Well, I thought, it served them right, after all the stunts pulled on us during our voyage on the Thomaston. God, all that seemed like five years ago.
With no more ammunition onboard, we made it into Da Nang and were offloaded from the LCM. I waved to the chief, who stood where his bridge once was. Our episode must have given them a whole new impression of what the war was like for some of us. Maybe they would be even more appreciative of the cushy jobs they had.
We proceeded to Division FSR near the Da Nang airport. In the huge repair facility, they told me it would take about three days to pull the main gun, fix the seal, and reassemble it. Great! I thought, off the Z and living in hardback hooches.
Mechanics were assigned to start work removing the gun shield. “Hey, guys,” I told them, “take all the time you want! I’d rather have this job done right than have you rush it.”
I had the distinct impression that they thought I was serious.
Since first reporting our hydraulic gun-seal leak, however, one thing had gnawed at the back of my mind. Every time someone said, “Shit, I’ve never seen this before,” they never intimated that it was anything more than a defective seal. Nonetheless, that leak was such an odd, unusual quirk that somebody might just wonder if we had deliberately caused it.
There were rumors of crewmen sabotaging their vehicles so as to take them off the line. One story had it that, during a PM, someone put a small rock in the turbocharger of a tank’s engine. When the engine started, the rock got sucked in and tore up a cylinder—which took several more days to repair.
My crew and I would never have considered such an act; we would have felt guilty for letting down some grunts who really needed us.
I spent the next day searching out Arthur Weber, the brother of a friend of mine. He was in First Force Recon near Hill 327, just outside Da Nang. Force Recon’s reputation made them easy to find. Everyone always knew where the crazy people were; it was like asking people in a small town how to get to the biker bar. You could ask most anyone where Force Recon was located, and they could point you in the right direction. So I started by asking one person after another. It took me only an hour and several lifts from trucks to find Arthur’s outfit.
I had never really expected to find Arthur himself, figuring he would be out in the bush somewhere. I came across a sign that proclaimed that I was now in Force Recon country and quickly found the unit’s CP, which had an office in one of the hooches. I asked an enlisted guy in the office where I could find Lieutenant Weber.
“He just came off a mission,” the clerk said as he pointed to the hooch next door. Its sign proclaimed itself as being the bachelor officers’ quarters.
Arthur, just showered, was sitting on a cot when I came in. After we caught up on what each of us was doing in this crazy war, he invited me to join him for drinks in the officers’ club.
“You know I can’t go in there,” I said.
He winked, told me to take off the corporal chevrons on my collar, and went over to one of his roommates, who was lying on a cot reading. After they talked for a minute, Arthur came back with two silver bars. “You are now an officer and a gentleman,” he said, pinning the bars in place of my chevrons.
On our way over to the club, it took me a minute to adapt to my new role as an officer. I had two and a half years of conditioning to suddenly overcome. Arthur kidded me about not returning a few salutes from enlisted men.
“I’ll get the hang of this,” I told him. “All I gotta do is act like an asshole,” I said with a smile.
“Not quite,” Arthur chuckled. “You’re playing the role of a first lieutenant, not a second lieutenant.”
When we got near the officer’s club, suddenly the door opened, and out came a second lieutenant. I was halfway through my salute when I realized I didn’t have to—saluting officers was a reflex every bit as automatic as blinking my eyes.
The second lieutenant didn’t know what to make of me, a first lieutenant saluting him. He started to return the salute not once but twice, before catching himself—but still not sure, either.
“Goddamned second lieutenants!” I muttered. Arthur was in stitches.
Inside, we ordered a couple of beers and sat down with a few of Arthur’s friends. He introduced me as a back-in-The-World buddy, now with 3rd Marine Division. Like any bunch of enlisted Marines, they wanted to know what unit I was with.
“Third Tanks,” I said.
“You’re a ways south, aren’t you?” one asked.
Arthur was eyeing me, thoroughly enjoying the game. Naturally the conversation drifted around to what I did, and when did I get in-country? But I had trouble with the next question: “Who was in your class at Quantico?”
Of course I had never gone to the boot camp for Marine officers. I stammered for a second, until Arthur stepped in and explained who I really was and my real rank. They all had a good laugh. Then Arthur told them about the saluting incident and how I had confused the second lieutenant coming out the door. They got a big kick out of that. It was comforting to know that even first lieutenants hated second lieutenants.
I enjoyed that civilized evening with Arthur, one very cool guy, and some of his Force Recon buddies. But the longer we talked, the less I understood what drove people to join a bizarre outfit like Force Recon. Their job was to gather information and call in artillery on any NVA units they spotted. They worked in very small, often isolated teams, always miles from any friendly units. If discovered, they were helpless.
I told them about the guys who operated out of Oceanview, with ear collections hung on their belts, who went into North Vietnam for days at a time. The guys around the table didn’t say anything, they just looked at each other. It was instantly clear I had mentioned something that wasn’t supposed to be talked about, so I changed the subject.
Before leaving the next morning, I shook Art’s hand and returned the collar emblems. “If I thought it was that easy,” I said, “I’d have put them on a long time ago. Thanks for the best evening I’ve had in The Nam!”
I went back to being a corporal once again—more than ever convinced that when I got back to The World, I was going to college. The officer’s lifestyle was more to my taste, and I liked the perks that rank brought with it.
I hitched a ride back to Division FSR. What progress had the maintenance people made? By the time I arrived that afternoon, the main gun had already been pulled out of the turret—a procedure seldom done, if ever, and certainly something few tank crews ever witnessed. Inside were exposed areas that hadn’t seen daylight since the assembly line. With a large hole gaping in front of the turret where the gun once protruded, the tank had a strange, far less intimidating appearance.
Now that they had the main gun out, they could take apart the recoil system and discover why the seal was leaking. I was relieved when they told me the cause—a scratch caused when the gun was assembled back at the factory. There was no way it could have been caused in the field.
But the mechanics were far too efficient for my taste. After the third day, right on schedule, they declared us ready to return. We boarded another LCM at the Da Nang docks. The Mike boat backed out, and we headed to open waters for the cruise back to Cua Viet.
The driver and I took off our shirts and sunned ourselves on the back of the tank. As we took in the cooling breeze, I told him about my twelve-hour stint as an officer.