When we finally arrived in country, we laid off the coast of Chu Lai for a night
before we landed. I sat with a buddy on the bow of the boat and watched
flares, explosions and tracers light up the dark sky over the hills beyond
the coastline. My buddy and I looked at that shit and thought, wow, a
real war zone. To us, it looked like the Sands of Iwo Jima.
The
next day, the LST motored up to a sand ramp, the bow doors opened, and we assaulted
the beach with full field gear – but no ammunition. I
felt like a God damned idiot. What the hell was going on? Did they
think we needed more practice? When I hit the beach, I saw a navy guy
sitting on a little bulldozer wearing shorts, sandals, a straw hat and sunglasses
drinking beer with a Vietnamese girl on his lap. As we stormed the beach,
he waved and lifted his beer can, a salute to the FNGs, Vietnam style. The
girl waved too, and when she smiled, I saw an ugly row of teeth stained black
as tar. Later, I learned Vietnamese women chewed betel nut as an appetite
suppressant and because they believed it prevented tooth decay. The downside
(for me, anyway) was the black teeth.
What the fuck? That whole scene
was too unreal. I wouldn’t
have been surprised if the navy guy had tossed me a football or the Vietnamese
chick spread a picnic blanket. I felt like a fool lying in the sand with
an empty weapon, but apparently, the guy next to me hadn’t caught on
by then, because he looked up from beneath his helmet and said, “Who’s
that dude, and where’d the war go? I know it was here just last
night.”
The first moment I set foot on Vietnamese soil, I experienced
the endless dichotomy that was the Vietnam War. Things never entirely
what they appeared, you never knew what to expect next or what reality would
unfold before you.
The
next day, the LST motored up to a sand ramp, the bow doors opened, and we assaulted
the beach with full field gear – but no ammunition. I
felt like a God damned idiot. What the hell was going on? Did they
think we needed more practice? When I hit the beach, I saw a navy guy
sitting on a little bulldozer wearing shorts, sandals, a straw hat and sunglasses
drinking beer with a Vietnamese girl on his lap. As we stormed the beach,
he waved and lifted his beer can, a salute to the FNGs, Vietnam style. The
girl waved too, and when she smiled, I saw an ugly row of teeth stained black
as tar. Later, I learned Vietnamese women chewed betel nut as an appetite
suppressant and because they believed it prevented tooth decay. The downside
(for me, anyway) was the black teeth. 
