by Robert Mason
He liked that. When I turned around, Westmoreland was nearly on top of us, still marching, smiling, probing for eye contact with the skinny warrant officer who just then flipped a perfect salute. I held the salute until he stopped and returned it. The general and his admiral friends stood facing me and thirty grunts.
“At ease, Mr. Mason,” the voice boomed. He stood close enough to read my name tag, so close that he seemed much taller than he already was. What other rank could they make a guy like this? He had to be a general.
“Mr. Mason,” he began in a conversational tone, “my friends and I are on important business, and my airplane just broke down.”
His airplane? All the airplanes were his airplanes. Also all the helicopters. And all the ships. Westmoreland owned everything, even the cannon fodder he was talking to. “I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
“Thank you. Well, Mr. Mason, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to take this airplane of yours so I can get these important gentlemen back to their ships on time.” The admirals smiled at the joke—“if it’s okay with you”—as he said it.
“Yes, sir.” Of course, absolutely, my plane is your plane….
“Thank you, Mr. Mason.” He smiled a straight smile in a square jaw while a knowing glint flashed in his eyes. “Now, if you could move these men out of the way, we really have to get going.”
“Yes, sir.” I turned around and gave the command. “Move out of the way!” There was some confusion as the men grabbed their stuff and backed away.
The admirals walked up inside the plane and sat in three of the thirty-five seats. Westmoreland turned back to say, “Thanks again, Mr. Mason. And I hope this doesn’t make you too late for… where was it you were going?”
“R&R, sir.”
“Ah, R&R. There’ll be another plane very soon.”
Time’s recent Man of the Year walked inside to join the admirals. The four men sat in the cavernous interior of the Caribou. The crew chief, looking like he had just been given a couple of grades of rank, pushed the button that raised the ramp and sealed the ship. The prop wash hit us, and the airplane moved away, got smaller, and leapt into the sky. Behind me the dusty mob spoke.
“Gee, I hope they ain’t crowded in there.”
“You can’t mix enlisted and brass too close, you know.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“The vapors from the enlisted men make ‘em tarnish.”
I considered myself very fortunate indeed to be on an airliner cruising smoothly toward Taiwan. My sweat had dried in the air-conditioned plane, and I nursed a drink served by a stewardess. As I stared out the window at the sea, I knew that Resler and the rest of the gang were at this very moment trying to get rid of the rat turds and mildew in our GP. I had to smile.
We had returned from Bong Son just two days before. The VC had suddenly given up or disappeared. After forty-one consecutive days in Bong Son valley, high body counts were announced. Victory was ours. Let’s go home.
We couldn’t just fly back casually after forty-one days away; we had to do something dramatic. We were, after all, the First Team.
The hundred Hueys moved into trail formation at the An Khe pass and snaked around the sky, trying to spiral to a landing at the Golf Course. The guys on the ground said we looked really impressive. They couldn’t hear the chatter, everybody yelling about how fucked up the formation was, how we were bunched up—fussily worrying about how we looked to the rest of the Cav. The hundred ships landed, causing a storm at the Golf Course. The crews walked to their tents.
Once again the rats had prevailed. Their turds were lined up in comfortable disarray, which bespoke rats truly at home. Mildew coated everything. Black shapes with shining eyes darted for cover as we reoccupied the tent.
“We’ve got to kill these fucking rats!” yelled Connors.
I was smiling stupidly when the stewardess asked, “Care for another drink, sir?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah.”
Connors’s exasperation always delighted me. Once, when he came back from a night out, he drunkenly explained that the tent flaps should be down, not up. He sat in the dark on his cot and loudly enumerated the faults in leaving the flaps up. Then he pulled the rope near him that released the flap. It had filled with water. When it unrolled, gallons of water poured over Connors and drenched his bed. He launched into a series of curses, filled with rage and fury. He also lent me a hundred dollars for my R&R. Just before our assault the day before, Connors said, “Mason, be real, real careful, okay?”
“I always am.”
“Yeah, but you’ve never been worth a hundred dollars to me before.”
By the time we landed in Taipei, I was feeling very good. Uncle Sam, in his great wisdom, provided all necessities for his warriors—just follow the line. In Saigon we had lined up for various cities: Taipei, Bangkok, Sydney, others. The attraction of each city was the same—drinking and fucking. Or fucking and drinking, depending on your morals.
As we deplaned, a smiling government employee directed us to a bus. The bus cruised the streets while a man gave us a rundown of various hotels, indicating prices and location. I elected to stay at the King’s.
When the government dropped us off at the hotel, the Chinese-civilian half of the team swung into action. A kindly, knowledgeable Chinese man-about-town latched on to us as we stepped off the bus.
“Okay, boys. You have come to the right place.” He smiled warmly. “Come right this way, I’ll help you get your rooms, but we must hurry. There is so much to do in Taipei.”
