Vietnam . . . Smells
by: Wayne R. "Crash" Coe
Blackhawks - Tay Ninh
Did I sleep last night? I must have. I am here on my cot under the mosquito net. Wide-awake at 0400, I know it is flying time again. I can hear all six Warrant Officers farting and moving around in my GP medium tent mounted precariously on a plywood platform. Time for the morning crap, the line forms quickly at the 4 holler near the showers---funny they would call it a shower, when all it was, was a tank with cold water running out through some shower heads mounted on a crossbeam. The Blackhawks even get some adrenaline in the shower when the cold water hits your grimy skin.
Sure enough, there is a f'n line at the crapper. I grab my copy of the Stars and Stripes, always liked to see how much they would lie about the war statistics, and run for the 4 hole wooden crapper, one of the few wooden construction items in our company area.
The prevailing wind in our area came from over the jungle to the West and East of Tay Ninh. I was up wind of the JP-4 powered crappers. This particular crapper had a plume of stink that came off of it that was identifiable over a half mile away out on the flight line. When it was my turn to enter the torture chamber, I first took several deep breaths of the perfumed air coming from the Jungle. Then as my father had instructed me years ago when learning to free dive, I entered the mental state of a deep diver holding my breath. All this extra pressure from my diaphragm, a careful aim, the paperwork, out of the chamber to the sweet air outside. Total time on target less than two minutes. I managed to not inhale any of the air, therefore eliminating a major source of nausea in the early morning.
I have a pile of clothing, clean, washed by the Vietnamese down at the river. I pull on the jungle fatigues and the smell of the brown slimy river is all over the shirt. I liked the smell of body odor better, the river washed shirts always itched my skin, I would take the whole pile to the hospital and have it cleaned there. One of the side benefits of having a Nurse girlfriend, and flying so much medevac for the 45th MUST hospital right next door.
Any meal in Tay Ninh was an experience. Breakfast was particularly nauseating. My shirt smells like a duck pond, and the smell being pumped out of the mess hall by the big electric fan in the door strikes my olfactory senses like a mallet. The slightly sour smell of the garbage, body odor, cigarettes, and coffee---no way---I make a 180° and head back to the tent for my flying gear. C-rats for breakfast---no problem.
I looked for my maps and notes from last nights briefing in the dark of my tent. I grab my clean guns and my camera, time to go to the flight line, Captain Lungarella would be at the aircraft ready to go right now. He loved to fly and would never be late.
On the way to the helicopter I stop at the Operations tent to pick up my survival radio. I am home again, the smell of the radios and batteries, is just like the radio shop my father worked in. The smell of the hot lead solder is unmistakable. I sign for the survival radio say hi to the radio tech, and I am off to the flightline.
Captain Rock Lungarella was untied and starting to light the fire; always impatient, I loved to fly with the Ranger Rock. I am barely plugged in to the intercom and Rock is picking up to a hover and calling for takeoff. Full power South departure we are off Tay Ninh at 0450 out into the beginning day---hell, it is still dark. I get my shoulder harness and lap belts hooked up and the plate on the seat moved forward, and look over at Rock; he is laughing at me. "So, what took you so long?"--he was always f'n with my mind. We were airborne 10 minutes early, I was not late---he was early.
Rock's first command of the day: "Lets get some tunes on the ADF, see if you can get Armed Forces Radio from here." Rock pulls some pitch and we go up in search of a clear signal. The sun is just coloring the horizon, its sixty five degrees outside of the cockpit at 2000 feet AGL, and we are rocking and rolling singing along with the radio---life was good when you were a helicopter pilot.
Our first mission of the day was in support of an ARVN unit south and east of Saigon. In an area Captain Lungarella had worked in many times before. We neared Saigon as the sun was just coming over the horizon, illuminating the plumes of smoke coming off of the cooking fires in the thousands of small grass houses that dotted the country side. The air was still, no movement.
One of the Fire Support Bases was firing our direction, we either had to go to 16,000 feet or low level. Low level---my favorite. Streaking along at over 100 knots, cyclic climbing over the trees, every garden had its own perfume, its own beautiful smell. Some smelled like Jasmine, and some smelled like Gardenia, some just smelled new and exotic. A Vietnamese villager spends his whole life growing a beautiful garden to surround his home and we fly through at 100 knots sniffing and singing on the radio. I am getting paid to do this.
