A Soldier's Christmas

                                                                                  

Alfred Martinez, no relationship to Reynel, on the outpost 

     As I write this, on December 21st, I know there are Americans fighting wars somewhere around the world. Do they think about Christmas? If their experience is anything like mine, and they’re carrying out combat missions, they’re probably oblivious to the savior’s birth, to all holidays, thinking only about the mission and survival. Sometimes, they don’t even know, really, why they're fighting, and every day is the same, just another 24-hours. 

      It was a long time ago, 1966, December. I don’t even recall thinking about Christmas, only the vague notion about a cease fire. Christmas wasn’t important to us, the cease-fire was, but let me start at the beginning. 

     I’d arrived in-country on October 25th, after finishing jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, with orders to report to Phan Rang, home of the 101st Airborne, first brigade, but it wasn’t that easy getting there. 

     I arrived in Saigon on a commercial airliner, along with a bunch of other travel-weary, mostly, teenage soldiers, the perfect age; we bitch but don't ask questions. Ours was not to reason why, ours was but to do and die.

     I grouped up with the few Chicanos I knew from jump school. After spending two days in Saigon’s 90th Replacement Center, they placed us on a convoy and drove us through a strange landscape of straw huts, rice paddies and fields of elephant grass to Long Binh, a larger, newer temporary replacement center, where I learned the Army had lost my orders. I was in limbo. 

     October moved into November, still, no orders. They gave me a choice to stay at Long Binh, a dusty, desolate Army induction center in the middle of V.C. country, or wait for my orders at Cam Ranh Bay, outside an Air Force base, along the shores of the South China Sea, where the Army was building a permanent, enormous military complex to process incoming and outgoing soldiers, a sign to the world the U.S. was in Vietnam to stay. I chose the beach.

     The rest of November passed. With some friends whose orders had also been misplaced, I spent the days working with military engineers, pouring cement slabs for all the new buildings. We worked all week, half-day Saturday, with Sunday’s off, which we spent swimming and sunbathing in the most beautiful beaches I’d ever seen. 

     Thanksgiving came and went. Anyone stationed on a permanent military base had no problem keeping track of time, like days, weeks, months, and holidays. In the huge mess hall, we feasted on a turkey dinner, with all the trimmings. On military bases, officers don’t cut corners when it comes to their luxuries and conveniences, including a five-course meal. 

     Finally, December arrived, and with it, my orders, report to Phan Rang, Camp Eagle, the 101st Airborne Division’s Home. Once we arrived at the sparsely populated camp, they told us the majority of the brigade had moved up north. As New Mexican Reynel Martinez, a recondo with the 101st, wrote in his book, Six Silent Men, “For the first time in the Vietnam War, a brigade (about 4,000 soldiers) was moved from one place to another in less than forty-eight hours.” For me, it was a sign of what was to come, constant movement, and I'd quickly get to know why the media dubbed the brigade, The Gypsies of Vietnam.

     Within three days, they issued us new jungle fatigues, boots, and M-16s, (we’d been trained on M-14s), bandoliers of ammunition, and two hand grenades. They put us through days and nights of intense jungle training, patrolling the mountains around the brigade’s perimeter. They walked us through the brigade zoo, animals captured, for training purposes, during past operations, the grand exhibits, lethal vipers, an eighteen-foot boa constrictor and a large jaguar. They wiped the past from our brains. Only the present mattered, the “right now,” life over death. 

     Christmas? Nothing…not even on our minds. The birth of Jesus and peace to the world somebody else’s business. The more common words in our vocabulary, words of survival, “Killers,” “Assassins,” “Executioners,” “Demons,” “Devils,” “Hell,” and “Widow-Makers.” December was just a name for a bunch of days. By 10th, the entire brigade had set up in the Central Highlands, Kontum, a dark, ominous mountain wilderness. They loaded us, “cherries” and “new guys,” onto C-130s, crammed in, along with the brigade’s supplies, and flew us into Kontum. 

     A truck picked us up and drove to our units. I reported to A battery, 320th Artillery. It looked like something out of the old west, a Civil War camp, concertina wire, rows of tents set up everywhere, guys, some cleaning weapons, others holding hand grenades, some relaxing, smoking, talking in groups, and just hanging out. Some were in town, for a few hours of entertainment. We heard about fights breaking out in bars. Christmas cheer? 

     By the December 12th, we were in the mountains, the artillery batteries setting up, for what seemed like a long stay. So much for Christmas. The infantry companies had begun humping the mountainsides around us. It was cold, mountain-cold, and most of us hadn’t brought field jackets. Vietnam wasn’t supposed to be cold. 

     As the month passed, the only thing we heard about Christmas, 1966, was a possible cease-fire. Weird. We’re all killing each other, their infantry and ours, with AK-47s and M-16s, and we, with 105 howitzers, blowing villages and people off the map. Who knew why, really?

     No one mentioned December 25, Christmas, the nativity, Bethlehem, the three wise men, the baby in a manger, nothing, zip. No showers for us, just dirty clothes, and, like heathens, eating out of cans, sometimes with spoons and forks, sometimes with our fingers, just how the Army wanted it. A holiday like Christmas might make us weak, so no trees, candles, or lights, just muzzle blasts and flares floating down on parachutes, illuminating the dark hell in front of us. 

     Around December 23rd, not long after I heard a sniper's bullet whiz past me ear, one close call in many to come, they got the word. Hanoi had agreed to a Christmas cease fire. We "broke down" the battery, no easy feat, moving seventy-five guys and six-howitzers. That’s not counting two other artillery batteries and all the infantry units still out in the mountains. We worked all day, and we were back in Kontum, setting up a temporary camp, by evening, chinooks and hueys, kicking up dust, coming and going at will. 

     I really don’t remember the dates. Browsing in a bookstore years ago, I found Reynel’s book. Coincidentally, he and I had both arrived in Vietnam about the same time. He kept a diary of the dates, operations, and important events, like Christmas. I’m indebted to him. His book is a good one. 

     He reminded me the Army served us a fine Christmas meal. Then it came to me, since we were still in the “front” area, far from our base camp, the cooks served us from metal containers. We sat on sandbags and ate from our mess kits, gobbled down turkey, mashed potatoes, peas, and cranberry sauce. 

     I’m sure, I must have gone to mass. There was always a priest somewhere nearby. When a Catholic priest wasn’t available, I’d join whatever pastor happened to be holding a service, regardless of religion. By that time, I figured Heaven wasn't only for Catholics. Mostly, though, we took advantage of any time out of the field to stay drunk, sloshed, or stoned, before the next operation. Christmas cheer didn’t last long. The only thing that mattered was ticking off one more day, hoping to make it to 365, the magic number.

     What I’d also forgotten, and Reynel Martinez reminded me, were the days after Christmas. To draw $55.00 “jump pay” each month, a lot of money in 1966, we had to jump at least once a year. So, the brass took the cease-fire as an opportunity to organize a one-day jump, the whole brigade, thousands of us, filling the skies above Kontum, a real show for the Vietnamese, but that’s an entirely different story. No Christmas cheer there, either. 

     Good luck to all of those serving today, so far from home. I remember you, and to all those who have served, and still suffer from the remnants of war, and to the families of those who never made it home. Some of us remember you, Christmas or not.

Daniel Cano is the author of the Vietnam saga, Shifting Loyalties.