I walked fifty meters farther into the camp, and Susan followed. “We moved deeper into these hills, and on the seventh day, we were patrolling down a ridgeline, looking for another fight. The company commander put out flank security—two guys in the ravines on either side of this ridge. I was one of the guys. Me and this other guy scramble down into this ravine, and we’re walking parallel to the company, who we could still see on the ridgeline above us. But then the ravine got deeper, the ridgeline turned, and the other guy was way out in front of me, and now I’ve lost visual contact with him and the rest of the company. So, I’m walking by myself, which is not a good thing to do, and I’m trying to catch up to the guy in front of me, but as it turned out, he’d scrambled back up the side of the ridge to try to find the company.”
I moved to the base of the steep hill where there were still some huts, collapsed and overgrown with vines. I looked up at the hill. “It was over there, on the other side of this hill . . . I’m walking by myself, and I decided it was time to climb back up the ridge and find everyone. Just as I was about to do that, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye, and standing on the other side of the ravine, not twenty meters away, is a North Vietnamese soldier with an AK-47 rifle, and he’s looking at me.”
I took a deep breath and continued, “So . . . we’re staring at each other, and this guy is dressed in tiger fatigue pants, but he’s bare-chested, and he has bloody bandages wrapped around his chest. My rifle is not at the ready, and neither is his. So, now it’s a matter of who gets off the first shot, but to be honest, I was frozen with fear, and I thought he was, too. But then . . . the guy throws his rifle down, and I started to breathe again. He was surrendering, I thought. But no. He starts walking toward me and I raise my rifle and yell, ‘Dung lai!’ Stop. Halt. But he keeps coming at me, and I yell again, ‘Dung lai!’ He then pulls a long machete out of his belt. He’s saying something, but I can’t figure out what the hell he’s trying to tell me. By this time, I’d had enough of this, and I was going to blow him away. But then I see he’s pointing to the entrenching tool—the shovel hanging from my web belt, and all of a sudden, I realize that he wants to go hand-to-hand.”
I felt a cold sweat forming on my face, and I listened to the birds and the insects in the trees, and I was back in that ravine again.
I said to Susan, or to myself, “He wants to go hand-to-hand, and he’s spitting out these words. I didn’t understand a thing he was saying, but I knew exactly what he was saying. He was saying, ‘Let’s see how brave you are without your artillery, your gunships, your jet fighters.’ He was saying, ‘You fucking coward. Let’s see if you have any real balls, you overfed, overindulged, fucking American pig.’ That’s what he was saying. Meanwhile, he’s coming closer, and he’s not even ten feet from me now, and I looked into his eyes, and I’ve never seen hate like that before or since. I mean, this guy is totally around the bend, he’s been wounded, and he’s alone like maybe he’s the last survivor of his unit . . . and he’s motioning for me to come closer, you know, like in a schoolyard fight. Come on, punk. Let’s see if you have any balls. Take the first swing . . . then . . . I have no idea why . . . but I threw my rifle down . . . and he stops and smiles. He points again to my shovel, and I nod to him.”
I stopped talking and stood on a rock at the base of the hill. I took a few breaths and wiped my face.
Susan said, “Paul, let’s go.”
I shook my head and went on, “So, who’s crazier, me or him? I reached around, unsnapped my entrenching shovel, and set the blade at a ninety degree angle to the handle and locked it in place. I took my helmet off and threw it on the ground. He’s not smiling anymore, and his face is intent and focused. He’s looking in my eyes, and he wants me to look at him, but I’m from South Boston and I know you keep your eyes on the other guy’s weapon. So, now we’re circling around each other, stalking, and neither of us is saying a word. He swings the machete, and it cuts the air in front of my face, but I don’t step back because he’s not close enough . . . but his machete is longer than my shovel, and this is going to be a problem if he comes closer. So, round and round we go, until finally he makes his move and aims a diagonal blow at the side of my neck.”
