The Grand Ole Opry

I made it out of Vietnam for this moment. To play on the greatest stage in the world; The Grand Ole Opry. My stetson boots tapped to the rhythm of my guitar, as I finger picked honkey-tonk tunes by Stonewall Jackson, Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, and God rest his soul, Cowboy Copas, while waiting for the curtain to open.

Sgt. Johnson told me to give up these dreams while we were humping through the Mekong Delta in 68 not long after the Tet Offensive.

“We ain’t getting out of here alive, Rusty. The quicker you come to peace with that, the better soldier you’ll be. Your sorry ass was born at the wrong time to be a goddamn Honky-tonker, son.”

Johnson was only a couple years my senior, but he was on his third tour when I was still in my grunt diapers. Meaning I was still in my stumbling phase, where the heat, the weight of my rucksack, and my general unfamiliarity with this new world I had been drafted into made me look like an infant compared to those who had adapted.

And in Nam, two years’ difference might as well have been 50 back in civilization. Any soldier who made it through a tour, let alone two, was a man you listened to, because that man was a survivor. Every grunt in Nam wanted a platoon leader like Johnson, and in 68, they were few and far between.

Johnson was right so much that when he told me Vietnam was the end of the line for us grunts, I believed him without a shred of doubt. But the Sgt. wasn’t saying this to deflate morale. It was, in fact, the reverse. He just wanted us to have a clear understanding and acceptance about what it was we were doing there, and to push forward despite it.

He didn’t want us crying and begging for our mothers in the middle of a search and destroy mission, where silence was the difference between life and death. He wanted us mad, not scared. And with acceptance, we could drop that fear like dead skin and become killing machines.

I understood that and became a harder soldier because of it. But it didn’t stop me from picking the guitar up on evenings when fireworks didn’t light up the South-East Asian sky, and dreaming of glory. There was a part of me, no matter how small, that always whispered, “Rusty, you’re going to play on that stage, boy, and the world will never be the same.”

I’d think about the Grand Ole Opry, and a smile would stretch wide across my face. Standing there, alone with a guitar, stripping myself and barring my soul for an audience who was about to be mystified. Telling them through melodic poetry, the troubles I’d seen, the troubles I’d survived, and how if the war didn’t kill me, hell, then I must be immortal.

In my head, I was in Nashville, Tennessee, throughout most of my tour. The boys thought I was crazy, but I thought they were crazy for not having a dream. Or if they did, letting the heat, the jungle, and the VC strip them of it.

“Oh, Wheeler was a dealer at his old general store. It was a trading post for traveling cowboys and widows of the war. Wheeler watched the goings-on in a valley in the west. And if you tried to rob ole Wheeler, boy in a wooden casket, you would rest.”

I’d sing old tongue in cheek western songs I’d written for the grunts in Firebase Lorraine. Smack dab in the heart of A Shau Valley. They’d laugh, smoke cigarettes and pot, while staring at me with the eyes of those who’d seen too much to ever be kids again. I’m sure I was looking back with those same vacant eyes, despite my best efforts.

In December of 68, about a month shy of my DERO(Date of expected return from overseas,) I began feeling these premonitions that things were going to go to hell in a handbasket, and that I was going to die. You feel that at the beginning of your tour, and somewhere in the middle, you think that maybe, just maybe, you’ll make it out alive. But the last month or so is filled with stone dread, as though the heavens themselves have opened up just to laugh at you for ever having hope.

You are washed with the rains of absolute certainty that you were kidding yourself if you ever thought you were going back home. Your maker was in the jungle. That’s where you’d meet, and Sgt. Johnson would be there as the world faded to black.

A week later, my premonition reared its ugly head as we were ordered to run a search and destroy mission deep in A Shau Valley. Heading down Armageddon Lane in rattlesnake formation, through trails that had brought about the deaths of many soldiers in recent months.

There was VC movement about four miles in from the firebase. Platoon after platoon had been sent in to kill them and destroy whatever supply nest they had. We followed orders and not even two miles in; we were ambushed. Our point man Anderson was decimated by a claymore and then, beyond the valley of green, hellfire rained down upon us. I hit the ground and began blindly firing back.

I was back at the Grand Ole Opry, standing behind the red curtain. It opened slowly, and a spotlight flashed in my eyes, revealing the crowd that awaited me. They were all soldiers. Dead soldiers.

Jamie Dickson, the nineteen-year-old who I foolishly befriended during my stumbling phase, clapped in the front row with half his face missing. Gomez whistled with the thumb and middle finger of his left hand, the whole right side of his body gone. Madrid, the Spanish-American radio operator of my unit, stood up and cheered. “My honky tonk brother, Rust-ayyy, yo, Rust-ayyy,” he went to clap, but looked down at two stumps where his hands used to be, then shrugged his shoulders and said, “There it is. There it is.”

I started playing and realized that the guitar was out of tune. Although I could swear that I tuned it before the curtain opened. Then my fingers forgot how to strum and pick, and my brain acted like it had never played the damn guitar before.

The crowd of dead soldiers had the smiles wiped from their faces as they began to boo and scream obscenities. One of them threw their helmet at the stage, right next to my feet, or at least where my feet used to be. FTA (Fuck the Army) written on the front. I went to pick it up and noticed a hole in my midsection.

“What is going on?”

I looked out, and again saw Madrid shrugging his shoulders.

“There it is. There it is."

Then the Opry got hot, so goddamn hot.

“Rusty, are you awake?”

I heard the voice of Sgt. Johnson. The smell of tobacco on his breath brought me back to A Shau Valley like smelling salts. Johnson was on his knees, while the medic wrapped my midsection in gauze.

“What’s uh, what’s going on? I was just at the Grand Ole Opry,” I said weakly. Johnson looked at me with solemn eyes.

“I’m sorry, kid. I told you, you were born at the wrong time to be a honky-tonker, but not at the wrong time to be a hero.”

He held on to my hand as I slipped out of the valley for the last time.

That was the day that Rusty the honky-tonker died.