by Doug Bradley
Right around this time they let us media types in—notepads, microphones, and cameras even—to watch them mopping up. There was even an impromptu statement delivered by Col. Johnson (he’d been promoted and given a bronze star ‘cause of being attacked). The colonel reported that while the LBJ disturbance had left 63 MPs and 52 inmates injured, “there was one lone fatality, a Private Edward Haskins of St. Petersburg, Florida, who was beaten to death with a shovel.”
I couldn’t help myself. Standing there in what looked like Watts or Newark, listening to this Army bullshit, something snapped. “What about the four that got away?” I burst out. Turner had told me about the four escapees, and I was sick and tired of all these pussy-ass journalists standing around and playing along as if this was just another installment of the five o’clock follies.
I didn’t get to hear the rest of Col. Johnson’s crap because I was immediately yanked out of line by a very big—and very pissed off—MP.
“You think this is your press conference, solder?” he snarled, forcing my left arm behind my back so far and so fast that my fingers were almost touching my ear. “These fucking scum bags killed a United States soldier, and you want everybody to know that some of them got away? I’m going to have to kick your sorry ass.”
A freshly-scrubbed lieutenant jumped between me and the MP. He, too, looked unhappy, but he had his arm on the MP’s shoulder, urging him to ease up. He turned back to me and was right in my face.
“What’s your name, Specialist?”
“Spec. 4 Bailey, sir.”
“Specialist Bailey, how the fuck do you know that four inmates escaped from the stockade?”
* * *
You know what comes next. I keep asking myself, why did I give up Turner? Was it the pain in my left arm? The look of pure hatred in the face of the MP? The fear of court-martial and being sent to the DMZ?
I kept remembering what Turner had said about poker and the Army holding all the cards, and in that moment before I started blurting out what I knew, I saw myself throwing down my hand, aces and eights, saw me being cleaned out by Col. Johnson and the faceless lieutenant and the pissed off MP. I knew I was screwed. And as soon as my survival instinct kicked in, Turner was toast.
The story I finally did get to write about LBJ focused on the 129 courts-martial that were levied against the “insurrectionists” for charges including murder, assault on a superior officer, aggravated assault, mutiny, aggravated arson, larceny, and “willful destruction of government property.” It was a big story and it was juicy. It got me bumped up to Spec. 5.
The real irony of the LBJ riot was the lack of coverage it received in the mainstream media, despite the fact that the Army had given the story to so many members of the press. The Army’s reports highlighted the fact that the riot was racially motivated and was patiently quelled. Unlike My Lai and a lot of other shit during the war, the 1968 riot at LBJ was a public relations tactical victory for the military.
* * *
So, go ahead and call me a REMF. I’ve been called worse. By myself even. Hell, I’ve lost count of all the names and faces and dates and places I fudged or chose to ignore. I’m trying not to remember the lives, the honest to goodness human lives, I maybe could have saved.
And then there are words. Words that I wrote and, even worse, those that I didn’t. And those few I uttered that hot September day in 1968.
I was in a position to expose things, even if only to my own heart.
And I didn’t.
I was a coward. I am a coward.
And now that I’ve told you my story, you’re a part of it, too. You can pardon me, forgive me, or wag your finger at me and tell me I fucked up.
That’s how it was in Vietnam. That’s how it still is, too.
Moron Corps
“Goddamn, Hawk,” muttered Arthur Poole as his city’s infamous wind slapped him in the face and curled inside his pea coat. Arthur’s sidekick, Lanny Watkins, quivered like a pool cue.
“Man, it’s fucking c-c-c-cold!” The loquacious Lanny could hardly talk.
“What else is new?” Arthur deadpanned.
Both men scanned the line in front of them. It zigzagged along and up Michigan Avenue, its numbers of shivering brothers ebbing and flowing. Someone up ahead told them that yesterday’s line was twice as long as this one.
