Ants and "Con Cooks"

          The South Vietnamese Government had a difficult time trying to keep track of people. It was a third world country without the kinds of birth certificates, marriage licenses, and community structures that we are used to in the U.S. I remember some of the farming families in the rural regions frequently lacked any official identification. Many families had fled to South  Vietnam when Communism gripped the North. Some families were sent down from the North to infiltrate the south in the early years of the war in an effort to influence the expected election. Other families had been displaced by the war, forced to give up their homes and farmlands when their enemies were successful in securing control over their region. And, of course, there was the river of North Vietnamese soldiers moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into Laos, Cambodia and on into the South. Of course, by 1969, we were aware that some of the people moving around us were VC, NVA or their sympathizers. Anyway, one of the ways that the government in the South was trying to figure out who belonged where ; was supportive of the government and who was a potential enemy, was to issue identification papers. These were called "con cooks" (perhaps it was spelled "con kooks" or something similar) We just had to know the word and they were expected to show us the card which they carried. Anyway, many of our days in the delta were spent on missions where they would send us out on foot, on boats or they would load us up on trucks, (kind of like cattle trucks) and transport us to the predetermined region. We would then move off the transports and out into a long line and sweep along through the country, checking every house, every hamlet; trying to make sure that the people belonged in that area and they had gone through the process of establishing identification with the South Vietnamese Government..

          I always felt like our leaders in the Platoons, men like Lt. Joannides, SSGT. Elias, did not like these missions. The very nature of the thing strung their men out where security and communication were pushed to the limit. For the Officers and NCOs, there was always difficulty keeping track of all of the soldiers. It was difficult for them to hold some semblance of organization with us stretched out at such a distance. If anything happened, they would have difficulty trying to get into position quickly in order to support the men in danger.

          Another reason that they probably did not like this duty was that the nature of the work had us interacting with the locals and the locals were never to be trusted. The general attitude among the men in my squad was the they may act normal by day but they may well be humping rockets and other supplies for "Charlie" at night. One tried not to turn your back to them. I think most of these poor souls were just caught in the middle. They probably had no strong political beliefs and they probably had little sense of a nation and little respect for any government. I think the majority of the local population in rural areas simply wanted to be left alone to raise some rice, have some kids and perhaps save enough to own a stinking water buffalo, a bicycle, or a rusty old used motor scooter that would run. Unfortunately they were in the middle and there were all kinds of outside forces messing with their lives. There were the VC and the NVA According to what I have learned about their history, these two forces of the enemy may have been on the same side but there is some evidence that they did not like or trust each other very much. There seems to have been a great deal of friction and struggle for local control between these two groups. Then there was the frequently changing South Vietnamese Government which seemed to be using the people to further their own agenda. Then there were the Americans, the Australians, the Koreans and the Tie forces in their homeland. So, as I look back at their plight, most of those folks would probably do whatever they had to do in order to try to keep their families together and alive.

          I remember that most of those Elvira days, when the mission was checking identification cards, were always filled with long boring hours and a lot of leg work. I remember we stumbled into one remote family which had several young children and an older son, perhaps in his late teens or early twenties, who was crippled, with a swollen knee and a leg, shriveled to little else but bone. There was also a frail old woman in the group. When we discovered that none of them had the proper identification, we were ordered to move the entire family many kilometers in order to get them into the identification station. We ended up carrying the crippled fellow and his younger sibling most of the way. They were skinny, little folks, mostly bones, but when their weight was added to our normal combat gear, they certainly were not light. After numerous miles with them on our backs, we were suffering. When the army issues a soldier a field pack of rations and gear, a flack jacket, water, grenades, ammo, sticks of C4, a Claymore, and weapons, they do not expect the load to include additional people. In other words, that was not a very fun afternoon. We ended up dropping the family off at the ID station set up by the Brigade, and I have no idea how they all got back home. I am simply glad that we did not have to face the heavy load of that responsibility.

           On other days with a similar mission we were loaded in a river craft called an LCM. We would ride in the thing up river to a spot were the boat’s skipper could land. He would just swish the front of the thing up onto bank. The front of the craft would come down like a drawbridge, and we would walk out onto the banks of the river. Then he would reverse the engines and back right out into the river and move on. We would work the area, checking for the identification cards and then we would meet the fellow driving the boat later, up river. I think this boat driver was keeping several of our Platoons in business on those days. Seems like he was always alternating between moving us and moving other units in Delta Company along the rivers and canals.

