Part V: War Story

By Temple Ligon
December 6, 2013 

R&R
 
In Part IV there was some description of Vung Tau and its American in-country R&R compound. R&R stood for Rest and Relaxation. There were other names and combinations, but there’s no telling who might read this.
 
For a year’s tour in South Vietnam, whether in the combat arms on the front lines where the fighting was or well behind the wire where the main concern was the capacity of the clubs’ refrigerators, every soldier was given a week’s vacation in a choice of Pacific cities including Sydney, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Tokyo, Seoul, and even Honolulu in the good ol’ USA. The run to Hawaii usually was for the benefit of girlfriends and wives, while the single men had a hard time deciding among the other destinations. They all were selling the same thing.
 
In my case a trip to Sydney sounded best. As a teenager I was a serious tennis player, and anything Australian always had a positive ring for a tennis player, sort of like Canada and hockey, Alabama and football, Kentucky and horses, and Chicago and gangsters. On the other hand, I had absolutely no intention to see or play tennis on my Sydney vacation. As a young man of little education and limited tastes, I was interested in doing maybe two things at the most.
 
When I went to Sydney in the spring of 1970, what I was doing had been the course of action for tens of thousands of troops before me since the build-up in 1965. The vacation operation was like a machine well-oiled and well-used with no expectations of a breakdown. The citizens of Sydney absorbed us as unimportant and not a problem, and the hotels in particular knew us better than most Sydney people.
 
Part of my debate in favor of Sydney was a Playboy article I remembered from about two years earlier. The article recommended Menzies Hotel in downtown Sydney, so that’s what I did. I stayed at Menzies. Looking back on it, there was at least one better hotel, The Wentworth, I think it was. But the restaurant/bar scene downstairs at Menzies was the big attraction for Australian stewardesses.
 
The big difference in comparing my time in Sydney with others’ times in other cities was something of a social phenomenon. In Sydney you had to talk intelligently, pull out chairs, open doors, pay the cab fares, help with the coats, and always dress well – kind of like life in South Carolina. We were all part of the same Anglo orientation and its courtesies, even though the Aussies came from a penal colony and South Carolina was a crown colony. I got along fine as a member of the English Speaking Union.
 
Some guys didn’t have the time for all that. Elsewhere in the Pacific Rim the troops could do or say whatever they wanted as long as they forked over the cash. My introductions had an overriding faux civility, an odd necessary demonstration of respect and manners in that I knew what I wanted. In the end I actually made real friends, but I had to work at it.  The men in Hong Kong would walk into a bar in Kowloon, the mainland side, and walk out in less than five minutes with a friendly beautiful escort. Who’s to say they didn’t understand efficiency in the most basic form of supply and demand? And who’s to say they didn’t enjoy their professionals more than I appreciated my amateurs?
 
On my second night downstairs at Menzies, I got lucky – real damn lucky. I met two guys about 30-35 years old. The younger had just bought a dry cleaning business and the older introduced himself as David McKenzie, a lawyer with Parish Patience & McIntyre – what I found out later was a big deal. They offered their cards. I didn’t have one and I explained why. They turned out to be two nice guys who both had recently married and had not purged their little address books. Their wives were coming down for dinner in another half-hour, which they said was plenty of time to offer me a week’s worth of social potential from their pasts they were throwing away. If I had a tough time getting through, just let them hear about it, and they would make the connection or shift to another one. Talk about nice guys.
 
I had a good week.
 
Just about every night we would alert room service at Menzies around two or three in the morning. We’d call out from the menu the most elaborate meals, combinations of a seafood lover’s delight and the best in beef and lamb, and when the cart arrived – never a tray, too small – I would take out my camera to show the men back on line what we had. I don’t remember photographing the girls, but the food, the meals, the Champagne, now that was something to show.
 
After my week in Menzies Hotel, I told them I wanted to come back and I asked them how to make a reservation.
 
About six months later I did come back, but I was running a week late. No matter. The Menzies kept me a room, knowing my spending habits.
 
After my second vacation in Australia, I could still swing a week’s stay in Hong Kong – something to do with my re-enlistment for a second tour in South Vietnam. All my biases about the commercially crass concubines went right out the window. I had tea every afternoon in either the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon or the lobby of the Mandarin Hotel on Hong Kong Island. The Mandarin was brand-new and the Peninsula was built just after the turn of the century, both about the two nicest lobbies I have ever seen, still.
 
Upon my return from Hong Kong I was readying myself for a return to the world, as we called the USA. After almost 18 months in ‘Nam, mostly in combat, I had done my deal. I had read enough Hemingway to be dangerous and I was even more dangerous after all that experience in the field, far more that anything Hemingway ever saw, but finally it was time to resume life as a college kid.
 
