I'm in the Army Now

PART 2

(the not so ordinary life of one soldier)

VIETNAM

My plane left from California.  A very unpleasant experience.

 

 There were protesters, ugly posters and hippies. I was all alone. Venomous things were shouted in my direction. 

 

On the plane, I sat next to an Hispanic, from New Mexico,who spoke rather accented English. I asked his name. He said, proudly, “Juan Ignacio Valentin Patricio Salvador Felipe Garcia Gonzalez. I am proud to be the first in my family to serve my country, America.” After a stunned silence on my part, he asked my name and where I was from. I couldn't resist. I sat up straight and said, like any southern gentleman from the south, complete with that southern drawl, “I am from Louisiana and yes, we do sip our mint julips on the veranda and wrestle our alligators in the mornings before working. My name is James Richard Ashley Scott Montgomery Napoleon Beauregard Blair the III. But friends call me Nippy, short for Napoleon.” He never blinked an eye at my name, but Juan did have lots of questions as to my wrestling alligators. Naturally, I supplied all the tall tales I could. It was a long flight from California to Alaska to Guam to Vietnam but Juan and I had a great time becoming friends and the flight went smoothly. I'm sorry I never saw him again or even told him my real name. I hope he survived.

It was eerie as we landed, in the dark of night, and were quickly loaded on buses and taken away. I could hear rockets in the distance and explosions. The streets were narrow. Cardboard boxes lined the street with people living in them. Dogs barked. People, barely clothed, were sitting around makeshift fires or sleeping on the curbs, children played in the gutters. I had entered another world. One I was not familiar with. It looked like a land of poverty.

I was assigned to the 199^thLight Infantry Brigade.

I had been trained to be a Photo Lab Specialist and work in a lab.. The 199^th did not have a lab! I panicked because this usually meant that I would be out in the fields fighting and taking pictures. I was sick to my stomach. Would I be able to fight? Thankfully, the lab was in Long Binh next door to my brigade. Whew. The Lord heard my prayer.

 I was to work in the Information Office which was basically a newspaper office. Sargent Eckler, the Sargent in charge, met me. He was fat, scared of his shadow and alcoholic. He was very nervous and always sweating. His motto was: I will get you before you get me. He made my skin crawl. The other men assured me it would be fine as long as I did what he asked and never crossed him.

There was another person who also wanted my job when I arrived. He had been out fighting, and taking pictures of the war for six months. The Sargent asked us both to go build a bunker, with sandbags, outside the office. I complied. I was still green. The other man refused. I got the job as Photo Editor for the brigade and another promotion to E5.  All these promotions after only a year in the service. What were they thinking? I was still a newbie. Not long after I arrived, this mess of a Sargent barricaded himself in his room with a pistol (where he got it is questionable) threatening himself and everyone around him. The barracks were evacuated and he was quickly subdued by the MP's. He was terrified of being at war, and apparently had snapped. We never heard from him again.

My job was to collect the negatives from the photographers in the field and have them developed next door. Then, once a week, I would take them into Saigon to be censored before sending them to AP and UPI to be published in newspapers across the country. I enjoyed my fellow newspapermen. We were a loose bunch of soldiers, similar to Hogan's Heroes. There was Italian Frank who, I promise, had ties to the mafia. He even had a Doberman Pinscher sent over. Arthur had dreams of becoming a Nobel Prize winning reporter and working on famous newspapers. Mike, a short fellow from Oregon was a fantastic artist and preferred drawing than writing. Our clerk typist had his left index finger missing and had difficulty typing. He preferred working on our jeep instead. I quietly began typing for him while our jeep was kept in perfect order. The reporters noticed. I became a better typist. In fact, I became so good, they started dictating their stories rather than writing them out for me to decipher. I was becoming invaluable.

Sharing our office was a Lieutenant and his Sargent from New Jersey. They decoded messages from the Vietnamese. They were not regular army either. The Lieutenant had a hot water heater flown in so he could have hot showers - the only one on our base. We became good friends, especially after I shared my New York experiences. Sargent Cadolini was a man of many words. He claimed he knew all the popular musicians that played New York, and kept us interested with little private tidbits of things he witnessed. He had worked as a bouncer at a night club and had met all of them, he said. He had danced on American Bandstand with Dick Clark. He met the Supremes, the Beach Boys, Connie Francis, the Bee Gees, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, the Four Seasons, Tina Turner, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick. The list goes on. He talked a lot about the Gold Diggers, because his cousin from the Bronx had once dated one of the girls. We were never sure of the truth to his stories.

I had trouble sleeping in the barracks on the base, although I had a private room, so to speak. We were expected to make formations twice daily with spit shined boots. I thought this was rather nuts . We were in war and they wanted spit shinned boots? I was not that kind of army guy. I rebelled quietly. I walked to the Signal Corp. office and told them of my dilemma. They asked if there was an unoccupied bunker near by. I said yes, the one next to our office, that I helped build.

