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  There was a massage parlor across from the front entrance of the base, and a million bars with women to play with. I soon learned that New Costa Doza was the place to be. I joined other squadron members at the Club Black Cat, our official Mag-16 hangout bar and whorehouse, and spent the next three months having a ball. The bars had approval signs over the doors that meant the whores had VD cards and were inspected by a Navy doctor once a month. No VD! How nice! It was heaven!

  Of course, there were guys from Utah or some other spaceship state who said they wanted to marry their Japanese whores. “Are you nuts?” I asked. “At 18 they look good, but at 30 they are fat and ugly. Do you want your kids in Utah to have slanted eyes, you moron?” The Japs were there for our entertainment, not to take back to Turdsville, USA.

  My boss at Fatima, Gunny Sergeant Woods, was one hell of a squared-away Marine. On one side of his desk was a picture of his American wife and kids back in the States. On the other was a picture of his Okinawa whore. He loved her too, and wasted a lot of money on her. I got a real kick out of Gunny Sergeant Woods.

  He purchased his Okinawa whore, Nico, a new refrigerator, TV and air conditioner. He lived with her when he was off duty, and her whole place was decorated in PX furniture. I spent time with him drinking at the apartment with her. She said she would love him until the end of time. Sure! He was an idiot, but he also was having a great time partying.

  In September, the last remaining members of Mag-16 Headquarters Group received orders to report to LST-1122 for our trip to Da Nang, RVN. Gunny Sergeant Woods almost had a nervous breakdown. The not-so-free love feast was over! We were 50 enlisted guys headed for war. We were issued rifles, 782 gear, helmets and all the other necessary stuff, then we all headed up to the Club Black Cat. At our final party, we wrote our names on the ceiling and walls with magic markers. I was a PFC then—two years later when I returned to the same bar, I was a decorated Sergeant, and half of the 50 men who had written their names on the wall were dead.

  Gunny Sergeant Woods got all the men down to the dock at Naha to board LST-1122 for our trip to Vietnam. We were all pretty sad and felt we were leaving paradise. Even our barracks maids were crying when we left.

  Well, low and behold, a miracle occurred! The LST could not leave without a generator bound for the Enlisted Men’s Club at Da Nang Air Base, so we were told to come back the next morning. Happy day, we loaded into three trucks, and I rode in the jeep with Gunny Sergeant Woods, who headed for his girlfriend’s for one last time.

  When we arrived, she was already screwing a Navy E-7 enlisted man on Gunny Sergeant Woods’ PX-purchased sofa. Gunny Woods broke the door down and kicked the living crap out of his Navy replacement. He then went nuts and wanted to kill the girl. I had to drop him like a bad habit, which hurt my right hand. I dumped his limp body in his jeep and we got out of there before the Navy Shore Patrol or local Japanese cops came. The Navy guy was lying on the floor bleeding. I hope he learned his lesson: “Don’t be claim-jumping on a Marine’s whore!” I had to babysit Gunny Woods at the Club Black Cat for the rest of the night. We all got drop-dead drunk and sang Marine Corps songs until dawn.

  Finally, at 5:00 AM, the Gunny Sergeant returned to reality. He told us to get our stuff together and get our sorry, son-of-a-bitch asses aboard LST-1122 before we missed the boat to ’Nam. We all sadly said goodbye to Mamma San and our girlfriends. I sang “Happy Trails to You” going out the door.

  OUR LUXURY YACHT

  It was a hot August day in 1965 when we reported for the second time to LST-1122. We were all quite surprised when the Captain and his few fellow officers introduced themselves, and then introduced the crew of about 20 sailors. They weren’t pricks like the crew of the William B. Mitchell. On the contrary, this was a fun ship. The Captain was like a yacht racing Captain from Long Island with a handpicked champion crew.

  The Captain said everyone had a job to do, and ours was to help his crew load and chain down military equipment. He also said if we wanted to eat, we had to load the food on board. Another Marine and I were asked to help chain down jeeps and trucks on the deck. The sailors did it two or three times first, to make sure we knew how to do it correctly. The job was a ball-breaker, but everyone helped out everyone else as we chained down 20 or 30 jeeps and trucks to the deck. After about four hours, we were ready to go. A sailor threw the anchor lines aboard, the ship backed up, and off we went to Vietnam.

