Dark Humor in the Club

My granddad and dad were in WW I and WW II respectively.

So I was patriotic. I was a little naïve about politics back then. I thought it must be profitable for the entities supplying our troops because we keep making the same mistakes over and over. We would fight for a piece of real estate at the expense of young kids and then leave it for the enemy to return and reoccupy. We then in return would come back and repeat the same process of destroyed equipment and dead kids. We don’t learn from our own history. We repeat the same patterns and it divides our nation. We had a large national backing in WW I and WW II, but Korea was not popular. Now in Vietnam, we have half our country divided and protesting.

The only difference now is this was our first helicopter war so we were essentially learning as went along. This made for some interesting situations. At times laughable, (which seems bizarre), but dark humor has a way of raising its ugly head in dark situations.

For example; when we could get our hands on some gin, (at $1.00 per bottle – we were told that was the good stuff) we would drink it out of an empty beer can, (if we didn’t have to fly the next day) with the top cut off with our survival knife and mix it with grape soda or with sprite. Hence the name purple mother fucker and a green mother fucker, (green was the color of the can). No ice mind you, but it got the job done. It was our unwinder. Just be careful of the razor-sharp edge where we cut off the top of the beer can. Helicopter pilots and crews had a very high mortality rate. When we got the next day off we drank away the death and destruction as there was no other way. We were lucky to find our hootch, let alone our bed. The next day we would swear never to get that drunk again as we would be suffering.

You’ve never known anyone until you sat with them in a four-hole latrine, (shit house shed where the bottom four feet of the walls were wood and the top four feet screen, (for ventilation). “Hey man, can you pass me the paper?” After a time or two in there, it was no problem. Really!

Nothing was greater than receiving a letter from the world, (the US). They would talk about nothing or forget and talk about protesters, which we didn’t care for. Guys had girlfriends, wives, and/or acquaintances that would send them a “dear John” letter. Which is military parlance for a break-up, or in the vernacular, “kiss my ass and goodbye, I found someone else.) This is the worst possible thing to happen to a kid 3000 miles away with no ability to try and make things right. They were devastated. We would have to ground them for several days so they could get their head straight.

This is a picture of our infamous officer’s club. It only had two walls.