Me and some vet’rans started what we call Base Camp One. We met at this church. It’s to bring the comradeship that we had in the service into civilian life. To get a positive foundation to grow on. Because we feel that we are still in a combat situation.
We talk about the old enemy. The war. Our lives. The ghosts. The nightmares.
We didn’t gain no respect for the Viet Cong until after we got into combat and found out that we had millions of dollars worth of equipment which s’posed to be advanced and so technical, and they were fighting us with whatever was available or whatever they could steal. I don’t think we were well trained enough for that type of guerrilla warfare. But we were better soldiers, better equipped. And we had the technology.
In fact, we had the war beat until they started this pacification program. Don’t shoot, unless shot upon. The government kept handicapping us one way or ’nother. I don’t think America lost. I think they gave up. They surrendered.
And this country befell upon us one big atrocity. It lied. They had us naïve, young, dumb-ass niggers believin’ that this war was for democracy and independence. It was fought for money. All those big corporations made billions on the war, and then America left.
I can’t speak for other minorities, but living in America in the eighties is a war for survival among black folks. And black vet’rans are being overlooked more than everybody. We can’t find jobs, because nobody trusts us. Because we killers. We crazy. We went away intelligent young men to do the job of American citizens. And once we did, we came back victims.
Sometimes I’m walkin’ on the street. I see Kenneth McKnight. I see Cook, James Cook. Brothers I knew in west Baltimore, in D.C.
One time I saw Kenneth on this corner. When I got there, he had turned down the street and was not there.
Another time I saw James on the other side of the street.
I called ’im, “James. Wait for me, man.”
When I got over there, he was gone.
I ask this guy, “Did you see a brother standing right here?”
“No, man.”
I still cry.
I still cry for the white brother that was staked out.
I still cry because I’m destined to suffer the knowledge that I have taken someone else’s life not in a combat situation.
I think I suffered just as much as he did. And still do. I think at times that he’s the winner, not the loser.
I still have the nightmare twelve years later. And I will have the nightmare twelve years from now. Because I don’t wanna forget. I don’t think I should. I think that I made it back here and am able to sit here and talk because he died for me. And I’m livin’ for him.
I still have the nightmare. I still cry.
I see me in the nightmare. I see me staked out. I see me in the circumstances where I have to be man enough to ask someone to end my suffering as he did.
I can’t see the face of the person pointing the gun.
I ask him to pull the trigger. I ask him over and over.
He won’t pull the trigger.
I wake up.
Every time.
Radarman Second Class
Dwyte A. Brown
Washington, D.C.
Radarman
Operation Marketime
U.S. Navy
Cam Ranh Bay
March 1968–September 1969
I didn’t see the ugly part of the war. I enjoyed the war ’cause I was at Cam Ranh Bay. Cam Ranh Bay was paradise, man. I would say, Boy, if I got some money together, I’d stay right here and live. I wasn’t even gon’ come back to the United States. I was treated like a king over there. It was no war.
Cam Ranh Bay was the inland R & R spot. That’s where the battle-weary people was supposed to come to have R & R in country. They could get everything.
And it was so beautiful, pretty country. Beautiful coral reef. And the sand. Miles of perfect white sand. And the white boys could surf all they wanted. Boy, they had their fun.
We had movies about twice a week. The EM club was open from like eleven o’clock to about ten every day. It had live shows two, three times in a week. USO would come through all the time, too.
The Army had it good; the Air Force, better. We had it the greatest, the Navy. We had hot and cold running water. Air conditioning. The Navy always had great food, but this base was somethin’ else. The Vietnamese did all the cooking, and the blacks supervised the cooking. And we ate like kings. Lobster, steak, everything. I must have gained 40 pounds.
I had every luxury in my room. Complete stereo with reel-to-reel tape. TV. Three-foot refrigerator full of beer and booze. Cabinets. I had a closet full of clothes. When you were on duty, you had to dress. But other times, there was no dress code. If I wanted to put a suit on one day, I wore a suit. Officers, enlisted men, be lounging around all day, like the dress code was bathing suits and sunglasses. And all the officers had a dog. I had three myself. And Tiffany was my favorite. I called her that ’cause she was pure white.
