“No Sir. That’s another company.”
“If you get any, they can wait for their trials out here.”
“Yes Sir.”
“I need leaders, Lieutenant. Any officer who can’t do the job is … is not going to be transferred. He’s going to become a rifleman. I’ll make sergeants acting platoon leaders before I’ll let a piss-poor lieutenant kill any of my men. If you have problems with your leaders, let me know. Right now. We’ll shuffle them around this afternoon. I’ve got the authority to do that. What do you need?”
The GreenMan’s rage had taken Brooks by surprise. “Nothing, Sir,” he said without thinking.
As they passed through the 3d Plt CP set-up the GreenMan switched back to his sales manager voice. “Rufus,” he said, “I’m impressed with your moves so far. I think Alpha is doing a fantastic job. Truly fantastic. I know you’ve been plagued by the weather but the intelligence information alone that you have amassed has been enough to sufficiently alter the balance of force in this valley. The Old Fox said that to me himself. The NVA will never again be able to run through here unmolested.”
The two commanders completed their circuit of the perimeter and were now back beside the LZ. The GreenMan again showed disappointment. He had taken in tremendous detail. As they stood the GreenMan listed every improperly discarded tin can, every unconcealed soldier, every weapon lying on the ground and not ready in the hands of a boonierat. Then they stood in the shade of vine-choked trees and peered into the valley and discussed intelligence reports and tactics. Brooks retold him of Leech Row and of the enemy roads and the thickets and fog. “You go back down there and finish the job, Lieutenant,” the GreenMan said. “You can do it. It won’t take much longer. There’s two less enemy there now than there was this morning. My pilot and I got two on our way over here.”
“Yes Sir. I heard,” Brooks smiled. He paused then said, “Sir, about my request to DEROS …”
“You go back there, Lieutenant. Finish the job and you can go home knowing you left this country safer. You should be able to clean this place up in two or three days. Go back down there, Lieutenant. Become a guerrilla behind the guerrilla lines. Can you do that?”
“Yes Sir,” Brooks said. The GreenMan seemed to be expecting him to say more so he added, “I can hide down there, Sir. In the thickets. Among them. We can pick them apart, piece by piece.”
“Good,” the GreenMan smiled. He was satisfied. “Follow me,” he beamed loudly marching to the unopened crate he had brought to the LZ with the cigarettes and lighters. “Break that one open, Major. Lieutenant, bring up all your thumpermen.”
Major Hellman broke open the crate and lifted from it the first new XM-203. The XM-203 was a replacement for the M-79. It was an over/under, an M-16 rifle on top mated to an M-79 grenade launcher on the bottom, all on an M-16 stock. Hellman handed one to Old Zarno then reached in and lifted another. “Look at these beauties,” he said smiling. And indeed the men who received them considered them beauties.
“You’ll be a one man army with that,” the GreenMan said to one smiling troop. “What’s your name?”
“Willis, Sir,” Numbnuts said smartly snapping the new weapon to his shoulder.
“That’s the first one of its kind in all I Corps,” the GreenMan said to Numbnuts. “You’ve got the first, Alpha’s got the first nine.” The sound of the C & C bird could be heard as it approached Alpha’s location. “Good luck with those,” the GreenMan beamed to all of the company’s thumpermen. “And good hunting.” The C & C bird hovered, set down. The GreenMan saluted Brooks. “Find em. Fix em. Fight em. Finish em. For the glory of the Infantry, Lieutenant.”
Brooks returned the salute. “SKYHAWKS, Sir,” he said sharply.
The third bird in brought mail, clothes, two members of the 7/402 battalion kitchen staff and mermite cans of Kool-Aid and chipped beef.
“What the fuck is this?” Molino moaned to Mohnsen when the kitchen orderly slopped a ladleful of the brownred mush atop a soggy piece of toast and handed it to him on a paper plate.
“What the fuck do you care?” the orderly laughed.
“It aint Cs,” Mohnsen smiled.
“Shit-on-a-shingle,” Molino shook his head. “Christ, last time we had this was when Zarno threw that correspondent out of the mess hall.”
“What correspondent?” De Barti asked from behind Molino.
“Didn’t you guys hear?” Molino asked.
“Naw,” said Calhoun. “We never hear nothin.”
