Chap 18 Fun with Cooks 010925

      I now know from reports and eye witness accounts, that during October there was a huge increase in NVA activity eighty to hundred miles north of Saigon. This was in the general area where my unit had previously spent a lot of time during Operation Junction City. Some of the towns in that area were Song Be, Loc Ninh, Quan Loi, and An Loc.  At the same time, towns all across South Vietnam had sufficiently succumb to Duan’s terroristic tactics enough to act as staging areas, where he had been quietly building irregular and covert forces to pull off his fake general uprising during the Tet Holiday. My unit noticed a heck of a lot more enemy patrols of all types combing through the jungles and rubber trees around Quan Loi, then when I had been going patrolling with them earlier in the year. It was also apparent that the NVA was becoming better armed. Enemy base camps were being built and improved all up and down Thunder Road from near Saigon to the Cambodian border. As a truck driver, I drove that road quite a few times during my last two months in country. At least half that time I was driving alone, running errands all by my lonesome self. I had no idea how much danger was lurking around me. The Viet Cong exerted almost total control over most of the villages which I was driving through during the day. They were run almost entirely by a communist shadow government. The reality was that the villagers of South Vietnam were being held hostage by them, to do their bidding. The alternative for not obeying their orders each and every day was not just death, but a torturous death. Often times their family was made to watch.

     Very quickly after settling into this new job, I, however, found a new sense of freedom and it was quite exhilarating. When driving, alone, through the countryside, dodging people, Lambrettas, buses, and a few ox carts, I began to feel like I was in control of my life again. No one was eyeballing my every movement. On the contrary, the people I worked around seemed very "task driven" and those tasks had nothing to do with me. When running the roads, I would pass American soldiers, tanks, and other supply trucks along the way and sometimes I would get a glimpse of the Koreans who were called "Rok Soldiers". They were "some bad dudes". The enemy didn't want to tangle with them. This new life created in me a sense of normalcy. It also created a false sense of security. If I had known how many enemy combatants were in near proximity to "little ole me" as I drove blissfully down the road, I am sure I would have immediately begged to be returned to my old squad. Joe Boland of C Company gave an account years later of his experience one day while driving a truck to pick up some supplies. As he was driving along, out of the blue, a group of maybe twenty to thirty men dressed in black pajamas crossed the road in front of him. They carried AK 47’s and were following single file. He waved to them, and they waved back and kept going. The Arvin’s wore green and did not carry AKs. So, there is a 99.9% chance that this was an enemy patrol, crossing the road in front of his truck. He believed that it was, and I have no reason to doubt him. The stark truth about the average rear echelon American serving in Vietnam was that we were in much more danger than we realized. We were also totally naïve about what was really happening all around us. I find it remarkable that rear echelon grunts were not taught to be more observant and to report any unusual incidences. Localized enemy forces weren't like the NVA conscripts. For the most part, the conscripts didn't want to be there anymore than we grunts did. The local VC, however, were "card carrying" members of the communist party, looking to gain as much individual power, for themselves as possible. They had a criminal gang mentality and were amoral. The only human life which they valued was their own and that of family members. This patrol, which crossed paths with Boland, knew they had nothing to fear and were very comfortable operating around Americans. They owned the countryside and the roads at night but had no problem getting a lot of business taken care of, during daylight hours.

      Shortly after settling into this newfound utopia, I met Tex the donut man. Rumors were that Tex had been assigned to a combat squad, but he had freaked out early on, so, a place was carved out for him with the cooks, making fresh donuts. As I have already said, we did not start getting fresh donuts until shortly after Dick arrived, so I believe Dick had something to do with creating this new job. I wish I knew the full story, but I don't, so here is what I do know. Tex's sole responsibility was to get up at 3:00 am and have donuts made in time to be flown out to the men in the field for breakfast along with hot coffee and that delicious, dehydrated vegetable soup which I mentioned earlier. I can’t remember this guy's real name. Since he was from Texas, everyone just called him Tex. Now, I loved donuts so I started setting my alarm to get up at 3:00 am in the morning, so I could help Tex make donuts. I could get those hot delicious treats just as they were coming out of the boiling oil. Yum, yum! Man, they sure were good.

