Up Country (10 page)

Saigon

W
e came in through the clouds, and I looked down at Tan Son Nhat Airport for the third time in my life.

Strangely, it looked the same as it did almost thirty years before; the sandbagged revetments hadn’t been removed after the war, and there was still a military side to the airport where I could see Russian-made MiG fighters around the old American hangars. I also caught a glimpse of an American C-130 cargo plane, and I wondered if it was operational, or if it was some sort of war trophy.

I recalled that Military Advisory Command, Vietnam had been headquartered at Tan Son Nhat, which turned out to be convenient when, in April 1975, the victorious Communist troops approached the airport; the MACV guys, among the last American soldiers in Vietnam, blew up their headquarters and flew off on Air America planes. I had seen it on TV, and now I saw some rubble that might have been the old MACV Headquarters, known then as Pentagon East.

As we approached the runway, I saw that the civilian terminal, too, was the same old piece of crap I remembered. I had this weird feeling that I’d passed through the Twilight Zone, and I was going back for my third tour. Actually, I
was
.

We came down on the wet runway with barely a bounce, so the round-eye was flying. The tarmac, however, must still have had shell holes in it or something because the rollout was a mile of bad road.

The aircraft turned onto a taxiway and for some reason stopped. On
the approach, I hadn’t seen a single aircraft around, so it wasn’t like we were backed up waiting for a gate at this nowhere airport. When the Americans ran it during the war, Tan Son Nhat was the third busiest airport in the world, and it ran fine. But that’s another story. I knew I needed to get my head into the reality of this time and place, and I tried. But as we waited on the taxiway, my mind kept pulling me back to 1972, and the events that led up to my second visit to this place.

I
was stationed at Fort Hadley, where I had re-enlisted after my first tour, after Peggy Walsh and I had stopped writing to each other, or I had stopped writing to her, to be more honest.

After about six months at Hadley, for some reason known only to God and Sigmund Freud, I married a local Midland girl named Patty.

Patty was very pretty, had a cute Georgia accent, didn’t hate Yankees, loved sex and bourbon, was poorer than me, and always wanted to marry a soldier, though I never found out why. We had absolutely nothing in common and never would, but getting married young and for no good reason seemed to be part of the local culture. I really don’t know what I was thinking.

Housing for married people was tight during the war, and there was nothing available on the fort, so we lived in this squalid trailer park called Whispering Pines, along with hundreds of other soldiers, their wives, and kids.

We watched guys go off to war and some of them came back, some didn’t, and worse, some came back to the army base hospital, missing parts. We drank too much, there was too much fooling around with spouses not one’s own, and the war dragged on with no end in sight.

So, there I was, a kid from Boston living in a trailer park with a wife whose accent and outlook made her incomprehensible half the time, and I had a few years to go in the army, and guys around me were getting their second and even third sets of orders for ’Nam. Don’t think I didn’t miss Peggy and Boston, and my friends and family. Especially when Patty would turn on the country western station, and I had to listen to songs titled “Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth ’Cause I’m Kissing You Goodbye.” Or “How Can I Miss You if You Won’t Go Away?”

Mom and Pop and my brothers had not yet had the pleasure of
meeting the new Mrs. Brenner; I kept avoiding a trip north, or them coming south.

I never thought I’d see Whispering Pines Trailer Park again, but I did, last summer, when I was on undercover assignment at Fort Hadley investigating the arms deal case that turned into the case of the general’s daughter. I could have lived anywhere while undercover, but I chose Whispering Pines, which by that time was nearly deserted and filled with ghosts.

As I get older, I’m starting to make weird choices and decisions, and it seems that consciously or unconsciously I’m revisiting things and places from long ago. Like now, sitting on the taxiway at Tan Son Nhat Airport. I need to talk to a mental health professional.

But back to 1971, Fort Hadley, Georgia. By this time, I was a four-stripe sergeant—we made rank fast in those days—and as a combat veteran, I was assigned to the Infantry Training School, teaching young draftees how to stay alive and kill other young guys. The infantry sucks, by the way, but training new infantrymen was better than being one in Vietnam.

The country was in open rebellion by this time, the quality of the draftees was pretty low, and morale and discipline were in the toilet.

But all good things must come to an end, and I knew I was on the verge of getting orders for Vietnam, Part Two.

I really wanted to avoid this exciting opportunity, but I also had to get out of that hellhole I was in, including, I’m sorry to admit, my marriage. I wouldn’t be the first soldier who chose war over garrison duty and marriage, and I wouldn’t be the first to regret it either.

And there were other considerations; my brother Benny was now draft age. Benny was and is today a great guy, very bright and easygoing. Unfortunately, he spends a good deal of time with his head up his ass, and his chances of surviving a combat tour were not good.

The army had a sort of semi-official policy of not sending brothers, fathers, and sons to ’Nam at the same time, so I knew if I went back, Benny would probably not go until I returned, or might never go if I didn’t come back. The war was starting to wind down, and the name of the game was buying time.

I had a plan, and I’m a clever, take-charge kind of guy, and I managed to get accepted to Military Police School at Fort Gordon, Georgia. This was temporary duty, so Patty stayed at Whispering Pines Trailer Park in Midland, while I went to MP school at Gordon.

