CHO LON

Cho Lon

     When I studied, when I read a book, when I talked with friends and teachers and classmates about politics, I did it with the same urgency I'd felt when I left my outfit at Chu Lai. One day in the Spring of 1968, as the aftermath of the Tet offensive in Vietnam dominated the news, the availability of a small grant for a student to travel to "an underdeveloped country" was announced in classes. In separate classes, at the same hour, Jim Martin and I heard the announcement and had the same idea: Vietnam was an underdeveloped country. 

     We became joint recipients of the grant. 

     I didn’t know anything about cameras, but Mike Taylor did. He became my photography teacher. He said I needed a camera with a light meter, or a separate, hand-held meter. Our classes consisted of a couple of hours on the porch and lawn of the “Shell House” at 524 East Cache La Poudre in Colorado Springs, with Mike, ever generous with his friends, patiently explaining F-stop, shutter speeds, film speeds, focal lengths. I took some pictures of the lawn, trees, and the rusting spray-can-painted green panel truck that Tom and I had bought cheap because it was old and almost done for. 

     So for the summer between our junior and senior years, Jim and I were accredited, by the Denver Post and the Colorado College Tiger, to the Joint United States Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO) in Saigon, the official agency for the dissemination of information about American operations in Vietnam to the news media. We got to Saigon in late May. 

     We hooked up with Lee Dembart, a student reporter like ourselves who had come to the country some months earlier with a credential from New York radio station WBAI and then found other work as a journalist. Lee knew the lay of the land as far as reporting in Vietnam was concerned. He knew how to deal with government information bureaucracies, who was who in the journalism community, how to get places. 

   Lee took us to Cho Lon, the Chinese district of Saigon where there was still fighting that had begun during Tet. We hopped into a small taxi and headed out into Saigon's wartime maelstrom of motor scooters, rickshas, jeeps, and Army trucks.

     The traffic gradually thinned, and the noise with it. First there were only a few vehicles and the odd hurrying pedestrian or bicyclist. That number dwindled to none as war's damage appeared: corners of buildings blown out, masonry tumbled into the streets, blackened rebar twisted against the sky, Renaults overturned, burned, dimpled with bullet holes. 

     The driver stopped; this was as far as he'd go. Jim and I got out. Lee stayed to return with the taxi; he'd already reported the Cho Lon story, and had another commitment that afternoon. He pointed us in a direction, with the war correspondent's parting shot: "Keep your heads down." The taxi turned around and left. 

     Nothing is as noisy as a crowded city, or as eerily quiet as a deserted one. We walked a world of rubble, shattered glass, silence.

     But soon, up ahead, we heard the guns: the snap snapsnap of rifle fire, then the throbbing staccato of a heavy machine gun, then the crash of a much larger weapon.

     The scene we arrived at was one of two ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) tanks, parked a few yards apart in the middle of a wide street in the business district of Cho Lon, their turret guns angled down and across the street at what had been a sizable brick building. A unit of ARVN Rangers hung out on the sidelines, in no particular hurry to move up the street. 

     Jim and I took cover in a doorway and watched. I'd been shot at before, but street fighting was new to me, except for a little training at ITR six years earlier. Jim, a Navy vet who had served on an icebreaker in the Antarctic and then volunteered for duty in Vietnam but was never sent there, was under fire for the first time. He did well, though. In fact, he moved ahead a little more quickly than I thought was wise. 

     There were other journalists around. Peter Arnett, the AP reporter, and his frequent partner Horst Faas, the photographer whose Vietnam pictures for Life magazine were already famous, were standing on a street corner where Arnett conversed in Vietnamese with some local people. They were both wearing flak jackets and helmets. In the years since 1968, whenever I saw Arnett’s byline, or saw him on television, I would jump to his defense if sarcastic remarks such as “opportunistic reporters” or the like surfaced from the gallery. This happened frequently when Arnett stayed behind to report for CNN on the bombing campaign against Iraq during the first days of the Gulf War in 1991. I’ve always considered him the real deal, in a profession where lots of people weren’t. 

