Not all of my memories are grim, gruesome or horrible. One in particular still brings me a smile whenever I allow myself to think of it. I was in garrison at Camp Eagle with the 101st Airborne. Being the only Mexican in a company of some eighty men was at times unnerving to me. Imagine being a lone “Gringo” in a totally Mexican company of men !!!
More than halfway through my tour, a Mexican joined us at 265th Radio Research Company, 101st Airborne. Gonzales was a cook and had only two or three months left on his tour when he was reassigned to us from 8th Radio Research Field Station, Phu Bai. Seems that Gonzales had been caught with a large bag of weed and was then given the choice between Summary Court Martial (Article 15) and joining us at the 265th Radio Research at Camp Eagle. He chose the latter.
We weren’t authorized cooks and didn’t have our own mess hall in our company. We ate at a neighboring mess hall operated by the 801st Maintenance Battalion, so an arrangement was reached between our company commander and the neighboring company commander. They decided that Gonzales would be our company’s contribution to the messing operation. Gonzales and I became drinking buddies sharing several beers every night and sometimes going to sleep on top of our assigned bunker with our weapons, our gasmasks and a case of beer to help pass time. Thinking logically, if we were too drunk to find our bunker during a night attack, it would be an easy task to just roll into the bunker.
At one point the messhall began serving canned hot dogs daily either as a main course or side dish, and few GI’s would eat the nasty hot dogs, so whole cases of gallon canned hot dogs would be put in the trash where the Vietnamese trash crews would retrieve them for their own use. Gonzales thought this was a waste of good food, so he would often bring a gallon can or two of hot dogs to share with our friends.
Many of these unopened cans were lined up along the walls of our hooches along with two or three cans high of Carling Black Label beer which was given away with every other brand beer we bought simply because no one would drink that nasty beer. We were not permitted to purchase a regular beer without accepting the free Carlings. It was the PX’s way of reducing their inventory of the dreaded, nasty beer. GI’s being GI’s can come up with some very practical and innovative solutions. The “making lemonade when life hands you lemons” comes to mind.
We never figured out who started a novel process which put both our canned hot dogs and that nasty Black Label beer in great demand. I was at another hooch in the company and observed someone boiling a whole gallon can of hot dogs over a sterno can. I was offered one and found it to be a fabulously tasty hot dog. Inquiring further, I learned they were being boiled in the nasty Carling Black Label beer which was totally undrinkable. These boiled hot dogs were fabulous!!! I was to learn later in life about Synergy which Wikipedia defines as two or more agents working together to produce a result not obtainable by either of these agents independently. So now we couldn’t get enough canned hot dogs though the Black Label was plenty available.And when sterno cans were not available to boil our hot dogs, we’d break open a claymore mine and use its C41 explosive to boil the hot dogs.
Twice after returning back to the world I found myself longing for the canned hot dogs boiled in Black Label beer. Upon leaving Nam in 1971, I lived in Arlington, Virginia, and recall going to a local A&P Supermarket. I found and bought the best hot dogs money could buy and bought a six-pack of Carling Black Label beer. It was a disaster! The delicate zesty taste I’d come so much to love was not even close. I couldn’t even stomach those nasty hot dogs which swelled and broke up in the boil process. Some eight years later I was at Fort Hood in Texas and again thought about those boiled hot dogs. I went to HEB Supermarket and again bought Carling Black Label beer and the best hot dogs I could find. This, too, was a dismal failure. Over the past few years I have spent hours searching the internet looking for recipes involving hot dogs and beer hoping to find the recipe and proper ingredients we used in Vietnam to make those fabulous hot dogs. To date, I have found none. I’ve since given up on replicating that zesty delectable hot dog which I had come to be so fond of. I'm thinking life is just not fair. Why does the mind keep detailed perfect taste memories of something that is no longer available? Why?
1 C4 is the explosive ingredient in a claymore mine. It is extremely effective in defensive positions. Some five or six hundred steel balls are embedded into the C4 explosive and a small voltage activate the mine, but the C4 itself can be burned safely. We would break open the claymore mines and use the C4 to heat our meals or to make coffee.
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