Even in the Barracks

 By William L. Casselman, Fairbanks, Alaska

 

I was 19 years old, and I thought I understood war. A patriotic kid who’d grown up on John Wayne movies, I wanted to be where the fighting was. In 1972, that meant Vietnam. So, I left my home in Upland, California, to enlist in the Air Force. The local newspaper carried an item.

 

After basic training in Texas, I took a 22-hour flight to Vietnam in October. I became a member of the 6498th Security Police Squadron at Da Nang Air Force Base, a place not too fondly known as Rocket City. I didn’t understand the nickname until December, when we were ordered to step up the bombing. The North Vietnamese responded in kind. Nearly every night that month, usually around 2:00 A.M., we were barraged by 122 mm rockets.

 

I lived in Gunfighter Village, a compound of two-story plywood barracks. The first floor of each was protected by a wall of sandbags and concrete slabs. But the second floor, where my bunk was, had nothing more than a thin screen to keep out mosquitoes. There was a cone speaker mounted on the roof of the barracks next to mine. Whenever there was an attack, the PA came to life with a piercing squeal, and the voice of some young soldier shrieked, "Rockets! Rockets! Da Nang is under attack!" I would wake up and dive to the floor terrified, praying God would spare my life one more time.

 

Six days before Christmas, morale was sinking fast, which you might expect given the tremendous pounding we’d been taking. For most of us, it was our first Christmas away from home. No one bothered exchanging cards or gifts. There was no sitting around the barracks singing carols. The troops in Saigon got the Bob Hope show; we got a third-rate rock band stumbling through renditions of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix songs. To top it off, there was that little voice in our heads whispering, “There’ll be a rocket with your name on it tonight."

 

Mail call was the only bright spot. Letters from home were great, but care packages were best of all. Sure, the cakes were dried out, the cookies stale and the brownies rock hard, but they still tasted a lot better than rations. No one waited till Christmas to eat them. After all, none of us knew whether we’d be around then.

 

That’s what I was thinking one day while heading back to my bunkhouse in Gunfighter Village after mail call. There hadn’t been anything for me. Then I saw my first sergeant coming my way, carrying a broom. He shoved it into my hands and told me to follow him upstairs, where my bunkmate, Frank DeMario, was trying to catch a nap. The first sergeant bellowed, "Get outta that bed, DeMario! You and Casselman are gonna clean the attic!"

 

Frank, not quite awake, responded, "What attic?"

 

I asked my own brilliant question: "Why?"

 

The first sergeant, who had 7 stripes on his sleeve and 16 years’ experience dealing with young troops, rested one hand on Frank’s shoulder and pointed straight up with the other hand. "An attic is a room located just below the roof of a building," he said to Frank. Then he turned to me. "As to why, Airman Casselman . . . because I ordered you to!"

 

One of the things I’d learned early on in my military career was that you did not disobey your first sergeant. Those men had memories like elephants and tempers like wolverines. Frank and I set out for the attic.

 

We discovered a small trapdoor above Airman Kimbrel’s top bunk. The loud creaks the door made could’ve come right out of a horror movie. I popped into the attic, waving my flashlight to scare off the rats. "All clear, Frank."

 

The floor was covered with a thick layer of dust, like dirty snow. The only things up there were four empty M16 magazines, some trash and two large cardboard boxes at the end of the room. I wonder what’s in those boxes. I walked over to the larger one and opened the dusty flaps. Branches? That’s what was inside, fake tree branches——black wire and green plastic twisted together. Frank opened the other box, which was full of Christmas decorations.

 

He looked at me, and I looked at him. We knew what we were going to do without even talking about it. We didn’t finish cleaning. Instead, we picked up the boxes and carried them over to the trapdoor, leaving two distinct dust-free squares on the floor along with our footprints. Downstairs we sorted through everything. Soon we’d put together a four-foot tree, complete with ornaments and 14 sealed-in-plastic candy canes, some of which were crumbling. Frank said, "It looks pretty shabby."

 

He was right; it would never win any contest. But sitting on an ammo box in the corner, that shabby little tree gave off some kind of magic. It didn’t have lights, yet it seemed to glow. The next mail call I got a package from home. I was about to tear into it, but then I remembered the tree. I decided to wait till Christmas Day. Back in my bunkhouse I set the box beneath the scraggly branches. Later Frank did the same with his package. Before long, our tree was surrounded with packages belonging to other guys in the barracks.

 

At night I thought about my mom, my brothers, Larry and Paul, and my sister, Linda. I imagined what their tree looked like with all the packages lying beneath it. When I was younger the most important thing about Christmas had been all those presents. Now that I was 5000 miles away, it was my family I missed more than anything. But as I lay in my bunk praying that I’d live to see them again, I’d look at that shabby little tree in the corner and feel comforted. I knew my mom was doing the same thing in California, asking God to protect me, praying I’d be home for many Christmases in the future. In a place like Rocket City, celebrating Christmas——even in such a small way——made me feel closer to home and to God.

 

On Christmas Eve there was a 24-hour cease-fire. It was a time of genuine celebration, a few extra hours of sleep and good chow for once. But the cease-fire was overcome midnight, and at 3:00 A.M. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I witnessed a rocket explosion a bit too closely and earned a place in the Purple Heart club.

 

After I got out of the hospital I returned to my bunkhouse. Frank had taken the tree down and repacked the boxes. Kimbrel had put them back in the attic.

 

On January 28, 1973, just over a month later, the war ended for my squadron. But not for me. I was selected for the base roll-up force.

 

The last American plane was to leave Da Nang on April 2. I was getting ready to board along with 15 other security policemen, a chaplain and some officers when suddenly I remembered the tree. I didn’t want to leave it behind, so I hustled to the barracks and climbed into the attic. The M16 magazines and trash were still there. The boxes weren’t. I could still see a faint outline of the footprints Frank and I had left in the dust, but there wasn’t any sign of the dust-free squares where we’d found the boxes. Dumbfounded, I returned to the plane.

 

The other guys swore Kimbrel had put the boxes back in the attic, but it seemed as if they’d never been there in the first place. I don’t know where that shabby little tree came from, and I don’t know where it went. But I do know that it was there for some frightened young soldiers when they needed it, a reminder that wherever we were, even fighting a war thousands of miles from home, Christmas would find us.