I entered the decade of the sixties , 10 years of age, living with my parents on an idyllic street in a Norman Rockwell type town. I left the sixties, 21 years old, a husband a father and in the US Army in Vietnam. Somewhere along the way, I had managed to attend college, learn how to make pizza professionally and sing in garage band. It was a crazy decade.
When we started the sixties in the United States, Our President was Dwight D. Eisenhower, a grandfatherly figure, who had won World War II as the grand poohbah in charge. Just about everyone trusted him. At the end of the decade the man running the country was Richard Milhous Nixon. No one would have mistaken him for having a grandfatherly image, and no one was exactly sure what he had ever accomplished, to earn the right to be President of the United States. Trust was not a characteristic that was readily assigned to him. So here we were , not sure how the country got into this mess or how we were going to get out.
For certain, being in the Army, half a world away, rendered my participation, moot. So I did the next best thing, I tried to drink as much beer as I could whenever and wherever possible. Being in a war zone, most generally accepted rules of etiquette are pushed to the wayside. Beer for breakfast is possible and considering the circumstances understood. You see, it’s brutally hot in Vietnam and refrigeration is non-existent, so about the only time an acceptable temperature of my desired liquid beverage could be attained, is after midnight. So, the first thing in the morning was as close as I could get to a “cold one”. Breakfast was most often fruit out of a can, so beer went reasonably well with it. It is a acquired taste, much the same as scotch. You just keep drinking it until one day it doesn’t taste awful anymore.
My days in Vietnam were very much the same. Sleep in the jungle at night, get up, strap on an 85 pound pack, walk for most of the day and tomorrow, do it all over again. It is helpful if bad guys don’t try to walk the same trails you are on. That’s when the game gets serious, they want to go one way and you want to go the other. Shooting generally erupts and often someone gets hurt. After this little interruption, everyone runs off to their corner of the jungle to hide. This is when beer is very helpful. Not only are you very thirsty when things calm down, you are also in need of something to bring you back from the edge of insanity.
It is helpful that every three days while you are in the jungle, resupply helicopters bring you more beer. If you are lucky, mail from home will arrive as well. Sometimes those letters do not bring good news. Things like your old high school is being torn down or your girlfriend is now dating your cousin, make you want to reach for a newly arrived fresh beer. However, most resupplies were routine and carried out with amazing efficiency. C-rations, ammunition, water and beer were among the things that we could not live without. They are also some of the heaviest things on earth if you are going to be carrying them in a rucksack strapped on your back. So you might as well start lightening the load by popping a beer. It is important to note that with temperatures routinely at 115 degrees by mid day, it helps to delineate the affect of any alcohol that enterers your system. Sweat is the bodies way of expelling toxins and in the jungle there is a lot of toxin expelling going on.
After thirty to forty days of wandering around the jungle trying not to get into trouble, we were picked up by helicopters and brought back to a Fire Support Base for a couple of days of R&R (rest and recuperation). It was our favorite place on earth because they had generators, therefore they had electricity, therefore they had cold beer. War tends to reduce everything in one’s mind to simple choices. It also introduces the concept that tomorrow may never come, so live for today. Hot showers, cold beer, and a latrine were the most important things to us during that time. So after availing ourselves of all three of these luxuries and getting a full nights sleep, without being interrupted to pull security, we were rejuvenated and returned to the triple canopy for more fun.
When a person is twenty-one years old and given a lot of time to think, elaborate plans are hatched .When you are in Vietnam, these are always thoughts of what you will do upon returning home. What’s first thing you will do when you see your kid. What your first meal will be. What will your Mom look like. Also, you make plans for things that you never do again. In my mind one thing was for certain, I was never going to drink another warm beer, ever.
