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When we returned to work on January 2nd, having had a free day on the 1st, we all cursed the man who discovered fermentation, and we swore off drinking for good. This was feasible at the time since we had consumed our entire supply of beer and liquor. The two holidays, a week apart, had certainly taken their toll on everyone, and most of us were glad to fall back into a routine again. I understood now why the army made us work such long hours. But for that, we surely would have poisoned ourselves to death with alcohol. The next day at lunch time, the Chief and I decided to eat at the USO grill, but instead of walking, as usual, we took the long way around on the shuttle bus to avoid a steady drizzle that had started the night before. I wanted to visit Mrs. Doan to see if the ao dai was finished, finally. On the way, we passed the Vietnamese village and saw it was almost repaired, after having largely burned down two weeks earlier in some freak and unexplained conflagration. Word had it, the village would reopen on Friday, and a good thing too, given all the horny GI's who had missed their share of love over the holidays. There was no doubt in my mind that our military, itself, had torched the place to control the spread of VD during the joyous season. As we rode, the Chief was badgering me about going with him on the money run to Saigon on the 11th of January. Three times a month, five of our men, armed to the teeth, flew from Cam Ranh to the finance office in Saigon to pick up several footlockers full of dollars, piasters, and military script, the so-called funny money. Everyone volunteered for this travel assignment, but I had always avoided the privilege like the plague. "Look," the Chief said, "it's like an in-country R&R. You go there for three or four days, stay in a real hotel, eat food in a real restaurant, drink like hell, and it's no more than four or five hours work. On top of that, they pay you an extra $26.00 a day in per diem to cover your expenses." "I don't care," I said. "Those zappers are always throwing satchel charges into the restaurants and bars and blowing up GI's left and right. I don't have to go all the way to Saigon to die. I can do that right here." "Aw, come on," he pleaded, "that zapper stuff is all blown out of proportion. You'll have a good time, you'll see." "No way, never happen, GI," I said. I could see by the look on his face that he wasn't taking no for an answer. "Besides," I added, "I promised my wife I wouldn't go down there." That frosted it. His crestfallen expression told me the wife ploy, that inveterate standby, had worked once more. After lunch, we went around to Mrs. Doan's, and she was there, smiling and looking in the pink of health. I was glad to see her well again, and also to learn my wife's outfit was complete. Mrs. Doan took the blouse portion of the ao dai out of the box and held it up to her neck with one hand, while she cinched the bottom part to her waist with the other hand, unwittingly revealing the curve of her ample bosom. "He's done a fine job," she said. "Yes, it's very nice," I said. "I like the color too." She showed me, but did not model, the pants since they were much too long for her. The tailor's bill came to 2,000 piasters for the whole ensemble. I gave Mrs. Doan a twenty-dollar bill, the equivalent of 2,360 piasters, and begged her to keep the difference, which, after some hesitation, she agreed to do. I observed with some embarrassment that, when I handed the money to Mrs. Doan, my hand trembled slightly, but noticeably, as though I had no control over it. Oh boy, I thought, there I go again. I tried not to let myself blush or otherwise lose my grip on the situation, for I didn't want the Chief to suspect that this diminutive lady had an unsettling effect on me. I thanked Mrs. Doan as sincerely as I could without being fulsome, and we left. I mailed the ao dai home to my wife the next morning. A few days later, a man from the 243d Aviation Company came in to have a pay problem corrected, and I noticed while talking with him that he had fewer teeth even than my old friend Snuffy who used to be in the motor pool at DBT. This started me thinking anew about the massive piece of tooth I had lost off my molar on the way to Vietnam. It occurred to me that I should try to have the tooth fixed, now that I was stationed in Cam Ranh. I explained my problem to Sergeant Barker and asked him how I would go about getting a dental appointment. He said he'd look into the matter and let me know. The next morning he told me he had called the dental clinic in Cam Ranh, only to be told they accepted nothing but emergencies because of a shortage of dentists in Vietnam. "Can it wait?" he asked. "Sure," I said, "I'm not in any pain, except for the pain in the ass I feel every time I think about being in this mickey mouse operation you call the army." He smiled. "You're right," he replied. "What can I say? I won't lie to you. Just hang in there, Horton, you're getting short." "You don't know the half of