I stopped speaking and thought about what happened next. Strangely, though I’d rarely relived it in detail, it all came back to me. I said, “I jump back and it misses, then he comes in again with the point of the machete aimed at my throat. I step to the side, stumble, and fall. He’s on me in half a second and goes for my legs with the machete, but I swivel my legs away, and he cuts the ground. I jump to my feet as he delivers another blow toward my neck, but I deflect it with my shovel, then bring the shovel up, like an uppercut, and catch the side of his jaw. The shovel blade, which I keep sharp, shaves off a piece of his jaw, and this big piece of bloody flesh is hanging there, and he’s in temporary shock, which is all I need. I swing the shovel around like I’m swinging a bat at a fastball and the blade nearly severs his right forearm and the machete flies out of his hand.”
I thought I should let this story end there, but I continued. “So . . . he’s standing there and the game is over. I have a prisoner, if I want one, or I could let him walk away. Or . . . I could kill him with my entrenching tool . . . he’s staring at me, this big bloody piece of his jaw hanging, and his forearm running blood . . . so, what do I do? I throw my entrenching tool down and pull my K-bar knife. His eyes show fear for the first time, then he shoots a quick look at his machete on the ground, and he goes for it. I kick him in the head, but he’s still scrambling for the machete. I come around him and grab his hair with my left hand, jerk him upright and pull his head back. Then I cut his throat with my knife. I can still feel the blade slicing through the cartilage of his windpipe, and I hear a hiss of air as the windpipe is severed . . . I cut the artery, too, and blood is gushing out all over my hand . . . I let him go, but he’s still standing, and he turns to me and we’re face-to-face, and blood is gushing out of his throat, and I could see the life dying in his eyes, but he won’t stop staring at me, so we look at each other until his legs collapse, and he falls face forward.”
I avoided looking at Susan and said, “I wiped the blood off my knife on his pants, clipped the shovel on my belt, sheathed my knife, gathered my helmet and rifle, and started walking away. I looked up and saw two guys from my company, who’d come to find me, and they’d seen some of this. One guy took my rifle out of my hand and fired three signal shots in the air. He said to me, ‘The rifle works, Brenner.’ These guys looked at me . . . I mean, we were all a little nuts by then, but . . . this was above and beyond nuts, and they knew it.”
I thought a moment, trying to recall what happened next, then I said, “The other guy retrieved the AK-47, and he says to us, ‘The gook has a full magazine.’ He looked at me and says, ‘How the fuck did you get into hand-to-hand with this guy?’ I didn’t say anything, and the other guy says, ‘ Brenner, you’re supposed to shoot these fuckers, not get into knife fights with them.’ They both laughed. Then the guy picks up the machete and hands it to me, and he says, ‘Take the head back. No one’s going to believe this shit.’ So . . . I hacked off the dead man’s head . . . and the other guy fixed his bayonet to my rifle, and he picks up the head and sticks it on the bayonet and hands me my rifle . . .”
I glanced at Susan and continued, “So we go to rejoin the company, me holding up the head on the end of my rifle, and as we approach the company positions, one of the guys with me yells out, ‘Don’t shoot—Brenner’s got a prisoner,’ and everybody laughs . . . everybody wants to know what happened . . . a guy cuts a bamboo pole and sticks the head on the pole . . . I talk to the captain along with these two guys who found me . . . and I’m kind of out of it . . . I’m looking at this head, which is being paraded around on the pole . . .” I drew a deep breath. “That night, I was on a helicopter back to base camp . . . along with the head . . . where the company clerk handed me a three-day pass to Nha Trang.”
&n
bsp; I looked at Susan and said, “So, that’s how I wound up in Nha Trang on R&R.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Susan and I walked silently down to the river where we did a leech check. She was clean, but I had a land leech on my back starting to bloat with blood.
I said to her, “Light up.”
She lit a cigarette, and I instructed her to heat the leech’s rear end without burning it or me. She put the cigarette close to the leech, and it backed off. She plucked it off my back and threw it away with a sound of disgust. She said, “You’re bleeding.”
