by Dennis Foley
Hollister turned and found Jack Donaldson standing just behind him, bent at the waist, his hands on his thighs—gasping for breath.
“That’s as close as I ever want to get to another shitty landing,” Donaldson said, straightening up and exhaling to calm himself.
“That working?” Hollister asked—looking at Donaldson’s radio.
Donaldson picked up the handset and listened to the rushing noise in the earpiece. “Any station. This is Campus Killer Two-Eight. Over.”
He paused for a reply. Getting one, he responded. “Roger, Gunslinger. We are a downed slick. What’s your location?”
He listened to the reply and then thanked the distance station. “Roger. You’re a bit too far away to help. Not to worry. We have friendlies overhead right now. Thanks for the offer. Out.”
Donaldson turned to Hollister. “Works fine. I’m going to drag it over to Captain Tennant so we can talk to the chase ship.”
“Good idea,” Hollister said.
Donaldson was not more than two yards from the aircraft when a plume of brown water and dirt erupted beneath his feet.
The sound of the explosion reached Hollister a fraction of a second after he saw Donaldson hurled into the air.
He leaped to his feet and ran to Donaldson without thinking. Only after he was running did he hear someone yelling, “Watch it! There may be more of them!”
Hollister knew what the warning was—if it was a mine or a booby trap there might be more. But he was only a few feet from Donaldson, and he hoped there wouldn’t be another one close by.
He dropped to his knees and rolled the young lieutenant over. His right leg had been torn away just above the knee and most of the fingers on his right hand were gone. Hollister ripped his jungle fatigue shirt open and quickly looked for any wounds to his torso, then his head and neck.
He rolled Donaldson forward and raised the back of his shirt to examine his back and yelled over his shoulder, “Someone get over here and grab this radio. Get a fucking medevac in here now! He needs help—fast!”
It was nearly two A.M. by the time they had recovered the downed chopper and pulled out the teams on the training missions. Hollister sat at his desk toying with the letter to his parents he had started four days earlier. It contained less than two complete sentences and said absolutely nothing of consequence. He pushed it away—promising himself to finish it.
“What’s Donaldson’s status?” Hollister asked Easy, who had just entered Hollister’s office.
“Last update was an hour ago. He was still in surgery. They did tell me he will lose his arm as well as his leg. But they think he has an even chance.”
Hollister looked up at Easy. “He’s only a boy, Top.”
“We’re all boys, Captain,” Easy said, an uncharacteristically warm smile on his face.
Hollister had to smile at his longtime friend. “I guess you’re right I’m just getting so fucking tired of watching this war eat up the Donaldsons. I didn’t even get a chance to get to know him before I’m looking for his replacement. This is really fucked!”
“S’cuse me a minute, Captain.” Easy stepped out of Hollister’s office.
Hollister looked at the pile of notes on his desk. He had had a call from Colonel Terry while he was out on the ground. He looked at his watch. He decided to call Terry in the morning.
Easy returned with a bottle of bourbon and two coffee cups. “Got some good stuff from an old friend up the road at the ordnance battalion. He was one hell of a radioman in Korea. He’s a good contact for several reasons—and this is one of the better.” He held up the bottle. “How about a nightcap?”
“Everybody’s in? Guards posted on the perimeter?”
“That’s affirm.”
“A little,” Hollister said.
Easy poured a bit more than Hollister asked for. “Bad start, huh?” Hollister said.
Easy shook his head, took a sip of his bourbon, and then shrugged. “It’s a fuckin’ dangerous business. If we don’t train hard, we’ll die hard. You know that.”
Of course Hollister knew he was right, but it didn’t make him feel any better about Donaldson, who would be forever changed by one step on an uncontested landing zone. Hollister’s face reddened with a hint of anger. “I want to know what the fuck brought the chopper down.”
“Now Cap’n, I’d think twice about connecting the chopper with the booby trap on the LZ. If there’s a maintenance problem, Captain Tennant will be quick to find it and fix it. He wants to keep flying more than you want to blame somebody for the boy losing his leg out there in that paddy.
“You didn’t ask, but I’ve decided Cap’n Tennant’s one fine aviator in the time I been watchin’ him. You ’n’ I been ’round some good ones and some not so good ones. This guy you don’t have to worry about.”
Hollister killed his bourbon and pushed his cup toward Easy for a refill. “Who do I have to worry about?”
Easy poured more without comment and pushed the cup back. He rolled his eyes skyward and thought for a minute. “It’s a long list. But my old soldier’s bones tell me you have to watch the chain of command for starters.”
“My chain of command?”
“No,” Easy said, thumb pointing in the direction of Long Binh. “The links above you.”
Hollister was surprised at Easy’s reply. “You have problems with Michaelson and Colonel Terry?”
“No,” Easy said. “I got nothing but respect for Michaelson, and I think Terry’s prob’ly a straight shooter. I’d keep my eye on folks way up higher. They’re shaky, and the war’s coming unglued. They’re liable to do just about anything. Some’ll want to find ways to get some more medals. Others’ll lay low. They’re all fucking crazy about numbers and body counts and keeping discipline figures down—you know. They’re running scared, and you can get caught in the squeeze.”
