(Southern Wyoming in the spring, green hills rolling away, and the smell of the new grass as sharp as the winter cold still hiding in the wind, and new colts awkward as teen-age girls under a cobalt sky. Rain on the summer bricks in Brooklyn and thirty-five cent shots of raw whiskey in a sad old bar across from the Navy yard and Jersey girls smelling of Juicy Fruit and Johnson’s baby powder. Pale blond faces and hands catching blond hair, girls whose faces glowed with politics equated with love, their breath laced by ripe beer and stale cigarettes, their eyes smiling at the sound of his guitar. Live oak trees gnarled along the Nueces bottoms, and my mother’s cherry cobbler, my crazy brothers as innocent as puppies. Levi’s, white cowboy shirts, handmade boots, and forty-dollar Stetsons jammed in the pickup, off for a VFW dance on Saturday night, Lone Star beer, long-legged girls named Regan Bell, Marybeth, and Jackie… all our hopes flying home on a silver C-124. There was mourning.)
But with the sadness came a wild elation, too. It may have been only the physical conditioning, or the release from the tedium of rotating trick, or merely the idea of a change of scenery, but there were nearly one hundred brown, happy faces looking up at me each morning at 0600 as I climbed on the platform to lead the exercises.
PT, then a five-mile run, and the rest of the morning whiled away learning about new ways to die. Tetrick lectured and lectured about booby traps, tried to teach us to make our own in the hope that we might understand the psychology behind Malayan Gates, Punji spikes, foot traps, and the ever-mined corpses. Two Special Forces sergeants came down from Okinawa to teach us a bit of the combination karate, judo, and barroom brawling they had learned. It wouldn’t, as a few of the troops quickly learned, make a superman out of the average guy, but it did serve to remind us, John Wayne aside, that elbows, knees, feet, and teeth are more formidable weapons than the right cross.
A new shipment of M-14s had to be cleaned and fired again, since our usual armory consisted of old M-1s and .30 carbines, and even a few old grease guns. For sentimental reasons, Tetrick would not part with his grease gun, and a few of the officers preferred to keep the light carbine. We also picked up four M-60 machine guns, a supply of Claymore mines, five 81mm and two 60mm mortars, but we weren’t able to find even one of the new M-79 grenade launchers. Someone in Okinawa kept promising them, but they never came. With the new equipment came new men to flesh out the tricks to fifteen men each, kids whose names I barely learned. Novotny had my old Trick now, and I was left with clichés about the loneliness of command. You can’t have everything, Krummel.
At the range one afternoon, my old Trick was firing the M-14 on semi-automatic at pop-up silhouette targets at thirty to seventy yards. The targets stayed up for two seconds or less. Morning was on the line, and I was at the control panel, letting him fire until he missed. He had hit thirteen in a row when Tetrick came up. Morning hit five more in a row; like a cocky young gunfighter out of a bad western his movements were consciously slow and arrogant until the targets came up, and then arms and feet and rifle were slick and smooth and snake-quick. Tetrick told me to give him two at once, one thirty yards to the right, the other fifty to the left. Morning didn’t even jump, but took the right one first, then hit in front of the second, but the ricochet took it down.
“Pretty good,” Tetrick shouted to him. “But when it’s for real, take the close one first.”
Morning said sure, but with such sarcasm that I knew he would get killed, now, rather than do as Tetrick asked.
Tetrick took off his fatigue cap, then rubbed the fringe of hair, mumbling, “Kids like that took all my hair, Krummel. Now I’m bald. Shit, I’m getting old.” He said that we had received a shipment of the new AR-15s that the Special Forces had been using in Vietnam and half a dozen shotguns. “Which do you want?” he asked as Morning walked up.
“Get one for each foot, Sgt. Krummel,” Morning said. “Shit, that little old AR-15 bullet is better than a dum-dum. Shit, when it comes out of a man, it takes about fifty percent of the blood, bone, and flesh — no, that’s semi-liquid gelatin I believe the Army calls it — right out the other side. And you know what shotguns do at twenty yards, don’t you, Sarge? Shit, one for each hand.”