“That dude, Caribski,” Molino laughed. “Lamonte brought him down to battalion mess. You shoulda seen Zarno. He turned red as a beet. Begins screamin at this guy. Ya know, this dude’s got muttonchop sideburns and hair about this long.” Molino motioned with his hand just above his shoulder. “‘Get outa here,’ Zarno screams. ‘We don’t want no bums in our mess hall. Get out.’ I mean Zarno’s screamin at him. PIO is there tryin ta calm Zarno down. ‘Sergeant Major,’ he says, ‘this man is a civilian news correspondent.’ ‘I don’t give a shit,’ Zarno yells. ‘Get that long-haired hippie bum outa my mess hall.’ I thought Zarno was goina hit him. Instead he shoves Lamonte. You shoulda seen it.”
“Well, what happened?” Mohnsen asked. Five of them had worked their way through the chow line and now sat clustered in the sun on the LZ.
“The guy got up and left,” Molino laughed. “He got up and walked out and everybody got up and gave him a standing ovation. Man, you shoulda seen Zarno. His whole face turned purple. I thought he’d blow a blood vessel right there on the spot.”
“Man, I wish I was there,” Calhoun said.
“What for?” De Barti laughed. “This food’s worse than Cs.” They all laughed.
“You know what they do at division?” Molino said. He was enjoying being the center of attention.
“Tell us, Man,” Mohnsen said. Mohnsen had clung to Molino ever since the ex-bartender had been assigned to him. Molino somehow filled the vacancies in Mohnsen’s mind, the vacancies of the dead and wounded from his squad.
“Man, you wouldn’t believe it,” Molino said. “But I shit you not, this is the God’s honest truth.”
“Come on,” De Barti prodded him.
“You know,” Molino said, “like at the general’s mess. He has, like, thirty people to dinner every night.”
“Bet they don’t eat this shit,” Hayes laughed.
“Man, like they eat steak or lobster tail every night. Every night, Man. They get a choice of three entrees. And, they get served immediately. Steak, lobster tails and one other every night. Rabbit or chicken or duck. That’s the third. You know how they do it?”
“Oh wow. I wish I could eat there just one night a month,” Calhoun said.
“How?” De Barti asked.
“You know how they can serve everybody immediately?”
“How?”
“They cook up three times as many entrees as people they got comin. Then if everybody orders lobster they got thirty lobsters cooked up. They dump the rest of it.”
“Naw. No way.”
“I shit you not. Dudes on KP got it set up so they always throw the leftover entrees inta one garbage can. Then at night the dudes from the headquarters companies, they sneak down and eat the general’s garbage.”
“Mail for Choo-lee-nee,” El Paso called out as he came toward 1st Plt. “Sorry, Bro,” he whispered to Egan. “Nother letter for Choo-lee-nee. Nother letter for Choo-lee-nee. Oooo! This one smells nice. Postcard for Choo-lee-nee.”
Cherry blushed. A postcard and three letters. Half the mail for 1st Plt and all for him. El Paso read the card aloud. “‘Dear Jimmy, We always think of you and I pray for you every night. Uncle Tony said CYA—you’d understand. Much love, Aunt Millie.’ Aaww, aint that sweet! Oooo-ooo! Smell this one.” El Paso handed the letter to Doc McCarthy who sniffed it and passed it to Cherry.
Cherry got up all smiles. He moved a short distance away and opened the letter from Linda. As he began reading he heard El Paso sa
y, “Anyone want Leon’s Newsweek? Here’s some good shit. Listen, ‘… five years of warfare against the US have so badly depleted Viet Cong ranks that today an estimated 75% of the communist troops in main-force units are North Vietnamese … barred by a lack of popular support from reverting entirely to guerrilla warfare, the communists are limited in what they can accomplish …’”
“Hey, El Paso,” Thomaston chuckled. “Who the fuck are the other twenty-five percent?”
Cherry shuffled the pages of Linda’s letter, looked at them for a moment without reading as if the shape or color might tell him what she would say. Then he read.
Hi Jim!
