by Dennis Foley
“Tell me about your weight.”
“Well, sir, you know we don’t have any scales around here. Weight doesn’t seem to be somethin’ these people concern themselves with,” he said, referring to the Vietnamese soldiers.
“Are you on your diet and doing your PT?”
The sergeant leaned back and hooked his thumb into the waist band of his trousers pulling them away from his ample belly. “All I can tell you, Colonel, is I’ve been able to tighten my belt and my pants are a little roomier in the ass end.”
“Well, I want you to keep at it. We need to get you down to a weight where you can get out in the bush with the troops.
“Now, what was all that with you and that Vietnamese soldier on the steps of the supply room?”
The sergeant became uncomfortable with the question and his tone changed noticeably. “Oh, I was just talking to him about, ah… training.”
“What training?”
“I wanted to know what he thought they needed,” the sergeant replied, not convincing Pascoe.
“You read those After Action Reports?”
“Yessir…”
“How far back?”
“Six months.”
Pascoe sat back in his chair. “So, tell me. What have you learned?”
“I think they need lots more training in patrolling and marksmanship. They don’t seem to find many bad guys out there and when they do they can’t seem to hit them when they shoot. “
“I agree. Have you discussed this with Major Laury?”
“Not yet, sir,” he said, starting to get up.
“Tell him I agree when you see him this morning.”
“I won’t be seein’ him today, sir.” He started moving toward the door.
“Why?”
“He’s up in Tay Ninh talking to the chopper pilots about possibilities for more training with aircraft.”
“Good. Good. Well, tell him when he returns.” Pascoe stood and picked up his cap off his desk. “I’m going over to see General Duong. If anyone needs me, I’ll be there.” He tapped the pile of papers in his out-box. “I need you to get these to Saigon.”
Jackson stood and said, “Yessir,” eager to leave.
Scotty crawled to Nguyen to alert him they needed to move again. It was getting dark and had been raining for most of the day. If it continued, it would help conceal their movement and some of the sounds they made moving.
“You have fever,” Nguyen said.
“I’ll tell you, Dai Uy, I think it’s malaria. It probably won’t kill me, but I feel like shit.”
“No.”
“No? No what?” Scotty asked.
“Not malaria. Is Dengue.”
“Dengue fever?” Scotty asked, surprised at the captain’s diagnosis.
“Yes. You have pain in head?”
“Yeah, and my back and my joints.”
Nguyen nodded his head. “Dengue.”
“Shit! This is going to get worse. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, my friend. It can be very bad.”
Scotty racked his brain trying to remember his medical training and vaguely recalled Dengue could be fatal in its worst form—hemorrhagic fever. “Well, there’s not a damn thing I can do.” He got up to pick up Nguyen. “So I got to live with it. Let’s go while I can still lift you.”
They moved for most of the night without a break. Scotty wanted to put as much distance between them and the Cambodian border while he could still carry Captain Nguyen.
Toward dawn Scotty slowed partially catch is breath and reposition the captain slung over his shoulder and to look at something confusing ahead of him.
“What is wrong?” Nguyen asked.
“I don’t know,” Scotty whispered. “I think we’ve got a road or something up ahead.” He turned around in a complete circle just to see if anyone else might be moving under the cover of the rain and the darkness.
Turning back to their direction of travel, he took several more labored steps and recognized an irrigation canal. The near bank was void of vegetation, obviously used by small wildlife in the area.
On the far bank a stand of Nipa palm trees sprouted out of a head-high cluster of bushes and weeds.
Scotty put Nguyen down and then slid over the side of the canal into the water just a foot below the top of the bank. The canal, only waist deep, held running water which though cloudy was clear of debris compared to what they had been drinking for days.
He immediately welcomed the cooling effect of the water on his body. His fever had sapped his strength and made him nauseous for most of the night. He moved to the far bank and pulled himself out of the canal to check out the vegetation on the other side for a place they could lay up during the day coming on in a matter of minutes.