And there was plenty of pretty Vietnamese women over there.
And marijuana. Fact is I didn’t even smoke marijuana ’til I went over to Vietnam. Didn’t even know what marijuana was ’til I went over to Vietnam. And it was given to us. We didn’t spend money in the village for it. It was a barter system. We’d bring them some steaks from the base, or a mattress. They would just give us the stuff.
I tell you I ain’t even know it was a war if somebody didn’t tell me. I mean I did have to be reminded sometimes there was a war going on.
Nobody shot at the base but one time. In fact, we didn’t even carry weapons. That one time we thought we was under attack. All of a sudden, the siren went off. General quarters. So we brought the boats around, trained the guns on this hill. We was getting ready to light them suckers up. When we put the spotlight on, we saw two simple-ass white dudes up there drunk, spraying the base with two M-16 rifles. So they got a court-martial.
The only serious fighting at Marketime was between black guys and white guys. There would be this power struggle over the field. All the white guys wanted to play softball. We wanted to play basketball. And we could go into a barracks, and there would be nothing but Confederate flags all over the place. And one time they burned a cross. And like some of the brothers was getting beat up. And we were more or less head hunting, too. Payback. We knew that we couldn’t get justice going by the book, because out of 500 people, it was only 38 blacks. That’s why we started this club, Negro Veterans from Vietnam. We had to protect ourselves. So we lived together, this club. And the whites knew they better not cross our perimeter. This is my territory, this is yours. It was like a city within a city. I wasn’t fighting the enemy. I was fighting the white man.
I joined up in ’65, a year after I got out of high school. I was working as a stock clerk in Woodies department store in D.C. I come from a family of nine children. My father always worked two jobs, for Sealtest Dairy Co. and drove a taxi. I had three brothers who had been in the Navy, and I was just following them. And I wanted to learn a trade. They told me I could either become a radioman or a radarman. I chose radarman.
The first time I went to Vietnam, we spent the time sitting out there guarding a carrier. I said, Hey, I want to see some of the action. I thought I should be there to fight. Stop the Communism. I wanted to be in Vietnam. So I volunteer. I put in for a river patrol boat. So I got sent to Cam Ranh Bay. But when I got there, they said the boat I was s’posed to get on had just got blown out of the water by a mine. So they sent me into the operation center. Operation Marketime was for coastal surveillance, right? And I was in the front office, plotting the courses of the ships. I was radarman. I was telephone talker. The other brothers on the base was in the mess, doing the security on the boats, or seabees. We didn’t have no black officers. So I was the elite one, because I was the number one plotter. I was like the spook sitting by the Navy door.
One time I be in the plotting room, and Time magazine have a whole
bunch of big-shot business people from Fortune 500 seein’ our operation. I know, ’cause I had the pointer. They told us, show ’em the good part, none of the ugly parts. We doin’ this, doin’ that, which was not true. Just make it look great, but in actuality it wasn’t. Like a operation went foul, fucked up. Lost a whole bunch of lives. But we tell ’em it was a great operation. I can remember we had a contingent of the SEAL team come down. About ten of them. They had the run of the base. They snapped their fingers—everybody jumped. Nobody messed with them. Shit they did was hushed up. But they had a operation, people lost their lives. Then the report that came out was a complete reversal of what happened. Said everything was great.
I went out on the patrol boats a few times. It was illegally, more or less. But I was bored. We were searching down the lines to keep the sappers away from the generator ship that was giving power to the base. They would be like a kamikaze person. He would strap a charge on his back, just float down the river with a reed out of his mouth, and he would just ram his body right to the ship. Boom. Gone. Blow a hole in the ship. Cause chaos. Or if we saw a little junk, or anything strange, we would go investigate.
