Drafted

by Andrew Atherton

  My thoughts drifted into dreams.

  I woke up when I fell onto the head and shoulders of the man in front of me. I asked the chubby black guy next to me if we could take turns sleeping while the other man listened for our numbers. He agreed. We exchanged group numbers. He said I could sleep first and he’d stay awake. I stretched out on an empty bench and fell asleep.

  When I woke up, my buddy was slumped over snoring. I kicked his boots and moved to another area of the bleacher. I asked several guys in the new area if T-6 had been called. They said they didn’t know because they listened only for their own numbers.

  “Anybody from T-6?” I called out, but not loud enough to startle dozing GIs. “Any T-6s here?” No response.

  I went down to the double door. I asked the new staff sergeant, who replaced Pretty Boy and smelled of Aqua Velva Aftershave, if T-6 had been called.

  He glared at me. “We announce the numbers two times, loud and clear.”

  “Just tell me if T-6 was called and I won’t bother you again. Please.”

  He sighed. “Okay. You caught me in a good mood at the beginning of my shift.” He looked at the list on his clipboard. “T-6 has not been called and it’ll be awhile before it is.” He looked at his watch. “We’ll break for dinner soon. You’ll eat in the mess hall. But while you’re eating, another planeload will come in and they’ll have an even longer wait. That satisfy you?”

  “Thanks.”

  The bleacher seats were getting unbearably hard. My clothes stunk. My eyes stung from oily sweat off my face. My stomach felt like a crimped tin can of sour milk. My legs ached. My back ached. And every ten or fifteen minutes I found myself dreaming with my eyes open.

  It wasn’t until seven o’clock the next morning that yet another staff sergeant called my group’s number. I made my way down the bleachers on stiff legs, heading toward the double doors. I leaned on the shoulders of seated men to keep from stumbling. I saw other men working their way down the bleachers, too, but I was too adrift in my mental haze to remember them.

  In the out-processing room, the new staff sergeant waited for the last man to join us. Then, in a loud voice he said, “Listen up. Any of you who want to claim a major medical or mental problem that developed while you were in Vietnam, step forward and form a line over at the blue desk. You’ll be processed slower than the other men so we can determine the legitimacy and extent of your claim.”

  Slower? Nobody moved.

  “Nothin’ wrong wit’ me but two missing arms and a bad case of syph,” said the guy next to me, shaking his head.

  The staff sergeant broke the twenty of us into four-man units, gave us paper forms, and told us to line up behind a variety of booths and tables and have our forms initialed after we completed the exam at each station. My group started at the heart station.

  “Anybody with a bad ticker from humping the rice paddies? No? Okay, take off your shirts and stand facing me on this white line.” The medic walked past us while he touched each man’s chest with a stethoscope. He could not have heard more than one heart beat per man.

  All of us passed the heart exam.

  About an hour later, our physicals completed, a staff of men and several women measured and fit us with new dress greens, sewed on our insignias, and machined our plastic name tags. The GI next to me asked the workers who were fitting us, “So why’d we need new fatigues for the flight home?” Nobody answered.

  The last form we filled out was typed for us by a clerk. It was Form DD 214: Report of Transfer or Discharge. For draftees who extended their tour in Vietnam, this was our ticket out of active military service. The clerk asked me, “What’s your service number?” I was so exhausted and flustered by the question I couldn’t remember the number without looking at my dog tags. The clerk said, “How’d you get through Vietnam without getting killed?”

  I was instantly furious. I wanted to bash the man’s head in with his typewriter. I forced myself to calm down.

  “Here’s your DD 214 buddy,” the clerk said. “Sign at the bottom and you’re out.”

  A large group of us was briefed on veteran’s benefits. Then we stood in line for our severance pay and another line for our flight tickets home.

  And that was that. One hundred of us picked up our duffel bags, and with our DD 214s in our pockets and our flight tickets in our hands, we walked outside into California sunshine.

