by Ken Babbs
On the toilet, wet from the rain, all hell breaks loose … frightening flickering shadows cross my sweated forehead … voices reverberate old warnings through my ringing ears … “Don’t eat the native food” … Captain Beamus, the self-ordained Oriental, poo-poos the warnings: “The natives eat it and they don’t seem to suffer” … Cochran corrects him, “Bullshit, they all got dysentery. They’re just forced to live with it” … until done, weakened, washed out and exhausted, I stagger back to the tent, take two pills, eat a couple of soda crackers and punch the ticket to dreamland.
Workers pound and dig, laying cement across my chest … smell of rice paddies wafts through the tent on a hot humid breeze … sweltering tremulous drums beat a frenzied tune on the top of my head … a shower roars in from the southwest, drenching the tent … rousing me to get up and make an assessment. Seems the cure has taken. The pills, plus the C-ration John Wayne crackers. They explode in your stomach, not in your mouth. Old Corps glue for stoppering loose bowels.
With my body settled down, the next morning it’s back to the regular routine of wearying hours in the cockpit, the radio blaring in my earphones, Cochran beating time on his leg.
10. The Silence of the Tropics
Slow it down, Doc … it slips away too fast … what was immediate, all-consuming, burned on my brain … slips away … I grasp at wisps … a Vietnamese home defense corps soldier lies on a stretcher with his eyes stuck open … bloodied body unnaturally sprawled … waiting to be lifted aboard the helicopter … lines of men and women pass sacks of rice, cages of chickens, boxes of canned goods from the chopper belly to the ground to be carried to huts, to be cooked on wood stoves to end up in people’s bellies … a squad of ARVNs pile aboard … flown to a landing zone … kicked out into a paddy, rifles held high above waist- deep water, rotor wash beating down … strange bloated shapes move through the water … slippery eels … goopy sea slugs … a small fish with a barbed horny head rises and discovers a flow of piss splashing into the water … swims up the stream of piss and lodges inside the pecker, eating its way into the urethra where it dies … leaving an oozing infection … no known cure … it’s not gonna happen on my watch, Doc … when that mancón comes swimming up my pee, I backpedal as fast as I can … keeping just ahead until I’m pissed out … my stream spurts dead … the fish falls to the ground, mouth opens and shuts helplessly … there’s danger everywhere, Doc … only way to avoid it is to fly higher … out of range … in the comfort of the clouds …
The silence of the tropics has been shattered by a line of cumulonimbus clouds that have cleared the air, watered the soil and awakened me from the doldrums. The mail has been sorted and delivered, and all over the camp Marines hunker down on cots, boxes, chairs or the ground to read their letters from home.
Cochran sits on a camp stool in front of the refrigerator. Hors d’oeuvres are spread out on another camp stool: mess-hall soda crackers, salami, pepperoni and cheese. He carves out spots of mold with his survival knife. A cocktail pitcher sits on the floor: a number-ten can filled with martinis and ice.
He raises his head and sniffs, makes a face. “Do I detect a malodorous odor in the air?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “You’ll have to prove it. How do you spell malodorous?”
“Spell? I’m talking about smell, muchacho. This isn’t an English class, you know. School’s out. Have a drink.”
We swig greedily. Out there is the war. Both sides feeling their way, evolving tactics, a prelude to the conduct of future wars, dragged out without ever really ending. The center comes undone. What rough beast slouches toward Saigon? Diem runs the country with an iron family hand, passing out officialdom to his relatives, keeping track of everything, keeping the country safe from degenerate activities, like dancing, for instance. No telling what secrets are being passed back and forth as, heads close, bodies rub together in communist conspiracy. Not that communists are such great dancers.
Balmy summer days are quietly tucked away with Aunty Kathy who was committed on the last day of August. Fall is right around the corner. Brings out the do’s and the dont’s. Bills, babies and new cars. Books to read. Coeds to cuddle. The turf smacks of frosty action. Gladiators unlimber their meathooks, swath their muscles in padding, and, with of the roars of millions shaking the firmament, go at it with teeth, forearms, cleats and the piling of ons.
