Prey Lewd - 1966

Joey Russo, all of 21,  had arrived in the 95 degree heat and humidity of sexy Saigon at Tan Son Nhat a month before South Vietnam’s National holiday to celebrate the anniversary of the overthrow and assassination of former Prime Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. The Diem regime not exactly a poster child for the democracy we were trying to sell by rammng it down the throat of this small Asian nation at the point of a bayonet.

Joey enlisted in Detroit, basic trained at Fort Knox and was an expert marksman with an M-16...perfect fodder for the Fun, Travel and Adventure the U.S. Army was offering as a door prize to all young Americans who were of draft age and unlucky enough to have their number called. Time to choose your prize boys….a body bag behind door number one or Canada behind door number two or prison behind door number 3 on cell block C in federal prison. No help from our studio audience please!

Joey however wasn’t drafted. He enlisted.  He was spinning the military wheel of fortune hoping to get stationed in sexy  Germany or romantic  France or swim among the Mod hipsters of jolly old England. Anywhere but up country in Vietnam’s  bush where the rice paddy’s ran red with the red, white and blue  blood of  American soldiers. The blood would mix with the similarly red blood of both North & South Vietnamese in body count battle after battle. Strange how Vietnamese blood is also red. Hard to distinguish which blood belonged to which prostrate body or the irrational rationale for the killings over some Pentagon penchant to play a deadly game of napalm + agent orange = freedom. Tag you’re it!

Joey hadn’t  seen any action yet, but was enjoying getting acclimated to life in Saigon.  The language, the chaos of the crowded clogged streets with motor scooters and cabs, the noise and rock music or country music blasting from inside the GI bars and of course, the bar girls, massage parlors and hookers.  Most of all enjoying the bounty of goods available on a thriving black market. American dollars were the Holy Grail of currency.

He had gotten settled in and went with some friends to the A-OK club that afternoon, a favorite watering hole he had discovered by accident. Today was National Day...celebrations, firecrackers, singing, and a parade Joey & Company could view from the bars street front patio while enjoying rounds of 33 Beer,  a popular brand for GI’s also called Ba Muoi Ba.  The jukebox was loud and the music of the Byrds flew gently outside to the filling streets while next door, at the Blue Moon bar, the Okie’s and the southern boys in khaki were fired up on a Bakersfield high as Buck Owens “A-11” was competing on the invisible outdoor beer soaked patio stage with Roger McQuinn’s 12 - string mastery.

Today a parade, beer and a quick trip to Mama San’s later to enjoy the carnal hospitality of her go go go girls who could make love seem like Celestial heaven on earth. Small framed bodies, pert little breasts and enough sexual action to make any man feel “Numbah One GI” for a short time at least.

As “Mr. Tambourine Man”  invited Joey to “take  a trip upon his magic swirlin' ship”
the first explosion from North Vietnamese artillery rocked the street in front the A-OK Club and elsewhere in the city just as the parade was getting ready to get underway.

The VC where in the jungles three miles out from city center. The accuracy of their aim was frightening and admirable at the same time. People scattered in all directions as over two dozen shells pelted Saigon with hot metal and shrapnel. As a bonus for the North Vietnamese, an American minesweeper on the Saigon River was sunk … by a mine that missed detection.

The streets were filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder and the cacophony of shrill screams of people trying to avoid death at any cost. By the time the smoke cleared….numerous South Vietnamese and five Americans were dead including one officer, not that many grunts would care if a 90 day OCS wonder  2nd Louie bit the dust. Enough of them were fragged in the bush anyway, the folks back home were not notified that they died of “friendly fire”.

Joey and his friends suffered only confusion and spilled beer. They were lucky that day. Because of this unprecedented attack this far south into the heart of Saigon, LBJ called for more troops to be sent to hurry the end of this quicksand nightmare.  “We need to end this war, NOW!” former President and hero of Normandy, Dwight Eisenhower told the media.

As for Joey and his platoon….they were already jungle boots on the ground. Within two days he would leave Saigon. Reality was about to bushwhack Joey as he would now go upcountry...all this in the midst of the  attack, a growing national Buddhist uprising, and growing protest against the war back in the states.

He dashed off a letter that night to his best friend, Mickey Cusmano in New York City. They went to school together  back in Detroit, Mickey, a member of the SDS which he had joined in Ann Arbor, Michigan before his move to New York,  now was living in Greenwich Village as a journalism student attending classes at City College by day and organizing against the war at night at the various coffee houses along with his girlfriend, Myrika Christie, an artist and folksinger/songwriter when she performed at the Gaslight Cafe.

Mickey read Joey’s letter with alarm. This was his first personal contact with someone in Vietnam who had just experienced the horror of this so called war. Joey was his best friend and Mickey had tried to talk him out of enlisting, but Joey was stubborn and believed in the cause.

Now the shit was about to hit the fan in a way that would take four young Americans on a road and moral journey into the abyss of protest. “What would Thoreau do under the circumstances?” he questioned silently. He knew the answer and quickly wrote back to Joey.

The times would force them to go  on the run through the turmoil of the Sixties, to Haight Ashbury, Chicago and Canada,  as now Mickey had also that day received his draft notice. He wanted no part of Vietnam. Nor did he want any part of prison for failure to report. His moral compass was being challenged….now he had to find his true moral direction.