“Thanks. Anything happen on the ambush?”
“The usual. One guy fell asleep and got chewed out. Otherwise, no excitement.” He took a loud slurp of coffee. “Now, what the hell are you doing out here?”
“Oh, man, don’t ask. It’s so stupid.”
“Didn’t volunteer, did you?”
“Fuck, no! It was… well, General Stoner’s jeep drove by me…”
“And you didn’t salute?”
“Yep. So here I am.”
“God damn—it’s true, then. Always thought that was just a bullshit line they made up to keep you saluting.”
“No way. I’m out here for six weeks at least.”
“Probably won’t be in the fire base much, either.”
“Huh?”
“Fact—Miller’ll probably have you take over my job, field squad leader. Nobody else here has more than a month’s experience, except Doc. And he’s not an engineer, not by training.”
“Shit… trouble just comes in bunches, doesn’t it.” And the aspirin wasn’t helping my head.
“Don’t sweat it, man. We stay in fire base a couple of days every week. And in the field, well, we’ve only had one shootemup since June. Charlie’s gone from around here.”
“Let’s hope. How much longer you stayin’?”
“Be on the first bird to base camp.”
“That soon!”
“Yeah, man, I’m really short. Eight days. I’ll be home before the next time you shave.”
“Oh, you dirty fucker. And me with ninety days…”
“Right, John—next time you pick up that razor, think of me back home in Manhattan, in school, good threads and a pretty chick on each arm—wait!” Sound of a helicopter, pretty far off. “Think I hear the subway comin’ in. Want to walk over with me?”
I was still trying to imagine what Willy would look like with clean clothes, civvies at that, and no whiskers on his chin. Just couldn’t see it—let alone the two girls! “What?”
“Want to walk with me down to the pad?”
“Sure. Maybe I can knock you over the head and steal your papers.”
“No way you’d ever pass for me, Farmer. You’re too pretty.”
What do you say to a guy who’s going back to the world? We just stood on the pad, Willy watching the slick get closer and closer, me feeling a little bit jealous and sorry for myself.
Just before the chopper landed, Willy shook hands with me and wished me good luck. I wished him the same, though he was just about past the need for it.
The noise of the bird hadn’t helped my head any, and it woke up the sleeping drunks in the bunker.
Drinking his morning coffee, Sergeant Miller said yes, I’d be doing Prof’s job, at least until White, the assistant squad leader, had learned enough to take over.
He said we’d be humping out early in the afternoon, to set up a company-sized night ambush about two clicks away.
Turned out we left at noon.
THIRTEEN
Started out easy enough. We humped for about three hours and then set up a box-shaped ambush around a place where two jungle trails came together. We napped in shifts until dark, since Charlie doesn’t travel much during the day. From sundown to sunup, though, we all had to be on alert.
This company had been setting ambushes for over a month without a single night of action, so nobody was surprised when the sun finally came up without a shot being fired. Tired as I was, I might as well have spent the whole night doing pushups.
The captain decided the hell with it, we’d hump back to fire base and get a day’s rest. We could’ve stayed at the ambush place for another night, but I guess he didn’t think it’d be worth it.
Maybe the captain should’ve let us rest before we started out. But everybody was anxious to get back to the fire base, get a hot meal, and sack out. So tired, careless, we started to hump back.
After about an hour, the jungle got less dense and the path we were following widened into a small clearing. I remember thinking it was strange to be able to see both flanks and the center file all at once, but it didn’t occur to me that that was extremely dangerous.
Then one of the flankers yelled and fired. I hit the dirt and jacked a round into the chamber of my M-16 and all hell broke loose.
Ambush on three of four sides, just like we had sat in all night; a classic box. The gunfire mounted in a steady crescendo until it was just one constant unnerving roar. They had fifties, three fifty-caliber machine guns that traversed back and forth over the little clearing; perfect setup for a hundred careless idiots. A fifty is a hell of a lot of gun—all we had to fight back with was regular humping-infantry stuff; M-16’s and grenades and one M-60 without too much ammo. You could barely hear our return fire over the chug of those fifties.
