Last Man Out

by James E. Parker, Jr.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  “Never had a chance.”

  Richardson came back late in the afternoon. He said we had to be leaving so we could get back before dark. By then, most of the people in the ward were around Pete’s bed—telling stories, laughing with the nurses, drinking champagne.

  I told Richardson it’d only be a few more minutes and invited him to have some champagne.

  We continued with the bedside fellowship until Richardson said the “Richardson freight” left in five minutes.

  I bounced my eyebrows, Pete smiled, and I crawled off the dolly.

  As I started shuffling down the aisle Pete said, “Be careful. Your mother told me to tell you. Be careful.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Take care. See you in the States.”

  “Hey, by the way,” Pete said suddenly, and I turned around. He reached under his bed, “Take this back with you.”

  He pulled out a box and put it on the part of his chest that wasn’t covered with bandages. I returned to his bedside, and he extracted a bathroom scale.

  “Momma sent this. Maybe she was thinking I was getting out of shape.” Pete handed me the scale with his good hand. “Put it by the bar.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, trying to think of something silly to add, but nothing came to mind.

  Outside, Richardson strapped me in and I grabbed the stretcher. Racing the setting sun, we took off for Di An.

  We arrived as the MPs were putting barricades across the road at the perimeter’s main entrance. Specialist Wallace and the doctor were standing in front of the tent when we approached. Both men walked toward us while Richardson unstrapped and helped me to the ground.

  “There are several things here,” the major said, “that we need to talk about. Like AWOL. You were ordered to bed. No one authorized the dispatch of that ambulance. You’ve been nothing but a problem since you arrived.”

  “Sorry,” I said, but my tone and the set of my jaw probably indicated that I didn’t care.

  “I am going to discuss your case with the adjutant general. You can’t just take a vehicle like that and go out on unsecured roads. You are in my hospital ward and you answer to me. You understand?”

  As I walked by them with Pete’s scale in my hands, I said, “Yes, sir.”

  I put on the fresh gown lying by my bed. One of the men from the other end of the tent said in the half light, “Man, you are in some heavy shit. These people are mad.”

  I didn’t respond as I awkwardly crawled onto my cot and went to sleep.

  When I woke up the next morning I put on my fatigues and jungle boots with the cut laces, picked up Pete’s scale, and shuffled out the rear door of the tent. Ignoring the looks from other people, I crossed the busy intersection near the hospital tent and shuffled to the division helipad. I located the dispatcher and told him I was looking for a ride to the 1st Battalion 28th Infantry base camp.

  At midday I was back in the company and ate lunch standing by a table in the back of the mess hall.

  For the next ten days, as my wound healed, I worked at battalion operations. Standing by a battery of radios, I followed the movement of the battalion as it completed its sweep of the area near Cu Chi. On the night of 27 January, the VC attacked my platoon as it lay at rest in a defensive perimeter. Sergeant Rome was killed, blown apart by shrapnel.

  Two days later the battalion returned by truck from Cu Chi. Woolley was the first off. I thanked him for getting to Peterson as fast as he did, but he said that Colonel Haldane and Sergeant Major Bainbridge were the first to get there. Pete was in the hospital at the 93d within an hour after he was shot.

  “Pretty fast,” Woolley said, and then added with some suspicion, “like your return to battalion.”

  “Sir, on that, ah, there may be some paperwork on the way,” I told him.

  He shook his head. “I’m not surprised.”

  My platoon clambered off another truck and walked by me, making comments about my wound. Spencer came by with the radio. “We been talking. That toilet seat you are so famous for, I think that VC knew about that toilet seat. Pissed him off. Someone carrying a toilet seat around ought to be shot in the ass. You know what I mean?”

  Bratcher came over to me. The hospital staff had told him to go back to the base camp, but instead he had rejoined the platoon in the field. He was the acting platoon leader the night Rome was killed.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, a round came in on top of us, could have been ours, could have been theirs. Landed by Rome. He never heard nothing.”

