PFC Washington drove the jeep like he was in the Indianapolis 500, and we soon were out of danger. Corporal Laid wanted to go back and resume the attack, but the driver wouldn’t even slow down until we got to the main gate at Marble Mountain. We called it a night and I gave Gunny Sergeant Easy his change, ration card and, most importantly, his booze. He was happier than a faggot in Boys’ Town. I didn’t bother telling him about the 7th Marine tank guys and the shoot-out. I told him it was a hot, boring bumpy drive. What a lie!
At dawn the next morning, I was woken from my hangover in the S-1 tent by the loudest explosion I had ever heard. It literally shook the ground. I thought that the zips were hitting us with nuclear bombs. I looked down the flight line to the very last bunker, my normal midnight to 8:00 AM guard position, and saw an M-48 A-1 tank turn around and head toward the other side of Marble Mountain. I also saw a lot of smoke near the tank. In the far off horizon I saw a Willie Peter cloud at the exact spot where the zip gave me the finger. I couldn’t believe they drove up and wasted him. The whole base went on alert, then off again when they found out the 7th Marines were just testing their guns. That’s our Marines! Unbelievable! The next day I looked for the smartass zip in my spotting scope, but all I saw was a big hole. Scratch another VC.
JUNGLE SURVIVAL SCHOOL
Since Gunny Sergeant Woods owed me a favor, he called me via the main radio communications from Wing with a message that a surprise was on its way to a “good, stand-up Marine.” End of message. The officer on duty thought this was strange and was kind of pissed off that I knew someone at Wing Headquarters.
A few days later, a special order came down from III MAF Headquarters for PFC John J. Gebhart to report to Subic Bay, Philippines, for Jungle Survival School, a one-day school that was a one-week trip. I packed my gear in an officer’s travel bag I had found, went to Gunny Sergeant Easy, and asked if it was okay to go to a one-day school for survival training. First he said “No way, Jose,” but after four shots of Red Fox Vietnamese whiskey and a few beers, I bullshitted him into covering for me over my short vacation. I told him I would be back by Friday. Finally he shook my hand and said to have a good time. He was like a dad to me—it just took some whiskey to warm his cold heart up and make him more cooperative.
I secretly had a custom set of tiger stripe camouflage BDUs made, complete with matching hat, to wear for such a great school. No Marines were allowed to wear tiger stripe utilities, period. Only the Green Beret and Special Operations Army Rangers had them at this time. Captain Heartbreak happened to see me walking down the company area in tiger stripes and went nuts on me. I told him I was headed for a special jungle survival school and he just about ripped the order out of my hand. “How the hell did you get picked for this school?” he asked. I told him I had seven VC kills and that was probably the reason.
“These orders are phony!” he exclaimed, so I asked him to call Wing Headquarters or let me be. He then really got pissed, and told me to get out of my specially made tiger stripe utilities and change back into my regular green utilities. I packed my new tiger stripes in my bag and hitchhiked a ride with the mail truck to Da Nang for my plane ride to Subic Bay. Over at Da Nang, I changed back into my tiger stripes. I taped my K-bar knife upside down and really looked good, complete with new jungle boots that I had traded an Army Corporal for before the Marines even saw them.
People on the R-4D plane ride to Subic Bay asked me what I did. I told them my mission was classified. All bullshit! I didn’t wear my PFC chevron on my collar, so nobody knew what rank I was. The R-4D plane made the trip once a week to Subic Bay from Da Nang. It held around 30 passengers and a crew of two pilots. R-4Ds were two-engine transport planes like you see in old newsreels, going over to Normandy in World War II with Screaming Eagles jumping out of them. As long as you rebuild their mighty Pratt and Whitney engines, they run forever.
I reported to Jungle Survival School, Subic Bay, Philippines, as ordered. The instructor spent most of the morning showing us what to eat and what not to eat in the jungle, how to find water from overhanging vines, and how to identify medicinal plants. We all purchased homemade machete knives from their guides and outfitters.
