A Long Way Back

by J. Everett Prewitt

  A few of the men looked at one another and murmured, “Sarge.”

  Sarge is dead. Turner took a deep breath. His mind had been buzzing since they’d returned to Cu Chi because he couldn’t sense what had happened to their leader. He had hoped he would receive some kind of sign Sergeant Stinson was alive, but he hadn’t. Even with Anthony’s announcement there was still some uneasiness, something that wouldn’t quite let him close the door on Sarge.

  Chapter 60

  T

  urner surveyed the room, looking at his friends. He was glad he’d decided to come when Warfield called for the seven of them to meet. It was the second time they had all been together since leaving the service four months ago. Turner had never been emotional, but he loved these guys.

  At their first meeting, he remembered the men sharing their coming home experiences with each other and how they’d dealt with their transition back into civilization.

  The first thing Xavier Warfield said he did when he returned home was to buy a pair of Stacy Adams shoes, a brown Bill Blass pinstripe suit, a white silk shirt, and a .38 caliber handgun. “The first three were optional, the last a necessity,” he had said. When the Army took away his weapon in Vietnam, he felt naked. Warfield couldn’t explain why except he felt much safer with a gun than without one.

  His first night home, his mother, whom he loved dearly, hovered over him, watching Warfield so intently it irritated him. His father was the opposite. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, Dad. I’m okay.”

  “Welcome home, son,” he’d said, hugging Warfield before going to bed.

  After a sleepless three hours where Warfield jumped at almost every sound, he took his mattress, pillow, sheets, and gun to the basement and fell asleep within the hour.

  “Why are you sleeping on the floor down here, Xav?” his father, with his mother standing behind him, had asked the next morning.

  “You’re going to have to bear with me for a little while, Mom, Dad.” He didn’t expect them to understand, so he didn’t feel obligated to explain.

  The first thing Leroy Casper told the men he did when he came back was to go straight to his house. He needed the comfort of a home, his mother’s cooking, and to catch up with his girlfriend, Ida, and his friends as soon as he could. He figured the busier he was, the better.

  Casper became hyper in creating diversions for himself, like going out to cookouts, picnics, movies, the zoo, and even to a play. The night was for nonstop parties and anything else that would keep his mind busy. Ida, smart as could be, but a party girl herself, loved it. His friends just laughed, but Casper had a plan. He figured at some point when he slowed down, maybe the images would be gone. That was his hope.

  The first thing Raphael Holland said he did when he returned was to seek out his Uncle Farley, who was an ex-con and a drug dealer. Holland stayed with marijuana and Wild Irish Rose wine for a while before graduating to heroin while working the streets for Farley.

  The drugs served Holland well, obliterating at least for a short period the memories of sheer terror he had experienced, especially the tiger’s roar that awoke him almost every night. But there were consequences, and Holland realized early on he had merely replaced one bad dream with another.

  With the help of his Aunt Mildred, Holland went cold turkey in her basement and pledged to himself he would find another way to erase the memories before he did something the Viet Cong hadn’t been able to do—kill him.

  The first thing Marcus Glover told the group he did when he arrived in Cleveland was purchase a mosquito net because just one in a room made his skin crawl. He had visited four stores before he found one, but, even with the net, there was no peace until the insect was dead. The second thing he did was call Oscar Adams. The pool room fight had weighed on his mind even in Vietnam.

  “Oscar? This is Marcus.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “I called to apologize about the fight, man. I hope you accept it.”

  There was more silence before Oscar responded. “Okay.”

  “Cool. So how are you doing?”

  “I’m good, Glover. Sandra and I got married.”

  “Great. Well, I wish you both the best.”

  “You, uh, and she never…?”

  “Naw, man. Never.”

  “Good. Thanks. I-I understand you were in the war.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve got to go. Take care.”

  “Yeah, Glover. You, too.”

  The first thing Clarence Bankston said he did when he came home was to inform his parents he was moving to Cleveland. As soon as the plane landed at Jackson-Evers International Airport, he’d decided. He already missed his buddies and couldn’t fathom living in Mississippi after having fought for the country.

  Bankston was afraid he might hurt somebody real bad if provoked. It would be better to leave Mississippi and be around his friends who understood what he had been through. Plus, the way they talked about Cleveland, it had to be five times better than living in Mississippi.

  Erving Robinson confided only to Turner. He was too embarrassed to tell the others. The first thing Robinson did when he got off the bus was head to Ebenezer Baptist Church where he’d been raised. It was Saturday. There would be people there.

  As the brick two-story church came into view, he hesitated, hung his head, and turned to go home to surprise his parents instead.

  “Maybe later,” he’d said to Turner. “Maybe later.”

  The first thing Turner did when he got to Cleveland was rent a room at the Holiday Inn on East 55th. He had saved $1,830 of his army pay. Two weeks would barely dent his savings. Turner hadn’t called his mother because he needed to rest. Too many issues were agitating him; too many unanswered questions were bouncing around in his head.

  He understood Sarge when he said he would buy peace of mind if he could. Well, this was the next best move: Rent a room, only go out to eat, and sleep the day and night away, which he did.

