by Stuart Keane
After that, my mother and I were alone.
You may find it inappropriate, but I forgive my father for his ways. My mother's abuse was uncalled for; he can rot in Hell for that. You can say he got his comeuppance. No, my father's abuse readied me for my life thereafter. I took care of my mother. I got any job I could find. Paper routes, part-time work at the local store. My mother worked as a waitress to make ends meet. We barely did, our wages paid the bills and left a little for other things. We weren't rich, but we were happy. A family. Nothing would tear us apart again.
Then, one fateful day in 1967, I got my call up.
The Vietnam War came a-beckoning.
Fast forward twenty years, and tears are streaming down my face for the first time in my adult life. I thought I was numb to these feelings; thought I had pushed them to the back of my conscience with the memory of all the horrors I've seen and done.
Looking at the bed beside me, I know I was wrong.
Oh God, what have I done?
Vietnam, and my father, has a lot to answer for.
Now, if I offend anyone by comparing my father's domestic abuse to my participation in the Vietnam War, I apologize. For me, they were very similar. Strategic battlefields, complete opposites in setting, but similar nonetheless. Avoiding my father's beatings or a shot in the head by a fucking Charlie, that was my teenage years.
Like many of my fellow soldiers, I wasn’t ready for Vietnam. I doubt anyone was, regardless of distinction. There were the veterans, the people who had experience before their call-up, and the younger soldiers, people with minimal training, those drafted from school, given a crash course, kitted up, an M16 shoved in their hand, propaganda scribed, and ordered to go out and fight. You even had the crazy people who did it for shits and giggles. We were all in the same boat, expected to fight a war we didn’t want to fight. Unprepared lambs for the perpetual slaughter.
You don’t fight a war that way. Well, you wouldn’t think so anyway.
But we did.
I did it. And I survived.
Others weren’t so lucky.
As I look in the grimy bathroom mirror now, twenty years later, I still see Rollins over my shoulder, staring back at me. His face is a mess, a hole where his left eye should be, the skull from the eyebrow upwards missing. Blood streams down his face, drenching his uniform and splattering on my bathroom floor. I can barely make out his name on his breast, blood-soaked and muddied. My best friend during the war, we fought together for many a year, slaughtered many a gook that came our way. We saved lives, and we took lives.
I haven’t slept properly for seven years. Not a night passes that I don’t wake up covered in sweat, screaming at the image of my best friend dying in my arms. I try to shave in the mirror, and although my face is clean and smooth once the razor glides over the coarse bristles, I still feel fragments of his brain sliding down my face, a red trail in their wake. The trail breaks at my top lip, slipping down my neck and into my uniform. Blood follows, forced downward by the dousing rain of Vietnam. In the dreams, there's always rain. My bathroom haunts me.
Forced into a waiting helo before the Vietcong could kill me, I couldn’t even bring his body with me. As we flew away, firing our last bullets at the trees, at hidden snipers and Charlie, I saw Rollins lying there, his blood, face, and brain splattered across the long leaves surrounding him. I saw a fucking gook emerge from the trees, look up at us, hesitate, smile, and then plow another round into my friend's chest for confirmation. Blood sprayed him, and he stole Rollins's boots without another thought. I looked down, vehemence scorching in my veins. My jaw clenched – I thought I would snap some teeth as they pushed against one another – and my skin bristled with absolute fury. I trembled and considered jumping out, landing on the cunt and smashing his face with my rifle butt.
The gunshot is probably the most terrifying thing I ever witnessed in that shithole. Funny, if you consider the travesty of the Vietnam war.
Rollins staring at me is way up there too.
Horrific.
Nightmares. You see things you can't forget.
Like that final gunshot, I’m helpless to do anything.
That gunshot wakes me at night. I call it the 'bourbon blast' because every time it wakes me, I make a futile attempt to drink it away.
Tonight, I wish it would work. Just once.
Operation Firefox was a fuckup from day one.
Rollins and I were a year into our service. Everything up to landing in the jungle is a blur. The first thing I remember is checking out our weapons. I was loading my pistol when Rollins received his M16.