  Yellow taxi cabs and brown military buses were waiting for us along the curb up and down the road. Most of them displayed the same destination sign: San Francisco Airport. The buses were free. The cabs we paid for ourselves.

  I stood a few moments savoring my freedom. I was anxious to get home and hold Janice in my arms, but other thoughts crowded in and held my attention.

  Men carrying their duffel bags walked past me and boarded the buses. After they dropped their duffel bags on the seats, they shouted and gave each other high fives. They rocked the buses like football players who’d just won a game, but they weren’t celebrating victory. Far from it. I could hear them whooping and hollering, “I’m done with this shit” and “Fuck Vietnam” and “Don’t make no never-mind.”

  I stood there a good five minutes watching my fellow GIs vent, like steam escaping from a high-pressure cooker. Then I shook myself and walked to the curb and dumped my duffel bag in the open trunk of a yellow taxi and climbed in the cab.

  Two other servicemen walked up to the taxi and looked in at me. I nodded yes. A taxi driver pushed off from the grill and fender of the cab behind us where he’d been talking with another driver. He grabbed the two duffel bags, one in each hand, flung them with a “thump-thump” into the trunk, and motioned for the two men to join me in the cab. One man rode shotgun up front and the other man climbed in back with me. Within minutes we drove two or three city blocks and accelerated down an entrance ramp onto an expressway.

  It occurred to me that I could stop the cab and get out. I could go to a bar and stay all day if I wanted. I could go anywhere and do anything.

  I looked out the windows and studied the passing scene. All thoughts of arriving home and holding Janice left me. I was mesmerized by what I saw.

  Signs. Thousands of signs. On roadsides and overpasses, buildings and trucks. Signs on buses. Then I noticed signs on our cab seats and floor mats. Signs everywhere.

  The Biggest, Brightest Color TV You Can Buy.

  Silva Thin, The One That’s In.

  Coke. It’s The Real Thing.

  Feel More Important On TWA.

  It Looks Expensive and It Is.

  Billboards displayed pictures of girls in swimming suits and tight sweaters, their breasts like balloons, their eyes boldly looking at me looking at them. Other billboards were razzle-dazzle come-ons for booze, restaurants, soda and shaving cream, new subdivisions and fancy furniture.

  Then I focused on the eight-lane concrete highways. Fields of concrete and asphalt bordered by huge glossy-mirrored buildings. Multi-level overpasses. Little patches of mown grass like green velvet.

  And cars. Thousands of cars. Racing. Swerving. Changing lanes.

  Semis speeding past like walls on wheels.

  Everybody moving fast. On the job. Making money. Here in the USA.

  I was home. In the States. My country.

  Then it hit me. This is the face of my culture. Maybe the soul of my nation. This is why I was sent to war. This is why my fellow soldiers died. To protect all this.

  GLOSSARY

  AIT: Advanced Individual Training is given to recruits after Basic Training: it’s two months of training in a special type of service, e.g., mechanic, clerk, artillery, infantry.

  AK47: a Russian designed, semi- and fully automatic 7.62mm assault rifle; heavier rounds are fired at lower velocity and fewer per minute on automatic than the M16 rifle, but it’s more rugged and dependable; used by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong.

  APC: a tank-sized Armored Personnel Carrier mounted with M60 machine guns or quad-fifties, i.e., fou
r .50-caliber machine guns, two over and two under.

