Digging for Treasure

I may have already told this tale but that’s okay. A story is never really complete until it’s been embellished and retold at least twice.

This story happened during the time I spent in the boonies with the First Cav. We were patrolling the Jolly Trail System near the Cambodian border when we happened upon a freshly deserted North Vietnamese bunker complex. After a nervous couple of hours deciding if the NVA were truly gone, or set up to ambush us, we decided on the former and established a base camp, sending out several patrols to see if we could find out which direction the enemy had gone. I was one of the lucky ones that remained at the base camp.

I have always been enamored by buried treasure and soon I had myself and everyone else convinced that there was probably a fortune in gold buried somewhere within the perimeter of the bunker complex. This was not such a far-fetched idea as the NVA were known to carry large amounts of money and gold to trade with the locals.

Since they had abandoned the complex in such a hurry, perhaps they had forgotten to take the treasure. Before long, practically everyone left at the base camp was poking around with trenching devices (military shovels). As luck would have it, I was the first one to find something.

“It’s here,” I said, beginning to dig feverishly over a spot of loose earth.

I was quickly joined by others and we soon had a large hole in the ground. I soon became apparent that what we had found was not a treasure trove – well, unless you were a maggot. The bunker complex, it seemed, was a well-established stop along the trail from North Vietnam, our covered treasure no more than a buried latrine. The other soldiers were soon shaking their heads and looking at me as if I were freshly escaped from a loony bin.

“Hey, I’ll bet the treasure’s in the latrine. No one would think to look there.”

The other men didn’t buy my argument and, since I couldn’t convince anyone else to poke around in the smelly remains of an NVA latrine, I decided that even if there were treasure a few feet from where I stood that it wasn’t worth digging through the sh-t for.

No, I didn’t find any buried treasure during my tour of Vietnam. Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever seeing a single rock during the entire time I was there. As a geologist, you’d think I would have noticed.

Eric'sWeb

Baby Killer

Americans don’t always support the wars we are in, but they support the troops. That wasn’t always the case. During the time of Vietnam, returning soldiers were often regarded as maniacal baby killers. I soon learned as much upon coming home, fresh from the war in Southeast Asia.

I was an infantry foot soldier, a machine-gunner in the 1st Cav, so I guess I was suspect. My first night home in Chalmette, my drunken brother-in-law demanded to know how many baby sans I had killed and how many mama sans I had raped. I was drunk too, and just held my tongue.

Gail and I soon left Chalmette. After a few days on the beaches in Florida, we drove to Vivian in north Louisiana to spend a little time with my family. My uncle Grady and his wife Artie had a barbecue for Gail and me. Everyone was happy to see me, but I soon noticed every time I began to say something about Vietnam, everyone would turn away. I quickly learned that no one wanted to hear about my tour of duty.

Uncle Grady sensed my angst and asked me to go squirrel hunting with him the next day. We drove in silence to a wooded area a few miles from town. I had my old .410 shotgun.
“Let’s split up. I’ll go this way,” he said, pointing.

The forest quickly encompassed me and I sat on the ground against a big pine without firing a shot. Grady soon returned and saw me sitting against the tree. He joined me and put his big arm around my shoulder.

“You okay?”

I shook my head and said, “I’m not sure if I’ll ever be okay again.”

“You’re back home now with your family. Whatever happened, you better know you’re family supports you and always will. It’s over now and we are proud of you.”

Grady spoke for the whole family, but everyone else soon let me know that they felt the same way. Still, his words that day lifted a heavy weight from my soul.

I smiled, shook his hand and said, “I’m okay. I’ll make it now.”

My family was one thing, the rest of the world another. I soon learned that all Vietnam vets were considered dope smoking, heroin addicted crazies that could fly off at the drop of a hat and murder people. I quickly learned to keep my Army experiences to myself.

Things have changed for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan because citizens no longer hold returning soldiers in contempt. No one questions their involvement in foreign wars that few support, or their commitment and patriotism. Still, I bet I know how they really feel.

More than forty years have passed since my own involvement in an unpopular foreign war and no one has ever asked me even a single question about what I did while I was there. Bet if I mentioned the subject, even today, most would still shake their heads and wonder if I am mentally stable.

I'm grinning to myself now and thinking, "Maybe they have a point."

Eric'sWeb

Dancing With the Devil

I served in Vietnam from July 1970 until September 1971. I did not choose the fate of a draftee, but I met many wonderful people during my tour. It is also impossible to spend fourteen months of total hell. There were moments of total hell but most of the time was almost normal, some moments even fun.

