“They didn’t trust us.”
“Who didn’t trust you?”
“Guys in the 101st.”
“Why not?”
“They been living in the boonies. Seeing bad shit. And we was combat newbies from an engineering unit. Nobody wanted us. Said we was dangerous. Wouldn’t talk to us. Wasn’t anybody give a rat’s ass if we lived or died.”
“What’d they assign you?”
“Ammo carrier for a machine gunner named Rodriguez. Everybody called him Roddo. His carrier got hit.”
“Was this the man—?”
“Big Mex from LA. Been growin’ a mustache for months.” Martin laughed. “All thin and straggly. Looked like shit.” Martin stopped. Tears filled his eyes. He slapped them away. “He was decent. Looked out for me. Hell, he was that way with everybody.”
Martin was silent for a moment. I waited, looking at my beer.
“One of our assaults up the hill, our point man got hit by an RPG. One minute he was walkin’ the trail, next minute he exploded. Pieces of him landed near me and Roddo. Everybody up front cut loose, but they stopped firing when Roddo went nuts. He jumped up and charged the bunker by himself. Held ’em down ‘til he got on top of ’em. Killed three gooks before he blew through his ammo belt. Bravest thing I ever seen.”
Martin glared at me while reaching for his beer and knocked it over. He grabbed the can from the foamy puddle, wiped it on his pants, tipped the can to his mouth, and swallowed the remaining beer.
“Something happen to Roddo?”
Martin looked at me, squinting. “Know what?” Martin belched again. “I’m not talking about this with you anymore. You wanna know what it’s like out there, go fight the fuckin’ war yourself.”
I nodded. I felt sick to my stomach. My face burned. I turned my glass and wiped the condensation off with my thumb. “So what happens now? You going back to your unit?”
“Don’t know. Maybe I’ll re-up and get a job like yours.”
I finished my beer and looked at my watch. “Hey, I got things to do. Gotta go.”
I carried my glass and beer cans to the bar. Jake had returned from out back and was taking a break on the far side of the room. He gave me a nod.
I looked back at Martin. He was staring over the far edge of the table at the floor.
I left Jake’s Bar and walked around Long Binh for awhile.
I ended up in a library I hadn’t known was there. I pulled down a multi-record set of Haydn's London Symphonies I was surprised to find. I stacked the records on a portable record player and listened through earphones while looking at magazines. The next time I checked my watch I was late.
I ran to the 85th Group Headquarters, my .45 semi-automatic flopping on my hip. I signed for the papers and ran to the chopper pad.
The pilot was cranking the rotor for takeoff. I’d barely made it. I scrambled up on the canvas seat closest to the door.
“He’s on board,” Chief Hot Copper yelled. We lifted off while I fastened my seat belt.
Chief Hot Copper leaned forward, tapped me on the shoulder, and yelled, “Pilot wants to know if you need an appointment secretary or just a wake-up call at the bar.”
“Tell him I prefer the secretary,” I yelled back, “followed by a wake-up call.”
I was out of breath and drenched with perspiration from all the running. I quickly cooled in the rush of air from the chopper’s open doors.
I rode that rush to euphoria. I wanted to yell and shout. I wanted to tell somebody—anybody—what I escaped.
And Martin? He would have done the same thing I did if he’d had the chance.
“Pure dumb luck,” I said, telling the other clerks in my hooch that night about Sulley Martin and my close escape from Hamburger Hill. “Pure fucking dumb luck.”
****
Monday, Nov. 3, 1969 - Cu Chi Base Camp
Dear Janice:
During my chopper layover in Long Binh I do a lot of reading. I’ve started reading William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. It’s the most interesting assessment of religion and spiritual experiences I’ve ever read.
I heard that Chaplain O’Donnell DEROSed and was replaced by another Catholic chaplain, a fellow by the name of Sebastian. I’ll miss O’Donnell. He wrote good articles for The Paver and provided me with thoughtful conversation and visits to fire bases and villages. He was almost as stimulating to talk to as my buddy Jerry Maener in personnel.
