Thanksgiving Day 1973

Sailing in the Gulf of Tonkin

On Thanksgiving 1973

Is not where we wanted to be.
Northward we had been escaping,
On our way to Yokohama,
On our way, far away
From the war,
From Viet Nam.

We mistakenly thought 

We were homeward bound,

Sailing first,

For a little R &R

Before sailing east,
So that we could feast

At the Thanksgiving table,

To be with our wives,
Our kids, and our friends
Who were able 

To celebrate our being home.
But 0rders came
Telling us to turn around.
We were no longer 

Homeward bound.
Back to the Gulf of Tonkin,
Back to the fight 

That turned off the light

That held our hope.

Now we,

War-weary sailors,

Were once again,

Returning, 

Forever returning,

To War-torn Viet Nam.

On that Thanksgiving day

We ate in shifts

As the Truxtun sailed

Up and down

The Gulf of Tonkin

On Thanksgiving 1973.

Vietnamese Fishermen

This reminds me of my time aboard the USS Trippe in Viet Nam in 1972. Fishermen had to feed their families, even if the war was exploding all around them.
And yet, there were some nights when it was quiet for a while, beautiful for a while, and the fishermen floated on the sea between the land and me, standing watch on my warship.
Excerpt for Viet Nam Body Count, Chapter 12:
I had been thinking
about the My Lai massacre when an old, weathered and wrinkled Vietnamese
fisherman attempted to bring his wooden boat alongside of the U.S.S. Trippe as
we patrolled back and forth about a hundred yards from the shore. Standing in
the hot midday sun, on the edge of his rickety boat, the fisherman pulled back
his pointed straw hat and yelled up to those of us on the main deck. We
couldn’t understand what he we saying.
“Stay back! Get
away from our ship!” someone yelled from the Helo deck, above me.
Unfazed, the old
man continued getting closer.
“What the hell does
that gook think he’s doing?” One of the gunners mates asked as he ran to the
machine gun on the Helo deck. “That fuckin Charlie better not be hiding a mine
under his boat.”
I put my hand on my
pistol. Sweat ran down my back. The old man put both his hands up, asking for
something, in Vietnamese. I stared at the boney, bare chested fisherman,
wearing what looked like pajama bottoms. A team of butterflies began taking up
residence in my belly. I pulled my pistol an inch out of it holster, hoping
that he didn’t have a mine or bomb hidden in his little old wooden boat.
Otis donned his
flack jacket and took his position, manning the M60 machine gun on the bow. It
was mounted on a tripod at the edge of the deck with an unobstructed view of
the rickety wooden boat. Otis’s hands were sweating. I could see them clearly.
His palms glimmered with droplets. They were in contrast to his eyes that were
frozen. His grip on the M60 machine gun was so tight it was making me sweat
even more.
Barry was summonedover the intercom as the ship slowed to a stop. He
knew how to speak a little Vietnamese, ... My book can be purchased at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Viet-Body-Count-Mushroom-Montoya

Orange Faced Seiko

I purchased this Seiko watch at the Subic Bay Naval Exchange in 1972 and I wore it during my two Westpacs in the Tonkin Gulf during the Viet Nam war.

My Seiko stayed wrapped around my wrist for many years before it broke. I was unable to have it repaired because parts were no longer available.
When I started writing Viet Nam Body Count, I took my Seiko to a local jeweler who luckily had some spare parts that could replace the worn-out ones in my watch. My watch worked well during the time I wrote the manuscript for Viet Nam Body Count. I am grateful for this watch whose tic-toc helped to remind me of events onboard the USS Trippe in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Oddly enough, or perhaps fittingly, my Seiko stopped working again after my book was published. It worked magic, assisting me with recalling memories. It helped ground me when the memories were too hard to bear at the moment.
If my Seiko has a spirit, I am grateful to it. It served me well while I wrote the manuscript. I keep this watch in a dresser drawer so that when I open the drawer, I see my orange-faced Seiko. Sometimes I pull it out and wear it, for old time's sake.
The following is an excerpt from Viet Nam Body Count:
Our Mk-42 cannon, two decks above me, fired at a target. My back muscles tensed, my breathing sped up. After a few more shots, then silence. The second hand on my orange Seiko watch resumed its slow march around the dial. My five hour battle station watch ended at three in the morning. I had an hour before my sounding and security watch. My arms were sore from transferring the ammo. I wanted to sleep. But I knew that in forty minutes, the sailor who was currently standing watch would attempt to wake me and that would only piss me off.   

