~Don’t Panic
Heywood vividly recalled serving his country’s efforts to rid a small Southeastern Asian nation, called South Vietnam, of the nefarious presence of Viet Cong guerrillas, as well as a bunch of meddling North Vietnamese regulars. Together, those two interlopers were intent on prosecuting a prolonged (no longer civil) war to determine which of the two prevailing world political philosophies: Democracy, where the rich capitalists eventually ended up with most of the wealth, or Communism, where the rich and/or bureaucratic elite ended up with most of the wealth, won the exclusive rights to exploit the country’s natural resources and indenture most of South Vietnam’s grass hut residing citizenry with foreign debt that mathematically could never be repaid. While the war went on, the United States dropped enough defoliant and unexploded ordinance to keep the impoverished population busy cleaning up for years.
The first thing Heywood had to do, though, was get there. That turned out to be not such an easy matter. First, he had to catch planes that took him to Seattle, Washington, where he subsequently made his way to the Fort Lewis Army Base. Once there, he was beset with the usual hurry up and wait Army manner of doing business. Enough documents had to be signed to fill a medium-sized file cabinet. About the only form he remembered was the one that dealt with where to send his body if he was not to be one of the lucky ones. Add to that a bunch more needles getting stuck in his body every time he got in a line and his future seemed to be taking a trip to the crapper.
Ultimately, the trip to the U.S. military/industrial complexes’ golden goose, i.e. Vietnam, got under way. Although Vietnam lay far to the southwest of Fort Lewis, the first leg of his long journey took him north to Alaska. Why would one expect anything else, Heywood asked himself. He considered himself to be on the clock. His tour in Vietnam was for one year, and if they wanted him flying in aircraft going away from a combat zone during that time, so be it. It was fine with him.
In succession, Heywood set foot in Alaska, Japan, (saw Mt. Fuji), Taiwan, and, finally, Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, which had to be one of the largest combined Army/Air Force bases in the world. The place was huge. Buildings abounded to the far horizon. Heywood wondered if maybe he could finagle getting assigned to this place. There were thousands of soldiers and sailors as well as Air Force personnel everywhere one looked. He saw a church, PXs, huge airplanes, hangers, three story barracks, ocean-going vessels unloading at docks, pristine beaches, as well as a large convalescent center where wounded soldiers recuperated.
It was probably the convalescent center that attracted his attention most of all. If you were there you had been shot, stabbed, blown up, or otherwise rendered incapacitated by all sorts of enemy military war-making paraphernalia. Also, just behind the facility was a hill upon which sat a huge water storage tank capable of holding enough water to supply a good sized city. Painted on the side of the tank was a Red Cross about twenty feet wide, displayed most likely to dissuade the enemy from trying to do further harm, via mortar and rocket attacks to the seriously wounded men presently being cared for.
Heywood settled into his temporary home dreaming of getting lucky enough to be assigned to the very place he parked his rear end right at that moment. If he never saw another square inch of the country, that was okay with him. He would be satisfied to read about the war in the papers. Or, if he got bored he could walk the one hundred yards over to the hospital and talk to the wounded soldiers who already had first-hand experience with visiting other parts of this exotic country.
As Heywood later recalled, the remainder of that first day crawled along like syrup on a Detroit sidewalk in December. By his reckoning, he had three hundred and sixty-four more days and a wakeup remaining. All he wanted to know right then was where that place would be. As the daylight eventually turned to darkness and all the perimeter defenses were manned, search lights scanned the perimeter wire as occasional flares rose in the sky like fireworks on the Fourth of July. He determined to try to relax and get prepared for the following day when he would finally be notified as to just where he would call home in Vietnam for the next twelve months.
Unfortunately for him sleep was not to come. Heywood was wired tight. Plus the partly screened-in barracks he was assigned to didn’t let enough air in to counter the stifling heat. He got up to get a drink of the cold ice water they kept in a big canvas bag hanging besides the headquarters building. He expected the cold water, plus a couple of cigarettes might help to settle him down. He had a whole year to go, so it wouldn’t help matters to get flustered right out of the gate.