     Everyone, including the ARVN infantrymen, was watching the tanks. We learned that there was, or had been, a sniper in the brick building the tanks were firing at. During the time we were there, there may (or may not) have been a round or two of return fire come up the street in our direction. There was so much muzzle blast, so many ricochets, so many pieces of flying masonry that it was impossible to tell. Return fire or no, the tanks were systematically destroying the building. Each had a .50 caliber machine gun up front, and a 90mm cannon mounted on its turret. One .50 gunner would open up and traverse the top row of bricks on what was left of the building. When his can of ammo ran out, the machine gunner on the other tank would take over while he reloaded. Periodically, one or the other of the tanks would cut loose with its 90mm cannon on a stubborn section of the building. Then the .50's would go back to work.

     Storefronts all along the street were demolished, their contents spewed onto the sidewalk. Plastic shoes and small electric appliances covered the sidewalk where we knelt, hugging the wall with our right shoulders. 

     I began to feel that less was happening here than met the ear, that the sniper had long since left the brick building, that what we were witnessing was the expenditure of ammunition, the destruction of a building, and Vietnamese soldiers taking advantage of the opportunity to vent their racial enmity towards the Chinese merchants of Cho Lon.

     I let my attention drift away from the tanks. A few feet away from me, some of the ARVN Rangers had wandered into a store with its glass front shot out, helping themselves to the merchandise. A soldier who emerged next to me seemed pretty pleased with the small electric fan he'd procured.

     I turned around, peered into the gloom to my rear. I was crouched in a corner formed by the elevated sidewalk, the storefront at my shoulder, and a low wall behind me, at right angles to the storefront. The low wall sealed the end of a long space enclosed by the raised sidewalk which extended down the street behind me, about three feet above street level.

     As my pupils dilated, I saw a roughly circular hole in the masonry of the low wall behind me, blown open by some large caliber ordnance. I duck-waddled over and peered inside. At first it was too dark to see into the space beneath the sidewalk. Gradually I made out the form of a corpse, a Chinese woman in her middle years. She had recently died. I assumed she had been killed in the fighting, though I saw no wounds. She had been carefully laid out on the rubble that defined the floor of the space, until the fighting ended and her relatives could retrieve her. She looked very dignified. Looking at her, I thought of the phrase, "lying in state." 

     As I looked - she was just inside the hole in the wall, with her feet near enough for me to touch, and her body extended away - the body let out a long, loud, slow, putrid fart right into my face. 

     We walked out of Cho Lon the way we'd come in, away from the tanks, past blocks of blownout buildings, back to where there was again traffic in the streets, back to the land of the living, and caught a taxi downtown just in time to catch the "Five O'clock Follies," the daily press briefings at JUSPAO. Some journalists did all their reporting from there, scooping up the official handouts, rewriting them a little or a lot, shooting them off to their stateside editors, and collecting a regular paycheck for it. Some of the better ones, like Arnett, preferred to get their news where it happened, and seldom went to the briefings except to compare them with reality. 

     The gallery of reporters sat through the U.S. Army Major's recital of recent encounters between their side and our side, giving comparative body counts. During the question and answer period, things got more animated when people began asking about whether some helicopter gunships working over Cho Lon in recent days had caused any civilian casualties. I don't remember the outcome of that exchange, except that it was both confrontational and inconclusive. 

     What I do remember was the evening's final question.  The briefer was asked to comment on reports that ARVN Rangers had been looting during the fighting in Cho Lon. The major was emphatic. Nonono, he said. The Rangers were the South Vietnamese Army's elite. They had all been trained by U.S. officers and NCO's. They would never do that.

