Chapter 28

Over a period of perhaps twenty years after I left Vietnam, from time to time I sat down and tried to write up a concise rendering of what Cat and I did there. I never really got a good start, since a lot happened in fifteen months. There are episodes that I would really rather not remember, and some I am happy to relate. There is a lot of detail that blends into routine. Sometimes there was a lot of stress, and sometimes there was a lot of joy. It was one of the most kaleidoscopic periods of my life, and I was eventually to realize there was no way to tell it all, so all I can do here is to give you a taste of it.

It made for some long days to get up early, go out to some fire base or other, do our little skits or whatever, then fly onto another, and another. Then, when we got back in the evening, we’d still have to be at the club until it closed, and sometimes afterwards. The days were long but usually there were not very many boring ones although the specifics changed from day to day.

Much the same thing could have been said of my time in Vietnam as Joe. One day I might drive to Bien Hoa, and the next down to a warehouse in Saigon, and the next day to somewhere else – but it was all driving, every day, usually to the same places, or at least places that looked like they could have been the same place.

Typically we would get up early enough in the morning to fan out and go to breakfast at one of several mess halls in the area by ones and twos. We tried to eat in mess halls whenever we could just to make contact with the troops. It was more than just eating, though; often we would take over from some guy in the serving line, at least a little bit as if we were their mothers serving breakfast. “Would you like eggs or chipped beef today? How much?” It gave us another chance to talk to at least a little personally to each guy.

Sometime in there we’d slip through the serving line ourselves, get a light breakfast and find a table with an empty seat and ask, “Can I join you guys?” It was another opportunity to do the “What’s your name? Where are you from? How many days do you have left?” routine, and those weren’t necessarily the only questions we’d ask. “I like dogs. Do you have a dog? What’s its name?” and so on. It sounds easy, but the same thing, day after day . . . it gets old after a while, and we had to keep it fresh and perky.

Sometimes we would be at a place where they served C-rations for meals – and it could be any meal of the day. We did pretty much the same thing, but with a twist. “I’ve got a roast beef and gravy. Anyone want to trade a ham and lima beans with me?” Most of the guys hated the ham and lima beans, and I think I hated them more than most – but you would not believe the friends you could make with that line.

Just for the record: the cookies were pretty good in the C-ration packs. Since I didn’t smoke, I was always willing to give away the four-pack of cigarettes that came in the ration box, and never had any problem getting some guy to accept them.

I have to say that after Vietnam I never had any shyness problem with approaching a guy and chatting him up if I happened to feel like it. I’d had a lot of practice at it.

After breakfast, we would usually fan out to do programs at remote fire bases or installations. It usually worked better if there were two of us, and sometimes even three of us would go to do a program.

I think when most people think of Vietnam, they think of guys being out in the jungle with a rifle in their hands and being shot at continually from the moment they got there to the moment they left. In actual fact, from my experience it wasn’t quite that bad. Sometimes units would be in their camps or fire bases for days at a time, not doing much of anything and getting bored. That is why they wanted us to come do programs in the first place – to give the troops something to do, a reason to relax for a few minutes or an hour or so. Even out beyond the green line, while things were often tense there were periods when the units would go days between contacts. True, when things got sporty they could get dangerous, but we SRAOs were rarely allowed in the area at times like that; when we were, it often involved a screw-up of some sort.

Very often we were the only American women who had been to one of those fire bases and the only ones who would ever go there, so it was a distinctly male atmosphere where some of the normal things didn’t quite apply. I remember one fire base that had only one shower building, and since there were no women around no one had bothered to build walls. Cat and I were riding by there one day to discover two guys there, taking routine showers, in the altogether, of course. We just smiled and waved at them, and they waved right back, then went on cleaning up. There was no way we could have gotten upset under the circumstances, not that Cat and I would have anyway.

 Not much of what went into those clubmobile performances was handed to us, and we often rejected most of the things that were suggested from up the line as being a little too heavy in the propaganda department. We were expected to come up with most of the programs ourselves. These were usually little stand-up shows, with skits, singing, and joking around. I was a lousy singer and always was even as Joe, but honestly I don’t think many of the guys watching us cared – we were American females, and that was what counted. Although Cat knew how to play a guitar a little – very little, she would claim – she hadn’t brought one with her, but she later acquired one on a quick trip to Saigon and added a little depth to the programs.

