Georg E. Mateos

Four Men: One Final Roll Call – Part 1
BOOM-BOOM (1942-1968 in Nam)

Boom-Boom would tell anyone that if they heard something going BOOM… they could be sure he was around somewhere, doing something to someone.

Build like a small bodybuilder with steroids instead of blood, the brawny fellow was by his own choice, the designated team’s mule for transporting heavy loads which he did without complain, even with a smile of thanks to be entrusted with the precious ammo or whatever.

Fearless; he had multiple scars around his body as the proof of never backing in fear from a bad situation going on worse, and for each of his scars… you should see the ones he left on the schnook that made the “little” cut on him.

Maybe he had one too many bumps from a lead pipe on his head, fighting with his street-gang to extract revenge or turf respect, but one day he wasn’t fast enough, as everybody got away he, kind of too early morning slow, was caught to face the violins in the big house with the dude dressed in black without a church.

A no ID papers illegal, he could pass for a Mexican or from any Latino country south of the border; abandoned by his parents in 1954 outside a convenience store after hearing about foster-homes and a better future for a son with parents TB ridden and with no prospect for work tomorrow. The boy was probably eight years old when left in the street to fend for himself.

He was adopted by a street-gang, which vanished from his world the day he faced the Judge in Orange County, sporting newly unpacked orange coveralls, new snickers, shining handcuffs and papers saying that his name was Juan Valdez by the courtesy of a clerk that thought it was uproariously funny to give the little greaser a name with a donkey attached to it.

The Judge’s car was frequently broken into or just vandalized for the hell of it by vengeful members of one gang or another missing a “body,” probably serving a short or, preferably, a long term jail, sponsored by the black robed man giving back this for that, which incurred on his house being peppered from time to time by drive-by-shootings, with not pepper involved.

As the Judge had little sympathy, and vice versa, for any gang’s lost-puppy-with-sad-eyes, he was more than happy to have in front of him a pissed off bulldog to pay for his last car outrage committed, no less, in the guarded(?!) Court House’s underground garage.

Folsom will teach the little monkey how to behave he was thinking as he was ready, arm up, to whack his desk with the Judge’s hammer and be done with it, when his eyes caught the slight hand movement of the Recruiting Sergeant patiently sitting on a backbench.

Growling like a dog seeing his bone kept out of his mouth reach, the Judge spat a “not that I agree in all the nonsense dished from above, but I need to comply by offering you two choices in this times of war, Folsom or the Navy and I hope you take the first one, because those Marines are meaner than any of you delinquents punks!”

Boom-Boom looked at the public defender which was giving him all kind of approval nods and, without waiting a second more in case the old dotty changed his mind, he faced up to the bench saying, “my client wish to serve in the Navy Your Honor”

“So be it!” The Judge said giving his bench a whack like he was trying to send through a stubborn rusty nail.

If Folsom didn’t gain another troublemaker, the Navy didn’t gain a sailor either.

In a lily-white organization, colored people, no matter of what shades, were frowned upon, like they were coming from a barrel of second-class citizen.

For a street boy always ready for a fight, he didn’t need a formal provocation to produce few bloody noses, missing teeth, cleaved lips, and eye shines of a blue tone to make any Navy blue boy very proud.

Which take us to a not so few days in the bricks after “clobbering, indiscriminately of rang, anybody he took offence for.”

Nevertheless his combative disposition, the Navy was disenchanted with him and thought nothing about passing him to the Marines after failing to send him back to Orange County and Folsom at the end of that line.

Parris Island was hard on training grunts, but not hard enough to bend a little the stocky fellow that wouldn’t bend or break, but after a while the training gave him the edge over the special interest of few drill sergeants which didn’t wanted to give up and be outsmarted by the juvenile delinquent, slowly he was becoming a soldier! Not less.

But, Boom-Boom wasn’t ripe yet to join any armed force, because of his untamed dislike of whatever authority around with the need to put down a random somebody that happened to cross his path.

He gave a bloody nose to a young full of himself Lieutenant, without witness mind you. Boom-Boom was crazy – nobody said he was stupid.

Folsom seemed the logical course, but again mother Fortuna was on his side, and if he wasn’t good enough to be a regular soldier he was plenty enough to play his new learned trades making trouble in Nam under the “Company” auspices.

He liked and could fire guns making big noises; with one sputtering Caliber 50 between his hands he looked more like a happy child on Christmas morning after opening the big box than a fierce soldier putting slugs right where they were expected to hit.

Carrying a 50mm gun on his shoulder and a heavy ammo case hanging from one arm, he would march like every day was his birthday and he got a present.

