My War - Installment 23

"I understand you’re very interested in flying H-13's for the Scouts. That's what John Talbot and some of the others have told me."

"Yes, I'd really like that Dave."

"The CO tells me you’re a pretty fair pilot. He recommended that you fly with us, if you want to after knowing what happened today."

"I sure do. I've wanted to ever since I took that ride with John. I like the smaller ships."

"Good! Day after tomorrow you’re flying wing on me. You are now Apache one six (1-6)."

"Terrific. Thank you! I just don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything. We have "first light" here, and then we'll be off for the day doing some recon. Think you can handle flying ten or more hours a day?"

"Sure can! Thanks again."

We all sat around the mess tent and had some more wine and coffee with our pumpkin pie. We were all relaxed even though we had some loses that day. It was one of the prices of war, having friends that get killed in combat. We all knew that the possibility was there, that we each might not come back on any given day.

At the OPs meeting we did find out who had been wounded that afternoon. One of the Scout pilots who had been seriously wounded had been immediately med evaced (evacuated) to the hospital at Qui Nhon.

I was informed that I was to ride with the supply specialist and another EM (enlisted man) to Qui Nhon. At the hospital there I was to retrieve the pilot's SOI (a list of security related frequencies etc.).

"Tomorrow gentlemen we will begin an operation with the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam. There has been considerable evidence of enemy activity in and around the 506 Valley. In summary: The Cav will be acting as a blocking force, inland. We will be deployed along a north-south line. The ARVN will close the pincer and moving from an area near the coast they will drive the enemy toward us."

Crap, there we were getting into what sounded like a major operation and I would not even be around. What kind of luck was I having; an errand boy to be sent to Qui Nhon. The EM's that were going to Qhi Nhon were not cleared to pick up or possess an SOI so; I might as well try and enjoy the trip to the big city. Oh, well. At least the next day I would be in the Scout section. I checked with Specialist Ramirez, the supply specialist, to see what time we were leaving the next morning. He told me that he had a few things to take care of in the morning and he'd be ready at around 0800 hours.

QUI NHON

Morning arrived all too soon. I almost felt guilty, not heading out to the flight line early to preflight a helicopter. I sat around the coffee pot for what seemed an eternity waiting to go to Qui Nhon with Ramirez and his partner. I started to feel that if I sat there much longer I'd grow root out of my ass and be fastened to the darn bench in the mess tent.

0800 hours finally arrived and Ramirez came by looking for me. I gladly left the mess and climbed into the cab of the truck on the passenger side. The truck was a jeep type ton and a half, with a canvas top over the cab, the rear of the truck was open. There were two other men riding in the back of the truck, one more than I had expected. It was obvious to me that Ramirez was uncomfortable with my presence in the cab. I could not imagine why. I had never done anything to him and all the other men and I seemed to get along fine. Well, I guessed that I might feel uncomfortable if I were him, he couldn’t play the big cheese with me along.(both the passengers were of lower rank than he.)

This trip was one of many that Ramirez made to pick up items for our PX. He also delivered and picked up laundry and so forth. He regularly made runs to Phu Cat and Qui Nhon for these purposes.

It had been the first time I had been in a wheeled vehicle since my trip to An Khe, when I had first arrived at the Cav, not that it was that long ago. We wound our way out of our compound and south along the squadron runway, out the gate of our barbed wire perimeter and joined the road leading south southeast to Phu Cat, which was around 20 kilometers away.

We were about 15 kilometers out from Little Hong Kong when we drove past an Air Force installation. I had never flown down that far and really did not know that the base was there. I guess I just was not ready for what I saw. The perimeter was a wire mesh type fence with razor wire rolls on top and outside of it. There were guard houses on the corners and along the fence at regular intervals. It reminded me of a few prisons that I had seen back in the states. As we moved along the road we could see air conditioned billets and other permanent type structures. It was unreal. How could this be? I did not know that we were so close to something like this, especially considering our gypsy like dwellings and lack of facilities, such as showers and toilets. I kept my thoughts to myself as we continued down the road.

