Deros Vietnam (10 page)

“There it is!” Jackson shouted, prompting me to jump about three feet off the ground. “The bunker is a great place to hide, but not such a great place from which to fight!”

Followed by a lively rendition of “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide.”

Maybe it was the dope, but I could see every detail of everything Jackson's voice conjured up. I didn't have to tell him; I didn't need to talk really. I just sat there and enjoyed the command performance.

Our only difference of opinion had to do with the Vietnam grapevine, the local source of gossip and opinion that drove everybody crazy. For some reason, as soon as Jackson brought it up, I launched into a rant about how you couldn't trust the ‘vine but you couldn't avoid it either.

“Fucking thing is a grab bag of fiction, fact, disinformation, gossip, and propaganda,” I argued, pointing out that grapevine sources included officers, enlisted men, private contractors, Vietnamese workers, prostitutes, correspondents, and no doubt a few VC. I was cataloguing my grapevine grievances when Jackson put up his hand, signaling for me to pause.

“Relax, brother,” he exhaled in my direction. “The grapevine frustrates everybody, which is what makes it acceptable. The real quandary is whose version of ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine' is better—Marvin Gaye's or Gladys Knight and the Pips.”

We both broke down laughing, until we eventually realized the commander of the guard was on the radio, checking in with the guard post. Jackson hated answering to anyone's orders, so I was ready to sign on for our bunker.

When the commander called on Bunker 763—us—Jackson responded by improvising the lyrics of a then-popular Paul McCartney chart topper, opining about how U. S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ellsworth Bunker might not approve of how we were waging the war. By the time Jackson was repeating the chorus, you couldn't hear the commander of the guard screaming at us over the voices from the other bunkers singing along. A couple of flares went off along the perimeter line and, for a moment, we became that fantastic French star Jackson had described earlier.

By the time the MPs got to our bunker, Jackson and I were doing a kick-ass version of the Flamingos' “I Only Have Eyes for You,” inserting a lyrically-appropriate critique of American foreign policy.

The Army brass was royally pissed and assigned us all extra guard duty. Jackson got slapped with an Article 15. A few nights later, he pulled his stunt at the Bien Hoa Theater during the showing of
Woodstock,
and they hauled his ass to LBJ.

Today's grapevine carried the news. Jackson had offed himself.

“That boy waz just some hippy-dippy doper strung out on somethin',” Top explained to us as we prepared for guard duty. “That sorry SOB probably pissed off everybody at LBJ, so he had no choice but to hang hisself.”

Whatever did go down, it hadn't stopped most everybody on post—lifers and draftees, old and young, black, brown, yellow or white, whether they knew Jackson or not—from forming their own opinions about what went down and why. That's how the grapevine worked—it allowed you—reader or listener—to make your own story, turn the page and carry on, not having to spend too much time wondering why some disaffected GI would allegedly commit suicide without telling anybody why.

Top was one of the good old boys, and he didn't know what he didn't know, which was also one of the grapevine's tenets. What the grapevine couldn't communicate to lifers was why a ‘60s generation draftee like Jackson wasn't just some Dr. Spock-coddled goofball who got high and spoke out because he had a problem with authority.

No, Jackson was a genuine hippie ambassador for those of us who'd surrendered to Vietnam and the draft rather than go to jail or Canada. The dude was a bright light, one of the few who reached high and never looked back.

So, what do I think? Fuck the Grapevine. Fuck Top and the Army. Fuck LBJ and the Viet Cong. Fuck Woodstock, too. I promised Jackson's memory I'd get to the bottom of this. I'd act like a real goddman journalist for once instead of the sanitized Army propagandist I'd become. I'd do my job, get people to talk, dig out the truth, if there was truth anywhere in ‘Nam.

And I'd remind them that it was the Smokey & the Miracles' version of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” that we eventually decided was the best. Fools didn't know that.

Rest in peace, brother.

The Revolution Isn't Being Televised

None of us knew much about him except that his last name was Jackson and he always wore sunglasses. Even at night. Somebody said it was because he was high all the time and his pupils were dilated. Nobody knew for sure.