DRESS BLUES 1

Dress Blues 1

     Bill took me to a gun shop in Klamath Falls. We couldn't afford anything, not even a used rifle. We went there to dream. Maybe they'll give me some overtime, Bill said. And we'll pick spuds together on weekends when they come ripe. Maybe we can get a good used .30-30, not this year, but in time for next deer season. We could sure use the meat, save on groceries. Gotta tell your ma that, or she won't let us spend money on a rifle. .30-30's not the best gun for this country, though. Good brush gun, but short range. Need somethin' that'll reach out farther in this open country, .300 Savage maybe. That's a real nice rifle, got a good long barrel, you get a peep sight on the back, with that long distance between sights, you can be real accurate. Bill liked peep sights. He'd gotten used to them during World War II, when he'd fired the Springfield 1903 .30-06, and later, the M-1 Garand. Ought six's a good caliber, he said. You could get a lot of different loads for it, and you could buy ammo anywhere. 

     We were talking like that, and the store owner, who knew we didn't have any money, was letting me handle a used .300 Savage off the rack. He wasn't busy. "Boy handles a rifle real nice," he said, knowing that'd puff me up, which it did. Puffed Bill up a little too, because he'd taught me. 

     The little bell over the door jingled, and a man walked in. Instantly, the three of us were breathing different air. The man wore a striking blue uniform, topped by - of all things in a dusty logging and cattle town - an immaculate white cap with a brown leather brim and a shiny brass emblem. He removed the cap and tucked it under his left arm as he entered. The dark blue uniform tunic had brass buttons and a funny high collar that closed at the throat, and red piping at the sleeves and pockets. There were medals - some shiny silver, some multicolored cloth - on his left breast. The silver medals seemed to represent rifles and pistols. There was a broad crimson stripe down each leg of the blue trousers. 

     The man knew the gun shop owner; they greeted each other. I could sense a subtle change in Bill, even though he was behind me, looking over my shoulder at the man in the strange uniform. 

     The man in the uniform was watching me, seemingly   with approval, handle the .300 Savage with all the aplomb a skinny kid with glasses could muster. He nodded over my shoulder at Bill. "There's a young man I'll be talkin' to one of these days," he said to all of us. Then, to me: "Ever hear of the Marines, son?" He smiled. I was thirteen or fourteen. I knew nothing of him or his world. 

     I did know that both Bill and the gun shop owner had changed when he walked in. 

     "No," I said.

     The man might have said something else. I don’t know. I just remember how he looked, and the feeling he brought into the room. And Bill saying with a testy voice, "He's a little young for that." 

     The man in the glittering blue, white and red uniform did his business and left. I could feel the air in the room return to something like it had been before he came in, though a part of his presence remained. 

     I looked at Bill's face with my question. Part of his answer was already in his face; it contained some mixture of awe and disapproval, with a hint of myth or mystery.

     "Marine recruiter, I guess," Bill said, looking at the gun shop owner, who nodded as he leaned on the counter. I asked who Marines were, lobbing the question for both of them to catch. The store owner said something that confirmed the awe in Bill's face, about Marines being the best fighters. There was more awe in his reply than I saw in Bill's face, with none of the disapproval. 

     I was surprised at the anger in Bill's voice. He said something like, Sure, Marines have a lot of guts, but they don't care, they do all this crazy stuff, just stand up and fix bayonets and walk right into it instead of trying to do the job with less casualties. They get a lot of guys slaughtered just to prove how brave they are. 

     As we walked back to the Studebaker Bill said, very pointedly, that when my time came, I should join any branch of service but the Marines.

     I never forgot Bill's admonition. But the man in blue had done his work.

BATHING BEAUTIES (poem)

                                    Bathing Beauties

                         Dean Metcalf©1985, 2012

Del Mar Beach,

California 1985

I.

Slipping sideways under Cinzano umbrellas,

afternoon sun hammers ice

through thin walls of tonic glasses,

extruding beads of limesweat.

Greased bodies sizzle,

layed out along the griddle

that is the continent’s edge:

so much sexual bacon.

