enemy.
Sergeant Major Cooper, our command sergeant major, was one of the most colorful of the battalion’s soldiers. I had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with him during the brief interval before the unit returned to Binh Dinh. A hard-charging, hard-drinking, totally professional NCO from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, he knew full well the importance of relaxing in a combat environment when one had the opportunity to do so. I liked him.
Booze, the hard stuff, was not permitted in the boonies, and rightfully not. Therefore, it flowed quite freely during a unit’s so-called stand down at An Khe, the division’s soldiers viewing Camp Radcliff, after months in the boonies, in much the same fashion as sailors look upon their home port after a long tour at sea. One of the hutches in which booze flowed most freely was that of the command sergeant major.
In the waning days of the battalion’s stay at An Khe, Cooper invited a couple of the company commanders, several of their lieutenants, and some of us on the staff to his hutch for evening cocktails.
Arriving late, I found that the sergeant major and my fellow officers had been “cocktailing” for quite some while.
“Yeah, and that’s the last I ever heard of young Romeo,” Cooper was saying, laughingly, as I walked in.
“Who’s Romeo?” I asked offhandedly, pulling up a chair.
“Who’s Romeo, indeed!” the sergeant major responded. “Well that was before your time, Captain. Matter of fact, it was before the old man’s time.” (A unit’s commander, in this case Colonel Lich, is traditionally, and respectfully, referred to as the “old man.”) “Well, Romeo—which is what we called him, for reasons that will soon be obvious—was a young seventeen-year-old from the farmlands of Indiana… or was it Illinois?”
He paused momentarily, as if this aspect of Romeo’s earlier existence might have some bearing on the story, then, evidently deciding it did not, continued. “Oh, well, no matter where the fuck he was from, he was a young stud who ain’t never been off the farm till he was drafted and found himself in the Nam… where he fell in love.”
He started laughing, as did the others, who obviously enjoyed hearing the saga of Romeo again as much as the sergeant major relished telling it.
But then abruptly he stopped laughing and, in a serious vein, said,
“Gentlemen, the unfunny part of this tale is that we lost, the Army lost, what might otherwise have been a good soldier to a goddamn Communist whore!”
After a brief pause, he continued. “But that’s neither here nor there.
Hell, story’s old as the Army itself and ain’t anything you can really do ‘bout it. Young man leaves the farm, goes overseas, and falls in love with the first hooker he puts it to, which, likely as not, is also the first broad he ever put it to. Anyway, our Romeo falls in love with this sweet young thing from the ville last time the battalion pulled base security—shit, nearly a year ago now. Well, falling in love’s okay, but when it comes time to go back to the boonies, Romeo decides he’s gonna stay in the ville with his true love… uh… you know the story, first love, can’t live without her, Charlie might get him if he goes back, so on and so forth. So the battalion returns to the boonies and reports young Romeo AWOL. And next day the MPs go down to the ville, police him up, and return him to the rear detachment [the battalion’s residual force at An Khe], where he’s restricted to quarters till his company can be informed of his apprehension.”
“Meanwhile, his true love returns to her family in Qui Nhon with matrimony on her mind. Well, Romeo, knowing that, decides to “unrestrict” himself. So he just walks out of camp, boards a gook bus, and goes to Qui Nhon. A week or so later, the MPs find him there, pick him up, and bring him back to An Khe a second time.”
“Now the rear detachment commander—that’s your predecessor, sir,” he said, looking at me, “what with being just a bit embarrassed ‘bout his first disappearance, puts a guard with a loaded forty-five on Romeo and initiates an Article 32.” (Article 32 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice provides for a pretrial investigation of serious allegations to determine whether or not the alleged offense should be referred for court-martial.)
“That same evening, the guard, feeling he needs a short break for a beer at the Black Horse, handcuffs Romeo to his bunk and takes leave.”
The sergeant major paused briefly to collect his thoughts and mix himself another drink. Several of us followed suit.