The short walk to the HQ building helped to relax Heywood. All the flares and search lights in constant use at the perimeter wire no longer held his interest as they had earlier. There were thousands of troops with automatic weapons guarding every inch of the place. Someone would have to be crazy to attack the base. It was as big as a medium-sized city back home. There were literally thousands of soldiers and choppers as well as Air Force jet fighters ready to destroy anything that even looked like it might pose a threat.
Soon, a paper cup filled with ice cold water drawn from the large canvas bag helped to calm Heywood’s nerves. He lit a cigarette, sat down on the soft sandy ground, and leaned back against the sand bags that surrounded the HQ building.
“Just take it easy,” he told himself. “One little step at a time. One day at a time. That’s what I need to do.”
Heywood soon lost track of the time as he regained some control over his emotions. He knew he could get through this if he kept his wits about him. There were five hundred thousand GIs just like him in country, and if those guys could put up with this craziness, then he could also put up with it.
Heywood soon felt much better. He planned to make these little self-reflection sessions a common occurrence. If he just remembered to do -
Boom! Boom! The loud explosions shocked Heywood back to reality.
“What the hell is happening?” he asked aloud.
Then another sound assaulted his senses. He heard what could only be automatic small arms fire coming from the perimeter, off in the distance. His senses and emotions went on heightened alert.
Sirens started wailing adding to the cacophony of alien noises assaulting his ears. Then it dawned on him - an actual firefight was happening at the perimeter a couple hundred yards away. He realized he had no idea of what to do. He didn’t have a weapon. As far as he knew, no one but the perimeter guards were armed. The next thing he heard was explosions from off in the distance. Again, he had no idea what caused them: rockets, mortars, or suicide bombers?
After sitting stupefied for some time, he recalled some member on the permanent staff telling them all during the first briefing that there were bunkers located at various places around the area in the unlikely event any enemy rockets or mortars were fired their way.
Heywood could tell by the way the guy talked that he considered this possibility as being unlikely, and he could understand why. The whole place was a veritable fortified city. Who in their right mind would attack it?
Well, somebody did, and Heywood, after coming to his senses, decided he needed to find one of those bunkers he was told about earlier in the day. He knew approximately where he needed to go, so he got to his feet. As soon as he was about to become completely erect so he could take off running, more explosions occurred off in the distance. He hurriedly got back down on the ground and decided to crawl in the general direction of the bunker.
Not until a very frightened Heywood was well away from the HQ building did he stop to get his bearings. He had cleared the buildings and was looking for the bunker as he lay in the soft sandy soil. Far in the distance, he could clearly make out the guard towers and the security fencing. Farther down the perimeter, he saw automatic weapon fire. He had no idea who was doing the shooting, good guys or bad guys? He didn’t know.
Heywood continued to lie still for a time to regain his senses. His poor brain was on overload - this kind of stuff only happened in movies. But now there
he was, right smack in the middle of what he quickly came to believe was a really, really bad movie.
Right as he started to rise, he made out a life form off in the distance towards the perimeter. He had no idea if it was a good guy or a bad guy. He also knew that if he stood up and it was a bad guy he would probably be dead in a matter of seconds as he was unarmed. So, for what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was most likely only seconds, whoever it was coming his way abruptly turned away heading in the direction of the hospital. Heywood let out his long held breath and resumed his search for the elusive bunker.
He found the bunker within another couple minutes. It was a reinforced concrete tube about thirty or forty feet long, approximately five feet in diameter and had several feet of sand bags piled on top of it. It also had a six foot high pile of sand bags partially blocking both ends. It would take a direct hit from something big to harm the individuals seeking cover inside. Within minutes the bunker was filled with others seeking a place to hide from whatever munitions were being hurled their way.
Heywood couldn’t help but take notice of all the nervous chatter and outright giggling that came from the individuals who had reached a place of safety. As for himself, he discovered that both of his elbows and his knees were cut up and leaking blood. He hadn’t realized it before then, but as he crawled across the perforated metal plates covering the ground in front of the HQ building where all the formations were held, the sharp edges of the holes in the heavy strips of metal had cut through his new jungle fatigues, leaving both his elbows and his knees a bloody mess.
Heywood used his handkerchief to clean up a little and was happy to see the cuts would probably not require stitches. If that was all the harm he received while in country, he would be a happy man.
