The Cann-Sai Field
Gordon Neumann
Company A, 1/12th Cavalry- 1969-1970
It was just another charlie-alpha, somewhere west of Tay Ninh, somewhat closer to the Cambodian border than where we had just been. I came down on the first lift of six slicks with their sixties talkin’ and two side-kick Cobras peppering the flanks with mini-guns and M-79 H-Es.
We un-assed the birds and found ourselves in elephant grass up to our butts. The field was smoking from the ordinance the choppers had put down. We spread out, formed a lazy perimeter around the landing zone, and waited for the next lift.
That’s when I smelled a familiar scent. I smiled. “Somebody’s partyin’ at the wrong time,” I thought. Then I heard SSgt. Barnes shout, “Whoever’s smokin’ dope, better cut it the fuck out.”
But the aroma got more distinct, permeating the air of the immediate vicinity. When Barnes came by to check my position, I pointed to a large patch of high, leafy, green plants that covered a third of the clearing we had just set-down in. A rocket or an H-E had set-off a fire. That was where the smoke was coming from.
“Oh Lordy,” the black veteran of the Korean War said. “We got a whole field of the devil-weed.”
The rest of the company came in with the second lift and we humped in column into the wood-line right through the field of marijuana plants that rose to heights well over our heads. As we moved through the rows and rows of cannabis, I discreetly stuffed my fatigue-pants-side-pockets full of resin-covered buds and sticky leaves.
We were supposed to stay close-by in this area for 14 days, setting up a company-sized fire-base on a hill less than a click away. “This is gonna be interesting duty,” I thought with a big grin that wouldn’t quit. “Oh my, oh me…heavy on the THC.”
We got to our hill, dug-in, and a day later, Chinooks brought in a 105 arty battery that was to provide support for other units in the AO. From this hill we had a wonderful view of the top of the surrounding jungle and a line of green, rolling hills that extended north for miles. We had a well-defensible position that provided viable sanctuary from any threat of enemy interdiction.
I was overwhelmed by the beautiful scenery. “Things always look different from higher up,” I thought.
Things looked different high on cann-sai, too, whether hand-filled into C-ration-issued filter cigarettes emptied of their tobacco, or put into LRRPs and eaten like parsley. With the entire stash of marijuana I had, I could afford to do the latter and stay buzzed while looking at the jungle roof below from my perimeter foxhole.
For about five days things were going unusually smooth on the small fire-base. There was no enemy contact and the “heads” of the company were in a good state-of-mind, while the arty boys conducted their fire-missions with a special spring in their attitude. One might say morale was high.
Then SSgt. Barnes found a cache of marijuana branches drying under a poncho in the bottom of a foxhole. Immediately discordance was created in the rank-and-file of the company; soon all the cadre from the captain on down was on a crusade to find any cann-sai that was on the fire-base. We were told to turn-in what weed we had, and we wouldn’t be punished; but if caught with pot, Article 15s would be flying.
Soon a large pile of marijuana in various forms, from branches to leaves to buds appeared in the center of the base close to the CP. When the lifers thought the pile was large enough, it was lit into a bon-fire, from where members of the witnessing cadre stood a discreet distance away while drinking beer. Somehow the lifers’ unspoken idiom was that beer was the intoxicant of choice, and was to be condoned, while marijuana should be banned.
I still kept modest stashes in my pack and pants. “Fuck an Article 15,” I thought. “It’s worth it just to stay high.” But to avoid inciting confrontation, I began volunteering for recons and ambushes around the base of the hill.
By day eight in this area of operations SSgt. Barnes had talked the captain into sending details down to the field to cut-and-burn the devil-weed. I got conscripted on one of these missions, which was akin to a witch hunt where the demonized object of scorn was vegetable, not even animal. Three men pulled security while six men hacked with machetes at the high-growing plants. After three hours work, not even a dent was put in the mass of hundreds of plants that still stood in the clearing. Before leaving the patch, the fallen plants were lit by fires that were aided with pieces of ignited C-4.
I joked with SSgt. Barnes who oversaw the sortie, “Don’t you think we can get an air-strike, we don’t want any of the devil-weed to get away.”
Barnes had the build of a small bear, “We need a dead G.I. first, smart ass…you wanna volunteer?”
I laughed back into his face from 10 feet away, “Yeah, I’ll volunteer you…you old dinosaur…you’ve fought so many wars you don’t know who, what, or why you’re fightin’ anymore.”
Barnes looked back hard at me, “You just watch your ass, smart guy.” “So what’s our body-count today, Sarge?” I smiled. “I wanna write home about this.” Barnes, by this time, was busy working his Zippo and gave me no reply.
On day 10 of this operation, I was on a four-man ambush half-a-click from the base of the hill. We had trip-flares set across a small tango that led to the cann-sai patch.
We all smoked-down without worrying about the lifers and not being too concerned about there being gooks in the area. We were separated in two’s on the hill-side of the trail.
A little after noon we were in the middle of a C-ration lunch, when a trip-flare popped. I could see three gooks standing on the trail. They were bare-chested, in shorts, with no rifles. Two gooks ran away from us, and one gook ran straight for us. They were all running for their lives, and obviously couldn’t see us.
The gook coming at us was 10 feet away when we opened-up. It was like he hit an airplane propeller; skin and meat and blood went flying as the running body was stopped in its tracks just a few feet from us.
“3-2…3-2, 3-1…what’s goin’ on?” SSgt. Barnes was in the cann-sai patch and on the horn. I picked up the mike to our PRC-25, “3-1, 3-2, we engaged three dinks, two got away…over.” “Uniforms?…over.” “3-1, 3-2, nah…shorts, no shirts, ho chi minhs…not even long-barrels…over.” “3-2, 3-1, I’m comin’ to yer position…out.”
I looked at my forearms; there were specks of blood and pieces of the gook’s flesh all over me. I looked at Juicer, Davis, and Slick, they had disintegrated gook all over them, too. “Well aren’t we a fine, fucking mess,” I said, locking and loading a new magazine into my “16.”
Juicer kicked at a big piece of the dink’s torso. “Not as bad as him,” Juicer said.
When Barnes got on site with his nine-man detail, he looked at the corpse, “No weapons?...what were they, damn civilians?” “Maybe marijuana farmers,” I said. “Well, that’s the same as VC,” said Barnes, who smiled. “Maybe I’ll get that air-strike after all.”
Two days later the sound of Phantoms and the smell of napalm were in the air. To Barnes it probably was the sound and smell of victory. To me, it was just a field of marijuana being burned up and plasticized on the premise that it was enemy contraband.
Two days after that, Chinooks came and lifted the arty boys away; then our company departed the small fire-base. We lifted out of the same clearing into which we had charlie-alphaed. Amazingly there were still many marijuana plants standing and viable, even after the air-strike.
I made it a point to pick several lush buds and put them in my pants-pockets before boarding one of the slicks on the last lift out.
“Those plants were like the gooks,” I thought. “Resilient…we couldn’t kill them all.”