First Sergeant Rocky liked to play poker for money and drink whiskey. A lot of times he stayed up all night playing cards and was shot-up-the-ass half-drunk the next day. Thus as time went on, he settled down to being a First Sergeant we could live with. He bothered people less and became a stand-up guy. The whole process took about three months, but he finally settled in and stopped annoying everyone.
SERGEANT SNAKE EYES
Sergeant Snake Eyes was scared of snakes. He was a funny-looking, fat black Sergeant in charge of Motor Pool. He did a good job out there with all the lazy asses he had to deal with. His only problem was that he was always checking his boots, under his rack, and all around his hootch for snakes. Whenever we would see him in the chow hall or walking around, we would tell him we had just run into a deadly poisonous, three-steps-and-you’re-dead mum-mum snake. He would shake in his boots.
One miserable rainy night as Corporal Reckless and I were walking back from all-night guard duty, we found a dead six-foot boa constrictor. Corporal Reckless thought it was still alive and wanted to drop a magazine of M-14 rounds into it. I told him, “You want to make Lance Corporal, you moron. The snake is dead!” I picked it up and said, “Let’s screw with Sergeant Snake Eyes.” Since we hadn’t gotten into any trouble recently and were wet, hungry and in a pissed off mood from waiting all night in a bunker in monsoon rain for zips who never attacked, it seemed like a fun thing to do.
I hid the dead snake in my laundry bag. We knew every night at 9:00 PM Sergeant Snake Eyes came out of the Sergeant hootch with his flip flops and a towel around his waist to shit, shower and shave. He usually was singing a song and had a flashlight in his left hand. We pissed in empty 55-gallon oil drums anchored into the ground with a long metal pole that came up taller than the sunken drum. I got a wire hanger, put the snake’s head up in the air, and propped a stick in its mouth to make it look like it was attacking. I put ketchup on its teeth to make it look really fearsome, and wrapped the rest of the snake around the pole. It looked truly frightening. Corporal Reckless was my lookout. I worked fast, and luckily nobody had to take a piss.
We waited for 9:05 PM, when Sergeant Snake Eyes walked down the boardwalk toward the head with his flashlight. He saw the dead boa with blood dripping down its mouth, dropped all his shaving gear, and yelled out like the devil had him. He ran a hundred miles a minute to his hootch, returned with his .45-automatic, and shot all seven shots at the snake and piss tub. The whole base opened fire for one minute, then all the sirens, alarms and phones started ringing from Command Post Headquarters and Squadron Headquarters. It really caused a stir.
We pretended we had been at the movies and rushed with the other Marines into our hootch to grab our helmets and rifles and cartridge belts. Full alert! First Sergeant Prick came running down in his underwear to see what Sergeant Snake Eyes was shooting at. Boy, did he start yelling and screaming when he saw the boa constrictor and realized it was a big joke.
First Sergeant Prick then called off the alert and ordered every Marine in our outfit to stand in formation. He personally went down the lines, asking each Marine where he had been and if anyone knew who had done this. He got to me and I had to pinch my leg hard to keep from laughing. I told him I was at the movies. He didn’t really believe it, but he had no evidence against me. Corporal Reckless backed up my story, saying he had been sitting behind me and I blocked his view of the flick. The other Marines thought it quite funny and cleaned up the dead snake. One guy from Deadwood, South Dakota, skinned it and was going to make a belt out of it. There were a lot of rumors about who was really responsible, but Corporal Recklesss and I both kept our mouths shut.
CHRISTMAS IN ’NAM, 1966
December 25, 1966 was a day to always remember. A stand-down, or truce, was called and the Marines got some slack time. General Walt made sure all the Marines in Marineland got a first-class Christmas dinner, and you could even have seconds and thirds.
To top it off, a real miracle happened to my outfit. A 4 x 4 truck arrived with about a hundred cases of pink champagne. I believe it was sent by Reynolds, a vineyard in Vineland, New Jersey. God bless the good people of Vineland for that good cheer.
