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8early, the pilot reported, and they would be on the ground at John Wayne in Orange County in 20 minutes. Their gate was open and ready. Cool. Gary’s mind snapped back to Bill and Vietnam’s Ah Hoa in February and March, maybe even April, 1969. Day after day, night after night it rained rockets and mortars onto their little field headquarters. Vast rice paddies surrounded about two-thirds of their combat base. Two or three curvy clicks distant a lazy meandering muddy river slowly flowed by. Along its opposite bank a lowland jungle flourished. Unused pasture land surrounded the other third. Beyond the open fallowed pastures thickly forested foothills rose to meet the distant and lush mountains. The battalion supply lines consisted of a well mined road running through NVA and VC territory and a little dirt helipad that was largely useless because the enemy had artillery trained smack dab on it and every chopper jockey knew it. Now assigned to H&S Company First Lieutenant Friese was in charge of perimeter security, an impossible job as Lance Corporal Gary S. Andersen/2440095 viewed it.
One An Hoa night between cans of Olympia beer and shots of whiskey, a rare treat, Dagwood, Spindles, Magilla Gorilla, ‘Mini Man’, a tunnel rat turned clerk, and Juice asked Sergeant Salas why they were in such a vulnerable place. Who was protecting them? Where are the line companies? What were they accomplishing? Also, they were getting hungrier by the day. “Nobody likes C-Rat B-2 units except Magilla,” Spindles griped, “and that’s all we have.”
Never mind that three days earlier the re-supply choppers dropped ice cream into a flooded, shitty rice paddy.
A Marine to the bone, Staff Sergeant Salas said “We are protecting ourselves. Decisions are sometimes made half a world away,” he explained, “maybe in the White House or Pentagon and Lieutenant Colonel Snelling,” the new battalion CO, “is just following orders. It’s all part of a giant chess game.”
“Right,” noted Dagwood, “and we’re the pawns.”
“Shit,” snapped Spindles, “did you think you were joining the royal amphibious Siamese
Coast Guard?”
“We’re at war,” Magilla Gorilla pointed out, “not playing a game.”
Then there was silence. “Pretty soon,” Sergeant Salas broke it, “when the next
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9chopper or two gets in, there will be a replacement for me aboard. Andersen types my orders.” Just as they began to toast his good fortune the ear piercing whistles of incoming rounds filled the air. Everyone dove into the trenches. Not a drop of beer was spilled. After fifteen or twenty shells – who was counting? – there came the sounds of distant small arms fire and then the pop and swoosh of friendly mortars. The incoming stopped. A few rounds came plenty close. Lance Corporal Yakabowski, a Canadian, took a chunk of shrapnel in the ass, which was about the funniest thing that could have ever happened. Where better to get it? And a small piece ricocheted off the side of the trench and stuck in Andersen’s gut. As he delicately picked it out with his fingertips casualty clerk Spindles noted, “Juice, you can get a purple heart for that.”
“Don’t want it,” he replied, “This don’t count.”
“You sure?” Magilla Gorilla offered.
Gary thought about Captain Toby who laid in a hospital bed aboard the USS Tripoli, a chopper carrier they were stationed aboard a few weeks earlier. He had a leg and arm blown off and his whole torso was wrapped in blood soaked gauze with a dozen tubes going in and out of different remaining body parts. “Damn yes, I’m sure.”
“Mr. Friese must have done his job,” Sergeant Salas suggested about the sudden end of the incoming. “He’s a good officer.”
It happened Friese was back at base the next afternoon when the battalion police sergeant reported to Major Lucy ‘an unauthorized individual’ was spotted within the perimeter. On his way to S-4 with two top grunts to replenish their small arms ammo and make plans to get mortar shells to the squads Bill was the first officer Lucy saw when he ventured from his holy bunker. Like a traffic cop he held up his hand: Stop. Corporal McCorkle braked the mule to a quick halt, locking the wheels and sending puffs of dirt into Lucy’s pant legs. “Lieutenant,” the XO announced, “I have a report of ‘an unauthorized individual’ within our perimeter. Go tent to ten, bunker to bunker and check,” he ordered.
First Lieutenant Friese was not stunned by this abrupt, senseless order. Major Lucy was a very senior Marine Corps major. Only he knew how many times he’d been passed up for promotion. By that point in his fading Marine Corps career Lucy would have better served baseball, hotdogs and apple pie in the Pentagon. He could be the guy moving shapes around the big wall maps in the war rooms
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10 looking spiffy and important, his gold leafs glowing under the lights. He was not known for his valor. Nor for good planning and preparation. Perimeter Security Officer Friese was on a mission. His work was important to the whole battalion. Even mustang Lieutenant Visnick, who replaced S-1’s Tyson, would have been a better choice. This effort could take a while. Friese turned to McCorkle. Go to S-4, he told him, and get our ammo and arrange for mortar shells to get to the teams. “If I’m not there by 1630 go back without me.” He turned to black PFC Hawkins, the strongest Marine in I Corps, “You didn’t hear him tell me to report back, did you?”
