Vietnam-Perkasie: a Combat Marine Memoir by W.D. Ehrhart

Author:W.D. Ehrhart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2012-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong is made up of two parts: Hong Kong Island, and the Kowloon Peninsula on the Chinese mainland. By the fall of 1967, a lot of the Hong Kong economy was geared to the American R&R trade. The seven hotels where American military personnel stayed were all located in a six-square block area of Kowloon. The neighborhood around the hotels was loaded with restaurants, souvenir and tailor shops, and cheap bars where Chinese prostitutes were plentiful.

I arrived in Hong Kong on my nineteenth birthday. After I registered at the Ambassador Hotel, even before I went to my room, I bought a set of civilian clothing from a shop in the hotel lobby. Then I went up to my room, took off my uniform, and turned on the hot water in the bathtub. I called room service and ordered six cold beers and a bucket of ice. When the beer arrived, I climbed into the tub with a beer in each hand, and commenced to soak out 240 days worth of sand, dust, dirt, mud, sweat, pain and fatigue. I had not seen hot and cold running water in more than eight months. I ignored the cold water faucet. I played with the hot one, turning it on and off, refilling the tub whenever the water temperature got below 211 degrees Fahrenheit. I drank two more cold beers. I scooped hot water into my mouth, tilted my head back, and spit the water straight up, so that it tinkled and splashed all over my face as it fell. I got out of the tub dripping wet, urinated in the toilet and flushed it. Then I flushed it again. I flushed it a third time, just to watch the water swirl around in the bowl, then I got hack in the tub. I drank two more beers. I shouted snatches of every song I could remember, until my throat hurt and my skin turned bright pink and wrinkly.

After about two hours, I got out of the tub and dried myself off with a clean white towel which I kept dropping because of the six beers I had just consumed on an empty stomach. I got dressed in my new civilian shirt and trousers, asked a bellboy in the hotel lobby to point me toward the nearest restaurant, navigated across the street, through the door of the restaurant and into a chair with a table in front of it. I ordered a steak dinner with all the trimmings. “No grease,” I said to the Chinese waiter, “and nothin’ outta cans.” I washed it all down with several mixed drinks.

“Well, Ehrhart, it’s time to get laid,” I said to myself when I’d finished eating. “Jenny’s not the only one who can cash in on this free love shit.” I headed for the bars. It took me another five hours and a dozen more drinks in as many bars to comprehend that love was not free in Hong Kong.

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