Deros Vietnam by Doug Bradley

better,” he smiled. “You’ve got everything here at Long Binh—discontent, quadraphonic sound systems, lots of soul brothers, and great dope. Things will go well here.”
    None of us said anything.
    Jackson pretended to be our drill sergeant and marched us to the theater. We sang cadence about Jody and our girlfriends, adding a couple choruses from “Coming into Los Angeles.”
    Later at the theater, they stopped the film just as Sly and the Family Stone were cranking up the volume on “Higher.” The lights came on, and a voice told us that the VC were nearing the perimeter and we had to get to a bunker. With the movie’s sound track off, we could hear mortars exploding and sirens sounding. Most of us started moving dutifully toward the exits.
    Jackson refused to leave. He was standing on his seat, arms raised, singing at the top of his lungs.
    â€œFeelin’s gettin’ stronger…” he yelled at the screen. Sly shouted back, telling Jackson he was going to take him higher and higher. The rest of us had already left the theater.
    The last we saw of Jackson he was wearing his shades and giving the peace sign as the MPs led him away. None of us did anything to help him.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
    We all had rituals in Vietnam. The brothers had their dap, the grunts had their boonie hats and bracelets, the zoomies had their high-class clubs, the lifers had their Vietnamese lovers.
    What we had late in the war, way back in the rear, was TV. Not the TV that brought the turmoil of the world into your living room on the six o’clock news. No, for us it was the kind of TV that reminded us of growing up, of sharing rites of passage with families like the ones on Ozzie and Harriet, My Three Sons, and Leave it to Beaver. Bummer about the Beaver, buying his lunch in Vietnam. Kinda made sense though, when you think about it.
    For the hard-charging, hard-working, gung-ho REMFs in the USARV Headquarters’ Information Office, the TV ritual was watching Room 222 which had premiered on ABC around the time most of us were initiating our acquaintance with the Army and Vietnam. It reminded me of the 1967 movie “To Sir, With Love” with Sidney Poitier playing an idealistic teacher dealing with rambunctious white high school students from the London slums. The TV version was based in L.A., but the lead character, Pete Dixon, was black and cool, just like Sidney Poitier.
    Watching Room 222 every week was the one thing that brought everybody in the hooch together. Juicers liked it, dopers liked it, loners liked it, our resident lifers liked it—hell, even our one and only soul brother liked it.
    We did more than just watch Room 222. We would live it, or at least pretended to be living it for the 30 minutes it was on. Nevin or Conroy would warm things up by making a bold prediction about who would be the focus of that episode’s story line. Then they’d make things more interesting by establishing odds and laying bets.
    It was the night after Kenny Martin’s visit. I can still see Nevin walking up and down the hooch with a clipboard and a sheet of paper, puffing on a Lucky Strike and wearing a green visor on his head like Uncle Billy, the bank teller in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
    â€œFifteen minutes, boys and girls,” he shouted through puffs of smoke. “Just fifteen more minutes to place your bets.”
    â€œWho will it be?” he continued in his carnival barking manner. “Our favorite history teacher Pete Dixon? Walt Whitman High School’s long suffering principal Seymour Kaufman? Liz McIntrye? Or how about everybody’s wet dream, Alice Johnson?”
    Shouts of “Alice, dear sweet Alice, I love you Alice, I want to screw your brains out Alice” rained down on Nevin, a shared vision of Karen Valentine, the cute young actress who played student teacher Alice Johnson on the show. Something about her perky