A minute ago I could see almost all of the company, seventy or eighty men. Now, lying in the grass, I could only see three, and one of them was dead.
The radio operator and White, my assistant squad leader, were lying in front of me. A rifleman whose name I’d forgotten, one of the flankers, was in the elephant grass to my left, his ribs glistening white and splintered where a rifle grenade had dug out his chest.
After a minute the enemy slacked off; fire started coming in short bursts. The radioman was hollering into the horn, trying to get us some artillery. The artillery observer, Lieutenant Hernandez, was thrashing around in the grass with a sucking chest wound, not interested in giving coordinates to the radioman. Finally, a shell crashed into the jungle, but it must have been a mile away.
The captain crawled up to me, moving on his back like a swimmer trying to do a backstroke with his shoulders.
“Where the fuck is that medic?” He had his left hand cradled in his right, blood gushing from the stump of a thumb.
“I don’t know, Cap’n, he was back of me somewhere.” The captain started to worm his way back. “Hold up—you stay here, I’ll go back and find him. Got to check on my squad anyhow.”
He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it and nodded. Not that I was bucking for a Bronze Star. They don’t make engineer heroes. But I had to get my men together.
Squirmed out of my pack and demo bag and started crawling, rifle slung between my arms like some basic trainee on the “live fire” course. This was live fire, all right—but the bullets came in a little lower here.
“Medic!” I shouted once and rolled away, knowing they might zero in on the noise.
“Over here, goddammit,” came a whisper to the left. It was Doc Dayton, the center-file medic. I found him in a shallow depression behind a stand of saplings, bandaging a tall Negro flanker whose lower jaw was shot off, thick blood drooling around the pressure bandage.
“Where you hit?”
“Not me, Doc—the captain’s bleeding pretty bad from a hand wound and Lieutenant Hernandez got shot in the chest—”
“Motherfucker musta stood up.”
“They’re both up front. Ten meters or so.”
A burst of machine-gun fire rattled through the saplings. The medic and I cringed down, but the big Negro just lay there, eyes filming. “Fuck ’em both.” Doc pushed a morphine syrette through the dying man’s sleeve, blood-slick and shiny. He tagged the man’s collar and said, “Let’s go.”
“Gotta check my squad first.”
“Man, you ain’t got no fuckin’ squad—go back there and you won’t have no fuckin’ squad leader, neither.”
“All dead?”
“Dead, wounded—fuckin’ half the company blown away ’fore they could hit the dirt.”
The captain was lying beside the radioman when we crawled up. “Drop one-zero-zero and fire for effect. One-two over and out.” He hung up the horn and saw us behind him. “Doc, go check the lieutenant, I think he’s dead. Find your squad, Farmer?”
“Doc says they’re all gone, all but me and White.”
“Not White.” The captain glanced at my assistant squad leader’s body, less than five meters away, t
he back of his helmet blown open and bluish-grey brains splashed in a bloody streak down his back. “You’ll have to drop back and try to blow the LZ by yourself.”
“No way, Cap’n. That’s suicide—I need a squad of riflemen with me while I set the charges, or—”
“That’s an order, Farmer. Sorry. We need every man we can get on the line.” He drew in breath with a hiss when Doc clamped a tight bandage over his hand. “Where the fuck is that artillery?” We all looked up automatically at the faint tearing sound that came in answer. “Get down that’s coming right on top of—”
Everybody was already down, of course, but I held my helmet on with both hands and pushed my face into the dirt.
The ground fell away and came back to slap me, twice, three times and my ears rang, chimes, buzzers, bells… the captain shouting came through a whisper.
“Sergeant, round up a squad and try to punch through in the front. You go with them, Doc; see if you can find a place to blow your LZ.”
It was useless to argue, and I supposed going up front with a bunch of riflemen was better than trying to get through the rear by myself. I picked up my demolition bag, put a couple of grenades on each side of my belt, and set out, ax in one hand and M-16 in the other.
