“Why?” I shouted over the roaring engine.
“Another chopper will pick you up tomorrow! We aren’t going back to An Hoa!” He stood up and made his way back to the cockpit. Almost immediately the CH-46 helicopter started downward. I stuck my face against a glass portal. We circled downward toward a large, muddy hill, the top of which had been bulldozed flat. It bristled with artillery barrels sticking above a network of sandbag bunkers. Concertina wire around the hill looked to be thirty to forty yards thick. We set down on a big square piece of corrugated steel matting. The copilot gave me a thumbs up and I jumped out. I nearly fell on my face. I’d forgotten how heavy a full pack, canteens, flak jacket, rifle, and ammo could be. The CH-46 lifted off, its giant rotors blew me forward as I tried to hold my helmet on. After it had pulled away, a cool breeze hit me, the kind of breeze we never felt in the stifling jungle below.
I felt ridiculously conspicuous standing on the landing pad with no idea of what I was supposed to do. A helmeted head popped up out of an underground bunker twenty-five meters to my left with two huge antennas sticking out of the top of it. He waved me over. In the center of the compound stood a flagpole. A yellowish South Vietnamese flag with three horizontal red stripes hung limp beneath Old Glory. Beside the flagpole, resting atop a fifteen-foot post, sat a large wooden birdhouse. Under it, a big, bearded Paul Bunyan of a Marine wearing nothing but cut-off trousers sat in a lawn chair, throwing seeds to a group of brightly colored birds and drinking a beer. Judging from his golden tan, this wasn’t the first time he’d done this.
As I neared the man who had waved, I realized he had a lieutenant’s bar painted black on his helmet. I wasn’t sure whether to salute or not. I decided that they probably considered this a combat area. No salute.
“You’re just here for the night, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“See that bunker over there? The one closest to that big bearded guy?” he pointed.
“Yes, sir.”
“Go over there and tell the men lying in it that you’ll be bunkin’ there tonight.” He turned and disappeared into his sandbag cave. I looked around to see if anyone else was aboveground besides me and the bird feeder. There wasn’t a soul visible. Must not be too worried about getting hit, I thought. I walked over to the bird feeder. He turned toward me as I got close, revealing blue eyes surrounded by a network of bright red blood vessels. I hadn’t seen eyes that bloodshot since Tijuana.
“Yeah, bro, what do you need?” His voice seemed to come from his stomach.
“The lieutenant told me to bunk in here for the night.”
“Where ya coming from?”
“Cam Rahn Bay,” I answered.
“You get hit?” His eyes looked fully open for the first time. He sat up in his chair.
“Yeah. About a month and a half ago.”
“Come on in, man. I’ll introduce you to the guys.” He stood up slowly, as if the motion weren’t easy. “What’s your MOS?”
“0331.”
“Machine gunner? God, that’s awful! Come on in.”
I followed him down four sandbagged steps. We bent through a narrow doorway and into a twelve-by-twelve-foot sandbag room with cots against all four walls. A fat candle flickering from a small wooden shelf provided the only light besides the shafts of the setting sun streaking through the doorway. A thin, mustached, and shirtless Marine rested comfortably on a camouflaged poncho liner draped over his cot, studying the foldout in a Playboy magazine with the intensity of a student facing finals.
On another cot, against the opposite wall, lay another prone Marine, this one face down and snoring peacefully under a bushy head of blond hair. Vintage Playboy fold-outs ‘sixty-six through ‘sixty-seven covered the wall behind the snorer.
“We got company for the night, comrades,” the bird feeder announced. The snorer kept snoring. The reader looked up, nodded once, and went back to reading. “Don’t pay attention to these two, Gunner. We had a little blowout last night.”
“Little!” the reader said with a tired chuckle. “We got stoned out of our minds!”
“That’s your cot. What’s your name?” the bird feeder asked. “I’m Bill.”
“Better known as Wild Man,” the reader said. “I’m Joe Constantine.”
“Better known as Surfin’ Joe,” Wild Man countered.
“And this is Banger Berkeley Adams. He claims to have banged every girl in Berkeley, California,” Surfin’ Joe said.