it," I said. The night before he left on the money run, the Chief brought to my attention an article in the Stars and Stripes that indicated the Pentagon had called on for 39,000 men to be drafted in March of 1968. We laughed about that, knowing it was in our best interest for the military to keep the cannon fodder signing up. After all, everyone needed a replacement. Coincidentally, the next day at work, a document came across my desk that showed a list of personnel from the 14th Engineers leaving Vietnam in March, the month of my DEROS. My name was on the list, but it showed my leave address in the U.S. incorrectly as 1275 Milstead Avenue, Conyers, Georgia. I called Chief Walls in personnel and asked him acidly if that meant I had to spend my 30 day leave in Georgia, rather than at my home in California. He became very confused and flustered, but, after some checking, he told me that the address in question was the home of record for another Horton in the battalion. That surprised me, for I was unaware that we had acquired another Horton since Maxie Horton had rotated back in September, 1967, with the original battalion. The other Horton must have been on one of Bradley's or Wagner's payrolls, but I never bothered to ask them, fearing the Horton lineage would become the butt of another round of jokes by Bradley. On January 14th I received some good news and some not so pleasant news. On the positive side, Chief Walls called in the morning to advise me that he had chosen a man to be my replacement in the pay section. The man's name was Tom Molinari, a Spec-4 with a 12B40 engineer MOS, and he was from New York City. I was disappointed I hadn't been assigned a school-trained replacement, who would have required less instruction on my part, but Molinari had three years of college in business administration and high clerical scores, so he was probably bright and would catch on quickly. The bad news was delivered by Altman in the afternoon when he handed me my reassignment orders. After rotating back to the U.S. and taking my 30 day leave, I was to report to the 546th AG Company, Personnel Services, Ft. Hood, Texas, a long way from my home in Oakland, California. I just sat there shaking my head. "Well, there go our tax dollars," Bradley said. "You'll only have a hundred days left in the army after your leave, so we taxpayers have to fork over big bucks to ship all your personal crap clear down to Texas for three months, and then back again." "If anybody was worried about the money," Wagner said, sarcastically, "we wouldn't be in this war in the first place." They were both right, of course. With the billions of dollars already sunk into this conflict, what was a few thousand more? On the other hand, what sense did it make to station me so far from home with only three months left in service. How could I have expected anything more rational from the army when our favorite saying was: there's the right way, the wrong way, and the army way. The dilemma for me would be: do I go to Texas and leave my wife at home, or do I take her along? If I went alone, I could live rent free on the base. If my wife accompanied me, we'd have to rent an apartment and leave our home stand empty for three months because we certainly couldn't rent it for such a short period. If we did this, we'd be paying both rent and mortgage payments, which I wasn't sure we could afford, especially since my wife would have to quit her job. If I went to Texas by myself, I'd be away from my wife again, when already, in the last seventeen months, I'd only been with her about 40 days. She definitely wouldn't be happy about the continued separation. What a mess. I decided I should sort this out in my own mind before I wrote to her about the reassignment orders. It occurred to me only moments later that I should count myself lucky just to make it home alive. Too many men, unfortunately, had been deprived of these hard choices, along with their lives. Having reminded myself of these truths, I felt genuinely ashamed of my petty complaints. What happened later that day only reaffirmed the correctness of this last assessment. After work, I stopped by the Chief's barracks to see if he was back from Saigon. I thought he'd be interested to know that Molinari, my replacement, was also from New York City--not that they would have known each other, of course. I found the Chief sitting on his bunk looking through some of his blurred photographs. He listened to my revelation about Molinari's origins with what struck me as being less than his usual enthusiasm. Moreover, he was uncommonly quiet, and when I finished, he didn't seem to want to talk. "Are you okay?" I asked. "Yeah, a little hung over, I guess, from all the drinking in Saigon." Suddenly, I could see his eyes filling with tears, and he looked away so I wouldn't notice. "No, I'm not okay," he said. "I'm really depressed." Saying that, he covered his eyes with his hand and started to cry. I wasn't sure what I should do. "Is it something you can talk about?" I asked. He shook his head in the affirmative, but