Jackson would just show up at our office out of nowhere. He'd hang out and work on his company's newsletter. What he was really good at was getting us high on the kick-ass dope he smoked. Most days we were fucked up on the job, it was Jackson's doing.

He was also our main source for what was happening stateside. Reading
Stars and Stripes
and the sanitized versions of
Time
and
Newsweek
left us clueless about what was really going on, so we depended on Jackson's insights.

The night before the shit went down, he'd told us how happy he was with the way things were going back home. America was owning up to its responsibilities. Before ‘Nam he'd been everywhere from San Francisco to the Big Apple, he'd hitchhiked from upper Michigan to Key West, Florida. Everywhere he was struck by the same good vibes—people were getting high and flashing the peace sign.

He'd talked a couple of us into going with him to check out
Woodstock
at the Bien Hoa base theater. Before the movie, we went out to the bunker line with some other REMFs and got wasted.

“Brothers, was Woodstock the greatest thing that ever happened to America or what?” Jackson asked rhetorically. “How's the movement going here?”

“Shitty,” someone volunteered.

“It'll get better,” he smiled. “You've got everything here at Long Binh—discontent, quadraphonic sound systems, lots of soul brothers, and great dope. Things will go well here.”

None of us said anything.

Jackson pretended to be our drill sergeant and marched us to the theater. We sang cadence about Jody and our girlfriends, adding a couple choruses from “Coming into Los Angeles.”

Later at the theater, they stopped the film just as Sly and the Family Stone were cranking up the volume on “Higher.” The lights came on, and a voice told us that the VC were nearing the perimeter and we had to get to a bunker. With the movie's sound track off, we could hear mortars exploding and sirens sounding. Most of us started moving dutifully toward the exits.

Jackson refused to leave. He was standing on his seat, arms raised, singing at the top of his lungs.

“Feelin's gettin' stronger…” he yelled at the screen. Sly shouted back, telling Jackson he was going to take him higher and higher. The rest of us had already left the theater.

The last we saw of Jackson he was wearing his shades and giving the peace sign as the MPs led him away. None of us did anything to help him.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

We all had rituals in Vietnam. The brothers had their dap, the grunts had their boonie hats and bracelets, the zoomies had their high-class clubs, the lifers had their Vietnamese lovers.

What we had late in the war, way back in the rear, was TV. Not the TV that brought the turmoil of the world into your living room on the six o'clock news. No, for us it was the kind of TV that reminded us of growing up, of sharing rites of passage with families like the ones on
Ozzie and Harriet, My Three Sons,
and
Leave it to Beaver.
Bummer about the Beaver, buying his lunch in Vietnam. Kinda made sense though, when you think about it.

For the hard-charging, hard-working, gung-ho REMFs in the USARV Headquarters' Information Office, the TV ritual was watching
Room 222
which had premiered on ABC around the time most of us were initiating our acquaintance with the Army and Vietnam. It reminded me of the 1967 movie “To Sir, With Love” with Sidney Poitier playing an idealistic teacher dealing with rambunctious white high school students from the London slums. The TV version was based in L.A., but the lead character, Pete Dixon, was black and cool, just like Sidney Poitier.

Watching
Room 222
every week was the one thing that brought everybody in the hooch together. Juicers liked it, dopers liked it, loners liked it, our resident lifers liked it—hell, even our one and only soul brother liked it.

We did more than just watch
Room 222.
We would
live
it, or at least pretended to be living it for the 30 minutes it was on. Nevin or Conroy would warm things up by making a bold prediction about who would be the focus of that episode's story line. Then they'd make things more interesting by establishing odds and laying bets.

It was the night after Kenny Martin's visit. I can still see Nevin walking up and down the hooch with a clipboard and a sheet of paper, puffing on a Lucky Strike and wearing a green visor on his head like Uncle Billy, the bank teller in “It's a Wonderful Life.”

“Fifteen minutes, boys and girls,” he shouted through puffs of smoke. “Just fifteen more minutes to place your bets.”

