Muddy Jungle Rivers by Wendell Affield

Author:Wendell Affield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vietnam war, ptsd, army, marine corps, mekong river, brown water navy, gunboats, riverine force

12 Boat Race

18 March 1968

Early one morning I came topside to relieve Stonewall and found him with his eye against the starlight scope. It was rested on the edge of his 20mm cannon turret and aimed at the far side of the river. He didn’t hear me because the engines on the boat next to us were running. I stood in the darkness watching, when suddenly the engines shut down and I heard a tape player. I stepped closer, assuming he was listening to a tape from home. As I eavesdropped, I realized it wasn’t a family tape but a speech from Martin Luther King Jr. about why Americans shouldn’t be in Vietnam. I listened as he spoke of the poverty of blacks and whites. He did make a legitimate argument about spending so much money on this war. But who would stop the communists if we didn’t? He kept referring to the poor at home—black and white—and I recalled how my stepfather had felt quite proud the last time I talked to him—about a year ago. He said that for the first time, the farm had an income of twenty-nine hundred dollars for the year.

Before I went in the navy I never had a gauge to measure our standard of living.

But by the time he told me that, I was earning more than he was. I decided—yes—I came from a family in poverty. I recalled the winters when the cows were dried up, no income at all for several weeks. I gave my trapping money for food. Homemade white bread smeared with lard and molasses was a staple on those winter days. When the cows began freshening, we ate the new-born bull calves. The meat was very pale and tasteless but with enough mustard it was edible. When King talked about seating white boys and black boys together at school I thought he didn’t understand—the blacks preferred to be together. I made a noise then, hoping Stonewall would think I’d just arrived because I didn’t know what to say about the tape. When he realized I was there, he shut it off.

“Nothing stirring across the river. The gooks took the night off,” he said, handing me the scope. He picked up his tape player and went below.

Spring crept upon us. Hot day followed hot day as we patrolled the river. The crippled man stopped coming. Our dysfunctional family routine spiraled downward. Buddha kept a well-stocked liquor cabinet so our boat became a hangout when beached at Cua Viet in the evening.

The Tango 7 mining festered in Buddha’s mind. After several drinks he’d begin chanting, gently shaking his cupped hand as though he were shaking dice, playing craps with an invisible opponent. “Seven come eleven. Seven fucking come eleven. Seven come eleven.” His voice would begin low—almost a whisper—then rise slowly, then lower again. It seemed he was willing evil to our boat as retribution for his imagined guilt for not being in lead position the morning Tango 7 had been mined.

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