War is carried out by young people trained for the task. It occurs at the edge, or just over the edge, of what passes for civilized behavior. During the Vietnam War, the US military employed heavily-armed high-speed gunboats to intercept and disrupt enemy travel on the rivers of South Vietnam.
In this variant from standard Vietnam War works, Michael Hebert takes the reader along for a ride in this engaging memoir of his year in Vietnam. This light yet quick-witted nautical adventure entertains readers with tales of romance, daring exploits, and abject fear.
The remote Vung Ro Bay, while an idyllic setting, is not without peril. It is a constant target for snipers, mortar barrages, and full-out perimeter assaults. Hebert’s boat becomes a casualty to a rocket propelled grenade. Their base is wiped out by a super typhoon and they are forced to spend two days in the South China Sea with mountainous swells that threaten to sink the small 32-foot craft.
While primarily based on his first-hand experience, he deftly weaves sufficient fictional representation to incorporate the difficult life circumstances of the Vietnamese people and the Viet Cong. ‘Ever Vigilant’ offers a lively, compulsive read with a surprising finale.
War is carried out by young people trained for the task. It occurs at the edge, or just over the edge, of what passes for civilized behavior. During the Vietnam War, the US military employed heavily-armed high-speed gunboats to intercept and disrupt enemy travel on the rivers of South Vietnam.
In this variant from standard Vietnam War works, Michael Hebert takes the reader along for a ride in this engaging memoir of his year in Vietnam. This light yet quick-witted nautical adventure entertains readers with tales of romance, daring exploits, and abject fear.
The remote Vung Ro Bay, while an idyllic setting, is not without peril. It is a constant target for snipers, mortar barrages, and full-out perimeter assaults. Hebert’s boat becomes a casualty to a rocket propelled grenade. Their base is wiped out by a super typhoon and they are forced to spend two days in the South China Sea with mountainous swells that threaten to sink the small 32-foot craft.
While primarily based on his first-hand experience, he deftly weaves sufficient fictional representation to incorporate the difficult life circumstances of the Vietnamese people and the Viet Cong. ‘Ever Vigilant’ offers a lively, compulsive read with a surprising finale.
J.J. Cooper held on for dear life─an uncontrollable grin plastered across his face─as Riggs careened down the narrow mountain road. Riggs always drove like there was no tomorrow. Cooper had still not gotten used to it after an entire year of working with the guy. He glanced over the side of the rusty old jeep, the wind whipping his hair into a tangled mess and causing his eyes to tear up. The tires were spitting rocks up and shooting them off the side of the cliff. He watched them for an instant, as they disappeared quickly over the edge, dropped out of sight, and fell several hundred meters to the bottom. His ears were filled with the sound of angry tires screeching, stretching, and groaning at every turn. His body jarred with every bump in the pothole-filled road. Riggs was downshifting with abandon as the little jeep sped down the mountain. His nostrils filled with the scent of baked-on dirt and oil wafting up from the hot engine. The worn-out little 4-cylinder sounded as if it wanted to explode into a million pieces at any moment.
“Damn it, Riggs. Do you always have to drive like a madman? Maybe you could slow down a little bit? I want to get home in one piece, not in a damn body bag!”
Riggs offered a quick grin as he glanced back over his shoulder. Cooper had a death grip on the seat in front of him. His knuckles were almost white. The other hand was tightly wrapped around the strap of his duffel bag.
Jack Kelly, sitting in the front passenger seat, just turned around and smiled. “No problem, Coop. We have to slow down anyway. We’re almost at the crossing.”
They were approaching the remnants of the blown-up bridge on Highway QL-1. Nothing was left but a big, gaping hole littered with dirt and rocks. Riggs slowed the jeep to a crawl.
“You know, this is the fourth time the Viet Cong have blown this bridge up since I’ve been here. It seems to take the Army Engineers longer and longer to rebuild it each time,” Cooper said.
“Maybe they’ve gotten smart and just given up,” answered Riggs. “The Viet Cong are good at taking out any bridge they want─any time they want.”