Within a few minutes we were entering Phu Cat. The village appeared to have been one that had been established long before the U.S. round eyes, had arrived in Vietnam. The buildings were not like those in An Khe. They were of local materials and design and most of the buildings, at least the older ones, had thatched roofs. The newer buildings had corrugated metal roofs with grass sides or sides of woven mats, these buildings had a more temporary air about them. Ramirez pulled up to a building stopped the truck and jumped out. We were dropping a load of laundry off.

I had not thought about it before, maybe I was too busy, but there were no Vietnamese at all within the perimeter of our base, at Little Hong Kong. I had heard many times while in training about hiring servants to clean your house and do laundry and other tiresome tasks, but hadn't really concerned myself about it. I found out from Ramirez that it was policy not to allow any Vietnamese within the unit's perimeter for any reason. I wondered if this included ARVN that we were working with.

Every other building seemed to be a shop of some kind. The shops were all orderly and neat in appearances. There were people milling about everywhere, which was normal. The village was kind of nice. There were palm trees all through the village providing shade and coconuts and what ever else they provide, like leaves for weaving palm mats and thatching and hats and lots of other items.

The clouds had lifted somewhat and the day was turning out to be bright and clear. Little shafts of sunlight glinted through here and there illuminating palm trees and huts of the village, in addition to the ancient temple ruins of the surrounding countryside, with their golden glow.
Darn, I had forgotten my camera. It had become a ritual to take my camera with me in the aircraft, but had not seen much to take a picture of. Maybe I did not use it as much as I should have, but at least I had it with me. That day I did not have it. Maybe it would be an interesting day after all; flying was not everything in life, was it?

I walked along the main and only street of Phu Cat, browsing here and there at the multitude of items for sale. Here there was not the variety of electronic paraphernalia like in Saigon, but then this was a relatively small village. There were many hand made items, rings, guitars. Mine had come from somewhere in the village, baskets and other woven items. There was also local produce for sale, both that of the local agriculture and the produce of the flesh. There were bars, tattoo parlors, massage parlors, cat houses and so forth.

Ramirez honked the horn on the truck and pulled up beside me. I climbed back into the cab and offered Ramirez one of the cokes that I had just bought. He thanked me; his strangeness toward me seemed to have vanished. Ramirez popped the gear shift into first, let out the clutch abruptly and off we bounced down the road. He slowly manipulated the truck through the masses of people, finally emerging from the south edge of the town where he shifted into a higher gear and we merrily moved on.

I was oblivious to the fact that we were in a war zone. Everything seemed so quite. The roadside scenery was beautiful with the rays of sunlight scattering about, lighting everything with beautiful shades of gold. It was turning into a very nice morning and what I believed would be a great day. The fields along the road between Phu Cat and Qui Nhon were neat and well taken care of. There were lots of temple ruins always on a hillock. I wondered if the little hills that all these temples were on were man made - probably so, what matter?

We continued bumping along the rutted road moving closer and closer to the coast and Qui Nhon. I decided that I would get Ramirez to drop me at the hospital where I could check on the missing SOI, then he could pick me up or I could try and meet them somewhere.

We could see Qui Nhon in the distance. In addition we were starting to see the inevitable refugee hovels, which infested the outskirts of the larger cities. I was glad that I was with someone that knew where they were going. It would not have bothered me to fly into a strange place like Qui Nhon, but I would not care to drive there. Qui Nhon was looming larger. I thought of it as being the port where the 1st Cav had landed, just a little more than a year before. It would be said in years to come that during this period, including the time which I was there, that the 1st Cav was writing the book on Air-mobile operations.

