I didn’t know anyone on the flight except two fellow journalists from the DOD School of Journalism. I also don’t remember much about what happened when we landed and arrived at our temporary barracks. I assumed that those soldiers who knew where they were going went to those places. Those of us who didn’t fall into that category did what those of us out of the loop always do. We waited.
But we didn’t just sit on
our bunks reading comic books. There was a war going on and we had to do our
part until our orders came in. I just didn’t think my first job in Vietnam
would be sweeping sand off a wooden sidewalk under the watchful eye of an old
Vietnamese woman who I would soon come to know as a mama san.
She was armed with a
broom like the kind witches often are portrayed carrying—a very short handle
with about two feet of bundled straw attached to the end that required the user
to stoop over awkwardly. She directed me to my area of responsibility but just
so I would not make any mistakes she first showed me the correct manner of
sweeping sand with a witch’s broom.
“See? Like this,” she
screamed in a high pitched yell that carried with it a certain sense of urgency
that I would become quite accustomed to hearing over the course of the next
year.
I took the broom and
mimicked her action but apparently not with the enthusiasm she desired and the
job required. She grabbed the broom back and even more animatedly and with an
ever increasingly shrieking voice she again scolded—
“Like this. Like this, you do,” and she handed
me back the broom and shot me a look that seemed to cry out, what chance do we
have of ever winning this war if they keep sending over boys who can’t even
sweep sand off a walk.
Realizing that this war
was bigger than one inexperienced soldiers learning the finer secrets of
sweeping with a witch’s broom and understanding that I represented not just
myself or even the military but my whole country, I put a little more effort
into the task at hand and she seemed pleased—both by my enthusiasm and by the
apparent authority she seemed to wield over me. I looked around and there were
GI’s in brand spanking new fatigues all over the compound—each one sweeping his
own little piece of sidewalk, each one with his own proud mama san coaxing him
on.
I did this for a day or
two and when I wasn’t sweeping I was hanging around with Gary and Irwin, the
only other two men I knew in Vietnam—each of us sharing only one concern. When
would our orders arrive? Well, we also wondered why we didn’t have orders
waiting for us when we landed.
The three of us were in
the army on a rather common but little understood plan called the three-year
guaranteed enlistment program. None of us had a real good idea of how it worked
and the fact that we didn’t have orders waiting for us when we arrived only
stoked the fires of doubt, confusion, suspicion, and anxiety.
We were all journalists,
designated as such by our army MOS, 71Q20. But we all knew that once we
completed the DOD School of Journalism training, the army had fulfilled its obligation.
It wasn’t an ironclad guarantee by any means and in fact didn’t even pretend to
be.
The whole situation
reminded me of a used tire ad I had seen once on TV, where the price of the
tires were so low that the announcer warned the listener to hurry up “because
at these prices, these tires won’t last.” Maybe the three-year guaranteed
enlistment program wasn’t all it was cracked up to be—and it wasn’t even
cracked up to be much. As we were told at every stage, AIT training was the
only guarantee.
The program worked like
this. I signed up for three years and the army in turn guaranteed that I would
receive training in my chosen MOS field, Information Specialist. If they didn’t
complete their end of the bargain I could get out but if I got the training
then they could assign me to any job they wished to.
Now the unwritten assumption was that they wouldn’t
train you for something if they didn’t intend to use you in that field but the
other unwritten assumption was that soldiers were getting shot every day and
they had to be replaced by someone—and it might just as well be a journalist.
Another unknown was that
even if the army did use you as a journalist, what unit would you be assigned
to? There is a big difference between infantry, airborne, transportation,
medical, and motorized units. There was also a big difference between working
at a company, battalion, division or brigade level. None of these unknowns were
covered in the guaranteed contract I signed the previous November when I
enlisted.
I was very much aware of
the loose ends attached to the contract and was doing my best not to let the
unknowns get the better of me. Nevertheless they would cross my mind about
every hour or so because sweeping a wooden sidewalk on a sandy beach isn’t as
distracting as one might think.
It seemed to Gary and me,
though, that Irwin was doing everything he could to let these concerns get the
better of him. He was convinced that we would never see a typewriter in Vietnam
much less use one in our jobs. More so, he was convinced that the army knew
this when they signed us up. The biggest thing he was sure of, and he was as
certain of this as the third-tour sergeant I had sat next to on the plane, was
that he was going to die in Vietnam.
“Irwin, I don’t even
think the army wants us fighting over here,” I’d try to tell him. “We’ve got no
training and I’m pretty sure they want fighters who know what they’re doing.”
“How many journalist do
you think they need?” he’d reply. We were all aware that our whole graduating
class at the school had received orders for Vietnam.
“Soldiers are being sent
home every day,” I countered.
“In body bags.”
There wasn’t much Gary or I
could do. We had the same concerns as Irwin did but were doing our best to fight
them. He wasn’t making it easy and the simple truth is that he was not much fun
to be around and so we stayed away from him as much as possible. I don’t know
how Gary handled the problem but I kept asking my mama san if there was
anyplace else that needed sweeping. If I couldn’t be a journalist than I was
prepared to be the best damn sidewalk sweeper the army could provide her with.
