Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“I’m more interested in what you think it means.”

“I don’t know.”

The shrink sent me to Fort Sam Houston for loony tests. Fort Sam is a big medical post and the Army’s burn treatment center. In a hallway I saw many Vietnam veterans, kids with their faces burned off. New pink skin grafts were stretched over stunted noses. The public never saw this—bad for the war effort. I felt terrible; I was whole. Why was I here?

Diagnosis: combat neurosis. They prescribed Valium, so I could not fly. My new medical profile said: Aviator may not be assigned to duty in combat area. They were shipping pilots back to Vietnam every day. My new profile was known as the “million-dollar ticket” at Wolters, but I wanted to fly. Without flying, the Army was a drag.

They found out I wrote stories. I told them, yes, I had many rejection slips to prove it. They assigned me to MOI as a platform instructor. I helped write the syllabus and gave lectures about being an IP. I worked with a captain, Robert Giraudo. Just the two of us ran the whole IP ground-school training sessions and had fun doing it. Giraudo eventually made major but turned in his resignation. He said the Army was getting old. Giraudo was okay.

A year later, when they asked me if I was staying (I was getting near the end of my three-year obligation) I said no. The head of the MOI branch thought I was good in MOI and offered me a direct commission as a real officer, a regular Army captain, if I stayed. No.

Out-process. Debrief. Gone. Leave in Volvo packed to brim. Go toward Fort Worth like a Saturday trip, but won’t come back for twenty years. See helicopters flying over a butte; blink a lot.

CHAPTER 2

When I’d dropped out of the University of Florida in 1962,1 had a grade point average of 1.2. To be readmitted and to resume my major in fine arts, I had to be sponsored by the chairman of the art department, Eugene Grissom. Grissom saw little point in my continuing—who would?—but agreed to sponsor me if I maintained a 3.0 average.

In June 1968 I was once again a college sophomore. I was seven years older than most sophomores. I was married and had a son. I was a veteran of a war still being waged. We moved into a married student apartment on campus at Schucht Village in Gainesville. I’d gotten a lot of D’s and had to take several of my undergraduate classes over—mathematics, history, and English.

When I stood in line at registration, I couldn’t believe what silly-simple shit civilians worried about. These people pissed and moaned if they couldn’t get a morning class, or if Friday afternoon got busy, or if some crip-course was filled. I had seen grunts infested with intestinal worms, living in swamps, eating crap, dying young, their brains splattered in the mud, their intestines spilled into their laps. Hey! You think this is a problem?

Every evening, sipping bourbon, I watched the news. Usually they showed a five-minute Vietnam segment: firefight, lots of smoke; wounded grunts, battered and bloody, being loaded onto a Huey.

Looked like my Huey. That film was shot the day before. They were still there, still dying for no good reason, and nobody cared. Die, and get ten seconds on national television; wounded, less.

A machine gun crackled on television.

My gunner is shooting, walking the bullets across the rice paddy to a crowd of people concealing a Viet Cong gunner who’s been knocking helicopters out of the sky. I tell him to walk the bullets—give the villagers a chance to run. He does, but they don’t run. I see them close- up as the bullets hit. The old woman with black teeth says something to me, then screams. There is no sound. Her wrinkled hand holds a child’s smooth arm. The child hangs lifeless and drags the old woman down. She moves slowly, like she is falling through water. The people around her gasp silently and flinch and fall. The machine gun stutters from a distant place. They fall slowly to the ground, bounce, dying and dead. The old woman is saying something, but I can’t hear. When I see her lips moving, I realize she is saying, “It’s okay… .”

Electricity jolts down my spine.

Calm down.

I swallow a gulp of bourbon.

Your war is over.

Fit in.

Wake up. Get out of bed. Waves of fear shoot through my head. Walk to kitchen, eyes swollen slits. Pour three fingers of Old Granddad. Swig that down, watching cars filled with lucky commuters bored senseless on Archer Road. Another Old Granddad. Feel fine now. Arrive at eight o’clock English class with warm whiskey sloshing mercifully through my brain. No one notices. Alcohol is good; it enables me to appear normal among normal people.

During my previous student career, my English composition teachers had been myopically interested in grammar. I thought they missed the point—grammar’s important, but look what I’m saying. My new English teacher, Yvonne Dell, though interested in grammar, was more interested in my stories.