Detained in Tehran—Sort OfThe timing of the call could have won an award for serendipity. I was walking the halls of the former U.S. embassy in Tehran, nicknamed Henderson High by the former diplomatic staff because of its resemblance to American high schools of the 1940s, when it was built. Now it is the Museum of Anti-American Arrogance, since it reopened to display the alleged subterfuge of American diplomats before the fall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
It was Firouzeh’s phone that rang. For three days Firouzeh had been my guide in Tehran, leading me around the sights of the city. The call ended, and she told me that when we were finished she had been instructed to bring me to the visa office. I didn’t know, but soon learned, that within the Iranian foreign ministry there is a special department that approves (or denies) visas for the “usual suspects” (from the Iranian point of view)—Americans, Canadians, and citizens of the United Kingdom—who are required to be accompanied by a tour guide from the beginning to the end of their stay in Iran. We spent the next half hour strolling through the grim corridors, eyeing the massive office machines, circa 1979, which the regime claims as proof of the effort of a global power to “meddle in the internal affairs” of a smaller one. Which was probably true. But whether all of this was evidence of “crimes against Iran” or merely the electronic gadgetry any embassy would have had on hand to do its business, circa 1979, was anyone’s guess. The visit over, we headed to the main gate. As we left the ticket seller, with customary Persian hospitality, wished me a very pleasant stay in Iran. When we entered he’d asked Firouzeh where I was from. “Welcome home,” he’d replied. Our driver was waiting at the gate. Firouzeh had summoned him. We navigated the Tehran traffic for half an hour before pulling up in front of a drab, nondescript office building. Nothing stated its purpose. It could have been a department of the foreign ministry or the office of an insurance company. The interior was just as drab. Drabness is the face of bureaucracies because drabness makes no statement. It says nothing about its modus operandi, least of all its character or values, if it has any. But drabness takes on special meaning in Iran. Because drabness says nothing it can say anything, and in Iran any statement—of aim, of intention, of principle—depends on circumstances, which are forever changing. Therefore the bureaucracy, and those who administer it, may alter its face at a whim, because they, too, have made no statement, staked no claim, said nothing. In the Persian mind clarity limits flexibility, offers no wiggle room, no opportunity to adjust to changing circumstances. One needlessly boxes oneself into a corner. It is bad politics, bad negotiating strategy, bad everything when delicate relationships are in play. Firouzeh was told to wait outside. I handed over my cell phone and passed through the metal detector and spent the next 10 minutes sitting on a drab waiting-room chair waiting for—I knew not what. Finally I was called to an inner office. A tray of Persian sweets was centered on a coffee table surrounded by leather couches. I sat down to wait. An office lackey brought me a cup of tea with a mountain of sugar cubes. The cubes were provided so the tea could be drunk the Persian way—sucking it through a single cube, placed between the teeth. After a few minutes two officials entered—a 30-something I will call Amir and an older man with a salt-and-pepper beard and hair to match I will call Reza. Amir sat on the couch across from me. He had a scholarly look, with horn-rimmed glasses and thin build. But Reza established himself as the boss by seating himself behind the only desk in the room. “Are you aware of the reason for this?” Amir asked with easy, Persian formality. I shook my head. “No.” “We have many foreign tourists and like to learn about their interest in our country. We realized you were leaving Tehran tomorrow and wanted the opportunity to meet you. We have many Americans but not many who come in Iran three times.” Of course this was horseshit. If the visa office wanted to meet every foreign tourist who came to Iran it would have to book appointments. Likely they realized only that afternoon that I was scheduled to leave Tehran the next day and told Firouzeh to hustle me over to the visa office before I was “on the road”—Iranian style. But why? Because few Americans visit Iran three times, if at all, and my repeat visits had made them curious. Reza and Amir tried to wear the garb of gracious Persian hosts, but it was costume that did not fit. To get ahead of them I explained my interest in the country. For years I’d read articles about Iran that portrayed a much different reality than anything conveyed by conventional news outlets. In 2004 I moved to the UAE and one of my aims was to see it firsthand. The conversation shifted to my first visit to Iran, during the postelection demonstrations in 2009. Violent demonstrations rocked the streets of Tehran and other cities, because former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected to a second term due to poll results widely seen as fraudulent. “Weren’t you frightened?” Amir asked. “Not really.” “No?” “No. I grew up in Chicago in the middle of the civil rights movement. It was the violent sixties, and there were lots of protests over the Vietnam War.” It was not the answer they expected. Americans are supposed to be afraid to leave their comfort zone, fear places in the world viewed as threatening. “Didn’t you think someone might attack you, being an American?” I shook my head. “Iranians aren’t violent, and they like Americans.” Reza was listening close, but turned to Amir for a translation. Then he sat back in his chair, revealing nothing. Amir then wended his way through a series of questions he already knew the answers to: How long had I lived in the UAE? In what area did I teach? In classic Persian style it followed no particular path and was aimed in no particular direction, like all good conversations. But it clearly had one, otherwise I wouldn’t have been summoned to the visa office the day before I was supposed to leave Tehran. Whatever it was, only Reza and Amir held the keys, but even they may have had no clear aim other than to “feel out” this American on his third visit to Iran. What did I think of Trump’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem?—Amir asked. It was a mistake. Jerusalem should become a neutral city, shared by all the major religions. Did I believe in God? How we arrived at this is lost within a series of steps that left no trace, but I found the winding, twisting course of the conversation fascinating. In the traditional sense—no. As a Syrian friend of mine once said about religion, “I believe in all of them and none of them.” But, I added, just to throw a spanner into the works—I was part Native American, and I’d always felt drawn to Native American spirituality. Reza leaned forward to listen close, but far more important than my responses was tone and body language, which needed no translation. Sometimes I sat back in the couch, sometimes I leaned forward—whatever suited the moment. That I taught university-level writing courses also interested Amir: Did I have a Web site? A blog? “No.” “No?!” No. I told him I had neither the time nor interest. “I have always been under the impression that writers feel their work has to make an impact, socially or politically.” “That’s more true of Europeans,” I explained. “European writers have a much longer history of social and political activism. They’ve had more revolutions. It happens in the U.S. too, but usually among minorities and other groups, or during times of conflict. Many writers have strong views, but in America it isn’t seen as obligatory to use writing for that purpose.” All of this was translated for Reza, who nodded with each phrase Amir sent his way. I enjoyed the mini-lecture on American letters. It turned the tables, if briefly. Iranians are masters of obscurity—in language, thought, even purpose. But here was a straight-talking American they could not quite figure out. Amir recalled what I’d said about film studies being my main area of teaching. He asked if I knew much about Iranian cinema. “It was excellent,” I replied, which was certainly true, and I rattled off a string of films I admired-- The Color of God, by Majid Majidi, Leila, by Dariush Mehrjui, A Taste of Cherry, by Abbas Kiarostami, and of course Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation and The Salesman. For the first time Reza cut in, without translation: “You like the ones with all the beautiful women.” “Who cares about the men?” I shot back. There was a round of laughter. When it died down Amir asked if I found the Iranian people hospitable. “Very much,” I replied, which was also true, “but they can’t beat the Syrians.” Amir was nonplussed: “The Syrians are more hospitable than us?!” “Yes, but don’t take it personally. No one can beat the Syrians.” Another round of laughter. It had become clear this was not going to be a short conversation. I thought of Firouzeh waiting outside and hoped she’d found a coffeeshop nearby to kill the time sipping a cappuccino. Amir asked to see my passport. I told him I’d given it to the reception desk at the hotel when I checked in and never got it back. This threw them into a minor tizzy. I was supposed to have it in my possession all the time in Iran, he scolded—slightly. Reza summoned the tea lackey, issued instructions, and he left the room. And then, without any explanation, Amir left also. Then it was only Reza and me in the drab surroundings. Reza leaned back in his chair and rocked slightly, avoiding eye contact. Time passed—15 minutes, then 20. I wanted to engage him, seek tips on the best coffeehouses in Tehran, or where to find the best pizza—anything to fill the silence—but his English was not up to the task. That had been Amir’s job—to serve as translator and questioner. Time passed, and I wondered what the point of this was—the wait. Was it calculated? Very little in the Iranian mindset isn’t calculated. Like all good chess players, they make no move without thinking five steps ahead. To paraphrase Barack Obama, Iranians “don’t do stupid stuff.” They may blunder, like all good chess players, but impulsiveness is a rare find in the Iranian gene pool. So I waited—for Amir or the lackey to return with my passport so we could get on with it. So I could head back to the Hafez Hotel, put my feet up, and watch a bit of Press TV, the English-language Iranian satellite network. I wondered what Reza was waiting for. That I’d crack under the pressure, reveal the true reason for my return to Iran? That would be the tactic of any interrogation, but this wasn’t an interrogation—or was it? When Amir first settled down on the couch across from me he said, straightway, that if I felt uncomfortable about the meeting I was free to leave and go on with my sightseeing. And he meant it. But I wasn’t uneasy and had no reason to be anywhere else. Besides, whatever was about to transpire was far more interesting than anything that could be found in another Tehran museum. One of the purposes of museums is to project clarity—historical, cultural, scientific. Here nothing was clear, not the aims of Reza and Amir, nor the reason for my presence, nor the possible endgame, which made this more enthralling than any museum could ever be, and it give me a better insight into Iran than any museum could. After 20 minutes Amir reappeared, holding my passport. I was impressed. The lackey must have zipped through the Tehran traffic on his motorbike in record time, flashed whatever credentials he needed to obtain it from the hotel staff, and done double-time all the way back. Reza took the passport and flipped through it. It was cluttered with a dizzying array of visa stamps and entry and exit permits, which said as much about my travel patterns as a jumbled Rubik’s cube. Reza tossed it on the table. I looked at the clock. It was almost five-thirty. Again I thought of Firouzeh, and wondered if she wondering if I had been carted away to Evin Prison or some holding tank within the labyrinth of the Iranian penal system, and if I had, what would she do? But there was no reason for worry. Our chat was at an end. Both Reza and Amir rose, and with consummate Persian politeness shook my hand and wish me a very pleasant stay in Iran. Amir added, in a moment of rare candor, “We had no idea it would go on this long, but it was so interesting!” I’m sure. And with that I left. Regrettably, Firouzeh hadn’t been whiling away the time in a coffeeshop. She was so unnerved she hadn’t left the car for the past two hours, now waiting outside the office door. The driver flashed his lights and I got in. “When you didn’t come out I didn’t know what to think,” Firouzeh stammered. I was about to fill her in on the curvaceous conversation, but she had other things on her mind. “Did they ask about me?” “No.” “Every day we just followed the program, what the agency gave me,” she argued, defensively, and she opened a plastic binder to show me the itinerary she had been handed. It was all written in Farsi and meant nothing to me, but her worry was clear. Had we strayed from it in any way and had there been questions about it, it was she, not me, who would have had questions to answer. But Reza and Amir weren’t interested in where I had gone or what we had done, and probably knew anyway. To put her mind to rest, I gave her a quick rundown on my conversation with Reza and Amir in all its mundane detail—banality is often a balm for anxiety. Soon we were turning off Ferdowsi Street and pulling up in front of the hotel. I got out of the car and thanked her for her very professional service over the past three days. The worry lines on her face had smoothed—a little. The next morning I was greeted by a new guide, Aydin. After breakfast we loaded his car and headed northwest, spent three days in Tabriz before making an abrupt right turn at Ardabil to cruise toward Rasht and Ramsar, on the Caspian coast. All was smooth going. Then we got to Rasht. The night we arrived there were antigovernment demonstrations on the streets. In the past few days they had erupted in many cities, but oddly, many were known to be government strongholds. Tehran, usually the hotbed of antigovernment sentiment, was left in the cold. Even by Iranian standards it was curious—forever curious. Aydin and I had dinner at an Italian restaurant and then took a stroll along the pedestrian streets for which Rasht is well known. The shops were alit and buzzing. Then progovernment demonstrators appeared, parading down the center of the street, escorted by security forces and mouthing pro-regime slogans. Politically speaking, it was a muddle—pro-regime voices shouting down protestors who were also attacking the government? Pundits speculated that it was all a stage show, that the antigovernment protests had been organized by anti-Rouhani forces aiming to blemish his too-liberal government, and the harder hardliners had taken to the streets not to support Rouhani, but to bolster their allies seeking to humiliate him. In the end the guessing game continued. No one knew anything. The next day Aydin’s phone rang. We were on the highway somewhere between Rasht and Ramsar, with the azure sheen of the Caspian glimmering to the east. I identified the voice on the other end as the woman from the tour agency who had met me at my hotel in Tehran one morning to collect the payment for the trip. She had called a few times before, but this was the first time since the Rasht episode. The two chatted, I heard laughter, and when Aydin hung up I asked, “Was that the office again?” He sighed. “Yes . . .” “What did they want?” He fessed up. The agency had been calling him two, three times day, he said, sometimes first thing in the morning, sometimes late at night, at least once in the middle of the day: How is everything going? Have there been any problems? This time they wanted to know about the night before. “What did you tell them?” “That we went for a walk and there was a demonstration.” “What did she say?’ “She just laughed and asked, ‘What did you do? I told her—we watched it go by.” And that was that, and other than that I knew nothing, and neither did Aydin. Perhaps the visa office had instructed Hamid, the tour agency’s man-in-charge, to check in on me. Perhaps Hamid had taken it upon himself to check in on me, to ensure he had nothing to report to the visa office should it call to check in on me. Either could have been true, or not. In Iran one learns to work with a limited horizon. It is like forever driving on a foggy night with the headlights going dim. The trip finished, and a few months later I contacted Hamid. Could he arrange another visa for me? The timing was bad, and I knew it. The U.S. had just pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal—that was a fact—and likely the Iranians weren’t very anxious to welcome an Americans, even a returnee. But Hamid passed my request on to the visa office anyway. A few days later he replied. “You are very famous to them,” he wrote back. No kidding. But then he went on, with practiced Persian regret, to say that the foreign ministry would not give me another visa—not now. It might approve one “in the future, after a while.” But—he made clear—they gave no indication of what “a while” meant, and “might” only guaranteed that there was no guarantee, but it didn’t close the door, either. I couldn’t have expected anything else—a reply that was forever obscure, perfectly noncommittal, classically Persian. As an Iranian friend of mine once said, “Who would be stupid enough to tell anyone exactly what they think?”
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Journey to the Kagayaku Smile |
 | Charles Hayes, a multiple Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Scarlet Leaf Publishing House, Burning Word Journal, eFiction India, and others. |
You’ll Be Sorry
After passing over the coastal mountains along the South China Sea we went into a sudden dive, sending my stomach up to my throat. Out the small bulkhead window I saw the jungle and bamboo villages suddenly grow larger until, just as suddenly, we pulled up. Palm trees flashed by just below the wings. I checked my crotch for wetness and watched the palm trees quickly give way to black tarmac. We landed hard and slowed just enough to quickly exit the runway and taxi to a large metal hanger. As if this was all completely normal, a colorfully dressed stewardess appeared at the front of the cabin and welcomed us to the busiest airport in the world, Da Nang, Vietnam.
I came from one of the many sweeps for poor white trash and blacks conducted throughout Southern Appalachia to feed the Vietnam war. Having no clout nor any real means to get out of the poverty of the hills or avoid the draft, I was easy prey for the “Uncle Sam Wants You” roughriders at my local draft board.
I reported for induction into the Army and the sergeant in charge told me that the Marines were short on men. He said that if I agreed to join them for 3 years I wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam. Otherwise, the sergeant said that I would be beating the Vietnam bush within 3 months. I fell for the spiel, beginning a journey that still quickly took me to Vietnam. Taking a last look back at the pretty stewardess standing in the exit doorway I said my goodbyes to the world.
The first thing I noticed after that goodbye was the heat coming from all directions as it poured down and was reflected back by everything it touched. Everyone seemed to be in motion as if the sun demanded it in order to avoid being cooked dry by its wash.
My group was quickly met by a gunnery sergeant as he hopped out of a jeep, gathered us together, and herded us toward our next staging area. All along the hot tarmac I could see camouflaged jets landing and taking off. The same for helicopters. It was one big beehive of sweat, flashing afterburners and noise.
Soon we passed another group of marines peering at us through a chain link fence just off one side of the tarmac. Looking very much out of place amongst all the purposeful activity and uniform dress, they wore jungle fatigues and floppy bush hats. With their jungle boots scuffed tan from wear and never having seen any polish, their gaunt yellowish faces, colored by the anti-malaria pills, they looked out from masses of long hair and mustaches. But it was their eyes and demeanor that really set them apart and belied their youth as they amused themselves, watching the new guys as if watching their favorite animals at the zoo. Pressed up against the links in the fence, like some band of detainees curtained off from the more respectable lots of society, their looks unsettled me in a way that’s hard to explain. Like I was part of some exhibition of the condemned. I wanted to ignore them but couldn’t help staring back. Reviewing their faces, I saw that most seemed to be there just for the sake of being there. No particular reason or motivation registered on their visages, just that they were there and accounted for, to hell with anything more definitive than that. That was until I met the eyes of one a little taller and dirtier than the rest. With no amusement reflected in his dark eyes, he sang out in a clear lilting voice without a hint of comedy, “You’ll…….. be…… sor……ry.” The others along the fence only stared on as if the tone of his prediction rang with an air that some things just were ...and not a one of them doubted it.
We eventually got parked in a huge hanger and over the next few hours were in turn sent out over Vietnam far and wide to replace those who were going home, or who had been killed or wounded. When it came to my turn I was sent only a few miles southwest of the air strip.
I was very much welcomed when my jeep arrived at my new unit. No predictions of sorrow were heard for me who had come to freshen up this unit. Fresh newbies generally meant a little less hazard for those trying to get out of the Nam someway other than a crate or a hospital plane. Making it through that year and getting the hell out of there was what it was all about. Not complicated at all I soon figured as I settled in and started ticking the days until I could get back to the world. Nor was it complicated or long before I got my first taste of the war, that cherry from the hillbilly country of West Virginia.
As the pop flare drifted to earth a ghostly light was cast over the green wet terrain beyond the perimeter of the 1st support battalion, 1st Marines. Those along the bunker line facing the base of Hill 821 peered through the misty monsoon rains from underneath ponchos and anything else that might help them find a little comfort in the muddy trench. Assigned to the communications section of H&S Company, I was catching more than my share of perimeter duty. Since I was the cherry of the outfit that was nothing unusual in the Nam but it sure as hell had little to do with repairing radios which was my MOS or military occupational specialty. After scanning the dark perimeter I sloshed a couple of steps along the trench and entered a bagged and roofed bunker where I had unloaded the PRC-25 radio pack at midnight. A couple of waterlogged grunts or infantrymen from security platoon were wrapped in their ponchos and setting on ammo crates trying to stay dry and avoid the chill of the monsoon season. I felt no pity for them, I was cold and soaked too.
“How come you guys aren’t in position?”
“Aw hell, give us a break corporal, there ain’t nothing out there but maybe a rock ape or two,” one of them said, “you ain’t been here long enough to know.”
“I been here long enough to know that if you two don’t get back to your positions you’ll find out that you're not as short as you think you are.”
If it’s anything most marines try to avoid it’s having to stay in Vietnam past their rotation date on a legal hold because of some personal screw up. So both grunts reluctantly picked up their gear and went back down the bunker line to their positions.
I knew I had a lot to learn and I hated to push seasoned grunts but I had to make a situation report and how the hell could I do that with two posts vacant.
I picked up the radio handset, keyed it, and quietly said, “Yankee one, yankee 3, sit-rep all secure, over.”
“Three, one, roger, out,” came the reply.
Back outside the bunker under the constant rain I resumed my watch and tried to shelter my M-16 rifle as much as possible. Rifles could be tricky enough about jamming even when in good condition but so far I had not had any trouble with mine. It appeared that the government had finally gotten the problem fixed after lots of young men had died and were found with a jammed rifle in their hands. Even then there was no hurry it seemed, just another poor dumb son of a bitch dying for his country as General Patton so eloquently once put it.
As the descending flare was about to hit the ground and die I reached into my cargo pocket, removed another one and slammed the base of it with the heel of my hand. A whooshing sound traveled skyward followed by the loud pop of the illumination chute and again the barren kill zone beyond the concertina wire lit up. Scanning the kill zone for movement, I wondered what was really going on in Vietnam. What I was seeing was not jiving with what I had heard.
Ducking down in the trench, I lit a cigarette, cupped my hand around the glowing ash, and smoked. My watch told me that soon my shift would be over and I could make chow before hitting the rack. The patrol should be on its way back by now according to the checkpoints that I heard over the radio. Looking in the direction from which I knew they would come, I could see the wooden poles used to open the wire and the glowing eyes of the sentry dog staked out there, but not much else. Suddenly, about 200 meters in that same direction I heard the ack-ack-ack and saw the green tracers of enemy AK-47 fire immediately followed by the rapid burst and red tracers of several M-16s returning fire. The booms of the 12 gauge double ought bush gun could also be heard from the return fire. From the listening posts the radio net came alive with contact reports and as soon as I could log in I, now with the radio on my back, rushed down the bunker line and passed the word to the grunts who were already standing by. After another burst of M-16 fire mixed with M-79 grenade launcher explosions there was a lull in the action. Everyone on the radio net was instructed to remain in place and wait for further word.
As the siren atop the COC or Commanding Officer’s Communication bunker in the rear sounded the trench line began to fill up with marines. In the distance I could hear the funny sounding alarm of the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) 155 Howitzers and knew that they too were bee hiving and lowering the big guns. The once dark sky was now full of the sound and illumination of what seemed like a hundred pop flares going off as we all waited, staring out at that cleared ground beyond the wire.
Shortly, a helicopter gun ship showed up and mini gunned the area with a curtain of lead that looked like one big red screen descending to the ground from the dark sky above the flares. We called them spooky gunships and they could put a round into every square foot of a football field sized area in less than 30 seconds. Nothing above ground could withstand such withering fire. An eerie quietness took hold, broken only by the zipping sound of the spooky mini guns as the terrain was raked with lead. Earthbound marines looked skyward as if it were Zeus or some other God practicing his art from above.
When the chopper ceased fire and left, dawn broke so quickly it was almost like waking up from a dream. Colonel Blevins, the battalion CO, was now on the line and I could hear his operator, another com section marine named Tim, relaying orders for the patrol to break cover, reconnoiter for killed and wounded, and come in.
Usually no higher than a sergeant led patrols but it was Lt. Stansworth, the security platoon CO, leading this time and apparently he had been wounded by the first volley of AK fire. Word was that it was only superficial, having grazed his shoulder. Stansworth, a former force recon marine, was about as gung ho as they came and it was typical that he would be in the front during a firefight. That little action would later get him his captain’s bars.
After a bit the patrol radioed that they had two confirmed kills and were bringing them in. All eyes were on the gate in the wire when the patrol appeared, half carrying, half dragging two body laden ponchos. The Colonel left the trench and met Lt. Stansworth just in front of my position near a little bridge over the trench where they dropped the bodies. A small crowd began to gather, mostly officers but a few enlisted as well. They were snapping pictures as Tim and I stood off to the side and eyed the lumpy ponchos.
After rolling up the bloody sleeve of the L T’s jungle blouse and examining the dressing Col. Blevins asked to see the bodies.
The larger one was opened first, exposing a young Vietnamese male dressed in khaki shorts, a black long sleeve shirt, and sandals made from rubber tires. It was hard to recognize any features of the face which were now just a pair of cloudy dark eyes set in a ripped and bloody mass. It looked as if the double ought had done a thorough job clear through. From the open back of the skull there were parts of reddish grey matter spread on the poncho. Only a dark hole existed where an ear had been cleanly severed. The rest of the body was not in much better shape as evidenced by pools of half clotted blood that were starting to darken the mud around the edges of the poncho. But for the clothes, what lay there could have been the half finished job of a butcher suddenly called away from the back of his shop. Except for the occasional whirring sound of a camera advancing film it was utterly quiet as the Colonel pointed to the other smaller body and nodded for it to be exposed.
A large conical hat covered the head with the rest of the body in remarkably better shape than the first. Dressed in black silk pants and shirt and wearing the same kind of sandals, known as Ho Chi Minhs, it appeared from the large patch of blood on the shirt that this Vietnamese had been hit only in the upper torso. When the Colonel reached down and lifted the hat covering the head, a long stream of silky black hair that was caught in the chin strap cascaded down to frame the face of a lovely Vietnamese girl of perhaps sixteen. Her eyes were closed and except for the bloody shirt she might have been asleep. Everyone, including the Colonel, stared in open amazement. Not a camera shutter was launched nor a word said. A scene which no mere camera could capture lay before us and it was something that only we who experienced it could realize. Something that was and forever would be present to us youngsters of war standing there in shock. Always present in its absence, for it was our girlfriend, our sister or our buddy’s sister, the dream girl we wanted to go home to, or the one we hoped to find when we got there. It was a piece of us that lay there dead. Without another word the Colonel quickly placed the hat back over the girl's face and left. There was no weapon found.
Those first weeks in Vietnam saw me trying to carry out the duty that had been placed before me but as far as technical radio repair was concerned there was not much that I could do. We had neither the parts nor the equipment necessary to perform such operations. If we couldn’t cannibalize from radio to radio we simply shipped it up to the regiment for repair. Because of that techs like me usually ended up working down into the radio operator, or wire stringer jobs.
From Sgt. down rank was not a big deal in the com section which ran the COC bunker, the hub for all communications coming in or out of the battalion, and also monitored the nets of some nearby units.
The 1st, along with a few other units, was responsible for protecting the approaches to the Da Nang airstrip throughout that area immediately south of Hill 821. It was a large area that began at the east end of a valley that ran many kilometers into the countryside between lush green mountains. A pretty land dotted with rice paddies and small villages, crisscrossed by meandering streams. To stand atop one of those mountains under a sunny tropical sky and look out over that broad expanse of beauty one would think it one of the most peaceful places on earth. But from that same spot in the dead of night one would see red and yellow explosions along with the red and green tracers of small arms fire decorating the sky in many spots that had appeared so pretty and peaceful during the day. It was said that the Viet Cong owned the night. It was then that they showed just how jealous they were of their property.
All these things I was beginning to acknowledge. Things that one had to see to understand since they previously had not been fairly described by the drum beaters back in America. I was able to see that the gung ho marine and unit cohesion usually held up as an example in the states was almost non existent there in Vietnam. Nobody was unhappy when someone’s rotation date came, for to get out of there was the big prize, though the melancholy of being left behind was hard to avoid too.
When I first got there I tried to get along with everybody and quickly got to know several of the young men in my section. But probably more because I had grown up that way than because of the different timelines everybody was on, I didn’t get very close to many. Also, as I would later learn, getting close to someone complicated the dismissiveness necessary to keep the hurt and shame at bay when people died or the fear got too big. But just the situation we found ourselves in, fighting a war that was unnecessary and much too one sided, seemed to provide enough glue to hold us together to some extent.
Since I was a quick corporal I had the privilege of sharing half a hooch, a plywood structure with a GI tin roof, with two other corporals, Amos Rooter and Charlie Roderno. Charlie had come in country only a couple of weeks after me but Rooter was already half way through his tour. The other half of the hooch was partitioned off for the two sergeants in the section, Bob Winsonsky and Alan Blume. Because of that and our shared NCO status I got to know these individuals a little better than the others of lesser rank who all shared one large hooch.
One commodity that was never in short supply unless you were in the field was beer. Every evening after chow the club would open and it was there at the crowded tables that most social activity took place over countless beers served by pretty Vietnamese girls wearing ao dais. An ao dais was a beautiful combination of a dress split up the sides worn over long silk pants. The beer was paid for with MPC or military payment currency which was as good as real money and even preferred to the national currency which was the piastre.
When it came to the military culture there were quite a few more divisions than one would find stateside. Racial divisions in the war zone were more pronounced than in America because in Vietnam everybody had a gun. Vietnam was a white man’s war but the blacks, being easier to draft, got caught up in it disproportionately. Black soldiers took far more of the casualties than the whites, which along with the age old discriminatory practices of American racial prejudice caused considerable resentment and sometimes even rebellion. It was not unheard of to have actual firefights between the races although that was rare. But because in America it was usually only “the man” who had a gun and in the Nam everyone had a gun, suppression of the black race was far harder to accomplish. That led to a milieu where blacks and whites went their own ways absent the authority of the white cop with the only gun. However these segregated conditions did not exist in the bush where all were green and most interracial friendships were forged. But once back inside the wire the old standards and separations quickly reappeared, even among close friends.
Another divide could be found between those who used marijuana and those who didn’t. I had of course heard of pot and while in California had even known some marines who used it. I had tried it a couple of times before I went in the marines but didn’t experience any effects from it and considered it a waste of time when I could be drinking beer. Consequently I could always be found with the mostly white “juicers.” At least that was the way it was before Corporal Rooter turned me on.
Rooter, one of the corporals whom I had shared a hooch with, had been transferred to the marine air wing at Chu Lai but had literally dropped in aboard a chopper for a quick visit at the 1st while on some kind of temporary duty in the Da Nang area. As luck would have it or Rooter already knew, probably the latter, there happened to be a USO show at the club that evening. Almost always these shows would consist of a bare bones plywood stage and a Korean band with at least a couple of pretty girls in short skirts. They danced and sang American songs for the beer drinking, hooting jar heads gathered there. Laughter, macho jokes and too much to drink were standard fare at these events so Rooter and I quickly squeezed into the little club for some fun and beer.
After the show we returned to the hooch and were rapping about life down in Chu Lai when Rooter suddenly asked, “You want to get high?”
“What do you mean,” I replied, “we just drank all that beer?”
Rooter smiled and rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, but that was beer, I got some really fine Chu Lai weed. You ever try any weed?”
“Yeah I tried it a couple of times, it doesn’t do anything for me, can’t see what all the hoopla is about.”
Rooter eyed me skeptically.
“Yeah, where did you ever smoke any pot?”
“Back in the world, West Virginia,” I said. I was about to elaborate but Rooter burst out laughing before I could go on..
“West Virginia! You mean you never smoked any Nam weed? You really are a cherry. Come on let's go outside and smoke a couple of joints. Then you can tell me it doesn’t do anything for you.”
“Are you crazy,” I said, “you mean you’re packing around marijuana?”
“Hey take it easy, you’d be surprised at the number of heads around here. It’s cool. Come on new guy, I’m going to show you what’s happening.”
Once outside the hooch behind some refrigeration units Rooter pulled up the bloused leg of his jungle trousers and pulled a little cellophane package of pre-rolled joints out of his sock and fired one up. After inhaling deeply and holding the smoke in he passed the joint to me and exhaled.
“Take a big drag and hold it in.”
I did as instructed and as I drew on the joint the pot seeds compacted in it would sometimes explode in a small shower of sparks that for a split second would light up the darkness around us. Back and forth we passed the joint until it was too short to smoke and Rooter ate it. Neither of us said anything for a while. We just sat on the ground looking at the sky.
Rooter finally asked, “Man, how you doing, good weed huh?”
“I don’t feel a thing. Just a little bloated from the beer.”
“You're shitting me,” Rooter exclaimed as he went back into his sock, produced another joint, lit it, and passed it directly to me. I took the joint and after a long drag offered it back to Rooter.
“Hell no, not for me. I’m totally wasted,” he said, “wow, man, not getting off…..you smoke that one by yourself.”
“OK, but this shit don’t affect me, I tell you.”
We sat there for several minutes, Rooter quietly looking around at the night as I puffed on the joint, holding it in and then exhaling. When I had smoked about half of it a sudden rush overtook me. Nothing like the change overtime brought on by alcohol. This was like one moment the world was one way and the next it was different in the extreme. Suddenly I felt incapacitated and no matter how hard I tried I remained that way. Time took on aspects that were foreign to me and I lost track of how long we had been there but it must have been some while for when I looked down I saw the half smoked joint dead in my hand. I looked over at Rooter who was staring at me with a big shit eating grin on his face. Reaching the joint toward him and in the most serious voice I said, “You can have this back now.”
“Did you get your ass kicked, cherry,” Rooter laughingly said, “still don’t affect you, huh?”
I now definitely knew better than that.
“Lord have mercy, I am smashed. What the hell am I going to do. I can’t hardly move.”
