Wizard and Me: (Or How We Survived Vietnam and Evolved into Real Human Beings)

By Gary Gill

While we were trained to be soldiers and I witnessed acts of bravery every day, we were still part of our generation; and our generation was closing down universities, protesting, and generally fucking up the country. Our country was as divided as it hadnt been since the Civil War. Us? We as soldiers were conflicted, torn between a culture that included everyone that you ever knew and the brothers that we served with. We grew our hair to the military limit, listened to music, carried on a personal protest about something or the other, and smoked pot.

Racism was part of the inhuman view of our adversaries. Just as our fathers had called their enemies Japs and Krauts, we called ours Gooks. So the influence on eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-olds was kind of warped, especially if you spent most of your time in the bush. While I plead guilty of all of those things at eighteen, they are not what I became or what my returning brothers and sisters became.

Every soldier has a story to tell, each with differ nuances, but the overall experience and attitudes were about the same. I saw bravery and craziness in every possible way. The bottom line, in my humble opinion, is that truth is stranger than fiction. While this account is fictional, the events are not. In truth, I dont do justice to what I observed and was a part of.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546229001

Book preview

PROLOGUE

I tried to write Wizard and Me from the point of view of an 18 year old doing his best to grow up and survive. Over 58,000 of my brothers and sisters didn’t have that chance. I keep Red and all of them in my thoughts every day. In telling this story the language is coarse and vulgar as is some of the imagery. The mantra of this time period was drugs, sex and rock n roll. We did our best to keep up with the mantra of the times. Fortunately, the statue of limitations has expired on decisions of our youth.

There are those that might ask, why write about Vietnam and the men that I served with in an irreverent slant. My answer is what I’m writing is so much closer to the way it was than telling this story in John Wayne or Rambo style. For the majority of us, we didn’t live that way or fight like they show on the big screen. The actors were paid well, avoided serving and created an image that was as phony as they were over the top.

We, the troops, were for the most part 18, 19 and 20. We were young, brash and exceedingly brave. Individually we were 10 feet tall and bullet proof. I don’t know about the other 2.7 million veterans that served in Vietnam but I could jump over jungles in a single bound. Bullets bounced off of our chests and we drug our balls around in bushel baskets. Every day. All the way.

While we were trained to be soldiers and I witnessed acts of bravery every day, we were still part of our generation and our generation was closing down universities, protesting and generally fucking up the country. Our country was as divided as it hadn’t been since the Civil War. Us? We as soldiers were conflicted, torn between a culture that included everyone that you ever knew and the brothers that we served with. We grew our hair to the military limit, listened to music, carried on a personal protest about something or the other and smoked pot.

Racism was part of the inhuman view of our adversaries. Just as our fathers had called their enemies Japs and Krauts, we called ours gooks. So the influence on 18, 19 and 20 year olds was kind of warped especially if you spent most of your time in the bush. While I plead guilty of all of those things at 18, they are not what I became or what my returning brothers and sisters became. Every soldier has a story to tell, each with differ nuances but the overall experience and attitudes were about the same. I saw bravery and craziness in every possible way. The bottom line in my humble opinion is that truth is stranger than fiction. While this account is fictional, the events are not. In truth, I don’t do justice to what I observed and was a part of.

Many of us shared or followed what I call the fuck it philosophy. That is, if we don’t get smoked today, we probably would tomorrow. So fuck it. Armed with that point of view, we could make it through the day and be ready for the next day. Or, as Red once told me, if someone is KIA all you can tell yourself is better him than me. Even if you didn’t believe it. So fuck it.

I wouldn’t say I had any special insight into the outcome of Vietnam but looking back we were given some clues. In this account, I will tell you about the CIA engineer and his beliefs about JFK and the War. This really happened.

In Cambodia we destroyed weapons, bullets and rice but I don’t think any of us saw this as an end all to the war. Maybe, for me, the most telling moment came at an old lager site by the side of a road where we were pulling road security. Among the kids and others hocking everything from #1 Cherry girl to Cokes, was a young girl who was selling beads and sunglasses. I kind of wanted a couple of strands of beads and new pair of sunglasses with round lenses. After being described by the little girl as a Number 10 GI and rotten motherfucker because I wanted to pay less than she wanted to sell her stuff, I said, What are you going to do when we leave? Her answer has stuck with me all of these years. She simply said, Then I will go to school. Bam. I had absolutely no reply for that. Another clue.

Over the last 50 years our country has spent billions on interdiction and incarceration with resources wasted on accomplishing nothing except to destroy thousands of lives around the country. It’s still around. For me and thousands of other soldiers, our first real contact with smoke was in Vietnam. Marijuana for many of us became what alcohol was for WWII and Korean vets. It’s just the way it was. When, in the early years, the VA turned up a nose to us and our claims, we just medicated ourselves.

Regardless of this political battle, troops used reefer to numb the mind to what was happening around us. So if I offend, I do so truthfully and for that I am sorry because that’s not my objective. I owe it to my brothers and sisters to tell what it was really like day in, day out. However, unlike Peter Pan, we grew up.

