The First Night

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by Mark Orr

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I like the night because it's consistent. Rain or shine... it's always dark.

Our platoon Sgt. had been right there with us checking out I.D.'s of the civilians in the rice paddies all afternoon. When we finally located our night time perimeter somewhere in the Eight Click Ville it became apparent that he'd been also thinking up the little speech he would give us when we were finished with the day's patrol. He rounded up the three or four of us "cherries" and we had an informal meeting right there in the front yard of that bombed out and half roofless old house that would serve as the command post that night for our half of the platoon. It was one of those "this is how it's gonna be" lectures that any good (or bad) leader should give the new guys.

To tell the truth it was pretty generic. "I'm the boss. Here's the rules.... Any questions?"

I had a question. I wanted to know what was that sweet smelling smoke cloud just hanging there in the thick wet heat of the evening behind him?

(I swear I heard a chuckle somewhere)

"That's Davis and I'm glad you brought that up. My feelings on smoking pot are this and this etc..." Basically, he explained that he did not smoke pot and that he'd better not ever catch anyone stoned when they were on guard or any other time when they were supposed to be alert. His concept was quite logical. "What you do with your life is up to you, but if you put MY life in jeopardy... I'll kill ya."

"So what's that cloud?"

"Well that's Davis, and apparently he's lit up a joint over there . Davis is crazy, but he's a good man. He won't be on guard for a couple of hours and he knows it. He always takes the last guard shift."

"Well how long have you been here and who's been here the longest?"

The Sgt. explained that he was "short" with only something like 200 days left in the field before his year was up. Further, that the "shortest" guy in the platoon was "Swede" who only had about sixty days to go.

[lingo: Short. (adjective) Pronounced "short" Always spoken loudly or shouted. When shouted, the word short declared to everyone within earshot that the one shouting had only a "short" time left to serve in Vietnam. It might be followed by an exact count of the days such as: "Short!! 150 and a Wakeup!" which meant the soldier had 151 days left to serve in Vietnam. The last day was not counted. It was called a Wakeup.] I never understood that wakeup part. How could you wake up when you're never allowed to sleep? It must have started with someone who had a rear job.

Anyway, I decided to hang out with Swede for a while. He was the shortest and therefore had lasted the longest. I had to find out how he'd done it. Swede was a Spec 4 in rank which is average for a normal groundpounder near the end of his tour. One can get promoted to E-5 (Sgt.) from there, but you gotta shine or be a suck-up. Swede did not care about either one. He just wanted to get home.

Fortunately, he was a nice guy and willing to answer all my million questions pertaining to how he lasted so long. When he spoke of being "too short for this shit" I couldn't relate... and he said that often. As for me, I was about 356 and a wakeup at the time. That's nothing to shout about... believe me.

We were eating C-rations at the moment, so the first lesson was not to use those stinky heat tabs that come with the C-rations to heat your food. If they don't get enough air when burning, they give off a gas that's awfully similar to tear gas . The best thing to use was a plastic explosive called C-4 which you could carve out of a broke open claymore mine. A quarter sized ball could thoroughly heat a can of whatever. Boiling a cup of water was a snap. One claymore was sacrificed every week or so for it's C-4 content, and replaced by a new one that came out with resupply. That much (1 lb.) took care of a squad pretty much, and the platoon sergeant would usually try to order a couple of sticks of the same substance packaged in 1/2 lb. strips and intended for use in making shape charges. The C-4 would burn much hotter than the tabs and wouldn't go out once it really started burning. It was a perfect way to heat the canned meals quickly. The perfect begining to any good fire was a little bit of C-4.

After chow I talked to Davis for a while. He wasn't smoking at this point but he was still smiling and that was good to see. I figured if one can do what we gotta do and still smile once in a while... it won't be so bad. If his calmness and coolness under fire (which I would soon witness) were the result of his habit... well you certainly can't say it was a bad habit. Pure logic would have you saying "...more power to him."

When dusk came I went with Swede just outside our perimeter where he showed me how to rig up a trip flare. Another shortcut. "Get yourself a couple of matching bamboo sticks and tape the flare to one of them. Then if you wrap about fifty feet of trip wire around the other stick and lash them both together you've got a portable trip flare system that you can just roll up in the morning and pack on your back until the next night." It was kind of a hassle and he was "too short" to be doing it, but he'd rather roll up an un-tripped flare every morning for the next sixty days than to ever see one go off again.

No sooner did we get back to the command post than the platoon Sgt. told Swede he'd have to go back and take down his flare. And order had come over the radio that we were to make a night patrol, and we'd be going right down the trail that Swede had just wired. You have to be very cautious when taking down a flare since they are set to ignite by the slightest touch. And it was getting too dark to see anything, so that made it all the more dangerous. A trip flare wouldn't kill you probably, but the molten magnesium they spit out would definitely piss you off and give you something to remember.

Swede was again "...way too short for this shit," but he was the only one (besides me) who knew where the well hidden flare might be found. He went off grumbling and came back in a few minutes having been successful at disarming the flare. The Sgt. picked several volunteers for the night patrol mission and we took off out into the village an hour or so after complete darkness set in.

We were looking and listening and moving very quietly in and around the Eight Click and along the small river. I remember something dropping in the water and getting our complete attention for a while. It was probably a rat or something. All the safeties were clicked off and we covered the area for about 15 minutes very quietly. When there was no further movement or sound, we moved on. After about an hour and a half we ended up back at the command post. The night patrol had been very tense for nearly every step. They always were. And it was always good to make it back to the command post even though it meant that we'd now have to pull guard and sleep in the dirt. The only other good part of the night patrol was that usually you could leave your heavy equipment at the command post and carry nothing but your weapon, ammunition, and a couple of grenades.

I pulled first or second guard duty and as soon as my shift was over and I layed down, the guy who replaced me got startled by automatic rifle fire close by. It was no more that 25 or 30 yards from us in the opposite direction from where we had patrolled. We all got up and ready for the worst, but it just turned out to be some ARVN's (South Vietnamese Army sldiers. pronounced "R Vins") shooting something they'd seen moving in the river. Probably the rat. The other platoons were far away but they heard the firing and radioed us to see what was happening. When our platoon Sgt. told them "it wasn't us" the Captain must have checked out his map for the location of other "friendlies" working our area and deduced that ARVN's were doing the shooting and that it was probably nothing. "ARVN's will shoot at anything."

After the alert was over, I asked what would have happened if we'd run into these ARVN's while on patrol. The Sgt. snickered and said that "ARVNs don't go on night patrols." Apparently someone in our high command knew where those ARVNs were located for the night and had thus arranged for our night patrol to steer clear of them.

"Great!" I thought. "Another way to get killed." Besides the NVA and the Vietcong we could just as easily get killed by ARVNs who were notoriously nervous at night and apt to shoot at anything.

I didn't sleep well that night if I slept at all. (Come to think of it, I haven't slept well since.) It wasn't the ARVNs shooting up the river or the night patrol so much as it was the complete and permanent lack of any hope of ever having a solid eight hours to sleep. Every night in the field, every grunt had to pull guard for two or three different shifts. Four hours of sleep at one time was the very best you could ever hope for.

It's sometimes stated how Vietnam Vets looked aged 10 years when they came home and something about the way there eyes looked vacant or just unexplainably strange. I saw a picture of myself that was taken as soon as I got home and yeah... I looked dead. But shit! I hadn't slept or bathed for a year... whad ya expect?

Orr