A single-lane dirt crossing had been constructed in haste next to where the bridge used to be. An armored Military Police jeep fitted with an M-60 machine gun was almost across, coming from the other direction.
Cooper looked at the armored jeep with envy.
“Hey,” he yelled to the driver as they crept past. “I’m going home. Can you guys take me to Tuy Hoa Air Base? That jeep looks a lot safer than this one."
“Sorry, buddy. We’re heading to Nha Trang for convoy duty. Good luck to you, though.”
Once across the bridge, Riggs took off again. The road down the mountain featured several tight turns and three 180-degree switchbacks, which required vehicles to slow to 5 mph or so, making them perfect targets for enemy snipers. To Riggs, though, the switchbacks were just a challenge. On one side were boulders rising out of sight up the side of the mountain; on the other side, a cliff fell to the valley below. Guardrails were non-existent.
If you went off the road, you were dead.
“I always get nervous going through here,” Cooper yelled. “I wish there was some other way to get down this mountain other than going through all these switchbacks.”
“Calm down, man. We’ll get you home safe.” Riggs yelled back.
Cooper eased back in his seat and reached into his shirt pocket, pulling out his favorite letter. She had written it just after he was sent to Vietnam, and he read it over and over again, almost daily. There was one part that always made him smile:
I’m so sorry I stopped you that night when we were down on the beach. I was just scared. I really regret that─every day. I promise to make it up to you when you get home. As a matter of fact, it’s the very first thing on my list.
He folded the letter and put it back in his pocket.
It was January 2nd, 1970, and he was on his way home. His 365-day tour in Vietnam was almost over.
“I can’t believe I’ve only got two more days and a wake-up.” He yelled at Kelly and Riggs. “And those will be just out-processing in Saigon. It’s a piece of cake from here on out. I’m home free, man, home free.”
“What are your plans when you get back home?” Kelly yelled back.
“First thing I’m going to do is get married,” Cooper laughed. “and I’ll just be happy to stop crossing days off my short-timer’s calendar.”
His calendar was a single-page drawing of the Snoopy cartoon with 365 little boxes surrounding it. It was a ritual that he and every other soldier in Vietnam did each morning. It was something he would do no more. After a long, long year, he had nearly filled in his 365 little boxes.
“Who you gonna marry?” Kelly asked. “That girl whose pictures were splashed all over your wall?”
“Yep!” Cooper smiled.
SP-4 Jack Kelly accompanied Riggs as they drove Cooper to Tuy Hoa Air Force Base to catch his C-130 flight down to Long Binh, just outside of Saigon.
“I’m glad we decided to leave Vung Ro early,” he said. “We’ll have all afternoon in Tuy Hoa until your 4:00 o’clock flight. Pick what you want to do, man. We can go to the PX, snack bar, bowling alley, and even an air-conditioned movie theater. We’ll do whatever you want. It’s your big day.”
“I don’t know. I’ll think of something by the time we get there. By the way, what the hell are you wearing? You smell like a day at the beach.”
Kelly laughed. “Sea and Ski, man. Best smelling stuff ever invented. My mom sends me two or three bottles a month.”
“Well, I sure hope the VC can’t smell it. It sure is strong.”
“Have to keep my tan up, man. I’ll be going home someday. Gotta look good.”
“Well,” replied Cooper, “You shouldn’t have any problem there, as much time as you spend on the beach every day!”
“You know,” Kelly said, out of the blue. “I kind of wish I’d joined the Air Force. They’ve got real brick and mortar buildings, paved streets, the best food, clean sheets, everything─you name it. What a way to fight a war.”
Oh well, Cooper thought, it doesn’t matter to me anymore. I’m on my way home!
He sat back and enjoyed the wind blowing through his longer-than-regulation brown hair. He hoped he could get away with stretching the rules until he got home. He certainly didn’t want people knowing he was in the military.
