Drafted

by Andrew Atherton

  Don’t worry. I’ll get back to my normal corrupt self after a while and be upbeat about the good work I’m doing helping get medals for men who shouldn’t be here.

  All the boxes of hi-fi equipment arrived? That’s great.

  Love, Andrew

  Sunday, Dec. 21, 1969 - Lai Khe Base Camp

  Dear Janice:

  Colonel Hackett DEROSED today.

  I interviewed him a week ago for a newspaper article about “His Legacy.” He got pretty chatty.

  He said he was lucky he stayed the full year. Most higher brass serve in Vietnam only six months, which is far less than ideal because it takes that long, Hackett said, for a commander to get a sense of his mission’s obstacles and acquire commitment from his troops. He thinks the reason for the six-month rotation of higher-ranking officers is so more of them can puff up their credentials with service in a war zone. He didn’t explain how he managed to stay a full year. But he said none of this was to be included in the article.

  I thanked him for his candor and told him he sounded like a rebel. He laughed.

  The new commander, Lieutenant Colonel Clive Forester, is strict. Too bound by rules and regulations. Wears tailored fatigues. I haven’t once seen him smile or heard him compliment anybody for good work. He sets everybody on edge. Nobody likes him.

  We’re all thinking about Christmas.

  Oh, yeah. Merry Christmas!

  I look forward to being home with you.

  Love, Andrew

  ROVING GUARD

  The night it happened I was assigned as roving guard for our battalion’s perimeter bunkers. My job was to walk back and forth on a dirt road behind our eight bunkers and make sure no VC suicide sapper snuck through our stretch of perimeter.

  A brightly lit field runs around our entire base camp. Along the inner edge of this field, starting about ten yards in front of our bunkers, coil after coil of razor wire threatens any intruder with being hooked by needle-sharp points sticking out from the sides of hundreds of tiny razors affixed to the wire. Those needle-sharp points hold the intruder while the razor edges slice his flesh as he tries to extract himself. Tin cans, each containing a few pebbles, hang from the razor wire and rattle when jiggled. The wire is held in place by five-foot high metal stakes. Between those stakes, here and there, thin wires stretch to sensitive flares that ignite, when tripped, into brilliant yellow fire that illuminates the position of any person in the vicinity.

  Each bunker has four or five claymore anti-personnel mines set up behind the coils of razor wire, but facing outward, away from the bunkers. Electrical wires from the claymores trail back to the bunkers so the guards, if they see anything moving, can detonate a claymore that contains a pound of C-4 plastic explosive that blows 700 steel balls forward in a 60-degree arc, left to right, so any person within that arc will be rendered into chowder. The guards constantly survey the field from bunkers spaced a half city block apart.

  Nobody knows how sappers get through all those defenses, but they do. Then they harass us with potshots or explosives, or sometimes they wait around and slit the throats of sleeping guards.

  It’s a damn spooky business, walking out there in the dark by myself, looking for men so clever and dedicated they can penetrate our perimeter defenses and sneak into the camp on missions they probably won’t survive.

  I walked along the dirt road behind the bunkers, my helmet on, my flack jacket crisscrossed with two ammo bandoleers, a couple grenades clipped at my shoulders, and my M16 held across my chest, locked and loaded, my thumb on the safety. After calling out the password loud and clear, I stopped at bunkers here and there, bullshit with the guys, and continued my walk under a star-filled sky. The moon was so bright I had a shadow walking behind me in one direction and a shadow walking in front of me when I went in the other direction.

  I was not happy about that bright moon. It made me a prime target for a sniper. He’d be aiming at a moving target from half a mile or more away, and he’d be sighting against the glare of perimeter flood lights, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I still felt like a mouse walking past a hungry cat.

  Around midnight clouds rolled in and obscured the moon. I’d taken a ten-minute break at one of the bunkers and then continued my walk, back and forth, feeling a little more secure. My night vision adjusted to the light filtering through the clouds and I could see quite well except in the shadows. Sometimes I’d stop and listen. Or I’d stare at a point up the road and practice my peripheral night vision by detecting movement by our guys on top of a nearby bunker. Then I’d move on.