“We’re all from California. Where you from?” Wild Man asked.
“I’m John Clark.” I suddenly felt that my name was terribly insufficient, too close to John Doe. “I’m from Florida.”
“Far out!” Surfin’ Joe exclaimed. “You ever catch any waves at Daytona?”
“Here, have a hit.” Wild Man handed me a smoking hand-rolled cigarette.
“No thanks. I don’t smoke.”
“This ain’t no cigarette, Marine.” He held it closer. I took it from him.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a joint, man. You know, weed.” I knew that if I looked as ignorant as I felt right now I was one sorry sight.
“Look, I don’t know anything about this stuff. I’ve never even seen it before except in a movie once they showed us in school. Showed people going crazy and crashing—”
“That was a bunch of bull!” Wild Man blurted out. Then he started laughing.
“We used to bring joints into those movies and pass them around while the lights were out,” Surfin’ Joe said. Then he started laughing too.
“You’ve never seen grass before?” Wild Man asked in disbelief.
“I thought Florida was cool!” Surfin’ Joe said.
So these were the infamous California Marines, I thought. My DI always said there were more fags and freaks in California than the rest of the planet combined.
“I thought you guys would get some great weed out in the bush,” Wild Man said.
“Are you serious?” I said. “Haven’t you guys ever been in the bush? You sit around smoking grass out there and you’d die. If the gooks don’t kill you then your own men probably would.”
“Well, this ain’t exactly downtown Saigon,” Joe said sarcastically.
“This is R&R to the grunts, and you know it,” Wild Man snapped at Joe. “You feel like trading places with him?”
“Fat chance, bro!” Joe said. He chuckled and turned to me. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I’m coming back from Cam Rahn Bay.”
“You get hit?” Joe asked with renewed interest.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to hide my bulging pride. “My unit was under fire so the chopper dropped me off here till tomorrow.”
“Who are you with?” Joe asked.
“Alpha, One-Five.”
“Really!” Wild Man said. “We fire for you guys sometimes.”
“One-Five!” Joe said. “That’s Staff Sergeant Morey’s outfit! Do you know ol’ Morey?”
“Yeah. Not real well though. He’s in Third Platoon most of the time, but sometimes he comes with us, and sometimes my gun team goes with them.”
“He’s a great guy. He was ranking staff in my unit at ITR,” Joe said. “Did you know that guy is on his third war?”
“Yeah, I know. We get on him every time we see him.”
“Why?”
“That guy’s been through Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, and Chosin Reservoir as a grunt and never got a scratch. Not even a piece of shrapnel. So we got a running joke about him disappearing when the shooting starts. It’s all in fun, though.”
“Does he still have that droopy mustache that curls around the corners of his mouth?”
“Yep. That’s him. Always looks pale,” I said.
“Even in the bush?” Joe exclaimed.
“Yep.”
“Look, if you’re staying here all night, you might as well get loaded with us. You won’t be stoned tomorrow.” Wild Man said. He relit the joint.
“Bu
t I don’t even smoke cigarettes. I can’t inhale smoke.”
“It’s easy,” Wild Man said as he passed the joint to Joe.
“Yeah, watch. Just take a big hit into your lungs like this.” Joe inhaled until his cheeks looked flush. “Then hold it down for as long as you can.” He sat up on the cot. Tiny puffs of smoke floated out of his mouth with each word. He passed it to me. I took hold of it with my forefinger and thumb. Something popped inside, breaking off the crimson ash. I stomped it out on the hard dirt floor.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Just a seed,” Wild Man said. “Here.” He lit a match and held it out. I put the joint to my mouth and leaned forward. The first puff told me why they called it weed. It tasted like burning weed. My throat closed to keep the smoke out of my lungs, but I forced it down. It came right back up, followed by a month’s worth of coughs that brought tears to my eyes.
“That’s okay. Everybody does that until they get used to it,” Joe said.
“Since this is your first time …” Wild Man said with a huge grin surrounded by hair. He reached under his cot and pulled out a cigar box. He opened it and pulled out a ten-inch-long, burnt-orange cigar with the circumference of a fifty-cent piece. Joe started laughing at the sight of it. “You ever heard of a Ban-San Bomber?” Wild Man asked.
