A Sphinx

I don’t know what I expected. My first look through the plane window was a blur of colors. The dominant color was red. The very earth was scarred blood-red. It was as if the world had been slashed open here and there with a savage blade. There was also green–a lot of it–in the distance, but most of what I saw as I got closer was trash. There were numerous little huts whose sides consisted of pieces of crates holding up a tin roof held down by what looked like US Army truck tires. There seemed to be some tall buildings off in the distance. I had landed at Tan Son Nhut airport, outside of Saigon. Everybody near our plane that I could see was carrying a weapon of some sort. There were bunkers and foxholes spotted around.

When the plane finally stopped, the door was thrown open and the smells of Vietnam invaded the cabin, accompanied by an oppressive heat. It was like walking into a hot oven where they were cooking garbage and something else that I couldn’t place–and probably was smart not to try to place. The sun was blinding. Twenty-four hours ago I was in a wintry San Francisco covered with a cold fog and chilly winds. The human system was not made for this rapid a change. They rushed us off of the plane and ran us over to a building with no walls, just a tin roof. They wanted to get us out of the sun. There were water bags around the non-existent walls, hanging from the roof beams. I got some water but it tasted of chemicals and was kind of cloudy. I wasn’t sure if it was safe to drink so I left it alone.

I had never been rank conscious. I had never been in uniform except in Basic Training. I was a Sergeant E-5, which meant I had more rank than most on the flight. I was now treated as a sergeant by all the men around me: they thought I should know what was happening and kept asking me questions. We eventually got our duffel bags and were taken to the reception center, commonly known as the “repo depot.” Here we had to go through in-country processing. The first thing they did was make us give them all our money, including coins, for which they issued military scrip: Funny Money! Everything, including coins, was duplicated with strange, ugly pictures on paper scrip about half the size of a dollar bill. I guess this was to keep us out of the black market where US dollars were king. Most locals would take scrip, but that was always a risk, with the threat of the military changing all the scrip and thus nullifying their bankroll. This hung over everyone’s head. The Army never changed it during my tour, though. After the money changing, we were moved to some living quarters at the repot depot. We were assigned beds according to rank. I moved into a bunker-type dormitory and grabbed a bottom bunk. The walls were made of sandbags up to a height of 6 feet and then open for a couple of feet before the tin roof, so air could flow through and keep it cool. We were told where the mess tent was and grabbed some dinner.

Afterwards, I came back and lay on my bunk and listened to the sounds of Vietnam. I really hadn’t listened until then. The airport was nearby so I heard jets and planes and helicopters. There were also the sounds of trucks, bikes rattling, and people talking gibberish. I had seen some Vietnamese running around as we deplaned. They wore those conical hats I had seen on the TV news. They were short, small people who–by what I was seeing–worked quite hard. As it got dark, I began to hear explosions and gunfire from far away. As it got darker, it got louder and, I thought, closer. I soon discovered that waiting for the unknown was much harder than reality itself. I wondered where I would get a weapon if something happened. I had never thought about having a weapon before. What would I do if something happened? The sounds of what I thought was a battle in the distance continued. I slept poorly that night.

The next morning, after a quick breakfast, we were taken to local indoctrination classes. Basically, we had to wait until our units heard we were here and sent someone to pick us up. The group I was in consisted of individual replacements. We were all being sent to different units. My orders were a bit different, as they did not specify anything other than an “MI GROUP”–which could mean anything. There were meetings about the culture of Vietnam, about their military and their various units, and something about the various areas of the country. I had heard it all before. In the afternoon of the first and last day of training we were moved into a large room holding about 35 or so of us and given forms to fill out in the eventuality of being wounded and meeting death. The room got very quiet. It was pointed out to us that 30% of us would (not could) be wounded and 1 out of 10 of us would die. (I found out later those figures were high, but the chance was there.) The forms were simple. Do you want us to notify anyone if you are lightly wounded? If so, who? Who do we notify if you are seriously wounded? And finally, who do we notify upon your death? The room was very quiet. You could see the men counting with their eyes, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven and so on.” I did it too. Would I be one of the unlucky 30% or, worse, the one guy out of ten that would die? It took me a while to fill out the forms. I decided that light wounds would get no notification from me. I listed my wife and mom and dad as people to notify about serious wounds or death. I didn’t realize how hard that was to do. It was incredibly difficult to print the information on the form and then sign it. There was finality in that act that I did not like. I wasn’t the only one who had trouble with this. Everyone in the room got a serious dose of reality that afternoon. Some of us were not going to come back alive and some of us were going back in hospital planes. I made an inward decision that I was coming back alive and on my feet, no matter what it took.

We went back to the barracks and a couple of us decided we needed a beer. One of them had heard of an enlisted men’s club for NCOs so off we went in search of it. It took us a while, but finally we turned the right corner and there it was. I had to blink my eyes a couple of times. It looked like a regular bunker with a metal roof, but, instead of sandbags, the bunker was surrounded by cases of Lone Star beer cans. Who but an Army sergeant would think of that? None of us could believe our eyes. We walked up to it and had to touch the cans. They were hot from the sun and were not pop-tops. You needed a “church key” to open these. Lone star was one of the first breweries to come out with pop-tops and had them on all their beers for almost two years. Some military genius had bought up old beer and it was only good for sandbags. We went inside where they had cold beer and spent some of that funny money on a lot of it. Somehow, we made it back to the barracks.

Vietnam was a hot, muggy place. The heat and humidity were hard to handle. It hung on you like a hot, steamy, suffocating blanket. The sweat was pouring off all the new arrivals. One of the side effects for many of us was a rash–the infamous “Crotch Rot.” The very air seemed alive with vermin. Get a scratch and it turns red, raw and infected in what seemed like minutes. So everyone eventually goes to see a medic and gets a tube of ointment that gets rid of it. You just walk oddly for a day. After a week or so, your body becomes more acclimated to the heat and the rashes disappear. The vermin in the air was still there, but by that time your body had made peace with it. I had already gotten my tube of ointment. On my third day at the repot depot I was called to the office and introduced to my ride: some guy wearing a khaki shirt and cutoffs. I got my stuff and threw it in the back of his green army jeep. This jeep, even I noticed, was different. It had no stenciled army unit or recognition on it. I was back in the clutches of MI once again.