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In the first week of December, we received from Chief Walls a list of 28 men from the 14th Engineers who were to be transferred to the Americal Division, a disbanded army unit which had been reactivated earlier in 1967. Officially, the transfer operation was called the Infusion Program, but we changed the name immediately to the Confusion Program when it became clear from a reading of the names that the 14th's CO had chosen for reassignment 28 of the worst troublemakers in the battalion. This selection technique was probably used by all the CO's who transferred troops to the Americal Division, which left no doubt that this unit would be staffed mostly from the lower end of the gene pool and that it would, therefore, distinguish itself some day, for one reason or another. At about the same time, Sergeant Barker, with a great deal of ceremony, introduced us to an instrument called a red border document, a fitting appellation to be sure since the paper's four edges were bordered with bright red stripes a half-inch wide forming a perfect frame. "These documents come directly from the Finance Center in Indianapolis," Barker said gravely. "We are required to take immediate action when we get them." Bradley snatched the paper from Barker's hand and perused it. "What does it say?" Wagner asked. "Big deal. It says this guy owes Uncle Sam an uncollected partial payment of $50.00," Bradley said. He pushed the paper across the desk to Wagner. "Here, you take care of it. He's on your payroll." Wagner studied the document. "Be sure to take care of that right away," Barker said. "Roger that," Wagner replied, going to the file drawer to pull the appropriate record. After Barker left, we all examined the man's last pay voucher and ascertained that he was not allotment poor, drawing $200.00 in cash each payday. "No sweat," I said. "He won't miss the fifty. Go ahead and collect it all next month." No sooner had I said this than a flash went off, partially blinding us. It was the Chief taking our picture with his state of the art 35 mm Nikon camera, a device he was seldom without lately. He also dragged around constantly a camera bag containing two or three more lenses and other assorted paraphernalia whose use was known only to devotees of the hobby. The laughable part was that most of his photos turned out blurred, chopped off at the head, or incorrectly exposed, despite the built-in light meter. None of these shortcomings daunted the Chief in the least. "Vivid color," the Chief said, referring to the red border document. "Hold it up next to your face and I'll take a picture. By the way," he said, focusing the camera, "I overheard Slatz talking to Greesel this morning in the washroom. They're going to make you guys GI your barracks tonight." Unfortunately, the Chief had been right. The announcement came about 7 P.M. when most of us were sitting around killing time because there was no movie. We cleaned the barracks one half at a time, moving all the bunks and lockers to one side so we could sweep and mop the other half, unimpeded by furniture. This procedure was forced on us by the NCO's in charge, otherwise we would have moved nothing. We also hadn't seen the necessity to mop the floor, but we were constrained to do so under the watchful eyes of Greesel and Slatz. I had never moped sheets of plywood with water before, and it was a bizarre experience because of the way the wood changed color as it soaked up the water. "I really hate this," Bradley said, squeezing out my mop. "I wish we were back in DBT." "I don't know," I said. "I think I'd rather do this than stand guard duty every six nights." "Yeah, well, I forgot about that part," Bradley said. All in all, the job took more than two hours, and we didn't finish until 10 P.M. Just as we went to bed it started to rain heavily, and the downpour beat a steady tattoo on the tin roof, causing me to drift into sleep immediately. On Sunday afternoon I went down to Mrs. Doan's to see if my wife's ao dai was ready, but an ancient Vietnamese man, whose English was only barely understandable, told me Mrs. Doan had not been in for many days because she had been ill. Despite this unexpected hitch in the plan, I was confident that Mrs. Doan hadn't forgotten my request and that she would make good on her undertaking. When I returned to the barracks, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was blaring from the record player at the far end of our floor. A recent acquisition, this album was played over and over again, night and day, by the man whose girlfriend had sent it in the mail. No one minded really because the music was so uplifting, or at least it was to us, mired as we were in a foreign land, ten thousand miles from home. The Beatles had provided us solace for months with their peculiar British