CHAPTER 1

JUNE, 2008

A lot of life has run under this structure that serves as a bridge over our journey that starts with the trickle of youth and then flows into the ocean of our culture. Swept along in life’s current are things that we call our career or vocation: as well as, things like marriage, parenting and a host of other things that we use to tie up events into something that we can understand.

Although my kids think of me as old, I don’t. Not really. Maybe a little worn and frayed around the edges but not old. Of course, the dinosaur assessment not only is given by the kids that I have at home, but is a general consensus by the kids that I have at school. Both are more than willing to tell me about it-Hey there old fella, let me get that for you before you hurt yourself. Screw that. I’ll tote my own bags thank you and the same goes for a Senior Discount. But that’s the way it goes and, for the most part, I’m OK with it. At least I am most days, or unless the senior discount adds up to some real money.

It has been thirty-eight years since I finished my tour of duty in Vietnam. You know, not too many days goes by without remembering something that leads to something else and that leads to somewhere else that invariably has triple canopy jungle or rice paddies. Not too much of either one of those here in Missouri. And even though it is pushing forty years since being a Dreadnaught with A Co 2/34th Armor, I sometimes sit on the deck, drink tea, watch my neighbors’ cattle and try to remember names, faces and places. The irony, of course, is that for the longest time I had tried to forget all of that. But it came sneaking back around anyways, only now I don’t chase those memories away. Or at least some of them.

Not that my neighbors cattle has much to do with this story, but this is a good time to let you know that if you took all of my knowledge of cattle and put it in a thimble, you would still have room to add ice and sugar. I watch them, but I don’t raise them even though we do let my neighbor use about eight acres of our pasture as part of his feeding rotation. It keeps the weeds down and snakes on the run. But when I sit out on the deck in the morning or of an evening and think about faces, names and people often my attention is drawn to the cattle as they work their way across the pasture. Sometimes I think that I am too easily entertained and at other times I know it for sure.

Mentioning my neighbors cattle with me watching them graze doesn’t say much about the cattle as they are fattened up for market but it is a way to tell this story about Wizard and me. A story that started in January of 1970 when we first met and then lay dormant until a phone call twenty-one years later in 1991 that started it going again. His call was an unexpected phone call that sparked a renewal of our friendship over the phone; then several weekend get togethers, and later at Dreadnaught reunions. This, of course, brings us to where we are now: June, 2008. With me sitting on the deck drinking tea and thinking while watching my neighbors’ cattle eat grass and drop cow paddies.

Hannah and I were still living in the city when, one night in 1991, out of the blue Wizard called. He had gotten my name from a registry that I had signed at a veteran’s reunion in Kansas City. Wizard had attended a similar veteran’s reunion in Kokomo, Indiana (he was from Indianapolis), seen my name and phone number, written it down and called. How is that for a blast from the past? On an other wise ordinary evening, I was listening to some classic rock and grading essay questions from a test that my econ class had taken earlier that day. When the phone rang I figured that it was either Hannah’s mother or my dad. Either would provide a distraction from the irritating supply and demand answers that I was reading. However, a numbing shock ran through my body that blew away any thoughts of the effect of supply on demand or vice versa when I heard a voice that at one point in my life that I knew as well as my own say, Pass the C rats FDR if you haven’t lost them to some ARVN. (An old joke that wasn’t funny at the time)

Wizard? I had asked. Stunned would probably be an understatement to describe my reaction to hearing his voice.

The one and only. How’s FDR? He answered in the same cocky voice that I remembered. Wizard’s given name was Merlin James Hogan III, but all any of us ever knew him by was Wizard. As in. the Wizard Merlin or something like that. In fact, the only time I had ever heard him called anything other than Wizard was at an awards ceremony at Cu Chi and when his name was read, Sp 4 Merlin Hogan sounded strange. After the XO had read the citation, even the Old Man (our Company Commander) had said Congratulations Wizard when he handed him the dark blue and gold box that held his Silver Star for valor.

I never knew that it was so simple to tumble back over the years so easily. And that’s what we both did as we talked. I mean, how can anything else happen when on the other end of the phone line was someone that you had been so tight with, that he knew most everything about you and I knew most everything about him. So Wizard and me talked on the phone as if it were 1970 again and the years hadn’t gone by along with all of the things that had happened to both of us: Marriage. Kids. School. A career. Life. married for fourteen years but I don’t think she had ever heard me talk in the manner that I talked to Wizard because the language used was, shall we say, just a little bit colorful. She kept an amused ear on our conversation as she read on the couch. But Tori 12, who was just too cool for words and Jeff Jr. 9 wandered in and out during the nearly three hours that we spent on the phone. Occasionally Tori would make a sour face or would snicker at something that she heard from my end of the conversation. Jeff Jr. wasn’t as subtle. He just out and out laughed.

What they wanted to know, Hannah told me later, was What’s Daddy talking about? Who is this Wizard Guy? Is he really a wizard? Who’s FDR? And why does Daddy sound like that? I’m not sure that I had any real answers for those questions although I tried to explain but I’m sure my explanations sounded just as lame to Tori as my own words sounded to me.

But during that three hours we talked, Wizard and me. Wizard was Wizard and I was FDR. Our telephones served