Meeting Women In the Old Army. Adult. (standard:travel stories, 2849 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jun 27 2020	Views/Reads: 1403/983	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
An old natural law, in that whenever there is a demand for a product or service, there WILL be a supply.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


In any case, being new, I stationed the guy at one of those two
emplacements.  Because of my official position, I could in no way warn 
him about the special house. It simply wouldn't have been appropriate, 
best left to the corporal of the guard or one of the others. 

I was asleep at my desk, feet up, when I heard that .30cal going off in
a long sustained burst, such as an inexperienced person would use. I 
jumped up and listened, it had come from the vicinity of the house. 

Christ! I could picture the problems I would have if he had shot someone
going or coming through the hole; not to mention what the man, or men, 
he would have maimed or killed would think. 

As it turned out, maybe in fear or inexperience, he had missed. I never
heard who he had shot at, but there must have been at least one pair of 
dirty shorts in a basket that night.  Later, I even heard the shooter 
was put in for a medal, though I don't know how true that was. 

** 

When I was stationed with the 198th Infantry at Chu Li, the local method
of meeting willing ladies was to ride into town on the back of laundry 
trucks. While the truck driver picked up clean laundry and left the 
dirty to be washed, a truckload of troopers would explore the town. 

That entire town was made up of laundries, small bars, and the homes of
many single women. Those females appreciated our efforts to bring 
democracy to their land and often invited soldiers in to tea. There was 
a rumor that they were as friendly to the enemy at night. I wouldn't 
have any way of knowing since the American presence ended at dusk. 
Occasionally a trooper would brave the elements in search of nighttime 
companionship, often coming back in the comfort of a body-bag. 

On one occasion, my favorite laundry hostess left a closet door open by
mistake. I could see rows of clean North Vietnamese uniforms inside.  
So they must have stayed open for business at night. 

If we wanted companionship after dark, we would hitch a ride on a truck
or chopper to one of the many tiny fire-bases dotting the landscape. 
The policy, at the time, was to move cannons and other big guns close 
to where the action was, thus supporting the infantry on walks through 
the countryside. 

First, a guarded perimeter would be built around a bit of high ground,
enclosing maybe a city block of space. The land would be bulldozed flat 
and bunkers built.  Several guns – 105s or 155s – were moved in by 
helicopter, and troops assigned to both guard the base and fire the 
weapons. It was very often right in "Indian Country" as we so aptly 
called it.  When circumstances warranted, the guns would be lifted out, 
bunkers blown up, other goodies picked up, and the place abandoned. 

Now, those small bases all had their own willing ladies living nearby,
and some means to meet our troops for long walks in the moonlight. 

One night I was discussing politics with a young lady in a shell hole a
little ways outside the fence of one of the fire-bases. We were doing 
well, no arguments in sight, when all hell broke loose. Rifle firing 
went on over our heads for long minutes that seemed like hours, with 
both of us trying to crawl a  vital two inches deeper into the hole.  
Red and green  tracers whipped over my head from both sides – with a 
distinct cracking sound. I hugged the ground, trying to dig a foxhole 
with my chin, until the bright-colored streaks moved away to my right 
-- even as I wriggled to my left. You never could tell when the VC felt 
like partying with pyrotechnics. 

*** 

On my second tour in the country, I spent some time with the 11th
Armored Cavalry. We had a base southeast of Saigon. It was a small 
affair for only our battalion.  I lived in half a large sewer-pipe 
covered with a half-dozen layers of sandbags. 

At night, the ladies came in through the front gate. They were numerous.
I once counted one more girl than we had men inside. Poor thing had to 
play alone. 

On one occasion, we received a new captain -- the old one going back to
the US. His second night there, the new base commander checked the 
guard posts -- we had eight of them -- and found only one bunker with a 
guard that was awake, sober, armed, and ready for action. All the 
others contained assortments of  visiting women, guys drinking or 
passed out drunk, or troopers so drugged that they couldn't see him.  
One post sported a .50cal machine gun and an alert guard, but the ammo 
was locked up and he was without a key.  Other guards were asleep or 
otherwise unready.  Since I was not on a guard roster, it was a 
surprise to me and kinda scary in retrospect. 

The next day, that captain banned all girls and alcohol from the base.
Let me tell you, guys were very angry. Angry and well armed.  I heard 
much complaining. 

A few mornings later later, I happened to be standing inside a hut,
passing out chunks of C-4 plastic explosive to troops going out to the 
field.  We used the explosive to heat our rations.  In came the new 
captain. I waved at him with a pound block of C-4 in my hand. Man, that 
guy gave me the meanest look I've ever seen, turned abruptly and left 
the building. 

I didn't know it at the time, but someone had set an "AA", Automatic
Ambush, at the door of his hooch. We figure a rat or something set it 
off, and it blew the hooch apart. The captain? Well, he was gone by 
noon the next day. The new one let the girls and booze back in. 

Also, when I was with that unit, I had a real bad experience involving
ladies. First, though, a little background. 

