by Robert Mason
“I’m wet,” said Connors in the drizzle.
“Gentlemen, I have a few things to talk to you about today. Number one, we’ve been back for just a week and already we’re getting complaints from the MPs about of ficers crashing the gate at night to get to the village, officers drinking and driving recklessly, officers involved in unnatural sex acts in local bars.” The Colonel shook his head, disappointed. “The medics say the VD rate has quadrupled. This behavior is against the code of the American officer, immoral and disgusting. I’ve decided to do something about it.” The Colonel unfolded his arms to step forward for emphasis, but the mud stopped him. “Starting today, no officer is allowed to drive any vehicle: no Jeeps, no trucks, not even a mule. Any officer wishing to go somewhere by ground vehicle must request a driver first. There will be no exceptions. Second, the VD problem. Gentlemen, I know what you’re going through. I’m human, too. But what kind of example do you think we’re setting for the enlisted men? Those girls downtown are all disease-ridden, a very tenacious version of VD.” The Colonel paused, his face a map of concern. “So for the time being, I’m holding every man here duty-bound to exercise discretion and stay totally away from those women.”
Murmurs and laughter drifted through the crowd. Did he really think that abstention by the officers would influence the enlisted men? At that very moment, An Khe was filled with hundreds of enlisted men understandably jumping every female in sight. “Men, severe situations require unusual solutions. I know you may think of it as self-abuse, but I, and the commanders above me, think that m-masturbation is now justifiable.”
“Is that an order?”
“Who said that!” No one answered. The Colonel glared expectantly at the damp mob, trying to pinpoint the bad apple. The offender did not come forward and throw himself into the mud at the Colonel’s feet, begging forgiveness. Disgusted, the Colonel continued. “No, it is not an order; it is a suggestion. And if there are any more cases of the clap among you men, I’m closing the village to all of you. No passes to town for anything.”
“Did he just order us to jerk off?” Connors’s low voice came from the back of the crowd. Laughter engulfed the formation. The Colonel had not heard the remark.
“I’ve got a plan that will keep everybody occupied and healthy while we aren’t flying. On this very spot, we will build an officers’ club.”
The brass applauded from the front of the formation.
“Face it, men. We’ll be here a long time. Now, having a real club to come back to, a drink after a long day, a refreshing conversation with some nurses, comfortable plush chairs to sit back into, and music—all these things are possible if we start right now.”
“Nurses?” Connors again.
“Yes, nurses. There are nurses at the division level. And they will come down here to see us, if we have some place for them to come to. You wouldn’t want them to visit us in these moldy tents, would you?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Who is that?” The Colonel peered from side to side trying to locate the heckler. We all turned around, looking at each other, to show that we were innocent. Captain Williams glared toward our group, in the direction of Connors.
“Gentlemen, it’s attitudes like that will keep us living like beasts.” He shook his head sadly. “So, starting right now, this minute, we will collect the first month’s club dues. That money will be used to start buying the necessary materials. Captain Florence will be in charge of the job because he was a contractor in civilian life.” Florence beamed and nodded. “Labor will be supplied voluntarily by you men. And each man will be expected to work his share each month until the job is finished.”
———
A few days later, a Japanese newspaper reporter interviewed me. Some guys watched while the photographer snapped pictures. Among them was a tall, lanky captain from Indiana, whom I still think of as the New Guy. He had a healthy, confident aura about him, qualities that had faded from the veterans.
“If they want a new mess hall, let’s build it!” he’d said when Williams announced that we’d volunteered to do that, too, along with the club. “I’ve built a lot of stuff in my day,” he said. “I could probably do it myself. And, hell, anything’s better than this crummy tent.”
Riker had stared at him and growled, “Shit.” Connors nodded. “Uh-huh, un-huh.” Banjo snickered. That very day, the New Guy started laying out the new mess hall.
“Uh, Bob,” said the New Guy. The Japanese photographer was hunched in front of me, dodging for an angle.
