1968. Part 5

Two people who seemed to be in the same place were yelling for a medic. The heavy rounds started coming in like clockwork, every four seconds, walking across the camp from left to right. The light ones popped all around, sporadically, in syncopation.

Then somebody yelled "Pig's got 'em!" and an M60 started chattering, spraying a red-orange arc across the valley-every third round a tracer-at first playing it like a hose, and then settling down in a steady stream. An artillery round, one of ours, shrieked in and exploded in the valley. The forward observer yelled "Drop four hundred left two hundred fire for effect!"The enemy mortars stopped. The medic sprinted across to where one person was still crying out.

Another machine gun joined the first and the light mortar squad sent a round over there,poink. It turned out to be an illumination round, crackling and sizzling under its parachute. There was no obvious movement on the hill, but they kept up the machine-gun fire.

The fusillade had been fairly effective on the VC position. The children who had been firing the small antique mortar had probably escaped, but the other four men were caught in a rain of machine-gun fire while frantically disa.s.sembling the big Russian weapon. The lieutenant had been hit in the throat; another man had a shattered elbow.

It was obvious that they would not be able to take the mortar with them. The lieutenant, coughing blood, unable to speak, was suddenly visible in the bobbing stroboscopic light from the illumination round. He made a waving motion, releasing the other three men: get down the hill while you can. Then, bullets spattering around him, blood streaming, he stood and took careful aim with his AK-47.

It looked kind of pathetic from Spider's bunker, the constant rain of orange fire being answered by a little line of green tracers. It must have looked more serious from the American target's point of view, though; one of the M60s stopped.

Then a salvo of artillery rounds came in right under the bobbing light: four, five, six, seven orange flashes and puffs of gray smoke. The forward observer confirmed that they were on target and asked for two w.i.l.l.y peter. Thirty seconds later, two white phosphorus sh.e.l.ls crashed in, making impressive sprays of white smoke and fire just before the illumination round sputtered out. Then another three HE rounds, and another two, and silence.

"We got 'em," Batman said. "Can't be n.o.body alive up there." At that moment, he was wrong. The lieutenant, blood still pulsing from his throat, his eardrums shattered by the artillery blasts, his body torn by more than a dozen shrapnel wounds, was patiently trying to fit a fresh magazine into his AK-47. He was choking on blood and phosphorus fumes and two particles of phosphorus were burning their way into arm and forehead. He knew he had only seconds to live and was trying with every molecule of his will not to cry out, to die well. As he raised the rifle toward the American hill he felt no anger but only immense, hopeless sadness. He thought a prayer for his wife and children and pulled the trigger.

From the American side it looked like a gesture of defiance, the green tracers flying every which way, to no effect. The action did bring in another five artillery rounds, but by the time they hit, there was no one left on the enemy hill alive.

The VC would have been better off if they had fired one round and split. The first round caused the only serious casualty. A later round did score a direct hit on a bunker, but the structure held, and the men inside only suffered ringing in the ears and temporary incontinence. The earlier casualty was very serious, though: right leg blown off at the knee, left leg mangled, genitals history. He'd lost quarts of blood and was in deep shock. The medic said he needed a dustoff ASAP or the guy was meat.

The captain was doubtful, nighttime and hostile fire, but said he'd try. He ordered the X-Rays down to the LZ with blinkers and purple smoke.

Choppers No American who fought in Vietnam would ever be able to hear the sound of a helicopter throbbing without a sudden rush of remembered emotion, a compound of relief and anxiety. Usually helicopters came to save you. Sometimes they came to carry you to places you would rather leave alone.The time and place where Spider was fighting, most of the helicopters were UH-1 Hueys, "slicks." These were general-purpose machines that ferried people and supplies around, and evacuated the wounded and dead. Some of them were turned into gunships, by adding on machine guns and rocket launchers, but the main gunship was the sleekly streamlined Cobra, with its Gatling-style minigun and automatic 40-millimeter grenade launcher and wingpods full of rockets. The other common helicopter was the fat, ponderous Chinook, inevitably called a "s.h.i.t-hook," a flying boxcar that could deliver a whole company of men at once, albeit slowly and with a lot of noise. They were heavily armored on the bottom, out of necessity, because they drew a lot of attention and were easy to hit.