I learned a few songs that would carry me through that part of the program. Leavin’ On A Jet Plane was always popular, as was We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, and Detroit City. Cat and I claimed that last one for ourselves, but when we got down to the chorus we’d always ask the guys to join in: “I wanna go home, I wanna go home, oh, how I wanna go home.” We occasionally got some stink from officers for doing that one, but never from the grunts.

One thing I had to be aware of personally was to not do any song without thinking about it, and practicing it a little. I learned that by one time almost starting a Dixie Chicks song I remembered from my Kenworth driving days until I realized that the Dixie Chicks were decades in the future. That would have taken some serious explaining . . . Rule Two survived by a hair.

Skits were simple, of necessity since we usually didn’t have amplification, or very little in the way of staging or props. Some of them were just two us of standing back to back, playing as if we were talking on the telephone. One or more of us almost always did a stand-up comedy routine; we tried to keep the jokes as timely as we could. It was always necessary to keep the program changing, coming up with new things to do, since we frequently went back to the same place every month or so.

Part of the shows was just the simple talking with the guys thing we did all the time. “Do any of you guys have dogs? Put your hands up. Hey, you down there on the end of the second row, what kind of dog? Is that a hunting dog?” And so on . . . “Hey, I have a dog (I didn’t). One time he . . .” and I would lead off into a cute dog story or two, one sure to get some laughs.

Even the Karmann Ghia got involved. “Have you got a car? What kind? Let me tell you a little about mine . . . ” and I would talk about my Dad hopping it up with the Corvair engine and beating up on that MGB with it. Most guys liked car stories and hot rods of course, and it was a real treat to have a girl who could talk cars with them.

We were willing to use just about whatever worked.

There were several times when we wound up with units that had just returned from the field and the guys still had dirt caked on their hands, a wash of tears, sweat, and grime streaking their faces. The games and programs we had planned often seemed inappropriate at such times, so mostly we just ladled more Kool-Aid that had already gotten warm from the Vietnam heat, and talked to the soldiers. Some wanted to talk about friends who had been injured or killed; others needed to cry. Some were unable to speak, still shocked by what they had seen and done. At least we could offer our ears and our shoulders while we tried to figure out how to give the guys some comfort. It required emotional strength and quick thinking, and it was tough. It’s hard to explain just how messy and emotionally draining such moments could be.

I can’t speak for every girl who worked for the Red Cross in Vietnam, but most of us at Phan Loc tried to concentrate on the troops and not get too friendly with the officers, who had a little more in the way of diversions than the grunts did. Maybe not much more, but a little. After all, while we were there for everyone, the enlisted soldiers needed more attention from us. That got us a little resentment from the officers, but favoring them would have gotten us a lot more resentment from the enlisted men, and that would make our jobs that much harder.

After an hour or two or three, sometimes depending on when the chopper showed up, we would be on our way to the next place, and the next, and the next. Is it any wonder that they all blur together after a while?

It could be a very long day by the time we got back to Phan Loc. If we got back in time, we’d go to one of the local mess halls and do pretty much the same thing we’d done in the morning, including working the serving lines. “I don’t know what the mystery meat is tonight, but it sure smells good . . . would you like some more spuds?” If we were too late, and it happened frequently, there was a friendly supply sergeant in a nearby helicopter company who kept us supplied with cases of C-rations. Sometimes it was nice to just lie back on our bunks for a while to unwind while picking at a can of something before heading over to the center, where we still had several hours’ worth of work to do.

In a way, it was more of the same thing. There was often a performance or two, much the same thing as during the day – since we’d dreamed them up in the first place, we needed to get some mileage out of them while we could. But we did other things like play games and serve coffee and cookies, almost like we were having a sort of mini-date that might only last for a few minutes. That might be all a guy really needed to make it through a tough spot.

If a guy was new to the place, we’d fall back on the standard “where are you from” routine, but sometimes things went differently. We often had guys who wanted to talk to a woman about some things, especially for perspective, usually it was family, wife or girlfriend troubles and all too often it was the same problem – a girlfriend, or whatever, who couldn’t wait for him to get home.

Although these tales were often distressing to the guy involved, I have to admit I’d heard the same story all too many times, but I always tried to listen and be helpful because it was the guy who was hurting, not me.

