Who Shot the Water Buffalo?

by Ken Babbs

  “Good for you,” Cochran says. “Think how it looks, the men getting the idea old Captain What’s His Name is one of the boys. Why, he’s got the clap, just like me. Man has his pleasures, the bill will come due and he’ll have to pay up. Put my name on there. I’m not worried about anyone seeing it.”

  “But you don’t have the disease,” Doc Hollenden says.

  “How they gonna know? It’ll look funny if there’s no officers’ names on the list.”

  Doc Hollenden stares at the paper. “I’m not sure …”

  “You never are. Take the bull by the horns, Doc. Make him roar.”

  He pushes the Doc out the door.

  “Lights out, men,” he says. “Tonight we sleep. Tomorrow we fly.”

  13. The Native Seers

  Clean sweep fore and aft, Doc … sweep this shoulder rot right out the door … it’s a stinking bleeding mess, fouling the whole deck and I want to be shunt of it … I know you can do it, Doc, if you follow the example of the do-gooders … those twinkling-eyed, firm-handshaking, stalwart, upright men who can spot a thirteenth-century boondoggle all the way from the heights of their rooftop tables at the Continental Hotel in downtown Saigon … looky there, one cries, how those poor unfortunate women are all bent over, using short-handled brooms to sweep out the dirt … no wonder they are so round shouldered, so crooked backed … put it on the hot wire to Washington, code red … and, in rapid response, fifty thousand American brooms with full-length handles are offloaded from the cargo jet at Ton Son Nhut airport … they will install some spinal rectitude … God knows the nation can use it … and the brooms go out to every hamlet, every ville, every outpost … while the Dudley Do Rights in Saigon sip their gin and tonics and gaze out over the land from their vantage point high above Saigon city and see … what the fuck! … Vietnamese women not grateful at all, are still bent over, still sweeping with short-handled brooms … while the cut-off tops of the American broomsticks lean against the walls … sad testament to another failed attempt to bring modern technical expertise to a backward nation … and if this pain is any indication, the emergency treatment on my shoulder is going the same direction … consult the native seers, Doc … they wink knowingly, nod heads, read the signs … the moon is full … time to plant rice and conceive children … make auspicious sacrifices to the Oriental gods that escaped the missionaries’ purge … hang banners from overhangs and eaves of houses … mutter strange incantations … burn incense … smoke curls above the trees … babies are shushed … solemn rites begun … distant sound of thunder, muffled, unlike the usual thump of artillery … no night to wander the streets … get a prescription, Doc … jungle powders … dried yarbs … hootchie-kootchie dancers …

  The morning breaks quiet and clear. The flight line is busy, twelve birds scheduled to carry troops to a mountain outpost sixty miles to the south.

  Clouds and mist lying off the northern end of the runway seep across the field. The first drips of rain are gentle but denser drops quickly displace the wispy spray. The monsoon has arrived.

  The ready room is cold and harshly lit. The walls are damp, and the clothing racks reek with the smell of sweat-stained body armor and musky gun belts. In the front of the room the map board is layered with enemy positions and friendly outposts, the whole picture a tangled mess.

  “Be ready for anything,” the Hammer warns. “We won’t know what we get until we find out what we’ve got.”

  It’s too early to mutter insidious responses to that meaningless statement and we file silently out of the ready room to preflight the choppers. Engines screaming and rotors clattering, we lift off in a welter of spray. We’re doing the old-fashioned troop switcheroo. Shuttle a replacement group of ARVNs into a mountain outpost. Move in a hundred men and seven thousand pounds of supplies. Haul out the soldiers we’re replacing.

  Montagnards, mountain tribesmen wearing bead necklaces and brass bracelets, live in the village ringing the outpost. The women are bare breasted and sagging, the men taciturn and staring. The Montagnards are ancient enemies of the Vietnamese, who consider the mountain people barbarians. But in order to help combat the VC, the Montagnards are flown to the lowlands in small groups and trained to use modern weapons, and then carried back to the mountains to fight on the government’s side. The Vietnamese are leery of the setup, figuring once the VC are destroyed, the Montagnards will turn on the government and establish their own mountain state. Necessity makes for uncomfortable bedmates.