Most of the men who flew Hueys loved them. They were nimble and fast as a sports car, if also as cantankerous. Some pilots developed a scary don't-give-a-s.h.i.t hotrod att.i.tude-either confident of their immortality or certain they were going to die no matter what-and jumped at any mission, the hairier the better. One such cowboy was available in Kontum when the call came from Spider's captain. He hauled his door gunner and another pilot-"crew chief"-out of the EM Club, beers in hand, and within five minutes they were sailing up into the hills, into the darkness.

Chill Dear Spider, Here's the map of the Southern constellations that you wanted. Boy, I had to Xerox it three times before it came out, all that black.

It must be really neat to see stars you've never seen before. Does anybody in your platoon have binoculars you can use? I remember all the great stuff you showed me with your telescope that night last year, Jupiter and the O'Brien Nebula.

I hope all that bulls.h.i.t with the chemistry department didn't put you off science when you come back to college. You really ought to be an astronomer. Maybe an astronaut! I read in the paper the other day that NASA is taking guys with PhDs and teaching them how to be test pilots, so they can fly on the Apollo missions.

Funny to think about you in the jungle this morning. I got caught downtown yesterday in a sudden blizzard and had to just leave my car and walk to a friend's house. n.o.body in Washington knows how to drive in the snow! It's like it was a southern city that gets surprised every year. Anyhow I better close this and trudge back and see if the snow plow buried my car. Brrr! I'm gonna put some boots in the car for the next time this happens!

Love, Beverly Road race The pilot's name was Smeeps, but he wanted people to call him Fangio, after a racing-car driver he admired. They usually called him Fang. He had an overbite.

Fang was in Operations, drinking coffee and trying to learn whist, when the dustoff call came in from Spider's hill. No one would be ordered to fly a mission like that, but you could volunteer, and it was uncool not to. Fang tossed his cards in, wrote down the coordinates in his notebook, and checked the wall map. No sweat in this moonlight, he said; just follow Route 47 about fifteen miles south, then have them pop a flare. He went next door to the EM Club and asked w.i.l.l.y Joe if he'd like to go scrag somegooks. The door gunner put a couple of beers in his side pockets and followed him down to the pad. His crew chief Monsoon, actually a copilot, shrugged and came along, too. They'd left the slick set up, ready to crank; they had it in the air in less than a minute, flying at treetop level with no lights.

Fang was among the best, but this mission was not quite the milk run he'd pretended it to be in Ops. The people in Ops knew that, of course, and so did Monsoon and w.i.l.l.y Joe, who leaned out the door with studied nonchalance, sober enough to be terrified. He sipped the warm beer while he scrutinized the flickering darkness of the treeline, waiting for the stream of tracers that would give him something to aim at: bright red or green b.a.l.l.s that floated toward you with deceptive slowness. He'd seen them a few times, and twice the slick he was in had been hit, both times without doing major damage. It bothered him that he hadn't known they'd been hit, either time, until they landed. But the rotor blades and his M60 made a lot of noise; more noise than a bullet popping through soft aluminum.

Fang kept one eye on the elapsed time; when it looked like they'd gone about fifteen miles, he radioed the LZ for a flare to guide him in. They rogered that, but said they couldn't hear the slick. That was weird.

A few seconds later, Monsoon yelled s.h.i.t! loud in his earphones and punched him twice on the shoulder.

Fang craned around and saw a dim flare hanging maybe ten miles away, behind and to the right.

In the thin wash of moonlight, he'd picked up the wrong road. Cursing monotonously, he circled the machine around, climbing, and took a bearing on the flare as it faded. He stayed fairly high and told them he'd be about five minutes; pop another flare when they heard him approach. Then he muttered a line that Monsoon would make famous: "If that motherf.u.c.ker bleeds to death I'll kill him."

