War Year

  The bird was equipped with sliding doors for both walls, and both of them were open (imagine riding in a convertible going 100 miles an hour, a half-mile up in the air). Door gunners were strapped on either side, leaning on .30 caliber machine guns. They looked bored. The pilot and copilot looked bored. I was scared shitless.

  After about fifteen minutes we dropped down to treetop level and roared up the side of a hill. It was green bamboo jungle all the way up to the top, and all of a sudden, dirt—Alamo, a brown scab covering the mountaintop. Barbed wire and bunkers. Heavy artillery all over. On a low-level patch not much bigger than the helicopter, a guy was waving his arms. The helicopter set down gently and kept roaring away, kicking up dust while we helped unload two flame throwers, a mailbag, and lots of C-rations.

  So I got my first good look at a fire base through a cloud of whirling dust, dry sticks, and bits of paper kicked up by the helicopter blades. Most people do, I guess.

  First, it was really filthy. Everything and everybody was covered with that reddish dust. It had a temporary look; no buildings except for a couple of steel tocks that were probably dropped in by helicopter. I guessed people lived in the bunkers, holes in the ground with crude log roofs piled high with sandbags.

  The artillery pieces were clean, black metal shiny with oil, and I could see why; half the crews seemed busy wiping rags over the metal. Looked to be about twenty real artillery-type guns, plus another dozen mortars, each one a black stovepipe about waist-high.

  There wasn’t any order to the place; the bunkers seemed to be just scattered around all over the hill. The guns were all together in one place, though, and so were the mortars.

  Finally the slick lifted and fell away, down the side of the hills. Everything was eerie quiet, like cotton stuffed in your ears.

  Speaking, I realized I was more than half-deaf from the noise. “Hey, buddy,” I asked the pad man, “where do the engineers hang out around here?”

  He pointed up the hill to what looked like a wooden shack on wheels, with a tattered American flag fluttering above it.

  “If you swallow hard a couple of times, you’ll be able to hear OK,” Willy said. I did and it worked.

  Right by the shack (which turned out to be a trailer with walls and a roof built over it), there were four guys digging a hole and filling sandbags.

  “This Bravo Company engineers?”

  An old guy, about thirty-five, dropped his shovel and climbed out of the hole. “That’s us.” He stuck out his hand. “Sergeant Pobanovitch, call me Pop. Which of you is Farmer and which is Horowitz?”

  We got straightened out and he introduced us to the others. “The tall one’s Doc Jones, the medic.” Jones was the only Negro in the bunch. “Guy with the pick is Fats—Fats, what the hell is your real name?”

  “Don’t matter. Fats is OK.”

  “And I’m John Williamson,” the last one said. “They call me Professor.” He looked kind of like a professor, too; horn-rimmed glasses and bald halfway up his head. But he was just as dirty as the rest, and unshaven to boot.

  “All right, men, take a break,” Pop said. “We’ll help you get rid of some of that beer.”

  “Yeah, it’s lunchtime anyhow.”

  “You ever think about anything else, Fats?”

  “You betcher sweet ass I do!” He went over to a cardboard box and fished out a green tin can. “None of them around, though.”

  “Let me show you guys how to eat C’s,” the Professor said. He pulled out three C-ration cans and started opening one with a P-38 Army issue miniature can opener. “You don’t want to open it all the way—leave enough so you can use the top as a handle.” He bent the top over so it made a kind of messy handle. “Then you find yourself a stove, like this.” He picked up another tin can with both ends removed to make a hollow stand, with holes punched in the side. “Now. You take some C-4”—he took a stick of the white plastic explosive out of his pocket—“pinch off a piece the size of a marble, put it in the stove and light it.” It flared up with an orange flame, and he put the C-ration can on top of the stove. “It heats up real fast but you’ve got to stir like mad to keep it from burning on the bottom.”

  The can he brought over for me turned out to be frankfurters and beans; Willy got spaghetti and meatballs. Not bad. For dessert, we opened cans of fruit.

  “Farmer, you and Horowitz are going out with the Prof tomorrow to relieve the engineer squad with A Company, First of the Twelfth. Prof’ll be in charge, and your squad’s code name is Two-One-X-ray. That’s what we’ll call over the radio when we want to talk to you.