She put a tissue on the leech bite and held it there until it stuck. We put our clothes on, and we sat on a rock by the riverbank.
She smoked, and I said, “I’ll take a drag.”
She handed me the cigarette, and I took a long pull, coughed, and gave her the cigarette. I said, “These aren’t good for you.”
“Who said they were?”
We sat there quietly and listened to the flowing water.
She finished her cigarette and asked, “How are you doing?”
“Okay.” I thought a moment and said, “Men who’ve been here have worse stories than that to tell . . . and I’ve seen worse . . . but there’s something about hand-to-hand. I can still smell that guy and see his face, and I can still feel his hair in my hand and the knife cutting into his throat . . .”
“Finish it.”
“Yeah . . . well, afterward, I was sorry I killed him. He should have lived. You know, like a defeated warrior who’s shown bravery.”
“Do you think he would have let you live?”
“No, but I shouldn’t have taken his head. An ear or a finger would have been enough.”
She lit another cigarette and said to me, “That’s not what’s really bothering you.”
I looked at her, and our eyes met.
We sat there, watching the river. Finally, I said, “I frightened myself.”
She nodded.
“I mean . . . where did that come from?”
She threw her cigarette in the river. She said, “It came from a place you never need to go to again.”
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel good about it . . . about taking the challenge and killing him.”
She didn’t reply.
I said, “But like a lot of traumatic events, I buried it very quickly, and by Day One in Nha Trang, it was the furthest thing from my mind. Except, now and then, it would pop back in my head.”
She nodded and lit another cigarette.
I said, “Then after I got home, I started to think about it more . . . like, Why did I do that? No one was egging me on, except him, and there was no rational reason for me to throw down my rifle and try to kill this guy with my shovel while he’s trying to hack me up with his machete. What the hell was I thinking?”
“Sometimes, Paul, it’s better to leave these things alone.”
“I suppose . . . I mean, I’ve seen war psychosis, and I’ve seen guys in combat who lose all fear for some reason, and I’ve seen the most inhuman and brutal behavior you can possibly imagine from normal guys. I’ve seen skulls used as paperweights or candle holders on the desks of officers and sergeants, I’ve seen American soldiers with necklaces made out of teeth or dried ears or finger bones, and I can’t tell you all the day-to-day atrocities I’ve seen on both sides . . . and it makes you wonder about who we are, and about yourself when you barely pay attention to it, and you really start wondering about yourself when you start participating. It was like a cult of death . . . and you wanted to belong . . .”
Susan stared at the flowing river, the smoke rising from her cigarette.
“Most guys arrived here normal, and they were shocked and sickened by the behavior of the guys who’d been here awhile. Then within a few weeks, they’d stop being shocked, and within a few months, a lot of them joined the club of the crazies. And most of them, I think, went home and became normal again, though some didn’t. But I never once saw anyone here who had gone around the bend ever return to normal while they were still here. It only got worse because in this environment they’d lost any sense of . . . humanity. Or, you could be nice and say they’d become desensitized. It was actually more frightening than sickening. A guy who’d sliced off the ear of a VC he’d killed that morning would be joking with the village kids and the old Mama-sans that afternoon, and handing out candy. I mean, they weren’t evil or psychotic, we were normal, which is what really scared the hell out of me.”
I realized I’d gone from “they” to “we,” which was the whole point; “they” became “we,” and “we” became me. Fuck Father Bennett, fuck St. Brigid’s church, fuck Peggy Walsh, fuck the Act of Contrition, fuck the confessional booth, and fuck everything I’d ever learned in school and at home. Just like that. It took about three months. It would’ve taken less time, but November and December in the Bong Son were kind of quiet. After Tet, Khe Sanh, and the A Shau, I would have killed my own brother if he was wearing the wrong uniform; in fact, a lot of the Vietnamese did.
Susan was still staring at the river, motionless, as though she didn’t want to make any abrupt movements while I was carrying my sharpened shovel.
