - billy genius but when I had him listen to my album of THE RITE OF SPRING he was very impressed.
Life in Nam fell into a rhythm. The longer you had been there the shorter you were. It was all about surviving your year and going back to "the world". I figured out which direction was east-northeast and would gaze in that direction and think about Jenny. Meanwhile events were brewing about which I was oblivious. I was still just a believer doing my duty to my country.
One morning before breakfast Chicken Man came to me in the OR. He leaned over and said in a loud whisper "If you've got anything in your locker that you don't want them to find you better get rid of it now." I said "What?". He repeated himself and explained "There's gonna be a shakedown inspection. Barnes is gonna kill Miles so hurry!" I was stunned. Miles lived across the hall from us and he was Bonehead's room mate. "Go, go!" he said and I left the OR. All I had in my locker was a box of .357 magnum dum dum bullets that were already in my locker when I inherited it. They were illegal under the Geneva Convention.
Barnes' room was the first one on the left. Miles and Bonehead lived next door. When I walked into the building Barnes was sitting alone in his room. He said "What's the caper?" as I walked past. Still in shock, I replied "Good morning." as if nothing was wrong and kept moving. I got my room, went inside, closed the door and opened my locker. The next thing I heard was the sound of Miles voice followed a few seconds later by a deafening BANG! Then I heard Miles shout "Barnes, you motherfucker!"
For the first time in my life I was afraid for my life. Barnes knew where I was and knew I had heard Miles identify him. The silence was complete - I could hear my heart beating. Seconds dragged by like hours. I was torn between going to the aid of Miles and hiding from Barnes. I finally could wait no longer and cautiously opened the door. Barnes was nowhere is sight and Miles was on the floor right outside my door. I yelled "Medic!" as I bent over him. He was awake and asked me "Am I going to die?" I replied "Not if you can ask me that." with no confidence. I looked at his wounds, front and back. They were both small, with very little blood, right in the middle of his chest. As he was saying "I can't move!" the medics showed up carrying a litter, as if they had been ready and waiting.
They picked him up and carried him away leaving me to my thoughts. What the hell had just happened?
I walked, confused and dazed, back to the OR. Much to my amazement I saw Barnes sitting in the CO's office smiling and looking very smug. Top and the CO were in there with him. He looked like he owned the place. A few minutes later the MPs showed up and hustled Barnes away in cuffs. He never stopped smiling.
A trio of CID investigators came. They wear fatigues just like everyone else but they bear no tags. No name, rank, unit patch, no nothing. That's how you can spot them. It turned out that I was the only witness. They questioned me at length but I never told them why I had gone to my room in the first place. They never asked. Meanwhile Top and the officers did the shakedown and came back to the OR with a box of contraband including my dum dums. No one ever said anything to me about them.
I tried to get the Morning Report done but it was tough. The events of that morning had been pretty overhelming. I looked up in time to see that the MPs were back. "Now what?" I wondered. This time I was a bystander. Behind the lead MP were two SP4s and a buck sgt with 5th Cav patches. They were lean, tanned and wore faded fatigues. Behind them was another MP bringing up the rear.
The lead MP approached Top and said "We caught these guys stealing bunks out of one of your transient barracks. What do you want to do with 'em?" Top sighed. "You boys picked a bad day to pull a stunt like this." he said with a tired voice. "We just had a shooting here not three hours ago and the CID is still here. What the hell were you doing?"
The sgt answered that they knew we had a few empty barracks and we'd never miss a deuce and a half load of bunks and mattresses. All they had to sleep on was cots. Top shook his head in disgust. He sat for a few seconds looking at the miscreants and finally said "Put those bunks back where you found 'em and get outta here. If you ever come back you're in trouble! Now beat it!"
Ahh. Here was a caper that I could get into. History is full of tales about one outfit stealing from another. Patton had guys prowling the port of Antwerp commandeering portable bridges so he could be the first into Germany. Even my dad told about a time when his LST was carrying beer to the troops on Guam. The deck was piled high with cases of beer and someone found that a navy footlocker was the same size as two cases of beer. They replaced quite a few cases without changing the shape of the cargo and the marine guarding it was never the wiser. Those guys from the 5th were carrying on a great tradition.
