In Vietnam, I was a clerk for an Advisory Team, which was boring. Every chance I got, I'd volunteer for jobs that were dangerous. I was twenty years old, stupid, but I got to see some interesting shit. These are photos taken with SSG Thorsen, when he was advising troops from the 821st ARVN Ordinance. ARVN stands for Army Republic of Viet Nam. After a nightly attack, we would go out and look at the mortar tail fins, and burst patterns, and figure out where the attack came from. Sometimes, the Viet Cong would forget to pull out the safety pin on the mortar round, and the round would launch, impact, then dig itself far into the earth, unexploded. We would dig these out, and destroy them. This was EOD: Explosive Ordinance Disposal. We would also destroy damp and outdated explosives, and captured explosives. We would often put it all together, in a big pile, usually in a bomb crater, if one was available. We would place blocks of C-4, a high explosive, in strategic places on the pile, so stray bombs and artillery rounds would not get “kicked out” in the blast. We’d tie the C-4 blocks together with det. cord, run out a quarter mile of wire, and twist the plunger. And there was always an impressive blast, but quickly after, we’d crawl under a truck or jeep, to avoid the hot, jagged chunks of shrapnel, falling from the sky.
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| Unexploded 82mm Mortar Round That Buried Itself Into The Earth |
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| 4 Tons Of Explosives In A Bomb Crater With C-4 And Det. Cord In Place |
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| Old Grenades, Mostly, In A Hole, For Safety |
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| Sandbagged Hole With Grenades |
Long Island, 1967. I was riding with Greg, Pete, and yeah, we were looking for trouble. We had radical bikes, loud and greasy, handlebars more than 15” over the seat, no mufflers, dentist mirrors. I had a chrome German helmet…a real one with a dog chain for a chin strap. Oil stains on my pants from when my generator would vibrate loose, and soak my right leg from the knee down. And we hung around with some clubs, but more on that later.
So the Nassau County cops would see us riding, and pull us over at every opportunity. It was not at all unusual for us to get five “equipment violations” at a sitting. Pete bought a really cool looking flathead from a guy from a local MC: the exhaust stacks were higher than the apehangers, and had a fake parrot on top. One time Pete got a ticket because his bike was dirty. The cop couldn't see his numbers, and his hand got greasy, trying to see. And it got to the point where I would make mental notes about possible escape routes, places where a motorcycle could get through, but not a police car, like behind Food Fair, where there was a hole in the fence.
So one time we were riding on Hempstead Turnpike, and I see this cop car, going in the other direction, checking us out, he turns around, and we shoot into the Food Fair parking lot, and he’s coming up quick behind us, and there’s this hole in the stockade fence, in the back, where pedestrians from the adjoining neighborhood pass through with their groceries, and we blast through the hole, onto the sidewalk in the neighborhood, and disappear into the side streets, until the heat was off.
So I got pretty good at evasive riding to avoid multiple equipment violations. Me and Greg were riding once in Bethpage, he had a cool Beezer, with handlebars taller than mine, and we passed a state police car, and I saw his brake lights come on, like he was gonna make a u-turn to come after us, and it just so happens that we were on a narrow road, near the state park, and there, on the right, was the wide opening for the bridal path, and we took it. There were sandy sections where we wallowed, and had to push the bikes through, and of course, horse shit, and there was one section, on a downhill grade, where we had to get past, over and around, a fallen tree, but we made it. We came out in the back yard of a startled woman, who was hanging clothes on the line, and I apologized sheepishly, because we had to pass under the low part of the clothes line, brushing through some of the newly cleaned garments.
My most exciting escape of all happened in Farmingdale. I was cruising along, passed a cop who was going the other way, saw his brake lights come on, and began evasive maneuvers. Well, I shot down this side street, where I would normally cross the railroad tracks, and disappear into an industrial area. The gates were coming down as I approached, and the lights were flashing, the bells were ringing; there were a couple of cars ahead of me, already stopped at the crossing. I looked back, over my shoulder, and saw the cop car just making the turn, to come up behind me. I was trapped, I had no choice, I rode around the cars, up next to the crossing gate, the train seemed to be moving slow, and I figured I could make it. I swung around the gate, and shot over the tracks, looking up momentarily, at the train bearing down, massive locomotive, fifteen feet tall, and the engineer blasts the air horns, and I made it around the gate, past stunned drivers, waiting in the opposing lane.
