I held out hope the war would end before I had to go. War protests at home had intensified, and Robert McNamara, defense secretary, had resigned. But then, in January, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched what they’re calling the Tet Offensive. They attacked dozens of South Vietnam cities, believing the South Vietnamese would rise up against the government. They didn’t. US and South Vietnamese forces repelled the monthlong offensive and inflicted devastating military losses on both the NVA and the Viet Cong. Word coming back home was we had the NVA on the run, but LBJ made overtures of peace talks instead of finishing the job. The NVA refused.
So there I sat on the final leg of what would be a twenty-hour journey to Vietnam.
Many marines on board the 707 went through boot camp and ITR with me, so we were all yelling and shouting, like we were starting a vacation and planned to raise hell. Stewardesses handed out hot dogs and Cokes. It was all fun and games until we started our descent in-country. Then everyone got quiet. Out the window I saw land. Vietnam. My future for, hopefully, the next thirteen months. It still seems surreal to be here.
But there it was.
As we descended, escort fighter jets strafed the jungle canopy of a mountain to the north of the airstrip. Marines crowded the windows to watch. An instant later the trees went up in a whoosh of black-and-orange balls of flames.
Napalm.
We erupted in cheers, and I felt a rush of adrenaline and excitement, but the smile on my face was hesitant, and similar to the smiles on most of the other faces. We were all wondering why the F-4 Phantoms were strafing the bush and dropping napalm so close to our base.
The plane landed at Da Nang with a hard jolt that would get a private pilot fired and a combat pilot a medal. Get in quick. Get out quicker. The doors opened the second the plane stopped rolling. Marines boarded and ordered us to quickly deplane, though not in such polite terms. It was just like boot camp all over, except I wasn’t called “shit bird” or “numb nuts.” I was called “marine.” “Marines, grab your gear and haul ass. Saddle up and move out.”
Apparently the airport had been under mortar attack most of the morning. Charlie was hiding on Monkey Mountain, which I assumed to be the mountain to the north of the airstrip. “We’re sending out kill patrols,” said a sergeant who greeted us.
I stepped to the door and the first thing to hit me was the heat, like the heat in South Carolina, but on steroids—felt like a hundred and change, with 100 percent humidity. The only time I ever felt heat like this was during a summer visit to relatives in Dallas. The airport doors slid apart, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. The heat just sucks the air from your lungs, and you feel like you’re burning from the inside out. Beads of sweat popped from every pore and rolled down my face and my forearms, making my hands slick. The uniform clung to my skin, and I realized why they gave me salt tablets and told me to take two a day, every day, no matter what.
The second thing that hit me was the smell.
My first whiff of the Nam, and it smelled like shit.
Think about it. You’ve got five hundred thousand men and no sewage system. The army collects the human waste in these metal barrels, soaks it in diesel and gasoline, then lights the barrels on fire. The marines who made it home called it shit detail. They said somebody has to stir the shit to ensure it burns, and when the wind shifts direction, the smell of burning shit blows right into camp, which gives all new meaning to the phrase “We’re in the shit now.”
Chapter 3
June 4, 1979
I awoke the following morning, morning being relative, with a nasty hangover. My brother had long since departed to work his summer job at the hospital, making so much noise it had to have been payback for waking him at two a.m. My father and my mother had also left for work, though I did not hear them leave. I awoke to the sound of the television in the family room down the hall. A soap opera. My three older sisters were big-time followers of All My Children with Susan Lucci. Summers, they alternated working as cashiers at my father’s pharmacy to help pay their college tuition and updating each other about that day’s episode.
I got up, stumbled to the bathroom, then made my way into the kitchen to grab a tall glass of water. Mike, my sister Maureen’s boyfriend, sat on the couch in the family room eating a sandwich. He wore headphones, the cord attached to a Walkman, a portable cassette player I had heard about but never seen. Maureen was at work, but my sister Bethany sat in a chair close to the television. My younger siblings were still in school.