Lunacy Spider sat on the ground in the semi-darkness, M16 in his lap, turning the blinker over and over in his hands, looking up at the moon's face, remembering the names of some dark areas: Ocea.n.u.s Proeellarum, Mare Tranquillitatus, the man-in-the-moon eye of Mare Crisium, and tiny Sinus Iridium. He could barely make out the ray system radiating from the crater Tycho, or maybe he just thought he could, since he remembered how it looked in a telescope. He was staring at the moon, naming its parts, in an unsuccessful attempt to take his mind off the shattered sobbing wreck of a man behind him, flanked by medics who murmured at him while he mourned his legs, his b.a.l.l.s his c.o.c.k, no no no no no no. He was quiet for a minute and then said in a strangled whisper, "Just shoot me. Please just shoot me. Once in the head."

Where was the f.u.c.king helicopter? That flare a minute ago had to have been to guide it in. Maybe it got shot down. That would be a b.i.t.c.h; this guy's gonna die anyhow, or wish he was dead. Maybe somebodyshould just shoot him; maybe the medics ought to keep popping him morphine until he dies.

Graves was bad enough, but all those dead bodies were just like cartoons of dying, compared to this.

The real thing, real pain, a real person. Spider knew the guy from fire base, although he didn't know his name. He was one of the guys with Bangkok pictures. Bang c.o.c.k, Jesus. Two guys' d.i.c.ks blown off in two days.

Oceauns Procellarum, sounds good, but what the h.e.l.l does it mean? Ocean of Procells. Mare Serenitatis, the Sea of Serenity. Spider wondered whether he was going crazy. Anybody who didn't go crazy with this s.h.i.t going on must have been crazy before it started. So everybody is crazy and n.o.body can tell.

One of the' medics lit a joint and offered it to the wounded man. He didn't pay any attention. He pa.s.sed it to the other medic, who pa.s.sed it to Spider. Spider took two big tokes, holding the second one in for aslong as he could.

He declined a third hit. The dope made him feel dizzy and even more tired. He chugged a c.o.ke and ate a piece of jungle chocolate, which gave him a little bit of a compensating buzz.

Finally, the faint throb of a helicopter beating its way over. After a minute, the mortar team popped an illumination round and the RTO shouted "Blinkers on."

The engineers and three other guys were positioned around the inside of the LZ with blinkers, small but powerful red lights that were shielded so as to be visible only from overhead. Shadows danced crazily as the illumination-round flare bobbed under its parachute.

The helicopter got louder and the blades changed pitch. Moses yelled "Pop smoke on the LZ?" The RTO shouted back, "No, he's got yon." The flare sputtered out.

Then there was a swirling gale and the dark bulk of the helicopter slid in front of the moon, louder and larger than any slick had ever seemed in the daytime. For a few seconds, hovering, it shined down a dazzling spotlight-Spider incongruously thought of the Lucas Lasers he'd installed in his Chevy's brights-and, satisfied that the way was clear, dropped swiftly.

The helicopter didn't even laud. It bobbed a foot off the ground, a few inches, while the two medics hoisted the wounded man aboard. He was struggling and screaming something, unintelligible over thewhack-whack-whack of the blades. One of the medics got aboard, hauled into the red-lit darkness by the door gunner, and the slick shot straight up and banked away.

As the sound faded, Spider reached down and tugged at his s.c.r.o.t.u.m, an unconscious magical gesture that most of the other men were conjuring as well.

Third Week

Beverly's s.e.x life (3)

Two weeks with Lee and Beverly had done things the bare mention of which would have made her mother faint. Everything was equally new and different, and she was willing to try almost anything. She knew he would never hurt her on purpose, though sometimes her own inexperience, her tightness, caused pain. She was uncomfortable for a couple of days after the first time they enjoyed a.n.a.l intercourse, the sphincter bruised and some pain deeper within, but in a way even that was nice; she could sit in cla.s.s and take notes automatically while feeling the ghost of him hard inside her, plumbing, probing. He showed her how to practice for oral s.e.x with a banana, to subvert the gag reflex, saying he'd learned it from a Berkeley student, a co-ed who was a part-time prost.i.tute, which was mostly true, except for the co-ed part. The prost.i.tute was male and had skipped college.

