Scent of War

When I arrived in Nam (late September 1966), a military truck dropped me near my squadron's hut area amid an evening downpour. Trudged the last 100 yards along a monsoon-muddied road in my Joe-New-Guy stateside uniform, useless leather boots, seabag slung across bony shoulder. The duty NCO steered me to one of many plywood huts-on-stilts, which I entered as its four salty occupants were playing poker.

My arrival made them feel shorter, so all smiled as they pointed me to a vacant mildewy cot and began telling me what to expect. Arose the next morn when they did (zero-dark-30), ate shit-on-a-shingle at a chowhall fit for cheap-wine hangovers, rode another truck around Danang's runway to VMFA 115's hangar, reported to its Maintenance Control office. I'd been schooled as a jet mech but Gunny Riggle assigned me to the Flight Line because the squadron was humping beaucoup sorties and needed more warm bodies to help launch and recover warbirds.

First hour on the line I got sent on an FNG errand to the neighboring Air Force hangar by my NCOIC: "Tell 'em you wanna borrow 50 feet of flight line, Duffy." I returned empty-handed and red-faced.

Next I got sent behind the hangar for "maintenance duty" — burning shitters. That included not just adding fuel and torching those sawed-off oil drums filled with you-know-what, but also standing among a dozen flaming stinkers while holding a javelin-size metal rod via which I stirred Life's byproduct.

"Stir 'em so they'll burn better," I was told by two E3s who scurried clear of me surrounded by those dozen shitters as they grabbed a smoke a safe distance — upwind.

They were supposed to be helping me but, because I was so green, they skated. After 12 years of nun-run schools, I was used to taking orders. Authority points, I do. Deadpan mug no matter what the duty 'cause showing emotion invites face-whacks.

My second morning on the flight line they began teaching me what I'd need to learn to help them launch and recover F4 Phantoms. Twelve-hour shifts in the tropics mean you start sweating before sunrise. By 10 a.m. all are thirsty and hungry, but nothing available except chlorine-heavy water from a towable tank known as "the mule." The same water was served in the chow hall, but at least there they dowsed it with powdered Kool Aid to mask the chlorine.

After watching coworkers launch Phantoms, I'm standing in the line shack as they explain pre- and post-launch duties. Adjoining our shack was Ground Support's, whose Marines took care of hardware needed to launch and recover warbirds. Two dudes from GS were arguing about something and it flared to them throwing hands as others watched, then began breaking it up.

I'm standing there wide-eyed when behind me I hear Beep! Beep! Beep! from over near 115's hangar. An F4 flight line generates all kinds of loud noises, so those beeps didn't mean squat to me — but they did get saltier Marines highly motivated. Suddenly the two dudes who'd been throwing hands are zooming past me at max gallop, followed by the would-be peacemakers.

"We bein' mortared?" I asked, wide-eyed.

My shop's NCOIC goes zoomin' by like Ben Johnson-on-steroids and yells something like, "Roach Coach, Duff!"

That didn't sound like "Head for the bunkers!" so I replied, "Huh?"

As he exited the line shack and made a hard-right toward the hangar, he yelled back over his shoulder a word I did comprendé:

"Geedunk!"

As my NCOIC swiveled his gourd back straight ahead while max-humping toward the arriving Air Force Roach Coach, he saw a FNG Green Blur whiz by his left shoulder like Road Runner cranking by Wile E. Fox. When he and the other Flight Line and Ground Support dudes chugged up to the line already formed outside the Roach Coach's opened window, they found me lickin' the edges of my first ice-cream sandwich in the Nam.

Someone grumbled, "We gotta put some weight on that new dude."

*     *     *

"What makes shit such a universal joke is that it's an unmistakeable reminder of our duality, of our soiled nature and of our will to glory. It is the ultimate lèse-majesté."

John Berger (b. 1926), British author, critic.

"Muck and Its Entanglements" in Harper's,

May 1989

War's odors — jet fuel, hydraulic fluid,

engine oil, diesel fumes, exhaust from

warbirds, spent bomb fuses, morning

napalm, burning shitters

"I vant to be. . .alone."