  “Reminds me—we’ve gotta get code names for both of you. Can’t use real names over the air. Either of you have a nickname?”

  I remembered Smitty at Cam Ranh Bay. “Anything but Tex. Call me Okie.”

  “Okie it is.” Pop wrote it down in a little notebook. “Horowitz?”

  He puffed on his cigarette. “Hmm… how ’bout ‘Whore’?”

  “Fine.” He wrote it down. “Now—good thing you came so early; didn’t think we’d get this bunker done by nightfall. Fats, you get a chain saw and Doc, get an ax; go out an’ get us some overhead. Rest of us’ll keep digging here. Including the lieutenant, if he ever gets back from that goddamn meeting.”

  “Meetin’!” Doc snorted. “You know they’s up there drinkin’ beer and tellin’ dirty stories. Lieutenant’s not comin’ back ’til the work’s all done.”

  “‘RHIP’ Doc—remember what that means?”

  “Yeah… ‘rank has its privileges’—too many fuckin’ privileges, if y’ ask me.”

  “So who asked you? Take a couple of beers, but don’t let any officers see you drinkin’ on the other side of the perimeter. If they do, I’ll swear I don’t know where you got ’em.”

  “OK, Pop.” Doc put a beer in his leg pocket and tossed one to Fats.

  “Also, don’t fuck around out there, y’hear? Get big logs—you two’re gonna be stayin’ in this bunker.”

  “We know, Pop,” Fats said. “The life you save…”

  “… may be your own. Goddamn right.” Pop watched them gather up their tools and start down the hill, then turned to us.

  “So that’s the way we run things around here. Free an’ easy, no bullshit. Long as everybody follows orders. Anybody starts to fuck around, we lean on him. I lean on him. The lieutenant leans on him. And life can get pretty sorry. Understand?”

  We both nodded. “OK—Farmer, get on the pick for a while, break up the ground in the bottom of the hole. Horowitz, shovel the dirt onto that pile. Me an’ Prof’ll fill sandbags.”

  I picked away for half an hour and my palms started to blister. Willy traded with me, and the shovel seemed to put blisters everywhere the pick hadn’t. After an hour we took a break for a beer.

  “Pop,” I said, “how dangerous is it out in the field? Many engineers get hurt?”

  “No, not many. Too many, but not many compared to the infantry … you’ll be part of the ‘command group,’ always in the middle, infantry all around you.”

  “It’s like this,” the Professor added. “The company moves through the jungle in three lines, right flank, left flank, and center file. We’ll be in the middle of the center file. Charlie’s got to get through a flank before he can get to us.”

  “But sometimes he does,” Willy said.

  “Sometimes.” The Prof took a big swig of beer. “And sometimes he pops mortars or rifle grenades into the center file. But it’s nothing like being on the line, smelling his breath.”

  “How often?” I asked.

  “Hmn?”

  “How often do you run into Charlie?”

  “Oh, we make contact, what, about twice or three times a month, on the average. A Company hasn’t made any contact in two weeks or so, now.”

  “Means they’re due?” Willy asked.

  “Doesn’t mean anything, except they’ve been lucky for two weeks. Maybe they’ll be lucky for two weeks more. Maybe for the rest of
the year.”

  “Still sounds bad,” Willy said.

  “Ah, don’t sweat it, Horowitz. I’m glad I’m goin’ out in the field again. One heck of a lot safer than it is here—Alamo’s been hit twice this week.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Not all that bad, just mortars. Couple of guys hurt, but nobody’s been killed yet. They’re bound to try a ground attack, though. I’d just as soon be someplace else when it comes.” Prof wiped his forehead with a filthy rag.

  “Ain’t gonna be no fuckin’ ground attack,” Pop said.

  “That’s what they said on Brillo Pad, Pop.”

  “Tell y’what, Prof. Those Intelligence boys been sayin’ we’re gonna have a ground attack, three days in a row now. I’ll bet you ten bucks there won’t be an attack tonight, ten there won’t be one Friday night, and ten there won’t be one Saturday night.”

  “I’d hate to collect, Pop.”