In the dialectic of a slightly later period, people would say he was exploiting her mercilessly for s.e.x, but in his own mind he was patiently, lovingly, initiating her into the mysteries of a sacred order.

No one would deny that he had a lot of energy; most would give him credit for more positive qualities.

He had actually gotten a job, three weeks of inside painting in an office building downtown. On weekends, he and Beverly put in ten- or twelve-hour days doing volunteer work for Martin Luther King's upcoming Poor People's March on Washington. They ran a hand-cranked mimeograph together, slipsheeting and collating, dead on their feet and feeling good about it.Police cars cruised slowly by the small shopfront, and at one time, for several days, a conspicuous white man in a suit walked by and peered in every couple of hours. Finally they all waved at him. He never came back. They knew that a lot of powerful people didn't want a hundred thousand poor blacks descending on the Mall. "Martin better watch his a.s.s," Lee said once. "The pigs are gonna get him. If they want him dead, he's dead. Just like they got JFK."

Lee was always saying things like that. It upset Beverly that he could be so cynical and nihilistic. But other times he was upbeat and almost childlike, exuberantly playful. His orthodontist father diagnosed him as a manic-depressive and had tried to get him into therapy, which was one reason he left California.

Beverly and Lee felt especially virtuous, working on the 6th of January, most of Washington paralyzed by an 11-degree cold snap. That same day, five people, including Benjamin Spock, were indicted for "conspiracy to block the draft," and, in a better part of town, the Reagan for President office quietly opened.

Love Letter Beverly didn't want to tell the truth to Spider, and she didn't want to lie: January 6th Dear Spider, Just a short note, I'm beat. Spent all day cranking a mimeograph. My new roommate Lee and I are working down at Martin Luther King's Poor Peoples March office downtown. Lee's pretty, has long hair, plays the guitar, kind of a hippy. I think you'll like Lee.

The paper today says that an average of 26 GIs died every day last year in Vietnam, and 170 were wounded. Do you think that's the truth? I mean, you had so many GIs coming in when you worked at that awful place, and that was just one little part of the country, right? I think they're lying. But then I'm turning into a radical. Mother would just s.h.i.t. (She doesn't know I'm going down into Southeast every weekend to work with Negroes. Please don't mention it to your Mother either, I know they talk.) Hanoi sent another peace feeler out, I don't know whether they tell you about things like that. Some people are saying its just a bluff, and Ho Chi Minh just wants to stop the bombing for awhile. Well, who wouldn't? Bobby Kennedy says that if negotiations don't work we can always go back to killing each other. I'm sort of caught in the middle myself. I like Bobby Kennedy, and I don't like anybody being bombed, but he doesn't have a boyfriend in Vietnam, and I know that at least some of the bombs are to keep the enemy out of the south. Keep them from getting even stronger. (Lee doesn't like to hear me talk like that, but then Lee doesn't have a boyfriend in Vietnam either.) Another cold snap. Got down to 11 last night. (Bet you'd trade!) I'm getting around okay now on snow tires with-chains.

Well, I can't keep my eyes open, I'm going to bed.

Love, Beverly P.S. Look at this new stamp-can you believe 10 cents for airmail?

Love LetterSpider didn't want to tell the truth to Beverly, and he didn't want to lie: 6 Jan 68 Dear Bev, G.o.d am I bushed. We had a little mortar attack last night after we were dug in. n.o.body killed, one guy wounded, just in the legs. They sent a medevac to get him in the middle of the night, which is more than I would expect from the FA. But everybody had to stay up all night, on guard.

