by Si Robertson
St. Peter looked at the teacher and asked, “What’s the name of the famous ocean liner that sank in the Atlantic Ocean after hitting an iceberg?”
“The Titanic,” she said.
“Correct,” St. Peter said. “Come on in.”
Then St. Peter turned to the thief.
“How many people died on the ship?” he asked.
“Ooooh, that’s a difficult question,” the thief said. “But I saw the movie, and I think the answer is about one thousand and five hundred.”
“Close enough,” St. Peter said. “Come on in.”
Finally, St. Peter turned to the lawyer.
“Name each of the deceased,” he said.
Hey, let me tell you how bad the Vietnamese were about stealing. One of the army’s platoons had set up shop on a mountainside above a village in the Mekong Delta. They were on a reconnaissance mission, going from village to village to determine whether Charlie had infiltrated them or not. For whatever reason, they kept burning up power generators and losing electricity at their base camp. They couldn’t figure out what was happening. No matter what they did, they were burning up brand-new generators every night! The motor officer was yanking his hair out trying to figure it out. Every night before they turned them on, they checked the oil and made sure they were operating correctly, but they kept burning up in the middle of the night.
Finally, one of the officers decided he was going to get to the bottom of it. The generators usually ran on two hundred and twenty volts, but you could convert them to four hundred and forty volts. One night, the officer shut down the generators and switched them to four hundred and forty volts. After he turned the generators back on, the village became extremely bright. It looked like the Las Vegas Strip! All of the sudden, it sounded like fireworks. TVs, radios, and all the other appliances in the village were blowing up! It looked like a firefight in the bush.
The officer sent a few soldiers down the hillside and they discovered a string of extension cords that probably covered two miles from the generators to the village! Every night, one of the Vietnamese villagers snuck up the hill and plugged the cord into the generators. The Vietnamese watched TV all night on Uncle Sam!
Now, that’s a thief, Jack!
“I’m like Aretha Franklin. Don’t get any R-E-S-P-E-C-T round this joint!”
Guard Duty
ONE OF MY FIRST jobs in Vietnam was working in a warehouse in the back of Can Tho Airfield. Every chance I had, I rode in a rough-terrain forklift with the guy who was operating it. I rode with him for about six months to learn how to drive it. I figured if something happened to the guy who was driving it, I’d be next in line to jump into the driver’s seat. Driving the forklift would keep me out of harm’s way if nothing else. Hey, I might have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night, Jack!
Mostly, we loaded and unloaded supplies from cargo planes and moved crates to where they needed to be. But every now and then, we’d get in a Jeep, deuce and a half, or five-ton cargo truck that had been shot up by the Vietcong. Our job was to go over the vehicle and strip it down, taking every working part we could possibly use. We’d set aside the tires, wheels, motors, batteries, transmissions, carburetors, water pumps, and any other parts we could salvage. Normally, only the metal frame of the Jeep or cargo truck was left. We’d pick up the truck or Jeep frame with the forklift and drop it into a pond at the back of the airfield.
Well, as I suspected, the guy who was driving the forklift left Vietnam when his enlistment in the army was over. A sergeant came up to me and said, “Hey, we need somebody to drive the forklift. Do you know how to do it?”
“Hey, can you crank it?” I asked.
“I’ve been watching you ride around with him for six months,” the sergeant said. “You never saw him crank it?”
“Nah, I never saw him do it,” I said. “Do you want me to do everything around here?”
So the sergeant climbed into the forklift and cranked it up.
“Get out of the way,” I told him.
From that day forward, my job was to drive the rough-terrain forklift in the warehouse and motor pool at the airfield. Some nights, I also had to take my turn on guard duty at the airfield. I usually guarded the motor pool, where they kept the Jeeps, trucks, and other vehicles we used in the army. The motor pool extended all the way to the edge of the pond where we dumped the stripped truck and Jeep frames.
One day, we had a brand-new deuce-and-a-half diesel engine come to us in a metal box. New engines were like gold in Vietnam. Most of our vehicles were pretty outdated, so it was rare that we acquired new equipment. The technicians in the motor pool took the engine out of the box, hooked a battery to it, and cranked it to make sure it was running properly. Then they bolted it back down because they planned to put it in a deuce and a half the next morning.
That night, a buddy and I were on guard duty. We had to cover a pretty big compound, so we started the night walking the fence in opposite directions. About an hour later, we hooked back up again for a cigarette break.
“You see anything?” I asked him.
“Nah, I didn’t see anything,” he said.
“Nah, me neither,” I said.
Suddenly, we heard some noise coming from the motor pool area. I called the watchtower and told them to pop a flare over the motor pool. They fired a flare and it lit up the entire area. We scanned the motor pool and didn’t see anything. We checked under and inside every vehicle to make sure Charlie wasn’t hiding anywhere. We didn’t find anything suspicious.
I called the watchtower again and told them to shoot a flare over the pond. I wanted to make sure our suspects weren’t swimming back across the pond, which separated the American army compound from the South Vietnamese military base.
