Once an Eagle

  Jesus Christ, Krisler thought. He hurried after Sam, who was walking quickly toward two of the American advisers.

  “Captain,” the Old Man called. His face was fearsome. He did not shout, but his voice carried clearly against the wind and explosions. “Captain …”

  Desautels broke away from the other officer and said, “Yes, General?”

  “You are firing these huts.”

  “Yes, sir. Those are my orders. All hooches containing bunkers.”

  Damon stared at him. “Bunkers—those pitiful little mud shelters …?”

  “Yes, General. They are to be considered of an offensive nature.”

  “But you’re firing their clothes, too—their food, their rice—how are they going to live?”

  Desautels frowned. “They’re to be relocated, General. The whole village.”

  “Who authorized this action?”

  “General Tho Huc, sir. And General Bannerman concurs.”

  The Old Man closed his mouth. “I see. Carry on.”

  “Very good, sir.” Desautels trotted off toward what looked like a storage shed at the far side of the village.

  Sam shot Krisler and the others a quick, furious glance and said, “Come on. Let’s see it all …” They went on. Nearly all the huts seemed to be on fire, their roofs seething in a crackling roar through which showers of sparks swirled and rained like mica. Everywhere there was the rancid stench of burned food and clothing.

  In the clearing before the storage shed a man was crouching on the hard dirt, a boy of perhaps seventeen or eighteen. He was squatting on his thighs; he was naked to the waist and his hands were tied behind his back. A Khotianese regular was bent over him, speaking to him imperiously and persistently. The boy made no reply. At the end of each sentence the soldier would strike him across the face with a slender bamboo strip, and a fiery red welt would rise on his face or neck. The others stood watching, in silence. Finally the boy said something, and looked down.

  “What did he say, Gene?” Sam asked Villarette.

  “He says he is a rice farmer, he knows nothing about the Hai Minh.”

  “—He is a liar and a pig,” the interrogator said. He was a sergeant, a short, powerfully built man with a heavy jaw and a small, pinched mouth. He said something in Khotianese, took his bayonet out of the scabbard and repeated the question. Then with a deft, tantalizingly casual motion he drew the point across the prisoner’s chest. Blood leaped out in a lazy curve of bubbles and the boy winced, then stiffened again.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Forbes said angrily.

  The sergeant smiled; lowering the point of the bayonet he held it against the boy’s belly, very low, his fingers pressing gently on the haft, and repeated the question. The boy said nothing. The interrogator pressed a little harder, and the blade entered the flesh. Sweat was running in great streams down the prisoner’s lacerated face, and now blood began to seep into his trousers, staining the dark cloth; his teeth were bared.

  Krisler averted his eyes. The firing had stopped almost entirely, and he could hear the boy’s slow, labored breathing. God Almighty, he thought. He had seen some bad things; some pretty bad things in seventeen years of soldiering. Done them, too. At Werbomont, on the northern shoulder of the Bulge, he had helped the shattered remnant of an engineer company blow the bridge over the Amblève in the very face of the German armor, and then had crouched behind a pile of rubble and watched in helpless rage as the SS had routed two dozen women and children out of their homes on the far bank and shot them down amid curses and laughter. Schrecklichkeit, and then some. And the next afternoon, shivering behind a wall in the snow above Stoumont, with the sound of tank engines clattering hollowly through the fog, he had paid them back. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before; a genial, easygoing boy—he was his mother’s son—he’d rarely lost his temper. But now as the black-uniformed figures came on through the fog he had shot them down in a cold fury, in exultant defiance. Here was the enemy, these SS monsters with their death’s-head insignia and their gospel of terror and brutality: here they were. He had no wish to run anymore. This was it. He stayed, and he made the others stay with him. Forty-one of them, with four bazookas and half a dozen satchel charges and two machine guns—and that was as far along the road to Liège as the Wehrmacht got that day, or any other day. So much for Schrecklichkeit.

  In Korea too he had seen some sights that sickened him: mutilated bodies, prisoners shot down in windrows, children blown to bloody rags by artillery fire. He had seen German prisoners threatened and roughed up for information. Blows struck in rage, in desperation, yes. But this kind of thing—the deliberate and indiscriminate butchery of helpless civilians, the depraved, malignant torturing of prisoners such as he was now witnessing, he had never seen. This was not war: this was not the destruction of enemy forces in the field, nor was it ambush, nor even reprisal. This was running exceedingly close to Schrecklichkeit …

  With slow consternation he looked at Sam Damon, whose features were set in a noncommittal mask. Desautels had come up during this little scene, and the Old Man turned to him.

