Chuck Hommes
Chuck is a carpenter. He lives in Florence, MA with his wife, Vicky, whom he met and married upon returning from Vietnam, and his 17 year old daughter, Ari. In addition to his love for motorcycles, Chuck competes in the master’s races at New England crew regattas.
It was 1970. I had just graduated from high school. I actually went to a trade school so there weren’t really any college prospects and it was summer. I was looking for a job and just kind of hanging out. I was living in Whittensville, MA, which is a little southwest of Worcester, a little mill town, a small town. My brother was actually in the army at that time, in Germany, and the lottery was going on, but the year before the number for my birthday was in the three hundreds so I just assumed that I would be safe. Of course, every year was a new, lottery, but somehow I wasn’t worried about it.
I hadn’t really been following the Vietnam War that closely - being a teenager and being somewhat in that closed world. Prior to getting a license you tend to be kind of short-sighted in terms of what your thoughts are. I was hearing about it on TV and thinking, it’s a long ways away. It’s nothing I have to worry about, and gee, it’s too bad that we have to be there. You don’t really believe that we are there. I wasn’t clear on all the circumstances like I am now. It seemed like it was just a big mistake to be there, but honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought.
We had some anti-war marches, which everybody would participate in, because either you believed in it or it got you out of school. Being a small mill town and somewhat conservative, there were a lot of people who were ready to go, and thinking, well, this is your country. There’s no question. You need to go if you are eligible and fight for your country. I wasn’t thinking about joining up at the time. I had no interest.
My dad had been in the Coast Guard. In World War II he had gone into Hiroshima right after the bombing. He drove landing barges for some campaigns and so he saw what kind of devastation could happen. He supported Nixon and later Reagan. If I were to go to Vietnam, I knew he would be proud that I went, but I don’t think he really wanted me to go. My brother went to Germany. The thought was, he’s okay; you go there, you serve your time, you do your job, and it’s like seeing the world, a little vacation. No thought of more than that in Germany. So, I’m not really sure if my Dad was pro-war. I don’t think he was. I’m sure when I got drafted, he wasn’t—he might have been proud of me for going, but I’m sure he didn’t want me to go. He never really voiced it, but I got that feeling.
I did get a number in that second lottery. It was 26 and it was like, all right, what I am going to do now? I talked to a lot of friends asking, how’d you get out of being stationed in Nam, because I’m thinking, I’m out of high school, I’m kind of bored. I’m thinking, well this might be good. Not to go to Vietnam, but to go into the army, go to Germany. I’m thinking maybe they’ll station me in Hawaii. I was pretty naive.
Soon after the lottery, I went to Springfield. A recruiting officer there told me, “If you enlist right now and I change you to regular army versus draft, you can go anywhere you want.” I’m thinking, well, I’m in anyway. So, at the recruiting station I switched, and it didn’t really do me any good.
The physical was—I mean everyone I knew had stories about how to get out of your physical, so you kind of sped up on mescaline or whatever you could think of. I had some crystal meth. I went down there pretty stoned. My heart was pounding like crazy, but I sailed right through it. It was interesting because it was like nothing was happening. You just went in there, and they checked you right through. They made sure you didn’t have flat feet or bleeding hemorrhoids or something - all these major problems, but maybe they could see right through what some of us were trying. Maybe they knew - this is temporary. His heart is pounding like crazy. He is obviously doing something. I passed with flying colors. It was quick and I was panicky. I found that I didn’t really get nervous until I was there. And then, oh my God, this is real, I’m in it now. Once I take this physical and pass, I’m on my way to Fort Dix, New Jersey. It was a strange time.
Several of my friends were drafted and went to Vietnam. In a small town like that if you got drafted, they threw a party for you; you’re going away. It wasn’t looked at so terribly, maybe only because we were all so naive about what was actually going to happen, of what it was like to be in a war. You kept thinking, this war is going to be over and this will not last. And this was 1970 - it had been going on for a long time. They kept saying it’s going to end, it’s going to end, it’s going to end. So they had a party for me, too. Just a bunch of my buddies, the people I was hanging out with. You just go out with a bunch of friends and a bunch of beer and everyone gets drunk. It was a send off - good luck, and so and so is over there and maybe you’ll see them.
My parents got really nervous once I got in there and went through basic training. All through boot camp I thought I wasn’t going. My brother was into small arms repair. He was with rifles and pistols in the supply room and to him it was an 8-hour day job where he could go and do whatever he wanted to and the day was over. He got paid for it. He was in Germany. He was traveling all over Germany, and so he was having a great time. That’s what I expected – some version of that.
So I go in and I’m thinking, okay, I’ll just do this. It’s only two years. I go to Fort Dix, New Jersey. Boot camp is the most demoralizing time. They want to break you down to nothing and then rebuild you. My theory in boot camp was that you keep your mouth shut. You don’t look at anybody, and you just do it. It’s painful and it’s a lot of work, but as soon as you have an attitude you’re in big, big trouble. I got the warning from other friends.
Turns out boot camp was not that bad. I’m thinking, okay I’ll do boot camp and then go to AIT, which is Advanced Individual Training. I still don’t know what I’m going to do yet. Out of boot camp I came home and I had 30 days before I had to go to Aberdeen, Maryland where I was assigned. I got my orders saying I was going to be an aircraft armament subsystems repairman on helicopters, which to me is large arms, but to them is small. A 20mm cannon is small arms because it’s on helicopters. I kept hearing: nobody’s going, nobody’s going, nobody’s going. Don’t worry about it. They’ve frozen it down; nobody’s going over there. Only the people they really need are going and they really don’t need us. I was thinking, maybe I’ll go to Hawaii or something like that. I was still so naive about the whole process.