tunes. On this record, the men's favorites seemed to be "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Penny Lane," and "Bungalow Bill." Other songs on the radio that I particularly liked were "Paperback Writer," "Taxman," and that philosophical hit that began "I read the news today oh boy." Of course, there was that other English rock group whose lyrics I could never understand and whose popularity seemed to dog the Beatles like some hound from hell. If I had bothered to ask, someone would have told me who they were, I'm sure, but it never became a matter of priority with me, so I didn't. Bradley was sitting on his bunk making a halfhearted attempt to polish his jungle boots and crooning along with the music to "Lucy" when I decided to try out an idea I had hatched recently. "You know, Bradley," I said, "I'm going to be leaving in March, and somebody has to take over the officers' payroll." "Yeah, so what?" he said, staring into the toe of his boot. "So, it'll probably be you," I said. "It's a very delicate matter handling the officers' pay, and it's different from what you're doing with the EM records. So, I was thinking that maybe you should start getting some experience in January." "You mean you want me to do the officers' payroll next month?" he asked. "Might be a good idea," I said. I waited anxiously for his response, to see if I had managed to slide this by him or whether he would come back at me with one of his snide rejoinders. "Sure, that's cool," he said, still toying with his boot. Great, I thought, less work for me--God, I must be getting short. I wondered when Chief Walls would start to think about finding my replacement. The only reason Bradley had even bothered with the appearance of his footgear was the persistent talk about an inspection. What kind or when it was to be, we had no idea, but we certainly didn't discount these rumors, knowing how RA Colonel Landry was. The timing of the thing couldn't have been worse, for it was almost mid-December, and the Chief and I still hadn't laid in our store of Christmas booze, as planned. Since the vast quantity of liquor and beer we were contemplating would have to be hidden in our wall lockers, there was no way we could buy it before the inspection, if there was to be one. Our dilemma took on greater urgency as the days went by. On December 15th, we began working nights from 10 P.M. to 6 A.M., which wouldn't have been so bad, except for the cold. My fingers became icy sometime around four o'clock every morning, and it hurt to punch the calculator. Wearing my field jacket had helped some, but didn't completely alleviate the problem. This night shift business was only to last until we finished calculating our own payrolls, a situation necessitated by an overload in the 92d's computation section, aggravated by an adding machine shortage that prevented us from all working days. The hardest adjustment to the change in our work hours was trying to sleep during the day and, also, figuring out when to drink. If I had stayed on the new routine long enough, the martinis at 8 A.M. might have seemed normal. When I reported to work on the night of the 16th, I turned the page on my desk calendar, and there it was, staring me in the face. "Outstanding," I said, and I let out a whoop, startling everyone within 30 feet. "What's with you?" Wagner asked. "You're looking at a two-digit midget," I said, with great satisfaction. "A what?" Bradley asked. "I broke 100 days," I said. "Only 99 days till DEROS. God, I'm so happy." I picked up my calendar and kissed it. The others ignored me for obvious reasons, which I didn't mind. Having been in their situation myself, I understood that no one particularly enjoyed being around an animated short-timer, so I toned it down. Still, I couldn't get my mind off that magic number, 99. What a huge leap forward for me psychologically, breaking into double digits. I was on a cloud the whole night. In the spirit of the holidays, the army instituted a "call home" program using satellite transmission from Cam Ranh to tie into U.S. phone lines. While it sounded appealing at first, the wait to get on the list was long, and the wait for the call even tougher. Some men spoke of sitting for hours, hoping their calls would go through, but they never did. That kind of aggravation we didn't need, so none of us tried. We finally received word on the inspection, however, and it was worse than we had anticipated. On the day we came off nights, Greesel told us to expect a full-dress lay out on December 21, with the inspection itself to be performed by Colonel Bishop, Landry's commanding officer. Also, Greesel told us, Landry wanted the family pictures, the centerfolds, and all that other "crap" off the walls and the locker doors. According to Greesel, Landry had said that we would, by God, be standing tall when