Deros Vietnam by Doug Bradley

Author:Doug Bradley [Bradley, Doug]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: War
ISBN: 9780985338817
Publisher: Warriors Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

Delta Lady

“Take a hit off this.” Specialist Four Charles handed me one of his tightly manicured marijuana cigarettes. I had no idea where he got these, but Charles always had a pack of joints on him, cellophane and all. It was by far the strongest dope I’d ever smoked.

We crept our way along the shortcut to our office, through brambles and brush and sometimes sandy terrain, passing the joint. It wasn’t a long walk, and it was partly illuminated by lights from basketball and tennis courts. Every time I took this route to USARV headquarters, day or night, I tried to envision this place as the rubber plantation it once was. The Michelin tire guy was about the best I could come up with.

Before you knew it, we’d arrived at the big, bright sprawling “H.” Ours was the north building of the H, the two-storied metal one that looked out over most of Long Binh. There were more people out there than in my hometown. Most nights, we would sneak back into our office, put on our headphones, turn on our reel-to-reel tape decks and listen to music as we typed letters home to our wives and sweethearts and family.

Nights like those when we took that trek we were so goddamn high it was as if we weren’t even in Vietnam. Those few special minutes transported us elsewhere—back to college or away on R&R—any fucking where but Vietnam. Sometimes, that sense of being someplace else lasted long into the night, since the music and the typing kept us aloft even as the dope wore off.

And some nights the dope never wore off.

“Procuring marijuana in Vietnam is easier than getting a beer at a keg party,” I remembered the JAG officer telling us during our in-country orientation. He looked like one of the Beach Boys—shiny blonde hair, toothy smile, square jaw, perfect features. I kept waiting for him to burst out in surfer tunes.

“In every camp in country,” he lectured to a roomful of us newbies, “a GI can get a joint within five minutes.”

I was seated near the front, so I started taking notes.

“The weed grows wild. It is cultivated by the Vietnamese, who rarely use it themselves,” he went on. “They understand marijuana’s proclivity as a new cash crop.”

Even though I wasn’t exactly sure what proclivity meant—it sounded kind of dirty—I burst into a grin. Hell, this was the best lecture ever, since we were finding out all we needed to know about the weed we already knew and loved.

Now the Beach Boy major pulled down a map of Vietnam with big Roman numerals on it and armed himself with a pointer. “With three harvests a year, the Mekong Delta is the marijuana bowl of Vietnam.” He thrust the tip of the pointer on IV Corps. “Recently, police moved in to destroy these crops because many of the local farmers were giving up rice and turning to cannabis.”

Momentary frowns.

“But the destruction urged—and supported—by the Army and United States federal agents hardly touches the supply.

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