REMFs at War, #2
Most days in Vietnam were dull and uneventful. The VC mortared our compound a few times but no one else was ever injured and none seriously. We had none of the racial incidents that seemed to mark later years in the war. Drug use was mostly grass in 1967 and 1968. You could buy it in the market. Boredom was the major enemy along with news from back in “the World.”
Many of us in the 330th kept abreast of the latest news of unrest on the campuses where we had gone to college. We read newspapers from home or managed to watch the news on the Armed Forces Television Network (Yes, we had television on the Hill. The television show “Combat”--which we saw as a comedy--was a great favorite.) or received letters from home. Most of us realized that the protesters were not protesting against us but against government policy. I do wish people could get that straight in the current wars.
I was becoming a bit more politically aware than I had been when I had pretty much drifted into the Army back in December, 1965. I don’t mean that I would have gone to Canada or even to Sweden (both places are much too cold and actually have white stuff that falls from the sky), but I would probably have visited my Selective Service Board and argued that my student deferment was waiting for me. Seven years later, I would have completed the PhD and the war would have been over for all practical purposes.
In October, though, I was busy with the other linguists working on a whole series of messages heralding the formation of the “Provisional Revolutionary Government.” And I was very busy with Allen, Jim, and others in fighting what I have always called the “Refrigerator War.
And this, too, is no shit:
Not too long after we arrived on Engineer Hill, we finished building our new barracks. It was, truly, much too big and pre-fabricated, all lumber with concrete floors, to be called a “hootch.” We helped put the things together with ladders, hammers and nails (very Thoreauvian that, building our own houses). Inside were partitions that divided the place into two-man sleeping arrangements: cots, footlockers, tin wardrobe-type cabinets where we could hang clothes. Each of the partitions had electric outlets.
And, REMF that I am and have always been, what can I say? The PX sold mini-fridges like the ones most dorm residents have in their dorms now. The only people they could sell them to were soldiers on the Hill. Ipso Facto: they were meant for us. So, two by two, the linguies and others in the 330th bought fridges. Mostly, we stored beer and soft drinks in them, the occasional bottle of white wine. The reds were kept in racks above the fridge. Shameless, no? But we, sans dout, were the intellectual elite of the enlisted ranks. I say that, shamelessly, even though we had been dumb enough to go in the Army and, even dumber, to sign up for four years into of three. Why would we do that? Stupid of us, but we believed the recruiters who said we would not have to go to Vietnam.
In all of that frenzy of refrigerator buying, we had not counted on our company commander. “Shaky,” having received a medal for leading us into battle, mostly against each other,decided that since those of you Vietnam veterans out there who might be reading this and who were grunts could not have cold beer out in wherever in the boonies your battles happened to be, we should, in some kind of weird empathy with you guys, not be able to have cold beer in what passed for our hootches either.
We had not, then, heard of “fragging” and were non-violent enough that we would not have fragged him, but we had heard of peaceful and/or passive resistance. We read the order that was posted on our bulletin board and disregarded it.
A few weeks later, our fearless commander, winner of a non-valorous Bronze Star, shaky to the end of his tour, announced an inspection. On the day of the coming inspection, we took all of the beer out of the refrigerators and lined them up under our cots. When the C.O. came through, I (the ranking Spec-4 in our digs) shouted “Ten-Hut!” and we all snapped to.
SIDEBAR: Why I was the ranking Spec 4
Basically, what happened was that I didn’t have a car. You may well ask yourself what not having a car to do with getting a promotion and, had I not been there, I would be asking the same question. You see, I had had a car, a shiny 1965, pale yellow, Pontiac GTO (my first ever new car) before I got drafted and then enlisted. But that car was only five months old and I had to pay $87.95/month for it. I could afford that, barely, while I was teaching at Silsbee High School but E-1 pay was less than the total monthly car payment. I gave the car back to the bank and wound up doing monthly installments to pay the bank the difference between what I still owed on the car and what they were able to sell the “used, current-year car with 33,000 miles on the odometer” for and what I still owed. I paid them $10/month for the first two years of my Army life. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was more than 10% of my monthly salary as an E-1 and E-2.
Since I did not have a car, Allen Hallmark gave me a ride (I was the--*wink*--chaperon on the trip from Texas to Fort Meade because Allen was taking his then girl-friend, soon-to-be-wife, Molly, to Maryland with him). They dropped me off at Student Company, ASA, and then went house-hunting.
Okay and en fin, here’s what happened. I reported in on a Friday afternoon and Allen, Don, and everyone else reported in on the following Monday. The captain who was C.O. of student company had never come into contact with an E-2 enlisted man before (or at least had never had one in his company, until us. Most of student company was made up of sergeants and a few officers being re-trained as linguists. We were among the first folks in the call-up of 1965 when U.S. involvement in Vietnam began its rapid expansion with deployment of Marines to DaNang.). The Captain, a really good guy whose name I have forgotten, put through the paperwork immediately to have me promoted to PFC. The other students did not have their paperwork processed until the next week. As a result, like clockwork, I was always promoted a few days before all the rest of my cohort: to PFC, to Spec-4, to Spec-5).
So, there it is. On that day, because I had not had a car when I got to Fort Meade (I would have found something to do until the next Monday when we were supposed to report in if I had had one), I was the ranking enlisted man in our barracks and had to call everyone to attention out of what passed for respect for our C.O.
Back to the REMF War and I do hope Allen remembers this, if he’s reading it—he’s the only corroborating witness I have. When the C.O. got to our partitioned-off cubical and saw the fridge, he ordered us to open it. We did. There was no beer in it. Ever vigilant as our C.O. was, he did spot the cans of beer standing in perfect ranks under the cots. When he had the temerity to ask what those things were under our cots, either Allen or I said, “They’re cans of beer, sir!”
When he demanded to know why we had not gotten rid of the cans of beer as he had ordered us, one of us (I forget which one) said, “You ordered that we not have beer in our refrigerators, sir. These cans are not in our refrigerator, sir!” Shaky shook a little and, as I recall it, we filled sandbags for a while. But thanks to our skills interpreting poetry and other difficult missives, we could not be found guilty of anything. Allen would fill more sandbags before we left Pleiku, but those were my last bags.
For a few weeks, we had our beer in the EM Club and were able to view the occasional rock band/strip show, but then after a minor work slow down had our privileges reinstated. You see, some of us kept getting sick and were somehow unable to read Vietnamese message (unless they were really important). Shortly after that, Shaky decided we had learned our lessons and we were able to restock the refrigerators.
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