dedicated to the memory of the guy
who died next to me, the night we talked about
the Tractatus and Wittgenstein.

 

I.

My post-traumatic stress disorder
started at lift-off from Bien Hoa airfield,
when the plane did a vertical climb to the top
of our collectively held breaths
before leveling off, safely out of rocket range.

A few moments of awesome silence.
then, this is the Captain speaking, we are now in civilian air space.

The cabin explodes in a deafening roar. HOORAH! HOORAH!
The stewardesses commence to pour champagne.

Party started. We made it out, against the odds.
We can’t stop grinning. We scream. We yell. We drink.

Imagine, a plane, full of strangers,
nobody will remember anyone’s name,
who have all just experienced exactly the same,
I repeat, exactly the same,
significant emotional event.

We are having the time of our lives.
No more army transport.
we are in a contracted, commercial jetliner,
streaking across the skyblue pacific,
high above the earthbound clouds,
close to heaven.

It could have been an episode of Twilight Zone:
a case of alien abduction,
or perhaps, a sky-jacking into a parallel universe.

Yes, Fucking A.
we are going to San Francisco with flowers in our hair.

Forty-eight hours later, after express checkout,
processing so proficient, you could hardly
believed it was the same army.

I’m standing on the tarmac at SeaTac airport,
just like that, home.

No parade. No fife and drum. No colors to salute.
It’s the middle of the night,
exhausted I hail a cab.

A civilian about to restart a life.

* * *

My recurring dream for the next six months
is waking up in ‘Nam again, due to some SNAFU
ordering me to stay another 180 days.

It was infuriating. So unfair. I had
done my time! How could they
extend me just like that? For no fucking reason!
whatsoever! Sentencing me to another
six months of death roulette.

Why must I be the victim
of someone else’s fucking mistake? Again?

I would wake in a sweat,
belligerent, exasperated and short of breath.
Relieved and aware that this recurring nightmare
needed to be dealt with.

Which I did,
finally, when I got around
to looking at the orders in my dream
which were made out to one, Shermon Woo,
a clerical error of the first degree.

These orders were not made out for me!

I awoke a final time,
after a blissful night’s sleep,
delighted at how my english major mind
had forged a loophole with my name.

II.

The first day in country, they brush your teeth with gunk
designed to keep the dental rot to a minimum.
Drill you with a shot cocktail to keep you fit:
Malaria, blubonic plague, elephantitis.
The army cares, you are no use sick.

I got sent somewhere to await further orders,
where I swam in an olympic sized pool covered
by a hanging rose garden.

It was a Michelin rubber plantation.
A glint at what was worth fighting for.

We were prepared,
plenty of beer.
Machine gun placements
on the garden walls..

That didn’t last long.
Next day, orders cut, I’m assigned to the badass First Cav.

A mistake I point out to the company clerk
the moment I arrive.

To his credit, he didn’t just laugh.
Politely handed me a transfer request.
No hassle, mistakes are always being made.

Cryptography is my MOS.
My score, for camping outdoors,
on the army aptitude test was below zero.

I wasn’t a grunt. Au contraire,
I was a highly trained specialist,
an english major,
who was supposed to be
assigned to a desk in a room
in the basement of some embassy.
Definitely, not here in the boonies.

While this is being processed,
they tell me to grab my gear and help move an LZ,
which turns out to be
a landing zone produced by an eight ton bomb,
dropped by parachute from a skycrane
to a calculated height above the jungle floor,
and detonated.

After the ground stops shaking,
Lo and behold,
a clearing, flat as a pancake,
ready for occupancy.

Not a hole-in-the-ground bomb crater.
No debris to haul away. Vaporized.
Good old American ingenuity.
An instant parking lot.

I get on the huey headed to the LZ with two other guys.
When we touch down, they jump out running
towards the berm in a crouch.
The rotors are beating.
I follow, crying,
“why are we running?”,
Dust is kicking at my feet.
“They ‘re shooting at us, stupid!”,
one of them shouts back.

III.

You quickly learn not to care too much.
To avoid making friends who might be gone just like that.

It’s too painful to have and then to lose
a friend’s emotional support.

You take care not to want or hope.
You don’t dream of the future.

It’s easier to let things go.
It is among the few things left,
that you can still control.

To be free, eliminate desire, says the Buddha.

You vow not to wallow in self-pity.
You resolve not to be afraid.
You prepare to weather the storm.

