Last Man Out (10 page)

The men, however, were not understanding. The rumors about shore leave had been detailed, some aspects even discussed by the Navy crew. The troops thought army brass had decided among themselves against letting them off. An angry rumble drifted up from the hold and grew louder. Men ran up the steps from the troop compartments. Clusters of soldiers stood on the deck and talked conspiratorially. Somewhere below, a soldier slammed the butt of his M-14 into the side of the ship. The noise
increased as more and more men grabbed their weapons and started thumping the bulkheads.

Pete came up and we stood together waiting, listening. It was mutinous. The banging of weapons continued as the tugs pushed the ship into place beside a long concrete pier.

A gangplank was lowered from the ship. We watched the commandant and Sergeant Major Bainbridge leave with an entourage of staff officers. When some of the men on deck saw them leave, they yelled that the top dogs were going ashore, leaving the troops to rot on the ship. Men ran below to spread the word. The banging got louder.

The sergeant major soon returned and a meeting of all officers was called in the officers mess.

The banging stopped.

An officious lieutenant colonel addressed the group. Without reference to the previous message over the PA system, he said that the port authority had offered some old dry docks a few miles from the pier so the men could stretch their legs and drink some beer. But he said everyone had to be back on board by midnight because we sailed for Vietnam at first light. It was then almost 1300. As he was giving instructions for off-loading, we heard a roar from below. The men apparently had heard through their own sources that they were going ashore.

Disembarking by companies, almost three thousand soldiers marched off the pier and down the island road toward the dry docks. Four abreast, they sang, waved their arms, and clapped their hands as they marched.

The dry docks, four large wooden bulwarks three stories high and in varying degrees of disrepair, stood amid a variety of smaller buildings. Once inside the gates, the men fell out from the column to explore or stood around in groups and talked. An officer climbed on top of a shed near the gate and announced that the Guam National Guard would arrive in a few minutes with beer on the back of flatbed trucks. The beer was ten cents a can, and each man could buy twelve, no more. After giving further instructions about what the men could not do, he said that the opportunity for the men to stretch their legs was done on the authority of the troop commander, who wanted the men to form up at 2200 and march, by companies, back to the ship.

The men were milling around as he spoke. Peterson opined that not everyone had paid attention. He guessed that before the day was out there would be a few violations of the rules.

Captain Woolley gathered his platoon leaders—Peterson, Duckett, Ernst, and me—and said that two of us had to stay with the men at all times. The others were allowed to go to a nearby officers club. Duckett and Ernst agreed to take the first shift. Pete and I would return by nightfall.

As we walked out the gate, two dump trucks laden with beer pulled into the compound. The men behind us let out a roar and began to form up in lines. McCoy and Dunn were in the officers club when we arrived. They had staked out an area overlooking the beach and had their drinks on a side table. Pete and I downed a starter set of drinks quickly before settling down to more reasonable drinking. We became boisterously happy and made preposterous toasts. “Larry Moubry” [alias], the battalion supply and transportation platoon leader, came over and loudly joined us in making toasts. He had a reputation for being very religious and we found his drunken behavior unseemly, maybe because he was a little drunker than the rest or because he wasn’t funny or clever or invited. He was, in fact, obnoxious and his mood turned morose quickly after we had gone through a series of toasts. He imagined that many of us would die in Vietnam, a sweltering, Oriental hellhole. He said the Viet Cong were godless demons who killed without mercy, had no regard for life, and ate their dead.

He finally stumbled off, and after watching him barge into another group Dunn commented that he was a righteous son of a bitch.

Dunn noticed Woolley, carrying several drinks, across the room and called to him to join us. Woolley made his way through the crowd and placed his drinks on a nearby piano. Dunn said it was fair to tell him that Parker and Peterson didn’t think much of him. Dunn said the good captain looked pretty damn good in his uniform and everything, and Dunn liked him a lot personally, and that was why Dunn was going to tell him something in confidence. “Keep your eye on Parker,” Dunn said, “especially when we get live bullets.”

