Drafted

by Andrew Atherton

  Suddenly Miller turned to his men. “Get on the roofs,” he yelled. “Do what they’re doing.”

  The men from Echo Company swung into action. Village women held out buckets of water for the GIs to soak their shirts for flogging sparks and cinders. The GIs hoisted each other up on hootch roofs by making slings with their hands. Miller remained on the ground.

  “You guys up there,” Miller yelled. “Be careful you step only on cross-supports! That thatching might support villagers but not you!”

  “Get the water tankers,” one man yelled.

  “The equipment stays on the road,” Miller yelled. “Tankers can’t get in here anyway.”

  “Fuck!” yelled a heavyset GI when his right leg crunched through thatching up to his crotch. He tried to pull himself free, but he grew desperate after pulling out handfuls of thatching from the upward-sloping roof in front of him. He quickly realized what he had to do. He tipped far to one side and brought his free left leg up into a kneeling position. Then he rolled to the left, over his kneeling leg, and pulled his right leg out of the hole and promptly rolled off the roof. He fell to the ground, rolling as he hit.

  Miller shook his head and passed along a bucket of water. “Get stuck up there,” he yelled, “and you’ll get barbecued.”

  While the other men extinguished burning embers, truck driver Gallagher jumped to the ground and ran back toward Paddington’s jeep. He had what he thought was a great idea, an idea God had just given him, an idea that needed immediate action.

  “Lieutenant Paddington!” Gallagher yelled while yet thirty feet away. “Chopper with water tank … before the fire spreads.”

  Paddington assumed Gallagher was conveying a request from Miller. He instructed Donaldson to radio Tropic Lightning on Cu Chi Base Camp for an emergency mission by an appropriately equipped Chinook helicopter.

  Gallagher ran back to the firefighting crew and told Miller what he’d done. Miller immediately recognized the breakdown in command structure but thought Gallagher’s idea was a good one. Distracted by the whirl of activity and the necessity of putting out the fire before it spread any further, he quickly forgot about it.

  An hour later five huts were piles of glowing embers emitting thick smoke high in the sky. Several men had minor burns and other men had sprained ankles, but the GIs and citizens of Sáng Mât Trâng Village were beaming at each other from roofs of huts in a broad half-circle around the collapsed kiln. Miraculously, nobody had fallen or been seriously burned.

  And then they heard the sound of a Chinook helicopter. The heavy thudding of its double rotors got closer. Men looked at each other and frowned. They pointed as the Chinook appeared, a huge water bucket slung beneath it.

  “Is he coming here?” yelled a road-roller operator sitting on a roof.

  “We don’t need no fucking water dropped on us now!” yelled another man.

  Captain Steuben flew the Chinook in at 500 feet. At first, he was guided by smoke from the charred huts no longer burning with visible flame. Then he saw the smokeless red glow of the kiln fire nearby. Uncertain, Steuben radioed Paddington and asked, “Where you want this water dumped?” He assumed Paddington was at the site of the fire.

  According to RTO Donaldson, when Steuben’s call came in, Paddington, back on Route QL-14, rolled his eyes and repeated Steuben’s question to Donaldson. Then Paddington spoke in the PRC 25’s handset to Steuben, “Try dropping the water on the worst part of the fire.” After a long pause, Steuben radioed back, “You got a Roger on that.”

  Captain Steuben prided himself on his intelligence and his four years at the University of Colorado, and he deeply resented the sarcasm in Paddington’s reply. To his copilot, Steuben said, “Let’s make sure we hit what that asshole wants us to hit.”

  The worst part of the fire viewed from the air—the only fire that could be seen—was the red glow from the collapsed kiln. It was a small target when seen from the sky and surprisingly difficult to hit with water falling from a tank hanging below the middle of the Chinook, particularly since Steuben and his copilot were not experienced dropping water.

  Then smoke from the burned huts obscured the kiln.

  To recover the target’s visibility, Steuben slowly lowered the Chinook over the kiln field opposite the burned huts. Wash from the rotors cleared the smoke and made the target visible again. But the chopper’s downdraft blew more than just smoke. Ashes and burning embers flew over huts that previously had been in no danger.