When a flare lit up the sky again, I looked out at the pond and saw the brand-new deuce-and-a-half engine floating on the water. There was a Vietnamese person swimming on each side of it. The two men were swimming with one arm while holding the engine with the other. They were stroking their free arms kind of like the Olympians do in the butterfly stroke.
Now, you have to understand that this was a 478-cubic-inch engine that probably weighed close to 1,650 pounds. I looked closer to see if the engine was floating on a raft but didn’t see one. I looked to see if the Vietnamese had magically built a bridge across the pond but didn’t see one.
As my buddy and I watched the Vietnamese in amazement, they stroked the engine all the way across the pond. The pond was more than one hundred yards wide!
I’ll never forget the expression on my buddy’s face after the Vietnamese reached the other side of the pond. Neither one of us said anything, but he had the dumbest look on his face. Then he smiled.
After I picked my jaw up off the ground, I asked him, “What did you see?”
“You first,” he said.
“Let me start this conversation out this way,” I said. “Did you see any kind of flotation device around that diesel engine?”
“Nah,” he said.
“Are you sure you didn’t see any kind of flotation device?” I asked him again.
“Uh-uh,” he said.
“Well, how many people did you see?” I asked.
“One on each side,” he said.
“Did you see any kind of raft?” I asked him.
“Nope,” he said.
“Did you see any kind of bridge?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said.
“Well, how are we going to report this in the morning?” I asked him.
“I’d rather not report it,” he said.
“Hey, they’re going to be missing that diesel engine in the morning, and then they’re going to come looking for us,” I said. “They’re going to ask us why we weren’t doing our jobs while we were on guard duty. We’re going to have to report it. A brand-new diesel engine just doesn’t get up and walk away.”
“I don’t know what we’re going to say,” he said.
“All I know is we
can tell the truth,” I said. “Did you see one Vietnamese on both sides of the engine?”
“Yep, that’s what I saw,” he said.
“Well, that’s what we’re telling them,” I said.
“Sounds good to me,” he said.
I knew no one was going to believe us.
When I gave my report to the officer in charge the next morning, he said, “Hey, y’all were smoking weed, weren’t you?”
“I don’t smoke weed, sir,” I told him.
“Well, then you were drunk,” he said.
“Hey, on a bad day, you might have me on the alcohol use because I keep a fifth of liquor in my pocket,” I said. “But I don’t drink while I’m on guard duty.”
Well, after my buddy and I were interrogated for the next few hours, they finally believed our story, or at least they couldn’t come up with another plausible explanation as to what happened to the engine.
My commanding officer sent two MPs in a Jeep to the other side of the pond. Much to their amazement, they found the deuce-and-a-half engine inside the South Vietnamese military compound and brought it back to the American side.
All these years later, I’m still not exactly sure how deep the water was in the pond. Day after day for six months, I watched Jeep and truck frames get dropped into the pond, so it was obviously pretty deep water.
What I do know is the pond was deep enough for fifty Vietnamese soldiers to stand on each other’s shoulders and carry a diesel engine for more than one hundred yards.
And, boy, the Vietnamese sure can hold their breath.
“A beaver is like a ninja— the suckers only work at night and they’re hard to find.”
Leave It to Beavers
HEY, MY HAT IS off to the Vietnamese. They’re some of the most resourceful people I’ve ever seen. In a lot of ways, they were like beavers: they worked only at night, they were relentless, and they didn’t stop working until the job was finished. Hey, it’s hard to capture or kill something if it only moves at night. Beavers are hard to kill and so were the Vietnamese. It’s the reason the Vietnam War lasted so long; the North Vietnamese and Vietcong continued to fight us even though they were grossly outmanned. They didn’t think they could lose, and they took advantage of their natural surroundings.
Look, you know what’s un-be-beaver-able? In 2010, scientists discovered that beavers had constructed a dam of trees, branches, grasses, and mud in Alberta, Canada, that was more than half a mile long! The dam is located in a remote part of Wood Buffalo National Park, and park rangers didn’t even know it was there until scientists saw it on satellite images from outer space! Scientists say the dam is the largest in the world and that the beavers have probably been building it since the 1970s.
Hey, you know how I feel about beavers. I believe they’re the pelted plague. The furry rodents are nothing more than log-chewing, water-slapping, flat-tailed rascals! Phil and I always have problems with them on our hunting land. They’re our bucktoothed archnemeses. Beavers like to dam up water, which prevents it from reaching the land around our duck blinds. Look, it’s pretty simple: if there’s no water, there’s no ducks. So there are few things that are more enjoyable to me than blowing up a beaver dam. It’s like I tell Phil: hey, give them a kiss for me—the kiss of death!
I didn’t know why beavers have flat tails until I went to Vietnam. Shortly after I arrived there, one of the American soldiers warned me to never go into the jungle at night. Now, I wouldn’t have been caught dead in the jungle even during daylight, but I was curious to know why I shouldn’t go in there at night.
“Because elephants jump out of the trees at night,” he said.
Hey, now you know why beavers have flat tails. They go into the jungle at night, Jack!
