“Just the Vietnam equivalent of cockroaches, Dai Uy,” Fischer chuckled. “Don’t worry, they left plenty for us.”
“Plenty of what?” I grumbled, as the men produced slender, five-foot-long bamboo shoots which had been converted into straws. The men rammed the straws down through the oily-looking water. With much gusto, they sucked long swallows from the bottoms of the pots and pronounced the stuff fit to drink.
Belching in appreciation, the old man passed me his straw. With bravado overcoming my apprehension, I took a hard pull on the bamboo tube. A foul-tasting, highly alcoholic concoction burned its way down my throat and exploded into a fiery ball in my stomach. “Wow,” I finally managed to gasp. “That stuff sure packs a wallop.”
Sergeant Fischer laughed and reached for my straw. “Beats anything you can buy in the NCO club, for a fact.” He sucked mightily and passed the straw on to the next man in line. Across the way, I saw Lieutenant McMurray happily tapping another pot and resigned myself to the inevitable. It was going to be a drunken afternoon. Just that once, I’d bend my vow to lay off the hard stuff forever. I sure hoped Paul Potter would understand my breaking my vow to him.
After a couple of passes around the circle of thirsty men, the jug was nearly empty. I had high hopes that I’d seen the last of the local “white lightning.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The last man to drink just poured in some more water, and presto, another round was ready. My head was getting light as a helium-filled balloon. I missed the first part of the chief’s speech, although Pham was translating it into my ear. His voice just added to the buzzing in my head from the potent brew I was sucking down.
The old chief brought out the new volunteers for my unit, and introduced them to me one by one. They were just kids, most likely fifteen to seventeen years old. They all smiled and bowed politely, pride and a manly determination visible on their young faces. I shakily got to my feet and welcomed them to the American Army. “The Bru are strong fighters,” I intoned, Pham rapidly translating at my side. “Together, we will kill many VC.” My translator must have jazzed up my little speech, because the crowd let out a mighty yell when I finished. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that most of these boys would be dead before I finished my tour. I doubt if half of them ever returned to the village in one piece. Most likely, their only way home was just like the one for the boy I’d brought with me, in a wooden box, with a gaudy little trinket for his grieving family to mark his passing.
The village medicine man now got up and led the cow into the circle of villagers. One of his assistants skillfully slit the animal’s throat and another put a big metal pot underneath the dying animal’s neck to catch the gushing blood. After a mournful “moo,” the unfortunate animal keeled over. That resulted in a robust cheer from the onlookers. The pot of blood was passed around, and everyone took a sip. The taste of the warm fluid should have sickened me, but I guess the effects of the home brew numbed my senses enough to overcome it. I smiled a bloody grin at Sergeant Fischer as he carefully took a tiny swallow and passed the pot on to the next man.
“Guess we’re honorary members of the clan now,” I told him as I reached for another swallow of the wine. Fischer just smiled and nodded, sucking mightily on his reed straw. I had moved up a tiny notch in his opinion.
Village women stacked piles of brush around the dead cow and set it ablaze. For a while we all drank and watched the fire burn. My body was numb, my tongue thick, and my head spinning. Surprisingly, I was also famished. I made small talk with the village men, using Pham as my translator, occasionally speaking in the pidgin English and Vietnamese they might possess. I flirted outrageously with Pham’s older sister, who looked better and better the more wine I drank. Each time, my dashing smile was returned in full by black teeth, filed gap visible, before she shyly covered her face with her hands and giggled helplessly.
If I hadn’t imbibed so much of their hooch that I was incapable of moving, much less procreating, there might have been a half-breed Montagnard in my family tree. I found out later that, in their eyes, it would have been impolite to turn me down if I had insisted on her hand for a one-night marriage. Lucky girl, saved from a fate worse than death. Lucky me, for that matter.
Finally, the women allowed the fire to burn down, by which time the poor cow was very scorched, on the outside at least. The ladies moved in with sharp knives, and set to carving up dinner. Nearly raw hunks of meat and organs were swiftly passed around, men first, and we all set to feasting, much like early man did, I suppose.
