My Ph.D. in BS
By:
David R. "Doc" Berger
(D Company, 1/11, '67-'68)
Reprinted from Volume 18 - Number 1 of Thunder Run
I think everyone at one time or another thinks about having a title or honor before or after his or her name. During a very short period of time I received such an honor from my peers. This honor came from a group of people with whom I was very close. A group that still has my utmost respect today. The time was late 1967 or early 1968. A time when people grooved, when something was awesome or it was the greatest! Playboy magazine was not just promoting pictures but the Playboy philosophy as well. A time when everybody tried to be clean cut, well attired, and to drive a late model hot car. Green was becoming the fashionable color even though most people tried to avoid wearing the color.
There I was in green, riding a big green tank. We called the Big Boys. I was playing medic and tanker. At that time the duty was not real bad. We were guarding a little black top road about eight feet wide day and night. We weren't busting jungle, going through mud, busting track, or getting shot at. How many tanks were guarding the road, I don't know. I know that my platoon of five big boys were approximately a half a mile apart. Just close enough to see each big boy beside you in daylight. The days were hot and the nights were dark. We hated the days and loathed the nights. We were always prepared to move if some one got fired upon. There was constant guard duty with someone ready at the radio and ready to grab the main gun trigger. Normally we would have four men on a tank, but we were short one man. That meant a lot of time doing guard duty. When you weren't pulling guard duty you were never more than eight to ten feet away from the radio and main gun controller. In that small area you would sleep, eat and yes, use the bathroom. It would be like working in a plant in a small work area and never leaving even for a break.
In the early evening on most days each big boy would leave the area where the tank was parked and go to a staging area. Here they would get needed supplies such as ammo, fuel, mail, and most of the time a very hot meal. It was also a time when you got to see someone besides your own crew, drink hot coffee, drink Kool-Aid, send out mail, or trade for magazines. Some people described this as a small period of time when you were allowed out of your jail cell. Afterward you returned to your designated guard position to get set for one of those long, dark and mind-bending nights. I was one of those people who could manage to stay awake at night better than the other two crewmembers. I might pull four or five hours of guard duty. Midnight to 5:00 am found about all the high-ranking people asleep. During these hours it was like the world was shut down and there you were all alone atop a pile of metal that was supposed to be capable of causing about as much destruction as a company of infantry. Except for a call on the radio each hour for a situation report and starting the tank about every two hours, you sat there staring into the dark looking for enemy. Then there was the two-way radio on the tank and the other four people on guard duty on the other four big boys. Suddenly the two-way radio was like, "Radio Free Vietnam".
At first there would be a couple of calls that would seem almost official. Then the calls would appear as necessary personal calls. When there was no reaction from the high-ranking personnel, the radio would become sort of a radio chat line. Everybody would have something to say. The first couple of hours everybody was up beat. Scores from sports would be announced. Prices of Corvettes, GTOs, Roadrunners, Mustangs, Sunbeams, and MGs with various options would be discussed. Of course girls and sex were not far behind. Sometime after 2:00 am the mood would change, a little more homesick whining and stupid Army would set in. After 3:00 am, the personnel pulling more than two hours guard duty would slow down the talking. There would be more dead radio time, stupid jokes, and just stupid statements made. I can remember one guy would say, "Oh if I could just kiss a nice soft check." Someone else would immediately reply, "I have a nice soft cheek you can kiss, the only trouble is I am sitting on it." Sometimes one guy would like to sing. The songs were always up beat and encouraging songs like "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" And he would usually make up his own verses. Just talking to the five platoon members would open up the world. Without the radio talk you were just a couple of eyeballs and ears trying to survive. The radio nightlife soon came to a halt. A new radio repairman came into the company. Like me he liked to work the late shift and was a regular radio policeman. "Radio Free Vietnam" came to a halt. The company commander was being alerted to our game and our wayward radio ways were changed. Without the radio, sanity would just pass you by. You would sit there just thinking weird thoughts like, "If I were to elevate this main gun and bust a cap on a high explosive round with a possible range of thirty miles, where would the round land?" "Wonder if radar would pick it up? Maybe it would land in some army outpost or maybe it would land in the jungle killing a bunch of slimy snakes. The more you thought the worse it got.
