It was May of '69. We had yet to land on the moon. Woodstock was still a few months away. Conscripted into the US Army and assigned to an artillery unit in Vietnam, I was twenty and full of wonder. I had just begun to sense the beginnings of intellectual maturity.
Slowly at first, then with increasing speed, a whole lot of stuff was beginning to make sense — plots of novels, paint on canvas, even the people around me had become strangely transparent; it was as if I had begun to see through the surfaces of things. I realized that the stock of preconceptions I'd carried overseas in my head was inadequate to describe this new unfolding world; my vocabulary suddenly seemed cliché-ridden and inadequate to the task. I'd been 'in country' since October of the previous year and was due to leave in December; it was something like the halfway point of my tour; I could hardly have gotten further from home, geographically or chronologically.
My unit had returned from a few months on a distant hilltop fire base and the unit was 'enjoying' a temporary reassignment at a big sprawling service base called 'Camp Evans' about thirty miles south of the DMZ. I'd been given a temporary change of my 'military occupational specialty' and was serving as a cook. The mess sergeant liked me for some reason and when there was an opening in the kitchen he saw to it that I got a place there. I enjoyed the work and I especially enjoyed the schedule — we'd start breakfast before dawn, serve the meal, and then start preparing lunch. Around half an hour before serving time the next crew would arrive and help get lunch on the table. Then the morning crew got to leave — and we wouldn't have to be back until lunch the next day. So I actually enjoyed large, predictable chunks of 'free' time.
There was a lot of military traffic along Highway One, with convoys of supply trucks headed back to bases in the south and I learned that, despite such behavior being forbidden, you could pretty much just walk out of the base, stick your thumb out and get a ride, no questions asked. Some guys told me about a little village where you could leave your laundry with some local girls and get it back the next day for not a lot of money. There were also rumors of sex being sold, for not a lot of money, but I never saw any evidence of this. I started hitching to the village around the An Lo Bridge pretty regularly and got to know a few of the locals. They seemed to like me because I was serious and respectful (and I didn't leer at their daughters). Like many of the Vietnamese, they were Catholics and they were really surprised when they saw I was wearing a Buddhist charm. I had just begun to study Buddhism and it had become a consuming passion. They couldn't understand why an American would be interested in the 'religion of the enemy' but one of them offered to take me to a nearby Buddhist monastery, Long Quang Pagoda, and there I was introduced to a kindly monk name Hôi who spoke some English and told me I was welcome to visit any time.
It wasn't long before I was spending all my available time at Long Quang. Besides the monk Hôi, I also befriended a young novice named Lôi. We'd sit and look at Vietnamese-English phrase books. I'd help the Vietnamese with their pronunciation and they tried to teach me some simple phrases in their own language. The setting couldn't have been much nicer. White-shirted kids attended school nearby, there were water buffalo working the fields, the Perfume River ran placidly next to the temple, the western horizon was dotted with fat green hills leading to the distant highlands. I even started spending nights there, putting myself at risk of a court martial for repeatedly being AWOL. But my luck held; no one noticed my empty bunk.
One day I arrived at the gates of the temple and noticed much more activity than usual. People were milling around and more were arriving, well-dressed and carrying flags and decorations. The temple was festooned with brightly-colored banners. It was the celebration of the Buddha's birth. This looked interesting and I decided to stick around. As dusk approached the monks began to chant prayers. It must have been my age — all the romantic notions swirling around my rapidly developing mind — but just standing in the midst of a crowd of worshippers for hours on end, not understanding a word anyone was saying, seemed like the most natural thing in the world. The clash of gongs announced some sort of change of venue, and everyone started heading for the banks of the Perfume River. I was gestured to come along. The crowd lined up along the shoreline and there was this sense of anticipation — suddenly sharp voices rang out and everyone looked upstream. And there, from around a bend, a small flickering object floated into view, then another, and another. Soon it became obvious — it was a whole flotilla of paper lanterns mounted on tiny rafts, probably thousands. Each little village along the river would contribute its own floating lanterns and I helped to launch some of Long Quang's. Then we watched the flickering spectacle slowly float downstream, lighting up the night, finally disappearing around another bend. It was so beautiful!