We couldn’t find a squad of whole people, but we got ten grunts and a medic, plus me and the sergeant. The fifty that had been spraying right down our column hadn’t fired a shot since the artillery salvo hit. But they could just be playing possum. We circled around the gun’s position and closed in.
I was crawling up the center between the medic and the sergeant when an AK-47 opened up on the right, a sound like dry sticks cracking. A couple of grenades went off and the AK stopped. That was all the resistance we hit.
One of the eight-inch shells had come in right on the fifty; nothing but twisted metal and gallons of blood scattered all over the area, with some barely recognizable human parts. Crawling up, I squashed an eyeball with my elbow.
There were a dozen or so shattered bodies just beyond where the salvo had hit. No telling how many had slipped away.
“Wanna blow your LZ here?”
I looked around. “No, it’s too close to the perimeter. Those trees’re too big anyhow. I don’t have enough C-4 to drop all of ’em.”
“Well, I can’t send my boys out too far. They’re still fightin’ back there, back at the rear.” I could hear spurts from the fifty that must have taken out my squad. “Might have to go back any minute.”
“I know, goddammit.” I could see daylight ahead about forty or fifty feet. The trees were probably more sparse there. “Leave me five men and take the rest back to the captain.”
“Who’s givin’ orders here? I’ll let you have three.”
“Whatever you can spare, Sarge. But you know there’s nothing more important than that LZ now—we’re gonna need ammo, and we got thirty or forty wounded; a lot of ’em are gonna die if they don’t get a dustoff, quick.”
“All right, take the fuckin’ five—but make it quick! I’m gonna need every one of ’em on the line.”
We got to the sunlit area with no trouble, six of us moving up in a zigzag line. “Skinny, take three guys and post guards out, oh, thirty feet. Leave me Tex to help chop down that bamboo.”
“How long a fuse you puttin’ on it?”
“One minute—when I holler ‘fire in the hole’ you got a little less than that to take cover. Or you can head back to the perimeter; that’s what I’m doin’.”
“Minute’s not too fuckin’ much time.”
“Nobody’s gonna get blown away, Skinny—I don’t have that much C-4. Just get far enough away that a tree won’t fall on you.”
“OK, Farmer—Tex, get to work on that bamboo. Rest o’you poor fuckers follow me.”
Tex had just about gotten the bamboo down by the time I had set the first charge. It was a big one, ten pounds of C-4 set into a hole I chopped out of the base of a tree. I was crimping a cap when the sergeant came back.
“I need those five men. Need ’em bad!” He was panting hard. “Gooks broke through our rear, we’re split in two.”
“Well, they went that way. Leave me Tex, OK?”
“No way. Need all the firepower we can get—you’re goin’ on the line yerself, soon as you blow those trees.”
Decided I’d take my time on the trees. I’m nobody’s infantryman. Of course, I wasn’t too happy about being left alone in the woods, either. The fighting was quite a ways away, but the enemy might decide to circle around, and run into me. In fact, they probably would circle around and try to surround us.
The sergeant took his men back and I continued setting charges, working as quietly as possible.
I was almost through, molding the last of my C-4 into the crotch of a tree that poked out of the ground like a giant wishbone, when I heard somebody coming down the path, from the wrong side. I got down behind a bush.
A Vietnamese wearing green jungle fatigues—probably an NVA regular, no VC would look that military—walked into the semi-clearing where I had set my explosives. He was carrying an AK-47 but also wore a pistol; probably an officer. I eased the safety off my M-16 and worked a hand grenade from my belt. Then I realized I couldn’t use the grenade without setting off the whole thing—no matter what I told Skinny, it wouldn’t be healthy to be near it when it went bang. I just wanted to kill the guy, I didn’t want to share a grave with him.
Each charge was connected to two others with a length of white det cord, to make sure they’d all go off at once. The officer didn’t see it at first, and just kept walking down the path. He’d pass about five feet in front of me.
Then he saw the stuff, turned and said something in a soft voice to the woods behind him. Four more men came out, following down the path. They knew what it was and wanted to get away.
