LBJ's Hired Gun

by John J. Gebhart

  We all got tired of PFC Punchy very quickly. When his third week came, the Flight Surgeon gave him a physical and a rabies shot. This really pissed him off and he yelled out in pain like a little kid getting a needle in the rear end. I guess the monkey missed his relatives over across the bay at Monkey Mountain. One day after another shit-throwing incident with the Major, he went AWOL.

  At Friday’s formation, First Sergeant Prick read that PFC Punchy the Monkey had gone Absent Without Leave, and everyone cheered. Just about every squad member had some unhappy tale to tell about the monkey. Finally a happy ending, and we could now live in peace. Wrong! PFC Punchy the Monkey returned two weeks later, and simply went into his cage and took a nap like he had never gone away.

  At our usually boring Friday formation, PFC Punchy the Monkey was charged with being AWOL and busted to Private. He was put on a diet of C-rations with no fresh bananas for two weeks. In reality, this was all for entertainment. We treated this wiseass monkey like our family. Sergeant Laugh liked him so much that he had his mother send him a book on understanding monkeys and another on monkey behavior problems. He studied up and became a monkey expert of sorts, and the Colonel made him the official monkey caretaker. He told us that if we ignored the monkey he would be good, but if we played with him and got him excited, he would be bad. The only problem was, if Sergeant Laugh went out and got drunk, the monkey would run amuck!

  One hot night, Private Punchy knocked over his water bowl, so he unhooked his leash and went looking for water. I guess he smelled it. He climbed up on a water buffalo, a large water tank with two spigots that could be pulled with a jeep or a truck, which contained purified water processed by the Navy. Normally the supply lasted about a week, and then they replenished it. We had two of these water buffaloes at the enlisted men’s area. PFC Punchy turned on a spigot, drank and washed up. He also turned on the other spigot. I guess he was hot. He left them both on and went back to his leash in the S-1 tent and went to bed on the Colonel’s chair.

  The next day at 6:00 AM we went out to shave and brush our teeth. There was no water, but there was a lot of mud on the ground with tiny footprints. In fact, a lot of footprints. It didn’t take long to figure out that Private Punchy was the culprit. Everyone was thirsty and pissed off. The second water buffalo had a long line of guys waiting to get water, and ran out later the same day.

  The monkey was declared a VC spy and we had to figure out how to get rid of him. We called the 7th Marines to see if they wanted him back. Answer: “No way, Jose!” Sergeant Laugh defended the monkey as being thirsty and said we should overlook the incident. The whole outfit had to wait two hours for the water tank truck to refill the water buffalo. Every Marine had to take two salt tablets each day. The temperature at noon was usually about 110 degrees. Even though we lived on the beach, we didn’t get a lot of fresh breezes off the ocean. Water was our life and cold beer was the entertainment after work that kept us going so we forgot that the gooks were out to kill us.

  First Sergeant Prick tried six different outfits. They all said sorry, but no thank you. They must have heard about Private Punchy at the big Enlisted Men’s Club in Da Nang. By this time, he had become quite well known to fellow Marines in I-Corps. Finally the Colonel declared that Private Punchy the Monkey was unsuitable for military service and he was loaded into a slick UH-IE chopper with doors. The Colonel took him over to Monkey Mountain and landed in an LZ where two Air Force F-4 Phantoms had crashed. Private Punchy’s cat collar was removed, the Colonel said goodbye, Sergeant Laugh gave him a huge bunch of bananas, and First Sergeant Prick, with tears in his eyes, saluted him and said goodbye.

  The Colonel returned in about 20 minutes and we all rejoiced upon finally getting rid of this menace to society. The moral of the story is, “Don’t let a wiseass spider monkey make a monkey out of you!” Happy Trails! Hope we don’t meet again!

  THE DAY I MET MY GUARDIAN ANGEL

  At Saint Callistus Roman Catholic Grammar School in West Philadelphia’s Overbrook section, Sister Margaret Murphy had told us we all had a guardian angel that God sent down to watch over and protect us. She stated our good angel was on our right shoulder and our bad angel was on our left shoulder. Of course my buddy Anthony (or “Little Anthony,” as we called him, because he was so skinny) didn’t believe this angel story and was always asking his bad angel to help him beat someone up. Anyway, it was always good as a young kid to think you really did have a guardian angel, even though you never saw him. Little Anthony wanted to be a gangster and would say, “Fuck the angels, I got my brother Big Anthony to kick anybody’s ass who messes with me.”