It wasn’t until the next morning that Heywood and his newcomer group found out the full extent of the damage. It was much worse than anyone expected. It began with them learning of the destruction of the large water tank with the Red Cross on the front, taken out by either sappers or a mortar round. It now was nothing but a collapsed pile of mangled metal.
By far the worst damage resulted from sappers destroying a part of the hospital where the wounded soldiers helplessly lay. Over twenty were killed while several more sustained additional injuries. Heywood got a full accounting the next morning when he reported to the medics after formation to get his cuts and scrapes looked at. No stitches were required and after all his cuts and scrapes were cleaned and bandaged, he headed back to his billet to await his assignment orders.
One other strange thing happened as the medics were cleaning his elbows and knees. They informed him he should make sure to put in for a Purple Heart.
Heywood was shocked and told the medic he had to be kidding, right? The guy was serious, though. Heywood had received his certifiable injuries as a result of an enemy attack upon his temporary duty station. He had four bloody bandages on his body to prove it, plus the medics would verify it in their written report.
Heywood thought about the proposition but quickly declined the opportunity. He didn’t like the idea of being awarded a Purple Heart simply for the bloody abrasions on his elbows and knees received while he crawled for safety as severely wounded men were being murdered in their hospital beds a short distance away. All he wanted was get to wherever they were going to send him and start the year so he could get this pain in the ass deployment behind him and go home. Give the medals to the guys that deserved them.
The next morning he sat on an old C-47 cargo plane heading south to a place called Long Binh, a humongous Army military installation just north of Saigon. Once off the plane he was eventually deposited, after an especially horrific hour long truck ride through squalor the likes he could not even imagine, at the 90th Replacement Battalion. Evidently, these were the people who would determine his final in country destination.
Only after his departure from that cheery place did Heywood discover why they kept the guys coming in and the guys going home separated. The stories being carried homeward by the departing grunts were not exactly morale boosters. There was some really heavy crap going on up country, up country being just about any place in country not offering miles of guarded perimeter, PXs, movie theaters, NCO clubs, and nearby bordellos.
For Heywood, up country turned out to be a little place called Lai Khe, home to forward units of the 1st Infantry Division which he was assigned to for the next year of his life. If one drove northwest of Saigon for sixty or seventy miles along Highway 13 (like one would do that without being faced with a court martial for not doing it) they would pass through what used to be an old French rubber tree plantation surrounding a small village. That was Lai Khe. The plantation had shot craps years before as the rubber trees they planted were reported to be of an experimental nature and were unsuitable. The whole place was about a half mile wide by three quarters mile long. Highway 13 went straight through it. Of course, anyone hoping to pass through the heavily fortified installation was stopped and searched coming and going.
All in all it required about three miles of perimeter to be manned every single night. During the day only fortified towers spaced every several hundred yards watched over the surrounding defoliated landscape. Stretching out around the entire perimeter were hundreds of sandbagged bunkers that were manned every night. Beyond the perimeter was nothing but jungle waste land. Enough chemicals had been repeatedly dumped on the area to kill anything that lived, plant or animal. One did not go there for any reason excepting the daily foot patrols searching for rockets that were timed to go off after the VC had made their escape. Lots of guys at Lai Khe were killed or seriously messed up by these rockets and mortars as well as the booby traps set to take out the soldiers patrolling the area. Then there were the snakes: cobras, plus what they called the Two Steppers supposedly so poisonous that the unlucky victim died after taking only two steps. That turned out not to be true as Heywood’s XO was bitten one morning as he picked up his M16 rifle to respond to a report of sappers coming through the perimeter wire. A Two Stepper was wrapped around the barrel and bit him on the hand. He was back in time to soak up a couple cans of suds with the guys that very afternoon.
The place was made even worse when the monsoon season came. That’s when it started to rain which meant everything turned to mud. If one could recall old movies about World War I where soldiers toiled forever in mud-filled trenches, one might have a working idea of the monsoon season.
