Take Back the Night: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 3)

by Dennis Foley

  As soon as the general’s chopper arrived, Westmoreland moved with dispatch to the reviewing stand where General Parrish waited. The two then stepped down from the stand and marched to Hollister’s post in front of the assembled honor guard.

  Not knowing firsthand that everything was ready nagged at Hollister while he greeted the general and then trooped the line. If anything did catch General Parrish’s eye, he chose not to mention it to Hollister as he thanked him and returned to his post at the reviewing stand for the pass in review.

  Hollister marched his company, the color guard, and the band past the reviewing stand, did a sharp right, and moved to the base of its steps. There, he stopped, turned around, and saluted the colors as they passed.

  Once the last of his honor guard had passed the stand, Hollister turned to General Westmoreland and saluted. “Sir, this concludes the ceremony.”

  Westmoreland returned Hollister’s salute and stepped down from the stand to shake his hand. “Thank you, Hollister. Fine job. I always love coming back to Benning because you all do a wonderful job here.”

  Before Hollister could respond, General Parrish and Colonel Valentine stepped up next to Westmoreland. Westmoreland turned and caught sight of Valentine. “Hollister here has a fine-looking honor guard.”

  Valentine puffed his chest a bit and smiled. “Yes, General. He’s a good man.”

  Hollister was stunned at the hypocrisy of Valentine’s words. He was tempted to show some sign of surprise but was interrupted by Valentine’s bombast.

  “And you know, General, young Hollister here’s the kind of soldier I like to point out to the young lieutenants—as an example. He’s been deep selected for early promotion. And I’m very proud to have been part of putting him there.”

  Since he’d been in the army, Hollister had met and worked for only a few officers he thought were complete assholes. Valentine was one of them. For Valentine to take any credit for Hollister’s promotion was to Hollister a cold, hard lie. Valentine had not even been in his job long enough to influence the major’s selection board.

  Hollister remembered how much time, energy, and emphasis had been placed on an officer’s word in OCS. He still believed it was very important. And watching a colonel lie to somehow take credit in front of the chief of staff of the army sickened Hollister. There wasn’t much he could do about it but promise himself he would never become a Valentine, and promise himself he would never turn his back to Valentine. He couldn’t be trusted.

  Jrae sat in the only piece of shade she could find under the metal roof of their structure. Aluminum sheeting covered the open timber frame of what the South Vietnamese called refugee housing. The floors were hard-packed earth, but the shelters contained nothing else in the way of living accommodations. The ground was adequate to sleep on in the dry season, but many sought the comfort of hammocks.

  Jrae was forced to sleep among the other Montagnard women. Women she didn’t even know. From her place, Jrae could see the hundreds of mountain people going through their daily routines. Some wove bamboo into baskets, while others carried square five-gallon cans of water balanced on the ends of carry poles. Old people sat near their few possessions and watched the others suspiciously.

  She was able to recognize the differences in the features and the clothing worn by members of other Montagnard tribes. So she knew they were not of her people. Her people and these were as alien to one another as if they had come from different sides of the globe. Some were able to communicate in French, and others had enough in common in their dialects to get along. But most of them were unsure of the others and wary.

  Jrae looked at Krong. “Where do you go? Can I get some water for you?” Jrae asked.

  “No. I am only going to wash the filth from my hair,” Krong said. “Don’t worry for me. I am well.”

  She watched as he turned away. He walked, hunched over, to a government-built latrine. It was designed to accommodate as many as fifty people at a time. And in its efficiency came a complete loss of privacy and dignity. Jrae was worried. She had seen him scuff to the latrine far too many times over the past several days.

  She had tried to talk to him about it before, but he changed the subject and made it clear to her he would neither be fussed over nor be a burden to his people. Instead, he told her it was time for her to think about her survival. He would be gone soon, and she would be alone. She was the last in her family line, and the few others from their village were all having their own problems. She should not expect them to look out for her.

  The thought of being without Krong was painful for Jrae. He had been her family’s heart her whole life. What they did, what they were, and where they traveled were all decided by Krong. There was never a question about his wisdom or his authority. But since they had been put out of the choppers in Da Lat, his power and influence had disappeared.

  “Have you ever used one of these?” Sergeant Jackie Beck asked Jrae.

  She shook her head—no. She had seen one once in a clinic run by the nuns, but she wasn’t sure how it operated.

  “Okay. Here is a copy of the Stars and Stripes, an American newspaper. I want you to pick out an article and copy it using this old gal,” he said, patting the worn-out, upright Remington as if it had a personality.

  Jrae watched as Beck rolled a piece of paper into the typewriter and tapped on a few of the keys.

  “See here? You match the letters on these keys to the letters on the page, and you’ll type a copy of the news article. That’s how you practice. Can do?”

  Jrae nodded even though she wasn’t completely sure what he had her doing.

