A Volunteer from America.Pdf

A Volunteer From America

Bob Mack

1ST Signal Brigade Nha Trang, Republic of Vietnam 1967 – 1968

Dedicated to those that served

In-Country

The big DC-8 banked sharply into the sun and began its descent toward the Cam Ranh peninsula, the angle of drop steeper than usual in order to frustrate enemy gunners lurking in the nearby mountains. Below, the impossibly blue South

China Sea seemed crusted with diamonds. I had spent the last two months at home, thanks to a friendly personnel sergeant in Germany who’d cut my travel

orders to include a 60-day “delay en route” before I was due to report in at Ft.

Lewis, Washington for transportation to the 22 nd Replacement Battalion, MACV

(Military Assistance Command Vietnam). Now I was twenty-five hours out from

Seattle, and on the verge of experiencing the Vietnam War at first hand. It was the fifth of July 1967.

Vietnam stunk. Literally. After the unbelievable heat, the smell was the first thing you noticed, dank and moldy, like a basement that had repeatedly flooded and only partially dried. Or like a crypt…

The staff sergeant was a character straight out of Central Casting, half full of deep

South gruffness and Dixie grizzle, the other half full of shit. He paced back and forth while we stood in formation in the hot sand. “Welcome to II Corps,

Republic of Vet-nam,” he said. Then he gave us the finger. “Take a good look at it, boys. It’s all you gone get for the next 12 months. Any of y’all come here with orders?” A few of us raised hands. “Well, throw ‘em the fuck away. Them orders don’t mean diddley. The way it works is if the Cav gets shot up this week and they need people, you gone to the Cav; if the 4 th Division needs people, you gone to the 4 th . Only place you ain’t gone go is the Airborne, less you already been dumb enough to jump out a perfectly good airplane. Y’all gone form up here after morning chow. You gone form up here ‘fore evening chow. In

between, you gone pull detail. Y’all hear you name called, means you got orders.

The rest of the time, you on your own.”

The sheer number of civilians that worked on the Cam Ranh base surprised me, but the same was true, I learned, of almost every other American installation in- country. “Half of ‘em are VC,” one salty old-timer told me. “And the other half are related to the first half. You just got to keep your eyes on ‘em. That’s the way it is over here. It ain’t safe nowhere.”

I was headed about 35 klicks north to Nha Trang. “You one lucky sumbitch,” the old sergeant said. “It’s safe up there.” A dozen of us boarded a transport that would drop FNG’s (fuckin’ new guys) at all the stops between Cam Ranh and

Quang Ngai. Arriving at Nha Trang after dark, I checked in at a station for new arrivals located inside the air passenger terminal. A sleepy G.I. scanned the papers on his clipboard, made a phone call, and said, “Wait out front.

Somebody’ll be along for you.” I went outside and spent the rest of the night swatting mosquitoes and listening to the sporadic thump of artillery and some occasional chatter from automatic weapons. Safe.

At dawn, a deuce and a half (2 ½ ton truck) picked me up. The driver was a cheerful PFC (Private 1 st Class), who said he was always happy to meet anybody

who had more time left in-country than he did. We drove off the airbase and rolled north, parallel to the sea. He pointed dismissively at a Vietnamese woman relieving herself by the side of the road: “Fuckin’ gooks. You’ll get used to seein’ that .” We turned onto a trash-strewn dirt road lined with areca palms.

Plywood shanties with beer can roofs pressed against old French villas slowly decaying in the shade. A half-mile further was an intersection where a White

Mouse (nickname for the Vietnamese police because of the color of their helmets and gloves) directed mostly military traffic, and elegant ladies with sunglasses and dainty parasols strolled past street vendors lugging bamboo shoulder poles.

Just beyond the intersection was a checkpoint guarding the entrance to Long Van base—my new home.

Bunker Rats

ats.

RThey were as ubiquitous as the clap, and even harder—in fact, impossible—to get rid of. I had grown accustomed to burning buckets brimming with feces (a man hasn’t lived till he’s hooked a can of simmering crap through a hole in a latrine wall in 100+ degree heat), pissing into a bamboo tube stuck in the ground

(necessary, because if the crap got too wet, it wouldn’t burn), setting the legs of cots into C-ration cans filled with motor oil to keep voracious red ants from

climbing up for a bite, chasing amiable little gecko lizards off tiny shards of shaving mirror, mandatory group ingestions of large orange malaria pills that precipitated sudden intestinal cramping and frenzied gallops for the nearest shit- can (they issued those abominable pills weekly at formation, then checked under everybody’s tongue to make sure we’d swallowed), after-dark crashes into the fence wire by unidentified flying bugs as big as birds—all of this I had accepted as the cost of doing business in the war zone. But it was difficult adjusting to the goddamned rats.

At Long Van, the rats lived in the bunkers and in the wooden frames of the troop tents, and dug tunnel complexes between the two of which even “Charlie”—a master burrower himself—would have approved. I used my mosquito net mainly to keep the little bastards from crawling over me while I slept—I could hear them all night long, scratching in the wood a foot from my head. The Viets considered

rat to be fine dining (the “ham” & cheese sandwiches at Suzie’s Bar were especially suspect—those we washed down with Ba Muoi Ba (“33”—Vietnamese beer) so the formaldehyde could finish off any surviving bacilli), but the rodents had no fear of humans. One morning, I watched a pair of playful foot-longs frolic around on a pillow while its owner was at chow. Another time, I saw one amble out from under a bunk and take a seat between a guy’s jungle boots—which the guy happened to be wearing. He shook a copy of Stars & Stripes at the beast, but the rat just grinned and wagged its tail. So he stepped on it. Sorry about that .

The only thing that did seem to scare the rats was mortar fire (local VC did not have access to the more frightening 122mm rockets at this time). This made bunker rats even more troubling than tent rats, because the only time we ever went into the bunkers (except for the pot-heads, who used them as smoking lounges) was when we were being hit—and mortar barrages were usually unnerving enough without the added stress of anxious rodents belly-flopping onto your head in the dark (I was once caught on a shit-can during the registration round sequence of a mortar attack. When “Charlie” started to walk his rounds in instead of out toward the helicopter park, I stopped in the middle of business, and hobbled off to those unhappy shelters with my pants locked around my ankles— that was worse).

Bubonic plague in Vietnam was first recognized as such in Nha Trang in 1898.