Coming down to my day to pack up and go, I found out we had had a fire in the storage shed where we kept our uniforms, the ones acceptable on planes and in airport lounges, what we called our Class A uniforms, a k a khakis. To fly to Hawaii and then to California, I was supposed to wear my Class As. I had some respectable civilian clothes from Sydney and Hong Kong, but to take the MAC (Military Airlift Command) flight I had to be in Class As. I chose to show up for my flight in jungle fatigues, the only uniform I had. But at least I had a nametag and the patch for the 25th Infantry Division on the right shoulder and another patch for the 173rd Airborne Brigade on the left. And my first lieutenant bars were on the collar. It might have been the wrong uniform, but it was a uniform, thank goodness – which is not exactly what I said – and thereby street-legal.
 
Our MAC jet landed at Hickham Field near Honolulu, which was both the military tarmac and the civilian aviation airport, the way Charleston does it.  We were told to expect to hang out around Hickham for maybe an hour. I went into the commercial side, where the civilians, at least almost half of them, looked awfully good. One stewardess explained to me the Hawaiian Open golf tournament was on the tube the previous weekend while a blizzard blanketed most of the area between Chicago and New York. All those television watchers saw balmy Hawaii while they sat inside, afraid to go out into the blizzard.
 
Out of that incredibly heavily populated critical mass of golf fans, enough decided to get to Hawaii to overflow the place, something unusual for early March, although technically it was still winter until the 21st.
 
I asked the stewardess how was she managing to score a hotel room if she expected to be crowded out by the televised golf watchers. She said she was staying at the Ala Moana, an American Airlines property near the Hilton Hawaiian Village, the place made famous by the television detective series, Hawaiian Eye. She then directed me to the cabstand and recommended I ask to be taken to the Hilton, which could possibly be big enough to absorb the golf fans and still let me have a room. I explained that I was leaving for California in another half-hour because I was supposed to exit the army in another two weeks. She had the prescience to ask if it really mattered where I spent my two weeks till civilian status kicked in. After all, she was checking in soon and she was not unusual. Plenty of stewardesses were coming to Hawaii for some sun in early March, all on the pre-deregulation price structure where stewardesses could fly to Hawaii and stay in a hotel for 10% of the going rate.
 
I had no idea how the army saw my predicament, but I thought I was getting good advice. Why was I in such a rush to get to Columbia, South Carolina? Cogburn’s was not running out of Dixiecrats anytime soon, I was sure. And I had to gather the Ala Moana had plenty more like that resourceful sort who was steering me to the Hilton. I went back over to the military area, and I approached an army sergeant with a clipboard, the universal sign of knowledge and authority. He said the army didn’t care where I spent the next two weeks, but it did care I was there at Oakland Army Base at the end of those two weeks. I asked if I could stay a couple days in the Hilton, say, and still catch a MAC flight to California. The sergeant said the army reserved me a seat that day, and I could take that seat to California, but if I didn’t show for two or three days, maybe the army could put me on another plane. If that didn’t work out, he warned, I would have to buy a commercial ticket at my own expense.
 
Fine, sergeant, thank you, I said. I’ll take that risk.
 
I sat in the back of a Cadillac cab and asked the driver to take me to the Hilton Hawaiian Village. In a few minutes we arrived, and I climbed out in my jungle fatigues carrying my duffel bag over my shoulder. I was directed to the check-in desk where I met one of the world’s Great Guys. He looked at my unimpressive appearance and asked if I had a reservation. No, I said, I didn’t, but I was hoping there was room at the inn.
 
Great Guy asked if I was on R&R. I said no, I already had two runs to Sydney. He then thought I was meeting my wife on some kind of special price for married military. No, I responded, I was not married and I was not meeting my girlfriend, either. Then he needed to know if I was on some form of official leave. I explained my situation about the two weeks until I had to be at Oakland Army Base, but I further explained I planned to go back over to Hickham in probably just two days for my flight to the world. He understood. He also asked if I had a wardrobe more than what I was wearing. I said, yes, I was fastidiously outfitted by fast-track tailors in Sydney and Hong Kong, and I should move about most any hotel lobby in complete confidence.
 
Then Great Guy got down to business.
 
Here’s what we can do, he said. We can give you a suite, two rooms with two full baths, on the 15th floor in the Rainbow Tower with two verandas overlooking Diamond Head. You have to leave in two days, but for those two days we’ll charge you $27.50 instead of the posted $65. Part of how we’re doing this is because we’ll book you at the single occupancy rate even though you get a suite. Fair enough?
 
Deal, I said.
 
Keep in mind this was in 1971 dollars. Figure on almost $400 today instead of the $65, and I paid only $160 today which was $27.50 then, roughly.
 
Two days later I called Great Guy to tell him how much I was enjoying myself at his fine property and I was wondering if I could simply stay put at the existing room rate and at the existing food and beverage habits I had developed over the past two days. All right, Lt. Ligon, fine, you can stay till the end of the week. I thought we had an understanding, but what the hell. Enjoy yourself.
 
At the end of the week I called Great Guy to declare my position: I’ll be out of here by the end of another week. I promise. 

Sign up here to receive MidlandsLife weekly email magazine.