Viet Nam Trigger

Today, a BIG,  pain infested sadness
Punched me without warning. 
As it snuck onto the surface 
Of my tongue.
It hid deep in the scent, 
As I drank a Heineken beerIn a Vietnamese restaurant.
That all too familiar scent 
Of the beer that I had drunk
When our ship sailed away
From the war
To repair and to replenish
In Subic Bay.
That cruel heartless sadness
Grabbed my umbilical cord
And yanked me across the Pacific Ocean
All the way back to Viet Nam. 
All the way back to 1972,
My tears drip.
I try to grip
Something, anything
That convinces me 
That 1972 is only a memory
It is only the sadness
That can hurt me now.

And I thank God

That sadness is temporary.

Mail Call

Excerpt from Chapter 11, Mail Call
The whop, whop, whop preceded the announcement on the intercom of a chopper's arrival. I ran up the ladder to meet my helicopter fire crew and assemble them at the Helo deck. I opened the repair locker and distributed the firefighting and rescue equipment. My primary function was to be the ship’s firefighter, the scene leader in charge, especially in the combat zone..

*****

...As the helicopter descended slowly onto the deck, one of the helicopter crewmen lowered the anti-static cable to the sailor, who was wearing the cable glove. Grabbing hold of the helicopter's cable, the sailor attached it to the ship's anti-static cable that was attached to his glove. Once safely connected, he removed his glove from the combined cables and ran over to where the rest of us were standing. Permission was given to land. Whop, whop, whop, the helicopter blades slowed to a stop.

Only one of the chopper's crew jumped out onto the Helo deck. The setting sun, behind him, allowed only his silhouette to be seen. He turned around and pulled out a large bag and placed it on the deck. It was the mail. I smiled, along with my entire fire rescue team in anticipation of getting a letter from home. The ship's postman signed the release that the crewman had given him. He picked up the mail bag, threw it over his shoulder and, looking like a young Santa Claus in July, hobbled down to his office below decks to sort out the mail. When the chopper flew off, and we finished putting away our rescue gear, I hurried down to the galley and stood in the crowd of sailors waiting for the postman to arrive. It always seemed to take the postman a long time to sort the mail and take it up to the galley. And today was no different. While we waited, we talked about past letters that we received from girlfriends and our parents and wondered if the questions that we had asked in previous letters would get answered.

All eyes were glued on the postman when he entered the galley, carrying a large box with letters and a few packages. Taking a handful of letters in his hand he began calling out names. We waited like kids at an elementary school raffle. Those who weren't waiting in the mess decks were on watch or battle station. The postman would deliver their mail to their racks, later. But for now, those of us in the galley waited and hoped for our names to be called. As each sailor's name was called, he ran up grabbed his letter and ran out of the mess decks. My feet twitched at the announcement of each name. I wanted to grab the letters out of the postman's hand and search through his box. I hoped that the postman would call my name and that I would receive a letter from someone, anyone. I always looked enviously at anyone who received a letter from home when I ended up empty handed. Mail call always felt like playing a slot machine; someone always won. And when it wasn’t me, I felt forgotten and lonely.

Cigarette smoke billowed out of Matty's mouth when he said, “Damn, he's only got two letters left; I hope one of them is mine.”

“Montoya! You got a letter, a post card and a package,” called the postman.

“Wow! I hit the jackpot!” I yelled and I ran up to the front to get my prizes. A smile erupted on my face while Matty's eyes looked down, almost as if he were going to cry. I looked at the return addresses, a post card from a friend from firefighting school, a letter from my friend, Kathy, and the package from my parents. I had just passed through the galley door when Matty caught up with me. He was an eighteen year old radioman from the Bronx. He reminded me of my younger brother, only taller.

“What's ya got in the package?” he asked. “Cookies?”

“If we're in luck,” I said. “Come with me to my berthing compartment and we'll see.”

