“How am I supposed to get to Hanoi, sir.”
The President chuckled and looked around the silent Oval Office as if to see if anyone was listening in. “The secret way,” he said. He patted Gearheardt on the shoulder and pushed him through the door, which opened as if they knew he was ready to leave.
6 • Gettin’ Out of Dodge
Gearheardt and I received our orders for Vietnam a few months later. By this time we were in a squadron on the West Coast. As chopper pilots in the Marine Corps, unmarried, yearning for action beyond what we were finding in Southern California, we were excited. The opportunity to go shoot people out of a high-performance flying machine is irresistible of course. And we both liked the name “Vietnam.”
I was dating Mickey Mouse at the time, or at least the girl who walked around Disneyland dressed as Mickey. They sometimes use small young men, but Old Mick had to squat to pee during the time that I was dating him, or her. Her name was Penny, and I unfortunately had mentioned the possibility of discussing the chance of thinking about getting engaged. That’s why a number of Disney employees, and I assume a fair number of parents and their children, are still talking about Mickey calling a uniformed Marine a thoughtless rotten bastard at the top of her lungs in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Of course, now I know I should have waited until she was off duty. When I left the park, Mickey was near the top of the Matterhorn crying and threatening to jump off.
Later I heard that you could still see her in a number of the bars around Disneyland. She wouldn’t take the costume off, even though the Disney people sued the hell out of her. She was a mean drunk. Foul-mouthed and quick to throw punches. The letter relating this, from a Marine who had been dating Snow White, had arrived almost at the same time the squadron made it to Danang.
Gearheardt and I packed our gear and marked KILLED IN ACTION across all of the envelopes containing bills and dropped them in the mailbox on the way out of our apartment complex in Anaheim. He had misplaced his car, so he rode to the debarkation area with me. It was in Long Beach at the Naval Ship Parking place, or whatever the Navy called them.
The pier was a grand sight. The ship that we were embarking upon was festooned with pennants and patriotic signage. GIVE ’EM HELL, BOYS and KILL A KRAUT FOR MOM—that one was fairly tattered and discolored—and BENE VALE PUTRIS FAEX, which I assume was hung by some prissy Naval ROTC guy from Princeton. Balloons bobbed merrily from every place you could tie one, and crepe paper ran all the way around the ship, a converted World War II aircraft carrier named the USS Ike and Tina Turner. (This was in the time when the Navy, trying to be with it, let the men vote on the names of the ships). We were to find she carried a merry crew, except for the twenty-two hours a day they spent pissing and moaning and trying to avoid anything that resembled useful activity.
“You don’t like the Navy very well, do you, Gearheardt,” I said as he stepped around the Shore Patrol officer who tried to look at our orders.
“They all have beady eyes and wear lipstick, Jack.”
“No they don’t, Gearheardt.”
“Oh, I suppose not. I actually like the way they drive boats. But when they have you aboard ship, they whisper all the time and ring little bells, and loudspeakers are always now hear this-ing. It’s silly. And they have little sissy names for everything.”
He paused and looked up at the ship that was to carry us to Vietnam, by way of Japan and Okinawa.
“In World War II, my uncle was a Marine grunt. He was aboard the USS Pumice Stone. When his battalion was ready to hit the beach at Iwo, they loaded into those little Navy boats that drive you up to shore and then the front falls down and you run out and get shot. LSTs or something like that.
“My uncle went down the rigging into the boat, and the coxswain, or wainscoting or whatever they call themselves, was such a sissy that he drove the LST around to the other side of the big boat, away from the beach, and lowered the front. My uncle and his men had to swim eleven miles into the beach.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if Gearheardt made these stories up as he went along or if he rehearsed them.
Our squadron of helicopter pilots was assembled. A battalion of Marines in full battle gear was in the process of dressing down their ranks, checking their equipment, and getting ready to board the same ship. The officers were yelling at the noncoms, who were yelling at the troops.