  Kohler, a weight-lifting black kid, was sitting on a thatched roof and could not believe what he was seeing. He yelled, “That dinky-dao pilot don’t know what the fuck he’s doing!” Kohler held his arms over his face for protection against the smoke and cinders.

  Villagers and men of Echo Company shouted and cursed and waved the pilot away, but smoke hid many of them from Steuben’s view. The few people Steuben saw waving he assumed were waving their welcome to him and their relief at his arrival. And Steuben assumed he’d be alerted by radio if there were a problem. From his chopper, he couldn’t distinguish smoke from scattering embers.

  Steuben, now oriented to a flight path, raised the Chinook and flew over the kiln and smoking huts and released the water. But when the water hit the kiln’s super-heated clay and glowing charcoal, they exploded in clouds of steam and flying embers that blew in all directions like tracers from a firefight.

  Steuben radioed Paddington for confirmation that the first drop was successful. Paddington thanked him and requested another load of water, since Paddington now saw more smoke than before. Steuben turned and flew back toward Cu Chi.

  When the Chinook left, the villagers and GIs, many of them now wet, brushed cinders from their hair and clothing and looked around. Despite the shower of water, they saw glowing coals on thatched roofs all around them.

  They renewed their efforts. They worked as fast as they could, but too many huts were catching fire. Two or three small fires would spring to life on a hut’s thatching and rush together and engulf the roof in a roaring inferno. Several men were almost trapped by roof fires.

  The GIs and villagers pulled back their firefighting operation to where Route QL-14 bisected the town. Women screamed for their children. Men ran from hut to hut looking for elderly parents.

  The villagers and engineers now worried the blaze would jump the road to the south side of town. Several GIs drove two water tankers to the south side of QL-14. Using hoses at the rear corners of the tankers, they sprayed roofs and buildings closest to the road to prevent them from catching fire from falling embers. Other GIs and villagers hoisted each other onto thatched roofs of huts and ran up stairs to roofs of buildings to beat out sparks and glowing cinders.

  In the end, a gentle wind began blowing the airborne sparks back toward the burning side of town. Nothing on the south side of QL-14 caught fire.

  Then the men heard the Chinook flying in with its second load of water. Lieutenant Paddington, who had by now learned about the disastrous consequences of the chopper’s first visit, radioed Steuben.

  “Wash from your chopper blew fire all over town,” Paddington shouted in the PRC’s handheld mike. “Maintain higher altitude and scatter water over fire closest to the road.”

  Three hours later, nearly half the town on the north side of QL-14 was a steaming pile of damp ash and gutted wood-frame and brick structures. The heat was sufficiently reduced to allow GIs and villagers to walk through the devastation, so Paddington ordered his men to look for casualties.

  Gallagher and Kohler discovered an elderly man who apparently had been trapped by fire on all sides of him. He had wrapped himself around the base of a waist-high stone ancestor shrine for as much protection as possible. His hair was singed off except for his stringy white beard. The backs of his arms, legs, and head were badly burned. His plaid shirt was fused with the skin on his back. But he was still alive.

  “Run and get the medic,” Gallagher yelled to Kohler. “And radio for a dust-off.”

 
While Kohler ran for the medic, Gallagher sat cross-legged on the warm ground next to the burned man. The yelling had roused the man and he sat up.

  He seemed unnaturally alert but unaware of how burned he was. Gallagher said his eyes shone like the eyes of church members filled with the Holy Spirit Gallagher remembered seeing back home. Gallagher started praying aloud for the man, and the man started talking in Vietnamese.

  Days later, during my interview with him, Gallagher said he was sure God was there with them—“I could feel His presence”—and he was sure the old man felt it too. God’s grace, Gallagher said, enabled the man to “speak words of forgiveness to me.”

  While the old man and Gallagher were communing with each other, a young village woman came running between the smoking ruins of the town and found them. When she saw the man’s face and hideously burned body, she started wailing and slapping her hands against her thighs. The old man waved for her to be quiet.

  Despite protestations from Gallagher and the woman and other villagers who had gathered around them, the burned man slowly got to his feet and staggered toward the distant road. Not even the woman dared touch him. His body oozed water and blood from charred skin and broken blisters. He walked fifteen or twenty feet, Gallagher said, before he crumpled as though his legs had lost air pressure. He fell on his side without catching himself.

