Drafted

by Andrew Atherton

  Foley got to the kid, tied his green T-shirt around the boy’s leg up by the knee—stones, dirt, even weeds were blown into the kid’s calf, bulking it up—and carried the stunned boy back to the road. The crew’s RTO had already called for a dust-off.

  The kid lived. Minus one foot.

  The officer in charge of the road repair crew came into S-1 in the late afternoon to tell Colonel Forester about it, but Forester wasn’t in his office and hadn’t left word where he’d be. The officer gave me a summary of the story and said he wanted to submit an award recommendation for Foley. I offered to help write it, but the officer said he’d do it himself. I was glad. I didn’t want to help.

  Another day in a war zone.

  Love, Andrew

  Sunday, Mar 15, 1970 - Lai Khe Base Camp

  Dear Janice:

  My replacement arrived today. That gives him a few days to learn the ropes before I DEROS on March 20. That’s more break-in time than I had.

  Cecil Miguel. Nice fellow from Arizona. Attended college until he ran out of money. That’s when the draft caught him.

  He’ll do fine with awards work. Smart. Types well.

  I took him over to meet the guys in personnel.

  I’ll hang round the office a couple hours in the mornings while he finds out what he doesn’t know. Then I’ll go read for awhile. Come back in the afternoon. See if he has more questions for me. Then back to the books. Or a good smoke. Probably a good smoke.

  I won’t write again. I’d be home before the letter reaches you.

  I look forward to seeing you and being with you.

  Love, Andrew

  GETTING OUT AND GOING HOME

  Two hundred of us sat shoulder to shoulder in a DC 707, our seatbelts buckled, waiting for takeoff. We felt naked without our weapons and helpless without an avenue of escape. We worried the plane would be hit by a mortar round or RPG while still on the tarmac. A lone voice from the rear of the plane expressed our one and only thought: “For Christ’s sake, let’s get this thing off the ground.”

  The air conditioning was off. The fans were off. Our newly issued jungle fatigues—stiff with sizing—were black and soggy under every arm and down every back. The whole plane smelled of ripe funk and wet canvas.

  “Sorry for the inconvenience,” the pilot announced through little speakers above our heads. “We won’t be turning on the air conditioning until we’re at a predetermined altitude which we hope to reach quickly. Good to have you on board. We’ll be on our way shortly.”

  When our Silver Bird of Paradise finally lifted off the tarmac at Bien Hoa Air Force Base, a few men whooped, but most of us held our breath. The pilot banked the plane hard to the right, then pushed full-throttle at a sharp angle into the sky. My chest vibrated with the roar of the jet engines. The sides of the cabin trembled. After a half a minute that seemed like an hour the pilot reduced our angle of ascent, backed off the throttle, and turned on the fans and air conditioning.

  For the remainder of the trip, we sat dumbstruck. Head-whacked. One minute we were soldiers in tropical heat and humidity worrying about incoming rockets and mortars or an ambush out of nowhere, and the next minute we were sky high in air-conditioned comfort on a commercial aircraft smelling the perfume of round-eyed stewardesses in short skirts handing us cups of fresh coffee and cellophane-wrapped sandwiches.

  Men all around me shook their heads and said things like, “I don’t believe it” and “This is unreal.” Our sense of unreality was far more complex than a year-long dream come true or the surprise that our tour in Vietnam was finally done and we survived.

  When we stepped through the doorway of that plane, we stepped back in time to a way of living and thinking now foreign to us. Memories of our civilian lives could not compete with Vietnam memories of such intensity and surreal flash they robbed all other memories of reality.

  Living in a war zone had forced us to expect dismemberment or death, if not today, then maybe tomorrow. So we were always tense—our muscles tight, often without our conscious awareness—and we were attuned to sounds and alert to signals of any threat to our survival. That slowed the passage of time to a crawl, for when danger was eminent, we lived every minute as though it were an hour. And when danger was not eminent, we experienced things with greater appreciation—veins in a blade of grass, a cooling breeze across the face and arms, bright stars in a sky of infinite darkness; even the gray plastic weaving of sandbags was marvelous to behold—each thing revealed to us, in what might be our shortened lives, its singular beauty and the wonder of existence. Living life with such intensity turned days into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years.

