13th Valley

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Egan’s eyes darted back and forth across the Phu Bai base. Keep yer ass covered, Mick, he told himself. Keep yer eyes en ears open, yer mouth shut. Just cause yer paranoid don’t mean they aint out to get ya.

  After Hamburger Egan began to feel that he had become a machine. He had seen new friends die: six men from his company, two from his platoon, one from his squad. And the wounded. That was worse. But he did not freak—not immediately. He became the machine, hard and invulnerable. “Don’t mean nothin,” he had learned to say. “Just say, ‘Fuck it,’ and drive on.”

  On the third night of the stand-down after Dong Ap Bai Egan got very drunk and very stoned and his old indignation revived and he stood in front of the brigade officer’s club screaming. “FUCKERS. MOTHER FUCKERS. COCKSUCKIN MOTHER FUCKIN REMFS. I’M HOLDIN YOU PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR GREER EN MILLS. EN FOR KANSAS CITY. I’M HOLDIN COURT. ME EN GOD. RIGHT FUCKIN HERE, FUCKERS. RIGHT FUCKIN NOW. YOU FUCKIN PIGS. YER GUILTY. YER GUILTY OF SENDIN KANSAS CITY EN MILLS EN ME UP THEM FUCKIN HILLS.

  YER GUILTY OF SENDIN MILLS EN GREER UP INTO THEM FIFTY ONE CALS. I’M SENTENCING YOU ALL TO DEATH BY M-A. FUCKIN LIFER PIG REMFS …”

  Someone had hit Egan from behind and had carried him off to a bunk. The next morning he had found himself an E-2 Private with a choice of standing court-martial for attempted murder or of transferring to the 7th of the 402d. He chose the transfer. Over the next few months he became more paranoid, more defensive, more closed. He became sly. They called him The Boonierat. When men got together during stand-down they would swap stories of the things they had seen him do. “You wanta see something beautiful, Man?” an infantryman would say to another when they were drinking. “Then you oughta see Egan in contact. Him and maybe Pop. Nothin can touch em. Man, Egan is so fast, so powerful … Man, it’s like … it’s like beauty. It’s just beautiful.” And the second soldier would say, “I know. I seen him once. That 16’s like his hand, like he was born with it. I seen him kill four dinks with four rounds. And they was firin at him. I shit you not.”

  And Egan became cunning.

  Somebody’s always fucking with somebody in the rear, he thought as he approached the Record Center Building. Fuck the Army. Fuck the green machine. Salute this pig. Salute that pig. Egan paused as thoughts ran in his head. If a pig wants ta get rid of a dude he had him assault 937 or Bloody Ridge and he says it’s for the Glory of the Infantry. Demented Fuckers. Half the time the dude don’t get wasted. Somebody else gets it. Dude aint supposed ta get blown away. He’s just fuckin there. And dudes plantin frags. Demented Fuckers on both sides can’t shoot straight as I can piss. Some innocent dudes always get fucked up and blown away.

  In August of ’69, when the 7th of the 402d was sent to secure Bach Ma—the 1500-meter high peak that rises from the sea and overshadows the lowlands of Phu Loc—Egan knew he had been sent, once more, to the boonies to be killed. He hadn’t fragged an officer, he wasn’t under suspicion. But he’d opened his mouth too wide and the irritation his arrogance caused was reason enough. Sly babe, sly, he’d repeat to himself. Keep it cool, Mick. The terrain at Bach Ma was steep and treacherous and the winds at the top gusted to one hundred miles per hour. The NVA had the good sense to leave the Americans with nothing to fight but the mountain and the jungle, and the terrain took its toll in wounded.

  Egan stood thirty meters from the door of the in-processing station. He stood stock-still for minutes. Newly arriving personnel sauntered in and out of the building in their new boots and new jungle fatigues. It’s cause a me you fuckers can tricky-trot around here without worryin about Charlie doin a damn-damn on yer heads, Egan thought. You must be gettin soft, Mick. That’s what R&R does to ya. Maybe that’s it. Twenty-six en a wake-up. Don’t fuckin mean nothin.

  As if he had never stopped Egan resumed his metered pace. He walked, almost glided, into the in-processing station.

  “I tell ya, Man,” a young soldier was whining to the personnel clerk, “I’m a wire man. I can’t be assigned to an infantry unit.”

