The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

The year was 1969. I guess you can rightly say I survived Vietnam, although at the time, after I got home, and once in a while even now, I have to wonder. This you’re about to read? I call it:  “I remember.”

I remember stepping off a jet airliner in Danang, stiff-legged and already somewhat shellshocked from 18 hours in the air. I remember how the hot humid air assaulted my senses. There was the feel of the air, the smell of it, the humidity of it. It grabbed at you. Said to you this was different. I would soon learn that some of that smell came from burning American  human feces, Army soldiers’ waste mixed with diesel fuel and stirred by either penalized GI’s, or hired Vietnamese. The rest of the smell was an equal mix of helicopter exhaust, and a wholesale lack of native plumbing, who used their waste to help their rice grow.

I remember nights sitting and sweating on a sandbag bunker, hoping the moon would come up soon so I could see over the perimeter defense line of concertina wire and little wire-tripped Claymore mines we placed between us and the jungle. . So I could see over the flat burned-every-month ground between me and the jungle. I remember how dark it was at night. Even in a combat base, having lights at night was painting a target that even the ill-thinking Army could figure out.

And I remember sitting on that bunker marvelling at the large cumulus clouds that floated so low, laden heavy with humidity.

I remember how you could always see and hear helicopters in the sky, as their blades whopped and beat their way here and there.

I remember Tex, a tall 19-year-old with whom I served, who early-on held me off the ground a couple of inches and inquired of me: Was my superciliousness inherited, or did I have to work at it. Well, I replied, I’ve been working on it for 25 years, you know. We became good friends immediately. Most of the mischief to which I was naturally attracted involved him. Hence we spend some time filling penalty sandbags together.

I remember marveling at how such a long-lived organization as the U. S. Army had survived this long, led bafflingly by the most ill-contrived manner of leadership-based-on-time-served ever conceived. I saw early on that I was involved in what was basically a part-time war: One year for enlisted; six months for officers. Huh. Not difficult to understand why that didn’t work.

I remember Twine, a self-proclaimed hillbilly from Georgia who was there because he got caught headed for the back streets of Macon in a souped-up Mercury full of his daddy’s moonshine. A flat tire, the spare buried beneath a hundred pints of shine, a Georgia highway patrolman, and one judge he was right there with Tex and me and thousands more like us.

I remember  coming back home, where there were lights at night, so you could see.

I remember how fast cars and trucks went when I was back in the world, after a long time when you either walked, or rode deuce-and-a-halves going horse speed.

I remember.

If you were there, you remember too.