Bridge Inspection

Bridge Inspection

While serving in Vietnam as an Intelligence Analyst I earned a promotion to E-5, Specialist 5th Class, and so became a non-commissioned officer (NCO) in the US Army. This removed me from some tedious details, and it put me in the rotation of others. One of the new details that I had to perform was a job that nobody in my unit was fond of, bridge inspections. An officer and a NCO from the intelligence service went out at night with a Jeep and a driver to visit predetermined bridges. This inspection had several purposes; South Vietnamese staffed the guardhouses at the bridges, operating them with either Army personnel or a civilian defense group. Our mission was to make sure that the guardhouses at these bridges were manned, and that the personnel guarding them were awake. We also made sure that spotlights were operational and that they covered the approaches on both land and water, and we also verified that the electrical generators were in working order.
 
After a regular duty day, we had dinner at the mess with everyone else, and then we had a few hours to rest. Around 10 o’clock that night, we would meet at the motor pool with our weapons to go over the maps and discuss our itinerary. On this night, I was with Captain Courtney and our driver, Red. Red was from Texas, I think it is a regulation that every unit in the Army have a driver named Red, and that they must be from Texas or Alabama as well. Tonight we would head north and east of Saigon above Bien Hoa to check on some important crossings out in the surrounding waterways. We had with us a thermos of coffee and some water. We double-checked our weapons to make sure no one had a round in the chamber. Then we were off; Red and the Captain sat up front and I sat in the rear on one side of the narrow bench seat. There was a canvas top stretched over the Jeep, but no side doors or windows as it was not the rainy season. The darkness felt cool and refreshing as we headed out.
    
This detail gave everyone the creeps. No one wanted to be out driving around at night. “The Quiet American” was almost required reading among the intelligence corps, and the description painted by Graham Greene of the old guard houses at night did not instill much confidence in any of us who were tasked to inspect these small outposts. We worried about an enemy ambush; and we worried about being shot by some spooked South Vietnamese soldier who might have just been startled awake. The Jeep was equipped with night running lights to make it a less visible target in the darkness. The night-lights consisted of a soft yellowish low power beam that is covered by a metal plate with a horizontal slit in it, this slit let out a limited amount of light to fall on the road. In the rear was a single dim red bulb. The down side was you could not see much while you were driving, we were less of a target but we were constantly getting lost.
 
That night was no different as we quickly found ourselves floundering about in our Jeep, looking for our bridge. In an hour, we were talking with a South Vietnamese soldier who was trying to give us directions in a kind of broken English. He pointed to a location on the map that Captain Courtney held, the map illuminated by a red light night-use flashlight. In another hour we were really out of it, we were on rural dirt rutted lanes with vegetation curling over the road. There was no sign of well-lit bridges in any direction, just a flat and all encompassing darkness. We stared intently out the windshield and down the dim cone of light that softly lit the dirt in front of us as we slowly motored down the lane. We were all ill at ease and no one spoke. Then in the distance, there was a light. At first, it was indistinguishable; it seemed to float in the air far down on the dark lane. As we grew close, we saw it was a small oil lantern that someone was waving back and forth while standing in the road. I chambered a round and put the safety on. The Captain turned to me at the sound of that and in a voice that was quiet but authoritative, said, “Be careful with that thing. Everyone be alert.”
 
The Jeep slowed stopped in front of the man with the lantern. He was dressed in the black of a simple farmer, and he came around on the side up to the Captain and, in Vietnamese, he spoke quickly and with great agitation as he gestured down a path that was now visible in the light of the lantern. There was a further commotion coming from the path and two figures could be seen approaching us; one of them, a woman, was wailing loudly. The whole scene was strangely surreal. The man with the lantern turned and now there appeared by the Jeep a very pregnant woman, she had with one hand on her crotch and the other under her belly as she walked up to us, another woman in peasant garb helping her. They all stood there yelling and gesturing wildly in the weird little light of the lantern. The man was yelling at the Captain in Vietnamese and pointing down the road. I guess we all understood the human language of his need; Captain Courtney turned to me and told me to make room. The pregnant woman and the man with the lantern scrambled up into the back of the Jeep, and Red got us going down the dirt road again. Now with the lantern in the back seat you could hardly see anything through the windshield, I saw Red peering intently out into the dark in front of the Jeep. The woman moaned and rolled her head from side to side. I saw she was not that old, probably in her early 20s. For a second we looked intently into each other’s eyes. I saw the fear inside her as she looked at me. I was 20 years old with a loaded weapon at my feet, a pregnant woman screaming at me in a foreign language sitting on the seat next to me, and the man holding the lantern was talking softly to her and trying to run his hands through her hair. Captain Courtney turned and yelled at me over the din, “Do what ever it is that you need to do back there, whatever it is.” Now it really struck me, I might have to help this woman give birth right here on the back seat of this filthy Jeep.
 
The Vietnamese farmer put his hand out with the palm down and made several quick motions. Red slowed until the farmer yelled and moved his hand quickly. We stopped and he climbed out and we all helped the woman get out of the back of the Jeep. They started off down a small path together as he held the lantern out in front of them. We quickly got back into the Jeep. “Let’s get outta here,” the Captain said softly, “we’re done for the night. Red, get us someplace familiar, and fast.” Eventually we found a Vietnamese Army position with some officers who could speak English. In an hour we were driving through familiar surroundings, but it was still night. No one said a word. Soon we were past our own guards and into the safety of the motor pool.
 
Later we reviewed the night’s activities. What seemed a lonely and foreboding road to us must have been their village, their community, and they were trying to reach a mid-wife or grandmother, just as they had done for births over the centuries. We were the interlopers, the strangers who did not belong. I remembered how she looked at me with the fear in her eyes; I can see it clearly in my mind today. They spoke no English and we spoke no Vietnamese, yet we stopped and helped them under circumstances that, for us, were trying and stressful at the time. I think we all felt good about that.
 
That was the last time our unit had to do bridge inspection. When our commanding general heard about our exploits, he decided that he did not like the idea of his people driving around the countryside at night while lost, and that task was handed over to units who were closer to the inspection sites and more familiar with the terrain. We gained a small amount of notoriety for that accomplishment from those who would no longer have to perform it.

Moreover, that experience has left a lasting impression with me. When friends and family members head for the clean and sterile hospital maternity rooms as they await their turn to give birth, I think back to that peasant girl and about the reality of birth for so many people in much of the world. I can see that small lantern disappearing down a jungle path, and I wonder about where they were going, and what it was that awaited them there.