Hooch Five and Six

When I arrived in Vietnam my first tour I was whisked off to my unit pretty quickly. A week out of flight school I was sent to a qualification course in a brand new model of scout helicopter that the Army was just introducing. There were six of us in the course and three of us were qualified as instructor pilots in the aircraft when we finished. Many of these new helicopters were being sent to Vietnam and instructor pilots were needed to qualify pilots already in country in this aircraft.

Upon arriving in Long Bien I was quickly assigned to the 25th Infantry Division and they wasted no time coming and picking me up. As soon as I was in the troop area they put me in a jeep and took me around to the many places where records are dropped off. We went to the finance office, personnel office, and places like that. I didn’t make it to the flight surgeons office until much later. I did draw my weapon and get flight gear because I was told I would need it tomorrow. After meeting the commander I was assigned to live in hooch number six.

There were six buildings called hooches that housed the troop’s officers. Most of the hooches had six to eight officers in it. A hooch was a building a little over twenty feet wide and forty feet long. It had wood sides up to about four feet and then screening above that for the walls. The floor was concrete and the ceiling was open exposing the wood framing and the steel roofing, with one door at each end.

I took my bags down to hooch six and walked in. I did not have any expectations and it was good that I didn’t! It was just an open building with piles of gear around the steel beds in the building. There were stacks of empty beer cans and other areas that just had trash thrown in them. I did okay with all of those things but there was a very unpleasant odor in the place. Actually unpleasant did not describe it well – it was nasty!!!

A couple of the warrant officers who lived in hooch six were there and welcomed me without getting out of their lawn chairs. They told me where there was an empty bed and where to throw my gear. After I put my gear down I came back to meet them and get a feel of what was ahead of me for the next year of my life.

I pulled up an empty lawn chair and sat down. As we were visiting I noticed a couple of cats laying around on some of the gear. A short time later in came a scruffy looking monkey who had a collar and chain on him. The cats weren’t the best looking cats I had ever seen but the monkey was by far the worse looking monkey I had ever seen. I grew up around a lot of animals on the farm and had seen many animals but this monkey was probably the poorest looking thing I had seen. His hair was falling off in many spots and he just didn’t look well to me.

An hour or two later the other pilots that lived in hooch six returned from flying. The pilots sat around for a while talking and unwinding from the day of combat flying. They were drinking beer after beer and pouring some in the saucepan for the monkey to drink. I don’t know how many beers the monkey had but he was drinking it right down. The pilots said he was an alcoholic and got mean if he wasn’t given his beer.

The night was not a restful one for me. We were fairly close to an artillery unit that was firing much of the night. At that early stage I wasn’t quite sure what was “out going” and what was “in coming”. The others seemed to be sleeping quite well. Perhaps the beer had helped them. There were a couple of times that I saw others get up and “use the pole”. Before retiring they had told me that they had designated one pole to be the pole to urinate at if I needed to during the night. I now knew why the place smelled so bad!! It was cat poop, monkey poop and human urine!! This was going to be along hard year!!

The next morning I was up early and off for my first flight in Vietnam. Some how I survived the day and returned to hooch six. That evening I met some of the officers in hooch five and was impressed. I even spent some time talking with them that night. Their hooch was clean and they were making individual rooms for themselves. They would scrounge the lumber from rocket boxes and with used nails they would build walls and ceilings. It wasn’t real fancy but it sure seemed to stand out as pretty impressive compared to what else I had seen and there were no “pets” in hooch five. It smelled good. I liked hooch five.

After a day or two I learned that one of the pilots in hooch five was going home. He had completed his twelve-month tour and was headed home. His partially completed room was going to be up for grabs. I wanted it and went and asked the executive officer if I could move over there. He said it would be fine if the others in hooch five wanted me. They wanted me and in about a week I moved to hooch number five. Hooch five was my home for the rest of the tour.

Over the years I have traveled quite a bit and have been in many people’s “homes”. Some have been fancy and nice and others have been extremely modest. I have seen homes with only dirt floors that were swept clean as could be. They were neat and clean. I have also seen places that should have been pretty nice that were not well kept. It seems that how we live has less to do with how much we have than it does with how we are willing to live. The difference between throwing dirty clothes all over the floor and throwing them in a clothes bag or hamper is too small to measure. What we do and how we do it is a measure of us. And choosing whom we live with will help us be our best or lead us down to a lower level. Hooch five was a good choice!!