Half way through his 18-month tour in Vietnam, Bob McDowell was a forward recon artillery staff sergeant attached to units from the Army’s Second Field Forces. A year earlier, he’d graduated from the advanced combat training academy “scout school” that produced the first soldiers to wear the camouflage beret.
They were based near the village of Lộc Ninh, not far from where the southern tip of the country stuck its toe into the South China Sea.
At the time, most of the days on base – when they weren’t out on long patrols – were fairly quiet. They were always preparing for the next patrol, fortifying and digging in, resting whenever they could. And storing supplies, including some of the more important provisions: Pabst Blue Ribbon and Red Cap beer or Jim Beam bourbon. Most of the time, that’s what they had to choose from while out in the field.
There was a lot of drinking when troops weren’t on duty, or on the front lines. Another means of recreation was in herbal form. After all, some of the world’s very best marijuana grew in the tropical paradise of Vietnam.
In the spring of 1968, McDowell and other members of a small patrol were returning to Lộc Ninh after a brief encounter with the enemy. Fortunately, all members of the group were intact and smiling, knowing that refreshment was just minutes away.
Each soldier was eager to empty the foul silt water from their boots and pull the leeches from their legs. Shower and a shit, some dry clothes, then everyone’s choice of fine refreshment:
“When we weren’t on duty, we’d drink, mostly at night,” said McDowell. “None of the guys I patrolled with were ‘heads’ – the guys we knew were often doping with pot, hash . . . whatever.”
But something was different about this night.
“We were out at a favorite spot near the perimeter and began drinking, just talking about the patrol and busting on one of the guys for something stupid he’d done . . . when one of the guys held up a couple of joints,” recalled McDowell. “He said, ‘Hey, let’s smoke this.’ ‘No way, man,’ most of the guys were saying. Others said it’ll only make you hungry. It was back and forth like that with the guys amused, but undecided about what to do.”
Before long, the sweet smell of fresh Vietnamese weed was teasing its way through the group. Eventually, all of them were sampling it, some more enthusiastically than others, holding it in against the urge to cough – just as they’d seen the ‘heads’ do.
Soon, the mood changed. It started with a weak smile, then a snicker. Suddenly, one guy said, “Shhh! Shuuuuuut up. What was that? I hear . . . dogs!”
There was wild laughter when the guy got serious and quiet, intent to know if the dogs he thought he heard were coming closer.
“Shhh! The dogs – they’re out there!” By this time, everyone was laughing uncontrollably. “Then the guy began to bark and howl and we couldn’t stop laughing; it was a freakin circus,” McDowell said.
McDowell added that the guy went on and on with every variation of barking, howling, whining and scratching. Then he jumped up and made a big production of hiding from them, performing all sorts of antics to show that . . . if they came through that opening in the underbrush, right there . . . he’d make a run for it thata’way. He was fast, but tripping over his own feet. He leapt to the side then ran around the corner and – wham! – busted his nose on the corner of a bunker.
Blood spurted out of his face to the great enjoyment of everyone there and tumultuous laughter. Wave after wave of it, as other members of the group reenacted the nose-busting scene and the facial expression of the guy with the swollen, bleeding nose.
Eventually, they quieted down so as not to arouse too much suspicion. After another joint made the rounds, they hatched a plan to raid the mess hall. Sure enough, the munchies had hit.
Like a band of youngsters with arms outstretched and bent legs to “absorb sound,” the men made sneak on the food supply a hundred yards away. They padded through an encampment of sensibly sleeping soldiers as muffled laughter rolled forward, then back again.
At last, they slipped through a door that wasn’t nearly secure enough for the now fully-starved soldiers. Inside where the food was stored, they hungrily devoured all type and variety of snack, making quite a mess in the process.
“Damn, it’s almost 0400,” said one of the guys. “We gotta’ go out on patrol again soon.” That news wasn’t greeted happily by anyone.
“I gotta shit,” said McDowell. As he gradually slid from his altered state, he wasn’t going to let the reality of patrol duty get a grip on him yet. He had to go bad, pressure was building down there, and he looked forward to it.
“I had the shitter all to myself so I propped the door open to see the stars,” he recalled. “It was the most beautiful night I’d ever seen, quiet and peaceful. There were a billion 
stars. They looked so close I actually reached for them, moving my hand in the air; it felt so good.
“Sitting there with the fresh air on my face, I had an absolutely luxurious shit – the best I’d ever had,” he added. “I just kept shitting and had this smile on my face. Of course, I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it and, oh, the warmth and goodness of really fine shit – it felt sooooo good.”
McDowell was there in the shitter for a long time, having a near-religious experience. Hey, he’d earned it. Soon, he’d be back in the jungle, quiet as a mouse and undetectable, an alert soldier ready to spring into action.
“Eventually, I had to get up and get back to the hooch for a nap. And then – after some sleep – the guys’d be forming up again for patrol,” he said.
As he made his way to the hooch when a friend (the guy whose idea it was to raid the mess hall) stopped him with hand outstretched.
“He said to me, ‘Bob, I love you like a brother . . . but man, you smell like shit! You stink like a son-of-a-bitch.’”
Dreamily, McDowell looked down toward his ankles, and on to his flip-flops and saw – what?? – clumps of shit hugging his legs and feet. Was it shit? Damn: It looked like he’d shit his britches. And then the realization snuck up on him. Back at the shitter, he hadn’t pulled his pants down!
No wonder he’d enjoyed the peaceful feeling and the warmth of that shit so much. It didn’t go anywhere, so it just collected, then gently rolled out whenever it wanted to after he stood to leave. But now as it cooled and drew attention to itself, by golly, it was beginning to get just a bit unpleasant.
And that’s when the group, alerted to his predicament, had a new round of laughter, just like the party had started all over again.
Out of the laughter – and he had to laugh, too – one guy was able to communicate the urgency to get some sleep before the next patrol.
He said, “You’d better get yer foul ass in bed . . . Stinky.” New round of laughter and backslapping.
McDowell ran straight to the trash barrel; somehow, wagging his junk in the open air, the smell was getting worse. Peeling off the pants and underwear, he tossed the soiled clothes in, then hustled toward the shower.
“All we had was a jungle shower,” he explained, “and it was freakin’ cold.” A five-gallon bag of water hung on a nail, with a nozzle that twisted to let out a spray of water.
He stood on a wood pallet, working frantically to put the water to best use, deciding that one bag wasn’t enough. Caked shit was still running down his leg and clumped-up at his toes. He looked down at his feet, still in the flip-flops that he hoped to save.
Another bag of water, soap, scrubbing. Not enough, not nearly. One more, then another. The shit was gone but he could still smell it. Maybe it was just the smell was coming up from below the pallet.
He jumped from the shower, toweled off and ran to the hooch. All he could recall was that he slept well, dreaming of a heavenly latrine and a starry, starry night. He awoke to the sounds of guys gearing-up. He’d have just enough time for a quick bite to eat. He threw on some fresh underwear and pants. He then grabbed his rucksack, general hat and M16.
His greatest fear at the time wasn’t the enemy: “I was afraid that team sergeant Ramsey was gonna’ kill me for smelling this bad.”
The other guys confirmed it. They put him at the rear end of the patrol for good measure. As luck would have it, Ramsey didn’t hear about it or get a whiff of him that night.
But the name “Stinky” held for the rest of his tour in ‘Nam. And, for McDowell, it was a first and last experience with the evil weed.
“That shit wasn’t for me,” he said.
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