  Chicken shit, Egan thought. The young soldier and the clerk disgusted him. He inquired harshly about his old friend Murphy then he snarled something at the clerk and at the new soldier and then left.

  In late January 1970 Egan came to the rear for a few days to sign papers extending his tour. By lengthening his time in-country he received a drop of one hundred and fifty days from his enlistment. This meant that when he returned to the United States, instead of having five months remaining in the army, he would be immediately discharged. The first night in the rear Egan settled into a hootch with friends to have a party. A new supply sergeant, a young man with plans of making the military his career, had been assigned to the same hootch the day before. For the young lifer the hootch assignment was temporary, for, as a career man, he would soon be assigned to a more comfortable billet occupied only by other career NCOs. Egan and his friends broke out a little dope and the new young lifer threatened to report them all for being heads.

  “Look, REMF,” Egan snarled aiming a bony hand at the man’s eyes. “I happen to be the best mother-fuckin sergeant in this AO. I been humpin ruck in those mountains while you been suckin down whiskey at the NCO club. I know my shit, Man, and I do my job better’n any mother-fuckin REMF. You ever even been under a ruck? You couldn’t even pick my ruck up. You aint ee-ven worth havin a dog walk yer slack. I’m goina explain somethin to you, mothafucker, and then I’m goina decide if it sunk in and then I’m goina decide if a sapper’s goina cut yer balls off in yer sleep. Now you listen. I’m on stand-down, my own personal vacation from two months in the bush. That’s two months, twenty-fuckin-four hours a day with no fuckin slack. We don’t booze it out there. We don’t blow no weed. What fuckin right you got to resent my relaxin?”

  “Wow, Man,” one of Egan’s friends said, “this dude’s a real bummer. Let’s go up to brigade and party. I know some cool dudes up there.”

  For the next two days no one spoke to the new supply sergeant. Word passed through the entire battalion and brigade area that the new E-5 lifer in Oh-deuce supply was a bummer.

  On the third evening after the encounter Egan found the man alone in his hootch. He was sitting in silent dull light on his cot, his head in his hands, his elbows jabbing his knees. “Hey,” Egan called. “It’s cool, Man, ya know. It’s okay.” Egan sat down next to the supply sergeant. The sergeant apologized and they laughed. Egan removed a pack of joints from his fatigues, lit one and continued rapping. He got the lifer to take a puff too, and then they smoked another joint and another and another and they laughed and joked. Five of Egan’s friends came in and joined them. They brought in candles and a radio. They let the sergeant laugh and talk and smoke the dope. None of them smoked. They all laughed because they knew they had the young lifer. On Egan’s cue someone turned the radio off and everyone became silent, everyone except the lifer who was still laughing. The silent men with the candles walked out leaving the sergeants on the cot. “Hey,” Egan chuckled. “It’s cool, Man, ya know. That’s the Nam.” Then he too left and the young lifer was again alone and he knew he was caught and he became depressed and withdrawn. The next day Egan returned to the field via the supply pad. Egan punched the new supply sergeant on the shoulder, winked at him and said, “That’s the Nam.”

  It’s all the Nam, Egan said to himself as he walked beyond the Personnel Center toward the cantina. It don’t fit onto the mind of the World so yer head shifts. It all makes sense.

  “Fuckin REMF suckin down ice cream,” Egan screamed when he found Murphy. Daniel Egan and the Murf had been boonierat brothers in Company A, 7/402, from June to December ’69. The Murf hated the bush and Egan hated the rear. In December Murphy agreed to extend his tour by six months in exchange for a job at Phu Bai. He became a personnel clerk.

  When he left the 7th of the 402d Egan was irate. The Murf had abandoned him. For five months they did not see each other although when Egan extended his tour in January for the one-fifty drop the Murf handcarr
ied Egan’s paperwork to insure nothing was fouled up.

  Both men with nearly a year and a half in-country were tied by old times and impatient disrespect for the newfers and for the army in general. Whenever Egan was in from the boonies he looked up the Murf for a set.

  Murphy was sitting behind the main personnel building at a round, unfinished wood table. Green-brown camouflage parachutes hung over the entire area and the shade felt good. Murphy was sitting alone, reading Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. “Bog, Bratty. Dig this shit. Good ta see ya,” Murphy laughed. “Egads, Egan, let’s steal a jeep and score. You gotta be stoned to the max to read this book. Have some ice cream. Hey, how was them little Aussie ladies?”

