Fallen Angels

  “What the fuck happened?” Monaco came through the trees.

  “They pass by you?”

  “No.”

  “Here!”

  Peewee called us over and we went. He had found one of them lying a few feet from the entrance to a tunnel. The tunnel was near the comer of the cemetery, covered by a low, sprawling bush.

  Sergeant Simpson took a grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it into the opening as hard as he could. We stepped back, and a moment later the grenade went off.

  “Okay, let’s hit it!” he said.

  We were starting off. Backing out of the village toward the pickup zone. I felt sick. My stomach churned. I looked for Peewee and found him. There was nothing to read in his face.

  A pop. Nothing more. A small pop, almost lost in the sounds of the jungle around us. We hit the dirt, the mud. We returned fire. Someone sent up a flare that was defective. It burned for a second and then went out quickly. To my left I heard someone crying out. Not loudly — there was no panic — but a gentle cry of surprise.I turned just as the last of the light from the flare was dying. It was Lieutenant Carroll.

  The squad lit up the woods with fire as Sergeant Simpson barked into the radio. We started making our way toward the village. Johnson and Walowick carried Lieutenant Carroll.

  Carried him. He was limp. His legs dragged behind him. God have mercy. God have mercy.

  I looked toward his face, but he was a silhouette, lost in the darkness of the moment.

  Pain. I thought my heart was stopping. I couldn’t breathe. We went to the edge of the village and somebody shot off another flare.

  “Keep their heads down!” Sergeant Simpson pointed toward the village.

  Peewee sent a burst of fire into the village. Johnson had put Lieutenant Carroll down and was setting up the M-60. The sixty — the pig — was hungry, angry that they had hit our man, our leader.

  “Cover the trail!” Sergeant Simpson called to Johnson.

  Peewee and Monaco kept pumping rounds high into the village while Johnson sprayed the trail behind us.

  We didn’t see anything. The fire could have come from the village. Lieutenant Carroll, lying behind a wide tree, was a dark silhouette. No one in the squad spoke. We were afraid for Lieutenant Carroll, we were afraid for ourselves, and our only answer to the fear that called each of our names was to fire blindly into the fearful darkness.

  It took the chopper another five minutes to get to us. What we hadn’t done to the village, it did. It leveled the huts. There were Vietnamese, mostly women and old men, running for their lives. Few of them made it more than a few feet as the chopper guns swept everything in their path. These were the people we had come to save, to pacify. Now it was ourselves that we were saving. God have mercy. God give us peace.

  The chopper came down and we handed up Lieutenant Carroll. A burnt offering. We didn’t hand him up gently through the chopper doors, we pushed him as hard as we could. It was his life, but it was our lives as well. God have mercy.

  We all climbed on and the chopper tilted, jerked, and was off. The door gunner kept spraying the village as we moved off into the night.

  A medic on the chopper looked for Lieutenant Carroll’s wound, but couldn’t find it. Bars of lights passed through us. There were eyes, the outlines of helmets. There was Lieutenant Carroll, unconscious.

  “Anybody see where he was hit?” The medic was already putting in the IV

  We hadn’t seen. There weren’t any signs of blood.

  “Maybe he just passed out,” Monaco said.

  The medic didn’t answer, he just shook his head. We didn’t land at the base. We went on to Chu Lai. The whole squad made the trip. We got there in what seemed a short time. An ambulance was waiting for us. They took Lieutenant Carroll, and the rest of us went off to one side and sat outside a building.

  I was trembling, and I couldn’t stop. Peewee put his hand on mine and tried to calm it. I took deep breaths.

  A major came by, saw us sitting on the ground, and came over to us.

  “What are you men doing here?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, sir,” I heard Monaco say.

  “What unit you with?”

  Nobody answered. He looked at us, and then said something about either him being in charge or maybe he asked who was in charge, I didn’t know.

  Sergeant Simpson got to his feet and talked to him, and then we were all headed over to a low building. It was a mess hall, and two cooks sitting listening to the radio got coffee for us.

