CHEIU HOI

It referred to the `68 Tet Offensive, a bloody campaign from which an endless stream of little faces trickled; mixed race, motherless and miles from their fathers in Woodstock or West Hampton or Watts.

"Bad blood" they were called; unwanted babies in Vietnam's racially exclusive culture.

There were thirty-two when I first arrived, but the number rose and fell many times during my two tours of duty. Three infants entrusted to each six year-old, three six year-olds to each teen and a couple of old tired nuns who took care of the odd-outs so that order could be maintained.

A month before Christmas I put the word out to every G.I. in my battalion to send home for toys. Stateside toys, none of that cheap-o garbage they hung by wires in sidewalk-market Saigon. A real toy or two would "grease my wheels" and assure the giver a friendly trade relationship in the Spring.

You want fresh beef? Get me some Tonka Trucks. You want a souvenir flag or helmet to impress your girl? Get me some Mattel dolls and dress-up games. Pronto.

It was so simple.

I had the Long Binh Post tailor whip up a Santa suit, traded some detergent and a canned ham to a peasant theater company in Saigon for a scraggly chin beard and stole six forest green laundry bags from my own supply room.

"Papa Noel" the nuns chirped; a myth-gift from the French when these women were children themselves. Before the Call, before the Fall, before it all; Mau Than, Big War and thirty-two cups of milk.

My buddies did me right. By Christmas eve I had two, maybe three hundred little wrapped boxes; a three quarter ton truck full of love and guilty American generosity.

But shit, kids just see the toy, right? Kids just get the here and now of a present, unfettered by analysis of motive, that knee-jerk reaction to holly, that love that dared not recognize these step-children of Woodstock and Watts. A toy is a toy... Cheiu Hoi!

So now, here he comes, that jolly old "Ho-ho-ho", a chin-whisker, sweat drench, bowl full of jelly and his garland streamer Olive Drab sleigh. No reindeer. Just rain. Just dear. Dear God...

Listen to him, how he chuckles, "Ho-ho-ho Chi Minh!", waddling to the cane-chair throne in the ox-path dust, nouc mam breeze, Chipmunks "Jingle Bell" jangle, G.I.'s laughin' in the sunshine busting through the trees after a midday cloud-break in the monsoon-puddled courtyard.

Brown face, bow, present. Black face, bow, present. White face, Tan, Smallpox pocked, present, present, present.

"Hey bring Santa a Coke!", Christ I'm chokin' for a beer! and they line up again for round two.

Face, present, eyes, present, smile, present, `til the giftline finds its tail and rolls, rolls, rolls.

Finally all these little arms are full and the nuns whisper their wishes, tellin' my ears to tell my brain that the Spring must bring Black Market sinks and toilets and beds and peace, for me, for a while.

But sounds of gunfire and screams of pain slap me back to the war.

Sounds just like long ago, when I made them with my mouth. When I shot and fell and played with my brothers in the back-yard throes of Cowboy-Gangster-Civil War combat. Learning, rehearsing and practicing for a future I could not know; a war I could not imagine.

And how they played, under the gathering clouds, those boys and girls of Mau Than; with G.I. Joe jeeps and tanks and choppers -- with high-fashion Barbie and Betsy Wetsy and Nurse "Take-A-Temperature."

Fighting, nursing and celebrating Christmas the way American kids do; with the toys American kids have... as my tears ran with sweat down the whiskers on my chin.

- end -

Martin Higgins