Bertha

Upon waking in the early grey of first light, Bertha came into my mind; a mind of neural cobwebs, which boots up and immediately begins to assail my consciousness.

I hadn’t thought of her in a long time.  I sit with my legs over the side of the bed, sucking on the first cup of joe, earplugs connected to the Kindle Fire, listening to NPR (my apologies once again, Dave Rios, for not tuning in to your morning drive time) and inhaling nicotine in roiling clouds of smoke. (I’ll do a monograph on the pure evil of nico-addiction one of these days; but for now, all you non-smoking crusaders, just shut up and listen).

No, Bertha was not a woman, despite the feminine handle.  She was a long wheel-based multi-fueler, frequently seen on Mash and about every war movie I ever viewed.  She had twelve forward gears, six in each axel ratio, and the work-hard growl of a big working truck. 

Probably, she was used in the initial construction of our home, the Service Craft Division Pier, long before my arrival in Viet Nam. 

I sat on my bed, using Goofy as an arm rest.  In repose, my forty pound Standard Dachshund so much resembles a full loaf of horsecock salami, a staple of every Navy galley I ever raided.  Back to Bertha, or, Big Bertha, as we affectionately called her.

By the time I had assumed my duties as Boathouse Yeoman (think Radar O’Reilly), Bertha had become the snipe’s truck, ostensibly to run supplies and parts for the pusher boats. She sat idle most of the time, but whenever I could dream up an excuse to run errands down to Camp Tien Sha or China Beach, Big Bertha was first choice—even when the Division’s pickup trucks were themselves available.

We ran gasoline most of the time, although with the twist of a knob, we could run on diesel, J-4 aircraft fuel or kerosene. Hell, we could probably have used fermented sauerkraut juice in a pinch.  I would turn the key and punch the starter; Bertha would roar to life belching great plumes of coal black smoke.

Off we would go, my friends and I, like Faulkner’s Rievers, free of the deadly humdrum of the day’s monotony.   I was twenty three.  There was a terrifying war being conducted not twenty clicks away, a war that was distant and none of my concern.  All of us in the ‘rear’ areas, wherever the hell that was, trudged through the 365 days of our tour (yes, Ray, I know the Marines went 13 months), oblivious to the grizzly fighting over the next hill, which nightly came to television sets back in the World.

We focused on whatever would keep the specter of the boogey man of a determined enemy at bay.  Like all young men, we believed ourselves immortal; that one day soon, we would be ‘short in-country’, waiting out the final days of our tour in this sweltering mosquito infested bog.  We would arrive alive in a safe place, never to visit that awful place again.

For the moment, Bertha was our relief.  Churning up clouds of dust and smoke, I would run through all twelve gears to bring her to the top speed of 50 mph, before the killjoy governor kicked in.  Running the gears was not necessary: Bertha was not hauling 20 tons of material; but the young Cannonball-at-the-wheel would not be denied his fun. 

Scattering chickens and dogs in our wake, hearing ‘You numbah ten GI’ shouted in the Doppler of our path from some startled denizen, we careened our way down the highway, three or four of us adventurers packed into the spacious cab of the old sweetheart; each of us made whole by the journey with no thought for the end.

I sit swinging my legs, pressed on Slumbering Goofy, and relive those few halcyon moments from long ago.  Soon, the brain will stir, like an annoying aide de camp, to list all the tasks of the coming day—as much a killjoy as Bertha’s governor.  Get dressed, brush my teeth, shoot insulin, lift Goofy off the bed, take meds, stumble to the coffee pot for the next cup.

Maybe I’ll return to Da Nang someday.  Since the Vietnamese likely commandeered Bertha as they did the entire jetsam left behind, I hope to envisage the old girl, lumbering down those same dusty roads, testator to a young man’s joie de vie in the middle of the worst morass in U.S. history.