This became a very blissful arrangement for me.. Once or twice a week, depending on my schedule, I could slip out the main gate of the base and stick out my thumb and in no time at all some vehicle would pick up the unarmed G.I. and deposit him, as requested, at the An Lo bridge. For a few hours, and occasionally for an overnight, I could escape from the "Green Machine" and all its tiresome culture, and experience existence as an interested observer of the life and customs of a distant, fascinating land. I was always made to feel welcome at the pagoda. Hôi and I would sit in a screened area, sipping tea and talking, sometimes enjoying a bowl of very tasty ice cream made from water buffalo milk. When I stayed for the night, the delicious breakfast would be water buffalo cheese and pickled vegetables — memory, being what it is, allows me to summon up the smells and tastes of the food, the incense in the temple, the village itself. How stupid life back at the base seemed, so coarse, so vulgar — 'men', not much older than high school kids, performing the mind-numbing work details that characterized military life away from the front lines, and endlessly re-enacting the same dumb arguments, Ford vs. Chevy, the North vs. the South, potheads vs juiceheads. I did enjoy working with my fellow cooks — the calculus of meal preparation and the choreographed moves around the kitchen — but my heart was elsewhere.
Of course this was all happening in the course of several months and the situation on the ground was changing. There was talk of a redeployment as the division began operations in the A Shau Valley. And the military authorities were beginning to restrict contact between the soldiers and the people. The brass assumed that the only reason for guys to hang out with villagers was to buy contraband or sex — cross-cultural friendship was not encouraged — or its possibility even imagined. Some of the drivers who gave me rides told me about planeloads of military police and criminal investigators who were starting to be assigned to units as the army began trying to tighten control and restrict soldiers’ access to civilians. Remember, there was a culture war going on and it threatened the entire mission. The army was filled with draftees who didn't want to be there and there were constant flare-ups between beer drinking, flag-worshiping, gung-ho patriots and the quasi-hippie, weed-smoking, bead-wearing counter-cultural types. One afternoon I jumped out of the back of the truck where I'd hitched a ride and began walking to Long Quang. As I picked my way through the village I was suddenly confronted by a Jeep full of M.P.s. Oh shit. You could see by the expressions on these guys' faces that they weren't particularly friendly; they were apprehending a suspected criminal, a drug dealer, a money changer, a fucking spy. "Halt!!!" Suddenly I was looking into the barrel of a .45 and being screamed at by some asshole who was still probably seething about his side losing the Civil War. "What the fuck do you think you're doing here, G.I.?" "Looks like we got another one," said one of the others. "What did you come here for?" the gun-wielding creep screamed, gesturing with the gaping .45, its muzzle, inches from my face, looking like a sewer pipe. But before I had the opportunity to answer some little Vietnamese girl runs up with a bunch of clean, folded laundry. It wasn't mine — and I'd never seen this girl before — but it provided the perfect prop, "Just picking up my wash, sir." The guys calmed down. They explained that soldiers weren't allowed in this village and suggested I hop on the next vehicle headed north and I assured them I would. My Vietnamese friends were looking out for me!
Recounting things which happened nearly fifty years ago is weird because while some memories are pretty stable I know I've forgotten many of the day-to-day incidents and the story I'm telling tends to seem more cohesive than the actual progression of events as they took place. Thinking about the generally positive perspective with which I view my time at the pagoda I do recall a few instances which indicate more complexity than my single narrative line might suggest. Remember how I said I was always made to feel welcome? I was, but given the reality of what was occurring — I was representing an invading force invited by a corrupt government to thwart the designs of a large portion of the Vietnamese population — it's only rational to assume that some may have resented my presence.
On several occasions I brought a camera with me, a nice new Ricoh SLR which I bought for a very reasonable price at the Post Exchange on the base. While nearly all the monks and temple residents were welcoming and friendly I noticed that a few of them usually observed me with expressions of distrust or irritation, especially one tall monk who wore a red robe. I never thought too much about this, especially since Hôi had taken me under his wing, so to speak, and time talking with him and the novice, Lôi, was always pleasant. One afternoon a bunch of the monks noticed my camera and seemed interested in it so I let them examine it and take some pictures while I was having my discussion with my friends. Later that afternoon, as I prepared to return to the base, the red-robed monk returned my camera to me and I slipped through the village, hit the highway, and got a ride north.
I returned a few days later. It was an especially hot day, and while I was walking to the temple some villagers began yelling "MP! MP!" I really didn't want to deal with these assholes again and decided to flee. A girl beckoned me down an alley and into a small house. I don't know if the MPs had spotted me but they knew there was a GI on the loose and the posse mentality had come into play. I could expect to get roughed up if they found me. Anyway, there was an old man in the house and after some words with the girl he gestured toward a bed covered with a mosquito net and I crawled into the dark enclosed space. A few seconds later some MPs showed up and started screaming at the old man. I began to wonder if I'd been tricked and if the old guy was going to turn me in for some reward but my luck held — he played dumb and the MPs got back into their jeep and sped off. I thanked the old man profusely — never did find the girl — and continued on, warily, to the pagoda.