“Shit, I can’t do very much about changing Westmoreland’s or Trickie Dickie’s plans now, can I?”
“No, but you can watch your back.”
Hollister let Easy’s words sink in. “What about around here?”
Easy leaned back, scratched his stomach, and then patted his pockets, looking for a cigar. “Not so bad,” he said. He found one, unwrapped it, and began wetting the outer leaves of the dry cigar.
“I think you got good material, but these folks need lots and lots more training. Mostly, I think they need to get religion about what they’re doing. They got an attitude like the war is somewhere else. Not enough contact to sharpen them. They run too many dry-hole patrols, and they get cocky and sloppy. Then they get—”
“Dead.”
Easy raised his drink. “You’re right there, Cap’n.”
They looked at each other and said nothing. It wasn’t funny—not to them.
Browning had converted one of the buildings into a BOQ for the Juliet Company officers. It was once a supply shed for the former tenant’s construction materials. And it still smelled like bags of Portland cement.
Inside, someone had AFN on. Sly and the Family Stone banged out their latest hit. Hollister walked through the arch in the plywood wall that separated the sleeping area from the dayroom-bar they had cobbled up, using the supply counter. He found two platoon leaders, a pilot, the forward air controller, and Captain Thomas listening to one end of a phone conversation Captain Browning was having on the landline near the bar.
“I understand. Yes, yes … I’ll tell him when he gets here. Roger. Out,” Browning said. He hung up the phone, turned, and found Hollister standing in the doorway. “Sir, it’s Donaldson.”
“Didn’t make it?” Hollister asked.
“Some complication with his surgery. He had a fucking heart attack. He died about twenty minutes ago.”
All the others were silent.
Hollister tried to fight back the choking sensation rising in his throat. “Shit!” He dropped his head and let it sink in for a moment.
“Pour me a bourbon,” he said, moving to the bar.
Lieutenant Fass raised a bottle of Wild Turkey and his eyebrows. Hollister nodded. “It’ll do. Just give me a shot.”
The others said little, but each moved to the bar and got his own drink.
Hollister waited until they all had something to drink, and he raised his shot glass. “For Jack Donaldson.” He downed his bourbon and grimaced at the burn.
The others repeated the toast and followed suit.
“Brownie, I want you to make sure Jack’s battery has all the details, and I want to coordinate a letter to go with his battery commander’s letter.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Browning said. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, get someone on gathering up any of his things that are here and get them over to his battery. And let’s have a memorial ceremony—soon.”
Hollister had a second drink at the bar and decided to retire to his room. He wanted another drink but didn’t want to have it in front of the others. He had been pretty hard on them about drinking when he first arrived. He knew he had to set the example—or at least have another in his room.
His room was dark, smelled of the constant Vietnam mustiness, and felt damp. He twisted on the bulb hanging from the ceiling over the built-in desk and bench near the door.
On the desk, someone had put two letters from his mother, a couple of bills from the States, and a copy of the latest issue of Stars and Stripes.
There was nothing from Susan. And he knew it was unlikely he would find anything from her except something that couldn’t be avoided.
He threw his hat on the desk, and unbuckled his pistol belt and wrapped it around his .45 and holster. Placing his sidearm on the bench, he stepped over to the ammo crate that served as a headboard, and grabbed the bottle of Dickel nestled between three other bottles of liquor.
He sat and poured himself another stiff drink, and then fished around in his pocket for a cigarette. He found none. Instead, he slipped his finger under the flap of the first letter from his mother.
His mother always spent the first page of her letters saying very little, asking very little, and warming up to the acknowledgment Hollister was in Vietnam. As with all her letters, it was filled with little bits of news from Lansing, Kansas. News about the family and some long discussion about the actual weather and the weather they hoped to get.
Somewhere around the last third of her letters she would try to gently ask her son to be very careful and to try to avoid the perils of war.
Hollister took a long sip of his drink and let his mind wander from his mother’s letter to a mental picture of her back on the farm. He couldn’t remember a day when they had ever had any friction or tension between them—not until he left for Vietnam the first time.
That day, in the Kansas City airport, he saw her mood change from the mother who had raised him and had always been his best friend to a woman who was angry her son was going off to war. She paced nervously, and there was a strain in her voice he had rarely heard. Still, she didn’t want to upset him, so she kept much of her feelings to herself.
It was only through his father’s explanations and letters from his cousin Janet that he found out just how much pain was involved in having him in Vietnam—especially for the third time.
He missed her breakfasts, and he missed her company.
CHAPTER 20
HE WAS IN A deep fog when the CQ shook him.
“Sir? Captain? You gotta wake up,” the soldier said, half whispering.
“What? What is it? A contact?” Hollister replied with a start.
“No, sir. We don’t have any teams out.”
Hollister crawled to a sitting position and tried to clear his head. “What is it?”
“The first sergeant wanted me to come get you. He’s over in the orderly room—right now.”
“What’s it about?”
“Seems there’s been some trouble in one of the teams. I don’t know the details, only the first shirt sent me to get you.”
“Okay. Hustle back over there and tell him I’m on my way.”