  Being a loner, it didn’t bother Turner that he passed on calling his family or friends. Two weeks of cooling out wouldn’t hurt anything, but it certainly might help.

  Chapter 61

  D

  o you want to talk about Cambodia?” Anthony asked.

  Glover scratched his chest. “Why don’t you tell us about Tay Ninh, first?”

  Anthony gathered himself and haltingly told the men about the firefight. The men were quiet, looking at Anthony, then one another with bowed heads, sidelong glances, and an occasional nod.

  “How did you come out of that?” Warfield eventually asked.

  “Not too good. But compared to your experience, mine was minor.”

  Casper snorted. “Any situation where you can be killed is major.”

  The men murmured agreement.

  Anthony then opened up, describing his bouts with alcohol, his nightmares, his temper, and the flare-up that made his wife leave him. Speaking of his family situation caused a hitch in his voice.

  “So there were two reasons for my initial trip here: The first was to spend time with my other family; the second was to get with you guys. I wanted to find out how you are coping and tell your story, so I can make things right by you. I’m glad you invited me back.”

  After a few moments of silence, Casper shifted in his chair. “Cambodia.” He paused. “They sent us out to sea in a boat with no paddles. If it weren’t for Sarge, we’d all be dead.”

  There was another long silence before Holland spoke. “First, you don’t send men out who haven’t had any jungle training.”

  “It would be the same as sending David to fight Goliath without a sling,” Robinson added. “Then you give some lame instructions and some false hope that if we do everything we’re supposed to, we get to come back to base.”

  Warfield, dressed in a brown jumpsuit, tapped the table as he had in Raymond’s kitchen. “Maybe we were supposed to meet soldiers from the 1st Cav and get extracted, but it never happened.”

&
nbsp; Glover sniffed. “And if the soldiers we were supposed to meet were the ones who were killed, we knew we were through.”

  Finally loosening up, they told Anthony about the ridge that was their rendezvous point and how they had climbed to an area where they watched the Viet Cong ambush other American soldiers more than a mile away.

  Even at that distance, Holland remembered the awe and fear of watching American soldiers being killed and the remainder chased. Even though they had been out of harm’s way, the dreadfulness of watching others being killed was almost as terrifying as being there.

  Nothing, though, compared with the horror of the attacking tiger. Holland mentally erased the thought, as he did each time it surfaced, and returned to the conversation.

  The men talked about taking the hill occupied by the enemy. What Glover remembered was the churning anger he felt when Sarge got shot as he and the others charged the hill, killing five VC in less than a minute.

  Robinson described running from the enemy and leaving a wounded Sarge behind. “So when we turned and saw Casper didn’t have Sarge, we started to take him out, thinking Casper had ditched him because he was too heavy. We heard grenades and weapons firing, then nothing. You had nine black soldiers, tears streaming down our faces, running for our lives.”

  Bankston rubbed his jaw and frowned. “It’s funny, though.”

  “What’s that?” Anthony asked.

  “None of the VC followed us.”

  “Not right away,” Robinson corrected Bankston.

  “What happened next?”

  “We tried to find our way to base when we discovered we weren’t even in Vietnam.”

  “Man, we almost died right then,” Robinson said. “It was as if all the energy was sucked out of us—everybody trying to figure out why we had been put there and how we would get out of a place we knew nothing about.”

  “I think we would have given up if it weren’t for Sarge’s wisdom.”

  “Like what?” Anthony asked.

  “He taught us it’s not the smartest or the strongest who survive, it’s those who adapt,” Warfield responded. “That kept us going, kept us thinking.”

  “He also taught us that will was more important than skill,” Glover said. Glover tapped Casper on the shoulder. “Plus we had Casper’s leadership.”

  “Near the end, I could barely walk,” Warfield said. “Holland was wounded. We had sores, cuts from the saw grass and wait-a-minute vines, and we had jungle rot. We were exhausted—mentally, physically, and spiritually. And Glover was so sick, he could hardly stand.”

  Anthony watched as carefully as he listened. The war hadn’t been kind to them, as evidenced by Robinson’s facial tick, which Anthony assumed came from combat and Warfield’s constant drumming on his leg with his fingers. When any of the seven talked, their eyes were still, mostly vacant and staring, even though they might not have meant them to be. Where a typical person might move his hands to make a point, the men’s narrations were accompanied at most by the slightest of head movements.

  Anthony ran his hand over his face. He saw himself in each of them and their need to be normal again.

  Robinson gazed out the window. “If we had run into any more VC, we would have been dead out of luck. I mean, we sat looking at each other, trying to figure how we could go any farther.”

  “That bad?”

  Holland looked around. “Man, you should have seen us. You should have smelled us. You’d have to go to the Bowery to see somebody as bad off as we were. We had no food, no ammo and were losing hope.”

  Bankston glanced at Robinson. “All Robinson here said during the last few days was, ‘Could care less.’ And that’s about how we felt. As if nothing mattered anymore.”

  “Couldn’t,” Turner responded.

  “What?” Bankston asked.

  “Couldn’t care less.”

  “Whatever, Professor.”