I went to Maryland to school for 13 weeks. Real easy. I go to school during the day and I’m off for the rest of the day. I’m in Maryland; it’s nice, but then we got our orders towards the end and I got orders for Vietnam. I was like, no way. I had 15 days between AIT and going to Washington. I came home and stayed for 30. I was AWOL, but I didn’t care because I felt like if I was going to Nam, I’m taking as much time as I want to just sort of regroup. Nothing happened. When I went to Fort Lewis, Washington they said that I was AWOL and they looked at my orders and asked if I was going to Nam, and I said yes. They said okay, don’t worry about it.
I still didn’t know for sure if I was going. When I got to Washington, I was there for 14 days and I had 5 different sets of orders in those 14 days. They would come down and tell us first that everybody’s going, then nobody’s going, then certain people were going. I would call my parents and tell them, “I don’t think I’m going.” Two days later, “I think I’m going.” It was the rumor mill, and it was really hard to tell.
(Coincidentally, as Chuck tells his story in his backyard, a helicopter passes overhead and Chuck describes it as a military double-propeller helicopter - a troop carrier Chinook.)
Thinking now about going AWOL I remember I knew I was taking a risk. I was just hanging out and no one was coming to get me. My parents knew and I just told them, “I’m not ready. I’m not ready to go. What are they going to do? Send me to Vietnam?” I kind of had an attitude. I’m 19. It kind of felt like, “Why am I going? I didn’t get what I thought I was going to get.”
There’s a lot that goes through your mind, and it’s hard to remember everything. It was a long time ago, but you know, it was kind of like the lamb being led to slaughter. I’m thinking at some point maybe something will happen; at some point maybe I can jump ship. I was thinking, we’ll see where this goes. So I just took the 15 days, and I figured if they want me to go, they’ll just have to wait. In my own head I just wasn’t ready. I thought, what can I do? Where can I hide? If you went out of the country, you could never come back. At that time there was no amnesty. So, do I really want to go to Canada? I’m sort of a homebody. I wouldn’t know anybody. I’d just be in this country that I don’t know anything about.
The truth was I didn’t know how else to get myself out of the mess I was in except to leave the country. I think that was the only thing I considered. I didn’t know what else you could do. You could hurt yourself, and I didn’t want to go that far. I certainly didn’t go there in my head. I really didn’t want to go to jail. I couldn’t imagine spending 3 years there, and I saw what happened in boot camp because we had a couple of kids who said in boot camp that they were conscientious objectors and the drill sergeants just ripped them to pieces. They said, “I will not pick up a gun,” and it was the worse thing you could say because, oh my God, I have never seen people get so verbally abusive. They can’t touch you, but they are going to verbally abuse you. It was unbelievable. I just said to myself that I’m never going to say that. It was definitely fear. The two people I knew never made it through because they refused to a point that they were just removed because they were starting to influence other people. It was like the bad apple. You’ve got to get this guy out of here because these other guys are starting to think the same things. So, they just disappeared. Who knows what happened to them. I certainly don’t.
Finally I was sent to Tacoma, Washington. I got orders to go. Then orders not to go and again orders to go. It happened 3 or 4 times at least. Tacoma was a shipping out point, so I knew it was getting close. They called us out in formation and there were about 300 people backlogged because they kept not wanting to send people, but people were still coming. They had a giant formation. We all stood out there, and they started reading off names of where you were going to go. “You’re going to Fort Bragg,” and they call 50 names. “You’re going to Texas,” and they call off another 50 names. “Hawaii,” 50 names.
When they said Vietnam and my name was called along with maybe 15 others, I couldn’t believe I was going. It was just like with the lottery. I lost all over again. That was when I started to think, I’m not that far from Canada. If I’m going to do it, this is the time to do it. I was thinking, if I just take off…You’re not rational. You’re standing in formation and thinking if I can take off and I can thumb a ride fast enough, then I can be up there and they’d never catch me. In your head, you think like this, which is ridiculous. It would never work, but that’s when I almost bolted. It’s hard to get off base. You just don’t walk off a base. It didn’t matter though. I obviously decided not to leave, and again, I just said, all right. Let’s see what happens here. I packed. I called my parents and said, “I’ll see you. I’m going to Vietnam.” They wished me good luck.
I packed up and got on a plane and flew for 24 hours. We flew from Tacoma, Washington to Anchorage, Alaska. We landed on an airstrip that was frozen so the plane was fishtailing. I thought, well, O.K., I’ll just die here. I’m never going to make it. I noticed that the farther I got away, the older the stewardesses got and the more clothes they had on. When you’re flying overseas they were covered from their heads to their toes, pants-suits, nothing provocative. They weren’t attractive. Part of me was thinking, oh I see, they’re just trying to break us. We’re not going to see any American women for a long time, but it’s just bizarre the things you think about. Just sitting there waiting, flying and waiting, reading or listening to music or whatever. Not a lot of talking. People just kind of in their own heads.