  “You won’t collect. Intelligence’s got its head up its ass, as usual—hi, Lieutenant. How’d the meeting go?”

  A guy not much older than me sat down on a pile of sandbags and took off his hat, wiped his forehead. “Same as usual, Pop. Except Intelligence—no attack tonight.”

  “Bet’s off, Professor!” The Prof laughed.

  “Let me guess,” the lieutenant said. “You’re Horowitz and you’re, uh, Farmer.”

  “Sorry, sir. I’m Farmer and he’s Horowitz.”

  “Glad you could make it. Another dozen and we’d be all set. Anybody got a butt?”

  Pop threw him a pack of Winstons. He took out one and tossed it back. “Reminds me—we’ve got an SP pack down at the pad. Somebody wanta go get it?”

  “On my way,” Professor said.

  “What’s an SP pack?” Willy asked.

  “Mostly cigarettes and candy,” the lieutenant said. “Pop, you about ready to put overhead on this bunker?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got Doc an’ Fats on it.”

  “OK… what can I do besides drink one of those beers?”

  “Thought we’d just take it easy until we get the overhead.”

  “Suits.” He cracked a beer. “See, that’s the way it is. I command this platoon, but Pop leads it. Pop, if I ordered you to eat a pile of shit, would you do it?”

  “With a grin on my face, sir.”

  “I just bet you would. Anyhow, anything Pop says, goes. Anybody else tells you to do something, you can try to reason with him.”

  Doc and Fats came puffing up the hill, balancing two eight-foot logs on their shoulders. They dropped them by the hole and flopped down panting.

  “Got six more this size,” Doc said. “Afternoon, sir.” Pant, pant. “How ’bout lettin’ us take a break while the new guys haul up a couple?”

  We got to our feet. “Just show us where they are,” Willy said.

  “I’ll go with yuh,” Doc said, getting up. “Oh, my achin’ back.”

  “Give yourself a Darvon, Doc.”

  “Fuck, sir, I’ll stick to aspirin. Let’s go.”

  We found the logs, and Doc showed us how to get one on each shoulder. They didn’t start to get heavy until we’d gone about ten steps. We barely made it to the top.

  “Good job,” Pop said. “OK, Fats, you an’ Doc get the next two. Then Farmer and Horowitz again.”

  “What kind of cigarettes you smoke?” Prof was opening a cardboard box with his bayonet.

  “Pall Malls for me,” I said.

  “Same.”

  He opened the box and tossed a carton to us. “That’s all we got, you’ll have to split it. Won’t get any more for a week.”

  “Five’s plenty.”

  “Not for me,” Willy said. “What else you got?”

  “All the menthols you can smoke. Everything else is pretty much spoken for.”

  “Ugh. Gimme a coupla packs of menthols, then. Just in case.”

  “Have a carton. You can always throw ’em away.”

  Willy and I helped Pop and the lieutenant stack sandbags around two sides of the hole. When Fats and Doc came back, all of us wrestled the six logs into place on top of the sandbags, then we went back to get the last two.

  By the time we brought the two logs back, they’d covered half the bunker with three layers of sandbags. We placed the logs and finished piling up sandbags; wound up with four layers.

  “Well, what do you think, Pop?”

  “Four layers’ll probably stop a sixty-millimeter mortar. Not much else. It’ll do for tonight, though.”

  “Let’s get some chow and call it a day.”

  “Goddamn it, Fats; get some chow, get some chow!—everybody else hates C-rations.”

  “Lieutenant Byrnes!” A private came running down the hill.

  “Yes?”

  “Command post wants you on the double!” He came to a staggering stop. “A Company’s made contact, out in the boonies. Company-size ambush.”

  “Holy shit!” The lieutenant scrambled up the hill.

  Pop grabbed the guy’s arm. “Any casualties?”

  “Yeah. Don’t know how many yet.”

  “Prof, better get ready to blow an LZ. Your demo bag up tight?”

  He picked up a bag and rummaged through it. “Plenty of caps, fuse, det cord. We’ll get a box of C-4 down at the pad.”

  Then the artillery roared, BLAM BLAM BLAM-BLAMBLAM; I jumped out of my skin and so did Willy, but the others didn’t seem to notice.