  We were allowed to go anywhere on the ship we pleased. We all ate together on four or five dining tables in the mess hall. I couldn’t believe officers and enlisted men were eating in the same room, all talking and having a good time. The cook even asked each Marine how he wanted his eggs cooked in the morning. The crew shared their music, books and magazines, played board games in the mess hall with us, and told all sorts of funny stories about their travels.

  If the 20-man crew needed help, we all volunteered. It was the first time I can remember the Marines and Navy getting along. If you wanted, you could visit the Captain while he steered the ship, ask him dumb questions, and look at the charts. The Navigation Officer was happy to show us where we were in the middle of the South China Sea. We all volunteered for watch and stood on deck with a portable radio to make sure we didn’t crash into any other ships. The LST-1122 had radar, but they also liked to have volunteers stand watch and make sure nothing came loose that was chained down to the deck.

  It was a very pleasant experience to sit by the bow, watching the night sky and the porpoises jumping next to the boat and the flying fish flying by the bow. Sometimes up there I felt like Eric the Red, the Viking who discovered Newfoundland.

  The Captain was very grateful for all the little things we did. When he was busy we stayed out of his way. When he had time to relax, we listened to his stories about his ship. The ship and his crew were like one. He reminded me of the Captain in a movie I saw years later, “Das Boot,” about the crew of a U-boat that went through hell with their Captain during World War II.

  The South China Sea can get really rough in a hurry. The Captain announced a typhoon was headed our way that we couldn’t out-run, so he put out his sea anchors and tried to ride it out. The Captain showed us where the lifeboats and rafts were, how to use the life jackets, and how to survive if we went down. He even let us wear the crew’s extra foul weather gear if we needed to go outside.

  We anchored the ship into the wind. The Captain said a prayer to God, asking God to protect us against the typhoon. LST-1122 was a long, narrow, flat-bottomed boat that opened in the front so trucks and tanks could be driven out of it. It was so loaded down with military equipment you would think that it would not pitch up and down in rough weather. Wrong! The ship rocked and rolled up and down until just about everyone on board got sick. Sailors don’t get sick? Bullshit!

  I welded my body to the mess hall stools and fed my face with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I didn’t throw up during the two-and-a-half-day storm, but I will say that walking around the ship was like walking on an earthquake. You had to hold on to the bulkheads and hatches to move about. I just about tied myself into the top bunk and held onto the pipes above my head so I wouldn’t fall out. Everyone else got so seasick that they no longer threw up puke, only white stuff. I kept eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drinking milk.

  Finally the storm ended, we lived, and we didn’t lose any equipment overboard. The cook made the best beef stroganoff I ever had to celebrate our victory over the storm. Our LST-1122 made it. One good little ship! Thank you, God!

  THE D-DAY LANDING

  Finally, after six or seven days at sea, we hit the coast of Vietnam. We traveled up the river to Da Nang and got ready for an amphibious landing at Red Beach. The Captain and his crew had made the trip back and forth from Naha, Okinawa to Da Nang every month since March 1965. They knew no VC and North Vietnamese troops were going to oppose our landing, but they didn’t want to rain on our parade, so they told Gunny Sergeant Woods to get the troops ready. Th
ey handed out ban-doleers of 7.62 ammo to load up our M-14 magazines. We fixed bayonets and got ready for a bloody landing.

  They told the Gunny to give us a fast lecture about stomach wounds, bullet holes, grenade shrapnel and the like. He looked grim as he told us what to do if we got hit. He then slammed a clip into his .45-automatic, broke us down into four fire teams, and we prepared for our beach assault. Meanwhile, I was thinking, “I don’t hear any rifle fire, I don’t see any Navy Medics aboard to help us with casualties, I don’t see planes dropping white smoke, or the battleship New Jersey shelling the beachhead.” In short, I figured it was all bullshit, but the Gunny was having a blast playing General Pickett and getting ready to lead the attack like his ancestors had done at Gettysburg.

