The prairie spy

The very first thing you noticed when you set foot in Vietnam was sandbags. Well, sandbags after you noticed the sweltering humidity and heat, I guess. Everything sandbaged. Everywhere, sandbagged. The mess hall; the outhouse–yes, even the outhouse; all buildings, sleeping areas, headquarters offices; everything.

This story is about filling sandbags, and it occurred exactly to the day, 51 years ago the 4th of July. (The 4th of July is the clue to how I exactly remember this incident.)

Up close to the DMZ where Quang Tri Combat Base was located, the situation was pretty calm. It had been a couple of weeks since we had taken any rockets–122s–or mortars or any incoming at all. Like I said, pretty calm.

Pretty calm is not a good situation for my age bracket at that time, what with the 4th of July coming up, and all. I have mentioned in the past that due to the acute military intelligence and foresight of our army leadership at that time and place, all our ammunition was locked up. (Like I said, “military intelligence.”)

We each had one magazine of ammunition, which we used when we checked out rifles for guard duty. (You can see why we didn’t need much ammunition–we didn’t have rifles either. At least, not much of the time. After all, kids like us were likely to be untrustworthy.)

I really wanted to come up with some gunpowder so I could construct a 4th of July rocket, so I went around and got one round from everyone, closed the door on my service van, disassembled the bullets for the powder, and fashioned a small “test” rocket, one about six inches long, and as big around as a cigar. To help in this caper, I recruited Tex, who will read this in a few days, and wonder once again at my level of intelligence.

He and I closed the van door, and in a moment of sheer IQ absence, placed some weight on the test rocket, to hold it down while it fired, and lit it. It turned out to have a lot more power than initial mathematical calculation predicted. Well, I didn’t do any math, so that part was not a failure.

The rocket took off. It shot up to the inside ceiling of the small service van, went around about six times at the speed of light, dove into a corner, fizzled a bit, and went out. Tex and I stood up–we had hit the floor–and immediately couldn’t breathe for the dense acrid gunpowder smoke that filled the van.

We cracked the door and fell out coughing and choking. I remember looking at Tex’s fatigue shirt, and the thick gooey smoke that kind of cloaked him in a fashion reminiscent of a 9-alarm barbecue fire. Of course all the fuss drew a crowd, one of whom was the officer in charge, who asked what was going on.

I drew on my ability to lie creatively and believingly at a moment’s notice and said: “Sir, that’s the worst oscilloscope fire I’ve ever seen!” And he was buying it, since he really didn’t know an oscilloscope from a truck tire. (Another example of military intelligence.)

Everyone was buying it, until a good old southern redneck soldier shambled up and loudly exclaimed: “AH SMELL GUNPOWDER!!!”

And that’s how I know that 51 years ago today, to the exact minute, hour, day, and year, on the 4th of July, I and Tex were filling sandbags.

It was like yesterday.

Happy 4th of July.