Purple Daze (11 page)

 

From: SECNAV P. H. Nitze

 

To: All Ships and Stations

 

Subject: WAVES (
W
omen
A
ccepted for
V
olunteer
E
mergency
S
ervice)

“The Unknown Chaplain”

“Voodoo 10! Voodoo 10!
This is Orphan 99.
Request urgent dust-off.
U.S. Marine ...
mine ... mine.”

 

“99, this is 10.
Extent of injuries?
Is landing zone secure?”

 

“Urgent!
Repeat ... gent!
Marine bleed ...
Chri ... mighty . . .
get that damn bird. . . .”

“You're OK soldier.
Say again, 99.
Slowly.”

 

“10, this is 99.
LZ secure ...
... no enemy fire.
Need ...”

 

“Roger that.
Choppers airborne.
What's your position?”

 

“Zebra 109-271 ...
Repeat, Zebra 109-271.”

 

Dust-off complete:
19 minutes.

 

Marine dies over rice paddy.

Outside L.A. Mission:

 

Old men sleep on sidewalks.
Cardboard mattresses.
Pockets inside out.
Stolen shoes.

 

Ms. Hawes says,
“Don't be afraid.”

 

I'm not.

Cheryl,

 

All I've done for the last 42 hours
is wade through muck and mud.
Every inch of exposed flesh
is sliced up from busting jungle.
The fever blisters on my lips are
scabbed over with rot.

 

Tomorrow we're going on a seek-and-destroy
patrol. We don't like these skinny Commies
using us for target practice.

 

If we have to, we'll take the village apart one
straw at a time. Shoot a few dogs and chickens,
maybe a water buffalo.

 

Right now my cartridge belt has
1 Bowie knife + 180 rounds of ammo on it.
I have a rifle that shoots 20 rounds
in less than 2 seconds
plus 6 grenades.
Fragmentation type. 14 ounces.

 

I pity the poor gook that crosses my path.
I want to get at least one for Gunther.

 

Thou shalt not kill—Fuck that shit!

 

I want to come home, Phil

I can't get out of bed, strangling in sheets, soaked with tears, drool, snot—
screaming louder than when Daddy died and I wore white gloves and a
black headband like Caroline Kennedy at her dad's funeral—I'm crying for
Daddy and Gunther, and I can't even imagine how Phil feels—and I'm
tearing at my pillow until my fingers are raw and I'm numb inside trying
to understand,
How can someone fucking bleed to death in nineteen minutes?

USS
Hermitage LSD-34
Pussy Patrol

 

Don—

 

Check it out: More than 1,000 sailors
lined-up on deck with our flies open
and our dicks hanging out.

 

Master Sergeant says, “What's the gag?”

 

We salute, all serious.
“If we're gonna work like horses
we're gonna look like horses,
Sir!
”

 

“The Mick”

 

P.S. Man, I've been off my game.
Can't sink a stinkin' bar of soap
in the drain with the butt of my rifle.
P.P.S. I hear you got that job.
Better let your peeps play free!

Ms. Hawes shows me around the Mission,
where women stay up all night taking turns
at an ironing board, pressing work clothes
for the next day.

 

An older lady reminds me of Nana,
rhinestone clips in her silver hair.
She got laid off from J.C. Penny,
then evicted from her apartment.

 

“A neighbor brought me here,” she says,
but not like she's feeling sorry for herself.
“Tomorrow I'll look for a another job.”

 

She smiles and pats the blanket on her cot.
I settle on the edge. She smells like Ivory Snow.
She shows me pictures of her kids, grandkids,
too ashamed to tell them what happened.

 

“I'll wait until I get back on my feet,”
she says.

I told my parents I'm spending the night at Cheryl's house,
but I'm really taking a bus to Berkeley with my Psych class
to join thousands of protesters. A 10-hour ride.

 

My suitcase is filled with rag dolls I made out of socks
in red, white, and blue. Uncle Sam hats cut from cardboard.

 

 

Professor James says he'll dress up like a soldier in the
American Revolutionary War. We'll march behind coffins
filled with copies of the Declaration of Independence.

 

 

I'll burn my rag dolls, standing with draftees burning
induction orders and draft cards.

 

Hi Ziggy,

 

I got your letter and I can't believe I'm writing back, but so much bad
stuff has happened, and our country is in such a mess, but mostly I can't
stand the thought of losing you, and I miss you and everything about
you, even puking in my popcorn. Ha! Ha! I don't blame you the same
way I blame Don because I know you were stoned out of your mind and
crazy nuts after losing the baby, but I don't understand why Don did it?
Not if he really loved me, like he kept saying. Now I know he never did.
Not
really
. And I'll never forgive him.
Never.
But you're still my best
friend, and I had to tell you before someone drops a bomb on us. Girls
rock! Girls rule!