  One of the medics who had been on the chopper came over, and we asked him how Lieutenant Carroll was doing. He said he didn’t know, only that he was over in building A-3. We finished the coffee and went over to see him.

  “He got hit under the arm,” a hawk-faced doctor was saying. “That’s why the medics couldn’t find the wound. Almost in the armpit. It wouldn’t have done any good if they had found it, though.”

  Monaco knew the prayer.

  “Lord, let us feel pity for Lieutenant Carroll, and sorrow for ourselves, and all the angel warriors that fall. Let us fear death, but let it not live within us. Protect us, O Lord, and be merciful unto us.”

  Amen.

  Chapter 11

  Shock. Pain. Nobody wanted to look at anybody else. Nobody wanted to talk. There was nothing to say. Lieutenant Carroll’s death was close. It hung around our shoulders and filled the spaces between us. Lieutenant Carroll had sat with us, had been afraid with us, had worried about us. Now he was dead.

  “It happened so quick,” Brunner said.

  “That’s the way it goes,” Monaco said. He shrugged and continued relacing his boots. I looked over at him. His eyes glistened with tears. I started checking my rifle.

  At the camp Sergeant Simpson asked me to write a letter to Lieutenant Carroll’s family. I said I couldn’t do it, and he asked me why.

  “I just can’t,” I said.

  “If he was laying out in the boonies, and he was calling to you needing your help, what would you do?”

  “He’s not laying out in the boonies,” I said.

  “Yeah, man, he is,” Simpson said. “He just in too deep to get out.”

  I took Lieutenant Carroll’s personal stuff from Sergeant Simpson and started looking through it.

  There were letters to his wife, Lois, back in Kansas. He wanted to open a bookstore if she could find a place. I read part of one of his letters to her.

  No, I don’t think having the bookstore so close to the library is a bad idea. The place on Minnesota Avenue is close enough to the bridge so that we can get customers from Missouri as well. The idea of the bookstore is so comforting to me, Lois. I have this vision of me working behind the counter and you taking care of the baby in the back. Better yet, you work the counter, and I’ll take care of the baby. Have you considered Karen as a name if it’s a girlP It’s your mother’s name, and I like it.

  There were local newspapers that she had sent him and a Alumnus Bulletin from Emporia State College. There were pictures of his wife — a pretty girl, blonde, dark-rimmed glasses, in a winter coat. There was snow on the street behind her. Another picture of the two of them together in bathing suits. She looked less pretty, but the two of them looked so happy together.

  It took me three tries to get the letter even close to something worth saying, and then it was nothing special. In a way I felt real bad just being alive to write it. I could think of her wondering why I didn’t do something, why I didn’t save him.

  Dear Mrs. Carroll,

  My name is Richard Perry, and I had the good fortune to serve under your husband. Last night, we ran into heavy fighting in an area we’ve been trying to protect for some time. Lieutenant Carroll was in the process of getting us out of there safely despite the fact that we had run into more of the enemy than we had expected to, when he was wounded. The medevac choppers got him down to Chu Lai, to the medical unit there, and they tried their best to save him, but could not.

  Mrs.
Carroll, I know that it is not much comfort to you that your husband died bravely, or honorably, but he did. All of the guys in the squad who served under him are grateful for his leadership and for having known him.

  I am sorry to have to write to you under these circumstances.

  Yours,

  Richard Perry

  I read the letter to Peewee and Walowick and they said it was okay. Then I gave it to Sergeant Simpson to take to HQ.

  I thought about Mama getting a letter about me. What would she do with it? Would she put it in the drawer she kept Daddy’s papers in? Would she sit on her bed in the middle of the night and take it from the drawer to read like she did his stuff? I wondered how Kenny would feel?

  I had to get my mind off of Lieutenant Carroll. The guys in the squad hung out together after we got back to the camp. The conversation was quiet, almost reverent. We got six copies of a book called Valley of the Dolls, and Brew hit a rat with one of them. The rat was as big as any I’ve ever seen.

