If I Die in a Combat Zone

by Tim O'Brien

  “Assume, bullshit! When you go into My Lai you assume the worst. When you go into My Lai, shit, you know—you assume—that they’re all VC. Ol’ Charlie with big tits and nice innocent, childlike eyes. Damn it, they’re all VC, you should know that. You might own a diploma, for Christ’s sake, but does that mean you can’t trust your own eyes and not some lousy book? You’ve been there, for Christ’s sake!”

  “But, sir, the law says killing civilians is wrong. We’re taught that, even by the army, for God’s sake.”

  “Of course killing civilians is wrong. But those so-called civilians are killers. Female warriors. Poppa-san out in the paddy spying.”

  “But with that philosophy, you’d have to waste all the civilians in Vietnam, everyone. I mean, how do you know when this Poppa-san or that Poppa-san is VC? They look alike. They all dress in black pajamas and work in the paddies and sell us Cokes. Hell, we might as well go down into Nouc Mau, the little village down by the gate, and just kill them all.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re exaggerating the argument.”

  “Reductio ad absurdum. Logical extension, sir.”

  “Bullshit! Nouc Mau sure as hell isn’t My Lai 4, you know that. It isn’t a goddamn minefield; kids in Nouc Mau don’t go around setting up booby traps and spying on us.”

  “Now, that’s quite an assumption. Who knows? The whole town might be VC. We’d be the last to know it. But the point is, sir, we can’t say that those two-year-old kids were planting mines out at My Lai. Can’t prove that all those dead women were spying on Lieutenant Calley. Go ahead, how do you prove it? Or don’t you have to?”

  “Look here,” Callicles said, “can’t you see we’re over here trying to win a war? Is that so goddamn hard to understand, just trying to win a war and go home? I want to go home, you want to go home, General Abrams wants to get his ass back to the world. But, Jesus, with the communists doing things like at Hue—killing and doing extortion, stealing rice and taxing the shit out of everyone, when they’re living in Pinkville—really living there, eating and sleeping and making mines—Christ, then you got to go after them. Show me a war …”

  With the My Lai investigation complete, Major Callicles turned back to whores and dope smokers and malingerers, apparently with the hope of turning the army back toward World War II professionalism. “Professionalism,” at least, was the word he used most. But what he wanted and what he furiously went after was a return to the old order. Callicles’s suspicion and assumption, in the end, was that the massacre at My Lai may have in fact happened just as Newsweek reported it, but that dope and whores and long hair—all suggesting the collapse of discipline—were responsible. It conflicted with his other arguments, of course, but it was his belief. So he crusaded.

  He assigned officers and NCOs to the firebase’s gates, and every jeep entering LZ Gator was searched for marihuana. Sometimes he stood out in the rain, spending hours peering into gas tanks and under seat cushions. “You don’t smoke dope, do you, troop?”

  “No, sir!”

  “You’d tell me if there’s dope in this vehicle, right?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Okay. But I’ll check, just to make sure some goddamn VC didn’t sneak some dope onto this vehicle. Get out.”

  Long lines, sometimes stretching out fifty yards, waited while Major Callicles did his duty.

  At night he would roam the firebase. He would check the perimeter bunkers and the barracks, go to the officers’ club and drink and gamble, and make another round.

  One evening a medic shot himself in the foot. He’d been scheduled to go to the field the next day, and it was fair to guess it had been intentional. His friends carried him into the medic’s hootch and laid him out, and in thirty seconds Major Callicles was there.

  “You bastard, Tully, you goddamn coward, you shot your ass, didn’t you, you dirty, sneaky little shit. You’re a coward. Well, goddamn it, you little shit, I’m reading your goddamn rights to you right now while you’re busy bleeding the pus and shit out, and you’d better tell me you understand what’s going on.” He snapped out a book and read Tully’s rights to silence and attorney and jammed the book back into his pocket and leaned over the table and glared into Tully’s face. “All right, you fuckin’ coward, you understand? I’m gonna question you while you’re bleedin’ an’ you don’t have to answer, but you sure as hell better answer, understand?”

  “I understand,” Tully whined. The medics were cutting off his boot.