Corporal Wiseass quickly unloaded four cases and cooled it with a fire extinguisher. Everyone got as much as he wanted. We sang songs, danced, and made fools of ourselves. Some Marines from West Virginia who had never drunk champagne before got dizzy and sick and switched back to beer and shots, but the rest of us enjoyed every bottle. The bullshit stories in our hootch got deeper and deeper. Since I was on my second year in ’Nam, I had a million tales to tell. Who shot the most dinks? Who was the most stone cold merciless killer of them all? Who caught the clap the most often? It was pure Marine Corps bullshit until we fell asleep in our beach chairs watching our Armed Forces TV with the sound off and listening to rock music. The cool wind blew off the South China Sea and it was as close to a perfect day that I ever had in my life. In short, there was peace in the valley!
On December 26th, gunbird Lucky #7 launched to escort a CH-34 Med-Evac. Two Marines had been wounded out in the boondocks. We flew escort and were under direct orders not to fire our guns. As the CH-34 was lifting off the deck, it took automatic weapons fire and the two wounded Marines got shot again. Note this Med-Evac CH-34 was painted with huge red crosses. I saw where the fire was coming from and asked permission to open fire. Major Moose in all his Mississippi southern charm said, “Marines will keep their word, and damn the ungodly dinks for daring to break the truce.”
We all made a mental note of returning another day and redeveloping their village.
CORPORAL WISEASS
As the original VMO-6 crew rotated back to the land of the big PX, one day there appeared a new S-1 clerk-by the name of Corporal Weisbecker. He walked with a limp from a motorcycle accident and none of his Marine Corps utilities seemed to fit him right. His brass wasn’t shined, his hair was over his ears, and his boots weren’t bloused. In short, he looked like a soup sandwich in extra-large green utilities. He was assigned to my hootch.
The first question out of his mouth was, “Where’s the Enlisted Men’s Club? I need a rum and Coke.” I told him only an E-5 was allowed to drink hard liquor and he better get used to beer. At this point he wanted to know where the soda vending machines were located. When I told him we didn’t have one, that this was a gunship outfit, not Air Cav in Saigon, he got pissed off.
He didn’t unpack—he simply dumped all his gear on the floor next to his cot. I told him we’d get him a footlocker as soon as somebody got shot and one became available. I then told him he’d better get his shit together, shine his boots and brass, blouse his pants, clean his belt, starch his cap, and most of all put his Corporal chevrons on correctly. He was wearing them upside down. I told him his new boss, First Sergeant Rocky, was a by-the-book pain in the ass, and warned him to steer clear of Major Misery.
Corporal Weisbecker then put a picture of a 1965 Corvette on his wall and said he was in love with this car. Most Marines had Playboy pictures or their real girlfriends on their wall, but Corporal Weisbecker, whom we will now call Corporal Wiseass, said, “Fuck the women, I love my Vet.” I sent Lance Corporal Scrounge out to hunt up a case of Coke, and I ran over to S-4 supply and bummed a bottle of rotgut Captain Morgan rum, and in twenty minutes we were having a rum and Coke party with Corporal Wiseass. Most of us were drinking Miller beer, but Lance Corporal Scrounge and PFC Riggs decided to switch to rum, and all three got falling down drunk while Corporal Wiseass told us his story.
Once in a blue moon you would hear of an inter-service transfer, like an Army Sergeant becoming a Marine Corps Sergeant. Usually you had to re-enlist another four years to switch services, but you kept your same rank. Corporal Wiseass had been stationed in the US Coast Guard at some fort in Oklahoma. Why the government needs Coast Guard people in Oklahoma is a mystery to me. Since he was a real wiseass and broke just about every rule the Coast Guard had, they decided to screw him good and transfer
him to the Marines.
As he lay drunk on the floor next to his cot, I asked him what he had done to deserve this. He told me that he kept writing letters to the head of the Coast Guard requesting sea pay. He stated that the motel the Coast Guard had him staying in had a swimming pool, and thus he needed extra pay due to the extra danger of being near water. This story cracked us all up. What balls! He finally drove his Harley Davidson motorcycle onto the diving board and demanded sea pay for the water hazard near him. He definitely had a drinking problem and a don’t-give-a-shit, screw-everybody-over-the-rank-of E-4 attitude.