The smell starts to change as we near the built up areas. No more perfumed gardens in the countryside, now it is pigs, people, and black rivers. The stench of garbage and sewage brings us up a few hundred feet as we cross over into the Delta south of Saigon. Rock is on the Radio, doing all the flying and I am left with my own thoughts as we streak south in the morning calm, gaining altitude as we head out into the Viet Cong held Mekong Delta.
"Pop smoke," Rock calls on the FM radio to the US Advisors on the ground. I can't see a thing. It all looks dark to me. We are 1,500 feet in the air with the breaking day flooding in the windshield, I can't see a f'n thing. Rock, keys his mike, "Tally ho. Goofy Grape" and starts a screaming freefall approach to the black void as they roger our identification. I can just make out the camp and can see the smoke coming up. We make our approach to the smoke grenade. The purple smoke is choking and it swirls around the helicopter and covers everything with its acrid thick purple smoke dust. Smells like sulfur everywhere.
Rock lights up a smoke and turns to me, "Shut her down." Rock jumps out shaking hands and patting every one on the back wearing his big smile, He finds out just what they wanted us to do today over a cup of coffee and another cigarette sitting with friends in the middle of nowhere. Watching Rock work made it enjoyable just being out there.
Quiet takes on a new meaning out in the Mekong Delta early in the morning. I pull my helmet off and get out of the helicopter, we have landed in the middle of an ARVN night defensive position, and they are all up and cooking breakfast. Their food smells good mingled with the smell of tobacco and cooking fires. I am offered a bowl of rice, I accept, handing over a box of C-rations in trade. Just before the little Vietnamese cook handed me the bowl, he gave it a small shot of Nuck Malm from an old black bottle. Fermented Herring Sauce tastes salty and good, but it smells worse than any thing else in Vietnam. They claim that the buzzards drop dead when they fly over the factory on the coast just from the smell. Vietnamese layer salt and herrings in layers until they fill a silo, and leave the whole thing in the sun until black juice drips out of the bottom. I eat my rice holding my nose, and in a few minutes we light up the chopper and haul troops and supplies around for most of the morning, only taking time out to refuel.
We get released early from the ARVN advisors and Rock heads for Saigon. Lunch in Saigon with Rock is a real experience. He knows all the good places to go. Within minutes of leaving Hotel-3 in a Reaunalt Taxi cab, we are at a Cholon Chinese Restaurant sitting down to a feast. Rock orders seafood. "Just keep it coming," Rock calls into the kitchen. They bring us huge tiger shrimps on a stick, and soup with unidentifiable sea creatures---all smelling so good and tasting wonderful.
I think my favorite is the coconut milk and curry cooked shrimp, with the Jasmine scented rice, smells like flowers tastes like rice. I have eaten enough to feed a small family.
My belly is so full I can hardly take a breath. We are packed into a little taxi and head off full speed to the airbase, we could hardly see where we were going the air was full of blue smoke from all of he two cycle engines running wide open all around us. Fires burning, people cooking, three wheeled Lambretta Scooters belching smoke and enough Honda 50-cc motorcycles to make the roads impassable and unbreathable.
It was fun tearing across town in a taxi, Rock telling stories and smoking cigarettes out in the blue smoky air of the city streets. I would be happy to be airborne and breathing clear clean air again.
Traffic in and out of Hotel-3 is always heavy, we were running on the refueling pad waiting our turn for take off. Everywhere around us were helicopters landing, taking off, and hovering around.
"Blackhawk 69 Tan Son Nhut tower, say again your destination." Rock picked his own number, "Ton Son Nhut tower Blackhawk 69, we are enroute Tay Ninh, over." "Roger Blackhawk 69 hover to the VIP pad and hold, how much room do you have? We have the new Donut Dollies fresh from the world needing a ride to Cu Chi." Rock does not skip a beat and answers the tower "Blackhawk 69 has room for all of them, send them out." We set down on the VIP pad and went to flight idle.
Out of the operations building came 10 round-eye women each carrying identical luggage and dressed the same light blue dress. They all had wide eyes and had never been on a helicopter before---and their smell. I could smell them through the rotorwash and the JP-4. I could smell them almost before I could see them. Rock had sent the Crew Chief and Gunner to assist the girls, but they came with handlers and we loaded them with no problem, just a few blown up skirts from Rock holding a little pitch in the blades to help circulate the air.