  Lieutenant Carroll stayed on my mind. I knew he would. I thought of his calling Jenkins a warrior angel. It was a gentle thing to say, and he had been a gentle man.

  We spent another day lying around. It seemed to be what the war was about. Hours of boredom, seconds of terror.

  Morning. The coffee was pretty good. Somebody had found a cache of coffee beans about two months earlier, and they had sent to Saigon for a coffee grinder. I wasn’t hungry so I just had coffee in the hooch.

  Lobel came over to my bunk. He was really shaken by Carroll’s death. He sat on the edge of my bunk, and I could see he was trying to say something. He finally got it out.

  “Hey, Perry, you know … I kind of feel that maybe it was my fault.”

  “What?”

  “You know, about Carroll?”

  “Wasn’t your fault, man.”

  “Throughout the whole thing I was just lying there, scared out of my mind.” There was distress on Lo-bel’s face. “I think I’m a coward.”

  “Wasn’t anybody’s fault,” I said. “The Congs got him.”

  “I keep thinking if I had shot more, maybe a lucky shot would have got the guy that …’’he stopped and shook his head. I thought he was going to cry. “I was so scared I didn’t even see them until it was over.”

  “The Congs?” Peewee had heard Lobel and sat up-

  “Yeah.” Lobel was wringing his hands.

  “You know, I didn’t see one till it was over,” Peewee said. “I remember what you said about Charlie Company fucking each other up, and I thought we done did the same shit until I seen that Cong laying near that tunnel. I was glad as hell to see him, too.”

  “You didn’t see them during the fight?” Lobel looked up at Peewee.

  “The only time I seen a live, straight-money Cong was that guy they was questioning. As far as I’m concerned, the Congs could sneak they asses clear out the damn country, and we’d be here fighting for two more years.”

  “How about you, Perry?” Lobel looked at me. “Did you see them?”

  “During the fight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I saw their faces over the muzzle fire. I just fired where I thought they were. I’ve never aimed at anything. I’ve never seen anything to shoot at.”

  Lobel looked down at his hands again.

  Sergeant Simpson came in and said that Captain Stewart wanted me over at headquarters.

  I went over and there were two colonels there. One was a marine corps guy. I started to salute but the marine corps guy just walked away from me.

  Stewart motioned for me to sit down.

  They had a guy tied up in the middle of the room. I guessed he was VC. A Vietnamese interpreter was talking to him.

  I couldn’t understand any Vietnamese, but I listened all the same. An orderly had made coffee and passed it around. He brought me a cup and I thanked him with a nod. It was black, and it didn’t have any sugar but I didn’t want to get up and get the milk and sugar next to the marine colonel.

  “What’s he talking about, Vinh?” the colonel asked.

  “He says he’s a fisherman. He says he works on Song Bong River, but he doesn’t have an accent like that, he has an accent from the north. Then he say that the VC make him fight with them, but he doesn’t want to. He says that if he is killed his people don’t get his body from the VC. He doesn’t want to be buried under a tree in the forest. That’s what the VC do.”

  “Tell him I don’t believe a word he’s saying,” the marine colonel said. “Tell him that if he doesn’t tell me the truth pretty soon I’m going to have to shoot him.”

  The Vietnamese spoke to the prisoner again. This time his words were harsher. He slapped him a few times, then took his gun out.

  The VC was rocking and talking as fast as he could. His voice rose as he spoke. The Vietnamese officer hit the prisoner with his pistol butt.

  “Is he saying the same thing?” The army colonel asked. His name tag read Mulig.

  “Now he say they make him fight with the Second Division,” the interpreter said. “He says he hates army life.”

  “The Second?” The marine colonel looked at the VC as if he were seeing him for the first time. “He actually said the Second?”

  “That’s what he said,” the interpreter reported.

  “That’s the fifth one we got from the Second in the last two days. Something’s up. Get him over to Chu Lai to intelligence there. Let them work him over for a bit.”

