YIN & YANG
“What was your first experience as soon as you got off the plane in Vietnam? What was the situation like there?”
Well, I went from from where we landed, I think Cam Ranh Bay, we went to the bay and they pick you up the unit, 39th engineers. They had a real jeep, like WWII style jeep and picked us up and the guy picked two of us. This guy I went in country with and came out with. We landed up at Fort Ord together. So we make a turn, this guy hits the turn, and out of the seat comes out this grease gun, one of them Thompson submachine guns, the one you put .45’s in. These guys had the old stuff, we had the Ford Jeeps the rollover specials, the newer one. We carried M14’s; we didn’t carry M16’s because we were engineers. We didn’t want them because you know we’d throw it over there in the corner or we would stick them in this dirt and we knew it would work. The 16 you didn’t know it would work.
So we didn’t have no problem every time I went anywhere I carried an ammo can with clips because me and Charlie would go hand in hand if we didn’t have to. And we stayed on that bunker isle, we knew Charlie was across the bunker from us. One time we got twenty-five, See I wasn’t there at the Big Tet, the one that you all know of. I was there in ’69, so we didn’t know what we were gonna get. We were an headquarters company, artillery unit headquarters and had infantry headquarters. We didn’t have anything on this bunker line except M16’s so they give us this one machine gun that shot the same rounds as an M14 and a pole bunker. Where you would be up in these bunkers and we could shoot down. It was much easier to shoot down than to shoot up. So we’re there pulling guard and it would get scary. You just don’t know what’s gonna happen because it wasn’t no full moon. When it was the full moon, we would be up there smokin’ dope. But when it wasn’t full moon, you think about it, so 25 mortars, there was this South Vietnamese unit that was put across from us and they would stand down during this Tet. We just figured they were standing down there to part of this July the fifths command. All we were doing was setting a perimeter on them on a marine air base that was these phantoms. They always shot at this airbase with rockets, with 122’s. They sound like you gotta open the door. They make this whoop-whoop-whoop noise. They were so slow but they didn’t waste any shots. They always landed up over on the airbase.
So during this tet, 25 mortars hit between two of our bunkers. Just bang bang bang. We’re sliding in the bunkers and thinking they’re just gonna open the doors on us. We didn’t know. We don’t know a whole lot about combat either. We know how to shoot a gun and we weren’t afraid to kill somebody. There was no chance we were gonna kill somebody to stay alive. This was all for real. So we saw the flashes and we were part of this defense command the marines set up. We used to be our own defense command and we used to call up next door if we wanted to call up a flare over us. Well, through this marine defense command we were a half hour later waiting flares that were gonna come from next door. But they had to call them up and tell them to come. We were just shittin’ our pants man. We didn’t know what was going on.
That general would fly around in the chopper and say well, we’ll send some guys over there tonight, and they would send these guys outside the wire and they’d go find them a nice place to sleep. Because, they knew. How many times can you take a heel for nothing? So that’s why I say from Vietnam to this thing where you were gonna die for your buddy or gonna be all voluntary force. We’re gonna have your potatoes peeled for ya. FTA in the army didn’t mean fun, travel, and adventure, it meant fuck the army.
You could find enough tools in the motor pool to make a tool room that get me through this inspection because I want out of this army worse than you do, or at least as bad. I won’t let the lifers fuck with you. I said, I’m your man. And he didn’t but after he left it was a little tough, but it’s just the way it was because you were either on one side or the other. Yin and yang, back and forth, side to side, you were either on one side or the other, and we really knew how big a loser it was.