  Suddenly a short man carrying a glinting, nickel-plated revolver, and wearing nothing but blue-jean cut-offs and tennis shoes, ran out from the base camp toward the bunkers. He couldn’t be mistaken for a VC. Even so, I flipped off the safety on my M16. The man had a gun and I didn’t know how drunk, stoned, or deranged he might be.

  “Halt,” I yelled. “What’s the password?”

  He didn’t stop running. He yelled over his shoulder, “I’m gonna kill me one of those little bastards.” He was drunk. Stoned guys aren’t that aggressive.

  I flipped my safety back on and followed him to the bunker.

  Forget calling out the password. The men on the bunker heard us and saw us coming. They laughed and did the ass grabbing and poking shit to a drunken man with a loaded gun. I told the stupid fucks I almost shot him and they better get him off the perimeter line or I’d call the Sergeant of the Guard. They said they’d send him back as soon as he sobered up a bit.

  “Okay, but keep him out of my patrol area!”

  How they’d do that I didn’t know. He’d have to cross the road again. Hell, let them deal with it.

  I continued walking and looking. I was almost at the turn-around point at the end of our line of eight bunkers when I heard automatic weapons firing.

  I dropped to the ground. But then I held my head up to see what was happening. Risky thing to do, but I needed to know what was going on.

  I saw muzzle flashes from automatic rifle fire at multiple points along the distant tree line out beyond the perimeter. Sounded like strings of popping firecrackers. Tracers snapped in like green lines drawn straight as a ruler. Snaps and zings. Damn close!

  I put my head back down.

  I was pretty sure this was harassment, not a full scale ground assault. Otherwise they would have preceded it with mortar fire. It wouldn’t last long. The muzzle flashes show where the shooters are, and though tracers show the VC where their rounds are hitting, tracers also reveal the shooter’s position. So they shoot and run since they know our Cobra gunships will be after them within minutes.

  Our bunker guards made me proud. They turned it around like the Mother of God having her butt cheeks pinched. M60s clattered outgoing rounds at six hundred a minute. M16s sputtered like unmuffled motor bikes. Our red tracers stitched the bunker line to the tree line. M79 grenade launchers blooped grenades out among the distant trees where they exploded sounding like M-80 firecrackers.

  Then the VC let fly four or five RPGs like arrows with their feathers on fire. Most of them hit wire or metal stakes and exploded harmlessly. But one RPG skipped along the ground and hit a neighboring bunker, one that wasn’t in my unit. I saw it hit from where I was lying on the road.

  The VC stopped firing just as suddenly as they started. Their side of the firefight didn’t last more than a few minutes. Maybe not even that. Seemed like hours.

  Then two Cobra gunships joined the firefight that already ended, but not quite. The Cobras would try to nail the VC before they could retreat to secure ground or jump back in their tunnels.

  We couldn’t see the Cobras, but we could hear them high above us approaching our section of the perimeter. Then two powerful spot lights blinked on high in the black sky and shined down on the woods behind the tree line. Those two unbelievably bright and narrowly focused spot lights swung back and forth searching for the enemy. I knew, from seeing Cobras fire their mini-guns during the d
ay, they would soon tip forward, suspended in the air, to fire at specific targets and cover them with a carpet of bullets.

  Then the Cobras began firing their mini-guns, one to a chopper. Each spinning six-barreled gun fired six thousand rounds a minute. That’s one hundred rounds a second. Their streams of tracers, one tracer every fifth round, looked like two clusters of red ribbons with their upper ends gathered and pinned at two points in the sky, while their lower ends widened out in multiple streamers that brushed gently, back and forth, against the ground.

  It was so beautiful and gigantic a spectacle I forgot, in the first couple seconds, that those ribbons were puncturing the ground and anything above the ground with death and destruction. Then the sound of the mini-guns reached me.