We flew into Japan and got out of the plane. I was in Tokyo for about an hour and a half. I watched John Wayne in Japanese on TV in the airport. We got back on the plane, another plane, and flew into Saigon. Big city. I had never seen so many people. All those mopeds, all those people: culture shock for a guy from a little town in Massachusetts. “Oh my God, now what.”
The next thing I remember is getting prepped and going through all these trainings. This is where you are. This is what you’ve got to do. This is what could happen. I then got orders for Vinh Long, which is about as far south as you could go and so, I’m thinking, yes, this is cool. Vung Tao, which is the R & R where everybody goes for rest and relaxation, is even north of us.
I got my orders and we got to fly down in a helicopter. There were no doors in the helicopter, guys are sitting with their feet on the rails. They had harnesses on and it’s freezing because once you get up high enough, it’s really cold. My suit is as green as green can be. Anywhere in Vietnam when you see somebody that’s really green that’s an FNU, a fucking new guy. Stay away from him. He’s dangerous because he doesn’t know what to do. He could get you killed, which I didn’t know. You learned that when you got there.
We got off the helicopter. We were walking across the flight line and mortars were coming at us. I thought, I’m dead. This is it. How am I going to make it a year? We’re right on the airstrip. If the Vietnamese knock out one helicopter, that takes care of 5 or 6 people, that whole crew. Even if they were not in the helicopter, the crew now didn’t have a helicopter, so they were very smart.. The other thing they used to do was, if you were in the jungle, they would only try to wound you because every time you wound one person, it takes two to carry him out. You’re getting three for the price of one. They were trying to work it that way. That’s how it was explained to us. So we were getting mortared. I was freaking out. A lot of people were just saying, “It’s pretty normal”. They got into their bunkers, or they ducked down behind sandbags and then it stopped and they got up and just started doing things. And I’m thinking, you’ve got to be kidding me. This is nuts!
The mortar shells were quite a ways out on the flight line, but they were so loud. It’s a loud that I never got used to even after a year of listening to them. It was just so freaking loud. That was definitely how I came to understand what it meant to be shell-shocked. But, it happens and the older guys say, “Relax. You okay? Come on we’ll check you in.”
This is where it gets interesting. I’m there. I’m just starting to get whose who and I don’t really even know where I am. It’s a whole process. Which company you go into, blah, blah, blah. I walk into an enlisted men’s club. They have all these bars and go-go dancers and the Vietnamese women could make more money as a prostitute or a go-go dancer in a night than they could make in a month. The American influence, the French influence just destroyed their culture because these people were just living off whoever was there for their services. We all had a mama san to wash our clothes, shine our boots and make our beds.
I went into this club and I saw a familiar face. It was Ralph Skitanis from Whittensville. He had left in 8th grade. There he was and he looked like he was still in 8th grade. He was a cousin of a good friend of mine that I grew up with in Whittensville named Marty. Marty’s cousin from Michigan. “Oh, my God, Ralph.” It was a connection. He had three days left. He said, “How much time you got left.” I said, “I just got here.” He said, “Aw, man. I’m gone in three days.” So, he sat me down and we played cards for three days and he just told me about what you need to do. He said, “Forget everything they told you in boot camp. Just follow the older guys. See what’s going on. Follow the older guys.” It was good. It was relaxing because now I had someone to connect with. It’s wild because you’re just there with all these people you’ve never seen before, but you really do connect because you’re all dressed in green. You all look alike. There were no cliques. I found that out with boot camp, too, because people with long hair came in. We had rednecks come in; we had the boozers come in; we had the greasers come in. Whoever. And once you all have your hair cut off and you’re dressed in green, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure that’s the theory behind it. You’re all one. You’re all buddies. You’re all brothers at that point.
When I got to Vinh Long it was monsoon season. It just rained and rained and rained. Everything was wet. Our clothes were wet. Everything. Just constantly wet. I was aircraft subsystem repairman. I worked in a shop. I worked on rocket launchers and grenade launchers and mini-guns. I worked on helicopters. I’d go out when the birds came in. I’d pull out all the armament and fix what had broken. It served as an arms department. It was interesting. I’d go to my hooch after work. It’s a big open building. It’s just screened and you were with a bunch of guys and you’d go out and have beers and then you’d go to work. I felt like, all right. I can do this. You could go downtown and go out and get a good meal or a hooker or whatever.
Then what happened was that somebody got his throat slit downtown. After that they didn’t let us go downtown anymore. This guy went down, stayed overnight, and obviously there was some kind of trap. He just never came back. You couldn’t tell who was North Vietnamese and who was South Vietnamese. It was like who’s from Kansas and whose who’s from Nebraska. It was the same people. The infiltration—I mean there were North Vietnamese everywhere. That was a little scary. Being around soldiers who had been there for months and months and months could also be scary. My first shift on guard duty, I’m sitting there thinking, I’m scared to death. I’m watching for people, and these guys were sleeping, and I was supposed to wake them up. They said, “Forget it, go to sleep. I’m not going to watch.” Then I find out that this particular place that I was guarding there was somewhat of a path through all the wire, the barbed wire, and the mines and guys would stay up late and come back through. Nobody told me. I’m about ready to blow this guy away, and he’s waving, he’s calling to me. I’m thinking, “This has got to be a trap, got to be a trap.” Then this other guys says that no, that guy was just so and so, and that he was just coming back from town. I’m thinking, oh, Jesus. So, if you go downtown and you stay late, you’d come back and sneak through this place and this place, you jump off of this, you jump over a fence, and you’re in. People are nuts, but that’s what it was and it was normal to take those kinds of risks. It was just the way it was.
