As we walked and argued about the merits of WD-40, a deuce-and-a-half truck came roaring down the road and hit us with more mud. By divine providence a huge box fell out of the back. I shined my flashlight on it and discovered it was marked “Beef Steak.” I guess the truck was headed for the Army base—we hadn’t had a steak in months. The box was heavy as shit, with metal bands holding it together. It was also frozen solid.
Our next miracle was a lost Army jeep driver who came by looking for the Seabee base. We told him we would personally show him if he would drop us off at our base camp. We gave him the royal tour right to the front door of our hootch, and lugged the frozen box of meat inside. It now was 7:00 AM and everyone was getting up and ready for chow. We cut the metal band on the box and opened it up. Inside was a whole side of beef.
We figured that with no refrigeration, the meat would thaw out in about eight hours. We decided to have a steak and beer beach party just for our hootch. Corporal Wiseass talked a mess hall butcher out of a meat saw and some very sharp knives, and we rounded up three cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon. The mess men who lived next door got us a trashcan full of ice, but they had no luck with paper plates.
We got an oil drum and cut it in half, welded legs onto it and made a homemade grill. Some of our men hunted driftwood on the Sergeants’ beach to use for cooking, and we started up the fire with JP-4 helicopter fuel. We skipped evening chow hall and another miracle happened—it stopped raining and the sun came out. During monsoon season, this would happen about once a week.
We stole salt and pepper shakers from the mess hall. Believe it or not, Corporal Wiseass’s parents owned a restaurant, and he was an A-1 butcher. While most of our outfit went to the movies, we cooked our steaks under the stars on the beach. Since we didn’t have any plates, we ate the steaks like cavemen, holding it on the end of a K-bar knife or bayonet, and tearing off bites with our teeth. I managed to balance my steak on one of my beer cans. I had four huge T-bones and drank five beers to wash them down. We built a campfire and everyone in the hootch told funny stories. It was one of the best times I had in ’Nam. Twelve guys and a ton of bullshit stories. We called it a night at 1:00 AM and everyone was happy and well fed. Corporal Wiseass and I were heroes for lugging the huge box back and sharing it with our fellow Marines.
CORPORAL WISEASS’S TRIP TO LUNCH
One very hot day I was headed for the chow hall. We were required to carry our weapons with us, and I had my web gear with extra magazines and M-14 rifle, but had forgotten my helmet and left my soft hat on my desk. I was too lazy to walk over and get my “cover,” as the Marines called it, so I just kept on walking. Corporal Wiseass, who had just arrived, wanted to walk along with me, and I told him he had to take his M-14 with him. “Fuck you!” he said, and pulled out a Colt .25 automatic pistol. I laughed and told him if Colonel Jamison came passing by, he would be in a world of shit, to which he replied, “Fuck him!” Sure enough, His Highness Colonel Jamison came riding down from his officers’ hill with Lieutenant Kissass driving. They saw Corporal Wiseass had no weapon and I had no cover on my head.
Colonel Jamison asked for my name, rank and unit. Lieutenant Kissass had his little black fuck-you book, and I was fined $10.00 for not having my cover on in 110 degree heat. The Colonel yelled at me, “Ten dollars will wake you up, Marine! If you have a heat stroke it will cost the Marine Corps time and money to repair you.” Like I was a machine! The Colonel then started with Corporal Wiseass. “Where is your weapon?” Corporal Wiseass pulled out his .25-auto and I started laughing. The Colonel said, “Son, what are you going to kill with that sissy woman gun?” Corporal Wiseass said, “I’m going to shoot myself when I can’t take the heat, mud, rain and harassment anymore.”
By this time even Lieutenant Kissass was laughing his worthless ass off. I had tears coming out of my eyes as I pinched my legs to keep from falling down laughing at Corporal Wiseass’s reply. The Colonel yelled, “We are LBJ’s hired guns, and you will be ready for a gook attack 24 hours a day!” He then told Corporal Wiseass that a $50.00 fine out of his pay would teach him the importance of having his M-14 rifle at all times.
