Da Nang Postscripts

By B. F. Gaulman

Dave Simms is a young black marine stationed at the Da Nang Air Base during the Vietnam War. Working as a supply clerk, he fights not only the Viet Cong but also everyday boredom and the absurdity of military life.

In the face of those challenges, his search for personal identity leads him through a drunken and reefer-smoking year of ludicrous encounters. Simms finds himself in perilous surroundings and yet is protected from the worst of events in many waysbut not always. The horrors of war reach even him, leaving a mark that not even alcohol fueled nights can erase. Simms rarely meets the enemy, but his worst fears arise more from what the marines might do to him. The preposterous, bloodthirsty mind-set of the Marine Corps feeds his hatred for them and his determination to leave Vietnam not only alive and in one piece but also in his right minda goal that might prove impossible to achieve.

In this military novel, a young marine serving in Vietnam struggles to stay alive and keep his sanity in the face of the brutality of war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481715881

B. F. Gaulman

B.F. Gaulman was born in Manhattan and served in the US Marine Corps from 1964 to 1968, including thirteen months in South Vietnam. He has worked as a New York City firefighter, retiring in 1989, and as an environmental regulator in Florida and Virginia. He holds a degree in biology from Lehman College.

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© 2013 B. F. Gaulman. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 5/01/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4817-1587-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-1588-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013902645

Front Cover Design Concept by Barbara Fontes and B.F. Gaulman

All Interior Photos Taken by B.F. Gaulman

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

All Scriptural quotes before each chapter are from the King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.

CONTENTS

Other Possible Titles

Da Nang Postcripts: The Present

The Dream

Introduction

Da Nang Postscripts:The Past

Chapter One The Beginning

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Postscript

Epilogue

Postscript II

Endnote

About the Author

Kudos to New Yorker B.F. Gaulman’s DA NANG POSTSCRIPTS, for an auspicious debut novel. His protagonist Dave Simms, 22, an African-American US Marine, is stationed in war-torn Vietnam and is a gifted storyteller to boot. Using his diary, Simms pulls you willy-nilly into his surreal war experience, which is equal parts folly, incomprehension, and tragicomedy. Packed with richly textured narratives, like biblical ones, and peopled by an eclectic cast of characters, Simms’s diary chronicles friendships, addictive behavior–-drugs and sex–-survival, and the oppressive Vietnamese sun. His never-ending question….why are we here? Simms’s voice is steady even as he begins his descent into a state of early-stage madness, a madness informed by fear, despair and hopelessness. His mantra, dying is not an option, is like a reader’s adrenalin rush….which defies you to abandon his compelling story.

DA NANG POSTSCRIPTS proves that B.F. Gaulman has the right stuff necessary to produce a page-turner novel. He is adept at taking a risk with an unpopular subject like men at war and turning it into a work which is both accessible and eminently readable.

Victoria Horsford, New York Beacon

There was a war in Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s. This story is a complete work of fiction, and no resemblance to places and people living or dead is intended or implied.

War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds, and is not divorced from the political life of a nation, and as such, is a continuation of politics by other means.

Victory is purchased by blood, and that total victory is assured only through annihilation of the enemy’s forces.

Principles of War by Carl von Clausewitz, 1832

To all the military support people in Vietnam who furnished the ground and air war operations and who didn’t die in combat. We grieve all the soldiers and civilians who did. We helped and shared in your deaths, and many of us are still suffering your memory.

For:

My deceased mother—Viola Elizabeth Gaulman, housewife

My deceased father—William Francis Gaulman Sr., World War II veteran (US Army)

My deceased friend—Charles Powell Sr., World War II veteran (US Army)

My deceased high school principal—Walter G. O’Connell Sr.

My deceased friend—Don Ferguson, Vietnam veteran (USMC)

My deceased friend—Henry Miller, Vietnam veteran (US Army)

My deceased friend—Hugo Carpenter, Vietnam veteran (USMC)

My deceased friend—Victor Butch Horsford Jr., Vietnam veteran (USMC)

My deceased friend—Stephen Gussow

My children—Dara G. Gaulman and LeShan A. Gaulman

Special thanks to:

Saundra Ferguson

Otis Q. Sellers

Morgan Freeman

Harry Smith

Walter Mosley

Ernest Hemingway

James Baldwin

Chester Himes

Alfonso Raines

Henry Rudy Steglich

Nanette Carter

Deba August

Michael Campbell

Chris Rock

Alex Keith

Roni Patton

Kene Holliday

Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise

OTHER POSSIBLE TITLES

Dave Simms: Da Nang Diary

Da Nang Postscripts: Still Stuck in Vietnam

Da Nang Postscripts: An Embellished/Crude/Unpolished Memoir

Da Nang Journal and Beyond

Da Nang Postscripts: Life after the War

Da Nang Postscripts: The Aftermath

The Da Nang, Vietnam, Confessions of David Simms

The Secret Journal of Dave Simms

The Dog Patch/Reefer/Opium Chronicles

The Constant and Perpetual Impairment of Dave Simms

Thirteen Months of Dave Simms Getting His Freak On

Homeboy’s Jitterbugger’s Ball: Gang Fighting Brought to a Higher Level

Dog Patch Blues

DA NANG

POSTCRIPTS:

THE PRESENT

THE DREAM

The round went straight through Benny’s right eye. He lost consciousness the instant the bullet passed through his brainy flesh. Seconds later, he died without ever knowing what hit him. But I knew.

I was looking at Benny when he got hit. I was concerned about him sticking his head up and over the top of our bunker to take a look into the dark empty space in front of him. The bullet met his face the moment his head cleared that top row of sandbags. The blood blowing out of the back of Benny’s head didn’t impact me as much as that small, bloodless hole that violently pushed into his right eye. It was the sign of a sniper. I hated snipers; they were always so sure of themselves.

With no life in his other wide-opened eye, Benny started to shake. I laid his head down against the wall of the bunker. That’s when the mortars started going off. Poor Benny.

I abruptly raised my warm head off of my sweat-soaked pillow, immediately realizing that it was the same chronic nightmare. Once I realized I wasn’t in Da Nang, my heart slowed down. I grabbed a plastic water bottle from my wooden nightstand and glanced at the clock radio—it read 2:40 a.m.

INTRODUCTION

My name is David Simms, and I’m a black Vietnam veteran. I have been through so much and seen too many bad things. I have discovered that reliving my worst memories could be detrimental to my mental health; I have realized I am damaged.

Vietnam was truly a shitty deal for many, particularly the ones who died or were wounded. However, I was one who took a shitty deal and made the best of it by surviving. It’s been more than forty years and one hundred and fifty thousand beers since I was in Vietnam. By most standards, I am a Vietnam survivor. Webster defines the word survive as to remain alive or to remain in existence. To live longer than, to outlive. To live or persist through. This is an accurate description of my thirteen months in Vietnam. The miracle, the wonder, and the fluke of my physical perseverance has raised many questions. By virtue of being a survivor, I am also a witness. Vietnam was an unavoidable and painful truth and getting out alive and in one piece was the first test of my young abilities. However, after more than forty years of intense reflection, my survival reflex has taken on a different challenge. Physical survival was part one.

The psychological survival afterward has proven more difficult, and I have become and represent a side effect of the war. Vietnam offered me no psychic rewards. Its past is still with me. I still sleep with a loaded .380 automatic on my night table, and I still check for snakes beneath my bed covers. Is that crazy?

I am always ready and alert, waiting for somebody, anybody, who may want to kill me. I can’t help it. It’s a habit impossible to break. Avoiding being killed or injured in Vietnam was quite easy because it was so instinctive. For me, dying was not an option. I had promised myself that I would survive Vietnam by any means possible. I learned things there that were not taught in public school or at home. All I did was try to stay alive as best I could because I was too scared to die. I just refused to die. However, after forty years of passive insanity, maintaining a pretense of my emotional stability has proved to be more of a challenge. A person can get into a lot of trouble in that amount of time—primarily because you never know how crazy you are. And after you realize it, you don’t know how to deal with it. I had become an enigma to myself.

I have accepted my insanity. Hiding it, however, has proved most difficult. The story of my life today is directly related to my time in Vietnam and those recurring memories that refuse to cease. Vietnam changed my life forever, and it still haunts me in spite of my denial of having been there and surviving its brutality. I have avoided recording this story for so long because I was afraid of reliving the memories. I spent so much time trying to forget Vietnam. All of my attempts at writing were short-lived—I just didn’t follow through. And I found numerous excuses for not writing. Working through two failed marriages and helping to raise two children were my best justifications.