As part of the training, they set you free in a three-mile jungle area surrounded by a fence. You have acres and acres to hide in. The Marines dress up like the VC and try to track you down while shooting AK-47 blank ammo at you. Then they try to capture you, interrogate you and hold you prisoner. It was great fun, like hide and seek with blank-shooting guns. I purchased six Clark Bars, or “pogie bait” as the Marines call them, at the PX, and hid them in my bloused boots. When they let the class of 20 or so go hide, I climbed a huge tree about 200 yards away from the camp and hid up there in the vines. They soon started bringing in captured Marines and treating them like the VC would. The captured Marines gave only name, rank and serial number, but of course that pissed the guys off and they roughed up everyone they captured. Had to make it real!
Finally they captured Corporal Kent, a guy I had made friends with on the plane ride over from Da Nang. He got tired of their make-believe game of VC torture and took a shit on the floor in the head interrogator’s office. That really pissed off the fake VCs. The Gunny Sergeant called it a day by that time, but couldn’t find me, PFC Gebhart. They started to worry I was lost, hurt or bitten by a snake. By this time, I had eaten my pogie bait, so I quickly climbed down the tree, walked up to the Gunny dressed in his black pajamas, and said, “Bang, you’re dead!” It scared the living shit out of him and he couldn’t believe his band of VCs hadn’t been able to find me. I never told him my secret hiding place, from where I had watched the whole afternoon program from above. I came out first in the class—amazing!
Because the R-4D plane only went back once a week, we had to wait six days to return to Da Nang. We were shown a Navy VD movie from 1943 that was quite comical. Some sailor gets the clap and the Navy sends an official 1940 Plymouth car to his girlfriend’s house to treat her for venereal disease. Really! Then we saw a lot of current pictures of sick dicks. We were told Olongapo, Philippines, the town right outside the Subic Bay gates, was loaded with VD-ridden bar girls.
After the film, we got our liberty cards and headed for the bars. We had to cross a bridge that led to the town from the front gate. The river under the bridge smelled like pure shit, and there were kids in boats diving into it for coins the Marines threw into the water. They came out of the water smelling like shit, but seldom missed a coin. Unbelievable! About four miles of bars lined both sides of the main drag. Some had two levels and bars on both floors. The bar girls were hanging out the windows and doors, yelling, “Hey, playboy!” and flashing their tits.
We saw a million jeep jitneys with every kind of gadget and tricky horn you can imagine. There were a million Filipinos selling stuff. We purchased barbecued monkey meat on a stick for 50 cents. We had no idea what we were eating, but it was good. We ate whole roast chickens, and walked into the whorehouse go-go bars throwing chicken bones right and left. The whores were good looking; some were round-eyed, meaning they’d had surgery, and all of them wanted our dollars.
We hit a few places until we found an upstairs joint, The Last Chance Bar & Grill, which was clean and had a rest room with toilet paper. The Mama San was okay and even brought us a few rounds of San Miguel beer, on her. We spent some money and the hookers serviced us and then we sent out for food. We ate the same food the hookers and Mamma San ate: fish and shrimp, rice and bread. Barbecued and grilled pork or monkey meat, who knows? It was good and we didn’t catch the shits.
Corporal Kent and I set up headquarters at this bar and soon had a few girls who wanted to work as our whores. We became pimps and the new bouncers, and threw out drunken Navy guys, and other riff-raff. When our six days of pimping, partying and whoring were up, we went out to the plane. Corporal Kent said, “Why go back to ’Nam and get killed?” We bribed the Navy guy, who was scared of Vietnam Marines, $10.00 to stamp our orders “No Seats Avai
lable” on the plane, then went to the Subic Bay payroll department and asked for emergency payroll services, saying we were stranded. This was a lie, as we had about $300.00 we had made as pimps.
Payroll gave us $50.00, and off we went for another week of partying. The USS Enterprise, which the whores called the Charlie Tuna Boat, was coming into Subic Bay. It carried about 5,000 officers and men, all with US dollars to party and get laid. Mama San put on ten more party girls, and in one week Corporal Kent and I took in over $1,800 as our cut of the business. We beat up anyone Mama San wanted thrown out of the bar, and we gave the girls a 50/50 split of their money. Everyone was not happy, though. The local Filipino gangsters wanted to kill us, but Corporal Kent and I always carried our jungle survival machetes. We threw them into the walls periodically and told stories about how we liked to gut and kill zips. The gangsters stayed out of our way.