  That night when McCoy and Dunn came by the tent, we talked about the randomness of war.

  “It is altogether a proposition of chance,” McCoy said. “Remember when we were talking on the USNS Mann about courage and presence of mind and that kind of shit. War for us grunts is none of that so much as it’s just pure luck. War—this war—has no heart, no rhyme or reason.” We got drunk that night, toasting our men who died at Cu Chi and to Pete’s safe exit to the States.

  During the next few weeks, as my wound continued to heal, I stayed in the base camp and occasionally helped at the battalion S-3 (operations section) manning the radios. Someone had bought a chess set and McCoy I would play a game most evenings when he was in the base camp.

  After Operation Crimp, my platoon was down to twenty-one men. Some of the wounded had been sent to the States, other men had left because their enlistments were up. We got few replacements because the limited reserve of infantrymen in the United States was used to fill out new units for deployment to Vietnam.

  We collected Rome’s personal effects and sent them to Division so they could be forwarded to his next of kin. In preparing Patrick’s effects, however, Bratcher and I realized that his billfold and some other personal items must be with his body, which we assumed was in the morgue at Bien Hoa. I took a day trip down there to pick them up. Starting out by the brigade helipad at sunrise, I caught an early flight for Bien Hoa and was standing in front of the MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) field morgue later that morning. There was an unusual smell about the place—antiseptic and forbidding. When I walked into the reception area, I told a young corporal that I had come for the personal effects of one of my soldiers killed in mid-January and gave him Patrick’s name and service number. The corporal looked off into the distance for a moment and then reached for a field telephone on his desk. He was soon in lengthy conversation about what was Patrick’s and what wasn’t. He hung up and suggested that we go in the back.

  We walked into the working area of the morgue. Six dead, nude GIs were laid out on marbletop tables. Other, unprocessed body bags lay in the rear. The concrete floor around some of the tables was covered with blood. A man was calmly hosing down the area. The morgue operators, wearing rubber boots, were talking among themselves as I walked through. One or two apparently noted that I was trying not to lose my breakfast. My muscles froze and I walked awkwardly.

  The smell in the midday Vietnam sun was putrid: excrement, alcohol, and another atrocious odor akin to rotten oranges. Trudging along behind my escort and stepping through water, blood, and slime, I felt the stark image of the room etch itself into my brain. Dark blood dripped from the cold marble tables. Some of the men had lost limbs; the mouths of some were open, as if gasping for breath. Some stared wide-eyed, vacantly at the ceiling. The black men so colorless, the white men so chalky. All quietly, patiently waiting to be processed.

  The scene assaulted my senses. Time stood still as my mind involuntarily examined every detail. It was too ghoulish, too sudden, too unexpected, too macabre—the most horrible sight I had ever encountered.

  When we arrived in the supply room, the receptionist asked whose effects I had come for, but I could not speak. Patrick’s name was finally mentioned, and some personal items were put on a table in front of me. I went through them as though I were hypnotized—taking this, discarding that, not sure why. When I finished, I look
ed at the supply sergeant and said, “That’s it.”

  He put the items in a plastic bag. I signed for them and walked out without a word, away from the working bay, around the building, and out to the road in front. I jogged to get away from the place. Finally, a quarter of a mile away, I stopped and looked back, still afraid. What a godless, deadly place. The gateway to hell.

  We heard that General Seaman was being replaced by Maj. Gen. William E. DePuy, called “Peppy” by some of the men who had served under him. He did not like sedentary troops and immediately began launching extended field operations: “Rolling Stone,” “Lavender Hill,” “Quick Kick II,” and “Silver City” came one right after the other.

  I went on the first operation, but because of my healing wound Woolley was easy on my platoon and we were held in reserve. Just a casual “walk in the woods,” said Spencer. He suggested that I get wounded more often.

