It appeared that Marty, Shauna, Kerri and I had gotten away, at least momentarily, with Grand Theft, Assault Boat.
I met the two gorgeous nurses and Marty at the Supply Quonset where Marty and I drew a set of dress whites, black dress shoes, black kerchief, and white hat apiece. Loaded up, we began walking back toward the piers to grab some clean camos from the boat.
Marty and Shauna walked ahead laughing and chatting like a couple of, well, young lovers. Kerri, like me, seemed content to just follow along, to enjoy their happiness. As we turned toward the boardwalk above the boat dock, amid passing officers, nurses, shore-bound boat crews, and Vietnamese base workers, I felt Kerri's soft touch on my shoulder and turned to look at her.
"I'm so glad today happened," Kerri said, and grinned. "That was pretty good, 'The Official Vung Tau Harbor Tour Boat'."
"Well, I had to say something to get you ladies aboard, ma'am . . ." I started to reply.
Kerri stopped, put both hands on her hips. "I told you not to call me 'ma'am'. Do you have any feelings for me at all, Jimmy . . . besides the fact that I'm a good lay?" she said heatedly.
Surprised, I replied, "Ma' . . . Kerri, you're an officer, I'm . . ." I paused then, comprehending her words. "Are you saying that you, um, like me?"
She melted me with her smoldering brown eyes. "You dumb squid; I'm saying that I'm falling in love with you."
It was that simple.
Though, over the years, Marty has attempted, with some justification, to dispute the title, I became, on that day, at that moment, the luckiest river rat in the world.
Just like in the movies, we moved for a spontaneous kiss then heard the hooting and hollering from the pier. Marty and Shauna had reached the dock, stood next to the Stoned Pony. Both were bantering with the others of the crew, Marty showing off his new uniform and Shauna, arm around Marty's waist, laughing at Ollie Jackson's pretended offence that she preferred whitey tiny over black power. The crew of our sister boat had also wandered over to quickly make Marty's Irish beauty the center of their universe.
"Looks like a freakin' circus down there." I said, unsure what Kerri might make of it. "Guess they've accepted Shauna as just one of the, um, girls, though; nobody's standing at a rigid attention."
"Yeah," she said. "And it looks like your gung-ho Lt. Janvrin isn't around, either. He'd have you all piping us aboard, with side boys and white gloves. Guess he caught Shauna's look."
She giggled lightly when I said, "You saw that look, too?"
"Yep," she replied. "I thought she was going to grab one of those guns in back and open fire on him." She gave me a quick peck on the cheek "C'mon, I want to meet the rest of your crew."
I was, I knew then, in love with one of the finest ladies in the entire Eastern Hemisphere. I prayed to God that this would take, that I could spend the rest of my life with this woman. Remembering the commander's earlier words, I found myself looking forward to fathering Kerri's children, was determined to make myself worthy of her love. "Think you can stand being romantically involved with enlisted vomit like me?" I asked this only half in jest as we walked rapidly along the boardwalk toward the gangway.
"It'll be hard on both of us," she said, giving me a speculative look, "but I think we're both smart enough and tough enough . . . and love each other enough to find a way to make this work. Same thing for Shauna and Marty." She grinned wider, showing perfect teeth and a teasing tongue. "Besides, I adore your pecker, and it just happens to be attached to the rest of you."
In moments we were aboard the Stoned Pony with both women demanding to be treated as just a couple of river rats, which, during our recent voyage, they had, for better or worse, become. Thus, the four of us were inundated with much ribald commentary and make-believe bravado, though not before Shauna had taken one look at the way Kerri and I now fitted together and abruptly embraced each of us. I guess women just recognize love quicker than guys do, but I know I hadn't received so many hugs in one day since I was in diapers.
Marty and I each hurried to dredge a set of reasonably clean camouflage uniforms, boots, skivvies, shaving kits, and floppy jungle hats from various nooks and crannies on the boat. We bundled them, along with the dress uniforms, into a sizeable rucksack that Salty Morton and I had kumshawed from a cute little mama-san for two Cokes and my Kabar bos'n's knife -- a pretty juicy story in its own right. We'd assigned the rucksack as the property of the entire crew, but this was the first time any of us had actually used it.
I hefted the weighty pack, and we rejoined the others out on deck to find a couple of icy beers waiting and Freddie Mikowski, Machinist's Mate Seaman and the Stoned Pony's ching -- her chief engineer, regaling those gathered around regarding his intentions when he got back to the World.
"Gonna get me the fattest, blondest, most round-eye woman I can find, gonna get a case of Southern Comfort, gonna get myself the best hotel room in San Francisco, and I ain't comin' outta there till the woman's half dead and I'm all the way outta liquor."
