I and maybe thirty other soldiers boarded a C-123 Bookie Bird, strapping ourselves into the fold-down canvas seats on either side. When the engines started, the noise was deafening, and conversation impossible. So we sat, the roar of the engines humming in our ears, as we lifted off and flew to our new home. Closing my eyes, I tried to ignore the bone-jarring bouncing of the plane and thought about my last night in San Francisco, where several of us had gone for a pre-Vietnam celebration during our two-day layover at Travis Air Force Base.
All I knew about San Francisco, which wasn't much, I'd learned from news clips and articles depicting the city as one big hippie heaven. I'd expected nothing but bearded men smoking pot and shirtless girls handing out flowers and kisses. And there were some of those, but the streets weren't overrun with them, as I'd thought they might be. Instead, I discovered the most beautiful city I'd ever seen. I was thrilled by the elaborately-painted Victorian houses, the breathtaking span of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the trolley cars that trudged up streets so precipitous I was sure we would never reach the top. Even the summer weather—so oddly cold and foggy—couldn't dampen the city's spirit After a day spent walking around and taking in the sights, we found ourselves in Chinatown at dinnertime. Choosing a restaurant at random from among the many available, we dined on food the likes of which I'd never tasted: gloriously plump dumplings filled with ground pork, noodles topped with crisp-skinned duck, and shrimp in black bean sauce. Afterward, we made our way to a bar on the waterfront, where we drank far too many beers until, dizzy with excitement, we stumbled into the night and walked through the foggy streets back to our waiting bus. As we crossed the Bay Bridge, I told myself that one day I would live in San Francisco. The next morning, I hastily scribbled a postcard to Andy, still at Fort Eustis, and dropped it in a mailbox. Despite being stationed less than a hundred miles from one another, we hadn't seen each other at all during AIT. I'd sent Andy a couple of letters, and he'd sent back rushed replies, but that was it. I used my postcard—a photograph of twisting, turning Lombard Street—to inform him that I was shipping out. His training program ran longer than mine, so I knew he wouldn't receive his orders for another two months. I fully expected never to hear from him again. I did not write to Jack, who now occupied little of my thoughts.
I had, as much as possible, left my past behind to begin a new life as a new man in Vietnam. Now, as I felt the plane begin to descend, I wondered what kind of life it would be.
CHAPTER 25
If I'd been surprised by Vietnam, I was completely taken aback by Quan Loi. Once the site of the French Terre Rouge Rubber Plantation, which took its name from the red dirt out of which the forest sprouted, it was a strangely beautiful place, part stark military installation and part elegant colonial outpost, complete with a mansion, gardens, and what our French hosts told us was the most beautifully constructed swimming pool in Vietnam. Monkeys watched, curious and suspicious, from the safety of palm trees, the voices of birds provided a nonstop soundtrack, and the little flop-eared mongrel dogs adopted by the soldiers slept in the sun. Except for the machinery of war that had grown up like weeds where the rubber trees once stood, it would have been a paradise in the foothills. Enough of its grandeur remained, however, that I did feel as if I'd stepped into the remnants of the Garden of Eden, its perfection marred by sin but still evident beneath the dirt and scars of battle. Located approximately fifty miles north of Saigon and ten miles from the Cambodian border on notorious "Thunder Road" (officially National Route 13), Quan Loi was used by a number of military units, including, at various times, the Big Red One, the 1st Cavalry, and the 11th Armored Cavalry. Its 3000-foot-long airstrip, carved out of the plantation's former golf course, served a constant stream of aircraft carrying troops and supplies, and helicopters darted over the trees like dragonflies. I quickly fell into the routine of life there. My primary assignment was the inventorying and dispersion of stores, a tedious but easy job that kept me occupied most of the time. It also had the built-in benefit of making me popular with the other soldiers, as I was in a position to do favors for them. As a result, I soon made many new friends.