In the outdoor shower,

bikinied teens preen,

already posing for Playboy.

At the steps to the beach,

where everyone can see,

a couple stand

so everyone can see.

He is tall, blond,

tan, seventeen.

His muscles are from play,

for playing with:

not from work,

not for working with.

She is shorter, blonde,

nubile, fourteen.

She wears four small triangles

     of blue cloth.

She wears her self-assurance

as if she had already done everything

the older men under the Cinzano umbrellas

     are wishing they could do with her

and found it amusing.

She tosses her hair,

turning to devour

the stares

that are devouring her.

                   

II.

She is eighty.

She walks with a cane.

She has trouble with the sand.

At the other end of her life,

the soft girl’s bones of her feet were

broken, toes bent back under the arch

to form the desired opening

for a highborn man’s erection, then bound

to heal, if that is the right word, into

a different kind of foot.

They are still bound,

her childhood trapped there

like butterflies pressed

in a book.

You can see

she loves the sun.

She walks carefully

past the perfect couple

past the sizzling Californians

lifting her withered face

pushing the cane with withered hands

down to where the salt foam

washes her shortened feet,

down to where one wave’s foam

smoothes the sand with its coming,

withers the same sand with its leaving,

the withered sand a mirror to her skin.

She lifts her face

smiles into the sun

smiles toward the West,

toward China.

                                   Dean Metcalf ©1985,2012

HUNGER 3

Hunger 3

     Mike Taylor and I went to dinner at the cafeteria in Loomis Hall. He was sitting across from me, and next to him was another student with whom we both were slightly acquainted. We'd almost finished dinner when the guy next to Mike, without saying anything, reached over to take some food from my tray. Reflexively, I turned the fork in my hand downward and stabbed the back of his hand. Four small roses of blood appeared around the tines of the fork. The guy turned pale. Mike’s jaw dropped. They looked at each other, then at me. I shrugged: "Don’t fuck with my food," and went on eating with the slightly bloody fork.

MISSOURI SQUIRRELS

Missouri Squirrels

     Christmas vacation after my first semester at Colorado College, I decided to visit my Aunt Bessie and Uncle Lank Hickman in Wheaton, Missouri. They'd made another of their moves between Oregon and Missouri. I'd go by Greyhound, of course: even the accumulated wealth of a year's overseas pay, combat pay, and a Corporal's wages was quickly gobbled by the cost of life at an expensive private college; a plane ticket was out of the question.

     The bus didn't go through Wheaton; it was too small and out of the way. It was nearly dark when I got off the bus. I asked directions. There were no local buses, no taxis. Bessie and Lank lived several miles from where I stood.

     I walked half the night along rural Missouri roads. Dogs would awaken with the crunching of my boots on gravel, bay their alarms, passing awareness of my presence to the dogs at the next farm. It was a little scary, but none of the dogs came after me. Sometime in the night I got lost, and had to knock at a farmhouse, waken someone, and ask directions. I apologized. They said it was no trouble. 

     A few days later I was stacking firewood on Bessie and Lank's porch. An old man walked by out in the street. He stopped to watch me. At least, that's what I thought at first, that he was just watching me stack wood, to pass the time like old men will, maybe to pass judgment on my ability to lay up a neat and stable rick of wood, which is a recognized art among country people. I began to be more careful.

     Then I realized that he wasn't so much watching me work as looking at me personally, at who I was. I straightened, nodded. "Howdy," I said. 

     "You kin to Bob Metcalf?" he asked. No preliminaries, no introductions, no chitchat about firewood or the rare skift of snow that had Wheaton drivers sliding all over Main Street. "He was my dad...." A dozen questions bubbled in me, but none formed quickly enough. "Y' look just like 'im. I delivered mail in these parts for thirty years." He turned and walked on.