  But it wasn’t only our memories of civilian times that seemed unreal by comparison to our Vietnam experiences. How we saw ourselves and who we were—our very identities—had changed from what they had been a year or so ago.

  We were state-sanctioned killers, willing or actual; some of us were vicious abusers and torturers; still others were annihilators of entire villages with one radio call to napalm bombers or Puff the Magic Dagon flying high in the sky. Basic Training began the changes, but Vietnam completed them.

  Stepping into that plane, we faced the expectations of those who waited for us to return home as the men we were before, but maybe with a few bad experiences we’d set aside as we began living again our previous lives. But we could not live up to those expectations. We were not the naïve, idealistic youth we once were. The thought of getting jobs and joining our loved ones in maintaining a well-painted, plasterboard and plastic world seemed like a comedy fit for a stage.

  Then a gestalt shift would occur and we’d see our current selves as prior selves would see us—coarse, angry, dark with guilt, contemptuous of our country’s leaders—and then nothing at all seemed real, including ourselves.

  Who am I? Who will I be when I get back home? How will loved ones see me and how will I see them? In what, in a fucked-up war, can I take pride? How can I hold my head up after being such a fool as to believe my country’s leaders spoke the truth?

  Prior to boarding the Silver Bird of Paradise, I spent a full day at 90th Replacement Facility at Long Binh Base Camp. Homeward-bound GIs drove and flew to the 90th from all over South Vietnam. Many of us had not slept the night before. Some got drunk, others stoned. Since few of us knew men outside our immediate units, and since few men in a platoon or a company departed Vietnam on the same day, we were strangers to each other at the 90th.

  Hundreds of us milled around the compound. There was no sequence to follow for many of the things we had to do, and other things required a precise but unfamiliar step-by-step procedure. Sergeants yelled instructions, but we weren’t familiar with the names of the documents or the names of the buildings they shouted at us. Men waited in lines in front of every building and Quonset hut, but few signs indicated or explained what was going on inside, and those signs were sun-bleached beyond reading. So we’d choose a line, ask the men in front of us what the line was for—“Fuck if I know, but it’s good as any”—and wait our turns to fill out forms and hear briefings.

  After hours of confusion and form-filling, I was told I needed new boots and new fatigues, and I would not be allowed on the plane without them. Why I needed a new uniform was beyond me, but I wanted on that plane. So I waited in a long line at a warehouse for new clothes. In the warehouse I was told I wouldn’t be allowed on the plane unless I got a haircut. Apparently the Army wanted its returning soldiers to look shiny and new, ready for patriotic reunion photos with mothers, wives, kids, and the family dog.

  Wearing my new boots and fatigues, I joined the long line of men waiting for a haircut. I waited thirty minutes and only ten or twelve men were ahead of me when the two barbers went to lunch. An hour-and-a-half later I got my haircut. Then I stood in line to exchange my Military Payment Certificates for American dollars. After that I waited in line with my duffel bag for a contraband shakedown. Finally, late in the evening, twelve hours after my arrival a
t the 90th Replacement Facility, a sergeant bellowed a flight manifest for the next plane, and he called my name.

  I hadn’t eaten all day, but I didn’t care. I was going home.

  Our flight to the States was boring and emotionally exhausting. Every time I thought about seeing Janice and holding her in my arms, my stomach clenched, my muscles stiffened, and I’d get an erection. But imagination carried me no further. Other than going to bed with Janice, nothing else materialized in my mind. I could not imagine what I’d do the day following my return home. Or the day after that, or the week or month after that. Nothing other than seeing Janice seemed a real possibility.

  Even arriving in the States would be a bummer because I’d need to go through out-processing—“might take a whole day,” a sergeant told me—and then I’d board another plane for a five- or six-hour flight from California to Detroit where Janice would be waiting for me.