The CID guys went through Barnes' effects with a fine tooth comb. They found some white powder hidden inside an empty 50 caliber shell casing. At one point I heard the XO ask one of the agents about guys that smoke pot. He was told "If we busted everyone who smoked pot, there wouldn't be enough people left to fight the war. That includes all ranks."
The CO made a connection between what had just happened and the use of the catch phrase "What's the caper?" He ordered the company to stop saying it.
My work day was finally done and after a meal of fish sticks and veggies I went back to my room to find Chicken Man sorting through a box of photographs. There was a trash can on the floor with a pile of photos in it. He explained that he was worried about the investigation that was sure to come and he wanted to get rid of all photos with him and Barnes or Miles, or photos of him smoking pot.
Needless to say I had a question for him and he knew it. I wanted to know how he knew there was going to a shooting and this is the story he told. It all started before I even came. Barnes had found out that Miles was gay and had started to blackmail him. As time went by he got Miles' stereo, piece by piece, which he never listened to. Recently he had talked about killing Miles because he was "just a queer". No one took him seriously until last night when he produced a pistol. Someone called the MPs but they couldn't do anything because Barnes hadn't done anything yet. The MPs couldn't find his pistol and left after just talking to him. Miles knew nothing because he slept with his boyfriend on the far end of the battalion, no one knew for sure where.
The next day Bonehead came to me in great turmoil. Two of the "What's the caper?" trio were still there and Bonehead was worried that one of them, very short with only a week left, was going to do unto him what Barnes did unto Miles. I was receptive because of what Chicken Man had told me the night before. We went to the CO who went with us to the Battalion CO. The next day the guy Bonehead was afraid of was on a plane back to the world.
The two of us went to the hospital to see Miles. He was in good spirits even though he was a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. The bullet had damaged his spinal column but missed his heart by a fraction of an inch. He was being sent back to the world in a couple of days. The other guys around him looked much worse than he did. One guy's entire body was purple. It was an eye full.
A few days later the CID came back. This time they talked to both Bonehead and me, one at a time. I answered their questions but didn't tell them about Chicken Man's story. When I first became a company clerk back in Ft Polk I answered the phone and the caller asked for the CO. I said "I'm sorry, sir, Captain Smith is out to lunch right now but he should be back around 1300 hours. Can I take a message?" I hung up thinking I had been very business like and military.
The old Top looked at me and said "Son, never volunteer information." It was advice that I took to heart. The CID agent asked me what he wanted to know and I answered. Then, at the end of the interrogation the agent stepped closer and said softly "You should know that Gen Creighton Abrams has taken a personal interest in this case." Creighton Abrams! The name resounded on a couple of levels for me. During the Battle of the Bulge he had lead the relief of the 101st Airborne and 10th Armor at Bastogne. Now he was in command of all US forces in Vietnam. Why, with all the death and destruction in Vietnam, would he be interested in this case?
Meanwhile life went on. As i said, I was sending most of my pay home and what I kept was barely enough for cigarettes and beer. One day I heard they were looking for a bartender at the NCO club. I could do that, so I walked over there. The sgt I talked to was very direct: "We're here to rip people off. We weigh the bottles before and after each shift. We expect you to get at least 38 drinks out of a 32 ounce bottle. It's easy to short shot. It's all in the wrists. If anyone objects send 'em to me. Any questions?"
His bluntness was almost breathtaking but, what the heck, I needed the money and I figured I'd only be ripping off a bunch of lifers, so I took the job. They liked me, I'm ashamed to say. I could get 40 drinks out of a bottle and I only had one complaint. I referred him to the sgt and he disappeared. I only lasted a month. I just couldn't stand to be part of such a sleazy operation. By that time I knew the same two sgts who ran the NCO club and the EM club also ran the snack bar. There was a row of slot machines there that never paid off.
Life went on. I wasn't short yet, but I wasn't as long as I had been. Bonehead went home, then Chicken Man. The only insiders left from the shooting were Quarters and me. My new room mate was a young kid who worked in receiving. The Top went home to retirement and his replacement was an eagle beak who told me "I don't always go by the book." I wasn't sure what he meant.