One thing that happened d while I was in the southern part of Nam is that we had to go out into the rice paddies to check the claymore mines, which were these half brown, 780 ball bearings behind a plastic explosive. When you set them off, they would just send balls across the field. You’re up to your waist in water with a machete and a 45 because you’re worried about snakes more than anything else and you’re just checking all the connections. It shouldn’t have been dangerous because you disconnected the electrical charge, but the scary part was that a lot of them had been turned around and they were facing us. Snipers had been coming in at night and crawling through what seemed like impossible stuff and turning them around and waiting for the optimal moment when we’d set them off and those balls would head our way. They just prepare, waiting for that moment, which might never come, but they constantly prepare. I remember another bizarre aspect of checking the mines. To be able to see what was what at times when the rice grew too high for clear vision, we’d pump J24—jet engine fuel—into those rice paddies.
So, we check the knoll and then we pump J24, which is jet engine fuel, into the rice paddies because the growth was getting too high to see and this was how we dealt with it. This was people’s food! We pumped the jet fuel out there and lit it. We’d been told, “Just burn it out. We don’t care about those rice paddies.” Everything burned, even those little houses out there and the little stations people worked out of when they were picking rice. We’re burning out this whole field around the base, and these little shacks that people would sit in during the heat of the day were blowing up like crazy because they were full of armaments. They’re blowing up and it’s like the Fourth of July. It was really wild, but you don’t look at it as a scary thing. You look at it, like, now we know. Now we know. This isn’t going to happen again. You just numb yourself out and do your thing and just wait for your time.
Of course, drugs were part of it, too. Part of the numbing out. I got quite heavily involved in drugs over there. Marijuana was just like smoking cigarettes almost. It was everywhere, just everywhere, and all kinds. Big Bad Buddha and North Thai and dipping opium. You had opium dens, which I really never saw, but guys used to talk about them. I don’t know if they really existed. The other big drug over there was heroin. Big. And it was incredibly pure. I heard numbers like 95 to 96%, while at the time in New York City it was 14%. What was happening was that these junkies were coming over and killing themselves because they were just firing it up, unaware of its greater potency, and overdosing. Drugs for me were an escape. Marijuana was okay, but the heroin was unbelievable. I basically couldn’t deal with what was happening to me in Nam. With heroin, I wasn’t there. I would get up in the morning. I would do my job. I’d function. What we used to do was put the heroin into cigarettes. Undiluted, it was just too potent and we really wanted to start shooting it up, and a lot of guys did, a lot of city guys. New York City, Philadelphia, hard core guys. We did it in cigarettes and I could stay up all night long, just nodding out, and I would be so rested that I would function all day again without a problem, without sleep. The bottom line was, for me doing drugs was just an incredible escape.
I started fooling around with it not long after I got there. Someone said, “Here try this. It’s really great. You’ll feel much better.” I got so sick that I thought that I would never ever do it again, but I did. I’d get these little plastic vials and they were just like snowflakes. They were big puffy white flakes. $5 a vial. You didn’t have any other major needs for money. I sent a lot of money home, and I bought drugs.I fell prey to it, and for me it was a total escape because you were just gone. I don’t think I over did it, but I certainly got addicted to it. I just maintained a level that worked. I didn’t try to get crazy. Doing drugs meant keeping your wits about you. You had to, because you could get busted.
That was another way out, to get med-evaced out. A lot of people were doing that. They failed the urine tests on purpose. Towards the end we were being tested about once a month, supposedly “by surprise,” but we always knew. And you could prepare yourself. Just drink tons of water. I’m not sure why they did it, but they would just do it. “Okay, piss test. Let’s go.” “Now?” “Yup, come on.” But, for me, there was a huge stigma in my head. Oh, my God, I can’t get med-evaced out. Stuck in a real hospital for like 90 or 120 days next to my hometown. It would destroy my parents. It would just destroy them. They’re religious. They go to church.
After Vinh Long I got transferred, only because at that point they’re starting to close things down. What they’re doing is they’re closing bases up; they’re wrapping everything up. Since we don’t have numbers for specific machinery or helicopters or whatever, we just “disappeared” them. We’d dump them in a lake or bury them because, if we couldn’t identify a piece of equipment by showing its number, we shouldn’t have it. I mean we left tons and tons of stuff there.
My base was getting closed down, too, and they sent me to Quang Tri, which is about as far north as you can go. I’m thinking, this is just too much. We get in the helicopter. It’s dark; in my head it’s dark, and it’s scary. The second night there I had a full guard duty in this place where they keep all the fuel in these gigantic rubber bladders sitting in shallow graves just to hold it. What happens is that a mortar hits one. I’m thinking, the world is ending. It was just flames and explosions. I thought, Oh, my God, what the hell am I supposed to do now? People all around me are running around, and it didn’t come out until later that it was friendly fire. Some guy was fooling around with a stupid grenade launcher and set one off that went straight up and happened to drift our way. Give me a break. But, it was panic. It scared the hell out of me, but I’m on guard duty for a couple more nights. I’m thinking, hopefully, that that’s not going to happen again.