  “Goddamn it, Tully, you know who the hell you’re talkin’ to, goddamn it, you little shit? This is Major Callicles, an’ you call Major Callicles ‘Sir,’ you understand?”

  “Yes, sir, Jesus, it hurts, sir!”

  “Shit, I’d like to bite the bloody little stump! What the fuck you expect, you little shit? You shoot yourself, you point an M-16 and blow off your toe ’cause you’re afraid to go out there and help guys getting shot up by Charlie, an’ you bitch ’cause it hurts. Aw, it hurts! Shit. Okay, Tully. Now, did you shoot yourself? You shot your goddamn self, didn’t you?”

  “God, it hurts! I was just cleaning it. It hurts, Jesus, sir, I’d just—”

  “Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, bullcrap!” Callicles put his nose down into Tully’s face, and Tully tried to turn his head to the side, but Callicles leaned more and kept his mouth against Tully’s nose. “You were scared shitless you’d get blown away out there, right? So you thought what the hell’s a toe, an’ you blew it away, an’ now you’re going to the world and sit in a hospital and read some comic books and drink some beer, right? Bullshit! Tully, bullshit! You’re gonna get a court-martial, that’s all you’re getting.”

  “Accident, sir.” He moaned, choked.

  “Accident?”

  “Yes, I don’t—”

  “You sneaky little shit! You trying to lie to a major, you little coward asshole?”

  Back in his office, Major Callicles talked about courage: “You know, O’Brien, when it comes down to it, people like me are lifers because we’ve got to show that there are still people with courage around in this world.” He smiled and wrinkled his nose, then dropped into a mean stare. “It’s the old story. Guts to stand up for what’s right. Sure, it’s almost futile—like the last man walking around after the bomb, just to show there’s still people around, but it’s still something to be proud about. You kids make me feel like an old man. I’m forty-four, I’m like an old man in the army. But I don’t care what the new culture says, young people like you are wrong when it comes to guts. You know what courage is? I can tell you that. It’s not standing around passively hoping for things to happen right; it’s going out and being tough and sharp-thinkin’ and making things happen right.”

  He grabbed his helmet, leaving the problem of what is right unresolved, and went on up to the officers’ club.

  Some of us sat about and talked about Major Callicles. Bates took the position he was outright crazy, and Porter agreed in essence, but he admired the man’s pizzazz. “The way he grimaces, they don’t make them that way anymore! Nazi Germany turned out some good ones, of course. Remember Himmler: Ja wohl, was ist richtich ist richtich! To the fore, to the fore, we’ll not surrender; save the Motherland; sorry—Save der Vaterland! Really, he’s got character, we need men like Callicles.”

  “He’s nuts,” Bates muttered, and shined his boots.

  “Of course he’s nuts. That’s the beauty of the man. But put him in Himmler’s shoes! Try him out that way. Can’t you see it? Stuff a monocle into one of those eyes. Isn’t it great? Sieg heil!”

  “No, he’s pathetic. That man will hurt somebody, wait and see.”

  Porter had a way of affecting seriousness. “Oh, no. Hold on for a second. You’ve got to appreciate style, Bates, you’ve got to use some imagination. Now, just think: Major Callicles is now Wehrmeister Hintenberg. Guten Tag, Herr Hintenberg, how goes das war, gut? Ach, ja! Aber die Menschen—pot, die fräulein, das Haar. Going to pot!”

  “Cut it
out,” Bates said. “Sometimes I like the guy.”

  At midnight Major Callicles came down from the officers’ club, eyeballs rolling. “O’Brien! Get your pack and rifle and ammo and a radio. We’re goin’ on down to Tri Binh 4—run a little patrol, just you and me and a Vietnamese scout. Let’s see if you got guts.”

  I said I was on duty.

  “Duty, shit! Who the hell’s running this battalion? Saddle up, let’s go.”

  “You serious, sir? Come on …”

  “Damn straight, I’m serious. Good to get out in the field. Scared?”

  I said I was plenty scared.

  “Good,” he said, winking at one of the other men. “Good soldiers are always scared; that way they don’t get careless and shit in their pants when the action starts. Maybe we’ll get some kills, surprise everybody, huh? Ol’ Major Callicles goes out and gets Charles, and everyone else’s back here puffin’ on the weed an’ lookin’ at skin flicks, an’ old Callicles, the ol’ soldier’s out there messing up Charles. We’ll have people shittin’ in their pants tomorrow, let’s go.”