  The marine colonel and the army colonel both left. Captain Stewart talked to the major who stayed behind for a few minutes and then the major left. The orderly went to Captain Stewart and spoke to him. I heard him mention my name. Stewart, who had been leaning on the edge of a desk, came over to me.

  “Your name Perry?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You wrote the letter to Lieutenant Carroll’s wife?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Damn good letter, boy.” Captain Stewart wiped away some tobacco juice from his chin with his thumb. “You know how to type? I can use somebody in here who can type and speak English.”

  “I can’t type, sir.”

  “Well, it’s still a damn good letter,” he said. He turned and walked away.

  I finished the coffee as two guys blindfolded the VC to take him back to Chu Lai. He was trembling.

  “They found some tortured marines up near the demilitarized zone,” the orderly said. “He probably thinks they’re going to do the same thing to him.”

  “Tortured?”

  “They tie them to trees and pull their guts out,” the orderly said. “Then they just leave them there. That marine colonel said when they found them they were still alive and begging for somebody to kill them.”

  “For the marines to kill them? They begged for the marines to kill them?”

  “Yeah,” the orderly said. “And now they think that a whole regiment of North Vietnamese regulars are coming through Laos and Cambodia now.”

  “Damn!”

  “To say the least,” the orderly said.

  Back at the hooch I told Peewee what the orderly had said. Peewee asked what had happened to the truce, and I told him I didn’t know.

  We had a halfhearted volleyball game against some guys from HQ company. They beat us easily and made a lot of noise about how good they were. Peewee wanted to take a shot at one of them. When I got back to the hooch after the game, I saw the Vietnamese house girl putting something on the end of my bunk. I went to see what it was and saw that it was Lieutenant Carroll’s pictures. For some reason I put them with my stuff.

  The war was different now. Nam was different. Jenkins had been outside of me, even the guys in Charlie Company had been outside. Lieutenant Carroll was inside of me, he was part of me. Part of me was dead with him. I wanted to be sad, to cry for him, maybe bang my fists against the sides of the hooch. But what I felt was numb. I just had these pictures of him walking along with us on patrol or sitting i
n the mess area, looking down into his coffee cup. It was what I was building in my mind, a series of pictures of things I had seen, of guys I had seen. I found myself trying to push them from my mind, but they seemed more and more a part of me.

  We got a new platoon leader, a Lieutenant Gearhart, and he chewed tobacco. He could have been twenty-five, maybe twenty-six, no older. Captain Stewart brought him around and introduced him.

  “The first thing Lieutenant Gearhart is going to do is to make sure that we get some gooks for Lieutenant Carroll,” Stewart said. “Isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Gearhart answered.

  “Where you from?” Monaco asked.

  “Wilmington, Delaware,” he said.

  “What the hell do they have in Delaware?”

  “The DuPont company, mostly,” he said. “And Delaware State. I played football for Delaware.”

  “You any good?” Brunner asked.

  “Damn straight.”

  “What position you play?”

  “Linebacker.”

  “You’re too small to play linebacker,” Monaco said.

  “I played it,” Gearhart said.

  “When you get in country?”

  “Two months ago.”

  “Where you been?” Peewee asked. “Mr. Cong been asking for you.”

  “Taking reconnaisance training,” Lieutenant Gearhart said. “I was supposed to be with the Seventy-fifth’s program, but they needed officers here, so here I am.”

  “How are things going down in the south?” “Okay. They think we’ve seen the worst of it.” That afternoon, orders came through for Brunner and Lobel to be promoted to sergeant, and everybody else in the squad moved up to corporal. I didn’t even know that Lobel had been a corporal. The word was that everybody was getting short on people. “Say, Peewee?”

  “What?”

  “Why you think Lieutenant Carroll got it?”

  “The Man dialed his number,” Peewee said. “You really believe that?” I asked.

  “Can’t handle nothing deeper,” Peewee said.

  He got up and started fixing his mosquito netting. He had got some new netting from a guy in supply and was tacking it around his bunk.