  “And the guerrilla force, Captain?”

  “We’ve got three of them. Two killed, and this prisoner here …”

  “Who will apparently soon be dead himself.”

  The prisoner was doubled over on his thighs, gasping and trying with all his might not to cry out.

  “It’s the only way to deal with them, General.” Desautels was a tall, blond man with heavy eyebrows, and he looked very serious and intent. “I was—disconcerted by some of the counterinsurgency measures employed here, at first. But it’s the only way to get information, sometimes.”

  Sam gestured. “He didn’t give us much, did he?”

  “Some of them are very intransigent. The hard-core type.”

  “Was he armed when he was captured?”

  Desautels shook his head. “They ditch them when they’re about to be captured—it’s SOP with them. So as not to be caught with the evidence. Then they pick up a straw hat and a hoe and they’re right back down on the farm. That’s the kind of war we’ve got.” He grinned and added brightly: “We did capture a weapon, though.”

  “What type?”

  “An M-1 carbine.”

  The Old Man’s upper lip curled. “I see. You mean you’ve succeeded in recovering one of our own, then.”

  “That’s about the size of it, General. They’re pretty tough to nail down out here. Over in the real paddy country around Nanh Kep you can put the screws on them and track them down. Here, they break into the jungle and they’re gone for good. They’re masters of the easy fadeout.”

  “How about the blocking operation on the other side of the ridge there?”

  “They must have had some trouble with it, sir. We just got the word on it—that drop was scrubbed.”

  “I see.”

  Desautels pawed at the earth a moment with his jungle boot. “I’m sorry this mission wasn’t more rewarding, General. We often have better luck than this. Though to tell you the truth, sometimes we don’t corral any of them.” He made a curt, deprecatory gesture with his thumb and little finger. “Maybe this little son of a bitch will give us something we can use.”

  Krisler’s eyes moved involuntarily back to the prisoner. Four or five soldiers were now crowded around him tightly and he couldn’t make out what they were doing. Finally he was able to see that the boy’s head was being held in a bucket full of water. He looked away again.

  “That ‘little son of a bitch’ isn’t going to tell anybody anything,” Sam was saying in a flat, hard voice. “I’ll bet you five hundred dollars.—When are they scheduled to pick us up?”

  Desautels glanced smartly at his watch. “Eight minutes exact, General. They’ll be right on the button, you’ll see.”

  The Old Man looked down at his field shoes thoughtfully. Smoke from the burned huts swept low around them, turning the moving men to shadows. The crying of the women and children we
nt on unabated.

  “I’m certainly gratified to hear that,” he said.

  16 May 62: It is all very complicated, it seems. Hai Minh control most of country by night, Vu Khoi’s people by day. Government forces have all kinds of American equipment and supplies, but they are being slowly forced back on Cau Luong. Insurgents have mostly old French and homemade weapons (when they have any at all, that is), but they are winning. Slowly, painfully, falteringly, but they are winning. Current crisis seems to have been created by Hoanh-Trac, a disaffected general from previous (Ngo Hieu) regime, who is apparently sulking in his tents like Achilles up at Plei Hoa, and who has been recently making noises about deserting his status as a sort of half-ass 3rd force and going over to the side of the Hai Minh. This, I was told almost tearfully by Starling at the Embassy, would certainly tip scales in favor of insurgents.

  But of course the insurgents are not exactly insurgents. They call themselves People’s Liberation Army (or some such) and many of them were leading lights in booting out French (which most of the jazzy types down at Cau Luong definitely were NOT).

  And then there is the matter of those 3 Chinese Nationalist Divs which Hoanh-Trac wants to boot out of the country, too.

  Flew back to Cau Luong Tuesday with my retinue. Joey and Bob Forbes playing 10-second chess, Gene perusing the Upanishads (in the ORIGINAL), Tony Giandoli keeping us in an uproar all the way. “Man, I feel like a presidential candidate. When I get home I’m going to run for office. On a sex-and-electronics ticket. Hello, out there! …” Waving grandly out of the window. “You greasy grunts with your never-jamming automatic weapons: Why crawl on your leech-infested bellies when you can do the ozone caper! Hey you know, this is the first time I’ve ever been in an aree-o-plane … ?” Rain clouds like great pewter dream-surf over the mountains. Thought of the flight in to Moapora with Ben that afternoon. Another Fast Trip to Big Trouble.