His final offense was that he was dating an Army Colonel’s daughter from Fort Stillwell. He told her he was a First Lieutenant in the Coast Guard, and the Colonel nearly had a fit when he found out his daughter was dating an ordinary enlisted man. The whole base heard the story and the Colonel had to get Corporal Wiseass away from his not-so virgin, 99 percent pure, I-am-only-allowed-to-date-officers daughter.
One phone call and Corporal Wiseass was no longer out in the middle of nowhere, he was packed and flying nonstop from El Toro Marine Base to Da Nang. What a colossal screw up. I needed a good man in S-1 administration to cover my ass, so Corporal Wiseass fit in perfectly. He got the straight scoop from Wing Headquarters and I was always well informed about what was coming down the highway. I filled him in on who was a team player and who was a by-the-book ball-breaker. When he got falling down drunk, he usually insulted everyone and I stood up for him and said he had a drinking problem with rum rotting out his brain. One day he insulted my buddy Lance Corporal Iron Leg, telling him the only good Indian was a dead Indian. Corporal Wiseass then rattled off the tale of Wounded Knee. That was it—Lance Corporal Iron Leg got his bowie knife and wanted to cut Corporal Wiseass from his neck down to his balls like a gutted deer.
I was the Corporal in charge of the hootch, and I couldn’t have a murder. It would make me look bad. Every one was pretty drunk and both Marines were friends of mine. We disarmed the Indian and told Corporal Wiseass to shut his mouth and apologize and shake hands. I then broke out a deck of cards and we started playing five-card stud poker for NPC military scrip. The game went from fun to downright ruthlessness. Corporal Wiseass sobered up and started winning our money at a remarkable speed. In a matter of two hours he got $120 out of the whole hootch. I knew he was cheating his ass off, but couldn’t figure out how he was doing it.
We learned not to play with Corporal Wiseass, but I often staked him in high-stakes poker games in which he had extraordinary luck and then we split the winnings. One peaceful night, with my financial backing, he got into a friendly game of poker with First Sergeant Rocky. “Top Rocky,” as we called him, considered himself a great card player, and he usually stayed up all night and played cards. It was a peaceful night, and most of us were at the movies, when about 9:30 PM, the VC decided to hit us with 81mm mortars. Once again, we ran and got our rifles and went on full alert. A zip mortar hit the generator cable that provided lights to our hootches, knocking all the lights out. Corporal Wiseass took his switchblade Italian Rizzo knife and stabbed his cards in play on the wooden picnic table they were using to play cards. First Sergeant Rocky put his K-bar through his cards. Other Marines used their bayonet or whatever they had, and everyone ran to their bunkers. They left about $750 in military scrip lying on the table with a beer to hold it down.
We launched two gunbirds and made lunchmeat out of the zips’ mortar team. Maintenance fixed the broken cable, the alert was called off, and everyone went back to the movie or the card game. There was only one problem—the $750 had vanished. First Sergeant Rocky checked everyone’s hand and he would have won with three tens and two kings. He was pissed, half drunk, and wanted to find who stole his money.
First Sergeant Rocky sobered up and had a half-assed investigation of all six players. Corporal Wiseass kept a straight face and the rest of us really never knew who stole the poker money. To this day, 36 years later, I would say Corporal Wiseass stole the money to put in his ’65 Corvette fund, but I really never did find out. I asked him a million times and he only smiled and said, “Do I look like a sleazy card shark thief?”
THE TUNNEL RAT AND THE TIGER
A tunnel rat was a small Marine or Army soldier who was sent underground into VC tunnel complexes. He usually had a flashlight in one hand and a .45-automatic in the other. He had to be small and skinny like a gook to get into the tunnel entrances. The Marines needed small guys so bad they lowered their height requirements to recruit them. These men are hardly ever mentioned in the history books, but they all had a lot of courage. I tried to get into a VC tunnel hole once. I tried feet first, but I was too big to make the turn in the complex. Next I had two Marines lower me into the hole head first, but I still was too big and tall to crawl into the small opening.
