---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN#/ ISBN# issue/book “Too Many Humans & Not Enuf Souls” cc&d, v307 (the March 2021 issue) Order the 6"x9" paperback book:

Order this writing in the book What Lies on the Other Side the cc&d Jan.-April 2021 magazine issues collection book		get the 424 page Jan.-April 2021 cc&d magazine 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

part 3 of the story

You’ll Be Sorry

Charles Hayes
(see the previous two issues for part one and two of this story)

    After refueling in Darwin and noticing Australians quite different from the ones I had seen in Sydney, I looked down at the Great Barrier Reef as we flew over. I wished to God that I did not have to cross that ocean back to Vietnam. Being in a very nice situation for those few days and feeling life once again was a joy beyond words. Returning to the non-life of the Vietnam war was a hugh downer and, consequently, my emotional strength was at a low ebb.

    Back in the Nam I isolated myself and became more depressed but I still wrote a letter almost every day to Alicia telling her that I would return to Australia. Finally I got a letter back that was nice and thanked me for my mail but not much else. Not long after that I got another letter from her that thanked me for the time I spent with her and let me know that she valued it. But she said that she would not wait for me because she was sure that I would find lots of girls when I returned to the United States. She wished me luck and hoped that I would not let that make me sad. It didn’t make me sad. I even started to come up from my depression but I never forgot her, always remembering and appreciating her as one of the most important girls I had ever known.

    Things at the 1st had not changed much during my brief absence except Charlie had managed to get some good weed which he shared with me when it came time to burn the toilet drum.
    In the Nam, while on base, instead of digging a hole underneath the wooden cut out toilet seat, the severed bottom portion of an empty 55 gallon oil drum was placed instead. When it got full someone had to drag it out, pour kerosene in it and burn it, frequently stirring the burning waste in order to ensure that it all burned.
    The section chief told me to see that the shiter was burned. He passed on his responsibility and avoided being the one to give the order, leaving me holding the bag. Word spread fast in the com section when it was time to burn the shiter and not an idle soul would be found....always. I could have ordered any of them to do it anyway but I hated authority. So just going through the motions to see if maybe a miracle would occur and someone would be available I made a quick check through the section anyway. I found everybody extremely busy as expected. Tasks that had sat idle for months were now under urgent repair by young men who were unable to meet my eyes as they stated the super importance of their work. No doubt, I figured, it was as good a day to get stoned as any. I took the good pot Charlie had given me, drug the shit drum out myself, got it burning nicely and, while the vile odorous black smoke enveloped me, fired up the joint and stirred away. No one came near enough to know what I was smoking, that’s for sure. Tens of gallons of burning human waste, sending out a plume of heavy dark smoke ripe with the smell of human excrement mixed in urine, took care of that. Excellent weed it was too. So fantastic that when the job was done I was feeling quite hungry and proceeded directly to the mess hooch for chow. I didn’t even have to stand in line for when I got within ten feet of anyone they howled their displeasure at the smell and immediately vacated the area. With a whole large picnic table in my own vacant private section of the large mess hooch I thoroughly enjoyed my chow. Then I went back to the com area, stripped my clothes, which I would later give to one of the mamasans or Vietnamese laundry women to launder, and took a shower. To hell with the lifers, I burned shit and enjoyed it more than anything they could come up with. One day I would get through this soup sandwich and rejoin the world free of those who shoot their toes off while playing with their guns like a bunch of kids. I thought back to the ship over interview I had recently attended and laughed so hard that Charlie heard me and yelled over, “Pretty good weed, huh?”