  The days in Jackie Beck’s office began to make some sense to Jrae, and she soon became quite skilled at copying things on the typewriter. And working around Americans helped to improve the English she had learned from the nuns when she was a young girl. But along with the growing comfort she felt among the more Western world came alienation from her own people and a new problem for her. She recognized there was little she could do about the distancing. There was a notion among some of the Montagnards that it was somehow disloyal to their kind to befriend Viets or Americans. But those same Montagnards were dying with their insistence that they cling to the old ways and the old ties. Their spirits faded before they did, but Jrae saw it in their eyes long before their bodies gave out.

  She was determined not to give up just because she had been separated from her cultural homeland and village life. She would adapt, and she would survive.

  Her other problem was the American and the South Vietnamese men. Working in an office, she came into contact with them daily. Some of them would treat her with indifference, some were friendly, others would show open contempt. And still others would treat her like a common prostitute.

  She was occasionally approached with propositions she tried to refuse without creating friction. She quickly became aware of the high priority placed on maintaining face. It was no different among the South Vietnamese men and the Americans. They were equally crushed when she refused them. The South Viets tended to react with insults about her heritage and her limited worth. They often covered her rejection by finding fault with her work. She responded to this by redoubling her efforts to become a better clerk and interpreter. Though many of the South Vietnamese had been assigned to work with the Montagnards for years, none of them had bothered to learn their language. Jrae worked at English, Vietnamese, and several dialects of Montagnard. As her proficiency grew, so did her usefulness to the South Vietnamese.

  The Americans tended to laugh off her rejections as if they had only been kidding her all along. But privately they resented her lack of enthusiasm for their advances. Sometimes she would feel as if she were being punished by the Americans, disguised as extra work. This, too, she accepted. She would not be broken. She would not let her spirit be damaged by the insults and the punitive actions of her employers. She took strength from her own discipline. While other women wasted time sitting around the camp watching the
days pass by, she practiced her typing and improved her grasp of the many languages spoken there.

  CHAPTER 7

  HE WALKED THROUGH THE main waiting area of San Francisco International Airport, and people stared at Hollister. He just assumed there was no one in that place who was undecided about Vietnam, and he was certainly a symbol of the war.

  He wore his starched khakis with highly polished paratrooper boots, rows of combat ribbons, his master parachutist’s and combat infantryman’s badges on his chest. On his head—his new green beret, having finished the training en route to Vietnam. He felt like he was in some people’s crosshairs and others’ prayers. But he held his head high, carried his B-4 bag and small carry-on bag as if the weight was nothing, and tried to take in the people around him without seeming to care.

  He was amazed at how things had changed in the six years since his first departure for Vietnam. Then there were no hippies, no draft dodgers, no antiwar demonstrators, no draft-card burners, and no one in the airport to even care who he was or where he was going.

  But things had changed so much; hardly a head remained unturned as he walked the length of the concourse to get to his gate.

  He was ready. He had heard all of the horror stories about people spitting on soldiers. He had considered wearing civvies but then got angry that he even considered it. He was going off to serve his country, and he would not do it like a thief in the night.

  The flight from the West Coast to Vietnam was always awful. It was not just long, it was filled with the finality of going off to war, with the uncertainty of war, and with the depression of knowing there was at least a year ahead of you before you were eligible to return.

  Hollister had drawn a commercial ticket. He was traveling with other soldiers, civilians of all walks of life, and tourists on their way to Honolulu. The stewardess was a cute little redhead named Pammy, who had spotted Hollister’s uniform and kept him in tiny bottles of bourbon from the time they lifted off at San Francisco International until they orbited Saigon.

  The second leg of the trip stopped in Guam for refueling, and then straight into Saigon.

  For Hollister, the approach into Saigon was not much different from his first time. The city was a blur of headlights, and the countryside was spotted with parachute flares and hundreds of navigation lights on the aircraft he could see on the descent into Tan Son Nhut Airport.

  It was three in the morning when they landed. A sergeant was waiting at the ramp to start in-processing for the 131 new arrivals.

  As always, it started with a formation—lining everyone up. Hollister found a spot and dropped his bags while the sergeant went through the most critical initial instructions.

  “If during this in-processing, you hear sirens located on the corners of the building behind me or you detect incoming enemy rockets, artillery, or mortar fire, you will immediately break ranks and head for the large bunkers located one hundred meters to my rear—adjacent to the parking area. Is that understood?”

  Hollister looked around at the airport area. He hadn’t been there since his first tour, when he had stood in roughly the same place to get his first glimpse of Vietnam. Everywhere he looked there were signs. More and more buildings had been built to hold more and more people and cargo going through the airport. He had read in a news magazine in the States that Tan Son Nhut had become the busiest airport in the world.

  He shook his head. Soldiers, MPs, civilian employees, military vehicles, and aircraft filled every possible space in his field of view. Still, it was a shabby little airfield with too much happening and only one reason for being—the war.

  “Those of you who are scheduled for Fifth Special Forces Group assignments will be met inside the ATCO terminal by someone from the SF liaison team. You can fall out now and head on over there.”

  The air traffic control terminal was one of the oldest buildings at Tan Son Nhut. Many thousands of soldiers had waited there for word on a flight to some place in Vietnam—most of the time those waits were very long.

  Hollister entered; not much had changed. There were soldiers waiting to go home, some new arrivals, soldiers waiting to go to other parts of Vietnam, and a large group waiting on a flight to Singapore—for R & R.