My confidence began to wane
after monsoon rains
drowned my copy of Milton,
which I had kept underneath my cot,
carefully annotating
in its margins, notes for my PhD.

It was floating
in a foot of water
that rose in the night
of my first monsoon.

It swelled and bloated like a corpse
bled blue ink like tie die.

It was then, I let go of one of my dreams.
stopped writing, wanting to write, kept busy.

I was pulled out of the Thanksgiving Day
chow line by a second lieutenant
who read me the riot act
for not writing home.

He made it clear
he did not care why
and only wanted to hear
how my folks were not going to complain
to the war department again.

Dear Mom and Dad
Happy Thanksgiving. Thinking of you. Be home soon.

IV.

We were over run twice.

The first time, I stuck with Moose,
who was from Iowa. A big, blond, blue-eyed guy,
who could have been Moose
from the Archie comic books.

I was deathly afraid of friendly fire,
figuring someone would think twice,
before shooting a gook,
who was with Moose.

( I needn’t have worried, real gooks were a foot shorter,
and a hundred pounds lighter and couldn’t speak english.)

That night we ferried the wounded to the medevacs.
Too scared to worry, too busy to pray,
we just grabbed the next stretcher and made our way,
me in front, Moose in back, through the chaos.
I remember holding the weight, watching my steps,
thinking these guys are going home.

Moose left not long after.
Tour over, then disaster.

Gets home to a waiting Dear John letter,
re-ups, and is back in two weeks.
We weren’t too happy to see him.
It was sad, how Moose missed the comradery.
we understood, we were family.

He was still there, on the LZ,
when I rotated to the rear.

V.

4ai (Four-Alpha-India) was my call sign.
I was a black hat,
one of the traffic controllers for the LZ.

We managed the loading dock.
It was our job to get things in and out.
The mail, which made us important and popular,
provisions, munitions, guys going on or coming from R&R,
waved in ‘copters, medevacs, cobra gunships,
We went in with deadly intent,
avenging angels falling from on high.

And,
we made sure the water blivet,
delivered by Chinook, was lowered gently
into place and not bounced into the jungle
where we would have to go after it.

We parked ourselves on the Ho Chi Minh trail
and begged them to come after us,
dared them to take us out.

They responded with Tet.

Every night we posted guards outside the perimeter.
Their job was to report any movement
of NVA or Viet Cong crawling past.
They sat in the night, scared out of their wits, listening.

Being a sitting duck isn’t glamorous.
Mostly long, boring hours being scared,
Listening for the static to go clear.
“4ai, 4ai, this is chickenman, over.”
“Chickenman, this is 4ai, over.”,
you respond sharply, as you bolt up
to get ready for all hell to break loose.

Chickenman was the pilot of the ambulance ship.
He would need me to release
smoke of the correct color,
for him to spot where we were,
under the jungle canopy.

He was bringing wounded in.
He was renowned, for three tours, he answered the call.

VI.

It was a scene from a Fellini film, I thought,
as I looked up and saw
the huey with a five-holer swinging in a sling,
hovering in the air over my LZ.

Some General determined hygiene mattered,
had deluxe shitters constructed.
complete with door, seats, chicken wire, mosquito netting.

I am not shittin’ you!

It was widely debated if this was asking for trouble.
These luxury commodes were simply too damn nice.
Didn’t have the same mojo as the more familiar,
open trench.

Our latrines were so gross,
it was maintained,
you could count on being safer there
in a fire fight.

In the end,
it was conceded,
sitting to shit was a luxury.

If you’ve ever been in the woods for a time
without a shitter, I’m sure you’d agree.

VII.

In the boonies,
under these circumstances,
everyone is superstitious.

It’s a natural response,
given the conditions,
to hedge your bets.

The Ace of Spades for example,
stuck non-chalantly, up front, on the helmet band,
the short-timer card. Signifying the
terrifying countdown
which every short-timer must live through,

Their last day in country.
Everyone has a story.

I knew a dog handler and his dog
who went out on patrol, who didn’t have to go
because it was their last day.

They never cashed-in their Ace.

They say that soldiers sacrifice for God and Country.
I can vouch, no one wanted to be there.

We were not about sacrifice.
We had no idea why we were fighting
this fucking war.

Gave up trying, let them say whatever.

Protesters please get us out of here.

We knew there were patrols with second louies,
that went out of their way to avoid contact with gooks.

