This section is recollection compiled four decades or so later. I try to be as accurate as possible, and would supply more names if I had them.

AUGUST REVOLUTION

August 23 is one of my significant dates. It was the day I went in, the day I got out, and between those two, it was the day I reported for duty at Headquarters Co, 2nd Battalion, 10th Mountain Division, Ft. Carson, Colorado.

This is where they sent Vietnam returnees, who usually had about six months left to serve. Since my time in Vietnam had been short, I had a full year left, and one extra day.

August, 1968, was also the time of Chicago's infamous Democratic National Convention, and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion was one of the units elected to go. Unaware of the Convention's place in history and of how much fun it was going to be, I of course did not want to go. Even in play, infantry was not what I wanted to be doing, so I used the facts of having just come off convalescent leave and my limited-duty profile to finagle, I thought, a few days of on-base R&R.

The battalion left by plane for Chicago. Late morning or early afternoon of that day, I was lying on my bunk enjoying the quiet and my good fortune. Probably, I was reading a book, probably "The Morning of the Magicians." I might have also been listening to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", when some officer or person of many stripes poked his head into the nearly empty barracks and ordered me in his deep-male command voice to training. My orders were to doff my uniform for civies, then go out and skirmish, riot, be a hippie, go places I was not allowed to go and do things I was not allowed to do.

So that's what I did. I exchanged dog tags for the love beads hanging in my locker, another sort of talisman I suppose, and I went outside to riot.

A few others "hippies" were wandering about the company area, not quit sure what to do, but gradually our numbers grew and we got braver, and our voices grew louder. We stomped into the day room and the supply room, ran through the CQ, scraping a chair across the floor here and there, or tipping it over. Emboldened, we expanded into the company area next door, a place I had never been, where the uniformed soldiers were in on it, but still generally outranked us and did not like us. So they cursed us back and called us various forms of asshole and told us to get out, and of course we did.

Our scattered band of revolutionaries benignly shouted a path down the company street "Hell No, We Won't Go!" toward the motor pool when the authorities finally arrived, an open-air jeep, driver, lieutenant, two grunts in back, with a red, I think, unit pennant flag flapping above it all on a thin pole.

Their mission being to maintain order, they told us to break it up, so we shouted at them and they yelled back at us. Myself, adrenalin rising, I snuck to the back of the slowly moving jeep and unstrapped the empty jerry can, so close to the uniforms one only had to turn around to grab me.

Obviously outnumbered and under attack, the jeep, lieutenant and grunts, sped off minus the spare gas can.

Pleased at my own bravado, I found a hand-sized rock with which to beat my olive-drab drum, as always freshly-painted and inspection ready. The clamor of rock on hollow can resounded and quickly drew a rioting cluster around me, fifteen, twenty…. Belligerence in bloom, we readied to re-infiltrate the enemy when, of course, the army returned, two jeeps aiming down the road, much faster this time.

The revolution instantly saw it was doomed and quickly scattered. I dropped the drum and fled. I ran into unfamiliar territory, looking for escape. Rounding the corner of a barracks, I glanced back. I still retain this image of the jeep rounding the corner behind me, left-front tire turned and hanging low in the wheel well, pennant flag bent to the rear. And though I was not alone in the stampede, the soldiers were looking at me. Then the jeep braked alongside and I was pinned up against the wall by unfamiliar arms and bodies, and I was making no attempt to move.

All after that is anti-climax. They did not beat me up. No arrest. I did not even get to ride in the jeep.

In a fatigued tone that seemed to say, "I'm glad this is over," the officers ordered us all back to our companies.

The August Revolution was over.

July 2010

BUNKER HOLE

Encountering a bunker while on the way to someplace else, or because somebody else had already searched it, it was common to simply toss in a grenade -- "Fire in the hole!" -- and consider that sufficient reconnaissance.

One day we went through a village on Search and Destroy. I don't recall the other man with me but, since I took charge, he must have been a new guy like me.

Hooches were usually empty, but this day the village was inhabited. We entered a hooch to search it. Inside we found cooking and household items, none of which I now remember. We also found Mamasan standing in the one room, and a bunker, like a large box built of mud. Mamasan spoke no English, of course, but an ARVN soldier had no doubt already explained our presence. Clearly, we were there to inspect her house.

The bunker was obvious and took up a lot of space and, though unexpected, no more ominous to me than a storm cellar in Kansas. We showed our interest in the bunker and I asked in my unintelligible English if there was anybody in there. She indicated there was not. I pulled a hand grenade from my jacket and she became suddenly agitated, waving her hands at me and calling out to the bunker. Two or three young children then emerged from the bunker and she shuffled them into a corner. I looked her in the eye and asked if there was anybody else in there, which again she denied. I then made a motion as if to pull the pin from the grenade. This was a conscious bluff, but again she was upset and speaking incomprehensibly. She rushed into the bunker and came out seconds latter with a smallish dog in her arms.

Now with the bunker presumably clear, we had to inspect. My buddy carried an M-16. My weapon was a single shot grenade launcher, useless for any kind of short-range combat. With that thought, I decided I should be the one to inspect the bunker. If I were killed or injured, he would be better equipped to fire back. On my hands and knees, I crawled maybe shoulder-deep into the hole. Coming from outdoors and even the relative brightness inside the hooch, inside this hole it was perfectly black. Two thoughts came quickly to mind. The first was that I was not continuing on into this hole. Second, choosing to do this was likely the dumbest thing I had ever done.

Inspection over, I backed out of the hole and tried to be pleasant to Mamasan as we left her hooch. We did not use the grenade.

Did I feel we had invaded this woman's home, privacy and peace of mind?

Sure.

April 2010

LUCKY PIECE

We moved into the Dong Tam barracks on April 3rd, 1968. 1st Platoon was housed on the second floor, but I never slept a single night in the barracks.

Whoever lived here before had abandoned personal effects. Maybe they left in a hurry, or maybe they were just sloppy. But before moving in, we had to clean out the metal clothes lockers that must be standard in every army barracks and high school gym. While cleaning, another grunt found a crude wood carving about six or seven inches long, about the right size and shape for the rounded end of a walking cane or umbrella handle. The carving's protruding ears and horns, indentations for eyes, were those of a water buffalo.

The finder showed it about and asked if somebody wanted it before he threw it out. It was remarked that the carving might be a lucky piece, forgotten or abandoned.

Having recently lost my own lucky piece and thinking the water buffalo might be more lucky for the one who saved it from the trash, I thought I should have it.

As I took the object in my hand, somebody else said it might not be so lucky, maybe in Vietnamese the carving was a bad omen or evil charm.

A dread came upon me at that instant unlike anything I'd ever experienced. But then, as now, I did not really believe in lucky charms or evil omens. I carried a charm because it could do no harm, just because.

But I wanted this water buffalo, and so I told myself that my sudden panic was irrational. I denied the terror I felt. The whole episode had come and gone in an instant.

I put the carving away on the shelf of my locker, and forgot about it. A few hours later, lying in my bunk next to the locker and reading a novel about war on Mars, I was shot.

May 2010