Dusting Off Vietnam

DUSTING OFF VIETNAM

The stacked and scattered Conex compartments organized like oxidizing dominoes throughout the medieval layout of Pleiku Air Base had a soft glow of tempered metal. These inter-modal freight containers snaked through steaming black air strips, green canvas clam-shell tents, and the plywood B huts that adorned the budding American installation of the South Pacific. Stuffed with ammunition, weapons, and tools of ranged complexity, these 40 foot boxes served as stove coils in the Vietnam sun, monstrous metallurgic models of annealing that burned to the touch.

Pleiku itself rose out of the Jungle lit like an operating table in the twilight with “sorties” and “four ships” spewing their afterburners and departing on the half hour. A hub of western civilization dealing barbarism amidst the biological treasure trove of the of the Mekong Delta. The dense wetlands where the Nine Dragon river empties into the sea through nimble fingered dis-tributaries, were cut away giving Pleiku the surrounded canvas backdrop of tropical foliage. In the jungle that surrounded, one would expect some prehistoric gargantuan primate to descend upon the plateaued airfield like Kong. Here the defense of Saigon, and the elimination of the insurgency would be displayed as childish figurines moved about on table sized maps by the spotted, shaking hands of generals and diplomats. The onyx black tarmac damp in JP-8 jet fuel, was freshly paved and now steamed in the daylight. The bulky hulks of grounded helicopters ordered in neat rows sulked with their limp blades drooped and foreboding. The UH-1 Huey, the A-1E Skyraider, F-105 Thunderchief and other jet powered, rotary or propeller driven fixed wings remained parked in their respective positions, the only sensible structure on the base

All remained in the early morning hours, save the CH-47 Chinooks which departed in response to the “Dustoff” evacuation of a 9th Infantry unit just moments earlier. The mufflers of a M561-Gamma Goat 6 wheel jeep and the M151 Mutt coughed like bronchial patients as they sputtered in a frenzy around the living base.The wailing of the alarm billowed across river valley. The conical Asian paddy hats rose from their work outside the perimeter and peered towards the fenced installation in the direction of the distressed. Soldiers half dressed in piecemeal uniforms, dashed out of their bunks and to the airfield in a gaggle reserved for a rush hour metro.

Lt Roy Mader heard the groaning cacophony of the sirens in the midst of his own struggle.

Squatting like a sumo wrestler above the platformed hole in in the latrine tent, sweat ran down his steep brow towards his crow-magnon sunk eyes. He was the 9th infantry medical officer. A combat nurse charged with the care of the Pleiku Psychiatric Ward, but also, more importantly, the watch officer for “Dustoff.” Dustoff, is the colloquial name for casualty evacuation or CASEVAC from a combat zone, and as the sirens moaned louder, his determination to vanquish the evil spirit in his gut became greater.

Despite all regulation warning against the ingestion of local food, the Roy’s curiosity of the exotic tastes, in more categories than food, led to the gut wrench of the dribbling s***s. The ten hole canvas privy sat juxtapose to the airfield and was often the last stop of departing aircrews before their missions. A biological incident within ones own cockpit was more common than one would think, but the publication of such events would mean endless ribbing for the remainder of your tour. The muscles in the Lieutenant’s abdomen and around his thighs pulsed and the perspiration that ran down his face and back only exacerbated his discomfort. The sirens were throbbing between his temples as they continued. The fumes of diesel fuel invaded his nostrils. Choking and sweet inside the sweltering s**t tent. The standard method of waste disposal in Vietnam was to fill a 55 gallon barrel half way with JP-4 Diesel jet fuel, and at the end of the day engulf the excrement in flames. Despite the gruesome nature of Dustoff, Lt Mader disliked latrine duty more than any other. The humid burning fecal air seemed to cause a pneumonic searing with every inhale. He considered the combustible half kerosene half gasoline mixture just a few feet below his dangling manhood, and as he cleaned himself in a few hurried swipes he noticed the loosely lipped Pall Mall in the mouth of the man relieving himself opposite him. There were no dividers between holes in this s**t tent, or any s**t tent for that matter in Vietnam.

“Pray to god you don’t drop that in there.” He said to the smoking shitter.

“I’m droppin’ other things in here LT! Lord have mercy on my black a*s!” The man said with a laugh, ambivalent to the

combustible hazard on his lips.

Roy gave a soft grin, pulled up his fatigues, clutched his medical bag tightly to his chest, and began a sprint out of the latrine tent towards the incoming Chinooks.

