I spent most of my 20th year in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. I made a few close friends. Those were the guys that shared their last drop of water and their last packet of toilet paper with you.
One guy, of Polish decent, with a Polish name, became known, as was the military custom, as Alphabet. He was crazy as hell, and as our respective years rolled on, he became crazier.
Our commanders would send us into the jungle for various lengths of time to search out the NVA. When we were lucky, we didn't find them. These periods of time in the boondocks were about 30-45 days. After the first few days we were filthy. After a couple of weeks we could no longer smell ourselves and towards the end of the sweep we could not smell each other.
Once we set up close to a beautiful stream for a couple of days. Patrols were sent out, and a few of us at a time were allowed to bathe. Finally, Alph and I went to the river. He produced a small tube of shampoo. I rubbed some into my hair, but could only produce a light brown. scum instead of suds. With repeated rinsing and application of more shampoo, I finally got a respectable head full of suds. We then heard the guards yell that unknowns were coming toward the river. Alph and I got our boots, M-16s, and bandoliers, and found cover. The unknowns turned out to be Montagnards, aborigines who were, for the most part, allies to Americans. They looked at Alph and I and quickly went upstream to get water. Alphabet and I looked at each other; boots, rifles, bandoliers and heads full of shampoo suds. We laughed until tears rolled down our temporarily clean faces.
I wonder if there is a legend in the Central Highlands of naked white gods who grow bubbles from their heads.
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