One time we’d see bubbles on the surface of the water. It would be at night, okay ? We had spotlights. He was trying to get through our lines. So we just dropped concussion grenades into the water. Let ’em explode. Bust his eardrums. That would do the job. And then wait a few seconds after the explosion. Then the body come up to the surface. Then we would just rake his body in, and we would just put him in a sack. We would get one like that once a week. And if that tactic didn’t work, they would try maybe around land. Well, then, they would meet the Army people.
Sometimes in the plotting room the white guys would be all drunked up, and when they come down to tense situations, they couldn’t perform their duty. Even ones ranked higher than me. But the captain knew that my stuff was good. And Captain Hoffman, he liked the Miracles, the Temptations. So I used to sit in his trailer and make tapes for him. He would let me do anything. I had his jeep at my convenience. The other officers come up when he was away and say, “Can I borrow the jeep, Dwyte?” “No. This is my jeep.” I got to be a snotty mother over there. And if you wasn’t a lieutenant commander or above, you don’t even talk to Dwyte. This lieutenant got mad because I didn’t salute. I told him, “You ain’t got no rank, turkey. You ain’t nobody. I work for Captain Hoffman. He got four bars.” When he told Captain Hoffman, Captain Hoffman said, “Get out of here.” Then Captain Hoffman say, “Dwyte, you didn’t have to do that.” I say, “I know it.”
The captain was buckin’ for admiral, so sometimes he went down South to fight the war so he could get his ribbons. When the captain was there, I worked. If the captain was not there, I didn’t have to work. So I’m roamin’ around free. I could go and get lost in the village.
One time I disappeared for three weeks, and nobody knew where I was. Captain went down South. I ain’t got nothing to do. I’m gone. “See y’all.”
I got my gun. I got my walkie-talkie. I got voice communication to the boat. So the brothers dropped me off in my girl’s village. I stayed in her house. I didn’t need no supplies. I ate what they ate. I slept on what they slept on. And when the boat came back to get me, I just shine my flashlight. And George, this brother, say, “Dwyte, that you?” “Yep. Comin’ in.”
This other time six of us—all brothers—got caught though. We had took the boat down the river, maybe about 10 miles. We pulled right up to this village, and we was in there shacking up with the little village people. Early in the morning of the second night, that village was attacked by Vietnam terrorists. The Vietnamese killing the Vietnamese. You could raise the flap on the window and watch them fightin’. I was kind of scared at first. But the girls said not to worry. They ain’t comin’ in here. We’re gonna protect y’all. When the daylight come out, I walked around the village. And the ARVNs be right there with guns and everything. Then we got caught sneaking back to the boat. The Army had sentry dogs and caught us off limits in the village. They took us back in handcuffs, and our people said, “All right. We’ll take care of ’em.” I opened the door at operations, and Captain Hoffman said, “All right, Dwyte. Go back to work.”
After a while, we’d go to the villages and bring the women back on the boat. See, the Air Force had built a village. And the men could go there and buy some pussy. But the VD rate got so great, they closed it down. So every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the brothers would sneak five dames on the boats and bring them into this barracks. The white guys would stand in line outside, and we would charge them. That’s how we made money. Five minutes cost about a dollar. All night, $20. But all night be only a couple of hours, you know. We’d have a man downstairs collecting the money. And then we’d have another guy up by the cubicles saying, “You go in that one. You go in this one. Times up.”
It made the white boys mad that we had this business sewed up. But we did, because we controlled security and nobody could get on base except through us. And this was the paradox about it. The officers knew what was going on, but they didn’t mess with us, because we were providing a service. One time the brother on the gate stopped this captain’s car. He said, “Captain, what do you have under the blanket, sir?” He wouldn’t let him on the base until he had a look. “All right. You got a little girl under there, don’t you, Captain? All right, sir. We’ll let you in this time, sir.” That was a trip, because there was a contingent of Red Cross nurses ’bout a couple of miles down the road. And the American women, white or black, went with the American officers only. If you was enlisted, you couldn’t get within striking range. I’m talkin’ ’bout don’t even look like you want to look at ’em. Even the black sisters. I went up to this black nurse. “No, brother,” she told me. “Officer’s pleasure only.”