the time came or, if not, Landry would know the reason why. Our consolation in all this was the satisfaction of being able to lay in the holiday hooch, once this nonsense was over. On December 19th, we learned, sadly, that a man from D company of the 14th had committed suicide the previous night, one week before Christmas. He had shot himself with his M-14, though why he did it, no one knew for sure. His pay record revealed he was a Spec-5 with 15 years of service, a depressing circumstance in its own right. Unfortunately, he left behind a wife and a child, for both of whom the meaning of Christmas would probably never be the same, no matter how long they lived. To me, personally, this death represented just one more tragedy in the long chain of misery we called the "war," and I knew any grief I felt would pass anon with the coming of the next distraction, which luckily occurred later in the day, after work. In the mail, I received a package from home, as did several other men on our floor of the barracks. Mine contained a miniature artificial Christmas tree and a large dried salami about 18 inches long, which was the first I had encountered since I left the U.S. The other men received edibles too, so everyone began to share food with everyone else, and soon it became a party. Of course, we were drinking beer and listening to Sgt. Pepper's, and, as the evening wore on, the party grew louder. As luck would have it, Greesel and Slatz were not in their quarters, so no one was there to throw a damper on the fun. Part of the motivation for getting wild must have been our knowledge that the whole of tomorrow evening would be spent cleaning the barracks and preparing for the inspection on the 21st, which made us want to live it up while we had the chance. Around 10 P.M., when everyone was reeling drunk, some miscreant discovered a piece of heavy equipment sitting in the field across the road, and he was clever enough to start it up. After we heard the chug of the diesel engine, men began shouting outside, and half the barracks emptied onto the street. Watching from the top of the landing, I could see that the machine was huge, with a blade in front and what appeared to be a back hoe at the rear. The man who had fired up the engine was driving slowly around in a wide circle, and every few feet a safety device on the wheels made a loud clanking sound like steel hitting steel. Soon, men were climbing onto the top and the sides to go along for the ride, and all were clamoring to drive. Thankfully, neither Bradley nor Wagner wanted to ride. If they had, I would have stopped them, or at least I would have tried, for it was clear to me how dangerous this new toy was. People were standing on the sides and hanging on to places where no one was meant to be. Should one of these men lose his grip and fall, surely he would be run over by the wheels. The three of us went back into the barracks. As I sat on my bunk talking to the others, I couldn't get my mind off that clanking sound outside, which told me the men were still screwing around with that infernal machine. Suddenly, I became like my father--the old, wiser head who wanted to march outside and to put a stop to this nonsense once and for all, before someone got hurt. If I told them to stop, would they listen to me? Most assuredly not, and all I would accomplish would be to make myself look foolish. If some poor dolt were seriously injured, would I feel badly for not having stopped him? Certainly I would. I was torn between equally bad choices. For what seemed an eternity, the clanking and shouting went on as the machine continued its rounds. I waited for screams of death, but they never came. Finally, mercifully, the clanking noise ceased, and, shortly thereafter, my vigilant ears told me the engine had stopped as well. A great feeling of relief swept over me. Men gradually returned to the barracks, many of them flush from the silly excitement. As it turned out, the machine had run out of fuel and coughed to a stop. I thanked God for his sage intervention. The next day at the office we received mimeographed sheets of paper showing us how our clothes, footwear, toilet articles, and other gear were to be laid out in our wall and footlockers for inspection. Bradley was shocked. "I don't Goddamn believe this," he said, looking at the diagram. "This is just like basic training. I don't even have half this crap they're showing here. I mean, Jesus, we're in a war zone. Why are they doing this to us?" I couldn't have been more sympathetic. On average, we were working 80 hours a week, and we certainly didn't need the additional vexation. It was one thing to make us clean the barracks, which we could appreciate the importance of and which we had done when asked, though maybe not so willingly. It was an entirely different matter to pursue some formal standard