     We were going out to see Dan Metcalf, my grandfather, who lived near Monett, a town even smaller than Wheaton. He'd long since separated from my grandmother Elizabeth, a woman who'd had long flowing black hair as a young woman, who my dad always claimed, with some pride, was part Indian. Maybe Cherokee(

); she'd come from Oklahoma. 

     Dan's current wife was Rose, who was always spoken of (though never in her presence) as "a reformed prostitute." Even out of her presence, people never said "prostitute" without "reformed" being attached. They were trying to be generous to her because, they said, she was good to old Dan. But you could tell they were working at it. And you could tell she felt it too, but she just went about her business. I wasn't quite twenty-four, but had probably seen more prostitutes than most of the Metcalfs around there. Rose didn't look like the prostitutes I'd seen. She looked more like Aunt Bessie to me: a plainspoken, plainlooking, hardworking country woman. Except for an extra air of worldliness about her - a tinge of sadness, it seemed to me, at knowing and having lived a truth that everyone else also knew (some more directly than others) but would never say aloud. 

     Dan was a lean, kindly old man who was glad to see me but was clearly holding back. He didn't say much. Bessie and Lank figured later that I reminded him too much of his son, dead only six years. My dad had committed suicide at age 43, in 1960.

     Dan and Rose both looked to be people who had cleaned up their acts considerably from the way they'd lived until well into their middle years. Dan came from a long line of moonshiners. The story had it that one night he'd come home likkered up and blasted a hole in his own roof from inside the house with his shotgun, just for fun.

     I wanted to go hunting. Something in me needed to close that circle, to carry a rifle meant to put meat on the table instead of to kill another human and leave him to rot in the mud. Bessie and Lank thought about it a while, and said, Well, we might go out and visit Lank's sister and brotherinlaw, Dorothy and Floyd Jennings, who lived in Thomas Hollow, one of those folds in the Ozarks like those where most of my extended family grew up. (They spelled the word h-o-l-l-o-w, but everyone said "holler". Bessie and my mother were born and raised on a 160-acre homestead in "Star Holler". 

     They were a little reluctant to drop in on the Jenningses, especially Floyd. They seldom saw this man. He kept to himself, didn't have a lot to do with relatives and even less with outsiders. Don't expect him to cotton to you, they warned. He's just that way. 

     We drove out to Thomas Hollow. Lank brought along his slide action Remington .22 rifle, which was very accurate, for me to use in case Floyd could be talked into a hunt. 

     We all sat down in their cabin's small living room. Dorothy busied herself offering us coffee and cookies. Bessie and Lank introduced me, said I was just back from “Veet Nam.” Floyd lit up, started rocking animatedly in his chair. "Ah was thar, durin' the war," he said. "Well," he went on, "guess I should say, durin' the other war, or World War II, or whatever." Actually, he said, he'd never been ashore in Veet Nam. But he'd been aboard a Liberty ship in those waters. "Yup. Spent quite a spell thar. Hell, most people 'round heah nevah had no idy they was such a place, let alone whar it was. Leastwise till this war come along. I'd say somethin' about it, an' a body'd just shrug. But I knowed. I was thar. Durin' the war."

     Lank and Bessie had relaxed. Lank chimed in that he'd told me Floyd had a pretty good squirrel dog. Still got 'im? 

     "Oh yeah, he's gettin' on, but still does pretty good, for a collie." That was the first I'd heard of a collie being a hunting dog. I'd had two collies as a kid, Mike and Buddy, so we talked about collies for a while. Pretty soon we were up in the hardwood grove behind the cabin, Floyd and the dog and I. Lank said he'd not go this time, he'd lend me his rifle and let me do the huntin' 'cause I hadn't been in so long. 

