Dirt: Poker in Pleiku

James Pollock, GI Card Game, 1967

19

Most people do not start out as heedless adventurers hell-bent on the road to destruction. It’s just that danger is like most things in life: you can get used to it. After a while you stop paying quite so much attention to it, then you ignore it, and finally you are contemptuous of it. You might even be so audacious as to taunt it on occasion, just to see if it can be pricked to a response. But the worst thing of all is to think that it is no longer worthy of your attention. That’s when you start doing stupid things and making stupid decisions.

David Donovan, Once a Warrior King

1968

We were playing poker when the rockets came. The dealer was an artillery captain and at the table were an intelligence NCO, a CIA contract guy advising the Vietnamese reconnaissance teams, another civilian working for USAID, an armor officer working in the Province headquarters, and me. We were in a team house on the edge of Pleiku City, Pleiku Province, Vietnam where most of us lived in various buildings scattered around the compound.

The dealer called for the ante, a 25 cent chip, and named the game, seven-card stud. A tape slowly spooled from one reel to another on the TEAC tape player. Blood, Sweat, and Tears came through on the stereo. As the cards ran out, two down, one up, the conversation was of weapons we’d known and used, a common topic. The chips clicked into the center, a bet, a raise, a call, a fold.

The dealer tapped the table. “Pot’s good,” he said. He dealt the next card.

A rifle was my primary tool. I was serving in a time and place where I saw and used weapons that covered almost a fifty-year span of technology. Like others of my craft the weapons were endlessly debated in barracks and bars and hooches and foxholes, preferably, as in Pleiku, accompanied by music and shots of Jack Daniels.

With each weapon came its legend and reputation, its quirks in assembly and disassembly, its appropriateness to the mission at hand. Although I had handled the ancient Springfield ’03, the bolt-action rifle in use in the early days of World War Two, by my time the ’03 was purely for ceremonial purposes. It was ideal for the ‘manual of arms’, the ritualized forms of carrying and moving a weapon inherited from the days of muzzle-loading muskets and from the times when the movement and massing of men were the essence of infantry at battle. The ’03 was reputed to be a very accurate rifle, but I never fired it on a rifle range. The ’03 was replaced by the M-1.

The M-1 was going out of the inventory as I was going through training. Nevertheless, it was the first rifle that I mastered as a soldier and the one most respected by the older sergeants who were my teachers. The M-1 and the smaller M-1 Carbine were given to the Vietnamese in large quantities and I encountered them often in my years there. The M-1 was, to me, a near-perfect weapon, probably because it was the first rifle I truly felt comfortable with. It was quirky in how it had to be handled, particularly during drill and ceremonies, but it was very accurate.

I was never entirely comfortable with its replacement, the M-14, although after enough beer (or bourbon) I would reluctantly admit that, yes, the M-14 held more rounds of ammo, that later models were at least as accurate as the M-1, that it was slightly lighter, and that its round (its bullet) was possibly more effective than the M-1 (and interchangeable with the round used by other armies in NATO). Besides, old hands, Korean War vets, had one very telling criticism of the M-1. The M-1’s ammunition was held in a small metal clip that was shoved down into the rifle. After the last round was fired, the clip was ejected with a distinctive metallic pinging sound. In a way that was good, that is, you knew that you had to reload. On the other hand, anyone else who heard that ping also knew you had to reload. Not a good thing if the person who heard was one of the bad guys. Still, in all, the Korea vets didn’t much like the M-14. The M-14 lasted until the M-16 came along. The old hands really hated that one.

An interest in weapons is expected of an infantryman, but it can be taken too far.

In our compound on the edge Pleiku we had not dug foxholes. Instead we had bunkers made out of old shipping containers placed along the perimeter. The containers were built up with layers of sand bags around their sides and on top. When the compound was attacked by rockets or mortars, we would run to these forts and hide, waiting for a possible ground assault.

My room was about twenty steps from the poker table. In it I had the collection of weapons I’d accumulated in the months I’d been in-country.

