That Was My War and I Missed it

Down through the ages, most generations have had a war or two occur in their lifetime. Some were called to duty, others volunteered for action, some watched it pass by and a few looked the other way.

In his outstanding book ‘Mekong First Light,’ about his involvement in the Vietnam War, Joseph W. Callaway, Jr. quotes the Greek philosopher Aristotle who said: “The search for truth is in one way hard, in another way easy. For it is evident that no one of us can ever master nor miss it wholly.” The truth is that war is bad but that perspective is often lost on youth.

Adolescence and competitive behavior often times run in parallel tracks. Many young men engage in high-risk behavior in order to satisfy their sense of self-worth.  This “rite of passage” can manifest itself in many ways; athletics, mountain climbing, fast cars, sexual activities and bar fights. If I were to think long and hard about it, that was probably my back story in the condensed version of my life.

I never really did anything ‘totally stupid’ in my youth but there were moments…

Volunteering for Vietnam was about on par with my failed attempt at grabbing a tramp steamer out of high school and sailing around the world and escaping to Europe after college to find myself. None of those events were thought-out, rational or goal-seeking. They were just ideas that came into my head one day and sounded ‘very cool’ at the time.

Vietnam could have been my war but, in the end, I only manned a typewriter instead of a hog (M60 machine gun) and sat behind a desk instead of in a foxhole. Two years of honing my journalism skills plus learning self-control and discipline was the best I could get out of the service. Mind you, I’m not complaining. It was a life-changing experience and I have only the greatest respect for those who wear the uniform of the United States of America. Truly spoken, unless you’ve lived in a barracks and marched the parade grounds, you really don’t understand what it means to ‘be in the service.’

Now, fifty-nine years later, I find myself somewhat ambivalent about my lack of combat experience. To be honest, the closest I ever got to bombs exploding nearby and bullets flying overhead was in basic training. It was reenacted in one of my first novels ‘Love in the A Shau.’ Fortunately, I was able to reimagine that as a cathartic experience of combat and translate it to the written page.

I wasn’t there; not really. Writing that novel was an exercise in purging my soul of a lack of real-life combat experience. In that vein, I tried very hard to be realistic and respectful of the brave men (and women) who did go through that special kind of hell. It must have worked. I’ve had several combat veterans compliment me on the ‘action sequences’ in the book so at least I got that part right.

In past blogs, I’ve rambled on about various sequences in my military experiences. Fort Leonard Wood was where I went through basic training. I had a chance to sign up for OCS (Officer Candidate School) but chose not to because of the additional four years commitment required. Good decision or not; I don’t know.

The Presidio of San Francisco is where I did volunteer for duty in Vietnam. But only because of the extra bonus pay; overseas duty and hazardous duty pay. A year and a half later, I was offered the opportunity to reenlist with a guaranteed transfer to Vietnam (they had kept my record of volunteering). I politely declined their offer.

While Army slang labeled the Presidio the ‘Country Club’ of the Army, it also pigeon-hoed Fort Polk in Fort Polk, Louisiana as a certain part of the human anatomy which, in fact, came close to describing the place in the hot, humid summer months I spent there.

Fort Lee, my last assignment, meant a promotion to sergeant (Spec 5), a nice desk job and weekends spent in D.C. Then it was an early-out and back to finish college.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be returning to the Presidio 58 years after I left there. My kids and I are going on an ‘On the Road’ venture to celebrate my eighty years of being around. We’ll start in San Francisco and then swing down the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) to L.A. and then over to Palm Springs.

It should back some very strange memories and interesting feelings. It seems like a million years ago and relative to all that’s happened to me since, it probably was. I followed a different path instead of a jungle trail and now here I am. Life can take some interesting twists and turns. I’m so fortunate I got to experience them.

Mexico, 1965

It was an escape across the border back when it was still safe to grab a southbound Greyhound, roam the countryside as a white guy, mix with the locals, eat their food, and drink their booze. Of course, I’d been warned about drinking the water, staying out of local bars and off remote beaches at night. In fact, anything an errant GI might want to do, I was warned not to. Mexico could be hot in more ways than one.

