by Jack Twist
Chapter 27
On the parade bus to Saigon I sat thoughtful and downcast among what was otherwise a happy group of thirty odd Australian soldiers from different Vung Tau units. A friendly captain from A.L.S.G. central admin had welcomed us aboard and reminded us of the importance of our mission. We had been chosen as our country’s representatives in the commemoration of our host nation’s national day.
The soldier sitting next to me, a storeman from the engineers squadron we worked with, nudged me good-naturedly. “Six and a wakie. Soon as I get back I’m on the big silver bird out’a this shit hole. So short I can taste draught beer. Won’t it be great to be back in the world, eh? Out of the funny place.”
We passed a convoy of troop carriers coming out of the turnoff road to Nui Dat and some of the marchers yelled at them from the bus windows. “Get some war up!” the engineers storeman leaned past me to call out. He told me later that in six months he hadn’t been outside the camp at Vung Tau, except to go to town.
In Bien Hoa I watched out for the road to Muc Thap and as we went past it looked as insignificant as any other track that turned off the highway into the rice fields. The captain wanted everyone to sing and couldn’t get much response with Waltzing Matilda. But when someone started singing a different song they all joined in.
All my bags are packed. I’m ready to go ...
The storeman sang at the top of his voice. I couldn’t join in. Singing had too much of the sound of celebration about it, when I felt more like a minute’s silence. Perhaps I was being a little too precious in my melancholy. You have to take the good with the bad and I was at war after all. It was bound to get ugly somehow. And we were about to go home. But in all that singing, in fact in all the effervescent rejoicing of those final days, I had this presentiment of some kind of anticlimax, a hollowness. For me a shadow lurked behind all the good cheer, laughing with us, and then at us, quietly, bitterly, and persisting when the singing was over. The cloud behind the silver lining. That’s all I could see. I wondered if anyone else felt the same. Certainly no one on the bus that day. In my downcast mood I went searching for signs further afield, among those I knew.
I thought of Tony Carmody’s worrying letter. During his nearly ten months incountry Tony had deliberately not taken any photographs. He wanted to pretend it didn’t happen; walk back into civvie street and pick up where he left off, as if nothing had happened, until one day the memory was gone forever. And yet, in those last weeks, his attitude grew increasingly sombre.
There was Greg Urquhart’s anger. Moll’s diminished sense of humour. Al’s mutiny, that wasn’t .
Blowfly, our mumbling but contented garbo, would fly out on the last flight of nashos with Tony Carmody because each time he was supposed to leave he went to see his girl in town, one last time, and missed his flight. Captain O’Brien gave him orders to stay in camp the night before the last plane’s departure but MPs caught him sneaking onto a Lambretta late that night. He was accommodated in the guardhouse up until his departure time the next day, at which the MPs escorted him to the airport bus.
And when I returned from Saigon I would find out also that Barry Love, our longest server, had been put on the medevac emergency flight with Al and Lyle. He had come back to the hut from the canteen, taken his M16 and gone searching for ammunition. No one knew what he had in mind. He had been admonished by Donald Duck during the day, but he was always in trouble for speeding. Tony claimed he had been writing to his ex to ask her to meet him, but he was whisked away so quickly his motivation remained a mystery.
But were any of these much more than life’s inevitable hassles? Was my search for misery just self indulgence? I had met soldiers, Aussies, who considered this war little more than an inconvenience, if protracted and sometimes scary. Bushfire Daniels saw it mostly as a joke. For Captain O’Brien, Joe Bartolino and the rest of the regulars it would probably mean promotion. And the majority of our troops, you could tell, felt pride in their service. What’s wrong with me? I’m going home. In one piece. Shouldn’t I be thankful?
Sing, mate. Be happy. We’re going home.
To a ticker-tape welcome.
Shut up, Al.
So kiss me and smile for me. Tell me that you’ll wait for me.
- 0 -
We were put up in a big American base called Camp Alpha, not far from Tan Son Nhut Airport, with barrack blocks that seemed to go forever. We were given one of these.