I tossed my bag into the room. A man named Chuck had the room across from mine. Chuck was in his mid-forties and was a captain back at work. In the hallway he wore a tourist costume much like mine—chinos, checked shirt, and loafers. We had just introduced ourselves when Danny, the guide, came rushing toward us.
“Come, come, gentlemen, we must hurry. There is much to do in Taipei.”
Danny hurried us down the hall to the elevator. “Remember, gentlemen, you are here to enjoy yourselves, and I am here to help you. First, we must go across the street to a fine, high-class bar and have a drink to discuss our plans. You must tell me what you want to do and I will be your guide.” Danny walked a little ahead of us, almost walking backward as he talked to us. He was so excited that you might have assumed that he, too, just got in from Vietnam.
Danny showed us through the door of the bar. I noticed thirty or forty women sitting along one wall, side by side. He herded Chuck and me toward the beginning of the line.
“Martha! So good to see you tonight,” he said to the first girl. She nodded warmly to Danny and then to us.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Bob Mason.” Martha looked very pleased to meet me.
We moved up the long line of girls, saying hello to almost everyone. At the end of the line we went up to the second floor and settled around a table where drinks were already being served by some of Danny’s friends.
“So, gentlemen, which one do you want?”
“You mean, which one of those girls?” I asked.
“Of course. Tell me which one you prefer and she will be with you like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“Well, I did see one girl I kinda liked, but I didn’t get her name,” I said.
“Where was she sitting?”
“I think she was about the tenth girl. She’s wearing a violet dress.”
“Ah, Sharon. You have very high-class taste, Bob.”
“Thanks.”
Chuck described the girl he remembered, and Danny got up and excused himself. “I will be right back, soon. Drink up!”
Immediately after Danny disappeared down the stairs, the girl in violet, Sharon, appeared and was escorted to a table at the other end of the room. She sat down across from her escort, facing me. How could I feel deceived by someone I didn’t know? Of all the girls I had met in the lineup, she was the one whose eyes had locked on mine. As I sat there watching her, I realized that I absolutely loved her. There was som
ething familiar about her. She was smiling gently as she met her escort, but her expression changed slightly when she looked up. She did not look away, and I knew she loved me, too.
Danny came back up behind two women. They were both dressed very nicely and carried evening bags. They sat down across from Chuck and me while Danny introduced them. “Linda, this is Bob. Vicki, this is Chuck.” He stood back for a moment, grinning at the happy couples. “I must go see about your drinks.” Before he left, though, he leaned over to me and whispered, “Sharon was already—” I nodded quickly.
Linda leaned across the table and whispered, “It is so sad that you could not get the one you loved. Do you wish me to leave?”
Yes, I did. That girl, Sharon, seemed to be an Oriental version of Patience. Patience looked at me the same way when we first met. But there wasn’t enough whiskey in me to cause me to become callous. The fact that Linda was willing to leave, to be rejected, stirred what remained of my sensibilities, and I said, “No, of course not.”
“She is more beautiful than I am,” said Linda, fishing for compliments. In fact, Sharon was more beautiful than Linda, but I reminded myself that neither of them would be near me if I wasn’t going to pay. In four days it would be over.
“Don’t be foolish; you are more beautiful.”
“Thank you for saying so.” She smiled.
Sharon still looked at me occasionally. I wondered why.
I have dim memories of the insides of many different clubs, singing in the streets, and bright lights and taxis. I even woke up in a different hotel. My companion, for ten dollars a day, was Linda. She showed me the sights on the island in between servicing my desperate horniness. We ate at different clubs and restaurants every night, never visiting the same place twice. Occasionally, as we toured, I would see Sharon watching me familiarly.
In moments, the four days were spent.
Surprisingly, girls crowded outside the bus as we arrived at the airport. As we got off, reunions were formed by the departing soldiers and their Chinese girlfriends. The girls were actually crying. Why in the world? Perfect strangers five days ago were now sobbing tearful farewells. I climbed down out of the bus, but there was no Linda. I moved past the hugging couples, to follow a roped path to the terminal. Five steps away from the door, I heard my name called. I looked up and saw Sharon. She was smiling broadly, but tears flowed on her cheeks. She held her arms out and I instinctively hugged her. I could not understand why she was doing this.
“Please be careful,” she said.
A nearly hysterical feeling of fear hit me as I stepped off the plane at An Khe. The fear welled within me, changing to a prickly, cold terror in the moist heat. I shivered slightly and forced the demons to the background while I looked for a field phone. I shivered in the dark tent while I waited to be connected to my company.
“Welcome back, Mr. Mason,” said Sergeant Bailey. I calmed immediately at Bailey’s voice. “We’ll send a Jeep over right away.”
It was gray outside, overcast, humid, incredibly hot. I fired up another Pall Mall and waited.