  Hollister found a mail drop cut in the plywood wall next to one of the counters taking up two walls inside the building. He pulled the letter he had written Susan out of his bag and looked at it before he dropped it into the slot marked “MaiL” in uneven, handwritten letters of mixed case.

  He realized there was not much in the letter. At best, it would do nothing to raise his hopes that it would help patch things up between him and Susan.

  “Captain Hollister?”

  Hollister turned around, expecting to find someone from the Special Forces processing detachment. Instead he found a staff sergeant wearing a baseball cap and a II Field Force shoulder patch. “Yes. What can I do for you?”

  “Sir, I’m Sergeant Kent from Two Field.” He jerked his thumb toward the doorway. “I’ve got a vehicle outside, and I’m supposed to pick you up.”

  “You aren’t from the SF liaison team, are you?”

  “No, sir. I’m not. All I was told by the duty officer was to get down here and pick you up.”

  Hollister knew the sergeant didn’t have a clue and wasn’t responsible for the change in his travel plans. He also knew it wasn’t even worth arguing with him. He remembered what a soldier had once said about a similar situation on his first tour: What the hell. It all goes toward a year.

  Hollister shrugged, nodded, and pointed toward the door. “After you.”

  The streets of Saigon were the biggest change. They had always been crowded with Americans, Vietnamese, refugees, and carpetbaggers from all over Asia. But Hollister was surprised at how much it had all grown. Next to the numbers of people scurrying to work, the numbers of black-market stands going up for the day were mind-boggling.

  He looked at the wide array of American products for sale. It was obvious the problem was completely out of control. Air conditioners, GI-issue American combat gear, folding cots, helmets, fatigues, and several boxes of Tide soap were on display on one corner. Only a few feet away, a vendor had a display of C rations stacked chest high. Hollister thought of the nights out in the bush when he would have given a month’s pay to have a can of C rations.

  The II Field Force Vietnam headquarters complex had only expanded since he had been there last. They had added more and more barracks, offices, and warehouses. Sergeant Kent turned into one of the first gates they reached and waited for the guard to raise the red-and-white metal barrier pole stretched across the road.

  Hollister was immediately struck by the sight of a sloppy-looking soldier leaning against the guard shack, talking on a field phone, oblivious to Hollister and Kent.

  Kent tapped the horn on the jeep and got no response from the soldier. He reached down to throw the jeep out of gear and Hollister stopped him. “No, you stay here. I’ll take care of this.”

  Hollister got out of the jeep and straightened his beret. He walked around the front of the jeep and up to the soldier’s back. “You suppose we could bother you to open the gate, soldier?”

  The soldier slowly looked over his shoulder, the phone still pressed to his ear. Seeing Hollister standing there, his hands on his hips, a scowl on his face, he quickly mumbled some good-byes into the phone and dropped it.

  The soldier spun around and saluted, leaving the phone dangling from its cord against the guard shack. “Oh, sorry, sir. I was on the phone.”

  Hollister decided to let the weak excuse go and just let the soldier do the talking instead of getting into an argument. The soldier awkwardly stepped over to the counterweight on the barrier and leaned on it to raise the gate. “I’m really sorry to hold you up, sir. You, can, ah … go ahead now.”

  Hollister stared at the soldier for an uncomfortably long time for the soldier and then thanked him, a clear trace of sarcasm in his voice.

  “Sorry
’bout that, sir,” Sergeant Kent said, using the well-worn saying often repeated throughout Vietnam. “We been getting some pretty lame actors over here in the last year. They just drag ass and give you some sorry-ass excuses and slow everything down. It’s like they don’t care there’s a war on and time is important to the kids out there,” Kent said, pointing toward the tree line to the northwest of the roadway.

  “You been out there?”

  “Yes, sir. I was a recon NCO in an artillery battalion for eight months. Then they sent my battery home, and I got reassigned here. I’m pretty happy. Being a forward observer was what I was trained for, and now I get to work at the field force artillery headquarters. Good chow and a real cot and, well, I like it.”

  Hollister was happy to see the combat veterans were still being sent to the headquarters to work rather than filling it up with people who had no appreciation for what the field rats were going through.

  He’d been in the same headquarters section many times before. But on this trip, it looked more crowded with desks, more handiwork adorned the walls, and more phones seemed to be ringing. Sergeant Kent had led him to the operations sergeant major’s desk—but the sergeant major wasn’t there.

  Hollister checked his watch. It was only a few minutes after seven, and the headquarters was already humming. “Sergeant Kent, I can take it from here. Why don’t you go get yourself some coffee or breakfast?”

  “Oh, okay, sir. I’ll do that. I don’t know where the sergeant major is, but I’m sure someone will be able to help you out pretty quick here. I’ll drop back by here to make sure you’re okay.”

  Hollister stuck out his hand and shook Kent’s, thanking him for the ride. He looked around for someplace to wait and found a chair. He dropped his gear next to it.

  “You just sit around on your ass when there are things to be done, dragons to be slayed, and virgins to be deflowered?”