Woolley threw back his head and laughed. Dunn reached over and got one of Woolley’s drinks from the piano.

“Mr. Parker’s going to be in front of me most of the time, pulling point, I think,” Woolley said.

“Pulling point?” I asked. “Odd-sounding phrase.”

Suddenly Ernst burst into the room and ran over to Woolley. “They’re rioting at the docks!” he yelled. “They are out of control. They’ve turned trucks over, burnt buildings. They’ve gone crazy. Crazy, Captain, crazy. It’s a riot.”

Maj. Robert J. Allee, the battalion executive officer, came in and talked with the troop commander. The commander stood up and said everyone was to return to the dry docks and begin policing up the men. He was canceling shore leave as of that moment.

Not far from the officers club, groups of men were wandering off in all directions. The gate to the dry docks was clogged with people trying to get out. Most were heading toward the ship, but many hundreds were making their way inland. In the half light of dusk we could see some small buildings on fire inside the dock area. I found a few of my men and told them to go back to the ship. Down by the gate, Moubry was telling men who appeared to him to be heading away from the ship to drop and give him fifty push-ups and then go on to the ship. To their credit, most told him to fuck himself and walked away as he screamed, “Give me fifty, give me fifty, soldier!” Dunn told Moubry to go to the ship or he was going to break his nose because he was giving all the officers a bad name.

Sergeants Bratcher and King were sitting on top of some lumber inside the gate, a couple of cases of beer between them.

“I thought twelve beers a person was the limit,” I told them.

“King can’t count good.” Bratcher said. “Want a beer, Lieutenant?”

I sat down beside them and opened a beer. The scene resembled Sherman’s sacking of Atlanta. Some buildings were on fire and others had been torn down. King said that too many men were standing on the roof of one building and it just collapsed, so the men built a bonfire.

High up on the off-limits bulwarks, men were happily walking about. Others were sitting with their legs hanging over the side and drinking. Some men were swimming in the lagoon. Hundreds of beer cans were floating in the still water.

Bratcher said, “It was the lines. They made the men form up in lines and they weren’t that interested in more lines. Plus it was the ten-cent beer and the twelve-beer limit and the fact that not everyone had the right change and it took a long time sometimes for one person to get his beer and get his change and then, maybe the most important, was the fuck-you attitude of the National Guardsmen, who weren’t hardly going on to Vietnam themselves. They didn’t show enough respect. Not necessarily smart on their part, when you consider that they were inside a barbed-wire enclosure, outnumbered a thousand to one or more.”

I told Bratcher and King to stay behind at the dry docks while I went to the ship and made a head count. They were to send any stragglers from the platoon down and come back themselves when they were convinced that none of our people remained at the dry docks.

King said, “Good plan, Lieutenant.” He opened another beer.

By midnight, my men were all back on the ship. That was not the case everywhere; men staggered back all night. Two swam up to the ship from the sea side. Several got on the wrong ship. One group tried to board a submarine. The local police returned another group that had crashed a local high school football game, run out on the field, and stolen the game ball. Policemen also found 1st Infantry Division soldiers on people’s roofs, under cars, and in churches.

The ship slipped her mooring at midmorning the next day and the tugs pulled her to sea. Under her own power, the
Mann
continued her westward journey toward Vietnam. As Guam disappeared behind us, the holds were awash with puke. The Navy stopped issuing sheets. Everyone stayed on deck as long as they could.