didn't say anything. After a minute or so, he seemed to regain his composure somewhat and took his hand from his face. "When we were coming back, they kept us away from the main part of the airport in Saigon because we had all the money. We were off all by ourselves with the footlockers near some isolated buildings. While we were waiting for the plane, I walked over to check out some stuff lying on the ground about 200 feet away. When I got close, I saw they were body bags lined up in rows. There must have been about 40 of them. God, I felt awful. I had no idea how gruesome they look when they're full. Now, I can't seem to get that image out of my mind, and it's really depressing. I feel so sorry for those guys who were lying there on the ground." As he talked, his voice had become steadier, as though he were getting a handle on his emotions. I sat down on the bunk next to him and put my arm around his shoulder. "For a hard-bitten New Yorker," I said, "you're a lot more sensitive than I would have thought." "No, not a bit of it," he said, laughing and wiping his eyes with his hand. "We New Yorkers eat nails for breakfast, and don't you forget it." Then, after a pause, he asked, "Do you have time to play some cards?" "I'd like to, but I can't," I said. "We have to GI the barracks tonight before we can go to the movie, so we're starting early." "Okay," he said, "I'll bring some brews and see you at the movie." As I walked back to my barracks, I realized how glad I was that I hadn't been with the Chief at the airport in Saigon. Molinari arrived from DBT on the 18th of January, and I began to break him in immediately. The faster he learned, the more relief I could get from the long hours required to do my payrolls. When he was up to speed in a few weeks, there would be two of us to do the work of one, every short-timer's dream. By the end of six weeks, he should be able to handle everything himself. I had images running through my head of me coasting out my remaining days in Vietnam, sitting at my desk grooming my fingernails while Molinari pounded away at his typewriter. Wagner left for R&R in Sydney, Australia, on the 22nd of January, and the night before, he was so excited that we thought he was going to crawl out of his skin. Because he had to go to Saigon to catch his international flight, he would be away 9 or 10 days, rather than the usual week. He was so happy to be getting out of Vietnam, even temporarily, he was beside himself. Wagner picked a good time to leave too, because that day someone went through the CONEX and decided that 123 of the 300 weapons stored there were dirty. Our punishment for having unacceptable "guns" was to fill sandbags one evening after work. We were broken into groups of ten, and instead of telling us we had to shovel for three or four hours, the NCO's gave us 400 sandbags and said we couldn't quit until they were all full. My group buried half the bags and filled the other 200 in one hour and five minutes, a testament to both our ingenuity and skill. We were finished in time to watch A Man for All Seasons, a movie that made me realize there were some decisions more difficult than choosing whether to take one's wife to Texas, a matter I was still turning over in my mind. On January 23rd, I received a letter from my wife indicating the ao dai had arrived in the mail safely and that she had tried it on. She said it fit fairly well. She also wrote that it was an "unusual but interesting" style of garment, meaning, of course, that she didn't care for it at all. Obviously, she thought my desire to buy this weird outfit for her was simply another unfathomable aberration that resulted from my spending too much time in a strange land. I wasn't in any manner dejected by my wife's lack of enthusiasm, however, because I simultaneously hit 60 days to DEROS, the time when I had planned to start my short-timer's calendar. While I was verifying the number of days until March 23rd, I noticed that 1968 was a leap year. That was just my luck, I thought, getting to spend an extra day in country. After lunch, I was sent to the medical center to be inoculated against the plague, and the rest of the day my left arm felt as though it was falling off, it hurt so badly. But this also didn't deter my good mood, and in a fit of whimsy I created a sign that I posted on the side of the filing cabinet next to my desk. It read: 14th Combat Engineer Battalion Of course, the airmobile part was untrue, but the next day, an unsuspecting PFC from the computation section wandered by and said, "Hey, I didn't know you guys were airmobile." "You'd better believe it," Bradley said. "You get me a plane ticket out of here, and I'll show you mobility." When we reported to work on the morning of January 30th, we were called together for a mass meeting at which they told us the VC had initiated a major offensive the night before and had torn up the countryside all over South Vietnam. Major cities had come under attack, and the troops at Tan Son Nhut outside Saigon were defending the air base on all sides, allowing