He enjoyed crossing the mountains, even with the omnipresent danger from the Viet Cong guerillas. He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled. Even though they had crested the mountain ridge, he could still smell the pungent aroma of the sea blowing in from across the top of the mountain range. He was going to miss waking up in the mornings and smelling the crisp, clean smell of the ocean.
“Oh man, I just love the smell of the sea. There’s nothing else like it.”
“What?” yelled Kelly.
The jeep squealed around a tight corner. Cooper looked out and over the edge of the road. It was quite a drop-off. He knew he probably should have his helmet on, but he hated wearing it. None of the guys wore them anyway. Besides, he had pictures of his girl stashed in there. He didn’t want to mess those up. One of the photos, however, was missing. It was one of his favorites, too.
“I wonder what happened to that picture.”
“What?” yelled Kelly.
“Huh? Oh, Nothing.”
Kelly and Riggs were Cooper’s gunners on a river patrol boat operating out of Vung Ro Bay, where the Hon Ba Mountains reached the South China Sea. Kelly was a West Coaster, an accomplished Los Angeles surfer─sun-bleached hair, tanned, confident, blue-eyed, and cocky. Riggs was a wiry, skinny fellow from Minneapolis. His short, curly black hair framed a pair of silver John Lennon glasses.
They were all assigned to the same boat, even though Kelly and Riggs were Military Police and Cooper was Transportation Corps. It was a strange marriage, even for the military, but it worked very well. Each river patrol boat was crewed by two Transportation personnel to operate the vessels and two Military Policemen for enforcement actions. On occasion, a South Vietnamese Police Officer would accompany the patrols to serve as an interpreter, but that happened at some of the Company’s other eight outposts and was a rare occurrence in Vung Ro Bay due to the small outpost having rare, if any, daily contact with Vietnamese sampans.
The little jeep bounced along the road. “Why so quiet back there, Coop?” Kelly yelled from the passenger’s seat.
“Nothing, man,” Cooper replied. “Just thinking.”
Thinking… thinking about home. He could hardly contain himself. The anxious anticipation was overwhelming. It was almost over─a year in Vietnam─the finish line was in sight.
In Ever Vigilant, Tales of the Vietnam War, Specialist-4 Michael Hebert has written a compelling view of his tour of Vietnam, from his draft to his return Stateside. Done in vignette format, Hebert covers his multifaceted experience with a rare honesty and self-effacing humor that makes reading his stories a joy. Take this excerpt from the chapter that describes how he ended up in such an unusual post (it follows him losing sleep over an upcoming potentially dangerous assignment):
“All you gotta do is sign up for a third year instead of the two you got drafted for, and we’ll send you to a school of your choice.”
Sold! I signed on for a third year the next morning. I flipped through the sizeable loose-leaf binder my first sergeant was showing me. It had listings of all the jobs in the army. Having had “experience” only with trucks, I decided to sign up for Truck School.
“That one’s full. Everybody wants to drive trucks.” the sergeant bellowed.
Continuing to scan through the selections, I came upon Cooking School. My father had been a cook in the Korean War, and he had survived that just fine.
“I’ll try that,” I said. “That’s full, too. Everyone wants to be a cook.”
Flipping through more pages, I came upon various exciting and rewarding positions: Mortar Operator, Helicopter Door Gunner, Sniper, Ranger, Tank Driver, Forward Observer, Infantryman—every one of which screamed “death, death, death” to me. No, No, No! I had looked through just about the entire book and was in the “W” section when something caught my eye: Watercraft Operator! Hmmm…. I thought. How bad could THAT be? “How about this one, sergeant?”
Although the rest of the book absolutely covers the traumas of life in Vietnam, it does so in Hebert's charming style. Never grotesque, always respectful and entertaining (though be forewarned, it does use some of the racial terminology of the time in dialogue and thought segments).
The book is not Platoon or Full Metal Jacket; neither is it Good Morning, Vietnam. It neither pretends nor needs to be. Hebert brings his own experience as a Patrol Boat Specialist to the field, with his own voice, and that is more than sufficient. I heartily recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Vietnam history - or who simply enjoys a good story well-told.