Laughing, Rooter stood up, reached down, and grabbed me by the upper arm to help me stand.
“Come on, let's get back inside the hooch, you look like you're ready for the rack.”
After Rooter got me to my rack he left, never to be seen again, just off into the night or back to Chu Lai or some other unit. He wasn’t even carrying a weapon. Just that ass kicking Chu Lai weed like some vagabond who had quit the war and was now just touring the places he had been.
I laid there half on and half off the rack, almost blinded by the brightness of the overhead bare bulb. I felt as if I had been planted there and could only with time grow out of it. It still must have been early because I could hear some coming and going around me so I tried to act like I was just relaxing. It seemed so long ago that I was outside with Rooter but every indication was that it had only been a few minutes.
One thing was for sure, I was not immune to pot and for the first time in my life I was stoned. Fully dressed with not even my boots off, I was held up by the rack, and felt like I was made of stone. No longer would I consider such a feeling ridiculous. The section chief, a very tall thin black Ssgt. walked in, took one look at me peering up through the glare of the overhead light and knowingly smiled. Slowly shaking his head and wagging his pointing finger, he knew I was stoned. And I knew that he knew but not a word was said, then or afterward. The chief just quietly turned around and left. He was to rotate out soon and that was enough to keep him quite no doubt. Besides, we had known each other before he had made staff and became the section chief. Although I didn’t know for sure, I figured that he had had a few puffs himself over the past year.
In the beginning I didn’t smoke often but when I did I was amazed at the number of guys I knew who also smoked. The next time I decided to indulge I and Charlie Roderno, my remaining hooch mate after the transfer of Rooter, ended up in a remote ditch between the club and the wire. It was completely dark but the ditch was full of people and when the matches and Zippos were struck to keep the joints going I recognized half the com section. I also found out why not many blacks came to the club. Most of them were out in the ditch doing pot instead.
I didn’t do the communal pot thing much after that. Most of the time I only smoked with guys from my own section and to my knowledge, just as with beer, it never happened outside the wire. Usually I and another section member would sit out late at night, share a joint, and talk about the war and what we were going to do when we got out of it, Spending an hour just rapping and watching the pop flares shoot up into the sky and slowly drop back to earth, we felt removed for a little while.
Christmas and New Years Eve I was hidden away in the night watching the tracers fill the sky as marines all around hill 821 turned their guns to the air. These little gigs were a slim hold on the world across the sea. It all evaporated quickly once Christmas and New Years had come and gone but when my mother sent me a small box of cheeses for the holidays that little box went a long way as it was shared a little at a time among the section. That Christmas of 1968 and many of those that followed would always be associated with that gaily packaged box of cheeses resting under a hanging M-16 rifle and a couple of Christmas cards. I took a picture of it for my personal Christmas card that I eventually gave to my step kids many years later. That was before they and their mother left me, not having been with me even a year.
There are places and times in people’s lives that seem to take on a significance that one looking on might find odd. But for me, as meager and poor as it was in a war zone, that Christmas of 1968, along with the yuletide cheeses, became the last Christmas with any meaning. At that point in my tour I was still struggling to get along and remain a part of the World which I considered to be the USA. But my grip was not as tight as it had once been. Now instead of an angel atop my Xmas centerpiece there was a gun. Things had changed.
Time inside the wire was slow and that meant time to try and fill the empty feelings that nagged. But when I stepped beyond the concertina I was as full up of bone and blood as I could stand. The 1st had people a few clicks out into the bush every night on patrols and listening posts. And then there was the observation post beyond that. I had been on them all, humping the radio because the grunts had a hard time keeping anyone who could operate the radio, change batteries, and keep track of the different callsigns and frequencies. Long hours spent in the COC bunker assured that a marine from com section was up on all that stuff.
LPs or listening posts were the worst. Three guys with rifles, grenade launcher, starlight scope, and a radio were sent a couple of hundred meters out and a little ways up hill 821. They would find a spot, settle in and try to see what was going on, reporting every hour on the situation. No digging in or any of that defensive stuff. Just quietly hunkering down and trying to freeze in place for hours on end. The joke was that you listened until you heard them coming, reported it, and hoped they passed you by without knowing it. However it rarely worked out that way. In reality a listening post was fodder, no more, no less, and if you were unlucky enough to be there when Victor Charlie came you were unlikely to survive any fight from such an exposed position. But it would eliminate the element of surprise. Everybody hated listening posts and knew that it was a throwaway job with a posthumous purple heart as its only reward. Once when I thought I heard someone creeping through the bush my heart pounded so loud that I had to listen between heart beats. Peering in the direction of the sound for a couple of minutes I discovered it was just an insect moving among the weeds a few feet from my ear.
There were definitely other people out there in that darkness. Other LPs and at least one patrol. The fuzzy green mess seen through a starlight scope was almost useless at being able to define which was which. Back in the COC bunker the watch commander had a map and was supposed to keep track of everyone’s position. I knew that was not really effective because I had been humping on some patrols where the grunt sergeant in charge would tell us to just lay down and sleep. Consequently our location was not accurate..
I had almost killed some of my own men when I was on net control in the COC bunker because of that kind of bull shit. One of the LPs was reporting movement at a place where there was not supposed to be anyone. With the watch commander asleep in another section of the bunker, and not wanting to wake him, I took it upon myself to order grenades launched. Soon as I heard the explosions the screaming on the radio began.
“Stop that Goddamned shit right now!!”
Nobody was wounded but when they came in at dawn I was outside the COC bunker watching them pass. Although nothing was said, some very hard looks were exchanged. The watch commander never even knew it happened or if he did it was never mentioned. Just another example of some dumb son of a bitch dying for his country….. almost.
The 1st must have gotten some intelligence that indicated a threat to the observation post which was about 6 kilometers out. It was decided to pull an ambush on the far side of the hill that it occupied. Security platoon sent word that they needed a radio operator for the ambush but most of the lower ranks of the com section were already manning various radio posts and that left only a few NCOs and an officer. Officers, even within grunt units, never packed the radio so I, being the junior NCO, volunteered when the others firmly declined. A lieutenant that I had never seen was leading the ambush and that in itself was unusual. Plus a scout dog and handler were also going. Who was ambushing who, and why was a scout dog going on an ambush? I just chalked it up to Vietnam, the major American debacle where nothing seemed right. Altogether there were only eight of us who gathered at motor-t to board the truck that would take us out. The LT, me, and a corpsman plus five grunts, an M60 machine gunner, grenade launcher, dog handler, claymore man, and a rifleman. When we got on the truck one young black grunt was bitterly complaining, almost to the point of tears. He had only 9 days left on his tour and thought that it wasn’t fair to send him out when he was so short. He got no sympathy as the others ignored him and accepted the assignment as just another task to get through the best way they could. There was no joking around or any conversation as the LT rode in the cab and the rest of us rode in the back out the dirt road to the OP track. Black striped faces were serious, and except for the gear and black grease, we could have been a bunch of strangers sitting in a waiting room to see our doctor back in the world. Once we got to the little track leading up to the OP the truck dumped us and returned to base.
As the sun was setting and a tropical bluish green dusk was fast coloring our world we humped up the track to the OP and gathered around a burn barrel to receive our final briefing.. Suddenly a loud metallic sound interrupted the briefing. It took but an instant for us to see the live M79 grenade bouncing on the ground by the burn barrel. We scattered in all directions. The dumb shit carrying the grenade launcher had accidentally discharged his weapon but since the round traveled less than six feet before slamming into the barrel the safety mechanism had kept it from exploding. When we realized that everyone calmed down and the LT told us what we should have already known.
“Don’t load your weapons until we leave the perimeter.”
Not even an ass chewing for stupidity took place, probably because it wouldn’t have made any difference. Plus there could be much more stuff to come very shortly. Why put down one of the few men you had to fight it with? Nam was different from the gung ho bull shit back in the states. People actually got killed ...and not always by enemy fire.
The LT made sure that my radio worked, the claymores were ready to deploy, and that there was sufficient ammunition before leading us through the wire. Once outside he told us to lock and load our weapons. The handler and his dog walked point, stringing us out a little. The LT and I were in the middle going down the rocky foot trail toward the valley floor. It was almost completely dark but the monsoon season had passed so we had the stars and a small moon to see by.
I had never been off the road in that territory and didn’t know the terrain so I just followed the LT and hoped that he had read the map correctly. On a day trip out to the OP I had seen Vietnamese carrying loads on shoulder sticks so I knew there were people around there. But now the road was long gone. We wound around and up and down small hills, putting considerable distance between ourselves and the OP. The terrain was not bad and with the extra adrenaline the pace seemed easy but visibility was not good as we passed through tropical bush with no clear vision of anything but the person ahead. It was no wonder that we saw no sign of any human presence.
The narrow path resembled some sort of game trail that meandered through the undergrowth. Only the tops of palm trees could be seen, dark shapes outlined against the night sky. Eventually we left the trail and cut across a wide grassy corridor, the first place that I could see ahead to the the dog handler and the front of the patrol. The dog was obscured by the grass but in the faint light there was everyone else, strung out across the thigh high tropical meadow. Word was passed back to hold up because the dog had alerted on something. Everybody froze while the handler checked it out. I wondered what in the world could there be to check out in that darkness. The dog had alerted, something was wrong. How could one know anymore than that. I was not used to the scout dogs because they usually came in and went out on helicopters--far out, all over the Nam to the grunt units who lived in the bush. We were flanked by a small bushy hill on one side and a stretch of palm trees with the same dense undergrowth that we had just come through on the other. Realizing that we were very exposed I went from being anxious to just plain scared. When I returned my attention to the point I saw the muzzle flashes and heard the AK-47 fire coming from beneath the palms to the front. Almost simultaneously another series of flashes and sound came from the same tree line nearby. I dropped to the earth as the LT screamed to return fire. Hugging the earth but still managing to get my rifle raised I emptied my magazine in the direction of the tree line as the others laid down what fire power they had. Three magazines I went through in a couple of minutes, blindly, by rote, not thinking or wishing for anything but to please not die. I lived only within the all encompassing sound of the fire. Desperately trying to get more ammo from the bandoliers tangled around my chest, I began to discriminate the sounds of grenades from the launcher as they hit along the tree line. I thanked God for that dumb son of a bitch that almost blew us all up back at the burn barrel. Not to mention the M60 machine gunner I could hear firing furiously.
I couldn’t really see what was going on because I was so scared that I couldn’t raise my head out of the grass far enough to see much of anything. It must have been a full two minutes of withering fire before I heard the LT yelling to hold the fire. Still glued to the earth when the LT appeared beside me and told me to contact the battalion or the OP, I reluctantly sat part way up and flicked up the tape antenna on my radio. The LT ran off toward the point. I tried to make contact but got nothing, not even the sound of a squelch. I checked the antenna connection but that did no good either. That left only the battery so I rolled over and shrugged off the radio with the bandoliers of ammunition tangled around it. Always I went out with a new battery and logged in but this one must have been bad so I started un-taping the spare I always carried at the bottom of the pack. That’s when I felt it, a neat round hole in one side of the radio and a large jagged exit hole out the other side. The thing was useless, leaving us with no communications. The LT returned and said that the handler had been hit bad and wanted to know if I could get a med-evac. All I could do was show the bullet holes in the useless radio and mutter a few words. I was so scared and ashamed that I could hardly talk.
Amazingly there were only two wounded, probably because the attack had been a classic hit and run. The machine gunner had been hit in the lower left arm, a clean flesh wound with minimal damage. A field dressing would temporarily take care of it but the handler had a sucking chest wound and was barely conscious. The corpsman worked on him for what seemed like a long time, almost losing him a couple of times, trying to get him stabilized enough for carrying. He gave long odds on his survival if he wasn’t lifted out but the best that we could do was carry him back to the OP and call for a dust off there.
Nobody, including the LT, wanted to reconnoiter the tree line. If there were any VC bodies there they could stay there. Besides there were most likely booby traps as well. Somehow we had walked right into the ambush either by making too much noise in our approach or someone on the inside had passed the word about the operation. I wandered about all the drunk marines and pretty girls at the club but what the hell did I know, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. It took the rest of the night but we tied some ponchos together and took turns carrying the handler as his confused German Shepherd remained with whoever walked point. During my turn to help with the carry I listened to the awful wheezing and moans as the handler tried to breath. Many times we had to stop and let the corpsman work on him. I was glad to get away from that wheezing sound when I was relieved but the next time it was my turn I heard nothing. Knowing that the handler must be dead, I quietly cried and cursed God.
Near the OP we popped a red smoke grenade in the misty dawn light and yelled out who we were. Once inside, I got the coordinates and called in a med-evac with the OP radio.
As the chopper touched down another corpsman quickly jumped out and examined the handler lying there on the bloody ponchos. White that showed through his half closed eyes and lips that looked like they had been painted blue on his pale young face formed the vision that would always represent that mission for me. The exposed chest was still and covered with a mixture of dried mucus and blood. What had once been alive and loved by someone was now surely long gone.
Out in the valley, on a patchwork of different shades of green, the sun was starting to reflect from the numerous paddies and except for the noise and dust from the chopper it was so maddeningly serene that I wanted to scream.
Quickly and with the detachment of repetition the corpsman looked up at the LT and shook his head. The corpsman and a couple of grunts lifted the handler into a large dark plastic bag laid out on a stretcher and zipped it up. Now handling only cargo, the corpsman and crew chief raised the stretcher, shoved it through the open door of the chopper, and hopped aboard as it lifted off. The whole dust off had taken less than three minutes and I figured that was how long it took to get out of the war that way. So fast that I didn’t even know the handler’s name.
After the failed ambush I began to slide even more, smoking more pot, drinking more, and giving less of a damn about fighting the communist. What the hell was I doing there anyway. I had known from the beginning that it was messed up but I had thought that if I applied himself I could stomach it and move on. I watched the higher ups for a clue as to what this war was really about. It took very little time for me to become convinced that they had no idea either…other than to advance their own careers. From this conviction I developed a hatred of authority and class that would plague me from then on. Those in authority would throw my life away to gain an advantage in their quest for a bigger, better, and richer American dream. I may have come from poor stock and little family but Vietnam was showing me that there were some things that I could not stomach. Unforgivable things. That kind of unholy sacrifice for gain, dressed in the garments of patriotism, be it personal or national, was one of them.
I was not alone in those views. All through the war zone similar attitudes were developing. However I continued to follow orders whereas some others often refused and ended up in the brig. Many times for murder.
In a neighboring unit one staff NCO was so hated by his men that they faked an enemy attack then cut him down with a machine gun as he ran out his door to hide in a nearby bunker. Many of the murders, called “fragings,” after the fragmentation grenade, were done with hand grenades thrown on or under sleeping victims. Or simply by shooting them during a firefight or enemy attack. It was a terrible thing to do but it all started with the lies and the draft, then developed into a festering boil that eventually, in some cases, could not be contained. The majority of those murders were never prosecuted. And that along with a similar rebellion in the US helped end America’s involvement in Vietnam. But for the young people caught up in it at the time the damage was done. I was one of them. Despite my own feelings about the war, I had tried to comply with the bull shit. Now I only wanted out and away from those who willingly participated in it, lived by it. If I couldn’t get away physically I would do so mentally just as I had done with mind travel in boot camp on Parris Island. But the war was much bigger than boot camp and I found it impossible to get away. Even with the use of drugs and alcohol there was always the next time. The next useless bull shit to put up with, the next wasting of a human being. No longer did I care about who won the so-called fight for freedom. We were all losers as far as I was concerned. The young people like me had a favorite phrase among ourselves that grew out of that desperate loss.
“Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”
There was no event or disappointment, including death, that could not be somewhat assuaged with the utterance of that phrase.
An order came down to the 1st to send a com marine of lower rank TAD or temporary assigned duty to Yokosuka, Japan for seven days. I got the nod and was told to report to the marine barracks at the big naval base and attend a class on some antiquated piece of communications gear. It was just another ridiculous quota that had to be filled. Since I was becoming the old man in grade as a corporal, the new section chief, a Mexican who had made the marines his career, decided I should go. Perhaps also figuring in the mix was that I, despite my attitude, was known to have a bit of intelligence. That would make me a good stand in for the 1st when it came to the technical stuff. As far as I was concerned I couldn’t believe my luck. I welcomed the chance to get out of Vietnam for a week.
I arrived at the little operations center at the air strip and presented my orders. After waiting a while, I was told to grab my gear and board a jeep just out the door. I rode out onto the tarmac to an area where a big Air Force cargo jet was being loaded with aluminum crates.. Hopping out of the jeep, I went to the little side door under the wing and offered my orders to an Air Force Tech Sergeant standing by the pull down steps. The Sgt. glanced down at the orders and looked up at me.
“You going to Japan?”
“I guess I am,” I replied.
Having already turned his mind to something else, like what kind of chow he would get for lunch, the Sgt. simply jerked his thumb up and said, “Get aboard.”
Inside the hold of the huge plane there were large wheeled metal slabs mounted on tracks that ran along the deck from the front to the back. They were used to slide the cargo on and off. A couple of small fold down benches made out of nylon straps and aluminum tubing were hung on each side of the bare bulkheads for any passengers and that was it. No windows, only the back doors and ramp large enough to drive armor or semi trucks on.
As another young marine showed up for the flight the load masters continued to shove stacks of aluminum crates aboard until we were full up with cargo. The doors closed and we took off.
The hold was dimly lit by a couple of small red bulkhead lights and it was quite cold. After coming out of the tropics and flying for about an hour, I felt like I was freezing my ass off. The crew remained forward in the sectioned off nose of the plane while the other marine and I rolled down our sleeves, propped our feet on the cargo and hugged ourselves to stay warm. We hoped that the flight would be quick. It was not. The other marine got up and started walking back and forth in the space between the cargo and the bulkhead, trying to stay warm. He eventually paused beside a tall stack of the aluminum crates and began fooling with one of the attached tags. He stood there for a long while and I wondered what could be so interesting about a cargo tag. Finally, returning to the strap bench with a look of astonishment on his face, he said, “Man, you know what all this cargo is?”
I shivered a little, “What ?”
“Man, these are bodies, KIAs, we’re on a morgue shipment of American dead from graves registration.”
Suddenly we both knew why it was so cold. I slowly removed my boots from the body in front of me and wondered if it was the dog handler I had helped carry out of the bush.
The constant whine of the jet engines filled the air as I studied the deck. Without looking up I said, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.” The other marine just nodded and studied the deck as well. The two of us never spoke again until we parted upon landing at Yokota Air Force Base in Japan.
In my bush fatigues and floppy hat, wearing once black boots that were scuffed tan from use and not really giving a shit, I was put through a rigorous customs search. The young Air Force guard went through every single item that I carried and then searched my person as well before allowing me to move on. I received many a second look from the spit and polished military personnel coming and going at the busy air base but not one person messed with me. I did not bother to salute nor speak. Simply presenting my orders and silently going where directed I almost dared anyone to get in my space. Straight from the cargo of the dead, I didn’t care what anyone thought. What the hell could they do to me anyway, send me to Vietnam?
It was late at night as I rode a military bus for about two hours through one continuous stream of multicolored neon lights with Japanese writing in characters that were completely foreign to me. As the only passenger on the bus I passed through the outskirts of what I figured to be Tokyo. I followed the coastal congestion through Yokohama and further south to the big naval base at Yokosuka and its Marine Barracks. When I reported in the duty marine showed me to an isolated and unused part of the barracks where I unrolled a mattress, made a rack, locked my gear in a locker, and slept.
The next day, wearing the same attire and with the same attitude, I was sure that this strict marine unit would reprimand me. Marine Barracks, throughout the Corps, was known for its spit and polish, but the reprimand never happened. Sometimes I would be asked who I was. I would simply say that I was TAD from Vietnam. That was the end of it no matter where I went on the base. Not one person accosted me, though I looked like military rabble.
I found my class when it started and went to it when I was supposed to, sometimes falling asleep. But even that was ignored because, just as I had expected, it was a typical bull shit quota class on some old piece of gear that was no longer used. The lifer who had ordered it was so out of it he didn’t know that and anybody who did was not senior enough to tell him.
Everything I did, I did alone. I knew no one and wanted it to stay that way. Occasionally, at the almost vacant NCO club, some sailor would initiate a conversation from the next bar stool just long enough to find out where I was from. Having found out, they would silently smile for a moment and politely excuse themselves. There was no problem with that, in fact I welcomed it, for deep down I knew it didn’t mean nothing anyway.
Passing through the week of class and learning nothing was a skate since the classes didn’t last a full day. I had time to visit the Great Buddha down in Kyoto and take a train ride to Tokyo. Once I had a steam bath and massage followed by a visit to a little bar in downtown Yokosuka. The owner, a beautiful madam, tried to saddle me with a young beginning prostitute. After drinking a lot and buying the young girl drinks which I knew were only tea I went to a hotel by myself. Prostitutes were no use to me and never had been. Not because I was otherwise adequately serviced, but because they just didn’t do anything for me.
Those things I did in a couple of days. Mostly I just wandered around, whether on base or off, watching the people and always figuring that they had no idea of the things that existed beyond their bubbles of concern. To them it didn’t mean nothing either. Why should it mean anything to me? But always in my mind I knew that I didn’t have long to sit on the fringe of real life and speculate as I watched it come and go. For the poor white trash of Appalachia it would be back to the Nam where such stuff was ridiculous and never rested well on the conscious to begin with.
The week in Japan went by so quickly that later it became like a dream that couldn’t be remembered two minutes after waking.
After reversing my mode of travel used to get there, minus the crated war dead, I found himself back in Vietnam not sure that I had ever been gone. Nothing had changed. Only it was hotter and drier as the summer approached.
During this time when forced into competition with other marines for advancement I always did well by just simply regurgitating the material that had been fed to me. My attitude never changed but when the facts of the data were posted I found myself at the top of the list, an irony lost neither on myself nor the lifers. The CO of the 1st must have thought that it was a big deal though for it wasn’t long until I was given a plaque proclaiming me to be the marine of the month. Somewhat amused with all the hoopla and the trinkets being passed around, I wondered why this corporal with so much time in grade was getting all this candy. Had they forgotten that I had been turned down for Sergeant once already because I wouldn’t lie and say that I intended to make a career of the crotch. In fact I had been so emphatic in my rejection of that idea that the much surprised lifer on the board who asked the question had to ask it again. When I answered with the same emphatic, “No!”, the lifer, with an angry look on his face, told me that I could go.
I was probably the senior corporal in the whole company but after the marine of the month thing it wasn’t long until I was informed that I made sergeant and would receive my warrant at a company ceremony the following day.
The next morning the com section LT, an ex-school teacher from Boston, formed us up and made sure I was presentable. The company commander, an older grey haired captain who was a mustang, which is an officer that has risen through the lower ranks, came out of the company hooch, said a few words and then ask me to step forward. The old captain walked up close and squarely faced me.
“Corporal Hayes, you have earned this promotion and I am pleased to give it to you. I know that you will not stay in the Marine Corps but I hope that you will use this promotion to inspire you in your civilian life to achieve success wherever you can. Congratulations.”
I replied, “Thank you, sir,” as I accepted the warrant, shook hands and saluted.
Looking a little tired and somewhat sad the captain then told the company 1st Sergeant to dismiss us and went back into the hooch. It was done and I, while I treated the whole thing respectfully, knew that the only reason that I had gotten promoted was because it would have been an embarrassment for me to remain a corporal. The old captain was not, nor had he ever been, part of my problem. Because he was old and near the bottom of the back side he could be trusted to not try and gung ho his way to greater things at another’s expense. Just like me, he was simply trying to get through Vietnam and back to the world. I saw it written on his face and heard it in his words and for that I am thankful. Other than that the whole thing meant nothing nor, more importantly, did it change anything.
I moved my gear into the best part of the hooch with Winsonsky, known simply as Wins, the only other buck sergeant in the section. Sgt. Blume, after shipping over for Staff Sergeant and ten thousand bucks, had rotated back to the states so I took his empty rack underneath Wins.
Wins was the wire chief. He taught me how to string wire and use a set of gaffs to get up the poles. I was stringing and troubleshooting com wire in addition to filling in the operator slots. The wire jobs took me out in order to keep the landline communications to other units in the valley working. It was work that was done only during the day and it was almost always uneventful.
Wins came from Idaho and, like me, was from the poorer class. We got along good. We wanted the hell out of the Corps and Nam and that shared passion was enough to make it easy to share the same half hooch. Roderno was now alone in the corporal’s quarters in the other half of the hooch so most of the time we just left the adjoining door open and shared the whole hooch.
Cpl. Charlie Roderno had come to the 1st a little later than me. He was a tech also but, like everybody else, cross trained in all the com section responsibilities. Younger and shorter than me and a bit on the heavy side, he pulled his weight just as well as the next guy. For someone so young in a combat zone Charlie had a calm demeanor and was slow to anger, a fact that would sometimes make him the butt of cruel jokes that ass hole marines liked to play. That and the fact that he had a wife and baby made Charlie seem a little different than the ordinary jarhead. Recently he had gone on emergency leave to attend his father’s funeral. He had died suddenly, yet through all that grief and responsibility Charlie had remained solid and kept an even keel. Or, perhaps because of those things, he saw a bigger picture than most and it steadied him.
With my aloofness, I matched well with Charlie and his steady temperament. Maybe that was why we tended to pull together. Whatever the reason, Charlie was the closest friend that I had. We often got high together as we let the crotch and the war go by, talking about other things like philosophy and why we thought things were the way they were. Rarely would we resort to the “it don’t mean nothin” equation. Mostly because Charlie wouldn’t allow it. He would challenge me on it in a way that left me vulnerable and made me look at myself. Because of this tendency to try to get to the root of things Charlie was not the average marine’s favorite kind of guy. Although in a different vein, his analytical interests put him almost as aloof as me. In a marine combat unit such qualities can be very hard to come by and to have one, let alone two complementing individuals of such nature was rare. For me, in a land of worthless endeavor and sham, along with a multitude of other undesirable qualities, my relationship with Charlie had value. And that made it important where no real importance seemed possible. As a result of that it turned out that even I grew a chink in my armor.
When the war was not heating up around Quang Nam Province life in the 1st got so boring that almost any excitement was welcome. It was also a good time to get into downtown Da Nang to the giant military PX and buy some hard liquor. Charlie and I hitched a convoy into the crowded city. We got off just on the far side of the local shanty town next to the PX and cut across the squalor of the makeshift village.
Betel nut chewing women, stirring a pot of who knows what, squatted in front of their shacks constructed of junked military material. The pungent smell of nuoc mam or fish sauce was so thick that it would turn your stomach if you weren’t used to it. Peasants, chased from their homes in the countryside, mostly by the US military, saw us with our M-16s coming. With betel nut blackened teeth, they smiled up as we walked by. After we passed they frowned at each other and spit long streams of black juice into the dust beside their fires. There were no men but there were plenty of kids, not even waist high, that crowded around us, begging and trying to reach into our pockets on one side while just as many tried to tug our watches off on the other side. Some of them reached up little packets of 10 marijuana joints for sale, $1.00 mpc. Other kids, in broken English, would hawk their sisters who were waiting among the shanties, hoping that their little pimps would bring some money home for rice. Most were starving. Once healthy people who had proudly owned and farmed their own land were relegated to lives of abject poverty, their land now part of an American free fire zone.
Charlie and I hurriedly got through this shameful result of the war and past the guarded gate into the PX. We bought a fifth of Jack Daniels and a couple of cartons of cigarettes. After looking around at all the cheap electronics and jewelry we made our way back out to the street and caught another convoy going back south. As we passed the road to the 1st and hill 821, we jumped off and caught a six by or large troop truck that took us back to the unit. We did pretty good, in and out and still had time for evening chow, which we skipped, knowing that the COC bunker would have plenty of night rations later if we got hungry. Instead we secluded ourselves in the hooch, cracked the Jack Daniels, and proceeded to get wasted, eventually crashing late in the evening.
In the morning I continued to sleep through the explosions and shaking hooch, Tim rushed in and roughly shook me awake.
“Hurry up and get your radio and flak jacket on, the ammo dump is going up.”
As the hooch continued to shake from the explosions I hurriedly got geared up while the prior night's Jack Daniels caused its own kinds of explosions in my head. So far the fire and explosions had not engulfed the 2000 pound bomb bunkers and the 1st was just trying to stand by and hope that it could be contained. I and Charlie, who was no doubt also hung over, were sent to the area closest to the ammo dump to secure the generator and make sure it kept working. We just sheltered against the sand bagged diesel machine, smoked a cigarette, shot the shit, and listened to its chugging while explosions rocked us. Hungover and just another day in Vietnam, neither of us were very concerned because we knew that there were worse things. After about an hour of increasingly heavy explosions we received word that the 2000 pounders were about to go up. We should get the hell out of there.
Loaded with all that we could carry, the whole 1st battalion swept through the wire into no man's land under a blazing sun,. Moving as quickly as possible with small breaks for logistics and communications, we swept west through the bush until we were about a click or one kilometer out. We started digging and looking for any kind of shelter that we could find. Recognizing the radio from its antenna, some officer stomped up and told me to get a dust off for one of the scout dogs that was dying from heat exhaustion. A dog was considered more valuable than a man but even so, after I told the chopper the coordinates and which direction to come from, he radioed back that they would not come into the area--it was too hot. So what could I do--fuck it, it don‘t mean nothing, man nor beast--I rogered the chopper and informed the waiting officer who cursed and stomped away.
By the time I had found a crater to take refuge in the explosions had grown huge, bigger than anything I had ever seen. Every now and then I would stick my head up to observe the spectacular effect, a huge flash of orange filling half the sky and pushing pulsating waves of oxygen as the concussion and matter expanded outward. Dropping back down into the crater, I plugged my ears, opened my mouth to equalize the pressure, and waited for the blast of the concussion to pass. In the relative quiet that immediately followed I heard little noises, almost like rain drops, hitting the top of my helmet and along the shoulders of my flak jacket. I looked to my shoulders and saw hundreds of tiny pieces of warm grey black shrapnel falling. It was actually raining shrapnel.
Eventually we had to quit that location too and evacuate to another marine unit further away. The explosions continued for two more days and could be seen and heard from all over that part of South Vietnam.
Once or twice I had stood and listened to distant B-52 strikes and felt the ground tremble. Now I had a very small taste of what it was like underneath those falling bombs.
We got back to the 1st battalion area and there was not a thing left standing except the face of the career advisor’s hooch where one went to ship over. That was the place where many lifers got their beginning. I was not superstitious but it seemed like a bad omen because everything else was completely flattened. Pieces of shrapnel, both large and small, lay everywhere. So it was back to the hot and dusty tents with everything in short supply….. until the Seabees arrived to rebuild the base.
The Seabees came, and along with them better supply. We of the com section bartered old radios for some things and stole other things. One night I was caught coming out of a mess refrigeration unit with a big stick of bologna stuffed in my trousers. The mess private who caught me just took it and told me not to come back. That’s the way it was. If you wanted something you either stole it or traded for it. The Navy Seabees had everything and the marines had nothing.
Trading and stealing from the Seabees, I, Wins, Charlie, and a new corporal just in country managed to get together enough construction material to rebuild our NCO hooch because the higher ups had decided not to have it rebuilt. Many lifers felt that the com section was too elitist and needed to be brought down a notch so the Seabees only built one large hooch. Everyone lower than a staff sergeant was supposed to stay there. But the four of us, as was often the case in the Nam, ignored the policy and re-built our own hooch anyway. It was a nice place decorated by blow torch seared plywood walls. A nicer hooch than some of the higher ups had because we did it ourselves, including procuring the material. No doubt that was the reason that after about two weeks I and the other three were ordered out and into the crowded big hooch while a couple of lifer Ssgts. who weren’t even from the section moved in. I had been on the edge for a long time about my commitment to the war and the corps. That pushed me over the line and a hatred grew inside as I and the others pulled the combat duties that the lifers avoided. They would set inside their confiscated hooch, misfire their weapons, and almost shoot their toes off. I knew that the green machine had lost me no matter what bonus was offered. When they asked me to ship over I would tell them to stick it up their ass.
