Vietnam – “Characters in Cam Ranh Bay”

Cam Ranh Bay was a major supply depot during the war. There was a huge complex there that for the most part was relatively safe. After some of the ports we had visited in the north, Cam Ranh seemed almost like a stateside base. There was lots of activity what with numerous ships being off-loaded, trucks coming and going and a seemingly endless press of humanity, military and civilian.

Unskilled locals handled some of the off-loading and other dock work, typically done by longshoremen and warehousemen. Some of the crews that were set to this work were made up of the unlikeliest characters. Along with the skilled crews operating the machinery, there were old men, young boys and other improbable persons doing odd jobs such as lifting, stacking and hauling. One of these was a girl of maybe fifteen or sixteen who was put to work hauling lumber. She was also pregnant and well along. To my western, First World eyes this seemed incongruous; yet, over time, I began to understand the politics of necessity.

All of these people had access to the ship and its decks. As I was in the food business, I was extremely popular and I was constantly being hit up for leftovers. A fan favorite was fresh fruit, particularly oranges (I assumed the want of citrus in their diet was what warranted this). When this was requested of me, it was with a word that sounded like “Rahnge”. Once I finally figured out what I was being asked for, I realized that “Rahnge” was actually a bastardization of the French word “L’orange” (Vietnam was long a French colony). After that, I would always go ashore with bags of fruit stolen from the stores and hand them out in the streets to great acclaim and much gratitude. Eventually, I would have to answer for this thievery and rightly so.

Cam Ranh Bay was also an underground commercial center for all kinds of contraband. Some of the best smack and weed I experienced I obtained there. When I first encountered heroin here it was being sold under the name cocaine (for reasons that were never quite clear). Because the heroin was so strong, (particularly compared to the heroin being sold on the streets in the States at that time), it was most often imbibed by mixing it with either tobacco or reefer and smoked. Since I didn’t smoke tobacco I went the weed route. The ganja mixed with heroin was a potent blend indeed, typically knocking me for a loop, as I was a novice in the horse department. Later I would opt for smoking opium, as it was less harsh and a more agreeable experience.

Because the majority of the cargo was to be off-loaded at Cam Ranh, we were there for several days, enough time to inquire about and find a quality dealer among the draftees stationed there. After making a few inquiries, I was introduced to two extremely emaciated soldiers. Looking at their faces, these boys appeared to be intelligent enough but their bodies shouted absolute addiction. They told me stories about being out in the jungle before they were injured that made my hair stand on end. I had heard rumors of soldiers making necklaces of human ears but these two assured me they had seen it with their own eyes up in the remote hills.

The medics had given them morphine initially when they were first wounded. This was further supplied, liberally, at the hospital until their wounds had healed. Now they were short-timers assigned to light duty off the front lines, playing out the string. The problem was they were right in the midst of perhaps the largest supply of heroin in Southeast Asia and they were feeding their habits with frightening regularity. A lot of boys came back just like these two “with a purple heart and a monkey on their backs” to paraphrase John Prine.

Vietnam – “Adventure in Saigon”

I had already been to the ports of Qui Nhon, Cam Ranh Bay and Vung Tau but this time I was headed up the Yellow River toward the capitol, Saigon (today’s Ho Chi Minh City). The ship was going up the river but not all the way to the capitol. We were only going as far as Cat Lai, a small village that was near a supply depot. Sailors being sailors, I had heard many stories about Saigon with its “red light district” called Tu Do Street and I really wanted to get there. When the ship arrived at Cat Lai, it was announced that there would be a launch going up river but because of fighting along the river, some even as far up as the capitol, we were prohibited to go. Compounding my problem was the fact that I needed to be back by 6:30AM for my shift and the launch schedule had the return trip getting back no sooner than 10:00AM.

Being young and foolish, I decided that this was not a problem. Whatever the consequences, I had to go. So that evening when the launch made its pickup, along with a few other adventurous souls, I slipped down the gangway and onto the forbidden launch. The trip up river was relatively quiet (for a war zone) and without incident. Outside of the city, the countryside was sparsely populated with only the occasional village or cluster of grass shacks coming into view. There was sporadic gunfire in the tall grasses along the riverbanks and the sound of shells in the hills beyond. Still and all, I had been in country for about a week and this was typical of my experience so far, so I was unperturbed. Soon the city came into view and the shore of the river became increasingly crowded with structures, people and accompanying river traffic.

The launch landed at a small slip among many other slips that stood by a crowded riverside street. Numerous other small craft, including a multitude of the small outrigger canoes that were the common people’s conveyance of choice, crowded the slips. These canoes were a combination of the primitive and the modern. Long bamboo poles were attached to one side of the canoe by two curved wooden braces. Typically, in times past, these canoes were paddled but now they were upgraded with an outboard motor at the stern.

The streets and the surrounding slips were crowded with jostling and, to me, being unable to understand the language, jabbering people. The river being the main throughway for commerce, the crowd was mainly made up of buyers and sellers haggling over the price of this and that, all in totally incomprehensible and impenetrable Vietnamese.

I disembarked and hailed one of the many waiting taxis. Once I was ensconced in the cab, I told the driver to wait. I had what to me seemed a brilliant plan. In order to return in the morning to catch the launch back to the ship I would ask the driver to tell me the name of this place in Vietnamese. That way, when I jumped in the cab the following day, I would be prepared. As the driver spoke no English and I no Vietnamese, I signed for him to give me the name of the place. He seemed confused by the request but spoke a word. I repeated it back to him a few times until I had it right, accent and all. I said okay and he shrugged his shoulders. That should have been my first warning.

