Sleeping Under Runways

A little ditty about a night in Viet Nam

Once upon a time, there was a guy, just an ordinary guy, who was fulfilling his military obligation in a small foreign country called…oh, let’s call it Viet Nam for lack of a better name. Of course, I could come up with a better name, but this is a family blog… One day, this guy was called into the “office”, as it were, and was given an ASSIGNMENT. This little job, which was being done by several people, is the subject of this little ditty, and with your kind permission, since the guy was, in fact, me, I will now switch to the first person narrative…since it is easier. I can? Oh, thank you…

The assignment we were given involved traveling (in the back of a truck) quite a few miles from one base to another for the purposes of doing some repairs on the far end of one of the runways. Why (a question I asked myself repeatedly) base #2 (a reasonably large establishment) didn’t have people of their own to do this is way beyond me, and “ours not to reason why, etc., etc.”. At any rate, we made our little journey, traveling through villages and jungle, getting shot at along the way, and of course shooting back at God knows what, and eventually, arrived reasonably unscathed. We ate, we retired, we slept.

The next morning we started our task, driving out to the end of the runway to assess the situation. It was a nice clear morning, temps not too bad, humidity WAY up there, but not bad. I won’t bore you with all the details of the days work, except to say it got hotter, we got sweatier, it rained (but the temperature stayed high), we got wet, it cleared up, we sweated…you get the idea. Along about late afternoon, it came time for my part in this little drama, and the reason for my going became clear. Sorry, but this needs a new paragraph.

At the end of the runway was a tunnel, and through this tunnel there ran a cable, which was attached to a net, which caught any planes that, while landing, attempted to make any unauthorized escape off the end of the runway into the jungle (the military was sort of against unauthorized escapes at that time). Part of the job was that “someone” had to take a rope through the tunnel, where it was attached to a pulley and pulled through. It was attached to a larger rope, and a larger one, and then a thin cable, and a thicker cable, etc., etc. until the main cable was pulled through.

What you have to know at this point, is that, at that time, I was not the svelte, trim 250 pounds that you see before you today. No, siree, Bob, I was 6 foot, 6 inches tall and MAYBE 150 pounds, if fully dressed with a full field pack. In other words, about the right size to squeeze through a VERY small tunnel under a runway with a rope in my teeth. The reason for this thinness, if you will, had something to do with my diet (I was never sure exactly what I was eating over there, but I do know that some of it was Very Strange…) and my proclivity for certain, shall we say, stimulants at the time. So,anyway, I took the rope, got down, slithered forward and, in the words of Ray Stevens (Ahab the Arab), “uh…into the tent (tunnel) uh he went…”.

Sliding through the tunnel wasn’t all that hard…Oh, sure, there was the occasional small critter body, some standing water from the recent rains, a LOT of cobwebs (some occupied), but, all in all, not too awfully bad. The fun started when I reached the other side. As I emerged triumphant from the tunnel, I looked around and,….there was no one there.

The entire crew that I was with had vanished into thin air, or so it seemed. I looked all over, and finally saw them, running and driving as if for their very lives, away from me and toward the base. Now, I HAD showered that morning, and while there was some sweat involved, it had also rained, which washed me a bit, so I couldn’t understand the sudden exodus. I nervously looked around, trying to see the pack of pissed off water buffalo, or maybe the pile of angry elephants that might be heading my way, when I heard (and felt) a mighty WHUMP! nearby. I then concluded (the mind is always going) that I was in the middle of a mortar attack.

Now, obviously, my first thought was “RRRUUUNNN!!!”. But then, the old analytical brain kicked in, and I thought…well I could follow everyone else, thereby becoming a moving target in their little shooting gallery, or I could…Say!! There’s a runway right next to me…12 solid inches of concrete over a tunnel that I can fit in, and what the hell am I doing standing here thinking about it? So…in the immortal words of Ray Stevens (Ahab the Arab)…well, check it out, three paragraphs up.

OK…I’m not sure how many of you have had the pleasurable opportunity to spend the night under a runway in a small South East Asian jungle country (and I’m sure a lot of you have), but for those few of you that haven’t, let me point out one of the main perks in participating in such an adventure. When you are under there, and it’s dark…FULL dark because the base is under blackout conditions…well, you don’t have to worry about loneliness because you are most definitely NOT alone.

You ever notice how, during a war, everyone seems worried about how the humans are faring, but no one really seems to give much thought to how the really, really small critters and crawlers are doing? Well, apparently, they get scared too, and at that time, they go looking for a place to hide, and look…isn’t that the Lincoln Tunnel over there…we can hide in there, and everything will be hunky dory. I felt like a part of a massive parade ground under there, and boy! were the troops massing to march that night! They ranged from the very, very tiny, who would run up the mountain (me), stop to graze a little bit, run some more, graze some more, etc., to the very, very large and very, very long who slithered up and over. One such fellow, apparently exhausted by the climb, stopped to take a nap before beginning the decent. I even managed to become an anchor point for one of my eight-legged friends, who wanted to build a web to catch some of the lunch meat running by. I really kept wishing some VC type would wander by and toss a bottle of whiskey in the tunnel for me.

Comes the dawn…thank the Lord!! Finally I emerged from my little tomb, covered with hundreds of muddy little footprints, a few welts, some bite marks and a slither track or two, and headed off toward my barracks, dreaming of hot showers, cold beer and lots of sleep. Unfortunately, THAT wasn’t going to happen, because the portion of the barracks where my bunk was no longer existed. Just a hole in the wall, and a lot of shredded plastic and metal. Had I been in that bed, I would also be shredded metal and plastic, which would totally piss off my kids, because they hadn’t been born yet, and, in that case, never would have been.

So, that is my little ditty about Sleeping Under Runways…and as for the stimulants mentioned, well…I arrived In Country clean (but not sober), and left the region clean (but not sober), which involved a hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand, a lot of booze, and as Mr. Harvey says all the time…”The Rest of The Story….”

Reviews

[Cherrie Palmer]

I have two brothers that spent two tours there and they would love this story, I loved this story and you did a great job telling it in a way that you don’t terrify the straights. Great work.

[Samuel Dickens]

A great little story, Arizona Writer--and true, I'd say. I enjoyed your playful, humorous style. You write very well. Thank you. I'm a vet of that particular war myself. (Navy)