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I now know from reports and eyewitness accounts that during
October, there was a massive increase in NVA activity eighty to a
hundred miles north of Saigon. This area was in the general area where
my unit had previously spent a lot of time during Operation Junction
City. Some of the towns that my unit operated near were Song Be, Loc
Ninh, Quan Loi, and An Loc. During this stage of the war, towns all
across South Vietnam had sufficiently succumbed to Duan's terroristic
tactics enough to act as staging areas, where he had been quietly
building irregular and covert forces to pull off his fake general
uprising during the Tet Holiday. My unit noticed a heck of a lot more
enemy patrols of all types combing through the jungles and rubber trees
around Quan Loi than when I had been going patrolling with them earlier
in the year. It was also apparent that the NVA was becoming better
armed. Enemy base camps were being built and improved all up and down
Thunder Road from near Saigon to the Cambodian border. As a truck
driver, I drove that road quite a few times during my last two months in
country. At least half that time, I was driving alone, running errands
all by myself. I had no idea how much danger was lurking around me. The
Viet Cong exerted almost total control over most of the villages through
which I was driving during the day. They were run almost entirely by a
communist shadow government. The reality was that the villagers of South
Vietnam were being held hostage by them to do their bidding. The
alternative for not obeying their orders every day was not just death,
but a torturous death. Oftentimes, their family was made to watch.
Very quickly after settling into this new job, I found a new
sense of freedom, and it was pretty exhilarating. When driving alone
through the countryside, dodging people, Lambrettas, buses, and a few ox
carts, I began to feel like I was in control of my life again. No one
was eyeballing my every movement. On the contrary, the people I worked
around seemed very "task-driven," and those tasks had nothing to do with
me. When running the roads, I would pass American soldiers, tanks, and
other supply trucks along the way, and sometimes I would get a glimpse
of the Koreans who were called "Rok Soldiers". They were "some bad
dudes". The enemy didn't want to tangle with them. This new life created
in me a sense of normalcy. It also created a false sense of security. If
I had known how many enemy combatants were in proximity to "little ole
me" as I drove blissfully down the road, I am sure I would have
immediately begged to be returned to my old squad. Joe Boland of C
Company gave an account years later of his experience one day while
driving a truck to pick up some supplies. As he was driving along, out
of the blue, a group of maybe twenty to thirty men dressed in black
pajamas crossed the road in front of him. They carried AK-47s and were
following in a single file. He waved to them, and they waved back and
kept going. The Arvins wore green and did not carry AKs. So, there is a
99.9% chance that this was an enemy patrol, crossing the road in front
of his truck. He believed that it was, and I have no reason to doubt
him. The stark truth about the average rear echelon American serving in
Vietnam was that we were in much more danger than we realized. We were
also totally naïve about what was really happening all around us. I find
it remarkable that rear echelon grunts were not taught to be more
observant and to report any unusual incidents. Localized enemy forces
weren't like the NVA conscripts. For the most part, the conscripts
didn't start out wanting to be there any more than we grunts did. The
local VCs, however, were "card-carrying" members of the communist party,
looking to gain as much individual power for themselves as possible.
They had a criminal gang mentality and were amoral. The only human life
that they valued was their own and that of family members. This patrol,
which crossed paths with Boland, knew they had nothing to fear and were
very comfortable operating around Americans. They owned the countryside
and the roads at night but had no problem getting a lot of business
taken care of during daylight hours.
Shortly after settling into this newfound utopia, I met Tex the
donut man. Rumors were that Tex had been assigned to a combat squad, but
he had freaked out early on, so a place was carved out for him with the
cooks, making fresh donuts. As I have already said, we did not start
getting fresh donuts until shortly after Dick arrived, so I believe Dick
had something to do with creating this new job. I wish I knew the whole
story, but I don't, so here is what I do know. Tex's sole responsibility
was to get up at 3:00 am and have donuts made in time to be flown out to
the men in the field for breakfast, along with hot coffee and that
delicious, dehydrated vegetable soup which I mentioned earlier. I can't
remember this guy's real name. Since he was from Texas, everyone just
called him Tex. Now, I loved donuts, so I started setting my alarm to
get up at 3:00 am, so I could help Tex make donuts. I could get those
hot, delicious treats just as they were coming out of the boiling oil.
Yum, yum! Man, they sure were good.
It didn't take very long for me to realize that Tex was a bully.