After the wives were gone and the children were grown, I ran out of good excuses. Still, I developed lesser reasons for not writing: reading hundreds of books about writing, engaging in constant beer drinking and reefer smoking, accruing debt to justify the need for steady employment, to name a few. Despite the strong urge to write I continued to back away from satisfying those writing impulses partly because I was afraid….but mostly, I was lazy. I always said, I’ll write it later. I still have time. So after more than forty years of avoidance, I have decided that it’s now or never. I wanted to be healed before I started writing this memoir. However, after all this time, I am not. I can’t wait any longer; I must write this despite my dysfunction.

I am convinced that the constant urge to write about my experiences in Vietnam is crucial to my recovery, and this story is about my youthful past there. I will speak plainly and truthfully. There is no plot, no theme, no leading lady—just some random, boring days in a dangerous place. Da Nang offered many days of absolute monotony and a few brief moments of unspeakable horror and fear. I spent a great deal of time in Vietnam pursuing vain attempts at relieving that boredom.

At the same time, I believe these words will allow me to effectively work through some of those negative and painful memories. This memoir represents not only a possible healthy closure but also a reasonable pathway to true freedom and peace. Sometimes the past can come crashing back into your life, and you never know how it is going to affect you or where it will take you.

Late last evening, I pressed the joint into the small, black ashtray, and then I slowly reached across the kitchen counter for the cold bottle of Heineken next to the microwave. It was my usual position. Getting high is what I do. It’s what I have always done. The reefer and beer drinking are habits that I fine-tuned in Vietnam forty years ago. They have proved to be a good ways to end the painful memories, to avoid the loneliness and everything that hurts. Last night’s beers did not allow me a restful departure from my bed in the morning. The more beer I drink before going to sleep, the harder it is for me to get out of bed at six o’clock in the morning. That wasn’t a problem for me in my twenties and thirties. I used to take pride in the fact that I could party all night long and still get up in the morning and go to work.

It was 6:10 a.m. I swallowed hard as I listened to the morning news. The black female TV announcer reported that another American soldier had been killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Iraq. A marine. The Vietnam memories that persistently stalk me begin to reappear. Since the war in Iraq began, I have been reluctantly and painfully reliving old Vietnam ghosts. The sleepless nights have returned. The news of Iraqi prisoner abuse was an upsetting reminder of what I witnessed in Vietnam. It was the first time in my young life that I experienced how cheap a human life was.

One rainy evening, there was a short gun battle about a quarter mile beyond a barbed wire perimeter where I was walking guard duty. Three Viet Cong soldiers had been captured and hauled inside the perimeter for interrogation. With their hands tied behind their backs, the lieutenant ordered the prisoners to kneel in the mud near one of the guard posts. One by one, after being grilled by the lieutenant as to the position of their company, each man was shot in the head with a .45 caliber pistol by a willing corporal. It was the first time I saw someone murdered in cold blood. The last man executed defecated and peed all over himself.

I’m in counseling now. It’s so incredibly predictable: my therapist could give a shit! Nevertheless, it’s good to talk it out. However, there are some situations that even counseling can’t fix. I have faced all of my demons and monsters—and those self-inflicted demons and monsters were me!

All warriors look for the great kill and hope a good death will find them in battle. Some warriors, however, don’t wait for death to find them; they go looking for their good death. To die badly can bring forth imagined disgrace and dishonor. To avoid that, many go to war seeking the madness! To all veterans who wake up screaming, knife in hand and lunging toward anyone unlucky enough to have been lying in the same bed, you have found the madness. Inadequate and insecure men who seek to prove their manhood and themselves on a field of battle. For them, there is no proof of courage or worth outside the battleground. They seek out the madness within. Instead of finding their honor and worth, most end up losing their minds and souls. This futile behavior usually results in that emptiness, that spiritual depravity that constantly needs to be filled with something other than the madness. The search for that elusive honor comes at a high price.

DA NANG POSTSCRIPTS:

THE PAST

CHAPTER ONE

THE BEGINNING

They all hold swords, being expert in war: Every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night.

Song of Solomon 3:8

I joined the Marine Corps on January 30, 1964. I don’t remember having any particular feelings at that time. After high school, I worked full-time in various low-paying factory jobs on eastern Long Island, New York. I do remember being unemployed at the time I signed up. Joining the military seemed like a reasonable solution to my out-of-work situation.

As I remember, the conflict in Vietnam wasn’t classified as a war in 1964 (there was never a congressional declaration of war). I had never heard of South Vietnam, but I understood that it was somewhere in Indochina. It was also my understanding that the U.S. military was only there as a military advisor. Supposedly, we were not involved in any offensive military maneuvers.