“Yeah?”
“Maybe you’d better take down that picture behind you.”
I turned around to the pinup I had tacked to the wall of Riker’s partition.
“You leave Cathy right where she is,” said Connors. “Let the folks back in good old Japan know what we’re fighting for.”
“But what if his wife sees it?” said the New Guy.
“It?” Connors said. “It? Please, that is Cathy Rotten-crotch, queen beaver of this tent. She is not an it, as you can see.”
The reporter laughed, and the photographer moved to include Cathy in the shot.
“What is it like to fly into the bullets?” asked the reporter.
Someone wanted my opinion? I had thought about the bullets a lot during Ia Drang. I was always afraid. That was the answer: I was always afraid, every time. I sit before you, a chicken in soldier’s clothing, Mr. Reporter. “Well, it’s kinda scary at first, but when you get involved in the landings, you get used to it.” Shit, yeah, you get used to it. Like to be out there right now doing it again.
“Have you had any close calls?”
Yes, very close. So close it makes me shiver. I could’ve been in that pile of bodies. “Well, no closer than any of the other guys. A few rounds through the cockpit. Stuff like that.”
“Is that what you wear during the assaults?” I was dressed in fatigues, wearing my flak vest and pistol, at the photographer’s request.
“Yes.”
“Does that—” He pointed.
“Flak vest.”
“Does that flak vest stop bullets?”
“No. As a matter of fact, it won’t even slow them down.”
Everyone laughed.
We flew support for a convoy going to Pleiku and had to laager for two hours at the Turkey Farm.
Foot-tall grass bent over as the wind gusted along the row of twenty or so helicopters. Near noon, as we sorted through the C-ration boxes, somebody at the front of the row knocked over his jet-fuel stove.
“Fire!” someone yelled. Smoke swirled out of the grass next to the first few Hueys. I ran with the rest of the men toward the fire. Orange flames burrowed through the grass. People slapped the rushing flames with their shirts, but it did no good. The breeze carried the flames toward the rear ships. My ship and the two behind it would be right in the path. I ran back.
Reacher stood behind my seat. “Hurry, sir!” I fumbled for my seat belts, but the smoke surrounding us made me realize that there was no time. I cursed myself for not having the ship preset for start up. Too lax.‘ I flipped switches and hit the starter trigger. “Hurry, sir. The fire is almost here!” The blades turned more slowly than ever before. The flames were less than a hundred feet away, moving very fast. The exhaust-gas-temperature gauge read hot. A hot start now? No, it dropped back to green. The rotors blinked, close to operating rpm. When the flames were orange under the chin bubble, I pulled pitch before the turbine was completely up, and the machine groaned into the air. When I pedal-turned the tail away from the flames, my door flew open. Damn. Didn’t even have the door latched. The noise of the ship seemed very loud. I could feel the hot breeze, and I realized that I was wearing no helmet. Jerk! I backed away in a hover and set the ship down. The two ships behind me moved out of the fire, too.
Connors hovered to intercept the line of burning grass. He approached from downwind, forcing the flames to pause against the blast from his rotors. I pulled back up to a hover and j
oined him and another ship in the corraling operation. The fire died against the wall of wind.
While we were at Ia Drang, Christmas packages had been pouring in. Gifts, canned hams, cookies, cards, and loving pictures. We even had a large cardboard box filled with letters from schoolchildren all over America delivered to our mess hall. “Dear American soldier,” said one of them. “I am very proud of you. I know you will win. Becky, Grade 5, Mrs. Lake’s class.” I got a pound cake from Patience mailed in September. After three months en route it was not edible.
Two weeks before Christmas, we launched more assaults into Happy Valley, landing troops on pinnacles instead of down in the valley.
Resler and I began flying together. We were the two most junior warrant officers in the company. It was an honor that we were trusted with our own ship. I usually logged aircraft-commander time.
“Why? We’re both equals, you know,” Resler said.
“Not quite. I graduated a month ahead of you.”