Not long after we were kicked out of our hooch I had a chance to do just that. I became short enough for the pitch. The career advisor called me into his office to lay the bait and contracts out which were the standard $10,000 and promotion to Ssgt. plus choice of my next duty station. What a lie I thought. I would get the money and the rocker stripe but the next duty station would only last long enough for a transfer back to the Nam to take place. I felt so good about being short enough to receive such enticement that I didn’t even tell the lying bastard to shove it. I just simply laughed in his face and told him there was no way in hell that I would ship over. The guy obviously heard that a lot for he seemed to expect it and let me go quickly.
Another way I exhibited my attitude was by refusing to wear my sergeant chevrons. Several times I was ordered to wear my rank but I simply said that I would, then ignored it. After a while they just stopped trying to get me to do it.
It was July 1969 and I had been in WESTPAC or western pacific for 10 months of my 13 month tour. My attitude had deteriorated significantly over time. I was on the edge a lot, getting into fights with other marines, many times over nothing. Maybe it was time to use my R&R or rest and relaxation. I had a choice of Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, or Hawaii. Only the married people who wanted to see their wives went all the way to Hawaii and most of the other places didn’t speak English so I choose Sidney, Australia.
For six days I left the war in Vietnam and took in the different life in Sydney. The feeling my absence from the Nam and the Marine Corps brought about was overwhelming. I passed TVs parked on the streets of Sydney so pedestrians could watch the first man on the moon one July afternoon of 1969. I only glanced at it for a moment and had a few words with a spectator before moving on. It meant nothing to me and only brought about an angry feeling. Big deal, I thought, but it won’t save one dumb son of a bitch in Vietnam from the bullet that’s got his name on it.
At first I mostly just wandered around luxuriating in the clean clothes and the reduced stress. At an event that was somehow partly sponsored by the American government, I met a girl. There wasn’t an abundance of them but I had gone with the attitude that I was going to come away with a girl. My own efforts had not gone well and this event was specifically for Australian girls that wanted to meet American servicemen. Luck for me there wasn’t an abundance of GIs either because sitting right behind me at the introduction, waiting for me to turn around, was young Alicia Mays. She was a pretty redhead with nice legs, short hair and a touch of freckles under deep blue eyes. About the same age as me, she had a modest demeanor and moved with a quiet confidence on a trim fit frame of average height.
Alicia lived with her parents in a suburb of Sydney called King’s Cross. It was a working class neighborhood not unlike the same in most American cities. The one time I went there to meet her parents I was treated nicely. They ask me to join them for afternoon tea and I was a little surprised when I was served a fried egg and toast with my cup of tea. I did not realize that afternoon tea included a snack as well. They talked some about America but the subject of Vietnam was avoided. I liked her parents and could see that those good people were simple working folks who did not warmonger like many of the Americans. Also it seemed that in Australia there was less class difference and consequently a stronger social bond among its citizens.
Alicia showed me many of the sights of Sydney but, unlike the temporary girlfriends of many servicemen on R&R, she did not stay at my hotel. However we spent much time there making out and having room service bring drinks and ice plus whatever we wanted to eat. Sometimes we would use the dining room but most times we were out and about or in the hotel room that had a nice balcony with a view of the city and harbor. Despite a couple of romances of prior years I was still rather sexually inexperienced. Alicia seemed not to mind, only checking my clumsy moves of seduction. We usually met at the hotel lounge in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day and evening together. Always late in the evening Alicia would take a taxi home.
The few days of R&R with Alicia flew by and when it came time for me to return to Vietnam it was one of the hardest things that I had ever had to do.
Before I left I gave her a pearl necklace that the shopkeeper who sold it said would really stun her. The guy had said that it was the type of gift an Australian would give to his fiancé. With lots of money left over and nowhere to spend it, I was glad that I could buy it because Alicia had in no way tried to use me. Truly she was interested in me for what I was. She had always been nice to me as well, sharing her city, and keeping me company during my brief period of freedom, even taking me to her home and parents which was unheard of for Nam soldiers on R&R. When I gave her the necklace the last time I saw her she was stunned. A beautiful string of cultured pearls, they misted her eyes as she accepted them and whispered a thank you. I kissed her goodbye, told her I would be back, and, with a heart as heavy as I could ever remember, left to catch the shuttle to the airport.
After refueling in Darwin and noticing Australians quite different from the ones I had seen in Sydney, I looked down at the Great Barrier Reef as we flew over. I wished to God that I did not have to cross that ocean back to Vietnam. Being in a very nice situation for those few days and feeling life once again was a joy beyond words. Returning to the non-life of the Vietnam war was a hugh downer and, consequently, my emotional strength was at a low ebb.
Back in the Nam I isolated myself and became more depressed but I still wrote a letter almost every day to Alicia telling her that I would return to Australia. Finally I got a letter back that was nice and thanked me for my mail but not much else. Not long after that I got another letter from her that thanked me for the time I spent with her and let me know that she valued it. But she said that she would not wait for me because she was sure that I would find lots of girls when I returned to the United States. She wished me luck and hoped that I would not let that make me sad. It didn’t make me sad. I even started to come up from my depression but I never forgot her, always remembering and appreciating her as one of the most important girls I had ever known.
Things at the 1st had not changed much during my brief absence except Charlie had managed to get some good weed which he shared with me when it came time to burn the toilet drum.
In the Nam, while on base, instead of digging a hole underneath the wooden cut out toilet seat, the severed bottom portion of an empty 55 gallon oil drum was placed instead. When it got full someone had to drag it out, pour kerosene in it and burn it, frequently stirring the burning waste in order to ensure that it all burned.
The section chief told me to see that the shiter was burned. He passed on his responsibility and avoided being the one to give the order, leaving me holding the bag. Word spread fast in the com section when it was time to burn the shiter and not an idle soul would be found….always. I could have ordered any of them to do it anyway but I hated authority. So just going through the motions to see if maybe a miracle would occur and someone would be available I made a quick check through the section anyway. I found everybody extremely busy as expected. Tasks that had sat idle for months were now under urgent repair by young men who were unable to meet my eyes as they stated the super importance of their work. No doubt, I figured, it was as good a day to get stoned as any. I took the good pot Charlie had given me, drug the shit drum out myself, got it burning nicely and, while the vile odorous black smoke enveloped me, fired up the joint and stirred away. No one came near enough to know what I was smoking, that’s for sure. Tens of gallons of burning human waste, sending out a plume of heavy dark smoke ripe with the smell of human excrement mixed in urine, took care of that. Excellent weed it was too. So fantastic that when the job was done I was feeling quite hungry and proceeded directly to the mess hooch for chow. I didn’t even have to stand in line for when I got within ten feet of anyone they howled their displeasure at the smell and immediately vacated the area. With a whole large picnic table in my own vacant private section of the large mess hooch I thoroughly enjoyed my chow. Then I went back to the com area, stripped my clothes, which I would later give to one of the mamasans or Vietnamese laundry women to launder, and took a shower. To hell with the lifers, I burned shit and enjoyed it more than anything they could come up with. One day I would get through this soup sandwich and rejoin the world free of those who shoot their toes off while playing with their guns like a bunch of kids. I thought back to the ship over interview I had recently attended and laughed so hard that Charlie heard me and yelled over, “Pretty good weed, huh?”
The war started to heat up after the 1st went up with the ammo dump. Even over by Marble Mountain it was hot as I stood and watched the F-4 phantom jets working out. They took turns diving in and releasing their loads of napalm. Tumbling in their wake and hitting the ground, the canisters erupted in fiery red and yellow explosions as the jellied mass of burning chemical was spread over the area. It stuck to everything it touched. There were villagers all through that area and I wondered if they had been moved into the city to form another slum or had they just been told to leave. If they had simply been told to leave that meant that beneath those jets were a bunch of black charcoal mounds of flesh to be added to the daily body count of enemy dead. Some marines called them crispy critters. Fuck it, it didn’t mean nothing I decided and went on about my business which by then was just trying to make it to my rotation date less than a 100 days away.
At night the sounds of the Vietnamese 155 battery next door and the big marine 175 howitzer on the next hill across the valley became more frequent. It became harder to get any real sleep. When the 175 went off the ground would tremble slightly and the sound wave would jar the hooch with a bang. Throwing rounds deep into the countryside helping some poor son-of-bitch try to avoid dying for his country, the big guns many times got the range wrong or the radio operator or some other screw up plotted wrong and only expedited the poor son of a bitch’s passing.
I could easily tell the different guns from the sound of their discharges so one night when a couple of big explosion at the 155 battery sounded different I got up, went outside, and looked over at the ARVN compound. It was not easy to see past all the gear and bunkers scattered about but there were a couple of fires burning and except for the light from the fires, it was completely dark. The siren blasted which told me that something was definitely going on as I ran back inside the hooch, donned my gear and grabbed the PRC-25 radio always stationed at the end of my rack. Since I was assigned to the battalion commander I only needed to muster outside the COC bunker and wait for the colonel as most everyone else was running for the perimeter. The colonel appeared and learned that the ARVNs had been hit by sampers using satchel charges. ARVNs were very lax about security and this time it had cost them. A couple of Viet Cong had slipped into the battery and tossed a couple of satchels loaded with explosives into the hooches of sleeping soldiers, killing some and wounding many.
Over a land line the ARVNs got permission to bring their wounded over to the 1st for treatment and minutes later stretchers of wounded soldiers began to appear around the battalion sick bay which was located only a few feet from the COC bunker. No way they could get all the wounded in the little sick bay so there were stretchers of wounded scattered all over the ground outside. Every now and then the colonel would appear at my side to see if any word had been passed over the radio. But mostly he remained in the sickbay hooch as I waited outside among the wounded. The 1st had only one Doctor and a couple of corpsman so the casualties didn’t move very fast. In fact I couldn’t see how they were moving at all. In the beginning the doctor had managed to get a couple into the hooch and since then he had disappeared while the others quietly waited. That was the thing that struck me. How quiet their wounded were. Americans would have been raising hell. They couldn’t all be unconscious, there were too many. If they were unconscious there were going to be plenty of dead before the night was over.
A couple of feet away was one wounded soldier lying on his side, still on the stretcher. The back of his white t-shirt was dark with blood. I studied him for movement of any kind and found none. Probably dead I figured.
How many ever made it to the doctor, I did not learn. The colonel saw that the medical people were doing all they could and that he was probably just getting in the way so he and I headed out to the perimeter. We stood by for several hours, occasionally sending or receiving reports. The VC had gotten away and were probably back in the village.
Eventually the alert was called off and on the way back inside I noticed that all the wounded were gone. Wondering how many had died and how many had been able to just walk away after the alert had been called off, I kicked a canteen cup that somebody had dropped and muttered, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”
The ARVNs wanted to survive no less than the Americans in that God damned part of Indo-China and they didn’t get a pass out after a year. It was their home for as long as it lasted and they took every opportunity to better their odds. Most of them had no more choice about being in uniform than I did. Sometimes I would stare into their eyes as I passed them on the road There was so much hatred there that I stopped looking after a while. Their looks told me that it was my fault that they were either about to die or lose an arm or a leg. Their officers tended to be suck ups to the higher ups in the American force and thought nothing of sacrificing their men in order to shamelessly gain some shiny trinket. It was a similarity among those of all nations that mongered for war. A similarity that became recognized by the kid from the Appalachian hardwood forest as more of a threat to peace than any communist domino.
Not long after the 155 battery got hit the security platoon patrol returned with a couple of ARVNs they had stumbled on and killed. What they were doing unarmed in a free fire zone no one knew nor cared it seemed. Their bodies were brought all the way to the H&S company hooch and dumped in the dirt outside the hooch door for display. As the lifers gathered around and tried to decide what label to attach to them I noticed that these dead still had all their ears. Since they weren’t American it was soon decided that how they were labeled didn’t really matter so their deaths by friendly fire were quickly forgotten--just more unknown meat that needed to be removed from the hot sun.
Two nights later the 1st got theirs’ when we were hit by mortars. I had just been reassigned to a bunker line radio and luckily got through the incoming fire and to my assigned bunker. I checked in without a scratch and monitored the net as other posts checked in. I heard a new voice operating as the Six and knew something was wrong because Charlie was assigned to the colonel. What the hell was going on? Maybe Charlie had switched with someone for some reason. Being directly connected to the battalion CO had its benefits as far as safety was concerned but some didn’t like the extra scrutiny from that high up. Maybe Charlie had switched because of that.
We took 86 rounds of 82mm mortars that night and many wounded, mostly from the administration section which had taken a couple of hits right next to their hooch. Two people were killed in action. One was a captain who had only been in country two weeks. He was standing up outside his hooch and giving directions when a big hunk of shrapnel took out a large chunk of his neck, killing him instantly. The other one which I refused to believe at first was Charlie Roderno. Charlie and the Colonel had been running for the perimeter, coming in late as usual. An 82 took them both down. One of the colonels legs had been badly messed up but Charlie, who had been between the blast and the colonel, never had a chance. He had been riddled from head to toe. When they removed his radio, along with the worthless flak jacket, one of Charlie’s arms almost came off. They had almost made it to the bunker line when they were hit. One of the black grunts jumped out of the trench and drug the colonel in and then went back and got Charlie. He later told me that Charlie never knew what hit him. A couple of weeks after that the grunt received the bronze star with combat V for valor. I heard that the colonel, whose war was now over, received a purple heart and the same medal as the grunt who had saved his ass. Charlie got an aluminum box. His war was over too.
The marines of com. section didn’t take it lightly. Maybe with time we would be able to proclaim that it didn’t mean nothin’ but right then it hurt. I was convinced that Charlie’s life was wasted by a country and it’s people that were nothing but a bunch of lifers in civilian clothes. People that could not see more value in a human life than the value that was placed in the huge industrial markets and their power hungry military customers. People like Charlie literally fell through the cracks in such a system. Those warmongers with pockets full of war booty knew very well about the people like Charlie, myself, and others. To assuage their guilt they fabricated those bright shining lies about heroism and honor and even created equally false and shiny trinkets to support those lies. I was fit to be tied with my anger and the belief that me and all the people like Charlie were only a bunch of dumb son-of-a-bitches stumbling through a bloody mess so some lifer, military or civilian, could enrich themselves and later use those riches to hold themselves a class above the ones who stupidly did their bidding. With Charlie’s death an attitude hardened that had been a long time coming. Consequently, along with the anger and disillusionment that were my steady companions, I no longer felt that I was just as decent as the next person. Even worse, I didn’t care.
With time, dope, and alcohol most of the com section slowly got back to a semi-even if somewhat shaky keel but I was not so lucky. I was more anxious about many things, particularly my rotation date and being able to make it back to the world. All pretense of discipline slipped out of me. Seldom was I included in the command loop anymore because in the Nam one thing that soldiers developed quickly was the ability to know when someone had had enough. So it was with me as I sank deeper into a kind of agitated depression that led to nights I could not sleep at all. When I could sleep I would be jerked awake by nightmares about murder and revenge. Those nightmares troubled me deeply, not because murder was wrong, but because I didn’t want to be held up from rotation on a legal hold. Knowing that I was unraveling I desperately wanted out of there before the worst could happen. On top of that, I got sick with what I thought was malaria. Fever and chills with diarrhea so bad that I didn’t even bother to dress. I just went naked to cool off and clean up under the water hose. Gulping water that came out of my ass almost as fast as I swallowed it. followed by chills seconds later, I wrapped up in poncho liners while lying and shaking on my rack. The corpsman said that I only had dysentery and gave me some little white pills which were of no help. I wouldn’t even have bothered with the corpsman except the chaplain found me squatting under the water hose and ordered me to go. After a few days it passed and, feeling a lot weaker, I returned to my normal pissed off self along with the depression which had for a while taken a back seat to my physical ills.
I drank even more with hangovers becoming my normal state but I was no weird agent. Throughout the Nam that had become a way of life for many who fought the war. I had only progressed to the point where it was easily recognized and therefore most others left me alone to do what I saw fit. Short fuses like the one I had developed were easily seen and wisely avoided. However no one ever had to take an assignment because of my situation. I was still the senior person of the lower ranks and the others in the section were under me. Just as I had done with the burning of the shiter, I avoided participating in any kind of command structure and either did it himself or deemed it foolish bullshit and eliminated it entirely by simply ignoring the order. Perhaps because even the lifers could see that what was happening to them was really doing no one any good, they left me alone. The LT stayed completely out of the way and his com chief avoided all but the most basic interaction with me. When armed people have had enough of the bullshit in a losing war, survival is all that is really important and anything beyond that is unwise to push.
The days were winding down for me with a couple of weeks left until my rotation date so I was surprised when I suddenly received orders to rotate back to the States. Hallelujah my time had come ...just in time. It took a couple of days to check out of the battalion and return my weapon and other gear. During that time I was able to have conversations with some of my men on a level a little different than the usual. There was a sadness in our exchanges, sadness that they were being left behind, that we couldn't all go. But we had been living the life of survival long enough to appreciate that right then, at least, one of us was going to make it out. However none of that sadness would overcome the relief I felt when, with my orders in hand, I jumped into the jeep and was driven away to stage for the freedom bird back to the world.
Much like it had been in Okinawa where I had staged to come in country, I waited for two days at staging to learn when I could fly out. My time finally came but I was told that something was wrong with my orders. They said that I would have to return to my unit and get it straightened out.
Livid with anger and almost as plagued by fear, I hitchhiked back to the 1st with a worthless set of orders in hand. To me it was another example of why lifers remained in the military. The simplest task they could screw up so bad that no one in civilian life would tolerate them.
There I was, back at the 1st, belonging to nobody, with no weapon, and no idea of how long I would be there or what was wrong with my orders. Matters were made worse by the fact that my replacement, a Sgt. from Quang Tri, was already there and I didn’t like him. To me he acted like everything was normal and that he was just going to shape up the guys in the com section concerning their job performance. He acted like a lifer and I could tell that when it came his time to ship over he would do it. The same guys I refused to give orders to, this newcomer wannabe lifer was going to “shape up.” I felt a deep resentment for having to watch the change plus I was stuck in a limbo combat zone and so nervous about getting killed in a place where I wasn’t even supposed to be.
A couple of days later, as I was returning from another night of drinking, I came across the new sergeant in the shop hooch and told him just what I thought about him coming in there and changing things so he could get on in his career. Drunk and again unable to control my temper, an argument developed. I took a swing at him that missed. My swing was countered by a quick hook that caught me squarely on the jaw. However it had little effect as I smothered any further punches when I closed in and grabbed the guy. We began careening around the shop, knocking over equipment and breaking things until a couple of others, along with the com chief, came in and broke it up. The chief demanded to know what had happened. The new guy told the truth by saying that I had come in raising hell and took a swing at him but I claimed that the other sergeant threw the first punch. Nothing got accomplished that night about who was at fault but the next day the LT, having received a report of the incident, called both me and my replacement in and asked what had happened. Again the same stories were repeated but from our demeanor and the way things had been going it was fairly obvious that I was lying. That’s when the LT told us that if we didn’t come clean he was going to have a court martial to squeeze out the truth. I just angrily glared at the floor for several moments until the LT dismissed us.
The next day, sure that I was going to be put on a legal hold and about as depressed as I had ever been, I was lying on my old rack, staring at the tin roof. Tim came in carrying the new set of orders, just cut from administration. He had just happened to be in the COC when they arrived and immediately grabbed them, saying that he would deliver them.
Tim and I had known each other a long time since we both had come to the 1st not far apart. That meant that Tim would be the next one in the com section to rotate. Classified in a lower MOS than me, Tim had never been able to get the rank that more desirable specialties attained but he had humped when he had to and skated when he could just as well as anybody. He and I had always understood each other and got along. Looking up at Tim standing there with a smile on his face and the orders in his hands I flashed on the day I had burned the shiter. I recalled that it was Tim who had played it up most about being involved in urgent work. Both of us had known that it was simply a ruse to avoid the shit detail but I had accepted it and moved on to do it myself. Tim looked steadily at me, handed me my orders and said, “This is payback shithead, hurry up and get your gear, I’ve already checked out a jeep from Motor-T.”
I had never unpacked so I grabbed my sea bag and we quietly went through the back of the company area, found the jeep and birded out of there. God bless Tim and all the other lowly ranks just like him.
Back at staging again and expecting to be called back at any time it didn’t take me long to get the travel section of my orders this time. After one more sleepless night I had them and clearly saw what had been going on with the mix ups. Now I was going back to the world on a troop ship as part of a marine regimental troop withdrawal. It was part of Nixon’s political stunt, pretending a troop withdrawal when in fact all the marines on the float were being replaced and rotated anyway. At least I was going to get out of there, regardless of the means, and that was what I held on to. I and 1800 other marines were crammed aboard the USS Thayer and another 200 were put on our flag ship, the USS Tripoli. It was a flat top helicopter carrier. When we pushed off from Deep Water Pier in the Da Nang Harbor I felt a little like I was born again.
That first night at sea under a moonlit sky, as we sailed past the same mountains that I had flown over on my way in, was far different from the nights in country. In country there were skies that sometimes had rockets overhead riding a red flame to the tune of a high pitched whine. If you heard them you wondered who got it. If you didn’t you got it. Now at sea the night was quiet, cool and smelled of salt with a peacefulness that came from the knowledge that it was over. That was until a couple of hours later when I saw the same mountains again pass above the port side, which meant we were traveling in circles. What the hell was going on? Why couldn’t they, for once, do something in the way it was supposed to be done? With the dawn came the news that we had to return to the harbor to net load more marines from an amphibious launch. By the time all the screw-ups got straightened out and the marines were loaded we had been at sea two days and hadn’t gone anywhere. Maybe we weren’t really leaving but being relocated somewhere else along the coast. Finally during the second night the coast line passed from sight as we really set sail.
With a two day layover in Okinawa to take on water and food, yet not allowed to leave the ship, it took 22 days to reach the California coast line. That was going all out most of the time except when we skirted a typhoon and pitched up and down and around so bad that it was very easy to lose somebody and not even know it. Lifers completely disappeared during that action.
The two ships drifted into their piers and tied up. I had no idea where we were but it was almost November and the weather was sunny and warm so we must be somewhere in Southern California. Coming across the Pacific we had gone from hot to cold and now back to warm. We were a salty looking bunch for the small marine band and the few USO girls on the pier with lemonade and donuts. Who those refreshments were for was a puzzle to me because I knew that I sure as hell wouldn’t be allowed to join them. So I yelled down and had the girls throw some of the donuts up which I and the others along the railing wolfed down. The little band puffed and beat out a couple of marches in their ragged red uniforms, looking like castoffs specifically picked to welcome a bunch of castoffs.
The whole thing seemed to me like a Norman Rockwell poster with characters that had somehow come to life and gathered on the pier for a photo shoot. What could any of them possibly know about the place the people aboard that big boat were coming from? Had they an inkling of that truth they surely would not have been there dressed in their Baby Janes and floral dresses, serving lemonade and donuts. To me it was just another surreal example of Americana that had never made it inside the loop of what really was.
When we disembarked all the lifers that had stayed hidden away at sea reappeared and started giving orders to marines who visibly didn’t give a damn. I had lost my hat and my blonde hair had started to come over my ears. The colonel who was trying to get us lined up told me to put my cover on. I told him that I didn’t have one, expressing it in such a way that indicated if the colonel wanted me to have a hat he would have to give up his own. Certainly not pleased but shut down, the colonel quickly ended the lifer lessons as we were herded aboard buses and taken to Camp Pendleton where we had come from a little over a year and a different lifetime ago. Long haired and bare headed, standing in my first formation at Pendleton, I heard them announce that anyone with less than 6 months remaining on their active duty time would be discharged as soon as the paperwork could be done. With less than 5 months of active duty left, I figured it was the sweetest sounding thing I had heard since it all had begun more than 2 years and 7 months ago. For the next nine days I wandered around in an almost dream like state.
I was placed in a group just like himself, ones that were already gone but still physically there as far as the Marine Corps was concerned. Except for my boots and the color of my shirt and pants I might have been a civilian laborer working on base for the day. Never wearing a hat because no one ever gave me one and never getting a haircut despite frequent threats to hold me back if I didn’t, I loafed around knowing by then that they were not going to saddle themselves with the likes of myself any longer than they had to. When I was out alone roaming the base on foot an occasional shocked lifer would jump in my space and demand to know what outfit I was from so they could fry my ass. Squarely facing them with a blank look I would tell them that I was from RELAD which was short for released from active duty. The way they almost swallowed their tongues and turned red, sometimes even stomping their feet like a small child was just too sweet.
Finally all in one day I processed through hours of paperwork dressed in my winter green uniform and signed the DD-214 that honorably released me from active duty in the United States Marine Corps. With a silent thank you to Tim and hope that he was close behind mixed with the intense sorrow that Charlie didn’t make it, I squeezed into a limousine full of other discharged marines. We exited Camp Pendleton for the last time. Just to make sure that it was real, I took a look back and watched the gate grow smaller.
Having plenty of war booty in the form of a fat wallet I rode up to LAX and bought a first class ticket to D.C. to visit my mother. She had left West Virginia while I was away and was now teaching high school in a Maryland suburb of DC. After showing her that I was still alive and with little fanfare, I returned to the airport and caught the next hop to the Appalachians of West Virginia. During the hour long flight I gazed down at the rolling landscape of the hardwood forested mountains. For some reason they always seemed to make me sad with their isolated demeanor, sometimes half hidden in wispy fog. This time was no different, only more so. Those age old hills were impervious to the goings on from outside and had not a hint of the momentous events that crisscrossed the globe and what I had been through the past year. Yet that is where it all began for me. Being alive was all I could bring back to their intractable presence. Amidst such loss and guilt that just didn’t seem fair.
I came from one of the many sweeps for poor white trash and blacks conducted throughout Southern Appalachia to feed the Vietnam war. Having no clout nor any real means to get out of the poverty of the hills or avoid the draft, I was easy prey for the “Uncle Sam Wants You” roughriders at my local draft board.
I reported for induction into the Army and the sergeant in charge told me that the Marines were short on men. He said that if I agreed to join them for 3 years I wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam. Otherwise, the sergeant said that I would be beating the Vietnam bush within 3 months. I fell for the spiel, beginning a journey that still quickly took me to Vietnam. Taking a last look back at the pretty stewardess standing in the exit doorway I said my goodbyes to the world.
The first thing I noticed after that goodbye was the heat coming from all directions as it poured down and was reflected back by everything it touched. Everyone seemed to be in motion as if the sun demanded it in order to avoid being cooked dry by its wash.
My group was quickly met by a gunnery sergeant as he hopped out of a jeep, gathered us together, and herded us toward our next staging area. All along the hot tarmac I could see camouflaged jets landing and taking off. The same for helicopters. It was one big beehive of sweat, flashing afterburners and noise.
Soon we passed another group of marines peering at us through a chain link fence just off one side of the tarmac. Looking very much out of place amongst all the purposeful activity and uniform dress, they wore jungle fatigues and floppy bush hats. With their jungle boots scuffed tan from wear and never having seen any polish, their gaunt yellowish faces, colored by the anti-malaria pills, they looked out from masses of long hair and mustaches. But it was their eyes and demeanor that really set them apart and belied their youth as they amused themselves, watching the new guys as if watching their favorite animals at the zoo. Pressed up against the links in the fence, like some band of detainees curtained off from the more respectable lots of society, their looks unsettled me in a way that’s hard to explain. Like I was part of some exhibition of the condemned. I wanted to ignore them but couldn’t help staring back. Reviewing their faces, I saw that most seemed to be there just for the sake of being there. No particular reason or motivation registered on their visages, just that they were there and accounted for, to hell with anything more definitive than that. That was until I met the eyes of one a little taller and dirtier than the rest. With no amusement reflected in his dark eyes, he sang out in a clear lilting voice without a hint of comedy, “You’ll…….. be…… sor……ry.” The others along the fence only stared on as if the tone of his prediction rang with an air that some things just were ...and not a one of them doubted it.
We eventually got parked in a huge hanger and over the next few hours were in turn sent out over Vietnam far and wide to replace those who were going home, or who had been killed or wounded. When it came to my turn I was sent only a few miles southwest of the air strip.
I was very much welcomed when my jeep arrived at my new unit. No predictions of sorrow were heard for me who had come to freshen up this unit. Fresh newbies generally meant a little less hazard for those trying to get out of the Nam someway other than a crate or a hospital plane. Making it through that year and getting the hell out of there was what it was all about. Not complicated at all I soon figured as I settled in and started ticking the days until I could get back to the world. Nor was it complicated or long before I got my first taste of the war, that cherry from the hillbilly country of West Virginia.
As the pop flare drifted to earth a ghostly light was cast over the green wet terrain beyond the perimeter of the 1st support battalion, 1st Marines. Those along the bunker line facing the base of Hill 821 peered through the misty monsoon rains from underneath ponchos and anything else that might help them find a little comfort in the muddy trench. Assigned to the communications section of H&S Company, I was catching more than my share of perimeter duty. Since I was the cherry of the outfit that was nothing unusual in the Nam but it sure as hell had little to do with repairing radios which was my MOS or military occupational specialty. After scanning the dark perimeter I sloshed a couple of steps along the trench and entered a bagged and roofed bunker where I had unloaded the PRC-25 radio pack at midnight. A couple of waterlogged grunts or infantrymen from security platoon were wrapped in their ponchos and setting on ammo crates trying to stay dry and avoid the chill of the monsoon season. I felt no pity for them, I was cold and soaked too.
“How come you guys aren’t in position?”
“Aw hell, give us a break corporal, there ain’t nothing out there but maybe a rock ape or two,” one of them said, “you ain’t been here long enough to know.”
“I been here long enough to know that if you two don’t get back to your positions you’ll find out that you're not as short as you think you are.”
If it’s anything most marines try to avoid it’s having to stay in Vietnam past their rotation date on a legal hold because of some personal screw up. So both grunts reluctantly picked up their gear and went back down the bunker line to their positions.
I knew I had a lot to learn and I hated to push seasoned grunts but I had to make a situation report and how the hell could I do that with two posts vacant.
I picked up the radio handset, keyed it, and quietly said, “Yankee one, yankee 3, sit-rep all secure, over.”
“Three, one, roger, out,” came the reply.
Back outside the bunker under the constant rain I resumed my watch and tried to shelter my M-16 rifle as much as possible. Rifles could be tricky enough about jamming even when in good condition but so far I had not had any trouble with mine. It appeared that the government had finally gotten the problem fixed after lots of young men had died and were found with a jammed rifle in their hands. Even then there was no hurry it seemed, just another poor dumb son of a bitch dying for his country as General Patton so eloquently once put it.
As the descending flare was about to hit the ground and die I reached into my cargo pocket, removed another one and slammed the base of it with the heel of my hand. A whooshing sound traveled skyward followed by the loud pop of the illumination chute and again the barren kill zone beyond the concertina wire lit up. Scanning the kill zone for movement, I wondered what was really going on in Vietnam. What I was seeing was not jiving with what I had heard.
Ducking down in the trench, I lit a cigarette, cupped my hand around the glowing ash, and smoked. My watch told me that soon my shift would be over and I could make chow before hitting the rack. The patrol should be on its way back by now according to the checkpoints that I heard over the radio. Looking in the direction from which I knew they would come, I could see the wooden poles used to open the wire and the glowing eyes of the sentry dog staked out there, but not much else. Suddenly, about 200 meters in that same direction I heard the ack-ack-ack and saw the green tracers of enemy AK-47 fire immediately followed by the rapid burst and red tracers of several M-16s returning fire. The booms of the 12 gauge double ought bush gun could also be heard from the return fire. From the listening posts the radio net came alive with contact reports and as soon as I could log in I, now with the radio on my back, rushed down the bunker line and passed the word to the grunts who were already standing by. After another burst of M-16 fire mixed with M-79 grenade launcher explosions there was a lull in the action. Everyone on the radio net was instructed to remain in place and wait for further word.
As the siren atop the COC or Commanding Officer’s Communication bunker in the rear sounded the trench line began to fill up with marines. In the distance I could hear the funny sounding alarm of the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) 155 Howitzers and knew that they too were bee hiving and lowering the big guns. The once dark sky was now full of the sound and illumination of what seemed like a hundred pop flares going off as we all waited, staring out at that cleared ground beyond the wire.