The offending organism is named Pasteurella pestis (also called Yersinia pestis ), and is spread by our good friend rattus rattus , then transmitted to humans by parasitic fleas. The Pasteurella pestis organism causes, among other things, symptomatic hemorrhagic spots on the skin. The dark color of the spots combined with a high mortality rate to give the disease its “popular” name during the

Middle Ages—the Black Death. Despite all the rats, I never heard of any

Americans who became infected (we took plague shots regularly), although I did witness a tent mate turn bright yellow one day, the whites of his eyes coloring up like ripe lemons. I sent him off to the medical tent and never saw him again. But

I digress…

In order to keep our burgeoning tent rat population under control, we spent a few hundred piastres on a predatory mousing cat, supplied by the betel nut chewing laundress who did our wash in the Dong Bo River, (Dong Bo rinse was probably responsible for much of our perpetually sour body odors). Mama-san guaranteed that our area would be cleared of vermin within a fortnight. At least that’s what I think she said—it was hard to tell. The plan might have worked too, except some of the guys began feeding the cat snacks from their care packages. He gained five pounds, and afterwards spent all his time lazing on a bunk while the rats banged away in the woodwork.

A few months after the Tet Offensive, we evacuated Long Van and moved to an area east of the Nùng cantonment (ethnic Chinese mercenaries) on the edge of

Camp John McDermott next to the Nha Trang airbase, where we were housed at last in rat-free wooden barracks. One evening, the alert siren suddenly sounded, signaling incoming. We took cover in our roomy new underground bunker. The first detonation shook dirt from the walls, and disturbed three large rodents that squirmed from under a sandbag, scurried up the steps, and chittered off into the night…

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count My “P”

y first sexual encounter in Vietnam (at least the first one that involved

Msomebody else) occurred a few days after my arrival at Long Van when I followed a scabby, pre-adolescent procurement specialist through an off-limits rabbit warren of dark and narrow alleys to the dirty roost where his “numbah one” girl and the rest of her family picked their teeth and waited for company. Old

Numbah One was probably the kid’s sister, and she was best viewed in a dim

light; but I had already committed my Government Issue gonads to this misadventure, and it was (pardon the expression) too late to pull out.

Numbah One was one of those ageless, pockmarked, & undernourished

Vietnamese wonders that could’ve clocked in anywhere between 16 and 45. Her mother, a grinning, squinting, black-toothed old termagant who reeked of nước mắm (a foul-smelling condiment sauce concocted from salt, water, and fermented fish), snatched up my 200 piastres (approximately $1.98) with a withered claw, and waved Numbah One and I past a drooping sheet that they’d flung over a clothesline to separate the business area from the rest of the hovel.

Numbah One dropped her shift on the floor and flopped on a grimy mattress with her bowlegs in the air. She had a thick mane of jet-black hair that was long

enough, mercifully, to cover her face; elsewhere, she was as smooth as a cue ball.

While the family chattered away like magpies on the other side of the sheet, I suddenly and inconveniently recalled the horrible saga of the Black Syph.

Virulent and incurable, the Black Syph was supposedly a deadly Southeast Asian strain of venereal disease that turned your dick black and drove you crazy before it killed you. Prohibited from returning to the World (the good old U.S. of A.),

Black Syph victims were reputedly held in quarantine on a secret island somewhere in the South China Sea, and their next-of-kin informed that Joey

Rotten Crotch had gone missing in action. As I harbored this unpleasant thought,

Numbah One grew peevish—time was money. I looked at her carefully, weighing the odds: should I risk the acquisition of a putrescent penis, terminal dementia, and an abbreviated future spent drooling aimlessly around a military leper colony? Or should I just go ahead and sacrifice the two bucks I had already invested in this madcap venture? In the end, it was really no choice at all. After all, Numbah One looked like a good girl…

Despite the tropical climate, steambath-massage parlors (frequently named for

U.S. cities and states) were common in the base camp areas of Vietnam. This was because these establishments provided services above and beyond routine pore- openings and vertebrae crackings, hence, their popular nickname: “Steam &

Creams”. For a mere 300P, I could substantially if temporarily lighten my

wartime burden while simultaneously improving the local economy. Employing shifts of deft-handed old reprobates and toothless country girls who could fellate a football, the steambath parlors prospered, and—although I sometimes worried about being locked inside and parboiled—I visited them frequently.

After a short but harrowing sojourn in the Central Highlands, I returned to Long

Van suitably chastened but not much the worse for wear, and obdurately determined to never again violate that hoary military injunction: Don’t Volunteer .

Settling back into routine, I became friendly with the denizens of one of the local short-time houses. This, I suspected, was due to my access to PX Coke, Salem cigarettes, and Revlon hairspray (favored commodities among the Viets) rather than good looks and American charm. Still, not every G.I. was invited to sup on

Swallow’s Nest Soup with a bevy of boom-boom girls and their wrinkly madam.

When the ladies enthusiastically pushed a bowl of twigs in front of me and handed me a spoon, I wished I hadn’t been invited either. Another injunction:

Never eat anything in a whorehouse that has the word “swallow” in it.

If a boom-boom girl liked you, she would sometimes admonish you not to come see her. What she usually meant was that the VC would be in town for some R &

R (Rest & Relaxation) that day. I heard about a guy who was in a short-time house after curfew one memorable night when a cadre of enemy soldiers

unexpectedly arrived looking for entertainment. His girl quickly swept a bamboo mat aside, pulled open a concealed door in the floor, and shoved him into a cramped hidey-hole with a fearful admonition to “no make noise”. He spent the next hour and a half with anxious bowel syndrome while three feet overhead

“Charlie” boom-boomed the bejesus out of his erstwhile partner. Some guys weren’t as lucky. In the fall of ’67, MP’s located an A.W.O.L. (Absent Without

Leave) G.I. at the bottom of a dry well outside of town with his decomposing penis dangling from his mouth…

R & R

went on my first R & R only two months after arriving in-country when I

I bought a slot to Bangkok for ten bucks from a black guy who had whored away all his vacation money. R & R's were assigned by number then, and as long as you were clutching a flight manifest order, brother, you had a ticket to ride.

When I informed my platoon sergeant that I was leaving for Thailand via Cam

Ranh in the morn, he looked at me strangely: "Din't you just get here? How the hell do you get to go on R & R? I ain’t been on R & R yet! Lemme see them papers!" I handed them over. He scrutinized them, and realized there was

nothing he could do except mutter, “Lucky bastard,” and send me packing.