When he approached the tarmac, the blades of the metal hulk carved through the Vietnamese firmament like some bloated mechanical dragonfly. The sheer size of the CH-47 Chinook hovering and poised above the helipad blotted out the cochineal hues suspended above the distant burning delta. Swirling gales upon the onlookers. Waving in the chopper’s touchdown Lieutenant Mader found his eyes darting from the twin turboshaft engines and the rotors popping in the air, to the battlefield’s illuminated bursts pervading through the jungle canopy like flaming parasols. Just west of the air base could be seen the misguided eruptions of what looked like primordial geysers. “Those boys are in one hell of a fight” he muttered to himself. In reality, Lt Mader reasoned that they were indeed our own artillery blasts, a dealt destruction so close that the yet living levitating occupants of the incoming helicopter were the only nearby souls privy to the true absurdity of the term “friendly fire”. Lt Mader’s NCO arrived and hugged to the right shoulder of his superior. They acknowledged each other  and again angled their eyes up to the descending beast. The Chinook began lowering itself to the helipad. As it did the only sound louder than the monstrosity of dual fan blades were the afterburners of the F-105s packed with Napalm B laden bombs that streaked down the adjacent runway.

“Cook em!” the Lieutenant could hear one of his young NCOs scream from behind his ear. “Burn up those f*****g Slants!” Roy shook his head, as he knew better. Those Napalm bombs would rip through the delta like a scythe sweeping through the grass, killing more of our own than the VietCong. He did not correct the boy. Outside of this,the  beating of the monstrous swash plates meant it was too loud and fruitless to explain further, that if dropped, the napalm was dangerously close to the base as well.The fighting in the jungle was three miles to the west of Pleiku. The temperature change induced by the incendiary would produce a firestorm of self perpetuating flaming winds of up to 70 miles per hour. They would likely be ducking for cover in some trench in 3 minutes from the hurricane of fire.

Behind the two of them six more boys ran to the base of the platform with medical bags and canvas stretchers flanking the officer on either side. Roy cupped the ear of his NCO,

“Do you know what happened?” he said. The NCO handed him a piece of paper with the distress call information.

Roy read that apparently members of the 9th infantry were a part of the Mobile Riverine Force engaging the enemy in the neighboring canals of the Mekong Delta. It was a routine patrol gone wrong, as they always are in a war against an insurgency. The 105mm M2A1 Howitzers were called in to support the GIs getting pinned down on the brown water banks of the lesser tributaries. He skimmed through the coordinates and technical details that said that the screams of “Too Close” followed by the whistle of beehive flechettes and shells could be heard as the transmission concluded in radio static.  This was the first of four Chinooks to return with some of the wounded boys.

Lt Roy Mader stood well above six feet. He wore thick bifocal glasses that rested on the end of his stub nose. He recently grew the wisp of  a mustache in an attempt to mirror the visage of Robin Olds, the esteemed fighter ace, while also keeping his hair long for military regulation, bushy above the ears. Three of his men were large blacks from cities like Cleveland, Philadelphia and New York. The other three white orderlies were from smaller rural areas in the South. His command couldn’t be more at odds. His NCO was the only volunteer for this fight, a gung-ho barbarian, the rest, draftees.  All came from poor families. As he observed them he saw that the fabric of their dark green fatigues were all matted to their skin with sweat. The heat rose from the tarmac flushing his face and the refraction made the distant jungle beyond the Pleiku Air Field fence line look like a sinister mirage. He was staring into the surreal scene when the gargantuan contraption slammed onto the helipad.

The loadmaster vaulted out from the forward doors to display the contents of the bird with the ease of a snake oil showman. The rear hatch of the Chinook lifted its mandible to present the digestion within its bowels. Blood disgorged forth, down the ramp and onto the asphalt. Ankle deep along the boots of the Lieutenant and his men. Inside was a scene of horror where black eyes and cracked lips were mouthing feral sounds of anguish. Like morbid streamers, the entrails of men and boys interlaced along the strapped jump seats. Cries were drowned through thumping rotors. Bodies stacked like cord wood amidst a lumber mill outstretched their arms to the light of the open hatch, calling out for mothers like they were teething babies. Clutching the collars of the nameless nurse on his flank, Lt Mader, brought  him up the ramp to the frantic wave of the loadmaster. They commenced their removal of the wounded and the dead like dock working teamsters, robot servants of death.  First a flood of able bodies trampled the flesh floor, with burned black and bloodied faces like primal savages on the great plains. Unintelligible curses and prayers and fits erupting in a propeller silenced hysteria. Lt Mader began pointing and screaming at his stunned men within the grotesquery. The Lieutenant seemed unphased, and cool in this element, barking succinct orders to each of his subordinates. Few of the walking wounded stayed to help transport the remains. As they worked, one of Mader’s men stood blankly at the base of the ramp thumbing the thin metal of his dogtags and a gold miniature crucifix.

