“Somehow I don’t think so, Gearheardt. But don’t change the subject. Why are we getting kicked out of the squadron?”
“The Skipper told Group Headquarters that we were disruptive to the war.”
“He told them what!”
“God, it’s pretty here. Look at that beach. And the deep blue water, green mountains in the distance. Jack, you have to admit this place is gorgeous. The Skipper had to tell them something. He’d look like a big pussy if he told them that I was just too wild for him to handle. So he told them that I demanded better food or I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions. Interestingly enough, when the chaplain looked into the food thing, he found out that they were feeding us scraps from the ships those Navy pukes are floating around on out here, and sometimes the leftovers from the Air Force parties. Makes sense of all those little square crackers with cheese we get all the time, doesn’t it, Jack? That’s why I stick to Grats when I can. There, you know what you’re eating.”
“Why are we getting thrown out of the squadron? You’re the one flying around strafing everyone and flathatting your ass off. You’re the one evidently pissing and moaning to your congressman about the chow. So why is it we?”
“I told the chaplain that you’re masturbating all the time, Jack. I hope you don’t mind, but I had to think to think of something, and I knew that would make him so uncomfortable he wouldn’t dig into it. He went to the Skipper and supported the idea of throwing you out of the squadron too.” He was looking down at the approaching beach, straining his eyes to see if any of the bodies lying out were nurses from the Air Force medical unit. He looked back at me. “Okay, I can see you’re pissed, Jack. I don’t know why you make such a big deal out of these things.”
I keyed the mike and let it stay open, the loud irritating hiss fitting the moment, before I began talking. I was trying to keep from pulling out my pistol and shooting him in the leg.
“You don’t think it should upset me that my record will show that I was kicked out of my squadron in Vietnam for excessive masturbation? You miserable—”
“Naa. I’m just pulling your chain. You’re so gullible, Jack. When the Skipper was chewing me out for blowing down the chow tent, I just mentioned that he didn’t have the balls to kick you out along with me, and he took the bait.”
He was looking at me. “It’s part of the plan, Jack. Did you think that we would just skate up to Hanoi and everyone would wonder where old Jack and Gearheardt were? If we screw up the squadron’s records, we’re really in deep shit.”
I found myself foolishly relieved. That was probably the point of Gearheardt’s little masturbation joke. “When will all this happen?”
“The President said that—”
“You talked to him?”
“I’m trying to tell you, Jack. I had a beer with him in Saigon last week when I flew down on that Air Force bird. He was on some kind of a big deal ASEAN thing. Drunk as a hoot owl when I saw him, but he gave me the word. I don’t think he was as drunk as he was pretending. Probably doing some plausible deniability for the little woman. Anyway he said it should be within a couple of weeks. We got the body count he’s been after—you know how many of those little suckers we’ve killed so far?—well anyway, he’s ready, but the star is balking at the nude parachute part. Some kind of professional pride thing. But the President says it’s a deal bleaker. I have a feeling that he’s promised someone a nude leap and he’s not backing down. And he says she has tits that’d make Mrs. O’Leary’s cow lay down and cry, and he wants ’em flapping in the breeze as she drifts over Hanoi. He’s about to persuade her it’s for her own protection, and I think he’s right. No AA crew is going to blow free tits and twat out of the sky.”
“Let me get this straight. You and the President were sitting in a Saigon bar last week talking about the star’s tits drifting over Hanoi. Right?”
He nodded, looking perturbed that I would question him.
“Why didn’t you say something to me?”
“I just did. I had to figure a way to get us kicked out of the squadron before I discussed it with you. I knew that you’d have a damn conniption fit and want to do everything by the book. Now, it’s all fixed. We’ll get thrown out when I give the Skipper the word, after the President gives us the word.”
“The Skipper is in on this now?”
“Oh hell no. But he’ll do what I ask him to do. He came into the club in Saigon when I was huddled with the President. He can’t figure it out, but he knows better than to dick with someone that drinks beer with the President of the United States in a strip joint in Saigon. Also, the Skipper was with the lovely Mrs. Taylor when I saw him. You know, the Mrs. Taylor he sent back to the States a while back.”
