Deros Vietnam (11 page)

He was trying hard to lift our spirits. A few of the guys started to smile. “It has come to our attention that the commanding officers of
Room 222
have gone AWOL and been replaced by hard-charging lifers in need of a promotion,” Nevin pointed his finger in the direction of USARV headquarters. “We regret any inconvenience this may have caused. I repeat, all contributions will be returned.”

Nevin handed back the wagering materials as most of the guys cleared out. A few of us lingered, feeling let down, deceived.

“They didn't have to remind us we were in Vietnam,” Ward was pointing at the TV. “That's just not fucking fair.”

The Medium is the Message

“Who the fuck watches TV in Vietnam?” Kenny Martin asked me that question the one night he spent in our hooch. He was on his way back up north after some in-country R&R. He'd just come off several rough weeks in the field, and he didn't want to talk about it. He didn't even want to get high.

So we drank a few beers and reminisced about college, about coeds, and mostly about the days we'd spent together washing dishes in the women's dining hall. Even though Kenny and I later became fraternity brothers, it was those first few weeks together as freshmen, shaking our heads at the mountains of discarded food and trying like hell to differentiate Dawn Smith from Jackie Mills, seeing their midriffs as they came through the line that had forged a bond between us.

Now here we were, doing our post-graduate work in Vietnam. One a grunt and the other a REMF. Still struggling to figure out who was who.

There was so much that separated Kenny and me and our Vietnam experiences that we couldn't even begin to talk about it, which is probably why we focused on the past. But reminiscing couldn't make us forget where we were. Or where we were going. I was headed back to my job in the air-conditioned jungle in the morning while Kenny had to return to the real jungle. He wrote me later to say he'd asked for reassignment when he got back to his unit but was turned down. He wanted to be a REMF, he admitted, and it was all on account of the night we were together. It wasn't on account of anything I said. It was what Kenny heard.

As I blathered on about our college days, Kenny's grunt ears perked up at the sound of something unusual. It was the din of our hooch TV blaring in the background. That now became our topic of conversation.

“You guys really have a TV?” he asked as if he'd just discovered gold. “And it works?” I nodded affirmatively and Kenny shook his head as if stunned to discover electricity in Vietnam.

“What do you
watch
?” he asked almost in a whisper.

I didn't want Kenny thinking we had all the comforts of home, so I tried downplaying the TV.

“We only see what the military brass wants us to see,” I lied. “None of it is any good.”

Kenny wasn't buying it.

“So you get news and sports and, like, real shows?” Kenny's eyes were big as saucers.

“The news is censored, the games ended a week ago and the shows, well, it's mostly old crap like
Bonanza
and
Combat.”

At the mention of
Bonanza,
the face of the young Kenny from college reemerged. He was somewhere else, with the galloping horses of the show's theme song, watching the flames burn the map of the Cartwright spread.

“Wow,” his whole body spoke. “What I wouldn't give to see an episode of
Bonanza.”

But
Bonanza
wasn't on the AFVN schedule in Saigon that night, so Kenny missed getting reacquainted with Hoss and Little Joe. A week later when Kenny rejoined his unit in the bush, he got to see a terrific program called
NVA Night Attack.
I missed that one.

The Gospel According to Shortimer Sam

Shortimer Sam was so damn short he needed help just getting his socks off the bottom shelf. He'd DEROS in 11 days which meant he'd been in this hellhole for 354!

The place just won't be the same without him. That's because Sam was the U. S. Army's ambassador of astute advice. He was our Ann Landers, Dear Abby, and Billy Graham rolled into one.

I had my own selfish reason for not wanting Sam to return to the World, mostly on account of the brass wanting me to take over his column. No way I could be Sam. The guy flat out knew how to give advice, knew when to be tough and when to be kind. Not to mention he could cite every stinking Army rule and regulation verbatim.

Like the letter last week from some PFC in the 229
^th
Aviation Battalion.

Dear Sam:

Can you tell me if the 229th Avn Bn has been awarded the MUC? If they have, am I eligible to wear it even if I wasn't here when they got it?