The VC tunnel complexes sometimes went on for miles. Other times, they were in the area where a village stood. There were hospitals, mess halls, meeting rooms and sleeping quarters inside, and they must have taken years to dig. The VC knew which tunnel to take when they came to a fork down below. One tunnel was a dummy dead end complete with a trip-wire grenade, and the other was the right way to go. A great many tunnel rats made the wrong choice at these junctions and tripped the grenade and got blown up. The VC went out of their way to kill a tunnel rat. They used poisonous snakes, punji stakes, broken glass, nail bombs and just about everything you could imagine. Some tunnel rats found cases of Coca-Cola bottles filled with ground up glass that would cut your intestinal tract all to pieces, making you bleed to death internally. They even left US canteens filled with poisoned water.
Some tunnel rats were really good at what they did. These were kids from mining towns in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and other states who had grown up around abandoned mines. A good tunnel rat could sneak up to a sleeping VC and shoot him point blank. They returned above ground with maps, weapons, pistols and all types of good stuff, even VC flags that commanded top dollar. These were great souvenirs to take home and trade with other Marines.
In ’Nam, death had many faces—it wasn’t always a smiling VC and NVA. One day at the very bottom of Marineland near Quang Nam province, a company of Marine riflemen were walking along a jungle path. The last one in the column was a tunnel rat. A huge tiger came out of the brush and grabbed the small Marine in his huge jaws and carried him off into the jungle. The poor Marine screamed horribly until the tiger mauled him to death and then ate him for lunch. The other Marines opened fire in the whole jungle area where they last saw the tiger. They found a blood trail and finally what was left of the unlucky tunnel rat. The tiger had eaten his mid-section, and all they found were his head and shoulders and his ankles and boots. Closed casket for this warrior.
Who in their right mind would figure a tiger would attack a column of combat Marines? The Marine company was super pissed. They returned to their base and got on the horn to Division to send down a Recon team with an experienced tracker. Team Hateful had a full-blooded Mescalero Apache Indian. He was short, fat and ugly, but he could track a mountain lion in Arizona for days on end, and he would kick a regular Marine’s ass just for looking at him wrong. He and the rest of the men on his team were the baddest of the bad.
They tracked the path that the Marine company had taken the previous day and the Indian found fresh tiger tracks at the site where it left the mauled Marine. The Indian was smart as hell. He figured the tiger lived in the local jungle and crossed this open area a lot. The Recon team acquired a water buffalo from the nearby village and tied him out in the open area. The Indian and the rest of the team then climbed trees and waited.
Sure as shit, the tiger came out at dawn for his breakfast and discovered that the Recon team was serving fresh VC buffalo on the hoof. He silently stalked around the edge of the area, watching and listening. Finally, he decided to go for the buffalo. He ran full steam ahead and pulled it down like a WWF wrestler on TV. The Apache had a Model 700 Remington sniper rifle with matching amm
o and a Redfield 3x9 scope. He took a headshot, but the tiger didn’t go down. He took another headshot and the tiger dropped to his haunches, crying out in pain. The whole Recon team opened up on him. Result? One big dead tiger. The Apache skinned him and cut out his heart, and the Recon team cut up the rest with their K-bar knives and every member ate a piece. The Apache painted his face with the tiger’s blood.
They used Borax powder to cure the tiger’s hide and then hung it up. It was so enormous that it covered almost the whole side of the wooden hootch. Stars and Stripes came down and took pictures, and the whole of I-Corps now had a new enemy, hungry tigers, to look out for.
Note that usually if Marines spotted a tiger, they would not kill it. Most Marines love animals of all sorts, and tigers could possibly do a lot of damage to the local VC/NVAs living in the jungle. This particular tiger shouldn’t have changed his daily diet from slow-moving VCs to a small tunnel rat Marine who was just trying to get back to base camp in one piece.
BEEF AND BEER BEACH PARTY
Once in a while God looks out for low-ranking, rain-soaked Marines who have spent all night in a leaky bunker waiting for VCs who never attack. Corporal Wiseass and I were dragging our sorry asses up the muddy road from our bunker to our hootch. We were wringing wet and our morale was very low. Corporal Wiseass was bitching that the VCs never attacked when he was on guard duty, and so he had never shot his M-14 at a real zip. He was pissed off that his rifle was wet and he had to clean it before it showed signs of rust. I told him to smarten up and use WD-40 to protect it and put a condom on the muzzle to protect the barrel. I told him if they found rust on his weapon, he would get office hours and extra duty.
LBJ's Hired Gun Page 20