Opening her duffel, she found her flak jacket and Army-issued steel pot helmet and slipped into the sleeveless jacket, immediately felt its weight. The helmet fell down and covered her eyes.
“It’s a party,” Barb said. “Not a John Wayne movie. Take that shit off.”
“But—” Frankie turned too fast; the helmet clanked hard onto the bridge of her nose, hurt. “Regulations state—”
Barb walked out of the hooch. The door banged shut behind her.
Ethel gently took Frankie’s helmet off, tossed it on the bed. “Look, I know today is a lot. We will help you fit in, I promise. But not now, okay? And as for the flak jacket, just no, okay?”
Frankie undid the flak jacket and tossed it aside. It landed on the helmet on her cot. She felt exposed and ridiculous in an oversized T-shirt that hid her shorts and showed her bare legs and shiny, brand-new combat boots that she’d polished obsessively. Why hadn’t she packed sneakers? Had the men who wrote the “What to Bring” section of the information packet even been to Vietnam? She’d had her hair cut in a Twiggy-inspired pixie for her tour, and now, after thirty-eight hours of travel and this hellish humidity, God knew she must look like she was wearing a black swim cap. Or like she was twelve years old.
Ethel walked fast, talking as she went. “Welcome to the Thirty-Sixth, Frank. Can I call you Frank? This is technically a mobile hospital, but we haven’t gone anywhere in a while; instead, we keep getting bigger. We have several doctors and four surgeons—you’ll know them instantly. They think they’re gods. There are nine of us women nurses and a couple of male nurses and lots of medics. In most wards, the hours are oh-seven-hundred to nineteen hundred hours, six days a week, but we are short-staffed right now, so really, we go until the last casualty is taken care of. If it sounds like a lot, it is, but you’ll get used to it. Hurry up. You’re lagging.”
In the falling darkness, Frankie couldn’t see much of the place: a row of shacks—the hooches—a large wooden building that housed the mess, the nurses’ latrines, a chapel, a row of Quonset huts that were weakly illuminated, the hospital insignia painted on their exterior walls.
Ethel rounded the corner of a Quonset hut and suddenly they were in a wide-open space, a patch of red dirt surrounded by shadowy structures. All of it looked hastily constructed, temporary. Not far away—close enough to hear the whoosh of the tides—lay the South China Sea.
Pale light glazed a coil of concertina wire that created a perimeter for the camp. Off to the left was a sandbagged bunker, its entrance a gaping black square beneath a wooden arch, upon which someone had spray-painted OFFICERS’ CLUB on the crossbeam. A curtain of multicolored beads shielded the interior from view.
Ethel pushed through the curtains. The beads made a soft clattering sound.
The place was bigger inside than it looked. Against the back there was a plywood bar, with stools in front. A bartender stood behind it, busily making drinks. A Vietnamese woman in pajama-like pants and a long tunic top carried a tray from table to table. A stereo system boasted huge speakers; beside it, there were hundreds of eight track tapes. “Like a Rolling Stone” blared into the space, so loud people had to shout in conversation. A trio of men threw darts at a dartboard on the wall.
Smoke filled the air, stung Frankie’s eyes.
Men and a few women filled the room—sitting at tables, standing along the walls. One guy was standing on his head with his bare legs crossed. Most were smoking and drinking.
When the song ended, there was a beat of silence. In it, Frankie heard snippets of conversation, bits of laughter, someone yelling, No love lost there, man.
Ethel clapped her hands to get attention. “Hey, all, this is Frankie McGrath. She’s from…” Ethel turned. “Where are you from?”
“California.”
“Sunny California!” Ethel said. She pulled Frankie forward, introducing her to the other officers. Patty was near the bar, smoking a cigarette, playing cards with a captain. She smiled and waved.
Suddenly the music changed. Out came “East Coast girls are hip…”
People clapped, yelled out, “Welcome, Frankie!”
A man pulled her into his arms, started dancing with her.
He was tall and lanky, good-looking, in a white T-shirt and worn Levi’s. His beach-sand-blond hair was regulation short, but the smile on his face—and the marijuana cigarette in his mouth—told her that he was the kind of guy her father had told her to stay away from. Well, really, that was all men. （“War bachelors, Frankie. Married men who think love’s a free-for-all when bombs are falling. Don’t you go all that way and shame us.”）