The hot meat was juicy and tasty, and I ate my share and more. The cow’s smoking skull was split and the gray-red brains were put on small skewers and roasted over the remnants of the fire. The last of the blood was used as a dip or a sauce. A person would have to have been drunk to enjoy the afternoon, and I really enjoyed myself. The carcass was reduced to skin and bones by dusk.
Sergeant Fischer and my equally sloshed lieutenant poured me onto the chopper when it arrived and held me in as it swooped into the air while I waved good-bye to my new family and friends. I believed myself to have been the life of the party, laughing, flirting with the gals, and telling scandalous lies to everyone who would listen. I guess Pham’s translation raised my stories to even more outrageous heights.
I didn’t start getting really nauseated until we hit some turbulence halfway home to Da Nang. Then, I set a modern-day record for puking out one’s guts at three thousand feet. Any VC below us were subjected to an intense and disgusting bombardment of my stomach’s contents.
I was sick the rest of the month.
5
Jose O’Connor’s Last Laugh
or
Never Enough of a Good Thing
The recovery period for my hangover set a modern-day record for misery. Once again, I renewed the famous and familiar vow, “No more of the hard stuff.” I promised the god Bacchus that if ever I recovered, I’d never get that sloshed again. A pledge I’m proud to report that I’ve kept for the past thirty years.
Experienced SF soldiers, who knew about the effects of the Montagnard home brew, gave me plenty of good-natured ribbing as I slowly and painfully returned to being a normal human being. Even Colonel Isler flashed me a bemused grin the first time I saw him after I emerged from my sick bed. My poor, wasted body was cleaned out, top to bottom. What a way to lose weight fast. If I could have brought it back to the States, I could have made a million bucks. And the weight would have stayed off; nobody would ever have wanted to use that method twice, believe me.
As I’ve said, our camp sat on the beach of Da Nang Bay. The bay was set in a big valley, with high mountains rising to the west and north, encircling a flat expanse of rice paddies nearly ten miles across. It sort of resembled a soup bowl, half buried in the sand. Inside the perimeter of the high mountains was the city of Da Nang, swelled to overflowing with war refugees. Add to the mix about twenty thousand American military men, and you get the picture.
Driving south, away from the city, was the big Da Nang airfield, which was constantly active with jets and cargo planes roaring off the concrete runways or coasting in for a landing. Helicopters buzzed around like angry wasps, darting here and there on the business of war. There was also a large navy contingent stationed at Da Nang harbor, and ships were stacked up out in the bay, awaiting their turn at the many unloading piers, which were just across the Da Nang River from the airfield.
Farther down the beach to the south was the headquarters of Company C, 5th Special Forces, which commanded all the regular Special Forces camps located in the northern region of I Corps. Next door to C Company was the 3d Marine Air Base, which supported the Marine units working in the northern provinces. Next was the navy field hospital, an oil tank farm, and a small POW compound. Across the road was the massive junkyard I mentioned earlier. It was filled to overflowing with destroyed tanks, trucks, jeeps, armored personnel carriers (APCs), Marine amphibious tractors (amtracs) which looked like an army’s APC on steroi
ds, and the rest of the refuse of the war. The junkyard was a treasure chest of spare parts and “goodies” to those of us with the inclination to deal with its keepers. Fresh serial numbers for our jeeps, rebuilt carburetors, tires, generators, firing pins for rifles, desks, typewriters, the list of goodies to be found there was endless. The soldiers who were assigned to the junkyard had one of the most profitable assignments in all of South Vietnam, since we paid whatever was asked for the things they sold.
The reason was simple. In the midst of plenty, relative to supplies to prosecute the war, there was always something we were short of. Once we asked for five hundred sets of fatigues for the supply shed. We got ten thousand sets delivered, yet a simple carburetor for an old M-35 jeep was not to be found, except at the junkyard. The lucky soldiers assigned to man the junkyards grew rich, I’m certain. Cash, enemy souvenirs, a sister’s honor, whatever they wanted, they got, or we walked, and a good SF trooper never walked anywhere if he could ride.