When Hollister got to his office he found the first sergeant, red-faced and angrily chewing on a stub of a cigar. Also, there was the team leader of 1-4, Sergeant Curry, and Private First Class Parsons. Parsons’s face had several large bruises, and the white part of one eye was bright red.
Whatever it was, Parsons had already pushed some buttons for Hollister. He had spotted Parsons his very first day in the company, and he knew the guy wasn’t his type of soldier. He had an attitude. That first day Hollister knew there would be a meeting such as the one he was about to have. He didn’t know what the first sergeant was about to tell him, but he knew it wasn’t good.
“What’s the deal, Top?”
“Fuckin’ pothead!”
“What? Who’s a pothead?”
“Parsons here,” Easy said.
Hollister looked at Parsons for a reaction to Easy’s charge and saw none. “Sit,” he said. “First Sergeant, come into my office.”
In his office, Hollister snatched his beret off his head and threw it into the top tray of his in-box. “I just don’t get it. I’m completely out of touch with this drug thing. I watched kids destroy their brains back at Benning, and wondered there. But here? Christ, it’s hard enough going a round with the bad guys without doing it in a damn coma.”
“This is a cancer eating the heart out of every unit in the army,” Easy said.
Hollister dropped into his chair and lit a cigarette. “Let me hear it.”
“Hear what, Cap’n?”
“Your wise old soldier’s recommendation.”
Easy took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Been in this man’s army, man and boy, for over thirty years. I’ve seen boozers, gamblers, barracks thieves, and race troubles. But I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“That mean you don’t have any ideas?”
“Means, years ago I’d tell you to throw this kid in the stockade and forget about him.”
“And now?”
“Now? Now’s different. You throw him in jail, and his replacement is jus’ as liable to be a pothead.”
“You think we should keep him?”
The first sergeant looked at the blank wall as if he could see Parsons through it. “You see the mouse under his eye?”
“Yeah. Where’d he get it?”
“His team.”
“That’s a good sign. They caught him?”
“Yes, sir. And they let him know they weren’t going to put up with a druggie.”
“How long’s he been here?” Hollister asked.
“Got here just about a week before you did. Came from the Airborne brigade when they rotated home,” Easy said.
“He been out on any shakedown patrols yet?”
“No, sir. Not yet.”
“Well, my guess is if he’s even fixable, he’ll fix better here than in Long Binh jail,” Hollister said.
“Hell, from what I’ve heard about LBJ, he’s more likely to get in the habit of being a screwup there. It’s a cesspool.”
“Send him in, Top.”
“Private First Class Parsons reports, sir.”
Hollister returned his salute. “Stand at ease.”
Parsons appeared to be unsure if he should look straight ahead, over Hollister’s head, or directly at Hollister. He tried all three before he settled on looking at Hollister.
“I’m only going to ask you one question,” Hollister said.
“Yes, sir?”
“You want to stay in Juliet Company or not?”
Surprised he was even being given a option, Parsons blurted out, “Stay, sir. If you’ll let me.”
“It’s not up to me,” Hollister said. “We’re going to leave it up to your team.”
“My team?”
“I’m going to let them decide if they want to keep you—if they can trust you.”
“You’re not going to send me to LBJ?”
“No. But if it happens again …”
Hollister didn’t have to finish.
“Yes, sir. It won’t. I fucked up. It won’t happen again,” Parsons said.
“Being counted on. Being reliable. Backing up other Rangers is what we’re about. Nothing else matters if we can’t do that.” Hollister leaned forward and raised his voice. “If you don’t get it—you don’t belong here. The only people you matter to in this world are your teammates. They can’t trust a fucking druggie. Would you?” Hollister asked.
Parsons hung his head and almost whispered, “No.”
“Go wait out in the orderly room until I find out what your team wants to do with you. And send the first sergeant in.”
“I want to see Parsons’s team, his platoon sergeant, and the platoon leader in the mess hall after breakfast,” Hollister said.
Easy smiled and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“What the hell are you smiling at, Top?”
“Most other company commanders would just dump a guy like that. My guess is you’ll be happy you kept him,” Easy said.
“Well, I’m glad you approve of my style, First Sergeant,” Hollister said—teasing his top soldier. “Oh, and see if Greenwood is still waiting to be assigned to a team and get him into the next hole in Parsons’s team. It’ll do them both some good.”
“You figure Greenwood will be harder on Parsons than his buddies already are?”
“Yep. That kid came close to destroying himself. He’s a believer now.”
“Well, yer in luck then.”
“How’s that?” Hollister asked.
“Sergeant Curry’s going home next week.”
“Talk with DeSantis and see if you two don’t think he’s team leader material. Will you?”
“And if we think he is?” Easy asked.
“Then see if you can make Lieutenant Fass believe it was his idea to give Greenwood the team.”
“Consider it done.”
Not finding a butt can on the mess hall table, Hollister crushed out a cigarette, fieldstripped it, and rolled the remaining paper into a ball. He staffed it in his pocket, spun a folding chair around, and straddled it. He waited for Lieutenant Fass, DeSantis, and the rest of the team to sit. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”