  “Oooo, Murf. We licked and fucked and sucked all night long.”

  “Shee-it. I thought you said yer heart belonged to a lady back in the World.”

  “It do, Murf, it do. But I wasn’t talkin bout my heart.”

  Murphy chuckled then asked, “You got time for a set? I’m clean out a dew but I can get headquarters’ three-quarter if you got the time.”

  “I don’t know,” Egan said looking at his watch. “I’m gettin kinda SHORT for this shit.”

  “Oooo! I know, Man, I know. Twenty-eight and a wake-up.”

  “Murf, you’se a cherry. Twenty-six and a wake-up. Let’s do it to it. They don’t grow good shit in the World.”

  “Did ya stay at the Illowra Lodge like I told ya?” Murf asked.

  “Yeah, oooo-oo! Let me tell ya …”

  “Dynamite lady at the switchboard, huh?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Let me tell ya …”

  “Told ya I’d take care of ya didn’t I? Does ol’ Murf take care of his buddies? Huh? Aint nothin ee-ven too good for my boonierat brothers.”

  “Let me tell ya …”

  “Shit, Man. Did you score on that honey at the Illowra? You son of a bitch. Did ya score on the Murf’s old lady? I was goina go back there …”

  They drove north on Highway One past Eagle and through Hue. They continued up the road ten kilometers to a low-lying area just before the steel truss bridge that crossed the Song Bo, then they turned to the left and followed a rutted dirt road to the hamlet of Ap Lai Thanh. Egan and the Murf rode in the back of the three-quarter-ton truck, sitting on the sandbag-lined floor—in case the truck hit a mine the sandbags were supposed to stop the shrapnel. Two other men from the base at Phu Bai were in the cab. While the truck rumbled down the dirt road dust swirled in over the open back. Egan’s civilian clothes were filthy. Murf’s fatigues hardly showed the dirt. Two kilometers down the road the truck slowed and struggled through muck where irrigation water from broken dikes flowed toward the river. Up the other side of the mire the truck halted and Egan and the Murf jumped from the rear. The truck drove off. Instantly fifteen tiny children surrounded them and ushered them off the road. Murphy knew the mama-san and the children. The kids asked for candy and cigarettes. One lad reached up to admire Daniel’s watch. The little ones were respectful, the older ones mostly shy.

  “Egan, I’ll be with you in zero five,” Murphy said, disappearing into the house while Egan played “Who You” with the children, gently poking one then another in the ribs. “Me Daniel. Who you?” The children laughed and hung at his legs. In a short time the flow of little bodies carried Egan into the house. As he entered the oldest daughter exited.

  Murphy was standing behind Mama-san. Egan bowed slightly and said, “Chao ba,” which was one quarter of his Vietnamese vocabulary. Murphy jerked his arm and whispered harshly, “Don’t stand with your back to the shrine.”

  The two Americans and all the children and two dogs and a mourning dove and the old women relaxed and the adults sat down. Murphy said something in Vietnamese to the old women. A young daughter came in with two glasses of citrus and water with ice. “You pretty baby-san, thank you,” Murphy said. The children increased in number to about thirty.

  Egan looked at the pretty girl with the citrus drink. She was eleven, maybe twelve years old. He thought she was beautiful. Her skin was a perfectly clear copper color. Her large brown eyes flashed over him, looking at his civilian clothing. Straight jet-black hair fell across her shoulders to the middle of her back. She was petite, delicate, fragile. Like Stephanie, he thought. As he accepted the cool glass from her he noticed how fine her hands and fingers were. Then she was gone.

  The house was made of boards from discarded mortar munition boxes. The floor was packed dirt. The building had no heating system, no plumbing and no electricity. For fire safety the kitchen was in a separate shed behind the house. The house smelled of fish and mildew. “Nice place you’ve got here, Mama-san,” Egan said slowly in a respectful voice.

  “Not too shabby, huh?” Murphy said quickly. He winked and added, “Mama-san makes beaucoup dinero off my orders, eh, Mama-san?”

  Egan looked closer. There was a small altar on one wall of the main room. On it there was a crucifix, several candles and a lacquered bowl with rice and small wooden fish soaked in nuoc man. Above the altar in a scant white plastic frame there was a photograph of Pope Paul VI.