“Shit, man, we’ll freeze to death ‘fore we get to the front of the goddamn line!” Lanny’s teeth were chattering. “I have n-n-n-never in my life been so cold. Damn line ain’t m-m-m-moved in an hour … what a s-s-s-sorry-ass d-d-d-deal this is …”
Arthur half-listened, figuring that Lanny was talking to keep himself warm.
“By the time we get to the front of this f-f-f-fucking line, Uncle Sam’s gonna be out of j-j-j-jobs and out of money. She-e-e-it..…”
Arthur gave Lanny a look that said shut up and kiss my ass simultaneously. Lanny stopped talking.
“Brother, you don’t know shit,” Arthur eventually broke the silence. “Them Army recruiters that come through Cabrini-Green the other day ain’t goin’ home empty handed. Like the sign says: Uncle Sam Wants You!—and me—and the rest of the brothers standing in this line.”
Lanny was taking this in when the big dude in front of them turned around.
“You shoulda seen the badass that blew into Robert Taylor yesterday.” The big guy lowered his head so that his words made their way down to Lanny and Arthur. “All shine and polish. Tight uniform. Lots of fancy medals. Big, booming voice. He told us if we joined up we’d get some schoolin’ and be able to pick what Army job we wanted to do and where we wanted to go. Sure sounded sweet to me.” The big guy smacked his lips.
“Did the dude ever mention Vietnam?” Arthur asked.
“Just to say that’s where they send the draftees,” the big man replied.
Lanny whistled. Arthur shook his head.
“This is my t-t-t-ticket outta here,” Lanny smiled. “I stay around the projects any longer and I’m going out f-f-f-feet first.”
Arthur and the big fella laughed. Then the three of them shivered. Arthur kept thinking about what Buster, his cousin who joined up and ended up in ‘Nam, had warned him about the Army. “Don’t believe their promises. Watch what you sign. Don’t ever trust the white man,” Buster told him.
But this deal was different, Arthur argued with himself, this here program had been blessed by the secretary of defense hisself. Project 100,000 he’d called it. They didn’t have to come into Mother Cabrini’s backyard and seek him out. They were trying to help him. Shit, there were no fucking jobs here.
“Did you ever take the test?” The big guy was trying to get his attention.
“Say what?”
“Did you take the qualifying test? The Army test?”
“Nah, dude said I could take it later,” Arthur replied, looking to Lanny for corroboration. Lanny was bumming a smoke from the guy standing behind them.
“The black recruiter told me it don’t matter what you score on the test, you’re in.” The big guy smiled. “California, here I come!”
The Hawk stung their cheeks. Arthur tried burying himself deeper into his jacket. Glancing at the fancy shops and deluxe buildings, he couldn’t believe he only lived a mile west of here. What did these people know of his life? His troubles? Ain’t no work for a guy like him in there.
The line started, then stopped. Small, slow steps. Around the corner floated the sound of sweet harmonies. Arthur strained to make out the words from a familiar Chicago song, but the Hawk blew the song away before he could remember the words.
The Girls They Left Behind
Lieutenant Brian Miller left behind Karla Bennett, his grade school, middle school and high school sweetheart. The cutest girl at Most Blessed Sacrament, Karla played Mary to Brian’s Joseph in the first grade nativity play, at which point they decreed that divine intervention had brought them together and nothing, not even a war, would tear them apart.
Sergeant Arthur Poole lef
t behind his fiancée Martha Brown, “the finest piece of ass in Kansas City,” as his good buddy Willie Brown once described her. Arthur knocked out Willie’s two front teeth for his saying that, and Willie never talked any trash about Martha again.
Corporal Joe Hudak left behind Sally McBride, even though he didn’t know it. Spirited, strong, independent girls like Sally always found him. Sally was out there, somewhere in the USA, and once he got “back to the World,” Joe would find her.
Petty Officer Hector Colon left behind his wife Pilar and her six brothers and sisters, two dozen aunts and uncles and 37 cousins. Hector would have to get Pilar out of El Campo, Texas, if he ever wanted to talk to her without some family member around, interrupting or commenting.