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| This is my 53 Triumph, my "escape machine." There are no pics of Pete's Dirty Flathead. |
So anyway, it wasn’t too long after that that I got drafted, and went to Vietnam. Wow…sure took a long time to get here…And it wasn’t long after that, that my dad had forwarded me the letter from New York State, explaining that my driving priviliges had been suspended. But the Army didn’t know about that, and part of my duties involved driving, and I spent a lot of hours driving jeeps and trucks, on Highway 19, and backroads around Pleiku and Qui Nhon. One time I even got to ride Honda 90, that’s ninety cc’s, that belonged to a friendly Vietnamese dude that I worked with. But it was none of that…it wasn’t even work related.
I’d found out that one of my Long Island friends was a LRRP,
A long-range reconnaissance patrol, or LRRP (pronounced "lurp"), is a small, heavily-armed reconnaissance team that patrols deep in enemy-held territory. The concept of scouts date back to the origins of warfare itself.
he was doing long range patrols, and was stationed near Pleiku, out at the 4th Division Headquarters. And I had a day off coming, and managed to get permission, and managed to borrow a M 151 jeep, and I took a ride out to the the Fourth Division, to see my friend. Now mind you, this is Vietnam, and this is 1969, and there was still a lot of shit going on there: snipers, mines in the roadway, hostile people, dressed as peasants, with rifles and explosive materials. And, at least for me, I wanted to get through the hostile areas as quickly, and as safely, as possible. I was traveling alone.
So I drove around the base. The base was heavily patrolled by Military Police, in marked vehicles, and they followed me, wanted to know who I was, where I was going…these people had rules…military rules, and they let me know, very quickly, that I was in their jurisdiction, and I would follow their rules. So be it. Well, it turns out my buddy was out in the bush, on one of those long range patrols, and no, I wouldn’t be able to see him, so it was time to move on, head back to Pleiku. And yep, the Military Police vehicle was behind me as I pulled out of the Fourth Division…but now I’m out the gate, right, so I put the pedal to the metal so I can get through the hostile territory as quickly and as safely as possible. And I’m moving right along…those 151’s were pretty quick on the straight-away, and I must have been going about 80 mph, when I noticed in those over-sized 151 mirrors, the Military Police jeep, lights flashing, right behind me. What…this is fucked up. So I watch, in the mirror for a while, and then decide to pull over in a place that “looks safe”, not a lot of hiding spots for hostile gunmen. And the lights are flashing…and these are THE POLICE. So they gave me a ticket for speeding; apparently, it was a 30 mph zone, right outside the gate. And they sent it to the Captain of my unit, the guy who gave me permission, and let me use the 151. And he penalized me, oh, he was angry, but he penalized me in a “non-military” way, that had to do with a female “house guest”, that I’d already paid, and lack of “privileges”…I don’t know of anyone else who got a speeding ticket, in Vietnam.
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| Fireball |
45 Years Later:
I was walking my dog at Chadwick Lake, and we were way back in the woods, maybe a mile, when my dog stopped, cocked her head. Out over the lake there was a muffled growling whoop. We stopped. It came again. Ice was moving. The middle water was open, but back in the coves there was the deep growling whoop, almost animal sounding, like deep muffled sonar.
An Asian woman came over the hill, saw us standing in the trail, and when she got closer, I said, “…sounds like ice cracking.” She stopped close in front of me; she was probably my age, maybe Vietnamese and had a heavy accent. “Sounds like war,” she said. I was not expecting her to say that, and it must have showed on my face, because she said it again. “It sounds like war.” A pause, muffled ice cracking, then “bye-bye,” she said. And she walked on down the trail, and she started to jog, and I let her get away. And me and the dog walked… and she was out of sight, and I’m thinking, that yes, sometimes in Vietnam, the distant bombs had that muffled heaviness that you could feel, and you knew there was something deep and big going on, and you just couldn’t see it.
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