The Sanctuary of the Hootch was more
than magical – it was a reality for me and those who shared this space with me.
In order to unlock the door to insanity, you have to understand that the only
way to do so is with the key of imagination. Nothing is real and everything is
crazy. Being sent to this war put a man into another dimension – a dimension of
sound, sight, and sometimes a mindless head game that moves you into a
‘twilight zone” kind of status.
Here, inside the sanctuary of your
hootch, you can avoid all negatives substances and shadows of evil. Darkness
can only exist if you let it and many of us would not allow the darkness to put out the light that kept us out
of the dark.
Living in this small wooden framed
and steel corrugated steel roof was about as good as life gets while in
Vietnam. What must have been a 30 by 15 box, it housed and kept everything we
had and owned while we were assigned there and worked out of there as duty
called. Made and constructed over three ago for Marines who lived here before
us, it had 12 of those flimsy military green folding cots precisely lined up and evenly spaced apart to house up to 12
men if full. Lately, there was only 5 of us living there and the same was for
the other 5 hootches. None of them were ever full to our recollection of being
there for the whole year.
Critically low staffed, we did the
best we could with whatever they gave us to work with at the time. There was
only one row of hootches built on 3-foot
high wooden stilts to prevent the water from coming in during the monsoon
season and held 6 of these hootches allowing 72 men to live under one roof of
the 23rd Medical Battalion
that supported the Americal Division Headquarters.
Down the stretch of the endless
silver sandy ground was the beach where the staggered and isolated sandbagged
bunkers sealed together with razor wire kept us safe at night as the beach was fully
lit by the moon when the sky was clear and portable lights set up by a large
generator to keep the area clear of intruders
including wild animals.
A weak perimeter by all military
standards, it appeared to satisfy the brass as being sufficient to protect the
seaside of the port and perimeter of what we called Chu Lai.
A beach adjoining miles of waterfront
that was both deep and beautiful. On some days, there are hundreds of men
celebrating life with games of volleyball and beer. There were at least 4 NCO
huts serving the men alcohol whenever the occasion called for celebration.
Although those times were sparse and few in between, they did help boost morale
when so far away from home.
These beaches were only accessible by
four-wheel drive vehicles. Many of those have gotten stuck in the deep sand as
there are pockets of sinkholes that swallow up anything that comes near them.
Under the moon, these beaches were amazing, pristine and had the serenity that
would capture the heart of a loved one if she was fortunate enough to with you
in mind and spirit.
Turning my head back to the hootches,
it was clear as day and night of what was ugly and what was unspoiled. However,
these hootches gave us all that we needed for the time being. The company was
allowed to have up to 120 men to serve their needs as medics. Due to attrition,
losses and shortages of the war, we were lucky to have 60 or more medics and support staff on a good day.
In the Army, as in other branches,
idle hands make for an unproductive helping hand so it was during your off days
that you were assigned to scoop, stir and
burn the poop of all those who went to the outhouse before the day’s end. The
compound had 6 outhouses and 6 showers. The showers were merely wooden stalls
with a half door and a large water drum kept on a steel bar that tips the water
when you pull on the chain attached to the drum.
Archaic, it served the purpose for
taking a shower and the water was only as warm as the sun allowed it to be – on
rainy days, the water was somewhat cold but it was good to take a shower even
when it rained.
Burning shit didn’t take much talent.
Using diesel fuel as an accelerant, you would be assigned to pull out the
cut-in-half 55 gallon [drum which contained the human shit and piss] and drag
it out into the open space, lining them up so you can pour the fuel on every
drum and not be in the way of the smoke as the wind was the main factor how you
lined up your drums.
Stirring shit and burning it for half
a day of your day off can be frustrating
but necessary for the good of all. Having s towel to cover your face helped not
gagging on the smoke and crap floating in the air around you.
Extraneous activity is nothing more
nor less than sloppy time spent doing nothing, in a manner of speaking. Some chose
to go to the village near the base and find a prostitute to give them the
pleasure sought under these weird and sometimes awkward conditions.
The hootches all had girls assigned
to them to do the housekeeping (dusting,
sweeping, laundry etc.) but these girls were off limits for sex. You had to be
an officer to screw one of the hootch girls and none of us rated in that manner of speaking. Thus those with sexually
related hormone problems set their sights on the young promiscuous prostitutes
and girls in the distant horizon and away from any harm as the buddy system was
the only way to do this kind of activity in the village.
