"Good Morning, Vietnam"-Indeed-The Trials And Tribulations Of
One Adrian Cronauer
By Si Lannon
I knew from the minute I picked up this guy Adrian Cronauer
from the airport that no way was he going to last in our outfit. You can take
it from me Eddie Garlick that he had a “misfit” target written all over him.
Our outfit if you could call it that was producing, well, hell, producing
propaganda and glad tidings to the increasing number of troops coming
in-country and in need of some easy listening on the Armed Forces Radio
Station-Vietnam edition. First of all Cronauer, nobody called him Adrian (and
he told me once we got to know each other that nobody but his mother called him
that and he would usually not answer to the name even from her. I wouldn’t answer
to Edward either except to my own mother after she twisted my ear a few times
when I faked not hearing her) came over from some good awful place, Crete, or
some place like that and was Air Force whereas the rest of us were strictly
Army, Regular Army. Second of all from minute one he had me both splitting a
gut laughing and looking at him sideways like he was some guy from outer space.
But see the General, General Timothy Taylor, a tough guy
street general as we would call a guy like him in the old neighborhood, back in
Philly, back in the Acre housing project where I grew up and where we had our
own General Baker and General Pratt although not with any stars on their
shoulders, didn’t need them, had heard of him when he was in Europe. He was old
school, bless his soul, who won his star going through the European Theater in
World War II. He, the general, must have ruffled some feathers though, annoyed
some General Staff guy because he had seen Cronhuaer as he was leaving some
cushy job there and transfer to hellish Vietnam as the American troops on the
ground expanded like crazy in 1965 once the shit hit the fan. The general
though landed on his feet though since instead of throwing him out in the
boonies with the 7th Air Calvary they put him in charge of propaganda
work, the radio station being one of his projects to supervise.
The real reason though, and I proved right in the end even although
I did everything in my power to try to save him including getting the grunts,
you know the guys who were going in and out of the boonies looking for Mister
Charlie to send fan mail to get him back on the air was Sergeant Major Dickerson,
the “Dick” as we called him behind his back. (I didn’t do any fighting although
I did face gun fire and bomb explosions in my tour of Vietnam like a lot of
guys not on the line, it was that kind of war, but I had nothing but respect
for the enemy and would not call him the derogatory Charlie but always prefaced
it with the honorific Mister to show my respects). He was all spit and polish,
all rules and regulations, all-lifer, the bad kind of lifer who lived to count
the days until retirement but in the meantime raise seven kinds of hell, the
only good commie is dead commie so you knew, I knew the minute I saw Cronauer
half out of uniform, hair too long and with a laugh a minute that he wasn’t
going to go the distance, would fuck up somehow and made hash out of
everything. (Then I didn’t know I would wind-up being a lifer too but that was
after I left the Army after my enlistment was up, seeing nothing around the
Acre that I could do without winding up in stir so I re-upped. I just hope some
of the guys that were under me don’t call be lifer the way I just did about the
“Dick.”)
While he was riding high one Airman Cronauer was beautiful
was like a breath of fresh air in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Would make a lot
of guys who are making a good living doing comedy routines take up another
profession, maybe lawyering or something, maybe learn to crochet. Yes, Cronauer
was the avenging angel and the worst nightmare for guys like the Dick, a loose
cannon. The only thing I didn’t like in the few months that Cronauer was around
was that he would always kid me about my turning the key to start the engine of
the jeep that I used to transport him around to his various doings when it was
already running. Being around him made me nervous and forgetful. I admit I was
trying to protect my stripes, maybe grab another one if I could control this
force of nature. See General Taylor had personally assigned me to “look after”
Cronauer since even the General knew he was loosely put together. I guess the
general didn’t know in the end how big a can of worms Cronauer would be after
the Dick got through with him.
You have to know something about Armed Forces Radio back in
’65, maybe any time but mostly the thing was about presenting “happy” news,
maybe cover a press conference of some important figure who was in-country to
see what was really going on (and never taking the blinders off to find out,
never leaving MAC-V headquarters and definitely never asking the soldiers, the
grunts, what the hell was going on while they were doing their whirlwind tours)
and play music like Ray Conniff, Percy Faith, I don’t know Guy Lombardo stuff
our parents would dig, would find appealing. And the guys, good guys really,
who took their shifts, usually four hours unless they were covering for
somebody, and gave what the Dick and Army regulations dictated to him to read
and play. They even had two donkeys, two brothers who must have been orphans
because no mother could love them (or have carried them in her womb) who red-penciled
everything especially the number of KIAs, and the lack of progress against
Mister Charlie that was apparent to anybody except those idiot VIPs who had
come in-country for more than five minutes. The worst lie though was the body
count. The number of VC killed. The numbers just didn’t add up. Some guy during
my second tour of Vietnam figured it out one time in 1968 I think that if you
added all the numbers together from the body counts then to you would have more
dead than were in the whole freaking country.
From day one, no, minute one, Cronauer blew all of that
away. Started off at six o’clock in the morning with his signature call-“Good
Morning, Vietnam” but he would stretch those three words out for what seemed
like an hour. Guys would imitate him, guys on in the boonies too. Then he would
do “mock” news reports, total bullshit of total bullshit, and then play
something like James Brown, can you believe it, Brother James Brown. Needless
to say the Dick blew his top, complained to General Taylor who told him to
“fuck off” then because the men liked hearing Cronauer, and he did have a big
breath of fresh air following. Like I said the General was what you would call
a soldiers’ General if you know what I mean (unlike those General Staff guys
who never came out of the bunker over at MAC-V).
What did Cronauer in, what did a lot of guys stuck in
Vietnam then before there were too many guys hanging around in Saigon and everything
got to be a whorish merry-go-round was a girl, a beautiful Vietnamese girl who
I told him was off-limits, was a no go. But Cronauer wouldn’t listen, spent
every waking hour trying to figure out how to get next to this beauty, this
Trinh. Including getting close to her brother Tran something I forget his full
name, and it doesn’t matter since that was not his real name, his real Mister
Charlie name as it turned out. Although Cronauer didn’t see it that way he was
basically asking this Tran to pimp for his sister. Nothing good could come of
that, and nothing did despite the extensive wooing that Cronauer did.
When push came to shove though nothing could save Cronauer.
He had been too friendly with the natives as they say and the natives had
bitten him, had used his as a cover to blow up a famous Saigon gin mill where
GIs hung out. Not good, not good at all. Got me mixed up in it and almost
ruined my career except the General had the Dick’s number and it was him that
was hung out to dry not me. Cronauer, well, bad boy Cronauer got kicked out of
the service for the good of the service as they say. Never did get too far with
that Trinh before he became persona non grata in-country. Sent his young ass
back to the States quick as a jack rabbit. End of story.
Not quite. Some nights I still wake up thinking about some
antic that mad clown did on the air or out in the streets of Saigon. Always
think even though I am a Sergeant Major myself here at Fort Meade about that
last gift he left me. His farewell tape to the troops which I delivered. Got to
do my own version of Good Morning, Vietnam, and got to feel for just one moment
what it was like to have the world in your hands. Yeah, Cronauer was one hell
of a guy, was a piece of work no question.