Shortly, a helicopter gun ship showed up and mini gunned the area with a curtain of lead that looked like one big red screen descending to the ground from the dark sky above the flares. We called them spooky gunships and they could put a round into every square foot of a football field sized area in less than 30 seconds. Nothing above ground could withstand such withering fire. An eerie quietness took hold, broken only by the zipping sound of the spooky mini guns as the terrain was raked with lead. Earthbound marines looked skyward as if it were Zeus or some other God practicing his art from above.
When the chopper ceased fire and left, dawn broke so quickly it was almost like waking up from a dream. Colonel Blevins, the battalion CO, was now on the line and I could hear his operator, another com section marine named Tim, relaying orders for the patrol to break cover, reconnoiter for killed and wounded, and come in.
Usually no higher than a sergeant led patrols but it was Lt. Stansworth, the security platoon CO, leading this time and apparently he had been wounded by the first volley of AK fire. Word was that it was only superficial, having grazed his shoulder. Stansworth, a former force recon marine, was about as gung ho as they came and it was typical that he would be in the front during a firefight. That little action would later get him his captain’s bars.
After a bit the patrol radioed that they had two confirmed kills and were bringing them in. All eyes were on the gate in the wire when the patrol appeared, half carrying, half dragging two body laden ponchos. The Colonel left the trench and met Lt. Stansworth just in front of my position near a little bridge over the trench where they dropped the bodies. A small crowd began to gather, mostly officers but a few enlisted as well. They were snapping pictures as Tim and I stood off to the side and eyed the lumpy ponchos.
After rolling up the bloody sleeve of the L T’s jungle blouse and examining the dressing Col. Blevins asked to see the bodies.
The larger one was opened first, exposing a young Vietnamese male dressed in khaki shorts, a black long sleeve shirt, and sandals made from rubber tires. It was hard to recognize any features of the face which were now just a pair of cloudy dark eyes set in a ripped and bloody mass. It looked as if the double ought had done a thorough job clear through. From the open back of the skull there were parts of reddish grey matter spread on the poncho. Only a dark hole existed where an ear had been cleanly severed. The rest of the body was not in much better shape as evidenced by pools of half clotted blood that were starting to darken the mud around the edges of the poncho. But for the clothes, what lay there could have been the half finished job of a butcher suddenly called away from the back of his shop. Except for the occasional whirring sound of a camera advancing film it was utterly quiet as the Colonel pointed to the other smaller body and nodded for it to be exposed.
A large conical hat covered the head with the rest of the body in remarkably better shape than the first. Dressed in black silk pants and shirt and wearing the same kind of sandals, known as Ho Chi Minhs, it appeared from the large patch of blood on the shirt that this Vietnamese had been hit only in the upper torso. When the Colonel reached down and lifted the hat covering the head, a long stream of silky black hair that was caught in the chin strap cascaded down to frame the face of a lovely Vietnamese girl of perhaps sixteen. Her eyes were closed and except for the bloody shirt she might have been asleep. Everyone, including the Colonel, stared in open amazement. Not a camera shutter was launched nor a word said. A scene which no mere camera could capture lay before us and it was something that only we who experienced it could realize. Something that was and forever would be present to us youngsters of war standing there in shock. Always present in its absence, for it was our girlfriend, our sister or our buddy’s sister, the dream girl we wanted to go home to, or the one we hoped to find when we got there. It was a piece of us that lay there dead. Without another word the Colonel quickly placed the hat back over the girl's face and left. There was no weapon found.
Those first weeks in Vietnam saw me trying to carry out the duty that had been placed before me but as far as technical radio repair was concerned there was not much that I could do. We had neither the parts nor the equipment necessary to perform such operations. If we couldn’t cannibalize from radio to radio we simply shipped it up to the regiment for repair. Because of that techs like me usually ended up working down into the radio operator, or wire stringer jobs.
From Sgt. down rank was not a big deal in the com section which ran the COC bunker, the hub for all communications coming in or out of the battalion, and also monitored the nets of some nearby units.
The 1st, along with a few other units, was responsible for protecting the approaches to the Da Nang airstrip throughout that area immediately south of Hill 821. It was a large area that began at the east end of a valley that ran many kilometers into the countryside between lush green mountains. A pretty land dotted with rice paddies and small villages, crisscrossed by meandering streams. To stand atop one of those mountains under a sunny tropical sky and look out over that broad expanse of beauty one would think it one of the most peaceful places on earth. But from that same spot in the dead of night one would see red and yellow explosions along with the red and green tracers of small arms fire decorating the sky in many spots that had appeared so pretty and peaceful during the day. It was said that the Viet Cong owned the night. It was then that they showed just how jealous they were of their property.
All these things I was beginning to acknowledge. Things that one had to see to understand since they previously had not been fairly described by the drum beaters back in America. I was able to see that the gung ho marine and unit cohesion usually held up as an example in the states was almost non existent there in Vietnam. Nobody was unhappy when someone’s rotation date came, for to get out of there was the big prize, though the melancholy of being left behind was hard to avoid too.
When I first got there I tried to get along with everybody and quickly got to know several of the young men in my section. But probably more because I had grown up that way than because of the different timelines everybody was on, I didn’t get very close to many. Also, as I would later learn, getting close to someone complicated the dismissiveness necessary to keep the hurt and shame at bay when people died or the fear got too big. But just the situation we found ourselves in, fighting a war that was unnecessary and much too one sided, seemed to provide enough glue to hold us together to some extent.
Since I was a quick corporal I had the privilege of sharing half a hooch, a plywood structure with a GI tin roof, with two other corporals, Amos Rooter and Charlie Roderno. Charlie had come in country only a couple of weeks after me but Rooter was already half way through his tour. The other half of the hooch was partitioned off for the two sergeants in the section, Bob Winsonsky and Alan Blume. Because of that and our shared NCO status I got to know these individuals a little better than the others of lesser rank who all shared one large hooch.
One commodity that was never in short supply unless you were in the field was beer. Every evening after chow the club would open and it was there at the crowded tables that most social activity took place over countless beers served by pretty Vietnamese girls wearing ao dais. An ao dais was a beautiful combination of a dress split up the sides worn over long silk pants. The beer was paid for with MPC or military payment currency which was as good as real money and even preferred to the national currency which was the piastre.
When it came to the military culture there were quite a few more divisions than one would find stateside. Racial divisions in the war zone were more pronounced than in America because in Vietnam everybody had a gun. Vietnam was a white man’s war but the blacks, being easier to draft, got caught up in it disproportionately. Black soldiers took far more of the casualties than the whites, which along with the age old discriminatory practices of American racial prejudice caused considerable resentment and sometimes even rebellion. It was not unheard of to have actual firefights between the races although that was rare. But because in America it was usually only “the man” who had a gun and in the Nam everyone had a gun, suppression of the black race was far harder to accomplish. That led to a milieu where blacks and whites went their own ways absent the authority of the white cop with the only gun. However these segregated conditions did not exist in the bush where all were green and most interracial friendships were forged. But once back inside the wire the old standards and separations quickly reappeared, even among close friends.
Another divide could be found between those who used marijuana and those who didn’t. I had of course heard of pot and while in California had even known some marines who used it. I had tried it a couple of times before I went in the marines but didn’t experience any effects from it and considered it a waste of time when I could be drinking beer. Consequently I could always be found with the mostly white “juicers.” At least that was the way it was before Corporal Rooter turned me on.
Rooter, one of the corporals whom I had shared a hooch with, had been transferred to the marine air wing at Chu Lai but had literally dropped in aboard a chopper for a quick visit at the 1st while on some kind of temporary duty in the Da Nang area. As luck would have it or Rooter already knew, probably the latter, there happened to be a USO show at the club that evening. Almost always these shows would consist of a bare bones plywood stage and a Korean band with at least a couple of pretty girls in short skirts. They danced and sang American songs for the beer drinking, hooting jar heads gathered there. Laughter, macho jokes and too much to drink were standard fare at these events so Rooter and I quickly squeezed into the little club for some fun and beer.
After the show we returned to the hooch and were rapping about life down in Chu Lai when Rooter suddenly asked, “You want to get high?”
“What do you mean,” I replied, “we just drank all that beer?”
Rooter smiled and rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, but that was beer, I got some really fine Chu Lai weed. You ever try any weed?”
“Yeah I tried it a couple of times, it doesn’t do anything for me, can’t see what all the hoopla is about.”
Rooter eyed me skeptically.
“Yeah, where did you ever smoke any pot?”
“Back in the world, West Virginia,” I said. I was about to elaborate but Rooter burst out laughing before I could go on..
“West Virginia! You mean you never smoked any Nam weed? You really are a cherry. Come on let's go outside and smoke a couple of joints. Then you can tell me it doesn’t do anything for you.”
“Are you crazy,” I said, “you mean you’re packing around marijuana?”
“Hey take it easy, you’d be surprised at the number of heads around here. It’s cool. Come on new guy, I’m going to show you what’s happening.”
Once outside the hooch behind some refrigeration units Rooter pulled up the bloused leg of his jungle trousers and pulled a little cellophane package of pre-rolled joints out of his sock and fired one up. After inhaling deeply and holding the smoke in he passed the joint to me and exhaled.
“Take a big drag and hold it in.”
I did as instructed and as I drew on the joint the pot seeds compacted in it would sometimes explode in a small shower of sparks that for a split second would light up the darkness around us. Back and forth we passed the joint until it was too short to smoke and Rooter ate it. Neither of us said anything for a while. We just sat on the ground looking at the sky.
Rooter finally asked, “Man, how you doing, good weed huh?”
“I don’t feel a thing. Just a little bloated from the beer.”
“You're shitting me,” Rooter exclaimed as he went back into his sock, produced another joint, lit it, and passed it directly to me. I took the joint and after a long drag offered it back to Rooter.
“Hell no, not for me. I’m totally wasted,” he said, “wow, man, not getting off…..you smoke that one by yourself.”
“OK, but this shit don’t affect me, I tell you.”
We sat there for several minutes, Rooter quietly looking around at the night as I puffed on the joint, holding it in and then exhaling. When I had smoked about half of it a sudden rush overtook me. Nothing like the change overtime brought on by alcohol. This was like one moment the world was one way and the next it was different in the extreme. Suddenly I felt incapacitated and no matter how hard I tried I remained that way. Time took on aspects that were foreign to me and I lost track of how long we had been there but it must have been some while for when I looked down I saw the half smoked joint dead in my hand. I looked over at Rooter who was staring at me with a big shit eating grin on his face. Reaching the joint toward him and in the most serious voice I said, “You can have this back now.”
“Did you get your ass kicked, cherry,” Rooter laughingly said, “still don’t affect you, huh?”
I now definitely knew better than that.
“Lord have mercy, I am smashed. What the hell am I going to do. I can’t hardly move.”
Laughing, Rooter stood up, reached down, and grabbed me by the upper arm to help me stand.
“Come on, let's get back inside the hooch, you look like you're ready for the rack.”
After Rooter got me to my rack he left, never to be seen again, just off into the night or back to Chu Lai or some other unit. He wasn’t even carrying a weapon. Just that ass kicking Chu Lai weed like some vagabond who had quit the war and was now just touring the places he had been.
I laid there half on and half off the rack, almost blinded by the brightness of the overhead bare bulb. I felt as if I had been planted there and could only with time grow out of it. It still must have been early because I could hear some coming and going around me so I tried to act like I was just relaxing. It seemed so long ago that I was outside with Rooter but every indication was that it had only been a few minutes.
One thing was for sure, I was not immune to pot and for the first time in my life I was stoned. Fully dressed with not even my boots off, I was held up by the rack, and felt like I was made of stone. No longer would I consider such a feeling ridiculous. The section chief, a very tall thin black Ssgt. walked in, took one look at me peering up through the glare of the overhead light and knowingly smiled. Slowly shaking his head and wagging his pointing finger, he knew I was stoned. And I knew that he knew but not a word was said, then or afterward. The chief just quietly turned around and left. He was to rotate out soon and that was enough to keep him quite no doubt. Besides, we had known each other before he had made staff and became the section chief. Although I didn’t know for sure, I figured that he had had a few puffs himself over the past year.
In the beginning I didn’t smoke often but when I did I was amazed at the number of guys I knew who also smoked. The next time I decided to indulge I and Charlie Roderno, my remaining hooch mate after the transfer of Rooter, ended up in a remote ditch between the club and the wire. It was completely dark but the ditch was full of people and when the matches and Zippos were struck to keep the joints going I recognized half the com section. I also found out why not many blacks came to the club. Most of them were out in the ditch doing pot instead.
I didn’t do the communal pot thing much after that. Most of the time I only smoked with guys from my own section and to my knowledge, just as with beer, it never happened outside the wire. Usually I and another section member would sit out late at night, share a joint, and talk about the war and what we were going to do when we got out of it, Spending an hour just rapping and watching the pop flares shoot up into the sky and slowly drop back to earth, we felt removed for a little while.
Christmas and New Years Eve I was hidden away in the night watching the tracers fill the sky as marines all around hill 821 turned their guns to the air. These little gigs were a slim hold on the world across the sea. It all evaporated quickly once Christmas and New Years had come and gone but when my mother sent me a small box of cheeses for the holidays that little box went a long way as it was shared a little at a time among the section. That Christmas of 1968 and many of those that followed would always be associated with that gaily packaged box of cheeses resting under a hanging M-16 rifle and a couple of Christmas cards. I took a picture of it for my personal Christmas card that I eventually gave to my step kids many years later. That was before they and their mother left me, not having been with me even a year.
There are places and times in people’s lives that seem to take on a significance that one looking on might find odd. But for me, as meager and poor as it was in a war zone, that Christmas of 1968, along with the yuletide cheeses, became the last Christmas with any meaning. At that point in my tour I was still struggling to get along and remain a part of the World which I considered to be the USA. But my grip was not as tight as it had once been. Now instead of an angel atop my Xmas centerpiece there was a gun. Things had changed.
Time inside the wire was slow and that meant time to try and fill the empty feelings that nagged. But when I stepped beyond the concertina I was as full up of bone and blood as I could stand. The 1st had people a few clicks out into the bush every night on patrols and listening posts. And then there was the observation post beyond that. I had been on them all, humping the radio because the grunts had a hard time keeping anyone who could operate the radio, change batteries, and keep track of the different callsigns and frequencies. Long hours spent in the COC bunker assured that a marine from com section was up on all that stuff.
LPs or listening posts were the worst. Three guys with rifles, grenade launcher, starlight scope, and a radio were sent a couple of hundred meters out and a little ways up hill 821. They would find a spot, settle in and try to see what was going on, reporting every hour on the situation. No digging in or any of that defensive stuff. Just quietly hunkering down and trying to freeze in place for hours on end. The joke was that you listened until you heard them coming, reported it, and hoped they passed you by without knowing it. However it rarely worked out that way. In reality a listening post was fodder, no more, no less, and if you were unlucky enough to be there when Victor Charlie came you were unlikely to survive any fight from such an exposed position. But it would eliminate the element of surprise. Everybody hated listening posts and knew that it was a throwaway job with a posthumous purple heart as its only reward. Once when I thought I heard someone creeping through the bush my heart pounded so loud that I had to listen between heart beats. Peering in the direction of the sound for a couple of minutes I discovered it was just an insect moving among the weeds a few feet from my ear.
There were definitely other people out there in that darkness. Other LPs and at least one patrol. The fuzzy green mess seen through a starlight scope was almost useless at being able to define which was which. Back in the COC bunker the watch commander had a map and was supposed to keep track of everyone’s position. I knew that was not really effective because I had been humping on some patrols where the grunt sergeant in charge would tell us to just lay down and sleep. Consequently our location was not accurate..
I had almost killed some of my own men when I was on net control in the COC bunker because of that kind of bull shit. One of the LPs was reporting movement at a place where there was not supposed to be anyone. With the watch commander asleep in another section of the bunker, and not wanting to wake him, I took it upon myself to order grenades launched. Soon as I heard the explosions the screaming on the radio began.
“Stop that Goddamned shit right now!!”
Nobody was wounded but when they came in at dawn I was outside the COC bunker watching them pass. Although nothing was said, some very hard looks were exchanged. The watch commander never even knew it happened or if he did it was never mentioned. Just another example of some dumb son of a bitch dying for his country….. almost.
The 1st must have gotten some intelligence that indicated a threat to the observation post which was about 6 kilometers out. It was decided to pull an ambush on the far side of the hill that it occupied. Security platoon sent word that they needed a radio operator for the ambush but most of the lower ranks of the com section were already manning various radio posts and that left only a few NCOs and an officer. Officers, even within grunt units, never packed the radio so I, being the junior NCO, volunteered when the others firmly declined. A lieutenant that I had never seen was leading the ambush and that in itself was unusual. Plus a scout dog and handler were also going. Who was ambushing who, and why was a scout dog going on an ambush? I just chalked it up to Vietnam, the major American debacle where nothing seemed right. Altogether there were only eight of us who gathered at motor-t to board the truck that would take us out. The LT, me, and a corpsman plus five grunts, an M60 machine gunner, grenade launcher, dog handler, claymore man, and a rifleman. When we got on the truck one young black grunt was bitterly complaining, almost to the point of tears. He had only 9 days left on his tour and thought that it wasn’t fair to send him out when he was so short. He got no sympathy as the others ignored him and accepted the assignment as just another task to get through the best way they could. There was no joking around or any conversation as the LT rode in the cab and the rest of us rode in the back out the dirt road to the OP track. Black striped faces were serious, and except for the gear and black grease, we could have been a bunch of strangers sitting in a waiting room to see our doctor back in the world. Once we got to the little track leading up to the OP the truck dumped us and returned to base.
As the sun was setting and a tropical bluish green dusk was fast coloring our world we humped up the track to the OP and gathered around a burn barrel to receive our final briefing.. Suddenly a loud metallic sound interrupted the briefing. It took but an instant for us to see the live M79 grenade bouncing on the ground by the burn barrel. We scattered in all directions. The dumb shit carrying the grenade launcher had accidentally discharged his weapon but since the round traveled less than six feet before slamming into the barrel the safety mechanism had kept it from exploding. When we realized that everyone calmed down and the LT told us what we should have already known.
“Don’t load your weapons until we leave the perimeter.”
Not even an ass chewing for stupidity took place, probably because it wouldn’t have made any difference. Plus there could be much more stuff to come very shortly. Why put down one of the few men you had to fight it with? Nam was different from the gung ho bull shit back in the states. People actually got killed ...and not always by enemy fire.
The LT made sure that my radio worked, the claymores were ready to deploy, and that there was sufficient ammunition before leading us through the wire. Once outside he told us to lock and load our weapons. The handler and his dog walked point, stringing us out a little. The LT and I were in the middle going down the rocky foot trail toward the valley floor. It was almost completely dark but the monsoon season had passed so we had the stars and a small moon to see by.
I had never been off the road in that territory and didn’t know the terrain so I just followed the LT and hoped that he had read the map correctly. On a day trip out to the OP I had seen Vietnamese carrying loads on shoulder sticks so I knew there were people around there. But now the road was long gone. We wound around and up and down small hills, putting considerable distance between ourselves and the OP. The terrain was not bad and with the extra adrenaline the pace seemed easy but visibility was not good as we passed through tropical bush with no clear vision of anything but the person ahead. It was no wonder that we saw no sign of any human presence.
The narrow path resembled some sort of game trail that meandered through the undergrowth. Only the tops of palm trees could be seen, dark shapes outlined against the night sky. Eventually we left the trail and cut across a wide grassy corridor, the first place that I could see ahead to the the dog handler and the front of the patrol. The dog was obscured by the grass but in the faint light there was everyone else, strung out across the thigh high tropical meadow. Word was passed back to hold up because the dog had alerted on something. Everybody froze while the handler checked it out. I wondered what in the world could there be to check out in that darkness. The dog had alerted, something was wrong. How could one know anymore than that. I was not used to the scout dogs because they usually came in and went out on helicopters--far out, all over the Nam to the grunt units who lived in the bush. We were flanked by a small bushy hill on one side and a stretch of palm trees with the same dense undergrowth that we had just come through on the other. Realizing that we were very exposed I went from being anxious to just plain scared. When I returned my attention to the point I saw the muzzle flashes and heard the AK-47 fire coming from beneath the palms to the front. Almost simultaneously another series of flashes and sound came from the same tree line nearby. I dropped to the earth as the LT screamed to return fire. Hugging the earth but still managing to get my rifle raised I emptied my magazine in the direction of the tree line as the others laid down what fire power they had. Three magazines I went through in a couple of minutes, blindly, by rote, not thinking or wishing for anything but to please not die. I lived only within the all encompassing sound of the fire. Desperately trying to get more ammo from the bandoliers tangled around my chest, I began to discriminate the sounds of grenades from the launcher as they hit along the tree line. I thanked God for that dumb son of a bitch that almost blew us all up back at the burn barrel. Not to mention the M60 machine gunner I could hear firing furiously.
I couldn’t really see what was going on because I was so scared that I couldn’t raise my head out of the grass far enough to see much of anything. It must have been a full two minutes of withering fire before I heard the LT yelling to hold the fire. Still glued to the earth when the LT appeared beside me and told me to contact the battalion or the OP, I reluctantly sat part way up and flicked up the tape antenna on my radio. The LT ran off toward the point. I tried to make contact but got nothing, not even the sound of a squelch. I checked the antenna connection but that did no good either. That left only the battery so I rolled over and shrugged off the radio with the bandoliers of ammunition tangled around it. Always I went out with a new battery and logged in but this one must have been bad so I started un-taping the spare I always carried at the bottom of the pack. That’s when I felt it, a neat round hole in one side of the radio and a large jagged exit hole out the other side. The thing was useless, leaving us with no communications. The LT returned and said that the handler had been hit bad and wanted to know if I could get a med-evac. All I could do was show the bullet holes in the useless radio and mutter a few words. I was so scared and ashamed that I could hardly talk.
Amazingly there were only two wounded, probably because the attack had been a classic hit and run. The machine gunner had been hit in the lower left arm, a clean flesh wound with minimal damage. A field dressing would temporarily take care of it but the handler had a sucking chest wound and was barely conscious. The corpsman worked on him for what seemed like a long time, almost losing him a couple of times, trying to get him stabilized enough for carrying. He gave long odds on his survival if he wasn’t lifted out but the best that we could do was carry him back to the OP and call for a dust off there.
Nobody, including the LT, wanted to reconnoiter the tree line. If there were any VC bodies there they could stay there. Besides there were most likely booby traps as well. Somehow we had walked right into the ambush either by making too much noise in our approach or someone on the inside had passed the word about the operation. I wandered about all the drunk marines and pretty girls at the club but what the hell did I know, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. It took the rest of the night but we tied some ponchos together and took turns carrying the handler as his confused German Shepherd remained with whoever walked point. During my turn to help with the carry I listened to the awful wheezing and moans as the handler tried to breath. Many times we had to stop and let the corpsman work on him. I was glad to get away from that wheezing sound when I was relieved but the next time it was my turn I heard nothing. Knowing that the handler must be dead, I quietly cried and cursed God.
Near the OP we popped a red smoke grenade in the misty dawn light and yelled out who we were. Once inside, I got the coordinates and called in a med-evac with the OP radio.
As the chopper touched down another corpsman quickly jumped out and examined the handler lying there on the bloody ponchos. White that showed through his half closed eyes and lips that looked like they had been painted blue on his pale young face formed the vision that would always represent that mission for me. The exposed chest was still and covered with a mixture of dried mucus and blood. What had once been alive and loved by someone was now surely long gone.
Out in the valley, on a patchwork of different shades of green, the sun was starting to reflect from the numerous paddies and except for the noise and dust from the chopper it was so maddeningly serene that I wanted to scream.
Quickly and with the detachment of repetition the corpsman looked up at the LT and shook his head. The corpsman and a couple of grunts lifted the handler into a large dark plastic bag laid out on a stretcher and zipped it up. Now handling only cargo, the corpsman and crew chief raised the stretcher, shoved it through the open door of the chopper, and hopped aboard as it lifted off. The whole dust off had taken less than three minutes and I figured that was how long it took to get out of the war that way. So fast that I didn’t even know the handler’s name.
After the failed ambush I began to slide even more, smoking more pot, drinking more, and giving less of a damn about fighting the communist. What the hell was I doing there anyway. I had known from the beginning that it was messed up but I had thought that if I applied himself I could stomach it and move on. I watched the higher ups for a clue as to what this war was really about. It took very little time for me to become convinced that they had no idea either…other than to advance their own careers. From this conviction I developed a hatred of authority and class that would plague me from then on. Those in authority would throw my life away to gain an advantage in their quest for a bigger, better, and richer American dream. I may have come from poor stock and little family but Vietnam was showing me that there were some things that I could not stomach. Unforgivable things. That kind of unholy sacrifice for gain, dressed in the garments of patriotism, be it personal or national, was one of them.
I was not alone in those views. All through the war zone similar attitudes were developing. However I continued to follow orders whereas some others often refused and ended up in the brig. Many times for murder.
In a neighboring unit one staff NCO was so hated by his men that they faked an enemy attack then cut him down with a machine gun as he ran out his door to hide in a nearby bunker. Many of the murders, called “fragings,” after the fragmentation grenade, were done with hand grenades thrown on or under sleeping victims. Or simply by shooting them during a firefight or enemy attack. It was a terrible thing to do but it all started with the lies and the draft, then developed into a festering boil that eventually, in some cases, could not be contained. The majority of those murders were never prosecuted. And that along with a similar rebellion in the US helped end America’s involvement in Vietnam. But for the young people caught up in it at the time the damage was done. I was one of them. Despite my own feelings about the war, I had tried to comply with the bull shit. Now I only wanted out and away from those who willingly participated in it, lived by it. If I couldn’t get away physically I would do so mentally just as I had done with mind travel in boot camp on Parris Island. But the war was much bigger than boot camp and I found it impossible to get away. Even with the use of drugs and alcohol there was always the next time. The next useless bull shit to put up with, the next wasting of a human being. No longer did I care about who won the so-called fight for freedom. We were all losers as far as I was concerned. The young people like me had a favorite phrase among ourselves that grew out of that desperate loss.
“Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”
There was no event or disappointment, including death, that could not be somewhat assuaged with the utterance of that phrase.
An order came down to the 1st to send a com marine of lower rank TAD or temporary assigned duty to Yokosuka, Japan for seven days. I got the nod and was told to report to the marine barracks at the big naval base and attend a class on some antiquated piece of communications gear. It was just another ridiculous quota that had to be filled. Since I was becoming the old man in grade as a corporal, the new section chief, a Mexican who had made the marines his career, decided I should go. Perhaps also figuring in the mix was that I, despite my attitude, was known to have a bit of intelligence. That would make me a good stand in for the 1st when it came to the technical stuff. As far as I was concerned I couldn’t believe my luck. I welcomed the chance to get out of Vietnam for a week.
I arrived at the little operations center at the air strip and presented my orders. After waiting a while, I was told to grab my gear and board a jeep just out the door. I rode out onto the tarmac to an area where a big Air Force cargo jet was being loaded with aluminum crates.. Hopping out of the jeep, I went to the little side door under the wing and offered my orders to an Air Force Tech Sergeant standing by the pull down steps. The Sgt. glanced down at the orders and looked up at me.
“You going to Japan?”
“I guess I am,” I replied.
Having already turned his mind to something else, like what kind of chow he would get for lunch, the Sgt. simply jerked his thumb up and said, “Get aboard.”
Inside the hold of the huge plane there were large wheeled metal slabs mounted on tracks that ran along the deck from the front to the back. They were used to slide the cargo on and off. A couple of small fold down benches made out of nylon straps and aluminum tubing were hung on each side of the bare bulkheads for any passengers and that was it. No windows, only the back doors and ramp large enough to drive armor or semi trucks on.
As another young marine showed up for the flight the load masters continued to shove stacks of aluminum crates aboard until we were full up with cargo. The doors closed and we took off.
The hold was dimly lit by a couple of small red bulkhead lights and it was quite cold. After coming out of the tropics and flying for about an hour, I felt like I was freezing my ass off. The crew remained forward in the sectioned off nose of the plane while the other marine and I rolled down our sleeves, propped our feet on the cargo and hugged ourselves to stay warm. We hoped that the flight would be quick. It was not. The other marine got up and started walking back and forth in the space between the cargo and the bulkhead, trying to stay warm. He eventually paused beside a tall stack of the aluminum crates and began fooling with one of the attached tags. He stood there for a long while and I wondered what could be so interesting about a cargo tag. Finally, returning to the strap bench with a look of astonishment on his face, he said, “Man, you know what all this cargo is?”
I shivered a little, “What ?”
“Man, these are bodies, KIAs, we’re on a morgue shipment of American dead from graves registration.”
Suddenly we both knew why it was so cold. I slowly removed my boots from the body in front of me and wondered if it was the dog handler I had helped carry out of the bush.
The constant whine of the jet engines filled the air as I studied the deck. Without looking up I said, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.” The other marine just nodded and studied the deck as well. The two of us never spoke again until we parted upon landing at Yokota Air Force Base in Japan.
In my bush fatigues and floppy hat, wearing once black boots that were scuffed tan from use and not really giving a shit, I was put through a rigorous customs search. The young Air Force guard went through every single item that I carried and then searched my person as well before allowing me to move on. I received many a second look from the spit and polished military personnel coming and going at the busy air base but not one person messed with me. I did not bother to salute nor speak. Simply presenting my orders and silently going where directed I almost dared anyone to get in my space. Straight from the cargo of the dead, I didn’t care what anyone thought. What the hell could they do to me anyway, send me to Vietnam?
It was late at night as I rode a military bus for about two hours through one continuous stream of multicolored neon lights with Japanese writing in characters that were completely foreign to me. As the only passenger on the bus I passed through the outskirts of what I figured to be Tokyo. I followed the coastal congestion through Yokohama and further south to the big naval base at Yokosuka and its Marine Barracks. When I reported in the duty marine showed me to an isolated and unused part of the barracks where I unrolled a mattress, made a rack, locked my gear in a locker, and slept.
The next day, wearing the same attire and with the same attitude, I was sure that this strict marine unit would reprimand me. Marine Barracks, throughout the Corps, was known for its spit and polish, but the reprimand never happened. Sometimes I would be asked who I was. I would simply say that I was TAD from Vietnam. That was the end of it no matter where I went on the base. Not one person accosted me, though I looked like military rabble.
I found my class when it started and went to it when I was supposed to, sometimes falling asleep. But even that was ignored because, just as I had expected, it was a typical bull shit quota class on some old piece of gear that was no longer used. The lifer who had ordered it was so out of it he didn’t know that and anybody who did was not senior enough to tell him.
Everything I did, I did alone. I knew no one and wanted it to stay that way. Occasionally, at the almost vacant NCO club, some sailor would initiate a conversation from the next bar stool just long enough to find out where I was from. Having found out, they would silently smile for a moment and politely excuse themselves. There was no problem with that, in fact I welcomed it, for deep down I knew it didn’t mean nothing anyway.
Passing through the week of class and learning nothing was a skate since the classes didn’t last a full day. I had time to visit the Great Buddha down in Kyoto and take a train ride to Tokyo. Once I had a steam bath and massage followed by a visit to a little bar in downtown Yokosuka. The owner, a beautiful madam, tried to saddle me with a young beginning prostitute. After drinking a lot and buying the young girl drinks which I knew were only tea I went to a hotel by myself. Prostitutes were no use to me and never had been. Not because I was otherwise adequately serviced, but because they just didn’t do anything for me.
Those things I did in a couple of days. Mostly I just wandered around, whether on base or off, watching the people and always figuring that they had no idea of the things that existed beyond their bubbles of concern. To them it didn’t mean nothing either. Why should it mean anything to me? But always in my mind I knew that I didn’t have long to sit on the fringe of real life and speculate as I watched it come and go. For the poor white trash of Appalachia it would be back to the Nam where such stuff was ridiculous and never rested well on the conscious to begin with.
The week in Japan went by so quickly that later it became like a dream that couldn’t be remembered two minutes after waking.
After reversing my mode of travel used to get there, minus the crated war dead, I found himself back in Vietnam not sure that I had ever been gone. Nothing had changed. Only it was hotter and drier as the summer approached.