  The woman danced from foot to foot while pulling out handfuls of her hair. Her mouth was open as if she were screaming, but no sound came out. Gallagher said he again prayed for God’s help and called to the woman. He told her a dust-off was on its way, but she ignored him.

  At this point, Gallagher stopped praying and stared motionless at the ground, stunned by a frightening thought. He jumped up and ran toward the road. He passed Kohler and the medic running with a stretcher in the direction of the old man.

  “Lieutenant Paddington,” Gallagher yelled as he approached Paddington’s jeep. “Radio the dust-off. Warn him about the downdraft!”

  Five minutes later the dust-off landed further west, in a clearing, beside Route QL-14. The burned villager had been carried on the stretcher to the road and now he lay across the back of Paddington’s jeep as the medic drove him and the young woman to the dust-off. Both medics—Echo Company’s medic and the dust-off medic—said the man was already dead, but they loaded the body on the chopper anyway and took the grieving woman with them.

  ****

  The day after my two evenings of interviews, I tried phoning Paddington in the late afternoon, but he hadn’t come in off the road. I left a message for him with Echo Company’s clerk. Paddington returned my call a few minutes before quitting time at 6:00 p.m. He asked if the rough drafts were ready for his review.

  “Sir, regarding those recommendations, I seriously doubt Bronze Stars will be approved for your men. We have a better chance if we try for Army Commendation Medals for Achievement. But even for ACMs, we might consider attaching a note about the politically sensitive nature of the fire and how it spread. That way Colonel Hackett and Major Roberts, as well as higher headquarters, will have all the facts when they make their decisions.”

  “What are you saying?” Paddington’s voice was brittle. “Are you saying my men didn’t act heroically? Or they did something wrong?”

  “No, Sir. Not at all. What I’m trying to say, and this is just my opinion, but if the full story of the Sáng Mât Trâng fire were picked up by Stars and Stripes or the press back home, your medal winners might appear foolish despite their obvious heroism. I know you wouldn’t want that. And Sir, I should inform you that your men do not want these awards.”

  “They said that?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Paddington was silent for almost fifteen seconds. I had to break the tension.

  “Look, Sir, I stepped way out of line. I’ll start writing your recommendations right away.”

  “No, no, I see your point. Hold off on the write-ups and let me think about this. I’ll get back to you later.”

  “Yes, Sir. Whatever you think best, Sir.”

  And that was that. I never heard another word from Paddington about those bullshit Bronze Stars.

  ****

  Saturday, Aug. 9, 1969 - Cu Chi Base Camp

  Dear Janice:

  Every day we’re getting heavy rain. We have a few hours when it isn’t raining, then it starts up again.

  Been thinking about you. I wish we could go for a walk together. And hold each other. I miss you.

  Love, Andrew

  KP WITH BRUNO, TWEEZE, & BERRY

  I pulled up from my run in the morning darkness across our company’s formation yard and yanked on the wooden handle of the screen door to the mess hall kitchen.

  The door wouldn’t budge.

  I refocused and realized Sergeant Bruno Dretchler, the first-shift cook, was standing in front of me on the other side of the screen. He was holding the inside handle so I couldn’t open the door. I threw up my arms in frustration. Here we go again.

  I looked at my watch in the light coming from the kitchen door. It was 4:26 in the morning. I’d made it with four minutes to spare.

  “You trying to test me?” Dretchler asked, and grunted his question again. “Your buddy is here, but the other KP is sick. So that means you guys got a lot of work to do. So why aren’t you on this side of the door where you’re supposed to be? A man proud of his work comes early to pick up the slack if it’s needed.”

  “I hear you, Sarge.” No sense arguing with him.

  Dretchler let loose of the door handle and moved aside. I quickly opened the screen door and squeezed past him into the kitchen. Seemed like I often had to squeeze past him.

  Dretchler forced that kind of chicken shit on all his KP workers, and it drove me nuts. I’d never met a man who repelled me more than Bruno Dretchler. He was at least six-foot two-inches. Huge chest. Firm tub of a stomach. Massive hands. His cheeks pushed up against deep-set, dark eyes too close together, so he looked like a giant pig sizing you up before he mashes you against the stall.