- PFC ALG, 229th

To which Sam replied:

Dear PFC:

The 11th Avn Grp received the Meritorious Unit Citation in GO 3006, dated 20 June 67. It was for action Sep 65 to Nov 66. The 229th Avn Bn was added on the first order, in GO 787, dated 21 Feb 68. If you served for 30 days in the unit during the cited period, you wear the MUC as a permanent decoration. If not, you go bare.
- Sam

Fucking A, only Sam could know that.

He could be funny, too. Like the question he got a couple weeks ago from a GI named “River Rat.”

Dear Sam:

Me and some of the other guys think we saw a submarine on the Vam Co Dong River on patrol the other day. We hadn't been in the sun that long so it couldn't be heatstroke. It didn't look very big but it operated under the water and came up every once in a while.

What's up? Or should I say, down?

- River Rat

Dear Rat:

I did a little reconnaissance myself and here's

“What's up, Doc.”

There is indeed a thing that operates in the Vam Co Dong. In fact, what you saw was a 50-gallon water drum operated by an ex-VC Navy Captain who thinks he's Burt Lancaster. He has a crew of three on board with him and they float around looking for Clark Gable.

Run Silent, Run Deep, GI.

- Sam

I'd proved my point. Life in Vietnam would be a lot worse if it weren't for Sam's weekly comments and insights. I just wished he'd have taken me under his wing and let me watch him work because he'll be gone soon and I'll be shit out of luck. He may have written a lot, but he sure didn't talk much.

When Sam was preparing his last column, he stopped by my hooch and asked me to meet him out on the bunker. For some reason, when Sam had something on his mind and felt like communicating, that's where he liked to talk.

It was late. I was sitting around in my skivvies and sure as hell didn't feel like doing anything. But, it's Shortimer Sam, so I grabbed my official green Army t-shirt, put on a pair of cutoff fatigues, strapped on my Ho Chi Minh sandals, and headed outside. It was hot as hell.

I found him sitting on top of the green nylon sandbags that covered our bunker.

“Read this.” Sam shoved several sheets of paper in my face and handed me his Government Issue flashlight with MX-99I/U marked in big letters on the side.

“What the fuck, Sam,” I sputtered, trying to hold the flashlight and the pages in my hands.

“Please don't swear,” Sam requested.

“Okay, but what do you want me to do with this?”

“Read it over a couple times and give me your reactions.” Sam talked like his columns read. “I value your opinion.”

“Read it? I can hardly see it.”

“Here, I'll hold the flashlight.”

I could see Sam staring at me in the humid darkness. His most distinguishing feature, his unibrow, looked like the ribbon on a typewriter.

“Sam, if you really value my opinion, then you'll let me take this back to the hooch and read it there.”

“I can't let you do that,” he shot back.

“What're you talking about?”

“Someone will see it, and if they know you've read the rules, then Shortimer Sam won't be meaningful.”

“Come again?” I wasn't accustomed to someone referring to himself in the third person, as if he were some kind of objective observer. And give me a fucking break on what was, and wasn't, meaningful in Vietnam anyway.

I decided to tell Sam just how fucking ridiculous he was acting when he yanked the flashlight away. It flickered under his chin, throwing a ghostly light on the rest of his face. That look reminded me of Bogey's face in the scene from “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” when he started going crazy.

All of a sudden, I was spooked.

Frightened or not, I made up my mind to get the hell out of there. But when I tried to stand, my cutoffs stuck to the sandbag and my shorts rode up my crack. Sam wasn't speaking, but I detected a faint sound in the jungle night, one that came from the direction of the Officer's Club. The tune seemed familiar enough but the singer's voice was a mix of Don Ho, Eric Burden and Charlie Chan.

“Jesus, those Filipino bands sure can ruin any song,” I laughed. “Who knows? Maybe they're playing that Animals' song for shortimers like you.” I turned back toward Sam.

He was gone.

