100 Monkeyz

A Story by Bruce Gatten

A story about the author's Viet Nam war experience, where he was a highly decorated US Army soldier.

100 Monkeyz

The airliner began its spiral descent to land at Bien Hoa. Even at two-thousand feet you were already sweating from the suffocating tropical heat and humidity. Disembarking from the aircraft, our first view was of body bags being hastily loaded into the cargo hold for the return trip to the ‘States. The jarring image instantly cutting through all the phony, superficial pretexts of bravado and patriotism. You were an expendable government commodity. Fall in battle and there’d be another to replace you. Just as we were replacing those who came before us. A slight bit of inattention and you’d return home in a plastic bag. What more was there to say? You prayed not to return like that.

When the rains finally came everything changed. The locals all welcomed the rain. After months of oppressive heat and humidity the monsoons were a blessed relief. They meant life and rejuvenation. But for the grunts in the field the torrential rains only added another layer of misery and discomfort.

The rain held its own mysterious power, muting all other sounds with its relentless, stinging and tap, tap, tapping staccato. Its beat resounding upon the broad grass and the leaves of trees. The rain drilling into the broken patterns of tiger striped camouflage hats, blouses and pants of hidden soldiers.

We sat motionless alongside the trail. Like silent, deadly ghosts within the rain and mist. Our lives encapsulated within a deadly chess game where the players struggled to remain alert, patiently waiting and watching. Waiting for the enemy’s mistakes, just as he watched for ours. The mind numbing rain hypnotizing, lulling less disciplined men into a state of diminished awareness.

The kill zone of hidden Claymore mines spanned the width of two narrow, converging trails. The rain’s constant patter drowning out all sound. After weeks of continual rain we were resigned to the impossibility of ever again being dry. Everything, no matter how well protected, became a sodden, rotting mess. It dissolved our clothes and boots, penetrating triple layers of plastic used to keep crucially important maps dry. Ammunition fouled, weapons malfunctioned. Scores of leeches hiding in the grass mystically smelled our blood and would attach themselves to the smallest portion of uncovered skin.

The slightest inattention could prove deadly. I momentarily diverted my eyes from the mountain trail to watch an iridescent caterpillar slowly inch along a broad leaf stem toward a smaller blue and green insect. Suddenly, the caterpillar disappeared as a long, sticky, pink tongue darted from an invisible lizard only inches from my face. Startled, a chill of terror ran up my spine. Alertness and reflexes were everything. Lifetimes flashed by in an instant. In less than a second your life could be over. Death was all around us. Standing by our sides. Taunting. Daring anyone to feel safe and secure. Mocking. Waiting for us to make one errant move. The uncompromising drama that played out every minute. Where with each successive day that one remained in the bush his chances of being killed only increased. Countless ages flashed past in the blink of an eye. Where the unsuspecting predator could quickly become the prey.

Early morning mission. The first light of dawn slowly pushed up in the Eastern sky. Coming down out of the mist and fog we looked like ghost spirits. Stay in the jungle long enough and you could feel its vibration. Attune to its subtle rhythm. The jungle and its overwhelming greenness. Listening closely to its pulse and how all things were delicately connected. Like threads that are woven left to right, up and down, over and under. The imprint of time creating the perfect living fabric of life and death.

A short distance ahead in a shallow jungle clearing a small village appeared to float surreally atop the jungle floor. Along its perimeter a makeshift stockade thicket of interwoven sticks fashioned to keep the villagers’ pigs and chickens from wandering away. Smoke from camphor fires slowly swirled upward in wispy threads and hung just above the thatched huts that we’d soon be searching and destroying.

We entered the village from three sides. Sweating, grunting soldiers, loaded down with machine guns, grenades and American machismo. None saw the miserable Vietnamese as human beings. We looked through them. We might kill anyone of them for the smallest provocation. Their plight was less than spit to us. Their sorry faces only stimulated our utter contempt for their existence.

In the months since Tet we had killed hundreds, perhaps thousands. Anyone who ran, fought or brandished a weapon of any sort was immediately done. Shoot first. Ask questions later. Reconnaissance by fire. It was the way to stay alive. We were indifferent to their years of pain and suffering. We, the terrible legions of cocky teenagers and twenty-year olds who’d metamorphosed into tough, battle hardened killers. Combat veterans completely callous to the existence of anything Vietnamese. We were a pack of dangerous b******s with guns.

It didn’t take long to figure things out. The war was bullshit. We loathed our fellow Army officers and superiors as much as we did the Vietnamese. Officers who sent us out on idiotic missions that, even if successful, accomplished nothing. With each day spent in country you had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Today our orders were to search through their crummy village for weapons, documents or anyone suspected as Viet Cong. The villagers had been over the same drill dozens of times before. They knew from experience to be submissive and polite. Still, it mattered little to us. Armed with attitude and M-16’s, we saw through their deceptions. We were the arrogant gringos, the invaders of their land. We took everything away and only returned pain.

We searched through the villagers’ sorry possessions as though it really meant something. Two soldiers entered a small hooch, their rifles pointed at a tiny Mama-san as she clutched an infant to her chest. Her eyes wide and filled with fear. Through black, betel-nut stained teeth she desperately gestured that she was not the enemy. “No VC! No Viet Cong! Vietnam! Vietnam!” The grunts pushed her aside and continued poking about with their bayonets, digging into a bag of grain stenciled with a picture of a smiling Uncle Sam, and the caption, “A Gift from the U.S.A.” The bag was promptly emptied out onto the dirt floor of the hooch. Another soldier carefully lifted a straw mat. “Would you hide a bomb under here, Mama-san?” In another hut soldiers upset a makeshift altar of Buddha, kicking pots and pans over with distain. No sticky search and seizure laws to stumble over here. We could go anywhere and do anything. No door was ever locked to us. We were more than the police. We were absolute.

