Thread: Reflections on Wartime Shaves

Ladies and gentlemen:

Today I came across an old photograph of mine taken, probably, a week or two after arriving in Vietnam. It flooded me with memories of the many sweet shaves I had in a beautiful place made grotesque by war.

In the photograph, a young man, his skin not yet tanned by the tropical sun and the taste of war, wearing an olive-drab T-shirt, sits on an ammunition can with shave cream on his face and a plastic disposable razor frozen in time ahead of a thin trail of cleared stubble on the cheek. The sink is a steel helmet with cold water and the tiny mirror, leaning against a Howitzer shell casing, a precious gift from the Red Cross.

My bittersweet memories from that tour of duty in Vietnam as a U.S. Army combat correspondent include a collection of shaving experiences that ranged from the miserable to the glorious. Some days their memory shuffles back into my morning shave ritual as a vivid reminder of why I treasure every wet shave with the straight razor.

I landed in Vietnam on Christmas Day, 1967. The Tet offensive exploded on January 31, 1968 — on the day I received my first reporting assignment. The chopper, however, refused to fly me out to join the infantry unit in the jungle I was to write about, because the guys were either pinned down or caught in a heavy firefight, I forget which.

I had a camera, well tucked away out of sight to avoid becoming a sniper's target, but since I was still a soldier, I also carried an M16, ammunition and a pack that weighted a ton.

Looking back, I was lucky that day, for as a rookie, who knows if I would have made it back alive from the assignment. Yet I also keep a warm spot in my heart for the soldiers who fell in that firefight and all the other firefights in Vietnam. God bless them.

Ordinarily, the combat correspondents spent several days covering various units throughout South Vietnam and returned to our base camps to write the stories. Sometimes we also wrote stories about someone or something in the individual base camps. The pieces were then published in the individual division newspaper and also made available to other military as well civilian newspapers.

Although I loved writing my newspaper stories, I think I loved more that first shower and shave after returning from the field. A clean set of jungle fatigues completed the routine — it made me feel as if I were dressed in black tie and tails and sporting dearly beloved on my arm.

The base camp where I was stationed had several shower points — sometimes a big tent with multiple shower heads — and where for a little while I would fade away and wash off the blood and the rot of war with a hot shower and a sweet shave afterward.

It is those memorable occasions that sometimes float back to me when the Thiers-Issard, Wacker, Filarmonica or some other razor I have glides on my face like the silky sheen painted on my soul by Brahms. I don't know how long I spent under the hot shower, or even on my shave, because time means nothing when you try to cleanse yourself of war and at the same time thank your luck for holding out another day.

The shaving routine was Spartan, done also haphazardly the way most people with plastic disposable razor and aerosol shaving creams tend to do, but it got the job done as well as possible under the circumstances. I avoided aftershaves, because you don't want to hump in the jungle smelling like a dandy.

No hot showers in jungle. No hot water either. When shaving in the jungle, the steel pot was the sink with canteen water and the shave good enough to remove some stubble. Since I have a tough Assyrian beard, the shave was usually rough, but it was also one way to avoid scratching a sweaty two or three-day stubble and further irritating the face.

All that was long ago. After the war, although I was scruffy from to time, shaving every day became routine. Oh, I went through a variety of razors, even a useless electric, but most of the time I stuck with the double edge. Later I had to switch to multi-blade razors, because double edge blades were hard to find. Eventually I returned to the double edge when its popularity grew once more. Then I finally added the straight razor, because I had wanted to shave with the straight razor as far back as my 'twenties.

Sometimes I wonder what my wartime shaves would have been had I used a Thater silver tip with Castle Forbes and a Wacker 6/8" with dreadnought point. The combination puts me in heaven now. Perhaps it would have done the same in Vietnam. Perhaps. Perhaps not. I will never know.

What I do know is that even though my Vietnam razor was a plastic disposable and the shaving cream a white cloud of nothing spewed out of a can, the hot shower and the shave were as sweet as my first sighting of the lights twinkling on American soil.

I often lived for those occasional periods of luxury in what we soldiers referred to as the armpit of the world. When I reflect on those days that held glimpses of happiness in the pains of war, I realize that I had to be satisfied with what little I had.

And I was. I was — especially because I still had my life.

Regards,

Obie

You paint a great picture. Thanks for sharing. And thanks for your service.

Thank you for your service.

Thanks for sharing that story.

Thanks for sharing....that was well written and very relevant to someone from a generation that didn't have to experience the nightmare of war thanks to the sacrifice of many we will never know.

Thanks for letting us share your reflections and don't hesitate to tell us more when the time is right. A pleasure to read.

Obie: I too was able to enjoy Tet 68 fron Hue area. I was able to obtain my first str8 while in Phu Bai- a numase. It was my first but not my last. Thanks for the serving!

My grandfather served proudly in the Army during the Korean Conflict. He tells a story similar to yours. He relayed his story to me a couple of Thanksgivings ago, and I'll never forget it (old soldiers don't really talk about war with those who never served: no common frame of reference). I also lost an uncle to Vietnam. My mother gets misty-eyed whenever she recalls Uncle William, and it makes me regret that I never knew him. He died ten years before I was born.

In no way do I envy you or the other real heroes who paid for my freedoms in blood. But you have my undying support and admiration. For what it's worth...

Thanks.

My uncle was in Vietnam, and he never talked to me about it until after I served in Desert Storm. The sights, smells and sounds of Iraq still have not faded. The stories he told me made me glad that my combat experience was so much tamer. Now he does his "latrine business" through a tube in his navel. However, war is hell and PTSD is worse. He still.....has problems.

Reading this post brought back some fond memories of showers and shaves that really did feel like time was standing still. Hot water was not a problem in the desert, however. Razor for me back then was a plastic disposable (aargh!!) and what was shaving cream? We shaved dry, or relatively. The sweat was pretty good at lubricating the face.

Not really sure why I posted this, except that it brings me some comfort, albeit minor, that there are people out there who suffered some terrible things and still have some common ground to feel halfway human. I felt like an animal for a very long time, and the only cure was a VERY hot shower and a nice shave. Now, of course, my razor is straight, the blood leaking from me is MY fault, and honing the new skill has caused me to slloooowwww wwaaayyy dooowwwwnnn and leave the sounds and sights in the background for a while.

Thank you for sharing and serving, especially since the people of that era weren't so forgiving and understanding of the men that were sent to kill & die for an ideal they didn't get. Much love.

Thank-you for sharing and your service. My father is also a Vietnam veteran and a career serviceman. To this day, he still does not talk about his tour of duty. I have some pictures of him and his buddies at some base camp, but no stories to go with them. I hope he has some good memories of what he endured there. Growing up, I thought I would follow in his footsteps and join the military, he told me if I choose the military as a career, go as an officer. I was in ROTC all 4 years of high school and wanted to continue in college. I spoke to recuiters after graduating high school and because of some medical conditions I would not be able to enlist. I was saddened that I could not do my part in protecting the freedoms our country enjoys. I have the utmost respect for all those who have and continue to serve in our military because I could not. Thank you.

Thanks for your service and the amazing story, Obie. I can see why you were a correspondent-you have the gift of using words. Until now, the only picture I had of a Vietnam-era combat correspondent was Joker in Full Metal Jacket. Thanks again, and I too look forward to more of your no-doubt fascinating stories (shaving or otherwise) when you feel like sharing more. Aaron