A terrible thing happened back at Cu Chi two nights ago (I’m writing this at Long Binh). A guy walked over to Charlie Company’s HQ Office and in front of the office tucked a M16 muzzle under his chin and blew his head off. I was told he fired three rounds before his thumb left the trigger. One round went through the outer office wall and damn near hit the clerk. The guy gave no prior indication he was depressed.
The world is a dark and unhappy place. I’m glad we have each other.
Love, Andrew
Friday, Nov 28, 1969 - Cu Chi Base Camp
Dear Janice:
I’m back working in S-1. Adjutant Harris said I’ll be the substitute courier when the new courier is sick or on R & R. That’s okay with me.
I’ve come back to the office just as the battalion is moving north to Lai Khe. Everything is packed or getting packed. It’s a confusing mess.
We had a good Thanksgiving evening meal. Turkey and stuffing, and pumpkin pie. The cooks did a great job! But I missed seeing one of the cooks. A good guy. Some bad stuff happened not long ago. I’ll tell you about it sometime.
I know we talked about this in Hawaii, but I went ahead anyway and extended my tour of duty past December. This way, when I return to the States in March, I can get out of the Army immediately, and I won’t have eight months of remaining active duty like I would if I returned home next month. You know how much I hate the Army.
Love, Andrew
RALPH MANTIS
“Wow, that’s a big one,” Adjutant Harris said. “He won’t bite, you know.”
“I know that, Sir.” I circled the five-and-a-half-inch praying mantis on the floor of the corridor outside the battalion’s S-1 office at Cu Chi Base Camp. “But he can sure put the clamps on your finger.”
Moments earlier I had picked up the green mantis just below his long, rigid back. The mantis swiveled his triangular head around and looked directly at me with his bulbous, black-dot-centered eyes. Then he turned his upper body and clamped his forearms, lined with needle-sharp spines, on my index finger. I was so startled I flipped him to the floor. We later discovered his arm spines could leave indentations on a wooden pencil.
Harris stooped and slid his hand on the floor, palm down, toward the insect. The praying mantis stepped up on the back of Harris’s hand as dignified as a king. Harris carried him into the S-1 office to show Connors and Parker.
We gathered around Harris and poked pencils at the huge insect to see what it would do. At each poking, it reared back and turned toward the offending pencil, arms tightly folded.
Suddenly the mantis took flight.
Everybody scattered. The bird-sized green bug made a buzzing and flapping sound as it flew to the rear of the office and landed on the window screen behind and to the left of my desk and chair. He took up residence on that screen and made it his new home. Harris named the mantis “Ralph” because, he said, it reminded him of a friend back home: skinny and bug-eyed.
Ralph soon became my valued assistant.
My first responsibility of the day as junior clerk in the S-1 office—I was still the “junior clerk” because I was the last man assigned to the office—was to come in early each morning and dust everything, make coffee, and knock down spiders and the webs they spun every night in the corners of our office.
The spiders were big as half dollars, leg tip to leg tip, and had bulbous bodies and thick hairy legs. Hitting one with a fly swatter left an unpleasant mess on the wall I wiped off with a wet cloth, which itself left blotches on the wall. Spider disposal became
far more efficient when I used them to fill Ralph’s dietary needs.
I would stand on a chair or a desk in front of the spider web with a pencil in each hand and rapidly circle one of the pencils through the anchoring strands of the spider’s web. The spider would drop straight down on an escape line from the web now wrapped around my pencil. But I quickly rotated the two pencils around each other like a windlass, winding up the escape line while I stepped down from the desk or chair and walked to the window screen.
Stepping up on another chair I had positioned next to Ralph’s screen, I continued rotating the pencils around each other, but now above Ralph. He would rear back in his most prayerful manner, his front arms tight against his chest. Then I stopped rotating the pencils. The spider continued dropping on its escape line, past Ralph, and Ralph snatched it for breakfast.
I found two or three big spiders in the office almost every morning. Ralph couldn’t eat them as fast as I supplied them. Even so, he always grabbed a second spider with his free arm before finishing the first one.
Ralph devoured a spider in ten minutes, sometimes less. With Ralph’s help, I cleanly eliminated all the spiders in the S-1 office within thirty minutes of my early morning arrival. No more spider guts and splotches on the walls from wet rags. Between spider presentations to Ralph, I made coffee, dusted the office, removed my plastic typewriter cover, and laid out my unfinished work from the previous day.