Back in ‘65, the trip was a wonderful distraction from being stuck in Fort Polk, Louisiana in the middle of summer. It was a two week pass from military confinement and promised all of its imagined freedom of the road. Past experiences had taught me never again to go back to Minnesota while on leave. The pain of returning to military life again wasn’t worth it.  That brief taste of freedom was something I couldn’t handle it emotionally or psychologically. The next time I ventured home it would be for good. So instead, Mexico beckoned me.

I picked up a Trailways Bus outside of base and took it down to the Texas border. From there we raced our Greyhound bus all the way down to Mexico City. Narrow roads and loose gravel didn’t stop our insane driver from passing other buses all the way down to the nation’s capital. A refusal by the passengers to close the windows meant there was no air conditioning all the way into town. Screaming kids, grumpy grandparents, and strange looking men kept me awake the whole trip.

In 1965, Mexico was like a third world country just slowly beginning to climb out of its centuries of poverty, corrupt governments, and a lack of economic steps for the masses.

Poverty was a way of life. Drug cartels hadn’t taken over the countryside yet. Marijuana was the worst drug around and there was no Fontaur to explode the tourism industry.

Parts of the countryside were the ‘wild west’ all over again. In the small villages, the rest stop was a quick jaunt to some decrepit toilet, brushing off the begging kids along the way and back on the bus again.

While the countryside seemed mired in poverty and some kind of medieval time warp, Mexico City proved a wonderful respite of old colonial buildings, narrow cobblestone streets and peasants kneel-walking in pilgrimages to the central cathedral in the main plaza.  Nearby the campus of the University of Mexico City was a respite from the craziness of the metropolitan area. Among the many monuments and plazas the elite of Mexican society gathered and rose above the masses. Outside of town, ancient pyramids drew inspiration for the flocks of tourists that roamed their sacred grounds.

I spent a week wandering the city to places where I dared roam only in the daylight. There was a Grey Line tour that took me further out of town and then on to Acapulco and a harbor cruise.

In that growing seaside tourist town, I hooked up with a wandering group of American kids like myself. We hung out at the beach. We drank beer all day and told tall tales about college back home. They worried about the draft and I laughed at them. I was careful about not drinking the water then like an idiot I ordered a Pepsi and it came with ice. Ten minutes later I was trapped in a toilet for hours. Lesson learned.

I don’t remember much about the bus ride back to base. It had been two weeks awash with bad food, good beer and over-imagined conversations that only hinted of romance with the opposite sex. I harbored lingering envy for my new-found friends who were heading back to campus. But held on to hope for me with only six months left of olive drab and khaki.

Not that long afterwards, I got transferred to Fort Lee, Virginia and an entirely different kind of lifestyle.

But that’s another blog entirely.

Last Chance Gasp

It was my olive drab trilogy.

Three Army bases that formed the nucleus of my two years of military service. In those three strikingly different environments, were three motley collections of soldiers who each came with their own unique storyline and take on life. They were either fellow draftees, R.A.s (Regular Army) or lifers who walked the walk and talked the talk. Among them all were the irascible characters whose actions and backgrounds are the stuff of legion and became fodder for a writer’s imagination.           

Presidio of San Francisco

Fort Polk, Louisiana

Fort Lee, Virginia

The Army bases came in three distinct flavors. First, the Presidio of San Francisco was the high point of my career there. Then Fort Polk, Louisiana during the summer of ‘65 became the lowest point. Sandwiched between that summer in hell and an early discharge came Fort Lee, Virginia.

Fort Lee provided the least memorable of my military experiences and yet in retrospect still garnered some poignant memories as well as some sad ones too. It was the last six months of my military life so it didn’t really matter where they sent me. Anyplace was better than months of ninety degree weather with matching humidity. Besides, autumn in Virginia can be pretty nice.

Fort Lee represented the last phase of my military existence.  It was all coming to an end and somehow I understood there was no going back to what used to be. My outlook on life had changed along with a renewed focus on education, travel and personal growth. Those changes were permanent.

By that point in my brief military career, the marching and inspections and KP were pretty much over. We couldn’t march outside because it was wintertime. There were few inspections and I was a sergeant by then so KP was a thing of the past.

My Army buddies and the assorted souls that inhabited that time period could fill the scrapbook of any aspiring writer. They were real and alive and as crazy as any comic book character. Some of them tortured souls and others just putting in their time. Each came with their own unique story to tell.

