Chapter 1

REPUBLIC OF SOUTH VIETNAM (1968 – 1969)

The scent of the heated turkey loaf had my full attention. I had become addicted to the nasty stuff after a period of subsiding on rat-fucked rations consisting of beans and mother-fuckers and some really foul tuna delight.

This turkey loaf had real possibilities. I had to be careful not to the burn the bottom of the olive drab can even though the burned turkey still tasted better than the nauseating lima beans dredged up from a farm located in hell. I shaped another little cooking ball of C-4 to use on my pecan nut roll for desert. Had to be a little careful with the C-4, but it was pretty safe, and so very fast to get a meal ready.

I scooped out a cavity in the middle of the turkey loaf for the introduction of my special mixture of hot sauce and nuoc-mam (rotten fish oil). The nuoc-mam smelled terrible but it sat on the taste buds like a bite of key-lime pie. I trashed the bread without a second thought. No one and I mean no one, fucked around with the bread. I bet the guys at the bakery stateside were rolling on the floor laughing at the nasty joke they titled “bread”.

Some of this stuff was left over from the Korean War. I was too young to get involved in that one. From some of the stories I heard from some of the older guys on our block, it was a damn good thing, too.

No, I had the unfortunate good fortune to be involved the seemingly never-ending Southeast Asian War Games. We were either saving the clueless populace from the evils of Communism or projecting our war-mongering imperialism onto a helpless third-world country. It really depended on your perspective.

Vietnam was a beautiful country. It was a country of lush jungles, flooded marshlands, and urban areas with a strangely unique French flavor. The use of the French language intermixed with the Vietnamese language was a tribute to the many decades of French colonial influence in Indochina.

I had studied the history and culture of the area at a special school in the Washington, D.C. area located not far from the Iwo Jima Memorial. I often went there to eat a very different and tastier lunch. A Marine disguised as a normal civilian. I think the short hair and the shiny black shoes were a dead giveaway. The school also included a special department for language training. It was supposedly of an almost fully immersed nature. I realized how non-immersed it really was after being “In-Country”.

This special training was pretty well wasted after being grabbed up in an “every swinging dick” raid on the Camp Pendleton, California base to press anyone standing and breathing to immediate deployment during the “Tet” offensive. I really didn’t care that much as I was curious to see the country I had trained to operate inside. My MOS at the time was still in Armor. I should explain MOS is yet another military term for Military Occupational Specialty. My actual MOS in Intelligence was never activated due to some SNAFU back in HQMC. (Situation Normal All Fucked Up) and (Headquarters Marine Corps) So the reason I was squatting in the dirt outside an abandoned French pillbox on the “safe” side of a rapidly flowing and totally opaque river was an administrative error. My current fixation on food was driven by a recent bout with amoebic dysentery that had pared over 40 lbs. off my already slender frame. It was quite a drastic reversal from being an obese child during my early school years.

Just a few hours prior, we had a monsoon type rainstorm that left the area steaming in a humid mist. The ground was already dry and only patches of the moisture could be found here and there in odd places. The solid French fort behind me pre-dated the debacle at Diem-Biem-Phu over a decade prior. When I first saw it, I was reminded of the photos of the World War II Maginot line touted by the French Army as the “Greatest Breakthrough in Defensive Warfare” since the introduction of the moat.

It did seem that pillboxes of this type were doomed to failure regardless of where they were located, along the coast of France, on isolated islands in the Pacific, or, even here in the middle of the Indochinese Jungle.

Despite all these facts, I found myself relying on the thick cement walls and excellent fields of fire it afforded well-armed defenders of this crucial avenue of approach into the vital airfield at Danang in central Vietnam.

This was I Corps area. It was a Marine area of responsibility. The Army considered the entire area of central Vietnam from the DMZ almost all the way down Highway 1 to just North of Saigon as the “boondocks”. An area fit only for Marines to take care of. It was far too vulnerable to infiltration from Laos and the populace was for the large part “non-pacified”

The pillbox was raised on top of crumbled rock laced liberally with interlocked razor sharp barbed wire. The barbed wire was a combination of tangled strands and more organized concertina hoops that looked formidable to me.

To the East there was an abandoned field that was clearly marked “Danger Live Mines”. I had never seen any person or animal venture into this area so I had to assume the warning was the truth. I certainly was not the one to question its basis in fact. Adding to the apparent danger was the unstable condition of some of the mines laid by earlier French Army residents.

Off to my right, on the West side of the circular building; I had a full panoramic view of the combination metal and wooden bridge that spanned the wide river that was part of the outer ring of defense around the all-important airfield in Danang. There were 3 concentric rings of defense around Danang. This was the outer ring, the most vulnerable one.