Well I had the kind of night a 19-year-old would have, especially in Saigon circa 1971. I awoke the next day with an incredible case of cotton head and mouth. The beer all over Southeast Asia is made with a little quinine in it to kill off any stray organisms that may have survived processing. This unfortunately equates with massive hangovers, over and above that incurred by the alcohol. I staggered down the hotel stairs and out to the street.

It was about 7:00AM so I was in good shape (as far as the time was concerned anyway). I hailed a taxi, got in, and gave the driver the word I had learned the previous night. The driver gave me a strange look and repeated the word in an interrogative tone. I repeated the word again and he did too, still in the same inquiring tone. I spoke it once more in my best definitive manner and he shrugged and drove off. Two taxis, two shrugs and one mysterious word all gave me a sense that something was definitely up. The cab wended its way along the crowded streets and soon I realized I didn’t recognize anything from the previous evening. I tapped the driver’s shoulder, repeated my trusty word, and the driver, nodding his head vigorously, repeated it himself while pointing animatedly down the road.

Suddenly we stopped. I was down by the river, which was good, but not at the point where I had disembarked the day before, which was not so good. I repeated my word. The driver repeated it, emphatically, while pointing. I said, “No, no, this is not the place, no (insert trusty word here)”. He turned to me and in his most definitive, affirmative tone said, “(insert word)”. Light dawned on marble head. I realized my trusty word, acquired with such diligence, such forethought the night before was simply Vietnamese for something quite generic like “river” or perhaps “slip”. Not the specific location of the launch landing, just something imprecise, vague and, for my purposes, useless. In an instant of insight, I understood what all the shrugging had been about.

There was nothing for it but to pay the cabbie and try to figure out my next move. I stepped down to the collection of slips and the various craft and tried to find, on the off chance, someone who spoke English. I could find no one who did, not even a smattering. I knew one thing; I had to get back to the ship before it sailed, which was scheduled for later that day. I tried not to panic and started propositioning likely candidates, pointing down river and saying “Cat Lai? Cat Lai?” I wasn’t finding any takers until one old Papa San called me over and signaled, as I had been, down the river. I nodded enthusiastically and we struck a deal.

He had one of those outrigger jobs, which concerned me, but considering the alternatives (none), I gingerly stepped into the bow. He was a very old man, especially to a 19-year-old. He was probably in his 60s but due to what the grinding poverty in that country had done to him, I couldn’t reliably hazard a guess. Suffice to say he looked ancient. He wore a long, light blue silk tunic and black silk pajama bottoms. On his head was a conical hat made of straw, on his chin grew a long, sparse, white goatee and on his gnarled feet, he wore nothing at all. He was very thin and frail, seemingly as fragile as the Popsicle stick houses I made as a kid. He looked like he would fracture at the slightest touch.

He sat in the stern with his hand on the rudder of the outboard motor, gave me a look as if to say “Ready?” and with a nod from me, off we went. Tooling up the river the night before in the large armor sided launch, I felt relatively safe. This was something entirely different. The larger launch had coursed the middle of the broad river but this canoe was not quite as seaworthy, nor did it have much of a draught, so we were forced to ply shallower waters and hug the shore. The rifle fire now seemed very much closer and even the mortar shell rounds booming in the hills were definitely giving me a certain pause. Despite all of that, there was still quite a bit of river traffic. Boats, launches and canoes, even the occasional ship, all driving up and down the wide river gave me, at minimum, some small sense of normalcy and security. At least I was headed back to the ship.

That bubble burst when suddenly, the old man turned toward the shore. There, partially hidden in the reeds, was a small slip and, on the shore behind, a shack made of sticks with a grass roof. There was no one around; beyond the shack was only more grassland closely backed by what looked like impenetrable jungle. I started pointing down river emphatically saying, “Cat Lai! Cat Lai!” He pointed to his shack and, shaking his head in the negative, started speaking very rapidly in Vietnamese. I started to realize that he was home and was going no farther.

Oh great! I scrambled out of the canoe and gained the riverbank. Looking around, trying not to panic, I saw in the reeds along the bank, a narrow path going down river in the direction I needed to go. I paid the old man and he, standing alongside his staring, puzzled wife, waved as I started down the path among the reeds. As may be imagined, I was hustling along at a good clip, listening to the rat-a-tat-tat of not so distant machine gun fire, when ominously the gunfire seemed very much closer. Bent over below the reeds, so I wouldn’t be visible, I really began to hurry. All sorts of horrible visions of death, or worse capture, crowded my now fevered brain. I figured I had to get out of there if I was going to make it, so gathering my courage, I peeked up over the reeds to survey the river. I figured maybe I could hail a passing boat or something.

Then, almost miraculously, I saw it. There, cruising relatively close to the shore, was the launch returning down river and, standing in the bow, the third mate from my ship. All I could think of was rescue and so, throwing caution to the wind, I waded out into the river and screamed the mate’s name for all I was worth. He turned toward the bank with a quizzical look on his face only to see this mad teen waving and shouting. He went back to the wheel of the launch, grabbed the wheelman and pointed toward the shore. To me that launch turning to the shore looked like a chariot sent from the gods. I was hauled aboard and, with the howling of the mate booming in my ears, the launch set off again down river.

Not surprisingly, I was reprimanded severely for leaving the ship and missing work. My infractions were entered in the “log” and cost me $50 apiece. At the time, it seemed like a steep price to pay for a night on the town. Is there a moral to this story? I don’t know. How about, “Get your facts straight before venturing out into a war zone”. That sounds reasonable. “Don’t venture out into a war zone, period” Nah…Where’s the adventure in that?

© Stephen Alexander 2008

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