I wish I could show you a picture of the cave we had, the brothers. You could only get to it by boat. About a mile down the river. We would go there on weekends. It was like a oasis. We had our own generator power set up. So we got our music boxes hooked up. Brothers ran the commissary, okay? So everything was there. Steaks, beer, liquor. All the women. All the marijuana. Picnic tables. You go swimming right down there from this little grotto. It was like Paradise Island.
One day we had an open house. We invited everybody. The commander of the base came down and said, “You all, this is a good thing you got here.” But after that, the white guys tried to crash it. And the executive officer said, “This is all black. That’s wrong. We want the whites to be able to share in this also.” We said no, and they made it off limits to us and everybody else.
Even so, I really had a ball over there. I didn’t take nobody’s life, and I’m glad I didn’t lose mine. It was really paradise.
When I got out of the service, I started looking for a job. Then I became bitter. I always considered myself to be a good guy. I stayed within the limits of the law, okay? I don’t bust nobody’s bubbles. I remember pounding the pavement for about a year looking for work. I could not get a job because I was not an ex-drug addict. I was not an ex-convict. I was not an ex-Vietnamese. I had to be an ex-something before I could get work. Being ex-serviceman Vietnam meant nothin’. I said, Damn, I done sacrificed for my country in Vietnam and what do I get. I just became a street urchin. Different odd jobs around the city. I didn’t want a regimentated type of atmosphere. In the service it was a hundred people telling one person to do something. I drove a bus. Worked as a laborer. At the Government Printing Office. I finally wound up becoming a elevator mechanic. I liked that. It’s been eight years now. My work speak for me. I know what I do is great. And I do it to please myself.
When the Communists took over Vietnam, I began to think the war was a waste of time. I guess we were there for fun and glory. I didn’t see us saving nobody. The Vietnamese didn’t want us there. I could even think back to how they didn’t want the French there. When I read where the Russians got our bases at Cam Ranh, I just figured the people who lived there,
they ain’t got no say. The poor Vietnamese. Somebody stuck it to them again.
Poor Vietnamese. So many times Americans would degrade them. At Cam Ranh Bay even. In paradise, man. That would be ridiculous. Havin’ it so good, yet still treat ’em like trash. Especially these white guys, actin’ like “I am the conqueror. I am supreme.” Dirt, that’s how they treat the Vietnamese, like dirt.
Let’s say, riding down the road in the truck, I’ll see ’em plow right through a bunch. It’s fun to them. You see a Vietnamese might be walking down the street. This guy run up there and goose him. Stick his finger up the man’s butt. Or smack him upside the head. Any type of derogatory thing to degrade them.
In the mess hall one day, this white dude wanted a whole bunch of chicken. The Vietnamese girl was doing what she was told. She say, “Two piece chicken. Two piece chicken.” So this guy grabbed her by the neck and stuck her head in the mashed potatoes.
And like mama sans be on the base cleanin’ our shoes. I give her a dollar. But this guy say, “You ain’t do it good enough.” Maybe smack her. Or throw her daughter down, pull her clothes up, try to have sex with her. She just thirteen or fourteen. She there tryin’ to sweep the floor. The mother was just too scared to say somethin’.
And like they cleanin’ up our showers while we takin’ a shower. I see it’s a woman, I’d keep my towel on me, right? This white guy didn’t have nothin’ on. He say, “Hey. Come here. Jump on this.” He shake his dick at her. The Vietnamese, they be just noddin’ their head, grinnin’. He say again, “Hey, Mama San, jump on this.” Then he grabbed the little daughter. I say, “Hey, man. Why don’t you leave the little girl alone? They just doin’ their work.” He say, “Aw, fuck it, man. We protectin’ them. I’m over here savin’ their life.”
Bloods Page 29
