The Lister Bag
By Douglas Kulow

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‍The Lister bag (or Lyster bag) was a staple water purification tool during the Vietnam War. This36-gallon olive drab canvas bag hung from trees or tripods to provide cooled, chlorinated drinking water. It allowed soldiers to turn unsafe water into potable water by adding calcium hypochlorite.

‍Specialist 5th Class Harry Sparkman balances his green plastic canteen under one of the Lister bag’s fill spouts as he operates the attached valve.

“Who’s in charge ofthis?”

“That’s a good question, Sparkman. Why?”  

Douglas immediately realizes the answer.  No amount of pressing and pumping and twisting the plastic valves brings water into his canteen. The Lister bag is dry.

He looks from face to thirsty face, as if each carries the same canteen, open, empty, each cap dangling from its chain. To and from the latrine, the piss tube to the mess, their body’s shuffle and drag as though they’ve forgotten where they are.  Soon, outside the perimeter of the Lister bag, there is no movement at all.

“Somebody ain’t doin’ their fuckin’ job.”

Sparkman’s north Mississippi drawl seems to add emphasis to each syllable of this accusation.  

“Some of us in this fuckin’ war got jobs to get to.”

He shouts at the monkey, Caroline, sitting on top of the corrugated roof. She jangles her dog tags at him in disdain.

Mike Kehoe, walking towards the Lister bag, has already started brushing his teeth.  Without water, he is full faced with a concentration of Pepsodent and no place to discreetly spit.  He lets go, then gladly accepts the first partially filled canteen offered by a sympathetic Mick Mango.

“No water?  What are we supposed to do now?”

Mango pushes on the green canvas hanging drum that might weigh as much as 300 pounds when full.  It sways with ease.  

“Hard to fight a good warwithout good water.”

It’s into this “Morning of the Living Dead” scene that Battalion Procurement Specialist Boyd Bloom rolls his personal “Mutt” Jeep. Consumerism is half of what motivates Bloom’s sense of marketplace enterprise.  The other half is the means of production.  

Bloom, who learned as a young man about supply and demand, recognizes that the best place to position oneself is on the road between the two.

“You out of water here, too?”

The word “too” seems to drape in the humid air.

Bloom jumps from up his seat, shakes the bag himself, and reboards the jeep in one deft movement.

“I gotta check formyself. Get paid extra for that.”  

Bloom pauses, his blueeyes swaying from side to side as if reading the room; he morphs his perfectsmile into a full laugh.  

He knows the rumors about his business dealings—that he plays both sides and gets paid either way.

“You need water? I can get you water.”  

Bloom starts the jeep.

“How long is that going to take?”

Suddenly articulate and calm, Harry speaks again.

“Some of us here have to get to our jobs out in the field.  It’s already 100 degrees out there.”

“Half an hour or less?” Bloom answers Harry, cocking his head and grabbing his ear as if listening for some distant sound that may accost him.

“If it’s not here in time, it’s free.  Of course it’s free anyway. See boys, we’re under contract. Gotta get this paint back to the coffin maker.”

He gestures to the OD green paint cans in the back. It’s US government paint you can’t get through proper supply channels. Commandeered straight off the landing craft, transferred to the black market. It’s an economic exchange in which everyone profits.

Right then, the slamming screen door announces Nguyen Tien’s departure from the captain’s office.  Tien works at the PX and, as it turns out, Bloom is her ride to work.  The details of production and consumption and procurement of this arrangement between Tien, Bloom, and Captain Honeywell are whispered about by the boys around the Lister bag.  

“I don’t know why he’s in such a big hurry. It ain't like his customers are going anywhere.”  

The always cynical Ed Schrader’s comment may be shared by some but rarely said aloud and surely not where Harry or any of his friends can hear.

Though Harry does not have a true signal corps military occupational specialty (MOS), he chooses to live in the “long lines platoon” with the guys that string wires from poles.  In the 41 Signal Battalion, it seems that all these guys are black, and they all live in this one barracks by choice. Why? Well, it IS closest to the Lister bag.

As Bloom heads out of the compound to the Vietnamese coffin maker to barter paint, the tank truck full of potable water rounds the barracks from the south, heading toward Harry and the boys.  As the two vehicles pass, their horns alert the waiting “customers” at the Lister bag to the shiny painted plywood disk over the jeep’s spare tire. Atop the long legs of the iconic roadrunner mascot there is now a pair of white puffy shorts.  Below the battalion insignia where once it read Pax Nostra Fini (Peace is Our Goal), it now reads “Raising Bloomers” in discretely scripted cursive. The name of Boyd Bloom’s new procurement company.

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Douglas Kulow served in the US Army in 1966-69 as a crypto graphics technician in the 1st Signal Brigade in the Vietnamese central highlands as well as Forts Benning, Monmouth, Jackson, and Leavenworth.  After serving, he returned to college and began working as a family therapist. He went on to become Administrator of Children's Services in Holmes County and after retirement taught high school as a substitute.  Living in Wadsworth, Ohio, he has four adult children and four young grandchildren.  Today, he writes short stories and poetry, and (of course) he is working on his own great American novel.