“Who will it be?” he continued in his carnival barking manner. “Our favorite history teacher Pete Dixon? Walt Whitman High School's long suffering principal Seymour Kaufman? Liz McIntrye? Or how about everybody's wet dream, Alice Johnson?”

Shouts of “Alice, dear sweet Alice, I love you Alice, I want to screw your brains out Alice” rained down on Nevin, a shared vision of Karen Valentine, the cute young actress who played student teacher Alice Johnson on the show. Something about her perky smile, her luscious lips, her mini skirt and high socks. Hell, everything about Alice Johnson had the entire hooch moaning with pleasure.

“Or will there be a dark horse tonight?” Nevin continued. “Helen Loomis? Wild-hair Bernie? Or how about our favorite militant Jason Allen? Or resident genius Richie Lane?”

By the time the show started, Nevin had collected an assortment of cigarettes, ration cards, Military Payment Certificates, and joints, all of it, in theory anyway, to be paid out to the winners. He posted tonight's odds on the blackboard that hung next to the refrigerator: 2-1 in favor of Alice with Principal Kaufman second at 5-1. A surprising Richie Lane held third place at 10-1 while regulars Pete and Liz were out of the running.

Alice always got the most votes because, well, we all desperately wanted every show to be about her. However, the rhythm of the series that we'd been able to detect pointed to the brooding principal as tonight's likely focus. That usually translated into something heavy or meaningful like race or pregnancy or bigotry which meant less of Alice. Damn!

Before we got completely settled in, Conroy warned everybody about making too much noise. “It's okay to shout when Alice appears, or when Pete comes on,” he intoned, waving his can of PBR to the multitudes. “But keep it down during the show so we all can follow what the hell's happening. We'll have the usual post-game discussion immediately after the broadcast.”

Sometimes the best part of watching
Room 222,
besides the camaraderie, was talking about it afterwards. Like the night we dissected how and why Principal Kaufman burned out and quit, arguing for hours why he should or shouldn't go back to work. Or the episode about the freshman girl with a crush on Pete who tagged along on his dates with his girlfriend Liz.

And, of course, any show about Alice.

So far the episode that had provoked the most intense all-night debate (fueled by beaucoup beer and reefer) was the one where Walt Whitman High started its own radio station—call letters KWWH of course—compliments of an egotistical city councilman who arranged to have the station built at the school. Eventually, the pompous ass went ballistic because the Walt Whitman students start to broadcast programs criticizing school board policies. Might have seen that one coming.

That episode hit home for us because it seemed so much like the Vietnam we knew and the AFVN radio we listened to morning, noon, and night. By the end of our back-and-forth, we had arrived at a consensus that the Walt Whitman kids had more balls than we did. At least they'd gone after the guys in charge. Mostly we rolled over and played dead.

Tonight, Conroy sat down to cheers as the show's inane theme song filled the Vietnam night air. Full of anticipation, we glued our eyes to the TV. An unlikely bunch of 20-somethings, thousands of miles from home in the middle of a jungle and a fucked-up war, we sat watching a TV show more or less about ourselves. The fictitious Walt Whitman High School in
Room 222
is our high school, the place we want to be tonight, every Wednesday night. Now light years away.

That night's episode was entitled “If It's Not Here Where Is It?” and you could tell within the first few minutes it wasn't up to
Room 222
standards. Not even Alice could save the situation. That night our favorite show was a little too topical, a little too close to home.

The subject was Vietnam.

Guys started to hoot and howl at the entrance of the alleged 19-year-old “Vietnam veteran” returning to Walt Whitman to resume his education. The guy was a gold-plated cliché. He didn't fit in with the other students, couldn't handle authority. The whole fuckin' nine yards. Even stalwarts like Pete Dixon and Seymour Kaufman spouted sanctimonious bullshit. And Alice, sweet Alice, never showed.

Eventually, Ward walked over to the TV and turned it off. Nobody said a word.

“Now hear this,” Nevin jumped up and contorted his face like James Cagney in the movie “Mr. Roberts.” “Now hear this. All contributions to tonight's war widows and pensioners retirement fund will be immediately returned to their rightful owners.”