He was about 5 feet 9 inches tall, with an incredible physique to match
his height. He weighed about 170 lbs. His favorite trick was to slip up
behind one of the cooks and get him in a headlock. He would hold them
there, while they cried for mercy, and he repeated this type of behavior
over and over, day after day. I was surprised that no one had stopped
him. If he had tried this with even the smallest man in my field unit,
he would have been clobbered before someone could say, "Lookout, Tex". I
became very embarrassed for his victims, and as I said, I was surprised
that no one stood up to him. I was as guilty as everyone else. I did
nothing. We all just stood around and watched.
As one might expect, it didn’t take Tex very long to turn his
bullying behavior on me since we were alone together at three in the
morning. Now, I was a little over six ft. and weighed about 190 pounds.
For the last 9 months, I have carried a 90-pound rucksack on my back
almost every day. I had lifted weights since I was fifteen, which was
something most people didn't do in those days. I also did a lot of
swimming during my teens. I could have put Tex down the very first time
he jumped me, but my mama didn't raise any fools. At that time, there
were no "Dunkin Donuts" in Vietnam, and I really didn't want to lose
this only source of those tasty treats. If I had put Tex down, no doubt
it would have caused irreparable damage to his ego. The result would
have meant no more hot donuts for me. So, I appeased him, hoping he
would soon get the bullying out of his system. When he got me into a
headlock, I jokingly demeaned myself, declaring how strong he was and
how he should let a weakling like me go. I did it with such a comical
demeanor that there could have been no sane reason under heaven for him
to continue this childish behavior. But he did. Not only did he
continue, but he began to attack me and the others more frequently. He
was most definitely starting to see himself as that mean character,
Roger, in “Lord of the Flies”. Life was good for "Ole Tex", as he
continued to tirelessly assert his sadistic reign over what he perceived
to be his private domain.
Sometime around mid-October, we support troops for the battalion
found ourselves in Quan Loi, pitching the mess hall tent in the rubber
trees just off the airstrip. Red mud was everywhere, and everyone had
been wearing the same fatigues for weeks. The showers were made out of
the hollow shells of napalm bombs and had not been filled with fresh
water in who knows when. Even if there had been water for showers, we
would have had to dress in the same dirty clothes, because there were no
resupplies of clean jungle fatigues. Now, "it just so happened" that my
"Ole Compadres" were returning from the field on this particular day.
Their return just after they had won those first three big battles with
Triet. The supply sergeant would have definitely realized that Dick
would have his skin if he didn't make sure that the showers had water
and that there were clean fatigues available.
Within minutes after my company landed on the air strip, several
of my old buddies came running up to me in the mess area and started
hollering. "Hey Wade", the showers are full of water and there are clean
fatigues for everybody". Now I knew what "everybody" meant. It meant
that if you wanted to get the right size fatigues before they ran out,
you had better get to the showers ASAP. Without fanfare, people started
jumping into the back of my truck. We all knew that we could make the
trip to the showers a lot faster, doing 40 miles an hour, than the mob
could by running on foot, but we had to act fast. The showers were about
a half mile away at the south end of the air strip. When we got there,
everyone jumped out and started stripping. Some had already stripped on
the way to save time. I cannot adequately describe to the reader how
good it felt to have the red dirt of Quan Loi washed off my body. Then
came the heavenly feel of clean fatigues rubbing against my skin.
Thinking back on this experience, it now makes me think of a cartoon I
saw one time of three dogs drinking out of a toilet bowl. One of the
dogs was looking at the others and saying, "Gee, it just doesn't get any
better than this". I drove back to the mess hall tent in the same frame
of mind that those dogs displayed in that cartoon.
Back at the mess hall tent, as I brought the truck to a stop,
people jumped off the back and ran to meet up with some of the cooks,
who had become their friends. It was amazing to me to learn that the
cooks really enjoyed keeping up with the exploits of their grunt
friends. I was a little surprised to learn years later that some of
these cooks were truly saddened when a grunt, whom they had gotten to
know, was killed.
Carefully parking my truck to avoid having to step down into a
mud puddle, I headed toward a couple of my old squad members. They were
standing fifty yards from me, and the area between us was dotted with
several pools of rainwater, which I had to avoid. There was a watery
area to my front, which I was carefully trying to skirt, when wham! My
legs suddenly came in contact with another person's outstretched leg. As
I stumbled to catch my balance, a hand pulled me around by one shoulder,
causing me to lose my footing completely. This blind side attack made me
land on my side in a large puddle of water, which I had just
successfully avoided. As I looked up, I saw Tex standing over me with a
silly smile on his face, while at least twenty or thirty people looked
on. I slowly got up and then looked him straight in the eye, my anger
growing. As we stared at each other for an instant, my countenance
changed. A demonic smile started to form. At the same time, that silly
smile on his face began to fade. In its place, he tried to put on a
stern look of intimidation. As I continued to stare at Tex, I could feel
my soggy, wet fatigues clinging to almost the entire lower part of my
right side. It made me even angrier. That demonic smile on my face
glowed ever brighter. At the same time, I could see the fear rise in
Tex's eyes, which caused him to back up a couple of steps.