During this time when forced into competition with other marines for advancement I always did well by just simply regurgitating the material that had been fed to me. My attitude never changed but when the facts of the data were posted I found myself at the top of the list, an irony lost neither on myself nor the lifers. The CO of the 1st must have thought that it was a big deal though for it wasn’t long until I was given a plaque proclaiming me to be the marine of the month. Somewhat amused with all the hoopla and the trinkets being passed around, I wondered why this corporal with so much time in grade was getting all this candy. Had they forgotten that I had been turned down for Sergeant once already because I wouldn’t lie and say that I intended to make a career of the crotch. In fact I had been so emphatic in my rejection of that idea that the much surprised lifer on the board who asked the question had to ask it again. When I answered with the same emphatic, “No!”, the lifer, with an angry look on his face, told me that I could go.
I was probably the senior corporal in the whole company but after the marine of the month thing it wasn’t long until I was informed that I made sergeant and would receive my warrant at a company ceremony the following day.
The next morning the com section LT, an ex-school teacher from Boston, formed us up and made sure I was presentable. The company commander, an older grey haired captain who was a mustang, which is an officer that has risen through the lower ranks, came out of the company hooch, said a few words and then ask me to step forward. The old captain walked up close and squarely faced me.
“Corporal Hayes, you have earned this promotion and I am pleased to give it to you. I know that you will not stay in the Marine Corps but I hope that you will use this promotion to inspire you in your civilian life to achieve success wherever you can. Congratulations.”
I replied, “Thank you, sir,” as I accepted the warrant, shook hands and saluted.
Looking a little tired and somewhat sad the captain then told the company 1st Sergeant to dismiss us and went back into the hooch. It was done and I, while I treated the whole thing respectfully, knew that the only reason that I had gotten promoted was because it would have been an embarrassment for me to remain a corporal. The old captain was not, nor had he ever been, part of my problem. Because he was old and near the bottom of the back side he could be trusted to not try and gung ho his way to greater things at another’s expense. Just like me, he was simply trying to get through Vietnam and back to the world. I saw it written on his face and heard it in his words and for that I am thankful. Other than that the whole thing meant nothing nor, more importantly, did it change anything.
I moved my gear into the best part of the hooch with Winsonsky, known simply as Wins, the only other buck sergeant in the section. Sgt. Blume, after shipping over for Staff Sergeant and ten thousand bucks, had rotated back to the states so I took his empty rack underneath Wins.
Wins was the wire chief. He taught me how to string wire and use a set of gaffs to get up the poles. I was stringing and troubleshooting com wire in addition to filling in the operator slots. The wire jobs took me out in order to keep the landline communications to other units in the valley working. It was work that was done only during the day and it was almost always uneventful.
Wins came from Idaho and, like me, was from the poorer class. We got along good. We wanted the hell out of the Corps and Nam and that shared passion was enough to make it easy to share the same half hooch. Roderno was now alone in the corporal’s quarters in the other half of the hooch so most of the time we just left the adjoining door open and shared the whole hooch.
Cpl. Charlie Roderno had come to the 1st a little later than me. He was a tech also but, like everybody else, cross trained in all the com section responsibilities. Younger and shorter than me and a bit on the heavy side, he pulled his weight just as well as the next guy. For someone so young in a combat zone Charlie had a calm demeanor and was slow to anger, a fact that would sometimes make him the butt of cruel jokes that ass hole marines liked to play. That and the fact that he had a wife and baby made Charlie seem a little different than the ordinary jarhead. Recently he had gone on emergency leave to attend his father’s funeral. He had died suddenly, yet through all that grief and responsibility Charlie had remained solid and kept an even keel. Or, perhaps because of those things, he saw a bigger picture than most and it steadied him.
With my aloofness, I matched well with Charlie and his steady temperament. Maybe that was why we tended to pull together. Whatever the reason, Charlie was the closest friend that I had. We often got high together as we let the crotch and the war go by, talking about other things like philosophy and why we thought things were the way they were. Rarely would we resort to the “it don’t mean nothin” equation. Mostly because Charlie wouldn’t allow it. He would challenge me on it in a way that left me vulnerable and made me look at myself. Because of this tendency to try to get to the root of things Charlie was not the average marine’s favorite kind of guy. Although in a different vein, his analytical interests put him almost as aloof as me. In a marine combat unit such qualities can be very hard to come by and to have one, let alone two complementing individuals of such nature was rare. For me, in a land of worthless endeavor and sham, along with a multitude of other undesirable qualities, my relationship with Charlie had value. And that made it important where no real importance seemed possible. As a result of that it turned out that even I grew a chink in my armor.
When the war was not heating up around Quang Nam Province life in the 1st got so boring that almost any excitement was welcome. It was also a good time to get into downtown Da Nang to the giant military PX and buy some hard liquor. Charlie and I hitched a convoy into the crowded city. We got off just on the far side of the local shanty town next to the PX and cut across the squalor of the makeshift village.
Betel nut chewing women, stirring a pot of who knows what, squatted in front of their shacks constructed of junked military material. The pungent smell of nuoc mam or fish sauce was so thick that it would turn your stomach if you weren’t used to it. Peasants, chased from their homes in the countryside, mostly by the US military, saw us with our M-16s coming. With betel nut blackened teeth, they smiled up as we walked by. After we passed they frowned at each other and spit long streams of black juice into the dust beside their fires. There were no men but there were plenty of kids, not even waist high, that crowded around us, begging and trying to reach into our pockets on one side while just as many tried to tug our watches off on the other side. Some of them reached up little packets of 10 marijuana joints for sale, $1.00 mpc. Other kids, in broken English, would hawk their sisters who were waiting among the shanties, hoping that their little pimps would bring some money home for rice. Most were starving. Once healthy people who had proudly owned and farmed their own land were relegated to lives of abject poverty, their land now part of an American free fire zone.
Charlie and I hurriedly got through this shameful result of the war and past the guarded gate into the PX. We bought a fifth of Jack Daniels and a couple of cartons of cigarettes. After looking around at all the cheap electronics and jewelry we made our way back out to the street and caught another convoy going back south. As we passed the road to the 1st and hill 821, we jumped off and caught a six by or large troop truck that took us back to the unit. We did pretty good, in and out and still had time for evening chow, which we skipped, knowing that the COC bunker would have plenty of night rations later if we got hungry. Instead we secluded ourselves in the hooch, cracked the Jack Daniels, and proceeded to get wasted, eventually crashing late in the evening.
In the morning I continued to sleep through the explosions and shaking hooch, Tim rushed in and roughly shook me awake.
“Hurry up and get your radio and flak jacket on, the ammo dump is going up.”
As the hooch continued to shake from the explosions I hurriedly got geared up while the prior night's Jack Daniels caused its own kinds of explosions in my head. So far the fire and explosions had not engulfed the 2000 pound bomb bunkers and the 1st was just trying to stand by and hope that it could be contained. I and Charlie, who was no doubt also hung over, were sent to the area closest to the ammo dump to secure the generator and make sure it kept working. We just sheltered against the sand bagged diesel machine, smoked a cigarette, shot the shit, and listened to its chugging while explosions rocked us. Hungover and just another day in Vietnam, neither of us were very concerned because we knew that there were worse things. After about an hour of increasingly heavy explosions we received word that the 2000 pounders were about to go up. We should get the hell out of there.
Loaded with all that we could carry, the whole 1st battalion swept through the wire into no man's land under a blazing sun,. Moving as quickly as possible with small breaks for logistics and communications, we swept west through the bush until we were about a click or one kilometer out. We started digging and looking for any kind of shelter that we could find. Recognizing the radio from its antenna, some officer stomped up and told me to get a dust off for one of the scout dogs that was dying from heat exhaustion. A dog was considered more valuable than a man but even so, after I told the chopper the coordinates and which direction to come from, he radioed back that they would not come into the area--it was too hot. So what could I do--fuck it, it don‘t mean nothing, man nor beast--I rogered the chopper and informed the waiting officer who cursed and stomped away.
By the time I had found a crater to take refuge in the explosions had grown huge, bigger than anything I had ever seen. Every now and then I would stick my head up to observe the spectacular effect, a huge flash of orange filling half the sky and pushing pulsating waves of oxygen as the concussion and matter expanded outward. Dropping back down into the crater, I plugged my ears, opened my mouth to equalize the pressure, and waited for the blast of the concussion to pass. In the relative quiet that immediately followed I heard little noises, almost like rain drops, hitting the top of my helmet and along the shoulders of my flak jacket. I looked to my shoulders and saw hundreds of tiny pieces of warm grey black shrapnel falling. It was actually raining shrapnel.
Eventually we had to quit that location too and evacuate to another marine unit further away. The explosions continued for two more days and could be seen and heard from all over that part of South Vietnam.
Once or twice I had stood and listened to distant B-52 strikes and felt the ground tremble. Now I had a very small taste of what it was like underneath those falling bombs.
We got back to the 1st battalion area and there was not a thing left standing except the face of the career advisor’s hooch where one went to ship over. That was the place where many lifers got their beginning. I was not superstitious but it seemed like a bad omen because everything else was completely flattened. Pieces of shrapnel, both large and small, lay everywhere. So it was back to the hot and dusty tents with everything in short supply….. until the Seabees arrived to rebuild the base.
The Seabees came, and along with them better supply. We of the com section bartered old radios for some things and stole other things. One night I was caught coming out of a mess refrigeration unit with a big stick of bologna stuffed in my trousers. The mess private who caught me just took it and told me not to come back. That’s the way it was. If you wanted something you either stole it or traded for it. The Navy Seabees had everything and the marines had nothing.
Trading and stealing from the Seabees, I, Wins, Charlie, and a new corporal just in country managed to get together enough construction material to rebuild our NCO hooch because the higher ups had decided not to have it rebuilt. Many lifers felt that the com section was too elitist and needed to be brought down a notch so the Seabees only built one large hooch. Everyone lower than a staff sergeant was supposed to stay there. But the four of us, as was often the case in the Nam, ignored the policy and re-built our own hooch anyway. It was a nice place decorated by blow torch seared plywood walls. A nicer hooch than some of the higher ups had because we did it ourselves, including procuring the material. No doubt that was the reason that after about two weeks I and the other three were ordered out and into the crowded big hooch while a couple of lifer Ssgts. who weren’t even from the section moved in. I had been on the edge for a long time about my commitment to the war and the corps. That pushed me over the line and a hatred grew inside as I and the others pulled the combat duties that the lifers avoided. They would set inside their confiscated hooch, misfire their weapons, and almost shoot their toes off. I knew that the green machine had lost me no matter what bonus was offered. When they asked me to ship over I would tell them to stick it up their ass.
Not long after we were kicked out of our hooch I had a chance to do just that. I became short enough for the pitch. The career advisor called me into his office to lay the bait and contracts out which were the standard $10,000 and promotion to Ssgt. plus choice of my next duty station. What a lie I thought. I would get the money and the rocker stripe but the next duty station would only last long enough for a transfer back to the Nam to take place. I felt so good about being short enough to receive such enticement that I didn’t even tell the lying bastard to shove it. I just simply laughed in his face and told him there was no way in hell that I would ship over. The guy obviously heard that a lot for he seemed to expect it and let me go quickly.
Another way I exhibited my attitude was by refusing to wear my sergeant chevrons. Several times I was ordered to wear my rank but I simply said that I would, then ignored it. After a while they just stopped trying to get me to do it.
It was July 1969 and I had been in WESTPAC or western pacific for 10 months of my 13 month tour. My attitude had deteriorated significantly over time. I was on the edge a lot, getting into fights with other marines, many times over nothing. Maybe it was time to use my R&R or rest and relaxation. I had a choice of Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, or Hawaii. Only the married people who wanted to see their wives went all the way to Hawaii and most of the other places didn’t speak English so I choose Sidney, Australia.
For six days I left the war in Vietnam and took in the different life in Sydney. The feeling my absence from the Nam and the Marine Corps brought about was overwhelming. I passed TVs parked on the streets of Sydney so pedestrians could watch the first man on the moon one July afternoon of 1969. I only glanced at it for a moment and had a few words with a spectator before moving on. It meant nothing to me and only brought about an angry feeling. Big deal, I thought, but it won’t save one dumb son of a bitch in Vietnam from the bullet that’s got his name on it.
At first I mostly just wandered around luxuriating in the clean clothes and the reduced stress. At an event that was somehow partly sponsored by the American government, I met a girl. There wasn’t an abundance of them but I had gone with the attitude that I was going to come away with a girl. My own efforts had not gone well and this event was specifically for Australian girls that wanted to meet American servicemen. Luck for me there wasn’t an abundance of GIs either because sitting right behind me at the introduction, waiting for me to turn around, was young Alicia Mays. She was a pretty redhead with nice legs, short hair and a touch of freckles under deep blue eyes. About the same age as me, she had a modest demeanor and moved with a quiet confidence on a trim fit frame of average height.
Alicia lived with her parents in a suburb of Sydney called King’s Cross. It was a working class neighborhood not unlike the same in most American cities. The one time I went there to meet her parents I was treated nicely. They ask me to join them for afternoon tea and I was a little surprised when I was served a fried egg and toast with my cup of tea. I did not realize that afternoon tea included a snack as well. They talked some about America but the subject of Vietnam was avoided. I liked her parents and could see that those good people were simple working folks who did not warmonger like many of the Americans. Also it seemed that in Australia there was less class difference and consequently a stronger social bond among its citizens.
Alicia showed me many of the sights of Sydney but, unlike the temporary girlfriends of many servicemen on R&R, she did not stay at my hotel. However we spent much time there making out and having room service bring drinks and ice plus whatever we wanted to eat. Sometimes we would use the dining room but most times we were out and about or in the hotel room that had a nice balcony with a view of the city and harbor. Despite a couple of romances of prior years I was still rather sexually inexperienced. Alicia seemed not to mind, only checking my clumsy moves of seduction. We usually met at the hotel lounge in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day and evening together. Always late in the evening Alicia would take a taxi home.
The few days of R&R with Alicia flew by and when it came time for me to return to Vietnam it was one of the hardest things that I had ever had to do.
Before I left I gave her a pearl necklace that the shopkeeper who sold it said would really stun her. The guy had said that it was the type of gift an Australian would give to his fiancé. With lots of money left over and nowhere to spend it, I was glad that I could buy it because Alicia had in no way tried to use me. Truly she was interested in me for what I was. She had always been nice to me as well, sharing her city, and keeping me company during my brief period of freedom, even taking me to her home and parents which was unheard of for Nam soldiers on R&R. When I gave her the necklace the last time I saw her she was stunned. A beautiful string of cultured pearls, they misted her eyes as she accepted them and whispered a thank you. I kissed her goodbye, told her I would be back, and, with a heart as heavy as I could ever remember, left to catch the shuttle to the airport.
After refueling in Darwin and noticing Australians quite different from the ones I had seen in Sydney, I looked down at the Great Barrier Reef as we flew over. I wished to God that I did not have to cross that ocean back to Vietnam. Being in a very nice situation for those few days and feeling life once again was a joy beyond words. Returning to the non-life of the Vietnam war was a hugh downer and, consequently, my emotional strength was at a low ebb.
Back in the Nam I isolated myself and became more depressed but I still wrote a letter almost every day to Alicia telling her that I would return to Australia. Finally I got a letter back that was nice and thanked me for my mail but not much else. Not long after that I got another letter from her that thanked me for the time I spent with her and let me know that she valued it. But she said that she would not wait for me because she was sure that I would find lots of girls when I returned to the United States. She wished me luck and hoped that I would not let that make me sad. It didn’t make me sad. I even started to come up from my depression but I never forgot her, always remembering and appreciating her as one of the most important girls I had ever known.
Things at the 1st had not changed much during my brief absence except Charlie had managed to get some good weed which he shared with me when it came time to burn the toilet drum.
In the Nam, while on base, instead of digging a hole underneath the wooden cut out toilet seat, the severed bottom portion of an empty 55 gallon oil drum was placed instead. When it got full someone had to drag it out, pour kerosene in it and burn it, frequently stirring the burning waste in order to ensure that it all burned.
The section chief told me to see that the shiter was burned. He passed on his responsibility and avoided being the one to give the order, leaving me holding the bag. Word spread fast in the com section when it was time to burn the shiter and not an idle soul would be found….always. I could have ordered any of them to do it anyway but I hated authority. So just going through the motions to see if maybe a miracle would occur and someone would be available I made a quick check through the section anyway. I found everybody extremely busy as expected. Tasks that had sat idle for months were now under urgent repair by young men who were unable to meet my eyes as they stated the super importance of their work. No doubt, I figured, it was as good a day to get stoned as any. I took the good pot Charlie had given me, drug the shit drum out myself, got it burning nicely and, while the vile odorous black smoke enveloped me, fired up the joint and stirred away. No one came near enough to know what I was smoking, that’s for sure. Tens of gallons of burning human waste, sending out a plume of heavy dark smoke ripe with the smell of human excrement mixed in urine, took care of that. Excellent weed it was too. So fantastic that when the job was done I was feeling quite hungry and proceeded directly to the mess hooch for chow. I didn’t even have to stand in line for when I got within ten feet of anyone they howled their displeasure at the smell and immediately vacated the area. With a whole large picnic table in my own vacant private section of the large mess hooch I thoroughly enjoyed my chow. Then I went back to the com area, stripped my clothes, which I would later give to one of the mamasans or Vietnamese laundry women to launder, and took a shower. To hell with the lifers, I burned shit and enjoyed it more than anything they could come up with. One day I would get through this soup sandwich and rejoin the world free of those who shoot their toes off while playing with their guns like a bunch of kids. I thought back to the ship over interview I had recently attended and laughed so hard that Charlie heard me and yelled over, “Pretty good weed, huh?”
The war started to heat up after the 1st went up with the ammo dump. Even over by Marble Mountain it was hot as I stood and watched the F-4 phantom jets working out. They took turns diving in and releasing their loads of napalm. Tumbling in their wake and hitting the ground, the canisters erupted in fiery red and yellow explosions as the jellied mass of burning chemical was spread over the area. It stuck to everything it touched. There were villagers all through that area and I wondered if they had been moved into the city to form another slum or had they just been told to leave. If they had simply been told to leave that meant that beneath those jets were a bunch of black charcoal mounds of flesh to be added to the daily body count of enemy dead. Some marines called them crispy critters. Fuck it, it didn’t mean nothing I decided and went on about my business which by then was just trying to make it to my rotation date less than a 100 days away.
At night the sounds of the Vietnamese 155 battery next door and the big marine 175 howitzer on the next hill across the valley became more frequent. It became harder to get any real sleep. When the 175 went off the ground would tremble slightly and the sound wave would jar the hooch with a bang. Throwing rounds deep into the countryside helping some poor son-of-bitch try to avoid dying for his country, the big guns many times got the range wrong or the radio operator or some other screw up plotted wrong and only expedited the poor son of a bitch’s passing.
I could easily tell the different guns from the sound of their discharges so one night when a couple of big explosion at the 155 battery sounded different I got up, went outside, and looked over at the ARVN compound. It was not easy to see past all the gear and bunkers scattered about but there were a couple of fires burning and except for the light from the fires, it was completely dark. The siren blasted which told me that something was definitely going on as I ran back inside the hooch, donned my gear and grabbed the PRC-25 radio always stationed at the end of my rack. Since I was assigned to the battalion commander I only needed to muster outside the COC bunker and wait for the colonel as most everyone else was running for the perimeter. The colonel appeared and learned that the ARVNs had been hit by sampers using satchel charges. ARVNs were very lax about security and this time it had cost them. A couple of Viet Cong had slipped into the battery and tossed a couple of satchels loaded with explosives into the hooches of sleeping soldiers, killing some and wounding many.
Over a land line the ARVNs got permission to bring their wounded over to the 1st for treatment and minutes later stretchers of wounded soldiers began to appear around the battalion sick bay which was located only a few feet from the COC bunker. No way they could get all the wounded in the little sick bay so there were stretchers of wounded scattered all over the ground outside. Every now and then the colonel would appear at my side to see if any word had been passed over the radio. But mostly he remained in the sickbay hooch as I waited outside among the wounded. The 1st had only one Doctor and a couple of corpsman so the casualties didn’t move very fast. In fact I couldn’t see how they were moving at all. In the beginning the doctor had managed to get a couple into the hooch and since then he had disappeared while the others quietly waited. That was the thing that struck me. How quiet their wounded were. Americans would have been raising hell. They couldn’t all be unconscious, there were too many. If they were unconscious there were going to be plenty of dead before the night was over.
A couple of feet away was one wounded soldier lying on his side, still on the stretcher. The back of his white t-shirt was dark with blood. I studied him for movement of any kind and found none. Probably dead I figured.
How many ever made it to the doctor, I did not learn. The colonel saw that the medical people were doing all they could and that he was probably just getting in the way so he and I headed out to the perimeter. We stood by for several hours, occasionally sending or receiving reports. The VC had gotten away and were probably back in the village.
Eventually the alert was called off and on the way back inside I noticed that all the wounded were gone. Wondering how many had died and how many had been able to just walk away after the alert had been called off, I kicked a canteen cup that somebody had dropped and muttered, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”
The ARVNs wanted to survive no less than the Americans in that God damned part of Indo-China and they didn’t get a pass out after a year. It was their home for as long as it lasted and they took every opportunity to better their odds. Most of them had no more choice about being in uniform than I did. Sometimes I would stare into their eyes as I passed them on the road There was so much hatred there that I stopped looking after a while. Their looks told me that it was my fault that they were either about to die or lose an arm or a leg. Their officers tended to be suck ups to the higher ups in the American force and thought nothing of sacrificing their men in order to shamelessly gain some shiny trinket. It was a similarity among those of all nations that mongered for war. A similarity that became recognized by the kid from the Appalachian hardwood forest as more of a threat to peace than any communist domino.
Not long after the 155 battery got hit the security platoon patrol returned with a couple of ARVNs they had stumbled on and killed. What they were doing unarmed in a free fire zone no one knew nor cared it seemed. Their bodies were brought all the way to the H&S company hooch and dumped in the dirt outside the hooch door for display. As the lifers gathered around and tried to decide what label to attach to them I noticed that these dead still had all their ears. Since they weren’t American it was soon decided that how they were labeled didn’t really matter so their deaths by friendly fire were quickly forgotten--just more unknown meat that needed to be removed from the hot sun.
Two nights later the 1st got theirs’ when we were hit by mortars. I had just been reassigned to a bunker line radio and luckily got through the incoming fire and to my assigned bunker. I checked in without a scratch and monitored the net as other posts checked in. I heard a new voice operating as the Six and knew something was wrong because Charlie was assigned to the colonel. What the hell was going on? Maybe Charlie had switched with someone for some reason. Being directly connected to the battalion CO had its benefits as far as safety was concerned but some didn’t like the extra scrutiny from that high up. Maybe Charlie had switched because of that.
We took 86 rounds of 82mm mortars that night and many wounded, mostly from the administration section which had taken a couple of hits right next to their hooch. Two people were killed in action. One was a captain who had only been in country two weeks. He was standing up outside his hooch and giving directions when a big hunk of shrapnel took out a large chunk of his neck, killing him instantly. The other one which I refused to believe at first was Charlie Roderno. Charlie and the Colonel had been running for the perimeter, coming in late as usual. An 82 took them both down. One of the colonels legs had been badly messed up but Charlie, who had been between the blast and the colonel, never had a chance. He had been riddled from head to toe. When they removed his radio, along with the worthless flak jacket, one of Charlie’s arms almost came off. They had almost made it to the bunker line when they were hit. One of the black grunts jumped out of the trench and drug the colonel in and then went back and got Charlie. He later told me that Charlie never knew what hit him. A couple of weeks after that the grunt received the bronze star with combat V for valor. I heard that the colonel, whose war was now over, received a purple heart and the same medal as the grunt who had saved his ass. Charlie got an aluminum box. His war was over too.
The marines of com. section didn’t take it lightly. Maybe with time we would be able to proclaim that it didn’t mean nothin’ but right then it hurt. I was convinced that Charlie’s life was wasted by a country and it’s people that were nothing but a bunch of lifers in civilian clothes. People that could not see more value in a human life than the value that was placed in the huge industrial markets and their power hungry military customers. People like Charlie literally fell through the cracks in such a system. Those warmongers with pockets full of war booty knew very well about the people like Charlie, myself, and others. To assuage their guilt they fabricated those bright shining lies about heroism and honor and even created equally false and shiny trinkets to support those lies. I was fit to be tied with my anger and the belief that me and all the people like Charlie were only a bunch of dumb son-of-a-bitches stumbling through a bloody mess so some lifer, military or civilian, could enrich themselves and later use those riches to hold themselves a class above the ones who stupidly did their bidding. With Charlie’s death an attitude hardened that had been a long time coming. Consequently, along with the anger and disillusionment that were my steady companions, I no longer felt that I was just as decent as the next person. Even worse, I didn’t care.
With time, dope, and alcohol most of the com section slowly got back to a semi-even if somewhat shaky keel but I was not so lucky. I was more anxious about many things, particularly my rotation date and being able to make it back to the world. All pretense of discipline slipped out of me. Seldom was I included in the command loop anymore because in the Nam one thing that soldiers developed quickly was the ability to know when someone had had enough. So it was with me as I sank deeper into a kind of agitated depression that led to nights I could not sleep at all. When I could sleep I would be jerked awake by nightmares about murder and revenge. Those nightmares troubled me deeply, not because murder was wrong, but because I didn’t want to be held up from rotation on a legal hold. Knowing that I was unraveling I desperately wanted out of there before the worst could happen. On top of that, I got sick with what I thought was malaria. Fever and chills with diarrhea so bad that I didn’t even bother to dress. I just went naked to cool off and clean up under the water hose. Gulping water that came out of my ass almost as fast as I swallowed it. followed by chills seconds later, I wrapped up in poncho liners while lying and shaking on my rack. The corpsman said that I only had dysentery and gave me some little white pills which were of no help. I wouldn’t even have bothered with the corpsman except the chaplain found me squatting under the water hose and ordered me to go. After a few days it passed and, feeling a lot weaker, I returned to my normal pissed off self along with the depression which had for a while taken a back seat to my physical ills.
I drank even more with hangovers becoming my normal state but I was no weird agent. Throughout the Nam that had become a way of life for many who fought the war. I had only progressed to the point where it was easily recognized and therefore most others left me alone to do what I saw fit. Short fuses like the one I had developed were easily seen and wisely avoided. However no one ever had to take an assignment because of my situation. I was still the senior person of the lower ranks and the others in the section were under me. Just as I had done with the burning of the shiter, I avoided participating in any kind of command structure and either did it himself or deemed it foolish bullshit and eliminated it entirely by simply ignoring the order. Perhaps because even the lifers could see that what was happening to them was really doing no one any good, they left me alone. The LT stayed completely out of the way and his com chief avoided all but the most basic interaction with me. When armed people have had enough of the bullshit in a losing war, survival is all that is really important and anything beyond that is unwise to push.
The days were winding down for me with a couple of weeks left until my rotation date so I was surprised when I suddenly received orders to rotate back to the States. Hallelujah my time had come ...just in time. It took a couple of days to check out of the battalion and return my weapon and other gear. During that time I was able to have conversations with some of my men on a level a little different than the usual. There was a sadness in our exchanges, sadness that they were being left behind, that we couldn't all go. But we had been living the life of survival long enough to appreciate that right then, at least, one of us was going to make it out. However none of that sadness would overcome the relief I felt when, with my orders in hand, I jumped into the jeep and was driven away to stage for the freedom bird back to the world.
Much like it had been in Okinawa where I had staged to come in country, I waited for two days at staging to learn when I could fly out. My time finally came but I was told that something was wrong with my orders. They said that I would have to return to my unit and get it straightened out.
Livid with anger and almost as plagued by fear, I hitchhiked back to the 1st with a worthless set of orders in hand. To me it was another example of why lifers remained in the military. The simplest task they could screw up so bad that no one in civilian life would tolerate them.
There I was, back at the 1st, belonging to nobody, with no weapon, and no idea of how long I would be there or what was wrong with my orders. Matters were made worse by the fact that my replacement, a Sgt. from Quang Tri, was already there and I didn’t like him. To me he acted like everything was normal and that he was just going to shape up the guys in the com section concerning their job performance. He acted like a lifer and I could tell that when it came his time to ship over he would do it. The same guys I refused to give orders to, this newcomer wannabe lifer was going to “shape up.” I felt a deep resentment for having to watch the change plus I was stuck in a limbo combat zone and so nervous about getting killed in a place where I wasn’t even supposed to be.
A couple of days later, as I was returning from another night of drinking, I came across the new sergeant in the shop hooch and told him just what I thought about him coming in there and changing things so he could get on in his career. Drunk and again unable to control my temper, an argument developed. I took a swing at him that missed. My swing was countered by a quick hook that caught me squarely on the jaw. However it had little effect as I smothered any further punches when I closed in and grabbed the guy. We began careening around the shop, knocking over equipment and breaking things until a couple of others, along with the com chief, came in and broke it up. The chief demanded to know what had happened. The new guy told the truth by saying that I had come in raising hell and took a swing at him but I claimed that the other sergeant threw the first punch. Nothing got accomplished that night about who was at fault but the next day the LT, having received a report of the incident, called both me and my replacement in and asked what had happened. Again the same stories were repeated but from our demeanor and the way things had been going it was fairly obvious that I was lying. That’s when the LT told us that if we didn’t come clean he was going to have a court martial to squeeze out the truth. I just angrily glared at the floor for several moments until the LT dismissed us.
The next day, sure that I was going to be put on a legal hold and about as depressed as I had ever been, I was lying on my old rack, staring at the tin roof. Tim came in carrying the new set of orders, just cut from administration. He had just happened to be in the COC when they arrived and immediately grabbed them, saying that he would deliver them.
Tim and I had known each other a long time since we both had come to the 1st not far apart. That meant that Tim would be the next one in the com section to rotate. Classified in a lower MOS than me, Tim had never been able to get the rank that more desirable specialties attained but he had humped when he had to and skated when he could just as well as anybody. He and I had always understood each other and got along. Looking up at Tim standing there with a smile on his face and the orders in his hands I flashed on the day I had burned the shiter. I recalled that it was Tim who had played it up most about being involved in urgent work. Both of us had known that it was simply a ruse to avoid the shit detail but I had accepted it and moved on to do it myself. Tim looked steadily at me, handed me my orders and said, “This is payback shithead, hurry up and get your gear, I’ve already checked out a jeep from Motor-T.”
I had never unpacked so I grabbed my sea bag and we quietly went through the back of the company area, found the jeep and birded out of there. God bless Tim and all the other lowly ranks just like him.
Back at staging again and expecting to be called back at any time it didn’t take me long to get the travel section of my orders this time. After one more sleepless night I had them and clearly saw what had been going on with the mix ups. Now I was going back to the world on a troop ship as part of a marine regimental troop withdrawal. It was part of Nixon’s political stunt, pretending a troop withdrawal when in fact all the marines on the float were being replaced and rotated anyway. At least I was going to get out of there, regardless of the means, and that was what I held on to. I and 1800 other marines were crammed aboard the USS Thayer and another 200 were put on our flag ship, the USS Tripoli. It was a flat top helicopter carrier. When we pushed off from Deep Water Pier in the Da Nang Harbor I felt a little like I was born again.
That first night at sea under a moonlit sky, as we sailed past the same mountains that I had flown over on my way in, was far different from the nights in country. In country there were skies that sometimes had rockets overhead riding a red flame to the tune of a high pitched whine. If you heard them you wondered who got it. If you didn’t you got it. Now at sea the night was quiet, cool and smelled of salt with a peacefulness that came from the knowledge that it was over. That was until a couple of hours later when I saw the same mountains again pass above the port side, which meant we were traveling in circles. What the hell was going on? Why couldn’t they, for once, do something in the way it was supposed to be done? With the dawn came the news that we had to return to the harbor to net load more marines from an amphibious launch. By the time all the screw-ups got straightened out and the marines were loaded we had been at sea two days and hadn’t gone anywhere. Maybe we weren’t really leaving but being relocated somewhere else along the coast. Finally during the second night the coast line passed from sight as we really set sail.
With a two day layover in Okinawa to take on water and food, yet not allowed to leave the ship, it took 22 days to reach the California coast line. That was going all out most of the time except when we skirted a typhoon and pitched up and down and around so bad that it was very easy to lose somebody and not even know it. Lifers completely disappeared during that action.