There he found the high ground was neither marshy nor muddy. The falling rain was running off the grasses there and to him it looked like a four-star hotel room.
Scotty crossed the canal again, picked up Nguyen and carried him in his arms to the new hiding place.
Once there, he flopped onto the ground to try to marshal needed to get through their next day.
After resting long enough to get his wind back, Scotty got to his feet and told Nguyen he wanted to look around.
On the far side of the new treeline hiding them was a bomb crater. He crawled out of the trees far enough to look into the crater and out over the terrain beyond.
The inside of the crater was half filled with quiet standing water broken only by the light rain still falling. It was sixteen feet across and Scotty guessed it to be not more than nine feet deep. The pockmark in the paddy was perfectly round and the sides were steeply sloped. Satisfied no one was hiding in the crater, Scotty took a long, slow look at the terrain around their hiding place. To the north he saw something irregular in the distant paddy. He dug his elbows into the muddy ground to steady his binoculars and looked again. There, silhouetted against the black skyline was the outline of two Viet Cong infiltrators walking slowly, half bent at the waist.
He guessed they were far enough away not to be a threat to Scotty or Nguyen if they maintained the same heading. They did remind Scotty of how perilous their own trip was and how much chance was involved in them being safe or being discovered.
He watched for awhile hoping to see where they would hold up for the upcoming day but lost them when their route took them behind some small trees. Then he heard a splash. Then another. There were fish in the man-made hole. Fish!
When Scotty returned to his position inside the treeline he found Nguyen dozing. “You okay, Dai Uy?”
“Maybe you go. Leave me. Come back.”
Scotty sat near Nguyen. “What? I can’t leave you. What if the VC stumble on you?”
“What if VC find now?”
Scotty knew Nguyen had a good point. Two of them were not more likely to be able to survive enemy contact any more than one would. He knew what Nguyen was getting at. It wouldn’t be long before he wouldn’t be able to carry Nguyen another step. Scotty’s strength was waning and he was beginning to suffer from bouts of violently cramping diarrhea. He needed to make it as far as he could with Nguyen and then consider hiding him somewhere and getting help to recover him. But he wanted to try one thing first.
“Listen. How about this?” He pointed over his shoulder. “There’s a bomb crater just outside the trees with fish in it. Let’s lay up here for an extra day or two and see if we can do a little drying out, catch some fish to eat and get some rest. Then we move on. We’re bound to be more rested. How does that sound, Dai Uy?”
Nguyen was quiet for a long time. “Good,” was his only reply.
Scotty spent the early hours of the morning trying to catch the small fish in the crater using his hands. After an hour of unsuccessful attempts he decided to try something else. He took his trousers off, tied the ankles of each leg in a knot and used them to scoop up large quantities of water. As the water leaked through the fabric it left behind the small fish he had scooped up. Wi
thin two hours he had collected more than a dozen sardine-sized fish and took them back to his hiding place.
The two ate the raw fish and spent the remainder of the day resting. It was the first time in days they had been able to get enough protein to compensate for the demands they were placing on themselves. That coupled with not moving for two more days helped them delay the unavoidable toll the journey was taking on the two of them.
Scotty moved Nguyen to a spot where the light slipped through the trees and uncovered his wound to allow the sun to beat down on the torn and inflamed flesh. He hoped sunlight and fresh air might help dry out the tissues which had been wet since he sustained the wound.
While letting Nguyen take in some sun, he took the other already used combat dressing to the canal and washed the dried blood, mud and dirt from the large gauze pad. Clean or not, the pad was anything but sterile. At least washing it and letting it dry out would provide better protection for Nguyen’s wound once he replaced it.
With the afternoon came the seasonal rains. And with the rain came the cold. It was relative, but a thirty degree drop in temperature as the light rain turned to steady rain and then to a downpour was enough to set both of them shivering. Scotty and Nguyen huddled together, back to back, to share their body heat, a trick Scotty had learned in Ranger School, keeping his kidneys as warm as possible circulated warmer blood and helped fight off the cold.