  Between operations we received replacements. The base camp had a rough-hewn battalion officers club, and when we came back for refitting between operations Dunn used it as his private venue to instruct new officer replacements on the history of the 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, United States Army. The history was his lead-in to a welcoming toast that had a typical Dunn ending.

  He’d get to the end of the bar and say something like this: “Okay there, you clean-smelling, unscratched, undented newcomers, come over here. Come here, come on.”

  I used to marvel at how he took command like that, how those replacements responded to him.

  “You have been assigned to the 1st Battalion 28th Infantry Regiment in III Corps, Vietnam,” he continued, “though by the looks of you, you’re hardly deserving, because this unit, youngsters, is one of the finest fighting units in the world—we have fought and died for our great country since 1813. Our colors have flown wherever America has needed strong, courageous men, willing to die. That’s what we do; we fight, we die. We are called the Lions of Cantigny ’cause in World War I, after we took the town of Cantigny, we held off five German counterattacks. This unit, this one you’re assigned, took more ’an five thousand casualties in World War I. In World War II this regiment landed at Utah Beach in Normandy and fought its way across Europe. We never, never, never backed up. We don’t do dat. We fight, we die. We are, you are, the Lions of Cantigny. You are the newest in a proud tradition of officers in a storied battalion. Gentlemen, you need to buy some drinks here. Champagne. We’re going to make some toasts.”

  With glasses charged, he’d say, “Here’s to the President of the United States—the Commander in Chief.” He downed his drink and insisted that the replacements do the same. When the glasses were refilled, Dunn said, “Gentlemen, here’s to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” and everyone downed their drinks. He went all the way down the chain of command until he got to the battalion commander, Haldane. The bartender, who had one champagne bottle filled with gin, poured gin into the replacements’ glasses.

  Bob then said, “And here’s to the best damn battalion commander of the best damn battalion in the whole history of the United States Army,” and he downed his champagne. The replacements downed their drinks, not knowing that it was gin.

  The reaction was always the same—the replacements’ eyes bulged, they opened their mouths, slammed their glasses down on the bar, and gurgled, “Aaaaaaauuuuuuuggggggg!”

  “Replacements are so dumb,” Dunn always said as he walked away from the bar, leaving the replacements gasping for air.

  Because we had been wounded and returned to duty, Dunn and I were among the first two officers in the battalion to be selected for a week of out-of-country rest and recreation (R&R). Bob arranged to meet his bride Linda in Hawaii, and I picked Hong Kong.

  The day I left I was surprised to see Moubry, the supply officer, dressed in his best, also on the way out for R&R. “Extra billet,” he said, “came in at the last moment.”

  Yeah, right, Moubry, was all that came to mind. A celebrated incident had occurred several weeks before when Moubry had flown into the battalion forward base on a resupply helicopter that took enemy small-arms fire when it made its landing approach. An enemy round came up through the fuselage and hit Moubry in his seat; the spent bullet lodged in his wallet. On the ground he rushed up to Colonel Haldane, dropped his pants to show how he was bruised from the round, and asked about getting a Purple Heart. Haldane eventually said no, but everyone remembered Moubry running after the battalion commander with his pants down to his knees as he pleaded for a medal. He was hard to like, and I had to share my R&R with him. Didn’t seem fair.

  On my first night in Hong Kong, I took the Star Ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong island. I paid something like ten cents for the ride in passenger class. It was a superb voyage—Chinese junks sailing by, a huge freighter sitting at anchor, barges being moved around, and the lights of Hong Kong going up the side of the mountains on both sides—how majestic and grand. Getting on and off were thousands of people, young and old, stooped and tall, beautiful and ugly, exotic and dour, richly dressed and in rags.

  I stayed on board when we reached the island and sailed back to Kowloon, then to the island and back again for a total of five round-trips. No one could have been more enthralled, more captivated, with Hong Kong, and I vowed to come back.

  In a small bar, I spent hours talking with a bar girl who had a Dutch-boy haircut. She did her job well and kept me entertained. Her English was perfect. How strange, I thought, for an Oriental to speak the Queen’s English.

