Everyone was quiet until Butler mumbled, “It’s a trap. We’re all going to die.” Then we all got up and walked down the ramp and stood around on the tarmac getting our eyes adjusted to the sunshine. It seemed incredibly bright. We could hear artillery rounds head outbound, and then small thumps as they landed in the distance. As we stood waiting for the trucks to haul our gear and us to our new home, it struck me as how American we looked. As new guys we were apart from the activities of war going on around us. Clean, fresh, and with a look of wonderment almost hidden behind aviator sunglasses.
Bearhead stood away from us. The Skipper had given in and allowed him to tie an Indian band around his forehead. In place of the survival knife issued to and worn by the other pilots, Bearhead wore a tomahawk, its handle stuck through his pistol belt and trailing a small feather. It was a gift from his tribe when he had left the reservation school to join the Marine Corps. The Skipper had at first insisted Bearhead wear “none of that native shit,” but the group public relations officer had convinced him that this was the kind of color that attracted television cameras, and there was nothing short of the Medal of Honor that the Skipper wanted more than coverage of his squadron on television.
Bearhead slowly turned to survey his surroundings. He paused frequently as if memorizing the terrain or the considerable U.S. fortifications built up around the fighters lining the runway. Toward the west he had to shield his eyes, and I saw the heritage of plains warriors in his profile. I looked where Bearhead was looking and was aware that the squadron was in a bright bubble of dust, heat, and noise. Outside the bubble, the low, cool, green hills of Vietnam stepped up into the Ammonite Mountains behind.
Gearheardt walked over and stood next to me.
“Well,” he said, “we’re not dead yet.” He put his hand on my shoulder, and I saw Peters look at us and raise his eyebrows.
“Look at old Bearhead over there,” I mused, “surveying the land that he knows he will fight over. He’s kind of a dipshit for the most part, but I have to admit he looks like a warrior right now.”
“You ever fly with him?” Gearheardt asked.
I shook my head no.
“Don’t, if you can help it. He may look like a warrior, but he’s got to be the biggest plumber in the squadron when he’s in the cockpit. As a pilot the man is a waste of good sky. Bad enough just trying to keep straight and level, in an emergency he tends to want to smash the instrument panel with his tomahawk and get inverted. I hate him.”
“Then I hate him too,” I said. “I hate everybody that’s incompetent.”
“Kind of a pretty place, don’t you think?” Gearheardt said, indicating the mountains and then the South China Sea beach across the runway from us. “I hope we don’t have to do our Barbonella thing before we get a chance to kill something. I just want to strafe. I’ve always wanted to strafe even if it’s in one of our damned helicopters with door gunners. Not exactly an F-4, but at least we’re slow enough we can see what we’re hitting.”
The six-bys arrived, and we loaded for the ride to our new tent homes. The few remaining pilots from the squadron that we were replacing tried to sell us useless junk that they were leaving behind: ashtrays made of coffee cans, cheap fans that didn’t fan, and bookcases made from ammunition boxes. We bought all of it. We were the FNGs, and we had to play our role, just like the old salts had to play theirs. Of course the old salts, the guys that had been in country longer than we had, even if this was fifteen or twenty minutes, had horror stories for every situation. Like when you went to take a piss, down an empty rocket pod stuck into the ground or a half-sunken fifty-gallon barrel with screen over the top, was when the snipers always got you. And there was always a guy in another squadron that went out to take a piss and the VC had booby-trapped the pisser, so they found the guy’s hand out by the runway still holding his dick.
We were the Fucking New Guys. Ready, willing, and able to kick Cong ass.