After I jumped the rabbit fence and made my way north, I heard from several other friends who had also escaped Fort Hell.

Max Camarillo (Mad Max) got out early to go back to school. He was one unique operator who truly knew how to game the system. He was Trapper John from ‘Mash’ and John Belushi’s (Bluto) from ‘Animal House’ wrapped up in one colorful character.’ In the Nam, he would have been a ‘dog robber’ providing much needed goods from unnamed sources. If you wanted it Max could probably get it…for a price. There were no moral scruples here. It was strictly business for Max.

Not surprisingly, there were no fare-well parties or blow-outs for Max. I’m told he simply was there one day and gone the next. No surprise. Nothing vanishes faster than a man who’s done his time in the Army.

There were several others that left around the same time. With them there was usually a brief flurry of activity, a few over-the-shoulder goodbyes and then silence as more empty bunks filled the barracks. There is no place more somber and solemn than a barracks room empty of old friends.

Another friend, mad-man Cornelius got an occupational discharge. Corny left even faster than Max. He didn’t even bother to get all the necessary discharge forms signed. He just signed them himself and left his bunk untouched. Minutes after his departure, it was stripped clean. His blankets, sheets and pillow became barter material for the newest resident ‘dog robber.’

45 Days to go before discharge from the Army

Like a lot of other servicemen, I’d promised myself I wasn’t going back home while I was on leave. The pain of having to leave home again wasn’t worth the few weeks spent there.

Staying true to that promise, I opted to spend the Christmas holidays with a friend in Pittsburg. Perhaps not the smartest decision I made since there was someone back home at the time. But I was young and dumb and pretty thoughtless when it came to relationships.

And like my weekend sojourns to Beaumont, Texas when I was in the southland I spent many a weekend in D.C. mingling with the masses and pretending to be a civilian. That was when you could traverse the mall at night or journey into the darker parts of town in search of a cold beer and not worry about getting mugged. The art galleries and Smithsonian and bookstores all provided a welcome relief from a year and a half of khaki blandness.

There was one Grey Line tour of New York thrown in but that only proved to me that the Big Apple was too big a bite for a Midwestern neophyte like me.

Every base has its own select group of entrepreneurs. Ours was no different. There was one lifer whose family lived in D.C. Every Friday night he would park in front of the mess hall and wait for eager recruits clutching their weekend pass. The cost was $25.00 bucks for a round trip passage to downtown D.C. Then a pickup nearby on Sunday afternoon.

The van driver was making a fortune each weekend just by driving home to see his own family and girlfriend. At $25.00 a head, five bodies each weekend, four weekends a month, he was clearing $500.00 a month and no taxes. And that was in 1966.

You could always tell when someone reenlisted. There was usually a new car, often a Chevy super sport or similar muscle car, prominently parked in the enlisted men’s lot. What most of those poor saps didn’t know was that their next assignment was usually Vietnam or Korea where their new cars would never follow.

Two friends stick out in my mind while I was at Fort Lee. Both were deep in their own inner turmoil brought on by reckless decisions and deep regrets afterwards.

 

The first was my friend Jerry or Gerard as he was known in his native Ireland. He had been in the U.S. Army for several years in Germany then left when his enlistment was over. His dream was to be a full-time playwright and novelist. But he said there were more playwrights in his native Dublin than regular people so he wanted to give New York a try.

He did so for a while and then decided he wanted to visit Vietnam as a reporter. So naturally, he enlisted again in the Army at age thirty. I could never wrap my understanding around why he re-upped. He was a brilliant guy, very quiet and probably gay which would have put him on unsteady ground in the 60s…in the military. Why he didn’t travel to Vietnam on his own, I’ll never know.

Nevertheless we had wonderful conversations at night, sitting around the office or sharing a coffee at the post restaurant. When I first meet him he was bidding his time at Fort Lee before his new papers came through and he was off to Southeast Asia. The times we shared talking theater and writing and story-telling still linger with me to this day.

While writing this blog I looked him up on Google. I came across a number of dispatches and newspaper articles Jerry wrote for Stars and Stripes from 1966 through 1967. I have no idea if he was transferred back stateside after that, got killed over there or just disappeared into that vast caldron called past friends and acquaintances. He was one of a kind. I treasure the few pictures I have of us together.