The rest of us took advantage of
catching a nap or two or we went to the PX and bought souvenirs to send back
home or to hang on the wall. Living in the hootch was like living in a time
filled period with photographs and memories in a tin box.
The same tin box that your family
sent you the fruitcake in to celebrate Christmas or any other holiday that
might have passed. In every hootch, there was a perceived noisy man; always,
one of a breed to cover up his fear of dying.
As for having any significance, there
was none as we all feared to die. Some of
us used our voices to shout out loud the frustration experienced or felt at the
moment. An apparent phenome most common
to use and express frustrations. Others used their silence and take long lonely
walks to deal with the emotions of being homesick and away from our loved one.
To violate one’s personal space was an act of desecration that had
serious consequences. There were no thieves in our hootches. We shared what we
wanted to share and we kept what we wanted to keep to ourselves. That was the
code, that was the manner we lived there together.
If one was to take anything that
didn’t belong to them, there was an idiosyncrasy
of revenge and expulsion that was quickly
turned into an obsession. Justice was quick in these hootches and everyone was
aware of it.
This insistence of running a
household like a clean ship without disruption was part of how we dealt with this kind of problems. We all knew this was a
proper combination where the act of stepping on the toes of others was quite
impossible without some sort of retribution coming from all of us – and this
was a rule that we could all live with.
Sometimes we whispered. We whispered to
see if we could hear the bombs in the distance
falling. We could see the light in the sky as these bombs exploded many miles
away and we could hear the echo of their thunder.
You know, in our hootch, we always
had cookies and we always had fudge brownies send from home. We loved them and
it kept us connected to reality in more ways than one. When someone’s time was
up and he was going back to the free
[real] world, we would say, “good riddance man, we never liked you” showing respectful salutation and disbarment and know very well, they would be
sadly missed.
We simply could not suffer any more than we already were, making friends were taboo and it was an obstruction to your own
sanity. Just another excess of wasted emotion
and more inflammation to the friendships developed on a temporary moment in hell.
Living here was absolutely
incredible. It was always ‘mind over
matter.’ Hooked onto a miserable occupation where death was often and misery
was always near, the noises of the war had been literally planted and seeded in
my head as well as the heads of others. The whole business was dealt with mind
over matter – if you didn’t mind the inconvenience,
it didn’t matter.
This war was indeed being beyond in
another dimension, a dimension of sound, of sight and of mind. We had to deal
with awful things and came up with some terrible ideas in order to survive this ordeal
in hell. Crossing over from heaven to hell and hell to eternity was something
the human mind had trouble with most of the time. It always left you confused
and desperately seeking an answer to an unasked question.
During the bad weather, we were
imposed on remaining inside our hootch.
To go out there during inclement weather was risky as the swollen waters moved
rapidly like a snake and swallowed you up
with ease. It was during the monsoon season where we had the most difficulty
maintaining our good sense. It was like the pounding of tons of water on the
steel corrugated roofs drove us crazy as the wind blew the rain sideways into
the hootches drenching us and our stuff as we had no windows and no glass
barriers – only screen doors and screen windows to keep the elements out of
here.
Our wooden
folding cots had mosquito netting covering our bodies when we slept. The
next best thing to sunshine was the ending of the rain for it brought millions
and millions of mosquitoes into our world, no matter where we were, they would
follow us. There wasn’t a day that we didn’t take our malaria pill for the
risks of catching the fever was greater here than anywhere else in the
world or so it seemed.
Turning off the lights at 10 pm was
mandatory. Before the lights were turned out, you could tell the generator’s
pulse by the flickering of the lights. After 10 pm we were allowed to keep the
fans going but no lights except those provided by batteries and flashlights
given.
In many ways, turning off the lights
was like finding another hiding place. Between the darkness and the silence, it was like a sanctuary to many of us and
that was the most appreciated thing about the hootch- it served us well as a
place for peace, solace, and sanity.
So all in all, it was quite a place
to have in this hell-hole of a war. When assigned to the convoys, it was a matter of routine to come back here every night
after a 12 or 16-hour tour of duty.
Sleeping all but 4 or 5 hours a day was all we needed.
When assigned to a field unit, we
didn’t come back to these hootches for up to several weeks if not months.