“Open your eyes! Open your eyes, damn you, or I’ll pull this trigger! You crazy bastard! You’ll kill us! OPEN THEM!” We hit the ground, bounced once, and then settled. The Marines bailed out the side, past the door gunner, who was illegally firing (it was not a designated “return fire zone” due to a typo in the ops order) over their heads into the tree line. Seconds later we were airborne again, the helicopter leaping without the weight of the ten combat-dressed Marines. I slumped back in my seat and gulped the air flowing in the open window, my pistol dangling loosely in my hand. The adrenaline began to wear away, and I became aware of the ungainly gaggle of machinery in a slow climbing turn out of the jungle and back toward the coast of Vietnam. Flying co-pilot on strike missions, inserting Marines into suspected enemy troop concentrations, was below Dante’s bottom circle. You were helpless. You were sure the idiot in the right seat, the pilot, was the most incompetent son-of-a-bitch in the military, and you had to let him kill you or be court-martialed—or at least written up for insubordination. When we began to let down into the landing zone, when the shooting started, the co-pilot was to rest his hands lightly on the controls so he could take over if the pilot was hit. That was the fondest dream of most of the co-pilots. And Barnes was the worst pilot in the universe. He couldn’t spell “sky.”
I keyed my intercom mike. “You do that every time, you bastard! I’ll never fly with you again. You close your damned eyes every time we head into a hot zone! Why do you do that?” I took another deep breath and realized that we had already begun to let down into the pickup zone to load another stick of Marines. Fear made my voice husky and breathless. “Oh God, not another trip back to that zone. Shit, shit, shit.”
“It scares the heck out of me to land when people are shooting at me.” Barnes’s voice was calm, reasonable. “I can’t help it, I just shut my eyes. It’s kind of like when someone is taking your picture I guess. You know how you don’t want to shut your eyes but then—”
“What about us, you prick? You think it doesn’t scare the crew and me to fly into that landing zone knowing you have your eyes closed! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Let me fly the damned thing. Please, Barnes.” I looked over at the ugly, screwed up, shit-eating half-face that I could see below his green Plexiglas visor. I wanted to kill him. I added him to the list of the people that I wanted to kill since I had gotten to Vietnam, none of them the enemy.
“I can’t let you fly because you’re not a designated wing leader yet, Jack. You know that.”
I strained against the shoulder harness. “So you’ll just fly with your eyes closed and kill us all in the landing zone, you dim-witted, crazy asshole! Let me out! Goddam it, I’m jumping out of here as soon as we touch down.”
Barnes gave his maddening little snort out of his pig nose that stuck out just beneath the visor. “You say that every time, Jack.” He actually smiled over at me. “Okay, Gunny,” he said to the crew chief behind us, “let’s get ‘em in and get ’em ready.”
We dropped down over the tree line, into the semi-dry rice paddy filled with Marines divided into small fire-teams, waiting to be lifted into the jungle. Ahead and behind us, the squadron touched down almost at the same time.
As we loaded the Marines for the flight back to the strike zone, I looked at the scene in a daze. The Marines, most of whom looked just barely old enough to drive, were solemn and pale beneath a hell’s wardrobe of weapons and ammunition. This operation was three days old and had already chewed up half a battalion of troops. Barnes was calmly eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells in a cup, rather than spitting them out into the mud and muck a few companies of Marines and a squadron of helicopters make of a landing zone. He appeared unconcerned that he would very shortly be heading back to the terror that caused him to close his eyes and put all of us in mortal danger with or without any enemy participation. It was becoming too easy to say; I hated him. Because he was three months senior to me, he had the right to crash and kill me if he was incompetent enough, without fear of retribution. My choice was to get yelled at and hav
e a bad fitness report or to die.
10 • The Leaping, the Gaping, and the Flaming
“I hate this fucking place.”
“Thanks, Adams, you’re so nice to wake up to.” I threw my boot at him. Of course it was the Air Force F-4s hitting afterburner down the runway that had awakened us, but Adams was closer and I really was getting tired of hearing him every morning. Everybody was getting tired of Adams, in fact. Bearhead threw his tomahawk and barely missed Adams’s head but hit my boot. Adams threw my boot back at me, but hit Buzz. Buzz jumped up and stumbled over Fatass, who was kneeling down trying to find his shower shoes. Fatass didn’t throw anything at anybody, but the sight of a gigantic butt inches from his face caused Flager to begin screaming and then lurch off his cot toward the tent door. He knocked down a pole and collapsed the front half of the tent down on Butler, Peters, and Zimmerman. The “Fuck yous” filled the morning air like bees pouring out of a busted hive.
“What in the hell are you men up to in there?”