of appearance that served no purpose in Vietnam. The thing was ludicrous on its face, and those in charge would be lucky if they avoided an insurrection. We worked at the office until 9:30 P.M., when we returned to the barracks and cleaned it till midnight. Then we were allowed to retire. We arose at 5 A.M. to finish our setup before the first walk-through by Colonel Landry at 10 A.M. Most of us had not done a total layout of gear for many months, so we had to refer to the diagram at every turn. For every item we supposedly owned, there was a definite position and method of display in the wall or footlocker. Socks were to be folded in a certain way for display in the top compartment of the footlocker, and next to them should be our toilet articles. The chronic complaint was that much of the gear to be displayed had been lost, never issued, or stolen by the Vietnamese laundry women. There was generally so great an outcry about this problem that Greesel finally lost his temper and yelled in a loud voice, "Everybody shut up, just shut up. Look, I know you guys don't have all this stuff shown in the picture. Just do the best you can with what you've got. If you don't have it, you don't have it." That placated the men somewhat, but there was still incredible hostility about having to do the inspection in the first place. Ready for inspection by 9 A.M., we had to kill an hour waiting for Landry to arrive, which he did promptly at 10 o'clock. He walked through the barracks slowly, taking everything in, while we stood at attention at the foot of our bunks. Thankfully, he said nothing to anyone and didn't ask us or the NCO's any penetrating questions, as is normally the inspector's want. We heard later that Landry was dissatisfied with our layouts but only left instructions to have the floor swept and mopped again, which we did, grudgingly. At 4 P.M., Colonel Bishop trooped through with his entourage, including Landry, to review our displays. Again, nothing was said to anyone, and the inspecting group moved through quite quickly, which was usually a sign that the senior officer didn't want to look very closely at anything, thereby being able to say with great confidence that he saw nothing wrong. This was always a good omen. Indeed, Landry sent word later through the NCO's that Colonel Bishop and he were extremely happy with our performance and that we were to be commended for a job well done. Most of the men perceived these compliments to be just so much devious crap and a sop to appease their anger. For my part, I was simply glad the event was over since there was little likelihood we would be re-inspected before January 1st, which meant we could buy our Christmas booze and hide it in our lockers. For some reason, I had been having trouble sleeping of late, and the night after the inspection was no exception. I crashed at 11 P.M. but awoke at 3 A.M. The only thing I could credit for my insomnia was being a short-timer. It occurred to me that the shorter I got, the more anxious I became subconsciously. Unable to go back to sleep, I dressed at 4 A.M. and went to work. I had 40 records of departing men to close out by the night of December 23d, otherwise I would have to work on the morning of the 24th, the day of our Christmas party at the office. As scheduled, Altman arrived from DBT at 10 A.M. on his usual Friday run, which on this day was a matter of singular importance to Bradley, Wagner, and me, since we planned to have him drive us to the liquor store and to transport our booze back to the barracks. Over the last several weeks, we three engineers and the Chief had decided, after considerable deliberation, that we needed at least five cases of beer and four quarts of liquor to see us safely through the period between Christmas and New Years day. Of course, I was the only person who could buy the hard alcohol, and since my ration card was already half used for December, we hit upon a contrivance to solve the shortfall in the allowance. The ration card had three sections, the outer two of which folded over onto the center portion to make it fit into a wallet. Because of sweat, rain, sand, and heat, my card had become quite beaten up and dirty, with one section almost completely separated at the seam from the center part which contained my name and serial number. In a stroke of genius, we decided to tear off the outer section of my card, where the liquor tally was punched, and to replace it with the same section from Wagner's card, which had no punches at all. Of course, to make his newer part look like my grungier one, we had to dampen it several times and rub it lightly in the dirt on the floor. Properly aged, it became a perfect match. With ration card in hand, I had ridden with Bradley and Altman to the liquor store, where I purchased five cases of beer and a quart each of