I figured a $10.00 fine and $50.00 fine was the end of this drama. Wrong! I saluted His Highness correctly, but Corporal Wiseass gave him a real half-assed salute. The Colonel shouted, “How did you ever make Corporal E-4? How long have you been in the Marines, son? Where did you learn to salute an officer like that?” Corporal Wiseass told Colonel Jamison he had been in the Marines three weeks. He then related to the Colonel that he had been transferred from the Coast Guard in Oklahoma to MAG-36 for dating an Army Colonel’s daughter. Colonel Jamison went nuts. “Why does the US government need Coast Guard personnel out in the middle of nowhere?” he asked. Corporal Wiseass told him that he was in charge of watching a swimming pool. I thought the Colonel was going to have a heart attack over that one.
Colonel Jamison looked at me and said, “It’s your fault this man is not squared away. Your new job, Corporal Gebhart, is to teach this swimming pool guard how to be a mean, green fighting machine. I’ll be watching his progress!” With that, Lieutenant Kissass hit the gas and threw dust in our faces.
People have often asked me why, since I loved the Marine Corps so much, I did not stay in. Simple—there were hundreds of Little Caesars like Colonel Jamison to break your balls. The Marines are great for shooting zips, chasing whores and drinking, but the petty bullshit broke your esprit de corps. As the Colonel roared off in a cloud of dust, Corporal Wiseass related these words of wisdom: “Colonel Jamison is a legend in his own mind—a fearless leader dedicated to ruining a hard-working Corporal’s lunch. Fuck him, and fuck the horse he rode in on.” I had to laugh. This trip to the chow hall was costly, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
NURSE MICHELLE
The 93rd Army Evacuation Hospital at the end of the runway was filled with tragedies. Like I’ve said, you hoped and prayed you would get shot on a slow day when you would get instant service. If not, it was take a number and wait, as if you were at your local bakery. On real busy days Dr. Death and his assistant, the death nurse, picked who to repair and who to shoot up with morphine. When you read this you are going to say I’m a liar, but believe me it’s the truth. We busted our asses to save wounded Marines and get them in there in less than 20 minutes after being shot, having a leg blown off, or worse, only to see men have to wait to be wheeled into the emergency door. The ghouls came and took the Marines who died and put them into cold storage units. While all this was going on, the death nurse would hold the wounded Marines’ hands and try to comfort them into the next world.
Later in life, as I look back on this policy of who would live and who would die, I think of the Valkyrie sent down from Valhalla to pick the bravest warriors and guide their souls to Odin. Maybe dying wasn’t that bad. Some people the doctors repaired wished they had been left with the death nurse. Others have led painful lives with lost limbs and broken spirits. In short, you didn’t want to visit the hospital and see the human misery, the body bags, and the dead and mangled Marines wrapped in ponchos covered with flies.
Army First Lieutenant Nurse Michelle Marks worked at the hospital, dealing with life and death on an hourly basis six days a week. God bless her, most people would have taken one look at that hospital and walked away as quickly as their feet could move. Blood, plasma bottles, bandages, flies, dead men’s gear and blown-off limbs: it was like a Civil War hospital after Gettysburg, with gruesome, nerve-wracking, morbid tragedies hour after hour.
Once a week Nurse Michelle got a day off and headed to a private beach in a cove right around the bend from the base. On my days off I used to take my field glasses, a few cold beers and my K-bar knife, and paddle out about 500 yards in the South China Sea in my little yellow rescue raft. I usually tied up to the beached LST that the Navy had cut into three pieces, climbed the ladder on the water side and explored the ship for souvenirs. Then I would climb back down and paddle around the corner
to the private cove at the nurses’ beach.
On my first visit a moron Army guard fired a burst of M-60 machine gun fire 200 yards in front of me, so I turned around and went back. On my next visit I took an American flag and a Marine Corps flag and didn’t get shot at. I went past the multi-colored floats in the deep water and paid the nurses a visit. Most of them couldn’t believe I had the guts to visit by sea, so they accepted me as a crazy, harmless Marine who was a lot of fun. I told them I was a reincarnation of a Viking explorer. They suspected I was an enlisted man, but I never told them anything except that I was John the Marine guy from next door.
