Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [50]
“Wouldn’t that make the soldiers less alert?”
“The government recognized that they needed a way of blotting out the horribleness of the experience.” He had since learned, he said, that sixty percent of Vietnam veterans who needed help after the war had returned with drug and alcohol addictions. Edward didn’t get into hard drugs, but he still had much to forget.
“It was dehumanizing. Take what they used for a”—he pointed through the window and I saw the outhouse—“and called something else.”
“You mean the latrine?”
“Yes. But they called it something else.”
“Outhouse? Backhouse? Shed?”
“They named it for what went into it.”
I snickered.
“They took a long board and cut ten holes in it. Then they took those fifty-five-gallon drums and cut them in half, and put them below.”
“And that was it? No dividers in between?”
“No. You just went in there and sat next to whoever else was there. And it was so hot, right under the sun.”
“It was outside?”
“Yes. It had a roof over it. When I first got there, I’d go way, way early in the morning or way, way late at night. But after a while I got as sloppy as the rest of them. I’d march up right after supper at the hottest part of the day. And there I’d sit with maybe ten people beside me reading the newspaper or conversing. And the stench!
“There was a fellow whose name sounded like what they called the latrine”—he contorted his face and tried to speak something in a mangled Chinese accent—“and when those fifty-five-gallon drums got full, he’d take them away and burn it. Oh, that was the best time to go. He’d burn it not twenty feet from us, and the smoke would just come rolling in. Then you could enjoy both the smell of what we were doing and the smell of what he was burning. It was so dehumanizing.”
“The word ‘human,’ ” I corrected him, “comes from the same root as the word ‘humus.’ It was humanizing.”
Edward paused, barely smirking. “It was humanizing.
“And the shower. There was absolutely no privacy. They ran a pipe through the center and water would just come straight down from a ‘T.’ It would just come in a stream on you. There was just the shower and two dressing rooms. And they’d have women come in to do our laundry. And they’d do it in the dressing room because there was water there. There again, at first I’d only go early in the morning or late in the evening.”
“Could they see you?”
“You were right there.”
“I thought you said they were in the dressing room.”
“They’d be sitting right here, and you’d be taking a shower right there, hearing ‘zchulbtha.’ ” He held his hands a yard apart. “They needed the water for their laundry. Every now and then they’d reach over and get some.”
“At first we’d say nasty things or point the shower nozzle at them. But I”—his Adam’s apple bobbed—“got used to that too.”
Edward remained impassive as he spoke, as if the trauma of it all went without saying. But I wasn’t sure I understood…While his buddies were dying in the jungle, he had shared a shower room with Vietnamese laundry women?
“My last year of duty, I took a leave in Hong Kong. I went to a tailor and had two suits made. One was blue and one was black—business-type suits. Then, when it was finally time to fly back to the U.S., well, we had to wear our uniforms to get into the airport. So I brought the suits in a carry-on bag.
“Then if we wanted to get on the plane, we had to wear the uniform. But once I got on, I left my seat, took one of those suits, and changed in the restroom. A lady was sitting next to me. She didn’t appreciate it much, I could tell.
“My parents were at the airport to pick me up. Of course they were expecting the works—me laden down with medals.” He sank in his chair to show what he meant. “As they stood there, the first-class passengers went by. Then so did everybody else. And I wasn’t there. Of course they were looking for a soldier in full regalia. They were a