the VC to penetrate only once. It was reported that the fighting had been bloody in many places. Until further notice, we were to expect guard duty every night, with assignments to be given out in the afternoon. Needless to say, this news put us all on edge, me particularly, because with less than 60 days to DEROS, I certainly didn't need this added excitement. Working only half a day, we reported back to the office at 4 P.M. We had already retrieved our weapons from the CONEX and adjusted our helmets and the other gear that we hadn't used for a long time. Ammunition was distributed at the office in massive quantities, a portent that we might be in for some heavy fighting. The place was crawling with officers and NCO's we had never seen before, and the men were visibly anxious. Lists of names were called, and we were assembled in groups and placed under the command of leaders whose tough exteriors predicted they were men who knew their business. My group numbered 15 and included Bradley and the Chief. We were assigned to stand guard on the unfinished USAID bridge, a steel and concrete replacement for the My Ca float bridge. This new bridge stood a mile south of My Ca, and its existence was unknown to most of us because the approach to the structure was well off the main road into Cam Ranh. The two NCO's in charge of our group left us to go in search of our transportation. Nearby, another assemblage of ten men listened to an infantry captain who told them they were going across the bay to the mainland to provide reinforcements to a small compound defended by U.S. soldiers and South Vietnamese infantrymen. Everyone going there from the 92d, the captain said, would take up positions on the perimeter. When Bradley and I heard that, we were relieved we had drawn the bridge assignment. One man asked the captain if he expected an attack on the compound that night, to which he replied, "Very likely, because it was attacked last night." Another man raised his hand. "Sir, if we're attacked and it's dark," the man asked, "how can we tell the VC from the South Vietnamese soldiers?" "Because the South Vietnamese will be inside the perimeter with you," the captain said in a slightly petulant voice, as though he were talking to a child. I, for one, didn't find the question all that objectionable, given our obvious inexperience in combat situations. "But, Sir," the man persisted, "if the VC get inside the perimeter, how can we distinguish the VC from the South Vietnamese?" Again, I thought this was a reasonable question under the circumstances. "Look," the officer said angrily, "if the going really gets tough over there, just kill anyone who's not an American." After he said this, a silence fell over the group. "God, did he really say that?" Bradley whispered to me. I, also, was appalled. Somehow, these instructions didn't comport with my notions of why we had come to Vietnam in the first place. "Well," I said to Bradley, "one thing you have to admit, those orders are easy to understand. Nothing in the gray area there." Soon, my group was on its way to the bridge in a truck. It was still light when we arrived, which allowed us to set our positions on the far side of the bridge and to gain some familiarity with our surroundings before darkness fell. The Chief, who--when he wasn't being sensitive--did some pretty stupid things, volunteered to be the point man. This meant he would be the guard farthest forward and the first man the enemy would encounter if they approached the bridge from our front. In fact, the position he was taken to by the NCO in charge was on the land, 50 feet beyond the end of the structure, where his only cover was some short scrub. I immediately volunteered for the rearmost position, well away from the land, but was denied this privilege because of my over eagerness. Bradley and I were put together in an intermediate position, about 200 feet back from the end of the bridge. Despite the darkness, the two of us primarily watched the water on both sides of the bridge as well as we could, for we both expected an assault from that quarter rather than from the front. Neither of us slept the whole night, which would have been an impossibility anyway because of the cold and damp. Occasionally, we could see flares at a distance up and down the coast, but there were no reports from weapons of any kind. To the extent that my mind wandered at all, it was only to worry about the Chief. In my mind's eye, I kept seeing his bullet-riddled body slumped on the sand, and I couldn't help wondering whether his volunteering for the point had been a bid for glory or a desperate act of self-destruction. However, since the fiery denouement I half expected never transpired, I was forced to leave the question unanswered. Gradually, the dawn came, and with it, a great sense of relief for us all. As Bradley and I straggled back across the bridge to our waiting transportation, the Chief caught up with us, and he was grinning from ear to ear, like a man who has thrust his head in the lion's mouth and come away whole, having