I was remembering an event I still cannot believe, even after all these years. To say that I had fun is a lie because my rear end stayed puckered the entire time. The event took place almost four decades ago, at the non-com club in Bien Hoa.

I spent the first six months of my tour in the boonies as an infantry foot soldier. I've told the story of getting poked in the eye with a bamboo limb. Recuperating in Song Be - relative civilization compared to where I had been - I played chess and became close friends with the company clerk of Headquarters Company. When a position as a clerk-typist came open and I offered the job, I did not have to be asked twice if I was interested.
A time came when the Top Sergeant asked to fill in as Battalion Courier for a soldier on R & R. Long before the days of personal computers, the courier physically transported a satchel of papers and documents from our outpost in Song Be to the main headquarters in Bien Hoa. I was a spec 4, the equivalent of a corporal but not considered a NCO. A friend that I will call Sergeant Brown was going to Bien Hoa at the same time and wanted me to accompany him to the NCO club later that night.

"A hell of a place," he told me, "With the best steaks, beer and whiskey in Nam."

"But I'm not an NCO. I'll get in trouble."

"No one knows you in Bien Hoa. I got sergeant's stripes for you. Tonight you're going to be an E-5 sergeant."

We made it to the club that night. It was dark, smoky and loud, a Vietnamese rock band playing on stage. We ate our steaks and were well into our second whiskey when my worst nightmare suddenly appeared. It was E-8 Sergeant Roper (I will call him). Sergeant Roper was big, easily three-hundred pounds, and he was black - a little scary for a southern boy that had never known many blacks, much less ones in authority. I had never seen him smile.

Frightened of the man, I once witnessed him take away a live grenade from a drugged sky trooper that was threatening to blow up an officer's hooch. To say that my heart was in my throat was an understatement and I fully expected to spend the rest of my tour locked in the infamous Long Binh Jail.

I waited for the other shoe to fall. Instead, he asked, "How are you tonight Sergeant Wilder?"

When I noticed the man standing behind him, I realized why I was not already in handcuffs. It was our company commander, Captain Ahab (I will call him). Officers, like enlisted men, are also unwelcome in an NCO club. Captain Ahab, white like me, was wearing sergeant stripes - he was an E5. That night I was his equal, Sergeant Brown his superior.

Sergeants Roper and Ahab joined us and we all proceeded to drink, listen to the band and even exchange a few pleasantries along the way. I fully expected court-martial the following day, as I am sure did Sergeant Brown. Instead, nothing was ever said of the incident and we never again acknowledged even a passing hint that we may have consorted illicitly.

Years have passed and I still wonder about the incident. Why had I taken the chance of court-martial to visit a place where I should not be? Moreover, why had a Captain, the company commander, taken the same chance? The answer surely has to be that there is a deeply buried need in all of us to visit that one place, at least just once, from which society forbids us to enter. It is a location where everyone is equal. Most of us never visit but there is surely no better place on earth.

Eric'sWeb

Between Truth and Fantasy

My Dad once told me, “Believe only half of what you see and nothing you hear.” I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but now I do.

Before I went to Vietnam, I read a book in the Northeast Louisiana State College library about hypnotism. It wasn’t a systematic instructional manual, but it did explain why hypnotism works and “suggested” how to use it.

I won’t try to explain how it works, but I gleaned enough from the book to test the theory. During my tour of Vietnam, I encountered many willing subjects and I soon became proficient at hypnosis. Delving with the brain can have serious consequences, something I quickly learned.

I was on a forward firebase in the middle of the jungle. My company had just completed a fifteen-day stint in the triple canopy never-land of the Vietnam War and we were luxuriating in a five-day stand-down on Firebase Betty. Fellow Sky Troopers had gathered around a fire as I prepared to hypnotize a soldier.

My shtick was to make a trooper think he was a chicken. Usually, the person hypnotized would crouch like a fowl and begin clucking and slowly looking for worms. This soldier’s reaction was quiet different.

Charles, a close friend of mine, became very frenzied. He jumped over the berm and began running down the hill, into the darkness. Trip wire and deadly claymore mines awaited him.

“One, two three,” I yelled, following him over the berm. “You are awake. Stop where you are.”

Charles straightened up and came to a halt, looking frightened as he stared into the darkness. I grabbed his arm and led him back over the berm, into the light of the blazing fire, surrounded by laughing GI’s.

Hypnosis is a reality, and not a joke. It is a powerful form of mind control and weeks passed before I used it again.

Louisiana Mystery Writer