A North Vietnam citizen is handed a mortar shell. Carries it hundreds of miles down the Ho Chi Minh trail to a mortar crew on a knoll overlooking an ARVN outpost. A Viet Cong soldier takes the shell, drops it in the tube, it goes off with a thunk and whoosh, the soldier turns to the citizen, “Go get another.”
Rob Jacobs perches on the edge of his cot, pours powder on his feet, the skin flaking and shredding with jungle rot. Cochran rummages through his clothes.
“Christ on a crutch, I’ll have to wash some skivvies, these are all full of nicotine stains.”
“Why don’t you give up smoking?” Rob Jacobs asks.
“I would if I thought it’d stop the shits.”
Cochran pulls off his shorts, holds the raggedy garment to the light, sniffs, grimaces and flings it in the wet pile under his cot.
Pom-pom girls unlimber their jigs and jounces for the first home game and coaches vow to make amends for last year’s disasterous season. Trees bloom scarlet and gold and shed their mantles. Coeds lie on dormitory roofs. Metal sun reflectors provide the season’s final tanning rays.
The sense of unity that first spread through the pilots and crew chiefs, extending even to the lowest enlisted ranks, still exists, although like Cochran’s shorts, it’s a bit tattered. We’re a gaggle of men working in unison for a noble cause, our lives in jeopardy. Fly our asses off all day, accept a bullet or two in payment and put out a few rounds of our own; flat clips and scattered impact from the grease gun, a wild-firing, short-ranged, fast-bursting, fat-slugged automatic weapon. Then return to the tent; flaps dangling, ropes singing, floors buckling, beds damp and mildewed, shoes covered with mold, metal oxidyzing into caustic red surfaces; our home where we gather every evening for drinks and bull roar.
In Bumfuck, Missouri, Miz Tildy slops her pet pig but unknowingly drops in a serving spoon and the pig chokes to death, all bloated and worthless, and it galls Miz Tildy so bad she comes up raging from a grog bender and blows out the TV with her double-barreled twelve-gauge when she catches Jonathan Winters doing his hog farmer bit, making suwee suwee pig talk.
The bubonic plague arrives in the Far East. Fleas transported through the Suez Canal, slipped tariff-free past Nasser’s guards busy putting down a riot, have debarked ship somewhere in Formosa and from there scattered through the Phillipines, Okinawa and China, to North Vietnam and, following the Ho Chi Minh trail, to South Vietnam.
Americans are invulnerable, if not from the Viet Cong, then at least from the plague. For we have had our shots, adding a sore arm misery to the grumblings in the lower bowels where an occasional explosion disrupts even the most important of activities. The runny shits won’t take a back seat, even for war.
In Pennsylvania, hunters get ready for deer season. In Southern California the first hint of rain builds over the Santa Ana Range. In Florida wisteria spreads its shoots in preparation for next year’s display. And in Texas whirling miniature cyclonic dust storms dance across the grass prairies.
The word comes down from the top: don’t have your film developed in Vietnam. The VC get copies of our pics and use them for training aids and propaganda. Nobody believes it and nobody sends their film to Okinawa to get developed.
When humor comes it is contagious, laughing and swinging up and down the rows of tents, into the mess hall, out on the flight line and even on the missions. Catches in a man’s craw, tickles his gonads, sparkles among the ice cubes in his drink.
Cochran picks up his towel and soap and steps out on the porch to shower in the rain.
“Uh-oh,” he yells. “Big trouble. The duty officer forgot to take in th
e Hammer’s flag. It’s soggier than one of my socks.”
“Blah,” says Rob Jacobs. “I wish the fucking flag would rot after the trick the Hammer played on me today.”
He picks up the bottle of gin.
“There I was,” he says. “Flying a nice tight wing when the bastard splits the needles and leaves me grabbing for the collective a thousand feet above the zone, not even a shout to tell me we’ve arrived. Whoosh, he’s gone and I have to circle around and come back in. By the time I land he’s already taken off, and when we get home I get my ass chewed for flying a sloppy wing.”
Rob spills gin on his hand and wipes it on his flight suit. The metamorphosis of the Marine. From shit-kicking warrior to shit-faced whoremonger, sucked into the morass and mire of the Ugh American on the Far East Tour.
