The Prairie spy

It was about 53 years ago. The army flew me into Danang. From there, I made my way up north to Quang Tri Combat Base, U.S.Army, by jeep, airplane, and deuce-and-a-half.  I reported in to the First Sergeant, a crusty old (old for the army, anyway) timer who had gotten where he was by just mainly hanging around and not drawing attention, which was how you got rank back then.

He looked at my records and said: “Yer a college boy, ain’t chew!” It wasn’t a question. And it wasn’t complimentary. I said: “I guess so, First Sergeant.”  Then he said: “Do you know how to run a movie projector?” Well, in fact, I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to admit it, so I said that yes, I did.

“Even better,” he grunted. “You’re the new Movie Guy.” He went on to say that the Friday night movie arrived at his hootch/office on Friday afternoon, and I could pick it up and run it that night. He grinned and said “Good luck.” Much to my surprise, not only did we have a movie Friday nights, but I was the lucky guy doing it. On top of my other duties.

There was, it turned out, a tiny movie projector hut, about half the size of a small outhouse. It sat in a clearing between our sandbagged hootches and the bunker line. There was a narrow door, and a small lift-up hinged opening, and a lot of baseball-sized rocks banked around it. And “stuffy” didn’t begin to describe how hot it was in there. I wondered why there were no openings for ventilation, but figured it must be because, since all those rocks must be there to hold it down in the wind, they weren’t needed.

Friday night came. The movie came. I came.  I opened the door of the hut, and hot in there oh Lord it was like opening an oven door. Soldiers from my maintenance unit began to arrive. Marines next door from the 3rd came, M16s in one hand; a six-pack of warm beer in the other. Army LRRPs—Long Range Recon Patrol—dragged in, boonie hats on, rifle and beer with them. As they arrived, I was sweatily loading the first reel into the projector, really not paying attention to anything outside the hut.

Quang Tri was five miles south of the DMZ. South Vietnam was a long skinny country. Movies began their long journey northward, starting way down south in Saigon. By the time a movie got to us in Quang Tri, it had been shown about a hundred times, and it was much the worse for wear due to the heat, humidity, and poor equipment. Bak then, movies were made of acetate, and you mended the breaks with Scotch tape, which came with the movie.

I knew none of this. I knew nothing about the tape or the movie’s age. And especially, it turned out, knew nothing about all those rocks that were banked up around my little house. I’m busy roasting inside the little hut. I don’t notice that there were in fact none of the hundreds of rocks left around the hut. As stressed soldiers came to the movie, they had each grabbed a few rocks before they sat down.

All of this became clear to me when, about ten minutes into Gone with the Wind—a four-reeler on top of it all—the film broke. Everyone cheered and threw a rock. And drank some more warm beer. At this point in time, after all my apprehension about going to and being in Vietnam, and wondering how I would react when under attack, I had had no idea that it might be by rocks.

Inside that little hut, I tried to stick the two broken ends of a rotten piece of movie film together with tape, all while the little board hut rock and rolled on its shaky foundation, and I was deafened by rocks slamming into it. And it was a double-heated oven in there, because projectors are hot. And it’s summer in Vietnam.

And the cheering. I was under attack by cheering soldiers carrying rifles, who seemed to understand that the new rule here was no shooting, just throwing. It was a little bit of hell inside that movie projection hut. Like being inside a landslide. It was deafening.

But once you think about it, it was a great bit of psychological release for guys who were the worse for wear by Vietnam, and heat, and combat, and leaders who didn’t know their hind ends from a hole in the ground.

It was the FNG, the new guy, who had to show the movies. It took about three weeks before the next one showed up, and I got to sit and cheer and throw rocks. Incidentally, Gone with the Wind broke at least a dozen times.

Fifty-three years ago today, 10,000 miles from here. A long time ago.

But like yesterday.