  “Farmer, Horowitz, go with the Professor. Wait on the pad ’til we send word.”

  We put on our packs, picked up rifles, and walked down to the pad. While we were on our way, three jets in tight formation streaked over the hill.

  “That’ll be air support,” Prof said. “Watch.”

  Two of the jets peeled away and climbed, while the third went on for a half-mile, shot two rockets and a long burst of machine-gun fire, and climbed. A minute later the other two, about ten seconds apart, screamed over the hill again. The first dropped a load of bombs and the second dropped a large barrel that burst into an orange-and-black flower at treetop level—napalm. They made a tight U-turn, rejoined the first jet, and sped for the horizon in tight formation.

  “Whew! How do they know they aren’t getting our boys?”

  “Sometimes they do. Can’t be helped.”

  Doc and the lieutenant came down the hill, carrying two chain saws and two axes. “Prof, you can scratch the C-4, they’ve got a natural LZ.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Yeah—look, the ambush dropped back after first contact, but they expect a night attack. They’re digging in; you three got to go drop trees for their overhead.”

  “Coming back tonight?”

  “No, you better count on staying. Doc’s going along; they’ve got twenty casualties already. Sure to pick up more tonight.

  “You new guys got plenty of ammo?”

  “Two hundred rounds.”

  “Ammo dump’s over there—better get another 500 apiece.”

  “Sir, our weapons aren’t zeroed yet.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything,” the Prof said. “Never see your target out there anyhow.”

  “That’s right. You get the first slick out—it’s still a hot LZ, you’ll probably have to jump.”

  I ran to get the ammo—I could hear the soft thrumming of a helicopter coming up the hill. Hot LZ? Jump?

  How far did they expect us to jump without a parachute?

  SIX

  The slick brought us down, dropping like a rock, to within five feet of the clearing below. The copilot jerked his thumb and we jumped out.

  Five feet isn’t a long way to fall unless you happen to have a fifty-pound pack, a rifle strapped on your back, and a heavy chain saw in each hand. I hit hard, and fell over on my face. One chain saw ripped a chunk of skin out of my right leg. The chopper zoomed away, straight up.

  “Hot LZ” means the pilot won’t land, for fear of getting shot up. A couple of feet more couldn’t have made that much difference,
though. Besides, nobody was shooting anybody.

  “Over here! Keep down!” A GI waved from the edge of the clearing.

  The four of us got up and ran in a low crouch to where he was standing. “Are we glad to see you. You a medic?”

  “Roger.” Doc was staring straight ahead while he took the medic bag off his shoulder. I came up even with him and saw what he was looking at.

  They had all the wounded and dead gathered in one place. The dead men, three of them, were wrapped in ponchos. Blood had leaked out and settled in a pool under the three corpses.

  Two of the wounded were sitting up, smoking; one with the side of his head all bandaged and the other with an arm in a makeshift sling. The other wounded were lying down, some of them unconscious. One man was naked from the waist down. Both his legs were blown off at the knee, stumps covered with scarlet bandages held in place by web-belt tourniquets. I heard Willy puke and clamped my jaws shut and swallowed hard again and again.

  “God damn it, you didn’t bring any blood?”

  “Man,” Doc drawled, “ain’t got no fuckin’ blood at the fire base. We come from Alamo.”

  “Sorry. We need it though, man, need it bad. Got any morphine?”

  “Yeah, twelve syrettes, maybe fifteen.”

  “More’n all of us put together. Wanna go down the line and see if anybody needs another shot—but go easy, no tellin’ what’s gonna happen tonight.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen tonight, man. The engineers is here. Charlie’s scared of the engineers.” He grinned and the grin was a skull’s leer in a gray Halloween mask. I didn’t know Negroes got pale.

  “Let’s go find some trees,” Prof said, and clapped Willy on the shoulder. “Gonna be all right, Horowitz?”

  Willy knocked his hand away. “I’ll be OK.” We went on into the woods.

  About ten yards in, we hit the perimeter. Two guys were digging like mad while the third stood in front of them with an M-16. “Hands up, Prof,” he said.

  “Friendly, goddammit,” Prof smiled. “Long time no see, Benson. Where’s the captain?”