I shook my head and coughed again. Wild Man held the huge cigar up and marveled at its beauty. Joe held out his hand. “Here. Let me smell it.” Wild Man handed him the cigar and Joe ran it by his nose twice. “Far out, man. Here. You do the honors.” Joe handed me the cigar.
“If we’re going to do the Bomber, let’s do it right, man. Let’s have some sounds!” Wild Man said. He pointed under the still-sleeping Berkeley Banger’s cot. It looked like an expensive radio, I thought.
“Where do you get stuff like that in Nam?” I asked.
“You don’t, man,” Joe answered. “Banger got that in Bangkok on R&R.”
“You ever get to listen to AFR, man?” Wild Man asked.
“What?”
“Armed Forces Radio.”
“You can’t have a radio in the bush,” I said.
“Yeah, of course. Stupid question,” Wild Man acknowledged. “Well, go on. Light up.”
“And this is Specialist 4 Robert Townsend, the enlisted man’s DJ in sunny Saigon! This is for Seaman First Class Frank Soper aboard the Sanctuary: The Doors, Jim Morrison, and ‘Riders on the Storm.’
“Talk about skatin’ duty. Can you imagine coming over here and being a disc jockey or sitting on a ship the whole time?” Joe asked, not really expecting an answer.
I took the first puff off the Ban-San Bomber. It tasted like the tailpipe of somebody’s truck. Wild Man handed me an unopened fifth of OFC Canadian whiskey. “Take a shot and swallow that smoke.” I handed the Bomber to Joe and started coughing up smoke again. “Go ahead, take a swallow.”
I opened up the bottle and downed three big gulps. When the burning subsided, I decided I felt pretty good. Joe and Wild Man kept staring at me with funny little grins on their faces, as if they knew something I didn’t. Joe passed the Bomber to Wild Man. He took a long, slow puff, his hairy, barrel-shaped chest expanding farther and farther as he filled it with smoke. When he couldn’t take any more, he handed it to me again. I was determined to keep the smoke down this time just to see what would happen. I inhaled more slowly, fighting back a cough all the way to my lungs.
“That’s it, that’s it. Now quick take a shot of whiskey.” Wild Man handed me the bottle. I handed Joe the Bomber. I gulped. “Now hold it in. Don’t let that smoke out!” My eyes bulged from the strain. It felt like the smoke was leaking from my ears. That tailpipe must have had wheels attached to it, I thought. I coughed. A cloud of white smoke shot out of my lungs. My eyes watered. The air became dense and resinous. I followed a column of smoke through the door and into the dark sky. I felt a nudge.
“Here.”
Wild Man handed me the half-empty whiskey bottle.
“Aren’t you worried about getting caught?” I asked. “What if the lieutenant comes rolling in here?”
“He knows better. I’ll kick his butt if he comes in here,” Wild Man said.
“I don’t see what’s so great about this stuff. I don’t feel a thing.”
Joe and Wild Man started laughing again. This time I laughed with them. Wild Man inhaled another long drag off the Bomber and handed it to me. “Here.” He forced the word out while trying to hold the smoke in. “You ain’t no Marine if you don’t keep it down this time.”
I took the Bomber and sucked in as much smoke as I could. I started feeling dizzy. I exhaled the smoke slowly, trying not to cough. Finally the smoke emptied from my lungs. I felt deflated.
“Did you guys notice that it’s dark outside?” I said.
Wild Man laughed triumphantly. Joe quickly followed, bursting into a loud cackle. “ ‘I don’t see what’s so great about this stuff,’ ” Joe said mockingly, then started laughing again.
“Fire in the hole!” A shout from outside echoed through the bunker. Suddenly one of the big guns fired. “Man your guns!” another voice shouted. Boots running, getting closer. “Man your guns!” Wild Man put the Bomber out, grabbed his helmet from a nail on the wall, and darted through the door. The snoring blonde awoke with a startled jump, shook his head, grabbed his helmet from under his cot, and ran out. Joe got up slowly, tightened the laces on one boot, leisurely pulled a green T-shirt on, and casually walked out the door.