Once I got there I realized how hot and sweaty I'd become from my adventure so I went down to the Perfume River where a bunch of boys were swimming. I stripped down to my shorts and placed my folded clothes over my camera, then entered the water, which was dirty but still felt good. When I got out I noticed all the boys were staring at me as if I were some sort of curiosity (I guess I was). And as I put on my clothes I saw that my camera was missing. I had grown so trusting that I'd completely forgotten how American goods supplied a huge black market and how most Vietnamese, the ones who didn't outright hate us, at best saw us a source of cigarettes, luxury goods, and money. Soon some dirty-faced little urchin runs up and tells me, "One hunner dollar! One hunner dollar!" I really didn't want to pay a hundred bucks to get the camera back. I just didn't care. I felt a bit foolish and I felt a bit hurt and, thinking of Buddhist precepts, I decided it would be best to cut the string of attachment and just let the camera go. When I came back to the village a few days later a woman told me she knew where I could find the camera and get it back but I just told her the kid could keep the thing. She was quite surprised and told me that another G.I. whose camera had gotten stolen found the boy who had done it — and killed him. I just pointed to the Buddhist charm hanging around my neck. She smiled and I continued to the pagoda.
A few weeks later I got back a roll of film that I'd sent to Hawaii to be developed before my camera was stolen. There were a bunch of slides of my buddies, some shots of Hue, and some taken around the temple, including a bunch of very blurry ones which I didn't remember taking. "Oh yeah, these must have been taken when the monks were looking at my camera." Sure enough, I could see they'd tried to take pictures of each other, and even though the shots were out of focus, I recognized, as plain as day, one slide of the red-robed monk exposing himself!
Months went by; my luck held. But I knew something was up and that the situation wouldn't last until the end of my tour in December. I remember discussing the moon landing with disbelieving villagers and drawing a model of the lunar lander for some kids. Meanwhile there was a big crackdown on our limited freedom of movement and it became trickier and trickier to escape from the base. Hôi noticed that my visits were becoming spottier and told me that he worried that the army might 'dras-fer' (transfer) me to another unit. I wondered about this myself. Along with a change in command, there was a change in the unit's organization and structure. We were no longer authorized to have as many trucks and jeeps and a big convoy was formed to drive all these suddenly unauthorized vehicles to the division headquarters fifty miles to the south. They needed lots of drivers and I was relieved of mess duty to take part in this convoy. I got to drive a “three quarter", which is a large, cranky jeep. We figured we'd be at the division artillery headquarters in a few hours, have lunch down there, and then get brought back by truck. But it took forever to get there. We'd be stalled for twenty minutes at a time because of delays further down the highway. We were basically 'sitting ducks' stuck in a single line in undefended vehicles along the open road. I remember at one point we stopped near An Lo Bridge and I was so tempted to jump out and just disappear forever. But I didn't, I just stayed in the truck, smoking Camels, and looking across the still alien and beautiful landscape of green fields, white sand, and fat rolling hills covered with circular graves made of stone.
Eventually the convoy made it to Camp Eagle. We waited for directions to DivArty HQ (division artillery) where we figured we'd get some lunch. But after a while the convoy captain came out of an office and started barking at us — get back in our trucks, fuel up, and return to Camp Evans. Evidently there was some problem with the paperwork. So we left and returned the way we'd come, only hungrier. A few days later I heard that all the vehicles in the convoy had been bulldozed into a huge pit and covered with earth — it was easier than coming up with the official paperwork.
One afternoon Hôi made me understand that there was a very special person he wanted me to meet. A senior religious scholar known as 'The Venerable One' (!) had arrived in the area and was staying in a forest sanctuary not too far away. This sounded exciting and we prepared to leave early the next morning with a few friends. When the temple bells sounded before dawn our little expedition assembled, breakfasted, and left by foot. We walked for an hour or so, along paths which ringed agricultural fields and through little settlements of a few huts seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There were tiny villages out here which were far from any road and every now and then there would be a shrine or a ring of graves, right in the forest or along the edge of a field. Eventually we came upon a large group of yellow and orange-robed monks and villagers in traditional dress surrounding a stone shrine. At the base of the shrine sat The Venerable One, engaged in discussion or prayer. I watched the whole thing with wide-eyed amazement, feeling as if I should not even be there on the one hand to never wanting leave on the other. Eventually our little group went up to the front of the assembly and I was introduced to The Venerable One! He looked through me with ageless patience and limitless understanding. I think I may have tried to say a few words in my halting Vietnamese but evidently he knew who I was, or what I was, and he spoke a blessing for me and then said something directly to me. I felt something like electricity pulsing through my body. One of the monks from Long Quang translated the words of 'The Venerable One': "You are not like other Americans." I guess I knew that — but hearing it from him was not only an honor, it seemed almost an exhortation to maintain a distinct alienation from, and an almost adversarial relationship with, the culture of my birth. “Chevy vs. Ford?” — no thanks, I think I’ll pass.