Being in Nam was just so weird in terms of the culture and the people. All these guys are on base and what they would do is they would have these women come to the gate. They would go pick up a woman. They were on the base! They would go do whatever, have sex with her, and then bring her back to the gate and she’d go home. It would be a line-up and this was okayed by the officers in charge. “It’s Wednesday night, let’s go down to the gate.” The girls were getting younger and younger. Mothers would bring their kids because they were making so much money. It was just insane, just nuts. Meanwhile there were diseases being transmitted the whole time. I actually got something. It was my third or fourth day on the base and this guy says, “Come on, we’re going downtown.” I’m very naive and freaked out by what’s been happening so I go. All of a sudden I’m in a room, where I had sex and I got gonorrhea. (At this point, Chuck breaks from his narrative and says, “I hope you don’t think any less of me because of all these evils in my life.”)
The gonorrhea was just like, you got it, you deal with it. A lot of people had it. You go into the bathroom and there’d be people trying to pee and screaming at the same time. The process of getting better involved going to the first aid desk where they would hand out four big tubes of penicillin. A nurse said, “The warmer you get it, the less you feel it.” Like this, you know (rubs his hands together). You’re waiting and you walk up and you get these four in your butt for a week. You can’t even sit down and I’m sure they’re not being careful because you’re also learning a lesson. You are in pain. You swear, I will never do this again.
I am remembering how the different guys divided themselves up around the various substances they did. There were the boozers, the drunks, and the guys that did the drugs, but there was also a real defining line of Black and Hispanic and Caucasian. The brothers, the black brothers, if there were only three or four in a group, would just meld in. They were all great guys. We were good friends. I worked with these guys and we got along great, but once it was a bigger group they definitely separated. It was only like that in certain social situations because the guys that were in my shop—we were best buddies. We worked together, but once you’re out and back into your living area it was, “You’re not really welcome here.” For me, coming from a town that had no African-Americans, hardly any Hispanics, I don’t think I was prejudiced. I hung with the guys; had the roast pig with the Latino guys and bought most of my drugs from the brothers, but racism was definitely an issue in the Army. It was pretty prevalent. For instance, the kitchen jobs were crappy ones no one wanted. It was obvious that mostly African-American guys got stuck with them, which was blatantly unfair. But then another thing went down with that too. I saw situations where it seemed like certain people had access to all the food for our unit. For example, lots of times there wasn’t much ice cream for us, but the black guys in the kitchen might well still have some. I caught on to this one time when it was really hot and I really wanted some ice cream so badly, and I went all the way over to the kitchen to see if there might be some I could get hold of. It just happened that night they were all eating ice cream and they were all African-Americans. But you know, more power to them because it was really rotten the way they got assigned to all the worst jobs.
But we all did the best we could to take care of ourselves. We used to equip our bunkers better than our hooches because that’s where we hung out a lot of nights. A lot of mortars would hit while we were trying to sleep in the barracks. They weren’t really a threat to us there, because they were always trying to hit the flight line and knock out helicopters, not the barracks. But of course, it didn’t exactly make for restful sleep. This was, of course, in the middle of the night, fairly late, around one or two. So, we’d all get up, run into this giant hole in the ground covered by sandbags, and immediately reach in the fridge for the six-packs we’d cleverly stashed there. They used these little rocket launchers and the mortars can go far. They could get very close and hide very well.
Which isn’t to say those little rocket launchers and mortars can’t be dangerous. can go far. They can cover a lot of ground, get very close, and hide very well. One case in point occurred after Vinh Long when I was transferred to Marble Mountain near Da Nang. Marble Mountain was a giant rock, huge, from which we’d get mortared every night, and every night and day we’d bomb that rock in return. But we couldn’t touch them, because they were so deep in the caves. The infantry would go up there and try to take them out. However, the other side would put captured villagers in front of the line. This created a major moral dilemma. If you were going in there to do a dive with a helicopter and you saw a bunch of kids and women standing where the mortars might land, do you drop rockets on the place not knowing who these people are? Thankfully, I didn’t have to deal with going out there and doing the actual firing. I know some of the officers, the warrant officers would come back—they had a lot to think about. They were going out everyday and shooting and firing rockets. If they were lucky, they just fired into some jungle of suspected things and they didn’t have to see what happened or who they actually hit.
There were some nasty weapons. One was a rocket, which had six penny nails with wings on them. It would just spray and you’d get nailed to whatever you’re in. This guy came back and told us that there were bodies nailed to trees, ripped to shreds and nailed to trees. I didn’t see that, but we had a couple of snipers we killed and you’d go look at them and it was really gross. There were also times we’d be driving down the highway going from one base to another getting supplies or something and we’d see dead Vietnamese on the side of the road who seemed like they’d been left there forever. The people just kept going on, the Vietnamese. Let’s remember, they’d been living in war since the 50’s. I’m sure it’s similar to what’s going on in Iraq now. You function. You go along with your life. Things happen and it’s horrific, but you go on.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to deal with going out there and doing the actual firing. I know some of the officers, the warrant officers would come back—they had a lot to think about. They were going out everyday and shooting and firing rockets. If they were lucky, they just fired into some jungle of suspected things and they didn’t have to see what happened or whom they actually hit.
Which was really terrible, because I met some really great people there. I had a Vietnamese girlfriend on base, and she was very nice. This wasn’t any kind of sexual thing, but more someone to talk to. She spoke English. A lot of the Vietnamese spoke English. If they wanted to function and work for us, they’d learn English. They’d learn it quickly, too. She was really sweet. She invited me to her family’s house, which was just sheet metal and cardboard and plywood and dirt floors. There was a stream out back that everyone used for washing and bathing and sewer. There were rats running around, and I’m lucky I didn’t get sick as a dog. There were a lot of Vietnamese that came and worked on the base. You’d see them in the office. You’d see them doing clerical work, any of the work that we didn’t have enough people to do. They were more than happy to do it because they made a lot of money.
