ONENESS In a War Zone

In the very snowy 1950s New England, my family's Christmas' was fantasy-like wonderful to us four kids, but The Best Christmas that I and some of my U.S. Navy shipmates had ever had was Dec. 25, 1966 A.D. during my first combat tour in Swift Boats. It was at our small Swift Boat base in what is now Khanh Hoa Province, Cam Ranh, Binh Ba Bay, Vietnam.
 
Our 16 Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) Swift boats were 50' aluminum boats, shallow draft aft for patrolling inland brown jungle waters and V-hulled forward for the green seawater offshore. They were well armed and equipped with the best off-the-shelf gear the Navy could find; however, one must note that our putative "armor" was aluminum, yup, aluminum armor….and yes, rueful laughter allowed here. 
 
We had a Swift that was hit by a recoilless rifle round that punched through both sides of the bow so neatly that the impact fuse did not ignite. That boat, with the crew likely praying madly, had to come home at full speed to keep those two gaping holes out of the water and accordingly beached with much velocity…. Perhaps a sailor or two knocked out the windshield, but no loss of life.
 
Even at Christmas, one would assume that such good feelings would not be likely to be felt 10,000 miles away from home.... in a confusing war that had bitterly divided our country, a country with its cities aflame with both racial and anti-war based riots, a country where the clash of age-based cultures had caused parents to see their college-aged children as The Other. 
 
With eyes averted, they gave a pass which allowed the Ohio National Guard to shoot down some of those protesting unarmed young students on open ground with impunity ...over a losing war in which we were going to lose 58,212 boys as well.
 
We very much felt the ugliness/pain of the racial riots back home for sure but were somewhat at a loss of what to say to our valued black brother shipmates. Otherwise, we cared little about what the civilians back in CONUS * were rioting against one another about.
 
They and their lives were irrelevant ...they were not us. We chose this life together in Vietnam/Indochina* with its consequences, however mistaken it might be.
 
No matter how much we resembled other folks, mostly passing as "normal," inside our skins, we were different critters; while others fled duty and risk, each of us had volunteered to go to war in this distant, small, hot, quiet, beautiful, but lethal country. Subsequently, we discovered we were there for one another, ourselves alone.
 
My eight Swift Boat Patrol Team Bravo had just returned that Christmas morning from our individual separate patrols.
 
After re-arming and re-fueling our boats so we could leave toot sweet, if so ordered or if the threats hit the fan, we began our Christmas Day.
 
Our initial Post Patrol beers finished (quick-cooling aluminum Hamm's cans rationed one to each man until the boats were ready to go go go)...Mai Tai was made the Drink of the Day. The dear old USN had dropped a generous supply of rum and Trader Vic's Mai-Tai mix in pallets on our bayside beach.
 
That morning, sailorly astute students of the craft / art of Mixology soon realized that the more rum one mixed with the bottled mix, the better it tasted! And, just perhaps, the more effective the beverage became.
 
I went to have a quick drink with my crew at the only not-a-tent shelter on the base except for the latrine: The Enlisted Men's' Club. It was well-known as the longest bar in all Indochina (all from materials stolen or cumshawed * from the Army and the Air Force or stolen from Brown, Root, and Jones, Inc....an American company which seemed to have a lock on most construction in V-N. Rumor was that Lady Bird Johnson was a hidden partner.).
 
The Enlisted Men's Club was the first lumber-built structure on our base. Clearly, the United States Navy had its priorities straight and well in hand.
 
BTW, the lumber-built latrine also was well-known as the longest latrine In Country * (that is, had more seats, all open, one hole next to the next, populated by men cheek to cheek as it were, reading The Navy Times, oblivious to the tropical dysentery beset shipmate beside them. I used to laugh so much every time I saw it. There was something comic about the scene. Surreal. This was in the days before shame-based partitions for males crept into schools, Fenway Park, or anyplace else). Every senior Navy Commander and Admiral serving in or touring Vietnam came to see and actually use both highly regarded, singular facilities. Truly.

For Christmas, the bartenders from our boats were all outfitted in complete Santa Claus costumes given by the very active USO of WWII fame.
 
I appropriated one and proceeded to the boat crews' quarters to spread joy and get all the attention I could get.
 
To my surprise, a number of big clear plastic bags of Christmas presents were being delivered. Consequently, there were demanding cries for Santa, Santa!  Being so drafted, early that morning, I sat down on a crate to do my duty even as it was interspersed with loud and ill-sung carols with harmonica accompaniment. The crew's arms draped shoulder to shoulder: I began handing out the great gifts sent by many, many kinds and quite generous American civilians....to the sailors and others in the country.
 
