TWO
BOTTLES OF BEER
By
Sgt.
Nguynh van Cu'
as
told to Tony Spletstoser
Just
two bottles of beer, that's what this
story is about,
how
they cost the lives of one of my very good friends, the
MSgt.
Canteen
Keeper,
our Commander and several of his staff officers.
We
were stationed at a VN Special Forces
camp located on the
side
of Monkey Mountain, just above the Navy base on the river
inlet
at Da Nang.
My
friend and his five team-mates have
just returned from a
really
`ruff'
mission that afternoon. The men had been debriefed
the
first thing after coming in.
The very
fact that they had
survived,
proves
again that the best training is the difference
between
success
or failure. But
they were tired
and used up.
Later
that evening the team decided to come to the canteen for a
bowl
of noodles and maybe something cold to drink.
A
Special Forces communications MSgt.
(NCOIC) had as another
of
his duties, that of being in charge of our canteen.
My
friend, asked the Canteen Keeper to fix something to eat.
Meanwhile,
he
took a look in the ice box (cooler) located behind
the
counter, for some cold drinks.
When he
opened the little
door,
he saw two bottles of beer.
My
friend say, "Hey you got two cold
beers in here". The
Master
Sergeant
Canteen Keeper said, "No can do, they belong to
the
Commander. He keeps them there for when special guests and
friends
come
to visit."
My
friend say, "Sergeant, it's 10 o'clock
at night and he's
asleep.
No
one will come to visit before late tomorrow morning
and
I'll give you money so that you can buy more beer the first
thing
in the morning, when you go into town to buy groceries for
the
days meals."
The
Canteen Keeper says, "No, you
can't have them, it makes
no
difference, those beers aren't for sale.
(Well, in a sense he
was
right, but it wasn't necessary for him to have been that
right.
It
would have easy enough to have accommodated the team
leader
and
have had the replacement two bottles before noon the
next
day.)
My
friend tried his best to reason with
the man, he told the
Canteen
Keeper,
"Look, we just get back from a very hard time.
We
are glad to have gotten out all alive and we want to
celebrate
by
having something to drink. I give you money now and you buy
some
more tomorrow morning, OK?"
The
Como Sgt. say, "Not OK!
The
two beers belong to the Commander."
My
friend, he say, "I'm tired of
arguing with you about the
two
bottles of beer. You
don't have to be
that way, I've tried
to
talk to you reasonably, but you are too hard-headed, so I am
going
to take these two bottles of beer and my friends and I will
drink
them. Now you
do what you think that you
have to do."
My
friend take the two bottles, open them up and pass them
around
for
his friends to pour into their cups.
The
Canteen keeper, he get mad, say all
kinds of things and
then
he leave. He is
so hard-headed about
someone daring to go
against
what
he say, that he went to the room where the Commander
sleeps
and
woke him up.
The
Commander get mad when he hear the Como
sergeant's story
about
the two beers. The
Commander get
dressed, then he pick up
his
.45 from beside the bed and stick it into his waist band.
He
and the sergeant walk back to the
Canteen. The Commander
said,
"You need to leave now!"
My
friend looks at the Commander
and
says, "Yes Sir! As soon as we finish the beer and noodles."
The
Commander repeats, you have to leave. If
you don't, I am
going
to lock you up." The Commander is getting very angry.
Now
you know that this is not a smart
thing to do. Normally
we
are always very respectful of any of our officers. But also
normally
they
are understanding and respectful of us as well. It
works
both ways. Here
are six men having very
short fuses on
their
emotions at this time of night. They
aren't about to be
afraid
of
one little .45 Colt.
The
men just looked at the Commander and
almost put the beer
down.
Only put it down their throats instead.
The Commander
turned
on
his heel and stomped out, followed by the Como Sergeant
Canteen
Keeper.
The
evening was about to turn nasty due to
a lack of under-
standing
or
maybe the Commander over reacted because of the "Yak-
yak"
that the Como Sergeant had given him. Everything was going
wrong.
The
officer knew that these men had a ruff mission,
because
he
had debriefed them just a few hours before.
After
finishing the beer and noodles, my
friend and his team
returned
to
our barracks area. They knew that they were in
trouble
but
it was too late to worry about now.
While
the other men went to bed, my friend
stay by himself.
He
get his AK-47 and pick up four 30 round mags taped together,
staggered
in
reverse so that any magazine could still be fit into
the
rifle.
My
friend, his temper limit had been
pushed too far that
night,
over
a mere two bottles of beer.
The
Commander and the
Canteen
Keeper
had not reckoned that there was a maximum for
their
being officious, when dealing with men who had just faced
eight
days of hell. The
sense of power that
the Commander and
the
Como Sergeant felt that they had, didn't impress these
troopers
very
much and the Commander's uncompermizing orders had
been
pushed the man beyond his limit.
My
friend took his rifle and left the
barracks area and
headed
back
to the Canteen in the dark.
The
Commander, the Como
Sergeant,
several
other staff officers of the group and another
officer
that
acted as the Provost Marshall (military police) for
the
group, were standing outside in front of the canteen.
