At the end of this momentous week, it has become apparent that many Americans who voted for Kamala Harris, me included, are taking things hard — very hard. Depression sits in the air. The losses of the Presidency and the Senate, and the likely loss of the House (that’s not a loss, because the Democrats didn’t have it in the first place), have caused widespread alarm.
Heading into the weekend before Veterans Day, I’ve decided something light might help. So, I’m offering a story from America’s woebegone Vietnam saga. Not our finest hour, but then, neither is this one.
For the many millions who voted for Donald Trump: You might like this too. We’re all Americans.
The story is 3,500 words, so today is Part One, tomorrow, Part Two.
Not everything during the Vietnam War was horrid. Soldiers look for humor wherever they can find it. This is an example of that. It might make you smile, maybe even laugh. Rusty the scout dog, the Red Cross Donut Dollies, the little man with the big wrench, the entrepreneurial Mama-San — they’re all here, still living in the fog of the past.
This story will take you back to that strange time when our nation found itself to be the wagging tail of a fiercely hawkish dog.
A Vietnam Story — Part One
It was a beautiful late summer day in Vietnam, and my 28-man Platoon and I, along with Rusty the scout dog and his handler, PFC Snyder, were feeling good. Having recently concluded one of our personally satisfying occasional encounters with a few visitors from the North, we were sunning ourselves on the rocky top of what passed for a mountain in northern South Vietnam, when Bobcat called.
Bobcat was Colonel Robert Stillingworth, “Still” to his few friends, Bobcat to me. He was a terse and demanding man. Never used a hundred words when three would do. In the entire time I knew him, ten months that seemed a lot longer, I never heard a kind word escape his razor thin lips. Talking to him was like talking to a tree on a trail.
Anyway, Bobcat called, and the ultimate, sub-rosa reason he called was because, with only three months to go, he had yet to win his Silver Star. He believed winning this award was essential in his quest for what he considered his much-deserved promotion to Brigadier General. Of course, I did not know this at the time. Why should I? But afterwards it explained everything.
As soon as I heard his voice, I knew siesta-time was over. “Go to the secure freq. I have orders for you,” he said. I switched to our secure frequency. He said, “You are to proceed to the sea.” Then he gave me a couple of coordinates, which, with deduction worthy of an officer and a gentleman, I presumed to be somewhere on the coast of the South China Sea. “You are to be there no later than 0100 hours. You will receive further orders upon arrival. Any questions?”
Well, no. Seemed simple enough. Then I heard, “Bobcat out.” The man had a way with words.
I pulled out my map and saw that our upcoming little nighttime stroll would cover about 24 kilometers, we called them “clicks.” This would equal roughly 15 miles. Twenty-four clicks in less than eight hours and, since we had just been resupplied with rations, ammo, and what not a couple of hours earlier, we’d be bebopping along with about 85 pounds on our backs.
The good news was we wouldn’t have to bebop through much jungle. After we made it down the mountain, we’d be just about one click from Highway 1, the only paved road north of Saigon. We’d take that north, and it would lead us right to where we were supposed to go. Simple. As long as we didn’t stumble onto any of the bad guys.
I called over my platoon sergeant Dave Lucey, a firefighter from California back in the real world, and told him to tell the rest of the guys the good times were over. Time to pack up and move out. So, we gathered up our stuff, and off we went.
About an hour later, we were on Highway 1. That’s when the rain began. It rained all the way to the sea.
In the gloom of a rainy night, our boots soaked through and through, we squished our way up Highway 1. About one click from where we were supposed to wind up, we took a right off the highway onto a dirt track and saw the lights from a village up ahead. As we got nearer we could hear voices, a lot of them. But before we got there we smelled the bread.
In our haste to make the deadline, we hadn’t stopped to eat, just kept slogging up Highway 1 in the rain. Now, dead ahead of us, a sorry group of cold and wet-to-the-core soldiers, was an old woman, smiling from ear to ear, standing behind a table in front of a tiny building that appeared to be the village bakery. She had two hanging oil lamps, one on each side of her, and spread out on her table were loaf after loaf of newly baked bread. The lady had known we were coming.
Ravenous as we were, we bought every loaf, making the smiling Mama-San instantly wealthy. We wolfed them down. If you ignored all the sand still in the bread it was the best we ever tasted.
Then we moved on to our rally point, where all the voices were coming from. We found ourselves in a little harbor, really little. And in it were a few small boats, not much more than Sampans, really.
Standing on a narrow pier hanging out over the water was the Intelligence Officer of our Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Horace Barnacle. He showed me written orders, but didn’t let me read them, and told me the boats behind him belonged to the South Vietnamese Navy.