Just to the south of our compound was the forbidding upthrust of rock called Marble Mountain. Beyond the rocky barrier of Marble Mountain was the 3d Marine Amtrac Battalion and the village of Xom Som Tui, from where the NVA sappers had launched the attack on us in August. From our back fence, we could see the despised cluster of grass huts, and many a scheme to repay the villains responsible was hatched and reluctantly discarded over cool beers at the club.
Actually, those poor villagers would certainly have had their throats slit if they had informed us of their unwanted guests. Of course, even that knowledge didn’t temper our hatred for the village and those unfortunate people caught between the two warring parties, both uninvited, in their land.
Beyond the village and the Marine base lay only swamp, rice paddies, heavy jungle, and the South Vietnamese fighting against us, or Viet Cong, who we usually called Charlie, or VC, if not something worse. Lately, we were seeing more and more North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regular troops, hiding up in the mountains that defined the rest of northern South Vietnam; the Tet offensive of January 1968 had resulted in the death of most of the VC in I Corps and elsewhere in South Vietnam.
The Marines had a small defensive outpost located at an old French fort right at the base of the high ground to the far west end of the valley. They had the unenviable assignment of patrolling the exits from the west, which was “Charlie Land,” and of providing early warning of incursion into the local Da Nang AO (area of operations). The Marines knew their business, as was proven by the high number of KIAs they counted in the hunt for our attackers in the fall. Except for the sad truth that we army types were handsome dudes and the Marines were all ugly grunts, happier in the dirt and weeds than in civilization, you couldn’t have told us apart.
In every war, one is going to meet a number of unforgettable characters. Some brave, some cowardly, strong or weak, smart or dumb, sane or crazy. The list of descriptors would fill a page. I met my share of them. One of the most amusing I met was Sgt. Jose O’Connor.
One of my best recon team leaders, Sergeant O’Connor was a half-Mexican, half-Irish, blue-eyed, tanned, Latino cavalier, and a ladies’ man from the top of his jet-black hair to the tips of his toes. He was husky and dark, with a devil-may-care buoyancy about him that made everyone he met like him instantly, especially women. When he smiled, which was often, his pearly-white teeth would almost blind you.
Jose bragged that he had slipped across the Rio Grande from Mexico and joined the army before the INS was able to catch and deport him. Once he was in the service, it was too late to ship him back. He’d been assigned to Special Forces ever since, spending a good deal of time stationed in South America, where his Spanish increased his value to the army. The rest of his enlistment time, he alternated between Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where Special Forces HQ was located, and Fort Bliss, Texas, where he could visit his relatives south of the border.
He had been in Vietnam about a year when I took over B Company, and had just extended for an additional six months. He had command of recon team Cobra, where he was famous for his ability to take his team in and out of tight spots without ever taking casualties.
Early in February, after a hard night of drinking with the regulars at the NCO Club, where the troops had spent time complaining about the lack of revenge against the offending village across the water, O’Connor decided to take action on his own. Originally, everyone had demanded we burn the place to the ground for harboring the VC who’d attacked us. Everyone agreed. Something was called for, something big.
I was officer of the day that night—how about that for a contradiction in terms? Thus, I had a front seat to the whole saga.
About two o’clock in the morning, Jose and a truckload of drunken troopers pulled up to the front gate. I stopped them and climbed up on the running board so I could see the driver up close and smell his breath. He was sober, although he was a minority of one. He grinned sheepishly at me, and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “What can I do?”
“Where you taking these bums?” I asked. The driver was the junior member of O’Connor’s recon team, so new to CCN that he was still pissing Stateside water. Of course he was eager to be one of the guys. Jose was sitting next to him in the cab, so sloshed that I doubt he could have staggered across the road without falling flat on his face. The men in back were singing at the top of their voices one of the favorite songs of the airborne trooper, “Blood on the Risers.”
“Special mission, Cap’n Nick,” Jose slurred. “Don’t worry, I’ve got everything under control.”
“Hell, O’Connor,” I replied, “every man in this truck, except maybe Spivy here, is so piss-potted that he doesn’t even know what his name is. Where the hell are you going?”
“It’s secret, honest, Captain. We’ll be back in a minute. Jus’ going down the road a ways to pick up somethin’ we need to pay back the dinks over in the vil’ there.” He jerked his thumb toward the offensive Xom Son Tui.