I took out a pair of scissors and cut open the brown paper bag wrapping and string. I pulled out the letter that was on top, and set it aside.

“What's in there? I wanna see,” said Matty.

“Hold on to your horses. Wow! A bag of homemade tortillas and venison jerky.”

I pulled out the jerky and read the note. It said that my grandfather had gone hunting and he made some jerky. My fingers became uncoordinated with excitement as I struggled to remove the clear cellophane wrapping. I lifted out a piece of jerky. When its odor hit my nose, I said, “Oh shit!”

“Oh shit what?” Matty asked.

“The venison has mold on it. Hand me the letter. I want to see when my parents sent this to me.” The date on the letter was three weeks ago. My heart sank. I felt cheated. “Damn humidity and damn this war. Well, so much for the jerky.”

“Gee, that's too dad, Mushroom. What about those tortillas? They look thicker than what I usually see.”

I took one of the tortillas out of the plastic bag and sniffed it. It didn't smell moldy. But when I took a bite, the sour taste made me spit it out. My eyes drooped and I hung my head down low. I wanted to cry.

“Isn't there anything else?” Matty pleaded. He looked as dejected as I did.

I pulled out some photographs. Under the photographs I felt cardboard, the bottom of my package, or so I thought at first. “We're in luck!” I exclaimed, pulling out a yellow and brown box. “Ginger snap cookies! My favorite. Here have one while I read my letter.”

“I didn't get a letter,” he said, his shoulders slumped. He took a bite out of the cookie and smiled. “Can you read yours to me?”

“Hola Hijo. Cómo estás? ”

“Ah sucks,” Matty said as his smile flattened. “I didn't think that your letter would be in Mexican.”

“It's not in Mexican. Mexicans don't speak Mexican any more than Americans speak American. I'm just teasing, you Matty. It's written in English. There is not much too it. Here, you can read it.

It just says that they hope the food is still good when I get it and a couple of notes about my son.

While Matty read my letter, I looked at the photographs in the box. When I pulled out the third photo of my son, I slapped my thigh and said, “Hey, look at this photo of Jeremy, he's covered in flour. They wrote on the back that he wanted to help make tortillas for me.”

Matty took a look at the photo and grinned. He said, “My mom has a photo of me covered in flour too. I was helping her make my birthday cake when I was about 3, like your son. What's the other letter say?” ...

You can purchase my book:
https://www.amazon.com/Viet-Body-Count-Mushroom-Montoya

Being Vulnerable

Excerpt from Chapter 15, Viet Nam Body Count:

[ Life give us opportunities to practice being strong, to practice standing up for ourselves. Often they come when we feel vulnerable. This was one of those opportunities.]

I turned off the shower and rubbed off the excess water from my arms and legs. Pulling the curtain open, I stepped out to get my towel from the sink across the room. Before I finished my first step, Chief Jaffe and two other chiefs came into the shower room and blocked my path.

I felt very uncomfortable standing naked, in front of the three chiefs.

“What drugs are you taking?” Chief Shea asked.

“The only drugs I take are those malaria pills that give the whole ship diarrhea.”

He continued asking questions, often repeating the same questions worded only slightly different from the first.

Feeling the air around my exposed genitals as the water began to evaporate made me want to jump back behind the shower curtain. I didn't want to be naked in front of the three chiefs. As I tried to make my way around them to get my towel, Jaffe jumped in front of me.

“Where do you think you're going?” he asked, clenching his fist. “We aren't through talking to you.”

“I'm getting my towel. Do you mind?”

Chief Shea and Chief Garfield smiled sheepishly as they moved out of the way, while Jaffe's bald head regained its familiar fiery red hue.

“What are you trying to pull?” Jaffe yelled as I reached for my towel.

By now I was mad. No longer afraid of Jaffe, I yelled back, “What are you trying to pull?”  I wrapped my towel around my waist. “Why did you bring two chiefs with you to yell at me while I was taking a shower?”

“You're doing drugs!” he growled.

“You're lying and you know it,” I shot back.

“Only someone who's crazy on drugs would run around the smokestack screaming every fucking night.”

“Killing innocent people is driving me crazy. I have to scream.”

