First Published May 31, 2013
“Door gunning. They’re losing helicopters and they need door gunners.” — Philip Roth, The Human Stain
I am a pool player who has played in organized leagues for years. I know little about the players with whom I shoot because we seldom have conversations that branch outside of the playing of the game. But I hear stories told, and I tell my own. A recent story of mine was about being a psychiatric attendant in a mental hospital, and when I recounted the tale of a coworker who had “rolled around in the mud” in Bethel, New York, in August 1969, a teammate had this to say: “I was rolling in the mud in Vietnam when I saw the movie ‘Woodstock.’”
It has often been said that the people who have truly fought, with some exceptions, are the last to tell the stories of war; Vietnam veterans are the quietest of the “silent warfighters.” When you hear boasts in bars, it is almost certain that they do not come from the real warriors. But suppressed memories and bottled-up emotions create pressures that sometimes produce leaks from these human containers, and such was the case with my teammate, Larry Mayes.
I had heard Larry make some references to Vietnam before; his comments were low-key, offhand. When I asked if I could interview him, he readily agreed. I gave him a sample of what he called “classic questions” about the Vietnam experience, and we met at restaurants to talk about a life lived.
Larry Mayes graduated from Arlington High School in 1968, and, having written a paper about it, was a believer in the “domino theory.” The year 1968 was pivotal in the Vietnam “conflict” (which seemed to be a “war” to those who fought in it) and images of South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan’s execution of a Viet Cong prisoner dominated the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Larry went to college but when he did not maintain a full load, the Selective Service board called up number 167: his. In July 1970, Larry began a phase of his life that affects him even today.
“From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State …” — Randall Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”
“I didn’t grow up around guns, didn’t have much to do with them, but (at boot camp) I qualified as ‘expert,’” Larry told me. His MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) was 72 Bravo: Communications Center Specialist. But 8 months before his 21st birthday (and coincidentally, just at the beginning of a major south Vietnamese offensive aimed at severing the Ho Chi Minh trail, an effort that ultimately resulted in the loss of more than 100 U.S. helicopters), a recruiter offered a bonus for another year of service and a different MOS. “I couldn’t afford to buy my wife an engagement ring,” Larry said. He had only been married for three weeks before he reported to boot camp. “I wanted to buy her that ring.” For $85 more a month, he became a helicopter door gunner.
Larry’s service lasted until July 1973. It took him 15 years to get to the point where he could tell his mother something about what his job had been. “I just didn’t want to worry her. I couldn’t tell her,” he said. But while in the arms of “the State,” and stationed in south central southern Vietnam at Bien Hoa Air Base, Larry lifted off the ground in a Bell UH-1 helicopter gunship. He crouched behind a gun thrust through the open door; a “monkey strap” helped him to climb back into the chopper when he was bounced out. Flying in support of troop movements, Larry rode the Huey to the ground five times; three times when “it just quit,” and twice due to gunfire.
“You know they shot down five thousand helicopters during that war?” — Philip Roth, The Human Stain
“It takes a special kind of person to look a man in the eye and pull the trigger.” We had been discussing the ownership and use of personal firearms. Larry paused, looked away, and then finished, “I was above all that, in the air.” While on the ground, when bombs fell, he learned to “get out (of the hooch), run around and get to the sandbags.” He brought this lesson home with him, startling his wife with the behavior. “I was a lot more messed up than I realized, at the time.” Larry said that it took him about ten years to shake off the effects of his war service, which may have contributed to the fracturing of his first marriage. He wandered through jobs — stockbroker, insurance salesman, restaurant owner and manager, small engine mechanic — until the urgings of his mother and other family members took hold. He was a 35 year-old college graduate when he found his true vocation: teaching.
“People tell you to find what you love and do it, and I did. I never had a bad day, teaching.” He taught Industrial Arts in the Monrovia School District and was at one point the athletic director of the school. He retired in 2010.
I asked Larry if he felt that Vietnam Vets were being given the proper respect for their service. He told me that he believed that two events galvanized the nation into recognizing the contributions of servicemen from that time: the Lebanese hostage crisis in 1989 and the first Desert Storm. He saw more overt expressions of respect and consideration as an outgrowth of those two incidents. “People are more likely to recognize ‘service,’ and to thank you for it.”
“Kids fight wars.” – Larry Mayes
Larry lost his second bride to illness, but he has three children — a son and two daughters – and 5 grandchildren. He went to war as a door gunner, came back in 1973 as Sgt. Mayes, went into education and became “Coach”; he is now grandfather to his children’s children. His business — the artful crafting of wooden bowls — is named for how his grandchildren address him: Papa Larry’s Bowls. Although the Vietnam war is still a part of him — he was close to tears on a couple of occasions as we spoke, he has a disability as a result of exposure to Agent Orange, he can still recognize the sound of a Huey overhead, and he wouldn’t let recruiters near his students — I believe that he has found a measure of peace. And there are five words we can utter to give him great satisfaction: “Thank you for your service.”
I did not press Larry for details of his service. He was an expert in firearms and he was a door gunner. I am certain that whatever I might imagine would be infinitely less than what he lived. But I did search for Larry’s voice in the writing of his story. I asked him what he wanted to say, and this was it:
“My country called, and I served. That’s it in a nutshell.”
But of course, that is not “it in a nutshell,” and before we left Goody’s restaurant, I said this to the door gunner, Sgt. Mayes, Papa Larry:
“Thank you for your service.”