This was the place the U.S. Army had tasked him to spend the greater part of the next year of his young and now endangered life. Heywood accepted his fate. He didn’t like it, but he was not going to shame his family or ruin his future chances of participating in all the opportunities the great free market capitalistic society he belonged to offered by doing anything other than whatever he had to do to get this most unfortunate civic responsibility over with.
It was during this gut checking, military skills enhancing period that Heywood was given the opportunity of coming in too close and personal contact with a number of honest to goodness characters.
One such individual was an old mess sergeant, a lifer who was intent, first and foremost, on staying alive to enjoy his still two years away government pension that came after serving your country honorably for twenty years or, in his case, more. This guy bragged about making soldiers’ lives miserable with his crappy food back in WWII. Heywood couldn’t ever recall seeing the man do any actual work. All he remembered is the old sergeant staggering back into the drinking hooch every afternoon to get started on a buzz before a full-fledged hangover could ever get going. As Heywood thought about it later, he also recalled two additional individuals who belonged to this, so-called, chow hall staff. One was a fat buck sergeant who always carried a Thompson machine gun with him. Heywood had no idea where the guy got such a gun. It certainly wasn’t government issued at that time. Heywood suspected it may have been used by other unfortunate GIs back in the Korean War. Anyway, he carried it with him always, exc
ept when he really needed it, like when he stood behind the chow line shoveling huge glops of gristly meat (they claimed it was beef) onto pissed off GIs’ chow platters. Heywood didn’t care how long a determined soldier chewed on that forever loathed and despised quartermaster favorite it only went down the throat as a solid, and potentially, gullet clogging mass. He could recall losing weight as a result of his too often having to fight to get the gristly waste out of his gagging throat and onto the hard laterite muddied floor where it belonged in the first place.
The other cook Heywood recalled serving with was a freaking psycho. How he ever got into the Army and was given access to a gun, or a meat cleaver, is well beyond any sane person’s comprehension. As Heywood recalled, he was a skinny kid who always looked as if he was trying as hard as he could to not let anything pass through his sphincter as he stood ladling slop on the chow line. His normal look embodied severe pain. Heywood never recalled him ever having even a PFC stripe on his arm. He couldn’t keep out of trouble for even that short a period of time. For fear of succumbing to food poisoning whether intended or not, Heywood refused to go anywhere near whatever food he was in charge of cooking or serving. Plus, the guy mumbled. Heywood couldn’t make out if he was saying, “Have a nice day” or “I pissed in the gravy I just ladled onto your plate.”
What happened to him was not at all funny, though. The guy kept getting more and more bat shit crazy until they, meaning the always alert commanding officers, determined the guy posed a greater threat to the unit than the VC - who regularly stood a klick out from the perimeter and lobbed mortar rounds on to the unit, daring the Army’s finest to come out and stumble into a booby trap.
The plan was to get this wacked-out cook back to a rear area and to real medical help as soon as possible. But as is often the case, it didn’t happen that way. The poor guy must have known something was happening because he grabbed his M16. Yes, everyone had automatic weapons and multiple bandoleers filled with twenty round magazines available at all times (they were up country), and he started shooting up the place. Surely he wasn’t trying to kill anyone as it would have been too easy. Instead, after scaring the crap out of everyone, he ran into the rubber trees while still firing his weapon, frightening some long gone GI’s left behind monkey so much that the monkey started sneaking into the commanding officer’s hooch and crapping on his cot. For a while the unit had shoot on sight orders for a crazy cook, a traumatized shit slinging monkey, and all slow-footed VCs.
That’s when things got really, really, really screwed. It was dark by the time the crazy cook ran into the interior of the rubber tree plantation, which meant the searchers needed to turn their attention back to manning the perimeter in case Victor Charley wanted to pay a visit that night as was often his habit. Usually by that time guys had already started heading for the perimeter to set up claymores and M60’s, but not that night. Most of the unit was ordered to head into the thick grove of rubber trees with flash lights and loaded M16’s to search for maybe the most seriously screwed up bad cook in the entire U.S. Army. The guy could be anywhere in there and everyone knew he would sure as hell see them way before they caught sight of him.
