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Steel Pot, Marijuana Convoy 2

 (Vietnam Legacy Project)

The Saigon Post, September 18, 1971

                                    Steel Pot in a Marijuana Convoy

                                         by

                                               Daniel Cameron

 

                                                   Part 2

 

Steve hasn't decided whether to finish that first joint yet. He may be a little high but seems in control. He's driven convoy in Vietnam maybe a hundred times already. He's going to receive Army commendation awards for it, if they don't find out about his smoking habits. Army policy is not to decorate a pothead even if the pothead earned it.

 

Steve still gets nervous on convoy. Ambushes and mines are still not very predictable. Driving so often can act as an anesthetic,  but today it's a little different. Today a civilian, somebody from "the World," is riding shotgun with him. He seems suddenly to remember that he's been living dangerously every morning and afternoon for 'beaucoup' mornings and afternoons.

 

He hates the steel pot but puts it on now, setting the grenades between us.

 

"This thing is hell on your hair," he says. 

 

He claims that the steel pot presses the hair against the head in  a way  that makes you go bald after a while.

 

"See my hair line?" he says, lifting the helmet. "It receded since I came to Vietnam."  

 

Maybe it had.

 

He throws the carton out the window and re-lights the joint.  He takes a drag like a drinker who hasn't been satisfied with the first two drinks.

 

News agencies and   folks will want to know, Steve, whether you're an addict.

 

"I ain't hooked," he says. "Grass isn't like that. I can stop anytime I want to."

 

Does he want to?

 

"Why should I? What else is there to do over here?"

 

Has he stopped.

 

"Sure. Sometimes I go all day without grass. A lot of heads around here do too.

Me? I'm not really a head.  I just like a joint now and then. It's something to relax you, make you feel better."

 

He used to be in the jungle with Echo Company, a recon platoon.  Did he smoke then, out in the boonies?  Sure he did. Lots of his buddies did too. They had to. Vietnam could blow anybody's mind.  They had to do something.  He liked grass better than booze, and booze couldn't be had out in the boonies, anyway.  Grass was a groove. He was sure he talked better with grass, became more friendly, mellow. More alert, too. And he was sure the VC smoked grass. His old recon platoon from Echo Company even found speed  in an NVA bunker once.   They figured that's how the NVA got themselves ready for those suicide attacks. They were hopped up on speed. Grass also made a person more alert in the jungle.  He could hear things, feel things better.

 

"Lot of my buddies say that's how the VC plays it so cool. Grass."

 

After a few drags, Steve seems more sure of his argument. He doesn't seem to be trying to convince himself now,  His smile is almost relaxed.

 

"I'm not stoned," he says. "Just a little high."

 

He seems in control.

 

The convoy starts again as suddenly as it had stopped. Two G.I.s who were urinating have to leap back into their  trucks. We pass a small town.

 

Mama-san has fallen asleep. Steve keeps his flak jcket unzippered.  He wonders out loud what he'll do back in Chicago.  Maybe go to an art school, if one accepts him.  He likes his roommate's  psychedelic posters in their hootch back in base camp.  Steve isn't arty, isn't a hippie, but likes to draw. And he'd do almost anything to stay out of a factory  when he goes home.

 

"A factory would be like another Vietnam," he says.

 

The convoy does more stopping and starting, giving no reason.  The machine gun escorts look ready for a fight in their steel pots and flak jackets. Nothing happens.

 

Finally we turn off the paved highway and onto that dirt road with puddles.  The last ten klicks are beginning.  Steve zippers up his flak jacket.  This road could make a good ambush alley.  It's narrow and crowded by elephant grass and hedgerows, all  of it thick, some of it on high ground looking down on us. You can't see anything in there.  Steve's had no contact here yet in six weeks. US minesweepers comb the road each morning.  We are passing here about three hours after this morning's sweep.

 

"I know roads like this," Steve says. "I used to drive convoy down in the Delta."

 

He reminds you that "great grass" comes from the Delta too. It's the home of the very smokeable "Delta Dew."

 

It was on a Delta dirt road like this where he hit a VC pressure device. His buddy shows you the pictures later. His truck made contact with the pressure device which set off the mine. The mine was hidden under a pile of buffalo dung on the dirt road. The blast tore a hole next to him right through the floor of the cab. A rider sitting next to him in your position would have been killed instantly, or pretty instantly. But Steve had no riders that day. Even more lucky for him, he was driving a roofless cab that day. The force of the blast lifted him straight up and out of the cab.  He landed by the road, unhurt.  Luckily too, no ambush followed the blast.  The explosion made a crater about three or four feet deep.  The convoy could afford to smile and take pictures of Steve posing in the crater.

 

"Some guys get religion over here," Steve says, without irony.

 

Later you meet one of Steve's buddies, a friendly Italian-American  who is bespectacled and married and clearly respects Steve. He was in that same Delta convoy that day in a truck right behind Steve. He tells you a little part of the story that Steve doesn't tell. Shock or no shock, Steve didn't fold at all.  After being blown out of his truck he snapped back in seconds. He did the best and most sensible thing he could in the situation. He was down in that crater with his M-16 rifle, ready to fire.  He was ready for the ambush that never came...

 

On the muddy road we pass the rusted skeleton of an old French tank. When the tall elephant grass ends we see mortar pits, big guns and tents in a great clearing where the French once built a trench fortress at the bottom of jungle peaks. Steve lights a 'straight' cigarette and parks in the mud near a big tent. We made it.

 

"Let's face it," Steve says, "the grunts over here are the lowest of the low. Nobody except their mothers cares about them.  The best thing for them is to do their job and not let their mind get in a bind."

 

Steve sees some buddies and gets you a beer.  Later they go into a small hootch for a smoke.

