If you want to honor a Vietnam vet, you could pick no better hat to doff than a boonie, aka a bush hat. The brimmed cotton topper was a point of pride for infantrymen like Grady Myers. As Grady recalls in "Boocoo Dinky Dow,: My short, crazy Vietnam War," he found his on a dusty parade field in Dak To. "Bleached by the sun from green to tan, it had a narrower brim than the newer bush hats. It would definitely give its wearer that old-timer look, and I was pleased to find that it fit my big head. "The baseball-style cap I’d been wearing was scorned by many of the infantrymen, who associated it with training. But I had creased its bill and roughed it up to make it look reasonably veteran-ish—enough so that Johnson, who had lost his hat during guard duty the night before, was delighted when I passed it along to him." At a recent "Boocoo Dinky Dow" book reading, veteran Ray Heltsley showed with pride a camouflage pattern boonie that had seen two tours in Vietnam -- first on the head of a friend, then on his own. The word "SURF" is stitched on it.. When I asked Ray later for details, he replied: "The boonie hat was given to me by a former O'Dea High School classmate, Tim Crowder, who went to Vietnam as a Marine in 1966. He told me that he won it for taking 2nd Place in the Da Nang Surfing Championships. The fluorescent pink material inside the hat is a piece of an aircraft signalling panel. When the hat is turned with the panel pointed upward, you can pop it open and closed and it becomes a visible signal so that an aircraft can spot your location." The back of the hat is trimmed with luminous tape called following tabs, Ray added. "They glow in the dark, so that the person behind you can follow you silently without losing track of you and breaking silence by calling for you. It's all pretty much Ranger protocol, and most of the people in the line units didn't do this kind of stuff." Vets like Ray are delighted by the detailed descriptions Grady put into his memoir. The hats, the knives, the ham-and-lima-bean meals remind them of their time of intensive living in Vietnam -- which, along with its profound miseries, had traditions and habits they will never forget.
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Ray Heltsley is a retiree on Whidbey Island in cool Northwestern Washington. In 1969, he was in tropical Southeast Asia, a U.S. Army adviser working side-by-side with the South Vietnamese. Ray, who will join me at a Nov. 6 reading of "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short crazy Vietnam War," got a perspective on the Vietnam War that most American soldiers were denied. He got to know individual Vietnamese, developing friendships and professional respect for them. Ray was a lieutenant; Grady Myers was a private. Ray went to 'Nam as a college graduate; Grady was a dropout whose professional training was still in the future. But when Ray read "Boocoo Dinky Dow," Grady's memoir, he related strongly to many of Grady's experiences, starting with the moment he stepped off a plane in Vietnam. In "Boocoo Dinky Dow," Grady recalled: "It was the second evening of our long day when we arrived at Tan Son Nhut airfield outside Saigon. When the jet door swung open, it let in a blast of hot air. When I stepped outside, I felt as if a damp blanket had been thrown over me." Ray describes the experience this way: "When I got off the plane, I thought 'I have to get away from this plane exhaust.' But when I went in the terminal, it felt just the same." Ray arrived in-country with some understanding of the Vietnamese language, politics and culture, thanks to Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Assigned to work with the South Vietnamese troops -- many of whose officers had fled North Vietnam -- he got a strong figurative and literal taste of the culture. While other GIs were told not to eat food prepared by locals for fear it might be poisoned, Ray learned what was safe and scarfed it down. "I ate monkey and dog," he recalls. "I kind of drew the line at fish soup that has eyeballs." Ray also experienced combat. Felt fear. Identified lots of bodies. He, like Grady, had to decide when to fire his weapon. He recalled choosing not to kill an enemy who was caught literally with his pants down because it wasn't the way HE would want to die. Ray went on to a law enforcement career. But he studied journalism in college and that training is evident in his own well-written 85-page Vietnam memoir. In it, he summarizes his experiences in a way that could've come from straight from Grady and the other veterans who've been kind enough to join me at "Boocoo Dinky Dow" readings in Grady's absence. He writes: "I have lost the sharp memory of the order in which my adventures unfolded, but they lie jumbled in the corridors of my mind, stark and real memories of an experience that I wouldn’t have missed for the world and would never want to repeat." |
Julie Titone is co-author of the Grady Myers memoir "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War." Grady was an M-60 machine gunner in The U.S. Army's Company C’s 2nd Platoon, 1st Battalion, 8th Regiment, 4th Infantry Division in late 1968 and early 1969. His Charlie Company comrades knew him as Hoss. Thoughts, comments? Send Julie an email. Archives
November 2018
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