Deros Vietnam (2 page)

This is where luck, good and bad, and fate and timing and whatever else you want to call it began to intervene, or at least I began to notice the intervention. Like many baby boomers, I'd figured that what separated us as soldiers—later veterans—from reservists and protestors and MIAs and deserters and POWs and draft avoiders came down to luck, fate and timing—who you knew, where you lived, when you graduated from high school, how you were raised, how many WWII movies you saw, when you turned 18, whether or not you committed a crime, big or small, at 17 or 18, when your number came up, etc. etc.

Hell, for me, even the fact that I turned 18 in Pittsburgh, thereby registering for selective service in that blue collar city, but was back living in Philadelphia at age 22 when I got drafted—meaning I boarded a bus in Philly in the wee hours of March 2 and headed west to the Steel City to take my vows with Uncle Sam—had everything to do with my eventually being assigned to Fort Dix, New Jersey and not Fort Bragg, North Carolina for basic training. Everything changed with that simple twist of fate.

Similarly, prior to my rendezvous with Uncle Sam in Pittsburgh, I'd serendipitously sat beside a soldier on a late February flight to Buffalo to visit Christine. Even though I did everything I could to avoid sitting next to this guy (back in those days, folks with student IDs and guys in the military both flew “stand by” on planes so the two of us were called up to the podium just before takeoff and were seated next to each other), we eventually struck up a conversation that would have a direct impact on my Army career.

“By the end of the first couple days of basic training,” the helpful GI told me, “you're going to be totally frazzled, and really pissed.” Even though this guy looked younger than I was, there was something in his eyes and in his voice that made him a lot older. “Then they lay on you a battery of aptitude tests and other shit. Don't blow these off!” he raised his voice and pinned my wrist to the arm rest. I jumped.

“When you get in there, be awake, be serious. Take the tests seriously because they might help you get a good MOS.”

I knew this was important, but what the hell was an MOS?

“MOS is your military job,” he continued, “it stands for Military Occupational Specialty. Mine was 25C40, radio operator. Those tests that you don't want to take and are pissing you off go a long way to deciding what the Army wants to do with you.” He stared so hard into my eyes that I thought he could see my soul, my fear.

“Even if you're drafted?” I asked, barely audible. I figured my ass was grass because of the draft.

“Yeah, even if you're drafted,” he said. My spirits lifted. “I was drafted,” he went on, “but they sent me to radio training after basic. Not everybody who gets drafted goes to combat.” He paused. “Of course, there are no guarantees.”

There was yet another of the Vietnam-era mantras. “No guarantees.” Of safety, of sanity, of being whole, of getting laid. Of coming back. No guarantees.

No shit.

The soldier on the plane to Buffalo was right. And I thank him wherever he is because his unsolicited advice helped me nail those basic aptitude tests and be expertly prepared for a follow-up interview so that the Army awarded me an MOS of 71Q20—Information Specialist—at the end of basic training. I was going to be an Army journalist. Or was that an oxymoron?

Of course that knowledge didn't come until after eight weeks of worry and fear and harassment. The drill sergeants at Ft. Dix knew I was a college grad, one of only two in my basic training platoon, and they bugged me relentlessly every day about becoming an officer instead of a grunt.

“Bradley, you're a smart guy, a college boy,” they'd tease me, “so why don't you save your sorry ass and sign up for OCS (Officer Candidate School)? Officers give orders and have cushy jobs. You don't want to be the guy taking the orders, especially if you're a grunt,” they'd snarl. “And as sure as I'm Ho Chi Minh, the Army will make you a grunt and you'll be DOA if you don't sign up for OCS!”

Sure, I was scared. But not scared enough to become a “shake and bake,” a.k.a. second lieutenant. Even though I was new to the Army, I already understood that being a junior officer in Vietnam might lead to a oneway ticket. So, I kept my head down, kept my mouth shut, and humped my ass through eight weeks of basic training.