Someone was scratching at the canvas, trying to lift it where it had collapsed. “Let’s knock off the grab-ass, lieutenants. We’ve got a full schedule of flying ahead of us today. Butler, are you in there?” It was Major Gonzales.
“No, sir.”
“Very funny, Butler. Get your butt out here in a flight suit right now. Collins is sick and you’ve got the perimeter run with Askins.”
After a moment the major said, “I know you’re in there, Butler. I’ll see you at the ready room in five. Shake a leg.”
“The perimeter run is a trap, sir.”
“I am tired of that trap shit, Butler. Everything is a trap to you. Now get your butt out here.”
“I’m trapped, sir.”
The major began talking to himself. “Why did I get in this damn outfit with the loonies? Isn’t there anyone in this squadron that just wants to do his duty?” He had lost some bubbliness in the past month or so.
“I’ll take his place, sir.” It was Gearheardt, who slept in the next tent.
“Good man, Gearheardt. Get your gear and I’ll see you in the ready room. And you see me in my office in thirty minutes, Butler.”
As the voices retreated I heard Gearheardt begin to lobby Gonzales for permission to strafe everything that moved. He had told me that firing the tracers down through the morning ground fog was the coolest thing he had ever seen. “Shakes up those fucking grunts too. Sonsabitches are mad as hornets when we finally land with their hot chow.”
Butler really was trapped. The tent pole had fallen across his legs and somehow leveraged itself against the side of the canvas so that Butler couldn’t get out of his bunk.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Save yourselves.” He began giggling and I heard him light a cigarette.
“I hate this fucking place,” Adams said.
I climbed out of the jumble of tent canvas and upturned cots, grabbed a flight suit, my helmet bag, and my boots with the tomahawk slice out of them and caught up with Gearheardt and Major Gonzales.
“I’ll fly with Gearheardt, sir. On the perimeter run, I mean. I’m sure Askins won’t mind.”
“I’m sure he won’t. Okay, Armstrong, you and Gearheardt know the drill. Baker’s your wingman.” He peeled off toward the admin tent while we continued ahead to the ops tent. “And Gearheardt,” he said, not knowing whether or not he was in on the joke, “none of that strafing stuff.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Gearheardt gave a half salute to the major’s back.
The run consisted of turning up and hopping over to the 1st Battalion /9th Marines headquarters, loading pots of steaming oatmeal, then proceeding to each of the outposts that the Marines manned around the Danang perimeter. Headquarters thought it was a great morale booster to give the grunts hot chow every morning, and it also served as an inspection of the area in case a regiment of North Vietnamese had managed to sneak in next to us during the night. It was a pretty good routine, except that the grunts hated the oatmeal and the pots usually returned still full. The choppers would normally take ground fire going in or out of the landing zones. The ubiquitous VC snipers would crank off a few rounds, resenting their nights crouching in the undergrowth or up in trees. They probably liked oatmeal more than the grunts. That was what made the perimeter run so dreaded by the pilots. No one wanted to buy the farm delivering oatmeal. Gearheardt didn’t care. He would fly anything, anytime.
Approaching the zone, Gearheardt called the Marines.
“Good morning, Slick Baby. You read Purple Tiger?”
Clicks, static, more clicks.
“We read you, Purple Tiger. This is Slick Baby.”
“Purple Tiger is inbound your LZ with hot oatmeal. Request permission to strafe the perimeter.”
“What? Purple Tiger. Say again perimeter strafing?”
“Roger, Slick Baby. Understand you are requesting Purple Tiger strafe your perimeter.”
“Uh, wait one, Purple Tiger.”
A long pause while we approached the LZ.
“Purple Tiger, this is Slick Baby Six. Gearheardt is that you, you rotten bastard?” Six indicated the leader of the unit.
“That’s affirm, Slick Baby Six. Your radioman evidently heard us taking ground fire on our approach to your LZ and has requested we hose the area.”
“Bullshit, Purple Tiger. You try that every damn time. We got friendlies around here. They don’t appreciate having their wakeup call being a goddam Marine helicopter shooting up their village. Knock it off. And take that oatmeal back to HQ and drop it on them from about five hundred feet. Slick Baby Six out!”
“Roger, Slick Baby. Have a good day, sir.”
We dove at the landing zone, where Marines stood watching us.