  But when our plane landed at Travis Air Force Base in California nineteen non-stop hours after taking off from Bien Hoa Base Camp, everybody cheered and I did, too. In a wonder-world delirium of dissociation and fatigue, we filed off the plane and boarded busses headed for Oakland Army Discharge Center. Nothing seemed real. Blink and we’d be back in Vietnam.

  At the Discharge Center a staff sergeant—a brush-cut pretty boy with bleached hair—told us where to pile our duffel bags. Then Pretty Boy directed us to the center of a gymnasium and instructed us to count off into groups, twenty men to a group. He assigned a number to each group. While he was talking, my mind went blank from exhaustion. When I refocused, he was telling us to find a place on the bleachers extending from three walls of the gymnasium. The fourth wall, the one without bleachers, had a double door that led to another large room. Three hundred men, maybe more, were already sitting on the three banks of bleachers.

  As we walked to the bleachers I asked a GI walking next to me what Pretty Boy said near the end of the briefing. I explained I’d blanked out. The GI told me someone would call out our group number. When we heard our group number called, we should go through the double doors into the adjoining out-processing room. “The sergeant said if we don’t hear our number and our group goes in without us, we won’t be processed until they finish with the guys on the next incoming plane.”

  We all assumed our numbers would be called within several hours, so nobody made an effort to organize us into sitting together so we’d be sure somebody in our twenty-man group would hear our number when it was called. You might think that was foolish of us, and it was. But most of us were draftees, and we’d grown to hate any expression of Army authority that told us, hour after hour and day after day, what to do. So any draftee who attempted to take charge, or suggest a system of organization and cooperation, would have been asked, “So who the fuck are you?”

  Disdaining “herd” mentality, we scattered over the bleachers looking for seats that didn’t encroach upon the space of men already there. I climbed the center bleacher and found a seat opposite the double doorway leading to the out-processing room. I figured whoever called out the group numbers would be coming through those doors. I asked several men sitting near me how long they’d been there.

  “I come in yesterday,” said a thin GI with red hair, bad acne, a southern drawl, and three day’s worth of spotty pink whiskers.

  A chubby black guy sitting next to me—wide nose, thick lips, purple shaving bumps on his double-chin—said, “I been kickin’ it so long I don’t remember when I started kickin’ it.”

  Thumping sounds under the bleachers caught my attention. I looked down between the benches and saw a GI in only his undershirt and boxer shorts. He was banging his head on the wood frame of the bleacher where it was bolted to the wall. Looked and sounded like it would hurt like hell. The men around me ignored him.

  “My God, look at that guy,” I said. “Shouldn’t we go down there and stop him before he injures himself?”

  “Don’t do it, man,” said the red-haired GI. “That guy’s crazy. Some of us went down earlier and he went nuts. Must of seen some heavy shit.”

  “Or done uppers on the plane,” said the black guy next to me.

  “Either way, can’t help a man doesn’t want help,” said the redheaded GI.

  Two MPs standing near the double doors started walking across the gym toward the man banging his head. The man stopped as the MPs approached him under the bleechers.

  “Hey, I told you before, keep the hell away from me,” he shouted. The MPs moved closer. The man screamed, “Hey, I’ll kill you, I swear I’ll kill you.”

  “Leave him alone,” a GI yelled from the far-left bleachers. “Why don’t you guys go cruise a bar for drunks?”

  One MP called out, “You mind your own business, smartass. We don’t need any help from you.”

  “You cocksucker,” the man on the bleacher yelled back with a chuckle. He was giddy, over the edge.

  Everybody sat up to see what would happen. One of the MPs turned and was walking toward the guy who’d yelled. But the guy was on a roll and wasn’t half done.

  “If that soldier wants to knock his head against a post or wall or whatever the fuck it is, he won’t be doin’ no different than what he’s been doin’ all year long. So you get the hell out of here before every grunt in this room helps me stomp you ass-wipes in the ground. An’ you wanna call more MPs in here? Well, you go right ahead, you shit-for-brains. Bare-knuckled we’ll take on the whole fuckin’ goddamn mess of you, so help me God, you buncha piss-ants.”