By the second day out the platoons began to organize their equipment. That night battalion officers met for a briefing on what lay ahead. After landing at the port city of Vung Tau we would move to a staging area north of Saigon for outfitting and then overland to an area farther north where we would set up a battalion-size base camp. When that was built, our battalion would join other division units securing the area north and northwest of Saigon. We received maps and intelligence briefings about known or suspected enemy activities in our tactical area of
responsibility (TAOR). Small Viet Cong units were active in the coastal and central regions, mainline North Vietnamese units were on the Cambodian border. Some friendly Army of (South) Vietnam (ARVN) units were scattered throughout our TAOR, although irregular forces that had U.S. Special Forces advisers comprised the principal Government of South Vietnam (GVN) presence along the Cambodian border. Our area was primarily jungle, but it included a number of rice fields and rubber plantations. We would go ashore on U.S. Navy landing craft. The beach area was reported to be secure, and no hostilities were anticipated.

“Reported to be?” I whispered to Pete. “Anticipated? Sorta vague, don’t you think? You reckon we ought to call him on it?”

“Everything’s going to be okay. Cool it.” Pete whispered back out of the corner of his mouth. “This is a good briefing.”

“Good my ass,” I said as I leaned toward Pete as if retying my bootlaces. “We’re heading into a combat zone and this guy doesn’t ‘anticipate’ hostilities. I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Just shut up. There’ll probably be a brass band playing when we get there.”

We arrived off the coast of Vietnam on 8 October, eighteen days after leaving Oakland. The next morning at first light we would go over the rail of the ship and down rope ladders to the Navy landing craft.

I was up long before dawn, packed my gear, and went down into the hold to wait with my platoon until we received orders to go on deck. We were among the first out, with Vietnam before us and the sun coming up behind us. Still some distance from shore, we couldn’t make out many details there. The fading night lights from a coastal town were visible to the north. I asked about the ammo and was told that it would be in the LSDs (landing ships, dock).

Small landing craft were bobbing on the ocean. Some were tied up to the
Mann
and others waited in the distance. Alpha Company, amidships, would be in the first wave over the side and among the first to reach the beach.

When word came to board the landing craft, I hitched my
helmet strap one last notch tighter and slung my leg over the rail. The loose rope netting jerked around as men all along the side of the ship climbed tentatively down to the waiting LSDs. The
Mann
moved up and down as if trying to shake us off. We were laden with equipment. Anyone who lost his grip would fall backward into the landing craft below.

Reaching the boat, I was helped aboard by Rome. In turn I helped Ayers. The landing craft bobbed up and down like an empty paper cup. Men continued to board our small craft, but there was a breakdown in unit integrity. Not all of my men were in the LSD with me. Men from Peterson’s and Ernst’s platoons were there, plus other soldiers I didn’t recognize. I was considering an attempt to make contact with the craft on either side to find the rest of my men when we cast off. For a time, the
Mann
loomed large above us and then disappeared. We couldn’t see over the side.

The ammo was in boxes in the middle of the LSD. Bratcher and I discussed whether we should obey the order not to break the cases. He was in favor of doing everything possible to protect our asses, such as issuing some ammo, but I didn’t comment. I was afraid to say yes or no—bad sign. My first decision and I couldn’t make up my mind. So we left the ammo crates unopened.

Most men held their weapon close to their chest to protect it from the spray. Some looked around nervously; others kept their eyes down. No one talked. The pounding of the waves on the bottom of the landing craft increased. We were coming through the surf, I thought, and would be landing soon. I looked at the big door ramp in front, which would drop into the water at any minute. We were getting ready to make our entrance into the war zone. I had a flashing recollection of John Wayne and
The Sands of Iwo Jima
. The Navy driver yelled something. As I turned to look at him the ramp fell forward. Beck was the first soldier off, bravely running down the ramp into waist-high water. Surprisingly, Spencer was right behind him.

On the back of a U.S. Army flatbed truck ashore, the 1st Infantry Division band was in midstanza of “God Bless America.” Several U.S. military officers were standing in a group off to the side and waving at us. Vietnamese civilians were farther away. Some smiled, but others appeared apprehensive. A column of
deuce-and-a-half trucks was parked on a blacktop nearby. My platoon gathered around me on the beach, looking confused.

And the band played on.

  FIVE