  Army Enlisted Ranks (lowest to highest):

  Private (PVT)

  Private 2 (PV2)

  Private First Class (PFC)

  Corporal (CPL)

  Specialist-4 (SPC-4)

  Specialist-5 (SPC-5)

  Sergeant (SGT)

  Staff Sergeant (SSGT)

  Sergeant First Class (SFC)

  Master Sergeant (MSG)

  First Sergeant (1SG)

  Sergeant Major (SGM)

  Command Sergeant Major (CSM)

  Sergeant Major of the Army (SMA)

  Army Officer Ranks (lowest to highest):

  Warrant Officer (WO1)

  Chief Warrant Officer (CW2-5)

  Second Lieutenant (2LT)

  First Lieutenant (1LT)

  Captain (CPT)

  Major (MAJ)

  Lieutenant Colonel (LTC)

  Colonel (COL)

  Brigadier General (BG)

  Major General (MG)

  Lieutenant General (LTG)

  General (GEN)

  Army Unit Organization (smallest to largest):

  Squad: (4 to 10 soldiers) led by a sergeant or staff sergeant.

  Platoon: 3 to 4 squads (16 to 45 soldiers) led by a lieutenant.

  Company: 3 to 4 platoons (100 to 200 soldiers) led by a captain.

  Battalion: 3 to 5 companies (500 to 1000 soldiers) led by a lieutenant colonel.

  Brigade: 3 or more battalions (3000 to 5000 soldiers) led by a colonel.

  Division: 3 brigades (10,000 to 16,000 soldiers) led by a major general.

  Corps: 2 to 5 divisions (20,000 to 80,000 soldiers) led by a lieutenant general.

  Field Army: 2 to 5 corps; (40,000 to 400,000 soldiers) led by a general.

  Article 15: gives commanders authority to administer a range of punishments without resort to court-martial. Punishments for the lowest level Article 15 can be up to 14 days extra duty, 14 days restriction to quarters or base, and oral reprimand.

  ARVN: Army of the Republic of Vietnam; South Vietnam’s army controlled by Saigon.

  Automatic Grenade Launcher: most often seen on Cobra attack helicopters; four to five barrels spun by electric motor that fire 40-mm grenade rounds (same as for an M79 grenade launcher) at 400 rounds a minute; the most commonly used rounds for an AGL are high-explosive or fragmentation grenades that have a five-meter casualty radius.

  Beaucoup: Vietnamese/French/GI slang term for “a lot” or “many” (pronounced by GIs as boakoo).

  Big Red One: U.S. 1st Infantry Division headquartered at Lai Khe. Has approximately 14,000 troops attached to it.

  Blooper: slang for the single-shot, 40-mm M79 grenade launcher; term derived from the sound the M79 makes when fired; looks like a pregnant shotgun the length of a man’s arm; carried by a strap slung over a shoulder; fires fragmentation grenades with a five-meter casualty radius; also fires high explosive, heavy buckshot, smoke, and illumination rounds.

  Boom-Boom: sexual intercourse.

  Boom-Boom Girl: a prostitute.

  Boonies: jungle or rice paddy fields; almost anywhere off a base camp.

  Bouncing Betty: an anti-personnel mine that pops up from the ground chest high before exploding and sending shrapnel in all directions.

  Bunker: a protective shelter, partly or entirely below ground; constructed of heavy timber and covered with sandbags and/or ammunition boxes filled with dirt.

  Butter Bar Louie: a second lieutenant; called a “Butter Bar Louie” because the single gold bar indicates he’s the lowest grade of officer and soft with inexperience.

  Bush Hat or Floppy Jungle Hat: broad-brimmed, green cloth hat worn by many American troops instead of safer, but far heavier, sound-distorting steel helmets.

  C-4: plastic explosive that can be shaped and molded like putty to direct the force of the explosion; comes in one-pound cellophane-wrapped sticks; field troops burn small pieces of C-4 to heat food rations.

  CAV: cavalry that use armored road vehicles and/or helicopters rather than horses.

  Charlie: the enemy; the term is derived from the radio operator’s designation for the Viet Cong: “Victor Charlie.”

  Chickenman: a radio series broadcast on American Forces Radio Vietnam that spoofs comic book heroes and the Batman television series; Chickenman is a shoe salesman who fights crime on weekends; his yellow crime-fighting car is called Chicken Coupe.

  Chief Warrant Officer: see Warrant Officer.

