Drafted

by Andrew Atherton

  I can’t tolerate the thought of that. Do you understand? And then I put up with your complaints about swearing at Fort Campbell!

  When I think about coming home at Christmas and being with people I’ve known all my life, I want to go somewhere and hide. Or go somewhere with other soldiers.

  I still love you and miss you and need you, but sometimes I wish you didn’t love me. I feel like everything that came before is from another life. I don’t want to be loved anymore. I feel twisted inside. Morally perverse. I just want all this over with. One way or another.

  Andrew

  LAND MINE COURSE

  Sitting on bleachers in the middle of a training field, we huddled against a cold wind. We leaned forward, cupping our hands to our ears, trying to hear Sergeant Lopez as he swaggered across the wooden stage in front of us, the wind whipping away his words. He was near the end of his briefing on what we were to do at the Land Mine Course.

  “Oh, one last thing. The pseudo land mine you dig up tonight might be booby-trapped with a CS gas grenade.” Lopez turned at the far side of the stage and swaggered back in the opposite direction. His head down, he talked off-handedly, as if bored by his memorized lecture. “So, if you find a grenade under or next to your mine, secure the lever and raise your hand. One of the drill instructors will come over and insert the safety pin.” Lopez stopped talking.

  Was he done? He strolled across the stage with a sarcastic grin on his face. He turned to us, shrugged his shoulders, and raised his hands palms up, as though saying, “That’s it. You want more?”

  We waited. We looked at each other. A trainee on the bottom bench couldn’t take it anymore and called out, “What do we do if we pop the grenade?” Lopez looked at him in mock surprise, as though the one bright bulb in the class finally clicked on.

  “It won’t explode, you know. Just hisses.” His purple lips stretched into a grin that put dimples in his yellowish brown cheeks. He was enjoying this. “As you know, CS is stronger than tear gas, but it’s not lethal. So if you fumble and pop your grenade, crawl to the windward side. You can withstand a lot of that stuff if your life depends on it, and that’s what you gotta imagine for this exercise. So don’t stand up and don’t crawl away. That makes you a more visible target. You’re supposed to be in the perimeter kill zone of an enemy camp. And remember: a soldier without his rifle is worse than dead. He’s a liability to his platoon.”

  Later in the day, a corporal gave us another suggestion for coping with the gas. Days earlier we had been issued woolen gloves. It was early December, so there was frost on the ground every morning and the wind whipped us with icy flecks of snow. The corporal said we should take our gloves with us that night, and if exposed to the gas, we should spit on a glove and hold it over our faces.

  Late that night, after standing in line for our rifles at the armory, we rode transport trucks to the Land Mine Course. It looked like a miniature football field lit with flood lights on telephone poles. The field was divided into four-foot wide lanes drawn with powdered lime. Drill sergeants instructed us to line up at the ends of the lanes.

  Breaking away from the other men, I ran down the side of the field to a lane not yet selected by other trainees. I wanted to be first in line. My fellow trainees probably thought I was putting on a good show of “gung-ho” confidence. But I was motivated not by courage, but by fear and desperation.

  I wasn’t a failure, but neither was I successful at most of what I was being trained to do. Although accurate with a rifle, I was physically awkward and made numerous mistakes—like not seeing booby traps and getting lost in the woods—mistakes that would be fatal in the jungles of Vietnam. Because my fear of failure was enormous and I had an excellent imagination, I was scared shitless most of the time. So I tried even harder to overcome my faults and face my fears without hesitation. Whenever I ended up at the end of the line and had to watch everyone go through an exercise before me, I imagined a hundred different ways I could screw up, a hundred different ways I could get killed—and get my buddies killed. So I always tried to be the first one out, the first one in line. That way I wouldn’t have time to get too worked up.

  While the other men were still assembling at the ends of other lanes, I waited anxiously on my belly for the exercise to begin. I had my gloves tucked in my fatigue pockets.