Orders were orders.

There were nine potential R & R destinations. Married men usually chose

Hawaii; sightseers went to either Hong Kong or Kuala Lumpur or Manila or

Singapore or Sydney or Taipei or Tokyo. The whoremongers always picked

Bangkok.

I was supposed to meet “Padre”, a Mexican-American E5 from my unit, on the second day. In the meantime, once I’d processed through the R & R center and checked into my hotel, I hired a driver named Rocky at a thousand baht for the week ($50 U.S.). Rocky owned a ’55 Chevy, spoke better English than Lyndon

Johnson, and knew the city like the back of his greasy palm. He knew which of the Petchaburi bars employed the prettiest women and which restaurants served the best food; he knew which theatres showed the best American movies, and which shops sold the best jewelry at the cheapest prices. Rocky knew so much that I didn’t even begrudge him the kickbacks that I knew he was pocketing from all the establishments to which he steered me.

In Vietnam, some of the thriftier Saigon tea girls saved their earnings and flew to

Hong Kong to invest in capital improvements such as breast enlargements and

eyelid straightenings. The working girls of Bangkok generally distained that sort of chicanery, preferring instead to attract their customers with the gifts Buddha had originally provided them. The Petchaburi bars offered a smorgasbord of delectability; beauties from Thailand and Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia, each wearing a numbered pin that made it easy to place your order. Once you’d decided on a companion, you paid off a mama-san (usually 1100-1200 baht for the week), and were free to hightail it back to your hotel with your new rental property.

My girl’s name was Noi. She was a pretty thing with an engaging smile and a bookmarked copy of the Kama Sutra . We became friends of a sort, and she wrote to me every week for the next ten months. She lived in a stilted house on one of

the khlongs (canals) in the old Taling Chan district. I stayed there with her during my second R & R.

Noi fixed Padre up with one of her girlfriends, and we spent the day cruising

Bangkok in search of a Mexican restaurant. Padre’s date decided she didn’t like him much, so she got him drunk on tequila. Later, after he’d passed out, she quietly slipped out of his room and got into bed with us.

After Padre’s girl had voided her contract, Rocky dropped Noi and I off at a Thai movie house while Padre headed back to Petchaburi in search of a replacement.

Thai girls loved to watch Indian soap operas and nibble on salted durian chips (a thorny, foul-smelling fruit whose odor one writer described as a cross between

“pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock”, but reputed to possess aphrodisiacal properties). I suffered stoically through the film and the atrocious snack, assuming that mortal sacrifice would be immorally rewarded later.

Noi took me to meet another of her Petchaburi girlfriends, a Buddhist medium and wicha (magic) practitioner named Ting, schooled in the thang nai (inner ways), and reportedly able to heal the sick and restore eyesight to the blind. Ting was to perform a ritual that Noi said would keep me safe from harm in Vietnam.

The attractive medium entered quickly into a trance, and, as the spirit of a ruesi

(hermit sage) possessed her, her eyes rolled back in her head and she began to chant. While I kneeled motionless on a prayer mat, she spat colored water into my face, and traced Sak Yant (sacred power) symbols on my forehand with candle wax. I had no idea if this sort of thing was anything more than rank superstition, but with ten months left in-country, I was going to take all the help I could get.

After five days, I bid farewell to Noi, and Rocky ferried me to the R & R Center where the buses departed for Don Muang Airport and the flights back to Vietnam.

It was not a happy place—too many men with guts knotted in dread of the prospect of returning to the hellholes from which they had recently been paroled.

One poor soul broke down completely, crying and twitching while he babbled out his own obituary. A pair of G.I.’s led him off to calm down while the rest of us looked away and pretended not to have noticed…

We All had A Beaucoup Good Time

n the first day off that I had wangled in five months, the company was

Oordered to join up with a convoy headed to Cam Ranh Bay to see the Bob

Hope show, helmets & flak jackets required. Despite all his corny jokes, I admired old Ski Nose as much as anybody—after all, he'd spent Christmas overseas for 25 years—but I'd had my heart set on a rare leisurely day at the G.I. beach, drinking beer & smoking Filipino cigars, followed by an extended visit to my favorite short-time house. They didn’t need us to pad the gate—G.I.’s would

already be gathering at Cam Ranh like wasps for the opportunity to ogle round- eyes (American women). But instead of floating lazily in the tepid swells of the

South China Sea, I found myself gripping an M-14 and zipping south along

Highway One. We rolled past Dong Ba Thin, past the MP checkpoint on the Cam

Ranh bridge, and over the causeway onto the peninsula. We parked our vehicles, stacked our weapons (thus preventing any careless jackass from inadvertently plugging Bob Hope), and took up positions at the top of the Pugh (formerly South

Beach) Amphitheater, about 400 feet from the stage. 43 years later, I watched a tape of that old show—finally I was close enough to see Racquel Welch’s cleavage.

1st Signal Brigade operated a SATCOM (satellite communications) station next to the A502 Special Forces camp at Binh Tan, about a mile to the southwest of Long

Van. Binh Tan was where I first heard about the accelerated training program that the Green Berets conducted at the MACV (Military Assistance Command

Vietnam) Recondo School at Camp McDermott. If you were crazy enough, and had logged at least 30 days in-country, you could volunteer to attend—but it was a tough curriculum. The final exam was a combat patrol into the Dong Bo

Mountains. If you came back, you passed.

Civilian transport in Vietnam consisted mostly of battered old buses, Peugeots from the French colonial era, boxy Lambretta taxis with engines that sounded like lawnmowers, and 3-wheeled cyclos powered by leg. The VC tended to ride

Hondas—they made for faster getaways. There were also bicycles, of course, some of which ended up packed with C-4 explosive and parked next to the billets and bars where off-duty Americans congregated.

One evening, after I’d soaked up too many cans of San Miguel, I decided to hitchhike into Nha Trang for some good-natured debauchery. My original plan had been to catch a lift with some passing G.I.’s, but a dragon lady wearing an áo dài (silk tunic) over her black pantaloons and a nón lá (conical hat) tied to the back of her neck stopped her scooter and waved me aboard. As I zoomed along

Beach Road with the dragon lady’s dark hair whipping into my face, I began to wonder if this was such a good idea. Riding into the night with an unknown

Vietnamese could easily lead to disaster. When we roared past the main drag that led into what passed for center city, I started to get jumpy. Eventually, the dragon lady turned west, and after a half-mile of bumping over a pot-holed dirt track, stopped in front of an old French villa.

