Author: Wes Choc

“Confidential information on a need-to-know basis” is what our battalion commander said to my own company commander when he presented my theory to him at officer’s mess.

I talk about this story in my book Just Dust, but wanted to give you a brief explanation about how I made the navigational calculations. When aboard the USS Vancouver heading west toward Vietnam, I couldn’t figure out precisely where we were or where we were going since the ship appeared to be heading northwest (not southwest as logic might suggest). This was particularly disconcerting to me for a very good reason. You see, I have this head full of maps, I never get lost, and I have an uncanny sense of direction.

But not at sea!

And, I had no idea I was messing around with any sort of secret either. And, no one believed me.

The Pacific is one enormous place, exceeded by my eyesight’s capacity only by all the sky itself! …two vast, rather unmeasurable universes. Yet, I reached a point as I wandered around top deck when my inner sense of direction was telling me we might be going in the wrong direction; other marines thought I was crazy.

I bring this up in Just Dust because of how unsettling it was for this naïve marine who hadn’t experienced such a vast open, immeasurable place before. It was more than mere curiosity for me, mind you; it was more like not getting enough air at high altitudes as one’s lungs gasped for something so fundamental to sustain itself. After all, I breathed maps!

Oh, we all knew we were heading toward Vietnam, but how could one verify this true? No one particularly cared how, but the “how” mattered to me. Let me describe how my mind solved a riddle, revealing an actual military secret, using only two handy tools: a world map, and a blank piece of paper that I’ll call a paper sextant. In the book, I give the details. But to give a simplified notion on how to determine the direction the ship was heading, I used the daily setting sun to calculate a remarkably precise deviation from due west, and explained how I did this accurately without a real compass. I understood and accounted for how much the setting summer sun moved south daily, the June 21 solstice, and the July calendar, by simple paper and pencil calculations. I then plotted my results using that same piece of paper onto the world map displayed on Bridge Deck. Voila!

As unique as this otherwise trivial revelation might have been, it’s peculiarly odd how the event developed into yet another role yet to come; it plays out in an unimaginable way. Look for the “Parallel Lines” chapter in Just Dust as well as subsequent references to Parallel Lines in later chapters. Be sure to read about the history of our sister ship, USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2) as well (for more information, go to this site: www.history.navy.mil/danfs/i3/iwo_jima.htm).

Finally, just for fun, you might want to check out the video too.

Can Silence be louder than noise?

In Khe Sanh (Vietnam) we all got used to odd sounds, clamors and clatters, screeching noises, thunder, blasting metallic crunches, ground-rumbling earthquake-type poundings, rifle pings and pops, the perpetual commotion of choppers’ whop-whops and jets’ discharges, rata-tat-tats, and who knows what else? Every day! Every night!

Even so, for us marines, such din became commonplace. It was always there, but kinda like a radio’s volume knob being adjusted way up or down by acts we usually couldn’t actually see. It made a guy jumpy because we couldn’t always know what it meant. Nevertheless, in another way, it was unconsciously comforting because routinely we knew these were our weapons, our planes, our helicopters, our own actions. In Just Dust, I talk about how repetitious certain sounds became …so repetitious that we quickly learned how to sleep amid this racket. Sleep, after all, was so very precious. Such jarring shakes and spiky bangs actually could lull one to ponder the strangest wafting dreams, escorting us to whiz away into slumberland without fear or distress.

In the book, Just Dust, however, I recount an event far less ordinary. After all, sometimes sounds do change.

Incoming mortars, for example, had their own unique jet engine-esque hissing roar trailed by explosions and whooshing debris colliding with nearby objects or even unsuspecting marines just lying in their bunks. As these pounding smashes grew louder, we recognized these mortars were being “walked in” toward us. We had to act right then and there, and we did. Then on other occasions, the rapid pings and pops of gunfire zinged or buzzed past us …we all knew what was happening; and, our alertness switch toggled “on.” We ducked. We hit the dirt. We splashed.

But there’s a segue I talk about in Just Dust where all of these familiar but antagonistic sounds played a different role. A significant part of this particular story had less to do with mere preparation or endurance as it did with outright survival …not just avoidance of death, mind you, but how the act of being spared played out with many other events that followed (The effects of postraumatic stress disorder need to be considered in the context of this event).

Silence was the shapeless trigger that night, and a shadowy tattoo-like companion thereafter.

Do you remember Simon & Garfunkel’s song, The Sound of Silence? Hello, darkness, my old friend…