“Morning, Morning, Morning,” I said. “What am I going to do with you.” I called him to attention. “What am I going to do with you.”
“Push ups?” Tetrick inquired with a professional interest.
“He’s already done about two hundred today,” I said.
“Run him?”
“Another five miles?”
Tetrick laughed. “He is sure gonna be in some shape by the time we get over there. Well, do something with him. You do something; I don’t want to see him.” He shuffled away.
I turned back to Morning’s face, which showed as little as did mine. “Pfc Morning, I want a hole, six feet long, six feet wide, and most of all six feet deep. You’ll find an entrenching tool in the three-quarter and lots of dirt right where you’re standing. Move.” He moved with clean hate like a halo around him.
I went back out to the range at 2200. Morning sat on the pile of dirt, smoking a cigarette, looking up at the stars as if he were on a cruise ship.
“Lovely night, Sgt. Krummel,” he said, but his body sagged in the harsh light from my jeep headlights.
“Did you dig me a beautiful hole, trooper?”
“Aw, cut that role-playing shit out, Krummel, you’re driving me nuts.” Sudden anger curled up with the smoke from the cigarette, and there was almost a plea in his fatigued voice.
“Fill it up.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fill it up. Right now.”
“You’re not going to break me. You can’t even bend me.” He waved the small shovel like a club. “You can’t touch me.”
“I already know that. Either fill up the hole, or get ready for a year in the stockade.”
“You’re joking.”
“Try me, boy. I’ll bust you wide open. Fill it up.”
He hesitated, then began flinging dirt into the hole. I stood over him the whole time.
“There,” he sighed, throwing a last shovelful onto the pile of loose dirt.
“There what?”
“There, sergeant.”
“Fine. Would you like a ride back to the barracks, Pfc?”
“Not with you, sergeant. Not with you.”
I double-timed him back to the barracks. He kept his mouth shut this time, but he couldn’t close his face.
“You can hate me all you want to, trooper, but keep your mouth shut. You’re going to die for being stupidly stubborn, but I don’t want you rubbing off on anyone else. As long as you keep your mouth shut, only you are hurt. But what about Franklin and Peterson and those new kids? You want them dead because they won’t obey orders on principle? Answer me, trooper.”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sergeant.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you don’t. Dismissed.”
What could I do with him? Would he have been different if we exchanged places? Does power corrupt, not just morally, but mentally too? Not just the powerful, but the weak also? I didn’t feel corruption creeping in my soul. All I could feel was responsibility, fatigue, and hopeless desire to fight for money and let the governments go to hell.
* * *
But then it was time to go.
We flew to Saigon at night, then were hustled into an empty hangar with all our equipment, including the four vans. For twenty-four hours we lounged in our cheap civilian suits provided by the government, ate cold C-rations, slept on piles of barracks bags, and used five-gallon buckets for latrines while Saunders tried to find the trucks which were to carry us to the new Det. Our tribulations were just beginning.
When the trucks came, they were driven in one end of the hangar, loaded, then driven out the other end. The vans were to go next, but two of them wouldn’t start, so we spent another six hours without barracks bags to lie on, without cold C-rations to gag on, but we still had the clammy cans to shit in, and o
ne Lister bag of tepid water which seemed to have absorbed the stink from our bodies and the bitterness of the constant bitching from the men.
But then it was time to go, again.
We were loaded in trucks whose beds were covered with sandbags, then laced tightly shut, locked in our own stink. I assigned myself to my old Trick’s truck, since I was in charge of assigning NCOs to keep the men from getting out of the trucks. While doing this, I noticed that the lead truck in the convoy pushed a heavy trailer arrangement in front of it like a cowcatcher in front of a train. A mine-catcher, I supposed, but I kept my suppositions to myself. The sandbagged floors and the company of ARVN troops riding shotgun in armored personnel carriers had already started talk, thought about death. But, as usual, dying was going to seem the easy part.