     The tree limbs were bare, their leaves now a crunchy mattress we walked on. With that noise, we'd never have seen a squirrel, but for the dog. The collie would run ahead, making a big circle out in front of us. Pretty soon he began to bark. "He's got one treed," Floyd said. We walked toward the tree where the dog was, and stopped a few yards away. Floyd motioned, Be still. Squirrels, when they hear a threatening noise, will go around the tree, putting it between them and the noise. After we'd stood still a while, the dog slowly circled the tree, moving away from us, barking and making a racket in the dry leaves. When the collie got to the far side of the tree, we saw, up high, just the head of a grey squirrel peek around the tree. I looked at Floyd. He nodded back at me. I raised Lank's rifle, pushed off the safety, took my time, got just the sight picture Lank had described to me, put the front bead where its top was at the center of the head, where the squirrel's eye would be if I could have seen it at that distance. I squeezed off the shot. There was a long pause. The squirrel slid, tumbled over a couple of branches, fell to the ground. 

     We walked over. Floyd knelt and picked up the squirrel and examined it. He stood and looked at me, went so far as to raise his eyebrows. "Right in thuh eye," he said. "Don't waste no meat thataway." 

     We shot four or five squirrels - "just enough for a mess of 'em" was how Floyd put it - and walked back to the cabin. His wife made us all a big pot of squirrel and dumplings. All the while Floyd and I sat and talked about Veet Nam, even though he'd never been ashore. We talked about the South China Sea, how there were flying fish that would bust out the side of a wave and glide in the air above the trough, and sea snakes swimming close to shore. 

     After all, we'd both been there, durin' the wars.

                              

TOWNIES

1. Townies
   
   Jim Price and I met at the college track. He was on the team, and I went there to run laps after classes. We were on north Nevada Avenue, walking back to campus after a late movie in Colorado Springs. There was no one else on the sidewalks and, at the moment, no cars on the street.
   A car turned onto Nevada Avenue and approached us. It slowed, passed us with heads hanging out the windows on our side, then its tires yelped as the driver veered to the curb. Five or six "townies" jumped out, young men out of high school who hadn't gone to college, who liked to rough up college guys for fun.
   "Let's go!" wasn’t out of Jim's mouth before he was gone, sprinting up the street towards campus.
   No.
   I was just back from Nam. I was home, among the people I had fought for, or so I wanted to believe. The thought that those same people would try to re-immerse me in the fear I was trying to leave behind sparked in me an immediate, dedicated fury. Not hot fury. Nah. Cold fury.
   Fine. I will kill at least one.
   The townies rounded both ends of their car and approached the sidewalk. I made no sound, no gesture. I unsnapped my corduroy jacket lined with synthetic fleece and stepped to a nearby fire hydrant. I draped the jacket over it and stepped back. Oh so methodical. In my mind was the handtohand combat stuff from boot camp: Be an animal. Attack, attack. Speared fingers on one side of the trachea, thumb on the other, plunge, pinch the grip closed, rip his throat out. Or break the bridge of the nose, then ram the broken bone up into the brain. A fist to the temple, with enough force, also kills. Or a speared finger through the eye into the brain....
   
   They were on the curb. Still I had made no sound or gesture. I remember folding my hands in front of me, at arm's length, looking at the townies and waiting. I leaned forward a little.
   They stopped, each individually yet all nearly together. They seemed to recoil, like cartoon germs bouncing off that "invisible Colgate shield" we used to see in television toothpaste commercials. The apparent ringleader, now standing at arm’s length from me, looked me over carefully, then spoke:
   “Let’s go,” he said.
   They got back in their car and drove off. I put my jacket back on and walked along the sidewalk toward campus. I did not hurry.

   

   Rattlesnake Dreams: An American Warrior's Story

   rattlesnakedreams.blogspot.com

   RATTLESNAKE DREAMS is a memoir of half a century or so of trying to understand why we go to war. Stories from my time as combatant and journalist in Vietnam, and journalist in Cambodia, Laos, Leningrad, Moscow, Baku, Kiev, Prague, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, East and West Jerusalem,…

   Like ·  · Promote · Share

TOWNIES