  Chinook: large, twin-rotor CH-47 cargo transport helicopter.

  Chopper: any helicopter.

  Clacker: hard plastic, handheld electric-pulse generator to which wires are attached from blasting caps or other electrical devices for setting off explosives, frequently claymores.

  Claymore: a concave, plastic-covered paperback-size anti-personnel surface mine that’s set on its edge on metal fold-out feet; when detonated by a trip wire or a handheld electrical detonator, a one-pound layer of C-4 plastic explosive blows seven hundred steel balls forward in a 60-degree, fan-shaped fifty-yard kill zone; the concave backside of the claymore cancels out much of the backward blast.

  Cobra: a sleek attack helicopter (36 inches at its narrowest) armed with two or four rocket pods, an automatic 40-mm grenade launcher (400 rounds per minute), and a 7.62-caliber mini-gun (6000 rounds per minute); the Cobra’s lower front is often painted to look like white jagged teeth in a red mouth.

  Concertina Wire: (also called razor wire) considered an improvement on farm-styled barbed wire designed to restrict animal passage; comes in large coils that can be expanded like a concertina musical instrument; secured to the ground or the top edge of a wall to form a barricade to human passage; protruding from the wire every inch or two are razor-sharp cutting edges that, at each end, project needle-sharp points that catch and hold a man’s flesh while the razor edges repeatedly slice a quarter inch deep as long as the man struggles to free himself; will cause sufficient blood loss for death to ensue if entanglement is severe.

  Commo-Wire: electrical communications wire.

  CO: commanding officer.

  Court-Martial: a military court set up for trial of military personnel charged with offenses committed during their military service; trial and punishments are in accord with the Uniform Code of Military Justice; rather than a jury, the court is made up of military officers appointed by a commander; three levels of court martial (summary, special, and general) deal with increasingly serious charges and punishments.

  CQ Runner: Charge of Quarters Runners are men in ranks below sergeant and Specialist-5 grades who are assigned from rotating duty rosters to stay awake at night in unit headquarters offices to take phone calls and radio reports and alert everybody to any adverse conditions or enemy activity that might endanger the unit or base camp.

  Crew Chief: a helicopter crewmember who maintains daily operational chopper status and fixes minor mechanical problems; usually the left door gunner on Hueys.

  CS Gas: riot control gas stronger than tear gas.

  Cu Chi Base Camp: located approximately twenty-five miles northeast of Saigon; home of the 25th Infantry Division (Tropic Lightning); area surrounding camp is heavily infiltrated by Viet Cong and a known site of underground tunnels used by the Viet Cong; located southwest of the Iron Triangle (see Iron Triangle).

  DEROS: Date of Expected Return from Overseas (the day a soldier goes home).

  Det-cord: explosive cord (looks like plastic clothesline) that explodes at five miles a second; for stringing together and simultaneously detonating multiple explosive charges.

  Deuce-and-a-Half: a standard two-and-a-half-ton dump truck.

  Didi-Mau: Vietnamese for “move away quickly!”

  Dinky-Dau: Vietnamese-GI slang for “crazy.”

  DOD: Department of Defense.

  Don’t Make No Never Mind: purest expression of cynicism and depression in Vietnam GI lingo; believed to be first used by grunts as a way of expressing pessimistic and despon
dent acceptance of the death of buddies who died for no good reason (i.e., the Vietnam War) and the need to continue doing the very thing that killed their buddies.

  Doo-Rag: (also spelled “do-rag” or “dew-rag”) a head covering comprised of a single layer of cloth that covers most of the forehead and down almost to the ears; particularly popular among blacks and Latinos.

  Door Gunner: a machine gun operator on a helicopter (usually a Huey).

  Downdraft: the forceful downward blowing of air by the spinning rotor(s) of a helicopter.

  Dust-off: nickname for medical evacuation by helicopter because the helicopter creates a dust storm when it lands and takes off; also called “medevac.”