“That's fucking bullshit. You're doing drugs.”

I stuck my neck out and looked Jaffe right in the eyes. “When we had the last locker inspection, did you find any drugs?”

“No. You must be hiding them somewhere else.”

“You didn't find drugs because I don't have any. I'm not stupid. You're the one who is trying to pull something.”

Jaffe's neck muscles pushed out the tendons as his whole face became the color of rage. “You aren't doing your job!”

“I came in here to take a shower so that I could do my job, like I always do,” I said.

Chief Garfield's lips contorted into a forced smile as he put his hand on Jaffe's shoulder telling him that his cause was lost.

If there had been no witnesses, I am sure that Jaffe's anger would have unleashed his fists and I would have had wounds that needed bandaging.

La Mare, the Sea

Nerve Gas Protection Training

In Damage Control school (Treasure Island, across from San Francisco) we were taught how to protect the ship and how to protect ourselves. We were taught about nerve gas and other biological war agents. In the event of a real nerve gas attack, we were taught to inject atropine into our thighs first and then inject the rest of the crew. Since I was the class leader, I was the first person to stand in front of my classmates and take a tube of fake atropine with a syringe needle that looked like the size of a 16d nail. (OK it really wasn't THAT big) and stab myself in the thigh. And then I had to squeeze out the tube of fake atropine (saline water) before I removed it. This was not a fun activity.

Across the Gangplank

I walked across the gangplank,

Onto that all too familiar ship,

Knowing all too well

That I could tumble
Into very deep holds.

I walked across anyway.
I slipped on an unkindess

Of loose and slippery thoughts

That shoved me down

Ladders and passageways,
Headlong into violent memories.
Memories that I had thrown,

And re-thrown,

Over and over again,

Into that very deep hold

Far below decks

Under the chain locker
Of my busy life.

The memories tied my naked body down.
They sewed my eyelids

Wide, wide, wide open

With threads of tiny jagged seasalt.

They poured a waterfall of sharp,

Stinging visions
Of soldiers running,
Of Hueys zooming to and fro,
Of MiGs screeching overhead
Of our five-inch gun blasting
Over and over and over again,

Over my face until I cried,
Stop!

Oh please stop!
I don’t want to see this again.
I don’t want to feel this again.
I don’t want to die like this again.

Crossing the river into Olongapo

We docked in Subic Bay after spending too much time in the Gulf of Tonkin in the summer of 1972.

“…A little beer will do you good. And you could buy yourself a better fitting pair of pants. The one's you're wearing are huge. Come on.”

I acquiesced. I really did need a smaller pair of pants. As we crossed the river that separated the base from Olongapo City, well-tanned boys stood in chest high water yelling, “Hey, body! Throw me coin.” The way they mispronounced buddy as body made me think that the word, body, was more accurate than buddy.

“How can they fucking stand the smell of that shit in the water, much less, swim in it?” Barry asked.

We held our breath as we walked across the bridge. The boys continued pleading, “Hey body, throw me coin.”

One of the boys standing in the brown fecal smelling river looked like he could be one of my little cousins. Reaching in my pocket, I tossed a couple of dimes to him. He caught one and dove into the shit brown water to hunt for the one that bounced out of his hand.

“Oh, fuck!” No way could I do that,” Barry blurted. “I swear, my grandfather's fucking outhouse smells better than that shitty river.”

“Thank God, Barry, we didn't grow up here, having to swim in that sewer of a river just for a few coins.”

“Let's get the fuck outta here. My nose hairs are starting to fuckin singe,” he said as we sped the rest of the way across the bridge.

Olongapo City had a carnival atmosphere. The aroma of skewered beef cooking on a small black grill was a welcome relief from the putrid smell of the river.

“That's probably monkey meat.” Barry said, “It tastes good. You ought to try it.”

I rolled my eyes, “Get real, Barry. When is the last time you saw a monkey in Subic Bay?”

“This morning. He's your..”

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MiG Attack

“General Quarters! General Quarters! This is not a drill,” came over the loudspeaker again as I donned my helmet and life jacket. The hair on my arms stood straight up. My knees began to shake uncontrollably. I looked at Otis, his face much whiter than normal, and said, “For as often as they call General Quarters, you'd think we'd be used to it by now.”

