Thanksgiving Hamburger
Written by Bill McLaughlin
I’ve just arrived in Vietnam and am scheduled to go to somewhere called Long Tanh. (“They need some bodies there,” I’m told). Waiting for my flight to my first in-country assignment, I decide to kill some time by walking down the street to the snack bar here in Vung Tau when out of the blue; I hear a familiar voice, "Soldier button that pants pocket!"
It’s Sgt. Orvick, a guy I haven't seen since he left Germany a few months before me, and this is his welcome? He was always getting me on unbuttoned uniform parts. We talk and it’s quite clear that Long Tanh isn't the place I want to be shipped off to. Sgt. Orvick does some checking around to see if I can stay and work for him in the supply room.
Could I be so lucky to stay in a rear area with a snack bar that sells burgers? Not to mention a place with a real Post Exchange (PX) and the feel of civilization, relative safety, and a picturesque, white sandy beach nearby.
I know it’s too good to be true. I'm told to be on the flight line for a chopper leaving in an hour. I figure I have time to visit the snack bar for a hamburger. “Go where they need bodies,” they told me. Are they nuts? When I don’t show up to the flight line on time a crew chief comes to the snack bar and orders me over to the helicopter pad for my trip to the jungle. We fly over unrelenting jungle, the thick vegetation the only scenery all the way out to Long Tanh, which is surrounded by rubber trees that are owned by an international company.
Every morning while eating breakfast, B52's are dropping bombs in the distance. My breakfast tray keeps vibrating down the table in the mess hall to the beat of the bombs. I have to keep pulling it back to my seat to continue eating my meal. Leaving the mess hall, I can see rockets from a chopper firing into a tree line in the other direction.
I'm only at Long Tanh a few months before being reassigned to a landing zone (LZ) up on the central coastal town of Phan Thiet. Later I find out this is a stroke of good luck, as Long Tanh has been overrun by the Viet Cong (VC). This new LZ was built on top of a graveyard, with some of the burial mounds still visible just outside the burm.
Our base overlooks the town and the South China Sea. From our position, we can only imagine what the town looks like since it's off limits to us; we’re not allowed to go there. The VC runs the town.
Our compound is on a sand dune overlooking the South China Sea. We walk, breath, and eat sand when the winds come through, which is most of the time here in the current dry season. Our much needed shower water is trucked in from a swamp, where wading water buffalo are hanging out.
I get a lot of stomachaches because the food is crap. On payday, the PX is my first stop. I load up on canned fruit, hash, and Spam. I’ll do anything to stay away from that mess hall dysentery hell.
Since my first day in Vung Tau, I've dreamed of going back and having a hamburger for Thanksgiving dinner. I don't have a clue on how to make this happen. I just know there has to be a way to spend this holiday away from that dammed mess hall.
I’m hoping it is a day off from the war, time away from working on choppers, repairing hydraulic systems, keeping all the parts operational so the aircraft can keep flying. We only work twelve hours a day, seven days a week.
Most days, the cooks, if you can call them that, serve chicken, roast beef or spaghetti, the standard American fare, along with Potatoes O’Rourke one night, Potatoes O’Grady the next, Potatoes O’Sullivan the next and so on. They’re always from the same pot, only with a different Irish name each and every evening.
I'm walking across the compound on Thanksgiving morning, when someone comes up to me and asks if I want a flight to Vung Tau? A gunship has come in to refuel on its way south; there is room for passengers if anyone is interested. No one else cares; they all want their turkey dinner. But my dream is on that flight.
The usual course for a flight south, in relative safety, is along the coast. Not today though, as the chopper heads inland to the southwest and flies over Highway One. Overland is normally high altitude flying to avoid being fired on, but today we're flying low with the door gunners in position waiting and wanting to draw fire. One of the crew tells me that this captain was transferred down from the DMZ because he lost too many gunships in battles there! He loves firefights and provokes them whenever possible!
The skids of the gunship are just above the highway, as we race along, so drivers and their passengers, unfortunate enough to be riding in vehicles just ahead of us, careen off the road to avoid being hit by our helicopter. We fly along watching the unnecessary carnage. Thankfully we never draw fire. A flood of cars and mopeds are now in ditches thanks to this lunacy.
I have always enjoyed flying until today. Most anytime a flight has room, I'll go, even volunteering to be a door gunner just for the shear enjoyment of flying and getting the hell off the LZ for a little while.
There were other inescapable scrapes on flights, like when we temporarily lost the use of the tail rotor once, or felt threatened by a helicopter flying up next to us with machine guns drawn, with our radio transmitter out so we had no way to communicate.
We continue flying south for what seems forever in this insane way with the captain just hoping to see some action. Scared and frightened; these words don’t even begin to describe my feelings as we fly along.
The countryside of Vietnam usually looks great from the air; it’s quite beautiful up there. Not so much on the ground in the midst of it all. I dash off to the snack bar to gather my nerves and to buy my dream hamburger. I sit there for the longest time savoring each bite, wondering whether my dream hamburger was worth the cost.
The return flight, later that evening, is surprisingly quiet. We fly calmly along the coast, and the waves gently caressing the sandy shore. We’re flying high enough to really relax and savor the scenery.
The rest of the soldiers back at the base had a quiet turkey day with their so-called dinners and free smokes from the Red Cross. They can have their turkey dinner and eat it too. I’ll remember my chase of the ideal burger.
Edited by Joe Haviland
Copyright 2007
