Boom Boom Girls(James brown) Like Sargent Rick, this is another Vietnam War story by my friend Craig Little's, as edited by me, after his telling it. Please enjoy.

Craig said:

Sherman said. “War is hell” but it’s a hell experienced individually. This was brought home to me by a Vietnamese woman long after I returned to the US. What she said made me realize what I already learned in Vietnam but hadn't acknowledged.

She was a middle aged, married woman with kids when I met her years after the war. It was at a suburban, back yard, barbecue social occasion, mostly of women .By hard work, with pluck and luck, she’d risen from Vietnamese refugee “boat person” status. Someone asked her what the war was like. Like the others, I had no knowledge of her Vietnam War experience.

She replied she tried not to think about it. Not taking the hint another asked what was the worst that happened. All looked at her for an answer. Cornered, she surveyed us, hesitated, then sobbed,

“The worst? It is finding out what you will do to survive.”

She fled to another gathering, stood nest to her husband, an old scab obviously torn open to bleed.

Her answer hit me like a dart from the past. It’s true, one of war’s hells is finding out what you will do to survive, a dark place best not visited, one I too have covered up.

At the peak of the American Vietnam War, there were 500,000 US military in Vietnam. Most were young men between 18 and 24, peak years of male sexual drive. Napoleon observed, “An army marches on its stomach”. In Vietnam we were well fed and used helicopters, trucks, and jeeps. Sex, not food, was the troop morale factor.

Although most GIs came from modest US income backgrounds we were rich by Vietnamese standards. Due to the ravages of war, we were very rich to the Vietnamese uprooted desperate.

To meet the pressing sexual needs of the hundred of thousands of young American men, desperate Vietnamese girls, trying to survive, were placed into service wherever there were US soldiers. The girls ranged from those who worked in city brothels or sex huts in village hamlets who were circulated by Chinese procurers to those free lancing on city streets, army roads, even jungle trails.

During one segment of my tour, our platoon guarded a bridge in the Central Highlands subject to Viet Cong attack. Across the bridge from our compound was a line of Vietnamese houses and shops strung together. They lay along one side of the highway adjacent to the river. The buildings created a snake shaped hamlet lying between the dusty sun-bleached road and a black water colored river that rose and fell with the monsoon rains. The snake wore a rusty corrugated tin roof and siding skin except for a picturesque, poor one with a thatched roof at the far end tail.

The head of the snake, the first shop over the bridge, was boom boom house. It provided desperate girls for the sex starved young men of our compound

The 10 or so girls there worked under the supervision of mama-san who spoke a little English, limited to basic profanity and trade words. She was old, fat, had a couple of front teeth missing and a mole on one cheek but always had a big smile when a young soldier crossed the bridge. With her broad grin, she would repeat, “You boom boom! F...ie, f...ie!” and then she would nod knowingly as she was right. She knew why the soldier left our compound to cross the bridge.

The first shop house was not the sex tourist Disneylands of Bangkok or other parts of Asia experienced on R & R, (rest and relaxation supposedly after 6 months war time). The girls were inexperienced and young. Today, in the US, a soldier who crossed the bridge would possibly be arrested for sex with a minor. I would guess they ranged in age from 16 to 20 but I don't know because I didn't know them or ask questions. To me, they were sex dolls not real people. They were not from the hamlet. They were desperate refugees used as imports who were rotated in and out by the Chinese procurer. Mama-san was their temporary mother hen while at the snake hamlet. She dressed them. GI desired sexy and made them up with lots of mascara and cheap red lipstick, whatever would encourage the young men to cross the bridge.

If the girls left the shop, however, they reverted to traditional Vietnamese Au-Dai full length dress of pastel color, split on the sides from the waist down. Underneath they wore loose black silk trousers. On top they wore the standard conical straw hat. While formally attired, their gait and the sway of the silk created a provocative but elegant appearance more alluring than Mama-san's adornments.

The other Vietnamese of the hamlet were also enterprising to satisfy the soldiers at more respectable trades. The native girls did our laundry while the boys supplied marijuana. There were no young men. You could also sell stuff from the compound or buy just about anything wanted if you put the word out what you were looking for.

The war in Vietnam was a 10,000-day war. We Americans were just the last stage before the Nike shoe factories. Vietnamese peasants and the Chinese shop traders in the hamlet accommodated the French, Japanese, the French again and then the Americans to survive. They also accommodated the Viet Minh, the Viet Cong, the South Vietnamese military, and us. Their young men could be serving on any side and killed by any other side.

The hamlet used the rotated boom boom girls to protect their females and understood from experience, young men with big guns needed boom boom girls, even though, officially the US army did not.

Like most in the compound I regularly crossed the bridge and made other “crossing” depending on where I was stationed during my year’s tour. I had empathy for those in the hamlet and for the boom boom girls, probably more than most in the compound due to my marginal existence back home in the USA. While I had empathy, I accepted the situation as it was and made no moral judgments. I just didn't make the situation worse.

