Most of us remember where we were when the Twin Towers were attacked on 9-11. For folks my age or older, we remember the Kennedy assassination.
Fifty years ago, Apollo 11 roared into history as I arrived in Vietnam. I wrote about those days in my embellished autobiographical novella entitled “Gonna Stick My Sword in the Golden Sand.” Here’s a snippet. Pardon the vulgarity and self pity.
There were no Charlies [enemy soldiers] in Cam Ranh Bay after all, but plenty of sorry asses like me, spending the first day of three hundred sixty five: July 17, 1969. Mounds of white sand dunes surrounded low-lying gray buildings with tin roofs held down with sand bags. And potable water and non-potable water, but I could never remember which one was for drinking. Back in Fort Lewis near Seattle, the army spent a couple of days processing me into Vietnam, and now that I was here, the army spent a few more days of processing, but that was fine with me. Standing in line was better than getting shot at.
A new patch on my fatigues said I was a PFC, private first class, just like all who had completed the Eleven Bravo infantry training at Fort Polk, but then I got promoted for a few hours by somebody who needed a drinking buddy. We had been standing in a line together. The silver bar on his collar said he was a first lieutenant, and he invited me to have a drink with him at the officer’s club; when he offered me his jacket with silver bars to cover up my PFC patch, I thought … what the hell? Turns out the officer’s club was air conditioned, and we spent the afternoon drinking scotch whiskey while a Filipino woman belted out sultry jazz. I drank mine straight because I was worried about potable or non-potable water.
After Cam Ranh Bay finished its processing, they decided to send me to the 4th Infantry Division up in the central highlands. Next stop, Camp Enari outside Pleiku. More processing. And rain. And mud. It was the midsummer monsoon of July 1969. In many places, plank boardwalks kept you out of the slimy red clay that caked your combat boots. When it stopped raining for a while, they loaded us into trucks called deuce-and-a-halfs and took us outside the perimeter for M-16 rifle training, part of the in-country welcoming festivities. There was a gully there, a drainage ditch or something, and I pictured a horde of Charlies lurking in the tall grass. I was an Eleven Bravo, and I already knew how to use an M-16, but the clerk-typists–Remington Raiders who were sent to shoot for the one and only time in their whole damned tour of duty–needed protection, I figured, so I kept a close eye out for Charlie, but the only real danger was if one of the desk jockeys shot himself in the foot, or worse.
More processing. My new buddies drank beer, we spent one day at the steam bath, and, of course, there was the PX with a TV and an ice milk dispenser, except it was never cold enough to cool the mixture beyond a runny, slurpy mess that spilled over the top of the soggy cones. There were great bargains on electronics, but what would I do with a goddamned reel-to-reel tape deck out in the boonies? We started planning for when we’d get our first combat pay, military payment script they called it. My buddies went to look some more at the stereos, and I went to get some soft, real soft, ice cream.
I thought of the sky-blue waters of the ten thousand lakes of Minnesota, I wondered if Twins ballplayer Rod Carew swiped home that day, and I worried that my girl would have second thoughts if Jody was to come around (it was always Jody they warned you about—“Jody’s gonna get your girl,” the drill sergeants teased). A small crowd gathered around the TV that hung high on a wall, and I stood at the back and watched and listened while ice milk dribbled down my wrist.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
What the fuck? The TV announcer said some swinging dick was walking on the moon, and the whole world was watching. Did I give a rat’s ass? What about me? Did anyone care what I was doing? Where I was? Somehow, I felt abandoned and much farther away than the man on the moon.