     It didn’t take very long for me to realize that Tex was a bully. He was about 5 foot 9 inches tall, with a great physic to match his height. He weighed about 170 lbs. His favorite trick was to slip up behind one of the cooks and get him in a headlock. He would hold them there, while they cried for mercy, and he repeated this type of behavior over and over, day after day. I was surprised that no one had stopped him. If he had tried this with even the smallest man in my field unit, he would have been clobbered, before someone could say, "Lookout Tex". I became very embarrassed for his victims and as I said, I was surprised that no one stood up to him. Even Tiny did nothing. I was as guilty as everyone else. We all just stood around and watched.

     As one might expect, it didn’t take Tex very long to turn his bullying behavior on me since we were alone together at three in the morning. Now, I was 6 ft. 1 in. and weighted about 190 pounds. For the last 9 months I had carried a 90 lb. rucksack on my back almost every day. I had lifted weights since I was fifteen, which was something most people didn't do in those days. I also did a lot of swimming during my teens. I could have put Tex down the very first time he jumped me, but my mama didn’t raise any fools. At that time there were no "Dunkin Donuts" in Vietnam, and I really didn't want to lose this one and only source of those tasty treats. If I had put Tex down, no doubt it would have caused irreparable damage to his ego. The end result would have meant no more hot donuts for me. So, I appeased him, hoping he would soon get the bullying out of his system. When he got me into a headlock, I jokingly demeaned myself, declaring how strong he was and how he should let a weakling like me go. I did it with such a comical demeanor, that there could have been no sane reason under heaven for him to continue this childish behavior. But he did. Not only did he continue, but he began to attack me and the others more frequently. He was most definitely beginning to see himself as that mean character in “Lord of the Flies”. I can’t remember his name. Life was good for "Ole Tex", as he continued to tirelessly assert his sadistic reign over what he perceived to be his private domain.

     Sometime around mid-October, we support troops for the battalion found ourselves in Quan Loi, pitching the mess hall tent in the rubber trees just off the air strip. Red mud was everywhere, and everyone had been wearing the same fatigues for weeks. The showers were made out of the hollow shells of napalm bombs and had not been filled with fresh water in who knows when. Even if there had been water for showers, we would have had to dress in the same dirty clothes, because there were no re-supplies of clean jungle fatigues. Now, "it just so happened", that my "Ole Compadres" were returning from the field on this particular day. I believe that this was just after they had won those first three big battles with Triet. The supply sergeant would have definitely realized that Dick would have his skin if he didn't make sure that the showers had water and that there were clean fatigues available. Within minutes after my company landed on the air strip, several of my old buddies came running up to me in the mess area and started hollering. “Hey Wade”, the showers are full of water and there are clean fatigues for everybody”. Now I knew what "everybody" meant. It meant that if you wanted to get the right size fatigues before they ran out, you had better get to the showers ASAP. Without fanfare, people started jumping into the back of my truck. We all knew that we could make the trip to the showers a lot faster, doing 40 miles an hour, then the mob could, by running on foot, but we had to act fast. The showers were about a half mile away at the south end of the air strip. When we got there, everyone jumped out and started stripping. Some had already stripped on the way to save time. I cannot adequately describe to the reader how good it felt to have the red dirt of Quan Loi washed off my body. Then came the heavenly feel of clean fatigues rubbing against my skin. Thinking back on this experience, it now makes me think of a cartoon I saw one time of three dog’s drinking out of a toilet bowl. One of the dog’s was looking at the others and saying, “Gee, it just doesn’t get any better than this”. I drove back to the mess hall tent in the same frame of mind that those dogs displayed in that cartoon.

     Back at the mess hall tent, as I brought the truck to a stop, people jumped off the back and ran to meet up with some of the cooks, who had become their friends. It was quite amazing to me to learn that the cooks really enjoyed keeping up with the exploits of their grunt friends. I was a little surprised to learn years later that some of these cooks were truly saddened when a grunt, whom they had gotten to know was killed.

