Sunset Playland: Chapter 15, "The Whole Nine Yards"
Two weeks later. Somewhere near the Mekong River inside Cambodia ...
I awoke to the sounds of a fierce firefight. At first, I thought it was Baker again, knocking on my room door at USC. No such luck. Rounds from AK-47 and Soviet SKS carbines were exploding around me, tearing up the foliage and ricocheting off the cement wall we were hiding behind, chunks of cement flying all around. It was total chaos. If it were a movie this would be the slow motion scene. The mortars were the worst. It was hard to hide from them. My foot was burning inside my dirty white Adidas with the green stripes. Right foot. Was I shot? Okay, this is it, this is where it all ends. This is where I end. Goodbye cruel world ...goodbye mom. Hello, Grandpa Georgy!
But it was no movie. This was for real.
We were headed for Saigon. To safety. About 100 clicks away. That was soldier talk for about 60 miles. A “click” is a kilometer, which is just a little over half a mile. I don’t know why they just don’t just use miles and feet anymore. The metric system conversion always confused me. I mean, why? If you grew up using metrics, wherever that may have been, somewhere “smart” like Sweden or Germany, or England, then okay, metrics was your mathematical language. But if you grew up in Brooklyn using feet and miles, inches and yards as points of reference, then why confuse me mid-education? In fact, in Brooklyn, in the Coney Island section where I was from, where delicious Nathan’s hot dogs were a life staple, we measured distance not in yards or feet, or miles even, we measured distance in the length of a Nathan’s hot dog. Which is about 5 inches, or 0.127 meter. So, if 1 kilometer = 1,000 meters, 100 kilometers (“clicks”) = 100,000 meters. We were about 96,560 meters, or 760,320 Nathan’s hot dogs, away from Saigon ...and safety. Which may have been one Nathan’s hot dog too far. But I digress ...
I was a long way from a Nathan’s hot dog. In fact, it was probable that I’d never eat another one again. My friends and me ate them by the yards, not meters, at Coney Island. Andrew ate the most yardage.
Another interesting measurement side note here before you find out if I died in that Cambodian jungle or not, or how I got there, or here for that matter ...In WW II, in the Pacific campaign against the Japanese, when flight crews were preparing the Corsairs and Navy Hellcat fighter planes on the decks of aircraft carriers for take off and battle, they would load the .50 calibre M2 Browning machine guns mounted on the planes by laying out the belted ammunition on the deck then carefully fold it into the gun mount boxes. Carefully, because they didn’t want the guns to jam up in battle. The total belted yardage per plane was nine yards, about 650 rounds. When the pilots returned from battle they would often tell their flight crews that they “gave ‘em the whole nine yards”, meaning they gave the enemy everything they had ...physically, mentally, and emotionally as well.
But none of this was going through my mind as chunks of cement were flying in my face and all around me in that hellish place behind that wall. When the rain stopped and the sun came out it was hot as a firecracker with suffocating humidity, very uncomfortable ...and my foot felt like it was on fire. Something hit me on the top of my right foot, a piece of hot metal fragment, and somehow got under the tongue of my shoe. But that was my problem. There were bigger fish to fry. Sam Stoddard and Miguel Rodriguez, two of the Marines who were escorting me home by way of Saigon, were busy being pinned down by enemy fire ...extreme, heavy, enemy fire. They were firing back unremorseful and with a determined, focussed, violence I have never witnessed, and hope I never witness again. Sam and Miguel were part of the Marine reconnaissance team walking me out of the jungle toward Saigon from where I would hopefully depart for the USA, “most rikki tic”. That’s Marine talk for “quickly”. It had been and would prove to be a thankless journey in bits and pieces, starts and stops. For right now, however, these two guys were my guardian angels and I would not be here today to relate this story had it not been for their extraordinary skills and bravery. They were truly of the ‘a few good men’ class ...true Marines.
“Marines die, that’s what we’re here for ...” But Stoddard and Rodriguez were not about to die today, or let me die either. These were professional stone-cold killers, armed to the teeth and cool under fire. Family men, the Marine family. A little older than me. After spending a week with them slogging through the wet jungle and fierce heat, I got to know them pretty well. I trusted them implicitly. But this was the true test. Even facing this monster firestorm attack from enemy forces, Vietcong apparently, I knew they had no reservations about who would walk away intact. Never even crossed their minds. As frightful as it was, I felt safe with these guys. In fact, I felt sorry for the Vietcong. They didn’t realize what they started and the shit they were now in. We were probably outnumbered 10 to 1, but that would be insignificant. These guys, these Marines, were about to give them the whole nine yards ...and more. Then some more.
