Did you see the monthly tonnage report?" "Yeh" "I've got a theory that they don't teach in War College". "There's over a thousand tons of bombs dropped over the North not including the part of the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. Those B-52s can carry a large load. Is the Air Force trying to look stupid? Every flight all I see are the same trees knocked down and the holes we made in the dirt roads filled with rain water. Here's the theory. If we had dropped the same tonnage of bowling balls with no finger holes into the rice paddies of North Vietnam from the beginning of this damn war the VC would have surrendered years ago and still be trucking those balls to the coast."
"Take a load off and we'll figure this out." I looked around the steel walled state room and all I saw was gun metal gray and lots of it. It made my head swim. Maybe it was the slamming sound of the hydraulic pumps catapulting the second wave of aircraft. Being a junior Lieutenant I didn't rate the best room on the aircraft carrier but a room next to hydraulics was gritting on my nerves. Nothing cheery about my temporary home sweet home these last eight months but the picture of my wife on my desk.
"You lock the door and I'll buy tonight." I opened the the safe on my desk meant for storing secret documents and out came the bottle of Chevas Regal. I had picked up a large bucket of ice for this debriefing. Chevas over ice had a nice golden hue to it and as I brought it up to my nose it had the effect of an ammonia stick and I shook my head. It's four in the morning and still a humid 81 degrees outside. The air conditioning was working overtime in my room and I shivered as the scotch slide down my throat. The midnight flying was going to kill me not the surface to air missiles they fired at us every night. We'd been out to sea for thirty four days straight and I was getting tired.
"What the fuck are we doing here?" "The Air Force gives us shitty targets every night. By the time we get the mission planned the VC move the ammo depot down the road and we knock down trees again. I feel like I'm in the lumber and swimming pool business."
My flight suit was still wet from the sweat in places so I moved around and pulled the nomex material away from my skin. It had been another stormy night and my landing hadn't been stellar. The Landing Signals Officer had told me I was high in the beginning, low in the middle and needed power over the ramp. All true but I had made a save at the ramp, grabbed a wire with my hook and was back aboard. It's not so bad they're shooting SAMs at you as having to listen to the LSO rant about your landing every night.
"You want another?" Valdez was clinking his ice around an empty glass. "Yea" "I have more than to say than that stupid Air Force tonnage report." "Then drink up and let's hear it." I lit my third cigarette in as many minutes. I wasn't chain smoking but it was close. The scotch was taking effect and the nicotine was kicking in so I unzipped my flight suit a little bit and took a deep breath. We had been out at sea so long I couldn't remember the good times I'd just had in Hong Kong. Get up, do paperwork, eat, bomb, sleep again, wake up to the screams of the hydraulic pumps. Was this ever going to end? "The skipper said not to hang around the target." "Go in get the job done and come out." Don't get complacent about planning, missions and carrier landings." The war will be over soon, they agreed on the shape of the peace table in Paris.
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence
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3 comments:
Sorry I've been out of it for a while, and commented before on a posting that was not your story for this class!
Anyway, I've read through these drafts, and I really like seeing how you have something that you are working with and you are moving it around and looking at it from different angles, adding some here, cutting some there, trying to find out what it is that you want to draw out of this material.
It's compelling throughout - to read of a world that I've only seen on movies is captivating. The line about the bowling balls is hilarious and seems like it could have been true. It and the rest of the piece communicate the frustration of a soldier and his impotence to make any change to how things are run.
The scene of relaxing with a drink and cigarette in a metal room, painted grey and suffused with the sound of aircraft carrier hydraulics is...crazy seeming, wildly incongruous, but totally real at the same time.
So what are you getting at? Is is futility? Frustration?
PS - thanks for reading my Blood images at school!
I also like this revision--it feels sharper.
I'd like to hear the hydraulics--I think it is ironic and funny that you and a friend are trying to relax in the most unrelaxing of settings.
I'm still loving some of the images in here--the rain holes filled with water, the way the work becomes so routine and mundane after a while.
I'm interested in the last paragraph--is this a poem?
Also, what kind of insight or reflection do you have looking back on this so many years later? What do you want to tell that younger version of yourself?
Good work! And thanks for being our class ambassador--I REALLY appreciate it.
We listened to anti war ballads on the ship, my wife had gone to the moretorium against the war in Washington DC. I quote Simon and Garfunckle in the anti war song of "Sounds of Silence" That's what I want to say is that there are many soldiers against the war but you are young, patriotic and do what you're told and totally keep your thoughts quiet or go to jail with disgrace in the eyes of many.
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