“So?”
“So, I’ve got seniority on you, Resler. You’re the pilot and I’m the aircraft commander.”
“We get to trade!”
“Maybe.”
We’d both practiced pinnacle landings with the more experienced pilots in the company. It was like approaching a floating island in the sky. Some of the hilltops were easily eight hundred feet above the valleys. The trick was to keep the landing spot below the horizon. If it climbed above it, you were too low, and that put you at the mercy of the buffeting winds on the lee side of the hill. With the heavy loads we carried, the chopper could mush into the hill if we approached through this burble of down-rushing wind. It was difficult to recover because there was no place to dive to get more airspeed. A captain in our other platoon had done it wrong a few days before with the result that he flopped and rolled down the side of the hill, strewing men and matériel out the doors of the Huey all the way down. He climbed out and landed on his hands and knees in a bed of punji stakes. Given that two other people on board had been killed, it wasn’t bad. He got to go to Japan to get the shit dug out of the punji holes in his knees.
Resler and I made a good team. We talked ourselves away from trouble.
Resler was on the stick, flaring toward the top of a grassy hill. Our sink rate was high because of the eight grunts we carried. We both knew the landing was going to be hard.
“Power,” I said.
“I’ve got all the power she has.”
“Then flare more. You’ll hit too hard.”
“Look, Mason, I’m flying. I can handle it.”
Luckily, it was windy. It was lucky because the wind blew the grass around and I saw part of a large boulder just where we were going to land. Hitting that would trip us, sending us crashing down the other side of the hill.
“Rocks!”
“Huh?” Gary couldn’t see them, because he was flying from the right side and had no chin bubble to look through. We were going to hit.
“Rocks!” I grabbed the collective and pulled hard. I hadn’t put my feet on the pedals, so the ship yawed to the right. We hesitated crookedly above the boulders, and the rotor wash blew the grass down, and Gary saw them, too. The ship mushed lazily over the boulders. As we cleared the hilltop, Gary dove down the other side to recover the waning rotor speed.
“I have just saved your miserable life,” I said.
“Oh, yeah? From what?”
“Those rocks, you blind fuck.”
“What rocks?” Gary fumed. “Why did you grab the collective like that? You could’ve killed us.” He shook his head seriously as he started his climb out of the valley. “Lucky for you I was able to save it,” he said.
Even though we flew every day, they always found time to give us our shots—plague shots, yellow-fever shots, hepatitis shots—on a regular basis. Naturally, we all hated shot day.
While I waited inside the tent, I watched a soldier having his thumb tended. I watched intently as the surgeon pried up the man’s thumbnail. It was smashed and almost black. As the surgeon pulled the nail up, black juice ran out. When the nail finally pulled free, I sank to my knees. I couldn’t believe it. This simple little operation brought me to my knees. I almost fainted.
“Shouldn’t watch stuff like that,” said the medic.
“You’re right.” I nodded weakly from the floor. “Maybe if it had been regular blood…”
Connors was chosen to fly a CBS News film crew around as it followed Gary and me in our ship.
“Hey, you guys, make it look good.” Connors stood outside my window at a laager.
“Like how?”
“Like steeper-than-normal turns and lower than low level and flaring steeper than steep. Like that. You know: Make it look good.”
So while we swooped all around the valley, dropping off troops—the valley had no war that day—we were being filmed. In a low-level turn, I pulled in close enough to a tree to brush the leaves with the rotors. I flared so steeply at an LZ that the grunts screamed.
“Looking good,” said Connors.
Patience said she saw the film clip on television. She knew it was me because there was a square on the door, which she knew marked my company, and “That pilot flew just like you drive.”
Nate and Resler and I went to town one morning. There was nothing up that day, so we hung around in the bars and watched the girls. Nate claimed he was immune to Viet clap, so he had most of the fun.
Something did come up, but since we weren’t there, the company left without us. We got back early in the afternoon to a ghost camp. Everyone except the Bobbsey Creeps were gone.