I could see that some of the more attractive wives and dates were nervous about getting on a boat with seventeen hundred Marines and were clinging to the men who were trying to get into formation. I think that Gearheardt and I were the only pilots who didn’t have dates. Of course, you can imagine the scene if I had had a hysterical Mickey Mouse down among those troops. I was glad that I had broken it off. Gearheardt figured if he could get a woman in Tijuana, he could get a woman wherever we ended up. There was a rumor, in fact, that we were actually going to invade Tijuana.
The sun was rising. The pier was bustling. The bands were playing. If you’ve never seen your country embark for war in a foreign land, you have missed one of the most stirring scenes known to man. My chest swelled under my Mae West, although it might have been a tightness caused by Gearheardt accidentally inflating it as he stumbled from the car.
Near the defense contractors’ pavilions, civilians in white shirts with short sleeves and broad, colorful ties were selling flak jackets and camouflage bikini underwear. The Winchester people were giving out free bullets, although the engraving line was hopelessly long. Gearheardt and I climbed on top of a stack of boxes labeled UTENSILS, COOKING and just took it all in.
We watched the battalion commander, a bird colonel, climb the gangway with a stride that said “Let me at those Cong.” Unfortunately, once at the top, he wouldn’t salute the little pissant Navy duty officer and say, “Permission to come aboard, sir,” so there was quite a scuffle before a corporal threw the ensign over the side and a squad of Marines secured the quarterdeck, another one of those prissy names for the boat’s front door.
Finally, the colonel found a bullhorn and addressed the partying mob below him on the pier. “Okay, men, ditch the dates and wives.” Much pissing and moaning. “You, the Indian vendors in the back. Give those men back their money. Those eagle feathers aren’t going to keep anybody from getting shot where we’re going. Come on, men, get those women out of here.” He paused and looked leaderly for a few minutes, while the women drifted to the rear and into the cars of the waiting Marines and Navy guys who weren’t going to Vietnam and who had come down for an easy score. “Also, men, it has been brought to my attention that many of you are carrying unauthorized items. Please discard the following.” He took out a list. “Tennis rackets, golf dubs, pinball machines, lawnmowers, live wolverines, inflatable women, beer kegs, lace or rubber underwear, paint, two-by-fours in excess of four feet in length, and any form of lard. Each and every one of these items will be provided for you when we hit the beach.”
The captain of the ship appeared behind him, accompanied by two burly Shore Patrol men with rifles that were all painted up and looked faked. Evidently the story of the duty officer being tossed overboard had reached him. He looked pretty steamed. The colonel ordered the huge, black Marine corporal to toss the Shore Patrol guys overboard and then escort the captain to his quarters. When the captain resisted, they pantsed him, ripping his trousers as they got them over his shoes, and the battalion below roared their approval.
A panel truck carrying a contingent of Colt firearms salesmen roared up. Seeing that they were about to miss the whole shebang, they piled out and began tossing handfuls of bullets at the troops. Moments later, their panel truck on its side and burning, they crawled and limped their way off of the pier after realizing that hadn’t been a good idea. The Winchester salesmen hooted at them and shook their fists.
And then it got quiet. The Marines looked up at their leader, standing tall on the quarterdeck, fists on hips, smiling like he knew where he was.
“Are we ready?”
He shouted.
“Yeesssss!” We answered.
“Everybody got a gun?”
“Yeessss!”
“Get your asses on board and let’s go get ’em!”
“Yeesssssssss!”
The colonel turned to the lieutenant at his side.
“Okay, son, let’s head ‘em up, and move ’em out.”
“What do you mean, sir?” the lieutenant asked.
The colonel was momentarily flustered. He looked over at the major, who was picking fuzz off of his ammunition belt. Then at the sergeant, who coughed into his fist.
“You know, the cowboy guy on TV. That Rawhide deal.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Colonel. I could find out and get back to you sir.”
The colonel turned back to the rail, grabbed it with both hands and leaned against it. He looked down at the mob, scrambling aboard the ship like British soccer fans.
“Shit,” he said.