The big sliding doors slammed shut and for the first time in the whole day Rock stepped on the floor button and says, "You got it." My turn to fly, I call the tower, and make a smooth full power take off and start up the right side of the highway climbing fast to get to cool air. Rock already knows all of their names and hometowns. I love working with Rock he is relentless. One of the Donut Dollies is from New York; Rock is out of the seat and in the back, holding her close screaming in her ear. I ask him once why he did not give her a helmet to wear, he grinned as he answered, "It is my only excuse to hold her close and smell her smell." I will probably never see her again, but I will remember what she feels and smells like forever. Instruction on life from the master himself.
"Blackhawk 69 Cu Chi tower on Guard." I switched to Guard and answered for Rock, still in the back. "Ah, Blackhawk 69 go ahead." "Blackhawk 69 change frequency to Cu Chi tower frequency and contact Cu Chi tower immediately." I have the Cu Chi tower in a preset channel and switch to them immediately, and key the mike. "Blackhawk 69, Cu Chi tower," and I get an animated voice on the radio inquiring about how many girls are on board and how many seconds until we would be landing. Then they made sure I knew where to land and Major Somthinaruter was there to greet them. I turned to Rock and gave him my best puzzled look, he climbed back into his seat bucked up and said "Have fun" in the back, the one from New York needs a flying lesson. I helped her get in the seat, threaded up the shoulder straps, and the smell of the perfume and the big smile reaching to help with the lap belt had to be experienced to be believed.
Cu Chi to Tay Ninh was a short hop. Rock had flown it so many times before he let me practice flying low level, directing me left and right as we went from rice paddies to banana trees to the triple canopy jungle. The smell went from mud to perfume as we neared our Area of Operation. Rock is talking to the crew, I am madly flying along. Rock keys his mike, "I've got it," and we cyclic climb up, up, up, and he calls for smoke. I hear both smoke grenade caps pop. Rock is lined up with the Cau Dai temple and does a mock strafing run on the temple, having to pull up to go over the top of the building. Life is good when you are the top link in the food chain.
Bad news on the tower frequency, "Blackhawk 69 go to POL top off and report to Blackhawk 6 on company push for further instructions clear to land POL." My afternoon off shot to crap, we call the Commanding Officer, he is airborne and heading south, "Six Niner, we lost a bird to maintenance, we need you to fill in, call inbound to Fire Support Base Burt, Six out." Rock and I looked at each other and keyed the mike together. F'n bodybags---first time today Rock was unhappy. We had volunteered to fly the ARVN missions just so we did not have to clean up the mess after the huge firefight at Burt---now we were trapped. Rock keys the intercom, "I told you we should have stayed in Saigon." What could I say?
Making our approach into Burt we flew upwind, into the smoke and dust, landing into the wind. As we went from base to final approach the smell of death was overpowering. It had been several days since some of the Viet Cong had been killed and the smell was grotesque. Sure enough, our timing had been the craps. We are guided in to the lined up black body bags, gently aligned into rows ... neat and tidy in death, each one with a tag, each one starting to swell in the sun. They put six body bags on our chopper---no one speaks. We pull pitch for the ride to Long Binh. Not a word is spoken. Rock makes a screaming approach to Graves Registration, we gently off load our cargo by its built in hand holds, but they leak and they slosh and our helicopter is a mess. The intense smell of death everywhere---Please pull pitch Rock, I can't take it here any more! Doors open, full power takeoff, low level to Burt. We haul our share of the carnage of war. My senses have been traumatized. We fly toward home in silence. Lost in our own thoughts. Dodging the thunderstorms that have grown to monstrous proportions in the last few hours.
"Can you believe it" snarls Rock, "they have the f'n nerve to see if we will fly an Insert for the Special Forces---they better have something good to trade for the mess hall or I am going home." Rock takes no prisoners, he is the mess hall officer, and is on the prowl for beefsteak, or frozen chickens at all times.
Rock "Rogers" the transmission from Operations and looks up the frequency for the Special Forces. Rock soon finds out it is one of his Ranger buddies and we are hauling Cambodians to reinforce an A-team way the f'n up north. Rock turns to me an says, "This will be fun." I doubt it.