          Now, on one of the days when we were given this kind of mission, I had a little adventure that I can share with you. We were working the hamlets and farms along a river but there were long stretches of time when we did not have the landing craft to move us along. We were having to do a great deal of walking along the banks between farms and hamlets. I can remember that we noticed part of a thatched roof located out on an island well over a kilometer into the water. Now, if memory serves me, their was quite a bit of flooding because the river had come up into the Nippa palms and other trash foliage which usually lined the river banks. However, from our location, the river was very wide and the current did not seem to be too strong, even with the high water.

           Well, our dedicated Platoon Leader, Peter Joannides, did not want to miss checking any locals in the mission sweep, but he also did not want to risk some of the shorter men, especially those who could not swim, so he took a long hard look at the dirty faces on the sweaty men who were in his area and called for the tallest man in his platoon...unfortunately, that turned out to be me.

           I walked over to where he was standing and he said, "Fromme, can you swim?" Well, I was too young, and too stupid, to know how to get out of these kinds of situations and I answered the man with the truth. I said, "yes."

          With the men taking a brake on the bank above the high water, I moved into the brown slurry. It was up to my ankles, then up to my knees. Then it was at my waste and I had to hold my weapon up to keep it dry. The current seemed to keep drifting me along to the right, as I moved on out toward the island. I noticed that the watery distance to the Platoon on the bank was growing substantial.

            As I struggled against the current, I drifted into some trees and I noticed one which seemed to be unusually red. Soon I had drifted over beside it and brushed against the thing. The red was everywhere. A bright red sheet of lace, like part of a window curtain, hung over the front of my helmet and my eyes. The red covered my arms, my weapon, the grenades hanging from my shirt. The red was everywhere, even clumps of it were stringing out from me, riding up and down on the waves of the current and breaking off in floating patches that drifted away with the muddy water. Then I realized that the red was alive. Ants!

           Under the water I went...every bit of me, even the M16 that I carried at that time.

          When I came up again, I was out from under the tree and the ants were long gone. My part of the red tree were headed down the river. I had a few welts on my ears and neck but I was really lucky. I decided that the water must have flooded their home several days earlier and in such a fashion that they simply moved up onto whatever they had near their mound or hive. It must have been the tree and they had been on the thing, hanging onto it and hanging onto each other since the flooding had begun.

          Well, the water eventually took me in to my arm pits and then the island bank began to rise. In the current, I had drifted down river and was not entering the land where I had planned. At the rivers’ edge, I noticed foot prints in the mud and the usual accumulation of other signs indicating that the place probably had some inhabitants. It did.

            It was a sleepy, depressing place. Every person I came into contact with seemed to be a bit ill. Sometimes there were soars on their faces and ears, one old fellow seemed to have only part of his hand. I checked in one of the little hooches and two people were laying on old wooden twine wrapped bed frames and they certainly did not look healthy. None of what I saw looked threatening, but it was sure a a pathetic place. The image has lingered and continues to haunt me. I was a bit disturbed when I realized that one old hag was following me from hootch to hootch. She bothered me because I did not like her or any local too close behind me. I kept trying to kind of walk sideways so that I could keep an eye on her as I moved through the huts. She, and the suffering people on the island were a bit of a distraction for me. I remember feeling a bit lonely in that strange place. It was like living in a bad dream.

          Eventually I remembered my mission. I ask the old woman for the "con cook." She opened her mahogany mouth with a big smile. ( Many of the locals chewed "beetle nuts" which supposedly warded off their hunger. The drug stained their teeth a dark reddish brown.) She turned and shuffled her bony little self off to one of the hooches . She returned with her card. She seemed to take great pride in the card, it may well have been the only thing she owned other then her black pajamas. Perhaps her delight was simply the result of her finally understanding the reason for my presence on her sad island.

          I was quite disturbed with the whole place and I did not see any use in bothering everyone of those poor suffering souls for more of the darned identification cards. I just handed the "con cook" back to the old lady and walked on out the other side of the path between the hooches. I headed back down the bank and into the river. The old woman with the big brown smile and the card in her bony little hand, followed me to the edge of the island. My curious visit must have made her day.

           Anyway, I was soon back out into the river and making my way over to the bank with the Platoon. Lt. Joannides asked if there were people out there. I said "yes." He asked if they had their cards. I said "yes."

            And under my breath I thought, "one of them, anyway".

            He did not question me anymore. The other men in the Platoon saddled up and we moved on. Eventually the boat could be heard lumbering up the river toward us. As we loaded back onto the craft, I could not shake the curious experience of that afternoon. I was taking with me, into the rest of my life, a haunting, depressing memory of a very sad and strange island.....and I had learned about the ants.

             As I remember that island, I often wonder how the people had gotten there. I wonder how they were fed, what sickness was upon them . I think it may have been a colony of lepers.

             God only knows.