So said the sign over the door to the platoon’s fourth hooch, part of which was converted to a club in December 1970. Plywood was nailed over the lower half of the walls, and the top half was slatted. Part of the metal roof was replaced with transparent panels to provide a skylight. The bar itself was plywood covered, and some bamboo had been obtained on the local market, split and used to cover the front of the bar and provide a rail. Slats were nailed to the rafters, and Christmas lights were strung among them for a night club atmosphere. Bar stools, two tables and some chairs were acquired from somewhere, and the walls were decorated with centerfolds. One of the tables was upholstered with the finest olive drab wool army blanket for card players. To help dry the patrons’ sweat there were three fans in the club, including a ceiling fan. A hole was cut into the wall behind the bar for easy disposal of empty cans and such.
Steve Rollins wrote to his wife Ann that we needed a list of distillers and brewers that might be able to help us get some bar stuff like glasses, signs, little paper napkins, etc. Ann contacted a distributer in Atlanta who gave us all kinds of stuff – signs, napkins, mirrors, glasses, even lamps, all kinds of good bar stuff. Ann was working for Southern Bell at the time. She took this bounty to the mail department and asked if they could help her. They packaged it and even mailed it all to us!
Through connivance, Paige Sawyer and Tom Yohn managed to get stuck with the task of running the club. When the teams were out on missions, there would be only one or two people left in the barracks, and they were sometimes not in the area. On occasion, things came up missing. One of the Vietnamese maids, who needed free run of the barracks in order to do their job, was caught helping herself to some ammunition. The maids cleaned the hooches, made beds, polished our boots, and did our laundry, including ironing our jungle fatigues. They did their ironing on an army blanket on the floor in the back room of the club. They did an exceptional job for us, for which we paid them $5 per man per month, converted to piastres, of course. It was not a lot of money for us, but it was good pay in the Vietnamese economy.
Sawyer and Yohn went to Sam Kemp, the Platoon Sergeant, who had not been there long enough to be on to these two yet, and expressed their concern about theft in the barracks. They volunteered to stay behind and watch the barracks when teams went out on missions. Kemp agreed and further added that they would manage and keep the club clean. Every day, they would clean out the club and re-stock the refrigerators. Then, they’d spend the rest of their day reading and working on their tans, doing regular quality checks on the beer throughout the day. Some of the other guys chided them for not going to the field or doing any work, but they did appreciate the chance at the end of the day or the end of a mission to get together in the club, where they ran a tab until payday.
About the first of the month, the platoon members would all go to the PX and buy their month’s ration of three cases of beer each. Budweiser (and maybe Schlitz and Miller High Life) sold for 3 dollars a case. Other brands like Black Label, Pabst, Hamms, and Falstaff, which were all typically shunned as their cans tended to rust in the PX yard, were two forty a case, the same as soda. The club would buy the beer and occasional case of soda or bottle of liquor from the members at cost and sell it back to them, one can at a time, at a very modest profit which was used to buy snacks and bar supplies.
The club had a 13-inch black and white television with (sometimes) acceptable reception, so they could watch whatever programs the Armed Forces TV Network thought were suitable, including the occasional football game re-run. Music was always available via the radio or reel-to-reel tape deck. The first Frazier-Ali fight was broadcast live at an unnatural hour, but a lot of the guys stayed up and listened to it. Ali was against the war and refused induction. He was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment, but the sentence was stayed for four years pending the successful appeal of his conviction. Frazier claimed he was not against the war, but he had a deferment for being married and a father. This fight was a big deal. When Frank Sinatra could not get suitable tickets, he took a job photographing the fight for Life magazine. Frazier won, by the way.
There was also a hot plate and a skillet in the club. Darryl Stoffer and John Michael ‘Ironman’ Randolph were often the last two in the club at night. After an extended evening of fellowship, they would cook a bedtime snack from c-rations or whatever had been found at the PX. Typically, the PX had Vienna sausages, Beanie Weenies, corned beef hash, Spam, canned tamales, and various other canned ‘foodstuffs’ that had been turned down by starving people in underdeveloped countries. They’d mix together whatever was handy, probably drown it in Heinz 57 sauce, eat their fill and leave the remains in the skillet. This stuff was so disgusting the rats and bugs wouldn’t touch it, so Sawyer and Yohn had to clean it up in the morning. (It served them right for their conniving ways.)
After filling up on their fine cuisine, Stoffer and Randolph would retire to their room, turn the stereo up and drink and talk over the stereo half of the night. The racket from their room could be quite annoying for those who preferred to sleep, and it sometimes resulted in ‘discussions’ of the matter in the hallway. There was something about these two, though, that kept anyone from staying upset with them for long.
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