Quarters and I became friends. After the other two members of the "What's the caper?" trio were gone he was more sociable and we found ourselves together more and more. He was an artist, and had won some national prizes. I was impressed with his room. He had built in two bunks, a table, a refrigerator, TV and a stereo, paneling, closet and air conditioner, all without a tape measure. He used a straightened out coat hanger. Compared to all the other rooms in that barracks it was the Taj Mahal.
One day the CO came into the OR with the latest news about Barnes. He had been shipped to Hawaii to meet with his wife. He had kidnapped her and was now hiding with her in the hills. It sounded too weird to be true. I called the company clerk over at LBJ and he looked up the case. He came back to the phone and told me "Something is going on here. I did the paperwork myself but it's gone. The entire file is gone." The plot thickened.
That night I asked Quarters about it and he described the events of the night before the shooting. Barnes was very worked up. He went into the CO's office and took it over. He got on the phone and spoke a code word that gave him an open line to the pentagon where his father was a high ranking officer. They talked for an hour. Shortly after he hung up a CID agent walked into the OR, gave Barnes $2000 in greenbacks, told him there was a freighter leaving Cam Rahn Bay at 0600 hours and he should be on it. He never left.
"Why" I asked, "did the CO order us to stop using the word caper?" Quarters told me about a paperback detective novel that Barnes had become obsessed with, in which "caper" was the word used to describe the perfect crime. Barnes' idea of a perfect crime was a murder where there was advance warning that it would take place, no question about who did it and the perpetrator got off scott free. Quarters never took him seriously until the night before the shooting when he actually used a top secret code word to call the pentagon. It was then that he realized that Barnes really was connected to the highest echelon at the pentagon, and that he could use his father's help to commit the perfect crime. "He's just a queer." rang in my mind's ear. It was a sobering moment in my life. All of a sudden Gen Abram's interest made sense. It was a good ol' boys network at the highest level.
One night at about this time a bunch if us guys were listening to sounds at Quarters room when Brownie abruptly asked me "So how much is the mess sgt paying you?" Huh? I didn't know what he was talking about and I told him so. He gave a look and asked "You know that head count number the mess sgt gives you every morning?" I did. It was a number that got put into the Morning Report every day, and rations were drawn based on that number. "Well, it's bogus." he said. "The mess sgt adds 15% to the real head count. The last company clerk was getting a kick back every month."
I was past being surprised, but I was pissed off. I was being used to help the mess sgt, a sleaze ball. I already knew that he forced his cooks to play poker with him every payday when he would "win" a part of everyone's pay. Brownie asked if I'd ever seen pallets of frozen T-bone steaks being unloaded from trucks and taken into the walk-in freezer. Come to think of it, I had. "Every guy coming into country is supposed to get one of those steaks for his first meal in Nam. You ever had a steak since you been here?" I had not.
Brownie went on to tell how the mess sgt had paid $3000 dollars for his assignment and another $3000 for'' the old mess sgt's phone book. All those steaks, tons of them, had been sold to the highest bidder. We got fed pancakes with sugar water for syrup, powdered eggs and fish sticks.
I was pretty depressed when I left Quarter's place that night. It wouldn't have been so bad but for all the history I'd read in my childhood. When I was in seventh grade speech class my very first speech was two minutes long and titled "World War Two in a Nutshell". So many of my friend's dads were veterans and as I grew up I learned that many of them were involved, like my dad, in historic battles. They were heros who did their duty for "three hots and a cot." They lost friends who died with nothing to show for their service. I remembered that Benedict Arnold had been busted for corruption a few days before he changed sides. Historians talked about war profiteers like they were lower than pond scum. When Truman was in congress he uncovered four billion dollars in defense department graft and that's where he got the money for the Marshall Plan.
I was hungry so I headed for the mess hall. They served a midnight meal every night and I still liked pancakes. As I approached the mess hall I saw a bush, on fire. I was transfixed. As I watched, the fire did not consume the bush. I had an epiphany. We were not in Vietnam to defeat communism. We were there to make $$$$$.
The next morning I tried to do the Morning Report but could not bring myself to do it. I didn't do it any more at all. A week later Top came in and told me to clean out my desk. I was sure I was going to be transferred to Dong Tam or Cu Chi or some other hell hole.