vodka, gin, bourbon, and Scotch, all of which we stored in our lockers. With the holidays hard by, I derived immense security from being able to open the locker and to see the cache of spirits, in much the same way as my father and other depression era survivors had glowed with warmth whenever they opened the pantry and feasted their eyes on the mountain of canned goods that was ever present in their dwellings. By the 23rd of December, everyone's mood had quickened noticeably from the mere approach of Christmas. Presents were arriving daily by post, bringing with them great cheer and well wishes from our supporters at home. We all vibrated with excitement and, of course, drank more than usual, unbelievable as that may sound, but there was no singing, definitely no singing, unless one counted the inebriated screeching of a small group who had tried to imitate carolers. Only these few had gone beyond the pale, except for another handful of seriously deceived mortals who had attempted to make snow angels in the sand. Our gala Christmas party at the 92d was held in the office and began at noon on the 24th. There was an ample supply of cold cuts and snacks, and a small trailer about six feet by five feet had been lined with plastic sheeting and filled with beer and ice. The trailer held at least 30 cases of beer, and more was waiting to one side. A four piece band provided by the USO played mostly traditional Christmas songs on horns and strings. Everyone drank and talked, and drank and ate, and drank and talked some more. I had downed a few shots of gin before arriving, and by 2:30 P.M. I was three sheets to the wind. I decided the most prudent course for me was to navigate back to the barracks and crash temporarily, which I did. I was awakened by voices outside the barracks at 4:45 P.M. I stood and walked to the landing in front to see what was afoot. Dozens of men had returned from the party and were standing in the street, as more straggled into the area from the office. After fifteen minutes or so, the street was filled with men clustered in groups of five to ten, talking among themselves, sometimes very animatedly. I was puzzling over why these men had stayed in the street rather than retreating indoors when, suddenly, to my right an outcry arose as a fight broke out between two EM. Several punches were thrown, but no one was seriously hurt, and the antagonists were quickly separated. From my favorable vantage point, I could view clearly everything that was happening in the crowd below. Five minutes later, another fight erupted to my left, but this time blood was drawn before the bout was terminated by several NCO's. Ten minutes later another ruckus took place, again to my left. A Spec-4 and a sergeant E-7 were pushing and swearing at one another. The Spec-4 lunged at the NCO, who turned and bolted toward the movie area at the back of the barracks. The younger man chased the older man down the side of the building and out of my line of sight. The NCO apparently escaped because within seconds the Spec-4 reappeared, walking casually back to his friends, who applauded and cheered his vanquishment of the older man. Only moments later, the onset of darkness coaxed the revelers gradually inside the barracks, but not before one last fight occurred to cap off the day. As the street emptied, I went inside to talk to my friends and to ask them for an explanation of the behavior I had just witnessed. Unfortunately, they were as clueless as I, so we dropped the subject and partied into the wee hours of the morning. Almost without exception, everyone had a deadly hangover on Christmas day, but we had the whole day off to recuperate. Bradley and I started the day with some hair of the dog and proceeded from there. We luxuriated in having an entire day with no work or details, and we whiled away the time playing cards and reading. Unfortunately, we succumbed to the temptation of booze and drank more than we should have, again, probably as a result of that old disease we called CDS, carpe diem syndrome. I was in a particularly good mood because my name officially went on the 90 day loss roster on Christmas day. Going back to work the next day was a living hell. My hands shook so badly from alcohol poisoning in my nervous system that I had to type with my two index fingers. Touch typing was out of the question. As a sort of punishment for my excesses, the men rotating in January, who I thought would not need their records closed out until December 31st, began to arrive in the morning, asking for their files. By 9 P.M., I had closed out 70 records, with 45 still to do. Since my bodily functioning by this time had returned to something reasonably approximating homeostasis, I called it a night and returned to the barracks for a beer or two. On the way, I decided I'd have a shot of bourbon also, or maybe two. |