They’d go out
on a walk-abouts,
go in circles,
get some rest.

What the heck, that’s great,
at least someone had some sense.

Of course, not everyone did this.

There were guys from military families,
who had been trained to serve.

For their fathers and brothers,
mothers and sisters, they did their best
to honor the corps.

They were brave.

VIII.

Some patrol managed
to capture a komodo dragon,
which entertained us for a few evenings.

What we first thought was some wise-acre Viet Cong
turned out to be this 6ft lizard.

we chained it to a stake, intending
to make him the company mascot.

it would emit a ratcheting sound.
Slowly winding up.
clack… clack…clack… clack… clack… clack…

Building to a pregnant pause,
then release with languid ease,
an absurdly appropriate lullaby,

fuck-uuoo… fuck-uuoo… fuck-uuoo,

all through the night.

Hard to explain exactly how this boosted morale.

The Captain, a West Pointer,
didn’t share our sick sense of humor,
had it set free a couple of klicks away.

He himself got sent home
the second time we got over run,
this time, by a battalion
of North Vietnamese regulars.

A gung-ho officer, he got shot in the balls.

IX.

I remember the morning after
that second time.

The smell of cordite that clung
to the ground like morning fog.

I hope to never smell that smell again.
Bodies draped over the concertina,
where the perimeter had been breached.

Some were collecting ears.
I remember thinking, I ought to be repulsed.

There was a twinge of shame for a moment,
knowing someone now dead, had taken your place.
Nothing you did accounts for your luck
There is no reason for you to be alive
You could have been easily dead,
but the elation I felt.
left no room for anything else,
I hadn’t realized,
life could feel this,
that I could feel this
fantastic.

They say, everyone finds God in their foxhole.
I can attest to that, and I hope he forgives me
for not keeping those promises
I made under duress.

Hot breakfast that morning came by huey,
shades of Apolcalypse Now!
Olive drab canisters packed with
scrambled eggs, bacon and soggy potatoes.
Gallons of coffee.

When it was served it up,
I thought of Dr.Seuss and Sam-I-am
who did not like green eggs and ham.

I had some idea of what Sam
was talking about,
as I perused my plate.
greenish eggs from ammo cans
had a greenish, chemical pallor.
It looked so disgusting, barely edible.
But, I had to eat something
to calm my nerves,
my gut.

I take a bite. Shock, it is oh, so delicious.
I’m delirious, A shudder passes,
my body begins to relax.

There,
another spoonful, mouthful, swallow, breath,
You’re in the First Cav. get a hold of yourself.

As I am eating,
I imagine their dead, assembling in a clearing,
freed now from hunger and pain,
watching, as we are,
their bodies being stacked for burning.

The comrades we lost
were in body bags,
neatly zipped up,
waiting on the tarmac,
for graves registration.

X.

Every evening, my chore is to call in the body count.
Killed, Wounded, Missing In Action.

We were winning by impressive TV numbers.
Napalm, Agent Orange, carpet bombing,
gunships raining bullets with monsoon fury.
We were superior in everything,
but they didn’t care.
It did not matter.
We kept winning, they kept coming.
They suffered terrifying losses.
Men, women, children laying down
their lives for their country.
They were adding new chapters to the Art of War.
They had nothing,
but they knew they would win.
It was only a matter of time.
They would outlast us.
We would tire of killing them.

It wasn’t hard to see. The odds
of getting out of there alive and well,
and in one piece, were depressingly long,

Then, my transfer came in.

No one could believe it. I couldn’t believe it,
The paperwork actually went somewhere,
got picked like a ticket in a lottery.

And it was my ticket! The fortunes of war!
I was out of the boonies in a blink.

Back in the rear,
I ran a crypto rig in Quan Loi.
hunkered down for the duration.
Forwarded orders for Nixon’s
secret campaign to bomb Cambodia.
Held my breath.
Read boxes of mysteries to kill time.

Waited like a school boy watching
the clock crawl through those last,
agonizing minutes just before
the final bell sounds.

Counting down the days, a short-timer now.

XI.

We landed men on the moon when I was in ‘Nam.
I read about it in the Stars and Stripes.

They said the whole world was watching.
I wasn’t one of them.
Didn’t get the notice.
Simply missed the event.

That December, Bob Hope came to tape
the annual Christmas show
along with the Gold Diggers and Neil Armstrong.
They needed a live audience.

It was sweltering hot.
They made us wait.
No beer, no food, no dope,
They took forever to setup.