  Unlike automatic fire from M16s or M60 machine guns in which discrete shots can be heard like washboard bumps under a speeding car, the mini-guns emitted a continuous, guttural roar. The sound shook the air and pressed against my chest. It reminded me that men were being chewed alive by the ends of those pretty ribbons. No movie or painting of the glory and wrath of God at the Last Judgment could be so awesome.

  The Cobra mini-gun show almost over, I waited a few moments and got up and ran doubled-over toward the bunker that got hit. The rocket appeared to have exploded on the face of the bunker. I knew from the way it exploded it didn’t fly through the firing slot and detonate inside, which is what the VC are trying to do when they skip RPGs along the ground toward the bunkers. And I was pretty sure the RPG didn’t hit protective fence mesh in front of the firing slot because almost all RPG screens in front of perimeter bunkers had been long ago rolled up by guards so they could see better. But either way—exploding on the fence mesh or on the face of the bunker—if the men were inside and ducked below the firing slot, they’d probably be okay except for busted eardrums.

  I stopped on the road behind the bunker, knelt on one knee, and did a visual inspection. I couldn’t see anybody on top. I called out the password.

  “Waterspout! Waterspout!”

  No response. They were probably inside.

  If they were inside, they were newbies. Experienced GIs do their guard duty on top of an assigned bunker, behind a waist-high wall of sandbags, so they can see and hear better. Only incoming mortar rounds force them in the bunker. Down there they can’t hear anything. And they can’t see if anybody is coming at them from the right, left, or rear. They see only through a twelve-inch-high firing slot two inches off the ground where they don’t have good perspective and can’t see much of anything at a distance. Vision inside a bunker is made even worse by RPG fence-mesh stretched three or four feet in front of the bunker, which is why most guards roll it up.

  Bending at the waist, I walked slowly toward the bunker. It looked massive. A big black box half-buried in the ground. I started seeing more details.

  No cots or lawn chairs on top. Like I said, the bunker wasn’t ours. We have cots and lawn chairs.

  I walked cautiously, still bent over, to the entrance at the side of the bunker, and called down the password again. Still no response.

  “Hello? You guys okay?”

  Then I thought, Hey, stupid, their ear drums are blown. They can’t hear you.

  “Okay,” I yelled, “I’m coming down. Don’t shoot me!”

  I started down the steps. Dust and smoke from the explosion drifted up around me from the entrance hole.

  At the bottom of three steps I ducked my head and dropped to my knees. I was surrounded by thick darkness pierced by a wide shaft of faint blue light coming through the firing slot from the brightly lit field out front. It backlit the dust and smoke in the bunker air.

  I propped my M16 next to the exit hole. I crawled further into the bunker.

  Similar to our battalion’s bunkers, the fucking ceiling was so low I couldn’t stand up.

  I shifted to my left knee and stuck out my right leg so I could reach in my trouser pocket for my flashlight. My boot pushed against something that felt like a leg. Not good.

  I knew it wasn’t smart to turn on a light inside a bunker because it shines out the firing slot and makes a perfect target for a sniper. But this was an exception. I needed light. So I pressed the rubber-covered button on my flashlight, but it didn’t work. I smacked the flashlight against my palm several times and it blinked on.

  I directed the beam along the front of the bunker. No wire mesh outside the firing slot. Rifles and clackers askew on the floor. Firing slot stripped to raw wood, slivers sticking out in all directions. I turned the flashlight around to the back wall on my right.

  There they were. The RPG must have hit the front wall of the bunker near the firing slot and blown these men to the rear of the bunker. They’d watched it coming at them. Mesmerized. Unbelieving.

  My initial response was revulsion. They did not appear human. They were misshapen obscenities. Violations of human nature. No human being should look like that. No man should have this happen to him.