  Sister Margaret Murphy, our sixth-grade teacher, may not have been bullshitting us after all. In times of great peril, life or death situations, I learned that your good angel materialized and you can actually see him for a very brief period. I know you are thinking I have now had too many Buds with Jack Daniels chasers, but I met my guardian angel face-to-face in a sudden, savage mortar attack at Marble Mountain.

  Two zip mortar teams opened up with two 81mm mortars. Since half the help we hired at Marble Mountain were actually VCs, they had measured all the distances from living quarters to the tarmac where our Huey helicopters were parked. The VC walked the mortars in, trying to hit our aircraft and hangar area. We had spent endless days digging sandbag bunkers in case we got hit with mortars, but when you are out alone on the flight deck and it starts raining mortar rounds, you are scared shitless. Our own mortar pits, run by the 7th Marine grunts, returned fire with illumination and heat rounds, lighting up the whole sky like daylight as the flares came down on their little parachutes. They made an eerie sound—wimmie, wimmie, wimmie—and then complete silence.

  The scene was chaos. Things were blowing up. The crash crew was running around in their red truck putting out fires. Everyone out on the flight line could see the mortars getting closer and closer to the aircraft and hangar area. There were no Sergeants or Corporals to tell us what hole to jump in. It was assholes and elbows to get into a sandbag bunker. Out of all the shit in ’Nam, the mortar attacks always seemed the worst. It took about six mortar attacks until I vanquished my fear. Whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.

  This night was my second attack and the gooks were dropping two mortars at a time, walking them right toward my bunker. It pisses you off—you have your rifle but there isn’t anyone to shoot at. You are literally in the hands of fate. It was like lightning—if you were unlucky, you might get zapped.

  I decided in three more rounds my present bunker would get hit, so it was time to beat feet to a new location. I made a mad dash to another bunker occupied by another Marine. Most of the flight line personnel were in other long 50-man sandbag bunkers farther up the flight line, out of harm’s way. I asked my fellow Marine if we should stay and pray or run for another bunker. He turned to me, and he had a clean face and even clean hands. He was calm and relaxed, and told me to calm down, keep my head down, and I would be all right. He had no rank insignia on his collar and he didn’t smell like the rest of us, like C-rations or wet sandbags. He was somebody I’d never seen, so I figured he was a new guy in the outfit. I did notice he had no rifle or helmet or even a web cartridge belt with extra M-14 magazines. I wondered how he was so calm without even a K-bar knife.

  Our UH-IE gunships knocked out the mortars in about 12 minutes, though it seemed like four hours. I turned and let out a loud rebel yell as we saw the zips get blown up with white Willie-Peter 2.75 rockets, turning them into burning, smelly bacon burgers. I turned around to thank this guy, but he was gone. Later I looked all over for him, but I couldn’t even find him at our Friday morning formation. Who the hell was he? Nobody knew, and they all thought I was crazy. I believed he was my guardian angel, who materialized to save me from jumping into the wrong bunker and getting myself killed. I told the Chaplain, who laughed and patted me on the back. “You know, Gebhart,” he said, “Sister Margaret Murphy wouldn’t lie to you.”

 
The Chaplin also told me I was very lucky to meet my guardian angel and live to tell about it. Thus I was happy to be alive and in one piece. I never met my guardian angel again, but I knew in the back of my mind that he was watching over me. It always gave me a warm feeling, especially later when I was blasting VCs from a UH-IE with an M-60 machine gun, because I knew that even if I crashed I would be saved.

  THE KIA GUARD

  One hot, moonless night, I was out on the flight line working in the S-3 Operations tent when I heard a shot. It was around 10:00 PM and the zips never attacked until midnight to about 2:00 AM. I grabbed my rifle and helmet and went outside to see what happened. The Marines on guard duty were carrying a wounded PFC on a stretcher as quickly as they could walk. He had blood coming out of his mouth. He was shot over the heart and was bleeding from both the entry wound and the rear exit wound. A Marine had shot him by accident, and they were in a near panic to get him to a hospital. I grabbed a nearby Navy Corpsman who brought his medicine bag, and we put pressure bandages on the Marine’s back and front, managed to stop some of the bleeding, and put an IV into his arm. Blood was still pouring out of his mouth, and he was asking God to save him.