  Our LST landed on the beach, the huge front doors opened, and out came 50 hard-charging Marines running full blast. We hit the beach frog teaming to the tree line. No opposition! The only thing on the beach was a 12-year-old female zip selling Coca Cola. The Captain and his crew burst into loud laughter as everyone realized, like I’d already figured out, that it was a drill. Fifty of us stood up, unloaded our weapons, put our bayonets away, and broke out laughing as the girl repeated incessantly, “You GI number one!” The Gunny would probably have liked to shoot her just to shut her up.

  Next we all laid our rifles down and jumped into the clear blue-green water for a swim. Since I couldn’t swim, I just waded in up to my waist. Everyone splashed water at me, calling me a sissy faggot who was too afraid to get wet. Then the Shore Party, Marines in charge of cargo unloading who wore red labels on their pants knees, started appearing with huge forklift trucks. They all had suntans like they lived in Key West and were rather amazed at our great landing maneuvers. It was time to stop swimming and start unchaining jeeps and trucks.

  The party over, we all helped to unload our equipment from our private yacht, LST-1122. As we worked in the hot sun, Corporal Laid came zooming off the ship on his motorcycle with his rifle slung across his shoulder, riding through a foot of water and sand and looking like Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape.” He had brought his motorcycle from Fatima, Okinawa, hidden in a special shipping container. He said, “If I’m going to war, I want to have my bike and enjoy myself.” He had no idea where he was, or where Da Nang was for that matter. He was headed out to get laid. Period!

  And so Corporal Laid roared off without any orders to hunt for women and adventure. The Gunny went nuts, but we had no jeep to chase after him. “Damn fool, he’ll be dead by nightfall,” the Gunny predicted. I liked Corporal Laid, or “Fearless Frank,” as I called him. He was nuts, but a lot of fun. In Okinawa, I had gone out for a ride on his cycle which ended in a crash into a Jap’s car. I spent two weeks wrapped like a mummy with sores from sliding across a gravel highway with him.

  The 49 remaining Marines were trucked over to Marble Mountain to rejoin MAG-16 Air Group. Traveling the five miles or so to Marble Mountain, we became stuck in traffic and got our first look at the Vietnamese we had come to save. We saw women shitting by the side of the road and men walking with water buffaloes, pulling loads of wood and rice. We saw a million kids asking for cigarettes, candy and food. “You GI number one!” After about ten minutes of handing out free goodies from our C-rations, it got old fast. We decided they had enough of our stuff, and then they called us “GI number ten”—meaning no good! Next we heard “Fuck you, GI!” It was about this time that Corporal Miller put a magazine into his M-14. We all followed his lead and the kids shut up.

  When we arrived around noon, it was 110 degrees in the shade. Marble Mountain Air Base was in the process of being built by Navy Seabees. It was one street of barracks after another in a very good location right on the beach. It looked like Wildwood, New Jersey, complete with big waves and a breeze from the ocean about 100 yards away.

  We were assigned five wood frame barracks. All we had to do was put a huge 20-man tent over the frame and we could move in. The tents were brand new canvas, and it was a major production unrolling, unraveling, and figuring out how they went on the frame. Finally, after about 20 of us including the Gunny got one up, we were surprised to discover it fit perfectly on the frame. Amazingly accurate woodworking! I felt like a pioneer settling the West and building a new town like in the movie “Virginia City.” After setting up five of these tents in the hot sun, putting new cots together, and moving in all our gear, we were worn-out Marines. We were issued mess gear and directions to the mess tent. After we ate, we took a quick walk around the area and hit the rack, exhausted but happy with our new beachfront property.

  THE SCREAMING MIMIS

  On our second day at Marble Mountain, all 50 new Marines got the shits. I mean, we ran out of toilet paper and had to use Playboy magazines, newspapers, packing paper, even our letters from home. The whole base caught it, and we soon ran out of anti-shit medicine at the sickbay. Guys shit their pants, shit behind bushes and buildings, and buried it in the sand. It was the worst, most painful thing that had happened to me in a good long while.