 

 

                                                  

 

                 

 

 

 

Steel Pot in a Marijuana Convoy

(Vietnam Legacy Project)

 

The Saigon Post, September 18, 1971

 

ETCETERA,,,,

 

Steel Pot in a Marijuana Convoy

               by

                  Daniel Cameron

 

                         PART 1

 

On the road in Vietnam

 

Riding convoy on the main paved highway is all right, so far. The dirt road coming later is what you think about. To reach the Firebase you  travel through ten klicks of  first-class ambush country along that dirt road. The mud and dirt will be good for mines, too.

 

Outside the main gate of the base camp, along the big paved highway, the vehicles are lined up, ready to go. Everybody has a weapon, a steel pot and a flak jacket.  The machine gun jeep up ahead is ready to give the signal. The morning sun is getting hotter and heavier. You're riding shotgun in a deuce-and-a-half truck with a 19-year old Spec 4 named Steve. He is friendly, a little jumpy and nervous, and in his way very innocent.

 

You don't expect him to spring a joint on you right out here on the road. Steve comes from a Chicago blue collar family, a strictly non-hippie background, you might say. He seems very young, but not without a certain maturity. He knows about ambushes and mines from personal experience. Acne blemishes parts of his face and his turned-up nose.  He swears he never had those pimples till coming in-country.

 

Steve drives this supply truck every day---mornings out to the Firebase, afternoons back to base camp.  He goes home in two months. His manner of talking is jumpy and intense.

 

"Some guys count each day," he says, reaching for the rolled joint in his pocket. "Not me. It's better not to think about it, not get your mind in a bind. I just do my job and try to hang loose with the lifers."

 

At the wheel he gestures. He says something cheerful, as though concerned for your welfare. "Want a drag?"

 

No, you didn't smoke this early in the morning, but thanks anyway.

 

He seems disappointed, but just a little. Despite his unsophisticated working class background, a certain politeness or innate discretion keeps him from asking whether you really smoke the weed or not. He tends to be jumpy and restless, but you find him sympathetic.

 

Up ahead the jeep escort with machine gun decides everything is ready. The motors of seven two-and-a-half ton trucks roar. G.I.'s insert ammo clips into automatic rifles. Some hastily finish a can of cola.

 

Steve holds back from lighting up until well after the convoy starts rolling. You don't know whether anyone else in the other vehicles is smoking 'grass' on this trip. Maybe yes, maybe no. Many are smoking what look like conventional cigarettes.

 

Forty klicks, or kilometers, to the Firebase in the forest. The highway here is well-paved and full of military traffic, motorbikes and three-wheeled Lambretta mini-buses that carry Vietnamese civilians. The convoy's first thirty kilometers will run along this good highway. It's considered secure by daylight. There are no commercial billboards around here. One of the few signs is a message to the Viet Cong, calling on them to join the Government's chieu hoi program, i.e, to defect. You don't know whether the Viet Cong read that sign mainly by day or at night.

 

When the convoy halts for a short while, Steve lights up.

 

"Sure you don't want a drag?" he says, offering the joint.

 

You play the resisting square again. A sweet pungent odor  floats through the cab.

 

"Steve, the folks say they want to know why guys like you smoke it, especially in this kind of neighborhood."

 

"Man," Steve says, "you got to. I might go psycho if I didn't."

 

He says it in that nervous jumpy way, as if he's also trying to convince himself.

 

He is supposed to put on his steel pot and heavy flak jacket despite the heat. He doesn't. That would be too hot, stifling, uncomfortable.

 

"The Army has all kinds of stupid regulations," he says. "Nobody can hack it all. Not me, anyway."

 

You've heard about stupid Army regulations, but you're not sure that this is one of them. Your own helmet feels too heavy and umcomfortable, but you keep it right up there, on your head.

 

The last ten klicks will be mud, off the highway and into the woods. It can never be as secure as a paved highway. But that's still far away. Right now the only pot Steve wants is the kind you smoke. We have to raise our voices because of the grueling motor noise. Everything in the Army seems extra noisy. Steve holds the big steering wheel with one hand and reaches for his steel helmet. He sets it between us, suddenly remembering something. He turns it upside down so that it's like a bowl. He puts two grenades in the 'bowl'. These are six-second hand frags.

 

"Know how to use these?" he says, as though looking out for your welfare.

 

You get a ten-second refresher course. You listen and watch carefully.

 

Behind us in the truck is a little old mama-san, laughing. Some other Vietnamese folk are in there with her, crowded and snuggled against the supplies. Her head is pressed aganst the opening in the truck's cab. She works out at the Firebase. Mama-san no smoke pot, Mama-san chew betel nut. She smiles and eyes us, her face in a mild betel-nut glaze from the strong mixture. Red juice from what she's chewing stains her mouth and gold teeth. She smiles that big gold-toothed smile and talks to us. She talks as though we can understand what she's saying. Then she breaks out in an impish Vietnamese giggle.

 

Steve hollers above the noise. "Stop your playing, Mama-san, and give us some chocolate milk."

 

Steve puts away his unfinished joint, tries to watch the road, grapple with the gear stick and make her understand, all at the same time. Mama-san seems to understand. She gropes around, finally comes up with two quart cartons of chocolate milk. She puts them through the opening for us and giggles again.

 

It's cold, but how to drink it in this vibrating monster vehicle? We shake, rattle and sip. Will have to wait till the convoy stops again.

 

Soon it stops and we don't know why.  They don't tell us anything. Somebody might have spotted something in the rubber trees, or in that banana grove. Maybe the LOACH helicopter radioed something to the RTO. Maybe it's just part of a start-stop pattern. Nobody tells us. But Steve decides to put on his flak jacket and stand his rifle upright against his door.   You hope he's not stoned.

 

(To be continued) 

 

                                

 

 

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