Excerpt: 'Steinbeck in Vietnam'

Dear Alicia,

If I had any ambition toward a journalistic future, I would dateline these letters from the field, drip a little sweat and blood on them (it's in good supply) and write pantingly to give an impression of immediacy. Actually I did no writing in the field except for notes of names, units and places. I tend to forget these things, but I do have total recall, a photographic memory, for the look and sound and feel of things if only I fix them with notes in time and place.

I think I told you I had checked out in weaponry short of artillery and did surprisingly well with them from the carbines through the automatic weapons and the machine guns. I did not fire the 50 caliber because it is the same gun I knew in World War II. I couldn't come by a grenade launcher until the Marines east of Da Nang let me use one in V.C. country. My son John swears by this weapon and I must say I agree. Even I was able to place three grenades in a very small area at 300 meters. However, I think a large part of my proficiency lies in the excellence of the new weapons: The M16 is a beautiful thing when you need it, light, fast, accurate and a man can carry twice as much ammunition as he could for the old M1. This just about doubles his fire power and that's a comforting thing in a fire fight. Most of this indoctrination was done at the Saigon airport where a sergeant of Military Police put me through it kindly but firmly on the shooting range.

Our first jump was to Pleiku in the central highlands. Things start early but they don't necessarily continue early. Military impulse is to get you out on some kind of line in the first dawn where you may remain until noon. But having got a bunch of men out early seems to satisfy a basic brass appetite.

The alarm went off in our pleasure dome in the Caravelle hotel and I put on my newly acquired army fatigues. These are the ones I told you about with so many pockets in pants and jacket that I have put pencils and small notebooks away and never found them again. The double and triple entrances of those pockets are as tricky as the hidey holes of the V.C. Anyway you get the pants and the thick socks on and tie the drawstrings at the bottom. This is to keep out leeches from below. Then the boots. They lace over the drawstrung pants bottoms. The laces do not have stiff ends. Even now, lacing those boots in the morning leaves me exhausted and covered with sweat. Under mortar attack when you find a sense of security in a bunker, you get there barefooted. Getting those boots laced is a ten minute job. There is a zipper you can lace in and I'm getting one immediately. I will not lace those damned things again. In the bottom of the boot is a plastic insole with the texture of a nutmeg grater. I'm sure it serves some purpose. Mine rolled up and crippled me until I took them out and shot them.

Anyway there I was, rumpled and sweaty and it wasn't even daylight yet. My cap was too big. I had to hold it on in even a light breeze. I said a quick warrior's farewell to my weeping wife, brushed a tear aside and strode like Hector down the marble steps of the Caravelle to the lobby. In the dim light I could see every chair, couch and lounge occupied by sleeping staff. The glass front doors were locked. The curfew wasn't over. I couldn't even get out in the street. Hector grounded his spear and collapsed on his shield and waited for somebody to open the door.

Did you know that the airport at Saigon is the busiest in the world, that it has more traffic than O'Hare field in Chicago and much more than Kennedy in New York -- well it's true. We stood around -- maybe ten thousand of us all looking like overdone biscuits until our plane was called. It was not a pretty ship this USAF C-130. Its rear end opens and it looks like an anopheles mosquito but into this huge anal orifice can be loaded anything smaller than a church and even that would go in if it had a folding steeple. For passengers, the C-130 lacks a hominess. Four rows of bucket seats extending lengthwise into infinity. You lean back against cargo slings and tangle your feet in a maze of cordage and cables.

Before we took off a towering sergeant (I guess) whipped us with a loud speaker. First he told us the dismal things that could happen to our new home by ground fire, lightning or just bad luck. He said that if any of these things did happen he would tell us later what to do about it. Finally he came to the subject nearest his heart. He said there was dreadful weather ahead. He asked each of us to reach down the paper bag above and put it in our laps and if we felt queasy for God's sake not to miss the bag because he had to clean it up and the hundred plus of us could make him unhappy. After a few more intimations of disaster he signed off on the loud speaker and the monster ship took off in a series of leaps like a Calaveras County frog.

Once airborne, I got invited to the cockpit where I had a fine view of the country and merciful cup of black scalding coffee. They gave me earphones so I could hear directions for avoiding ground fire and the even more dangerous hazard of our own artillery. The flight was as smooth as an unruffled pond. And when we landed at Pleiku I asked the God-like sergeant why he had talked about rough weather.

"Well, it's the Viets," he said. "They have delicate stomachs and some of them are first flights. If I tell them to expect the worst and it isn't, they're so relieved that they don't get sick. And you know I do have to clean up and sometimes it's just awful."

Anyway we landed in the perfectly huge installation at Pleiku, a giant sitting astride Route 14 -- the main road across the waist of the country from Cambodia to the sea. But I'll leave to tell you about that in my next letter.

Reprinted from "Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches From the War" by permission of the University of Virginia Press.