The Skipper had come storming into our tent one evening soon after we had started operating at Danang. He never entered any place. He always stormed in. It was late in the evening. Everybody was lying on their cots, reading or smoking and shooting the bull, scratching their nuts.
Everybody but Taylor, who was in his sleeping bag even though it was about a hundred degrees. The Skipper stomped over to Taylor near the back of the tent next to the runway.
“Taylor, is your wife here? Don’t lie to me, Lieutenant. I’ll have your ass for breakfast if you lie to me.” Peters and Butler snickered, and the Skipper glowered at them, then turned back to the cowering Taylor. He was the wimpiest of the lieutenants. Small, quiet, a decent pilot who never missed a mission. He had sandy hair and soft moist eyes. He seemed happy all the time, which didn’t really go with the rest of his personality, but the squadron had decided that he was probably just retarded.
“No, sir,” he said. He lay on his back, his sleeping bag pulled up to his chin. His small head looked childlike above the substantial body filling the sleeping bag.
“Did you or did you not buy a box of Kotex at the Air Force exchange this morning?”
“The Air Force exchange has Kotex, Skipper?” Butler asked from the dark of the front of the tent. “No one told me.”
The Skipper looked as if he were going to reply to Butler then thought better of it.
“I don’t remember, sir. I don’t think I did,” said Taylor.
“You don’t remember whether or not you went over to the Air Force exchange this morning and purchased a box of Kotex feminine napkins? Son, I’m not going to be the laughingstock of the—”
The tent door was pulled open, and Major Gonzales strode into the tent. He stopped beside the Skipper.
“Sir, Group just called, and the Colonel wants to see you up there right now. I think it’s about Gearheardt again.”
“You mean Almost Captain Gearheardt? Our Gearheardt?”
“Yes, sir. And, sir, in Korea we didn’t have almost captains. I don’t think we should humor him and let him—”
“Major, I’ve been in two wars. Three, counting this piece of shit war. The first two I could kind of figure out. They were in iambic pentameter, if you know what I mean. This war … this war hasn’t any rhythm. Unless you count that goddam godawful music the enlisted men play twenty-four hours a day. And we fly around with our thumb up our ass here and …” He stopped and looked around the tent as if waking up from a bad dream. Then he shrunk as if he had sprung an air leak. He sighed deeply, motioned for Major Gonzales to leave, and indicated that he would follow soon. “Get a jeep and a driver, Gonzales,” he said loudly. Then he turned back to Taylor, whose large eyes peered up at him from the top of his sleeping bag.
“Mrs. Taylor,” he said. Quiet but firm.
“Yes, sir,” the sleeping bag replied.
“You know that you can’t stay here with your husband. You know that don’t you?”
A muffled reply that sounded like a resigned yes.
“If the Marine Corps had wanted your husband to have a wife here, they would have issued him one. You know that too, don’t you?”
“Hmmmphhuuuh.”
“Tomorrow morning, Mrs. Taylor, I’m going to personally es
cort you to Saigon and see that you get a ride back to the States. You understand, Mrs. Taylor?”
“Hmmmphhuuuh.”
The Skipper took a deep breath and looked around the tent at the men, who were trying to act like they weren’t listening. He leaned near Taylor’s head.
“Taylor,” he asked quietly, “is your wife naked in there?”
Taylor nodded.
The Skipper shut his eyes and sighed deeply. Then he straightened up and stormed out. Peters groaned, and Zimmerman stumbled out of his cot and out the front tent flap, a copy of Playboy clutched in his hand.
“And I ran into him in Saigon,” said Gearheardt. He was flying lazy circles over the spot where he had chased the fishermen out of their boat.
“Wait a minute. That was a long time ago when the Skipper took Taylor’s wife to Saigon,” I said.
“It seems the Skipper’s idea of getting her back to the States included finding an apartment for her in Saigon and going down to see her every week. She’s probably still down there. Boy, she was a good-looking little woman.”