“No sir.”
McCorkle, Hawkins and the mule were off. First Lieutenant Friese marched to the closest of the little base’s two dozen tents and twelve, or so, bunkers. Nothing funny or strange there. Same with the next and the next. His 6th stop was the S-4 supply compound, where he was going in the first place. He saw the mule there, partially loaded, so McCorkle and Hawkins were on the job. Surely they had repeated Lucy’s order to everyone. As he approached two supply Marines came from their headquarters tent and six more from in and around their bunker, which doubled as the small arms armory. They formed themselves shoulder to shoulder in a line across the lieutenant’s path. McCorkle and Hawkins stood off to one side, closer to Friese. They greeted him warmly. “Nice to see you guys too,” Lieutenant Friese replied. He asked Sergeant Flowers, “Anything special going on around here?”
“Special? Not sure I know what you mean lieutenant.”
“For starters, let’s say I want to be sure everyone is in uniform.”
“In uniform, sir?”
“Yea. Clothes issued by the Marine Corps. Get it?”
“Of course lieutenant. But no one is in a complete uniform, we’re working pretty hard and it’s hot.”
“I just want to be sure too, sergeant, everyone is ball bearing, just like you and me.”
“Ball bearing? That’s pretty personal, sir.”
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11“Inspecting,” deadpanned Friese, “would be your job. They are your men.”
Flowers’ jaw dropped. Bill broke into a big broad grin. “I get it,” he said. “Just step aside and let me have a look in the ammo bunker.” When he entered it the cutest little mama san imaginable rose from a cot, smiled and bowed a little. She was wearing clean Marine Corps jungle utilities. Bill addressed Sergeant Flowers. “Did you give any thought to every swinging dick dripping with the clap? Or that maybe she’s a spy?” He then announced to all “You’ve enjoyed yourselves. You know I have to take her away for interrogation.”
“Yes sir,” a few voices concurred,
But Private Nelson objected. “Not fair Mr. Friese. We ain’t got to the privates.”
This topic had never come up in Naval ROTC at Holy Cross. Or in Marine Corps Infantry officer training school. He turned his attention to Private Nelson. “How many privates to go?”
“Three, sir. Me and Yonan and Corbin.
To collect his thoughts and buy a little thinking time, Bill asked “Whose utilities.”
“Mine,” answered Mini-Man of Japanese ancestry, from Denver, the former tunnel rat.
“Get her out of your uniform. “
“She’s got nothing else to wear, sir.”
Bill didn’t want to know the history of this. “Then give her a long T-shirt to wear.”
“Tell you what,” said Bill addressing the three privates. “Tomorrow morning you get a 36 hour pass to China Beach.”
He then turned to McCorkle. “You’ll kindly take mama san and I to Major Lucy. Come back for Hawkins, finish loading and get home. Be sure Gunny Wisdom knows. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
IV
Bill Friese and Gary Andersen were late into that first night catching up on their lives. “The best thing that ever happened,” Bill told Gary sipping on a blast of Bombay gin, was divorcing the first wife. “She walked out on me. There wasn't
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12enough money in the world to make her happy.” He went on after a little sip “And then along came a 25-year old ‘hottie’. Three successful adult kids and one granddaughter later Norma remains the best decision I ever made.”
“She’s still 25?”
“She’s still a ‘hottie’.”
Together with two partners, one in Pennsylvania the other in North Carolina, Bill built a successful, flourishing business in the high end fabric industry. He knows the material acquisition, purchasing, sales and distribution needs so related. He travels “too much“. His Fabtex is a clean, profitable, up right factory. Next birthday he’ll be 70. It’s been good. He is physically fit, looks good, remains sharp. “We’ve been thinking maybe it’s time to find a buyer.” He asked about Gary.
Between two healthy gulps of Jack Daniels Juice began. “After a ChIcago bus driving job and a low pay office one, I used the GI bill to ultimately graduate from college. I was 27? Soon after I found myself in Micronesia and then in Fiji, where I stayed – on and off – for five years.” Then it was back to Chicago and driving taxis, buses, trucks, even trains. Gulp. “All of it moving people and cargo, maybe a million miles.”
“Why would you leave Fiji?”
“I was going what the Aussies call ‘tropo’. Good living but time to move on.”
“What did you do?”
“For money?”
Friese nodded.
”I wrote magazine articles and learned to use a camera. There is good money in pictures. I didn’t need much,” Gary explained, “just flip flops, T-shirts, cutoffs, toothpaste, rent money and beer—“
“--And?” Bill broke in.
“It’s a promiscuous culture, I was enjoying it.”