“Gunny, I’m making a low pass over the LZ. Get those oatmeal pots in the door and when I give the word, kick ’em out. Then we’ll commence strafing on the far side of the LZ. You think I don’t know where the darn friendlies are?”
“Those are the ones we have to bury when we kill, aren’t they, Skipper?”
“Don’t be a wiseass, Gunny.”
The crew chief door gunner answered with two clicks on his mike.
Looking over at a grinning Gearheardt I keyed my mike. “Why do you torment these grunts, Gearheardt? Look at that, their mortar pit is about knee deep in oatmeal. Oh, shit, they’re shooting at us.”
“They don’t really aim, Jack. And I torment them because it takes their mind off the war. These sonsabitches have a shitty job out here, you know. They hate aviators anyway. Okay, Gunny, let ’er rip. Fire up those M-60s and see if you can at least hit dirt today. That’s it, that’s it. Get that tree there. Come on, Gunny, you’re blind. You’d miss the air if I didn’t make you practice. Now you got it. Okay, cease firing.”
I shook my head. “You’re nuts, Gearheardt.”
“I just like the sound of those guns and the way the shit down there jumps when the rounds hit. Come on, Jack, we gotta have some fun, or what’s the use of being here.”
We had this discussion almost every day. “Gearheardt, we’ve already lost Kirby and Johnson. You’ve been shot down twice. We pick up about a dozen kids a day all shot up, and Charlie Med is full of wounded troops. This war doesn’t exist for your personal enjoyment, damn it.”
“Well, someone should have thought of that before they invited me, Jack. Whose enjoyment should I worry about? Huh?”
“You know damn well what I mean. Whoa, whoa, Gearheardt, watch where you’re heading. Oh no you don’t. Let me have this thing. Goddam it, give me the controls! You’re not going to buzz the squadron again. It blows the shit out of everything. The Skipper is going to have your ass, buddy. Oh shit!”
Gearheardt was leaning out the window looking back at the tents we had overflown, less than twenty-five feet above them. He was laughing.
“Oh wow, Gunny, look at Sanders! We must have blown the top off of the shitter! Oh man, there’s toilet paper everywhere. Hold your fire, Gunny! Might stir them up!
” He laughed, and I realized that the gunny was as crazy as he was when they were in the air.
Gearheardt climbed to five hundred feet and leveled off. We swung toward the coast and I could see the small fishing boats heading out to the sea. I took a deep breath and tried to relax.
“Purple Tiger Two, this is Lead. I’m heading out over the water to check my instruments. We’ll be near the beach and won’t need an escort. See you in the barn.”
“Purple Tiger Two, rog. Too chicken to land and face the music, Gearheardt?”
“Gearheardt’s on R&R in Bangkok. This is Narsworthy, Tiger Two. Land before we shoot your sorry ass down.”
We heard two clicks and our wingman peeled away. Gearheardt spoke to the gunny and the side gunner. “Gunny, Almost Captain Armstrong and I are going to discuss top secret women. You and the kid will be off the intercom for a bit.”
Two clicks.
“We’re getting kicked out of the squadron, Jack.”
“What?”
“Hold on, let me finish. The Skipper is sick and tired of my shenanigans. Every grunt in South Vietnam has reported me as a flying maniac. And I’ve complained to the chaplain about the food. Even wrote my congressman about it.”
“The food? Gearheardt, have you completely lost your mind? What has the food got to do with it? You dumb—”
“Hey, anybody can be a wildassed pilot. The Marine Corps is full of ’em. But everybody hates whiners. Especially official whiners. Like me. I told the chaplain that the food was so bad that I couldn’t believe in God anymore. He’s pretty upset. Hey, let’s buzz that boat.” He took off power and put the chopper in a sharp descending turn. The boat below us was round. It looked as if the two Vietnamese men were fishing from a giant straw Frisbee. “They won’t jump out, you know. I think they know that if we dive fast enough and low enough we won’t be able to pull up and we’ll crash into the water and die. That’s why the sonsabitches won’t jump out of their boat. Hold on, Jack! Oh wow, there they go over the side!” We pulled up hard and Gearheardt looked down behind us. “They love this shit, Jack.”
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