Guess what? I got a new job in downtown Norwalk. I’m a secretary to two men who sold their business about eight years ago and bought a whole bunch of properties which they manage. It’s a real small office—the two owners, a bookkeeper, an accountant and me. I’m the only girl. I know I couldn’t have stood working in a big office with all the catty women so I found something more me. I bet you thought by now I’d be off somewhere carousing, huh? Well, I was a little confused as to what I wanted but things are a little better now. Not that I’m settling in, I’m just content for now.
My sister got engaged about a week ago and is getting married in October. She hardly knows the guy. He isn’t exactly welcomed into the family either but if she wants to marry a darkie (he’s not black, just dark) that’s her business.
My Dad got a new car. It’s white. I already don’t like it because the first time I got into it I hit my head. I’ll probably hold this grudge against it until I smash it up. Dad wants me to get one of my own but I say I don’t need a car. There’s always one available here if I want it.
Oh, what else has happened? I made it to Boston last month and I love it there. If things work out as I hope they will, next January I may take an apartment up there with a friend who goes to college in Boston. I’ll work. I really love Boston. The people are very friendly.
If my money situation works out I’ll have enough for a car and an apartment. My parents won’t say too much. What can they say? If they say no, I’ll go anyway and they know it. I know they wouldn’t hold me back from doing anything. I made it to NYC a few days since you left. I’ve a friend at Columbia, so I stay there for freesies. I don’t really like New York too much, but for a lack of anything else better to do, I go there.
Time out to eat. I’m still a skinny little bitch! One night I went for a ride because I was bored. I stopped at a gas station and asked where I was just out of curiosity. Massachusetts. Nice little ride I had.
Well, Jim, have a happy. I’ll be thinking about you.
Love,
Linda
* * *
“God, Mista. Oh God!” Doc was sobbing.
“What’s the matter, Doc?” Egan asked. They were at the CP. The radio message had arrived just before Egan came up to talk to Brooks about their move back into the valley. “What is it?” Egan asked perplexed. He could not imagine anything that had happened to Alpha or to any of the battalion units that would cause Doc to cry now.
“It’s Whiteboy; Eg. Aw Eg. They got Whiteboy. They got his bird wid a .51 cal, Mista, they done got his mothafucken bird comin outa Barnett. In the chest, Eg. A .51 cal in the chest.”
Egan stopped. Everything in him stopped. He looked at Doc then turned without saying a word and walked away.
Whiteboy had boarded a helicopter on the firebase which would take him to Camp Eagle. The forward supply crew had razzed him about his minor eye wound and he had laughed with them. Then as the bird left the peak and sped down the mountainside an NVA fire team had opened up with a .51 caliber machine gun. Several rounds impacted in the bird doing minor damage. One round hit Whiteboy in the lower left abdomen. The round smashed upward at an angle moving through his diaphragm and stomach, shattering ribs and exiting through his right front chest. It took the helicopter sixteen minutes to have him at the 326th Medical Detachment at Camp Evans. He received immediate aid and was flown to Phu Bai and operated on. He was then evacuated to Da Nang. The next day Clayton Janoff would be evacuated farther, this time to Zama, Japan, where he would die seventeen days after having been wounded.
In late afternoon the back bird arrived to take out the kitchen staff and mermite cans, all the unclaimed food and weapons and anything else Alpha wanted to DX but did not want to fall into enemy hands. The sun was still hot like a white fever blister in the sky. Alpha was packed and ready to move. The LZ was spotless. Brooks had screamed at every troop within range after the GreenMan had left and after the shock of Whiteboy’s wounding had jolted him. “Clean this site,” he had snapped. “I don’t want to see an uncrushed can, a usable piece of cardboard or a usable fighting position. Don’t leave a fucking thing the dinks can use. And if I hear a sound from a soul, every man here’s going to pay.”
And Alpha had cleaned. They cleaned their weapons and themselves and they cleaned the LZ. Even in their filthy ragged fatigues every troop looked sharp. Everything was tightened, trimmed. Ammunition was cleaned, almost polished. Alpha knew it was going to fight. Alpha wanted a fight. And in their fight the last thing they wanted was a weapon jammed with mud-caked ammo. They cleaned with hate, prepared with hatred. Fuck up Whiteboy, huh? Have the colonel yell at our L-T, huh? Well, fuck em. We’ll show em.