Sixteen men secured in the course, heavy heat, the constant sift of the sand, and the stench of each other and the tarstink of the canvas isn’t a Sunday afternoon drive. Piss calls were infrequent, and we ate more cold C-rations and drank more water tasting of tin and dirt and last week’s wash. Uncomfortable trip but uneventful, we drove through the first night, the next day, and that evening. Men slept, but a rough, fitful sleep as they tried to rest on the sandbags, or lean against the ribs, or each other. When the feeble light creeping through the canvas belied the raging sun above, some of them tried to play cards, but sandy dust and sweaty fingers chewed all the spots from the deck. Others tried to read, but raw-rimmed eyes couldn’t follow the leaping, bounding words. Most sat silent in the grime of their bodies and in the blackness of their thoughts, wondering about the sandbags and wishing for the heft of a weapon in their hands. We all cursed — bitterly, without jokes — at everything, until the curses became as much a sound of the trip as the random rattling of the truck. Even asleep, each bump, each rut, each chuck hole drew forth epithets from sleepy mouths which never noted words passing.
But when the cowcatcher caught a mine and the convoy slammed to a halt, no one said a word. A single drawn breath robbed the truck of air, and we gasped like dying men. One man farted, another belched. Stomachs grumbled, guts contracted and growled in protest.
A few rounds were fired in front, then steady chatter and little pops as if from toy guns, then silence again. The Trick tried to climb out of the truck over me, Franklin leading the way, shouting that he had to pee. I pushed him back into the crowd, kept pushing until they all were down, faces hugging the sandbags. Fear rose like a visible cloud from the huddled bodies, but I made them stay, while I dropped out the back and crouched under the truck. Inside, Franklin groaned, trying to hold his bladder, and Quinn shouted not to pee on him, but no one laughed, not even Quinn.
The road, a track through a jungled forest, was gray in the light from a moon as big and bright as a searchlight. No one ambushes by moonlight, I thought, never thinking that those who would would do it in a way I wasn’t ready for yet. Murmurs, shrouded by canvas, seemed to fill the space between the darkened trucks. Bodyless voices swept on a ghostly wind, turned, then turned back, till they seemed my voice drifting away from me. For an instant I was drunk with fear, and I knew the only way I could control it was to do something, but there was nothing to do but hold my bladder, keep my peace, and wait. Someone ran down the road toward me, stopping at each truck, then angry, frightened whispers sawed the night like the alarm cries of huge insects. Tetrick ran flatfooted like an old cop chasing a young pickpocket, but an old cop who firmly intended to catch that pickpocket. I stood, whispered an order to stay down inside the truck, then stepped out to meet him, already feeling better.
“What’s up?” I asked, my tone calmer than I expected.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just a mine. No real damage, but it will take about half an hour to get the truck going again.”
“Who fired?”
“Nervous fingers. One ARVN squad ran into another. One dead, four wounded, and lucky at that. Idiots,” he said. “Let the troops out for piss call or they will be pissing all over themselves. Tell ‘em, for God’s sake, stay on the road; the ditches may be mined.” But as he said this, two squads of ARVN troops ran past in both ditches heading toward the rear of the convoy.
“Guess not,” I said. As I looked, I saw a white track disappearing quickly in the forest, a trail. “But I guess we’re lucky.”
“Keep ‘em on the road anyway. Then get down to the weapons truck — first one in front of the vans — and get yours. Okay?” he asked, then ran off without an answer, his feet slapping against the dry road.
“Okay, you old ladies,” I said, unlacing the canvas, “pull down your bloomers, and come out to pee-pee. Trouble’s all over, but stay on the road. Novotny, keep them on the road.” As I trotted away, I heard Franklin’s voice, high and loud with relief, “Sgt. Krummel, Quinn tried to rape me while I was laying down,” and Quinn’s answer, “And I woulda, if you hadn’t been shaking like a twelve-year-old virgin,” and then his raw laughter. “Knock it off,” I shouted over my shoulder, not even hoping that they would.