“You wait,” she said.

What else would I do? I had no idea where the fuck I was. The dragon lady went into the villa. I tried not to think about camp legends concerning guys

who’d gone to town for some fun, then vanished off the face of the earth. The dragon lady returned in a few minutes carrying a small object that she pressed into my hands. It was a tiny Buddhist swastika on a chain.

“I souvenir you,” she said. “For luck.”

American camps were home to a large number of cagey Vietnamese mutts that had managed to escape their masters. The Viets were not inclined to keep pets, and their dogs usually spent short and unhappy existences as village sentries until the day they were cooked for supper. We’d often see skins floating downriver,

except during the first week of the month when eating dog was said to bring misfortune (particularly to the dog). I’d once had canine fillet myself, grilled to perfection and served up on a hot platter by an amiable ROK (Republic of Korea) mortar team member with whom I’d been drinking Tiger Beer on the beach.

Aware of the (to him) puzzling G.I. aversion to feasting on Fido, the cunning charlatan had claimed it was water buffalo.

The 17 th Aviation Company kept an ill-tempered monkey named Johnson (as in

Lyndon B.) in a chicken-wire cage by their hootches. Johnny had grown inordinately fond of tobacco, and would hurl monkey turds at any passer-by that failed to give him a cigarette. By the time we evacuated Long Van, he was eating a pack a day…

I loved the monsoon. Of course, I didn’t have to sleep outside in it. A month or two of natural air conditioning—water blowing sideways in sheets so thick you couldn't see fifteen feet away, water that bounced so hard off the ground it looked like it was raining up, a lake of water as high as your shins in the company area, water drip, drip, dripping inside the leaky tents—water, water everywhere, but not a dab of mud. The sandy loam of Long Van sopped up all that liquid like toast on gravy. In November—typhoon season in the Pacific—a storm hit the central coast of Vietnam with 75 mph winds, generating some decent surf in Nha Trang

Bay, washing out a few bridges north of the city, and grounding air support along the Qui Nhon-Cam Ranh corridor. The storm seemed to have grounded "Charlie" as well since there was a noticeable lack of enemy activity in the area. But what he was actually doing was making preparations for his upcoming slam-bang New

Year's celebration—Tet.

The Tet Offensive: Dancing With Mr. “C”

t midnight on January 30, 1968, the Vietnamese lunar New Year began with

Afireworks and traditional prayers to the Jade Emperor and His heavenly cohorts for 12 ensuing months of peace, love, and universal concord. Shortly afterwards, Nha Trang exploded. Rockets and mortars pummeled the town, the airbase, and nearby Camp McDermott. This was unusual. Attacks on Nha Trang were normally hit & run affairs that lasted only as long as it took for U.S. counter-

mortar batteries to return fire—local guerillas had learned the hard way that they could only get off about three or four rounds before being summarily obliterated.

No fools they, the VC would ordinarily đi đi mau (leave in a hurry) in order to fight another day, and things would thereafter quiet down rapidly. This time, however, the shelling lasted longer and when it stopped, hundreds of armed men emerged from commandeered houses and from the high grounds of the Long Son

Pagoda on the edge of town where a huge white statue of the Buddha serenely watched as the Tet Offensive began. These were elements of the 18B NVA

Regiment and their local guides. Undiscovered by U.S. intelligence, the NVA had been infiltrating the Nha Trang area for weeks. Sampans loaded with Viet

Cong sappers drifted over the gentle swells of the South China Sea and quietly came ashore on shadowy beaches from where attacks were launched on the U.S. and Korean compounds along Beach Road. By mid-morning, the city was

effectively under NVA control, and their political officers were beginning to execute reported collaborators (including some hapless boom-boom girls).

At Long Van, we were told to expect an attack sometime that night by a portion of the NVA unit that had crossed the causeway into the city (rumor later had it that 5 th Special Forces expected us to be overrun, and in that eventuality, planned on turning their artillery around and pounding whatever was left of us to a pulp).

Because I had previously served in a field unit (a year running encrypted communications for an artillery headquarters company in Germany), I was ordered into the gun tower to man an M-60 with a guy from the 199 th Light

Infantry Brigade who had been TDY'd (temporary duty) to us from Long Binh to pull security duty while he recovered from a minor wound. Idiotic. I was as

qualified to operate a machine gun in combat as I was to pilot a 747 (although every G.I.’s secondary MOS [Military Occupational Specialty] was Rifleman— and on this chaotic night even the cooks would be out on the firing line). The guy who actually did know his way around the weapon wanted no parts of it because the gun tower would be the first place at which “Charlie” would aim his RPG's

(B-40 rocket-propelled grenades). Not feeling particularly suicidal, we requested to pull the M-60 out of the tower and set up elsewhere along the perimeter.

Request denied. The condemned men would get no reprieve from the AIC ’s

(Assholes In Charge). As darkness deepened and the night wore on, the din of explosions and automatic weapons fire from the city grew louder and closer.

Tracer rounds started to streak by. The red ones were supposed to be ours, but who knew? Besides, when it’s coming at you, there’s no such thing as friendly fire. Illumination flares lit the landscape with an eerie kind of discomfiting, 1918 trench warfare yellow, elongating shadows that flickered and gradually shortened as the flares fell to earth and sputtered out. Refugee shacks ran right up to our wire, so there was ample cover for an assaulting force, and we wouldn't be able to see anybody until they were right on top of us. In the gun tower, the infantry grunt was cussing: "I can't believe this shit—they sent me here 'cause it was supposed to be safe, now I got the whole freakin’ North Vietnamese army after me!" Well, that was reassuring. I was staring disaster in the face, and in dire need of a calming influence; instead this fidgety son of a bitch was scaring me

shitless. Well, I had nobody to blame for my current predicament but the idiot I saw in the mirror every morning next to the gecko lizards—me (of course, it had been agonizingly boring in Germany’s Fulda Gap where I’d spent too many long evenings freezing my lonely unmentionables off inside of a locked V Corps crypto van. But the kamerads usually weren't trying to kill anybody—at least not on purpose—and they did have real beer. After I’d informed my mother that I’d volunteered for Vietnam, I received a 7-word letter back: “Are you out of your goddamned mind?” Apparently so, Mom).