Since the sun came up we've been on "two on, two off," that is, sleep two hours and be on guard two hours. I was up for the first two, and managed to keep my eyes open. (It's not too hard to stay awake in the dark, especially after an attack like that. But once it gets light you stop seeing ghosts.) (Actually I shouldn't say that-a guy on guard in the position next to me fell asleep last night about three and started to snore. Somebody kicked him.) Smoked some dope that might have had something else in it. Kept me pretty jumpy all night, which I guess was a good thing.

Anyhow I better get some sleep. Will write more later on.

(Later) Chopper coming in, they say with mail. Better put this in an envelope and send it off, don't know how long it'll be before the next mailbag goes out.

Love, Spider Edged Weapons The mailbag brought Spider a late Christmas present from his Uncle Terry: an impossibly shiny, impossibly keen Randall Made Fighting Knife, in a leather sheath that smelled like new shoes, like civilization.

The message inside was not too civilized, because Uncle Terry wasn't: "Wish I could have sent you my old Randall from Korea, but I left it in a gook." Spider wondered whether they actually called the enemy gooks back then, or was that just Uncle Terry trying to be cool?

(It was kind of sad. Spider's father told him thateverybody knew Uncle Terry never saw actual combat in Korea; he served six weeks in the Quartermaster Corps and then broke both legs in a traffic accident.

He had all kinds of vivid stories that weren't true.) He did need a sheath knife. The M-7 bayonet that was issued with the M16 was useless as a cutting tool, having a blade about as sharp as a b.u.t.ter knife's, made of metal so soft a fairly strong man could bend it without its breaking. The design was visually impressive, a sleek black dagger to match the sleek blackness of the rifle. It spoiled the balance of the rifle, though, and n.o.body expected ever to be in a situation where he would have to fix bayonets and charge. So most of them were thrown away. Some came back.

A lot of grunts carried some version of the Marine's kabar, a no-nonsense st.u.r.dy utility knife. They weren't issued to Army personnel, but you could buy one at the PX for $7.50, and what else was there to spend money on? (A very few old hands had kabars actually made by Ka-Bar, the original factory,that stopped manufacturing them after World War II.) The Gerber Mark 2 Combat Knife was a big number, and Bucks were also popular. Handmade knives were the ultimate cachet, though. Probably nine out often of them came from the Randall factory in Orlando, Florida (which in pre-Disney 1968 was a small town with no other claim to fame). General Westmoreland carried an ivory-handled Randall Model No. 1 on his belt.

It made Spider feel a little silly. As much as he needed a sheath knife, and he couldn't have asked for a better one, but G.o.d, Randalls were forlifers!

He tried wearing it tucked inside his boot, but that was uncomfortable. The sheath wouldn't fit on the wide canvas web belt that held his first-aid kit and ammo pouches and two canteens, and he didn't have a regular belt. So he put it inside his rucksack. If an enemy ever got close enough to stab with a knife, Spider could fire his one bullet at him.

Luck of the draw Batman and Moses walked over to Spider's perimeter bunker, looking unhappy. Batman waved for Killer to join them. "Look," Batman said, "they're gonna send a patrol over to that mortar position. They need a X-Ray volunteer. Anybody want to do it?"

"s.h.i.t," Killer and Spider said simultaneously. Moses had already testified.

"Draw straws," Batman said, and stooped to pick some gra.s.s. He arranged the stems with his back to them, then turned around and offered them to Moses. The one he chose was obviously long, and he breathed relief. Killer's was also long.

Spider stared at the two bits of gra.s.s protruding from the black man's fist, trying to see some sign but convinced he would draw the short one. He did.

All four were silent for a moment. "Shouldn't be much," Batman said. "Carry the demo bag; we already got our LZ."

Spider was about to protest that he'd never blown an LZ, but a more pressing objection came to mind: "But my M16 doesn't work. Somebody trade?"

Everybody looked at each other. "Here," Killer said, shrugging out of the shoulder harness. He handed Spider his precious Magnum. "It's single action. You got to pull the hammer back."

Spider hefted it. The weight was rea.s.suring. He laughed nervously. "Like in a cowboy movie?"