I happen to remember one of these incidents in particular, if only because it was one of the very few times we donut dollies actually had donuts in the building. I don’t know where Sharon found them, but they were a nice change from cookies.

I don’t remember the guy’s name now, but I’ll call him Gary so I can have a name to use. I could tell that Gary was troubled when he came into the center, because sometimes you could feel it without asking. Since we weren’t terribly busy at the time, I decided to take a few minutes to talk with him.

After I introduced myself, we started with the familiar, “where are you from” and “how many days before you go home” questions. In this case the answer to the last one was distressingly long, in the high hundreds, I think. “It’s too long,” he said. “I don’t know how I can hold out that long.”

“Why not, Gary?”

“My girlfriend,” he replied, almost in tears now. “She’s pregnant.”

“Isn’t that good news?”

“Not when I’m not the father.”

No, that was not good news, and I could see why he was upset. “How do you know you’re not the father?”

“Because she says she just found out she was pregnant. I’ve been here for a little over six months. You think she would have noticed it before now.”

“That sounds logical to me,” I said. “I’ve never been pregnant, but I’m told that a girl may not know for a while, especially if she’s on the heavy side.”

“No, she’s about the size and weight you are. Anyway, she wrote and told me that she had to break up with me. She didn’t come out and say it, but the way she said it I know she’s going to be marrying this other guy. He’s a real jerk, and got some crooked doctor to sign some paperwork saying that he’s diabetic so he could get out of the draft. Damn it, I thought I had something going with her, and now it’s turned to shit.”

“Gary,” I said, “would you believe me if I told you that this is not the first time I’ve heard this story?”

“No, I guess it wouldn’t be, would it?”

“I’m not really supposed to give advice in this situation, but Gary, let me ask you a question. Don’t rush to an answer, but think about it: if what you had with your girlfriend wasn’t good enough to last out the year you have to spend here, was it worth the trouble anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Think of this as being a test of how strong your relationship really was. If she were going to be that faithless, what would you be opening yourself up for in the future? If she cheated on you after only a few months of your being gone, what are the chances that she’d do it after you were married?”

“Shit,” he said, and obviously was turning the question over in his mind.

“Think about it while I go get you a donut and something to drink. Coffee or Kool-Aid? We have orange Kool-Aid tonight I think, and for some reason that doesn’t turn up here very often.”

“The Kool-Aid, I think. I don’t think I need any more coffee right now.”

I got up to get the refreshments, and took my time getting back to him. “So,” I asked, “any thoughts?”

“I think you’re right, JoJo. Maybe it’s better that I found out what kind of a person she really is before it’s too late. If she did it now, there’s no reason to think she wouldn’t do it later.”

“You could be lucky at that,” I told him. “Think what it would be like if you didn’t find out until after you had a couple of kids. That can get really messy.”

“Yeah, it could. I’ve seen it happen, too.”

We talked for several more minutes, during which time I told him to buck up, get through the rest of his tour, then go home and find another girlfriend, but one who would be faithful this time. After all, the guy she took up with was going to be dealing with a proven cheater, so he would probably get what was coming to him in the end. With a guy like that she probably would, too.

He finished up his donut and his drink, then said, “Thanks, JoJo. I guess I knew what you were telling me, but someone had to point it out to me that I already knew it. I don’t know if I could have talked to one of the guys about this, and I’m here TDY (temporary duty) so I don’t know anyone very well anyway.”

“Believe it or not, that’s what we’re here for, Gary. Now, just put the past behind you and look toward a happier future. Your tour won’t last forever, and then you can get a fresh start.”

“I think that’s good advice, even though you’re not supposed to be giving advice.”

“It’s not advice if you already knew it,” I smiled. “Now would you like to play a board game or something? Or, there’s a group of guys who are so bored they’ve taken to playing seven-card stud with a pinochle deck. I probably ought to warn you off of that one since I’m told it will ruin you for regular poker.”

“No, I think I’d better get back to the hooch and see if I can get some sleep. I haven’t been able to sleep much since I got the letter. Maybe now I can.”

“Well, good night and sleep tight,” I smiled. “I’m glad you stopped by.”

“I’m glad you were here to talk to. Thanks again, JoJo.”

