What the hell was that? Immediately I stopped and lowered the gun to investigate when a strong smell hit my nose. I thought it was some kind of solvent, but then a small amber river began to meander along the turret’s floor. I recognized the smell of Scotch!
I was already guilty of violating the rules. To elevate the main gun, I had used the TC’s override handle, which engaged powerful hydraulic pumps. Officially, the book stated that any movement of the turret or gun in a confined area must be done by hand, in order to avoid damage to the turret’s hydraulic motor should the gun abruptly bump into an obstacle. But because turning the turret or elevating the main gun manually was very time-consuming, many of us paid little attention to the rule. We just made sure that our platoon sergeant or platoon leader wasn’t around when we did it.
I followed the little river of liquid to its source and found a Scotch-soaked canvas AWOL bag that had been stuffed way under the main gun. To see whose bottle I had just broken, I looked for some name or identifying mark on the bag. When I turned it over, the name hit me with the force of a prizefighter’s blow: SSGT ROBERT EMBESI.
All I could say was, “Oh, shit!”
Suddenly queasy, I broke out in a sweat. Please, God, anybody but Embesi! I’d rather have been stripped of my rank—rather have eaten that broken bottle—than tell Embesi I broke it. Where could I hide until we got to Da Nang? Getting rid of the bag was impossible—the smell permeated the entire tank. And the Navy had very strict rules; having alcohol aboard ship was a court-martial offense.
What was I going to do? Could I run fast enough and long enough to outrun him? Suddenly the Thomaston had shrunk to the size of a small dinghy, and swimming suddenly seemed like a very serious option.
Embesi wasn’t around, which may well have saved my face from being permanently rearranged. My two fellow crewmen, working on the tank’s exterior, followed their noses and peered down into the turret from the two hatches above me.
“What the hell’s that smell?” they asked with Cheshire Cat-like grins, assuming that I—sitting on the turret floor, about to be nauseous—had been holding out on them. But when I explained what had just happened, they both looked at each other, then back at me, their eyes big as saucers.
“You broke Embesi’s bottle?” they asked in unison. “Embesi’s bottle?”
“Oh shit, man!” said one. “You’re dead!”
“No shit!” I replied. “Tell me something I don’t know!”
Some people just love to see others squirm in a difficult situation. “Are you a strong swimmer?” the other guy asked with a half-giggle.
“I don’t suppose either of you has a bottle, do you?” I pleaded.
“On a Navy ship?” they both said, feigning shock that I would even dream of their breaking such a rule.
Now I dreaded having to tell Embesi what I’d done. The last thing I wanted to do was disappoint him, because he had been very good to me. I was only a twenty-year-old “snuffy” still wet behind the ears, less than two years out of boot camp, with no combat experience.
I cleaned up the mess and gave serious thought as to how I should approach Embesi about his secret bottle. I dismissed the thought of playing dumb—the inside of that turret reeked of Scotch and there was no way to get rid of the smell. But while cleaning up, I came up with a great idea. When I explained what had happened, I’d use the word “we,” thereby deflecting some of the wrath that I knew was sure to follow.
I walked through the bowels of the ship, scared to death and rehearsing my lines, while trying to find his quarters. Eventually I found the staff sergeant’s quarters and approached Embesi. He was in the midst of a Pinochle game with three other staff sergeants.
Gathering up my courage, I asked, “Can I talk with you a minute? We have a little problem on the tank.”
He had just called trump after winning the bid. “What is it?” he wanted to know.
“I can’t say right here.”
Unintentionally, with his fellow staff sergeants sitting right there, he made it even more difficult. “Whatever you got to tell me can be said here. What’s the problem?”
“We were cleaning the breechblock,” I began, “when we raised the gun to…”
“Don’t you even fuckin’ tell me!” he shouted.
“It was a mistake. We didn’t see…” Again I had no chance to finish, but I thought the we part was working well.
“That was a thirty-dollar bottle of Glenlevit! What fuckin’ idiot raised the gun using power? Didn’t anybody bother looking underneath the fuckin’ gun?”
Out of first-person plurals, I looked down at the deck. “Sergeant Embesi, it was me.”
The small room broke into catcalls. Half of them began needling Embesi about having a bottle of booze on board a Navy ship and not sharing it with his fellow staff sergeants. The others asked me, “Do you know how short your life expectancy just became?” and “Did you pass your drown-proofing test?”—a type of training all Marines go through in case we’re stranded in the ocean for any period of time.
“You dumb son-of-a-bitch!” Embesi yelled. “I was saving that bottle for… get the fuck out of my sight!”
He didn’t have to ask me twice. I went back to the tank to hide out and count my blessings—and my teeth. I felt unbelievably lucky I hadn’t been given a personal one-on-one karate demonstration.
The next morning, Embesi climbed in the tank’s turret. I heard him inhale deeply, and he looked at me like someone who had just lost his best friend. “God,” he said, “I love that smell!”
To his credit, he never mentioned the incident again.
Until I put this story down on paper, I didn’t realize that the bottle of Scotch—broken or not—was a court-martial offense for its owner, not me. I could have just as easily said, “Sergeant Embesi, why’d you hide that contraband under the gun of my tank? Don’t you realize you could go to the brig for that?” But I was far too young and naive.
That night, I wrote my mother a letter, pleading with her to break all U.S. postal laws and send me a replacement bottle. Of course, my letter wouldn’t get mailed until we had landed in Vietnam, and her bottle could never reach me fast enough.
BY THIS TIME, our voyage was beginning to get old. The squids had enjoyed messing with us, playing one long mind-fucking game after another, until we found their weak spot. We disliked C rations, but they loved them. Because each of our tanks carried several cases of twelve meals each, we soon realized we had some major negotiating power.
Embesi’s experience—nine years in tanks and a previous tour in Vietnam—proved invaluable. One tip he shared with us was how handy thick nylon rope could be. It was very strong, far more flexible, much lighter and easier to work with than our issue tow cables, which were stiff, unwieldy, and hard to get on and off a tank. “Try to borrow, swap, or steal some from the Navy,” he told us. That became my job.
Of the very little I had learned about the Navy, I knew that if you wanted to procure anything aboard ship, you sought out a boatswain’s mate. With that in mind and a case of C rations under my arm, I sought out a petty officer first class—in the Navy, a rank equivalent to that of a staff sergeant like Embesi. “I’m looking for rope,” I told the squid. “And for the right kind I’m willing to trade a case of C rats.”
To my surprise, that got his immediate attention. “How much do you need?” he asked. “What diameter?”