While the guy from the 199 th LIB and I pondered our fates, a blocking force of

ROK's from the White Horse Divison had conveniently moved into position well to our front, and became busily engaged in exterminating the approaching NVA.

The Koreans were so murderously efficient that only a few lucky survivors managed to straggle through their lines. The first infiltrator that blundered into our vicinity was even more stunned by the contact than we were; in fact, we thought he was one of the ROK’s since he was inexplicably attired in U.S. jungle fatigues, U.S. jungle boots, & carried a U.S. carbine. But when he dove for cover into one of the abandoned refugee shacks, we astutely if belatedly realized, this guy was the freakin’ enemy . We Signal Corps commandos hurriedly opened up on the shack and thereafter on anything else—man, monkey, or bunker rat—that had the poor judgment to show movement in front. In the distance a pair of

gunships joined the Special Forces assault on the NVA positions atop Buddha

Hill. Tracers ricocheted off the turf like deranged fireflys. When morning finally dawned, Nha Trang was shrouded in smoke. A few enterprising but foolhardy

Vietnamese civilians were already out retrieving parachutes from all the flares that had dropped during the night. The ROK's started clearing the refugee shacks.

They pulled a wounded NVA draftee from a bullet-riddled hovel and dragged him on his knees into the dirt in front of our oil drum perimeter. He begged for a doctor: “Bác S ĩ, Bác S ĩ!” Yeah, right. Xin l ỗi, pal—sorry ‘bout that. The ROK's did not like the Vietnamese--they even hated the friendly ones (one of the guys at the Special Forces club over on McDermott had told me that the previous summer, some White Horse ROK’s had run over a captured VC’s head with an armored personnel carrier, and I knew for a fact that they’d shot up a shop downtown because they thought the shopkeeper was cheating them). Two of the

Koreans grinned at us, picked up sandbags and nonchalantly beat the poor bastard to death. It was over in a few seconds. The ROK’s never stopped smiling. None of us said a word. It didn’t seem prudent to piss these guys off.

Early the next evening, an E6 buddy of mine was ordered to draft 5 “volunteers” to drive to town and extract our Sgt. Major from his billet in the Duy Tan Hotel.

Against my better judgment (especially when I found out that one of the other

“volunteers” was an E5 from Brooklyn who had the absolute worst luck of

anybody in the unit—anyone who had the vast misfortune to spend time in this guy’s immediate vicinity needed to wear one flak jacket and sit on another), I said

I’d ride along. Locked and loaded, we headed off for Nha Trang City, parts of which were still occupied by the North Vietnamese—and we didn’t know which parts. Nothing happened on the way in, but it was the scariest uneventful trip I ever took. No traffic, no people, and dead silent except for the occasional pop of an illumination round, the thump of distant artillery, and intermittent bursts of far- off automatic weapons fire. Every house was a threat, every lurking shadow a possible ambush. We were armed with M-14 rifles, .45 pistols, and the E6 carried a couple of fragmentation grenades. We parked the jeep in front of a no parking sign around the corner from the hotel and apprehensively exited the vehicle. The

E5 rounded the corner first. Suddenly there was a loud shriek and a god-awful clatter. What happened was that the Duy Tan had taken fire the night before from

VC that had been holed up in a nearby convent. The MP’s had killed all the

Cong, but apparently no one had bothered to police up the bodies. Our luckless

E5 stepped on a dead guy and was so startled that he dropped his weapon, the sound of which almost initiated cardiac arrest in the remainder of our bumbling rescue party. The mission was momentarily halted to allow our shriveling testicles time to re-inflate then we hurried into the Duy Tan .

The Sgt. Major was dead drunk, and—enemy occupation or not—absolutely refused to desert all the whiskey stocks he had cadged from the Class VI store.

We had to plead with the old lush for twenty minutes before he finally stowed a few favorite bottles of booze in his rucksack, yawned, and allowed that yes, boys, it probably was time to đi đi after all…

Extending

he first guy I ever talked to in Vietnam was a trooper from the 101st Airborne

Twho was recuperating at the 6 th Convalescent Center in Cam Ranh Bay after having been shot in the foot while sitting peacefully in his hootch at Phan Rang.

He was in the middle of his third tour of duty, and said he planned to stay on until the war was over or he was killed.

"Fuck," I said, "I thought everybody wanted to get the hell out of here."

He looked at me and sadly shook his head. Then he uttered the truest thing I ever heard: "After a while, Southeast Asia just gets into your blood."

While most guys would have sold their sisters to get out of Vietnam, a surprising number wanted to stay. Their reasons varied. Some were adrenaline junkies who knew they had become entirely too unstable to be turned loose upon an unsuspecting homeland, like the half-crazy LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance

Patrol) member who'd told me a hair-raising story about his team encountering disaster in a cave where krait snakes dangled in bamboo traps from the ceiling in the dark; others had found contentment drawing combat pay without engaging in combat (although there was really no security anywhere in Vietnam, as most of us discovered to our dismay in January of 1968—hell, in Long Van, even the goddamn piss tube blew up one day). The military itself offered certain enticements to those willing to continue risking life and limb—transfers to more desirable commands, a 30-day leave with free transportation to anywhere in the world—but for me, the only enticement that made any sense was an early discharge and a blessed end to my self-imposed servitude.

When I made the decision to extend my tour, the mandatory period of extension required for early release was as many months (in my case, four) as was necessary

to ensure that you had 90 days or less of active duty remaining upon your DEROS

(Date Of Estimated Return From Overseas). Two days after I signed the extension papers, the goddamned army upped the early out days to 180, and I was royally fucked. The devious sons of bitches in Personnel had known about the impending rule change, of course, and not one of the squirrelly bastards had tipped me off; but part of their job was to troll for victims—the war machine was always in need of oil. In the end, I was the irresponsible moron who had failed to wait until the last possible moment to extend. It made me sick to my stomach.

With four and a half months left to go, I took my second R & R. Noi met me at the Rex Hotel on Sukhumvit Road (hotel check-ins were required by the military—they took a dim view of their personnel wandering loose and no way to locate them). Old, reliable Rocky was waiting at the cabstand with his ’55 Chevy and a cold bottle of Singha (Noi had arranged for his hire). After I’d unpacked, we drove to her house in Taling Chan. Rocky let us off, winked, and said he’d be back in the morning.