We all accepted each other, no questions asked. I ate their food and I even met some of the doctors who repaired everyone. It was like a day at Stone Harbor, New Jersey, and I had great relaxing experiences with these ladies on the beach. Some were fat, some were shy, some were in love, and then there was Nurse Michelle, like a blonde Viking goddess men would fight and die for in ancient times. She liked to swim and often came out to my raft. She must have liked my audacity, for it was forbidden for enlisted men to fraternize with officers, and you could be court-martialed for dating them. The Marine Corps was very strict about this, especially in their Stateside bases. I had to keep my visits a secret or face big problems with Major Misery who would have court-martialed me in a New York minute if he found out.
I was happy just to be with American women. I put up their badminton nets and played all their silly games like Scrabble. I drank their imported wine and ate their cheese and crackers. I told them funny stories to cheer them up. Often when I landed, some were quiet and withdrawn, and I told them that everyone’s life couldn’t be saved. They were not gods, just human beings who were doing their best. What more could a Marine ask for when he’s been shot-up? For some, it was time to buy the farm, pure and simple.
Sometimes when I paddled over to their beach, the nurses were all out working, trying to mend broken and shot-up Marines. I knew there was no future to chasing after Nurse Michelle, but just to have your picture taken next to her was a thrill. I became her friend, confessor and advisor, and she often gave me straight-up answers to my problems. Sometimes I couldn’t visit for a couple of weeks due to my flying schedule. The nurses actually worried about me and I got them to promise if I ever came into the hospital all shot-up, they wouldn’t leave me to die with the ghouls outside waiting to tag and bag me. This guarantee made me feel safer when we got into bad situations with Lucky #7.
The only person I ever told was Corporal Cross. I told him we had an “in” at the hospital and that we wouldn’t be dumped with the death nurse. He thought I was bullshitting him until one day we made an emergency landing to pick up a Marine who’d gotten his chin and lower face shot off. His face was wrapped in a green towel and he was a bloody mess. He was in shock but could still walk, and we rushed him nonstop from his LZ directly to the hospital. Who came out with a gurney, but none other than Nurse Michelle. She had blood on her green hospital uniform and her hair was up, but I still recognized her. She asked if I knew the Marine and I said no, but we had all risked our lives to get him there in record-breaking time from a hot LZ, and had taken a lot of fire picking him up.
The Marine didn’t want help. He wanted to be left outside to die. I almost had to knock him out to get him on the gurney. By this time I was covered with his blood. They rushed him into X-ray and I believe he was transferred to the hospital ship. He looked real bad, but they stabilized him and sent him to a hospital for plastic surgery.
Then the secret was out that I was an E-4 Corporal helicopter gunner—no more, no less. Nurse Michelle called out my name, saying, “John, we’ve been worried! We haven’t seen you for a couple of weeks.” Corporal Cross almost fell out off his seat. He then believed me that we both had an in over at the hospital.
The last time I saw Nurse Michelle she was down in the dumps. She and another nurse had done everything humanly possible to save a Marine Sergeant who had stepped on a bouncing betty that had blown off both his legs and his left arm. I told her maybe it was better that he die than live with all the problems his lost limbs would create. Maybe that was why God had called him. She switched from her usual red wine to rum and Coke, and got quite drunk while I drank beer and tried to cheer her up.
When I told her I had just re-upped my tour of duty to ’Nam for another year, she started crying and said I had a death wish. I told her it was a good career move, for soon I would get promoted to Sergeant when all the new people came. I also explained that I didn’t have enough medals and glory. I told her my family had been in America since 1730 and had been in every battle from the French and Indian War up to ’Nam, and that I had quit college to be there. She grabbed me and kissed me and told me to promise I wouldn’t do anything too stupid to get myself wounded or killed in the process of collecting my air medals and glory. I also said I was leaving on a 30-day vacation to Australia and would miss her going-home party. So I hugged and kissed her and made her promise me she wouldn’t marry a total asshole Navy officer, but would pick someone like me. She laughed and said there weren’t too many like me around. As the nurses left the beach, I took off on my raft and waved goodbye. To this day I hope she married someone worthy of her loyalty, compassion, beauty and talent. She was one of a kind.