 

Love, Cheryl

Pages of the new testament fill my pillow,
gospels on a recon in search of a soul.

USS
Hermitage LSD-34
World Traveler

 

Dear Cheryl,

 

Look at all the places I've been
since hooking up with the Navy:

 

Boston
Miami
Virginia
New York
Washington, DC
Halifax
Cuba
Jamaica
Puerto Rico
Virgin Islands

 

I'll double that next year when we make
a Mediterranean cruise—Unless we go to
Vietnam which is a definite possibility.

 

Love, “The Mick”

Fat tits + quick wit

 

does not = stupidity

 

if that's what you think.

Dear Cheryl,

 

Sarge just strolled in.
Told me to get my shit together.
A truck's leaving for the airport in Pleiku in 30 minutes.
He snatched my M-16 and walked out,
not another word.

 

 

Love ya, Phil

I'm wiggin' out over
Dr. Kildare
, that dimple
in his chin and those dreamy blue eyes, humming
the theme song “Three Stars Will Shine Tonight.”

 

Ziggy storms in like the good old days,
hair in soup can rollers,

 

“Bob Dylan crashed his motorcycle.
Broken neck.
Concussion.
Critical condition.
”

 

We sob listening to his album
Highway 61 Revisited
,
singing “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.”

 

I unpin her rollers, brush out her hair.
She irons mine. “Let's go cruisin'.”

 

We drag Van Nuys Boulevard in Bubba's beater,
flirting with bleached blond surfers in a woodie.

 

Ziggy peels out, ditching them for Bob's Big Boy,
cranking The Lovin' Spoonful, “Do You Believe in Magic?”

 

We share a banana split, extra whip cream and cherries,
celebrating 2 hours, 43 minutes without talking about the
two you-know-whos.

 

“Who needs them?”

and
Valley of the Dolls
by Jacqueline Susann
breaks bookselling records
and
Johnson says, “To know war
is to know that there is still
madness in this world”
and
the Beatles top the charts,
“We Can Work It Out”
and
American troops in Vietnam
double in size to 400,000
and
correspondent Bill Rowley
travels with a patrol in Vietnam
giving a vivid account, “GIs holding the
rifles above their heads ... one just fell.”
and
80,000 Americans are killed
or wounded in Vietnam
and
the president's daughter,
Luci Baines Johnson, gets married
with a 13-tier 300-pound cake
decorated with swans
and
Captain Kangaroo
is the only
live-action show on TV.

January 2.
The Selma Voting Rights Movement officially begins when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks at a meeting in Brown Chapel, which becomes the starting point for the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. The gathering is in direct defiance of an anti-meeting ordinance.

 

 

January 20.
Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as President of the United States. He remarks, “We can never again stand aside, prideful in isolation. Terrific dangers and troubles that we once called ‘foreign' now constantly live among us.”

 

 

January 27.
National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara send a memo to President Johnson declaring that America's limited military engagement in Vietnam is not succeeding, stating that the U.S. stands at a ‘fork in the road' and must either escalate its involvement or withdraw.

 

 

February 18.
Jimmie Lee Jackson walks with other African Americans in Marion, Alabama to protest obstructions in voter registration. Local police and Alabama State Troopers forcefully break up the unarmed protesters using bull-whips, billy clubs, and tear gas. Jackson, his sister, mother, and 82-year old grandfather seek refuge inside a café. Jackson is shot in the stomach by an Alabama State Trooper, chased into the street, and brutally beaten.

 

 

February 21.
Malcolm X is assassinated at a speaking engagement at the Audubon Ballroom in New York. Three gunmen charge the stage, shooting him 15 times at close range. The 39-year-old minister and political rights activist is pronounced dead at New York's Presbyterian Hospital.

 

 

February 21.
Augustus Owsley Stanley III operates a makeshift laboratory in the bathroom of a house near the University of California, Berkeley. The lab is raided by police who are searching for methamphetamine. They only find LSD, which was not illegal at the time.

 

 

February 26.
27-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson dies at Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma from an infection associate with his gunshot wound.

 

 

February 27.
Malcolm X's funeral is held at the Faith Temple Church of God in Harlem with 1,500 people in attendance. After the ceremony, friends pick up the gravediggers' shovels and bury their leader themselves.

 

 

March 7.
Between 500 and 600 civil rights activists march east from Selma, Alabama. After crossing Edmund Pettus Bridge, they encounter state troopers and are ordered to disband. Soon thereafter, unprovoked troopers begin shoving demonstrators, knocking them down and beating them with nightsticks. Another detachment begins hurling tear gas. Images of bloodied and severely injured protesters flash across news media evoking the name “Bloody Sunday.”