we gave each other
nicknames, pretended we were
cartoons that summer
It was hard being
separated from my family for an extended period of time. I’d never been
away from them for more than eight weeks, and that was during boot camp. Now I
was overseas in a strange land participating in a
war I thought I understood. I was nervous, lonely,
and sometimes, disoriented. I was eighteen years old. My world, prior to going
to Vietnam, was centered around sports, surfing, dating, and dancing. Like most
new boot camp graduates, I came to Vietnam
unprepared for what I would see or experience. Separation
from family, a different culture, tropical weather, a military bureaucracy,
a war governed by politicians instead of
generals...it was a confusing time for many of us.
To make sense of the
situation we were in and to keep our sanity, we formed small groups.
A cache of friends we could relate to and bond with. Everyone on base had a
group they belonged to. We needed each other. We
became the family we had left at home. We
gave each other nicknames. My buddies were Top Cat, Slow Man, Boats, and the
Great Randini. I was The Whippoorwill. We drank, we got high, we did whatever we
could to forget about the war zone we were in the
middle of, the pain we felt, and to exorcise
the ghosts our subconscious minds regurgitated from time to time. On duty, we
worked and did what we had to do. War is a team
effort. You ask no questions and do as you
are told. Needless to say, we lived and died for the off duty hours when we left
the newscast and became a Saturday morning
cartoon.
short night, mamasan
sees her husband's face
in the clouds
I asked a young South Vietnamese mother in Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City,
one afternoon in October of 1968, where the father of her children was.
"I'm not sure," she said. "He's in the Army fighting the Viet
Cong. I don't know where. I haven't heard from him in seven months."
"I bet you get lots of letters from him, huh?" I asked. Her lack of an
answer and the look on her face said it all.
Many of us living here in the United States lost a loved one or a friend in the
war our government called a conflict. We mourned our losses. We erected
memorials.
We weren't the only ones who suffered. Thousands of South and North Vietnamese
soldiers and civilians lost their lives as well. Deep down inside, the mamasan I
talked to, knew she'd never see her husband again. A cloud of doubt and
uncertainty hung over her. A peace of the puzzle missing. All she had were
memories and a faint glimmer of hope that was fading with each passing day. What
would she tell her children? How would she support them? What would happen to
them if South Vietnam succumbed to the North?
America could walk away from the "conflict", which they did in 1975.
Those living in Vietnam could not. And still can't.
it's no movie
i am dodging shrapnel
this afternoon
I remember the first time our base was
rocketed. We were eating dinner in the mess
hall when out of nowhere a shrill whistle pierced the din of our conversation.
Instinctively, my shipmates and I dove for cover. Shrapnel from
the explosion fell on the mess hall roof like hail stones. This was the first
time the Navy side of the base experienced a direct hit. I felt like a sitting
duck and said to my shipmates, "Come
on, guys. Let's go to our ship. It's never been hit be-fore." We
got up from the table we'd taken cover under and ran out of the mess
hall towards our duty station. Another whistle. Our ship was hit. I looked
behind us and saw a rocket explode two hundred yards away. The sky
was raining shrapnel. We continued running towards the ship. An-other whistle.
We kissed the pontoons our ship was moored
to. I looked up and saw one of my ship-mates laying
in a pool of blood. We yelled for a medic and ran up the gangway,
grabbing our weapons, donning helmets and flack jackets, and heading
for our general quarters stations.
In the blink of an eye, that evening, we became
the actors in the war movies we'd watched
stateside. Only we weren't acting and this wasn't a movie.
you are your own shadow
this autumn noon
at river's edge
Every day, we passed by the same thatched roof
home nested under a cluster of trees by the
water's edge, on our way to the main river. We called this tributary, Route 66.
It was a Viet Cong hotbed under the cover
of night, the scene of many firefights between the
Cong and river patrol boats. During the day, it was a picture postcard Eden.
Hard to imagine danger lurking from those
shores. The same woman, always without a hat, and
clad in black pajamas, stood outside the home's entrance like clockwork whenever
we passed by. The home, like all of the homes in
the Delta, had no electricity. She had walked
out of the darkness wearing black clothing Was she a lookout for the Viet
Cong? Or just a curious woman?
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