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MEMOIRS OF A BANGKOK WARRIOR 
A NovelByDEAN BARRETTOpening Chapters
 
OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM12 September 1967I knew it was going to be a malevolent day as soon as I woke up and saw that my sockswere missing again. That meant either one of my roommates borrowed them or else the Thaihouseboy left them in my shoes outside the door on the front porch. The Bangkok sun heated thefloor all right but still I didn't like walking across the floor in my undershorts and bare feet,especially since my room was visible to our Thai neighbors over the fence. But I did. And, sureenough, there they were stuffed into my shoes on the porch. The houseboy sat hunched over a boot which he was shining meticulously with a toothbrush full of shoe polish. He looked up, brushed his tousled black hair away from his eyes with a shoe-polish-stained brown hand, andsaluted: "
Sawasdee krab
," he said with a big Thai grin. He was wearing shorts and a Buddhistamulet around his neck. His T-shirt had a 'Grunt-Power' motto and a multi-colored picture of aGI throwing everybody the bird. I gave him a quick salute and said good morning to him too. Idon't know what the hell he always saluted me for. I was only a Specialist Fourth-Class financeclerk in the Army and about as unmilitary as any other ex-Hawaiian beach boy who joined thegoddamned service because he knows wearing costumes and saluting lifers is inevitable anyway.Taylor always said the houseboy was happy because we were stuck in the Army and hewasn't. But that's bull, because he was only about 17 and a pretty good guy even if he couldn'tshine shoes worth a damn. I never did learn much about him because he didn't speak muchEnglish and I only learned about a hundred Thai words during my whole 18-month tour of dutyin Bangkok. And most of those hundred words were swear words. You know how GIs are. They
 
go to a foreign country and learn about a hundred words and then quit learning. Fifty of thosewords will be profane curses, and forty will be words to get a girl to bed for almost nothing; sothat leaves ten picked up by accident. But I figured if I was going to finish changing this diaryinto the first memoirs ever written by an enlisted man, I'd better spend a lot of my spare time atit. So I decided the hell with learning Thai.But I kept my notebook up to date. I can remember our room now as if I were standing init right this minute waiting for Major Thompson, known as Blinky, and his sidekick, FirstSergeant Boogle, known as Bumbles, to inspect us. There were four single bunks, wall lockers,foot lockers, one bookshelf and a small bathroom. Books, magazines, articles of civilian andmilitary clothes and beer cans were scattered about. Several small ant-infested stuffed animals in poor condition (one-eyed rabbit, snake fighting a mongoose, birds with torn wings, etc.) were piled on a cardboard carton next to a floor fan which didn't work for shit.On the wall were taped hand-written signs in various colors of paper and cardboard. Theyread: ‘Fuck the Army,’ ‘Happiness is watching a GI who just kicked it for six more years getdicked away by a lifer,’ ‘Death before Re-enlistment,’ and ‘The shortest distance between twoPX’s is a lifer's footprints.’ A large banner with a humorous drawing of a Vietcong was affixed toone wall proclaiming: ‘Good iron does not become nails and good men do not become soldiers.’Taylor had hung a large sheet of cardboard above his bunk with a drawing he did of athree-storied outhouse. The waste pipes of the outhouse were so constructed that when the toptoilet was flushed, all the shit emptied onto the guy sitting on the seat in the room directly
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