“So you left?”
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13“Sometimes it’s better to go too soon than stay too late. Back in what we called ‘The World’ I took up real work. Writing was an express ticket to the poor house. That was depressing. After a lot of driving I became a dispatcher, then a supervisor, a warehouse manager, ultimately an operations manager. And it’s all behind me now.” Andersen mentioned getting married at 46 – first and only time - what was the hurry? No children. It’s been good. For 20 years he’s been a part-time instructor for Northwestern University. Another gulp of Jack.
And Bombay. Bill produced a few pictures from their Sydney R&R. In the first were sexy brunette Rhonda and sexier blond Margrett. In the second were the Texas Tavern in Kings Cross. A grand memory. In the third the two of them were climbing a tree. A cigarette dangled from Gary’s lips. “Man, we were young and immature and having fun” he offered.
“Right. And now we get to be old and immature.”
“Fun?”
“Certainly.”
Then came Vietnam, something they just never ever discussed during the Chicago years. The sappers overrunning them near Phu Gia pass and throwing grenades everywhere, the snipers along Highway One, its land mines, the napalm rolling across the distant hills, agent orange, PTSD, the ammo dump blowing up. Bill talked about Meade River. “The operation’s goal was to surround a big force of NVA regulars and VC and annihilate them.” And did, to the tune of 1,023 ‘confirmed’ enemy dead.
After another gulp of Bombay Bill lowered his voice. “December 7th was the day you transferred me to H&S company. To be the battalion librarian,” he joked. “My Holy Cross diploma was finally getting me somewhere.” Pause. “But I got only as far as India Company HQ that day. On the 8th I witnessed my replacement shot to death. His first day! And then Platoon Sergeant Karl Taylor charging a murdering machine gunner with a grenade launcher to save pinned down Marines. He was hit, got up and charged. Hit again, he got up and charged again. When he was close enough Staff Sergeant Karl Taylor fried off a grenade. End of that machine gunner. He saved the lives of at least a dozen men. Medal of
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14Honor. Posthumously. The bullets couldn’t – didn’t – kill him until after he launched that last grenade. He saved his men.”
Hill 55 came up. The bomb. It was a nice day, weather-wise, a little cloudy and not so hot. In May? It was a ‘quiet’ day too. Until about 1600 hours when the whole earth erupted to life. The ground jumped a foot. Blast driven dirt and debris roared by. Ears popped. White hot shards of shrapnel whistled and sizzled in all directions. BOOM! By the time the earth settled back down everyone in the S-1 tent hit the deck and hugged the ground. Then silence. Boldly standing in the tent’s doorway, Bill Friese yelled “In the trench you dumb shits.” And like a herd of charging rhinos in a single file in a cartoon Spindles, Mini-man, Juice, Dagwood, Magailla Gorilla, a new private, Fella, and Staff Sergeant Andrews and the cat either crashed into, hurdled past or tripped over Bill in their haste to fulfill his order. Never mind he was their commanding officer.
The cat was for rat control.
“Every one of you clerks just hit the deck. And froze.”
“Hey, we weren’t used to our own 500-pounds being catapulted on us and blowing up a hundred feet away.”
“You massacred me.” Gulp.
“Following orders sir. You didn’t get out of the way.” Gulp.
“I didn’t have time.”
Mutual gulps.
Gary mentioned his visit to Kyle. After he related Kyle’s rice and army episode memories Bill Friese’s eyes grew beach ball big and snow ball white. “I was his lieutenant. I remember. I was sure he was a goner. We got him lifted out of there. I didn’t think he had a chance. Kyle was a great Marine.”
V
Kyle receives an 80% disability from the Veterans Administration. His left hand –he was left handed – is gone except for a couple of skinny stubs for fingers. The arm remains mangled, is about regular length but half width and remains full of shrapnel. His legs survived and his family jewels too. Along the way Kyle got
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15married and inherited a step-daughter. He and the wife produced a son. They are long grown and on their own. He’s divorced from the wife.
Upon release from the Navy Hospital in ‘Corpus’ Kyle went to work for the city’s engineering department. “I always wanted to be an architect,” he said, “this was as close as I could get.” He became their best – and only – one armed draftsman. “I worked slow,” Kyle allowed, “and had to figure ways of doing things. But I always did my best. A retired Seabee became a great mentor. Every afternoon when the office closed at four he’d point to the clock and say it was time we got going. He helped me practice right handed writing. He encouraged me, he criticized me.”
Gary asked Kyle about his HO train set. “Who put it together?”
“I did.”
“All that delicate work?”
“Well, you just learn. You figure ways.”
This information delighted Bill Friese. “Do you have his phone number?” he wanted to know. “I want to tell him how proud I am of him.”
The world’s largest – and best – brotherhood. “Once a Marine…”
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Copyright 2016 Gary Andersen
