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Write Your Mother

By John Zutz

In the service, there are a number of pieces of advice handed down from older to younger and down through the ranks. First: Don't volunteer. Second: Don't attract attention. Stay anonymous, low profile. Third: Shit rolls downhill. Everyone learns that wisdom. I had already volunteered for Vietnam. The last two, I ensured that I learned all of them the hard way.

When the original members of the 585th Engr (DT) shipped to Vietnam, they all arrived on a boat at the same time. So when it came time for them to DEROS, almost the whole company would rotate at the same time, and their replacements were stuck on a similar schedule. When other replacements and I arrived in early December 1969, most of the old guys had already left. The company was short-staffed and on stand-down, doing maintenance and busy work, such as filling sandbags.

Somehow, a half dozen of us new guys got forgotten one day, and we were left to our own devices. We hung out in the hootch. We managed to scrounge a case of cold beer and a deck of cards. It was a pleasant afternoon. The hootch girl was sweeping and doing her busy work.

Being a nice guy, I offered her a drink from my beer (hey, I'm from Wisconsin—beer is food). She took a few swallows and immediately fell asleep on someone's bunk. We ignored her and kept at our game. We didn't think anything about it till the next morning at formation: "Zutz, report to the Captain." Oh, shit. I've been here for less than two weeks, and the CO already knows my name.

Turns out that Mama-san (the head hootch girl) was offended that we took advantage of her young employee. Luckily for us, we had never touched her. She spent the whole afternoon stretched out and fully dressed, and we slid through on a technicality. A stern warning—never do that again.

Only a few days later, we were at formation and I heard, "Zutz, report to the Captain." Now what did I do? Turns out this was much worse.

This is where that third piece of intelligence handed down through the ranks comes to play—Shit rolls downhill. Unspoken in this wisdom is the fact that it gains momentum as it rolls and impacts those at the bottom with an unstoppable force.

As I left home on my travels to Vietnam, I told my mother that I'd wait until I had a permanent address before writing, and it would likely be a month or so before she would hear from me.

There was the normal travel time, plus a few days AWOL time, and things got extended. It didn't matter. She didn't listen. She wrote a letter to the Department of the Army. "My son is in Vietnam, and he hasn't written. I don't know where he is."

That's what hit me that day. The Department of the Army is the highest available point, and a General wrote her back, assuring her that her dear boy would write soon. Then he directed the shit downhill, from the General to the Colonel, to the Major, and on down. It finally exploded in the 585th wardroom, with me standing at attention in front of the Captain's desk with the first shirt, making sure I couldn't escape.

It didn't matter that I'd already written her twice. They demanded I write her again. I paid by being assigned to every dirty job for months. My military career never really took off after that.

John Zutz is a longtime Milwaukee VVAW member.