The general misconception of war is that it is a thing always in motion. The truth is, life as a soldier involves long stretches of boredom punctuated by sudden bursts of activity. Although the men of Quan Loi were most definitely at war, as evidenced by the frequent sound of gunfire, the occasional mortar explosion, and the flow of troops both going into and returning from battle, we also had many days when nothing happened. On such occasions, we were like any boys itching for distraction, which we found in cards, beer, and the swapping of stories.
I arrived at Quan Loi in the middle of the annual monsoon season. The daily rains quickly turned the red dirt into mud, which caked on everything it touched and turned soldiers into warrior braves with earth-painted faces. One day in July, after I'd been in Vietnam about a month, we had five straight days of downpours. At night we lay in our hootches and listened to the rat-a-tat-tat of drops on the corrugated metal walls, the sound reminiscent of gunfire and therefore anything but soothing. By day, we trudged through the soupy mud, performing our duties with mute resignation. I was counting boxes of bootlaces when I was interrupted by the sound of helicopters cutting through the drone of rain. Shortly thereafter, the sergeant in charge of my platoon came in.
"Brummel, do you have any mortuary training?"
"No, sir."
"Well, you're about to get some. Come with me."
I put down my clipboard and followed him out into the rain. He walked toward a large building that had previously been used to store equipment for the plantation. It had since been turned into a Graves Registration Point, where the remains of soldiers killed in action were brought for identification and processing. Although we all knew what happened there, we seldom spoke about it, believing it to be bad luck.
"An infantry unit got into some fire with Charlie up around Loc Ninh," the sergeant told me as he pushed aside the plastic sheet covering the building's door and we stepped inside. "About two dozen of them went down."
The room was large, with a concrete floor and several metal tables against one wall. Three soldiers lay on the tables, their hands at their sides. Anyone glancing at them quickly would have thought them asleep, but a closer examination would have revealed the holes in their greens and the torn flesh where bullets had entered.
"Our refrig units can only accommodate ten bodies," said the sergeant as I tried not to look at the dead men. "With this rain and the heat, the guys we can't chill are going to turn ripe in no time. We've got to get them IDed, cleaned up, and out of here ASAP."
"But I don't know anything about…" I began to say. "Watson here will show you everything you need to know," the sergeant said, interrupting me and nodding at a soldier who had just come in, a short, stocky man with red hair and a missing front tooth.
"He's been doing this a long time. I'll leave you boys to get to work."
He left me alone with Watson, who said, "First time with GR?"
I nodded. He smiled grimly. "You'll get used to it," he said as he handed me an apron, gloves, and a surgical mask. "Besides, these boys need someone to look after them."
The care of the dead is an art, one I was introduced to that afternoon by a master. Lloyd "Digger" Watson was a third-generation mortician from Louisiana, a quiet man with a wry sense of humor and a love for death that at first frightened me, but which eventually I came to see not as an obsession but as a rare gift. He was on his second tour in Vietnam, having enlisted voluntarily after his only brother was killed during the Tet Offensive.
"When I saw the job they did on Bonner, I told my daddy I was going to make sure nobody else came home to their family looking like that," he told me as he prepared to lead me through my first experience with a dead body.
The soldier was a private, an infantryman whose dog tags revealed him to be Nicholas Betz, age 19. His clean-shaven face was perfectly intact, the eyes closed and the lips s
lightly parted. I helped Digger remove his clothing, at which point the single bullet hole in his chest was revealed. Digger ran his fingers over the ragged skin.
"They don't usually look this good," he told me. "This was a clean kill. He'll be a quick one." He handed me a washcloth and together we cleaned the dirt and blood from Private Betz's body. It felt unnatural, bathing a corpse. The limbs were already stiffening, and Digger had to show me how to massage the lifeless muscles to loosen the grip of death. In order to calm the churning in my stomach, I told myself that the body wasn't real, that we were simply playacting. I couldn't accept that the young man whose body I tended was unable to feel any of our ministrations, that he would never again enjoy the touch of another human's hands.
The next step in the process required even more pretending on my part. Digger inserted two needles into the boy's neck, one into an artery for the insertion of embalming fluid and another into a vein for the draining of blood, which emptied into one of the big sinks behind the tables. As the crimson stream trickled out, Digger continued to massage the body, evenly distributing the fluids. I stood a few feet away, unable to bring myself to touch the corpse.