  Cau Luong like a Fifth Avenue fag window dresser’s idea of the Mysterious East. Pedicab drivers all right out of Charlie Chan, shopkeepers out of Mr. Moto. GIs cruising streets in pairs trying to appear casual about it all, arms full of purchases. Debouched (that should certainly be the word) at Régence, entrance guarded by 2 spit-’n’-polish Khotianese PFCs. The grand syndrome, as Tommy would say: lobby like the Statler, dining room on the right with white tablecloths and smiling Khotianese waiters, bar on left, nice and dimly lit and sultry. Already packed with liquid standbys and long-time shack jobs of the brass, attired in skin-tight dresses and false bosoms and lots and lots of western type make-up. Just as American as Mom’s applejack. Everything air conditioned, streamlined, sealed tight against bugs, dust, vermin, reality. Home away from home in little old Kho-T.

  Blix Wissocker the center of a festive group of lesser lights and twittering maidens. Rigors of duty in Porky’s overswollen headquarters. “Sam! What’d they do—grab you in the draft? I’ll write that mean old son of a bitch Hershey myself. You’re not what we want …” “No,” I said, “I can see that.” Watching me shrewdly with his jolly fat man’s eyes: a little disdain, a little fear. “No kidding, what are you doing out here? Man, we must be in real trouble if they’re calling on the fire brigade …” Some laughter from the celebrants—but cautious: no knowing which way the beat-up old alley cat will jump. “Special mission for the IG’s office, Blix,” I said. “The Chief wants me to give a good, hard look at the rear echelons, particularly Services of Supply.” He threw back his head, laughing: jolly fat man with a fat finger in the pie. “Don’t josh a josher, Sam—they’d never have an old groundhog like you combing through records.” His hand resting on the bare shoulder of a girl with elaborately piled black hair and skin like silk over spun glass. “Come on down and have a drink when you get settled in.” Felt like the minister’s son who’s entered the town brothel by mistake. Everybody happy as Larry. The perpetual freeload at the Big PX.

  17 May 62: Over to see C. S. Massengale this afternoon. Ensconced in the old palace (what WOULD CSM do without a palace?) looking out over the Bay. Flunkies and anterooms abounding. Let me walk ¾ of way to his desk over soundless carpet, then rose and waited. A trifle awkward. I came to attention and saluted. Why not? He returned the salute carelessly and then shook hands. “Well, Samuel. We meet again.” How true. A bit off-balance himself, for all his savoir faire. “By Jupiter, you don’t look a day older.” Not true at all: true of him, though. Same old imperious, hawklike glance, the charming smile. Same voice without a human flaw. He has arrested time. How? Four stars now, all kinds of eerie decorations from Cambodian potentates. Four stars. I thought, Thou hast it now—king, Cawdor, Glamis, all as the weird women promised; and, I fear, etc. Well, not quite: there’s still the Chief’s post he hasn’t quite nailed down. But give him time. (Which he’s running out of.)

  Slouched back in his chair—that deceptive indolence. “Well, I’d have thought you had enough service to last you three times around. Just couldn’t bear to stay out of things, eh?”

  “No, I’ve had enough, General.” My turn to smile now. “The Chief called me back for this mission.” Thought I might as well let him know how things stand right away. “So I’ve heard.”

  A few pleasantries, no reminiscences. He said: “I ought to get out of harness myself. It’s getting to be too much for an old trooper.—The world has changed since we were youngsters, Samuel, do you realize that?” “I’ll sign that,” I said. “Yes. I keep wondering what it’s all for, do you know? I mean, just what are we busting our old guts for, out in this turbulent, unhappy land?” Hoped he’d go on but he didn’t. Captious Courtney disillusioned, ready to relinquish ambition, let slip the baton? I think not. And under it was that easy, guileless smile.

  But what, then? After a decent interval I said how sorry I was to hear about Emily’s death. “Yes. Thank you for your note—it was good of you to write. You and Tommy.” “She was a fine person,” I said. “Yes—she was a gallant lady. Her only fault was that she was too vulnerable, too inflexible for this world.” Sighing, gazing out at the magnificent gardens of the Empress Te-Phuong, who died of a broken heart when her young lord was killed in that witless expedition against Mandalay. Decided I’d better not ask after Jinny, not after that fantastic court case. God alone knows what she’s doing now—and He better not tell.