I was issued an M-16 when I arrived and managed to get my hands on a .45 pistol along my way to Pleiku. Or maybe it was the other way around. At any rate, when I joined the team I had a pistol and a rifle. A lot of different kinds of weapons were floating around in the advisory world, since the need for uniformity so pervasive in conventional units was not as important. Poker table and dinner conversation often tended to discussions about the merits of what was available.

The Swedish K, for example, a 9 mm submachine gun, was a favorite of the semi-military CIA advisors. It had a certain aura simply because the agency guys were carrying them. A Thompson sub-machine gun had a John Wayne macho style to it, and it was quiet. But four or five magazines of the .45 cal ammunition was one hell of a load to carry. Then there was the Army’s own “grease gun”, a .45 cal weapon that was notoriously inaccurate, but possibly handy as a “car gun”, something to carry in a jeep. The M-1 carbine was very light and a weapon that fit the hand very well. But the small .30 cal round had a terrible reputation. No stopping power. Just wouldn’t kill anyone, at least with conventional jacketed military bullets. Shotguns, 12 gauge pump-actions, were around. These were usually loaded with double-ought buck shot and had their advocates amongst those who walked jungle paths. Very nice close range weapons. But they only held a few rounds, the ammo was heavy to lug, and reloading was slow. Some preferred the AK-47, the weapon of choice of our enemies. The major problem with the AK was that with its distinctive sound and the different color of its tracer ammunition there was a good chance you could be mistaken for a bad guy and draw friendly fire. The M-79 grenade launcher was considered to be very handy, but it needed a good bit of practice and wasn’t quite a personal weapon all by itself.

I had one of each of these, except for the AK-47, in a locker in my room: M-16, .45 pistol, grease gun, 12-ga. shotgun, Swedish K, M-1 carbine, Thompson sub-machine gun, and M-79. I had a bag of ammo for each of them handy.

The Intel NCO bet fifty cents on the king and the four of spades he had showing. I checked my hole cards to see if it was worth staying for the next card.

“Lucretia McEvil” was playing from the tape deck when the first rockets came in. The rockets made a terrible, terrifying sound, a great screeching tearing of the night that made me want to dive under the poker table. Instead I did what every one else was doing. I ran to my room to get my flak vest and put a helmet on my head. I grabbed a weapon and a bag of ammo.

I ran, crouching low, to my assigned bunker through the streaking light of the rockets and the painful, ear-breaking sound of the alert siren. A rocket went overhead just as I reached the entrance. I rolled inside and crouched into a corner. I huddled up against the metal wall and listened as two more rockets screamed overhead. I was paralyzed. I knew in my brain that if there was a ground assault in progress I would be helpless, but I just could not move.

Another man, the artillery captain, the dealer, came crashing in through the entrance and immediately went to one of the firing slits. “C’mon, c’mon,” he said as he looked out. “Get that illumination going.”

I heard a soft popping sound overhead and then bright, bright, white-bright light of illuminating flares flooded through the firing slits. I came out of my crouch and peered through one of the slits and saw miniature suns floating down over the dry rice paddy outside our side of the compound. The paddy field was empty. I saw only the eerie dancing shadows thrown by the flares as they floated down beneath their parachutes.

In my hand was my loaded M-16 rifle. Over my shoulder was a bag of shotgun ammunition. If we were attacked, I had one magazine of useful ammo and then I would be helpless. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I was too embarrassed to say anything to the artillery captain who was watching his field of fire. “Had a pair of jacks,” he said. “Was gonna raise him back to see if he’d paired his kings. You have anything?”

“No. Had a pair of fours and the third one was already showing. I’d a probably folded.”

The captain patted the side pocket of his jungle fatigue shirt. It clinked. “Got your chips?”

“No.”

“Better hope they’re still there when you get back. Gotta be quick around here.”

A few minutes later the all-clear sounded. My chips were still stacked in front of my chair when I got back. I cashed out of the game and went to my room. I packed away all of my arsenal except for the M-16 and the .45 pistol.