Under the conditions that prevailed at that time, if a soldier left his young wife alone for more than twenty-four hours around a military base, some guy named Jodie was helping her get over her loneliness. I wasn’t sure that’s what happened with Patty, but something happened. Or, as the country western song says “She’s Out Doin’ What I’m Here Doin’ Without.”

So, I returned from Fort Gordon after three months with a new MOS—military occupation skill. My old MOS had been Eleven-Bravo, meaning infantry, meaning a second tour in Vietnam from which I had no reasonable expectation of returning home alive this time. My new military occupation skill was Military Police, and Vietnam was a possibility, but not a sure thing. And even if I went to ’Nam as an MP, my chances of getting killed or maimed by the enemy were less than the chances of that happening breaking up a brawl in the Enlisted Men’s Club.

While I was at MP school, Benny got drafted, completed Basic Training, and was at that time in Advanced Infantry Training with a high probability of going to Vietnam, despite the troop reductions. We all knew that within the next year or so, someone was going to be the last guy in ’Nam to turn off the lights when he left, and someone was going to be the last man killed there. No one knew exactly when that was going to happen, but everyone knew they didn’t want to be one of those guys.

In any case, my marriage was heading south, so I decided to do the same and volunteered for ’Nam.

Quicker than you can say bye-bye, and with no leave time, I was at Tan Son Nhat Airport in January of 1972, where I got orders for Bien Hoa, the big replacement center nearby. Bien Hoa was where some of the fresh meat arrived from the States, awaiting further orders to join their units up country. It was also where a lot of the guys heading home waited for the freedom flight. It was a crazy place, made more so by the juxtaposition of the damned and the saved. They didn’t share the same barracks, but they mingled. They had little in common except two things: Those who were going home wanted to get drunk and get laid, and those who were about to go to the front wanted to get drunk and get laid. I, an MP sergeant, got caught in the middle.

As I said, morale and discipline had gone to hell, and I barely recognized the army that I had entered only about four years earlier. In fact, I barely recognized my own country anymore. So ’Nam was not that bad a place to be.

The war was winding down, at least for the Americans who were pulling out, but it would go on for another three terrible years for the poor bastards who had the misfortune of being born Vietnamese.

In fact, my second Vietnam tour lasted only six months before my MP company got orders to go home.

I hadn’t heard much from Patty in those six months, and what I did hear through her brief, but neatly written letters didn’t sound too positive. In fact, one letter said, “I’m sitting here listening to ‘I’m So Miserable Without You, It’s Like Havin’ You Here,’ which is how I’m feeling now.”

Some men returning unexpectedly from overseas call ahead, so that the loving wife can make preparations, or the unfaithful wife can get rid of the cigars in the ashtray. I called from San Francisco in June ’72, saying I’d be home in three days. This news was met with some ambivalence.

When I finally got out of the taxi that had taken me from Midland Airfield to Whispering Pines Trailer Park, I was somewhat ambivalent myself about what I wanted to find.

I threw my duffel bag on the ground and went to the door of the trailer. Coming home after a long absence in a war zone is a strange experience, like you just re-entered the earth’s atmosphere from outer space, and you know that things on earth have changed.

I tried the doorknob, and it was unlocked. I stepped inside my trailer and stood in the small living room. I knew she wasn’t there, so I didn’t even call out.

I went to the refrigerator for a beer and saw the note:
Paul—I’m sorry, but it’s over. I filed for divorce. There’s no one else, but I just don’t want to be married no more. I guess I should say Welcome Home. Have a good life. Patty. P.S. I took Pal.
Pal was the dog.

The grammatical error of the double negative annoyed me, and I could hear her drawl in the written words. The title of another country western song ran through my head—“Thank God and Greyhound She’s Gone.”

I threw the note in the trash and found one beer left in the refrigerator, which wasn’t my brand, but it was cold.

I walked around the place that had been my home for a few years and saw that she’d taken all of her things, but she hadn’t taken the furniture because it belonged to the trailer and was mostly bolted down. She did, however, take all the linens, meaning a trip to the PX that evening. Actually, I didn’t even have a car because she didn’t take Greyhound; she took our ’68 Mustang, which I still miss. I also miss Pal. I had anticipated him knocking
me to the floor and licking my face, which I think he learned from Patty in the early days of our marriage.

This was not what homecomings were supposed to look like.

I spent a few days at Whispering Pines and Fort Hadley, getting my paperwork in order and all that, then I went back to Boston for my leave, where I was welcomed more warmly. My brother Benny was still in the service, so he wasn’t home—in fact, he was in Germany, holding the line against the Red Hordes on the Eastern Front. I’d like to think my second ’Nam tour kept him out of Southeast Asia.

My brother Davey was just eighteen, and had drawn a low number in the new lottery draft system and was looking forward to being called. He liked my uniform. The war really was coming to an end, so I didn’t try to talk him out of the army or into college, and he, too, served his country, mostly at Fort Hadley. When he got to Hadley, I tipped him off about the lint heads and told him to look up a strawberry blonde named Jenny, but he never ran into her.

Regarding my homecoming to South Boston, the neighborhood seemed different somehow, more so than the last time I’d returned. I realized my boyhood was over, and yes, you can’t go home again.