The LT waved him up. The boy stood in silence, fidgeting and lost.

    “What the f**k are you doing! Get the F**k up here!” The Lieutenant said. He ran down the ramp in two strides and repeated himself while cupping his palms to his mouth. The blades of the Chinook spun above them swirling the dank moist rot through their hair in the standoff.

The boy released his holy bauble and shrieked through welled tears,

“I’m PRAYING Sir!” he said.

LT Mader’s eyes narrowed, his brow bent in confusion at such an absurd gesture in the gates of hell. Praying? He responded with the only message he could muster,

“Multi-Task Mother F****r!”

He thrust his jump-boot behind the back of the boy’s thigh, kicking him up the gore soaked ramp. A few crawling men brindled with char and lacerations made there way to the mouth of the bird. The rotors began to slow as broken bodies were hoisted by the hands of the orderlies. They were hurled to the asphalt tarmac in some morbid assembly line. One of the gathered was a slope faced GI with his head and skin a replicate of a rotten orange, caved in above a cavernous occipital lobe and covered in the pulp of his flesh. As the enlisted unpacked the remnants of the 9th infantry, LT Mader saw huddled in the obscure corner of the chopper where motionless men were piled face down. The Dead. Within the mound of bodies, their legs jutted out in obscure angles and where some were missing from the knee and some from the hip. The open meat let out trickles and spurts of fluid like a bloody desert spring. On top of the dismembered heap was a frenzied negro holding tightly to his arms. Living? He was hugging himself as the din of the spinning fan blades slowed to mutter. The thumping rotors yielded to the moans of wailing boys and the black on the pile was no exception. His bawling resounded throughout the hull. An echo designated to a medieval rack chamber. As the Lieutenant approached he saw the true horror that plagued him. Gnashed below the shoulder and with the strips of a shredded loose biceps LT Mader recognized that the man embraced not himself but his right severed arm. In his wide eyed terror the negro kicked the medic squarely in the jaw. Spitting an enraged shock ridden form of jive at the LT. The officer was released from his stupor by the striking sole of a boot, and dove into the pile of flesh like driving for a loose fumble. He slapped the thrashing black unconscious, a neglected lesson in his training, and slung the flailing boy over his shoulder above the mass. The arm fell to the floor. He tossed the now unconscious young man on the tarmac, no living soul remained within the Chinook. The pilot spun his index finger through the glass cockpit motioning that the blades would start their propulsion again.

They commenced their triage of the assembly line like working through a beef stockyard. Behind LT Mader, the praying nurse was hosing blood and unclaimed limbs out the back of the chopper. They used the blood ink of their patients to mark their foreheads for treatment or for bags. The loadmaster closed the rear hatch and the spinning commenced. One of the LTs men came to his ear as he worked a bubbling lung wound in the center of a young man’s chest.

“Three more!” He screamed as he pointed to the burning jungle horizon and the approaching behemoths.

“Three more what?” He responded.

“Choppers, Three more full. Whaddya want me to do with these?”

“Mark them, Move them, Bag them if necessary. We gotta move faster.”

    “Roger that Sir!”

As the young NCO turned to depart the bass tones of a bomb mixed with a thunder clap rattled Mader’s eardrum vibrating through his crowned molars. He saw the other orderlies hit the deck, as he was lifted off his feet by the thrust of a heat gust. Flat on his back he felt the heat and witnessed the flying cinders above his face. He felt them burning behind his sweat soaked collar. The F-105s have dropped their  napalm payload, he thought. A scorching wave of heat filled his nose and eyes. The napalm wind forced gusts like a diabolic cyclone. He scrambled to his feet and plunged onto his loose medical bag. He covered the open Pnuemothorax wound of his patient with his right hand as he lay nearly face down on the blood soaked tarmac. As he did this the head of the boy he held slumped lightly to the right. The boy’s eyes opened staring at Roy like he was a long lost brother, or the aura of some heralded archangel. The boy gave a queer comforting smile, and as his lung gurgled bubbled blood, his eyes rolled over white. Roy turned his head away from the young man and peaked at the horizon. The Napalm wind swirled above him, and in the distance he saw the death spiral of three incoming Chinooks spiraling to be reclaimed in the dense jungle earth.

“F**k me, the wind hit em’. Oh S**t no!” He heard one of his men scream. The man looked again to the sprawled LT and back again to the spinning choppers.

