To War: With Caution

To War: with Caution
(On to Vietnam, October of 1971)



The buses, bordered by 240-soldiers, mostly privates, sergeants and corporals, and the Commanding Colonel stood adjutant to the officers and their wives not yet on the bus, and a few wives and several who were not wives, perhaps women-friends of the officers if not relatives, stood in the windy morning sun and kissed their war heroes—the very ones that the public called war mongrels —goodbye, as us privates and corporals, and sergeants sat on the bus waiting for them to kiss the last kiss with our orders in hand—the piece of paper, with its content we had already know long before we got it—orders to go and fight in some far-off distant place called Vietnam, a place no one in America had heard about ten-years previously, and only a few soldiers talked about coming home from Vietnam that past five-years.
I had already known the content of that paper for now, going on six months, while serving a tour of duty in Germany, it said something like this:

“…on this date below…you will depart from Frankfurt, West Germany to Fort Lewis, Washington, for Jungle Training, and then proceed onto the Republic of South Vietnam, forthwith and underarms, and with vigilance dispatched, to, at this time destination unknown….”

Then I put the paper back into my jacket pocket, I had folded it, and figured I had looked at it enough—the officers at ease behind the colonel, —the wives and other women folk, gathered from the back to alongside the young officers, and one young lady who had not been talking much since I was looking, twenty-five feet from the bus, kissed him with a hug and tears, as we all sat in the bus waiting, with boring if not flat and jealous and unpleasing faces, in the irregular sun, that crossed over the bus, then got covered by a cloud then crossed over again when the cloud shifted, and the colonels voice could be heard, telling again the old stale patriotic gesticulation—along with giving the sign ‘V’ sign for victory: as if we were all going off to World War II, to fight for land and liberty, and here we were with papers that said we were going to some unknown spot which forever no one gave a damn about, nor would afterwards, nor did even the folks we were sent to fight for—the south Vietnamese.
And then that same voice went into an actual nostalgic limbo, choking up, almost hoarse, and we all looked on the bus, and perhaps they all looked on the few buses behind us, and I heard someone say, “What is this?” The colonel was talking about Vietnam as if it was a country that was going to attack us. When in essence we all somewhat knew, it was a proxy country to take the beatings the United States and Russia and China to boot, couldn’t seem to do to one another face to face. But at least the colonel was done now. Then he faced us, an older man, and looked at us a moment, certainly in no way as he had the officers, perhaps a kindly man no doubt, a voice of blood and steel and red hot fire, his brass shinned like it.
“For Gad’s sake,” that same voice said on our bus, then a dozen or more voices sounded on the bus, and a voice said, “If we got this much time, let us all go home and kiss our wives and girlfriends, we got them too…!” and everyone started laughing, and the colonel had turned about saw our impatience—and perchance, our indifference, and the young officer I had been looking at with his pretty wife, she was now looking at me, not wanting to let go of her solider boy.
It was a drowsy, hazy mooring, in February (1971), and I slid back into my seat, neat and quiet and as the bus took off, and it went over the bumpy road, rising and falling and then smooth again, I figured: this is just like normal life.


No: 564 (1-11-2009)