  The freezing night air was foggy. The sandy ground in front of my face sparkled gauzy white from overhead flood lamps on either side of the field. A column of mist floated on a soft breeze down the center of the field like a blue ghost.

  Sergeant Lopez fired the starting pistol.

  I low-crawled down the lane. I held a bayonet in my right hand and I held my M16 as I was instructed: balanced parallel on my left forearm, the stock in the crook of my arm and the barrel in the crook of my thumb—with my thumb held up and bent sideways over the barrel—which, after five minutes, induced thumb cramps and pain, then numbness.

  Every few feet—holding the bayonet along the length of my open right hand, my thumb pressing the handle against my upright palm—I gently pushed the point of the bayonet at a backward slant into the ground directly in front of me. Then again on the left and on the right, the width of my crawling body. Feeling nothing resist the thrust of the blade, I crawled about one foot forward and repeated the process. In this way I “cleared” the lane, one foot at a time, halfway across the field.

  Then my bayonet struck something hard an inch below the ground. I yanked the bayonet back as if shocked by a live wire.

  Laying the bayonet aside, I carefully brushed loose dirt off the top of the mine. It was dark green and made of sheet metal, the size and shape of a round coffee cake tin. The trigger on top was a circular pressure plate.

  After digging a little trench around it, an inch or two deeper than the thickness of the mine, I scooped dirt from under the mine’s right edge while holding the mine steady with my left hand so it wouldn’t tip into the cavity. I continued scooping out dirt until I was sure there was no CS gas grenade underneath with its spring-loaded safety lever pressing up against the bottom of the mine.

  I lifted the mine from the hole and set it on my mound of excavated dirt and raised my hand. A drill instructor strolled over and approved my work and ordered me to wait for the all clear.

  I laid there for several minutes. Then I heard a popping sound followed by hissing about five lanes upwind from me. Then two more pops. I raised my head and saw white clouds of CS gas drifting my way.

  I frantically pulled out a woolen glove, cursing myself for not having done so already. I tried to spit on it, but my mouth was dry. I couldn’t work up any spit. I sucked in a chest full of air and covered my face with the dry glove.

  Then a thought came to me like a shout: Put your head in the hole! The gas will blow over it!

  It wasn’t until after the training exercise that I realized my mistake. CS gas is heavier than air; it’s manufactured to be that way. So the gas would flow down into the cavity I’d dug, displace whatever good air was down there, and I would be exposed to a higher concentration of the gas than if I had kept my head above ground.

  I pulled forward, removed my helmet, closed my eyes, and pressed my face, covered with the glove, against the bottom of the hole. I held my breath.

  My neck thumped with blood. My heart thudded against my chest.

  Already I needed air!

  Five more seconds. Count slowly. One … Two … Three … Four … Five….

  My abdominal muscles convulsed. I had to breathe! My body was fighting for air!

  No! Count five more seconds again: One … Two … Three … Four … Five….

  I took a shallow breath to test the air.

  It felt like steaming acid searing my throat and lungs! My eyes flew open. For a split second I saw what looked like white cotton. Then my eyes caught fire. I gasped and pulled in a chest full of gas. The pain was instant and overwelming. I yanked my head out of the hole.

  My lungs and throat locked up. I
couldn’t breathe even when I tried!

  I had to get out of the gas. I had to have air!

  I jumped to my feet and stumbled on something, but I staggered forward.

  Intense claustrophobia closed in on me. I had to find my way out of the gas! Blinded, stretching out my arms, I tried to feel my way. I shuffled around, still unable to breathe, lost my balance, and fell to the ground semiconscious.

  I revived moments later. I was on my side. Totally disoriented. I had no idea where I was. Rusty razor blades filled my lungs. Sharp pain cut my breath to quick, shallow gasps. My face burned like fire. My eyes were covered with hot sand. Mucus, moist and slimy, dripped over my lips.

  Where was I? What happened? I tipped back my head and tried to see. Muscles over which I had no control were squeezing my eyes tightly shut. Leaning on my left elbow, I pulled my eyelids open with my fingers.