    The gale subsided, and as LT Roy Mader stood up, he said with iron indifference, “Bag this one here with the chest wound. Where’s the next? Oh s**t, a squirter! Get me the snippers and the gauze” He raised his sleeve, and wiped the welling tears in his eyes. “Napalm breeze boys,” He said to his men, “Give me a hand will ya.”

“Why did you make me tell that story?” my grandfather said as he moved his nasal oxygen tubes so he could take a long draw on his beer.

“I didn’t. I asked about Vietnam, and that’s the one you told me.” I said to him a week before my rotator would take me into Kyrgyzstan on route to Bagram AF Afghanistan.

“Oh.” He paused, wrapping his fingers against the table in the ill lit kitchen. “Well, you asked about Vietnam, and well, that was pretty much it.”

“Was it all like that.” I asked

“Truthfully. No. There was a lot of f*****g around to be sure. You give boys, with fathers from the Second World War, a reason to prove their salt, or boys who didn’t want to be there in the first place an order to ship out, and you are going to get a mess of brazen retards and bed-wetters in every unit. A real mess. It wasn’t all blood and guts. We drank, we played with the dollies, we sat around. You won’t get that kind of treatment where you’re going. So there’s that.”

“How did you deal with it?”

    “Deal with what?

“Vietnam.”

“Oh.” He paused. He cracked a smile under his thick mustache, and his eyes shined below his crow-magnon brow, “I waited 40 f*****g years to tell that story to my nosy grandson, so I guess, until today, I just haven’t thought about it. And after you leave I won’t think about it again either. That’s how I’ve dealt with it.” He laughed and took another pull on his beer.

Now that he was retired, he wore tattered medical scrubs with his name, Mader, stitched along the right breast pocket. He fumbled in that pocket for a second, as a withdrew a worn bronze cased 9mm bullet.

“You earned that story tonight. Going over there I mean. You know, to the s**t, or whatever they call it.  It isn’t something you share with someone who won’t see it, or someone who hasn’t seen it. Even the ones that do, you don’t usually say s**t about it, but a nod or a beer.. Not because it’s some kind of secret handshake bullshit or anything like that. It’s more that they just couldn’t understand. Not to say that you are ignorant or that you don’t have your own struggles, it’s just that they would either think it is too horrible than it was, or not horrible enough. Sometimes the former is worse my boy. You will come home from seeing something awful, but it won’t phase you the way that it seems to phase others when you tell it to them. They let their imaginations run away with them, and they don’t know how to let you keep your thoughts in your box. To be honest, that makes you feel worse. It makes you feel less human because now someone is rubbing your shoulders and thinking you have been through a hellish nightmare, and how can you ever possibly go on. And you know what, maybe you have, maybe it is incomprehensible, but in the moment, you just go on, and you don’t talk about it ever again. You will be surprised at how much that helps. It’s when they make you sit in a circle and unload yourself onto the floor, and dissect you to the gnat’s a*s detail that you question your own humanity. They tell you how and what to feel, and that if you don’t cope in a Freudian circle that you are subhuman or damaged. The truth is, you just do what you can to survive, and you don’t need people opening up the box all of the goddamn  time to give their uneducated opinion on how you should or shouldn’t feel about seeing someone with a dangling eye out of socket. Anyway, I digress, this bullet here, this was mine. I kept in my pocket during the Tet. You keep this, and it will keep you safe.” He said. I put the 40 year old bullet in  my pocket. “This was mine. You keep this, and it will keep you safe.” He said. I put the 40 year old bullet in  my pocket.

The night progressed as promised without another word on Vietnam or Dustoff, and  as we plowed through a case of Molson Golden, I found that my 70 year old grandfather had again shown that he could drink me under the table. I was head bobbing and slurring when he told me to pack it in. Stumbling to the couch in the next room I laid down as the ceiling spun above me. My eyes closed and I thought of the week that awaited me. The 14 hour rotator to Kyrgyzstan, and the combat landing into Bagram, and from there, who knows. Before that there would be something more dreaded. The long drawn out goodbyes to family and friends, and the shame I would feel from tears left with absent reciprocation. I would sit on the plan packed like a  Nepalese sherpa with gear, and left with the fading visages of faces. His coarse and iron voice of Vietnam thumped like rotors in my brain. I thought about him, there alone in the jungle, and now alone at his table like the ragged drunk at last call in some basement bar. I then heard the hiss of another popped beer, and the gentle weeping of Roy Mader, my pappy, in the hazy lit kitchen. I slept in the sobbing murmurs as I put his withdrawn regret in my own compartment; Left untouched till now.

Author's Note

Please review all aspects of this story with unbiased opinions. I have a plethora of different writings that have been shelved without sharing to a soul outside of my family. Thank you for taking the time to read this.