It was just about three days after I signed up in Levittown, New York, that I was transported to the induction center at Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan. Once there, I repeated an oath of allegiance, and I was sworn in to the United States Marine Corps. I was given a quick, but thorough physical, followed by a series of inoculations.

After being inducted at Whitehall Street, I was transported by bus to Beaufort, South Carolina. From there, I went to Parris Island, South Carolina, the US Marine Corps recruit depot. I was never under any impression that I would be sent to Vietnam. The Marine Corps personnel in charge of us never said anything about Vietnam until about ten weeks into our boot camp training. And even then, I never believed that I would end up in Vietnam, so I never thought about it.

I was never given any reasons or explanations by the Marine Corps for the US military presence in Vietnam. It was generally understood by me and my fellow recruits that the US military was in South Vietnam to prevent a communist takeover by the North Vietnamese. The fundamental understanding held by most US military personnel was that we were trying to stop the spread of communism, which was an idea widely promulgated by the US media.

My sixteen-week military basic training took place at the US Marine Corps recruit depot located at Parris Island, South Carolina. Upon my 4:00 a.m. bus arrival from Beaufort, South Carolina, the eighty other recruits and I were verbally attacked and physically intimidated by a small group of screaming drill instructors wearing Smokey the Bear, wide-brimmed, dark brown hats. Actually, their assault began on the bus. These foul-mouthed, hollering drill instructors physically pulled us off of the bus in the dark hours of that morning.

Get up, you maggots, and get off the bus and fall in outside! And do it now!

It was apparent that none of us were moving fast enough. Once our group was standing perfectly rigid outside the bus in a timid formation of four rows of twenty recruits, the screaming and swearing reached a more personal and intense level. These six or seven drill instructors rotated themselves through our formation and stayed in our faces, calling us the worst curse names imaginable. Needless to say, I was surprised by this violent behavior to which I was suddenly being subjected. I was also scared to death, and I didn’t hesitate to comply with their wishes. The other recruits and I were all terrified, standing in formation and at attention with eyes wide open. We were staring straight ahead. Some of the other recruits, who weren’t moving or complying quickly enough, ended up on the ground with the drill instructor screaming at the top of his lungs and into their throats. Some of the other slow-moving enlistees were pounced upon by two or three drill instructors at once. It was a concentrated aggravation that was completely unexpected. That old element of surprise—very effective!

That was my first introduction to the US Marine Corps. From that moment on—and during my entire stay at Parris Island—I became absolutely compliant. The recruits who resisted these cursing, maniacal drill instructors were dealt with brutally and without mercy. One young man with shoulder-length blond hair was forcibly grabbed, one-handed, by the throat, by a drill instructor who quickly kicked the recruit’s feet out from under him and pushed him onto the damp asphalt. The large, lean drill instructor then stood up, placed his right foot on the prone recruit’s neck, and yelled in a pronounced Southern drawl, Didn’t ya hear me boy? I told you to move it, move it! Yes, sir! Yes, sir! I’m sorry, sir! the wide-eyed young man choked. The drill instructor, with both hands, lifted the disheartened recruit off the ground and violently shoved him into the formation while screaming vulgar obscenities into his left ear. It only further encouraged the rest of us to be totally obedient.

For the very first time in my young life, I had become totally afraid of something. I was forced to do things without thinking about them beforehand. The experience completely humbled me. I understood much later that, from the Marine Corps’ point of view, that was the only way they could effectively train new recruits from diverse lifestyles and backgrounds. Those initial confrontations allowed the Marine Corps to strip away the old personalities in order to create an entirely new individual, one capable of enduring military life and combat. That brutal training made us tough and strong, capable of surviving in a hostile environment under the most grievous of wartime hardships. If you didn’t graduate from Parris Island, you could never become a marine. That training made you a man—one totally responsible for his own survival.

After my training at Parris Island and Camp Geiger in North Carolina, I was transferred to the Marine Corps base located at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I was attached to the 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Battalion, and I was assigned to group supply company as a supply clerk with a military occupational specialty (MOS) of 3051.

In October of 1965, I was stationed at Camp Lejeune when I received my overseas orders to the 2nd Marine Air Wing and assigned to Marine Air Group-11, group supply—now with a MOS of 3071. Instead of being in a supply group that offered support to marine units dealing with tank and vehicle parts, I was in an air wing supply company that provided parts for various Marine Corps aircraft. The 2nd Marine Air Wing was at the time located in Yokohama, Japan. Sometime during that month, I was transported to the troop ship, Gaffey, which set sail for Yokohama. During the trip to Japan, I didn’t think I was going to Vietnam. However, when the ship arrived at Yokohama, I was told that my assigned outfit, MAG-11, had rotated to the Da Nang air base in South Vietnam. Needless to say, that took me by surprise. It was certainly not what I wanted to hear. The trip from Japan to South Vietnam only took a few days. I was not a happy camper; however, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. What I had hoped to avoid had become a reality.