  Robinson punched Casper in the shoulder. “Yeah, but Casper made us continue. I’m so glad I didn’t shoot you for leaving Sarge, Casper.”

  Casper grunted. “Me, too.”

  “So how did you survive without food?” Anthony asked.

  “We ate what the monkeys ate—fruits, leaves, roots…,” Bankston replied. “It was nowhere near enough, though.”

  “And grubs,” Robinson added.

  Anthony frowned.

  Robinson looked apologetic when he saw Anthony’s reaction.

  “It’s why I didn’t mention it,” Bankston scolded Robinson.

  Warfield’s lips turned down. “I don’t want anybody to know I ate grubs.”

  Holland laughed. “That was the least of our worries.”

  “Whose idea was that?” Anthony asked.

  The men looked at one another.

  “Da, this Cambodian boy who helped us find the way back. Anyway, we figured if the monkeys were our cousins, then maybe their digestive system was similar. At least it’s what Turner said.” Bankston laughed.

  “We would have eaten a monkey, too, but we didn’t want to give our position away with rifle shots and then a fire.”

  Bankston looked at Glover. “We gave the food to him first. When he didn’t die, we ate it.”

  “What?” Glover said, glaring at Bankston.

  “Just kidding, man. Just kidding.”

  Glover’s face softened. “I couldn’t have made it without you guys, though. I was messed up.”

  “We all got messed up one way or another,” Casper said.

  They became quiet again.

  Anthony bowed his head. “I know,” he murmured to himself. “I know.”

  He also knew that although their passage from Cambodia was over, the end of the war was assured only for the eight who had died.

  Chapter 62

  C

  asper’s eyes softened as he spoke. “Sarge helped us survive in so many ways.”

  “Because he held the enemy back?” Anthony asked.

  “No. Because he prepared us well—and he did prepare us well,” Casper answered. “Will more than skill” echoed in Casper’s head every time he mentioned Sarge’s name.

  “Like?”

  “He trained us to fight as a team and taught us the one other thing that probably saved our lives.”

  “What?”

  “He told us if we were to get out alive, we had to be united—be one, think like one, move like one. So every night we would go through ‘what ifs,’ and we would figure out how we could have dealt with the situation as a team. He taught us we had to want to win.” Casper hesitated. “It’s difficult to explain, but Sarge trained us that the mental was as important as the physical.”

  Anthony nodded. “I understand that.”

  “We kept wondering why Sarge kept putting us through those drills if we were just reconning, but he had us thinking ahead,” Bankston said. “It was as if he knew he wouldn’t be with us at the end.”

  “When Charlie ambushed us, they were so close, we should have all died, but we counterattacked as Sarge taught,” Casper said.

  “Counterattacked?”

  It would have been easier to run from an ambush, but besides Sarge drilling them on the maneuver, Casper had already been there in another ambush. Men were falling like bowling pins from the onslaught until Sergeant Henderson had yelled. “Charge!” It was their only chance, and Casper had learned the lesson well. Instead of them being wiped out, twenty-four died, but twenty lived because they’d followed Henderson’s order.”

  “Yeah. Because if the enemy is within fifty yards and you retreat, a one hundred percent casualty rate is almost guaranteed,” Casper answered, providing the same reasoning Sarge and Henderson had given the survivors.

  “We were lucky, too, though,” Warfield added.

  “Yeah, we were,” Holland agreed.

  Warfield scratched his neck. “I’m not sure why they ran. They had us.”

  “Not to change the subject, but did anyone get a good look at the one they carried away so fast?�
�� Warfield asked.

  “No. Why?” Casper asked.

  “I swear it was a woman,” Warfield said.

  Robinson huffed. “Get the hell out of here. A woman? No way.”

  The men looked at Robinson. It was the first they had heard him curse. “I’m just saying,” Robinson said, his face reddening.

  “If it was a woman, I got her at least twice,” Bankston said.

  “Theirs is a different culture,” Anthony offered.

  Turner looked at Robinson and felt a deep sadness for his friend, more so than he did for the rest of the men. It appeared he had lost more than the others. Robinson had certainly changed more. Holland had changed a lot, too. Where Holland had hardened, though, Robinson had turned from caring to cold. Turner felt it. Robinson had been the one with the morals, the “love your brother” attitude. When he shot those men in the head without blinking, without regret, without praying, Turner had cried inwardly for him. Sampson was right. They had been in hell, and the devil had claimed the most righteous of their souls.

  “How did the eight die?”

  There was a long silence. Anthony could hear some of the men take a deep breath.

  “One died from a sniper. The others died in firefights,” Warfield said glancing at Turner.

  Bankston’s heart had dropped when his cousin Darius Ward was killed in the attack. He would have cried, but something closed up in him. The anguish that came from his cousin’s departure was released through the barrel of his weapon. The more VC he killed, the more his anger was assuaged. But relief was fleeting. It was as if he had transformed into a vampire. But instead of seeking a victim’s blood to continue to live, he needed their deaths to relieve his grieving.

  Anthony made a mental note to call Furman Soledad about his friend Jeremiah Kendrick Franklin, one of the deceased.