"Right. Here." Spider helped him thread the harness over his shoulders and adjust it. "Just bring it back clean, okay? And remember you just got six shots?"

"Uh, yeah." Spider felt light-headed, almost to the point of fainting. He realized Batman was holding out the demo bag, and took it.

"So saddle up and get over to the RTO's position," Batman said, looking at the watch pinned to his shirt pocket. "You got five minutes."

"Saddle up? Got to carry Cs and everything?""Sure." Batman slapped him on the back, not hard. "Just 'case you get lost." Moses agreed to take over the perimeter guard. Spider shuffled back toward his own bunker. How many people were in a patrol?

What was he walking into? Getlost?

Spider stacked the stuff in his rucksack as efficiently as possible; searching, he found that the Randall knife fit into a side pocket on the left, where he could reach it if he stretched. Then he went back to the LZ to top off the canteen he'd been drinking from (he'd already filled three canteens and a gallon plastic sack from the water cans the slick had brought in) and pick up a carton of Camels.

He carried his burden over to where the RTO was sitting in dappled shade, drinking coffee with about fifteen men. The slick had brought coffee in, too, in a large insulated container, and it smelled good.

White paper cups looked incongruous in the scruffy setting; every one that had been touched by a soldier was fingerprinted brown.

"You the X-Ray?" said a man Spider didn't recognize, reclining with stiff casualness on his clean rucksack. His fatigues were clean.

"That's right, sir."

"Don't-call-me-sir-I-work-for-a-living"; a sergeant's stock reply upon being mistaken for an officer. Both men were following ritual. No one wore rank insignia in combat, and when you came upon a stranger in his late twenties or thirties, it was a lot safer to "mistake" a sergeant for an officer than the other way around. "You're new; you got a name?"

"John Speidel, Sergeant. They call me Spider." He took the cup the RTO offered him and tipped some coffee into it.

"I'm Sarge. Don't they give you guys M16's anymore?"

"Mine's busted, Sarge." He patted the b.u.t.t of the Magnum. "b.u.mmed this from a friend."

"It's really f.u.c.ked up," the RTO said. "Won't chamber. I looked at it yesterday."

Sarge nodded, staring intently at the s.p.a.ce between the two men. He was a formidable and strange-looking man, very black but with pale gray eyes, head completely shaved, long weightlifter's body. He moved slowly and carefully, as if coiled to spring. "Homer, you go over to Pig and get that spare AK." To Spider: "Have yon ever fired an AK-47?"

"Uh, no." In fact, Spider had only fired thirty-six rounds through an M16, in training, and although not many of them hit the target, he was rated Expert. Someone stateside had declared that no one should be sent into combat in Vietnam unless he had attained an Expert rating on the M16. So no one came to Vietnam without an Expert rating, whether or not he had ever seen an M16. "Is it a lot different?"

"Somewhat, yes." He picked up his own M16 by the barrel and pointed it at Spider. "Here, I'll take the AK. You didn'tbreak your 16, did you?"

Spider gingerly took the weapon. "No, Sarge. It came that way."

"f.u.c.kin' army," he said with no inflection. Homer brought the AK with two banana clips. Sarge slid a magazine into place and jacked a round into the chamber. Satisfied, he cleared the weapon and snappedthe round back into the top of the magazine. He peered around, counting heads. "Missing one."

"Freeling," the RTO said without looking. "Went to take a c.r.a.p."

"Of course." He turned to Spider. "I'm usually Bravo's platoon sergeant. Been on R&R."

"p.u.s.s.y patrol," a white boy with a southern accent sang out.

"Gone to see you' momma," he growled, scowling.

"Yon like my momma?"

"She one ugly piece a a.s.s, man, wonder how you ever got born."

"Daddy always put a bag over her head."

"Me too." He gave the guy a gleaming smile. "But first I cuts a hole in de bag. I lo-o-oves dem white mommas wit' no teef."

Some of the laughter was nervous. The white guy tried to mimic Sarge's accent: "Someday I'm gonna findyou' momma."