Different people tried to soften up this mean minded radioman. Nobody could seem to get a decent conversation going with this guy. He was cold, direct and without mercy. It was at one of those staging times someone pointed him out to me. Without hesitation I announced I was going to have a talk with him and get him to change his ways. The personnel around me laughed and someone said, "You might last thirty seconds." Someone else said I could accomplish more trying to walk through a minefield. I walked up to him sure and brazen and stuck out my hand, "I'm Doc . . .." He cut me off saying, "I know who you are, I listen to you each night." I crashed and burned real fast; it was time for some different tactics.
"Where you from," I asked.
"You never heard of the little place" he replied.
"Try me I've been around" I replied lying through my teeth.
"New Martinsville, West Virginia" he responded.
Without thinking I said. "Yea, Magnolia High School is located on Maple Avenue".
He turned toward me and his eyes got as big as golf balls and bigger. My eyes probably did the same. Within that minute we came to realize we were from the same hometown. We weren't just becoming friends; we were homefolks. The next twenty minutes we conveyed our backgrounds to one another. We were amazed we didn't know one another. His father got killed in a coalmine and his mother moved the family to New Martinsville so she could work. While I was spending two years in college, he was finishing his last two years in high school and we never got to meet. In the last two minutes talking to him, I asked him to give us a little break explaining what it was like and if we were causing problems for him, and if the company commander was up and around, just let us know and we would stop talking on the radio. He agreed. As my big boy passed the other tanks, I motioned everything was all right. Later that night I had to be the one that started "Radio Free Nam". Everyone was a little timid, but it wasn't long before things returned to normal.
When I was asked how I accomplished the almost impossible, I always replied, I just applied a little BS here and a little BS there and it worked. Later that week I was informed that the platoon had bestowed on me a Ph.D. in BS. I was honored. Sometimes late at night the radio talk would stop and then someone would call, "Two Three Tango Delta Oscar Charlie" (meaning two-three tank; tango, meaning crew member; Delta-Oscar Charlie, meaning Doc;) and I answer and they would continue with their radio talk. "Delta Oscar Charlie you aren't smart enough to be President of the United States, but with your gift of gab and line of bull you certainly would make a fine Vice President of our great country." There is nothing like having someone brag on you when you are in deep darkness. When you can't see your hand in front of your face you sometimes become unsure you are alive or that you are any kind of living being. When you hear someone brag on you its like light or energy flowing to you. Somehow it's like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and you say to yourself, "I am alive!"
In the darkness you can be ugly or beautiful, stupid or smart, weak or powerful and when the radio crackles and a voice tells you something you believe it. During the day light hours when someone feeds you a line or brags, it means nothing. At night in deep darkness you believe every word. If I were going to try to sell snow to an Eskimo I would do it in darkness. Sitting in the dark, I actually believed I was somebody; after all I had a Ph.D. in BS. It was an awesome feeling for a couple of weeks. Then someone in the platoon found out the radioman and I were from the same hometown.
It was in the evening when my tank went to the staging or supply area that the academic committee of the platoon met me. It was sort of like a college academic committee where everybody gives you disapproving looks and your sentence requires you to be cooked in boiling oil. The charge was sort of a form of plagiarism. I had not used my BS abilities to get us talk time on the radio. I had accomplished my great feat by dealing with someone from my hometown. The basic charge was something like, "Its not nice to lie to the platoon." When I replied that I had not tied, the charge was reduced to, "You mislead us and it's not nice to mislead your platoon." I was stripped of my PhD in BS and given a high school degree in BS. It was later upgraded to a two-year college degree in BS.
Sitting atop of that big boy pulling guard duty in the dark of night, fighting despondency and the urge to just give up, the honorary PhD in BS really meant something. I was no longer a king pin on "Radio Free Vietnam." The guys in the platoon were good to me, even though my fellow talkers felt a I little betrayed. A voice would occasionally come across the radio late at night and simply say, "Delta Oscar Charlie, you did good."
You might think this story is a little stupid, but an honorary degree meant something to me at a time when nothing else gave me the urge to keep on fighting the darkness. Even in today's world while occasionally driving late at night with headlights to guide me and my radio to comfort me, I will hear a certain golden throat voice come across the radio singing "Are you lonesome tonight?" and I fondly reflect back to a time when I had a PhD in BS.