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FIRST NIGHT The first thing that
impressed me about Vietnam was the stench. The air was filled with the
smell of diesel fuel and death. The mood was heavy, and the look in the
eyes of the Marines who had been there awhile was little more than a
vacant stare, as if their souls had been sucked out from their beings. I
later learned that the term and the look were called the 1000-yard
stare. This look you had to earn, and it was all about
self-preservation. Vietnam had no place for emotional attachment, in
fact you made no friends, so the term military acquaintance was used.
After the loss of my first two friends, it seemed best to detach and
resist for fear of loss. As a young Marine I had
a lot to learn and just a short time to learn it in. This is my first
night in Vietnam and here I was in a foxhole south of Phubai. It was
unbelievable. I want to tell ya, that it was the last place I expected
to be on my first night in country. The view was less than spectacular;
my foxhole overlooked a rice paddy field. In front of me concertina wire
was strung out in rows of three. Tin cans were placed dangling from the
wire at various intervals within the wire. Inside the cans were pebbles,
which would serve as an early warning device. Claymore mines were in
position for detonation in case of attack. We were armed with M14
rifles, Bayonets and a whole shit-load of grenades. My greatest asset
however, was the fear of the unknown. But then I had that redneck to
worry about, He was always smiling and as far as I was concerned he was
one round short of a full clip, if you get my drift. Night fell quickly in
the boonies and the silence was deafening. I know that sounds strange,
but when you can hear a skeeter sucking blood out of a water Boo at 100
yards it's to damn quiet. In the distance I could hear shots being fired
and watched in awe as tracer rounds lit up the sky in the darkness. It
looked, as though the tracers were coming right at me, it was unnerving
to say the least. It was an illusion, but the reality of Vietnam had set
in like exposed nerve on a broken tooth and I learned my first lesson.
This was not a game and I was not humping up some hill in a war game on
the Island of Greece, this was the real deal. The bullets were real and
death was real, This stinking fox hole was real and reality sucked.
Believe it or not even the 100-pound cracker was comforting to have
around. He kept asking, " are you awake pencil neck" And I
kept replying, " are you shitting me who can sleep," He
continued to grin. I continued to watch the perimeter with one eye on
the nutcase. The night was pitch
black, For you city folks who have never experienced pitch black, try
this, bandage your eyes, then jump into a hole 30 feet deep at midnight
on a moonless evening. Then have a lid placed over the hole. If you even
have the inclination that you are still living, there is still too much
light. If we were to get any sleep at all it would be in two-hour
snatches, but sleep was not on the agenda for this night, my first
night. I was scared to death to close my eyes I couldn't even bring
myself to blink, and if I had blinked I wouldn't have noticed it anyway.
This form of darkness was a hard one to overcome but in time I found
that this darkness would become a blessing as well as a curse and
completely necessary for survival. From the darkness in
front of us came the rattle of a tin can. My heart was beating a
thousand beats a second. With each beat I felt as though my head was
going to explode. Waiting
for the worst to happen, I swear I could hear the Redneck giggleing to
himself. His idea of funny was a bit skewed. The deafening roar of
silence returned once again. It seemed as though an eternity had passed,
I wondered to myself, where is the dawn, Will I live to see it, this was
just my first night in this shit-hole and will every night be like this
one? Question after question popped into what little room I had left in
my mind; fear had taken up most of what little space there was. Another
rattle of a can twenty yards out at the eleven o'clock position, nobody
breathed. A rustling in the dirt, we had no patrols out, it's gotta be
charley. A trip flare ignites, the claymores are detonated and
explosions fill the silence. A burst of flame emitting from the barrel
of an M-60 machine gun lights up the night, Hand grenades
follow Silence, Silence, Where is the dawn? The redneck continued
to smile. The next few weeks were
a time of getting to know those who were around you. There was Chuck
from Connecticut, he and I hooked up stateside and wound up together
here At Phubai. He was a crazy sort and we hit it off real well. The
night before we left for Nam we got kicked out of a motel in Whittier
California. Seems that we were on the third floor balcony and the
swimming pool below looked real inviting. We jumped in from the balcony
and were kicked out of the place by an irate manager. No sense of humor
at three o’clock in the morning I guess. Then there was Pineapple, we
became good friends and went through some shit together. He rotated back
to the world a few months or so before I did, but we spent a good eight
months in country together. These two were the only ones I would get
close to after losing some good friends in the Nam already. Between the
three of us we kept each other’s sanity in check, or should I say
insanity. After about a
month the smiling 100-pound Redneck rotated back to the world so I
understood why he was always smiling. Now he was in his own little world
for sure, looking spook eyed and smiling at his family from across his
own dinner table. That shit eating grin he wore would give his family
cause to wonder. Now they could watch him and wonder what the hell
Vietnam did to their son. The Nam was a life changing experience for
sure. Nobody came and left the same way; it was a fact of life. The
change could happen in a day or over a thirteen-month tour, but it would
happen and it would alter ones outlook on life. We never knew then just
how much it would alter our lives. |