“Let’s head back, Gearheardt.”
We started a gentle turn northwest toward the Danang airbase and our camp. Gearheardt flipped on the intercom and spoke to the gunny. “We’re back up, Gunny. You guys okay back there?”
“Yessir,” the gunny replied. “Request permission to test fire my guns, sir.”
I looked below us and saw a fleet of Vietnamese fishing boats. Off to the other side a small U.S. Navy craft sped toward the Danang harbor.
“Permission denied, Gunny,” I said, even though Gearheardt was technically the aircraft commander.
Gearheardt smiled and keyed his mike. “Pussy,” he said.
11 • Viet Nam or Vietnam (We Were Never Sure)
“Armstrong, grab your gear. You’re going on a little trip. Lucky guy, you’re the new forward air controller for the First Battalion, Eighth Marines. Can I have your air mattress when you’re dead?”
It was Taylor, who had turned into a real prick after his wife left. As assistant operations officer, he got to inform everybody of the crap details they were assigned. He openly admitted it was the part of his job he liked best. Now he was standing at the foot of my cot, where I had been relaxing after a morning flight. This announcement to me was clearly a high point of the day for him. Becoming a forward air controller for an infantry unit was pretty much like being convicted of murder and moving in on death row. The difference was that on death row you had good chow, a bed, and people weren’t trying to kill you all the time. And, given the appeal process, you had a better chance of not dying. When the action was too heavy for the ground troops, they would call in air support. The trick was that the FAC needed to be where he could observe all the action as well as where the aircraft were striking. Taylor knew all of this, which was why he stepped briskly aside when I lunged off my cot and tried to sink my teeth into his neck. Even though I knew he was enjoying it, I began my groveling.
“Send Adams, send Zimmerman. No one likes Zimmerman. Everyone wants to screw Johnson’s wife. Send him. All of those guys would be better FACs than me. Send Feldonstein. Everybody hates how he always eats one thing at a time off of his food tray. Send him. Jews like being FACs. He told me he wanted to be a FAC. Really. Come on, Taylor. Why me?”
Taylor beamed at my performance. He was almost happy again when he got to do something like this.
“Major Gonzales said to send you. Of course, he thinks you’re Gearheardt. He can never get you two straight.” He held the clipboard toward me so that I could initial beside my name that I had received my orders. I spit on it and tried to tear the paper off of the board.
Taylor laughed. “I already signed your name on the paper back in the office. I just like to see how people react.” He laughed again and started out of the tent. “Be ready by fourteen hundred. Askins is going to fly you down to Chu Lai and drop you at One Eight headquarters.” He stopped. “Is that your coffee can ashtray?”
I didn’t answer, and he left. I got dressed and found Gearheardt in the motor pool tent having a beer with the motor pool gunnery sergeant.
“Here comes a dead man.” The gunny smiled and saluted me with his beer when I walked in the tent. “Welcome, Almost Captain Armstrong. We heard about your good fortune, sir.”
Gearheardt was leaning against the fender of a Mighty Mite, one of the few mini-jeeps that the squadron motor-T sergeant had not traded off for comfort items such as walk-in refrigerators. I expected to see the familiar grin spread across his face as he listened to the gunny jibe me about my death sentence. But he looked worried. Now I knew for certain that this wasn’t somehow part of the Barbonella plan.
“Shit,” Gearheardt said, handing me a warm beer.
“No shit, shit,” I said. I slumped down onto the ground, leaning back against the tire.
Gearheardt spoke, looking at the gunny as if to confirm what he was saying. “The gunny talked to a Navy chief pal of his. He thinks he can trade you to the Army if you’re willing to be a second lieutenant again.”
“The chiefs can trade people?”
“Could you let me have a moment with Almost Captain Armstrong, Gunny? Thanks. And we’ll get back to you on the trade idea. I don’t think it’s going to work, but I’ll talk to Jack here.”
When the gunny left, Gearheardt slipped down the side of the mini-jeep and sat beside me. “I think that Gonzales did this because of Barbonella,” he said. “He thinks this will throw a crimp into our plans.”