  Finally, I decided that if I drank my two-beer allotment and then bummed everyone else’s, maybe, just maybe, I could plug myself up. I drank four hot beers until someone got the brainstorm of spraying the hot cans of beer with the CO2 fire extinguishers. We did this out of the sight of the First Sergeant or anyone else who would rat on us. We drank five ice-cold beers each, and believe it or not, the shits stopped. We skipped chow hall for a couple of days, heated our own C-rations, and got cured. It must have been something we ate at the chow hall, who knows, but it is a bitch to be in such a situation without a handy Rite Aid drug store down the street.

  On top of all this, we also had sun poisoning on our bare asses. Earlier on, we had all decided to go swimming in the ocean. We had real good tans except for our rear ends, which were as white as snow. We had no bathing suits, so everyone swam butt-ass naked. I, once again, stood like an idiot in the shallow water while my buddies had a great time playing in the surf. The South China sun burned our rear ends up! The screaming shits and a sore ass—what a combination!

  LAYING WIRE AND RIDING SHOTGUN

  Our new First Sergeant, First Sergeant Prick, had a duty roster made up with the new men’s names on it. By some miracle, my name was typed on top of the second page. When the two pages were stapled together, my name disappeared under the staple. Each morning we went to chow, then to formation to hear what great activities were in store for us. They read the names of all the different details, like putting up tents, digging forts, filling sandbags and mess duty. My name never got called; I waited while everyone went one place or another, then I headed for the beach and explored the coastline. I reappeared at noon in the chow line and disappeared again until 4:00 PM for evening chow.

  I got away with this for two weeks, until one day at mail call First Sergeant Prick asked me who the fuck I was and what detail I was on. One thing you learn in the Marines is never try to bullshit a Lifer First Sergeant, especially one that had earned the name First Sergeant Prick. I acted dumb, said very little, and pretended to be retarded. He was pissed off and told me he would get to the bottom of it without my help. He figured out fast that I was a shitbird playing on the beach all day like an American tourist in Mexico.

  At 6:00 AM the following day, I was personally handed a set of large leather gloves and driven by the First Sergeant all the way out to the end of the Marble Mountain runway. There I was introduced to the engineers from the 7th Marines who were installing anti-personnel land mines around the perimeter of the base. Next I was led to a huge pile of barbed wire and metal poles, complete with a sledgehammer. The First Sergeant looked at me and smiled. “Shithead,” he said, “all you have to do is put up this barbed wire fence while the 7th Marines lay the mines. Have fun!” There were miles of area to be mined and fenced in. I figured I’d be doing this job forever. We could only go as far as the engineers buried the mines. It was like working in Death Valley—scorching hot by 11:00 AM.

  After I st
arted, more Marines showed up, including Corporal Laid, who had finally come back and got caught too, so we got off our asses and started fencing in the property. We had recently seen “Cool Hand Luke,” where Luke was on a chain gang that worked so fast it got ahead of the road paving machines, so the boss-man had to let them rest until the paving machine caught up. First Sergeant Prick knew how much fence and how many mines we could do in one day. What the fearless leader didn’t know is how fast Marines who want to screw off can work. We started at sun-up, worked like French whores in liberated Paris, and by 11:00 AM, the hottest time of the day, we had already accomplished a full day’s work. We then jumped into the 7th Marine trucks, closed the rear canvas opening, and headed into Da Nang for the whorehouses.

  At first, the 7th Marine engineer, Sergeant Diggs, thought we would get into trouble. We went into town completely equipped with M-60 machine guns, M-79 grenade-launchers and M-14 rifles. We all wore helmets and flack jackets. We looked good. No other Marines or Vietnamese Military Police or Army MPs gave us a second glance. They probably thought we were headed for Ann Hoa or the likes. We parked our trucks behind some old French building, left a real Marine who didn’t want to party to guard the trucks, and then had a blast. We got to know every bar and whorehouse in Da Nang, and all the main streets and alleys too, like the back of our hands. We even knew how to disappear into private foreign embassy parking lots.

  We built the wire fence, helped lay the mines, and partied for two months until finally the job was over. I wore my leather gloves and kept leaving at 6:00 AM for another week, until First Sergeant Prick caught me again, and started yelling that the job had been over for more than a week. I told him that no one had dismissed me, and I was double-checking the concertina wire. He was beside himself and called me a fucking idiot! (Note: when people think you’re an idiot, they don’t bother you. Acting dumb is sometimes the smartest way to go.)