Pulling bridge duty was our only chance to monopolize on mail call. Sometimes we had the mail man bring out one of the guys' guitar with him from base camp. He'd bring a duffel bag full of mail out to us in a jeep. There was one night I'll never forget. About three of us were singing together along with are guitar player, like we used to do once in a while back at Schofield. Except, this time it was on top of a bunker, smack dab in the middle of VC territory singing, "This eastern world, it is explodin', violence flarin' and bullets floatn'; you don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're toatin' and you tell me over and over and over again my friends, you don't believe were on the eve of destruction"......
Well, about the time we were just beginning to enjoy ourselves, "Charlie" apparently couldn't stand it any more and opened up on us with all kinds of AK 47 automatic music about 3 inches over our heads. There was more than one of 'em about 30 or 40 meters out in the dark, in extremely thick vegatation. This happened three times in one night. It was a little too close for comfort, so each time it happened, we wrung the land line phone to the men about a half a mile up the road who had a couple apc's. You could hear 'em coming a long way off as the tracks of the apc's clattered noisely along the gravel road with their big Chrysler engines winding up. When they got to our location they'd say, "Well, where are they?" We'd just point into the bush and say it came from over there. Two apc's would drive down as far as they could without getting stuck in the jungle and start shooting their 50 caliber machine guns. Of course, by the time they started shooting, Charlie was well into his hiding mode. Doing us a favor was ok with the apc guys the first time, but the second time they were a little unhappy for being woke up again. The third time they were furious, but they came and shot into the bush one more time. To this day, I don't think "Charlie" liked listening to us sing and enjoy ourselves... If they could've understood the lyrics, maybe it wouldn't have bothered them so much? Anyway, the singing wasn't all that bad.... After all, we had eight months of practice in Hawaii...
Manning the bridge was also an opportunity to sneak away during the day when most of our leaders were having fun back at base camp. One day I thought it would be nice to get a hair cut, so myself and another friend decided to hitch a ride on a military vehicle headed to the nearest village. We got into a small village and came across a special forces, South Vietnamese soldier who was with his wife in a small hootch along the road selling liquor. They were very accommodating. She sold 45 whisky which they happily shared with us. It was very entertaining to spend a couple of hours with them. We got into throwing knives, learning some karate, and practicing some hand to hand combat to amuse ourselves. It was a good thing that we got a haircut first....
The Vietnamese barbers were probably Viet Cong. At one point during the hair cut the barber came at me with a straight razor to give me a little shave. Needless to say, I was'nt going to allow someone to slit my throat, so I had my friend hold his M16 on the barber while he very carefully gave me a shave. By the time we arrived back at the bridge bunker after enjoying ourselves with the Vietnamese couple, I was a little bit (tee-tee) dinky dow, which means not totally crazy but just a little off center....
Pulling bridge duty was usually boring during the daytime. In this case, while being a little off center, or a little drunk, I needed some kind of entertainment.. I found a large coffee can that I thought it would be interesting to shoot at with my 45 pistol. I practiced with it when ever I had the chance. To see how good I was at hitting the can, I placed it at close range, about fifteen yards out in front of me. I aimed carefully with both hands before shooting and to my amazement, I was hitting it every time. This is great I thought! And when I hit it, it would fly about twenty feet into the air. This was kind of fun, and a nice way to relax and get my attention away from the the seriousness of everything that loomed over me. I could feel myself staggering a little from the whiskey, but not to the point where I was unable to do my job.
0 comments:
Post a Comment