Da Nang, South Vietnam

I am on day seventeen of thirty days of mess duty at the MAG-11 mess hall. I am working in the staff NCO mess hall picking up their dirty dishes, and I hate it. This diary, at this time, will allow me the opportunity of expressing my many day-to-day thoughts. It will illustrate the mental highlights of an ordinary, mundane day. I work for Ralph Edwards, a gung ho corporal who keeps bugging me while I’m trying to write these words.

Whatcha doin’? Corporal Edwards asked, Writing a letter on a paper towel? These words I am now writing were first written on a brown paper towel. He annoys me so much. He’s always checking me out, staring at me.

Anyway, I’ve been at the Da Nang air base for twenty-three days now. I will therefore attempt to summarize my experiences from my arrival up to the present. My plan is to continue recording my experiences on a daily basis.

25 November 1965: I arrived in the harbor of Da Nang, South Vietnam during a nasty rainstorm at about eleven o’clock in the evening. I was aboard the ship Gaffey. We didn’t leave the ship until the following morning due to the high winds, which prevented the landing craft from pulling alongside the ship. That was perfectly all right with me because I really wasn’t that anxious to go ashore.

As I stared out across the dark, murky waters from one of the ship’s upper decks, the outstretched and unknown obscurity made Vietnam appear menacing. As quiet as it was at that time, I knew there was a terrible war going on somewhere in the darkness beyond. I was already starting to have a dreadful feeling about this place that I had come to hear so much about. There were about fifty marines standing on deck with me, all quietly looking out across the gloomy harbor. I imagined that most of us were wondering about our fate, wondering whether we would leave this place alive. When the first sergeant came up on deck and mentioned the likelihood of incoming sniper fire, no one ducked suddenly, but slowly, one by one, everyone but me left the ship’s deck.

26 November 1965: By six o’clock in the morning the rain had stopped and the clouds had disappeared. A bright sun began to break over the eastern horizon. As the sun’s light flooded the surrounding landscape, I was immediately struck by Vietnam’s profound beauty. The radiant morning sky revealed the resplendent seaport harbor of Da Nang with the lush vegetation of the surrounding mountains and hills coming sharply into focus. I felt a warm wind on the left side of my face, and I saw its effects on the surface of the South China Sea.

At approximately ten a.m., all marine personnel disembarked from the ship. As I walked down the gang plank, I was immediately plunged into a giant sweatbox of extremely humid air. Vietnam was dank and infernally hot under a scorching sun. I was ordered into a waiting six-by truck. Forty-five minutes later, I arrived at the headquarters of Marine Air Group-11. Coming through MAG-11’s front gate, I noticed that the entire compound was immersed in six inches of a light tan-colored mud. A thick, sloppy mixture of wet, sandy soil was everywhere, making the entire area a mucky swamp.

We were then dropped off in front of the commanding officer’s headquarters and ordered to fall in. The MAG-11 headquarters was a rectangular, wooden building that measured approximately twenty-five by sixty feet with a shiny tin roof. A tall, lean first lieutenant with sharp, blue eyes welcomed us to MAG-11. We were given a meager box lunch and turned over to a towering, gray-haired first sergeant. After eating my tasteless lunch, I checked into the squadron office and was ordered to pick up my 782 gear, rifle, flak jacket, and sheets. Seven-eighty-two gear consists of a one-man tent; a small, folding entrenching shovel; a blanket roll; and other camping necessities. I was assigned to tent D-5.

It really wasn’t a tent. Rather, it was a twenty-five by fifty-foot wooden structure constructed with an elevated plywood floor supported by several two-foot high two-by-fours. The rippled, galvanized tin roof was gabled-shaped and upheld by a horizontal wooden frame. The upper tent structure was entirely encased in a finely meshed screen netting, whereas the lower portions were covered with a few overlapping flat boards. There were also green, elongated, canvas roll-ups (called flaps) that were lowered to protect the upper screened sections of the tent when it rained. Three short, wooden steps led to both the front and back wooden doors, which also were screened in. I can still remember the annoying, sharp sound of those banging doors.

There was a taut, electrical black wire running through the top of the tent from front to back