***A Song To While Away The Struggle
By-Bruce Springsteen’s Brothers Under The Bridge- With A Story
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin
This conversation took place one afternoon (date, unknown) in late October, 1977 under a massive concrete overpass along U.S. Interstate 5 just south of Inglewood near Los Angeles, California.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin
comment:
Recently in grabbing an old
Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to “burn” and download into my iPod
I came across a song that stopped in my tracks, the one highlighted in the
title to this entry Brothers Under The
Bridge. I had not listened to or thought
about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from
the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (California, naturally) on
the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another,
could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like
those a great depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the
hobo, bum, tramps camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the
ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los
Angeles and created their own “society.”
The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me
this assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the
treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans
Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out
about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they
could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for
the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during
the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been
involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI
coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New
Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation
who had clued me on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.
After making connections with
some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where
to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in
the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A couple of weeks ago,
after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was
left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had
written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from a story that I
didn’t file because the Eye went
under before I could round it into shape. The format of those long ago stories
was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill
what he wanted the world to heard, and I would write it up without too much
editing (mainly for language). I have reconstructed that story here as best I
can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how
things were said. This is Jeff and Zeb’s story as told by Jeff, probably one of
the only stories that have ever driven home to me the hellishness of war and
what it does to men’s souls.
For the record Jeffrey James
Adams served in Vietnam from mid-1969 to-early 1970 and Zebulon Samuel Johnston
from mid-1969 to late 1971. Zebulon Johnston’s name appears etched in no
rededicated black marble wall down in Washington but just maybe it should. Read
below why.
********** This conversation took place one afternoon (date, unknown) in late October, 1977 under a massive concrete overpass along U.S. Interstate 5 just south of Inglewood near Los Angeles, California.
“Yah, Zeb was quite a guy in
his time, a guy you could depend on, a guy you could count on, if you know what
I mean. Who did you say you worked for, mister? Oh, yah, the East Bay Eye. I still miss the bastard,
miss him for leaving me here without a guy I could count on, and will until I leave
this good green earth and that ain’t no lie, no sir. A real brother, unlike my
own brother who sometimes was a brother to me and sometimes just a same last
name.
Zeb and I went back, went
back to basic training in the Army down at Fort Gordon in Georgia. Jesus just
remembering that hellhole place and that hellhole time and that hellhole way
the good citizens outside in Augusta treated us the couple of times we had
weekend passes just like the blacks just because I was a Yankee and old Zeb was
from broken down Appalachia, some dink town called Hazard, a coal dust town
from what he said about it. A town he always said was full of history and
written up in song and in the books. But I had never heard of it, and truth,
never have heard of it since so I think that was old Zeb just being old Zeb.
Just so you know when you write this story his real name was Zebulon Samuel
Johnston, named after his father, his pa-pa he said, simple as that. And don’t call him a Johnson, either. He was
a Johnston, born and bred, he said.
But the big thing about how
we hit it off right from the start was
that first day when we got off that olive drab bus and hit the barracks and Jeb was bunked across from me and I had
to show him how to tie his boots. See, he never had proper shoes from the way
he told it and the way he tried to tie those boots before the boot camp
sergeant snapped his neck back for him I
can believe that and maybe that was the way things were down in broken down
Hazard. All I know is that all through
basic training, through rough woods stuff, Zeb paid me back, paid me back big
time, for my minute kindness. See he knew more about the woods, and how to
survive in them, and little tricks about
how to use this and that to get stuff done than a city boy, a big time Boston
city boy, Yankee to the core, and corner boy smart not woods smart could ever
know.
So he kept me on, as he said,
as his mascot. And anytime he needed some fancy way to get out of something he
would yell for me, and then he would be my mascot. Tight we were right from
basic. Same tight, and you'd better be tight, or get our asses kicked when we
took Advanced Infantry Training down at Fort McClellan down in Alabama where
the civilians put Yankees and hillbillies below blacks in the pecking order
they had established, or so it seemed every time we had town leave.
And then shipped out to ‘Nam.