We land at the B-36 compound in Tay Ninh and shut down. The crew refuels the helicopter while Rock and I enter the Operations bunker. The smell of Cigars and chordate mingling with the light machine oil used on all the guns. Smells great. I look around at all the war trophies and round Cambodian faces. What a different war they were fighting compared to the one I was fighting. Our ten Cambodian fighters were packed and ready to go. We loaded them in the helicopter with a replacement E-6; we pulled pitch for what was a one-hour trip to the camp up north.
The turbulence was extreme, as we tried to stay VFR in blinding rain storms---we went up and down and it was hard to just stay on course. We would get forced down to the trees and then up in cooler and safer air, then the rock and roll ride down to the tree tops to get under a huge rainstorm with huge raindrops that go splat when they hit the windscreen.
The smell of Ozone from the lightning is everywhere in the wind. Rock was getting a long-count to home-in on, and I was flying when the first one puked. It set off a chain reaction and all ten of our Cambodian passengers hurled their last dinner of fish heads and rice. We almost crashed---Rock and I with our heads out in the wind, the crew chief and gunner pulling open the sliding doors, and the rain flying everywhere outside. Inside the chopper the contents of all ten bellies were now being diluted by mother nature and sloshing out the doors. Rock was flying out of trim trying to keep his face in the wind.
We called inbound to the Special Forces camp and they popped smoke. We landed in a driving rain and the Cambodian passengers were as glad to leave as we were to have them gone. We flew home with the doors open in the fading sunlight. Our poor crew, they would be working late tonight to try and clean up the Cambodians' mess.
We put the helicopter in the revetment and Rock heads for the Mess Hall full speed with me in tow. Yes I can smell it, it is getting stronger, definitely stronger, that's it, the smell of grease smeared on white bread. Grease soaked into the tent and ground, and gallons of coagulated-grease scuming in the hot tropical climate---splattered everywhere. A blind man could follow the scent to the mess hall. Like they say, once you are past the smell, you have it licked. I was in line for Grey meat, congealed gravy, and vegetables with the consistency of whipped potatoes. Lunch seemed a lifetime ago.
All briefings were held in the Officer's Club. Fine by me, after a cold shower, and small talk with the men in my tent, we all walked over to the briefing for tomorrow's mission. Blackhawk Six was standing in the front, with a full drink in one hand and a pointer in the other. 50 Warrants, 5 or 6 RLOs with half a pallet of beer in their bellies, and everyone smoking at once---I could barely breath. Even the streets of Saigon did not have this much smoke. I am sure the smell of semi-intoxicated men burping, farting and smoking, is an acquired taste, which most of our company must have had as they spent long hours in the Club which had a distinct smell of its own---even when empty.
In the corner of my eye I could see Rock sneaking out of the Club. He's not drunk, but he's feeling no pain. I followed his broad shoulders outside, he was acting suspicious. Rock never leaves a party in progress---and that's suspicious.
"OK Kid, I'm going to town for a steam-job and a blow-bath---and some real food too. Major Bauman will roast my nuts if he catches me. I have things worked out with the Filipinos across the runway---they have a regular taxi service to town and are probably getting a kickback. Let's go."
We were off to town in the back of an old jeep. Steam bath in the tropics. Gets all the grime off of your skin and makes it feel cool outside after you are finished. The little girls scrub with big sponges in each hand and make mounds of soapsuds, then they put us in a steam room smelling of mildew and hot pipes until we melted. Then they put us in the private massage rooms and two or three little naked girls gave a pretty convincing massage---what did I know, it was my first one, and I was only 19, and just a few years older than the working girls.
The smell of the women mingled with the mildew and oil they were rubbing on my body was an exotic blend not found anywhere else in the world.
We finished our few hours of freedom eating skinny chickens cooked in front of us on a grill. The smoke stinging our eyes while we watched Tay Ninh slow from its frantic daytime congestion, to the peaceful evenings when Charlie controlled everything but the airbases. Our pickup was right on time; we snuck in through the perimeter and walked across the runway. It was a little after midnight, the Club was in full swing, but we both passed it up and went home for some sleep. We were never missed in the compound.
I throw the tent flap back and the smell of the dark green canvas heated all day by the sun is so familiar. I turn on my fan, turn out John Jordan's light---the smell of Johnny Walker Red hanging in the air.Another smelly day in Vietnam comes to an end.
Wayne R. "Crash" Coe