  He said softly: “And how’s Tommy?” “Fine,” I answered, “she needed a little time to get her feet under her. She’s taken up weaving: I found her an old Shaker blanket loom with an overhead beater, and repaired it myself.” “Penelope,” he said, and smiled, “—the perfect occupation for a warrior’s wife.” “I’m not a warrior anymore,” I said. “Wanderer, then. You’re still wandering. Aren’t you?” I didn’t say anything. He gave me his long, low, significant look. “All’s well that ends well, eh? You always said that.” “Yes,” I answered slowly, “it’s sometimes true, General.”

  Then we got down to roofing nails. “Paul Bannerman tells me you’ve been observing some of our vertical-envelopment sweeps in the Delta. Tell me your impressions.” That meant he already knew them, he’s got his spies everywhere, I suppose. Told him I didn’t feel I’d really seen enough to be a competent judge—of the three ops I watched, two were almost total failures and the third aborted.

  He was on his feet now, pacing up and down. “Washington doesn’t realize what we’re up against out here. They’re still operating on a World War II psychology—a monolithic enemy, fixed lines of battle, the whole mystique.” He went off into a long dissertation involving what he called the New Diplomacy, the need for a more sophisticated, less sentimental approach to international relations, a return to the methods of Cardinal Mazarin (Jesus Christ, MAZARIN) in this new arena where indirection and subversion are the leading motifs, and a psychological preparation of the body politic is the paramount issue. I listened politely—nay, attentively. Couldn’t help thinking of that audience with MacArthur at Lennon’s. So long ago. Why do these types always need to have you seated while they pace and fulmina
te?

  “Samuel, we’ve taken six hundred and forty-seven casualties in the last two months alone, do you realize that? Six hundred and forty-seven. That’s including helicopter pilots and crews as well as ground advisers and the new Mobile Forces units we’ve just activated—I suppose you know about those.” I said I did. “I know you think I don’t give a brass farthing for the hoplites, but I do, believe me. Gehring was out here two weeks ago, full of righteous wrath. ‘You’re bombing civilians! You’re destroying the organic fabric of the country!’ The God damned fool—can’t he see that the insurgents are the people and the people are the insurgents? They’re one and the same thing … Oh sure—a few hardcore Moscow-trained cadres here and there, but they could never function if the populace weren’t with them. How do you think they’re warned, where they hide their weapons, where they get their food?” “So the answer is mass deportation,” I said finally. “Samuel, I’ll tell you something.” Standing right above me, his eyes narrowed. “The answer is what Chiang Kai-shek did in Hupeh and Honan. Yes. If the peasants support the insurgents—hide them, feed them, supply their manpower—then the answer is perfectly logical. Destroy that base of the insurgents.”

  I could only stare at him. But he’d already turned away. “Well, there’s no question about that, of course. We’re too mired in a nineteenth century ground-rules morality to absorb any of that … ” He went ranting on about Hoanh-Trac, who he said is playing footsie with the Hai Minh and screaming to the UN about territorial integrity. “Integrity! They don’t know the meaning of the word … ” I finally dove into the current and asked him if he’d talked to Hoanh-Trac. He looked at me with the expression of an exasperated saint. “I’ve invited him down here twice, and each time he’s put me off with the most transparent of pretexts. Death of a sister! I tell you they are the very epitome of sinuosity. Simpering, faithless little creatures—God knows how the French put up with them as long as they did.” “The silk and the rubber eased the pain,” I said, “—not to mention all that copper and tin.” He blinked at me with distaste. “That old bromide. Wait till you’ve seen a little more of them … It’s obvious he’s playing a double game, using us as a counterweight.” He took out that perennial jade holder of his and fitted a cigarette into it neatly. “In any event, it’s merely a case of waiting.” “Sir?” I said, startled; he had me there. “For the right signal. The one that will signify his willingness to come to terms with us and stop this preposterous monkey business. You’ll find out how things work after you’ve been out here a while, Samuel. It may come as an overture about economic aid, or one of their eerie religious ceremonies, or even a conference on agricultural development. But you can be sure it will be totally irrelevant to the problem at issue. That’s the way the game is played out here. It’s precisely that that they don’t understand back in Washington. They like to think they do, but they don’t. It’s lamentable.”