Each decorated gift came in transparent plastic wrappings (security, no doubt). We knew each other quite well and the person we each were...and the secrets we each thought was a secret. Ha! Therefore, my very insightful Elf (a thoroughly sharp, great lay psychologist), who had an ironic (actually jaundiced) and quite witty take on everyone, would pick the most suitable gift for each man after we had consulted together...funny, teasing, even hopefully embarrassing, and, perhaps, ...revealing. Each sailor had to sit on my knee and be made fun of by me and a highly participative, raucous audience in order to receive his gift.
 
Partway through the gift-giving and ridiculing, when sitting obediently on my somewhat smaller knee, a very broadly beaming shirtless, hairy, muscular 250 lb. Boatswain's Mate, with blue birds, tattooed on his chest's pectorals, flexed his pecs so that the birds appeared to fly, moving their wings to the loud, truly admiring cheers and Hooting laughter of all. I realized that THIS moment marked this Christmas Day, the best of my life.....as we laughed away together, sometimes for no seeming reason at all, when no joke had been let sail and the rum had not yet been sufficiently consumed that morning for any tipsiness… Perhaps because we were still alive when so many were not.
 
How happy I was ...how happy we all were that morning and afternoon. The feelings of caring amongst a brotherhood of volunteers.
 
We were among our own...WE FEW, on our own St. Crispin's Day.
 
In the days following, man after man came up to me and said, "This was the best Christmas of my life." And said With Feeling. THEY MEANT IT, as did I and often an unusually VERY firm shaking of hands. Many even saluted! It's not often done in a combat zone. And it is not often done due to our Swiftie lack of formal military courtesies.
 
And, so it was then, and so it remains now, The Best Christmas of My and other men's lives. Dare I say, the dearest.?
 
I think it also may have been that way because early that tomorrow, because of that choice we had made, early that next morning, our boats would be underway again for whatever was waiting out there. And it was, of course. We just did not know what it would be this time.
 
I still warm my eyes and hands over that Christmas picture and its soundtrack. It was such a joyous and generous gift of grace to have been given to us at a bad time, in a bad place, in a futile war.
 
Out in The World, they may not have understood our choices for risk and duty and our heartfelt JOY in this moment's embrace of us together, bonded by OUR understanding of one another. 
 
It was, perhaps, a chosen but unfindable again, ONENESS, is what I guess.
 
The most un-alone we would ever know. Ever!
 
Even now, as I read this, 56 years later, even now I can feel again those long ago but so alive moments of oneness. Such a gift of Grace…. the fleeting comforting raucous laughter of men and boys at war. Together with our own.
 
Thanks for listening,
Michael T. Alogna
Aka NAHA
PCF 51 (R.I.P.)
(Patrol Craft Fast)
 
*The Mobile Riverine Force (MRF) was a truly combined fighting unit of the USN Brown Water Navy and the Army's Ninth Infantry. Using armored and heavily armed watercraft that looked like Civil War vessels (indeed, some were called "Monitors "), SWIFT Boats, and USN PBRs, this force aggressively interdicted VC activities in the Mekong with much success. 
 
Combined with the efforts of local anti-Viet Cong Vietnamese militias (Including those from Catholic fishing villages that had fled from North VIETNAM), we had essentially won the war in the Delta, although some fighting and killing continued. 
 
When the VC TET "uprising" occurred violating the Chinese / Vietnamese New Year Truce, it was disastrous for the VC in the Mekong and, in spite of media coverage of their temporary infiltration of the US Embassy in Saigon, it was not successful in much of South VIETNAM because the people did not rise up against the government as the VC and North Vietnam had urged them to do.
 
Therefore, unfortunately only the VC and the MRF knew we had won in the Delta. When the NVA overran SVN, the Mekong was the last to fall and the Catholic militias were the last of the last to stop fighting.
 
* " CONUS" = Continental United States; because we did not say the U.S. or America, our patois was more distancing than that.

 
* "Indo-China" because some boats sometimes enterprisingly went to other places, sometimes on their own, in pursuit of Hearts & Minds...for keeps.
 
* " CUMSHAW"; a corruption of Cantonese word "thankful gift" or some variant of that. The old British Navy of Wooden Ships and Iron Men had adopted it to describe getting something in China that your ship needed by suasion, trading, by hook or by crook, a modest bribe, and such. It soon gained worldwide use by the USN also. 

Some sailors/ petty officers (NCOs) were gifted at getting all kinds of stuff on the sly; these treasures were known as Cumshaw Artists. Ship captains would say, " We really need X and the shipyard won't give us any. Who is the best cumshaw artist on board?" "Mission Accomplished, sir".