The Pink Photo Album
In the stillness, of the midnight,
Precious Memories flood my soul.
J.B.F. WRIGHT
It was at Burkett’s Arm, the new firebase named for a sergeant’s blown-off appendage, where the word came to me that G-troop, my old unit, had been hit hard and where the wounded would be brought for the services of the field aid-station. This was unusual. Bringing wounded to a field aid station instead of flying on to a real, Army hospital prompted some questions: why not take the just slightly longer, route to a more equipped facility ? Who is hurt? Will I know any of these guys?
Chances were I wouldn't, I figured. My best buddy from G-troop was Paul Dailey, who was in the states escorting his cousin’s body home, and my old track was only one of several in three platoons of tracked vehicles. It had been a couple of months since I had been transferred to H-Company, an ostensibly safer assignment with more fire power. We protected HQ and had the squadron doctor, but never received an med-evac from a fire fight. I sat on the berm waiting for the arrival of the chopper with the wounded and reminisced about my month-plus with G-troop.
My first day in the field with G-troop was pretty much uneventful, other than the fact that they were mine sweeping Highway 13 and had hit 13 mines. Not superstitious by nature I was nonetheless taken aback. I arrived by deuce-and-a-half about dark in Tay Ninh province, War Zone III, not the safest part of the jungle. I sensed the anxiety of some who had been there before who didn’t offer any comforting stories.
I was the new medic. The last one had blown his finger off playing with a blasting cap while on stand-down. That tidbit wasn’t comforting either. As the sun went down I was escorted to all the tracks by one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, a medic, Paul. The last track we went to was the one to which I was assigned. They let me pull guard duty first so I could get some rest after my long road-march out—as though they didn’t need it more after a long mine sweep day.
During the guard duty one of the gunners, Mike Bazel from Chicago, pulled out a pink photo album—anyone who was there remembers these things from the PX—and began showing me pictures of his family, wife and kids; telling me the story of his life complete with hopes, dreams, everything, I mean every damn thing. He wanted to be a Chicago police officer when he got out. We hit it off real well; he was homesick and I was scared sick. It made for a good blend like two-part epoxy. We bonded. The other gunner was a tall lanky guy whom I’ll call Red. Red was somewhat goofy both in pose and vernacular often making me laugh simply by his mannerisms or his curious humor. He was the accustomed sounding board for Mike’s incessant stories of home, a chore accepted out of true sentiment for his true friend, but a chore nonetheless, and one that was repeated nightly, by rote, effectively. Red teased me about suffering through the incessant chatter spawned by that pink album, but it was something he had done more than me, and would do against for now, I was the newby and Red, needing a respite, tasked me with the daily, sunset job.
After several firefights and some intense bonding with these comrades I was transferred to H-Company at HHQ, just another mobile, night defensive perimeter in the jungle but due to its job of protecting the higher ups, enjoyed more protection. While with H-Company I only saw the G-Troop boys in passing in the jungle or on Hwy 13, nothing more than a dirt road very near the Cambodian border. That border made the area of operation a dangerous one in that the NVA, uniformed, North Vietnamese Army troops, were provided an inherent advantage in their assaults and ambushes in that they had a safe space to run…
After my transfer to H-Company, my old G-Troop track became the command track for that Platoon. The tank commander had been replaced by a newby, 2nd Lieutenant who wore one of those black Calvary, cowboy hats with his shiny, Lieutenant Bar on the front like Robert Duvall wore in Apocalypse Now, a practice frowned upon by us due to the literal signal it could send a sniper with an RPG. It was considered dangerous, if not stupid, to identify yourself as an officer that way. The new 2nd Looie also insisted on both antennae up instead of one tied down, a tactic used to disguise the track as being the command track. But the most egregious of the guy’s look-at-me-the-brave-man’s tactics was that he sat in a lawn chair... with his reflective cowboy hat and communication headgear. This display was intended to be one of courage, a kind of “I dare you” statement, and, I suppose the NVA saw it that way. The medic that replaced me on that track told me the day I met him, that he wasn’t seeing enough action on a med-evac chopper so he volunteered for G-troop. Though I didn’t ask for it, it was time for me to leave. G-troop was too much for me.
My gut tightened as the sound of the med-evac chopper carrying the wounded grew louder. It landed outside the berm about forty meters and one lone GI got off. It was Red. He looked confused. In his hand, was something... pink. It was Mike’s fucking photo album. I was numb, frozen. I stood there for a moment with my mouth open framing the scene that was being created in front of me. I remember thinking, “it’s like a goddamned movie.”
He looked stunned, helpless, as he stood by the helicopter with a chopper personnel standing beside him in a guarded pose as if expecting the patient to fall. I ran out to meet him and escorted him into the base camp and to the aid station, nothing more than a bunker. We sat him down in a chair as he still clutched the album. He had requested to bring the photo album to me and the chopper personnel obliged out of sheer pity. Now, he couldn’t talk and though he had no wounds he was covered in blood. Without completing a sentence, he was able to tell me with tears and gestures and a few scattered words that everyone else on our old track was dead. He relayed he’d tried mouth to mouth resuscitation on Mike but the head was anatomically disjoined so as to render that impossible, my words, not his. He did manage to convey that he wanted me to send the album to Mike’s family. I explained that I didn’t have the contact information, he did, and that he should do it. He was a mess but starting to become more cogent.
Red had been made driver in the time since I had left. This protected him from the Claymore mines which the NVA had stolen from an automatic ambush, site set up by friendly troops. The enemy then placed them in a tree and detonating them manually with a “clacker,” a triggering device. After six other tracks had passed the ambush site, the cowboy hatted, com gear, dawned, Lieutenant, with dual antennae erect, reclining in his lawn chair, followed.
In the jungle, close enough to identify the Lieutenant's track were two or more sets of watchful eyes, not believing how easy it was. With anxious fingers holding the clacker, they waited for the precise moment, to press the clacker.
Mike sat behind the M60 machine gun on one side probably daydreaming about his wife and kids, and the medic on the other side manned the other 60. No one stayed below in an armored personnel carrier for fear of RPGs, which would explode inside the vehicle causing lethal destruction. You took your chances with small arms fire and Claymore mines atop deck. The only time the NVA used claymores is when they found one that hadn't been hidden well enough. It was a real concern but it didn't happen as often as RPG attacks. With one clack, worlds changed. Everyone on top was killed; Red, who was down below in the driver’s seat was uninjured, physically.
They made Red a cook in Quan Loi, for he never quite recovered during the time I was there. He went home before me and I wish him well. The medic saw his action; the 2nd Lieutenant never knew what him. Paul returned to Vietnam—although it wasn’t required after escorting his cousin’s body home—and began talking of fate and destiny, which, according to him was predetermined against his leaving alive. He was killed on the first day of the Cambodian incursion, just days after the previous incident leaving an arcane diary in which he predicted his death on several pages. Mike simply died, leaving a very pretty wife and two very young children alone in Chicago with nothing but old pictures of themselves shrouded in a red-dirt stained, photo album as a paltry legacy perhaps. But I would say to them: The love pasted into that pink, photo album by a homesick father who missed his babies and lusted for his loving wife is too immense to be measured.
The whereabouts of that precious thing was not known to me when I left Vietnam. I trust it is known to his loved ones. For unseen Angels guard that treasury, sleeping until somewhere, in the stillness of midnight, someone pulls it from its place of rest and spreads its sacred pages, waking sympathetic Angels from Their Watch as precious memories and undying love flood the soul.
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