  The whole gymnasium erupted with the joy of releasing long-suppressed frustration. Every one of us was on his feet yelling and stomping. The ceramic-surfaced brick walls of the gymnasium bounced back thunder. The bleachers trembled and shook. We stomped and hooted, whistled and cheered. Once started we couldn’t stop. The two MPs looked at each other, their faces turned white, and they walked double-time back through the double doors.

  The MPs’ exit gave us another reason to stomp and cheer. Several men near me had tears in their eyes. Men were slapping each other skin and giving each other high fives. We continued the ranting and stomping another three minutes.

  It was one of the best times I’d had since I was drafted. If those MPs had made a dismissive wave of their hands or flipped us the bird, we would have run down those bleachers and torn them limb from limb.

  But after sitting down, still laughing and joshing and making jokes about MPs, we settled into more waiting and mindless boredom.

  But then one of the men yelled, “Hey, anybody who’s a medic, go down there and check out that head-banger. Looks like he’s unconscious. Got blood on his head.”

  Four men jumped up, presumably medics. Now everybody was engaged and ready to help each other. The four men, from different parts of the gymnasium, started down the bleachers and were about to run to where the head-banger lay bloody and unconscious. But they stopped when two MPs came jogging in with a stretcher and headed for the guy under the bleachers. But they weren’t the only MPs who came back in the gymnasium.

  Six more MPs, including the two guys who left the gym a few minutes earlier, came double-timing in and stood at modified parade-rest, three MPs on each side of the double door. Each man held a M16 at waist level, the muzzle pointed down, one hand on the pistol grip and the other hand on the barrel’s hand guard. Then an officer walked through the door and stood with his feet spread apart and his fists on his hips. Six more MPs entered through the double door on my left, the one we’d used to enter the gym. They also stood at modified parade rest, each man holding a M16 at waist level.

  This was definitely an “oh shit” moment.

  “Okay men, I want your attention and you better listen up real good,” yelled the officer. He kept his fists balled and on his hips. He was red-in-the-face angry.

  “I’m Captain Lawrence James. What just happened in here will not happen again without the most severe consequences. I understand you men are tired, frustrated, and you’ve come back from Vietnam with a lot on
your minds. But you threaten one of my MPs again or you stage some kind of brainless insurrection, and this is what will happen. The men at these doors will close and lock them from the outside. Then we’ll toss in two CS gas grenades. When we’re sure you’re totally immobilized, we’ll open the doors and carry you out on stretchers and court-martial you on charges of insubordination, insurrection, and threatening a superior. You’ll spend most of the rest of your life at hard labor at Fort Leavenworth. What you just did carries heavy legal implications, and I have full power and authority to take the measures I’ve just described. Good day, gentlemen,”

  Nobody made a peep while Captain James was talking. Then he swiveled an about-face and left the gym. The twelve MPs, however, remained stationed by the doors at parade-rest.

  We all sat looking at each other. Stunned. Suddenly everybody was talking, but quietly. Nobody stood up. Nobody declared contempt of James’s threat. And nobody had any doubt that James meant what he said. His description of our behavior as being an “insurrection” was sobering. It put our angry “uprising” in a legal context nobody around me had thought about. And the threatened punishment was serious.

  We calmed down and began waiting, again, for our group’s number. After a while, apparently as I was dozing, the twelve armed MPs left the gymnasium.

  Every forty-five minutes or so—but it was hard to tell because I kept nodding off and couldn’t remember to check my watch or even remember what time it was after I did check it—Sergeant Pretty Boy walked through the double doors and shouted the number of the next group for processing. He shouted the number twice. But the size of the gymnasium, the undercurrent of noise from the men, the southern drawl of Pretty Boy, and the few seconds it took to wake up, combined to make the shouted number unintelligible. Several men yelled, “Why not write the number on a chalkboard?” Pretty Boy ignored them.