Well, I wasn't transferred to some hell hole. They may have thought I knew too much and they wanted to keep an eye on me, so I was just sent over to the shipping shed. That place was run by sgt Wilson, a bully and a mean drunk, which he was most nights. On the plus side we worked 12 hour shifts, of which we only actually worked three hours.
A typical day's work for me involved walking down to the orders shack where the individual orders were printed out. I would pick up a big stack of computer print out lists of names and service numbers divided by destinations, each six carbon copies thick. When I got back the first thing I did was tear off the bottom three copies and throw them away. Then I would put our own six copy carbon pack into a typewriter, copy the lists and throw the bottom three copies away. Go figure.
Another duty involved calling out those lists over the PA system when it was time to ship those soldiers to their units. One day I was reading a list of guys going to Cu Chi when I came across my own name. When I was done reading the whole list I paged myself to come to the window. When he arrived it was a face from the past.
Before I was drafted I worked at the Dayton's Brookdale store and he worked at the Dayton's downtown store. We discovered each other when our checks got mixed up. I invited him into the shed. He was wearing faded fatigues and carrying an M16 - obviously not a new arrival. He said he was being transferred because "I shot my CO's nuts off in a fire fight. They couldn't prove I did on purpose so they transferred me to Cu Chi." I wished him luck as he climbed aboard the truck.
My room mate had a visitor one day, his uncle. It was a happy reunion. It turned out the uncle had been waiting for him to show up at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon. When he found out that his nephew was coming to Nam he paid someone at the 18th Replacement Company at Tan Son Nhut $1000 to get him assigned to Saigon so they could be close. What he didn't know was that the18th in Saigon was only a small part of the 18th, and all they did was handle guys going and coming on R&R. His nephew was sent to Long Bihn. It wasn't a total loss, though. Long Bihn was only 16 miles from Saigon.
The uncle was a colorful character, to put it mildly. He was what is known as a camp follower. He lived off soldiers by playing cards with them. Fat and greasy, with a pencil moustache, he was very friendly to his nephew's friends. Like his nephew he was from Nashville but it had been many years since he had been there. He was wanted in too many states to ever go there again. That's why he was so happy to have his nephew so close. He invited all of us to visit him in Saigon. It sounded like an interesting thing to do.
Four of us made the trip. Quarters, my room mate, Chamberlain (a truck driver) and I rode in Chamberlain's deuce and a half. He was amazing. He could handle that truck, no power steering, like a sports car. He knew Saigon like the back of his hand, even the so called enemy territory of Cholon and he did it while smoking two packs of joints a day.
FYI: You could buy pot in two ways around Long Bihn. In bulk, cleaned, no seeds or stems, for $40/ kilo or by the pack ($2) or carton ($18) . The vendors would take the tobacco out of cigarettes (Kools) and refill them with pot, put them back in the pack and reseal it.
Chamberlain drove us to a white French villa in a ritzy part of town. You'd never know there was a war going on. Hedges, flower beds, ornamental trees and lawn sculptures made it look like a nice neighborhood back home. We were greeted by the uncle and one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She was Phillipine, dressed in the Vietnamese style with a full length tight red silk dress slit up to the waist with tight black silk slacks and spike high heels. Wow! Wow! Every move she made was a sensual, visual delight. Long, red fingernails, long, black hair, full, red lips, she was a slender, delicate vision of woman. She liked us too. We were young.
She was the uncle's mistress/bodyguard. He had her demonstrate her martial skills. Faster than my eye could see she produced a 12" Phillipine switch blade from somewhere on her person. My mind went back to the old comic strip TERRY AND THE PIRATES which featured an oriental femme fatale called "The Dragon Lady". I was bewitched as she showed us a new way to play solitaire, but then we got around to the business part of why the uncle paid $1000 to have his nephew so close. He needed a reliable contact within the US military.
He handled millions of dollars of MPC, or military payment currency either by winning it or playing the currency black market. He had to get that changed to real money before he could spend it. He was paying 15% to do that but he thought 8 or 9 % was fairer. That's where his nephew came in. You see, US officers could buy unlimited postal money orders with MPC which were then redeemed in real money. Enlisted men could only buy $300 worth per month so my room mate would need to recruit officers to handle all that MPC.