  And Dretchler stunk. If I smelled his body odor long enough, working next to him at the serving line, I’d get sick to my stomach. He might be a person with exceptionally funky perspiration, but he didn’t help it any by wearing the same T-shirt all week long. Any Saturday you could read the previous week’s menus off his shirt. That's a Sad Sack cartoon joke, I know, but it's no joke with Dretchler. And every day he worked in that hot kitchen his T-shirt was soaked with sweat.

  Inside the kitchen I was pleased to see Tweeze. He nodded and smiled. He was one of our company mechanics, an all-round fix-it guy. He even fixed my typewriter once. We worked KP well together, anticipating each other’s actions, accommodating each other’s strengths—Tweeze was a better egg cracker, I was a better bread toaster—and having a blast turning KP into high-quality team-work of which we were proud, and it made the time pass quickly too.

  “Third KP’s sick?” I asked.

  Tweeze tipped his head down and glared at me. “Got my Superman cape on.”

  Tweeze was a proud lifer, far more experienced than most KPs. He was thin. A little on the short side. Narrow nose and face. Narrow head for that matter. Brown hair. Gray eyes.

  At first I thought his nickname was due to his thin physique, but that didn’t initiate the name. The story was that Tweeze dropped a screw in a tight place working on a jeep. He worked five minutes trying to get the screw out. Finally he walked to his tool box he kept locked when he wasn’t on duty, pulled out surgical tweezers he’d recently “borrowed” from the medics, and said with a grin, “I’ll tweeze it out.” After that everybody called him Tweeze. Fits his personality too. He’d been busted from sergeant several times because he smarted-off to superiors. Just tweezing. Not taking any shit.

  I liked Tweeze. I did not like Dretchler.

  Dretchler walked to the stainless steel table at the center of the kitchen, leaned his backside against it, and looked at me. “What’s your name? Hey, hey, turn n�
� lemmie see your…. Oooh, that’s right. Atherton. Ain’t you special? What a royal fart in the dark that is.” He laughed.

  I didn’t respond.

  “Okay, fun and games is over. Fancy-Pants and Tweezy-Tit. You guys are carrying the ball by yourselves. No third—”

  “Come on, Serge,” Tweeze interrupted, “call me Tweeze or I’m leaving.”

  Dretchler moved in so close his protruding stomach touched Tweeze’s chest, but Tweeze stood his ground. “What do I got here? A mutiny? An insurrection? You wanna fight me? You gonna disagree with everything I say right off? Go ahead. Throw a punch, you skinny turd that can’t hold his rank.”

  Tweeze said, “So let’s get to work if there’s so much of it.”

  Dretchler smirked and backed off. “Okay, now here’s the rules. This is my kitchen, Mr. Tweeze, and you answer to what I call you. Got it? Now these are the jobs you guys got for breakfast.” And he gave us assignments as though laying down the law to KP first-timers when we already knew what had to be done.

  “And while you’re doing that,” he pulled a pack of Camel cigarettes from his chef’s apron, “I’m going for a smoke. And remember, I got special projects for loafers.”

  The standard breakfast menu for the a-la-carte serving line was scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, chipped-beef gravy over toast, French toast, cold cereal, coffee and milk. Dretchler ran the stove—frying, baking, cooking of any kind—and we ran support.

  Dretchler’s shift started at 4:00 a.m., thirty minutes before ours, but he must have come in even earlier. He’d loaded and plugged in the big coffee canister. The red “perking” light was on. He’d poured water in the steam tables and turned on the electric heaters. The water was already sending up little curls of steam. He’d mixed the milk and flour gravy, and added the chipped beef. Three empty gallon milk containers, a ripped-open cardboard box, and a balled-up plastic bag were beside the gravy bowl for us to throw away. The fourth milk container, half full, we’d leave on the table to be used later. We knew Dretchler had mixed two palms of coarse-ground black pepper and a palm of salt in the gravy because the quart-sized plastic containers of salt and pepper sat beside the bowl, and we saw pepper in the gravy. Last but not least, he’d perked the cook’s ten-cup coffee pot.