     Carefully parking my truck to avoid having to step down into a mud puddle, I headed toward a couple of my old squad members. They were standing maybe fifty yards from me and the area between us was dotted with several pools of rain water which I had to avoid. There was a watery area to my front, which I was carefully trying to skirt, when wham! My legs suddenly came in contact with another person’s outstretched leg. As I stumbled to catch my balance, a hand pulled me around, by one shoulder, causing me to completely lose my footing. This blind side attack made me land on my side in a large puddle of water, which I had just successfully avoided. As I looked up, I saw Tex standing over me with a goofy smile on his face, while at least twenty or thirty people looked on. I slowly got up and then looked him straight in the eye. As we stared at each other for an instant, my countenance changed. A demonic smile started to form. At the same time, that goofy smile on his face started to fade. In its place, he tried to put on a stern look of intimidation. I could feel my soggy wet fatigues clinging to almost the entire lower part of my right side and it made the angry demonic smile on my face glow even brighter. At the same time, I could see the fear rise up in Tex's eyes, which caused him to back up a couple steps.

     The time had come for me to show “good Ole Tex” another side of my personality and it was one which I had been carefully concealing from him. I could tell that he was already a little disconcerted by the abrupt change in my demeanor. He had no idea, however, that I had been leading him on with fake submissions during past bullying episodes. As a matter of fact, I am sure that he never knew what strong feelings I had against bullying, in general. Those feelings had already started fueling a dislike, on my part, for Tex. I had already come to the conclusion that I would have to deal with him sooner or later. Still, I hoped that when that time came it would not result in an altercation, which would cost me my donut privileges.

     However, things were past all that now. There were too many witnesses to let this attack by Tex go unanswered. So, as I stood there, dripping wet, I very calmly and deliberately started speaking to him in a tone which he had never heard coming from my lips before. It was a measured tone devoid of all emotion, with an air of certainty about it. I had learned that tone well from mimicking by my favorite cowboy heroes as they faced off with the bad guy on the silver screen. Yet, it wasn’t just learned bravado. Little did “Ole Lord of the Flies Tex" know that during our late-night wrestling matches that I had been measuring his strength against mine, while allowing him to get the better of me. Now, I was absolutely sure that I could make a move on “Ole Tex” that he would never see coming. Such was the "con job" which I had pulled-off on this guy. Besides, he had crossed the line. He deserved it. To top things off, my old squad members were watching. An example had to be made, donuts or no donuts.

     Looking around, I pointed to another mud puddle much more muddy than the one near us. “Tex, do you see that mud puddle over there?”, I said, as I nodded my head toward it. “That’s where you are going to go". These were the words I spoke in the manner which I have already described. To counter my firm proclamation, in front of our peers, poor ole Tex was now forced to reach down inside of himself to find some kind of scare tactic, to use as a comeback. Words started stammering from his mouth, as he clinched his fists, taking somewhat of a boxer’s stanch. “I’m serious, Wade. I’m not playing around here". "I can box”, he said. As he barely got those words out of his mouth, I lunged forward and scooped him up like a sack of feed. I ran my right arm between his legs and the left one around his neck and quickly lifted him off his feet. Now, finding himself pinned against my body, with arms and feet flailing in the wind, there was nothing he could do but go wherever I was able to carry him. How embarrassing it must have been for Tex to be carried helplessly toward his next resting place on the earth. When I had carried him to some sticky red clay mud about twenty yards away, I lowered his body down into it as carefully as a mother would lower her baby into bath water. That mud was about the consistency of chocolate pudding. I made sure he was submerged enough for the gooey red stuff to flow up and over his chest. I don’t remember how much of this mess I got on myself, but it was well worth it just to see the wind taken out of Tex’s sails. After this incident, Tex and I never spoke to each other again. Needless to say, I had forever burned my bridge, for getting to enjoy piping hot donuts, until my tour of duty ended. Now that was real crying shame.   

     Interestingly enough, my "stock" with the other cooks didn't jump any higher than it had been before. Putting Tex in his place didn't seem to impress them at all and there was a reason for that. From "day one" of my association with these cooks, I already had their respect. I suppose one of the main reasons for that was because I was a grunt on temporary assignment. This amazing little band of guys opened their hearts to me as soon as I came aboard, letting me raid the food supplies at will and most of the time they would cook for me after the mess hall had closed. When thinking back on this happy time, I realize now, that those cook’s quick acceptance of me into their circle, probably had something to do with a transference of feelings felt for other grunt friends whom they had lost along the way. They knew I had been a combat grunt for a long time. When I was in the field, they had seen my face, over and over, going through the chow line. Many other rear echelon people also had a lot of respect for us front line troops. Unfortunately, I don't believe this was understood by most grunts in the field and that's too bad.