Noi’s home was clean, pleasant, and airy (though the air smelled like fish, exhaust fumes, and canal muck), but it lacked amenities—the bathroom cum shower was a cistern-fed outhouse sitting at the end of a short pier that jutted out over the khlong. Well, I had used worse…

My reunion with my pretty Thai girl wasn’t going as planned. The dinner she’d prepared for me was excellent: tamarind tiger prawns with enough Singha beer to float a German; but I was moody and brooding over my ill-advised extension. I spoke too little and drank too much. Noi was angry. I’d insulted her. I wasn’t the same person I’d been. I’d turned into, well—I’d turned into Padre . I wanted to apologize, I really did—she liked me, and she’d gone way out of her way for me, done more than anyone should have expected from a Petchaburi girl—but I couldn’t do it. Vietnam had built a barricade around my emotions. I couldn’t get out and no one else could get in.

My relationship with Noi ended as it began—business only. She was my paid companion, and I was just another G.I. on R & R. We said goodbye at the hotel cabstand, then she turned and walked away without looking back. She had to work again that evening…

Shorttimer

ith less than 30 days left in-country, I became qualified by tradition to

Wcarry a carved shorttimer’s stick that announced my privileged status to my envious peers. There were a lot of FNG’s in the company now, and some of them would look at the stick and wonder how just much shit the guy carrying it had seen. Well, boys, it was a bit more than some, not nearly as much as others; but, because I’d volunteered , I could proudly say that I alone was the idiot

responsible for bringing all of it down on my own stupid head. In fifteen months, this particular REMF (Rear Echelon Motherfucker) had gone through 9 mortar and rocket attacks (in 5 of them, the impact areas were not really close enough to be threatening), 3 minor ground probes (all directed at portions of the perimeter safely away from my position), 1 major assault (Tet), had briefly come under sniper fire on the road from An Khe to Pleiku (unsettling), had been shadowed on a back street in Nha Trang by a VC gunman—or an angry husband—while on my way back from a short-time house (the assailant had hared off when a group of

ROK’s strolled over a footbridge in my direction), had been choked with CS gas one night (courtesy of 5 th Special Forces) when the wind suddenly shifted, and had taken ground fire (it missed) while flying in a UH-1 (Huey helicopter) on a courier run to Ban Me Thout. Most of this had occurred in what the army considered to be “secure” areas. I could only imagine what the unlucky bastards out in the LZ’s (landing zones) and firebases had endured, not to mention the grunts out humping the bad bush. At least I’d been able to get laid once in a while…

I’d taken to checking the port calls (embarkation orders for Freedom Bird flights back to the U.S.) that were daily posted on the company bulletin board, and one day, lo and goddamn behold, my name appeared. I’d gotten an unheard of 21-day drop (early departure date). I stopped in the orderly room to get my own precious

copy then rushed off to S-2 (Intelligence Section) for a mandatory debriefing (our

N.S.A. [National Security Agency] clearances, required for anyone involved with cryptanalysis, were revoked upon receipt of rotation orders). Debriefing basically entailed signing a form in which you swore never to reveal anything to anybody about anything—S-2 types would also have preferred that you never again told anybody your real name, but they couldn’t get away with that —and described the harsh penalties that would be visited upon you if you violated your oath. It was similar to the Mafia code of omerta , but without the spaghetti.

With only one day and a wake-up to go (so short I could look up at a snake’s belly), I was knocked on my ass at high noon by a huge explosion that rattled my teeth and puckered my sphincter. The alert sirens started whining, and I rushed outside where my progress was interrupted by a nervous FNG butter-bar (2 nd

Lieutenant) who said that sappers had blown one of the ammo dumps. I didn’t know if that was true, but I knew that something had gone up, and I could hear the thumps of the .50 calibers (heavy machine guns) firing from the direction of the

Special Forces area. The lieutenant ordered me out to the line, which was a problem since I’d already turned in all my equipment, including my weapons.

Nevertheless, I dutifully trotted off, unarmed and wearing a baseball cap in lieu of a steel pot, and took cover behind the first promising pile of sandbags I tripped over. After a few minutes, my old E6 buddy, the same NCO (non-commissioned

officer) with whom I’d helped conduct the Great Tet Rescue Mission, took a squat next to me.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked. “Ain’t you supposed to go home tomorrow?” I told him what had happened. “Get the fuck back to the bunkers, asshole. If anybody asks, tell ‘em I ordered you.”

In the morning, a deuce and a half picked me up in front of the orderly room, and delivered me to the Air Force base, where I caught a C-130 (cargo plane) for the short hop down to Cam Ranh. At the replacement depot, one last surprise was in store—my flight was late. “Probably forced down over the Kuriles again,” said one weary comedian as we whiled away the sweltering hours (Cam Ranh Bay was all sand and dunes that reflected the sun back at you like a pizza oven). He was

referring to Flight 253, a DC-8 carrying a consignment of replacements from

Seattle to Cam Ranh via Tokyo, that had strayed into Russian air space on the first of July and been intercepted by Soviet fighter planes.

Another night in-country. The next morning, a bus arrived to ferry us to the 14 th

Aerial Port and departure for CONUS (Continental United States). The bus had chicken wire tacked over its windows to prevent the people we had traveled

10,000 miles to defend from heaving grenades at us as we left.

After an interminable wait at the passenger terminal, we were finally allowed to board our Freedom Bird. We taxied onto the runway, and as the engines revved

for takeoff I ventured a last look at the foreboding green mainland, ancient, unchanging, and ultimately unknowable. “ Chào ông ,” I thought. “Goodbye, you old son of a bitch.” Another moment and we were streaking flaps-down along the tarmac. Then we were airborne. It was over.

Two thirds of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers.

One out of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty. Amputations or crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War II. Less than one percent of all Americans wounded who survived the first 24 hours died.

The American military was not defeated in Vietnam. The American military did not lose a battle of any consequence. From a military standpoint, it was almost an unprecedented performance. This included Tet '68, which was a major military defeat for the VC and NVA. The fall of Saigon happened 30 April 1975, two years AFTER the American military left Vietnam. The last American troops departed in their entirety 29 March 1973.

There were almost twice as many casualties in Southeast Asia (primarily Cambodia) in the first two years after the fall of Saigon in 1975 then there were during the ten years the U.S. was involved in Vietnam.

91% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served, and 74% said they would serve again even knowing the outcome.

Casualties 1967/68

1967 Force KIA WIA MIA US Forces 9,378 56,013 113 ARVN 12,716 76,299 529 NVA/VC 133,484 unknown unknown

1968 Force KIA WIA MIA US Forces 14,594 87,388 176 ARVN 28,800 172,512 587 NVA/VC 208,254 unknown unknown

"The 1968 Tet offensive was a total and complete military disaster for the North Vietnamese Communists no matter how you look at it. If you measure victory by territory gained or enemy killed, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong failed dismally in their attacks.

The NVA and VC had counted on a "People's Uprising" to carry them to victory, however there was no such uprising. They did exactly what the American military wanted them to do. They massed in large formations that were incredibly vulnerable to the awesome fire support the U.S. Military was able to bring to bear on them in a coordinated and devastating manner.

The NVA and VC attacked only ARVN installations with the exception of the US Embassy in Saigon. Despite reports to the contrary by all major television news networks and the print media, the VC sapper team of 15 men never entered the chancery building and all 15 VC were dead within 6 hours of the attack. They caused no damage to any property and managed to kill 4 US Army MPs, and one Marine guard. The South Vietnamese Police tasked with guarding the Embassy fled at the first sound of gunfire.

The NVA/VC launched major attacks on Saigon, Hue, Quang Tri City, Da Nang, Nha Trang, Qui Nhon, Kontum City, Ban Me Thout, My Tho, Can Tho, and Ben Tre. With the exception of the old imperial city of Hue, the NVA/VC were forced to retreat within 24 hours of the beginning of the offensive. In the process they suffered devastating losses among the southern VC cadres. Using the southern VC as the spearhead of these attacks was an intentional device on the part of the North Vietnamese politcal leadership. They did not want to share power with the southerners after the war, so they sent them out to what was inevitable slaughter. The NVA mainforce battalions were held in "reserve" according to General Vo Nguyen Giap, in order to "exploit any breakthroughs".

In the first week of the attack the NVA/VC lost 32,204 confirmed killed, and 5,803 captured. US losses were 1,015 KIA, while ARVN losses were 2,819 killed. ARVN losses were higher because the NVA/VC, reluctant to enter into a set-piece battle with US forces, attacked targets defended almost exclusively by South Vietnamese troops.

Casualties among the people whom the NVA/VC claimed to be "liberating" were in excess of 7,000, with an additional 5,000 tortured and murdered by the NVA/VC in Hue and elsewhere. In Hue alone, allied forces discovered over 2,800 burial sites containing the mutilated bodies of local Vietnamese teachers, doctors, and political leaders.

Only the news media seemed to believe that in some way the Communists had achieved a "victory". To put this in perspective, the news media would have reported the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's last ditch attempt to stop the allied forces in Europe, as a "disaster" for the Allies. They would have said that "despite Allied efforts, the enemy still has the means to mount a major offensive, and therefore the war in Europe is unwinable". Sound goofy? Well, that is exactly what Walter Cronkite said on national TV after the 1968 Tet offensive. He did not say this in WWII, mostly because the news media operated under strict war time secrecy laws that discouraged any negative reporting. For example, in WWII it was expressly forbidden to show the bodies of dead American soldiers in any newsreel footage or photograph. Any photos or film that did so were simply confiscated by military censors. When was the last time you saw a history book that had photos of dead GIs? Find a newspaper photo in the New York Times morgue that depicts a dead American soldier in WWII. Would there have been pressure on the home front to end our involvement in WWII had the media been permitted to show live pictures of GIs who had lost both legs to a German mine? Or photos of the thousands of Marines who were dying to capture islands no one could even find on a map? Islands which we gave back after the war.

In Vietnam however, the media operated under no such restrictions and were free to go wherever they wanted and film and photograph whatever they wanted. Despite this the overwhelming majority of the media never left the comfort of Saigon. The film clips of Morley Safer, Charles Kuralt, and others which seem to depict raging firefights in the background are very likely staged events. If you look closely at these film clips you will notice that the people in the background are acting rather nonchalant for people in a firefight. Only the reporter seems to be crouching low to avoid being "hit". Keep in mind that by carefully composing a scene, a camerman can make a small crowd of people look like a mob of thousands. So too can a couple of people firing M-16s be made to appear as if a firefight is in progress."

--Ray Smith 69 th Armor Regiment

"Also attacked at 2:00 a.m. was Nha Trang, the II Corps rear base and nerve center for U.S. Special Forces and the I Field Force. While gunners of Hanoi’s 95th Artillery Battalion lobbed mortars into the U.S. Recondo school and Col. Fred Ladd’s 5th Special Forces compound, more than 1,300 enemy troops launched ground assaults at the MACV compound, sector and province headquarters, and the hooches of the 272nd Military Police. The attackers were from several battalions of the North Vietnamese 18B Regiment and five assorted NLF sapper companies, plus local guerrillas who served as guides. It might have been worse except that a key North Vietnamese column faced the wrong direction and ended up aborting its mission. Fighting raged through the day and into January 31, the real Tet. The radio station, briefly occupied by the NLF, was demolished. Mike Force companies began a sweep north of the city in the morning. The enemy reserves were thought to be located there. Shells hit Nha Trang airfield and the 5th Special Forces camp. There was fierce fighting on Buddha Hill, overlooking the city and named for a huge Buddha statue upon it, where the North Vietnamese had placed heavy machine guns and mortars. Capt. Carl McCarden led the Mike Force company that spearheaded the counterattack onto Buddha Hill. But the NVA had pulled out its support weapons when fresh ammunition did not arrive, so there was not much to show for the assault. Gerald Hickey escaped from Ban Me Thuot only to reach Nha Trang in the middle of its own battle. Col. Ladd, a friend of Hickey’s, took him to see South Vietnamese Special Forces commander Gen. Dan Van Quang to describe conditions

in the other battle. In the early morning hours of Tet, loud explosions awakened Hickey, who was staying with Ladd. Gunfire and the eerie light of flares punctuated the enemy assault on the Special Forces’ own position as well as the I Field Force compound. There were heavy casualties, especially at I Field Force. By February 2, the Pentagon reported 64 friendly dead and 5th Special Forces had recorded 104 wounded. Enemy losses were estimated at 200 dead and 50 captured. By February 3, Nha Trang was reported quiet."