  The first trip to the outpost, Captain Beamus, leading the flight, gets lost. He goes up the wrong valley, makes a wrong turn at a river fork and we tool in circles for twenty minutes while everyone screams directions over the radio, confusing Wee Willie Weems, Captain Beamus’s copilot.

  Wee Willie, so named because of his short stature and good nature, often gets the short end of the stick, which means flying copilot with Captain Beamus a lot. Wee Willie is good at map reading, but Captain Beamus constantly doubts Willie’s instructions. Thus we endure the endless circling.

  We hunt for the outpost until we’re low on gas and Captain Beamus decides to go back and start all over again. We make a long slow turn, everyone heading back except Emmett, the number one plane in our division. He goes on ahead, calling, “I think I see the place,” and we follow him to a clearing under the clouds which reveals the landing strip. Captain Beamus catches up with us and barrels ahead to make a low pass over the field.

  Cochran watches him go, then turns to me. “‘Huck, old buddy. I don’t know what the rest of the boys are looking at, but that’s not the same field that’s on my map.”

  Captain Beamus reaches the same conclusion. He turns back toward Quang Ngai, the coastal refueling strip. I ease off power to conserve fuel and it’s a nut-clutching thirty-minute flight to Quang Ngai with bingo fuel in the tanks, too fine a calculation for my timid soul.

  While we’re on the ground refueling, Captain Beamus rails at everyone, first blaming Wee Willie for getting us lost. He then delivers a biting lecture on radio discipline and the unacceptable insubordination of pilots who go tooling off on their own. He looks at Emmett, who looks back, poker faced. Captain Beamus drops it but he exchanges copilots with Emmett, Wee Willie for Herbee Jenkins, a guarantee of success, for Herbee goes along with everything and doesn’t argue with the aircraft commander, even when the pilot may be in the wrong.

  The next trip looks like a lark. The route is familiar, the weather clear, and everyone is happy until Captain Beamus again misses the outpost, flying away from it in the wrong direction, eleven choppers following faithfully and silently, observing very careful radio discipline, everyone fully aware of our leader’s mistake.

  “He can fly us to hell for all I care,” says Cochran, putting prevailing sentiment into words. We continue in the wrong direction until an anonymous pilot, not wanting to waste the entire day on the same dull run, chances a blast from Captain Beamus and calls, “Target bears thirty degrees to starboard.”

  Captain Beamus doesn’t respond to the voice but turns the thirty degrees and heads for the outpost. Just as the short landing strip appears on a scarred and barren mountain top, Emmett’s engine coughs, two black clouds pop out the exhaust like twin cannonballs, and the engine quits. Emmett plummets toward the strip, autorotating to the one open spot in thirty miles of jungle. Cochran guns after him, sure as the saints that he won’t make it, but Emmett screeches in a tight turn, hits the middle of the strip, bounces over a mound of dirt, skips across a ditch, and comes to rest on a pile of bamboo poles. The Vietnamese troopers fly out of the cabin door like baseballs knocked from a batting cage.

  “Clear the field. Emergency. Emergency.” Cochran calls on the radio and there follows a wild chopper dance as everyone skitters clear of the strip. Finally we land and shut down and get out of the helicopter. Mechs surround Emmet’s chopper and open the doors to the engine. After a long discussion they decide it is a blown cylinder. Everyone agrees Emmett did a terrific job making it
to the landing strip, testimony to his excellent flying skills.

  Cochran and I visit the village, a collection of hastily assembled huts and tents built for a tribe of Montagnards who walked out of the jungle seeking sanctuary. Montagnard customs make the strongest occidental stomach quiver with anxious peristalsis. While still in the hairless stages of puberty they prepare for the trials and ordeals of adulthood by clubbing out their front teeth. High on betel nut, they file the stumps down to bloody gums before enjoying the first grown-up pleasures of marriage, hunting and sweet yam digging: full time jungle occupations.