Yah, ‘Nam hellhole of all hellholes and I know, know for certain I never would
have made it out alive if not for Zeb. See one time after we had a few days off
from the line we hit Saigon and jesus, the place looked just like home, or
somebody’s home if that home was Vegas or one of those glitter town, action
night or day. I couldn’t leave the place, or want to. Zeb could take it or
leave it so he went back first. Well one day, yes, day time he pulled me out of
some brothel, some sweet Eurasian girl
specialty house just in time to keep me from being locked up for about six
months in Long Binh for being, well, a few days over my leave time.
But I am getting a little
sidetracked and confused because that is not really the time he saved my young
white ass. No that was when we were out in the boonies, out in the Central
Highlands, near Pleiku just doing a routine patrol, keeping as far away from
the enemy as we could and as close to this little river, a crick Zeb called it, but really a creek, a little
low during the dry season. From out of nowhere we start taking fire from
“Charlie,” or maybe NVA regulars because the field of fire was pretty
concentrated like these guys had done it together for a while. In any case the
fire was getting heavy and so I wasn’t paying enough attention to where I was
heading. Next thing I know I am in the creek, water all around and muddy, big
muddy, and I can’t get out, no way. I take a round in the shoulder; see that
scar there, yah, that’s Purple Heart territory. I guess the hit made me crazy,
crazy not with pain as with fear, animal fear, and that ain’t no lie. I could
smell it and it wasn’t pretty.
I started crying out, started
crying out like crazy “Zeb, don’t leave me here to die alone so far from home, please Zeb.” And you know I don’t have to say anything
more about it because as you can see Jeb did not leave me in any 'Nam. Yah, he
got the Bronze Star for that, and a Purple Heart to boot for his own wounds
carrying me to the medivac area although I must have passed out because I don’t
remember much after the screaming and that fear smell. My war was over, and I
lost a little contact with Jeb as guys will do when they get split up in
wartime.
Back in the real world and
out, maybe 1972, I was doing okay, a little of this and that, nothing big and
nothing that couldn’t be shoved aside like air if I wanted to take off. Then
about a year later I heard through a
mutual friend that Jeb had made it back to “the real world” after another tour
of duty in ‘Nam and was out in Los Angeles. What that friend didn’t tell me, or
didn’t know, was that second tour took the stuffing out of Zeb and he had
started doing some girl. You know what that is right? Cocaine. Yah, drugs to
ease the pain and erase the horror. And once girl couldn’t shake the dreams and
the pain then boy, plenty of boy took you out of this world. Boy, since you
didn’t know what girl was, is nothing but horse, heroin, sweet dreams, for a
while heroin.
Yah, Jeb was in a bad way out
there in L.A. living on the streets, knocking off drug stores and I don’t what
else is what he told me later when he was sober a couple of times. Somehow our
mutual friend gave Zeb my number and one night, one hellish stormy night up in
Maine where I was staying working at a small shipyard, I got a phone call from
Zeb saying, “Jeff, don’t leave me out here alone to die, please Jeff.” And you know I don’t have to say anything
more because I did not leave Jeb to die alone in any L.A. Jesus, no, not a good
old country no shoes boy like Zeb in L.A. They would eat him alive.
So, a few days, maybe a week
later, we met in a Mission Of God house or some such place over on Wiltshire,
not the good part, and I got him fixed up there for a while. He was shaky, very
shaky. Then, after a few months, he decided that he had to get out of that
mission house and live on the streets. Well not exactly the streets but in a
place like this, near the railroad tracks, in case he wanted to head home he
said, just a hobo jungle really. So I stayed with him naturally. Somehow he got
some boy from god knows where and he went off to the races again. He wouldn’t
even consider getting help or leaving the jungle. He said he felt at home under
bridges, and along railroad tracks.
Well, somehow one day, I
wasn’t around that day I was down at the pier looking for a couple of days work
to tide us over, he got a hold of some badass smack , some poison left-over
stuff and started dancing on the tracks from what some ‘bo who was there said
later. You know as well as I do you can’t dance on any railroad track and not
draw a wrong number. They say he tried to get off the track but he wasn’t fast
enough.
Yah,
Zeb was quite a guy in his time, a guy you could depend on if you know what I
mean. I still miss the bastard and will until I leave this good green earth and
that ain’t no lie, no sir. Poor Jeb lived on sweet dreams and train smoke and I
guess I will for a while. Maybe do a little of this and that again. But not
right now, okay.
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