“Excuse me, Sir, South Vietnam has a Navy?” I asked. “Yup, and you’re lookin’ at it.” Pointing to something that looked like it was thrown together by a few people with failing eyesight, he said, “Your orders are to board that ship over there with your men and, ah, the dog. I see you have a dog. Well, that’ll be all right. Dogs can swim. The ship will ferry you up the coast to just south of the DMZ , where you will conduct an amphibious assault at coordinates I will provide and secure the beach.”
When he said DMZ, he got my attention, because the DMZ was the Demilitarized Zone, the most dangerous place in all of Vietnam.
I just looked at the man and said, “Sir, this is a joke, right?” “No joke,” he said. “Get ready to board, cause you’re leaving in 15 minutes.”
Dumbfounded, I said, “But sir, this is really strange. Do you know what kind of resistance my men and I will run into when we do this stupid-ass, crazy thing?”
Colonel Barnacle draped his arm over my shoulder and pulled me aside. “Lieutenant,” he said. “Believe me when I tell you it is highly unlikely you and your men will encounter much resistance, if any.”
“Is this just an exercise?” I asked. “Sort of,” he said. “But it’s kind of secret. Now get your ass on the boat.”
So, we did. Scout dog Rusty, PFC Snyder, and the rest of us began squeezing ourselves into the hold on the deck of a bobbing boat I hoped wouldn’t turn into a watery coffin. The hold, about 20 by 30 feet, sloped from the middle out to the sides. At the middle it was perhaps four feet high. At the sides it was down to about two and a half feet.
Somehow, we crammed ourselves in. It would have been a lot less uncomfortable if it weren’t for all the 85-pound rucksacks and weaponry.
Finally, crushed together, we pushed off from the dock, and the put-putting engine sent us all slowly out into the South China Sea.
But before we got too far out, our South Vietnamese Navy piece of junk started rattling underneath us. Gears started squishing and grinding. Then, everything stopped, and it became eerily quiet. From somewhere in the middle of the hold we were stuffed into, I heard Randy Billingsley, our M-60 machine gunner, say, “I can’t swim.” A couple more guys said the same thing, and I began to think Vietnam’s hot, swampy, snake infested jungle wasn’t such a bad place, after all.
That was when a door opened in the front of our compartment, which seemed to be getting smaller by the moment, and a wiry little man with a big smile slipped through it. He was carrying a wrench about the size of his arm. He slid between two of our guys and opened another door. He oozed through that one and disappeared.
Next came the banging. That was when Billingsley once again let everyone know he couldn’t swim. This got Rusty the dog upset, so he began howling. Then, everyone was talking excitedly at once, Rusty kept barking, the little man kept banging, and I got worried.
I don’t know what would have happened next, if not, at that very moment, the engine hadn’t suddenly come to life, which instantly silenced everyone, even Rusty. The second door opened and the little man with the big wrench was once more with us with an even bigger smile. He said, “Okey dokey,” and vanished through the first door.
Relieved, we continued up the South China Sea in the dead of night.
About ten minutes later my big mistake reared its furry, German Shepherd head, because that was when Snyder, stuck way back in the left corner, yelled over to me, “Lieutenant, the dog’s gotta go.”
The mistake had been loading Rusty and Snyder in first. They always led after our Point man in the jungle. Why not here? Well, this was why not.
There was nothing we could do, no way to get him anywhere else. So, with all of us glued tightly together and doing our best to squeeze away from the stench about to come, Rusty did his thing, a four-plopper according to Snyder, and the rest of our trip up the South China Seacoast was redolent with the very special aroma only dogshit can make.
At 0815 hours in the morning we were finally at the assault point. Getting out of the little torture chamber that would have made Grand Inquisitor Torquemada proud, was harder than getting in. It was probably the most ridiculous part of the entire operation. But we did it and said goodbye to South Vietnam’s gunless Navy. We even scooped up Rusty’s calling card to save the little man with the big wrench from having to do it.
After we tossed that into the sea, we discovered that the genius who designed the “plan” didn’t allow for low tide, so we hit the water for the big battle about a quarter mile from shore.
Not a shot was fired.
We watched the South Vietnam Navy chug chug away. Then, heads up, we casually waded ashore, walked up a sandy beach like the kind you find in Hawaii, and found rectangular table after table along about 100 feet of beach, behind which, with smiles to light up the sky, stood six beautiful women of the American Red Cross, dressed in their signature pale blue outfits, handing out cans of Coca Cola and doughnuts. To the guys in the field, they were known as “Donut Dollies,” and they’d been doing this since World War II.
Having not died in the second coming of D-Day, we occupied the beach without encountering a single moment of stress from an enemy that must have had other things on its mind.
Sometime in the weeks ahead, I had a chance to spend a few minutes with our Brigade Adjutant, a friend. It was he who told me the story of how Bobcat had directed an amphibious assault on a tightly held enemy location on the South China Seacoast, and, with a .45 caliber pistol in each hand, had led his men to victory.
At least, that’s what the citation for his Silver Star said.