  I laughed and looked at some paperwork. He went into his office, and Bates was saying what a close call that was when Major Callicles came out in his armored vest and told me to get my ass into a helmet.

  We drove out of the perimeter and picked up a Vietnamese scout in Nouc Mau. Then we drove down Highway One toward Tri Binh 1.

  A squad from Delta Company was there to meet us. Callicles smoked a cigarette and asked for the best route to Tri Binh 4. The squad leader pointed out across a paddy and advised him not to go, that the VC liked the place. But Callicles was spinning around in booze and courage, and he told me to turn on the radio, and we waded out into the paddy.

  Callicles took the point. The scout was behind him, then me and the radio, and a man from Delta took the rear.

  It was a half-hour hike. We roamed around the outskirts of the village until Callicles found a trail to ambush.

  “Okay, put up a Claymore,” he said, much too loudly, teasing. “Let’s see if you really pulled that field duty. Sure you can do it.”

  He crawled with me up to the trail and leaned over my shoulder. I put the thing in.

  “Shit, O’Brien, you wanna kill groundhogs? We’re after VC, not fuckin’ groundhogs, for Christ’s sake.” He was talking too loud, too much. The scout crawled up and asked what was wrong. “Shit, O’Brien’s on a goddamn groundhog hunt, for Christ’s sake. He’s trying to kill fuckin’ groundhogs.” The scout asked who O’Brien was, and Callicles laughed and clunked me on the rear. “This soldier, right here. College grad. Good man, though, even if he can’t set up a Claymore. You got guts, O’Brien, shit, I knew it anyhow. Here, let me get that thing in, and we’ll get some kills.”

  He pointed the Claymore up at the sky, and I asked if he were hunting eagles, but he growled and crawled off the trail and left the thing as it was, useless.

  “Okay, now we wait. You have to be quiet, dead quiet. I’ll start any shooting, you just wait and follow my lead. Don’t forget to blow the damn Claymore.”

  Major Callicles lay on his belly and was quiet. Rain sprinkled down, but it was a comfortable, gentle rain, reassuring because the VC were no more willing to venture out in it than GIs.

  Callicles didn’t stir for an hour. The man from Delta rolled over and asked if Callicles was stoned. I said yes, and he giggled and shook his head and rolled away.

  In a few minutes the man from Delta Company rolled back and pointed toward Major Callicles. “Jesus, either he’s asleep or dead. Look, he’s got his head all cradled up, he hasn’t budged.”

  Callicles was ten yards away, flat on his stomach, but it was too dark to make out his face.

  “Hell, my mama told me to watch the booze, sweet woman. Should I throw a rock over there?” He thought about it and decided he’d just be shot dead, and he rolled away.

  In an hour Callicles stood straight up and walked to the Claymore, walked down the trail, and peered into the village. “Shit, O’Brien, there ain’t no goddamn VC in Tri Binh 4.” He called it out like a drill sergeant hollering at a training company. “Who says Tri Binh 4 is such a bad place; you guys been giving me a line of bullshit? Jesus! Yank out that firing device and let’s beat feet out of here.” He stalked away like a prince, talking to himself; “Jesus, and I thought Tri Binh 4 was bad shit! Think I’ll hold a goddamn party here tomorrow night, everyone can waltz and drink punch, for Christ’s sake. Shit, a damn lark, a breeze, like walking through a patch of Maryland daisies!”

  In the morning the battalion commander rebuked Major Callicles. Things were tense, but afterward the major paced around his office, grinning and winking at everyone. “All it takes is guts—right, O’Brien?” Several nights later he burned down the whorehouse, and the next day he was given two hours to leave LZ Gator for good. It hurt him, leaving.

  Twenty-three

  Don’t I Know You?

  The air is still, warm. Just at dusk, only the brightest stars are out. The Southern Cross is only partly there.

  A man rolls a gate open and you walk carefully onto a sheet of tar. You go up eighteen steps.

  The airplane smells and feels artificial. The stewardess, her carefree smile and boredom flickering like bad lighting, doesn’t understand. It’s enraging, because you sense she doesn’t want to understand.