To no one’s surprise, nothing of consequence was found. No matter, our mission was to search and destroy. After the search, one by one their thatched huts were set afire. Zippo therapy. No one living in the village was allowed to retrieve any of their possessions. It never occurred to us that they’d just lost everything in their lives. Worse still, it wouldn’t have mattered, in short order the entire village was reduced to smoke and ashes. On the outskirts of the smoldering village, a soldier casually shot a pig. No pets allowed.

A short distance away the village folk were pushed into several groups, old men, women and children. They huddled together crying, in shock, unable to move or speak. An ARVN soldier spoke sternly to them in Vietnamese, explaining how they would be relocated to a new village in a secure area. The women whimpered, softly holding their babies to their breasts. These were ancestor worshippers. Moving them away from the grave mounds of their forefathers would cut them off from everything they held dear in their lives, bringing only more pain and chaos into their already shattered lives. For the villagers it was as though eternal time had suddenly ended.

Even in my dreams it was always Viet Nam. I thought, “If I wake up again tomorrow, what will I feel? Would I see people differently, or as I did when I focused them in my rifle sights?” I wanted to wake up again in Viet Nam, to smell the smoke of the camphor fires and feeling so alive…so…invincible.

In a small Albuquerque espresso house I met an intense Viet Nam Vet who did two tours in the boonies near the Cambodian border as a LRRP. He proudly showed me his silver Montagnard bracelet. He wasn’t adjusting well to regular civilian life. He asked me if I’d ever heard the story of the 100 monkeys. “It’s important to know how everything works,” he began. He explained how if you teach a monkey a new trick or skill, he’ll pass it along to the next monkey. And so on and so forth. Generation to generation. And when the critical mass of monkeys who learned the trick reached the right number, then all the monkeys everywhere incorporated the trick into their repertoire. “It’s called 100 monkeys,” he said. “So the question you’ve got to ask yourself is, do you want to be the 100^th monkey?” At the time I didn’t get it. Probably because I resisted the comparison of myself to a monkey. But not just any monkey. The 100^th monkey.

It was a gorgeous, sunny morning in Pampano Beach, the rippling ocean air rustling atop beach side palms, their leaves torn and tattered, still lolling from the previous week’s storm. The ocean spray crisp and clean, the fresh surf gently kissing my bare toes as busy sand pipers rushed to and fro. Only feet away in the shallow water a pair of lightning fast silver barracudas flashed past. Further out, white capped waves offered up a feast for circling gulls. Predators and prey. The strong and the weak. The play of nature relentless and unforgiving. The sudden realization of my colossal blunder. What was I thinking to marry a girl I scarcely knew? And now, more to the point, what to do with her body as it floated listlessly in the ocean some twenty yards out. Had I misread the marine charts and miscalculated he direction of the tide change? There were plenty of questions I should have asked. If the tide took the body out to sea would it later return it?

Walking arm and arm, two sweethearts strolled along in the white sand, engaged in intimate conversation. An audible gasp escaped my throat as the woman pointed toward the floating body. But then they laughed as they mimicked the haphazard flight of a lone gull. The reason for pushing her head down into the water still vivid in my mind. It wasn’t my intention to drown her. I only wanted to give her a mouth full of water, to teach her a lesson, purely in fun. She shouldn’t have slapped my face and scratched my cheek in retaliation. Her sudden, explosive rage taking me off guard, my instincts taking over, right hand on her throat in the Ranger choke hold, her stunned expression turning to horror as I pushed her head down into the water. Holding her head inches below the surface I peered deeply into her eyes. The eyes will never lie.

Once near the Laotian border I shot a crouching NVA soldier in the chest only seconds before he hoped to spring his own ambush on an approaching column of American soldiers. Etched upon his face a look of shock and amazement that he had become the prey, no longer the predator.

The acrid smell of napalm and cordite hung thickly in the air. What had caused me to snap inside? Stepping out into the surf I dipped my hands down into the water, splashing the salty brine on my face, the deep facial scratch instantly burning. Overhead, a pair of Navy Phantom Jets screamed past as they unloaded their cargo of 500 pound bombs on dug-in NVA positions. Less than one hundred yards away successive orange fireballs rose up into the sky, the deafening blasts and violently shaking ground followed by deadly waves of concussive energy. I crouched low, looking for cover. No. You have to pull back. Pull back. Look out there. Look around. Look closely, you’re back in the world. That’s all behind you now. No NVA soldiers waiting around the next bend to ambush you. No need to call in artillery or an air strike.

Huge ocean cargo freighters slowly moved across the distant horizon. My reverie shattered as she suddenly righted herself in the water and called out to me, waving her arms in supplication. “Come on out, scardy cat. There’s no sharks out here. The water’s fine.” I stood speechless for several tense seconds before I raised my hand and waved back to her. The deep scratch on my face mysteriously healed. Her lifeless body somehow revived, resuming her playful carefree nature. Behind me I alerted to the sound of NVA soldiers moving slowly up the trail, the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up. They were close enough to smell. I slowly turned but they were gone.

I would try to enjoy a day at the beach with my new wife. And I would try to survive in my strange new life one day at a time. Even as my primeval instincts held my soul fast. The jungle pushed and pulsated all around me. I wondered where my life was taking me and who I had become.