“Big battle going on just north of Lima,” said Owens. “Where were you guys? The major is pissed. Did you have a pass? It’s hot out there. Really, the major is really pissed.”
Nate thought the time was right to open the canned ham he had been saving for Christmas. We had a quiet party. The ham was good.
Just after dawn, Leese busted in through the door flap. “The New Guy was killed.”
“What?” said Gary.
“The New Guy. You know, the replacement. He got shot through the head. Hey, you guys, get ready to get out there.”
I wondered if I would amount to that much of an utterance someday. “Mason got shot through the head. Hey, you guys, get ready to go out there.”
“What’s going on?” I said.
“It’s hot,” said Leese. “Lotta automatic fire. All in the same area where we’ve been farting around for the last two weeks. Yesterday Charlie decided to fight. It’s already hot again this morning. You guys are supposed to crew the next two ships coming back. Mine is fucked. Nate, you and I take the next ship, and Bob and Gary the one after that. Okay?”
There was an hour between Leese and Nate’s departure and the arrival of our ship. Resler and I were alone in our corner of the tent. I smoked. Resler cracked his knuckles.
“There’s some islands out about twenty miles from Qui Nhon,” said Gary.
“I know.”
“Twenty miles away. Completely uninhabited, too.”
“How do you know that?” I said.
“I’ve heard.”
“Terrific.”
“Do you ever think about quitting?” Gary asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Me, too. Sometimes. Guess that makes us chickens.”
“Maybe. But we do go fly, don’t we? That’s got to make up for feeling chicken.”
“Yeah, I guess it does.” He paused. “And when I’m flying the assaults, I start feeling brave, almost comfortable, in the middle of it all. Like a hawk, maybe.”
“I do, too. When I’m in the middle of it. But times like now, I’d quit at the slightest excuse. So what am I? A chicken or a hawk?”
“You’re a chickenhawk.” Gary smiled.
“Yeah.” There was silence. Yes, I thought. We’re both scared out of our minds. It felt like we were near the end of our wait on death row.
“How long do you think we could liv
e on a Huey-load of C rations?” asked Gary.
“Shit, probably a couple of years. Two thousand pounds of food.”
“Maybe we should take less food and steal a couple of girls to go with us instead.”
“Go where?”
“The island.”
“You know, you’re right. We could do it.”
“I know we could do it.” Resler smiled proudly.
I liked the idea very much. Yes, by God, we could do it! “That’s it! You’ve got the answer. We just keep flying when we go out. We’ll have a big load of C’s. We can stop in Qui Nhon and get a couple of women, fly out to the island, land, and dump the food and the girls. Then one of us has to take the chopper out away from the island and dump it.”
“Why dump it? We can camouflage it, you know.” Gary leaned forward eagerly, caught up in the plan.
“Well, we’ll see when we get there. Maybe there’ll be enough trees and shit to hide a Huey. But if there isn‘t, we ditch it.”
“Okay. If there isn’t enough.”
“Some booze, too. Can you see it? You and me and two luscious girls lying back under the palm trees. We have to have a radio,with us, too, so we can keep track of the war. You know, so we know what we’re missing.”
Gary looked concerned. “Maybe we could fly to Pleiku first.”
“Why?”
“Well, I don’t know if I want to live out there with just any girl. Remember that girl, Mary, in Pleiku where I spent the whole night?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, she loved me.”
“Ah Gary, she…” Didn’t love you, she wanted your money. She wanted a ticket out of this bullshit country. “She was nice, wasn’t she?”
“She loved me.” Suddenly we were both quiet. We looked away, into our thoughts. My strength drained away. What a stupid idea. Just hopeful dumb fucking wishing. Face facts. Face facts. FACE FACTS!
“Gary, I think we can’t go to Pleiku first. I think we could only do it if we flew out of here just like normal and then disappeared. We could probably get away with landing at Qui Nhon. There’s a lot of transient traffic there.”