Another friend’s story whose ending remains a mystery to this day had to do with one hasty decision and six years of regret.

One of the first guys I met in my office was the staff photographer. We both shared a love of the Beatles, rock and roll music, travel and pretty girls. The Beatles we could listen to each night. Rock and roll followed us on his transitory radio. Travel for me were exaggerated tales of that city by the bay and my summer in hell. He hadn’t done much traveling at all.

The pretty girls were a figment of our lusty imaginations. At least for me it was. With exception of the girl back home, the imagination had to suffice where real wasn’t around.  His was a much sadder story.

Upon their graduation from high school, his girlfriend had traveled to Florida for summer work before college began. He stayed home and dreamt about their time on campus in the fall. When she returned she was two months pregnant from a foolish encounter on the beach with a hand-some lifeguard. My friend was devastated. His entire world had just blown up in his face.

Without talking to anyone, my friend marched down to the nearest recruiting office and joined the Army for a six year enlistment. Less than a month later, his girlfriend was back in his life begging for his forgiveness and understanding. She was willing to give up the baby if that’s what he wanted.

But it was too little too late at that point. By then my friend was in his first week of basic training and ready to kill himself.

Fortunately he survived that drama in his life and by the time we met he had resigned himself to five and a half years left in the service and the girlfriend back home who had betrayed him. We’d stay up late at night talking smack and expressing fond hopes for the future. I was always careful not to mention his remaining time in the service or that girl back home.

I never did find out if he got together with his old girlfriend again…or if he found someone else to fill that void…o somehow found peace with his five and a half years left in the service. I hope something worked out for him. He was a great guy; one of the nicest I’d met during that period in my life.

Several weeks before my discharge, the captain called me into his office. With patriotism and confidence written all over his face, he reminded me that I had volunteered for duty in Vietnam back in 1964. Smiling broadly, the captain assured me…no, he guaranteed me…that with my reenlistment I would be on my way to Vietnam within the month. He quickly pointed out that as a newly ordained sergeant this was my last great chance to continue a stellar career in ‘this man’s army.’

 I politely declined his most generous offer.

Hell came in Khaki and Sweat

 

Back in my day, there was a saying among the enlisted ranks. The Presidio of San Francisco was the country club of the Army and Fort Polk, Louisiana, was its orifice.

I experienced both of them. San Francisco during the summer and winter of 1964-65. Then Fort Polk during the summer of 1965. If there is a God, he was absence that summer or had a weird sense of humor.

Back then, the concept of air conditioning for army facilities was sketchy at best. The officer’s barracks and their dining quarters were air-conditioned. Some of the general offices were air-conditioned. But for the most part, any structure I lived in, worked in, drank in or studied in was window-ventilated and little else.

None of the barracks were air-conditioned. Bugs occupied the latrine at night, partying and carrying-on until they zapped themselves on the bare light bulbs. Heat enveloped the second floor during the day making it almost impossible to stay up there at night. Our barracks were surrounded on all four sides by Southern Pine forests and shifting sands. We called it hell on God’s green earth…and we meant it. It was an environment that nurtured and encouraged self-bravado. There were a lot of very lonesome guys on that base coping the best they could.

I took three showers a day and that wasn’t nearly enough. There were no stalls in the latrine so modesty went out the window. Everyone became very nonchalant about tending to their own personal needs.

There was only one town outside of the base but it was crawling with hungry horny recruits who were attending AIT (advanced infantry training). Almost all of them were destined for duty in Vietnam. We avoided them and the town like the plague. The locals hated us and we hated them. One glance at a local girl would bring her redneck boyfriend flying out of his pickup truck with clenched fists. The town was like a bus depot of lost souls. None of us spent any time there.

The closest semblance of civilization was either Lake Charles, Louisiana or Beaumont, Texas.

I spent many a weekend camping out in some hotel room in Beaumont just for the air-conditioning and television all afternoon and all night. I would wander the car lots just to stare at and fantasize about the car I was going to buy after the service. Bar-hopping wasn’t advised with my short cropped hair. Even in cowboy Texas, the locals weren’t too crazy about the military during the Vietnam era.

But like all my other bivouacs during those two years in the service, there were always colorful characters to either bright up and dampen my days.

