Free Last Man Out by Jr. James E. Parker Page A

the
Mann
.
    Around two o’clock the next day the ship’s horn blew and I went out on deck. Halfway down the pier a military band stood at the ready. The Red Cross women were cleaning up around their tables. Longshoremen disengaged heavy ropes from cleats on the pier. Fewer than a dozen civilians stood below looking up at the huge ship. Another whistle blew and the band started to play. The women stopped picking up trash and looked up. One out in front waved, and then the others joined in. The longshoremen heaved the ropes away, tugs moved the ship from the pier, and, under her own power at last, the
Mann
headed into San Francisco Bay.
    We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge and headed out to sea.

  FOUR  
Sea Voyage
    The second day at sea I began preparing and delivering training classes on small-unit tactics and field hygiene to the company. Later, support personnel from brigade headquarters delivered a series of lectures on Vietnam and its history. These were held on the open deck where movies were shown at night. The movies were better received.
    When not involved in training, the men waited in line for meals, for the PX, for the latrine, for space on deck. If a soldier wanted to see a movie, he had to get in the mess line for dinner at 1600—everyone was supposed to go through the chow line for every meal whether or not they ate it—in order to be finished in time to get in line for the limited movie seats on deck. The card game in the latrine never stopped, and I often stood and watched. Conversation was biting, with much bragging, much bluffing, and some shouting. Friendly smiles were few. Stakes were high. New players came and went, leaving their money behind with the regulars. Not a game for sissies.
    I often used Bratcher’s bunk for my office/couch when I was in the hold. Once I was sitting with him, wondering out loud what kind of operations we were going to be involved in.
    “It’s no big deal,” he said. “It’s a police action. Stopping cars, checking ID cards. The U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Marines against one little pipsqueak country. Come on, Lieutenant, get serious. We’ll blow ’em away.” He smiled and his jaw jerked to the right.
    The officers mess had clean, starched white tablecloths at each meal, and Filipino stewards served us. We had plenty of seats for our movies, and coffee, soft drinks, and sweet cakes were on a table should we want refreshments. We had the run of most of theship. At night Dunn, Peterson, McCoy, and I often climbed to one of the uppermost decks to talk and joke. Dunn was the master of ceremonies.
    Late in the morning of the eleventh day at sea I went down in the hold to see Bratcher, but he wasn’t around. I picked up the platoon roster from his bunk and went over to Spencer’s bunk to read it. Spencer was reading an old, dog-eared letter.
    Directing his comments to no one in particular but speaking so that only I could hear, he said, “Da man is coming down to the slave quarters to look after da field niggers, huh?” He smiled faintly. Although not educated or well-read, Spencer was probably the brightest man in the platoon. Aware of what was going on in the States in the mid-1960s, he was angry that his country had tolerated segregation for so long and felt that the law of the land was still stacked against him—that he didn’t have the same opportunities that the white man did. “Discrimination is as American as apple pie” was his phrase before something like that became part of the national black/white dialogue. Spencer was angry and sassy and was, in our platoon, the king of jive.
    “Spencer, you know I didn’t make the reservations for this cruise. You’ve got a right to complain, I reckon, but then so do a few thousand other good men on this boat.”
    “It seems strange to me that it’s never anyone’s fault. It ain’t the man’s fault, he was born white, it’s his society, his laws. Problem sure ain’t the