Coming back, I tried to be casual, carrying the Armalite by its handle like a suitcase, four grenades bagging the thin pockets of the civilian suit, two full clips sticking out of my back pockets like fifths of cheap whiskey. Morning commented, of course, “Mamma Krummel back to protect his little brood,” but I laughed at him. He expected push-ups and an ass-chewing, and grumbled, “It wasn’t a joke,” and I said, “Yes, I don’t think so either.” We smoked and talked quietly, our talk like the chatter from behind the other trucks, relaxed, confident, safe, but this cool babble couldn’t cover the raw grunt and moan which slipped out of the forest to the right. No one spoke, then everyone, but the metallic clang of a round snapping into the Armalite stopped the noise. I sent Cagle for Tetrick, Morning to the truck cab for a flashlight, and the men into the opposite ditch, then gave Novotny two of the grenades.
Quinn’s tooth flashed in the moonlight as he said, “Frankie. Frankie? Where you at, you ugly bastard.”
One of the new men mumbled that he had been seen drifting down the moonlit trail. I gave Quinn the third grenade, then Morning the last when he came back with the flashlight.
“Five yards apart on me,” I said. “Quinn last. No light yet. Morning behind me. Let’s go,” I said, then stepped off down the trail.
The trail seemed twice as white as I moved between the dark walls of foliage, following the faint trail of sharp prints made by new shoes in the dust, then the wavering serpentine track where he had peed as he strolled. The trail bent to the left, and as I cautiously slipped around the corner, I didn’t need Morning’s flash to see.
Malayan Gates, they call them, a bamboo pole tied to a tree beside the trail, a bamboo pole with three or four twelve-inch bamboo stakes lashed to its end, then bent away from the trail and tied to another tree and a trip wire. Franklin hadn’t finished, and urine still dripped into the black pool at his feet where he knelt, his grey face turned back toward me, one arm pegged to his stomach where he had been holding himself, and the points of the stakes gleamed out of his back two inches above his belt. His eyes were wide and alive when I first saw him, but before I could move, they were wide, white and dead in his face. A muscle spasm gripped his mouth, and a rumbling, sputtering release from the large bowel mocked the prayer his mouth seemed to form, but his eyes were dead in his face. Morning quietly said “Jesus Christ” behind me. Novotny, stricken, mumbled “Told him to stay on the road. Told him… Told him… Told…” Quinn dropped his grenade and started to run. I laid the butt of the rifle into his stomach as he reached my side, laid it harder than I should have, but a rage clutched at my muscles, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had started firing into Franklin’s offending body. Quinn dropped to his knees and gagged.
“Take him back,” I said, my voice colder than I could remember it ever being. “Take the son of a bitch back.” I slapped Morning’s shoulder and pushed Novotny. Their eyes came back to me from Franklin, then they started to stumble toward him. “No, you b
astards, no! Quinn! Quinn! Take him back. Take the son of a bitch back.”
Lake two owls dazed by sudden lightning, they asked, “Who?”
“Quinn,” I said once more. “Take him back. Have someone sit on him. Bring me a poncho and a roll of field wire. Now, goddamn you, now! Move!” I shoved at them until they moved, cursed them in various tongues, then they moved back down the trail, Quinn between them.
I waited with Franklin’s body. God, he stunk. He offended me with his rankness, his malodorous halo clinging to the trees. He stunk worse than any animal I’ve ever gutted. If I hadn’t been sure that he lay on a pressure release mine, I would have kicked him until he stopped emitting that fetid, slimy, smell. I might have anyway, but Tetrick ran up, two sergeants behind him.
He stopped, clicked on the safety of his grease gun, then said, softly, “The bastard.”
We stood there, looking and feeling guilty for looking, until Novotny came back with the roll of wire and Morning with the poncho. I made a loop, then tossed it over Franklin’s head, around his neck.
“Not his neck,” Morning said, but nothing more.
We rolled the wire back to the road and made the troops lie back down in the ditch. Then I tried to pull the wire, flinching like a nine-year-old kid firing his first shotgun, flinching as he does until he learns that it is the flinch not the shotgun which hurts him. The second time I didn’t flinch.
Nothing happened. The wire jumped toward me like a slim black snake. Each of us, in our own way, jerked away from it.
“It came untied,” Tetrick said. “Or broke. I’ll get it.”
“I will.”
Once more down that white trail dividing the darkness, the moon still bright in the sky, still searching, stars twinkling ordinarily, even the small sounds of the jungled forest peeping out once more. I tied a knot that would not slip, then walked back.