We booed and jeered when he came out.
Hope was a bore, a Salvation Army bell ringer,
Santa raising morale for the war.

Enough, enough with the Santa, we want to open gifts.
“Girls! Girls!”, we chant, until he reluctantly relents.

The Gold Diggers gambol forth: smiles, legs, breasts.
Resistance dissolves, again, Santa scores.

Returning to the stage with that iconic Bob Hope swagger,
He leans, he looks out with that Bob Hope smirk,
“All mine, Boys. All mine”, as if to imply,

If you’re going to be naughty.
If you not going to play nice.
I’m going home with my toys.
Tits and ass have a price.

It’s humiliating to have to submit.
He tells a lame joke.
We laugh on cue.
The girls come out.
Wiggle, dance and sing,
There’s barely a sound in the house
The only thing stirring is testosterone.
The girls get thunderous applause.
Then a slight pause,
costume change, rearrange the set.
Then on to the next skit.

This goes on for two sweaty hours
under a tropical Vietnam sun.

At long last, Neil Armstrong takes the stage.
Thanks us for the job we’re doing.
Says something about the moon.
And, of course,
the importance of a college education.

I kept wondering
how much of this is really
getting to the folks back home?

It was theatre, we were extras.
Back home, they were asking to rewrite the script.
There was talk of alternative endings.

It was blatantly obvious,
how none of this was ever meant for us.

Most of what they shot
wound up on the cutting room floor.

XII.

I did not rage against the war.
When my call came, I went
to become a man.

It’s been a struggle ever since
to recall why this was so important
or even what it meant.

My best friend fled to Canada.
His family disowned him.

I could have tried drinking a cup of soy sauce
( I heard that worked ).

but I chanced instead to prove my worth
and was tested.

I went to not disappoint myself.
And was lucky to make it back.

I think of those guys
who never got to live their lives,
who got drafted when there was a Draft.
What did it, does it mean, their sacrifice?

What difference did it make?

FNG’s, who joined the National Guard,
doubly fucked when they got called up.

The kids who chose to serve their country
at the recommendation of a judge.

We went because we had to.
Because we didn’t have the guts not to,
or the moral fortitude to resist
the lure of Honor and Glory
and the rest of that horseshit.

dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

We were lambs to the slaughter.
There was no altar.
It was a disgraceful mess.

Blame the politicians,
Blame the generals,
Blame the military industrial complex.

They were all to blame.
And don’t forget yourself.

I have always been suspicious of survivor memory.
How it shapes the truth to fit the circumstances,
tactfully, like a funeral director.

Smooth stories have rounded corners.
Histories are written with erasures.
Nations do not express regret.
Nor do they feel shame.

To the children listening,
I want just to say,
You can’t trust us.
You shouldn’t trust yourselves.

A spadeful of the past
yields many a dead and bitter truth.

I sift through these ashes
to find any clue, which might lead
to a better version of ourselves.

We were boys who wanted to be men.
Who never gave up.
Who never caved-in.

We went to war.
We saw for ourselves.
We had nothing to be proud of.

This is 4ai, I am Lazarus...
speaker for the dead.

The rest is silence.

XIII.

I live in Denver now.

Last year, I attended the Veterans Day parade.
It was a bit brisk for Denver, though sun was out.

The parade was well attended.
There were floats, antique cars, midget cars, Shriners, the drum and bugle corps.
It was quite the affair.

The veterans marched with their group
in review. Era by era.

World War Two vets, the placard said,
there were a few, as you can imagine.

Korean War Era, the one that never ended,
there were a few more.

Then, the sign said, Vietnam Era.

There one vet stood.
I suddenly flooded with shame.

This is my atonement for not
being there, along side, standing with him.

I sit here, proof-reading what I’ve written,
listening to myself through the static.

These are the beads of my rosary.
I pretend they are worn and hard to describe.
but, this isn’t so.

I probe the past with a blind man’s touch,
intentionally to feel the pain of memory,
to honor them.

I feel the chiseled edges of their names
engraved on the wall, still sharp,
as the day they were cut.

I tell you this with a catch
in my throat.

It’s taken some time
and considerable effort to get this out.

Forty-five years, more or less.

I should have spoken up sooner,
but, as I’ve tried to say, I didn’t know how.

Well, it’s out now,
thanks to the help of my poetry e-pals,
and other good and generous friends.

I do feel better.