I had to give variations of that talk many times, but I felt the basic advice was usually there: if a girl couldn’t wait, wasn’t it better to find out now? Gary was by no means the most torn up guy over a Dear John letter I met, and I honestly think I prevented some suicides. Maybe through us, guys like him got a small but much needed female reaffirmation of their self-image.

But it wasn’t always like that.

There was one guy I remember in particular, but his problem was a little different: he kept getting letters from his mother telling him that his wife was running all over town on him, and that he ought to dump her while he had the chance. The only problem with that was that he kept getting letters from his wife saying how anxious she was to have him home, and that she was counting the days. She was, too – she had the number of days left on each letter she sent.

For some reason something didn’t smell quite right, so I questioned him a little more deeply. “How does your mother get along with your wife?” I asked him – I’ll call him Fred, just to have a name to use since I don’t remember his real name and very likely never knew it.

“She doesn’t,” he replied flatly. “Mom hates her. She was totally against our getting married, so we had to run off and elope. Mom wanted me to marry the daughter of a friend of hers, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Fred, does that say anything to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could it be your mother is still trying to get you to marry the daughter of her friend? I’m not saying that’s what’s going on, but could it be that way?”

“You don’t think . . .”

“I don’t know what to think. You would know better than I would, but think about it for a minute.” Again, I offered to go get a cookie and some coffee; the Kool-Aid that night was an imitation strawberry that was totally undrinkable as far as I was concerned.

“You’re right,” he said when I came back with a cookie and a paper cup of coffee. “That could be what’s happening. But how do I find out?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “But do you have any friends at home who are plugged into the local rumor mill? If your wife was running all over town like your mother says, wouldn’t they know about it?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said after a moment’s thought. “A couple of them, in fact. I guess I’d better go write some letters.”

“We have stationary and pens right here if you like.”

Fred came back in a couple of weeks later. “Thank you, JoJo,” he said by way of introduction.

Since his story was a little unusual, I remembered him better than normal. “So what did you find out?”

“I just got the third letter telling me that my wife has hardly been out of her parents’ house except to go to work and to church. One of my friends is a waitress at a bar my mother says my wife has been hanging out in a lot, except that my waitress friend hasn’t seen her in there in months.”

“So does that give you some idea of which way the wind is blowing?”

“It sure does,” he smiled. “I should have realized that my mother is still as full of shit as she always has been. JoJo, now what do I do?”

“I can’t tell you,” I told him. “But look. When your tour is up, do you get out or do you have more time to do in the Army?”

“I’ll have another year and a bit,” he said.

“You could take your wife with you, especially if you go to a place like Germany. My brother is there, and he says a lot of guys have their wives with them. They have to live off base if they’re below E-5 (sergeant) and sometimes things get a little complicated, but wouldn’t it be better to have your wife with you than to have her at home with your mother trying to make more trouble?”

“Yeah, I guess it would.”

“I think so too. And when that ends, there’s no reason the two of you have to move back to your home town. Move to California or something.”

“I’m from California.”

“Then move somewhere else, maybe somewhere way across the country.”

“JoJo, that might not be the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. Thanks for listening.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

Nights like that following days like we had, with stories like that, could get wearing. It was always good to get the last of the guys out the door – often well after we were supposed to close – and head back to the hooch for the rest of the evening. We would take showers, fiddle with our hair, do housekeeping chores and things like that while we were desperately trying to unwind from the day.

It was easy to get beer in Phan Loc, and I mean American beer. Usually it wasn’t the best American beer, but we didn’t care. We had a refrigerator in the hooch, a rare thing indeed, and we usually kept some cold. We didn’t drink a lot, but a can or two was a good way to unwind.

After a day like that, when one of us got up to head for the refrigerator, it was not uncommon for Mary to ask, “Hey, while you’re up, would you get me a glass of that lemonade you’re drinking?”

We would get the beer out of the refrigerator and pour it into a glass – we kept a couple of them around just for this reason – and give it to her. “Wow, you have no idea how good that lemonade tastes,” she would often say.

We knew it was beer of course; so did she. And we knew that she knew it, but her Mormon principles wouldn’t let her admit it, so we all cooperated in the little white lie that all of us knew about.

Really, there was a lot of that going around. In fact, the whole war in Vietnam was sort of like that.