One night I was walking flight line duty, which is out there at night looking for anybody, and I hear the crack of a rifle and then I feel this, like this thwack, and I swear it hit my head and it turns out to be a round that somebody fired. They think that it was friendly fire. A lot of people died from friendly fire – just somebody fooling around with his rifle.
In Da Nang they have these big trailers which were air conditioned and contained all the computers. I’m sitting on the steps and I’m thinking, “Ah, I think I’ll go off and smoke a joint.” I get off the steps. I walk around the sandbag wall, which is ten feet high, and a mortar hits the steps of the trailer. So, okay. Another couple of minutes of sitting there and I wouldn’t be here now. Close calls. Then you’d say, “Hey, guess what happened to me.” It’s not as much of a panic. It’s an, “I just survived, you know.”
Your tour is only a year, so you’re working your way through. I was up to about 6-7 months and then you started becoming what’s called “short”. Guys would ask, “You’re short? How short are you?”, which meant how much time do you have left? One time I was really short. You wait for someone to ask you. This big guy comes up all cocky and says, “Hey, I got two months left, two months.” He’s bragging to everybody, and I don’t say anything. Then he asks me, “Hey man, how much time you got?” I said two days. (Again we hear the sound of helicopters flying above us…)
Back on Marble Mountain then, with 2 months to go. While we were there I used to really get into my work. It was interesting because I started to do woodworking. I said to myself, “Look I’m a carpenter.” We had our own little shop separate from the hanger. We put a roof on it, a white picket fence around it. It was kind of hokey, but it was cool. It was our own space. I had just finished building the white picket fence and an officer said, “We need a bunch of storage banks.” I’m working like an animal because it is such a trip being able to do something that I enjoy. I’m sweatin’ bullets. It was so hot over there. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. I’d think, “This is great. I finally got something to do that I like.” That helped a lot.
I even backed down on the drugs at that point. The work was my high. It was something that was interesting, something that I liked. I got into the mechanics of working. When I had a bunch of weapons to fix, I didn’t look at it like I was fixing weapons. I looked at it like it was a mechanical task. I was very meticulous about what I did. Rewiring a rocket pod is a nightmare because there’s hundreds of wires, but if you do it just right…You make it look nice and the wires and the plate line up just so. I took pride in that. I didn’t look at it like, “I’m creating a weapon that might kill somebody.” I looked at it like, “This is my job right here, and I’m going to do my job.” That was pretty cool. Of course, we were always smoking pot; rolling joints and hanging out. I have a bunch of pictures ustairs I’ve been hiding from my daughter. A bunch of us are standing over bags of weed.
It was a job. I’m not out on the front line. I’m not out in the jungle. The one time when it felt really scary was right before I left Marble Mountain and went to another place called Bien Hoa. They just dropped us in the jungle in the middle of what was the American Trans-Vietnamese Army. First they create a perimeter and then they drop in our guys. Sometimes it was the Marines ahead of us and then we go in and it’s what is called a firebase. The planes come in and out and in and out. When they’re in you fix them and get them loaded and ready to go. You’re just closer to the action. Now, you’re out in the jungle. There was nothing out there to do. You just wait until your job comes and then you do it. One night though, we got a little bit of a sniper attack. The Army ran. They didn’t want to fight. The Marines were there and there was another group, the Rock. I’m not sure quite what they were, but they were a really hard core South Vietnamese Army and they held it together and kept everything safe. You get overrun and that’s it. It’s all over. That was a little scary being out there because you just don’t know. You’re just waiting. I was out there for 2 or 3 weeks. It was awful.
Then we had another situation where we had a job. I knew a lot of guys who were all crew chiefs and gunners in helicopters and they had a thing called “night hawk”. You’d go up at night with a spotlight and do the perimeter. Talk about insane. These guys are getting knocked out of the sky and losing people. You don’t really ever see them. All of a sudden you get the word that so-and-so is gone. Two helicopters didn’t come back. They just never come back. They’re gone. You never see them again, or they get medevaced out immediately, if they survive. I think it just really did something to my emotional state in terms of just numbing me. I mean, my God, they’re dead?
When I got transferred to Bien Hoa I was really getting “short”. I’m thinking, I really have to be careful. I can’t get killed now. I’ve just got a month left. Be careful, be careful, be careful. And then I got busted with maybe two weeks left. Major Kennedy - I remember his name - was a bastard. He was just out for the guys who did the drugs. “We’re going to get you guys. We’re going to get you.” And I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?” I pulled off a real James Bond kind of a thing. I don’t know how I did it. I just did it. You just run on adrenaline. Weeks before I’m leaving, I got my orders to go. Now Kennedy has my orders. He’s got my id badge, everything in his desk. I go up to the CQ runner, which is the guy who takes care of the desk at night. “Hey man. You mind if I just cut through here. I need to get something.” “Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Sure.” I break into the major’s office. I steal my id. I take my orders and he doesn’t know they’re missing because he’s got them in the file somewhere. I don’t know how I found them.