Plus there were snakes all over the place. Heywood personally had a run in with what he learned later was a cobra. He caught sight of it while jogging around the perimeter. (Why did he jog around the perimeter? Because that’s what insane people do, they run around in circles.) The snake emerged from the thick perimeter wire and looked to be heading directly at him. He later admitted to being so scared that he stood there gaping like an idiot until coming to his senses and exploding out of the blocks like a sprinter with a renewed sense of purpose. Turns out the snake also altered course at that same instant and headed straight for a huge unoccupied bunker, disappearing down into a hole somewhere amidst the hundreds of stacked sandbags. Heywood could go on for a long while about how the occupants of said bunker reacted after dark when he casually informed them about their new perimeter bunker fellow occupant, but that would require listing several pages of language usually deemed unfit for polite company.
Regarding the crazy cook, Heywood, as well as several other really pissed off GIs, searched for the resident lunatic in a quarter-mile wide rubber tree stand in the dead of night, fully armed and to a man prepared to do whatever it took to not become a victim of a guy who had for so long made himself an infected boil on their collective asses. The guy had to have heard and seen them coming from a hundred yards away. With all the lights, the cussing, the constant threats of outright mayhem awaiting the cause of their present highly agitated state of mind, the most unpopular man in the unit, by far, had somehow gotten away and headed for the hills. Everyone was very relieved. There was not a man there that did not intend to do whatever was necessary to make this constant threat go away forever – if the opportunity was forced upon them.
Heywood would have liked nothing better than to be able to report that eventually everything worked out all right, but that was not the case. Somehow the guy literally got off the plantation – as the unit really was occupying an old French rubber tree plantation – and he stole a truck loaded with supplies at a base miles away down Highway 13 and promptly ran it off a bridge and was killed instantly. As the years went by, Heywood often wondered if the guy might not have become so nuts if he hadn’t gotten sucked into that crazy war in the first place and, very possibly, he might have gone on to enjoy some kind of meaningful life. Heywood hadn’t checked because he really didn’t want to know, but he wondered how many hundreds or maybe thousands of other guys became noncombat casualties of that most unfortunate expedition.
Meanwhile, the old mess sergeant did absolutely nothing but drink himself into a daily stupor. The day when the crazy things happened that caused an individual to scream out the words, “don’t panic,” started off no differently than any other miserable day in Vietnam. Meaning, time passed slower than molasses in February. Heywood could recall how excruciatingly painful clock gazing became when a person was forced to remain for prolonged periods in a place that both terrifies and bores one simultaneously. He recalled the event clearly, but long ago gave up trying to recall what day of the month it occurred. Every day was the same when someone close by wanted to kill you. After a while when the instances where you were cowering in a deep hole hoping whatever type of explosive heading your way either struck a tree first if you were in a covered bunker or struck the earth if you were expose to an airburst where shrapnel rained down upon all those unfortunates who could not find cover blurred into one. Excepting of course, that particular day when Heywood heard the words that became indelibly etched in his consciousness.
If Heywood was absolutely forced to name a date when it happened, he would probably guess early December, 1969. Everyone was talking about some kind of Tet offensive happening around the first of the year. That’s when Charley and all his NVA buddies were supposed to materialize from tunnels supposedly dug under practically every square yard of Vietnam and put a good thrashing on all the Number 10 GIs.
Things had been relatively quiet for some days. A number of convoys had come up country carrying pallets of beer for the troops, dropping off literally hundreds if not thousands of cases to the always thirsty GIs. Heywood had to admit things were looking better. Notwithstanding the threat of complete annihilation during the upcoming Tet, the availability of so much food and booze, along with the prospect of Bob Hope bringing his show to the area, cheered everyone up. The show meant there would be lots of pretty movie stars and dancers. For a while, the war was just going to have to wait.
Unfortunately it didn’t wait very long. The day in question gave no reason for anyone to think anything bad stood by waiting to ruin the day. Except for those guys setting out claymores on the perimeter in preparation for another very long night of guard duty, almost everyone else prepared themselves for another in a long sequence of lonely nights far away from everything that brought them real joy.
Heywood was already in the hooc
h, used by the NCOs, upon the order of the commanding officer, to socially segregate them from the lower ranked enlisted men. For the most part that only worked on site. Otherwise most NCOs, regular enlisted men, and even the officers freely fraternized together. It seemed less odd when even the officers were not especially interested in overtly displaying their rank as they were the first to be sought out when a VC sniper started looking for a target with bars on the collar. It was just something you put up with when you had to.
