The Finish
After returning to the Battalion following my treatment for malaria, life became as routine as it could get in the shithole. Eat, work, drink, pass out, wake up, repeat; this goes on pretty much seven days a week. For a week, or maybe two, I forgot to write letters to my mother. Usually I just told her “Hello” although this time I got to tell her that I was in the Battalion rear. All this time I thought I was fooling my mother. I had been writing to her fairly faithfully, but I was telling her I was with a unit doing bridge security, or securing a supply depot but not in the bush doing what I was doing. I figured she had enough to worry about in her life and thinking I was in a combat situation was not something she needed to know the details of.
I had, on the other hand, written to my sister Jenny detailing some of my adventures (not the R&R in Manila, of course) and somehow dear ol’ dad got his hands on the one I wrote to her after Foxtrot Ridge[1], a rather graphic, profane-laced diatribe as I was trying to get rid of some imaginary demon. In a drunken stupor, he thought that it would be a good idea to share that with my mother. I never knew her reaction to the letter, but I’d just as soon she not know about any of that shit.
I wrote to my sister the letters I did because, after a while, I just needed someone to vent this shit to. I didn’t have a girlfriend after high school. I had a lot of casual acquaintances; there was also a nurse I had grown fond of at St. Albans, but she found HN Jefferies a lot more fun than me, plus he was there and I wasn’t. I received that letter while we were in Phu Bai, what seemed a million years ago. Funny, I didn’t think of it as a “Dear John” that so many Marines received; it let me know she was doing well and wished me luck as she was moving on. Write if you wish. I didn’t. I hope Michelle is doing well. She was a sweet lady whose company, while brief, was pleasant.
My mother became a bit concerned when she didn’t hear from me, so she inquired with the Red Cross to see what became of her wayward middle child. This inquiry brought an end to a weeklong bender that Stokes and I began some time after receiving our orders out of the shithole. One of the 1st Classes grabbed me up, sat me down in front of a plate of food and a lot of coffee, then dragged my severely hung over ass to what was called a MARS station (Military Affiliate Radio System.)
My name was put on a list so that I could make a telephone call to my mother to let her know that her favorite middle child was still alive. The punishment part of this was that the E-6 stood there while I explained to my mother her medical warrior of a son had been too drunk to write her, and yes I did feel shame in that, just not enough to quit drinking. Slowed me down was all, and I wrote several times weekly after that and all during working hours.
The day of our departure, Stokes and I packed our meager possessions which filled about half a sea bag. Somehow the sea bag that we brought over from Okinawa had caught up with us, and when we looked inside, we found we find all of our Navy whites had been either stained green from the sea bag or molded. I managed to salvage a couple of white hats (Dixie Cups), but mostly just the Marine Corps greens had really survived almost a year following us from Danang, the 413 area, to Quang Tri in our now Battalion rear area.
Some crazy ass serendipitous shit had come down over this past year. The Best of Times and the Worst of Times, but shit, they were some kinda times. As we prepared ourselves for the grand departure, I had no thought of what it would be like to go home after one year of absence. My entire life for the past year was this mess that I had grown so comfortable in that I didn’t think of what home really was or what it would be like. I was only thinking of what it wouldn’t be like — being shot at, wondering if each day would be my last, fearing that Vietnam would be the sum total of my existence.
Any and all of the news I had received this past year had been from Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper for us serving overseas. Race riots in every major city in America, draft dodgers rioting in New York and Chicago. In 1968, the ROTC (Run Off To Canada) program was in full force, and many did. Mỹ Lai had happened and other pictures were shown to the American public with misquoted captions, written by the biased press that was emerging.
The American Military was being vilified in the press for atrocities, real and imagined, that most of us never took part in. We were too busy staying alive. We never fired on innocent civilians, but the NVA did. We never bayoneted babies, but the NVA did. We never went into an orphanage complex outside of Danang and burned all of the infants, toddlers and other children to death with flamethrowers, but the NVA did. Our wives and girlfriends didn’t go to Hanoi and become pinup girls for the NVA, but Jane Fonda did. Wonder what would have happened if Doris Day had gone to North Korea during that war. Fonda was hailed as a visionary. I’ll never forgive or forget. It would be a betrayal of the men who were over there.
Some time in mid-to late December, Stokes and I made our way south to the airfield in Danang. We’d been sober for at least two days because there was no way we were going to miss this plane that would take us back to the World, the World Bird. We’d been hearing lots of rumors about people getting into trouble trying to bring back illegal souvenirs, inert grenades, .45 caliber pistols and a whole host of other items people had grown fond of.
There was nothing that I wanted to take home except for my ten toes and ten fingers and the body they were attached to. Just put my ass on that World Bird.
One evening it happened. In my cleanest jungle utility uniform and scratched up jungle boots, I took the best airplane ride of my life. We lifted off of the runway in Danang, and the whole plane erupted into yells of happiness. Stokes had a window seat, and I leaned over him to take one last look at the shithole. It was twilight, more dark than light, and we could see tracers flying towards a target that wasn’t us. For some reason, I wasn’t happy but I wasn’t sad either.
Good-bye old friends.
[1]The Night I’d Died https://medium.com/war-cigarettes-and-san-miguel/the-night-id-died-cf32366dac0d