Private First Class Billy Donovan didn’t leave anybody behind, so he pretended his sister Linda was the girl back home—a confirmed fox—according to the guys in basic training who’d seen her picture. “Man, if the game ends up in a tie and you have to kiss your sister, then life is good,” his bunkmate Tommy DeFelice told him on more than one occasion.
The girls they left behind wrote letters and sent care packages and longed to visit their men on R&R in Hawaii. They watched the nightly six o’clock news but covered their ears when the reporters started to talk about the number of U. S. casualties in Vietnam.
They worked at low-paying jobs and went to movies with their girlfriends and spent lots of time with their families. They gave dirty looks to the guys who came hanging around. They went to bed every night with a prayer for their man’s safety on their lips.
They waited.
The men who came back home were not the same men the girls had given such tender goodbyes. Brian Miller left large parts of himself in Phu Bai where he’d stepped on a C-40 anti-personnel mine and lost both his legs. Arthur Poole complained about the treatment of black soldiers who were still second-class citizens after they got back to the States. Joe Hudak threw his medals at the White House and convinced himself he was a war criminal. Hector Colon was pissed off all the time because he couldn’t land a decent job. Billy Donovan never really came back.
The girls they left behind had to pick up the pieces.
Karla Bennett became Mrs. Brian Miller and tried to get Brian to sing along to the songs on the radio just like he did before he left. She spent six days a week working at the local Safeway and when she wasn’t at work, she was taking care of Brian. She wondered if she’d married Brian because she felt sorry for him.
Martha Poole tried helping Arthur find a job and made an honest effort to like the Vietnam vets he brought around all the time. She twisted the shiny bracelet on her left arm, a lucky charm her mother had given to her years ago, and with every twist, she told herself that Arthur would get back home from Vietnam.
Sally McBride eventually found Joe Hudak, but she lost him pretty soon after that. He seemed like the perfect guy at first, but when he got back from a D.C. protest, Joe stopped sleeping with her, or even touching her, for fear of contaminating Sally with his Vietnam transgressions. She was angry about Joe’s avoidance and she was mad about the war and the government and the VA and everything else. She was debating when exactly to split.
Pilar Colon spent most of her time on the phone, talking to her family back in Texas. She and Hector had moved north to Kansas City and were having a hard time adjusting. Her mother and sisters gave her daily, long-distance advice and propped her up. Hector was unhappy about their big phone bills.
Linda Donovan gave up on connecting with her brother Billy, so she dated a lot of Vietnam vets and volunteered at the Kansas City Vets Center. Always a good listener, Linda had a knack for saying the right thing at the right time and making people feel comfortable, which was probably why she became a group leader at the Center.
The men who came home gave up on just about everything, including the girls they left behind. They quit their dead-end jobs and stopped going to the State Employment Service where by-the-rules VFW types scolded them with their eyes about their appearance and their attitudes.
They gave the VA the finger and coughed up the shit they inhaled from the Vietnam jungles.
They joined the VVAW but watched their backs during raucous meetings where guys conspired to kill Nixon and blow up the Pentagon.
They missed the “three hots and a cot” the Army had delivered them daily.
Or they missed the adrenaline rush and the opium highs.
They missed their buddies.
They cursed their lives.
The girls they left behind joined the same therapy group, but they didn’t call it that. Their rap group met every Wednesday night for two hours. Inside a tiny room with dirty beige walls, castoff furniture, and one lone light bulb they bared their souls and cried and swore and hugged and hollered.
The rap group girls, as they called themselves, smoked cigarettes and drank Mountain Dew. They broke the ice with bean bag tosses and swapped stories about their men. They laughed when they wanted to cry and cried when they thought they would laugh.
Linda Donovan ended up needing the group more than the group needed her. Her brother Billy died in a high-speed car accident and his death left a hole in her heart. The other women gave her the time and the space to bandage that wound.
Martha Poole and Sally McBride almost came to blows, but they dropped their guards and forged a bond. They both liked Goetz beer and rummage sales. Karla Miller helped Pilar Colon shop at her Safeway on double-coupon days. Pilar made quesadillas for Karla and the rest of the group.