The time had come for me to show "good Ole Tex" another side of
my personality, and it was one which I had been carefully concealing
from him. I could tell that he was already a little disconcerted by the
abrupt change in my demeanor. He had no idea, however, that I had been
leading him on with fake submissions during past bullying episodes. As a
matter of fact, I am sure that he never knew what strong feelings I had
against bullying, in general. Those feelings had already started fueling
a dislike, on my part, for Tex. I had already concluded that I would
have to deal with him sooner or later. Still, I hoped that when that
time came, it would not result in an altercation, which would cost me my
donut privileges.
Now, things had gone too far to worry about donuts. There were
too many witnesses to let this attack by Tex go unanswered. So, as I
stood there, dripping wet, I very calmly and deliberately started
speaking to him in a tone which he had never heard coming from my lips
before. It was a measured tone devoid of all emotion, with an air of
certainty about it. I had learned that tone from my favorite cowboy
heroes as they faced off with the bad guy on the silver screen. Yet, it
wasn't just learned bravado. Little did "Ole Lord of the Flies Tex" know
that during our late-night wrestling matches, I had been measuring his
strength against mine, while allowing him to get the better of me. Now,
I was sure that I could make a move on "Ole Tex" that he would never see
coming. Such was the "con job" that I had pulled off on this guy.
Besides, he had crossed the line. He deserved it. To top things off, my
old squad members were watching. An example had to be made, donuts or no
donuts.
Looking around, I pointed to another mud puddle, much more muddy
than the one near us. "Tex, do you see that mud puddle over there?" I
said, as I nodded my head toward it. "That's where you are going to go".
These were the words I spoke in the manner that I have already
described. To counter my firm proclamation, in front of our peers, poor
ole Tex was now forced to reach down inside of himself to find some
scare tactic to use as a comeback. Words started stammering from his
mouth as he clenched his fists, taking somewhat of a boxer's stance.
"I'm serious, Wade. I'm not playing around here. I can box", he said. As
he barely got those words out of his mouth, I lunged forward and scooped
him up like a sack of feed.
I quickly ran my right arm between his legs and the left one
around his neck, and then lifted him off his feet. Now, finding himself
pinned against my body, with arms and feet flailing in the wind, there
was nothing he could do but go wherever I was able to carry him. How
embarrassing it must have been for Tex to be carried helplessly toward
his next resting place on the earth. When I had carried him to some
sticky red clay mud about twenty yards away, I lowered his body down
into it as carefully as a mother would drop her baby into bath water.
That mud was about the consistency of chocolate pudding. I made sure he
was submerged enough for the gooey red stuff to flow up and over his
chest. I don't remember how much of this mess I got on myself, but it
was well worth it to see the wind taken out of Tex's sails. After this
incident, Tex and I never spoke to each other again. Needless to say, I
had forever burned my bridge, for getting to enjoy piping hot donuts,
until my tour of duty ended. Now that was an absolute crying shame, but
what else could I do?
Interestingly enough, my "stock" with the other cooks didn't jump
any higher than it had been before. Putting Tex in his place didn't
impress them at all. There was a reason for that. From "day one" of my
association with these cooks, I already had their respect. One of the
main reasons for that was that I was a combat grunt on temporary
assignment. This fantastic little band of cooks had just naturally
opened up their hearts toward me as soon as I came aboard. They let me
raid the food supplies at will, and most of the time, they would cook
for me after the mess hall had closed. And that was long before they
witnessed me putting Tex in his place. When thinking back on this happy
time, I realize now that this quick acceptance into their inner circle
probably had something to do with a transference of feelings felt for
other grunt friends whom they had lost along the way. They knew I had
been a combat grunt for a long time. When I was in the field, they had
seen my face, over and over, going through the chow line. Many other
rear-echelon people also had a lot of respect for us front-line troops.
Unfortunately, I don't believe this respect was returned by us combat
grunts, and that's too bad.
My former squad members had also been watching the shenanigans.
They, too, like the cooks, were not impressed by my putting Tex in his
place. You see, there was a much more developed principle of mature
thinking at work here with these Dogface boys than that causing them to
get excited over a little display of high school antics. In the last few
months, Dogface Battalion had been transformed. We were not high
schoolers anymore. We had been transformed into dogs of war, ready to go
on the attack without hesitation, at the command of our master's voice.
Why had we been so remarkably transformed? Next Chapter |