  Murphy was now speaking in Vietnamese to the small old woman, who seemed very happy to see him. She was a weathered old woman. For many years she had worked in the rice paddies under the scorching sun and her skin was wrinkled and grayish brown.

  Mama-san had lived all her life in this area which had become known as the Street Without Joy. She had been here in July 1953 when the French attacked Regiment 95 of the Viet Minh. The French first encountered little resistance on that operation. At the village of Dong-Que, where this woman had been born and raised, a fire fight had erupted. The French field commander had called in artillery and soon shells from the 69th African Artillery Regiment of the Foreign Legion pulverized the tiny bamboo and rice thatched huts. The village burned but the people remained hidden. An artillery shell dropped through the roof of the Viet Minh’s main building and the round continued into a concealed ammunition bunker below the floor. There had been a tremendous secondary explosion which shook the entire village. French tanks and infantry closed in. The Viet Minh, following their standard defense pattern, a pattern the Viet Cong would use for the next twenty years, forced the civilians out of their safety dugouts. The villagers flooded the hamlet square and the paths and the road. Under this cover the Viet Minh cadre and troops began their withdrawal.

  French forces had totally surrounded Dong-Que. The Viet Minh unit, the 3rd Company, Battalion 310, 95th Regiment, Viet-Nam People’s Army, along with many civilians had been destroyed. Mama-san’s father and two brothers, all fishermen, were killed.

  Mama-san and the remainder of her family moved south to another village where her father’s brother became the assistant government administrator. He was killed in the spring of 1954 when the Viet Minh again infiltrated the Street Without Joy.

  In July of ’54, after the Geneva cease-fire, the Viet Minn’s 95th regiment evacuated the area. The new government relocated Mama-san’s village to Ap Lai Thanh. In 1962 Mama-san’s only living brother was killed in an ambush when new enemy troops again infiltrated the area. The new force was called Viet Cong yet it again was the 95th Regiment.

  US Marines stormed the Street Without Joy in 1964 and 1965. Again Mama-san was uprooted. Her village was cordoned off. All civilians were directed to gather their effects and relocate to the refugee camp three kilometers northwest of the Citadel at Hue. The village was razed, the ground plowed under. The area became a free-fire zone.

  On 31 January 1968 the North Vietnamese 800th, 802d, and 804th battalions along with Viet Cong elements of the Hue City Committee of the Communist Party assaulted and captured the Citadel and the city and many of the surrounding villages. Sometime between the onset of the TET Offensive of ’68 and February 25, when the last NVA soldiers were driven from the area, Mama-san’s husband and eldest son, a good-looking boy of nine, were killed. She did not know how or by whom and she did not care.

  In the spring of 1
970 with the help of the 326th Engineer Battalion of the 101st Mama-san and nine hundred other refugees resettled Ap Lai Thanh.

  Mama-san had cried many times. She had seen many soldiers. Now she told Murphy in Vietnamese, she wished all the soldiers would go. “If they stay,” she said, “it will only be more hardship. I will cheer the peace when all soldiers are dead. Today our lives blossom; today we open ourselves to the sun. Tomorrow we will have no petals for the sun to warm.”

  The soldiers sipped their drinks. A little boy was sitting on Egan’s lap and holding the mourning dove. The bird flew from his hand to Egan’s shoulder and then to the top of the boy’s head. The bird perched briefly and returned to the boy’s hand. All the kids laughed and Egan laughed and blushed and laughed again. Mama-san’s oldest daughter returned with a package wrapped in brown paper.

  Murphy did not know where Mama-san got the dew but he knew it would be good and the price was very fair. He purchased twenty decks of O-Js. The O-Js were thin, perfectly rolled marijuana cigarettes soaked in an opium solution. Fifty O-Js to a deck. Mama-san sold the twenty decks to Murphy for two hundred and fifty dollars greenback. She would then turn the American money into seven hundred dollars worth of piasters and Murphy would sell half the dope to more timid GIs for five hundred dollars MFC.

  More children ran into the house. They had been waiting outside: sentries. “Your friends back,” an older boy said. “Must go. Em-peees at end of road. You go now.”

  Egan had kept his attention on Mama-san while she and Murphy spoke and while he played with the children. The old woman now turned to him and said, “I wish you a thousand years. Chuc ong may man.” She turned to Murphy and in Vietnamese invited them to come back on Wednesday night to play cards.