The girls they left behind begged the men who came home to talk to them about how they were feeling, to hold them tight in bed at night, to join them in their Wednesday rap group.
The men who came home didn’t know what to say. They were still fighting the war.
The girls they left behind grew strong and at ease. They sang Aretha Franklin songs and harmonized on “Neither One of Us” by Gladys Knight and the Pips. They cooked and they cleaned and they worked and they believed.
They held their men’s hands and they prayed to their god. The only people they told about their own pain were one another. And they only did that on Wednesday nights.
The girls they left behind were no longer girls. They were women. They were pillars of strength and rivers of wisdom. They were the North Star and the true compass.
And slowly, eventually, they brought their men back home. To stay.
Every Picture Tells a Story
His fascination had started out as a nuisance, a distraction. But as his time drew closer and the noose around his neck tightened, it had become more a matter of survival.
Today, it had grown into a full blown obsession. That’s why he had waited all these weeks for the book to arrive, why he’d begged and pleaded with the librarian to order it in the first place. By now he was absolutely convinced that if he knew more about Vietnam and its history that he would find a way to survive. Yes, he told himself, if I have a deeper understanding of what makes the Vietnamese tick, then maybe, just maybe, I won’t come home in a box.
So, finally, here it was. She was signing the book out for him. Viet Nam Su Luoc by Tran Trong Kim, published earlier this year. She was smiling, obviously proud of herself for her persistence and resolve. She reminded him a little of his Aunt Mae, what she probably looked like when she was younger and her body had shape and she even cared about sex.
Yes, here it was. Now his entire body shuddered in reflexive response as he stared at the inside title page. There it is. Những bộ sử Việt nam - Diễn Đàn Hạt Nắng. Jesus, what a fucking idiot! Why hadn’t it occurred to him that the book would be written in Vietnamese? How completely stupid could he be?
His heart was in his throat and his head was pounding as if Jon Bonham was inside his head, banging away on “Good Times, Bad Times.” Jesus, but these were bad times.
He was done for.
He followed his nose to the clammy, dark recesses of the old library, sat alone among the dusty shelves and
forgotten tomes, and gingerly opened the book as if it were a booby trap. Slowly, ever so slowly, turning the pages of Tran Trong Kim’s manuscript, he stared at the pictures.
The recorded history of the Vietnamese people was unfolding in front of his eyes, but he could only experience it through illustrations, colorful drawings, and faded photographs. Maybe Vietnam’s history was made up of images, not words? But words were what he needed. Words were what reassured him. Words were his life.
There was one particular drawing that grabbed him and wouldn’t let go. The bright colors jumped off the page, especially the gaudy yellow background that reminded him of the French’s mustard he used to put on his hot dogs at baseball games. But even more arresting than the bright yellow was the image of a tall, proud Vietnamese woman astride a large, white, menacing elephant.
He had never seen anything quite like this before. The young woman looked pissed and defiant, a crown upon her head and snakes that looked like swords in each hand. Her gown was yellowish-brown with what looked like a green flak jacket over her chest. The elephant, too, was dressed in this off-yellow and green material, his left foot lifted off the ground as if he were marching and his head and eyes titled directly at the viewer, one of his sharp, pointed tusks almost jumping off the page to stab you in the heart.
He sat there bewildered. He tried thumbing through the rest of the book, but kept coming back to that same page, that stunning image. Who was the young woman? Why was she riding an elephant? Who was she fighting? What did it all represent?
And why did they both look like they wanted to kick the living shit out of him?
* * *
Eventually, the janitor found him there, asleep with the book open on his lap. The tall black man closed the book, lifted it from the white boy’s lap, and placed it on top of his cleaning cart. The janitor gazed quizzically at the cover, immediately recognizing the language as Vietnamese because the accent marks over the letters looked exactly like those in the pictures his son, an MP at MACV headquarters in Saigon, sent home during his tour.