After we missed the plane three times, I figured we were pushing our luck, as First Sergeant Prick would have to believe we were always getting bumped by officers and higher ranking enlisted personnel. Corporal Kent and I both caught the clap and had to go back to Subic Bay and get a double-headed shot of penicillin on both cheeks and listen to a ten-minute lecture of why we were worthless whoremasters. I told the Navy Chief to save his speech for someone who cared, because the following week we would all probably be dead, so we were partying while we could and didn’t really give two shits.
MAG-16 and First Sergeant Prick were pissed when we didn’t return, and sent Sergeant Wrightman over to the school to personally escort us back to Vietnam. It was good he came, because the Navy Shore Patrol was on the hunt for both of us for beating up two Navy JG 2nd Lieutenants who came to the Last Chance Bar and Grill and didn’t want to pay for their pleasure. Both of them had that stupid Annapolis cadet look about them and a superior attitude that said, “I am an officer and gentleman, and you are a worthless enlisted piece of shit.” We told them that they owed the bar girls $10.00 each and they laughed at us and asked what branch of the service we were in. We told them we were in the Merchant Marines, but they didn’t believe our story and said we looked like Marine assholes. Then they said they were going to call the Shore Patrol, and we would be put into their wire mesh dog catching truck and land in the brig.
“Okay,” I said, and stood up and grabbed the red-haired piece of trash, who was no better than me except his father was probably a member of the Fairfax County, Virginia ruling class of ex-military officers who make a phone call so their wasted offspring gets automatic acceptance to Annapolis or West Point. Then I beat the shit out of him and threw him down the steps while Corporal Kent did a job on his buddy. My Lieutenant got to his feet in the street, bleeding and yelling for the Shore Patrol. Corporal Kent took the other Lieutenant JG and dumped him into a toilet headfirst.
We said goodbye to Mama San and kissed our stable of beauties goodbye as the Shore Patrol whistled and came charging up the steps of the bar. We jumped out a rear window, crashed through a tin roof, and landed next to two fat pigs in a pigpen. We laughed ourselves silly. The alleyway behind the bars was off limits, but we had lived with our whores, so we knew the backyards and the neighborhood. The back streets were small, just about big enough for a jeep to pass. The Shore Patrol came to the back alleys looking for us. We gave the local Filipino gangsters $50.00 to block in the Navy jeep and trucks, and they made a roadblock with water buffalo carts and a bunch of other stuff. Then we paid a jeep jitney driver to drive us back to the front gate at Subic Bay while we hid under a tarp.
When got into the base, we changed into our green utility uniforms and met up with Sergeant Wrightman. “Boy, are we glad to see you!” we exclaimed. We showed him our orders, and by some miracle at 7:00 AM the next morning, while the Navy and Shore Patrol were getting ready to check every Marine’s hands on the base to see who had been in a fight, we boarded our R-4D plane to return to ’Nam. Sergeant Wrightman was a straight arrow. Corporal Kent and I kept our mouths shut except to tell him how hard it was with so little money, being bumped off the plane three times. Sergeant Wrightman believed our story but found it odd that the three of us had found seats back to Da Nang without any problem. The Navy guy we paid to stamp our orders kept his secret and smiled, and wished us luck in fighting the VC!
THE PRODIGAL SON RETURNS
When we arrived back at Marble Mountain after an absence of over three and a half weeks, I had forgotten what hootch I lived in. I unpacked and was ordered to report to Captain Heartbreak. I knocked on his door, entered his office and found him holding a paper in his hand. The paper was my promotion warrant to Lance Corporal. He ripped it into four pieces and handed it to me with a big smile to break my balls. He said, “I already heard the whole story about how you were bumped out of three flights back to Da Nang.” I told him that when you were a lowly PFC, even a Corporal got a seat ahead of you, so it wasn’t my fault I got stranded.
Captain Heartbreak was a southern aristocrat, probably from the Citadel Military School, and he thought he was playing God with me. But to me he was just another rich kid who knew the right Senator or Congressman, and his daddy was probably just another ball-breaker, retired Colonel who got him into Quantico Officers Candidate School. So I acted sad and was dismissed. I then went up to the payroll department and not only got three weeks back pay, but a per diem for three and a half weeks of being stranded. That put a smile on my face!
