“No, sir.”
Connors glared at the MP. We all did. None of us had our sleeves rolled up high enough.
“What if I like my sleeves just like they are?”
“Then I’ll be forced to arrest you, sir.”
“You would arrest me for not having my sleeves rolled up?”
“Yes, sir. Those are my orders.”
“Tell me,” Connors said quietly. “Do you know that there’s a war going on?”
“Yes, sir. Of course I know there’s a war going on.”
“Then why the fuck do you care how high my sleeves are!”
The MP flinched. “I don’t care, sir. But if I don’t enforce the dress codes, I get my ass in a sling.”
“Ah. You get your ass in a sling if my sleeves aren’t rolled up above my elbow. Now you’re making sense.” Connors started rolling his sleeves. “See, gentlemen, it’s not this specialist’s personal perversion that makes him look for sleeve abuse during wartime; it’s the personal perversion of his rear-echelon boss.” Connors nodded grimly. “Right, Specialist?”
“That’s right, sir.”
Everybody looked pissed off, but we rolled our sleeves up.
“Damn. I keep forgetting that the army goes on like normal while we’re away,” Gary said, voicing our thoughts as we strolled down the bustling street.
While we were still in sight of the truck, Farris told us to meet him back there at 1600 hours, to which we reverently agreed.
Kaiser had been here before. “What we need to do first, gang, is to go get a steam bath so we won’t repel the lovelies.”
“Ah, the lovelies!” Connors swooned.
“You’ll need more than a steam bath, Connors,” said Banjo.
“I love the lovelies.”
“Like, plastic surgery,” Banjo continued.
I had always liked the idea of a steam bath, but it wasn’t what I expected. It was hot, way too hot to enjoy. I was forced to the floor, to breathe the mythical cooler air there, two minutes after I had closed the door to the steam room. This is fun? After two more minutes, when I was sure I was passing out, I practically crawled outside to the massage table.
A middle-aged Vietnamese man positioned me carefully on the table and began to wreak Oriental vengeance upon my Occidental body.
“Good, no?” he said as he slammed on my back. “You will like… this.” I winced as he pulled my elbows beyond my head. He continued for some minutes. He leaned over quietly and said, “You want blow job?”
“No,” I said quickly, embarrassed.
“I can have girl come here give number-one blow job.”
I was relieved to know that it was a girl he was talking about, but I wasn’t interested. “No. Thanks anyway.”
“Yes, you do, Mason.” I heard Kaiser’s voice beyond the partition. “You owe it to yourself to enjoy the best each place has to offer. The best this place has to offer is Nancy and her magic lips.”
The Vietnamese masseur nodded expectantly, but I said no. He shrugged and started beating me up again.
We wandered around, shopping and drinking, more or less as a group, for a couple of hours. I began to lose track of my position. I was somewhere in the heart of Qui Nhon on a sunny street, off a sunny street. Four of us were sitting around a table at a wonderful little bar on the lovely, sunny street talking to beautiful little girls who wanted to fuck us blind. Kaiser belted back more booze while he tried to get a laughing girl to pay him for his services. Gary blushed and talked to an image of a sweet-heart. Nate became a sober intellectual as he discussed world affairs with a nodding woman. I drank and watched everything that happened in this sunny, wonderful bar. I never knew just how good bourbon could be.
“Secret?” I said, alerted by the words and face of a girl who had become my confidante. “Where?”
She pulled me to her to whisper the secret. Laughter broke out when Kaiser’s girl compromised and announced she would fuck him for free, just like he had said she would. Ah, it’s so wonderful here with all these lovely people.
“But if it’s a secret, why are you taking off your clothes?” Aha, be witty and she’ll love you. The girl grimaced as her pants caught her foot. Haste clouded her face with worry. Magically, my clothes were gone, too. She flinched once when I entered her, but maintained an admirable state of concentration while she waited for me to finish floundering out my months of pent-up lust. She didn’t have to wait long. Soon I was being led back to the bar, where I raved about how wonderful it was to get laid by these wonderful, sunny people.
“Ain’t it the truth?” slurred Kaiser. “Ain’t these little honeys the best little honeys there are? Huh?”
“It’s the truth!” said Nate, hitting his forehead on the table for emphasis.
From this point, the events grow faint. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the streets and drinking. By the time we remembered Farris and found our way back to the Jeep, we were an hour late.
“We got lost,” Kaiser explained.
“Right. Let’s go,” Farris said brusquely.
Unfortunately, after the two-hour drive back to the Rifle Range, I was stone sober. We bounced along the causeway watching village after village go by until, finally, a sandy, greenish tent city appeared. Ah, I thought, home at last.
9. Tension
Army infantrymen, Marines and helicopter crews suffer highest losses in Vietnam.
March 1966
I stood with thirty enlisted men on an apron at the airport at An Khe. Sweat dripped down my sides, staining my khakis.
We watched airplanes move around the airport, trying to determine which one was going to take us to Saigon. A silver C-123 transport had taxied out to the center of the field and then shut its engines off. An army Caribou taxiing toward us locked one brake and swung around, bathing us in a hot breeze that evaporated the sweat. This was our plane.
The rear end of the silver C-123 opened. Four men got out and walked toward us. The rear end of the Caribou opened. The crew chief walked down the ramp eyeing us, the eager groundlings, suspiciously. Up through the fuselage I could see the pilots in the cockpit. One of them noticed my wings and nodded hello.
The men from the silver plane got close enough for us to see they were brass—one army, three navy. The crew chief started to tell us to get on board. The pilot waved to him. He carried his clipboard up front to confer.
The brass were closing fast. The one up front was very tall, very big, wore stars, and had his arm in a sling. I racked my brain. Who is very big, wears stars, rides around in silver airplanes, and has his arm in a sling?
“Isn’t that Westmoreland?” a private behind me asked.
Right! Westmoreland, the ruler of Vietnam, was only a hundred feet away, heading for us. I turned around, looking for a lieutenant or a captain to take charge of this mob and call attention and all the stuff you’re supposed to do when the fucking general shows up. My search revealed that I was the ranking person there. “A-tent hut!” I yelled. AWOL (overnight) bags and laundry sacks hit the dirt as the mob dropped everything to come to attention for the general.
He liked that. When I turned around, Westmoreland was nearly on top of us, still marching, smiling, probing for eye contact with the skinny warrant officer who just then flipped a perfect salute. I held the salute until he stopped and returned it. The general and his admiral friends stood facing me and thirty grunts.
“At ease, Mr. Mason,” the voice boomed. He stood close enough to read my name tag, so close that he seemed much taller than he already was. What other rank could they make a guy like this? He had to be a general.