Because my defenses were up and my anxiety high, I didn't take the time to make deep connections with the other guys in my platoon. Those two months are like an old kinescope of faces, places, and nerves. Of Baby Fat Bob singing “Fire and Rain” every morning before formation, of black Murphy from Brooklyn saying he was going to knife me and white Murphy from New Jersey saying he'd get the other Murphy back, of two trips to the Big Apple with Billy and Doc and Four Eyes and Rufus to see Chris and her crazy, oversexed girlfriends from her all-girls school in Buffalo. Of mud and rain and night infiltration and weapons familiarization. And a somber Easter dinner with my parents at the Ft. Dix PX. I was the Pascal lamb, and there wasn't a resurrection in my horoscope.

There was also a visit to the base chaplain to inquire about Conscientious Objector status and long talks with my drill sergeant about bravery and cowardice and picking up a gun.

Right before we completed Basic Training, Nixon announced his decision to launch American forces into Cambodia. I remember a bunch of us standing around one of the sergeant's rooms watching a black and white TV on April 30 as Nixon pointed at maps and said things like “it is not our power but our will and character that is being tested tonight” and “the time has come for action.”

The drill sergeants who'd been over there were shaking their heads and twirling their dog tags. The rest of us were clueless as to what was going on, but that didn't prevent us from joining in the litany of fuck, fuckin' A, fucked up, fuckin', fubar, and other declensions of the GI's favorite word.

Later that night it started to sink in. The goddamn war wasn't cooling down, it was heating up. The odds of us draftees becoming grunts had just gotten a whole lot worse.

And the next day was May Day. How goddamn appropriate that was, since we'd be getting our MOSs and shipped to our next assignments.

The tension in the barracks the following morning was off the charts. No one spoke as we showered and dressed and prepared to meet our maker. Ours was one of several companies preparing to graduate from basic training on a perfect spring day. Our drill sergeants approached, accompanied by a handful of guys who looked like junior accountants. I couldn't hear what they were saying until Flipper (he had big ears) turned to me and hollered: “Brads, they want you.”

Time stopped. My heart was pounding so hard that I couldn't hear what the Spec. 4 accountant-type was saying. I followed him into a building and stood in a small line, as he directed. By the time I got to the front of the line, I was ready to piss my pants. Had the drill sergeants signed me up for OCS after all? Could they do that? Was I going to have to take basic training over because I'd paid somebody to cover my last KP? Did they know I was smoking marijuana? It hit me at that moment that I had no control whatsoever over what the Army wanted to do with me. Just put me on a plane to Vietnam now. I was fucked.

“Private Bradley!” The young soldier behind the glass was trying to get my attention. “These are your orders and this is the voucher you use for your plane fare.” He handed me a bunch of official-looking papers and, without even looking me in the eye, shouted “Next.”

My hands were shaking as I glanced down at my orders. I quickly cut through all the military folderol to realize two things: I was going to have a 10-day leave, and I was to report to the Army Hometown News Center in Kansas City on Tuesday, May 12.

Holy shit! I wasn't going to Advanced Infantry Training. I wasn't a grunt, and maybe I wasn't even going to Vietnam. I almost kissed the guy standing in line behind me. I was overjoyed.

But my joy was short-lived, because as I headed back to formation, the eyes of every guy in my platoon were on me, wondering
What happened? You okay?
I nodded, tried not to smile, and stood there with them as they received their orders to Ft. Polk, Ft. Sill, Ft. Benning. They were all boarding trains heading south that night. Most of them would be in Vietnam by the fall.

I never heard from any of those guys, and while I can still see their faces, especially as they were on that sunny day in May, I don't remember their names. It's just as well because I'd be afraid I'd find too many of them etched in black granite on The Wall.

Kent State erupted the following Monday, May 4. Every time the phone rang or there was a knock on my parents' apartment door during my leave, I figured it was the Army telling me to grab a gun and go shoot some students. I was convinced that I'd be taking up weapons against my peers before I'd have to shoot a Viet Cong.

I spent much of that ten days in Buffalo with Christine, trying to decide if the revolution was underway or whether I should go to Canada. We went to the movies instead and sat through “Z” a couple times, our mouths agape. Fiction and reality had become one and the same, and we both felt as if what was happening in a celluloid Greece was happening in Vietnam and Ohio and Jackson, Mississippi. I was almost relieved to put on my uniform and get the hell to Kansas City. It somehow seemed safer.