“All right,” I answered. “Just stay away from the MP checkpoint at the bridge. And Spivy,” I admonished the young driver, “don’t let anyone else drive this truck. You understand?” Spivy nodded. I noticed the buzz cut of his hair was so short I couldn’t tell if he was blond or dark-haired. Then he noisily shifted gears, and the truck lurched out of the gate and turned east toward Da Nang. Shaking my head at the spectacle and hoping I hadn’t turned a whirlwind of destruction loose on the world, I watched the truck disappear in the darkness. I could hear the singing voices long after the noise of the vehicle was gone.
About an hour later, the truck came back, with Spivy its only occupant. “Jesus Christ, Spivy,” I screamed at him. “Didn’t I tell you not to lose those drunken bastards? Where the hell did you lose them?”
“Sir,” the young sergeant answered, trying hard not to grin. “Sergeant O’Connor respectfully requests that you make a tour of the perimeter and don’t come back to the front gate for thirty minutes.” He looked anxiously down the dark road.
I thought I could hear the sound of a tracked vehicle approaching the camp. “Now who in hell would be driving a tank down the road in the middle of the night?”
“Don’t ask, sir. Just make your rounds. Please, sir. Right now.” The young sergeant was fairly hopping up and down in excitement.
Hestitantly, I nodded. “Okay, Spivy, I’ll make my rounds, but you’d better not be setting me up for an ass-chewing from the XO.” He grinned in relief, and hurried me on my way. I took plenty of time, even going inside the TOC, which was almost soundproof.
When I returned to the front gate, the Montagnard guards were all smiles at the joke, whatever it was, but they wouldn’t let me in on it. All I could get from them was “O’Connor funny, Dai Uy.”
The rest of the night passed uneventfully, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the sun came up. Whatever O’Connor was up to, it hadn’t happened on my watch. I should have walked the fence again, but decided it was better if I didn’t, in case there was something I shouldn’t see.
As I ate breakfast, I sensed a mood of jocular anticipation sweeping the men in the mess hall. Clusters of them would whisper together and then dash for the door, giggling like kids with a secret. Spotting O’Connor over at one of the tables, drinking coffee and looking bleary-eyed at his surroundings, I eased up beside him and sat down. “What the hell’s going on, O’Connor?”
“No so loud, Dai Uy,” he moaned in misery. “My head’s ’bout to bust wide open.” He slurped some more of the coffee. Looking up at me with eyes nearly bleeding red, he flashed his big smile and whispered, “Take a look over beside number four guard tower.”
Following the flow of gazers headed that way, I walked to the southwest corner of the compound, where a twenty-foot-tall tower marked the corner of the defensive perimeter of the camp. There, just outside the wire, half-buried in the sand, was a massive, M-110 self-propelled howitzer, its mighty eight-inch gun pointing like a dark, menacing finger of accusation right at our offending village across the bay.
Troops were laughing in glee as they came up and inspected the gun, while across the open expanse of water, the cowed village was quiet as a mouse in a bed of sleeping cats. I must have invented a dozen new ways to cuss a man as I hotfooted it back to the mess hall. “O’Connor, you crazy, pea-brained wetback,” I snarled as quietly as my enraged blood would let me. “Where on earth did you get that cannon, and what are we gonna tell the XO when he finds out who put it there, and who let it into the compound?”
Casually, O’Connor brushed aside my anger. “Relax, Dai Uy. How long do you think its been since the XO walked the perimeter of the camp? Nobody will tell him or the CO, and in a week there’ll be no way anyone can prove who did it or when. Relax, man. It’s cool.”
Damned if he wasn’t right.
For the next two weeks, countless MPs and a certain Marine artillery unit were looking all over I Corps for their stolen self-propelled gun. It seems whoever took it had swept the road of any tracks, and the twenty-ton monster was not to be found anywhere. I heard the Marines were tearing their hair out at the idea that anyone could steal something so big and noisy right out from under their noses. Of course, to any rational man who knew Marines, there was an easy answer. The army did!
15 Months in SOG Page 6