I took care of myself and when I crossed that bridge, I only thought about my sexual need. I accepted I was in a temporary surreal world, marking time until I was back in the "real world". In the meantime, while at risk of being killed, for the first time in life, I was rich. I could cross the bridge on whim and buy the girl which most appealed to me with no questions asked, in fact without any conversation. The girls were not real people. They were quickie sperm dump dolls. We all thought that way but didn't express.

The Vietnamese economy was American military spending. The girls at the head of the serpent were a small part of the economy. Their motivation when a soldier entered the boom boom house was to obtain his money. We were not real people to them either. We were a cash machine which dispersed cash on sperm dump. They earned tenfold what an ARVN soldier earned even after mama-san’s and her Chinese procurer’s skimming. They used the money for their families who were victims of the war disruptions and killing. They were surviving, not getting rich. Too soon they would be too old for rotation or became pregnant and be discarded to fend on their own back with the family they helped support, provided they still had a family.

Boob boom was 500 Piaster’s for a “number one good time” paid to mama-san. A Piaster was about one cent so a “Number one good time” sperm dump was $5 US.

$5 was worth more back then. Military pay due to the draft was much less than today and I was saving money for the eventual trip home and a car purchase, a necessity in California. My monthly salary as an E-5, Sergeant was $275 plus an allowance for combat pay less a deduction for my illegitimate son, another story too long for here. Too many trips across the bridge and I would not be able to buy the car. I crossed the bridge about twice a week, especially if there was a rotation.

VD was prevalent, but no one used condoms. It was before AIDS. We knew the medics could cure us despite rumors spread about incurable syphilis. The attitude was, I might die tomorrow so why worry about small stuff? The medics kept our occurrences of VD quiet as the army could press charges for breaking some official no contact regulation. However, like many things in Vietnam We knew, the officers knew, and the army bureaucracy knew about the head of the serpent on the other side of the bridge, but officially, no one knew, including we who crossed the bridge. It was an earlier version of, “Don’t ask, don’t tell”.

The sex was perfunctory. It was wham bam, thank you ma’am, without romance, wine, or candlelight. The girls hated to be kissed and avoided it if they could. They wanted you to dump and be gone, provided you paid mama-san first. After mama-san wooed you in and you paid, she paraded the girls before you. You selected one, she led you to a cramped cubicle behind a curtain, your pants were pulled down she lifted or dropped her skimpy outfit, laid on the cot and you huffed and puffed with your boots on listening to others nearby until you finished. You then pulled your pants up and re-crossed the bridge, $5 poorer. In hindsight I should have left a small tip, but I never did.

Two incidents come to mind that were examples of the deplorable nature of war as it effects the civilian population pushing some into survival mode.

One night a Vietnamese mother and her daughter came to our compound. They were refugees and had no place to stay and were hungry. The daughter was pretty, They were desperate and the mother agreed to sell her daughter to a soldier for sex in exchange for food and shelter. After the soldier finished, gave them a couple C-ration cans, the mother begged him to at least let the daughter stay behind in the compound as they had no place to sleep and it was a cold night. She was worried the daughter would get sick. It was cold that time of year in the hills where the compound was. Instead, he reported their presence to me and I forced them out of the compound.

I was the E-5 in charge. We could be subject to enemy action at any time but more importantly a young girl in the compound for sex was an official no-no that had to be observed to keep don't ask don't tell and officers from visibly knowing. It was heartless to force them out after her daughter was used for a quickie, but it was the only choice I had. I never saw them again. I do not know if they ever made it back to their village. In hindsight, I should have given them an army blanket.

There were also discarded brothel prostitutes on foot selling their wares to soldiers without mama-san protection. They included some obviously pregnant, the most desperate. The soldiers didn't want them yet they still had to survive. To compete, they pantomimed taboo sexual acts they would perform. It was the ultimate debasement. When the lady said the worst thing in war is discovering what you will do to survive, I thought about them.

There were those who took advantage of the desperate, the hell of attempting to survive. One of the soldiers in our company promised a boom boom girl he would marry her and bring her back to the states when his tour was up, a lie just to get free boom boom.

To be honest with myself looking back, I was indifferent to the hamlet on the other side of the bridge, even if I had empathy. I did not exploit the situation worse than it already was, just did my time at $5 a time.

In a way we were alike. The boom boom girls and me a soldier guarding the bridge were losers of the Vietnamese War. The desperate girls were used as sperm dumps and I, a draftee, crossed the bridge to be cash stripped. The difference was the wealth difference between the two societies.

Despite empathy, I lacked understanding of the boom boom girl’s plight during the war but understood their situation better than most others in the platoon due to my penury back in the "real world".

After my service, by hard work with luck and pluck, I rose up to middle class. I never forgot what some did to survive, but didn’t understand war’s worst secret is finding out what you will do to survive until the Vietnamese woman’s explanation.

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