Our mission, at the time, was to search through the jungle, looking for
enemy bases. We had these little Sheridans -- a light tank -- and a 
number of huge, armored, D-9 bulldozers. What we'd do was get some sort 
of tip off from headquarters and set out through triple-canopy jungle. 
We never used roads or trails, preferring to make our own. Trails could 
easily be mined, but you can't mine the entire jungle, which was so 
dense that you rarely saw the sun -- nothing but huge trees, elephant 
grass, and vines. 

We would go to the designated area and circle around it. Then the
bulldozers would clear the whole damn thing, smashing vines and felling 
trees as they went. There were heavy cutters welded onto the bulldozer 
blades.  They were used to chip away at huge banyan trees, eventually 
felling them. The bulldozers would move in -- in ever decreasing 
concentric circles --  while the tanks and APCs slowly followed until 
the entire patch was leveled.  Hopefully, the process would trap or 
kill any enemy inside. All that was left would be a large empty space.  
Empty except for tree trunks, of course. 

Even in that jungle, the ladies found us. More than once, we traveled
half a day through almost impenetrable jungle. When we'd stop, there 
would soon be the "put-put-put" of motor-scooters. It would be girls 
and their managers bringing comfort, booze, and drugs to sell. 

At night, we would park the bulldozers in a convenient clearing, then
the tanks would park in a circle with guns pointing outward like in the 
old-time wagon trains. One or two of the dozers would dig a moat around 
the whole thing, and we'd be setup for the night. 

To prevent sappers, which are guys sneaking in with satchel charges or
to slit throats -- all those sorts of small inconveniences -- the 
officer in charge of the watch would call, at random times, what we 
called a "Mad Minute."   Hearing the command, the guns would open up 
for a time, blasting the surrounding landscape with every weapon we had 
with us -- from the tank cannon to pistols -- whoever was awake would 
fire blindly into the dark. 

One night we had a couple of local lovelies visiting and trading
baseball cards. They had collected their sales money and had been gone 
maybe five minutes when a Mad Minute was called. I hope they made it 
out okay. Some of us looked the next morning but couldn't find any 
parts of them. 

*** 

At another post, the way to meet the ladies was at car washes. The roads
that our military commonly used were spotted with a great many of those 
small businesses. You'd pull your truck in and park it. While one or 
two young kids splashed water on the vehicle with a hose, pretending to 
wash the crud off, all but one passenger would be inside the building 
watching television or something with the ladies. Oddly enough, the 
show finished at the same time as the wash. 

And there was the one post where when a vehicle stopped at a stop sign,
anxious females in distress would jump in to beg a ride.  It was a 
funny situation, since you paid them for the ride.  They didn't seem 
interested in the scenery since, although their heads bobbed, it was 
mostly out of sight.  Meanwhile the driver would circle around to keep 
the MPs off his butt. The trip ended, the ladies would wait for a 
vehicle going in the other direction. 

*** 

While stationed on Okinawa, Japan in the sixties, loose women abounded.
I was stationed at a small base in the hills.  At night, after working 
hours, the ladies would come in to play. I wasted no time in renting a 
room off base to make it easier for them to visit. 

On my first payday at that site, another GI took me to town to show how
easy it was to become acquainted with the girls.  We caught a taxi to 
the nearest town where he had the driver circle around three bar 
streets.  On a second pass, he requested that I pick one of the 
streets.  I did and we left the taxi.  There were about six or eight 
bars in sight.  He asked me to pick one, any one.  I did. We stood 
right inside the door and he asked me to pick any girl. I pointed to 
one cleaning glasses  behind the bar. 

He walked over, talked to her for a minute. Making a point of letting me
see him hand her two dollars, he left with her. No way could he have 
set that up.  The going rate was $2 for a quick game of checkers, or $5 
to spend the night watching television.  In off limit areas of the 
island the prices were 50 cents and $2 – if the MPS didn't catch us. 

*** 

While stationed in Berlin, while the wall was still up, the method of
meeting loose ladies was in high rise buildings, maybe four stories 
high. Ladies would stand in doorways to entice us in to play. The 
higher up, the cheaper the price. There was no elevator.  There were 
police patrolling every floor, though.  There were street girls 
downtown. 

Nuremberg had a street used for meeting ladies. It was a couple of
blocks long, buildings with women gesturing from doorways and windows, 
part of the old city wall along one side.   Police patrolled the street 
to keep trouble down. 

Methods in Chinon France while I was stationed there were more
provincial, girls working in bars. There were few professional game 
players, mostly military groupies. 

*** 

In Honolulu, there were some houses of ill repute, but mostly girls
sequestered on one area of one street in downtown Waikiki. They were 
restricted to certain hours, wearing a certain kind of clothing to 
exclude accosting tourist women. Police patrolled the area to keep 
order and check health cards. 

A couple of times while I was there, back in the 80s, near election
time, politicians moved the approved streets around. I hear that they 
did shut them down once and the tourist industry lost a lot of money, 
forcing them to open back up.  Apparently conventions with single men 
refused to come to Hawaii when the comfort girls weren't there to 
welcome them. 

Hell, there are, or were, always military groupies, many after money,
around any military post. It was the old law of supply meeting a 
demand. The End.


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