When I first got to Vietnam in March 1966 I was an Ensign in the Navy and twenty-five years old. I was billeted at the Harding Hotel in Saigon, where I shared a room with an Army officer.
He turned out to be a warrant officer, a former enlisted man who received his commission based on his technical expertise. The first thing that I noticed about him was that he was old; he was at least forty. There were some strands of gray showing in his close-cropped hair. But he was well built, over six feet tall. In my squadron, there were several “old men,” but none over thirty-five. The draft driven military of the Vietnam era resulted in men in their teens and twenties serving their country, so anyone in his forties stood out.
After brief introductions he offered me a coke from his small refrigerator that he kept by the side of his bed. Sitting on our beds and in-between sips of cokes we got to know a little about one another. I said that I was a Tactical Coordinator with VP-1, an air patrol squadron. He told me that his field was communications; he ran a “comm.” center.
I explained that it was my first time in Vietnam. “How long have you been here?” I asked just to continue the small talk.
“Going on two years now,” he responded casually.
“Wow!” slipped through my lips. I was expecting his answer to be in months or at the most a year.
“Yeah,” was his only reply.
I noticed a framed photo on the dresser that I assumed was his family: a wife and two pretty teenage daughters. “Is that your family?”
“Yeah, they’re my girls,” he said with some pride.
“Have you been able to get home to see them?” I asked.
“No, I haven’t been stateside for two years now. But I was able to see them last July in Bangkok. It was only for six days,” he added in a melancholy voice.
He spoke freely but I thought that I might have been asking questions that were too personal. So I changed the subject and told him that my squadron was flying patrols off the coast of South Vietnam. Eight hour flights around the clock. The crews rotated the flights: midnight to eight, eight to four, and four to midnight.
Noting the midnight flights he said that I might have a hard time trying to sleep in the daytime. “The street is noisy, the air conditioning conks out from time to time, and the room never gets dark,” he said while pointing to the curtained windows with sunlight streaming through them.
He continued, saying that he was a “Saigon Warrior” – never leaving Saigon, never going “in-country.” His work at the comm. center was normally “nine to five,” but he sometimes had to work nights.
Pulling two more cokes from his fridge and handing one to me he asked, “When did you join the Navy?” I told him that I had entered in November 1963. “Before all this started,” he commented.
“I joined the Army in 1944. Right after high school,” my new roommate offered freely. “In time to return to the Philippines with MacArthur,” he said with a slight laugh.
“Wow!” I let slip again. “You could’ve retired by now!” I said with more feeling than I should have.
“I did try to retire, but the Army wouldn’t let me out. After congress passed the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,’ I was told there’s a national crisis. You know all that ‘needs of the service’ bull shit!” My roomy was now speaking with much feeling.
I knew about the “needs of the service.” But to me it was just a cliché. Something the military would use to justify sending its personnel to undesirable duty stations or having them perform necessary but miserable missions.
The “needs of the service” also made me think about a movie called The Bridges at Toko-Ri. In it William Holden plays a World War II pilot who gets called up for the Korean War. Completely out of the service he is plucked from civilian life, his family (his wife is played by Grace Kelly) and ends up in some ditch in Korea after his jet fighter is shot down. The rescue fails and he is killed.
But my roommate was not a cliché, not an actor in some movie. He was sitting on his bunk next to mine drinking a coke.
After he finished his coke he said that he had to go to work. We exchanged “nice to meet you” and “see you around.”
We had very little contact over the next several days. I was busy flying and he must have been busy working at his communications office.
One night I went to sleep early because I had the morning flight. I was sound asleep when there was a loud crashing noise - the door slamming the table by its side. There was a muttered “Damn!” and the overhead ceiling light came on. A string of crude curse words followed. Even though the words were slurred, I recognized the voice as my roommate’s. He then stumbled across the room.
He must have been drunk. I pretended that I was asleep. The room remained brightly lit but it was quiet except for an occasional “damn.” I was now completely awake and with the light on I could not fall back to sleep.
After several minutes I started debating with myself if I should say something to him. I also wondered what he could be doing. I did not hear any movement noises since he first shuffled across the room. What was he doing?
After a few more minutes of debating I decided to slowly roll over to face where I thought he was and slowly opened my eyes. I saw my roommate standing in front of the dresser with his arms outstretched holding on to the dresser for support. His eyes were fixed on the picture of his wife and daughters. His body was swaying slightly confirming my belief that he was drunk.
I rolled back over leaving him to his own private hell. Twenty minutes later I heard him collapse onto his bed. But the light remained on. And I never did fall back to sleep. Soon I had to get up for my morning flight. I got dressed in my flight suit and boots, shut the light, and silently walked out the door.
We roomed together for three more weeks, until it was time for my crew to rotate out of Saigon. But it happened a few more times: the crashing of the door, the turning on of the ceiling light, and the muttered curse words.
But I never did say anything to him; I never complained. What could I say to a man who has been serving our country since before I started kindergarten?