Though Kerri and Shauna smiled, nobody else commented. All of us, even, I found out later, the nurses, had more or less the same idea when we got back to the World; sex, booze, drugs, sleep, and then more of the same; whatever it took to forget this time and place.
"Hey, Jimmy," Kerri asked. "How long do you have left over here?"
I paused a moment. I knew nearly to the hour how much longer I had to endure the jungle, the rivers, the terror, and the bullshit until I could fly the hell away from Viet Nam. But Kerri changed everything about my plans when I got back to the World. "Two hundred fifty six and a wake-up," I replied. "How 'bout you, darlin'?"
Amid the howls and jeers of "Ooooh, darlin'" and "You pussy-whipped bastard, Axelsson" I heard her reply: "A hundred seventy two and a wake-up; I'm a few months ahead of you."
"Gonna be hard to beat the time we had today," I told her to more jeers and leers.
She moved closer, put her arms around me, her lips to my ear. "The best is yet to come," she murmured with the tiniest tickle from her tongue.
Again with the stiff willie.
Telling the rest of the Stoned Pony's crew that we'd see them later, the four of us headed over to the Base Exchange to purchase the various campaign ribbons, chevrons, and rating patches to which Marty and I were entitled. Obviously, we received plenty of looks -- curious from the Vietnamese, dirty from the officers, and envious from the enlisted men, as we cruised the cramped aisles. We had time to check out all the latest stereo equipment and cameras, as well as those few record albums deemed appropriate for our government-sponsored ears.
At seventeen-twenty-six hours precisely, with Marty and I showered, shaved, and appropriately dressed, the four of us reported back to Commander Lundgren's office.
Upon entering, we saw a captain, uniformed in khaki, complete with Annapolis ring and the gold wings of a naval aviator, sitting beside the commander's desk. We immediately came to attention against the office bulkhead. I didn't place the captain at first, eventually remembered him as a member of Admiral Zumwalt's staff.
"All of you stand easy," the platinum blond commander said in a brisk tone. "This is Captain Reimer. He has orders that originate directly from Admiral Zumwalt."
The ol' danger radar was raised again. It wasn't every day that an admiral sent such a lofty emissary to deliver specific orders for enlisted scum such as myself.
"Ladies, gentlemen," the captain said. "First off, I'm authorized to tell you that we captured three suspected Viet Cong at the co-ordinates where you reported that your boat took fire this afternoon. Intel indicates that at least two, maybe three VC were killed by your return fire. Also, seems like five or six were wounded, including the three that were captured, only one of which, I might add, is expected to live.
"Additionally, a number of weapons were also captured, along with some ammunition and other equipment. Indications are that you were taken under fire by a VC mortar team, whose intentions to lob a few rounds into this base and the town of Vung Tau, possibly tonight, were disrupted by your actions." The captain looked at us and shrugged. "Why these people felt it necessary to open fire on your boat, though, is still a mystery."
"In any case, the prisoners also mentioned that a number of VC infiltrators were among the casualties. These infiltrators, we've been told, were sappers with orders to plant explosives in and around certain military installations here on base, possibly as a diversion or retaliation for the Rung Sat ops. We believe that those plans have been abandoned, since the prisoners' claim that their buddies have decided to get out of Dodge."
The captain pondered us for a moment. "Altogether, you people did quite a bit of damage for . . . what . . . a five, ten minute firefight? Not bad at all. The admiral asked me to tell you 'Well done.'"
Now the guillotine drops, I thought with some trepidation.
I needn't have worried. We were indeed ordered to accompany Kerri and Shauna to the departure ceremony honoring their friend's remains, to give the women what comfort and support we could. At the conclusion of the ceremony, Marty and I were to report back aboard the Stoned Pony, while the nurses would resume their work at the hospital.
The captain also informed us that we were all freed from official duties for the rest of the day, that liberty passes for Marty and me had been, or shortly would be delivered to the duty officer's shack on the Navy Pier.
When he'd finished delivering his instructions from the Admiral, the captain looked around at all of us. "Any questions?"
I had several, but asked only one: "Sir, what about our orders to return to Nha Be tomorrow?"
"Presently, both boats of DET Bravo are, like you men, released from command of RivRon 15 and assigned TDY to COMNAVVN. Both are effectively under my command for the duration. As of approximately ten-hundred hours on the day after tomorrow, both will revert back to squadron command and will be released to return to the coastal operating base in Nha Be. Anything else?"
"No sir," I replied, knowing that the two boat crews would forgive us messing up the Stoned Pony for an extra day of liberty in Vung Tau.