  Thin slits of light. Watering. Burning.

  I was in a field lit by floodlights. Men lay motionless all around me. Others writhed and gagged and cried out in agony. Smoke drifted over the battlefield.

  Suddenly I understood. We were in the perimeter of the enemy’s camp! We had been machine gunned down! Men lying all around me had been shot!

  But the battle was over. The enemy defeated. Medics wandered among the fallen, ministering to the wounded.

  I felt for my rifle. I couldn’t find it.

  Then I realized I was one of the bodies on the ground.

  Oh my God! I must have been hit! But where? I felt my legs. No, no, not my legs. It’s my chest! I’ve been wounded in my chest! I could hardly breathe! Oh Jesus, Jesus, I’ve got a sucking chest wound!

  I tried to yell “Medic!”, but I doubled up, wheezing and coughing.

  I pressed my hand to my chest and tried yelling again. “Somebody help me.” My voice was hoarse from my chest wound. “I’ve been shot,” I called.

  Little time was left. Blood was filling my lungs.

  “Help,” I wheezed. “I’m dying.”

  A medic walked in my direction, ducking around and below the clouds of smoke. I waved him over.

  He came closer and shouted, “Shut the fuck up, asshole.” His face, without a gas mask, glowed like a cherry in the sun. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “You abandoned your weapon.” He kicked my leg. Hard. “Get back in your lane and stay on the ground before I beat the shit out of you.”

  We all assembled after the exercise. Two other trainees had abandoned their rifles. We had disgraced our platoons.

  Our punishment was to low-crawl in front of everyone, retrieve our weapons from where they were stacked thirty feet away, and crawl back to the starting line.

  The three of us reached our rifles at the same time. As we pulled them from the stack, a hidden CS gas grenade popped in our faces.

  ****

  Saturday, Dec. 7, 1968

  Dear Janice:

  Yesterday we simulated a raid on a Viet Cong village. We had blanks in our M16s. Members of the cadre wore black pajamas and pretended to be Viet Cong.

  I might have injured one of the Viet Cong pretenders. He was in an underground tunnel and flipped open the trapdoor just as I entered the hooch. I was so hopped up I stuck the muzzle of my M16 in his face and fired a blank and ran to the next hooch before I remembered he wasn’t a real VC.

  The reason I’m concerned is that the muzzle blast and wadding from a blank round, fired up close, can cause considerable injury, especially if fired in a person’s face. I told one of the sergeants about it, but he said not to worry.

  When I come home at Christmas time, let’s play lots of games in bed. Okay?

  Love, Andrew

  Wednesday, Dec. 9-11, 1968

  Dear Janice:

  We’ve been doing live-fire exercises the last few days. The DIs give us live ammunition and we practice advancing, on line, firing our weapons. The ammunition we use includes tracers. We load a tracer in our magazines every fifth round.

  One of the live-fire exercises goes like this. If we’re ambushed, we’re not supposed to drop to the ground. We’re supposed to remain standing and move on line toward the enemy. The idea is to use superior fire power to keep the enemy’s heads down until we walk up to their position and kill them. In each squad, one or two men fire automatic bursts. The other men fire individual shots.

  I can’t imagine this working in a jungle situation. Not only would we instinctively drop to the ground if ambushed, but I can’t imagine how we could see where the enemy is nor advance through jungle vegetation “on line,” granted we could advance at all. There has to be something here I don’t understand. I asked a drill sergeant about it and he said, “Do as you’re trained and adapt as conditions warrant.”

  Anyway, the effect of live-fire exercises at night is surreal. M16 muzzle flashes are star-shaped and rapid like strobe lights. The noise is sharp and metallic like high-performance motor bikes without mufflers. The streaking tracers, some of them ricocheting off rocks, are so beautiful it’s hard to focus on what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s like fireworks on the 4th of July.

  One time I got so excited I advanced too fast and got ahead of the line. A sergeant ran up and grabbed hold of my belt and pulled me back.

  He yelled, “Ya dumb fuck, you’re gonna get shot by your own platoon!”

