Read Online Deros Vietnam by Doug Bradley - Free Book Online Page A

office.
    â€œYou try way too hard, Sarge, you know that?” Swenson’s voice seemed friendlier. “You don’t need to try so fucking hard.”
    â€œAll I know is trying hard,” replied Myron. “That’s how I was raised. That’s how you survive. You try as hard as you can”
    â€œJust the same, guys like you need guys like me to look out for you, to save you from.…”
    Just then, there was a low rumble under Swenson’s desk. And another. And suddenly there she was, flushed, smiling, her hair tussled, wiping something from the front of her blouse. Dear god, no!
    Myron stepped back as if he’s been knifed through the heart. He could barely stand up, and he couldn’t hold back the sobs.
    â€œMai, how could you? “Myron whimpered.
    â€œCould me wha?”
    â€œHow could you deceive me?
    â€œD.C.?”
    â€œYou know, lie to me.”
    â€œI no lie, Sar-Jen. I stand,” Mai smiled, oblivious to Myron’s meltdown.
    Myron bolted out the door, the blinding Asian sun hitting him square between the eyes. He stumbled, falling on to a mound of sandbags. SFC Myron Swoboda put his head in his hands and wept, the tears resting on top of a used can of Clamato juice, forming a pool of salt above the big red letters.

Nightly News
    The hearty inhabitants of Eveleth, Minnesota, liked to engage in daily pleasantries. The topics of conversation had been the same for years—the weather, hockey, taconite, and kids.
    Erik and Agnes Swenson were finding it harder to be pleasant these days. Their son Robbie, like the Lindstrom boy and Herb Long’s kid, was stationed in Vietnam. Fortunately for the Swensons, Robbie wrote often and even called home a couple of times.
    But that didn’t really help them sleep any better.
    On October 9, 1969, their TV trays again stood at attention, the beef pot pies sending pockets of steam to the alabaster ceiling, two glasses of milk resting at ease. Five nights a week Erik and Agnes ate dinner in front of the NBC Nightly News. They preferred the Huntley-Brinkley duo to the opinionated Walter Cronkite. And they liked that NBC did not play politics with the war, but just gave them informative, daily reports from Vietnam. Somehow, it made them feel connected to Robbie.
    Between the commercials for Anacin and Tums, the dour David Brinkley introduced a segment by saying that “a former booking agent for Officers’ NCO Clubs in Vietnam, June Collins, testified that club managers had demanded kickbacks. When she complained, she was boycotted and her acts were not hired.”
    A segment of testimony by June Collins came next. “Sleazy harlot,” Erik muttered into his pot pie when he saw the shapely, bouffant-haired Miss Collins. She told her questioners that corruption was widespread in NCO Clubs across Vietnam.
    â€œI don’t know of a single custodian who doesn’t get kickbacks,” she testified to the TV cameras.
    â€œScrew her,” Erik shouted at the TV.
    Agnes asked nervously, “You don’t think this has anything to do with Robbie, do you?”
    As if on cue, shots of a U. S. Army base appeared on the TV screen. David Brinkley’s voice could be heard in the background: “The potential for graft in Vietnam is enormous. One post alone—Long Binh—has forty-two clubs.”
    Agnes shrieked. Erik got up to turn off the TV. It took him a while because of his old mining injury.
    Before he could reach the set, there were more shots of Long Binh as another reporter, outside a club that looked a lot like Robbie’s, began talking. “The more than one hundred such clubs in Vietnam translate into a nine million dollar a year operation,” the reporter named Robert Hager stated.
    Click.
    Agnes was sobbing. “Erik, you don’t think?”
    Erik looked down on the RCA Victor. His face was bright red.
    â€œI know what I think,” he stammered. “I think our