 They told me to move into the bunker and they would have me reassigned to their office. 

Problem solved. I didn't have to make formations again, although I did keep my boots shined, sort of. Now, I had a better private room and could sleep through the night, safe from direct bomb hits. Eventually I also became a member of the hot water shower club. 

 One of my duties as the Photo Lab Specialist was to travel on Sundays with the General to visit the wounded. My first General seldom did so. Instead, he asked me to take pictures of his “parties” with the Doughnut Dollies, the Red Cross volunteers who were primarily used as morale boosters for U.S. Troops in Vietnam. These were not clean parties so I assigned another person to take my place.

  

 General Bond, my second General, was different.

 He was a decent man that I respected greatly. We traveled weekly to visit the wounded. 

I was picked up, after lunch, in the helicopter and flown to the hospitals.

  It was scary flying with the doors open over potentially hostile areas with the machine gunners searching the ground. Once, when we banked to the right, it seemed I would fall into the jungle, I instinctively grabbed the person next to me, the General - he laughed.

I took Polaroid pictures of him with the wounded soldiers for them to send home. I was humbled, and somewhat embarrassed, roaming around with General Bond on Sunday afternoons while these solders lay in beds with stitches from head to toe, some with limbs missing. Some were difficult to take a picture of for they were so terribly scarred. I may not have been out front fighting but I certainly saw the horrors of the war. One Sunday, while at the 24^th Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh, General Bond received a message. There was fighting at the front and wounded were on the ground with no medivac helicopter coming. He quickly decided to help. “But, first,” he said, “drop Blair off, we may need to relay messages to him and his office.” They did. The message I received was that the General was on the ground carrying a wounded private when he and everyone on his helicopter were killed. I still get chills and find it hard to discuss, how close I came. He was a great General. One day I hope to see the Vietnam memorial and find his name. 

 Bob Hope visited our base that   December.

 Since I was a member of the Information Office I had a badge saying “Press” and was able to go backstage with other reporters and meet everyone. Sargent Cadolini borrowed a pass too because the Gold Diggers were with the troupe. Our doubts were answered because he really did know them and they knew him. Small world. I got to shake hands with Bob Hope but, sadly, didn't get an autograph. I also got to meet Neil Armstrong and, yes, I got to hug all the Gold Diggers.

Since it was hot in Vietnam we began spending our days at the base swimming pool and doing our work at night when it was cooler. I continued collecting film and traveling to Saigon, going to excellent Vietnamese restaurants, riding rickshaws, visiting the USO and even trying to skate at an ice skating rink in Saigon. That is, until I was asked if I knew about lay outs and proof reading since I had been an art major. It seems, the brigade needed a person to replace someone in Japan, working with Japanese publishers who were printing a brigade yearbook for us. Wow! Of course, I said yes, even though I knew absolutely nothing. I met my replacement and he taught me everything I needed to know in one day. 

 Japan

 So I spent my last two months in Vietnam working in Japan. This was rough. I worked 3 hours every third day. The rest of my time was spent touring Tokyo. Riding the Tokyo Metro (the subway) was easy. All the signs were written in Japanese and English. I also visited a friend, Sam, that I grew up with, and his wife Jill, who I, briefly, dated in college. Sam was stationed in the air force in Tokyo and flying TDY to Korea and Jill was pregnant. This was when I learned about Frances (whom I had never met) who was dating Jill's brother. But that should be a later story. 

 I got to see Mt.Fuji, traveling by bullet train.

 I saw fantastic department stores with rooftop gardens and swimming pools, visited Japanese shrines and saw the great Buddha.

Afternoons were spent at the Kabuki theater, an experience more wonderful than Broadway. 

 Most times the school children would gather around me outside the theater asking for my autograph. It appears they got extra credit if they talked to an American using their English. I felt like a movie star standing outside the Kabuki theater in civilian clothes, signing Nippy Blair. I wonder if they ever wonder about that strange American with the strange name.

Everyone in Japan was friendly. Businessmen would try out their English on me. I once was invited to visit a man's home and have a meal with his family so they could use their English.

The Japanese publishers were delightful. They took me to top restaurants where I tried exotic dishes, Sushi, Sashimi, Kaiseki Ryori, squid, octopus. Not food for my taste, but I couldn't be rude or disrespectful.

The yearbook was published on time.  My name is in the credits as Photo Editor.

 I returned to Vietnam where I spent a day and a half before flying home to ungrateful Americans. Upon landing, our plane was diverted to another air base in California because we were being shot upon. Welcome home, ungrateful nation.

The final chapter of my unusual journey as a not-fit-to-be-soldier will continue in Part 3.

© Nippy Blair 2015. Posts and pictures on this blog cannot be copied, downloaded, printed, or used without the permission of the blog owner, Nippy Blair.