By dark they were both shivering uncontrollably. Scotty wasn’t sure how much of his was cold and how much was Dengue fever. He hoped their plans to get some rest by staying put for an extra day or two were not wrecked by the cold rain which would keep them from sleeping.
Eileen sipped her coffee sitting at the kitchen table at Kitty’s. As she did, she looked at a small snapshot of Scotty she kept in a plastic covered pocket in her wallet.
“I miss him too, honey.”
Kitty had slipped into the room quietly and stood over Eileen’s shoulder.
Eileen looked up at Kitty, tried to speak and suddenly realized tears where streaming from her eyes.
Kitty pulled he to her waist and hugged her. She stroked Eileen’s hair and tried to calm her. “He’s gonna’ be okay. Sure as I’m standing here, he’s going to come back to us. I lost a husband to a war. I ain’t goin’ t’lose a son to one.”
Eileen leaned back and looked up into Kitty’s eyes. “Oh, Kitty. This hurts so bad. I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t ever see him again.”
“Shhh,” Kitty said as she wiped the tears from Eileen’s face with the cuff of her bathrobe.
“I can’t take this waiting and I’m ashamed I’m not stronger,” Eileen said, sniffling then hugging Kitty tighter.
“Do what I’m doing.”
“What’s that?”
“Just start planning for what you want to do when you see him again. You got t’get your head right about this. You got to just think of nothing else but seeing him again soon. You got to believe as hard as you can he’ll be coming home to you and me,” Kitty said kissing Eileen on top of her head.
“How can you be so sure?”
“You and I both knew that boy when he was livin’ here. And we saw how different he was after the Army got hold of him. He’s strong. He’s stubborn and he’s got a good heart. I have confidence in him. That’s how I’m sure.
“Now, what is it you want to do when he comes home?” Kitty asked.
“I want to spend the rest of my life with him.”
Kitty smiled, “Then you better get your dowry together, girl. ’Cause I know he’s coming home.”
Eileen laughed then found some worn and crumpled Kleenex in the pocket of her waitress apron to blow her nose. “Look at me. I’m a mess.” She pulled a compact from her purse and looked at herself in the small round mirror. Her mascara had run down her face. “I look like a raccoon.”
They both laughed and Kitty rubbed Eileen’s shoulders reassuringly. “Don’t you need to be gettin’ to work?”
Eileen checked her watch. “Oh, god yes. But do you have everything you need? You hungry? Need me to get anything at the store for you?”
“Go. Go do what you gotta’ do. I’ll be okay.”
Eileen stood to go and there was an awkward moment of silence. She looked at Kitty one last time, her unspoken questions were clear: Would he really return? Would he really be okay?
“I’m right about this. Now you go to work and make some plans. Plans for you two when he comes home. Now, go on, git.”
Kitty closed the door behind Eileen and walked back into the kitchen. She pulled a mug from the cupboard over the sink and poured herself a cup of coffee. She took a sip and began to quietly cry for her boy.
With sunrise came relief from the bone chilling cold during the night’s rains. Scotty looked through the trees hoping to find more blue sky than clouds but had to settle for a little of each. At least it had stopped raining.
The day and the one following was a repeat of those before. They tried to rest and conserve some strength. Scotty dried out some of the small fish, wrapped them in his cravat and stuffed them in his pocket to take with them.
By dark they had decided to try something new. The canal next to where they were hiding was going in the general direction of the Sugar Mill. Scotty wanted to see if he could make better time if they got into the canal and he pulled Nguyen along using Nguyen’s buoyancy to relieve Scotty of the burden of carrying him.
They emptied their canteens to turn them into floats. Scotty screwed the tops back on and tied them about five inches apart with is boot laces. He then placed Nguyen on his back in the canal and slipped the two canteens under the small of the captain’s back. They offered enough floatation to raise his hips off the bottom of the canal.