The next day I process out. I go to every place you have to go. There’s like 5 or 6 guys. I throw down my orders. The first sergeant signs. I stand in the back, throw my orders down, not looking away. I get my orders signed by this one. The supply guy signs one. The guy that has the weapons signs them, this guy signs them, this guys signs them. Hey, I’m getting out of here. I know some of the guys who are heading out. “Hey, we’re going to Saigon. You need a ride?” I hope on their helicopter. I go to Saigon. I’m there. The guy’s processing my order and he says, “Hey, you didn’t get this signed. You can’t go.” “You got to be kidding me, come on. Please just let me go.” “We’ll just call him up.” He calls my company and the warrant officer who was in charge of our shop answers the phone. “Not a problem,” he tells the guy. “Just let him go,” he says and, just like that, I was gone. Somehow, I don’t know how I did it, but I got out of there. It just was, whatever it takes.
That’s how I got back to the States. I got into California. Everybody said, “Keep a low profile. A lot people out there don’t like you.” I’m thinking, “Oh, this is great (sarcasm in Chuck’s voice). I almost get killed. I’ve been doing this awful stuff for a year.” There was a lot of anger toward the military. You’d run into people and if you looked like a service guy there was hostility. My clothes were kind of out-dated and my hair was as short as can be. We were obviously coming from a certain area, coming from a base. People looked at us strangely. I never really got accosted, but I just had this sense. I kind of wish it had been better in Californiabecause I would have stayed there, but my mindset was that I had to get somewhere safe. The only place I knew was my bedroom in my little town. It was just too scary to be anywhere else. My job was to get across the United States and just get home.
They wanted us to stay on the base for a couple of days, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to go. This guy said, “Hey, look. Get your civies on (your civilian clothes). Meet me here and I’ll take you out to town. Four of us just left. It really wasn’t like we were doing anything wrong. We were just leaving early. We didn’t process out totally. They didn’t want you to leave, but they weren’t going to do anything. The guy gives us a ride out to the edge of town and drops us off in the middle of nowhere. “Where the hell are we?” We finally get a ride. We get to the airport. As long as you have orders you can fly for free. All you have to do is walk up to the flight attendant and say, “Here’s my orders. I’m processing out.” “Where are you going? Okay.”
I get myself to New York City. We’ve got to get to the Port Authority. There are two of us at this point. A taxi driver picks us up. “I’ll take you there.” He drops us off in the middle of the city somewhere. We’re looking for a subway stop, but it’s like two o’clock in the morning. We can’t get into any of the stations. There’ll all locked so we jump over a fence and finally we get on a train. We’re just sitting there and a whole gang gets on. 5 or 6 guys. I’m thinking, “Fuck. I’m just trying to get home.” One of them says, “What you got in the bag?” I say, “Here, take it! Take whatever you want! Go through it. I don’t care.” He rips my duffle bag apart, pulls out all my crap, helps himself to miscellaneous stuff. I gave him a cigarette. I pack up all my stuff. I’m thinking, “I’m gonna get killed on the subway.” But they were cool and they left us alone. They were just macho.
We packed our stuff back up and got into the Port Authority. My traveling buddy lived in Albany. When we got there, which was on my way home, too, his parents drove us to get something to eat. I was experiencing total culture shock. I was also still strung out on drugs, which I knew I had to stop, so I just stopped. I know it seems impossible because how can you just stop? Nobody can just stop. I quit because it was either quit or don’t go home. So I stopped. I got so sick. I would drink cold clear water and I would vomit cold clear water. It wouldn’t stay in my stomach. I felt so completely empty. When I was still in Vietnam I couldn’t have processed out with anything in me because you’ve got to do urine tests on the way out. I knew when I was going to be leaving so I had to get clean. I cut myself off of it. I’d go to work and everyone knew it. I’d sit it in the corner. I’d be shaking and having cold sweats. Everyone would cover for me. Whatever I did, they’d cover for me. We had this bunker out back and I would go out there and sit out there for a while. I did it though. I quit. Then I went through the process. (Tom, I’m confused here. Did Chuck get clean in Nam? Then why is he still strung out on drugs?)
Meanwhile, I’m now in Albany and I’m freaked out. This guy drives me to Lee where my family is now living and he drops me off in the middle of town. I call my father and he asks, “Hey, where are you stationed?” I tell him, “I’m in town. Want to come get me?” He comes down. I’m standing there. Most of my friends are now gone. It was the summer of “going to California.” The whole group kind of migrated to California. It was 1972 and they’d left in VW vans. I just went home and slept for a week. I just slept and slept and slept. I felt safe, but it was very strange, because people were doing the same things. I had just gone through this mess of Vietnam and how could everyone else just be going about their business when so much stuff was still going on?
The other thing was, I had gotten home, but I wasn‘t out yet. I wasn’t out. I had orders to go to Fort Campbell, KY in December. I had just come back, come from 140 in the shade and I’m supposed to go down there. I decided to boycott. I just didn’t go. What were they going to do? At that point, I didn’t care if I got a dishonorable discharge. What I did was I hooked up with friends. I started drinking, out at the bars, having beers, shooting darts. I don’t know where the 45 days went, but I just vegged out and dealt with my folks. They were thinking, “Who is this person?” I had an incredible attitude. “Don’t ever tell me what to do again. If I leave, I leave. If I come home, I come home.” I think I was pretty brutal to them. I sort of lost it at this point. I was just totally out there. I was trying to cope with what I was doing in this tiny little town of nothing. I was like, “God, I can’t be living here.”