“Now, as you might guess,” he continued, again looking at me, “when the guard returned, both Romeo and the bunk were gone! Damn, now I think of it, we never did find that cot. Well anyway, the MPs now know where to find young Romeo, so they quickly police him up in Qui Nhon and bring him back here a third time. Needless to say, the RDC is pissed!” (The RDC was the rear detachment commander.)
“So he decides to send Romeo to LBJ.” (Cooper was not, in this context, referring to our commander in chief, Lyndon Baines Johnson; he was referring to the U.S. Army’s correctional facility in Vietnam located at Long Binh, which snuffies called Long Binh Jail or simply LBJ.) “So the RDC calls Battalion Forward and starts to set the wheels in motion for pretrial confinement. Well, Romeo’s company commander hears about this and says, ‘No way! Ain’t no goddamn AWOL of mine gonna sit on his lazy ass at LBJ, safe and sound eating three hots a day, while the rest of us suffer out here. You put young Romeo on the next log bird flying, and he can pull his pretrial here in the boonies!” Which, when you think of it, made a lot of sense.”
“Guess so,” I offered. “Mean, if he’s in the field with his company, he can hardly wander off to Qui Nhon at will.”
“Exactly!” Cooper responded. “Especially the area his company was then working, up there in the mountains west of Happy Valley. I mean it was Indian country, Charlie’s playground, the fucking jungle miles from nobody and nothing!”
Again he paused briefly, much as a comedian might just before the punch line, and noting the smirks on the faces of my fellow officers, I sensed we were nearing that point in the sergeant major’s tale.
“So,” he said, starting to laugh, “young Romeo goes back to the boonies on the evening log bird out of LZ English. Goes back to his platoon and the lieutenant puts him in a two-man fighting position for the night—you know, one up, one down” (meaning one man awake while the other sleeps).
“Well, when the company stands to at first light, Romeo’s gone! Weapon, rucksack, and Romeo— gone!”
This still is not the punch line. They’re laughing, but with restraint.
There’s more to come.
“Now Romeo’s commander has no choice but to report him as an MIA,”
Cooper continued. “You know, give the guy and his family the benefit of the doubt, ‘cause he’s probably dead now, and if he ain’t, at best, he’ll turn up as a returned POW when this thing’s finally over.”
After a brief pause, he smiled and said, “Next night the MPs stumble across Romeo at his girlfriend’s hutch in Qui Nhon! ‘Course they pick him up and return him to An Khe for a fourth and final time.”
Punch line!
After the laughter died down, the sergeant major wrapped up his saga of Romeo in a quasi-serious tone.
“So like I say, last I heard Romeo was at LBJ pending court-martial. By now he’s probably making little ones out of big ones at Leavenworth. But you know, the Army shouldn’t have sent young Romeo off to jail. Should have sent him back to the States and had him set up an escape-and-evasion course—teach pilots and other high-risk wieners how to evade Charlie should they get caught in the ‘badlands.” I mean, can you even imagine somebody just walking out of a company perimeter like that, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the jungle, and working his way through forty or fifty miles of Indian country to Qui Nhon! Shit, true love knows no bounds!”
“I don’t know, Top,” a somewhat aged but trim and deeply tanned first lieutenant from Bravo Company remarked. “I mean all a guy’s gotta do is make it down to Highway Nineteen, go east to Highway One, and follow it on in to Qui Nhon. Hell, your Romeo probably hitched a ride with the first deuce-and-a-half traveling Nineteen the morning after he left the company, knowing the snuffie driving it ain’t gonna say a word ‘bout picking him up.”
“Okay, Lieutenant Russell,” Cooper responded, “if you think it’s nothing more than a fucking walk in the woods, why don’t you just try it next time Bravo’s working Happy Valley? I’ll clear it with the old man, see to it that you get your picture in Stars and Stripes, and then we’ll send you back to Benning to teach E&E!”
Russell just smiled in return, apparently satisfied that he had, to some small degree, dampened the grandeur of the sergeant major’s tale. I later learned there was nothing vindictive in this; Cooper and Russell, himself a senior NCO before acquiring a commission, had known each other