"Hang on a minute. Taylor, this is a second-hand weapon." Scratched into the side was the name JIGSAW. The name didn’t ring a bell to me. "How about a new one?"
Taylor, a scrawny bag of bones with bifocals and confidence belying his wiry frame, sneered at Rollins. "It's all we have."
"Really? We’re fighting a war, and Uncle Sam can't afford new weapons? What a fucking joke."
"That’s the truth. You're lucky you get that one. If you don’t like it, write a letter to the president. I'm sure he'll respond in due course," Taylor sneered and looked down at his clipboard.
"So if I take this gun, what's to say it won't get me killed?"
"It's been tested. It's functioning. We had to wash blood and bone fragments out of it, but otherwise, it's fine. Just don’t shoot yourself in the face, and you're frosty."
"I don’t think Jigsaw said that. What happened to him?"
"I don’t fucking know. I'm not his fucking supervisor. Take the gun and fuck off."
Rollins's jaw knotted, but he remained silent. I grabbed his arm and forced him out of the tent. Sand and red flare smoke billowed around us as a helo lifted off. The heat was unbearable as it always was in the early afternoon. Sweat prickled my forehead, the constant itch could drive you to the brink of insanity. From our left, four men ambled over. Our squad. I checked Rollins, who was stripping the M16 apart and checking the innards.
"Sir. Sir." A blond-haired man saluted us individually.
"At ease."
It was Russo. Beside him were Gillicutty, Pearson, and Rogan. Rogan was a teenager, fifteen years old, one of the youngest men I've ever served with. He didn’t look a day over it either, his bony frame and blemished skin a dead giveaway. Gillicutty was a stocky fellow with biker tattoos, a bushy beard and a voice deeper than Hades. Pearson was a tall, silent fellow and, as I later found out, a mean shot. The guy had ice running through his veins, a stone cold, calculating killer. He was the most experienced of my new recruits. Uncle Sam would have been proud.
"Can I help you, gentlemen?"
"We're here to join your detail, sir." Rogan's voice had hardly broken, sounding similar to a little girl with a sore throat. I laughed.
"You're joking, right?"
"No joke … sir." Rogan was staring ahead.
"I said at ease, private."
Rogan loosened slightly and looked me in the eye. Abject terror stared back at me. Sure, he did his best to push it down and fit in, but you can't hide fear like that; it's the little voice at the back of your brain. In war, fear is your worst enemy. It can get you killed.
Mind you, I don’t blame him. We should all have had that look in our eye. Balls or bravado or utter stupidity, we all thought it would be a piece of cake. We thought we were invincible.
We were wrong.
Operation Firefox was a go.
*****
I look at the bed, not believing my eyes. I fight back tears, turn to the mirror and slide the razor over my face, wiping away a strip of shaving foam. Smooth shaved skin remains. I stare at the mirror and my reflection blurs. For an instant, I see my father, and I wonder why. I haven't remembered his face in years.
I haven't seen him since … since … it eludes me now.
Yet I find myself apologizing.
I'm sorry.
*****
We jumped from the chopper as it landed. Pearson to
ok point, then Gillicutty and Rogan followed. Russo went last behind Rollins and me. Heat smacked us in the face. Leaves and grass shot up, providing slight cover from any oncoming fire. We didn’t receive any on this drop. I once saw a man ripped in half by an RPG blast on a landing. The helo didn’t survive. On that occasion, it would be three days before we were rescued, drinking shitty water and nursing a soon-to-be amputee.
He died on the helo on the way out.
That's a story for another day.
The helo lifted away, leaving us on the ground. We merged into the undergrowth and became one with the jungle. Single line formation. Our destination was a small village in the forest west of Da Nang. One of the worst places to be during 'Nam, as it turned out.
The mission should have been simple. The village held a couple hundred people - villagers including kids and women. Innocent people, or so we thought. All we had to do was secure it.
In war, no one is innocent. It's a myth. Innocence is a casualty.