I never returned to the nurses’ beach again. It always brought back painful memories. Every time I played a song called “Laura” on my piano, I thought of beautiful Michelle. Did I make it all up in my mind or was she real? As time passed and the rainy season came and the sun disappeared, I dreamed of my mysterious blonde goddess who helped me forget the harsh day-to-day realities of war. She was every man’s impossible dream woman—the kind whom few men would ever meet in an entire lifetime.
CHAPTER 8
MY SIDETRIP TO AUSTRALIA
THE PASSPORT TREK, DA NANG
In order to travel outside of Vietnam I needed an American passport. In the States this would be a simple matter, but getting a passport in ’Nam was a major production. First I had to get permission and temporary orders to travel to Da Nang where they had a small American consulate. My Gunny Sergeant said, “Okay, but don’t make a career out of it. Get up and back ASAP.” I went into S-1 to get a temporary order, and Major Misery was pissed off that I was getting some time off. I told him if he wanted to sign up for another year in ’Nam he could come with me. He said one year was more than enough to get his ticket punched. Corporal Wiseass typed up my temporary orders and Major Misery signed them, telling me not to make a simple day trip into a major holiday. I bummed a ride with two gunbirds that stopped at Marble Mountain to refuel on a joint mission with VMO-2 to the Phu Bai area.
Once in a while each squadron sent a couple of extra gunbirds for a joint operation. I went into the S-1 tent and shook hands with First Sergeant Prick who, believe it or not, was happy to see me. He asked how I had made Corporal, and I told him he was talking to a genuine war hero. He laughed and told me to shut my mouth about his private war with First Sergeant Rocky a few months back, then ordered me a jeep with a driver from Motor Pool, who drove me over to the American Consulate. There were a million antennas on the roof and Marines guarding the building. Embassy duty is the worst thing that can happen to a regular Marine—it is all spit and polish and endless bullshit from professional State Department double-dealers.
I thought this visit would be a 15-minute trip. I was escorted into a private office of some young guy who was to issue my passport, who was talking to his mother in Fairfax, Virginia about sending him his summer pajamas and more underwear. I coughed and lit up a small cigar, which got his attention. I told him I hated to take him off his important phone call, but I had zips to kill and he was holding me up. He was pissed that a lowly Corporal would challenge him. He hung up on mommy and asked me what my problem was. I told him I had re-upped in ’Nam since I was having such a great vacation, and I needed a passport. He was dumbfounded. I must have been the first Marine to come over for a pass
port. He didn’t have any. All he could do was take my picture and send me down to Saigon to the main embassy to get one. He asked me why I wasn’t going home or to Hawaii for my 30 days. I told him I had joined the Marines to see the world, and had already seen the USA and Hawaii.
I asked him who he knew to get such a great job at the State Department instead of joining the service. He answered, “People of my class don’t fight wars.” I told him that if the Marines weren’t guarding the building, he would be lunchmeat after dark. He then went on to say how safe and friendly the local Vietnamese were. I told him we thought so too in our area, until we killed 21 of them in an attack they made on Marble Mountain, and discovered they were the same people whose smiling faces we had hired to help us. I added that he was a pussy rich kid with no balls, and he should let me take him up in our gunbird and show him the countryside.
He walked out of the office pissed. He knew he was a mamma’s boy. I got my ride back to Marble Mountain and had to spend the night. I went back to my old hootch and partied with my old buddies, who now had to call me Corporal Gebhart. We had a great party and I slept in my old rack. I missed my old buddies, but life was better at Chu Lai.
I got lucky—the next day, an unarmed UH-IE slick was leaving at 1:00 PM on a parts run from VMO-2, my old outfit, to VMO-6, the new outfit. I had time to hitch a ride down to China Beach and get laid. I went into a white stucco village whorehouse and got a tune-up and a good back massage for $10.00 NPC money. I came out of this house of ill repute with my M&P .38 pistol slung over my shoulder, holding my utility jacket in my hand. I was still tucking my green T-shirt into my pants when two Army MPs jumped out of the bushes and claimed I had violated a military order by going to a whorehouse.
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