* * *

Later on, I was back in my hooch, sitting on the edge of my bunk. Night had finally descended upon Vietnam and all my hoochmates were asleep. I grabbed a towel and toothbrush and stumbled down to the latrine. I brushed my teeth slowly, replaying my conversation with Sam. Did I misunderstand him? Offend him? Miss some signal that I was supposed to pick up? Or did I just imagine the whole thing?

Back by my bunk, I knelt down like I did every night to pray to whoever was out there watching over me. I noticed a large brown box, almost the size of my foot-locker, stuffed under my bunk. There was an envelope with my name on top of it. I tore it open.

“Dear Soon-to-be Shortimer Sam:

Your time is at hand ‘cause I'm outta here. And that's how it goes—no goodbyes, no hand-offs, no “this is my last column” b.s. Our soldiers need to believe that Shortimer Sam is constantly here for them, always listening and advising. Never DEROS-ing!

You'll find everything you ever wanted to know about Army regs and protocols and procedures in this box. Apply it at your own risk. But realize that what passes for communication is nothing but acronyms, abbreviations, titles and shorthand.

Trust your instincts, your
human
instincts, not your Vietnam-invented ones. You know the rights and the lefts. You know where the bodies are buried, and you know who's holding all the cards.

So, keep your head up, GI, not down, and remember these reporter's rules of editorial engagement:

1.  If a soldier complains about feeling bad, he either has malaria, the trots, VD, or all three.

2.  Answers always raise more questions.

3.  Never drink Agent Orange for breakfast.

4.  Gonorrhea is just a four-letter word.

5.  Ribbons are for typewriters, not uniforms.

6.  When Army lifers shake their heads to tell you no, listen for all the noise inside.

7.  Recess is what GIs want more than anything.

8.  You have no idea what a quagmire is.

9.  You'll get at least one letter every week signed by The Beaver.

10. Words can pile up like dead VC—save a life, drop an adjective!

Yours is the most important job in the Army because you give our troops truth, hope and humor. All the Shortimer Sams who have gone before you expect you to regard that old Smith Corona typewriter in the USARV IO office as your keyboard, your umbilical cord, and your elixir. Now, give it everything you've got!

- Sam IV

So, this is what Sam had handed me tonight? It sure seemed un-Sam like. How did he come by the wit and the wisdom? How could he be so consistently accurate, in-charge, mocking, and entertaining all at once? How in the hell would I do that?

Rummaging through the box, I uncovered some answers. For one, it was organized a helluva lot better than the Base library. There were categories for everything from awards to citations and medals, from discharges to R&R and hold baggage. And the fucking replies were there, too, already crafted, with just that right touch of Shortimer Sam irreverence and humor.

There was more. Endless sheets of paper with scribbling in ink and pencil, letters and notes signed by guys calling themselves “Ed the Head,” “Tokers for Truth,” and “GIs for Justice.” There were also plenty of copies of an anti-war GI newspaper that we'd only heard stories about.

The more I dug down into the box, the more letters I discovered. Ones that asked questions like: “Why is it that the little man gets all the shitwork and hassles while the higher-ups get their asses kissed and tickets punched?”

Even more notes and letters that sang the praises of pot and getting high. None of these ever saw the light of day, or a response from any Shortimer Sam.

As if that wasn't enough, cartons of expertly wrapped Pall Mall packs of marijuana cigarettes sat at the bottom of the box. The note on top read:

Sam:

You'll be flying high in the friendly skies. Trust us
—
a joint a day will keep the blues away.

Peace & Love,

The Central “High” land High Rollers

I opened a pack and admired the tightly manicured marijuana joints. I walked outside and lit up.

Does it make any fucking difference?
I asked myself,
if I write what's real or simply repeat the party line?
Everybody, myself included, knew what was going on by now, and I doubted if they'd believe anything that was written in a goddamn Army newspaper.

I shook my head. It wasn't just the marijuana talking. I fetched Sam's box and hauled it back outside. In less than three minutes, I figured somebody was going to be in my face, asking me what in the hell I'm doing. But that was still three minutes away.