Hope
For the Holidays
--a GI remembers
Virginian Pilot, Tuesday, December 7, 1982
In December 1970, I was nearing the end of my first year in the army. It was a strange year. I held none of the then-popular objections to serving in the army. Both my parents had served their country during World War II and I was proud to be following in their footsteps.
But there was one problem. I didn’t really feel that I was walking the same path that they had. So many changes had taken place and the army had come under so much attack in recent years that it was hard to believe that my army was my father’s army. His had had the support of the entire nation. Mine didn’t even have the support of its own members. After one year I was still looking for the missing link.
But as the year was
drawing to a close it was the upcoming Bob Hope Christmas Show that occupied my
thoughts more than anything else as the 12 days of Christmas passed so tediously
slow.
I was an information specialist assigned to the 1st Aviation Brigade. We’d be in charge of taking the official pictures of the show—Hope, the girls, the celebrities, the girls—did I mention the girls.
I naively thought a camera, pad and pencil was all I needed to get me backstage but as Christmas drew near, I realized the competition for the three backstage passes would be just as great among the members of our staff as it would be for good seats among the 20,000 GI’s swarming into the Long Binh amphitheater, just a stone’s throw from our office.
Our information officer kept one and another went to the master sergeant, who had many years of newspaper experience, both in reporting and in getting his foot in the door. There was one more pass, since someone had to actually write the story and so the five remaining enlisted men drew lots. Terry won. The rest of us would have to fight it out in the cheap seats.
Every day in Vietnam began the same—get up, pick out a green shirt that went well with your green pants, eat breakfast, attend roll call, perform police call and walk across the helipad to the building that housed our office. But the day before the show was different. Something had changed for the better. The helipad had been closed off with barbed wire—proof positive that Bob Hope was indeed coming. Everyone was talking about the show—well, they were talking about Miss World, the Ding-a-lings, and Lola.
Less work was done that day than the little work we did every other day. If the war wasn’t stopping for a Hollywood icon and some pretty girls, it sure as hell was slowing down. What was done consisted of buying film and beer at the PX and drawing up battle plans for capturing the best seats in the house. I conducted numerous personal reconnaissance trips to the arena during the day to record the progress, fearing perhaps that the workmen might be gone signaling that it was all a big mistake and there would be no visit from Bob Hope after all.
But the crews were still there putting up lights and speakers and a huge “Welcome to Long Binh” sign. After almost six months something big was finally going to happen.
The day of the show was even less productive than the previous day and even if I had wanted to work, there were too many distractions. Long Binh was a large post by anyone’s standards—20,000 men I had heard. But in just 24 hours it had doubled.
Troops started arriving at the crack of dawn. They were different from those of us stationed at headquarters. We wore the same uniforms but that’s where the comparison ended.
Ours were washed daily by the mama sans and starched for a few extra bucks. Our shoes were shined—not spit-shined because the mama sans never understood that tradition but shined nevertheless.
But the fatigues of the men riding in on the back of trucks or walking in on the roadside looked like they had never been washed. These were the real uniforms of war. The dirt was caked in. The boots were faded—a corroded white due to some strange mixture of water, mud and sunlight. And the men were tanned. Not an oily tan like those of the headquarters personnel—gotten on blankets behind the barracks during off-duty hours. Theirs was a tan like you got when you were a small boy, that mixture of sun and dirt that caused our mothers to cringe.
These men pouring into Long Binh that day was what made the Bob Hope Show what it was. They were coming in from the “boonies”—that no man’s lands somewhere beyond the perimeter that we guarded but never ventured beyond. They came with monkeys on their backs, snakes wrapped around their shoulders and mongrel pups following in their footsteps. It was a strange sight and not one to be easily forgotten. In fact, I don’t expect ever again to see a man lean over a water fountain and see the monkey on his back take the first drink. It was that kind of day.
At mid-morning the captain let us go. Terry had left hours ago to join the other journalist and photographers backstage. Now, it was our turn. I met up with Cecil, my barracks roommate and using the long way around the helipad we returned to the barracks to pick up my camera—already loaded and our beer—already chilled.
It was still early enough to choose any seat in the house. Cecil would have been satisfied almost anywhere but since I was interested in taking pictures we sat next to the center aisle, not too far from the stage. All that was left to do was wait.
We removed our shirts and used them to protect the beer from the sun’s 100ยบ heat.
The men on the stage continued to work as the amphitheater filled up. Troops from all over the Delta were swarming in. And overhead, the helicopters watched it all. After six months with a helicopter unit, I had grown accustomed to the constant hum of rotor blades. It was a sound heard in the morning when I awoke, all through the day and still going strong late at night when I went to sleep.
It felt good to be sitting underneath the hot sun—a sun that was too hot every other day but was just right on this special day. It was better than being at a ballpark or a circus or an amusement park. Hell, we were our own sides how. Twenty thousand GI’s from every state in the union, each carrying his own strange assortment of personal belongings—pets, radios, cameras, souvenir swords and statues, and of course the ever present rifle.