The first lieutenant who was in charge of our Communications Office was a poodle officer. He was constantly playing politics so he could game the military system to his advantage. The dork had graduated from VMI but really didn’t want to be in the military in the first place. Fortunately he was newly married and spent as little time on base as his wife would allow. We kept hoping they would ship his sorry ass to Vietnam but it never happened. After his enlistment was up, he probably became a banker or a southern politician.

For a brief, painful period we had to endure the haughty attitude of some blue-blood from upstate New York. Apparently his parents weren’t able to keep him out of the military so he went into the Army reserves under the false assumption that he wouldn’t have to spend any time with the likes of us after basic training. He was only on base for a couple of months but his demeaning attitude toward blacks, the poor and under-educated (meaning anyone with less than an Ivy League education) made him a target for several clandestine operations against his bunk, desk and mini-MG. He didn’t really care. He hired low-life’s to do his KP and get his car repaired. Fortunately he was gone before fragging or any other radical action became part of our lexicon.

There was this portly office manager who was overly friendly to all the new recruits in the office. My gaydar wasn’t tuned in back in those days but I still managed to avoid any compromising situations around him. He once invited me to his place for the weekend but fortunately I naively declined.

I used to admire, from a distance, this black guy who used his color to get himself ahead with the black sergeants. He was always working on one scheme or another. It usually involved money or women; two prized commodities on or nearby the base.  I'm guessing he became a used car salesman after the service or something akin to that. But I’m sure he was successful at whatever he tried.

At the other end of the spectrum was a young sergeant who was hardcore RA (regular army – a lifer). He had a great career all mapped out ahead of him. He was a natural for the military. He had a wonderful rapport with his platoon and got along well with all the officers.

We knew he had met this divorcee with two kids. She worked at a bar off base and he was spending a lot of time there and at her trailer. We warned him to be careful but he just laughed at our concerns. Then one weekend, he went AWOL to spend the weekend with her. They threw his ass in the brig for a month and busted him down to private. He still had four years left on his enlistment. I couldn’t get over what he had sacrificed for that divorcee who was probably humping some new guy while he was still serving his time. Strange things happen to good people in the Army.

I had two main ways to spend my weekends at Fort Polk. I would either hop a Trailways bus to Beaumont, Texas (see above) or camp out in the Captain’s office with my good buddy from Vietnam.

My buddy (whose name I have long since forgotten) was recovering from shrapnel wounds he received in Vietnam. He had just a little time left before his discharge. And after facing death in Vietnam, he didn’t much give a rat’s derriere about taking chances in the military. We were both determined to make every moment count while we were stuck in the devil’s playground. Unlike a lot of our bunk mates, he also wanted to go back to college after the service. I don’t know whose idea it was at the beginning but we both agreed we had found a splendid way to spend those sultry weekends in Louisiana.

 Our routine went like this.

After Saturday lunch, we’d head off to the commissary to buy several six-packs of beer and snacks and perhaps something of a little more substantial nature. Then we would head back to the office.

Now the only room in our office building that was air-conditioned was the Captain’s office. If we closed the door to his office and turned the AC on low, anyone entering the front lobby would never know we were hiding back there. Since the Captains office was in back of the building, anyone walking or driving by would never know there were two inebriated celebrating GIs inside.

We would pile up the cushions off his sofa on the floor and somehow managed to waste the entire afternoon, evening and part of the next day by watching television, reading or just talking smack and filling the room with our dreams of going home and seeing our girlfriends. We were just a couple of randy soldiers full of wild dreams and impure thoughts.

I have no idea why two knuckleheads like ourselves were so brazen and foolish. But it seemed like a fun thing to do at the time. We never got caught and I expect the Captain was never the wiser. Fortunately I was transferred before our scatter-brains thought up any other ingenious pranks to pull. My friend went home to who-knows-where and I headed up to Fort Lee, Virginia. And nothing vanishes faster than a man who has done his time at Fort Polk, Louisiana.

Reflecting back on that time in my life, it’s funny how such adverse, unpleasant, sad, depressing and uncomfortable situations can bring back such silly and yet fond memories. It was just a couple of footsteps and a blink away in my life but I’ll always remember those weekends in sultry Beaumont and the coolness of the Captain’s office.

Strange as it may seem, isn’t that what memories are made of.