Then the back bird arrived. Alpha had received almost no clean fatigues from the company clothes fund during resupply but now they received one-hundred-fifty pair of clean dry boot socks. They had received seventy-five tiny bottles of insect repellent. Now they received two-hundred-fifty bottles more. Doc hustled around distributing the goods and Alpha sat, changed socks and cooled down.
Alpha moved out, up around down, back onto the valley floor. They leap-frogged down and west. 3d Plt led then 2d with the Co CP and finally 1st. As the others left the high ground, 1st Plt dug and chopped pretending to be digging in for the night. 3d Plt moved slowly, in column, through the discontinuous brush and on into thickets of bamboo. They halted and formed a tiny perimeter. 2d Plt followed 3d by twenty minutes. They reached 3d’s position and worked through and beyond by 200 meters. Then they too halted. 1st Plt left the LZ and followed. They moved through 3d, then through 2d and finally beyond, west 200 meters.
During the descent to the valley floor Brooks was plagued with doubt. “Step by step,” he whispered to himself trying to dispel the uncertainty. “Step by step. Down into a tiny hell I struggle to go. May the gods pardon me for leading seventy-five men into this inferno.” Then he stopped whispering and just thought. Why do I do this bidding for others? Why do I ask these soldiers to do bidding for me? Stop it. Don’t question it. Not now. Step by step. Down. One step at a time. One thought at a time. One tree, one blade of elephant grass. An endless progression of life goes before me. One by one. Steps, trees, thoughts, lives.
Twenty minutes after 1st Plt had stopped, 3d rose. 3d leap-frogged 2d then 1st and moved 200 meters beyond. At each set-up Alpha hoped to catch the NVA moving. They spotted no movement. They slipped back under the valley’s mistblanket and the mist sapped the sun’s residual warmth from their bodies. The trail was thickslick mud. The valley stench clogged their throats like sputum in the throat of a derelict. Old fears surrounded them like the mist, dampening their hatred and bravado. They fought the fears.
“Hey, Cherry,” Egan whispered, “aint we about on the 18th hole of yer golf course.”
“Yeah,” Cherry laughed, fidgeted. “I’m goina put the green right under yer ass.”
“You leave my ass alone,” Egan winked. “Play with yer own putter.”
Beneath the mist it had become dark. The platoons continued leapfrogging. Now west, now north. One klick. Two klicks. They were in it deep, in thick vegetation, in enemy territory. The knoll would be only 500 meters north of them. Brooks called a halt. No one made a sound. No one ate. FO radioed in DT and H & I coordinates so quietly that Brown next to him couldn’t hear. And Alpha sat. It became darker.
“Hey, Cherry.” It was Thomaston. “Company’s staying here tonight,” he whispered. “You got LP. Go out—to the north about fifty meters. Take Willis with you.”
“With Numbnuts?!” Cherry blurted.
“Ssshhh. Yeah.”
“No way, Sir.”
“What?”
“No fucken way, Sir.”
“It’s your turn,” Thomaston said.
“I’ll go,” Cherry said, “but if Numbnuts is goin, I aint. No way.”
“What do you mean you’re not going?”
“Hey, that noisy fucker falls asleep every night,” Cherry whispered.
“I do not,” Numbnuts’ voice came from behind Thomaston.
“I aint goin with him,” Cherry said firmly but quietly.
“I didn’t fall asleep that night …” Numbnuts began then his voice muffled and Cherry could hear Egan on top of Numbnuts whispering shutup and cursing.
“Me en Cherry’ll go,” Egan whispered to Thomaston. Numbnuts disappeared in the darkness.
Cherry crawled behind Egan, crawled, duck-walked, slithered, down a narrow path and then into a thicket. They moved very little yet managed to open a tiny two-man cave in the growth. Then Egan left. He set out two claymore mines beside the path then returned to the cave. They positioned the radio between them, their rifles across their legs, frags spread before them, they sat for a long time without speaking. Both were awake, alert, listening.
Egan broke the silence after two hours. “How’s your lady?” he asked very quietly.
Cherry paused before answering, taking time to listen to the darkness. “Okay,” he answered. Then, “She’s a spoiled bitch.”
They spoke now very quietly, leaving long gaps between phrases to listen. “Good lookin?” Egan asked.
“Beautiful,” Cherry whispered.
“I’m a fucken fool when it comes to beautiful women,” Egan confessed.
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