The two ships drifted into their piers and tied up. I had no idea where we were but it was almost November and the weather was sunny and warm so we must be somewhere in Southern California. Coming across the Pacific we had gone from hot to cold and now back to warm. We were a salty looking bunch for the small marine band and the few USO girls on the pier with lemonade and donuts. Who those refreshments were for was a puzzle to me because I knew that I sure as hell wouldn’t be allowed to join them. So I yelled down and had the girls throw some of the donuts up which I and the others along the railing wolfed down. The little band puffed and beat out a couple of marches in their ragged red uniforms, looking like castoffs specifically picked to welcome a bunch of castoffs.
The whole thing seemed to me like a Norman Rockwell poster with characters that had somehow come to life and gathered on the pier for a photo shoot. What could any of them possibly know about the place the people aboard that big boat were coming from? Had they an inkling of that truth they surely would not have been there dressed in their Baby Janes and floral dresses, serving lemonade and donuts. To me it was just another surreal example of Americana that had never made it inside the loop of what really was.
When we disembarked all the lifers that had stayed hidden away at sea reappeared and started giving orders to marines who visibly didn’t give a damn. I had lost my hat and my blonde hair had started to come over my ears. The colonel who was trying to get us lined up told me to put my cover on. I told him that I didn’t have one, expressing it in such a way that indicated if the colonel wanted me to have a hat he would have to give up his own. Certainly not pleased but shut down, the colonel quickly ended the lifer lessons as we were herded aboard buses and taken to Camp Pendleton where we had come from a little over a year and a different lifetime ago. Long haired and bare headed, standing in my first formation at Pendleton, I heard them announce that anyone with less than 6 months remaining on their active duty time would be discharged as soon as the paperwork could be done. With less than 5 months of active duty left, I figured it was the sweetest sounding thing I had heard since it all had begun more than 2 years and 7 months ago. For the next nine days I wandered around in an almost dream like state.
I was placed in a group just like himself, ones that were already gone but still physically there as far as the Marine Corps was concerned. Except for my boots and the color of my shirt and pants I might have been a civilian laborer working on base for the day. Never wearing a hat because no one ever gave me one and never getting a haircut despite frequent threats to hold me back if I didn’t, I loafed around knowing by then that they were not going to saddle themselves with the likes of myself any longer than they had to. When I was out alone roaming the base on foot an occasional shocked lifer would jump in my space and demand to know what outfit I was from so they could fry my ass. Squarely facing them with a blank look I would tell them that I was from RELAD which was short for released from active duty. The way they almost swallowed their tongues and turned red, sometimes even stomping their feet like a small child was just too sweet.
Finally all in one day I processed through hours of paperwork dressed in my winter green uniform and signed the DD-214 that honorably released me from active duty in the United States Marine Corps. With a silent thank you to Tim and hope that he was close behind mixed with the intense sorrow that Charlie didn’t make it, I squeezed into a limousine full of other discharged marines. We exited Camp Pendleton for the last time. Just to make sure that it was real, I took a look back and watched the gate grow smaller.
Having plenty of war booty in the form of a fat wallet I rode up to LAX and bought a first class ticket to D.C. to visit my mother. She had left West Virginia while I was away and was now teaching high school in a Maryland suburb of DC. After showing her that I was still alive and with little fanfare, I returned to the airport and caught the next hop to the Appalachians of West Virginia. During the hour long flight I gazed down at the rolling landscape of the hardwood forested mountains. For some reason they always seemed to make me sad with their isolated demeanor, sometimes half hidden in wispy fog. This time was no different, only more so. Those age old hills were impervious to the goings on from outside and had not a hint of the momentous events that crisscrossed the globe and what I had been through the past year. Yet that is where it all began for me. Being alive was all I could bring back to their intractable presence. Amidst such loss and guilt that just didn’t seem fair.
Author is a retired attorney who started writing stories for something to do in his rusting years. He has had seventy some published in online magazines, including this one, and a half dozen or so in book anthologies. He may be reached at [email protected].
The Most Hated President Ever
“Well Mr. President Elect you got almost forty percent of the vote. Six out of ten people voted against you. I take that to mean that six out of ten people hate you.You certainly don’t have a mandate to rule.”
“Don’t need one to rule Mary. Only need the necessary electoral votes and I got those. Besides I don’t think I did all that all bad under the circumstances. My worthy opponent, His Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, got only about thirty percent of the vote. Seven out of ten people voted against him. This is the first time that I’ve beaten Stephen at anything in my entire life, except for winning you of course dear. And I beat him by over half a million votes and he wasn’t even close in the electoral college. He even came in last there behind Bell and Breckinridge.” Though the President Elect said all this with a joking false bravado, it was of little comfort to him.
Abraham Lincoln turned from his wife and stared out the window of their Springfield home that night and looked upward to the darkened heavens as if there was an answer up there somewhere in those storm clouds for him to all the impending doom that he would soon be facing.
“Well they’ll always hate you in the South. Eleven states there didn’t even put your name on the ballot they hate you so much.” Here Mary paused, smiled, then laughed, “You did get
one percent of the vote in Virginia though. The only southern state where they did allow your name on the ballot.”
Abraham Lincoln smiled too and came away from the window. His eyes back down to earth now. He refused to close them and shudder in fear. Refused to be afraid of what was yet to come.
“It’s not just me they hate Mary. The whole country is filled with hate. Too many factions. Too many parties. Each uncompromising. Each hating the other. Nobody leaves themselves any room to work things out any more. It’s become all or nothing for everyone. The house has been divided. And you know what happens when a house is divided.”
“Well then Mr. President Elect what are you going to do about all this? This house divided.”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll just have to wait and see what Buchanan does and go from there. Though I doubt he’ll do anything except be glad to hand over the Presidency to me.”
“You can’t wait too much longer Abraham. Eleven states already gone and more likely to follow. And they all seceded because you got elected. They didn't leave because of anything Buchanan did. This is a problem of your making. The don’t hate Buchanan. They hate you.”
“I know that. But I still have to wait until I’m in charge. President Buchanan is definitely right about one thing though. The states do not have the right to secede. Where we differ is over what to do about it. Buchanan doesn’t think that he has the authority or power to stop them.”
“And you believe you do?”
“I don’t know if the President can prevent states from seceding or not. But I’m going to find out. I’m going to act regardless of the Constitution or any other law and you know why Mary? Because when I’m President, as commander of all our forces, I will have under my control the
army of the United States of America. I can command it as I see fit. No law prohibits me from doing that. And with this army I will act.”
“That means war husband you know that. A lot of people in the states that did vote for you won’t be for that. They’ll turn against you too. Won’t support a war. Won’t support you any further.”
“That may be true but I’m betting more will back me than won’t. If more people hate me, then so be it. Consequences be damned. Time to move ahead. Time to act, not to worry or talk.”
Abraham Lincoln sat down. His shoulders slumped. The weight of his country’s problems and its future upon them. His mind was going a mile a minute as he contemplated all the issues before him and how he was going to resolve them. Resolving them one way or the other, with or without the law or any legal authority to back him up. That went against the grain of his lawyer training and reasoning. He wanted a definitive legal answer here. But there was none and he knew it. He and he alone was going to have to make up all the rules and answers as he went along.
His wife broke his concentration.
“What about slavery Abraham? What you going to do about that? You made a lot of speeches about that. The abolitionists are counting on you.”
“I don’t know just yet what I’m going to do about slavery. Again I don’t know if the Constitution gives me any authority to abolish slavery or if it takes an act of congress to do so or a Constitutional Amendment. But I do know this. I will do something about it when the time is right.”
“And how will you know when the time is right?”
“Trust me Mary I will know. I have a sixth political sense about these things. I’ll do the right thing, whatever it is, when the time is right, politically right that is, to save the union.”
“Enough of all this political talk Abraham. It’s giving me a headache again. Besides it’s getting late. Time for bed. You can sleep on all this as they say.”
“Well I can’t plow around this stump. That’s for sure. We better start packing tomorrow for Washington. It’s only a matter of time now before all this comes to a head.”
“A matter of time before someone kills you, you mean. Oh I’m so afraid for you Abraham. You’ve had so many death threats already. So many people hate you. So many want you dead. I’m so afraid that someone out there somewhere will kill you.”
“Don’t worry about it dear. The Pinkertons will protect us. Mr. Pinkerton is in charge of security and for getting us to Washington safely. He’s worked everything out with the railroad as to the route and security precautions. We’ll be safe. We’ll get there.”
“It’s not getting there that I’m worried about Abraham. It’s after we get there.” Mary Lincoln wiped a tear from her eye as her husband put his arm around her shoulders. He towered over her as he bent down and gave her a kiss on the top of her head.
“You know that you may go down as the most hated President in the history of this here country of ours Mr. Abraham Lincoln.”
“Well then dear I’ll just have to save the union won’t I and become the most beloved President ever.”
“Goodnight Mr.President.”
“Good night Mary.”
“Don’t need one to rule Mary. Only need the necessary electoral votes and I got those. Besides I don’t think I did all that all bad under the circumstances. My worthy opponent, His Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, got only about thirty percent of the vote. Seven out of ten people voted against him. This is the first time that I’ve beaten Stephen at anything in my entire life, except for winning you of course dear. And I beat him by over half a million votes and he wasn’t even close in the electoral college. He even came in last there behind Bell and Breckinridge.” Though the President Elect said all this with a joking false bravado, it was of little comfort to him.
Abraham Lincoln turned from his wife and stared out the window of their Springfield home that night and looked upward to the darkened heavens as if there was an answer up there somewhere in those storm clouds for him to all the impending doom that he would soon be facing.
“Well they’ll always hate you in the South. Eleven states there didn’t even put your name on the ballot they hate you so much.” Here Mary paused, smiled, then laughed, “You did get
one percent of the vote in Virginia though. The only southern state where they did allow your name on the ballot.”
Abraham Lincoln smiled too and came away from the window. His eyes back down to earth now. He refused to close them and shudder in fear. Refused to be afraid of what was yet to come.
“It’s not just me they hate Mary. The whole country is filled with hate. Too many factions. Too many parties. Each uncompromising. Each hating the other. Nobody leaves themselves any room to work things out any more. It’s become all or nothing for everyone. The house has been divided. And you know what happens when a house is divided.”
“Well then Mr. President Elect what are you going to do about all this? This house divided.”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll just have to wait and see what Buchanan does and go from there. Though I doubt he’ll do anything except be glad to hand over the Presidency to me.”
“You can’t wait too much longer Abraham. Eleven states already gone and more likely to follow. And they all seceded because you got elected. They didn't leave because of anything Buchanan did. This is a problem of your making. The don’t hate Buchanan. They hate you.”
“I know that. But I still have to wait until I’m in charge. President Buchanan is definitely right about one thing though. The states do not have the right to secede. Where we differ is over what to do about it. Buchanan doesn’t think that he has the authority or power to stop them.”
“And you believe you do?”
“I don’t know if the President can prevent states from seceding or not. But I’m going to find out. I’m going to act regardless of the Constitution or any other law and you know why Mary? Because when I’m President, as commander of all our forces, I will have under my control the
army of the United States of America. I can command it as I see fit. No law prohibits me from doing that. And with this army I will act.”
“That means war husband you know that. A lot of people in the states that did vote for you won’t be for that. They’ll turn against you too. Won’t support a war. Won’t support you any further.”
“That may be true but I’m betting more will back me than won’t. If more people hate me, then so be it. Consequences be damned. Time to move ahead. Time to act, not to worry or talk.”
Abraham Lincoln sat down. His shoulders slumped. The weight of his country’s problems and its future upon them. His mind was going a mile a minute as he contemplated all the issues before him and how he was going to resolve them. Resolving them one way or the other, with or without the law or any legal authority to back him up. That went against the grain of his lawyer training and reasoning. He wanted a definitive legal answer here. But there was none and he knew it. He and he alone was going to have to make up all the rules and answers as he went along.
His wife broke his concentration.
“What about slavery Abraham? What you going to do about that? You made a lot of speeches about that. The abolitionists are counting on you.”
“I don’t know just yet what I’m going to do about slavery. Again I don’t know if the Constitution gives me any authority to abolish slavery or if it takes an act of congress to do so or a Constitutional Amendment. But I do know this. I will do something about it when the time is right.”
“And how will you know when the time is right?”
“Trust me Mary I will know. I have a sixth political sense about these things. I’ll do the right thing, whatever it is, when the time is right, politically right that is, to save the union.”
“Enough of all this political talk Abraham. It’s giving me a headache again. Besides it’s getting late. Time for bed. You can sleep on all this as they say.”
“Well I can’t plow around this stump. That’s for sure. We better start packing tomorrow for Washington. It’s only a matter of time now before all this comes to a head.”
“A matter of time before someone kills you, you mean. Oh I’m so afraid for you Abraham. You’ve had so many death threats already. So many people hate you. So many want you dead. I’m so afraid that someone out there somewhere will kill you.”
“Don’t worry about it dear. The Pinkertons will protect us. Mr. Pinkerton is in charge of security and for getting us to Washington safely. He’s worked everything out with the railroad as to the route and security precautions. We’ll be safe. We’ll get there.”
“It’s not getting there that I’m worried about Abraham. It’s after we get there.” Mary Lincoln wiped a tear from her eye as her husband put his arm around her shoulders. He towered over her as he bent down and gave her a kiss on the top of her head.
“You know that you may go down as the most hated President in the history of this here country of ours Mr. Abraham Lincoln.”
“Well then dear I’ll just have to save the union won’t I and become the most beloved President ever.”
“Goodnight Mr.President.”
“Good night Mary.”
Carol Smallwood is a literary reader, judge, and interviewer. A recent book is Patterns: Moments in Time (Word Poetry, 2019).
Carol Smallwood Interview of Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series for writers including USA Book News’ winner for The Frugal Book Promoter in its third edition was an instructor for UCLA Extension's renowned Writers’ Program for nearly a decade. She was named Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment by members of the California Legislature and Women Who Make Life Happen, by the Pasadena Weekly newspaper. “[Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an incessant promoter who develops and shares new approaches for book promotion.” ~ Marilyn Ross, founder Small Publishers of North America and coauthor of The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing.
Carol Smallwood: I’ll begin with your award winning The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won’t. What led you to develop it?
CHJ: Mistakes. I made so many promotion mistakes with my first book, the award-winning novel This Is the Place! Even with a background in publicity, marketing, and journalism. Not least of which were these two nearly universally false assumptions:
1. Your publisher will assign you a publicist and all your book's promotion will be taken care of.
2. Once an author realizes that she must take her book's promotion in hand, a publicist is essential and one book publicist is about as good as the other.
Naturally, Carol, I had to share my experiences. I guess I've got that sharing streak that most teachers have in my blood. Oh, then there was that little thing: I wanted to share all my booboos and lessons with other authors so I applied to do a class at UCLA and they accepted. And, yep, there I was with tons of marketing books—none of them that addressed the special needs of authors!
Carol Smallwood: What is your favorite way for poets to promote?
CHJ: My favorite is, of course, that anyone, even the shyest can promote. There are lots of ways to do that and resources discussed in The Frugal Book Promoter.
Carol Smallwood: What is unique about you is your belief that authors should work together to promote their work. Tell us a little about your experience in helping and sharing your knowledge:
CHJ: Awwww. It isn't that unique. I studied publicity at USC (University of Southern California). It wasn't my major, but I had a fantastic professor, head of the publicity department there. He was a former president of a big airline. He taught us that one of the first rules of real publicity is that it shouldn't be proprietary. My way of rewording that principle is, "the universe is so full of opportunity there is plenty to go around." My other favorite is, "What one can do, two can do better." Thus cross-promotion is one of the best ways to make one's efforts do double duty. No. It's a way to make one's promotion efforts take quantum leaps. An example of how that works is a new blog I started. The New Book Review (www.thenewbookreview.blogspot.com) is something that takes me only minutes when I post a new review. Anyone can submit one. Reader. Author. Reviewer. After they've submitted and I post, they let their contacts know about it and that benefits them, me, and also all of the other authors who have ever participated on the blog. Submission guidelines are in a tab at the top of the home page and in the left column lest anyone should miss them. Following them exactly allows me to keep doing it free.
Carol Smallwood: What would you say is the unique selling point of your book compared to similar ones that are on the market?
CHJ: It’s fun to read. And everything in it is based on my own personal, practical experience. Not pie-in-the-sky marketing principles. It also addresses the fears that many of us have about anything to do with marketing.
Carol Smallwood: I know you have written other books, too. Can you tell me a bit about them?
CHJ: Well, the next one after The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't is The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. (http://bit.ly/FrugalEditor) Together they comprise the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers. There will be more to come.
This Frugal book is also based on practical experience. One of the classes I taught at UCLA Extension Writers' Program was on independent editing. Between that and the query and cover letters and media releases that I get across my desk (I also consult) I kept seeing the same errors over and over again. It feels as if little gremlins were picking at the possibilities of these author's success. They often weren't big things, nothing a high school teacher would pick on. But they were instant tipoffs that these authors weren't yet professional or hadn't done their homework. That's a big disadvantage when these gatekeepers—people like editors, producers, contest judges, publishers, agents—have many hundreds such documents move across their desk every week. They may toss something that is very promising based on a bad mood coupled with an inane comment like, "I always wanted to write." Think! One has one page (maybe even only the first paragraph of that one page!) to convince a gatekeeper to keep reading. I bet 90% of new authors use that writing line, and usually in the first sentence. And it doesn't really say much. So The Frugal Editor takes a writer through anything from first contact with a gatekeeper through final manuscript. Mind you, I don't encourage a writer to edit his or her manuscript on their own. I do know that the more a writer knows about editing, the better partner she or he will be for any editor, any publisher.
Carol Smallwood: How long you've been writing and what made you get into the literary field?
CHJ: I started my journalism career in high school. All the cutest, smartest, most talented boys were on the newspaper staff. I finally wrote the novel I'd always wanted to write when I got cancer and realized that if we keep putting off our heart's desire, we may never get a chance to do what we consider most important.. Writing is a healer. I've been cancer free since I started writing my novel—twenty-five years ago.
Carol Smallwood: Who are the people most instrumental in your growth as a writer?
CHJ: If I started naming names I might forget someone. Let's just say that creative writing is nothing like journalism, copywriting, or other kinds of writing I had done. Without UCLA's Writers' Program (http://www.uclaextension.edu/), I may never have gotten that first novel published. Of course, I taught there after I took those classes and published. It felt as if I was passing along the love.
Carol Smallwood: From your experience, what key ingredients do new writers need to succeed in the book industry?
CHJ: Curiosity and a lack of pride. The false kind of pride. We'll never become great writers unless we have open minds and an awareness that we don't know everything.
Carol Smallwood: Do you have a website where readers may learn more about your work?
CHJ: At http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com there is a page for each of my books including my creative nonfiction, my poetry, my novel and more. But there are also lots of pages of information. Resources for writers and readers, a free article page, etc.
Carol Smallwood: Are you working on new material?
CHJ. I am always working on poetry. I am very proud of my most recent poetry book, Imperfect Echoes. (http://bit.ly/ImperfectEchoes). Writer’s Digest gave it an honorable mention.
Carol Smallwood: Do you have any appearances planned?
Always. My next is a Writers Conference headed by Kathleen Kaiser in Oxnard, CA. Learn more on my SharingwithWriters blog at: https://sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com/2019/09/805-writers-conference-announce.html
Carol Smallwood: What are some resources for writers that you would recommend?
CHJ: They aren’t my own, but I do a “Back to Literature” column for MyShelf.com and love to recommend the entire site for both readers and writers. I also contribute to WritersontheMove.com blog.
A book I always recommend to my consulting/editing clients is Tom Chiarella's Writing Dialogue. (http://bit.ly/Chiarella).
Carol Smallwood: Thanks, Carolyn. I’m looking forward to your future projects. I became familiar with your books when they were recommended by my publishers after their acceptance to help promote them.
Carol Smallwood: I’ll begin with your award winning The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won’t. What led you to develop it?
CHJ: Mistakes. I made so many promotion mistakes with my first book, the award-winning novel This Is the Place! Even with a background in publicity, marketing, and journalism. Not least of which were these two nearly universally false assumptions:
1. Your publisher will assign you a publicist and all your book's promotion will be taken care of.
2. Once an author realizes that she must take her book's promotion in hand, a publicist is essential and one book publicist is about as good as the other.
Naturally, Carol, I had to share my experiences. I guess I've got that sharing streak that most teachers have in my blood. Oh, then there was that little thing: I wanted to share all my booboos and lessons with other authors so I applied to do a class at UCLA and they accepted. And, yep, there I was with tons of marketing books—none of them that addressed the special needs of authors!
Carol Smallwood: What is your favorite way for poets to promote?
CHJ: My favorite is, of course, that anyone, even the shyest can promote. There are lots of ways to do that and resources discussed in The Frugal Book Promoter.
Carol Smallwood: What is unique about you is your belief that authors should work together to promote their work. Tell us a little about your experience in helping and sharing your knowledge:
CHJ: Awwww. It isn't that unique. I studied publicity at USC (University of Southern California). It wasn't my major, but I had a fantastic professor, head of the publicity department there. He was a former president of a big airline. He taught us that one of the first rules of real publicity is that it shouldn't be proprietary. My way of rewording that principle is, "the universe is so full of opportunity there is plenty to go around." My other favorite is, "What one can do, two can do better." Thus cross-promotion is one of the best ways to make one's efforts do double duty. No. It's a way to make one's promotion efforts take quantum leaps. An example of how that works is a new blog I started. The New Book Review (www.thenewbookreview.blogspot.com) is something that takes me only minutes when I post a new review. Anyone can submit one. Reader. Author. Reviewer. After they've submitted and I post, they let their contacts know about it and that benefits them, me, and also all of the other authors who have ever participated on the blog. Submission guidelines are in a tab at the top of the home page and in the left column lest anyone should miss them. Following them exactly allows me to keep doing it free.
Carol Smallwood: What would you say is the unique selling point of your book compared to similar ones that are on the market?
CHJ: It’s fun to read. And everything in it is based on my own personal, practical experience. Not pie-in-the-sky marketing principles. It also addresses the fears that many of us have about anything to do with marketing.
Carol Smallwood: I know you have written other books, too. Can you tell me a bit about them?
CHJ: Well, the next one after The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't is The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. (http://bit.ly/FrugalEditor) Together they comprise the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers. There will be more to come.
This Frugal book is also based on practical experience. One of the classes I taught at UCLA Extension Writers' Program was on independent editing. Between that and the query and cover letters and media releases that I get across my desk (I also consult) I kept seeing the same errors over and over again. It feels as if little gremlins were picking at the possibilities of these author's success. They often weren't big things, nothing a high school teacher would pick on. But they were instant tipoffs that these authors weren't yet professional or hadn't done their homework. That's a big disadvantage when these gatekeepers—people like editors, producers, contest judges, publishers, agents—have many hundreds such documents move across their desk every week. They may toss something that is very promising based on a bad mood coupled with an inane comment like, "I always wanted to write." Think! One has one page (maybe even only the first paragraph of that one page!) to convince a gatekeeper to keep reading. I bet 90% of new authors use that writing line, and usually in the first sentence. And it doesn't really say much. So The Frugal Editor takes a writer through anything from first contact with a gatekeeper through final manuscript. Mind you, I don't encourage a writer to edit his or her manuscript on their own. I do know that the more a writer knows about editing, the better partner she or he will be for any editor, any publisher.
Carol Smallwood: How long you've been writing and what made you get into the literary field?
CHJ: I started my journalism career in high school. All the cutest, smartest, most talented boys were on the newspaper staff. I finally wrote the novel I'd always wanted to write when I got cancer and realized that if we keep putting off our heart's desire, we may never get a chance to do what we consider most important.. Writing is a healer. I've been cancer free since I started writing my novel—twenty-five years ago.
Carol Smallwood: Who are the people most instrumental in your growth as a writer?
CHJ: If I started naming names I might forget someone. Let's just say that creative writing is nothing like journalism, copywriting, or other kinds of writing I had done. Without UCLA's Writers' Program (http://www.uclaextension.edu/), I may never have gotten that first novel published. Of course, I taught there after I took those classes and published. It felt as if I was passing along the love.
Carol Smallwood: From your experience, what key ingredients do new writers need to succeed in the book industry?
CHJ: Curiosity and a lack of pride. The false kind of pride. We'll never become great writers unless we have open minds and an awareness that we don't know everything.
Carol Smallwood: Do you have a website where readers may learn more about your work?
CHJ: At http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com there is a page for each of my books including my creative nonfiction, my poetry, my novel and more. But there are also lots of pages of information. Resources for writers and readers, a free article page, etc.
Carol Smallwood: Are you working on new material?
CHJ. I am always working on poetry. I am very proud of my most recent poetry book, Imperfect Echoes. (http://bit.ly/ImperfectEchoes). Writer’s Digest gave it an honorable mention.
Carol Smallwood: Do you have any appearances planned?
Always. My next is a Writers Conference headed by Kathleen Kaiser in Oxnard, CA. Learn more on my SharingwithWriters blog at: https://sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com/2019/09/805-writers-conference-announce.html
Carol Smallwood: What are some resources for writers that you would recommend?
CHJ: They aren’t my own, but I do a “Back to Literature” column for MyShelf.com and love to recommend the entire site for both readers and writers. I also contribute to WritersontheMove.com blog.
A book I always recommend to my consulting/editing clients is Tom Chiarella's Writing Dialogue. (http://bit.ly/Chiarella).
Carol Smallwood: Thanks, Carolyn. I’m looking forward to your future projects. I became familiar with your books when they were recommended by my publishers after their acceptance to help promote them.
Theresa Rodriguez is the author of Jesus and Eros: Sonnets, Poems and Songs (Bardsinger Books, 2015), Sonnets (Bardsinger Books, 2019) and Longer Thoughts (Shanti Arts, 2020).
Chronicles in Passing
by Carol Smallwood
Chronicles in Passing
Paperback: 102 pages
Poetic Matrix Press, 2019
ISBN-10: 1733702539
https://smile.amazon.com/Chronicles-Passing-Spanish-Carol-Smallwood/dp/1733702539/ref=sr_1_7?crid=2IPNY30KG92FG&keywords=carol+smallwood&qid=1568047190&s=books&sprefix=carol+smallwood%2Cstripbooks%2C176&sr=1-7
The thing that struck me most strongly upon reading Carol Smallwood's Chronicles in Passing is the complete command of classical forms: the Rondeau, the Cinquain, the Pantoum, the Triolet, the Villanelle, and the Sestina. Smallwood displays fine technical mastery while uniquely using classical forms to frame her focus on the mundane and commonplace. Her writing flows with ease within the structure and rhyming of the classical forms. One can clearly see, as Smallwood mentions in her Introduction, that she “finds writing in formal style enjoyable” by “giving readers something extra,” “like presenting a box wrapped in a special paper with a bow.”
What I could also appreciate is that she does not limit herself only to formal or classical verse but recognizes that “there are times... when words in free verse are better in conveying the intended message,” in her endeavor to “try what fits.” I was glad to see free verse that did “fit” the intended topics very well.
Smallwood does indeed write about the mundane and commonplace, but her treatment of these topics is anything but mundane and commonplace. She manages to deftly take the mundane and transform it into the sublime. She gives weight and dignity to topics of life that might normally be overlooked. Blue jeans, the supermarket, clothes on a clothesline, a car wash, store flyers, homemade quilts and clothing, ballroom dancing, grocery shopping, going to a restaurant, dirt roads, spools of thread, clothing fashion, and the color pink—none of these topics escapes Smallwood's decisive treatment. It causes one to be mindful of some of the ordinary things of life, things that can be shaped into works of great beauty, especially by the mind and pen of a skilled poet. It has given me an appreciation of our common world in a way I had not had before reading this volume. It has taught me to seek out the simple things and find the poetry in them. Smallwood most definitely has done this, in great measure!
I also enjoyed her sense of imagery and description which can be found throughout the volume. For instance, in one of my favorites “A Hardcover Book,” Smallwood talks about being perceived as some kind of anachronism by carrying around a hardcover book as opposed to “a small electronic tool,” as “quite the dinosaur, out of touch and even speckled with mold” (8). In her free verse “The Place of the Cure of the Soul,” Smallwood describes “something about the feel of books, the crackle of newspapers, smell of magazines and in owning them” (14). In her Villanelle “Counting Backwards,” she shares how
“...the chatter near Christmas Day
was irritating, but told it was just feminine hormone delay
and before long it would be better so wisely didn't reply when addressed” (17).
In “The Hovering,” deities are “defined in other cultures as weavers of destiny upon a tapestry loom” (19). In her Sestina “A Regular” we are given a lovely image of salt on a tray:
“...I noticed its salt sprinkles made a vast night sky full of wonder
and understand why our ancestors made stories of constellations” (26).
In “There Were Only,” she describes “gentle rain reinforcing the nose as the most elemental of the senses” and poignantly thinks of “computers blinking in the empty library like solitary lighthouses” (32).
My favorite, however, is the villanelle “Our Unconscious Censor, ”where the subject of writing down dreams upon waking produces some excellent imagery, where one can “train” to write down dreams as soon as you wake:
“and confront the subterranean fear as if a waiting rattlesnake
coiled in a yawning cavern that's deeper, more terrifying than any hell”
and
“so get rid of the hoary, deep oozing fear making your tremble, shake:
but your built-in censor is a trench against shattering bombshells”
Finally, she asks:
“Is one a coward not to go ahead and capture dreams, face at daybreak
once and for all-- end the fear-- what could be that awful to dispel?
One can train to write down dreams just as soon as you wake
yet is it best to let your built-in censor block when so much is at stake?” (70)
I also found her many of her choices of rhymes to be ingenious: I have never seen rhymes for “necessary,” “customary,” “shade vary,” “monetary,” “them airy,” and “arbitrary” in one poem before, but this is the quality of inventiveness we find in the Villanelle “An American Icon,” a poem about blue jeans (51). I was equally impressed with the rhyming of “myth” and “Monolith” in her Pantoum “The Pleiades” (16), and “diverged,” “surged,” “purged,” “converged,” “urged,” and “submerged” in her Villanelle “Two Roads” (68).
In reading her work in this volume I only occasionally see her inner life—and the moments here and there are intriguing, and make me want her to reveal more. In “The New Galaxy,” she describes a date with “Mitchell,” where an evening at the opera reveals understated but deep feeling:
“...I remembered smiling at the attendant when he
asked 'Did you and your wife enjoy the performance'
because it meant we looked like we belonged together”
She goes on to share how she clutched the program of Aida, “proof that the night was real” and how
“...When Mitchell walked me to my
car in the darkness, his coat blew against me,
a benediction I knew had to be lasting. Would I ever
know the new galaxy the student had said with such
excitement had just been discovered?” (33)
I like this aspect of her writing, and wish there was more of it: tenderly rendered and touching. We do find more of this revelatory aspect in “A Matter of Nightmares,” where descriptions of Bob's nightmares are “terrible” and Alison's brother
“who'd returned from Nam:
unexpected sounds sent him diving under
any cover; certain smells made him shake,
his arms were infected trying to get rid of
“crawly leeches.”
She then describes Lily has having
“post-traumatic stress disorder first called
shell shock: that what went on behind white
picket fences was war.” (50)
I do like her understated treatment of the emotionally profound. I only wish there were more moments like this, as they intrigue and attract me. What more does this poet have inside, waiting to be revealed?
Carol Smallwood is to be praised for her skill, perspective, and philosophy over a wide poetic range. Hers is a unique set of senses, capturing sights, sounds, moments, and observations of the everyday world in such a manner that causes the reader to see what is all around him in a fresh, new way.
Paperback: 102 pages
Poetic Matrix Press, 2019
ISBN-10: 1733702539
https://smile.amazon.com/Chronicles-Passing-Spanish-Carol-Smallwood/dp/1733702539/ref=sr_1_7?crid=2IPNY30KG92FG&keywords=carol+smallwood&qid=1568047190&s=books&sprefix=carol+smallwood%2Cstripbooks%2C176&sr=1-7
The thing that struck me most strongly upon reading Carol Smallwood's Chronicles in Passing is the complete command of classical forms: the Rondeau, the Cinquain, the Pantoum, the Triolet, the Villanelle, and the Sestina. Smallwood displays fine technical mastery while uniquely using classical forms to frame her focus on the mundane and commonplace. Her writing flows with ease within the structure and rhyming of the classical forms. One can clearly see, as Smallwood mentions in her Introduction, that she “finds writing in formal style enjoyable” by “giving readers something extra,” “like presenting a box wrapped in a special paper with a bow.”