I took a deep breath and said, “I don’t mean to pretend that I was the chaplain’s assistant. Far from it. We’d all gone crazy, but we all figured it was temporary and conditional. And if you’re lucky, someday you go home. But unfortunately, you take it home with you, and it changes you forever because you went to that dark place in your soul, the place most people know exists but have never been to, but you’ve been there for a long time and didn’t find it so terrible, nor do you feel an ounce of guilt, and that itself becomes the fear . . . and you go on with your life in the U.S.A., mingling again with normal people, laughing and joking, but carrying this thing inside you . . . this secret that Mom doesn’t know, and your girlfriend can’t guess at, except sometimes she knows something’s wrong . . . and now and then, you run into one of your own, someone who was there, and you swap stupid stories about getting drunk and getting laid, and hot landing zones, and dumb officers who couldn’t read a map, and the worst case of black clap you’ve ever had, and poor Billy or Bob who got greased, and this and that, but you never touch on things like those villagers who you blew away by accident, or not by accident, or about how many ears and heads you collected, or the time you cut someone’s throat with a knife . . .”
Susan asked, “Was anyone . . . normal?”
I thought about that and said, “I’d like to say that there were men among us who . . . who held on to some degree of morality or humanity . . . but I really can’t remember . . . I think maybe. A combat unit is self-selecting . . . you know, guys who couldn’t handle it either never made it to the front, or were sent back. I remember guys who cracked very quickly and were sent to the rear to do menial jobs, and that was sort of a disgrace, but we got rid of them . . . and yes, there were men among us who held on to their religious or moral beliefs, but I think that in war, as in life, the good ones die young and die first . . .” I said to her, “That’s the best answer I can give you.”
She nodded.
I looked at the river, which I’d crossed so many years before with my own tribe, chasing the deer who led us into the dark rain forest to a darker place than we’d ever been before.
We re-crossed the river at the rock ford and started back to A Luoi. As we walked on the straight path through the ground mist and the farm fields, Susan said to me, “I feel that anything I say would be trivial or patronizing or stupidly sensitive. But let me say this, Paul—what happened here, to you and the others, was history, in both senses of the word. There was a war, you were in it, it’s over.”
“I know. I believe that.”
“And if you’re wondering, I don’t feel any differently toward you.”
I didn’t reply, but I wanted to say, “You say that now. Think about it.”
Susan took my hand and squeezed it. She said, “And there I am, having dinner
on the roof of the Rex Hotel, bugging this total stranger about not wanting to talk about the war. Can I apologize for that?”
“No need. This whole trip has done me good. And if you weren’t along, I might not have been as honest with myself as I’m being with you.”
“I appreciate that.”
I changed the subject and said, “Somewhere in this valley, in May of 1968, a North Vietnamese soldier named Tran Quan Lee was killed in battle. Found on his body was a letter from his brother, Tran Van Vinh, also a soldier in the North Vietnamese army.”
I didn’t elaborate and waited for her to respond. Finally, she asked, “And you found this body and letter?”
“No. Someone else did.”
“And you saw this letter?”
“Yes, about a week ago. Do you know anything about this letter?”
She looked at me as we walked and said, “Paul, I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
I stopped and she stopped. I looked at her. “Susan, do you know anything about this letter?”
She shook her head, thought a moment, then said, “This has something to do with why you’re here.”
“That’s right.”
“You mean . . . someone found a letter on the body of an enemy soldier . . . who found the letter?”
“An American soldier in the First Cavalry Division found the letter.”
“You knew this man?”
“No. It was a big division. Twenty thousand men. This guy who found the letter kept it as a war souvenir, and recently the letter was translated, and what was in the letter is the reason I’m here.”
She mulled that over, and I looked at her. I knew this woman by now, and I could tell she knew something and was trying to fit it in with what I’d said.
I asked her, “What did they tell you?”
She looked at me and replied, “Only that some new information had come to light and that you had to find someone here and question that person about it.”