The
Commander looked up, saw my friend,
then told him to
leave,
that
his group were discussing the charges to be filed
against
him
and his friends. My
friend said,
"That won't be
necessary,
I
take care of it now." He
then
raised his AK-47 and
started
firing,
the Commander and the Canteen Keeper went first,
then
the rest. Somehow,
one man made it
out. He had
dropped
down
behind something and made it out the back door.
My
friend left the Canteen and returned to
our barracks
area. None of us knew
what had gone on, we were so
used to gun-
fire
around the camp, you know men testing their weapons at
anytime
day
or night. My
friend came to were his
team was about
to
go to sleep and told them, "You don't have worry now, I
already
take
care of all of them." Then
he
walk back to the
Canteen
where
all of the others lay down.
He put
the muzzle of
the
AK under his chin and pulled the trigger.
The bullet came
out
the top left side of his head.
Another
friend had been awake and saw what
happened. Tan ran
to
him. He is still alive.
Tan wrap his
bandanna around his
wounds
to
try to stop the bleeding.
He is
conscious, he looks at
Tan
and says, "No, don't try to save me.", and pulls the
bandage
off. Then Tan go to
find a Jeep. My
friends and Tan put him in
the
back and hold him while Tan drives. When
Tan get to the
hospital,
Tan
took him into the emergency room, but then he gone.
When
they bury our friend the next day,
they put layers of
barbed-wire
over
him in his grave. This is symbol that he had
done
a bad thing and that even in death he was to be kept in
prison.
Even
though what my friend did was a wrong
thing, there was
good
for all of us that came because of his sacrifice.
The
Commanders and other officers were
replaced. These new
officers
had
been sent to special meetings and were told to be
very
careful not to be overbearing and tried to be fair in every
way. Good Special
Forces men were hard to replace
and something
like
two bottles of beer was too high of a price.
Nothing like
this
ever happened again and the mess hall was run better too.
Canteens and Mess Halls.
There
is a lot of difference between the
way Vietnamese
soldiers
and
the Americans GIs' are fed.
The
Americans have Army
cooks,
kitchens,
food supplies, and mess halls.
In the Vietnam-
ese
Army, the Commanders draw money from the soldiers each
month,
and we have two
sergeants assigned as cooks and
to buy our food
at
the village markets.
Since
these camps rarely have refrigeration
or even elec-
tricity,
food
supplies must be purchased daily at a village
market. Then food
service and cooking helper dutys
are shared
in
rotation by members of the teams inorder to run the mess
hall.
This
is not too much of a problem because our Special Forces
camps
are small anyway. In
the Special Forces,
no civilians are
allowed
in
camp.
The
regular ARVN army they have a
civilians under contract
to
cook and run the mess hall.
Sometimes
the money is diverted several
times. It finds it's
way
into the pockets of the officers in charge and on down to
the
man
in charge of buying food for the mess hall.
So the soup can
get
a little thin at times.
Our
Msgt. Canteen Keeper or manager, was
one who felt that he
held
power in his hands from his little kingdom of his canteen,
Other things like
cold drinks, cigarettes,
toilet articles, the
Canteen
also
serves as a mini-PX. Vietnamese
soldiers
never have
much
money to spend anyway.
to
give or withhold something from the men anytime that he
decided. In my mind, it was
reckless move on the
Master Serg-
eant's
part. These men
lived too close to death
to know any fear
of
his small power and on this night they had been pushed to
the
limit.
My
friend always act like a very `cool'
person and like all
Special
Forces
men, we are trained not to let anger rule us. So
far
tonight he has never shown anger or even raised his voice.
But
all men have the point that they should not be pushed
beyond.
One
thing that I always hate to tell
anyone, is that all of
us
have many times have had orders that we knew were wrong,
like
some
kind of a useless mission that some officer on staff think
up,
back at headquarters. I
don't like to
talk about this
because
I've
always felt that we were all a band of brothers and
if
I admit that there were cooked people in with us, it is a
shame
on the rest of us.
All
of our officers come up through the
ranks just like me,
but
somehow when some of them reach the command staff level,
they
change
and
forget how it was in the jungle.
Even when we have
proof
that a HQ officer has done wrong, we dare not say anything,
because
we
could be ordered out to some bad place and never
picked
up.
Toward
the end of the war, we found out
that there were even
communist
agents
in our command. For
us in Special
Forces, it is
a
loss to our honor that one of our `brothers' has betrayed
us.
No
matter whatever happened, we are still
there and we have
to
do the job. We have to always remember that we are fighting
for
our country and that's the main thing.
I
never forget this thing. My friend was
a good man and a
brave
soldier. He had been forced to the wall by stupidity too
many
times. Our Commander and the Msgt. had the training and
experience
to
have known better. These
men had just
returned
from
a `ruff' mission during which they had handled themselves
magnificently.
Adrenalin
had them pumped up to a high that was
almost
like
being on drugs. Common sense should have told them to
never
put any foolishness on men in that condition.
This inci-
dent
had pushed my friend beyond the wall of his control. I have
heard
of similar tragedies within American special operation
units. Never mess with a
man who has had a BAD day.