The Army Hometown News Center was located on Troost Avenue in Kansas City, the same street where Walt Disney had his first studio. The irony was not lost on me as we pretended to share good news with parents and loved ones across the USA about their sons who were far away in Vietnam. We never talked about the deaths, and we never wrote about them either.

It was a long, hot summer and I allowed myself to join the other lotus-eaters, acting as if the war in Vietnam and the one in America weren't happening. Christine paid a couple visits, I shared a decent apartment with two GI roommates, and there wasn't any extra duty to pull since we lived in a city and not on a base. I had to admit that Army life was pretty good.

The very best thing about Kansas City was meeting George, who became my best friend and lifelong confidant. He struck me as the complete antithesis of a soldier—skinny, brainy, and a daddy. We lived together the first couple weeks before his wife and baby daughter joined him from D. C. I couldn't understand why the Army would pursue a guy like George, but of course logic and good decision-making had nothing to do with this shit show.

Everything was going good, too good, until a late July morning when George and I were summoned into the Master Sergeant's office. He told us that we'd just come down on levy to go to Vietnam. I never understood the levy concept, but it had something to do with big-ass IBM computers at the Pentagon that had punch cards with all our names and MOS and dates, etc., so that when somebody with your MOS left Vietnam, they ran the computer to identify who was out there to replace them. It reeked of Robert McNamara's—he was both JFK and LBJ's defense secretary—brand of troop management by machine.

Unfortunately for me and George, our punch cards were in the database and our numbers came up that day. We were to report to Travis Air Base north of San Francisco on November 4 for our tour of duty in Vietnam.

I was surprised by how unprepared I was for this terrible news. I spent the first few days on the phone with Chris, who was making contacts with the Underground Railroad types in Canada. “You can't go to Vietnam.” She sounded pretty adamant. “You can't.”

But I did. Sure I agonized and second-guessed and even entertained the Canada scenario briefly, but in the end I upped my intake of booze and dope and partied my way out of Kansas City and back to Philadelphia for a 30-day leave.

That was the lowest of the lows. I couldn't look my parents in the eye, especially my mom, who teared up every time we exchanged a glance. My dad was in pain, too, but he didn't know how to deal with it, so he took me and my brother to watch a prize fight which I guess made him feel better.

I spent nearly two of the weeks in Buffalo and that was no picnic either. Neither Christine nor I would talk about that sword of Damocles hanging over my head, but we sure as hell were thinking about it. We stayed away from other conversations too, including the obligatory one of who would wait for whom and how true we'd be to one another. We mostly sat around her house listening to Laura Nyro albums.

I grew enormously sick and tired of all the people who shook my hand or patted me on the back or gave me a hug and wished me well and told me I was a hero and thanked me for what I was about to do. None of them believed how badly I didn't want to do this. Why weren't they listening? Why weren't they helping?

By day 30, I'd made some peace with myself and my parents. I didn't marry Chris. And I met George in San Francisco on November 4.

George and I got split up early on. He was up, up and away to Vietnam while I had to wait several more days for my death warrant. I spent those days donating blood so I'd be relieved of extra duties and reading James Joyce's
Ulysses
in the base library. I nearly became invisible.

The orders came. They always do. I boarded a plane late on November 10, stopped in Alaska and Japan, crossed the International Date Line, and arrived at the 90th Replacement Battalion in Long Binh on November 12. Then another of those fate-timing-luck moments occurred as I ended up being sent just a few clicks from where I was standing, to the Information Office at USARV Headquarters in the same exact office where George was working. I was safe and I was alive.

And I intended to keep it that way.

Long Binh was a major supply area and headquarters base. It was bigger than big. And it was a sanctuary for pencil-pushers like me and my officemates, as well as legions of clerks, logistics specialists, attaché aides, and others lucky enough to escape field duty. If it came down to a battle of rulers and pens and compasses, I was certain we'd get the best of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. But that wasn't the war we were fighting.