The closer we came to the city the more traffic we encountered. Three wheeled Lambretta scooters with people, in unbelievable numbers, piled on and hanging on everywhere. Each time I saw one of them I marveled, that the tiny Lambretta motor was able to move all that mass. It would certainly be a good advertisement. There were small Honda 50's with whole families hanging on and moving briskly along the rutted streets. Jinrikisha’s loaded with people moved along he busy streets in ever increasing numbers. Street side shops were everywhere, made from scraps of everything you can imagine. We moved slowly on through the throngs of people. Conical coolie hats moved along in seemingly endless currents, up and down every street. Noisy, sing-songy chatter reverberated everywhere in the streets. Jinrikisha’s of every description, jinrikishas that were pedal powered and jinrikisha’s that were pulled by people like a horse and buggy. There were carts of every shape and size and description, almost all human powered. There were porters carrying everything imaginable on yokes over their shoulders or on their backs and heads or what ever. There were people moving, what appeared to be huge masses of agricultural stuff, pile high on bicycles. It was all fascinating.

There were children of every shape and size from new-born to teenagers. Teenagers carried their little brothers or sisters on their hips everywhere they went. There were kids and adults relieving themselves along side the roadway. We passed shops and bars galore, massage parlors, and the ever present cathouses complete with whores standing in the doorways, showing off their wares. Jewelry shops, pet shops, electronics shops, and more bars and restaurants were ever present. The sites were a far cry from what I had become accustomed to in other areas of Binh Dinh Province. Here there was little evidence of the fact that there was a war going on, other than the multitudes of refugees that we had passed on the outskirts of town and the presence of military and white mice everywhere.

We continued to wind our way through the streets of Qui Nhon toward, I thought, the hospital and other military areas, when Ramirez suddenly pulled into a side street and stopped abruptly in front of a bar and grill. I could not believe it.

"The hospital is only a few blocks from here Mr. Rollason. We'll take you there in a few minutes."

Ramirez jumped out of the truck and went inside.

"OK," I said, to nobody in particular.

We waited patiently, within a few minutes Ramirez came out and climbed back in behind the wheel.

"We can meet back here if that's all right with you Sir? I mean, if you don't mind walking back from the hospital." Ramirez nervously twisted his wedding band while he spoke.

"Fine with me, I like watching people and that'll give me a chance to do some people watching and get some exercise to boot."

The day had warmed considerably compared to what we had been having, at least there on the coast. My shirt was splotched on the back with sweat from hours of contact with the truck's plastic covered seats. Within a few minutes we had pulled to a stop in front of the hospital. I sprang out eager to finish my assigned duties, so that I could spend some time prowling the streets of Qui Nhon, taking in the sights and goofing off.

The hospital was a large complex of buildings built in more permanent fashion. They were not the usual temporary type of buildings that I had expected. I surmised that they were more permanent so that the Vietnamese could use them, long after we were gone from their country.

Not being too familiar with hospitals and feeling a bit out of place, even though I had, as a kid, wanted to be a doctor, until I found out I had not studied hard enough in high school. I walked around trying to look confident in my mission. I moved into and slowly along a hallway that was used as a receiving area.

Men were lined up on stretchers and gurneys along the walls, two abreast in some places. The further along that I advanced the more critical were the wounds. Triage, I believe is what it’s called. Treatment by sorting according to a hierarchy of the needs of the wounded along with the capacity to handle them in an orderly manner and also taking in to consideration whether or not immediate attention would enable a person to survive or not.

Here in the hallway you could find men with simple gunshot wounds, small holes moderately seeping blood, broken bones in temporary splints, compound fractures, red and white, oozing, broken, shattered, and mutilated flesh, head wounds wrapped in red stained bandages - some of the men laying in bewilderment on their gurneys. There were screams of terror and confusion spontaneously echoed reverberating in the hallway. There were men with parts of themselves missing some parts, having been placed beside them, on the stretchers, in ice packs. You could see men with hands missing, legs or feet, perhaps an eye gone by some mechanism of war or some gruesome missile. Wounds from punjee stakes were there with the stakes still in place within their victims.