I kept a little hand broom and dustpan hidden between my desk and the wall for sweeping up crusty leg tips Ralph dropped to the floor. Sweeping up those crusty leg tips and other bodily remains was my last “junior clerk” job of the morning. Sometimes I delayed that job into the work day because Ralph ate his third and fourth spider much slower than the earlier ones, and he didn’t eat as much of them.
After breakfast, Ralph always cleaned his face and arms. Then he rested. But he always reared back, ready to attack, if somebody came near or walked past him to the mimeograph room behind my desk.
Occasionally we served Ralph an evening meal. These meals were office-wide projects, and everyone was happy to join in the search for Ralph’s entrées. When our late afternoon hunts were successful, we served him Live Baby Toad on String (in season). Live Baby Lizard on Lassoed Tail was a less eager snatch. Ralph sometimes got kicked by these entrees while he ate them, but he seemed not to mind. For dessert we occasionally served him Fresh Moth Sans Wings on Pencil Point.
Ralph became a celebrity. We talked about him in the mess hall, at the EM club, and in the hooches. Soon clerks started coming from personnel and company offices to see Ralph. Even a few sergeants came by. Men promised me beer at the EM club to see how I fed Ralph spiders, but I rejected their offers. I didn’t want Ralph’s appetite spoiled for morning meals. But when my buddy Jerry from personnel came over to see Ralph, he gave us some stunning news.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but Ralph is a girl. Whoever named her Ralph was a gender-bigoted lunkhead. Just because it’s big doesn’t mean it’s male. The little ones are the males. I suppose you could change her name to Ralphine.” Jerry chuckled.
Adjutant Harris overheard Jerry’s chortling comments and was incensed, which was unusual for Harris. “Why the hell would I name him Ralph if he’s a she?”
“Maybe because you didn’t—”
“Okay, wise guy, prove he’s a female!”
“I don’t know what kind of genitals they have or where to look for them. I’m just telling you what I’ve read and remember from biology class.”
Adjutant Harris ordered Jerry “back to personnel where you belong” and declared Ralph to be a male “no matter what anybody says.”
Despite Ralph’s celebrity status, Colonel Hackett was oblivious to Ralph’s existence until one morning when I was late for work. That delayed my removal of spiders and spider webs. Within moments of his arrival, Colonel Hackett charged out of his office, his morning cigar clenched between his teeth.
“Why is there a large spider hanging in a web above my wall map?” he demanded.
“Yes, Sir. I can explain that. Our spider-killing machine is overloaded right now, but the spider in your office will be processed within minutes.”
Hackett removed the cigar from his mouth and peered at me with deep-set dark eyes. His voice lowered to a purred growl. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Harris, Connor, and Parker, still half asleep, were suddenly wide awake and watching closely to see how much trouble I’d get myself into, because Hackett tolerated no foolishness.
“Sir, I believe I can show you better than I can put it into words. Would you mind stepping to the rear of the office?” I led Hackett between the desks to the window screen behind my desk.
I gestured toward Ralph. “This is our office mascot, Sir.” Ralph turned his head in the direction of my moving hand as though saying hello to Hackett. “Isn’t he magnificent? He stays on this window screen because we feed him our office spiders. He’s almost ready for the spider in your office. The one he’s holding right now is his second spider of the morning. He’s a cold, heartless killer. He eats his prey alive.” I smiled. “His name is Ralph.”
Hackett jutted out his jaw and squinted at Ralph and then at me. He shook his head and walked back into his office. I grinned and gave a thumbs-up to the other guys sitting at their desks.
Hackett said nothing when I entered his office a few minutes later, head down, intent on my mission. I stood on a chair in front of the wall map and wound up the spider, worked him like a yo-yo, and carried the doomed creature out the door I hooked open with my elbow.
Later in the day, Hackett came to my desk and demanded a feeding demonstration. I staged it the next morning by leaving one spider undisturbed in its web until Hackett came to work.