"You can't be afraid," he said, sensing my hesitation. "I think they know when you're scared of them. You have to tell them it's okay." I thought he was crazy. The thing on the table was dead meat, I thought to myself, nothing but a collection of tissues and bones and now-useless organs. It couldn't hear, or feel, or understand what was happening to it. But if that was true, I argued, then why was I so afraid to touch it? Why did the sight of the dead soldier bother me so intensely?
"You've never been around the dead, have you?" Digger asked. He didn't wait for an answer, continuing to talk as he worked. "Maybe they don't speak out loud, but they still have a lot to say. It's our job to listen."
He turned to me. "Every body has a story. It's up to you to read it." His strange pronouncements were making me even more upset. I felt like an intruder into a world where I had no business being. I wanted to be back with my boxes and lists, where all I had to do was count and record. Death was not something I wished to catalog or inventory. But Digger was unmoved by my discomfort. He indicated the body on the second table. "Why don't you start on him while I do this," he said. "You just collect their things and wash them. I'll handle the rest."
Grateful for at least not having to watch the draining and filling of Nicholas Betz, I moved to the middle table. Looking at the form on the clipboard Digger gave to me, I began filling in what I could: name (Hector Means), age (23), serial number (US67762419), and religion (Catholic). Then I began to remove his clothing, searching the pockets for personal items before folding the garments neatly and setting them on a chair beside the table. Every item was noted on the form, and soon I felt more at ease as I fell into the familiar rhythm of making lists. I put into a plastic bag a wristwatch, Zippo lighter, and wallet containing sixty dollars in military scrip and a photo of Hector standing with his arm around a young Asian woman.
"Looks like he had himself a girlfriend," said Digger, coming over to check on my progress and seeing the photo in my hand. He then looked at the form. "He's one of McNamara's boys." "One of his what?" I asked. Digger pointed at the serial number. "He's a US67. They only give that designation to guys drafted under Project 100,000. It's this program McNamara set up to draft guys who couldn't pass the military's intelligence test. This guy must have really wanted to fight."
I looked at Hector's face. Part of it was missing, a big chunk just below his right eye. The bones of his cheek were exposed, some shards of teeth visible through the tangle of skin. Below his navel was another wound, this one uglier and rawer, probably the one from which he'd died. I looked back at Digger, who had inserted a trocar into Private Betz's abdominal cavity and was (I would learn this later, when my ability to stomach the process was more certain) puncturing the soft organs to be sucked out and replaced with more embalming fluid.
"You mean he was basically too stupid to join?" I asked. "More or less," Digger answered. "McNamara says it's a way for the less-fortunate to still contribute to the fight. If you ask me, I say it's more like a good way to get a lot of boys who don't know any better to get themselves killed. I bet you at least half a dozen of the guys stacked out there are US67s."
He was right. As the day progressed into night and we made our way through the bodies waiting to be tended to, I counted seven men whose serial numbers began with the US67 designation. Each time I saw it, I looked at the soldier's face and wondered what it was that had driven him to enter the army. I couldn't imagine wanting so badly to fight that you would do anything to be given the chance. Even more, I couldn't imagine allowing these men to go to war.
We finished in the early hours of the morning. When we were done, twenty-six bodies were ready for transport to the main mortuary at Tan Son Nhut, ten of them in the refrigeration units and sixteen lined up on the floor in an adjoining room. We'd placed bags of ice over the ones too destroyed for proper embalming, covering them as much as possible to prevent decomposition. They would have to be seen to at the much more fully-staffed central collection facility. We'd done the best we could.
"Not bad for your first time," Digger said as we removed our bloodied gloves and aprons. "Sorry to drag you in here. My assistant shipped out last week and they haven't lined up a replacement yet."
"It's okay," I told him. "I got used to it. Well, sort of used to it."
Digger laughed. "Enough to come back?"