While I despise beavers, I also respect their work ethic and determination. Do you know how hard it is to build dams and lodges? A lodge is a hollow mound of sticks, stones, and mud, and beavers live and sleep inside of them. Beavers usually build them on the banks or islands of a stream or river. The entrance to the lodge is underwater, so beavers first build a dam across the river to prevent the entrance from freezing during the winter. Hey, when two beavers walk into the house, the first one always tells the other one, “Hey, shut the dam door!”
Beavers work together to build their dams and lodges, kind of like we do when we’re building duck calls. It’s a collective effort. With their long, sharp teeth, beavers chew through thick trees. Hey, beavers are even smart enough to make sure the trees always fall toward their dams! They drag tree limbs with their teeth and push logs to the dam with their noses. Beavers even roll large stones on the logs to keep them in place. Hey, you want to talk about some busy beavers!
When the beavers are finished constructing a lodge, they cover the walls with mud to insulate them and keep out predators, whether it’s foxes, wolverines, snakes, bears, Grizzly Adams, coyotes, or Daniel Boone. If a predator manages to break its way into the lodge, the beavers are able to escape through a secret exit. See, when beavers first start building a lodge, they burrow a secret tunnel on the other side of the river, which leads back to their lodge underwater. Now, tell me beavers aren’t smart!
When I was in Vietnam, it was like we were fighting some really mean beavers. They were ferocious, Jack! One of the first things American troops did when they built a new camp in the Mekong Delta was bring in engineers and bulldozers to clear about two hundred yards of bush for a firing zone. If the Vietcong attacked them, they wanted a clear area to fire mortars, grenades, or whatever else they wanted to repel them. As soon as the firing zone was cleared, the Americans built bunkers around the perimeter, giving our troops shelter and protection in case we were attacked. Well, at one forward base, the American troops dug bunkers around the perimeter just before dark. When they awoke the next morning, they discovered the Vietnamese had dug a bunker in front of every bunker they’d made! Their bunkers were even finished with roofs, hot tubs, and satellite dishes! Our bunkers were only holes in the ground. I told you, the Vietnamese were like beavers. They only worked at night!
And, hey, you want to talk about smart! One of the American military’s main objectives during the Vietnam War was to blow up bridges along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to cut off the Vietcong’s supply lines. The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, snaking through neighboring Laos and Cambodia along the way. Our air force flew over the trail and bombed bridges, wiping nearly every one of them out. After a few months, the Americans realized the Vietcong were still moving supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They were still getting materials to South Vietnam, even without the bridges.
Well, a few high-ranking officers assembled a couple of Special Forces teams for a reconnaissance mission to find out how the Vietcong were doing it. After a few weeks of hiding in the bush, the Americans saw a trail of truck lights coming. The trucks were barely visible coming down a mountain. When the trucks pulled up to a river, they just kept coming, even though the bridge had been wiped out! The trucks drove through the water and came out on the other side. Hey, the Vietcong built a bridge about three feet underwater. The U.S. Air Force couldn’t even see the underwater bridges to blow them up.
And you want to talk about bold! One time, the Vietcong dug a tunnel under an American headquarters in Vietnam and listened to our high-ranking officers giving commands. The Americans were preparing to sweep an area where there were more than 100,000 Vietcong troops. But when American troops swept the area, there wasn’t a soul in sight. Hey, the Vietcong listened to our orders and got everybody out. When the Americans left, the Vietcong moved back in. When I left South Vietnam in October 1969, there were two battalions of North Vietnamese army troops working the area around Can Tho. A gunship finally located one battalion moving across an opening, but there was still a second battalion on the loose. And we could never find them!
Sometimes the North Vietnamese were right under our noses and we didn’t even know it! In the Seven Mountains region of the Meko
ng Delta, American troops kept bombing a mountain to drive out Vietcong forces. But every time the Americans sent in a recon patrol, they took heavy fire and had to retreat. So the Americans sent in more B-52 bombers, artillery fire, and rockets. They hammered the mountain day after day for a couple of weeks, but American troops kept taking fire when they tried to capture the mountain. After bombing it every day for three months, the Americans finally took the mountain. When American troops went inside a cave in the mountain, they found a ten-story hospital inside! There were operating rooms, recovery rooms, and offices for the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops that came through the area. There was an American airfield right around the corner from the mountain, but we never even knew the hospital was there! Good night!
Hey, at least beavers slap the water with their tails to let us know they’re there.
“I don’t know any redneck who’s not into fun. That’s their middle name: Red Fun Neck!”
Black Market
WHILE I WAS IN Vietnam, I became sort of a psychologist for several of the soldiers from Bravo Company, who were the infantry and foot soldiers. They were some of the bravest soldiers in Vietnam and always seemed to be in the line of fire. Well, the army liked to give the guys who’d been beating the bush for eleven months a couple of weeks to cool off before they shipped them back to the United States. I guess Uncle Sam figured there wasn’t any better place to do it than my hotel room. There was always an empty bunk in my hotel room in Can Tho, and a lot of the guys from Eleventh Bravo ended up staying in my room for a couple of weeks.
Hey, while they were cleansing their minds and relaxing, they liked to tell a lot of their stories to me. My empty bunk became Dr. Phil’s sofa! I listened to their stories with an inquiring mind, and a lot of guys liked to bounce their fears and problems off of me.