  I had suits, sport coats, and silk shirts made to order. After living in holes and eating out of cans for six months, I had never been so fit and trim. The clothes looked smashing.

  On the third day of my R&R, Moubry ambushed me in the lobby of my hotel. He said he was running short of money and wondered if he could stay in my room with me. He’d share the cost of the single.

  I could have said, “No, Moubry, I don’t like you,” but I didn’t. I said okay and went out and rode the Star Ferry.

  Over breakfast the next morning, Moubry wondered aloud what was happening back at the battalion. He said he had a feeling in his bones that something tragic had occurred. We were having a grand time, and those poor slobs back there were facing danger every minute. He hoped he was wrong and said he was going to pray for the men in the battalion.

  Two days later, Moubry and I walked into the battalion perimeter. I had the tailor-made clothes in bags under my arms. R&R had been altogether too short, but it was good to get back to the unit.

  The battalion was in camp, getting ready for an operation scheduled to kick off in the next couple of days.

  I waved to Woolley, who was down the company street, as I ducked into my tent to drop off my new clothes. I was on the way out to tell Woolley about my R&R when he came in.

  “Jimmy,” he said, “I’ve got some bad news.” He paused. “McCoy was killed by a mine two days ago.”

  I stood perfectly still. “No, he wasn’t.”

  “George was here at the base camp. He went out to do some maintenance in his minefield and something happened and a mine went off. He was dead before he hit the ground. There was nothing the medics could do.”

  I was stunned. McCoy. Dead. Gone. I stood absolutely still— only my eyes blinked—sinking into shock, thinking about nothing at all.

  Woolley left, and Dunn soon arrived. He sat down at the chessboard where George and I had played so many games. He didn’t say anything.

  I lit a cigarette and sat down in a chair by him.

  “What happened?” I asked, my voice breaking.

  “Well, one of those things. The trip lines to the mines around the perimeter have got tangled in undergrowth and a couple of days ago one of the mines went off in front of George’s positions. Someone said a dog had gotten into the minefield, someone else said they saw some villagers near the concertina. George went out to check. He was walking down the safe lane and he took a little half-step off to one side and
a mine went off. He never knew what hit him. No reason. There is no great combat story here. Our friend was just walking along and he took a misstep and he died. No moral. Nothing gained. Just one of those things.”

  George’s death was on my mind for days. I could not shake the sense of loss. The only consolation was George’s contention that if we die in combat, we’re at peace. If others get upset, it’s their problem. Even so, my attitudes changed. I did not make friends with the replacements but kept to myself, relaxing only with Dunn, Woolley, and the men in the platoon.

  TEN

  Lavender Hill

  The operations around Phuoc Vinh continued. Dunn was wounded again when a bullet grazed one of his legs. He was not medevacked and was out of action for only a few days.

  During “Operation Lavender Hill” we were searching for VC supply caches in an area near the Song Be (Be River). On point in my platoon was a young soldier who had recently arrived as a replacement. He came to a clearing, took a couple of steps out, and dropped to one knee. Beck, coming up behind him but staying inside the wood line, said, “Get your ass back here. You goin’ to get shot.”

  I was walking forward up the platoon file as the new man stood up to move back. Suddenly a VC automatic weapon opened up from across the clearing. The point man yelled out, grabbed his stomach, and lunged forward and to his right behind an anthill out in the clearing. Other VC began firing at us from around the field. The point man was hit again in the leg and screamed. He pulled his legs up as far as he could behind the anthill and continued to yell.

  I called Manuel to come up with the M-60 machine gun and told the rest of the platoon to get on line and put some fire on the enemy positions. As our counterfire increased, the VC sought cover and their fire died down. The point man was still yelling, and I went to the edge of the clearing and looked out at him. He appeared lightly wounded in a couple of places but seemed to be in fair shape otherwise.