  The pain remains after the betel nut wears off. The chunks of teeth left imbedded infect their gums and they walk around for the rest of their lives hawking pus and gunk which gloms to bare feet like sticky patches of gum. U.S. Army dentists make the rounds of the villages, curing the infections by removing the old rotten stumps and packing the holes with antibiotics. The Americans are suddenly in popular demand around the mountains, possessing magic which can relieve some of the pain of primeval survival.

  We’re in the village on rice-distribution day and families are gathered around a large thatched longhouse. Old men in loincloths, women draped in brightly colored blankets, everyone bedangled with bracelets, neckpieces and huge earrings, some plain round hoops, others bent in wild elaborate designs. A soldier doles out rice from a large sack marked with the Hands Across The Sea emblem.

  Cochran walks around, looking for something to trade. Crossbows are a hot item, going for pocket knives, cigarette lighters and other knicknacks, but the market has been so glutted the price of a crossbow is now hard Vietnamese cash. Cochran hopes to get around the inflation by dealing with the bare-chested women. Planning ahead, he went into Da Nang one day and bought some items to barter with.

  He pulls wildly colored, delicately laced panties and bras from the pockets of his flight suit. Then he entices a shy woman to come closer, take a look, feel the material. Cochran holds a bra up to his chest and points to her breasts. She laughs, blackened stumps exposed, and the other women giggle and push her forward. Cochran turns his head and spits. A bright red gob splatters across the dirt. His teeth are stained dark purple. He hikes the straps over her shoulders, and fastens the snaps across her back. It’s a red lacy number with a deep cleavage.

  Cochran claps his hands. “Wonderful,” he cries.

  She is delighted and turns to the other women who cluster around, touching and prodding the strange new garment. In a few minutes Cochran exhausts his supply. The Montagnard women exchange their husbands’ crossbows, arrows and wooden spears for the cotton-and-silk underthings.

  Cochran gathers his booty and carries it to the helicopter, stopping outside to hawk a virulent plug at my feet.

  “Pretty good haul, huh?” he says.

  I stare at the wet mess spreading in the dirt. “What the hell is that? You taking up betel nut now?”

  “Agghh,” he grimaces. “Tried it but I can’t stand the taste. Made up my own mixture of Mail Pouch and food coloring. Always said the only way to deal with the folk is get down to their level.”

  He spits again, another red glob.

  The natives are hungry and grubby, but the American adviser, an unassuming Special Forces Major with the mild manners of a history professor, tells us this is the best they’ve ever had it and they like the treatment they’re receiving. The Sneaky Pete Special Forces have taken on the Montagnards as their pet project, drawing from a seemingly unlimited supply of money to buy them weapons, supplies, vehicles and ammunition. Once a month the supply officer makes the rounds of the Sneaky Pete outposts. He carries a wooden chest full of freshly minted piasters, money he gives the Montagnards.

  “You mean we’re paying them to fight?” Cochran asks.

  The supply officer winks. The Sneaky Petes have found a means of bypassing the rule stating we’re here only to advise, not to take charge.

  “If they take our money they’ll also take our orders,” he says.

  Captain Beamus has been listening in. He revels in this kind of insider dirt. He steps into the conversation and adds his astute analysis of the current military situation, taking advantage of the opportunity to discuss it man to man, Marine pilot to Special Forces adviser. I wander off to investigate the dirty mud huts, village pets and scattered machine gun emplacements.

  Ben-San follows a few minutes later, shaking his head.

  “I can’t believe Captain Beamus,” he says.

  “What now?”

  “The Sneaky Pete Major was saying they have leopards wandering around the outpost. Last night one got blown up in the minefield. Captain Beamus couldn’t get the picture. ‘A leopard?’ he said. ‘A tame one?’”

  Ben-San shakes his head again. “The adviser completely ignored him. Went on saying they have seen the Viet Cong using elephants to carry their mortars and artillery pieces into the hills.”

  Cochran walks up, the corners of his mouth stained, and I ask him if he was there.

  “There for what?”

  “When the Major said a leopard wandered into the minefield last night, Captain Beamus wanted to know if it was a tame one.”

  Cochran laughs. “Captain Beamus isn’t the only one out of it.”

  “What do you mean?” says Ben-San, realizing Cochran is about to spring something on him. “Isn’t it true?”