  There’s another exercise they call “leap frogging,” at least some instructors call it that. It does make sense, but it’s scary. Here’s how it works:

  We move in squads. The main part of the squad stays behind and two guys advance ahead to a predetermined point where there’s cover (protection from enemy fire) and where the others can join them. But while the two guys are running ahead and the other guys are in protected places behind them, the protected guys are supposed to fire their weapons past the running guys to “cover” (or protect) them by forcing the enemy to keep their heads down. Then the two forward guys fire “cover” so their buddies can run up to the forward position.

  It’s the first run—by the two guys running ahead—that’s scary. If the guys behind them aren’t careful, they can shoot those two forward-running guys. I’ve seen tracers streak past me and I’ve wanted to turn around and yell, “Watch it, assholes!”

  One of the sergeants told me that in real combat, the forward-running team often gets shot in the gut by the enemy or shot in the back by their friends. A no-win situation. But I can’t imagine any better way a squad could advance under enemy fire while risking minimum casualties.

  Graduation exercises are December 19. I’ll get plane tickets for a flight home leaving that afternoon.

  I’m excited about coming home. I still don’t know where I’ll be assigned. Hope it’s Germany.

  Love, Andrew

  Tuesday, Dec. 17, 1968

  Dear Janice:

  My plane tickets are all screwed up. You’ll probably get this before I’m home.

  My plane tickets are for the 21st. So I have to hang around after graduation (which is on the 19th) until the 21st. Then, on the 21st, I don’t depart until evening … and I have a layover between flights. So I won’t arrive in Detroit until the afternoon of December 22.

  I’m coming in on Delta Flight #4423 and landing at Metro at 4:05 pm—but the flight number and arrival time will probably change by then so I’ll call from my layover airport as soon as I know for sure.

  We have until January 9 to be together. That’s the day I report to Oakland Army Base in San Francisco.

  I received my orders today.

  I’m going to Vietnam.

  Andrew

  THE FLIGHT TO WAR

  Thursday, Jan 9, 1969 - San Francisco

  Dear Janice:

  It’s late in the evening and I haven’t reported to Oakland Army Base yet.

  After my plane landed in San Francisco, I ran into Eric Becker at the airport terminal. He was in my training company in AIT but in another platoon. We didn’t see much of each other.

  His last day for reportin
g to Oakland is Saturday. Mine is today.

  He wanted us to rent a hotel room and bum around San Francisco together until Saturday. Sounded like a great idea. What can the Army do to me? Send me to Vietnam? So we went outside and flagged a taxi and asked the driver to find us a cheap hotel. He did. The place is a dump, but it’s good enough for us.

  San Francisco is beautiful. You’d love it. We must have walked ten miles today just looking around. Took the trolley down the hills to the wharf. It’s like in the movies. We looked around the docks, then rode the trolley back up again.

  We stopped at a wonderful hole-in-the-wall used bookstore run by a little old lady who talked about Hemingway and Faulkner and Virginia Woolf as though they were old friends. Becker held up his end of the discussion pretty good, too. Turns out he has a few years of college and is quite well-read. So the three of us talked for two hours about novels we’d read and writers we liked. I bought a book of short stories and a magazine for the plane trip.

  I loved being with you during Christmas and New Year's!

  My God, you’re beautiful when you’re naked.

  Your parents were so good to me. Your granddad is a great man. I love and admire him more than any man I know.

  When we visited my folks … I hope you had a good time like you said you did. I was pleased to hear from Mom about my brother’s missionary activities, but I think her feelings were hurt when I said I didn’t want to read his letters she handed me. So you took them and read a few. Thanks. And it was awkward when Dad said grace at every meal. It’s nice I guess. That’s one thing I appreciate about you and your family. Good Christians, but you don’t say grace every frigging time you eat a snack.

  I’m not sure it’s a good thing being home two weeks prior to going to Vietnam. I didn’t want to leave you. I was almost ready to ask you to go to Canada with me.