--John Prados Tet In II Corps

“Rats love to live among people because that's where the food is. And Americans had a lot more food, which attracted a lot of rats. The troops that saw the most rats were the ones that were housed in underground bunkers. This kind of living arrangement was common in smaller base camps deep in enemy territory. Special Forces camps, for example, or any number of smaller camps were used just to keep an eye on the area and give the larger camps some security from surprise attacks. Living underground, these troops were safe from most enemy firepower. But all that dirt attracted rats, for the rodents loved to dig, and they loved to eat. A bunkerful of U.S. troops was rat heaven. Lots of food and lots of dirt. And lots of pissed off GIs who did not appreciate what a fine time the rats were having. Another thing that attracted rats was bodies. Normally bodies weren't left lying around very long, for both sides made some effort to dispose of them. But in some situations, such as the siege of Khe Sahn, this wasn't possible. One the most common recollections among veterans of Khe Sahn is the enormous number of rats feasting on dead soldiers. While Americans took a dim view of all these rats, the Montagnards considered it a symbiotic relationship, for the Yards liked to catch and cook rats. Some Special Forces troopers played along with that by going after rats with shotgun shells filled with rice. This killed the rat, but didn't tear him up or leave the body full of bird shot. The Yards appreciated that, although they could never figure out why the Americans wouldn't join them when they feasted on roasted rat. The Montagnards could never understand why their Special Forces friends didn't enjoy chowing down on a nice fresh rat. Indeed, some of the Yards would tease their Special Forces buddies about this strange aversion. A few Special Forces troopers came over to the Montagnard way of thinking, but had to keep this to themselves when they got home…the rats were a sturdy crew and quickly adapted to poisons. You couldn’t really clear a bunker of rats, for the critters only used the bunker itself as their dining room. The rats lived in a system of tunnels connected to the bunker by several openings. Keeping a non-poisonous snake in the bunker was the only way to keep the rats out, and a few troops found out which snakes could be kept under the bed and which couldn’t, obtained one of the serpents, and generally kept their mouths shut about it.”

--James Dunnigan Diry Little Secrets Of The Vietnam War

Xin Lỗi ('Sorry About That')

by Paul La Forest Royal Australian Regiment

“Xin l ỗi in Vietnamese (pronounced 'zin loy') literally means I'm sorry. The term became popular between locals and the westerners during the Vietnam War (especially with the bargirls and soldiers on leave) and usually was extended to the expression “Xin l ỗI about that”! It was a friendly sarcasm meant to infer that in fact the apology (for perhaps some minor slight or lapse in etiquette) was not really genuine—more of a 'tongue in cheek' apology. It was usually expressed with a degree of friendly humour intended.

“As I was standing at his desk, From the Reinforcement Unit, Confident and calm; Better known as A.R.U., He handed me some papers, I was slotted with these strangers, Three stripes upon his arm. Not one bastard whom I knew. So I asked this 'Sarge' politely: "Just what does this all mean, My new corporal there informed me, Now I've passed my check-up, A smarty smirk upon his face: And this course through which I've been?" "My forward scout, he's just been killed, So you can take his place!" He smiled up at me, So there I was, on patrol, Then held out his right hand, When not in base camp lines, Saying: "Congratulations son, Looking out for Viet Cong, You're off to Vi-et-nam!" Booby traps and bloody mines. I replied: "But I don't wanna go, 'Sarge', I love Austral-i-a; On a guard duty, one night, Don't wanna tread on punji stakes, Alert I tried to keep; Or catch bloody malar-i-a!" Then suddenly, I was 'gonkin' off', Sound a-bloody-sleep. "And in that stinking humid place, On a charge, by my new 'Sarge', There's a shortage of cold beer; Fronted up to my O.C.; It's either too damn flamin' hot, What could I say, so loss of pay, Or 'friggin' rainin' so I hear. And 14 days C.B. Don't wanna be caught up, In those bloody firefights; I thought: "Xin loi, Ol' Boy! As for flyin' up in choppers, I'll shoot through from Nui Dat! I'm terrified of heights!" And 'di di mau' to Vung Tau! Sorry about that!" He snarled: "Xin loi, you're an Uc-dai-loi! You're off to Nui Dat! In 'Vungers' town, all around, Just 'di di mau', right now! Many stalls and funny shops; Sorry about that!" A place to hide, dark inside, I was running from the 'cops'. At Tan Son Nhut, the airport, I strolled into a bar, 'Twas hot, though not 'The Wet', I was in my 'civvy' clothes; And this F.N.G. had landed, I had one thing on my mind, At the start of bloody Tet. That every soldier knows.

And whispered in my ear: Looking all around, "If you wanna pay for me, There were offers of all kinds; We go my place outta here!" Stuck upon the walls there hung, I knew this scam, no fool I am, All these funny signs. So said: "Now look here Honey! A price for just a haircut, I'm an Uc-dai-loi from Woy Woy, And another for a shave; Who's got no bloody money!" Prices for any bargirl, And special 'favours' that she gave. "I no believe, you betta leave! Hey! Maybe you 'cherry boy'? A mama san then asked me: If you no pay me just ten dollars, "Hello 'G.I. John'! You'll be pretty soon xin loi!" Tell me what I do for you, Though I tried in vain, to her explain, And where you coming from?" She sooled M.P.s upon my trail; I said: "I think I'll have a beer!" They'd called the roll, I was AWOL, So an ice-cold can I sank; And now I'm back here stuck in jail. "And by the bloody friggin' way, I'm not a bloody Yank!" She'd said: "Xin loi, Uc-dai-loi ! 'Cheap Charlie' go back to Nui Dat! "I'm an Uc-dai-loi, xin loi ! You di di mau, from me now! Down from Nui Dat! Sorry about that!" I 'di di mau' to Vung Tau! Sorry about that!" Uc Dai Loi (Uc dai loi)...... Australia (Australian) A pretty little bar girl, CB...... confined to barracks as a penalty Came and sat upon my knee, for some misdemeanor And after making small talk, Nui Dat...... Australian base Asked: "You buy me Saigon Tea?" camp in Phuoc Tuy I replied: "O.K., I'll pay, Saigon Tea...... overpriced bargirl's drink Though then I gotta run!" of coke and cold tea She said: "But I wuv you! I think you Number One!" She cuddled up on my lap,