  I decided he needed a real doctor, so I borrowed the Gunny’s jeep and drove to get our Flight Surgeon, Doctor Jacobs. The doctor was playing cards with the Colonel and other officers and really didn’t want to get involved. I told him a Marine’s life was at stake and we needed an immediate Med-Evac chopper for the five-minute ride from Marble Mountain to Charlie Med at Da Nang. Very reluctantly, the doctor came with me. I drove like hell, and by the time Doctor Jacobs arrived he had to cut a hole in the wounded Marine’s neck and put a tube in it so he could breathe. The doctor worked on him for another five minutes, but he died. It was a bloody mess, and we were all covered with his blood. I felt in my heart that I didn’t do enough to save him. Until this day his death haunts me. If only we’d had a pilot on the flight line for the five-minute ride we might have saved his life.

  Doctor Jacobs told us the Marine was now sitting with the Vikings in Valhalla. His wound cut an artery and he died of internal bleeding. Even Charlie Med with all their skilled medical help couldn’t have saved him. The Corpsman and I put him in a body bag and drove him over to the base medical facility where he was put in a cold storage unit. It seemed such a waste to see a healthy Marine die by somebody’s mistake. I changed my bloody clothing, got drunk, and tried to forget the whole episode. It was one lousy bad break for a good Marine, and we didn’t even know his name.

  THE CLAP

  The clap is a very strange disease. Only enlisted men seem to be able to catch it. If a Marine Corps officer and a Corporal had sex with the same whore, the Corporal would go to sickbay with gonorrhea. The officer, who got the same test at sickbay, would be diagnosed with a simple cold. Both men were cured by a shot of penicillin in each butt cheek. The Corporal might get busted for catching a social disease, but since the officer and gentleman only caught a common cold, nothing happened to him. How I love equality! The officer may have caught his cold off a dirty toilet seat.

  When you don’t feel like you have a prick, your plumbing is okay, but usually, five days after you had sex with an infested whore, you started feeling a small itch in the end of your pecker. When you woke up in the morning, there was a small deposit of ooze or puss. At first you denied it—maybe it was something you ate—but each day, you kept worrying about what you should do. About day seven it started getting itchier, and there was more oozing. By this time, your boxer shorts were getting stained. You were embarrassed to ask a Sergeant or Gunny about a leaky dick. They would send you to sickbay and tell you what you had in plain English.

  At 8:00 AM sick call, you would see 20 to 30 Marines, all with a bottle in their hand filled with fresh piss. Each would have a worried look on his face, especially the first-time clap catchers. Sickbay was run by the Navy, who had no respect for worried Marines with a sick dick. The unfriendly, gay-looking Corpsman put a chemical stick into your piss bottle, and if you had the clap it changed color. They announced your name and either clapped their hands real hard or sang “Good Golly Miss Molly!” You then went into the doctor’s office, were ordered to drop your drawers, and received two huge silver-plated penicillin shots, one in each cheek. You were told not to drink booze for the next five days. It was an assembly line operation without any kindness, courtesy or manners. The whole embarrassment pissed you off, but deep down inside you felt good because your problem sick prick got repaired.

  The Marine Corps went nuts when they saw 30 or 40 men waiting to get their dicks fixed instead of reporting to work details. That’s why they came out with the Marine Corps order that you were no longer allowed in Da Nang City, and if you caught the clap you would be reduced in rank. Thus a Sergeant would become a Corporal, a Corporal would become a Lance Corporal, and so forth. Thank God I had a friend who was a Corpsman, or the whole base would have been reduced in rank.

  Still, it always amazed me to see who caught what. Five Marines screwed the same whore, four caught the clap, and the fifth Marine didn’t get it. Some old-time Lifer would tell you to take a quick piss and rub it over the head of your dick; I tried this and learned it was an old wives’ tale. The fifth Marine was just lucky, and either lied about screwing the whore, or went for a cheap blowjob instead. Of course, you could always wear a rubber, but most Marines didn’t. Who wanted to screw a whore with a raincoat on?