We became a city—a Woodstock city, created overnight of people with a common bond. But things go wrong in cities all the time. They did at Woodstock and they were about to go wrong in Long Binh. At least they would for me.
 |
| No shirts appears to have been the order of the day |
Soon the platform was complete
and from it some more poles raised and another platform constructed. When they
were completed the equipment was hoisted up and then the technicians and
directors took their places, and then more equipment and cue cards and more men
until there was a two-story obstruction separating me from the stars I had come
to take pictures of. Ironically the soldiers sitting in the trees would take
those pictures.
 |
| Gi's imitating John Prine the time he listened to Little Richard sing Tutti Frutti from the top of a telephone pole |
 |
| "We flew in Saigon, " the sign said. "I know it's Saigon. At the airport I put my money in my mouth and someone stole my bridgeworks |
I had it on film—in black and
white. Everyone else was busy listening to it and the ones that followed or
looking at the pretty girls. But me, I was shooting pictures of cue cards. To
no ones surprise, it wasn’t enough.
For weeks I had been dreaming of Lola Falana dancing across the stage and the Ding-a-lings singing their way into my heart. I didn’t want to be taking pictures of stale jokes—stale the minute they were cast aside and put into the range of my viewfinder.
For awhile I tried a guessing game, trying to anticipate which side of the stage each star would enter from and then freeze my camera on the curtain hoping to get at least one picture. When Lola Falana was announced, I fixed my sights, like a skilled sniper might do, on stage left—my eyes glued to the camera, the camera glued to the stage—waiting—waiting.
But when, having never seen her walk on stage, I heard her voice coming over the mike I knew I had guessed wrong. The same thing happened with Miss World and with Johnny Bench, although with Bench, it was not nearly as traumatic.
Halfway through the show, Cecil and I decided we had had enough. Up to that point the visual aspects had been limited to the left and right portions of Les Brown’s Band of Renown. The folks back home would watch the show as if it were being performed in their living room. As for us, the live show being converted into a television show was in reality no more than a radio show. And a radio show, we decided, did not have to be experienced in 100-degree heat drinking now warm beer to be properly enjoyed.
I put my lens cap back on and we began walking back to the company area where we’d listen to the remainder of the show in the club. Of the half dozen rolls of film I had purchased, I had taken only 16 pictures, mostly of GI’s hanging from trees and telephone poles, choppers flying overhead, monkeys, snakes, the “Welcome to Long Binh” sign and the staging complete with cue cards.
But no Ding-a-lings, Miss World or Lola. Cecil was even more discouraged. He didn’t have a camera, and was counting on his memory to keep him going for the next six months.
The company area was deserted when we got back. We put our gear in the room and headed for the club, which was also deserted save for Lin and Rang. They were already listening to the show on Armed Forces Radio, aware that a legend was, indeed, in the vicinity—although not one of us had actually seen him or could attest to his presence.
If the show wasn’t live at the club, at least the beer was cold. So there we sat for the rest of the afternoon, listening to the jokes and cracking our own—mostly explaining to Lin and Rang what a Ding-a-ling was when they returned for another number.
We heard the tremendous roar over the radio and a photo in Stars and Stripes the next day showed them dancing across the stage in fringed bikinis, white knee-high boots; flashing smiles as wide as the Mekong Delta. It was a better picture than I would have been able to take. Still, I would have enjoyed taking that picture myself.
One by one the acts came and went like good army cooks. This was a joke not found on any of Bob Hope’s cue cards that my Sergeant Major told every time a good cook left the company. “He was a good cook as cooks go,” he’d say, “and as good cooks go, he went.”
Bench predicted another pennant for Cincinnati, Lola performed another dance routine and then it was over.
Hope called everyone back and they each thanked the men and told them how happy they were to be playing Long Binh. And then they sang the traditional “Silent Night,” as Cecil and I ordered another beer.
In a way, I guess, I’m glad they put up that television scaffolding. There’s less chance of becoming sentimental listening to “Silent Night” in a bar. I would not have fared as well in the midst of thousands of GI’s, most of who would be back in the boonies that night, many of whom would not see a Bob Hope show ever again—anywhere.
And besides, I didn’t have to actually see him. I was there and my being there was part of what made him a legend. In the weeks and months that followed, the Bob Hope Christmas Show took a back seat to bigger events.
I never really thought about it much until recently but now I realize that even though cameras and work crews stood between the performers and me; I was able to make a much greater connection. Bob Hope and the celebrities who visited Long Binh that day became the link that I had been searching for between my war and my army and my father’s war and his army.
Bob Hope probably didn’t visit North Africa while my father was there. Still, I can almost picture a beat-up, worn-out cue card leaning to the side of the stage.
“We flew into
Tunis. I know it was Tunis. At the
airport I put my money in my mouth and someone stole my bridgework.”
No comments:
Post a Comment