After that, Hackett sometimes came into the clerical office and stood behind me and used a wooden pencil to play with Ralph. Ralph’s triangular head and unblinking black eyes tracked Hackett’s movements with the cold logic of a programmed killer. When Hackett turned to walk back to his office, he always said, “Carry on, soldier.” I always said, “Yes, Sir.”
In mid-afternoon, Ralph sometimes flew the short distance from the window screen to my shoulder. He would stand next to my ear, perfectly still, and watch me type.
One day he climbed down my green fatigue shirt and hung on my chest, perfectly still. He was watching my fingers on the typewriter. About that time, a visiting high-ranking officer came out of Hackett’s office and continued talking to Hackett as he wandered expansively to the rear of the clerical office where I sat typing. He was carrying a manila folder in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He looked at my chest, puzzled, and walked closer as he spoke, trying to distinguish Ralph from my green fatigues.
Ralph suddenly reared up for battle, arms folded, and rustled his wings. The officer jumped back, yelled, “Good God,” and sloshed coffee all over himself and the manila folder. Colonel Hackett, standing in his office doorway, laughed so hard he started coughing.
“Hate to see you in an ambush,” Hackett said, wheezing and laughing.
After that, Connors and Parker brought in two more praying mantises. We thought Big Bertha and Tiny Tim would be happy on the window screen beside Ralph, even though they all acted hostile and rattled their wings when they first met.
A few days later I realized our food resources could not meet the needs of all three mascots. Another problem developed, too.
Tiny Tim was randy. He’d sneak up on Big Bertha with the apparent intent of mounting her. She’d rear back and rattle her wings in a way that would scare any ordinary male silly. But not Tiny Tim. He was persistent.
“He may as well forget it,” Parker said. “Big Bertha’s a feminist.”
“Maybe so,” Connors said, “But little guys are spunky. Maybe he’ll wear her down.”
The fourth night they were together on the window screen, Big Bertha ate Tiny Tim. I found Bertha in the morning with Tiny Tim’s little leg in
her mouth like a dog with a bone.
Then, after two weeks of low-yield spider harvests, Ralph killed and ate most of Bertha. Proof of this second atrocity was my discovery one morning of Bertha’s partially devoured abdomen and wings on the floor below Ralph. This raised our estimation of Ralph. We saw him as a war-hardened killer with a thousand-yard stare.
When our battalion moved from Cu Chi to Lai Khe, we forgot Ralph. It’s hard to believe, but we did. We left him hanging on the office window screen. Several days after the move we asked Hurley, the colonel’s new driver, if there was any chance he could drive back to Cu Chi and get our mascot.
“You’re in luck,” Hurley said. “I’m supposed to drive Colonel Hackett to Cu Chi this afternoon. If I get the chance, I’ll bring Ralph back in a paper bag.”
Early that evening, after returning from Cu Chi and spending an hour dusting and polishing the colonel’s jeep, Hurley visited our hooch.
“Hey, guys,” he called even before the screen door banged shut behind him. He walked down the aisle between the cots, footlockers, and lawn chairs. “I got bad news.”
“What happened?” several of us asked in unison.
“When I got there, guys from the new battalion were moving furniture around in your old office. I asked about the praying mantis and one of them said he’d heard somebody had knocked a big green bug off the back window screen yesterday and stomped it into green goo.”
As it turned out, we didn’t have a convenient source of food for Ralph anyway. Spiders seldom spun webs in the S-1 office at Lai Khe.
****
Saturday, Dec. 6, 1969 - Lai Khe Base Camp
Dear Janice:
We’re set up and fully functional here at Lai Khe Base Camp.
We have new hooches built by the Vietnamese under the guidance of our men from Echo Company. That now seems wrong-headed to me.
After seeing from up in the choppers the enormous size of our base camps at Cu Chi, Long Binh, Ben Hoa, and Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base, it dawned on me the destructive effect we must be having on Vietnam’s economy. We hire thousands of these people to burn our shit, shine our shoes, wash our clothes, and build our hooches, and when we leave, what will these people do? The amount we pay them is enormous compared to the little they can earn in the Vietnamese economy. So after they’ve adjusted their lives to what we’re paying them for being our lackeys, we’ll drop them over an economic cliff when we leave.
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