  “It’s true enough, only the Major was talking about lepers, not leopards. The villagers won’t allow them in the compound and last night one wandered into the minefield.”

  “A leper,” says Ben-San. “No wonder the Major ignored him. You mean a wild one? That’s raw.”

  “Mount up,” Captain Beamus orders. “We’ve got a load of passengers to take back to Da Nang before dark.”

  “Wild ones?” Ben-san yells back, but Captain Beamus stalks down the path as if he hasn’t heard.

  “Haw,” Ben-San guffaws, mentally preparing the story for the evening playback at the bull roar session in the Frog House.

  We lift off and fly out of the mountains. Captain Beamus is pleased. His perserverance has paid off. After three tries, he navigated us directly to the outpost and we completed our mission before dark. He voices a little braggadocio over his triumph: “My head may be bloody but I’m still unbowed. I was determined to find that place.”

  Although a broken chopper still sits at the outpost, a reminder that as soon as the weather clears we will have to return with a maintenance crew to repair and fly it out. Captain Beamus will avoid that chore, thank you, not his department. We arrive in Da Nang with low clouds hanging over the runway and slog to the Frog House.

  We never know from one day to the next if we will be flying or sitting on the ground. October is an on-and-off month. Rains ten hours straight, then lays off two or three, or whimsically, will be clear during the day and then pour all night. The only consistent prediction is that it will rain, no telling exactly when. We get news of the Cuban Missile Crisis, half a world away, a world poised on the brink of nuclear destruction.

  “There’s a silver lining to this,” Cochran says. “If the shit hits the fan and the missiles fly we’re sitting in the safest place possible. No one’s going to give a fuck about Vietnam.”

  14. The Old Pissing Contest

  What could be worse than this, Doc … worse than getting all shot up … only one thing I can think of … but it’s so much worse it’s unthinkable … drop a Fat Man on the fuckers … that’ll end this dirty little war and put the kibosh on the Red Horde … leave them crawling out of a radioactive hole … sounds muy estupido, doesn’t it Doc … the same thing came up in flight school … the instructor asked me if I had to make the decision in 1945 would I have dropped the bomb … I was stumped … what was I supposed to do … jump in a time machine … go back to 1945 … do I take my present-day knowledge with me or am I starting clean … if I’m there then with what I know now, hell no, I won’t drop the bomb … but if I don’t know the consequences then I might go with the par
ty line … end the war … spare us invading Japan … save thousands of American lives … the instructor is getting impatient … I dip into the Cochran playboook and dissemble … I tell him, yeah, I’d drop the bomb … on an unoccupied island … pissed the instructor off … but it would work, I told him … when the Japanese saw what the bomb could do, they would surrender … and everyone could go home … were it only so easy, Doc … to get out of this mess and go home … but I have promises to keep … and there’s miles to go before we sleep …

  Across the Song Han river from Da Nang, off the highway and over the sand dunes, the beach lies flat and white, glittering like a blanket of tiny crystals, soft near the dunes, packed firm where the waves spank the crystals flat. Each incoming slap followed by the whispering retreat of the backslipping water. The sky is clear, a blue dome pulled down to the sea and clamped in place.

  A six-by-six truck drives through the sand to the water’s edge and deposits a load of Marines. The men spread from the truck like flowers opening to the sun. The truck turns around and roars off. For the next six hours we are free, no claim laid on our bodies other than the sun, the breeze, the prickly sand and the salty sea.

  “Why hasn’t Henry Kaiser capitalized on this?” says Cochran, eyeballing the horizon from the mountains to the sea. “He could spend half his fortune turning Vietnam into a resort.”

  Instead of aluminum hotels the Vietnamese have constructed thatched-roof, flattened beer can siding shacks filled with tables and canvas back chairs, the structures shaded by scarlet and gold awnings. Kids hawk pop and Bia La Rue.

  A party of Marines pours into a shack. Their portable radio is tuned to Armed Forces Radio Saigon and they begin foot-skipping and diddy-bopping to the thump of a loud electric bass. In the distance a thin black line stretches down the beach, extending from the dunes to the water, blurred shapes of human figures.