The ship shook as our Mk-42 cannon fired several rounds. The machine gun blasts were muffled in the interior of the ship. I had opened the damage control repair locker and busied myself looking inside, taking a mental inventory of the location of the emergency equipment we would most likely need.

“I hate this fuckin shit, waiting down here, not knowing what the fuck is going on topside,” Otis said. “They never tell us a goddamn thing until it’s over.”

“All Clear,” came over the loudspeaker. “Eight MiGs have been diverted. 

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The Viet Nam Should've Ended in 1968

From  Smithsonian.com:

 In 1968, the Paris Peace talks, intended to put an end to the 13-year-long Vietnam War, failed because an aide working for then-Presidential candidate Richard Nixon convinced the South Vietnamese to walk away from the dealings, says a new report by the BBC’s David Taylor. By the late 1960s Americans had been involved in the Vietnam War for nearly a decade, and the ongoing conflict was an incredibly contentious issue, says PBS:

In 1967, with American troop strength in Vietnam reaching 500,000, protest against U.S. participation in the Vietnam War had grown stronger as growing numbers of Americans questioned whether the U.S. war effort could succeed or was morally justifiable. They took their protests to the streets in peace marches, demonstrations, and acts of civil disobedience. Despite the country’s polarization, the balance of American public opinion was beginning to sway toward “de-escalation” of the war.

Nixon’s Presidental campaign needed the war to continue, since Nixon was running on a platform that opposed the war. The BBC:

Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.
… In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris – concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.

President Johnson had at the time a habit of recording all of his phone conversations, and newly released tapes from 1968 detailed that the FBI had “bugged” the telephones of the South Vietnamese ambassador and of Anna Chennault, one of Nixon’s aides. Based on the tapes, says Taylor for the BBC, we learn that in the time leading up to the Paris Peace talks, “Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.” The Atlantic Wire:

In the recently released tapes, we can hear Johnson being told about Nixon’s interference by Defence Secretary Clark Clifford. The FBI had bugged the South Vietnamese ambassadors phone. They had Chennault lobbying the ambassador on tape. Johnson was justifiably furious — he ordered Nixon’s campaign be placed under FBI surveillance. Johnson passed along a note to Nixon that he knew about the move. Nixon played like he had no idea why the South backed out, and offered to travel to Saigon to get them back to the negotiating table.

Though the basic story of Nixon’s involvement in stalling the Vietnam peace talks has been around before, the new tapes, says the Atlantic Wire, describe how President Johnson knew all about the on-goings but chose not to bring them to the public’s attention: he thought that his intended successor, Hubert Humphrey, was going to beat Nixon in the upcoming election anyway. And, by revealing that he knew about Nixon’s dealings, he’d also have to admit to having spied on the South Vietnamese ambassador.

Eventually, Nixon won by just 1 percent of the popular vote. “Once in office he escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia, with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives, before finally settling for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968,” says the BBC.

Tattoo

Would ye be knowing that I have a tattoo on my arm? 

It covers the original scar that emerged after I was spitting logs. A piece of metal shot off from the hammer so fast and furious it sheared through my shirt and lodged itself within my mighy bicep. 

Faith and Begorrah! It hurt!

The doctor used his scalpel to hunt for the shrapnel. He cut in, following the little bugger's pathway. He stopped when his blade reached the muscle tissue. "Leave it be," he said to me. "It'll work its way out, of its own volition, in a month or two." His words brought me no comfort. And the next words that he uttered made me even unhappier: "or it will encapsulate and take up permanent residence." 

It took its sweet time, as if it were no faster than a lazy slug. So, what else could I do but assume that after two long years, it had taken doctor's option number two? 

The scar was hideous, making onlookers recoil in revulsion. To remedy the situation, I sauntered down to the Long Beach Pike and found a tattoo parlor. The artist embedded a bird, beautifully concealing the scar. 

My tattoo was not even one year old when that lazy piece of steel immobilized my arm with a hellacious pain. The little bugger finally made its way to the surface of my bicep. My tattoo, which had been doing a fine job of obscuring the original scar, now has its own unfortunate scar. It got one hell of a tonsillectomy.