The 2 IC of the outfit, a staff sergeant also from central admin, looked at me strangely when I asked about a phone. “Thinkin’ of callin’ home?” he asked.
I asked an American shambling past outside our building but when he mentioned something about the mess I thought he had misunderstood me.
We were more or less confined to barracks that afternoon and evening. We spent the next day practising and in my distraction and frustration at not being allowed to get to a phone, I became a liability to the marching effort. Everyone but me was in good spirits and the captain was very tolerant, calling me aside eventually to ask if anything was the matter. And I exploited the man’s good nature. I didn’t want to make too much fuss lest I got sent back to my unit. It was “just my shoulder.”
“Does it bother you when you march?”
“Yeh. I can’t swing my arm properly. Just yet.”
“Okay. Fall out for today. See how it is tomorrow. If it gets worse we’ll see if we can get a doctor to look at it.”
Back in the barracks block I was showered and ready to go in ten minutes. I was stuffing my savings (minus fifty dollars!) into my hip pocket as I charged out the door and the staff sergeant was coming up the steps.
“And just where are you going?”
“To find the RAP, Sergeant.”
“An aid post? Here? What for?”
I explained about my wounded shoulder and the difficulty with marching.
“War is hell. You looked okay a minute ago. Racing out ‘a here like the proverbial Bondi bloody tram.”
“I want to make sure I get an appointment to see a doctor tomorrow, like the captain suggested.”
He looked at me squarely. I felt like asking why it mattered. Why wasn’t he back on the parade ground? “Show me.” I took off my shirt and gave secret thanks to Greg Urquhart and his right fist. “Looks more like a bruise than a dislocation. Swing your arm.” A sergeant who thought he was a doctor, when all I wanted was a telephone. I winced as I swung my arm. The sergeant/doctor looked unimpressed.
“You can’t just roll up to an American Aid Post. You’d need some sort of authorisation. A doctor would probably only tell you to rest it anyhow. So I think that’s what you better do. Just rest it.” I returned to my bunk, nursing my left arm in my right. He followed me. “What’s your name?” I gave him my name and unit. “We’re not up here for a Saigon party. Your CO must have told you there’d be no malingering.”
I nodded my head, looked suitably shocked. He’d seen the bruise. How could he think such a thing? I was here to march, for my army, my country, for the whole free world. When he had gone I waited a half an hour, in an agony of frustration.
The ORs’ mess was a huge cafeteria. The selection of meats and ice creams alone seemed unlimited. When I asked a soldier for directions to the telephone area he pointed, and I was pleased he did. Another introspective, sotto voce American. It was as though responsibility for the war rested on all of their shoulders collectively, right down to the ordinary soldier. I suppose they had their loud-mouths somewhere.
I took Killer Kelleher’s phone number for the embassy from its safe place in my wallet as I sought out the telephones. All were occupied when I found them but fifteen minutes later I was being told by a member of American embassy staff that Julie Shields was not available. It took some explaining before I was able to convince him not to hang up on me. I became, by way of self-introduction, the ‘rescuer of Jake Klein’s daughter’. For a while I feared that Chuck had spoken to him about me and the character of m
y nation.
“Hello.”
“Abbie?”
“Julie Shields speaking.”
“This is Mark Ross.” Even if she didn’t remember my name I was sure she must have recognised the accent. “The Aussie who brought Abbie from Vung Tau.”
“Oh, yeh. Her rescuer, I’m told.”
“Is she there? Please?”
“No.”
“Oh. Has she gone home?”
Her pause seemed as deliberate as it was cruel. “No. Not quite.”
“Well, she wrote to me and said she’d like to speak to me before I go home.” This was met with another silence. “So, I ...ah ... I was wondering if she might be ... available ... to talk to. Or when might be the best time to call back, do you think?”
“Hold on a minute.” She sounded very bored.
I looked around at the line of soldiers waiting their turn, all in their loose-fitting greens. The graffiti on the wall next to the phone featured statement and response. Nixon! Withdraw now!was coupled withI wish his father had withdrawn. Uncle Sam loves mewithThat’s good. ’coz everybody else thinks you’re an asshole.