Boom-Boom was also thought to have some empty space between his ears or he was just crazy like a fox with a disregard for personal safety with a penchant to use hand grenades first and look for hiding Cong after, usually they were.

He said to feel naked if he hadn’t a half a dozen hand grenades, three hanging from a fast release rig below each shoulder.

One day he found a dud one and after giving a mighty kick to the unexploded steel fruit, picked up and placed it in an empty space of his left shoulder rig were a lonely pin was showing a vacancy, like a missing front tooth.

Once, coming back from a black-ops that took a little longer than was planned, the group, after extraction from the jungle where they got wet in the fetid waters of swamps while taking the time to map where the trip wires and the punji stakes traps were located, hiking back to Khe Sanh compound with a bundle of “found” documents, enemy positions, build-up coordinates, and intelligence, the team was dead meat on arrival. Dirty, hungry, sleepless, and in no mood for frivolous needling by the regular troops; they just stopped by their tent getting rid of extra weight and went homing for the chow house.

All looked a bunch of misplaced red-eyed honkies covered with rest of camouflage grease, dirt, sweat, and exhaustion shrouded bad humor.

Only Mr. Lee, wearing the same combat fatigues, could be mistaken for one of South Vietnam’s regulars learning the ropes of war with a bunch of unruly Yanks.

Commanded to “grab something to eat and catch all the winks you can before we get moving back”, the team, after a fortnight without a decent meal and fifty hours without a snooze, gingerly wading through few swamps full of leeches, B-52 size mosquitoes, snakes and bugs trying to mate on your hair, they went single file. Mister Lee first, with Boom-Boom on his heels, in front of the row of “cooks” to get on the food-tray a little of this, a spoon of that, a lot of what’s-name there, gravy, bread and a mug of scalding black coffee.

The rest of the team grabbed one after another a tray from the pile following after, from one “cook” to the next getting their “meal” rations between jaw breaking yawns, a glass of juice, coffee, or both and looked around for a free space.

The mess hall was packed with people eating but for a table next to one of the exits, where some flyboys had finished eating and were just smoking and chewing the fat with their coffee long gone.

Mister Lee, with that deceptive formality of his race asked, “Please, if the Sirs could be so kind and clear off the table for a group just coming back?”

The flyboys stopped talking and looked over at the new comers in question, covered with dry scabs of mud, smears of camouflage paint, red eyed and apparently dying on their feet.

One of the flyboys, a wing “commander”, possible with a corny nickname like Maverick-Thunder or what you have, slowly and demonstratively looked over his shoulder at Mister Lee from top to bottom and said, “Beat it chink!” and turned around displaying a contemptuous back.

Mister Lee was really tired, ready to collapse on the floor, and in no mood to start World War III so he said over his shoulder with a voice full of resignation, “Boom-Boom, can you get us a table?”

Boom-Boom, who was right back Mister Lee, dropped his food-tray on his combat boots making a veritable racked that called the sudden attention of everybody, (in a war zone, anything louder than a fart will jolt everyone to stop everything and dive, dive, dive) and in particular the merry pilots after a SAM exploding on their tails.

“That table?” he asked pointing with his chin to where the pilots were sitting.

“A-ha,” Mister Lee replied.

With a deliberate movement of his right hand, like a tired Fidel Castro substitute playing a mucho macho Mexican bandito, Boom-Boom pulled one of the hand grenades hanging on his chest, leaving a wagging lonely pin hanging there, exposed to the mesmerized look of everybody, frozen for what was coming next, and let the metal apple to roll the length of the pilot’s table.

Everybody scrambled out of there like small children late for supper with a big bad mamma waiting home with a fresh cut birch branch to use as a whip on their seats.

Mister Lee said to Boom-Boom, “Just sit there, I will fetch a new food-tray for you” which he did, with the cooks, suddenly alert, full of cooperation to dispense their “food” to the tired weird warriors.

Too tired even to flinch, the team looked set to eat, as Boom-Boom retrieved his hand grenade putting it back to hang from the vacated pin.

The pilots screamed bloody murder, court martial, article 32, and… good luck to them as the team, despite being covered with camouflage uniforms, wasn’t made with draftees.

Kentucky, apparently not disturbed at all by the rolling apple asked Boom-Boom, who had crossed his arms in front of him over the table to rest his head over, “Boom-Boom, just once out of simple curiosity, how you knew you was grabbing the dude and not a live one?”

He got a muffled and tired mumbling, “I didn’t.”

©Copyright 2007 by Georg E. Mateos