Finally, the booze started flowing and the card games got underway. Guys wrote letters home while the younger guys cried in their beers when girlfriends or fiancés hadn’t bothered to write them. Mail was the only game in town when it came to hearing from home. It took about seven to ten days for the recipient to receive a missive.
The rockets started coming in before dark. That took some balls for the VC to do that. It shocked Heywood and although he never asked, he expected he wasn’t the only one surprised by the nerve of the VC attackers. They had to know that trained spotters could approximate their position within minutes if not seconds. Choppers would be on the scene looking for anything moving to completely obliterate with mini-gun and rocket fire.
It must have been the shock of the timing that put most everyone off their games. Usually, the drill called for a soldier to hit the ground and lay flat until the salvo was over. Only then was it considered wise to get to your feet, knees, or whatever and get in to a protected bunker. Not a hole, a bunker. The unit was situated at a rubber tree plantation which meant that most of the rockets or mortar shells hit in the tops of trees causing above ground explosions. Lying flat on the ground when a shell exploded overhead meant the shrapnel would head downwards, covering the ground area you might be laying on. If there were no bunkers available then it’s just tough luck, but if you lived in a place that regularly experienced above ground explosions you were not going to survive long without digging a big hole and covering it with lots of logs and sandbags.
Heywood didn’t recall getting down on the floor but he’d be surprised if he found out he was not one of the first. Not only getting down quick, but being well situated to have first crack at getting out the door and on his way to a large bunker they’d dug and covered with tons of logs, dirt, and metal plates, located not more than thirty yards away.
One thing that did concern Heywood was that a few newcomers were apparently attempting to make their way through and over the bodies lying prone on the floor between them and the door way. This was not the thing to do. First, if you are standing up your chances of getting hit with shrapnel are greatly increased. Secondly, other soldiers lying on the floor or ground in front of you don’t particularly appreciate one of their fellow soldiers stomping on their fingers on the way to safety. The correct procedure was to get to your feet as soon as there is a lull and move together towards the exit. Once outside things changed somewhat if you were appreciably faster than a chubby guy in front of you. By all means go to the front and get to the bunker faster if you can make a clean pass. The only thing that would change this procedure is if someone is hit by shrapnel which was fairly common place. Heywood recalled a guy laying only a couple yards from him getting his back sliced open as a piece of shrapnel made a clean cut about half an inch deep across the width of his back, fortunately, never touching his spinal column. A very lucky man, he proclaimed himself to be a week later when he returned from the hospital.
Heywood sensed that all the commotion caused by the newcomers was going to cause a stampede. Guys were starting to yell. Chaos and confusion raised their ugly heads. Even Heywood began to look longingly at the clear exit only a few feet away from where he lay. Then the noise ascended to even a higher level and Heywood knew things were going to pop. He started to rise to his knees to ensure he got to the door first if the stampede started. Just when he was certain the herd was going to move, he heard a voice of authority from the very back of the hooch ring forth. “Don’t panic,” was the command of the one individual who had all his wits about him. The entire hooch quieted itself. Then again, a strong voice called out, “Don’t panic.” That did it, the entire group, including Heywood, returned to their previous prone positions until they were sure the first salvo was over.
As Heywood reassumed his position on the hard floor, he heard men start to yell once more. Something was happening in the back of the hooch. Unable to lie still, not knowing what was going on, Heywood started to turn his head towards the commotion. But before he could, he felt the pain of a heavy boot smashing down on his wrist, tearing the skin off as it pivoted towards the door. Glancing upward he caught sight of a lone jungle fatigue clad individual bursting though the doorway heading undoubtedly for the safety of a bunker. It was the old mess sergeant moving at a full head of steam. The last thing Heywood heard as the portly, yet surprisingly, fleet-footed individual, sprinted through the door alone, on his way to safety, was the same earlier admonition that had kept the rest of the group from bursting through the same door like a herd of stampeded cattle. “Don’t panic; don’t panic!” he yelled to the GIs left behind in his wake.