I looked at him as he took a cigarette from a pack in his pocket, lit it, and took a drag. He blew a perfect smoke ring and watched it dissipate before continuing. "I could use you here," he said. I hesitated. One day of GR duty was one thing, but doing it full time was something else. I didn't know if I could handle it.
"It's not like it's every day," Digger said. "Only when the war heats up and we get a delivery." "Just like fucking Christmas," I said.
"Think about it," said Digger. "Let me know. If you can do it, I'll get your assignment rearranged." I promised to think about it and said good night. When I walked outside, I discovered that the rain had slowed to a light drizzle. The sun, barely visible, had already heated up the air so that the compound was shrouded in a slow-crawling mist that rose to knee height. Walking through it, I felt like Charon crossing the river Styx, ferrying the dead to the other side.
After a quick shower to wash the stink of formaldehyde from my skin and a shot of Scotch to get the taste of blood out of my throat, I threw myself into my bunk for some much-needed rest. Around me, some men were getting ready for the day, while others, returning from night patrol or other graveyard shift duties, were just coming in. Ignoring the conversations around me, I closed my eyes. Sleep didn't come. Instead, I was visited by the dead. One by one they appeared, standing naked before me, holding the plastic bags containing their belongings in their hands. Their wounds were cleaned, the bullet holes stitched closed, and the ends of missing limbs wrapped in gauze. The violence done to them was, as much as possible, erased, so that when their loved ones received them they would see as little of it as possible. That much we could do for them.
The last one to come was Hector Means. He stood there mutely, his bag held over his genitals. He looked like an overgrown child, shy and uncertain. The terrible head wound was bound up, the hole in his abdomen sutured together with Digger's careful stitches. Looking at him, I imagined him at home, before the war. Had he been loved? Would someone be waiting for him when his plane landed? I thought about the girl in the photograph. It was likely she would never even know he was dead. Had he loved her? Had he told her so, and had she responded in kind?
The stories of Hector Means and the other twenty-five men Digger and I had processed (I hated that word, with its connotations of canning and rendering) were now ended. We had helped write the final chapter. It was, I realized, a weighty responsibility, the gathering up and readying of the dead. I'd begun the job seeing those soldiers as lifeless remains. N
ow I saw them as sacrifices worthy of remembrance. More than just names and serial numbers on dog tags, they were brothers and husbands, fathers and lovers. Their deaths would, I hoped, mean something to someone beyond being mere casualty statistics. They were men, and they were soldiers, and they needed someone to see them home. I knew that I would tell Digger yes. I'd come to Vietnam looking for something to change me, and I'd found it in a most unexpected place. The dead, I believed, had much to teach me, if only I would listen.
CHAPTER 26
"How did he die?" It seems a simple enough question. And often the given answer is equally simple. "He was shot." "He had a heart attack." "He fell from a great height." But those are not true answers; they are merely shorthand for the truth. "He had a heart attack," for instance, doesn't begin to describe the process by which the cells of one of the heart muscles, deprived of oxygen due most often to the presence of a thrombus in the coronary artery, die, forcing the remaining muscles to overcompensate and, ultimately, fail. Similarly, death from a "broken neck" is an inadequate but perhaps less distressing way of explaining that when injury occurs to any of the eight cervical vertebrae that comprise the top of the spinal column, resulting in damage to the delicate cord they surround and protect, death may occur either by asphyxiation (if the injury occurs at the fifth vertebrae or above, resulting in loss of breath control), or (if the spinal cord is severely injured or transected at any point) a sudden and severe drop in blood pressure as the nervous system is rendered inoperable. While this shorthand allows us to ignore the less pleasant physical aspects of death and dying, it also fails to acknowledge the surprising number of ways in which human life can be extinguished. As I spent more and more time with Digger, learning what there was to know about the preservation of bodies, I also learned much about how those bodies came to be dead. Die is, after all, a verb, and therefore an action. To die is to be a participant in a series of changes, some of them amazingly complex, that bring about an interruption of the normal processes of life. That this action results in total inaction is possibly the ultimate example of linguistic irony.