    The war started to heat up after the 1st went up with the ammo dump. Even over by Marble Mountain it was hot as I stood and watched the F-4 phantom jets working out. They took turns diving in and releasing their loads of napalm. Tumbling in their wake and hitting the ground, the canisters erupted in fiery red and yellow explosions as the jellied mass of burning chemical was spread over the area. It stuck to everything it touched. There were villagers all through that area and I wondered if they had been moved into the city to form another slum or had they just been told to leave. If they had simply been told to leave that meant that beneath those jets were a bunch of black charcoal mounds of flesh to be added to the daily body count of enemy dead. Some marines called them crispy critters. Fuck it, it didn’t mean nothing I decided and went on about my business which by then was just trying to make it to my rotation date less than a 100 days away.
    At night the sounds of the Vietnamese 155 battery next door and the big marine 175 howitzer on the next hill across the valley became more frequent. It became harder to get any real sleep. When the 175 went off the ground would tremble slightly and the sound wave would jar the hooch with a bang. Throwing rounds deep into the countryside helping some poor son-of-bitch try to avoid dying for his country, the big guns many times got the range wrong or the radio operator or some other screw up plotted wrong and only expedited the poor son of a bitch’s passing.
    I could easily tell the different guns from the sound of their discharges so one night when a couple of big explosions at the 155 battery sounded different I got up, went outside, and looked over at the ARVN compound. It was not easy to see past all the gear and bunkers scattered about but there were a couple of fires burning and except for the light from the fires, it was completely dark. The siren blasted which told me that something was definitely going on as I ran back inside the hooch, donned my gear and grabbed the PRC-25 radio always stationed at the end of my rack. Since I was assigned to the battalion commander I only needed to muster outside the COC bunker and wait for the colonel as most everyone else was running for the perimeter. The colonel appeared and learned that the ARVNs had been hit by sampers using satchel charges. ARVNs were very lax about security and this time it had cost them. A couple of Viet Cong had slipped into the battery and tossed a couple of satchels loaded with explosives into the hooches of sleeping soldiers, killing some and wounding many.
    Over a land line the ARVNs got permission to bring their wounded over to the 1st for treatment and minutes later stretchers of wounded soldiers began to appear around the battalion sick bay which was located only a few feet from the COC bunker. No way they could get all the wounded in the little sick bay so there were stretchers of wounded scattered all over the ground outside. Every now and then the colonel would appear at my side to see if any word had been passed over the radio. But mostly he remained in the sickbay hooch as I waited outside among the wounded. The 1st had only one Doctor and a couple of corpsman so the casualties didn’t move very fast. In fact I couldn’t see how they were moving at all. In the beginning the doctor had managed to get a couple into the hooch and since then he had disappeared while the others quietly waited. That was the thing that struck me. How quiet their wounded were. Americans would have been raising hell. They couldn’t all be unconscious, there were too many. If they were unconscious there were going to be plenty of dead before the night was over.
    A couple of feet away was one wounded soldier lying on his side, still on the stretcher. The back of his white t-shirt was dark with blood. I studied him for movement of any kind and found none. Probably dead I figured.
    How many ever made it to the doctor, I did not learn. The colonel saw that the medical people were doing all they could and that he was probably just getting in the way so he and I headed out to the perimeter. We stood by for several hours, occasionally sending or receiving reports. The VC had gotten away and were probably back in the village.
    Eventually the alert was called off and on the way back inside I noticed that all the wounded were gone. Wondering how many had died and how many had been able to just walk away after the alert had been called off, I kicked a canteen cup that somebody had dropped and muttered, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”