Daddy is proud I am serving my country, sure that I’ll uphold the Huckelbee tradition. “Fight with courage and bravery, son. Never miss an opporturity to reap honor. Your’s is a fighting man’s world, one in which the strongest and most valorous always win.”
There’s nothing on the line for us over here, Daddy. Not as if we’re fighting for our soil, our homes, our families, against a foreign invader. No, we’re here to assist the SVN against the NVN, but who can tell the difference unless it’s a slightly different accent and a different way of living in a slightly different climate and terrain, say like the difference between a Yankee trader—“I be from Milwaukee”—and a Kentucky tobacco farmer—“You be, huh? Down here we speak proper English; I am from Coon Lick.”
The Vietnamese farmer is caught in the middle. The Viet Cong demand food and shelter and total submission. Night-time atrocities are common. In the daylight, huge buglike machines swoop out of the sky, spitting bullets and disgorging troops. The Viet Cong say the bug machines spread disease and death. They might have something there.
I have traveled and seen new places. Hawaii, Guam, Okinawa, Japan, Vietnam. In letters home, the names scrawl from my pen like drool from a baby’s mouth. What I don’t tell them is no matter where we go, I have discovered, lurking beneath the grinning surfaces of these so-called exotic places, a common reaction to Americans: suspicion. Concealed by a willingness to fleece the Yankee out of his dollar. Provide him with insidious delights: smut. Gala extravaganzas. The country prostituted to please the jaded tastes of the American visitor.
I take advantage of a day off flying so the mechs can work on the sick birds, and hop a ride to Saigon on the supply run C-123.
The capitol is a leisurely city far removed from the outposts, maintaining its French flavor with sidewalk cafes, pissoirs and flower stalls and French still the acceptable language. The shops are closed twelve to three for an after-lunch siesta, just when I arrive downtown. I forego the offer of a pedicab and walk along broad streets lined with trees and large stores. Exploring deeper, I turn down a narrow, shadowed side street, past crowded stalls, hustling vendors and brown-skinned, red-mouthed betel nut chewers. Tall, stained, brick and mortar walls hem me in, windows barred and dirty, tables and chairs and benches piled with cloth bundles and goods wrapped with string. A man in a pith helmet and short-sleeve khaki shirt, a glaring scowl on his face, pushes a wheeled cart carrying flavored drinks toward me. I sidle past, deeper into the shadows, along slime-drenched walls where laughing faces mock my own filth. There, a sign ahead, STEAM BATH AND MASSAGE, just the place to boil off the dirt and diarrhea crud encrusting my body.
I push the door open and go inside. A furtive look from an old man changes to an ingratiating smile, so happy to exchange my money for a towel. He points to a changing room. Once I’m bare-ass naked, my feet curling on the cold concrete floor, I balefully eye the steam room, empty and gloomy, a bare bench alongside one wall. The wooden door closes behind me with a solid thunk. A small opaque window in the door is the only break in the monotonous gloom of the room. Overhead, a bare bulb sways in the ghostly fog.
The hot mist crushes me, forcing the air from my lungs. A shower head sticks out of the wall. I turn on the spigot but it spins uselessly in my hand. The heat bears down on my head and shoulders, muggy sweaty oppressive steam. The room is too small and confining. My pores open, making me more vulnerable. Bodily fluids ooze from my skin. The close air constricts my breathing. I push on the door, but it is locked shut by an invisible catch, no handle on the inside. I push harder, a fringe of panic seeping in with the steam. The bulb sways crazily in the gray ceiling soup. Darkness and blurred reflections stare from the window. Thoughts of murder awaken forgotten warnings: don’t go off the main street. Don’t go anywhere alone. Intense stiffling heat, suffocating air. The long-ago closing door. The missing handle. I bang my fist on the wood, muffled, barely discernible. Through the misted window a face watches with slitted eyes, grining mouth, white teeth. I knock desperately on the unforgiving door which suddenly swings open flooding me with fresh air. The steam room proprietor smiles helpfully.
“All done?” he says. “You shower?”