Scotty took hold of Nguyen’s collar and began to draw him gently through the water, careful not to allow the water to swamp his face as they moved.
In an hour they had covered more ground than any earlier night. Scotty was encouraged by the progress but worried about the bone chilling cold of the water on Nguyen. He stopped several times and asked if Nguyen wanted to get out of the water and warm up.
Nguyen wouldn’t complain though his lips were blue.
They kept moving until just after midnight and found the canal suddenly taking a turn to the north, no longer in their intended direction. Scotty left Nguyen on the bank of the canal and waded ahead for another hundred meters hoping the canal might switch back. It didn’t. He gave up for the night and looked for a place to conceal them. Within twenty minutes he found a depression in the paddies with plenty of vegetation growing in it. It was wet, but offered the concealment they would need the following day.
Scotty and Nguyen got little sleep that night—each taking turns staying awake to watch for anyone stumbling into their site. Scotty’s attempts at sleep were fitful. His fever came and went only to be replaced by uncontrollable shivering and chills. He knew he was losing strength rapidly. His challenge beyond avoiding capture was to hold on long enough to get the two of them back into South Vietnamese hands. The rest would just be luck. He had more confidence in his ability a few days earlier. That night he was no longer sure he could do it. They had been in the marshes for over two full weeks. He looked over at the sleeping Asian officer knowing his failure would surely mean Nguyen’s death. He told himself he had to put failure out of his head. He had to drive on. This was what Asa Russell would expect of him.
About an hour before dawn Nguyen woke Scotty who thought it was his turn to take the watch. It wasn’t.
Nguyen pointed out at three figures moving carefully through the reeds. Their direction of march put them on a collision course with Scotty and Nguyen.
They stayed still, watching the soldiers close on their position, moving to within fifty meters.
Scotty looked over at Nguyen who shook his head, indicating Scotty shouldn’t shoot. He held his fire and let them continue to approach.
Suddenly, one of the soldiers said something and poin
ted in the direction of Scotty and Nguyen. Scotty was sure he would have no choice. He would have to fire on the three before he lost a clear line of sight to each. But another pointed off to the south, disagreeing with the first Viet Cong soldier. What ensued was an argument between the two over their direction of travel. It finally became apparent to Scotty the second soldier won the argument. The three suddenly changed direction and walked south—away from Scotty and Nguyen.
As the three put more distance between themselves and Scotty and Nguyen, Scotty was overcome with nausea again. He tried to suppress the urge to vomit but was unsuccessful. The onset was sudden, his stomach was virtually empty of everything but some water and the attack passed quickly. Still, he was afraid the three Viet Cong soldiers might have heard him. He snapped his head back up and looked in the direction of the soldiers moving away from them and saw the one closest to their hiding place halt temporarily, as if he heard something. He listened then seemed to shrug it off and continue to move away.
The waves of nausea came and went for the next two hours and Scotty had nothing left to vomit. He splashed water in his face hoping to make himself feel a little better and looked over to Nguyen. He was looking at his wound. “What’s wrong, Dai Uy?”
“Am okay. You rest.”
Scotty moved to Nguyen and lifted the corner of his dressing covered with mud. What he found was disgusting. The wound was infested with maggots feeding on the deadened flesh surrounding the center of the injury. “Oh, man. This is not good.”
“We home soon. I be okay,” Nguyen said.
Scotty felt Nguyen’s face with the back of his hand and could tell the captain was spiking a temperature greater than he had experienced since being wounded. Their trek, the elements and their diet were all conspiring against both soldiers. It was decision time for Scotty. He was certain he had to outrun his own disabling disease and the accelerated spread of Nguyen’s infection.
During their journey Scotty lost much of the confidence in his estimates of the distance they had traveled and how much ground they still had to cover. He pulled his map from his pocket and tried to orient it but knew it would be difficult since there were so few good landmarks to use to plot his position precisely.