    The ARVNs wanted to survive no less than the Americans in that God damned part of Indo-China and they didn’t get a pass out after a year. It was their home for as long as it lasted and they took every opportunity to better their odds. Most of them had no more choice about being in uniform than I did. Sometimes I would stare into their eyes as I passed them on the road There was so much hatred there that I stopped looking after a while. Their looks told me that it was my fault that they were either about to die or lose an arm or a leg. Their officers tended to be suck ups to the higher ups in the American force and thought nothing of sacrificing their men in order to shamelessly gain some shiny trinket. It was a similarity among those of all nations that mongered for war. A similarity that became recognized by the kid from the Appalachian hardwood forest as more of a threat to peace than any communist domino.
    Not long after the 155 battery got hit the security platoon patrol returned with a couple of ARVNs they had stumbled on and killed. What they were doing unarmed in a free fire zone no one knew nor cared it seemed. Their bodies were brought all the way to the H&S company hooch and dumped in the dirt outside the hooch door for display. As the lifers gathered around and tried to decide what label to attach to them I noticed that these dead still had all their ears. Since they weren’t American it was soon decided that how they were labeled didn’t really matter so their deaths by friendly fire were quickly forgotten—just more unknown meat that needed to be removed from the hot sun.
    Two nights later the 1st got theirs when we were hit by mortars. I had just been reassigned to a bunker line radio and luckily got through the incoming fire and to my assigned bunker. I checked in without a scratch and monitored the net as other posts checked in. I heard a new voice operating as the Six and knew something was wrong because Charlie was assigned to the colonel. What the hell was going on? Maybe Charlie had switched with someone for some reason. Being directly connected to the battalion CO had its benefits as far as safety was concerned but some didn’t like the extra scrutiny from that high up. Maybe Charlie had switched because of that.
    We took 86 rounds of 82mm mortars that night and many wounded, mostly from the administration section which had taken a couple of hits right next to their hooch. Two people were killed in action. One was a captain who had only been in country two weeks. He was standing up outside his hooch and giving directions when a big hunk of shrapnel took out a large chunk of his neck, killing him instantly. The other one which I refused to believe at first was Charlie Roderno. Charlie and the Colonel had been running for the perimeter, coming in late as usual. An 82 took them both down. One of the colonels legs had been badly messed up but Charlie, who had been between the blast and the colonel, never had a chance. He had been riddled from head to toe. When they removed his radio, along with the worthless flak jacket, one of Charlie’s arms almost came off. They had almost made it to the bunker line when they were hit. One of the black grunts jumped out of the trench and drug the colonel in and then went back and got Charlie. He later told me that Charlie never knew what hit him. A couple of weeks after that the grunt received the bronze star with combat V for valor. I heard that the colonel, whose war was now over, received a purple heart and the same medal as the grunt who had saved his ass. Charlie got an aluminum box. His war was over too.
    The marines of com section didn’t take it lightly. Maybe with time we would be able to proclaim that it didn’t mean nothin’ but right then it hurt. I was convinced that Charlie’s life was wasted by a country and it’s people that were nothing but a bunch of lifers in civilian clothes. People that could not see more value in a human life than the value that was placed in the huge industrial markets and their power hungry military customers. People like Charlie literally fell through the cracks in such a system. Those warmongers with pockets full of war booty knew very well about the people like Charlie, myself, and others. To assuage their guilt they fabricated those bright shining lies about heroism and honor and even created equally false and shiny trinkets to support those lies. I was fit to be tied with my anger and the belief that me and all the people like Charlie were only a bunch of dumb son-of-a-bitches stumbling through a bloody mess so some lifer, military or civilian, could enrich themselves and later use those riches to hold themselves a class above the ones who stupidly did their bidding. With Charlie’s death an attitude hardened that had been a long time coming. Consequently, along with the anger and disillusionment that were my steady companions, I no longer felt that I was just as decent as the next person. Even worse, I didn’t care.
    With time, dope, and alcohol most of the com section slowly got back to a semi-even if somewhat shaky keel but I was not so lucky. I was more anxious about many things, particularly my rotation date and being able to make it back to the world. All pretense of discipline slipped out of me. Seldom was I included in the command loop anymore because in the Nam one thing that soldiers developed quickly was the ability to know when someone had had enough. So it was with me as I sank deeper into a kind of agitated depression that led to nights I could not sleep at all. When I could sleep I would be jerked awake by nightmares about murder and revenge. Those nightmares troubled me deeply, not because murder was wrong, but because I didn’t want to be held up from rotation on a legal hold. Knowing that I was unraveling I desperately wanted out of there before the worst could happen. On top of that, I got sick with what I thought was malaria. Fever and chills with diarrhea so bad that I didn’t even bother to dress. I just went naked to cool off and clean up under the water hose. Gulping water that came out of my ass almost as fast as I swallowed it. followed by chills seconds later, I wrapped up in poncho liners while lying and shaking on my rack. The corpsman said that I only had dysentery and gave me some little white pills which were of no help. I wouldn’t even have bothered with the corpsman except the chaplain found me squatting under the water hose and ordered me to go. After a few days it passed and, feeling a lot weaker, I returned to my normal pissed off self along with the depression which had for a while taken a back seat to my physical ills.
    I drank even more with hangovers becoming my normal state but I was no weird agent. Throughout the Nam that had become a way of life for many who fought the war. I had only progressed to the point where it was easily recognized and therefore most others left me alone to do what I saw fit. Short fuses like the one I had developed were easily seen and wisely avoided. However no one ever had to take an assignment because of my situation. I was still the senior person of the lower ranks and the others in the section were under me. Just as I had done with the burning of the shiter, I avoided participating in any kind of command structure and either did it himself or deemed it foolish bullshit and eliminated it entirely by simply ignoring the order. Perhaps because even the lifers could see that what was happening to them was really doing no one any good, they left me alone. The LT stayed completely out of the way and his com chief avoided all but the most basic interaction with me. When armed people have had enough of the bullshit in a losing war, survival is all that is really important and anything beyond that is unwise to push.

