Smoky Joe's Cafe by Bryce Courtenay Read Free Book Online Page B

big
whoof
of flame.
    One day something happens to The Blowfly, he’s reported sick or he’s got a leave pass or something and they send in an assistant Blowfly. The new bloke gets the mix vicki-verka and a quarter of a gallon of diesel with three of petrol and blows the whole lot to kingdom bloody come. We reckon there must have been VC in the jungle wearing dunny seats for collars, wondering what next the Yanks at H & I were gunna think of doing to them.
    The only thing the movies seemed to get half right is showing the street scenes in Saigon City and other
towns, the whorehouses, the girls and the cheap bars with the walls made out of flattened beer cans. The strip. You could see the same thing in Bangkok or pretty well in any other place in Asia.
    In Vung Tau, where we’d go for a seventy-two-hour break, this particular area was known as the front beach and the back beach, with ‘The Flags’ the centre of the front beach. There were hundreds of bars and brothels, or brothels with bars as most of them were. The front beach was where we went and the back beach was out of bounds. The rumour was the back beach was where the Viet Cong went for their rest and recreation.
    The subject of Vung Tau now comes up and Flow pipes in, ‘There was this time Animal and me got separated from you blokes at The Flags. We’re a bit pissed and Animal’s thrown up a couple of times and someone’s told him the Viet Cong pussy is better than our own, that they’re keeping the best for the enemy. I’m the only one who’s stupid enough to believe this or to think it’s a good idea. So him and me decide to go to the back beach.
    â€˜We get to this bar and it’s filled with Vietnamese blokes dressed the same as usual in black pyjamas. We order a couple a beers and two bar girls come and sit with us. They don’t look much different to the ones
we’ve just left behind. Pretty soon the locals are sending us over half a dozen beers and we’re returning the favour and we’re having a bit of a laugh, though we can’t understand their lingo nor they ours. Then suddenly one of them says something and they all get up and go out the back and next thing they’re back and they’re carrying AK47s.
    â€œShit, Flow!” Animal whispers, “It’s time for the last rites and there’s no flamin’ priest in sight!” But the Viet Cong smile and nod and give us the thumbs up as they leave. Animal turns to me and says, “Whaddaya say, Flow? I think I prefer the sheilas back at The Flags!”’
    â€˜Yeah, and I got the clap that time too!’ Animal remarks.
    This brings up a real big snort all round, because Animal got the clap every time. In fact about 25 per cent of the battalion had it at one time and the MO decides it’s way out of order and he calls each company separately into the mess for a bit of a chinwag and general dressing-down. ‘You’ve all been issued with condoms and you’re not using them!’ he shouts down the microphone. ‘The VD statistics in the battalion have reached alarming proportions and you’ve got to clean up your act!’

    The doc walks up to this big blackboard and he takes a piece of yellow chalk and on one side he writes a huge ‘60%’, filling half the blackboard, and on the other side he writes ‘20%’ just as big.
    â€˜Right, get this into your thick skulls, gentlemen,’ he says. ‘Sixty per cent of the prostitutes in Vung Tau have venereal disease and 20 per cent have tuberculosis!’ He pauses to let this sink in.
    Suddenly Animal shouts from the back, ‘Does that mean we only fuck the ones who cough?’
    For us, though, Vietnam wasn’t an occasional leave pass to the bright lights of Vung Tau but endless patrols and operations in the jungle, keeping Charlie on the move. Sometimes these operations would last five weeks where you seldom got to