“Can you get to a phone at say seven tonight?” asked Julie Shields.
“Yeh. Yeh, no worries. Yeh, I can do that.”
“Okay. Take it easy, please. I’ll keep this line free at seven o’clock. If you’re late, youwon’t be able to talk to her.” I was about to express my thanks when she moved on quickly. “So, if you can’t call at that time, please don’t bother us again. Because the girl is going home tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“That’s what I said.” And she hung up.
I didn’t go back to the barracks. With a few hours to wait I sat in the mess hall until I attracted unwanted looks, then wandered around the camp, avoiding my barracks block, keeping the mess in easy reach.
Around six o’clock I found the big hall full of soldiers. There were no Australians but I joined a queue and was asked no questions as I took my selection for dinner. The soldier who sat down opposite me at the table looked no more than seventeen. He returned my nod.
“You guys got a great selection on the menu here. I’m from Australia. Staying here to take part in the march.”
“You’ve come from Australia for a march?”
“No. No, we’re stationed at Vung Tau.” I could see he knew as much about a place called Vung Tau as he did about the march. I left him, too anxious to eat much.
“Hello.”
“Julie Shields?”
“Mark? This is Abbie, Mark.”
“G’day, Abbie.”
“Hi. This is a surprise. You got my letter, huh? So, where are you now?”
“I’m in Saigon.”
“You’re here in Saigon? How did you manage that?”
“It’s a long story. Listen. Is it true you’re going home tomorrow?”
“Yes. You called just in time.”
“Is there any way I can get to see you?”
There was silence for a moment. “Yes. One way or another.” Then she spoke so quietly I could hardly hear her. “I mean, this is my last night. And you’ve gone to the trouble to get here. Thank you, papa san.”
I looked around a moment, wondering if I looked as pleased as I felt. The queue had diminished. “When and where, can I see you?”
“Just a minute.”
I looked around again. A small embarrassed message on the wall said, I think I’m in love with my hand. And then from some more enigmatic soul, if just as sad,Minnie Mouse is a bitch.
Her voice came on the line again. “Can you be outside the embassy in an hour?”
I had to walk back through the mess hall to find my way to the base entrance and I saw the engineers storeman from the bus trip. He called out and waved. I waved back and kept walking, almost breaking into a run. Out in the street Lambrettas were difficult to find and instead of arriving early I was a few minutes late.
Abbie was sitting in the back seat of a jeep, just inside the gates. Julie was in front of her beside Chuck the driver who started the engine and moved forward as the gates were opened for them. He glared at me as I approached. I climbed in beside Abbie and as the vehicle moved off she gave my hand a quick, secret squeeze.
“Where are we going?” I asked quietly.
“You’ll see.”
We sat in silence. When Abbie smiled at me she looked beautiful.
The French-styled building where we stopped was a restaurant. A sign above the arched doorway said ‘Mon Cherie’.
“Abbie,” said Julie, “Would you mind going in and checking with the manager?”
Abbie looked back as she entered the restaurant. She was wearing a light cheese-cloth dress and looked taller in heels higher than her usual boots.
Julie turned to me. “I presume you must be AWOL again.” I opened my mouth to explain but she wasn’t interested. It wasn’t a question. “But I’m allowing this little dinner date to happen because Abbie asked me to, and she is going home tomorrow. But you must promise me, as she has already, that you will not leave the building.” She watched me as I nodded. “Now you have a watch.” I nodded, again with no real need to. “The time is now twenty fifteen hours. Okay? Now if you are not, both of you, standing under that archway at twenty-three hundred hours exactly, I will contact your military police and explain where you are, or where to start looking for you.”
I tried to look indignant but said nothing because that’s what she wanted. This conservation was one way only.
“Now I am not bluffing. I would not hesitate to report you, and, if I felt there was any need, report you for molesting a young American female. And my concern for the wellbeing of that young woman is such that if I were to call your military police, and they not respond, I would make sure that mine did. Am I clear?”