From what I had seen that wouldn't be hard. Every career soldier I knew had something going on the side and this scam took no effort at all. The uncle showed us some of his muscle, just in case someone tried to rip him off. There was a false back in a closet and inside was an arsenal with guns, grenades, rocket launchers and claymore mines. He had passports from four different countries. He carried a pistol in his pocket along with a roll of greenbacks that included $100 bills. The largest legal bill in Nam was a 20.
Before we went back that day the uncle had to show us how he stacked a deck to play black jack. Bicycle makes two different cards that are identical except for the finish, which are either matte or gloss. He took all the cards under 10 out of the matte deck and replaced them with gloss cards. Then he had the lighting in the room set up so he was the only one who could see the difference. He told us about winning hundreds of thousands of dollars from American officers who were only being paid a few thousand a year. Remember, this is back in the '60s.
By this time I was one disillusioned patriot. I remembered my church sending it's young men off to war with steel jacketed New Testaments to fight the godless communists. "Kill a commie for Christ!" was the war cry. I remembered the conventional wisdom was "Those Vietnamese don't have the respect for life that we do." Meanwhile we were the ones who traveled half way around the world to wage mechanized war on a country that never attacked us. I was surrounded by people who Benedict Arnold would have been proud of.
I felt sorry for our Mama-san. She was a middle aged mother of three whose husband was an ARVN soldier stationed in Saigon. She was basically a single parent. She worked hard, did a very good job for all us guys and she could drink a beer faster than anyone I've ever seen. I'm still haunted by something I saw years later. There was a series on TV about the Vietnam war. In the last episode, when the communists were closing in on Saigon, there was a film clip of women digging a tank trap. There she was. It must have been a desperate time for her. She had worked for the Americans and her husband was an ARVN..
One day I was walking past the battalion chapel when I saw an "Organist Wanted" sign. I went in and got the job. I was happy to get away from the sewer that military service had become. It paid $10 a service and all I had to do was play four hymns per service, two services a week. The organ had just been donated to the chapel and it was a Hammond B3 with a big Leslie speaker - an iconic jazz instrument. I knew it had never been in a jazz club because it didn't smell of booze and cigarettes. It was a nice part time gig, about three hours a week. One day I was in the organ loft practicing when the chaplain came in carrying one of those aluminum camera cases. He opened it and showed off the contents to his assistant, who asked how much he paid for the two cameras, lenses, filters and tripod. The chaplain said "Well, you know that orphan jeep that someone left up by receiving? I took it over to the PX and traded it for all this stuff." Suddenly I lost interest in being an organist.
I found out that my CO and the battalion CO were helping to launder money for my room mate's uncle. I remember sitting in a bunker one night wondering if that rocket that just came in had been paid for by my CO. My room mate came back from Saigon with the news that the sargent major of the army and a bunch of his friends were about to be busted for running crooked EM and NCO clubs, etc. He speculated that someone had welched on a gambling debt.
I was getting short. Quarters left and sold his room to my room mate, so I moved in with him for the few weeks I had left. One day there was a knock at the door and when I opened it there was my bunk mate from basic training! He had tracked me down somehow and stopped by on his way to Saigon. We had started out two years before with the coincidence of his buying the house where I lived. We went on to be the two guys out of 200 who were shipped to Ft Polk to be supply clerks but were made into company clerks. We were sent to Nam at the same time but I entered through Long Bihn while he came in through Cam Rahn Bay. That much I knew.
He brought me up to date. While I never made it past the repo depot, neither did he. He became the company clerk of the company in Cam Rahn Bay that welcomed new troops. Again, we were two out of many to get the same jobs in the only two of their kind companies in Vietnam . The coincidences ended there. While I was disgusted by the corruption swirling around me, of which I've only told you a fraction, he embraced it. He made money off the EM and NCO clubs, he ran a whore house, and he was on his way to Saigon to line up a sub contractor gig for when he got out the same day I did. "I'll be able to retire in three years!" he bragged. That was in 1969. The Americans were out of Nam in '72. I wonder if he achieved his goal.
Why did all that graft bother me so much? The millions of soldiers who gave it all for their country deserve better. What’s more, I believe the corruption cost us the war. The enemy got a lot of comfort from our crookedness. They knew we were too dishonest to prevail. Our very reason for being there was a sham.