  The plane smells antiseptic. The green, tweedy seats are low-cost comfort, nothing at all like sleeping in real comfort on top of the biggest hill in the world, having finally climbed it. Too easy. There is no joy in leaving. Nothing to savor with your eyes or heart.

  When the plane leaves the ground, you join everyone in a ritualistic shout, trying to squeeze whatever drama you can out of leaving Vietnam.

  But the effort makes the drama artificial. You try to manufacture your own drama, remembering how you promised to savor the departure. You keep to yourself. It’s the same, precisely the same, as the arrival: a horde of strangers spewing their emotions and wanting you to share with them.

  The stewardess comes through the cabin, spraying a mist of invisible sterility into the pressurized, scrubbed, filtered, temperature-controlled air, killing mosquitoes and unknown diseases, protecting herself and America from Asian evils, cleansing us all forever.

  The stewardess is a stranger. No Hermes, no guide to anything. She is not even a peeping tom. She is as carefree and beautiful and sublime as a junior-high girlfriend.

  Her hair is blond; they must allow only blonds on Vietnam departures—blond, blue-eyed, long-legged, medium-to-huge-breasted women. It’s to say we did well, America loves us, it’s over, here’s what you missed, but here’s what it was good for: My girlfriend was blond and blue-eyed and long-legged, quiet and assured, and she spoke good English. The stewardess doesn’t do anything but spray and smile, smiling while she sprays us clean, spraying while she smiles us back to home. Question. Do the coffins get sprayed? Does she care if I don’t want to be sterilized, would she stop?

  You hope there will be time for a last look at the earth. You take a chance and try the window. Part of a wing, a red light on the end of it. The window reflects the cabin’s glare. You can’t even see darkness down below, not even a shadow of the earth, not even a skyline. The earth, with its little villages and bad, criss-crossed fields of rice paddy and red clay, deserts you. It’s the earth you want to say goodbye to. The soldiers never knew you. You never knew the Vietnamese people. But the earth, you could turn a spadeful of it, see its dryness and the tint of red, and dig out enough of it so as to lie in the hole at night, and that much of Vietnam you would know. Certain whole pieces of the land you would know, something like a farmer knows his own earth and his neighbor’s. You know where the bad, dangerous parts are, and the sandy and safe places by the sea. You know where the mines are and will be for a century, until the earth swallows and disarms them. Whole patches of land. Around My Khe and My Lai. Like a friend’s face.

  The stewardess serves a meal and passes out ma
gazines. The plane lands in Japan and takes on fuel. Then you fly straight on to Seattle. What kind of war is it that begins and ends this way, with a pretty girl, cushioned seats, and magazines?

  You add things up. You lost a friend to the war, and you gained a friend. You compromised one principle and fulfilled another. You learned, as old men tell it in front of the courthouse, that war is not all bad; it may not make a man of you, but it teaches you that manhood is not something to scoff; some stories of valor are true; dead bodies are heavy, and it’s better not to touch them; fear is paralysis, but it is better to be afraid than to move out to die, all limbs functioning and heart thumping and charging and having your chest torn open for all the work; you have to pick the times not to be afraid, but when you are afraid you must hide it to save respect and reputation. You learned that the old men had lives of their own and that they valued them enough to try not to lose them; anyone can die in a war if he tries.

  You land at an air force base outside Seattle. The army feeds you a steak diner. A permanent sign in the mess hall says “Welcome Home, Returnees.” “Returnees” is an army word, a word no one else would use. You sign your name for the dinner, one to a man.

  Then you sign your name to other papers, processing your way out of the army, signing anything in sight, dodging out of your last haircut.

  You say the Pledge of Allegiance, even that, and you leave the army in a taxicab.

  The flight to Minnesota in March takes you over disappearing snow. The rivers you see below are partly frozen over. Black chunks of cornfields peer out of the old snow. The sky you fly in is gray and dead. Over Montana and North Dakota, looking down, you can’t see a sign of life.

  And over Minnesota you fly into an empty, unknowing, uncaring, purified, permanent stillness. Down below, the snow is heavy, there are patterns of old cornfields, there are some roads. In return for all your terror, the prairies stretch out, arrogantly unchanged.