  Another pain in the ass was the crabs. Believe it or not, I never caught this disease in ’Nam, although I contracted it in the Philippines. You can hardly see them with your bare eyes. Once they lay their eggs on your balls, you start to itch and scratch, because they bite like fleas. The cure is a simple ointment that kills them dead in ten minutes. Since there is no shopping center with a Rite Aid around the corner, you have to go to sickbay and get the ointment, where you usually are treated with a lecture from the Navy Chief. You have to throw out your boxer shorts or you might get re-infested.

  Some Marines shaved the hair around their dicks to make sure they got all the critters. It was always amusing to see your bunk buddy holding his prick in one hand, and trying to shave his balls with the other. Usually, he would put shaving cream on the hair, and most times he would nick or cut the tender skin on his prick, which meant he would scream out in pain.

  The crabs were worse than the clap because they would come back and re-infest you. When you shave your prick hair, your dick area gets itchy, and you have to use talcum powder to stop the discomfort. In short, a dirty, flea-infested, zip whore really pissed you off big time!

  RED BEACH

  Between the time the Marine Corps put Da Nang off limits and the whores moved into beer can huts across from the main gates at Marble Mountain, there was only one place to go to get laid. This was Red Beach, where we had made our amphibious landing. We would take a deuce-and-a-half truck with a canvas cover and make a supply run to the area, which served as a supply depot for Da Nang Air Base.

  We would load the truck with Marines and close the rear canvass cover. This got us through the main gate. On the road to Red Beach was a huge whorehouse made out of beer cans with about 12 girls in 12 private stalls. The Mama San would yell out, “No VCs! No VD! No MPs! Privacy! You come GI! Number one bum-bum girls! You come five times!”

  You would sometimes see ten trucks parked outside this beer-can House of the Rising Sun. The day I went, it was raining like crazy. There were about 15 Marines inside, drinking ice cold Millers and waiting their turn, and a bunch of young boys running around. I paid a kid to hold my rifle minus magazine, cartridge belt, helmet and flack jacket. They didn’t have beds, just mats that hurt your knees. A curtain separated you from your next-door neighbor. I held up the curtain and saw one of my buddies. He yelled, “Isn’t anything private anymore?”

  I was just getting on with it, when mortar shells started hitting outside. It was assholes and elbows getting your boots, rifle, cartridge belt, flak jacket and helm
et, and getting in those deuce-and-a-half trucks. They are about four feet off the ground and you have to climb up on them, but we did it in 30 seconds or less. The driver backed up in mud that came up to the top of our boots and we got our asses out of there. It was a real funny scene. We were all stuck up to our boot tops or sliding in the mud, and scrambling to get into the trucks before the mortars killed us.

  By a miracle the zips missed the trucks and the whorehouse, but the mortar shells scared the shit out of us once again. We never mentioned this to anyone except each other during parties when we were all drunk. But for the grace of God, we could all have been lying dead in eight inches of mud in front of a beer-can whorehouse.

  NAVY DRONE DISASTER

  The Navy decided to fly a remote control drone jet along our beach, about 300 yards off the shoreline. They had a deuce-and-a-half truck with a .50-caliber machine gun on the beach and were trying to teach the Seabee construction guys how to shoot down a plane. These guys were skilled bulldozer operators and carpenters, but they all missed terribly. The plane flew by our bunker about six times and started to annoy PFC Sureshot, a country boy from Hot Springs, Arkansas. Finally he put a belt into his M-60, put the sight up from 300 yards, and without further ado shot the shit out of the drone. It looked like a Japanese Zero being shot down at Pearl Harbor. It trailed smoke and finally crashed into the ocean.

  The Navy figured the Seabees had shot it down until they retrieved the wreckage and saw a million 7.62 bullet holes in it. They were pissed we had broken their toy, which I later learned cost over $5,000. It was a total loss. PFC Sureshot shot out the jet engine and ruined it, period! I was clean on this one, but knew who did the dirty deed. I told PFC Sureshot to clean up his empty brass in the bunker, put on a clean M-60 barrel, and dummy up. Since there were ten bunkers along the seaside of the base, the Navy couldn’t figure out which one had blasted their drone.