We soon found the village. Drenched in sweat, I swiped my slick forehead on my soggy sleeve. Silence surrounded us, broken occasionally by Rogan sniffing or Gillicutty chewing on his c-ration Chiclets. We pushed through the trees and staggered into an opening, a lopsided circle of mud dotted along the edge with crooked bamboo huts. A wooden stage sat a few feet off the ground in the center. On it sat food and several tables covered with rice bags and boxes. Two women were tending to the table. A third woman was rocking a baby wrapped in a dirty white sheet. I couldn’t hear her, but her lips were moving, cooing to the baby.
The silence was friendly.
I looked around the village and saw mothers bathing children, kids playing with a beaten football. Normal civilian activity.
Then there was us, six American grunts, armed and dangerous; a certified killer, a biker, a teenager with no pubes, and three soldiers, standing on the edge of their village, encroaching on their territory. When they looked up at us, the glares we got were bona fide evil.
We all smiled, laughed it off, thinking our weapons would buy us some time. Typically we’d walk through the village, do our duty, and leave. No altercation and no aggression. The locals knew the drill – let the Yanks get on with it. A little give and take allowed everyone to get along.
Sometimes.
A small boy with disheveled black hair and a dirty white t-shirt ran over, yelling something in his native tongue. He headed straight to Russo, who stiffened. He stepped forward and kneeled down. We all started walking around him, heading towards the huts. The kid reached Russo and handed him a playing card. Russo looked at it, confused. The kid turned and ran back to his mother as she rocked a baby in a makeshift crib. Russo stood up and chuckled. "Jack of Diamonds."
Rogan looked over, lowering his weapon. "Huh?"
"Jack of Diamonds. It's a playing card." He flipped the card between his fingers.
I kept my eyes on the village. "It's a death card. We leave them on the Charlie, so their comrades know who killed them. Bragging rights, if you will."
"Why did the kid give it to me?"
"I don’t know, maybe he found it on his gook father and thought it was cool."
Russo laughed. "Creepy shit, if you ask me."
"Happens all the …"
I didn’t see the newborn baby flying through the air until it smacked the dirt at Russo's feet. Slow motion took over; the baby's cry distorted in flight, sounding like some deranged battle cry. On instinct, I raised my weapon. The small body rolled over, dead, spraying blood. Russo kicked the body. I heard a metal clunk. "What the …"
The baby exploded.
Russo evaporated in a mist of dark red and shrapnel, spraying us all with blood and bone. The blast propelled Gillicutty backward, and he crashed into a tree, breaking his back instantly. He slumped in a broken heap in the long grass.
The woman in the center was aiming an AK-47 at me.
"Shit," I heard Rogan scream as we all dove for cover. Pearson walked forward, took aim, and blew the bitch's head clean off. Her head was there, and then it wasn’t. She dropped onto her table, spilling rice onto the dirt.
Several hut doors opened. Women walked out, armed with rifles. Several children ran out too, armed with knives.
"Fall back!"
Gunfire shattered the mundane jungle noises that were so peaceful mere minutes before. Rollins and I retreated to the opening we'd come through and grabbed Gillicutty. We dragged him by his arms as Rogan and Pearson mounted an offense. Gillicutty groaned as we pulled him through the grass, the lush blades whipping him in the face. Female shrieks filled the gaps between the thunders of gunfire. Bullets shredded the trees and leaves around us. Wood and shredded foliage rained down on us. Dirt spat up at our feet, bullets missing us by inches.
If they'd been Vietcong, we'd have all died immediately. With firepower like that, we should've been bullet-ridden corpses. Luckily, these villagers weren't trained in fending for themselves and defending their country from the Yanks they so despised.
You don’t get luck like that twice.
We found a felled tree and used it for cover. "Men, mount an offense. Rogan, you and Pearson take left. Rollins, you're with me." I leaned down and slapped Gillicutty. He was alive but severely injured. "Gill, you with me?"
No response. His head was moving, but otherwise he was gone. "Shit."