“He knows our plans?”
“Probably not, but that dickhead Skipper might have let him in on a bit. Just enough to get Gonzales suspicious.”
Gearheardt was quiet and I knew that I was doomed. I had wanted to believe that this was somehow part of the plan. Gearheardt and I sat smoking in silence, finishing the warm beer and not looking at one another.
“Why does everyone want to stop us from stopping the war, Gearheardt?” I asked. “Isn’t stopping wars usually a good thing?”
I wasn’t expecting an answer, and Gearheardt didn’t appear to have heard me. He flipped his cigarette butt through the tent flap. “The piece of Man that God can’t touch,” he said finally. “The church has a lot invested in wars.”
I looked over at him. This didn’t sound like Gearheardt.
“At least that’s what the chaplain told me,” he said.
“The Assistant God has too much time on his hands to think,” I said.
“Look, Jack. I’ll try to get in touch with the President. He’s probably the only one that can help us now. I promise you I’ll get you back in the squadron. Try to stay alive until I can get to him. Okay?”
“I’ll try to be the worst damn FAC they ever saw. Call in air strikes on the HQ. Stuff like that.”
“Everybody does that, Jack. But do what you gotta do. I’ll get you back.”
At the headquarters of the First Battalion Eighth Marines I reported to Major Finch. At least I reported to his administrative officer’s assistant’s secretary, Corporal Downey. Downey was pretty much what you would expect to find in a hot tent in the middle of suburban Doc Quo, Vietnam: disgruntled and near-terminally addled and anxious.
“You Lieutenant Armstrong?” he asked, reading the copy of my orders that I had just handed him.
“No,” I said, trying one of Gearheardt’s tricks.
To my surprise and discomfort, Downey began to cry. He sat down heavily onto the folding chair and laid his head on his small wooden desk. “Why do I have to put up with all this?” he blubbered into the crook of his arm. “All of you lieutenants give me nothing but shit.”
He sobbed for a while as I shifted back and forth, peering occasionally out of the tent flap to see if anyone was nearby. Finally I spoke up. “Okay, I am Lieutenant Armstrong, if that’s why you’re crying. Who ever let you in the Marine Corps?” This last under my breath.
Downey straightened up and smoothed my orders on his desk. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “I
’m a bit touchy today. I got a Dear John letter this morning.” He sniffled and I hoped he wasn’t going to begin bawling again. He was a Marine in a combat zone, for chrissakes.
“Tough luck. Maybe she wasn’t …” I paused. “Could you just process my orders and tell me where to find my crew?”
I was entitled to a radio operator and a runner slash backup. My success, and my life, depended on us working together as a team. I knew many FACs had grown terribly fond of their team in the field. I stepped outside of the GP tent and watched the young Marines go about their business. Smoking, lounging, and pissing and moaning. They looked strong and cocky, and I began to look forward to getting my team and beginning the training that we would need to function effectively in the field. This rear area, where the Marines cleaned themselves and their weapons and recuperated, was in a valley formed by two sizable sand dunes. The South China Sea was just beyond the runway that served the A-4 squadron and the metal mat that served as a landing pad for the chopper squadron. Presumably I had friends in the chopper squadron and made plans to visit them when I got squared away in my new home with the grunts.
“Who the hell are you?”
A redheaded major who couldn’t have been more than five and a half feet tall bumped into me as he rounded the corner of the tent. He looked as if he’d invented the Marine Corps. A tattoo of the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor on his forearm told me he was a mustang, a Marine who started as an enlisted man and had made it up through the ranks.
“Almost Captain Armstrong, sir.” That damn Gearheardt.
The major let it pass. He stuck out his hand and nearly broke my fingers in his handshake.
“Welcome aboard, Armstrong. I assume you’re the new FAC. Last one wasn’t worth shit, no offense to the dead. You met your team?” Without waiting for an answer he stuck his head inside the tent. “Dooley or whatever your name is, get your ass out here.”
Nam-A-Rama Page 13