cheated death again. I patted him on the back and remarked favorably on his courage, while saying nothing about his wisdom. The next morning we were allowed to sleep until 11 A.M. before reporting to work. Altman appeared shortly after our abbreviated lunch period and gave us a report on the damage at DBT. The other side of the compound across Q/L 1 had been hit fairly hard on the night of the 29th, and the VC had blown up grounded helicopters with satchel charges, completely destroying five and damaging three more. None of the aviation units had managed to get even one chopper in the air before the attack was over. The ironic aspect of the engagement was that the VC had penetrated the compound through the South Koreans' perimeter, the side thought to be most impregnable. Fortunately, when the smoked had cleared, there were no casualties, but the camp remained on red alert day and night, requiring many men to be on the perimeter constantly. Everything considered, Bradley and I were happy to be in Cam Ranh. Undeterred by the enemy's offensive, the administration at the 92d decided to take away from team #10 the payrolls of two aviation companies and to replace them with records of the 135th Heavy Equipment Maintenance Company and the 855th Signal Detachment, resulting in a net gain for us of 75 records. We three engineers now had 350 records apiece, a daunting workload. In my case, I had some help from my replacement, Molinari, who had grasped the concepts quickly enough since his arrival two weeks ago, but who had no typing experience whatsoever. However, Molinari's speed on the typewriter was picking up daily, so that in another month he would be able to handle half my payrolls. During the day on January 31st, the 92d received telephone reports from the finance center at Bien Hoa, near Saigon, that the pay clerks there had been firing at the VC from the windows of the finance building on the second night of the attacks, January 30th. The next morning, dead VC had been found lying within 150 feet of the office. Bradley was unimpressed by this news. "Great warriors," he said. "They were probably throwing pay vouchers at the enemy. The VC who got killed probably died from terminal pay problems." After an early dinner, the same group that had guarded the bridge the night before departed at 5 P.M. for the same destination. The Chief again volunteered for point, a matter whose wisdom I had intended to discuss with him earlier but had never gotten around to, probably because it had occurred to me that if he wasn't performing this service, someone else would be appointed to do it, which, as far as I was concerned, left too much to chance. In other words, better him than me. We spent another sleepless night on the bridge, but one that passed without incident. Bradley noted by way of conversation that Wagner was several days overdue from his R&R in Australia, and we surmised that he had become bogged down in Saigon awaiting transportation at the Tan Son Nhut airport. We speculated about the agony he must be going through down there, probably having to help defend the air base, which had been under heavy attack since the beginning of what was now being called the "Tet" offensive. At dawn, starving and exhausted, we were trucked back to the barracks. And so it went for another two days--sleep five hours, work four hours, and go back to the bridge for twelve hours. The Tet holidays had already ended, but not the army's vigilance. By the fifth day, our asses were starting to drag badly. On top of that, the mail was not getting through because the Cam Ranh air base had been closed to night operations. Mrs. Doan's shop was shut down, as were the laundry activities between our barracks, because the My Ca bridge had been restricted to military traffic for security reasons, which meant the Vietnamese couldn't reach the Cam Ranh peninsula. The only good thing to come from all this turmoil was the elimination of the inspections. Colonel Bishop had been through our barracks four or five times in the last month, but now the war had put a different perspective on the importance of our living conditions. We barely had time to clean ourselves, let alone the barracks. Finally, on February 3rd, Sergeant Barker announced after lunch that we were standing down from red alert and that guard duty was over for now. The office went wild. Men were throwing papers up in the air and dancing around their chairs. Tonight would be the first time in five days we could see a movie and do some serious drinking. As the jubilation was going on about me, I remembered thinking that perhaps we should be quietly contemplating the most important thing about all this, which was our good fortune in not being killed or wounded and in not having to kill or wound others. Even those who had gone to reinforce the compound across the bay had returned without mishap, not a shot having been fired in either direction. But then it occurred to me that such refinement of thought at a time like this was far beyond the limits of our badly strained mental resources. |