  The blond haired man nearest me, on my right, was bare-chested and sitting with his back against the wall, his legs splayed out in front of him. His jaw was blown open and hanging at an angle on his chest. His right cheek hung like torn chicken fat from the side of his upper jaw. His right arm was ripped from his shoulder and hung by blue tendons. I could see white bone sticking out the end of his upper arm. Blood pulsed out his shoulder and down his side.

  I turned the flashlight to the left. That man was lying on his right side, his face in a pool of blood. His left arm drooped over his back as though it had no bones. His shirt sleeve was rolled above his large bicep, now soft and flat, and oozing blood from multiple puncture wounds from one-inch splinters. His right arm was underneath him, his right hand and forearm protruded out from under his back. A claymore clacker was half-buried in his forehead. The RPG explosion must have blown the clacker off the bottom of the firing slot just as he ducked.

  Most guards store their clackers—hard plastic electric-pulse generators connected by wires to blasting caps in the claymores—on the bottom ledge of the firing slot to make them easily seen and available. Otherwise they’re on the floor, in the dark, next to the front wall where they can’t be seen but only felt.

  I held the beam from the flashlight on the chest of each man. I couldn’t tell if they were breathing.

  Suddenly the man with the ripped jaw gurgled and his chest expanded with a big intake of air. It startled me. I jerked back and swung the flashlight on him.

  His left eye was uninjured and open. The pupil was enormous. A black hole. Empty. Nothing there.

  Like an idiot I whispered, “Can you hear me? Are you conscious?”

  I looked around for the field phone. It was ripped partway off the wall. I tried to reconnect the wires—my hands shaking—but the wires weren’t long enough to patch together.

  The Sergeant of the Guard would come soon anyway. He’d miss their sit-com reports. And surely somebody from another bunker saw this happen and would call it in. Or their roving guard would come by.

  In the meantime, what should I do? These men were surely dying. And if the guy with the clacker in his skull wasn’t dying, he’d be a vegetable if he survived.

  I couldn’t leave them like this. I had to do something. But what? I had no medical supplies. I wouldn’t know how to use them on wounds like this anyway. There was a first aid kit on the back wall in the upper right corner. How would that help? A tourniquet? A bandage? Iodine?

  Then it occurred to me. There is something I can do. I can end this nightmare for these men.

  Wouldn’t that be horribly wrong?

  No. It’s what I’d want done for me. No question about it.

  Can I get away with it?

  Why am I asking that? If I were laying here like they are … Why not do what’s right in a war that’s nothing but evil? End this defilement of their humanity!

  I crawled over and grabbed my M16 leaning next to the steps. I crawled back and faced the two men on my knees. I laid t
he flashlight on the floor and directed it at the man on the right. I was trembling. I tried not to look at his mouth or his eye.

  I raised the M16 to my shoulder. I didn’t know where to aim. Where should I shoot this man? I lowered the rifle and shook my head.

  Wait for the Sergeant of the Guard! Or the roving guard! Whatever battalion maintains this bunker has a roving guard, too.

  But these men are my responsibility, too. I have to be strong. They would want this done for them.

  So, damn it, shoot the man! Go on. Put him out of his misery! He’s almost dead anyway.

  But where should I aim?

  Not the head. Don’t shoot him in the head. Not with his eye open. Shoot him in the chest.

  I aimed at the man’s chest.

  Oh God, he was a mess. Slivers of wood peppered his face and upper torso. He was covered with blood. Shadows hid much of it. His boots and legs blocked the flashlight. But I could see patches of white skin over the sights of my rifle.

  Sweat dripped in my eyes. I swiped at my forehead and returned my hand to the rifle’s hand guard. I shook so violently I worried I’d miss him entirely or merely increase his agony. I lowered the rifle. Resting on both knees, I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and calmed down. I opened my eyes and raised my rifle.

  Aim to my right of his solar plexus. Hold steady! Ready. Aim—

  And I pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  I quickly tried the cocking lever but I’d already locked and loaded on the road. I pointed the rifle to the side of the bunker and pulled hard on the trigger. Nothing. The trigger must be jammed.