What I could also appreciate is that she does not limit herself only to formal or classical verse but recognizes that “there are times... when words in free verse are better in conveying the intended message,” in her endeavor to “try what fits.” I was glad to see free verse that did “fit” the intended topics very well.
Smallwood does indeed write about the mundane and commonplace, but her treatment of these topics is anything but mundane and commonplace. She manages to deftly take the mundane and transform it into the sublime. She gives weight and dignity to topics of life that might normally be overlooked. Blue jeans, the supermarket, clothes on a clothesline, a car wash, store flyers, homemade quilts and clothing, ballroom dancing, grocery shopping, going to a restaurant, dirt roads, spools of thread, clothing fashion, and the color pink—none of these topics escapes Smallwood's decisive treatment. It causes one to be mindful of some of the ordinary things of life, things that can be shaped into works of great beauty, especially by the mind and pen of a skilled poet. It has given me an appreciation of our common world in a way I had not had before reading this volume. It has taught me to seek out the simple things and find the poetry in them. Smallwood most definitely has done this, in great measure!
I also enjoyed her sense of imagery and description which can be found throughout the volume. For instance, in one of my favorites “A Hardcover Book,” Smallwood talks about being perceived as some kind of anachronism by carrying around a hardcover book as opposed to “a small electronic tool,” as “quite the dinosaur, out of touch and even speckled with mold” (8). In her free verse “The Place of the Cure of the Soul,” Smallwood describes “something about the feel of books, the crackle of newspapers, smell of magazines and in owning them” (14). In her Villanelle “Counting Backwards,” she shares how
“...the chatter near Christmas Day
was irritating, but told it was just feminine hormone delay
and before long it would be better so wisely didn't reply when addressed” (17).
In “The Hovering,” deities are “defined in other cultures as weavers of destiny upon a tapestry loom” (19). In her Sestina “A Regular” we are given a lovely image of salt on a tray:
“...I noticed its salt sprinkles made a vast night sky full of wonder
and understand why our ancestors made stories of constellations” (26).
In “There Were Only,” she describes “gentle rain reinforcing the nose as the most elemental of the senses” and poignantly thinks of “computers blinking in the empty library like solitary lighthouses” (32).
My favorite, however, is the villanelle “Our Unconscious Censor, ”where the subject of writing down dreams upon waking produces some excellent imagery, where one can “train” to write down dreams as soon as you wake:
“and confront the subterranean fear as if a waiting rattlesnake
coiled in a yawning cavern that's deeper, more terrifying than any hell”
and
“so get rid of the hoary, deep oozing fear making your tremble, shake:
but your built-in censor is a trench against shattering bombshells”
Finally, she asks:
“Is one a coward not to go ahead and capture dreams, face at daybreak
once and for all-- end the fear-- what could be that awful to dispel?
One can train to write down dreams just as soon as you wake
yet is it best to let your built-in censor block when so much is at stake?” (70)
I also found her many of her choices of rhymes to be ingenious: I have never seen rhymes for “necessary,” “customary,” “shade vary,” “monetary,” “them airy,” and “arbitrary” in one poem before, but this is the quality of inventiveness we find in the Villanelle “An American Icon,” a poem about blue jeans (51). I was equally impressed with the rhyming of “myth” and “Monolith” in her Pantoum “The Pleiades” (16), and “diverged,” “surged,” “purged,” “converged,” “urged,” and “submerged” in her Villanelle “Two Roads” (68).
In reading her work in this volume I only occasionally see her inner life—and the moments here and there are intriguing, and make me want her to reveal more. In “The New Galaxy,” she describes a date with “Mitchell,” where an evening at the opera reveals understated but deep feeling:
“...I remembered smiling at the attendant when he
asked 'Did you and your wife enjoy the performance'
because it meant we looked like we belonged together”
She goes on to share how she clutched the program of Aida, “proof that the night was real” and how
“...When Mitchell walked me to my
car in the darkness, his coat blew against me,
a benediction I knew had to be lasting. Would I ever
know the new galaxy the student had said with such
excitement had just been discovered?” (33)
I like this aspect of her writing, and wish there was more of it: tenderly rendered and touching. We do find more of this revelatory aspect in “A Matter of Nightmares,” where descriptions of Bob's nightmares are “terrible” and Alison's brother
“who'd returned from Nam:
unexpected sounds sent him diving under
any cover; certain smells made him shake,
his arms were infected trying to get rid of
“crawly leeches.”
She then describes Lily has having
“post-traumatic stress disorder first called
shell shock: that what went on behind white
picket fences was war.” (50)
I do like her understated treatment of the emotionally profound. I only wish there were more moments like this, as they intrigue and attract me. What more does this poet have inside, waiting to be revealed?
Carol Smallwood is to be praised for her skill, perspective, and philosophy over a wide poetic range. Hers is a unique set of senses, capturing sights, sounds, moments, and observations of the everyday world in such a manner that causes the reader to see what is all around him in a fresh, new way.
 | Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world with such organizations as Food for the Hungry, Make A Wish International and was the CEO of Hagar USA. His book, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond was recognized by the Arizona Literary Association for Non-Fiction. His articles have been published in Ragazine, Literary Yard, Literary Travelers, Quail Bell, WorldView and Revue Magazines. “Hugs not Walls, Returning the Children” was an essay winner for the “Arizona Authors Association” 2019 Annual Literary Awards and reissued in the December edition of Revue Magazine. His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com and follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/millionmilewalker/ |
Moritz Thomsen: His Letters and His Legacy
Moritz Thomsen was an extraordinary writer and influential expatriate who spent thirty years in Ecuador studying the culture and identifying with the people with whom he lived. Although Thomsen only wrote five books, which have been compared to the works of Thoreau and Conrad, he was an avid letter writer. His missives numbered in the multiple thousands, though according to one letter, he was only able to respond to five letters a day on his typewriter, often in the hot, humid jungle of Ecuador. And yet, despite his propensity for separating himself from the outside world—or perhaps because of his isolation—he corresponded with numerous authors, publishers, and professionals. Upon returning from one trip abroad he said he found close to 400 letters to answer. According to author Tom Miller, Thomsen was a “wicked” literary critic, “…the severity of one letter from him could often take days before its impact wore off.”
After rereading Thomsen’s best known work Living Poor recently, Paul Theroux, the “Godfather” of travel literature revealed,
A British publisher, Eland Press in London, is reissuing Moritz's books—they just asked me if they could use my intro for nothing, and in the spirit of Moritz, I said yes. Actually I think Moritz would have had a big argument with them about money—his letters to publishers were fierce! Someday, someone has to sit down and gather all his letters and publish them in a big volume. His letters may prove to be his true masterpiece.
In another exchange, Theroux went on to say,
While the subject is riveting, and the details of peasant life vivid and unusual, Moritz himself did not really find a way to bring the people to life in “Living Poor.” His models were Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe and god-only-knows who else—big personalities. Moritz himself did not have the ego, or the style, to match them. I think his writing improved with "The Saddest Pleasure" and "The Farm..." (“The Farm on the River of Emeralds”) but in essence his writing has an epistolary feel—as though he is writing a letter to a reader; and is the reason his collected letters are probably his magnum opus. Just a thought.
Theroux met Thomsen in 1976 at a talk on “Aspects of the American Novel” sponsored by our State Department at the US embassy in Quito, and according to a letter Thomsen wrote fellow author Craig Storti, “It wasn’t particularly impressive, but he was such a nice guy that everyone forgave him. I tried to talk him into a PC (Peace Corps) novel, but the Peace Corps is not especially news at this point.”
They met again in 1977 when Theroux was writing The Old Patagonian Express, and according to Theroux,
It was Moritz who said to me one afternoon on a Quito street, “I don’t get it, Paul. How do you write a travel book if all you do is go to parties?”
“Write about the parties?” I said. But he was dead right and I was ashamed of myself. I vowed to take the train to Guayaquil the next day.
Over the years they would correspond and a friendship emerged, which Theroux revealed in his introduction to The Saddest Pleasure,
I should have declared my own interest at the outset—he is a friend of mine. I am glad he used a line of mine as a title for this book. Our friendship is, I suppose, characteristic of many he must enjoy. We met in Ecuador twice in the late seventies and have corresponded irregularly since. He goes on boasting of his ailing health, his failing fortunes, and his insignificance. For these reasons and many others, I am proud to know him. There are so few people in the world like him who are also good writers.
Acclaimed author Tom Miller, who would dedicate his last book in Thomsen’s memory, met Thomsen while researching The Panama Hat Trail in the early 1980s. In an article in the Washington Post he wrote:
I saw the chain-smoking Thomsen with some frequency and formed a deep friendship that continued in extensive correspondence. When I saw him last, he was living near the Esmeraldas River, his emphysema worsening, in what was, essentially, a tree house with a typewriter, books, a phonograph and classical records. We sensed it would be our last face-to-face visit, though neither of us said so.
Thomsen’s “wicked” critiques are also reflected in this letter to Miller in 1986, relating to an article Miller co-authored, “The Interstate Gourmet: Texas and the Southwest, a Restaurant Guide”:
Last night I read the Interstate Gourmet, the perfect oxymoron; so my idea of you is changed. You are not that sweet child I knew with your honed sensibilities…You are a kind of 3rd rate Caligula, chewing, dribbling, degenerate with your debased tastes, your incessant hunger, the food going in one end, an endless stream of shit shooting out the other. I think of Tom, I think of shit—tons of it spread thick enough across the desert to bring it into bloom…I don’t think writers should write about things that don’t engage their basic passions. —And of course, studying your book-book prose, maybe, god help you, you never have. But stop Tom, before it is too late; you will not be chevere [cool] at 300 pounds.
Miller described the critique as “amusing” and went on to state, “His vicious comments are often directed not at the writer but at the person or situation profiled. Anyway, I did not object to a word of his critique.” However, in another letter he admitted, “Thomsen maintained a wide correspondence; the severity of one letter from him would often take days before its impact wore off.”
The shared friendship and respect Miller and Theroux felt for Thomsen led to what they would call “Moritz Memories,” which Miller described as,
A tribute to a great American expatriate writer, in a century for which the term expat has little genuine meaning. Thomsen lived the word fully. We are convinced that he will be recognized as a significant 20th century figure for his life and his words. He was an uncompromising sceptic, difficult to know well, impossible to forget. And destined to be fully appreciated only posthumously. The book will be made up of a biography, essays by those who knew him well, his correspondence…some of his line drawings, photos of him and excerpts from his three published books.
I came across a ten-page version of this effort from February 1997, what Miller and Theroux referred to as the “Moritz Project,” which was to have been the last phase of the venture, to be completed by the middle of that year. The plan references some of the twenty-five key authors and publishers Thomsen corresponded with.
John Hay was one of those authors who wrote a short essay plus a prose poem about Thomsen called, “Moritz’s Dream.” John Brandi, a well-published small press poet, who carried on a “vigorous correspondence” with Thomsen wrote, “M’s writings were those of a master seer—direct and sizzling, full of enough passions, insight and rare detail to rock me off my seat.”
Philippe Garnier, a French journalist who was in Los Angeles for the publication Liberation, also wrote a short essay about Thomsen and eventually would be instrumental in getting Living Poor published in French. He was also asked by Miller to write an essay about Thomsen for the “Moritz Project,” which turned into an extensive article, “Maquis: Apercu, de un autre paysage American” an in-depth piece on various contemporary maverick American writers, which included an extensive section on Thomsen.
Stan Arnold, the editor of the features section of the San Francisco Chronicle which published stories from Thomsen that would become his first book, corresponded with Thomsen for many years. Of Thomsen he said, “I’ve only known two Christians in my life. He was one of them.”
Mary Ellen Fieweger, a poet and friend, was also asked to write an essay about Thomsen for the “Moritz Project,” (also known as “Moritz Memories) which she titled, “FAME ma non troppo.” Fieweger also lived in Ecuador and said this about her essay in a July 1996 letter to Miller,
Since you’re probably sitting up there in Tucson worrying about the screed (no doubt interminable) on Moritz I’m cranking out down here in Quito, I’m sending a draft to put your fears to rest. You will note that it’s within (just) the 5,000 word/20 page limit stipulated. You will also note that I’ve treated everybody with kid gloves. Well, sort of. But I haven’t gone after anybody with brass knuckles. Though a few academics, including one anthropologist, are presented in terms they might not think altogether flattering.
Miller felt Fieweger knew more about Thomsen than anyone although she was not easy to get along with, so Miller asked Theroux if he would take over future interactions with her. Theroux said of her, “Mary Ellen convinced me that she is a terrific resource and that Moritz was more B. Traven than I had really grasped,” which is another reason why Thomsen’s correspondence would become such an important window into his life despite having written four books about it. After Thomsen’s death, Fieweger would become the “Literary Executive” to negotiate for his estate.
The Origins of Tom Miller’s Collection of Moritz Thomsen Letters
In February 2018, Miller contacted the editor of Peace Corps Worldwide, a blog for Returned Peace Corps Volunteer authors looking for someone willing to complete the book about Thomsen and made these comments about how and why he came across so many of Thomsen’s letters:
One night more than 35 years ago I met Moritz Thomsen, a writer and former Peace Corps Volunteer. This took place in Quito, capital of Ecuador where Thomsen had served. His account of his Peace Corps years is wonderfully detailed in Living Poor, the first of a handful of terrific nonfiction books that earned the author ranking as among the best American expat authors of the twentieth century. I describe him like this: He was a man of almost insufferable integrity and undeniable charm.
Over the years until his death in 1991 Thomsen befriended many writers on the literary gringo trail through the Americas as well as Peace Corps officials, local farmers, and others, building up an impressive array of acquaintances with whom he corresponded. I count myself among them, all the more fortunate in that I came to know him personally. At one point late in the twentieth century I had in mind to write a biography of him, or at least, with Paul Theroux, compile a Festschrift (literary tribute) in his honor. Neither effort reached fruition. Still, I amassed an enormous amount of material about him going back to his military service as well as letters he had written to others.
As part of the “Moritz Project,” Miller had requested copies of Thomsen’s letters from all of the authors he knew had corresponded with Thomsen, and his best source was John and Ruth Valleau. (This material is available for review in the University of Arizona Special Collection).
According to Miller,
They came to my attention through an elderly woman in a retirement home in San Francisco who knew Moritz in college, who got in touch through her daughter who saw my announcement soliciting Moritz memories. She simply recalled a friend of Thomsen from college. She had enough of the name right and the city, that through the University of Oregon alumni office I was able to track down the Valleau’s.
JohnValleau was a college friend of Thomsen and shared a room. “Butch,” as Ruth called Thomsen, spent the Valleau’s wedding night in a cottage with the newlyweds, and according to Ruth,
We spent a happy and boozy evening, the three of us. And of course Moritz kissed the bride. His lips quivered as we kissed. They trembled each time I ever kissed him—then and through the ensuring years…I loved John but it was easy to be in love with Moritz, too—he was gorgeous, with incredible blue eyes and a smile that made me weak in the knees. He was witty, urbane, sensitive, and more than a little mysterious.
Thomsen referred to Ruth as “Panther Eyes” in his letters and after both “Butch” and “Panther Eyes” passed away, Ruth’s estate sent Miller several boxes of letters and sketches.
Other Literary Encounters
Thomsen told of his encounter with Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan author of Open Veins of Latin American, in a letter to Miller in 1989:
Did I ever tell you I met Galeano in Quito at “Libri Mundi” [a bookstore Thomsen helped set up] [I]fell to my knees before him (almost) called him “maestro” [teacher] and gave him a copy of the “Farm” [on the River of Emeralds]. He was guarded by a mancha of “pistoleros,” Quito Marxists in black leather jackets who didn’t like to see Eduardo talking to a gringo.
Although Thomsen wrote some blistering critiques of books written by fellow authors he announced his first negative review to Miller in a June 1991 letter,
“Got my first Vile and wicked review in 25 years—from the London Times. It is bitchy—and had I not written the book very similar to the review I might have written. All the English reviews are very good and…generous. Cogdon [his agent] says the River Esmeraldas book did not catch on.”
Clay Morgan was a fellow author who corresponded extensively with Thomsen, and told Miller the following in a letter written in April 15, 1996,
I dedicated “Santiago” to Moritz. In fact, the “little blue man,” who appears on a rock in the middle of the river, is a humorous poke at Moritz. Moritz dedicates “The Saddest Pleasure” to my wife Barb and me.
I’m enclosing an essay I did for Writers Northwest, a couple of years back, so you can see if my perspective is one that will fit your book. [Miller also requested an essay about Thomsen for the “Moritz Project”] I have many letters—I think you may be mentioned in one or two—but haven’t pulled them out to look at them since his death. Mark Lowry, a professor from Western Kentucky University, has asked for letters, too.
Moritz Thomsen Versus Editors and Publishers
Thomsen had a rather contentious relationship with agents and publishers, although he managed to get his first three books published. Thomsen sent his stories of life in the Peace Corps on a regular basis to the San Francisco Chronicle, despite being told they weren’t interested. Evidently they reconsidered once they received the initial stories, which were eventually compiled into his best known work, Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle, published by Washington University Press in 1969.
Page Stegner, a friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer and author, said of Thomsen:
[He]could rise to inspired heights of eloquence in his condemnation of all agents, editors and critics (whom he regarded as a kind of literary Gestapo) who maliciously failed to appreciate or understand his work. “Of course,” he would say, subsiding in his chair, “the bastards are probably right.”
Stegner would deliver the manuscript of Thomsen’s second book, The Farm on the River of Emeralds, to Don Cogdon, who would become Thomsen’s agent. When Cogdon asked for notes and asked when it would be done Thomsen sent back a 400-page manuscript with a curt note saying it would “end with a period.” The book would become the “poor orphan”of Houghton-Mifflin publishing company, since the two executives Thomsen had worked with left their positions for other companies. This dumfounded Cogdon, who stated that Thomsen, “had brought these people [in his book] to life in a Dickensian fashion, to be both colorful and memorable.”
Cogdon did convince Vintage, a division of Random House, to produce a paperback edition. In an interview with the publisher of Peace Corps Worldwide, John Coyne, Thomsen revealed his vision for The Saddest Pleasure, “A novel? On the inside cover of the last book about going to Brazil, I told my editor I wanted to say, after the title: travel book as memoir, memoir as novel, novel as polemic.” Several author friends leaned on the editors of Graywolf Press to publish this epic journey. According to Thomsen’s agent, Don Cogdon, he was able to “place British rights” where it received a better review as, “The British have greater interest in travel memoirs then readers in the U.S.” Thomsen’s second to last book, My Two Wars, was not published until five years after his death. He corresponded with Page Stegner about the book’s focus on his hatred of his father (one of the two wars), and Page urged him to focus more on his stories as a bombardier in the Second World War, as it resembled Catch-22 in its poignancy and hilarity.
Thomsen’s Legacy
In a letter to Tom Miller, Martha Gellhorn, considered one of the great war correspondents as well as being the third wife of Ernest Hemmingway, summed up Moritz’s decision to leave a life of privilege,
Moritz Thomsen rejected wealth and all its values, starting with his very rich father; he chose to live poor, as poverty is the majority human condition. He was true in practice to his beliefs and the result, for us, is truly extraordinary writing. I had never heard of Moritz Thomsen and by chance found “Living Poor.” I was electrified by something (not found) in any writing…I think he must have been a unique human being because the quality of his writing could not be separated from his spirit. His books should survive when many others, far better known, are forgotten.
In a similar vein, Paul Theroux said the following in a letter to Miller in July of 1993, “He was an exile, a refugee, a hostage—lots of incarnations. I often think that what he was and the ways he lived his life was as important as his writing.”
According to his fellow author and confidant, Mary Ellen Fieweger, “I think he was ready to die, and determined to do it the way he had chosen to live most of his adult life. He died poor, with a disease that affects only the poor.”
Thomsen was possessed with the thought of death for many years before he actually died. According to fellow author Mark Lowry II, Moritz grew more “absolute—his cynicism, advice, softer side, and crotchety morality all more pronounced. He wrote one friend, ‘I see now that death doesn’t arrive at a certain moment with a clang and clatter. It is simply a slow leak.’”
To another friend who was planning a visit Thomsen wrote,
I contemplate a visit from you in August with mixed emotions and wondering if I will still be alive. I’ve been talking like this for ten years and don’t die and have to apologize to my friends for lingering on. Lately, however, I don’t move around and figure seventy-five is OK. I can leave the party because it’s a f…ing drag when it takes thirty minutes to put on your socks…I think you have never lived as I live now, starving for human and intellectual contacts in complete isolation….Writing, the source of so much pain, I think I’ll give up. My gift to humanity—and myself...Yesterday I had more to tell you. Now, today, the mind has gone blank.
These, according to Lowry, were among his last words.
In August of 1991 (shortly before his death), Thomsen again wrote to Page Stegner, “Page, I am half sick and will write you again in a few days. Thanks again kid, I have put you through hell, but how else does one get ahead except walking on the backs of his betters.” In 1995, Stegner and several other friends convinced Steerforth Press in South Royalton, Vermont to publish My Two Wars after they tracked down Thomsen’s only heirs, a niece and nephew, for permission. And in 2018, Thomsen’s niece and Executive Literary Agent, Mary Ellen Fieweger would finally and independently publish his last manuscript, Bad News from a Black Coast.
According to Mark Lowry II’s, “The Last Days of Moritz Thomsen”, Esther (Ramon’s divorced wife) describes Thomsen’s last words,
Around 11:00 or 12:00 I woke to a loud thump. Don Martin was trying to get to the bed pan. The IV was in his way. He ripped it out and….”I don’t need this sh-t.” I pleaded, “Don Martin no! Please leave that alone. You need it. Let me help you.” But he said, “I can still do something. I can go to the bathroom myself.” I told him, “if you can’t, just say so, and I’ll hold the bed pan for you.” He said, “No. I still can do it. I can take care of myself.”
He died on August 28, 1991 at 11:00 P.M. dying as he lived most of his adult life, staying true to his values of living amongst the poor and rejecting comforts that his father had envisioned for him.
After reading hundreds of Thomsen’s thousands of letters, I’ve learned many things about the man not revealed as intimately in his books. His letters offered an opportunity to share some of his most inner feelings and fears with people he trusted and respected and considered part of his literary family. He wrote to some of these authors for over twenty years. His letters like his books were transparent but possibly rawer and obviously unedited. They included and abundance of colorful and profane language and a good deal of irony and humor was sprinkled throughout his correspondence. He offered good advice about writing and life which is one of the reasons so many authors continued the dialogue with him, sending countless letters on their long and often endless journey into the jungles of Ecuador.
Although I didn’t know Thomsen and never corresponded with him, he’s the author I consider my “literary patron saint”. His transparency and lifelong commitment to live among and try to understand some of the most abandoned people in Ecuador, the different ways he described what he saw and the impact it had on countless writers is an inspiration and something worth emulating.
After rereading Thomsen’s best known work Living Poor recently, Paul Theroux, the “Godfather” of travel literature revealed,
A British publisher, Eland Press in London, is reissuing Moritz's books—they just asked me if they could use my intro for nothing, and in the spirit of Moritz, I said yes. Actually I think Moritz would have had a big argument with them about money—his letters to publishers were fierce! Someday, someone has to sit down and gather all his letters and publish them in a big volume. His letters may prove to be his true masterpiece.
In another exchange, Theroux went on to say,
While the subject is riveting, and the details of peasant life vivid and unusual, Moritz himself did not really find a way to bring the people to life in “Living Poor.” His models were Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe and god-only-knows who else—big personalities. Moritz himself did not have the ego, or the style, to match them. I think his writing improved with "The Saddest Pleasure" and "The Farm..." (“The Farm on the River of Emeralds”) but in essence his writing has an epistolary feel—as though he is writing a letter to a reader; and is the reason his collected letters are probably his magnum opus. Just a thought.
Theroux met Thomsen in 1976 at a talk on “Aspects of the American Novel” sponsored by our State Department at the US embassy in Quito, and according to a letter Thomsen wrote fellow author Craig Storti, “It wasn’t particularly impressive, but he was such a nice guy that everyone forgave him. I tried to talk him into a PC (Peace Corps) novel, but the Peace Corps is not especially news at this point.”
They met again in 1977 when Theroux was writing The Old Patagonian Express, and according to Theroux,
It was Moritz who said to me one afternoon on a Quito street, “I don’t get it, Paul. How do you write a travel book if all you do is go to parties?”
“Write about the parties?” I said. But he was dead right and I was ashamed of myself. I vowed to take the train to Guayaquil the next day.
Over the years they would correspond and a friendship emerged, which Theroux revealed in his introduction to The Saddest Pleasure,
I should have declared my own interest at the outset—he is a friend of mine. I am glad he used a line of mine as a title for this book. Our friendship is, I suppose, characteristic of many he must enjoy. We met in Ecuador twice in the late seventies and have corresponded irregularly since. He goes on boasting of his ailing health, his failing fortunes, and his insignificance. For these reasons and many others, I am proud to know him. There are so few people in the world like him who are also good writers.
Acclaimed author Tom Miller, who would dedicate his last book in Thomsen’s memory, met Thomsen while researching The Panama Hat Trail in the early 1980s. In an article in the Washington Post he wrote:
I saw the chain-smoking Thomsen with some frequency and formed a deep friendship that continued in extensive correspondence. When I saw him last, he was living near the Esmeraldas River, his emphysema worsening, in what was, essentially, a tree house with a typewriter, books, a phonograph and classical records. We sensed it would be our last face-to-face visit, though neither of us said so.
Thomsen’s “wicked” critiques are also reflected in this letter to Miller in 1986, relating to an article Miller co-authored, “The Interstate Gourmet: Texas and the Southwest, a Restaurant Guide”:
Last night I read the Interstate Gourmet, the perfect oxymoron; so my idea of you is changed. You are not that sweet child I knew with your honed sensibilities…You are a kind of 3rd rate Caligula, chewing, dribbling, degenerate with your debased tastes, your incessant hunger, the food going in one end, an endless stream of shit shooting out the other. I think of Tom, I think of shit—tons of it spread thick enough across the desert to bring it into bloom…I don’t think writers should write about things that don’t engage their basic passions. —And of course, studying your book-book prose, maybe, god help you, you never have. But stop Tom, before it is too late; you will not be chevere [cool] at 300 pounds.
Miller described the critique as “amusing” and went on to state, “His vicious comments are often directed not at the writer but at the person or situation profiled. Anyway, I did not object to a word of his critique.” However, in another letter he admitted, “Thomsen maintained a wide correspondence; the severity of one letter from him would often take days before its impact wore off.”
The shared friendship and respect Miller and Theroux felt for Thomsen led to what they would call “Moritz Memories,” which Miller described as,
A tribute to a great American expatriate writer, in a century for which the term expat has little genuine meaning. Thomsen lived the word fully. We are convinced that he will be recognized as a significant 20th century figure for his life and his words. He was an uncompromising sceptic, difficult to know well, impossible to forget. And destined to be fully appreciated only posthumously. The book will be made up of a biography, essays by those who knew him well, his correspondence…some of his line drawings, photos of him and excerpts from his three published books.
I came across a ten-page version of this effort from February 1997, what Miller and Theroux referred to as the “Moritz Project,” which was to have been the last phase of the venture, to be completed by the middle of that year. The plan references some of the twenty-five key authors and publishers Thomsen corresponded with.
John Hay was one of those authors who wrote a short essay plus a prose poem about Thomsen called, “Moritz’s Dream.” John Brandi, a well-published small press poet, who carried on a “vigorous correspondence” with Thomsen wrote, “M’s writings were those of a master seer—direct and sizzling, full of enough passions, insight and rare detail to rock me off my seat.”
Philippe Garnier, a French journalist who was in Los Angeles for the publication Liberation, also wrote a short essay about Thomsen and eventually would be instrumental in getting Living Poor published in French. He was also asked by Miller to write an essay about Thomsen for the “Moritz Project,” which turned into an extensive article, “Maquis: Apercu, de un autre paysage American” an in-depth piece on various contemporary maverick American writers, which included an extensive section on Thomsen.
Stan Arnold, the editor of the features section of the San Francisco Chronicle which published stories from Thomsen that would become his first book, corresponded with Thomsen for many years. Of Thomsen he said, “I’ve only known two Christians in my life. He was one of them.”
Mary Ellen Fieweger, a poet and friend, was also asked to write an essay about Thomsen for the “Moritz Project,” (also known as “Moritz Memories) which she titled, “FAME ma non troppo.” Fieweger also lived in Ecuador and said this about her essay in a July 1996 letter to Miller,
Since you’re probably sitting up there in Tucson worrying about the screed (no doubt interminable) on Moritz I’m cranking out down here in Quito, I’m sending a draft to put your fears to rest. You will note that it’s within (just) the 5,000 word/20 page limit stipulated. You will also note that I’ve treated everybody with kid gloves. Well, sort of. But I haven’t gone after anybody with brass knuckles. Though a few academics, including one anthropologist, are presented in terms they might not think altogether flattering.
Miller felt Fieweger knew more about Thomsen than anyone although she was not easy to get along with, so Miller asked Theroux if he would take over future interactions with her. Theroux said of her, “Mary Ellen convinced me that she is a terrific resource and that Moritz was more B. Traven than I had really grasped,” which is another reason why Thomsen’s correspondence would become such an important window into his life despite having written four books about it. After Thomsen’s death, Fieweger would become the “Literary Executive” to negotiate for his estate.
The Origins of Tom Miller’s Collection of Moritz Thomsen Letters
In February 2018, Miller contacted the editor of Peace Corps Worldwide, a blog for Returned Peace Corps Volunteer authors looking for someone willing to complete the book about Thomsen and made these comments about how and why he came across so many of Thomsen’s letters:
One night more than 35 years ago I met Moritz Thomsen, a writer and former Peace Corps Volunteer. This took place in Quito, capital of Ecuador where Thomsen had served. His account of his Peace Corps years is wonderfully detailed in Living Poor, the first of a handful of terrific nonfiction books that earned the author ranking as among the best American expat authors of the twentieth century. I describe him like this: He was a man of almost insufferable integrity and undeniable charm.
Over the years until his death in 1991 Thomsen befriended many writers on the literary gringo trail through the Americas as well as Peace Corps officials, local farmers, and others, building up an impressive array of acquaintances with whom he corresponded. I count myself among them, all the more fortunate in that I came to know him personally. At one point late in the twentieth century I had in mind to write a biography of him, or at least, with Paul Theroux, compile a Festschrift (literary tribute) in his honor. Neither effort reached fruition. Still, I amassed an enormous amount of material about him going back to his military service as well as letters he had written to others.
As part of the “Moritz Project,” Miller had requested copies of Thomsen’s letters from all of the authors he knew had corresponded with Thomsen, and his best source was John and Ruth Valleau. (This material is available for review in the University of Arizona Special Collection).
According to Miller,
They came to my attention through an elderly woman in a retirement home in San Francisco who knew Moritz in college, who got in touch through her daughter who saw my announcement soliciting Moritz memories. She simply recalled a friend of Thomsen from college. She had enough of the name right and the city, that through the University of Oregon alumni office I was able to track down the Valleau’s.
JohnValleau was a college friend of Thomsen and shared a room. “Butch,” as Ruth called Thomsen, spent the Valleau’s wedding night in a cottage with the newlyweds, and according to Ruth,
We spent a happy and boozy evening, the three of us. And of course Moritz kissed the bride. His lips quivered as we kissed. They trembled each time I ever kissed him—then and through the ensuring years…I loved John but it was easy to be in love with Moritz, too—he was gorgeous, with incredible blue eyes and a smile that made me weak in the knees. He was witty, urbane, sensitive, and more than a little mysterious.
Thomsen referred to Ruth as “Panther Eyes” in his letters and after both “Butch” and “Panther Eyes” passed away, Ruth’s estate sent Miller several boxes of letters and sketches.