I’ll get to how I, we, got into this situation a little later. Consider me something like ‘Private Ryan' at this point in the story. But for right now, in the middle of this ‘Dante’s Inferno’ nightmarish dread of an afternoon, this was the real deal. Life, death, no shit, no foolin’. Maybe Marines were bound to die, but I hoped that didn’t apply to me too.
We walked right into a trap. There was an abandoned building that was supposed to be clear and where we were going to spend the night. It had been a factory of some sort. There was a main building and several outbuildings, so it was a good place to spread out and from which to observe the surrounding area from all sides. A fortress.
As soon as we arrived, it was late afternoon, the rain had stopped and the sun came out like someone turned on the furnace and it was casting an eerie glare across the landscape. We were all tired, wet, hungry, and pissed off to be there. Well, they were pissed, I was just happy to be anywhere away from Phnom Penh and hopefully headed toward Los Angeles. And, apparently, I was the only one concerned with fright and anxiety. They were just pissed off ...all the time. And when they weren’t pissed, they were stoic. Kind of like my dad. To these guys, it was just another uncomfortable walk in the woods.
They hit us hard and fast. They were probably a combination of Vietcong and the Khmer Rouge. But who knew for sure? I learned early on that these Marines really were not here to die, they were here to kill the enemy and to survive while doing it. And the enemy was in many cases anything that moved of which you were suspicious. Shoot first, ask questions later. An ugly fact in a war zone, and this was definitely a serious war zone.
A few days before, we got into a small skirmish with some ragtag insurgents. Sam and Miguel had given me an M-16 and a quick instruction on its operating characteristics. The Marines hated this gun. They called it the “Mattel-16”. It was mostly plastic and it had a propensity to jam up. During the Vietnam War, many dead U.S. soldiers and Marines were found lying next to their jammed M-16’s. Nevertheless, I told them, “I probably won’t need this anyway, right?” They said, “Nah, it’s just a precaution. Fucking thing is useless anyway.” Then they looked at each other and laughed. Well, I used it that day. I’m not sure if I shot anyone, besides Chang #2 or #1 back in Phnom Penh, but I was firing and making a lot of noise. I could tell, however that Sam and Miguel were concerned. They weren’t laughing, or looking at one another, or talking, they were just laying down some heavy fire, I mean, these guys were really pouring it on ...like their lives, and my life, depended on it. And it did. The Marine’s firepower was awesome even though there were only about a dozen of them. And me, not really contributing to the awesomeness. Rodriguez was raising hell with his M-60 belted machine gun. Stoddard had his M-16 going on full automatic, changing clips as fast as he could. The VC (Vietcong) were tough to see in the afternoon glare. Some looked like they had uniforms, some were dressed in black. They were dropping like flies. There was screaming, yelling, cursing ...and moaning. It was horrible. Horrible.
I was ducked down behind a wall just off to the right of Stoddard and Rodriguez. Suddenly, Stoddard turns his M-16 in my direction and starts firing over my head. When it was over, I asked him what the hell that was all about. He said, “Go look.” I did and saw three dead Vietcong just behind the wall I was hiding behind. I stood there mesmerized for a few moments, just staring at them. One of them had a camera around his neck. I took it, and later gave it to the Marine sergeant running the outfit, Sergeant Blaine.
...just to follow up on that, years later, fairly recently actually, I received an email from General Griffiths wife. He had passed away. We had kept in contact over the years. The email had a photo file attached. She asked if I recognized it. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I wasn’t in the frame because I was behind the wall. But there was Stoddard and Rodriguez, my heros, raining down hell on the Vietcong. I never did find out what happened to them, if they survived the war. I’m sure they did. But there they were in that photo on that bad day for the guy who took the picture. The photo must have come from the camera I took from the VC body and gave to Sergeant Blaine.
A few Marines in our group were killed, and a few wounded. Helicopters came in to take out the dead and wounded. There was no room for me. I would have liked to have left there, but at the same time it felt bad to leave that way, not dead or wounded, but like a coward, some useless heap of baggage. Although, they would have probably liked to have me out of their hair. I stayed. I had a small burn hole on the top of my right foot, it was really nothing, not purple heart material, just some light scarring. We left the enemy dead and wounded to their own.
I must say, that was one hell of a day. It’s burned into my memory like the hole on the top of my foot. We made it through. We ...listen to me, “We” ...no, “They”, Rodriguez and Stoddard and company, they, gave the Vietcong the whole nine yards that day. That’d be 8.2296 meters.
God bless America ...and Rodriguez and Stoddard.
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah
https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
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