I drew a bead on the officer, who looked like he was waiting for his men to catch up with him, and squeezed off a burst. Popped holes in his hip and back, and he flopped to the ground jerking. The others took cover but didn’t shoot.
At first I didn’t think they knew where I was hiding, so I held my fire, hoping they’d retreat. Then I heard the clink! sound of a grenade, the arming lever springing off as one of them threw it toward me. Shit, we’re all dead, I thought—the whole fuckin’ jungle’s goin’ up in—
FOURTEEN
Eight hours later, on the other side of the world, a cab rolled to a stop on a sleepy tree-lined avenue in a little Oklahoma town.
A captain in an immaculate dress uniform got out of the cab. He was holding the telegram by the corner because his hands were all sweaty.
Why do they have to use a captain to deliver the bad news, he thought; why not a lieutenant or even an NCO? He had to ride herd over a whole company of clerks at Fort Sill, on top of delivering these telegrams. It wasn’t fair.
He checked the number on the house and compared it with the one on the telegram. Mrs. Beatrice Farmer, 2705 Central Avenue.
At least it was a son this time, not a husband. Widows are harder to calm down.
He started up the walk and told himself that he had the hardest job in the world.
A Biography of Joe Haldeman
Joe Haldeman is a renowned American science fiction author whose works are heavily influenced by his experiences serving in the Vietnam War and his subsequent readjustment to civilian life.
Haldeman was born on June 9, 1943, to Jack and Lorena Haldeman. His older brother was author Jack C. Haldeman II. Though born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Haldeman spent most of his youth in Anchorage, Alaska, and Bethesda, Maryland. He had a contented childhood, with a caring but distant father and a mother who devoted all her time and energy to both sons.
As a child, Haldeman was what might now be called a geek, happy at home with a pile of books and a jug of lemonade, earning money by telling stories and doing science experiments for the neighborhood kids. By the time he entered his teens, he had worked his way through numerous college books on chemistr
y and astronomy and had skimmed through the entire encyclopedia. He also owned a small reflecting telescope and spent most clear nights studying the stars and planets.
Fascinated by space, the young Haldeman wanted to be a “spaceman”—the term astronaut had not yet been coined—and carried this passion with him to the University of Maryland, from which he graduated in 1967 with a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy. By this time the United States was in the middle of the Vietnam War, and Haldeman was immediately drafted.
He spent one year in Vietnam as a combat engineer and earned a Purple Heart for severe wounds. Upon his return to the United States in 1969, during the thirty-day “compassionate leave” given to returning soldiers, Haldeman typed up his first two stories, written during a creative writing class in his last year of college, and sent them out to magazines. They both sold within weeks, and the second story was eventually adapted for an episode of The Twilight Zone. At this point, though, Haldeman was accepted into a graduate program in computer science at the University of Maryland. He spent one semester in school. He was also invited to attend the Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference—a rare honor for a novice writer.
In September of the same year, Haldeman wrote an outline and two chapters of War Year, a novel that would be based on the letters he had sent to his wife, Gay, from Vietnam. Two weeks later he had a major publishing contract. Mathematics was out of the picture for the near future.
Haldeman enrolled in the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied with luminary figures such as Vance Bourjaily, Raymond Carver, and Stanley Elkin, graduating in 1975 with a master of fine arts degree in creative writing. His most famous novel, The Forever War (1974), began as his MFA thesis and won him his first Hugo and Nebula Awards, as well as the Locus and Ditmar Awards.
Haldeman was now at his most productive, working on several projects at once. Arguably his largest-scale undertaking was the Worlds trilogy, consisting of Worlds (1981), Worlds Apart (1983), and Worlds Enough and Time (1992). Immediately before releasing the series’ last installment, however, Haldeman published his renowned novel The Hemingway Hoax (1990), which dealt with the experiences of combat soldiers in Vietnam. The novella version of the book won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, a feat that Haldeman repeated with the publication of his next novel, Forever Peace (1997), which also won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.