Other Literary Encounters
Thomsen told of his encounter with Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan author of Open Veins of Latin American, in a letter to Miller in 1989:
Did I ever tell you I met Galeano in Quito at “Libri Mundi” [a bookstore Thomsen helped set up] [I]fell to my knees before him (almost) called him “maestro” [teacher] and gave him a copy of the “Farm” [on the River of Emeralds]. He was guarded by a mancha of “pistoleros,” Quito Marxists in black leather jackets who didn’t like to see Eduardo talking to a gringo.
Although Thomsen wrote some blistering critiques of books written by fellow authors he announced his first negative review to Miller in a June 1991 letter,
“Got my first Vile and wicked review in 25 years—from the London Times. It is bitchy—and had I not written the book very similar to the review I might have written. All the English reviews are very good and…generous. Cogdon [his agent] says the River Esmeraldas book did not catch on.”
Clay Morgan was a fellow author who corresponded extensively with Thomsen, and told Miller the following in a letter written in April 15, 1996,
I dedicated “Santiago” to Moritz. In fact, the “little blue man,” who appears on a rock in the middle of the river, is a humorous poke at Moritz. Moritz dedicates “The Saddest Pleasure” to my wife Barb and me.
I’m enclosing an essay I did for Writers Northwest, a couple of years back, so you can see if my perspective is one that will fit your book. [Miller also requested an essay about Thomsen for the “Moritz Project”] I have many letters—I think you may be mentioned in one or two—but haven’t pulled them out to look at them since his death. Mark Lowry, a professor from Western Kentucky University, has asked for letters, too.
Moritz Thomsen Versus Editors and Publishers
Thomsen had a rather contentious relationship with agents and publishers, although he managed to get his first three books published. Thomsen sent his stories of life in the Peace Corps on a regular basis to the San Francisco Chronicle, despite being told they weren’t interested. Evidently they reconsidered once they received the initial stories, which were eventually compiled into his best known work, Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle, published by Washington University Press in 1969.
Page Stegner, a friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer and author, said of Thomsen:
[He]could rise to inspired heights of eloquence in his condemnation of all agents, editors and critics (whom he regarded as a kind of literary Gestapo) who maliciously failed to appreciate or understand his work. “Of course,” he would say, subsiding in his chair, “the bastards are probably right.”
Stegner would deliver the manuscript of Thomsen’s second book, The Farm on the River of Emeralds, to Don Cogdon, who would become Thomsen’s agent. When Cogdon asked for notes and asked when it would be done Thomsen sent back a 400-page manuscript with a curt note saying it would “end with a period.” The book would become the “poor orphan”of Houghton-Mifflin publishing company, since the two executives Thomsen had worked with left their positions for other companies. This dumfounded Cogdon, who stated that Thomsen, “had brought these people [in his book] to life in a Dickensian fashion, to be both colorful and memorable.”
Cogdon did convince Vintage, a division of Random House, to produce a paperback edition. In an interview with the publisher of Peace Corps Worldwide, John Coyne, Thomsen revealed his vision for The Saddest Pleasure, “A novel? On the inside cover of the last book about going to Brazil, I told my editor I wanted to say, after the title: travel book as memoir, memoir as novel, novel as polemic.” Several author friends leaned on the editors of Graywolf Press to publish this epic journey. According to Thomsen’s agent, Don Cogdon, he was able to “place British rights” where it received a better review as, “The British have greater interest in travel memoirs then readers in the U.S.” Thomsen’s second to last book, My Two Wars, was not published until five years after his death. He corresponded with Page Stegner about the book’s focus on his hatred of his father (one of the two wars), and Page urged him to focus more on his stories as a bombardier in the Second World War, as it resembled Catch-22 in its poignancy and hilarity.
Thomsen’s Legacy
In a letter to Tom Miller, Martha Gellhorn, considered one of the great war correspondents as well as being the third wife of Ernest Hemmingway, summed up Moritz’s decision to leave a life of privilege,
Moritz Thomsen rejected wealth and all its values, starting with his very rich father; he chose to live poor, as poverty is the majority human condition. He was true in practice to his beliefs and the result, for us, is truly extraordinary writing. I had never heard of Moritz Thomsen and by chance found “Living Poor.” I was electrified by something (not found) in any writing…I think he must have been a unique human being because the quality of his writing could not be separated from his spirit. His books should survive when many others, far better known, are forgotten.
In a similar vein, Paul Theroux said the following in a letter to Miller in July of 1993, “He was an exile, a refugee, a hostage—lots of incarnations. I often think that what he was and the ways he lived his life was as important as his writing.”
According to his fellow author and confidant, Mary Ellen Fieweger, “I think he was ready to die, and determined to do it the way he had chosen to live most of his adult life. He died poor, with a disease that affects only the poor.”
Thomsen was possessed with the thought of death for many years before he actually died. According to fellow author Mark Lowry II, Moritz grew more “absolute—his cynicism, advice, softer side, and crotchety morality all more pronounced. He wrote one friend, ‘I see now that death doesn’t arrive at a certain moment with a clang and clatter. It is simply a slow leak.’”
To another friend who was planning a visit Thomsen wrote,
I contemplate a visit from you in August with mixed emotions and wondering if I will still be alive. I’ve been talking like this for ten years and don’t die and have to apologize to my friends for lingering on. Lately, however, I don’t move around and figure seventy-five is OK. I can leave the party because it’s a f…ing drag when it takes thirty minutes to put on your socks…I think you have never lived as I live now, starving for human and intellectual contacts in complete isolation….Writing, the source of so much pain, I think I’ll give up. My gift to humanity—and myself...Yesterday I had more to tell you. Now, today, the mind has gone blank.
These, according to Lowry, were among his last words.
In August of 1991 (shortly before his death), Thomsen again wrote to Page Stegner, “Page, I am half sick and will write you again in a few days. Thanks again kid, I have put you through hell, but how else does one get ahead except walking on the backs of his betters.” In 1995, Stegner and several other friends convinced Steerforth Press in South Royalton, Vermont to publish My Two Wars after they tracked down Thomsen’s only heirs, a niece and nephew, for permission. And in 2018, Thomsen’s niece and Executive Literary Agent, Mary Ellen Fieweger would finally and independently publish his last manuscript, Bad News from a Black Coast.
According to Mark Lowry II’s, “The Last Days of Moritz Thomsen”, Esther (Ramon’s divorced wife) describes Thomsen’s last words,
Around 11:00 or 12:00 I woke to a loud thump. Don Martin was trying to get to the bed pan. The IV was in his way. He ripped it out and….”I don’t need this sh-t.” I pleaded, “Don Martin no! Please leave that alone. You need it. Let me help you.” But he said, “I can still do something. I can go to the bathroom myself.” I told him, “if you can’t, just say so, and I’ll hold the bed pan for you.” He said, “No. I still can do it. I can take care of myself.”
He died on August 28, 1991 at 11:00 P.M. dying as he lived most of his adult life, staying true to his values of living amongst the poor and rejecting comforts that his father had envisioned for him.
After reading hundreds of Thomsen’s thousands of letters, I’ve learned many things about the man not revealed as intimately in his books. His letters offered an opportunity to share some of his most inner feelings and fears with people he trusted and respected and considered part of his literary family. He wrote to some of these authors for over twenty years. His letters like his books were transparent but possibly rawer and obviously unedited. They included and abundance of colorful and profane language and a good deal of irony and humor was sprinkled throughout his correspondence. He offered good advice about writing and life which is one of the reasons so many authors continued the dialogue with him, sending countless letters on their long and often endless journey into the jungles of Ecuador.
Although I didn’t know Thomsen and never corresponded with him, he’s the author I consider my “literary patron saint”. His transparency and lifelong commitment to live among and try to understand some of the most abandoned people in Ecuador, the different ways he described what he saw and the impact it had on countless writers is an inspiration and something worth emulating.
 | Vancouver author, poet, songwriter Bill Arnott is the bestselling author of Gone Viking: A Travel Saga, Dromomania, and Allan’s Wishes. Bill’s work is published in Canada, the US, UK, Europe and Asia with features in dozens of literary journals, magazines and anthologies. He’s received awards for prose, poetry, and songwriting and is a Whistler Independent Book Awards finalist for Gone Viking: A Travel Saga. Find Bill’s column, Bill Arnott’s Beat at the League of Canadian Poets and the Federation of BC Writers. @billarnott_aps |
Review: River Revery | By Penn Kemp
Insomniac Press | 2019 | $19.95
Reviewed by Bill Arnott
London Ontario’s my home. In part. Lived there two years. Important years. Growth years. It’s why I feel kinship, connection with the community and the meandering multi-named river that sews it together. I feel the same for the Laureate Emerita that truly calls this place her home, living in the house she grew up in, a songbird’s flight from the water, the faintest tidal tug hinting at Great Lakes and storm-capped Atlantic.
Penn Kemp’s River Revery came to me just before Christmas. It felt like a present; the cover – Mary McDonald photo, Mike O’Connor design – a copse of evergreens reaching, waving, to an avian line, all in reverential shades of aquamarine. Opening pages, I unwrap Penn’s poetic world, her gift, to us. From River Revery, the title poem:
“Water abounds here, with this river ... My rant runs along the river in / long twilight along the shore, a / migratory route for warblers / alighting in cottonwood, a trill.”
Within this beauty, insights, each message clear. From True Cost: Walmart versus Woodland:
“How do you evaluate a loss of habitat / tamped down by asphalt, crushed by // power complexes where brand names / replace the reality of life that feeds us? ... Ask what lasts. Glacial meltwater carved / a spillway through the Ingersoll moraine, / flood plain to terraced loam to upland clay, / Carolinian and northern Great Lake forest.”
Yet in pure Penn Kemp style, with poignancy comes playfulness. From All for Art:
“The photographer takes me down to the river, / my favourite spot. I dress up, thinking to just / stand by the bank and recite a poem while he // shoots. But no, he wants me by the water so / we scramble down the steep bank, brushing / back willow branches. He holds them back, // grinning: ‘I won’t let them snap till you’re / past.’ ‘Do you happen to have sisters?’ I / ask, recognizing the temptation he resists.”
Like Thames tributaries, this volume’s unexpected bends surface through mixed media – verse interspersed with photography and matrix barcodes leading us to live readings, music, song and film – Penn’s poetry spoken, sung and captured in video vignettes. A showcase of performances and collaboration unfold as we leap from the printed page to stage, YouTube and SoundCloud, Kemp continuing to push creative boundaries and blur artistic lines, her work a poetic map where latitude and longitude no longer apply.
Despite a nasty tumble and wrenched ankle during an accompanying photo shoot, our author perseveres. Again, from All for Art:
“For such an immersive experience, standing / on the edge won’t do. I offer to wade in, / rolling up my pants like Huckleberry Finn, / giving my all for Art as / always.”
Indeed. For such an immersive experience standing on the edge simply won’t do. Once more this poet gives her all. Few do it as well. No one does it better. While dedicating this book to her grandchildren, she could just as well dedicate River Revery to the planet, to which we owe our all. And need. Like Penn Kemp, as always.
***
Poet, performer, and playwright Penn Kemp has been celebrated as a trailblazer since her first publication of poetry by Coach House (1972), a “poetic El Niño,” and a “one-woman literary industry.” She was London’s inaugural Piet Laureate (2010-2013) and has been granted numerous municipal, provincial, and national awards. Chosen as the League of Canadian Poets’ Spoken Word Artist (2015), Kemp has long been a keen participant/activist in Canada’s cultural life, with thirty books of poetry, prose, and drama, seven plays and ten CDs produced.
Reviewed by Bill Arnott
London Ontario’s my home. In part. Lived there two years. Important years. Growth years. It’s why I feel kinship, connection with the community and the meandering multi-named river that sews it together. I feel the same for the Laureate Emerita that truly calls this place her home, living in the house she grew up in, a songbird’s flight from the water, the faintest tidal tug hinting at Great Lakes and storm-capped Atlantic.
Penn Kemp’s River Revery came to me just before Christmas. It felt like a present; the cover – Mary McDonald photo, Mike O’Connor design – a copse of evergreens reaching, waving, to an avian line, all in reverential shades of aquamarine. Opening pages, I unwrap Penn’s poetic world, her gift, to us. From River Revery, the title poem:
“Water abounds here, with this river ... My rant runs along the river in / long twilight along the shore, a / migratory route for warblers / alighting in cottonwood, a trill.”
Within this beauty, insights, each message clear. From True Cost: Walmart versus Woodland:
“How do you evaluate a loss of habitat / tamped down by asphalt, crushed by // power complexes where brand names / replace the reality of life that feeds us? ... Ask what lasts. Glacial meltwater carved / a spillway through the Ingersoll moraine, / flood plain to terraced loam to upland clay, / Carolinian and northern Great Lake forest.”
Yet in pure Penn Kemp style, with poignancy comes playfulness. From All for Art:
“The photographer takes me down to the river, / my favourite spot. I dress up, thinking to just / stand by the bank and recite a poem while he // shoots. But no, he wants me by the water so / we scramble down the steep bank, brushing / back willow branches. He holds them back, // grinning: ‘I won’t let them snap till you’re / past.’ ‘Do you happen to have sisters?’ I / ask, recognizing the temptation he resists.”
Like Thames tributaries, this volume’s unexpected bends surface through mixed media – verse interspersed with photography and matrix barcodes leading us to live readings, music, song and film – Penn’s poetry spoken, sung and captured in video vignettes. A showcase of performances and collaboration unfold as we leap from the printed page to stage, YouTube and SoundCloud, Kemp continuing to push creative boundaries and blur artistic lines, her work a poetic map where latitude and longitude no longer apply.
Despite a nasty tumble and wrenched ankle during an accompanying photo shoot, our author perseveres. Again, from All for Art:
“For such an immersive experience, standing / on the edge won’t do. I offer to wade in, / rolling up my pants like Huckleberry Finn, / giving my all for Art as / always.”
Indeed. For such an immersive experience standing on the edge simply won’t do. Once more this poet gives her all. Few do it as well. No one does it better. While dedicating this book to her grandchildren, she could just as well dedicate River Revery to the planet, to which we owe our all. And need. Like Penn Kemp, as always.
***
Poet, performer, and playwright Penn Kemp has been celebrated as a trailblazer since her first publication of poetry by Coach House (1972), a “poetic El Niño,” and a “one-woman literary industry.” She was London’s inaugural Piet Laureate (2010-2013) and has been granted numerous municipal, provincial, and national awards. Chosen as the League of Canadian Poets’ Spoken Word Artist (2015), Kemp has long been a keen participant/activist in Canada’s cultural life, with thirty books of poetry, prose, and drama, seven plays and ten CDs produced.
 | Renee Drummond-Brown is an accomplished poetess with experience in creative writing. She is a (Summa Cum Laude) graduate of Geneva College of Western Pennsylvania and The Center for Urban Biblical Ministry (CUBM). Renee’ is still in pursuit of excellence towards her mark for higher education. She is working on her fourth book and has numerous works published globally which can be seen in cubm.org/news, KWEE Magazine (Liberian L. Review), Leaves of Ink Magazine, New Pittsburgh Courier, Raven Cage Poetry and Prose Ezine Magazine, Realistic Poetry International, Scarlet Leaf Publishing House, SickLit Magazine, The Metro Gazette Publishing Company, Inc., Tuck, and Whispers Magazine just to name a few. Civil Rights Activist, Ms. Rutha Mae Harris, Original Freedom Singer of the Civil Rights Movement, was responsible for having Drummond-Brown’s very first poem published in the Metro Gazette Publishing Company, Inc., in Albany, GA. Renee’ also has poetry published in several anthologies and honorable mentions to her credit in various writing outlets. The Multicultural Student Services Office of Geneva College presented her with 2nd prize in the Undergraduate Essay Contest. Renee’ also won and/or placed in several poetry contests globally. She was Poet of the Month Winner in the prestigious Potpourri Poets/Artists Writing Community and in the running for Poet of the Year. She has even graced the cover of KWEE Magazine in the month of May, 2016. Her love for creative writing is undoubtedly displayed through her very unique style and her work solidifies her as a force to be reckoned with in the literary world of poetry. Renee’ is inspired by non-other than Dr. Maya Angelou, because of her, Renee’ posits “Still I write, I write, and I’ll write!” |
Gnarly Roots Book Review by: Author Reneé Drummond-Brown
November 15, 2019
Title: Gnarly Roots
FORTE Publications #12
Ashmun Street
Snapper Hill Monrovia, Liberia
ISBN-9780648182351
Gnarly Roots by Jack Kolkmeyer pulls the reader into the dedication, “To all who dig deeply.” The opening line is powerful, commands immediate attention and is definitely a controversial statement, exerting self mentally or physically. Gnarly Roots is the third book in Kolkmeyer’s poetic series that explore the difficulties that dare to challenge our planet and in the cultural realms. His book is rooted in place, belonging, and identity in the transitional space that people occupy. The book addresses issues that plague our lives daily; whether social, financial, spiritual, political or personal. The book gifts the reader with knowledge on how to untangle these complicated knots, and ultimately endure.
Kolkmeyer’s book opens with the poem “diminutive notions” (1), addressing community, national, international, political and individual issues facing society today. His ability to write and tackle them with conviction is astonishing in these lines, “in the dealings of this current specter you become aware of the larger proportions of potential conflict of segregation of the soul and the spirit” (1). Each poem is loaded with subtext challenging the reader to look at the bigger picture and dig deep within one’s own worldview.
It is no coincidence that the eponymous poem “gnarly roots,” on page 2, addresses anxiety, shelter, storms and the gamely fights and scars that manifest from within. As expected, Kolkmeyer’s, fifth stanza weaves in the solution: “as the roots stay firmly grounded…to support the timeless expansion…of the natural urge to spread higher” (3). “Growth,” is the resounding refrain that Kolkmeyer so eloquently captures and masters in his book adding depth to the word evolution.
From a craft perspective Kolkmeyer, like the American poet Edward Estlin Cummings (“e. e.” Cummings) weaves love, and nature into his work. Cummings is radically known for his unconventional punctuation and phrasing. Kolmeyer’s book seems to follow the same path of lower case letters throughout the text, with the exception of two poems found on pages 62, and 76; consistency, and uniformity in “e. e.” Cummings poetry is distinct. Nonetheless, in Kolkmeyer’s attempt to imitate one of the all-time greats, he comes up short. However, like e.e. Cummings, Kolkmeyer, has mastered tackling controversial subject matter while simultaneously making complex situations mundane with his use of metaphors.
Kolkmeyer understands the powerful effect of imagery stirring the reader emotionally when he wrote, “and finally to the freedom to soar…winging way above the confines of our…place…to find a new face to float with and…to find new realms and hear new songs…beyond the tones of ours” (11). This theoretical imagery challenges both the negative and positive emotional state which leaves a powerful impact on the reader. Kolkmeyer strategically plays with words, and takes full advantage of the use of white space adding by far literary techniques, and form that set his work apart from other poets. The carefully placed line breaks throughout his book create stanzas that provide space for the reader to pause, cogitate, and take it all in; in moderation.
Kolkmeyer’s poem “The nesting place,” employs a detailed mythical feat that literally invades every facet of human interaction when he wrote: “We know there are fly by nights who would steal from us snatching a meal from the very mouths of our offspring” (p.10). Kolkmeyer’s poetry is the juxtaposition of a history, and present day societal issue that strike a respondent chord lingering in the mind of the reader.
This erudite poet skillfully taps into the African American culture well; something he is very comfortable with since volunteering his service in the Peace Corps in Liberia from 1969-72. Thus giving his poetry a rhythm and blues flare in the poem titled: “The Palm Wine Drinkard-Uh Wunjuka Tunungee* For Amos Tutuola *(Kpella of Liberia: my head is turning).” Kolkmeyer, so eloquently takes the reader on a journey to a familiar place as he wrote, “like beer…palm wine is an acquired taste…some like it, some don’t…it’s a native thing too…because not everyone has piassava trees growing in their back yards” (p.54). Placing primary emphasis on West African “piassava (palm) trees” allows the reader to explore Kolkmeyer’s mind’s eye of philosophical interpretation of those beautiful images in the natural world.
Kolkmeyer’s aim is to bring balance of nature with our own natural roots. His poetry seeks to expand the boundaries of a normal array of perspectives by embracing a healthy mindset of the culture and relationship as it relates to the environment when he wrote, “and then there’s the head liner…with its beaming pineal eye…forever searching the heavens for…mystery” (76). This experimental narrative is a reminder that the idea of creation holds more questions than answers unexplainable by the application of human reasoning. In spite of the plethora of issues raised by Kolkmeyer, that the universe is faced with, his poetic framework of understanding still challenges the reader to continuously “grow.”
FORTE Publications #12
Ashmun Street
Snapper Hill Monrovia, Liberia
ISBN-9780648182351
Gnarly Roots by Jack Kolkmeyer pulls the reader into the dedication, “To all who dig deeply.” The opening line is powerful, commands immediate attention and is definitely a controversial statement, exerting self mentally or physically. Gnarly Roots is the third book in Kolkmeyer’s poetic series that explore the difficulties that dare to challenge our planet and in the cultural realms. His book is rooted in place, belonging, and identity in the transitional space that people occupy. The book addresses issues that plague our lives daily; whether social, financial, spiritual, political or personal. The book gifts the reader with knowledge on how to untangle these complicated knots, and ultimately endure.
Kolkmeyer’s book opens with the poem “diminutive notions” (1), addressing community, national, international, political and individual issues facing society today. His ability to write and tackle them with conviction is astonishing in these lines, “in the dealings of this current specter you become aware of the larger proportions of potential conflict of segregation of the soul and the spirit” (1). Each poem is loaded with subtext challenging the reader to look at the bigger picture and dig deep within one’s own worldview.
It is no coincidence that the eponymous poem “gnarly roots,” on page 2, addresses anxiety, shelter, storms and the gamely fights and scars that manifest from within. As expected, Kolkmeyer’s, fifth stanza weaves in the solution: “as the roots stay firmly grounded…to support the timeless expansion…of the natural urge to spread higher” (3). “Growth,” is the resounding refrain that Kolkmeyer so eloquently captures and masters in his book adding depth to the word evolution.
From a craft perspective Kolkmeyer, like the American poet Edward Estlin Cummings (“e. e.” Cummings) weaves love, and nature into his work. Cummings is radically known for his unconventional punctuation and phrasing. Kolmeyer’s book seems to follow the same path of lower case letters throughout the text, with the exception of two poems found on pages 62, and 76; consistency, and uniformity in “e. e.” Cummings poetry is distinct. Nonetheless, in Kolkmeyer’s attempt to imitate one of the all-time greats, he comes up short. However, like e.e. Cummings, Kolkmeyer, has mastered tackling controversial subject matter while simultaneously making complex situations mundane with his use of metaphors.
Kolkmeyer understands the powerful effect of imagery stirring the reader emotionally when he wrote, “and finally to the freedom to soar…winging way above the confines of our…place…to find a new face to float with and…to find new realms and hear new songs…beyond the tones of ours” (11). This theoretical imagery challenges both the negative and positive emotional state which leaves a powerful impact on the reader. Kolkmeyer strategically plays with words, and takes full advantage of the use of white space adding by far literary techniques, and form that set his work apart from other poets. The carefully placed line breaks throughout his book create stanzas that provide space for the reader to pause, cogitate, and take it all in; in moderation.
Kolkmeyer’s poem “The nesting place,” employs a detailed mythical feat that literally invades every facet of human interaction when he wrote: “We know there are fly by nights who would steal from us snatching a meal from the very mouths of our offspring” (p.10). Kolkmeyer’s poetry is the juxtaposition of a history, and present day societal issue that strike a respondent chord lingering in the mind of the reader.
This erudite poet skillfully taps into the African American culture well; something he is very comfortable with since volunteering his service in the Peace Corps in Liberia from 1969-72. Thus giving his poetry a rhythm and blues flare in the poem titled: “The Palm Wine Drinkard-Uh Wunjuka Tunungee* For Amos Tutuola *(Kpella of Liberia: my head is turning).” Kolkmeyer, so eloquently takes the reader on a journey to a familiar place as he wrote, “like beer…palm wine is an acquired taste…some like it, some don’t…it’s a native thing too…because not everyone has piassava trees growing in their back yards” (p.54). Placing primary emphasis on West African “piassava (palm) trees” allows the reader to explore Kolkmeyer’s mind’s eye of philosophical interpretation of those beautiful images in the natural world.
Kolkmeyer’s aim is to bring balance of nature with our own natural roots. His poetry seeks to expand the boundaries of a normal array of perspectives by embracing a healthy mindset of the culture and relationship as it relates to the environment when he wrote, “and then there’s the head liner…with its beaming pineal eye…forever searching the heavens for…mystery” (76). This experimental narrative is a reminder that the idea of creation holds more questions than answers unexplainable by the application of human reasoning. In spite of the plethora of issues raised by Kolkmeyer, that the universe is faced with, his poetic framework of understanding still challenges the reader to continuously “grow.”
Québec-born Greg Fewer’s flash fiction and reviews have appeared in Cuento Magazine, Lovecraftiana, Monsters: A Dark Drabbles Anthology, Page & Spine, The Sirens Call and Tightbeam, among other publications.
Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue
Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue (Katherine Tegen Books, 2017). ISBN: 9780062382825 (Epub edition); 9780062382801 (hardcover).
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, Mackenzi Lee’s second novel (after This Monstrous Thing [2015]), received a Stonewall Honor for Books in Children’s and Young Adult Literature in 2018. The novel centers on eighteen-year-old Henry (‘Monty’) Montague, his best friend, Percy, and his younger but more mature sister, Felicity. Together, they set out on their ‘grand tour’ of Europe, an ostensibly educational voyage under the watchful eye of their adult guide, Mr Lockwood, in the 1720s. Monty’s authoritarian father, an French aristocrat resident in England, hopes that his son will grow up and shrug off his reputation as a boozing rake so that he can help manage the family estates. He also wants Felicity to go to a French finishing school to learn social etiquette and prepare her for becoming a suitable wife. For Percy, it’s an opportunity to spend a year travelling with his friend before he’s sent off to college in Holland to study law. None of them is happy with their prospective lives after the grand tour – Monty fears his father and is unenthused about working with him, Felicity wants to become a physician and Percy seems reluctant to talk about studying law abroad. Of course, it would mean that Monty and Percy would also see very little of each other afterwards.
So the grand tour – the eighteenth-/early nineteenth-century equivalent of a gap year (but for the well to do) – is an opportunity for the trio to not only broaden their minds before starting their unwanted careers but also to have a last fling of adolescent fun together – and, for Monty, to temporarily escape his father’s overbearing presence. However, they find that under Mr Lockwood’s tutelage, the grand tour is not quite as exciting as they had hoped – until, that is, Monty makes a serious faux pas at a major social event, to the huge embarrassment of his companions. This leads to Mr Lockwood’s decision to bring the tour to an end and to return to England with the boys as soon as Felicity can be dropped off at her finishing school in the south of France.
However, soon afterwards, the trio become separated from their adult guide and encounter highwaymen, a travelling fair, a detour towards Spain, a sea journey and pirates, all while making new friends and undertaking a quest to find a fabulous artefact made by an alchemist.
Meanwhile, the bisexual Monty comes to realize that he’s in love with Percy but he is too fearful of rejection to tell him. Yet, at times, there seems to be the possibility that Percy might have similar feelings for him. This ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ subplot runs through much of the book and had me shouting out loud with exasperation at one point, imploring the boys to just express their feelings for each other! There are moments of intimacy, but nothing is explicit.
We also see the trio mature more, especially Monty, as they are confronted by various dangers and hardships. While having a roguish charm, Monty is very self-centered at the beginning of the tale but gradually begins to comprehend the points of view of others around him as well as recognizing his own skills and shortcomings.
The author’s afterword provides some historical context for various aspects of the story. Lee comments that a number of people had socially acceptable ‘romantic relationships’ (close friendships) with same-sex people and that hostility towards homosexuality had become lax by the early eighteenth century. However, she also knows that, from the 1720s, there was renewed persecution of homosexuals in Britain and that buggery remained a capital offence there for another century. Despite this, the boys don’t fear being outed or even convicted, which seems unlikely to me. Gay sex was illegal where I lived until I was twenty-five. It would be many years later before I would come out to anyone.
Lee places more emphasis on Percy being biracial (his white father seemingly had had a relationship with a black servant or slave on his estate in Barbados) and he experiences both direct and indirect prejudice during the grand tour. Perhaps Lee thought that over-emphasizing these negative aspects of eighteenth-century reality would have made the story bleaker and therefore less enjoyable to read.
The book is, after all, a fantasy – hence the alchemical artefact – though the author’s use of an historical figure as the villain could also be seen as a form of alternate history. In my opinion, it would have been more plausible for this character to have had a fictional henchman assume this role – with the latter’s employer unaware (officially at least) of what he was doing.
I loved the period vocabulary, which crops up here and there, even if it had me keeping a dictionary to hand! Who nowadays encounters terms like bezoar, clemming, jack-tar, posset, swain or xebec? Their use adds historical authenticity to the tale while also teaching something new about the past to modern readers.
A well-paced, historical coming-of-age adventure, told through the sometimes flawed, but entertaining, and (usually) well-meaning Monty, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue is a delight to read!
So the grand tour – the eighteenth-/early nineteenth-century equivalent of a gap year (but for the well to do) – is an opportunity for the trio to not only broaden their minds before starting their unwanted careers but also to have a last fling of adolescent fun together – and, for Monty, to temporarily escape his father’s overbearing presence. However, they find that under Mr Lockwood’s tutelage, the grand tour is not quite as exciting as they had hoped – until, that is, Monty makes a serious faux pas at a major social event, to the huge embarrassment of his companions. This leads to Mr Lockwood’s decision to bring the tour to an end and to return to England with the boys as soon as Felicity can be dropped off at her finishing school in the south of France.
However, soon afterwards, the trio become separated from their adult guide and encounter highwaymen, a travelling fair, a detour towards Spain, a sea journey and pirates, all while making new friends and undertaking a quest to find a fabulous artefact made by an alchemist.
Meanwhile, the bisexual Monty comes to realize that he’s in love with Percy but he is too fearful of rejection to tell him. Yet, at times, there seems to be the possibility that Percy might have similar feelings for him. This ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ subplot runs through much of the book and had me shouting out loud with exasperation at one point, imploring the boys to just express their feelings for each other! There are moments of intimacy, but nothing is explicit.
We also see the trio mature more, especially Monty, as they are confronted by various dangers and hardships. While having a roguish charm, Monty is very self-centered at the beginning of the tale but gradually begins to comprehend the points of view of others around him as well as recognizing his own skills and shortcomings.
The author’s afterword provides some historical context for various aspects of the story. Lee comments that a number of people had socially acceptable ‘romantic relationships’ (close friendships) with same-sex people and that hostility towards homosexuality had become lax by the early eighteenth century. However, she also knows that, from the 1720s, there was renewed persecution of homosexuals in Britain and that buggery remained a capital offence there for another century. Despite this, the boys don’t fear being outed or even convicted, which seems unlikely to me. Gay sex was illegal where I lived until I was twenty-five. It would be many years later before I would come out to anyone.
Lee places more emphasis on Percy being biracial (his white father seemingly had had a relationship with a black servant or slave on his estate in Barbados) and he experiences both direct and indirect prejudice during the grand tour. Perhaps Lee thought that over-emphasizing these negative aspects of eighteenth-century reality would have made the story bleaker and therefore less enjoyable to read.
The book is, after all, a fantasy – hence the alchemical artefact – though the author’s use of an historical figure as the villain could also be seen as a form of alternate history. In my opinion, it would have been more plausible for this character to have had a fictional henchman assume this role – with the latter’s employer unaware (officially at least) of what he was doing.
I loved the period vocabulary, which crops up here and there, even if it had me keeping a dictionary to hand! Who nowadays encounters terms like bezoar, clemming, jack-tar, posset, swain or xebec? Their use adds historical authenticity to the tale while also teaching something new about the past to modern readers.
A well-paced, historical coming-of-age adventure, told through the sometimes flawed, but entertaining, and (usually) well-meaning Monty, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue is a delight to read!
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