    The days were winding down for me with a couple of weeks left until my rotation date so I was surprised when I suddenly received orders to rotate back to the States. Hallelujah my time had come ...just in time. It took a couple of days to check out of the battalion and return my weapon and other gear. During that time I was able to have conversations with some of my men on a level a little different than the usual. There was a sadness in our exchanges, sadness that they were being left behind, that we couldn’t all go. But we had been living the life of survival long enough to appreciate that right then, at least, one of us was going to make it out. However none of that sadness would overcome the relief I felt when, with my orders in hand, I jumped into the jeep and was driven away to stage for the freedom bird back to the world.
    Much like it had been in Okinawa where I had staged to come in country, I waited for two days at staging to learn when I could fly out. My time finally came but I was told that something was wrong with my orders. They said that I would have to return to my unit and get it straightened out.
    Livid with anger and almost as plagued by fear, I hitchhiked back to the 1st with a worthless set of orders in hand. To me it was another example of why lifers remained in the military. The simplest task they could screw up so bad that no one in civilian life would tolerate them.
    There I was, back at the 1st, belonging to nobody, with no weapon, and no idea of how long I would be there or what was wrong with my orders. Matters were made worse by the fact that my replacement, a Sgt. from Quang Tri, was already there and I didn’t like him. To me he acted like everything was normal and that he was just going to shape up the guys in the com section concerning their job performance. He acted like a lifer and I could tell that when it came his time to ship over he would do it. The same guys I refused to give orders to, this newcomer wannabe lifer was going to “shape up.” I felt a deep resentment for having to watch the change plus I was stuck in a limbo combat zone and so nervous about getting killed in a place where I wasn’t even supposed to be.
    A couple of days later, as I was returning from another night of drinking, I came across the new sergeant in the shop hooch and told him just what I thought about him coming in there and changing things so he could get on in his career. Drunk and again unable to control my temper, an argument developed. I took a swing at him that missed. My swing was countered by a quick hook that caught me squarely on the jaw. However it had little effect as I smothered any further punches when I closed in and grabbed the guy. We began careening around the shop, knocking over equipment and breaking things until a couple of others, along with the com chief, came in and broke it up. The chief demanded to know what had happened. The new guy told the truth by saying that I had come in raising hell and took a swing at him but I claimed that the other sergeant threw the first punch. Nothing got accomplished that night about who was at fault but the next day the LT, having received a report of the incident, called both me and my replacement in and asked what had happened. Again the same stories were repeated but from our demeanor and the way things had been going it was fairly obvious that I was lying. That’s when the LT told us that if we didn’t come clean he was going to have a court martial to squeeze out the truth. I just angrily glared at the floor for several moments until the LT dismissed us.
    The next day, sure that I was going to be put on a legal hold and about as depressed as I had ever been, I was lying on my old rack, staring at the tin roof. Tim came in carrying the new set of orders, just cut from administration. He had just happened to be in the COC when they arrived and immediately grabbed them, saying that he would deliver them.
    Tim and I had known each other a long time since we both had come to the 1st not far apart. That meant that Tim would be the next one in the com section to rotate. Classified in a lower MOS than me, Tim had never been able to get the rank that more desirable specialties attained but he had humped when he had to and skated when he could just as well as anybody. He and I had always understood each other and got along. Looking up at Tim standing there with a smile on his face and the orders in his hands I flashed on the day I had burned the shiter. I recalled that it was Tim who had played it up most about being involved in urgent work. Both of us had known that it was simply a ruse to avoid the shit detail but I had accepted it and moved on to do it myself. Tim looked steadily at me, handed me my orders and said, “This is payback shithead, hurry up and get your gear, I’ve already checked out a jeep from Motor-T.”
    I had never unpacked so I grabbed my sea bag and we quietly went through the back of the company area, found the jeep and birded out of there. God bless Tim and all the other lowly ranks just like him.

    Back at staging again and expecting to be called back at any time it didn’t take me long to get the travel section of my orders this time. After one more sleepless night I had them and clearly saw what had been going on with the mix ups. Now I was going back to the world on a troop ship as part of a marine regimental troop withdrawal. It was part of Nixon’s political stunt, pretending a troop withdrawal when in fact all the marines on the float were being replaced and rotated anyway. At least I was going to get out of there, regardless of the means, and that was what I held on to. I and 1800 other marines were crammed aboard the USS Thayer and another 200 were put on our flag ship, the USS Tripoli. It was a flat top helicopter carrier. When we pushed off from Deep Water Pier in the Da Nang Harbor I felt a little like I was born again.
    That first night at sea under a moonlit sky, as we sailed past the same mountains that I had flown over on my way in, was far different from the nights in country. In country there were skies that sometimes had rockets overhead riding a red flame to the tune of a high pitched whine. If you heard them you wondered who got it. If you didn’t you got it. Now at sea the night was quiet, cool and smelled of salt with a peacefulness that came from the knowledge that it was over. That was until a couple of hours later when I saw the same mountains again pass above the port side, which meant we were traveling in circles. What the hell was going on? Why couldn’t they, for once, do something in the way it was supposed to be done? With the dawn came the news that we had to return to the harbor to net load more marines from an amphibious launch. By the time all the screw-ups got straightened out and the marines were loaded we had been at sea two days and hadn’t gone anywhere. Maybe we weren’t really leaving but being relocated somewhere else along the coast. Finally during the second night the coast line passed from sight as we really set sail.
    With a two day layover in Okinawa to take on water and food, yet not allowed to leave the ship, it took 22 days to reach the California coast line. That was going all out most of the time except when we skirted a typhoon and pitched up and down and around so bad that it was very easy to lose somebody and not even know it. Lifers completely disappeared during that action.