Coming back weary and worn out, you would find your mail stacked on your cot
and a shower was the first thing on your mind. The adjustment was irreversible.
It was the way the war had been set up for us here assigned to the headquarters
company.
We had no luxuries in our hootch.
There was no carpet, no pictures hanging on the wall and no bed – just a
folding cot that served as our bed that couldn’t be moved from its spot as it
was marked on the floor where it was to be and where it was to remain. In that
respect, the space provided was very limited but since the other folding portable beds were rarely filled or
used, space was an adequate accommodation
for the time being.
We had a wonderful view of the beach
as you could hear the waves pounding at night when the sea was rough and the
wind was ferociously pushing its way around the place.
When it was all said, there were
worse places to spend an evening or even a whole year in – thankfully we always had the hootch to come
back to if we made it through the daily grind of the convoys and the rogue
assignments with various field units.
Even with the sun on our faces, we
sometimes felt like we were living in a frozen jungle. Frozen because of the
coldness in the air, the morning dew and the lack of emotions around us. If one
could imagine the imagery of a freezing jungle, you can imagine the coldness
inside you as your heart turns to ice and these conditions are most unpleasant
to you and others. However, this unpleasantness was never enough to renounce my
faith in God, my country or my mind and never did I try to seek asylum anywhere
else but my hootch.
I knew that if I remained in my
hootch, I would retain my sanity. Indeed, there were times that I felt like I
was a political prisoner caught up in a political war.
I was sentenced to serve a year and a
year I will serve. I arrived here with neutral feeling and unfortunately, I will depart with many more negative feelings than good ones. I will
desperately cling onto the railing of the ramp that lets me climb the steps of the steel rails that lead me
into the airplane and take me out of here
back to a civilized world and nation.
In the meantime, I will look into the
mirror and remember so many faces. Perhaps I should work on remembering their
names but I can’t, I can only remember faces… I can only remember pain and
sorrow. So as I dispense with the amenities, the masquerades and the fake “give
a little take a little” between strangers
I can only stand in the corner at times and nod, smile and accept that I went
from agony to agony while stationed here in this god-forsaken land. I am sick
tired and torn, but I am not insane.
Let me explain the difference between
me and the others who shared this hootch. There were 5 of us – each from a
different place – 1 from Puerto Rico we called “Rico” and 1 from Dallas Texas
we called “Dallas.” We had 2 from Los Angeles and we called them “Hollywood and
Max” but Max was his real name. There cannot be two people called “Hollywood”
as that would confuse us all.
Our section sergeant was a
malcontent. He hated the world but he took good care of us by making sure we got to rest and fed. He could never accept the
role to which he was ordained to as a leader. He wanted to be someone else;
somewhere in combat as this was his third tour in Nam.
I, on the other hand, I adapted to my
situations. My role was small compared to others. My job was to save lives and
that’s what I focused on all of the time. We didn’t get paid much and the job
was well laid out there for me – the Army thought of everything.
Finding the wounded and suffering and
then doing away with their agony or pain, and healing them if possible. I never
chose to prolong it, in the process I did not procrastinate and did the best I
could. It was a designed approach based and designed on my training and a
challenge to my talents for I lived and fought with worthy adversaries and
friends in this hell-hole of a war.
To some I was a monster, to the
others, I was their savior. There was no sense of
this war. At times I was weak when I should have been strong but there were
times when I was strong, yet still weak. This was a soldier’s life and a
medic’s woes.
There are no easy answers to hell knocking on
the door of insanity and disasters. As you've probably perceived, I’m rather a
gamesman when it comes to healing the wounded and sick. I have my own rules and
ethics that apply, and, listen to the following quite carefully. When in war,
you learn the game – this is the game, and these are the rules. You have been asleep
for roughly three hours but during that time, your mind never stood still.
Inside your head, there is a time bomb – a booby trap that will catch you off
guard and make you regret remaining sane. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to
go insane for just a moment and return back as fast as you can to deal with the
upcoming reality of death.
If you find this booby trap in your
mind and cut the wire, you'll be permitted to leave the war alive. This is a
guarantee, but the following conditions are of the essence, you always must
actively search for this booby trap, and you must find it and render it ineffectual
before it is too late and you die.
That Bible that looks as if it's been
pulled out for you to see and read. I think it’s possible the answer is in the
Bible. It's quite possible that the key
to defusing the booby trap is in this
holy book – I think I found it.