When we lifted anchor at Long Beach, it was a thrill. If you’ve ever “put to sea,” you know there is nothing quite like it for lifting the heart and freeing the mind. There is a realization that the petty irritants of life, at least a large number of them, can’t follow you to sea. The daily influx of bills, the calls from the motorcycle rental place looking for their bike, having to buy gas and food, listening to depressing news, all of that is left behind.
I remember Gearheardt and me standing at the railing at the stern and watching the pier grow smaller, the crowd drift away. There was a sadness, yes, certainly when the quarterdeck sentry had to put a bullet in the knee of Mickey Mouse trying to fight her way up the gangplank as it was secured. There is something particularly poignant about sailing for Vietnam with a giant Mickey Mouse head bobbing in your wake. Even if it is shouting vulgarities. I suppose it’s all rather symbolic, sailing away with sailors shooting at a cartoon animal that arguably symbolizes the good nature and optimism of America.
7 • Over the Bounding Sea
“So you lied to me about Congress and the Joint Chiefs selecting me personally for the mission, Gearheardt.”
“Pretty much. I didn’t want to go by myself. Even the President said I needed a backup. And I needed someone who spoke Vietnamese.”
“I don’t speak Vietnamese and you know it, Gearbeardt.”
“The President didn’t. And it would have been disastrous to go up there without either of us being able to speak Vietnamese, Jack. Think about that!”
“But that’s exactly what we did. And it was disastrous.”
“Well, that proves it then.”
We quickly settled into our shipboard routine. Gearheardt and I were billeted with the other Marine lieutenants from the squadron. We tried to talk our way into the much superior captains’ quarters, but convincing the squadron personnel officer that we were both almost captains was a lot more difficult than we thought, since he had no earthly idea of what we were talking about and we weren’t about to tell him. “Worth a try,” Gearheardt said, as the personnel officer wrote “possibly insane” in our medical folders.
The lieutenants’ quarters for our squadron were a windowless iron-walled room on the level just below the flight deck in the far front of the boat. We could walk out the door and with a hard left turn be on the forecastle, pronounced “folk-sul” by the prissy Navy guys, with spray in our face and the smell of the sea.
Which was a lot better than the smell in the zoo, an apt name, after the first night. There were fifteen bunk beds, with just enough room in between them for back-to-back footlockers. We had a fellow named Noah Feldonstein in the squadron and we decided to make him “in charge” of keeping the zoo clean and orderly. The biblical Noah, of course, had a much easier task. On the other hand, that Noah gave a rat’s ass. Our Noah didn’t. It was just that when visiting Navy brass would ask, “My God, who’s in charge of this damn disaster?” holding a handkerchief to their nose, we could say “Lieutenant Feldonstein, sir,” and not look like no one gave a rat’s ass. This was how the Marine Corps worked. As long as someone was accountable, you could pretty much do anything.
I sat on my bunk looking at the mounds of combat-colored gear and the joking pilots. I felt clueless and mentioned to Gearheardt that I wondered if we were like Alice, following a rabbit down a hole.
“You mean like that Alice character in Wonder Woman?”
“Alice in Wonderland, Gearheardt.”
Gearheardt, reclining on his adjoining bunk, reached into his foodocker and withdrew his pistol. “Alice didn’t carry one of these babies, Jack. A nine millimeter, rapid-fire, fully automatic hand weapon with copper-jacket double loads. I see a damn rabbit or Mad Hatter and they’re wasted.” He dry clicked the weapon and returned it to his footlocker.
“I’m sure it would have been a different story if Alice had been armed to the teeth, Gearheardt.”
“You’re damn right it would have.” He lay back, his hands clasped behind his head, and closed his eyes. “Did you ever wonder what Alice looked like naked, Jack?”
I didn’t answer, thinking more about the Cheshire Cat. Laughing at me.