    The two ships drifted into their piers and tied up. I had no idea where we were but it was almost November and the weather was sunny and warm so we must be somewhere in Southern California. Coming across the Pacific we had gone from hot to cold and now back to warm. We were a salty looking bunch for the small marine band and the few USO girls on the pier with lemonade and donuts. Who those refreshments were for was a puzzle to me because I knew that I sure as hell wouldn’t be allowed to join them. So I yelled down and had the girls throw some of the donuts up which I and the others along the railing wolfed down. The little band puffed and beat out a couple of marches in their ragged red uniforms, looking like castoffs specifically picked to welcome a bunch of castoffs.
    The whole thing seemed to me like a Norman Rockwell poster with characters that had somehow come to life and gathered on the pier for a photo shoot. What could any of them possibly know about the place the people aboard that big boat were coming from? Had they an inkling of that truth they surely would not have been there dressed in their Baby Janes and floral dresses, serving lemonade and donuts. To me it was just another surreal example of Americana that had never made it inside the loop of what really was.
    When we disembarked all the lifers that had stayed hidden away at sea reappeared and started giving orders to marines who visibly didn’t give a damn. I had lost my hat and my blonde hair had started to come over my ears. The colonel who was trying to get us lined up told me to put my cover on. I told him that I didn’t have one, expressing it in such a way that indicated if the colonel wanted me to have a hat he would have to give up his own. Certainly not pleased but shut down, the colonel quickly ended the lifer lessons as we were herded aboard buses and taken to Camp Pendleton where we had come from a little over a year and a different lifetime ago. Long haired and bare headed, standing in my first formation at Pendleton, I heard them announce that anyone with less than 6 months remaining on their active duty time would be discharged as soon as the paperwork could be done. With less than 5 months of active duty left, I figured it was the sweetest sounding thing I had heard since it all had begun more than 2 years and 7 months ago. For the next nine days I wandered around in an almost dream like state.
    I was placed in a group just like himself, ones that were already gone but still physically there as far as the Marine Corps was concerned. Except for my boots and the color of my shirt and pants I might have been a civilian laborer working on base for the day. Never wearing a hat because no one ever gave me one and never getting a haircut despite frequent threats to hold me back if I didn’t, I loafed around knowing by then that they were not going to saddle themselves with the likes of myself any longer than they had to. When I was out alone roaming the base on foot an occasional shocked lifer would jump in my space and demand to know what outfit I was from so they could fry my ass. Squarely facing them with a blank look I would tell them that I was from RELAD which was short for released from active duty. The way they almost swallowed their tongues and turned red, sometimes even stomping their feet like a small child was just too sweet.
    Finally all in one day I processed through hours of paperwork dressed in my winter green uniform and signed the DD-214 that honorably released me from active duty in the United States Marine Corps. With a silent thank you to Tim and hope that he was close behind mixed with the intense sorrow that Charlie didn’t make it, I squeezed into a limousine full of other discharged marines. We exited Camp Pendleton for the last time. Just to make sure that it was real, I took a look back and watched the gate grow smaller.
    Having plenty of war booty in the form of a fat wallet I rode up to LAX and bought a first class ticket to D.C. to visit my mother. She had left West Virginia while I was away and was now teaching high school in a Maryland suburb of DC. After showing her that I was still alive and with little fanfare, I returned to the airport and caught the next hop to the Appalachians of West Virginia. During the hour long flight I gazed down at the rolling landscape of the hardwood forested mountains. For some reason they always seemed to make me sad with their isolated demeanor, sometimes half hidden in wispy fog. This time was no different, only more so. Those age old hills were impervious to the goings on from outside and had not a hint of the momentous events that crisscrossed the globe and what I had been through the past year. Yet that is where it all began for me. Being alive was all I could bring back to their intractable presence. Amidst such loss and guilt that just didn’t seem fair.

See the previous 2 issues of cc&d (1/21 and 2/21) for the 1st 2 parts of this story!

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...