Bark exploded behind me. I leveled my M16 and took aim. I took out two women and a child who was about to leap at us. His chest exploded in a burst of crimson, and his small frame slapped the tree beside him. The women hurtled to the ground, their guns clattering in the mud beside them. My fellow soldiers were all firing, taking down their attackers.
For a bit, we were winning.
Then Pearson stood up and walked into the open. He took his pistol from his holster and started firing, hitting his target with each shot. Bodies fell one after the other, slapping the blood-soaked mud.
He didn’t have enough bullets.
On a reload, a stray Vietcong emerged from the bushes beside us and screamed at him, "Migook. Migook!"
In his arm was a long tube attached to a pipe, which spiraled around to a shiny canister on his back.
A flamethrower.
Fire launched into the air with a suppressed roar. To this day, I can feel its heat searing my sweaty brow. Pearson didn’t stand a chance. He erupted in a burst of fire and flame. Within seconds, the cloying, sickening stench of scorched flesh singed our nostrils and made me gag.
You can train for anything in the forces, but that smell will always get you.
Pearson screamed and flailed, his arms whipping in the air. He ran at the Vietcong and launched himself on his attacker. It took me a second to realize the danger. "Get down!"
Pearson smothered his attacker in flame, thus warming the flamer fuel on his back. An explosion tore a hole in the jungle, taking out several maniacal women and children. Bodies erupted and spattered the foliage with blood and shattered bone. A child was whipped into the air, his body snapped across a tree trunk, becoming entangled in the branches. Blood sluiced from his broken body like a demented waterfall. I groaned and stood up, dragging Gillicutty through the opening. Rollins and Rogan followed, the latter was terrified and whimpering.
In the opening, our backs were to the water and mountains. Any imminent threat would come from the war zone we'd just escaped. Rollins wound up his radio and called it in. We needed an evacuation chopper.
Distant gunfire told us we weren't out of the woods yet. Literally.
"What do we do?" Rollins was addressing me. He tapped a fresh magazine against his helmet, and then rammed it into the M16. His arms shook.
"We hold off the gooks until the chopper arrives."
"And if we can't?"
"We can."
"But …"
"We can." I looked at Rollins and nodded. Rollins glanced at Rogan, who was on the brink of losing control. He reloaded his gun several times, each time with a full magazine clasped in a tremb
ling fist, and he was chanting incoherent utterings that sounded like a prayer. His flesh was pale except for the odd splash of blood. He stared at the unbridled horror of the Vietnam War. The slaughter and the blood, the death and the chaos. I glanced up at the dead boy in the tree, his neck snapped at an awkward angle. I sighed.
Rollins looked at me again and nodded. He understood.
Protect the new guy. His innocence was already dead, though.
"Sir?" Rogan was addressing me now.
"Yes, private?" My eye remained on the tree line, as the gunshots grew ever closer.
"I can't do this."
"You can, private."
"I can't. I can't." Tears streamed down his pockmarked face.
I turned to him and slapped him. "You can, and you will, private. If you don’t, a thousand Vietcong are going to burst out of that jungle right there and fucking murder us. They'll shoot us, take out clothes and guns, and probably rape our corpses. They'll kill us all. Our families will never see us again; Rollins here will never fuck his wife again …"
"I don't have a …"
"… and you won't get a chance to see your eighteenth birthday, spend it with your future wife, who is out there. You won't grow up to have a little Rogan of your own, to do your family proud. Are you going to let the VC take that from you? You're not, because we're fucking Americans, okay? We stand and fight until the last. We won't go down at the hand of any fucking gooks."
Rogan nodded. He wiped his face. "Sorry, sir. I won't let it happen …”
An arrow pierced Rogan's face, spearing his eyeball on its tip. Blood sprayed me in the face, and I flinched. Rollins stood up beside me and fired into the jungle. Rogan's teenage body slumped to the ground and rolled down the bank into the river. I looked down at Gillicutty, and he was non-responsive. I kicked his body to make sure.
Nothing.
"Just the two of us, buddy," Rollins uttered.
He was wrong.
It was the three of us. It was me, Rollins, and the ghost of my dead father.