Four days out to sea, the squadron made an important discovery. It was Bearhead who figured it out. No flight operations were scheduled for the day, and we were sitting around on the bunks in our skivvies smoking and complaining. Those who didn’t smoke had the extra complaint of having to breathe the smoke. Of course those of us who did smoke had to complain about their pissing and moaning about the smoke. Then there were always those guys who never got into fisdights, and they were always complaining about the fighters knocking over their bunks or stepping on their toes. They weren’t really fistfights, just pushing and shoving and wrestling and an occasional punch or two, usually thrown at someone who complained about his bunk being turned over. It was early in the day, and the complaining had not peaked at the fistfight level, which usually came just after lunch.
Bearhead burst in the door. “You know what those fucking Navy guys—”
There was nothing that could cut through the bitching, pissing, moaning, and complaining more quickly than anything that started with “those fucking Navy guys.” We were galvanized into a tight-knit, cohesive, combat-ready Marine squadron just by hearing those words.
“I say we kill ’em and take over the ship,” Flager shouted, frantically trying to find his pistol in his footlocker.
“Wait a minute.” Buzz, the senior, and largest, lieutenant stopped his diatribe against people who don’t smoke and complain about those who do and held up his hands. “Let’s listen to what Bearhead found out.” The zoo quieted and allowed Bearhead to continue.
“You know how it always seems to get so damn rough at night where the boat rolls and pitches till it throws your ass out on the floor? Every damn night! And everybody is throwing up all over the place?” Bearhead dropped to the footlocker that was always in the center of the zoo, usually with a poker game in progress. He lowered his voice as if someone could be eavesdropping through the inch of steel wall in the center of the boat in the middle of the Pacific.
“Last night I got up to take a piss and Weatherly had shut his footlocker so I had to go—”
“So you’re the bastard that’s been pissing—”
Buzz held up his hands again, his eyes shut. “You guys can sort that out later. Go on, Bearhead.”
“—so I take a wrong turn on the way to the head, and when I open this door there’s these Navy assholes with a switch box that says ‘pitch’ and ‘roll’ with degree markings and everything and they’re laughing their asses off.” He paused to see if they got it. “And I heard one of them say ‘I’ll bet those jarheads are puking their guts out.’”
Dowger was shaving the hair off his forearm with his K-bar. “So what’s your point? Everybody pukes their guts out every night in here. Damn deck looks like a giant combination pizza in the mornings. So what’s with the switch box?”
Bearhead was happy that he was the only o
ne smart enough to figure it out. “Don’t you get it? Those fucking Navy guys have got the zoo on a hydraulic platform. The sea doesn’t get rough at night like those assholes told us. It’s them! Dicking with us!”
“Let’s kill ’em and take over the ship.” Everyone ignored Flager this time because he had already lost his pistol. Losing your weapon was not good in the Marine Corps.
“Shut the fuck up, Flager,” said Bearhead. “Listen guys, we can’t let them get away with this. Buzz, what do you think?”
Buzz was strangely contemplative. He scratched his nuts and stared unfocused at the bulkhead. “I’m not so sure, Bearhead. How would they get all that gear rigged up? Just to screw with us? That would be a substantial undertaking. A feat of engineering that could require considerable forethought and exquisite execution.” It was rumored that Buzz had actually gone to a private school, or at least not a state-chartered university. Around him the other lieutenants sat or lay on their bunks talking among themselves. Buzz scratched his chin and then began again on his balls. “The chiefs,” he finally said. “That’s how they could have done it.” Now that he had pronounced that Bearhead was right, the atmosphere in the zoo became charged.
“Flager! Go find your gun!” Weatherly shouted. He seemed to get a kick out of Flager rummaging frantically through his footlocker. As I had seen Weatherly throw Flager’s pistol overboard the first night out, it was pretty certain the idiot wouldn’t find it and start shooting.
The room erupted in a barrage of threats against the Navy. The idea of setting fire to the ship and flying off in the helicopters seemed to be taking hold when Peters shouted everybody down. “Hold on!” He was a well-respected officer and the best fighter in the zoo, so everybody quieted down. “First of all, the helicopters won’t hold enough fuel to get us back to land. Second—”
Nam-A-Rama Page 8