First Sergeant Prick thought I had pulled a scam but since everything was stamped, signed and delivered by the book, he couldn’t do anything. It took me one year in the Marines to figure out how all the paper works. Once I got that under my belt, I knew I could out-smart any of them officially. It just took some balls, a little typing skill, and knowledge of the system. I got to know every S-1 clerk from every squadron up to Wing Command at III MAF Headquarters, where I had Gunny Sergeant Woods pulling strings for me.
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS PUNCHY THE MONKEY
Once again our grunt neighbors over at Marble Mountain outdid themselves. The 7th Marines somehow captured a wiseass small monkey. They made it a large cage and slowly tamed it to eat out of their hands and sit on their shoulders. It was their pride and joy until one day it pulled the pin out of an M-26 hand grenade that was attached to a Marine’s shoulder straps. Only the quick reaction of another Marine, who quickly threw the grenade into the ocean, saved their lives. Everyone except the monkey hit the ground, and they all got a shower of ocean water. Thank God no one was killed.
Since the 7th Marines always had grenades all over their area of responsibility, the monkey was branded as a VC, loaded into a jeep by their First Sergeant, and driven up the road to my outfit, Deadlock, VMO-2. The First Sergeant traded him for four cases of beer. We got a quick lesson on feeding him and a bunch of bananas, and the First Sergeant left with a shit-eating grin on his face.
By coincidence, on the same day we had an awards ceremony and Colonel Bronson officially presented the monkey to our squadron. The Colonel named him PFC Punchy the Monkey. This monkey was a real ball-breaker. The Colonel usually let him out of his cage during the day and he jumped around on a long leash attached to a fancy cat collar. He was good for the first week and didn’t bite anyone.
His second week was something our squadron will never forget. First he broke all the pencils the Colonel had on his desk. Then he unhooked himself from his leash and ran around the S-1 tent breaking every pencil he could find. Next he hopped on the Colonel’s shoulder, stole his fountain pen, and shot the ink in the Colonel’s face. The S-1 clerk tried to catch him, but PFC Punchy jumped all over the tent, turning our S-1 Administration Office into a soup sandwich mess. He took all the official papers the Colonel had to read and sign and threw them in the air, then laughed at all of us trying to grab him. First Sergeant Prick said, “Everyone get out of the tent, give me the bananas, and I will catch him.” He put a banana on his desk, and the monkey hung upside down by his tail and grabbed it so quick that the First Sergeant was surprised.
PFC Punchy ate half the banana and threw the other half in the First Sergeant’s face.
PFC Punchy then ran outside and hopped on a Motor Pool killer’s shoulder. The guy went crazy, like the small spider monkey could harm him, and threw him hard against the tent. The monkey then climbed to the top of the tent, took a shit, picked it up, and threw it at the Marine. I watched this Three Stooges comedy from the S-3 tent and laughed my ass off. The guy got hit on top of the head with the monkey shit. First Sergeant Prick said, “Get this sucker!” and everyone got into the act. The monkey stayed on top of the S-1 tent laughing and then jerked off on us. As I said, he was a wiseass spider monkey, and frankly too much for our outfit to handle.
Everyone went back to work and the monkey screamed and yelled from up on top of the tent for hours. Finally he climbed down and quietly went into his cage for a nap and some water. If we paid no attention to him, he was good. If we tried to be good to him, he was bad. The monkey had an attitude, that was for sure. The worst thing he did to me was sneak in the four-seat out-house while I was taking a dump and steal all the toilet paper. I had to use a letter from home to wipe myself. He took all four rolls and ran around the squadron compound unrolling them. There was toilet paper flying in the air, wrapped around the Colonel’s jeep, and one long roll that led to the mess hall where he drank all the orange juice. He got a lot of mileage out of those four rolls, all the while laughing his monkey head off. First Sergeant Prick ordered every Marine to gather up the paper, keep the clean ones and throw out the dirty ones. Like I said, the Navy didn’t give the Marines too much, and toilet paper was hard to come by.
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