KEITH POMEROY [POMEROY - STUPID WAR STORIES: Tales from the Wonder War, Vietnam 1970-1971

STUPID WAR STORIES

Tales from the Wonder War,

Vietnam (1970-1971)

Published by Keith Pomeroy at Smashwords

Copyright, 2015 by Keith Pomeroy

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FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA

It all began with instructions for Army Specialist 5th Class (SP5) Keith Pomeroy, to report to the Battalion Personnel Office for new orders.

The Head of Personnel was a crusty Chief Warrant Officer with a bizarre sense of humor. As I entered his office, I noticed that the room was completely bare except for two pieces of paper, face down on his desk.

Pomeroy, youre in luck. Mr. Pigg informed me.

Strange, I dont feel especially lucky , I thought.

I have two different sets of orders for you. Since both sets are dated the same day, as I see it, you have your choice. He paused for a moment, letting me digest everything. My first thought was solidly grounded in paranoia.

Do you really expect me to pick one of them, sight unseen?

However, after a few more seconds, he began to explain. The first set of orders will send you to the Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, to take EOD School for six weeks and upon completion of the school to be available for world-wide assignment.

I know I swallowed hard at the realization of what Mr. Pigg said. Despite my callow youth, I wasnt a complete dummy. I knew that EOD stood for Explosive Ordinance Disposal, an outfit commonly known to civilians as the Bomb Squad. Rumor had also gone around that the Viet Cong had been laying 40-pound box mines with no metallic parts under paved roads in order to harass heavy vehicle convoys. I also knew that the Army had been looking for select idiots to deal with this problem. Apparently, I was one of the idiots selected. I spent a nanosecond visualizing myself, a well-known klutz; being blown up the first time that I found one of those mines. I also knew that the euphemism world-wide assignment in 1970 meant Vietnam. Obviously, the Army had decided that SP5 Pomeroy was an idiot, and hoped he would bite on their bait. It didnt take a second for me to make up my mind.

I dont care where the other orders send me. Im definitely not going to EOD School. I silently promised myself.

Although I was certain that the other set of orders must be for Nam, since I only had slightly more than a year left to serve, I had to know for sure.

The Personnel Officer, anticipating my question, responded immediately with, Of course, the other set of orders say you go straight to Nam as a Meteorological Devices Repairman.

I didnt hesitate for a second, Ill go straight to Nam.

I thought you might say that. Youll have to take the 3-day Vietnam training class and be re-qualified with the M-16, of course. Have your company clerk get you signed up. You leave here on May 18 for your 30-day leave. You will have to be at Oakland on June 16th. If youre even a day late, youre AWOL and that will cost you a stripe and maybe even time in the stockade. If youre AWOL for more than 30 days, you will be listed as a deserter. And that will land you in Leavenworth for 30 years.

Properly warned, as per Military Regulations, he dismissed me to a pre-planned but spooky future.

Over the next few days, I took my Vietnam Indoctrination Course. Despite the title, this course did nothing more than qualify me to put out brush fires in the hills and canyons of Fort Huachuca, Arizona accidentally set off by enthusiastic instructors slinging flares and smoke grenades all over the place. I also earned my expert rating with the M-16 rifle by liberally spraying lead at a dead cottonwood stump from 30 away. Even a blind man couldnt have missed at that range.

So, after the required 30 day leave, a 22-year old, 64 tall, 170 pound Specialist 5th Class, a seasoned veteran of one year of electronic training, and with one year of stateside duty under his belt, began his tour of duty in exotic Indochina.

ICE STATION ZEBRA

In mid-June, I found myself on a World Airways chartered Boeing 707 with over two hundred other fools, winging our way over the Pacific from Travis Air Force Base to Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside Saigon, Vietnam. The in-flight movie was that great action flick, " Ice Station Zebra ." I had seen the movie at least twice over the previous year.

I find it mildly ironic that the in-flight movie, set above the Arctic Circle, was being shown to a planeload of idiots on their way to toasty Southeast Asia. Little did I know that this was not just happenstance, but an insidious plot designed to torture the troops until their minds turned into pudding.

The run to Honolulu took 5 hours, more than long enough to watch Ice Station Zebra twice. The leg to Guam took 10 hours, more than long enough to watch Ice Station Zebra five more times. The final leg to Tan Son Hut Air Base took 3 hours, just long enough to watch Ice Station Zebra one more time before landing. Needless to say, I know that damned movie very well.

SENSE MEMORIES

For me, Vietnam was a continuous assault on the senses. Visually, every landscape was either dirty green or dirty brown. The land was a cheap agricultural patchwork quilt with all the lowlands uniformly level and all the high ground unnaturally growing out of the uniformity.

Once the plane landed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, I expected that there would be the typical bustle of activity as the troops disembarked. However, no one moved from his seat. It was bizarre to sit in a parked plane with two hundred other troops in total silence. It was as if all two hundred men had decided to hold their collective breath, waiting for the flight crew to crack the hatch. The first tactile reaction happened the second our planes hatch was cracked. From a sixty-eight degree air-conditioned comfort provided by Boeing, the temperature leaped to over a hundred degrees instantly. I could see the rows of troops ahead of me gasping as the heat wave swept through the plane. The physical force of the heat struck all of us hard. Within seconds, I was sweating profusely and my glasses fogged up. I could feel sweat drops running down my back while I was still sitting in my seat. The khaki summer uniforms that we had left the States with, rumpled but still starchy after 18 hours in transit, within minutes had turned into soggy rags.

However, that sensory assault was nothing compared to the smell. Right behind the heat wave was the first whiff of the one sense memory from Nam that I will never forget, the smell of burning shit.

It is interesting to note that burning shit was the American Militarys solution to the sewage problem. The Vietnamese had their own quaint method of sewage disposal; open cesspools covered with used motor oil to keep the smell down.

Under the supervision of US Army Medics, ancient papa-sans with bandy legs would manhandle loaded 55 gallon drum halves to an empty area that was guaranteed to be upwind of everyone. There, they would cover the shit and toilet paper mix in diesel, and ignite it to burn cheerily for hours on end with a putrid black haze that would shame a smudge pot and gag everyone within a 100 yard radius.

Im sorry to say this about an otherwise beautiful country, but I think I will always associate Vietnam with that cloying, sickening odor.

Another distinct odor I will always associate with Nam is the metallic odor of DDT. To keep down the mosquito populations, DDT foggers mounted on Jeeps would cruise through the compound, usually while the troops were watching an outdoor movie. I firmly believe that after my death, my carcass will remain pristine for quite a while, having been well pickled by the DDT. The ironic thing is that even after being dosed with DDT on nearly a daily basis, I still managed to catch a low-level case of malaria that has worn down over the years to a toothless virus, which today only gets me out of Red Cross Blood Drives.