Dancing with Baptists

Chapter 3

Camp Dong Tam, Mekong Delta,

South Vietnam

February 23, 1967

Greg and shirtless, cross-less Chap got back to Dong Tam just in time for 4 a.m. breakfast mess. Chap and Greg each went to their quarters, got cleaned up, and met back at 0415 hours.

Camp Dong Tam was brand new. Only months earlier the area was inundated with Mekong rice paddies. Now the silt and sand pumped off the bottom of the Song River over-filled enough rice patties to create a 600 acre muddy camp. General Westmoreland, commander of all U.S. military operations, said Dong Tam was a place where you could be up to your knees in mud and have sand blow in your eyes. But he had placed Dong Tam there with a purpose. First, it was to be headquarters for the almost 20,000 troops of the 9th Infantry Division. Second, it was to make a clear statement.

The Mekong Delta of South Vietnam was the operational base for a large division of Viet Cong Việt Nam Cộng-sản (a contraction for Vietnamese Communists). Westmoreland chose the location as a strong message to say to the communists, "We are here in the Mekong and we are here to stay."

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Greg arrived starving at the mess hall. It appeared he had beaten Chap there. The Buckinghams' hit "Kind of a Drag" was playing on "Dawn Buster", an Armed Forces Radio Network program. The show still opened with "Gooooooooooooood Morning Vietnam!" even though the Air Force Sergeant who coined the opening, Adrian Cronauer, had ended his tour of duty months earlier.

Greg grabbed a tray and started down the line. Even at breakfast, a Himalayan-sized pile of rice was on line for all the local troops that would eat there. Greg pushed his tray to the eggs, bacon, hash browns, milk, and more section. With a loaded tray he started to navigate the tables filled with too-tired, too-sleepy, too-homesick soldiers who had no interest in unknown company.

Then Greg spotted Chap stepping into the line. Greg stood and waited and soon the two crossed to the empty end of a . They had only been seated for a minute when Chap said to Sgt. Franklin, "Come sit with us."

Oh great, Greg thought.

Greg had gotten to Dong Tam only a few days before Franklin arrived. They were both the same rank. Franklin was a good surgical tech. He was a "never" guy. Never missed, never late, never joked, never smiled. However, one "never" Greg would have appreciated was "never talked". But that was not the case. Franklin talked and talked a lot. It was always the same; the plight, abuse, and secret conspiracy of genocide of the Black man. In fact, Franklin was not Franklin at all. He demanded to be called by his African name. Greg could never remember how to pronounce his African name. This was not helped by the fact his fatigues and duty uniforms were all labeled Franklin. Chap, Greg, and Franklin were three of only a small number at the camp who didn't carry a weapon. Greg thought that was probably a good idea.

When Greg was in medic school at Shepherd AFB, they told him he would be issued a sidearm if he went into any "hot" areas. However, because of the Geneva Convention, he could only fire on the enemy if they were trying to kill his patient. Greg would not be allowed to return fire if they were trying to kill him. Medics were not supposed to be targeted by the enemy. Greg asked his instructor incredulously, "So I'm there in the jungle. I'm treating a patient and I have to decide whether Charlie is aiming at me or the wounded guy I'm sewing up before I return fire?" The instructor continued without answering.

"So, how's it going, Bro?" Chap asked Franklin. Greg was thinking Chap probably didn't know how to say Franklin's African name either.

"Aw, you know, S.O.S." Franklin cleaned up his language out of respect for the Chaplain. But Chap had heard it all and simply ignored it unless someone took the Lord's name in vain. Chap heard more profanity everyday than Vietnamese and he heard a lot of Vietnamese. One Sunday a quarter he would work a little Book of James "controlling the tongue" into a sermon, but like the Marines there, Chap picked his fights carefully and well.