“Hey! Are we getting hit?” I shouted at Joe.
He peeked back in. “No. It’s just a fire mission. Sit tight. Have another toke off the Bomber. We’ll be right back.” He turned and disappeared up the steps. I leaned back on my cot. My head felt a little off center. Funny. I’d only heard one round. Probably a spotter round. My rifle, I thought. Why am I holding my rifle? I leaned the rifle against the end of my cot.
“For the MPs of Saigon … Donovan.”
“Sunshine came softly through my window today.…”
I love that song, I thought. Reminds me of Barbara Windham, what a perfect face.…I think I’ll drink to that.
“We’re back!” Wild Man’s hoarse voice interrupted Donovan. Joe came in behind Wild Man. He threw his helmet on the ground.
“Light up that Bomber!” Joe shouted.
“Yeah, give me a hit off that thing,” Banger Berkeley added as he came in behind Joe. He plopped down on his cot, grabbed the bottle off the floor, and took a swig. Wild Man lit up the Bomber and passed it to me.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Sounded like the gooks were either too close to call in artillery or else they took off,” Joe said. “Pass me the whiskey.”
I inhaled another huge amount of smoke, this time without coughing, and passed the Bomber to Berkeley Banger. He wasn’t good-lookin’ enough to be the stud he claimed to be. A long nose and thin lips. Downright ugly. Wild Man nudged me again. “Here.” He handed me the whiskey. “You ain’t no Marine if you can’t chug it to the OFC on the label.”
I did.
The rest of the night blurred by. Pieces of the night floated through my brain in between the pounding of the world’s most horrible headache. Darts flew at the big nose of a picture of Lyndon Johnson, then I was dangling from the barrel of a giant cannon and falling into space.
“You got a chopper coming, Marine! Get up!”
I opened my left eye. It hurt. Sun. It can’t be! It’s daylight! The sunlight forced the eye closed again.
“Get up. You got a taxi comin’ in!”
I opened my right eye, hoping that it wouldn’t corroborate my left. Sunlight! Oh, no! A blurry face stood over me with the barrel of a .155 hanging over his head.
“Are you okay?” the face asked.
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I feel like I should be hugging a commode.”
“Get up! You got a chopper coming in to pick you up.”
“No,
thanks, I’ll just wait here.”
“Speak up! I can’t hear you.”
“I can’t make it today. Sorry.”
“Hey, Jack! Come over here and give me a hand with this guy!”
I could feel someone picking me up. I tried to open my eyes, but it hurt. My mouth was cotton. My teeth hurt. My legs hurt. My ears hurt. “What’s that noise? Turn it off.”
“You’ll have to pull him in. This guy is really blasted.”
“Hey! Man! He puked all over my boot!”
“Here’s his rifle and pack.”
I was going up. So was my stomach.
“Man, you look green!” I opened my eyes. The door gunner was talking to me.
“I feel green. I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Here, hang out the hatch. I’ll hold your feet.”
I rolled toward the hatch, took my helmet off, and stuck my head out. The wind smashed against my ears. The ground swirled. I puked. And puked. And puked.
WELCOME BACK
“Can you get off okay?” The young face covered with dark flight glasses seemed honestly concerned. “I sure hope you ain’t no boot.” My head stopped spinning, but I felt weak all the way down to the ankles. “Can you get off?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“There it is, bro.”
We dropped down faster than usual. My stomach came up. I wanted to throw up, but there was nothing left inside. This chopper was in too big a hurry. I knew what that meant. I wonder if God’s going to let me die drunk.
“Is it a hot LZ?” I asked.
“I think so. You better lock and load, bro.” He let loose a five-round burst at the ground below. My head pounded with each shot.
“What are you firing at?”
“Just making sure she doesn’t jam!” he shouted.
“We’re goin’ in!” a voice from the cockpit shouted. My stomach tightened. I didn’t feel drunk anymore. Just like, back in the world, I could always sober up when I saw those flashing red lights. The gunner started firing. We dropped like the dip on a rollercoaster, then steadied up, hovering ten feet above the ground. Small white puffs of smoke spit from a group of long-leafed banana trees. The door gunner fired back.
Guns Up! Page 23