Then there was Jerry Kelley, an old friend of mine and he was messed up. He was so messed up. He was a total alcoholic and drug addict when he came back from Vietnam. He had gotten wounded and totally messed up. There was another guy from a tiny little nearby town. This guy would sit in the bar and all of a sudden, he’d climb under the table yelling, “Incoming!” at the top of his lungs. Everybody knew him so they’d tell him, “It’s okay man. It’s okay. Come on out.” He was really messed up, too. I’m thinking, “Oh, my God, is this going to happen to me? Am I going to lose control?” But these guys were really bad and the guy under the table ended up in a hospital. I don’t know what happened to him, but he was just really messed up. Sometimes I wonder to this day how I can be as sane as I am. How can I be like this? I think well, okay, it’s a long time ago. It’s history. I know when I came out I was struggling. I think it was just my attitude. I’m not really sure what I was like.
I somehow functioned for the next 45 days. I went to Fort Campbell in Kentucky. I checked in. The first words they spoke, of course, were, “Hey you’re AWOL man. What the hell’s wrong with you?” I showed them my orders and they saw, “Aww. Look at that. You’ve been through hell and you only have three months left. I don’t know why you’re still here: when people have six months or less left, procedure is to let people out. I had three months, so I’m thinking somewhere down the road someone knew something and said, “Well, if this guy’s going to screw us…” - because I kind of connected it with all the stuff I had pulled -“Look, his orders are messed up. Let’s just make him stay when his tour is up. We’re going to give him a full two years.”
So there I was. It was freezing cold and they said, “Well, we’re going to play army. You’re in aircraft armament. We’re going to put you out in a tent with a bunch of new guys and you’re going to train these guys and you’re going to sleep in the tent overnight and then the helicopters are going to come in and you’re going to go out and fix them.” I said, “Are you out of your mind? I’ll die out there!”
So, I’m out there. Nobody wants to get out of his sleeping bag to stoke the stove. I’m definitely not doing it. It is so cold. We’re all shaking in the morning. The officers are pissed off because the tent’s not warm because we didn’t stoke the stove. I refused to get out of my sleeping bag. I’m not going to do it. This is insane. I was out there for maybe two days, and they said, “Send him back. Maybe we can do something with him back in the barracks.” It was nuts, absolutely nuts. I’m in the barracks thinking, “I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to do this.” The colonel walks in and I say to him, “What are you going to do? Fire me?” He responds with, “You’re out of here!” and I say, “Great. Good. I want to go.” But they didn’t do anything. I guess maybe they said, “He’s just come back. Give him a little slack.”
There was something called an “early out”. I called my father and I said, “You’ve got to get me out of here.” He talked to a carpenter in Pittsfield who said, “Yeah, I’ve been waiting for a guy to come work for me. If I don’t get him pretty soon, I’m going to have to give the job away.” They let me out. I think I got out a month early, and I went to work for the guy for four days and he laid me off. He fired me because I was useless, but I got what I wanted. I wanted to be back home and finally I was out. I got the honorable discharge. I’m sure there were people who took advantage of, or broke, more serious rules than I did.did a lot worse than I did. Mine were just little things. You act on interest. You really do. I didn’t know what I was doing. I never had done this stuff before. Some people just went back. I had a friend in Vietnam who was there for his third tour. They would re-up. “I got six years in, but if I re-up, I’ll get out a year early.” I’m thinking, “Are you nuts? I’d rather spend four years in the States then a year over here.” But they would do it. They would find a way to function and they just did it.
Once I got back I got really into drinking a lot. I’m down at the Men’s Club, 10:30 or 11:00 in the morning shooting darts and drafts and just hanging out with the guys. I think the same guys are still sitting down there now. I swear to God, they still are. I ran into a guy I’d met in basic training when I went to Fort Campbell. He told me, “Man, I got some heroin. Do you want to try it?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll try it.” And that was the last time. I said to myself, “I will never do this again”, and I have never touched it since. I said that there was just no way I was ever going to do it again and I never did.
I was back. I was hanging with my brother. He had a place downtown. Other than the guys at the bar, I was hanging out with some really good people, some old friends of mine. Two of us got motorcycles and we traveled up to the White Mountains. I just wanted to go out and have some fun, do stuff and have some clarity. We just were doing what we did normally I tried to make a little money on the side, too. I just melded in with all the people. I was out.
Then I met Vicky. She was going to the University of Hartford. She knew my brother and she was with my best friend, Kevin. He was madly in love with her and was going to marry her, but she didn’t want to be with him anymore and she wanted to date me. I’m thinking, this is not good. This is another whole mess, which wasn’t really a mess. It was just one of those circumstances. Very complicated. We’d go out together and Kevin would tell me, “I love her. I want to marry her,” and I had just gone out with her the night before and thought, “Damn, I can’t believe this is happening to me…”
He didn’t know, but he found out eventually and he almost, almost - he could have killed me. He is 6’4 and 280 and just muscle. It ended our friendship, but around ten or fifteen years later I got a phone call from him and he said, “You really hurt me.” He became religious over time and eventually became a minister somewhere down in one of the Carolinas. His older brother Larry, who was also one of my best friends, saved me because we were both at the Stockbridge Inn and he was plastered, Kevin really lost his entire mind, and he came after me. Larry somehow stopped him and Vicky and I have been together ever since.