“It doesn’t work.”
He turns the spigot.
Water flows in needle streams, cool refreshing head-clearing lung-cooling water, splashing over my throbbing head and running down my back and legs in sparkling relief.
“No more steam?”
“No, no more.”
“You like massage?”
After the steam room, anything.
We go into a small room containing a massage table. I relax and listen to the reassuring sounds of commerce and activity coming from the street. The massage pummels away the memory of being locked in the steam room.
Outside, the shops are still closed for the afternoon nap break but the bars are open and I go into the Texas Roundup. The front heavily screened to fend off grenades, a not so subtle reminder of the war. Young, dark-eyed, long-haired girls work behind the bar, serving drinks and playing dice or cards for the bill. I haggle with two girls and play liar’s dice. I’m too spent from the massage to sample their feminine wares. A little girl walks into the bar. She pulls at my leg and asks if I want to buy some peanuts.
“No,” I tell her. “Beat it.” The standard phrase for putting the kids off.
She tugs again, very insistent, and once more I tell her to leave.
She looks at me and says, “Why you don’t give me money? You buy them drink.”
I stare at her unblinking dirty face, grubby clothes and tray full of peanuts then pull out some piasters. I hand them to her and then leave to catch a taxi and return to the air field, with the bitter taste of the Bia La Rue beer still on my tongue.
“Conned again,” Cochran says, when I tell him about the little girl. “Americans are the biggest suckers in the world. Make them ashamed of being Americans and they can be conned out of their skins.”
I’m too tired to argue.
The southwest monsoon simmers to a close. Three or four days of steady rain recede to afternoon showers of hard and fast duration. The nights are clear and a breeze rustles the tent flaps, but not enough to ward off the mosquitos. The morning sun bakes the runway and the water from yesterday’s rain steams and dries. By noon a layer of wispy clouds boils in off the ocean and the muggy heat is at its worst.
Another month and the showers will end. The rice paddies will dry, the ground will be cracked and peeling, with dust rising and swirling on the fingertips of the wind. The hot season will be at its zenith and, along with the temperature, the war in the Delta will heat up.
Action and situation are muddled and confused, like a bowl of noodles. Politics and war. Impossible to move in one direction without a corresponding move in the other. What we get out of this depends on what we go in looking for. For some it is a medal, a badge of glory signifying so many combat missions. For others an opportunity to shoot up the countryside, let off pent-up frustrations
In Washington it is a study of new tactics and weapons. In Saigon, an accumulation of American money and supplies. At an outpost in the boonies, it’s beer, C-rations and rice, dropped from the
skies by a green whirley-bladed bird, huge and splendid with its tricks and capers, delightful to watch and touch, particularly the amazing giants who make it perform.
Much of it gives us a feeling of satisfaction. Hauling food and supplies to isolated outposts. Evacuating wounded to the comfort and safety of a hospital. And we feel better knowing we’re not the complete barbarians Hanoi Hannah makes us out to be. Still, we’re reluctant to trust the villagers, the families who are trying to keep their homes together, plant and harvest their crops, live a peaceful life.
You, who write to us, can you understand, does this make sense? Your letters are like messages from another planet. Does someone sitting in an office crank them out to perpetuate an American myth? A central morale building where families and towns and friends are invented and their activities chronicled? A vacation is planned—was it ever completed? Baby has a fever. Does the fever continue? Time stops and remains stationary until the next letter arrives, and, like a freight train on a siding, the pace picks up and the train jogs ahead to the next switch where it sits until prodded forward again.
Hello there. I send my answer into the void. Hello there. I, too, am an American. I am over here but still one of you. When you read this do you know that I am in the jungle, mingling with small brown people, passing out C-ration candy to their kids? Do I have depth, voice, body, a kiss? Or am I a picture hung on the wall, a projection on a piece of paper?
I write Rosey that I will comb the hills and the markets, peer into musty corners with my trusty jeweler’s eyepiece screwed into my left farsighted eye, and search for the perfect piece of jade, the solitary gem, the translucent marvel, the only stone remaining in Vietnam that will fit into the final fine bracelet to emerge from the Orient. I hope it makes her happy.