In a few days I succeeded in almost totally suppressing my fear. We were not taking many hits out in the mountains where the Cav was currently fishing. The closest thing to real action was when one of our gunships shot down a slick.
Major Astor, the replacement for Captain Morris, was a tall, sturdily built man with short blond hair, more like the stereotypical marine than an army pilot. He joined us right after Bong Son valley. He saw only our pleasantly boring missions in the local boonies, which led him to erroneous conclusions.
“They let us go pretty much where we want to go,” Major Astor said to John Hall. “How much longer can the VC last if we’ve got control of the air like we do?”
“We don’t have control; they do,” said John.
“Yéah. I’ve seen how tough they are. Actually, though, what could you expect them to do against our helicopters?” Astor grinned.
“You’ve got it wrong, Major. The little people have just decided to take a small break for a while.” John was drinking whiskey; the major beer; and I was listening. We were at the bar of our soon-to-be-opened-built-by-our-own-hands officers’ club. There was no bartender yet; people just brought their own bottles.
“You call them ‘little people’?”
“Sometimes.”
“Makes them sound like elves.”
“Well, sometimes you’d think the little bastards were carrying around some fairy dust or something, the way they can be exactly where you don’t want them to be.”
Connors and Banjo walked in. Connors’s shirt was stuck to his sweaty body, and sweat ran down his face. Banjo looked dry in comparison.
“Bartender!” Connors yelled. “Beer! Give me beer!”
“There is no bartender,” Banjo said.
“I know that; I’m just practicing.” Connors looked
around and nodded to the new major. “Good evening, sir.”
“Good evening, Mr. Connors. I just found out that you’re the company’s IP.”
“Yes, that is true. I am an ace with a helicopter.”
“Just don’t get near him when he tries to tie one down,” said Banjo.
“Fuck off, Banjo.”
“Ever teach at flight school?” Astor said to Connors.
“Not yet. That’s probably where they’ll send me after this bullshit, though. Why? Are you an IP?”
“No,” said Astor. “I just graduated. I was impressed by the training program at Rucker.”
“Army helicopter training is the best there is. When you leave, you’re almost safe.”
“Almost safe?” Astor laughed.
“That’s right. Any new pilot is still dangerous. They know just enough to get themselves in trouble. After another five hundred hours of practical flying, learning how to use the aircraft, I’d say they were pretty safe. If you’re still alive at a thousand hours, you must have it down pretty good. That’s stateside time. Over here you pick things up quicker ‘cause of the pressure of being shot at.” Connors grabbed the beer that Banjo put in front of him.
“Well, I thought it was a damn good program,” said Astor. “And after flying over here awhile, I’m even more impressed at how good the training is.”
“Yeah, it is good. But don’t judge the action here by what you’ve been seeing since you’ve been here. When you start making your approaches to that tight LZ, in formation, with the VC shooting at your ass, then it starts to get tough.”
“Even so, if you fly like they taught you, and don’t panic, you ought to do okay,” said Astor.
“What can I tell you? You got the big picture for sure.” Connors turned to me and Hall and rolled his eyes.
“Here’s to army aviation.” Astor raised his beer.
“Huh?” said Connors..
I left the club to write my daily letter home, mentally totaling my flight time. By Connors’s definition I was a little better than pretty safe, with seven hundred hours. Connors himself had nearly three thousand hours, almost all in Hueys. All of this proved to me that I was becoming a professional—a helicopter pilot. When I got back home, I could start my own helicopter company. All I had to do was get back home.
Later that night, I heard the shrill screaming of a man gone crazy. I ran outside, goose flesh rising on my skin.
“God damn them! God damn them!” the voice shrieked.
Near the club, I saw four men carrying one of our pilots, a screaming, twisting, fighting Captain Fontaine. Fontaine hated Owens and White.
“I’ll kill them! I’ll kill them!”
“Calm down…”
“I will kill themmmm!” Fontaine’s voice trailed into a high-pitched scream. He was a struggling pig going to slaughter, but the four men, one of whom was Connors, held him tightly and carried the writhing man up the short stairs to his hooch. And Fontaine was such a calm guy, too.
“He went fucking nuts,” said Connors.
“I can see. But why?
” I asked back in our tent, watching Banjo heat some coffee water next to his cot.
“Fucking Owens and White.” Connors sat on his cot. “Fontaine says he found out that those two have been faking their flight records. They’ve been logging a lot of combat time when everybody knows they don’t fly at all. Anyway, he got into it with Owens. Owens told him he was just jealous! That cocksucker! He thinks everybody is as much an asshole as he is.”
“Why do they want the time?”
“Well, you figure a guy like Owens, coming up soon for major. He needs the combat time on his records. He might even try to get some medals with it.”
“Coffee time. Sorry guys, there’s only enough for me.” Banjo laughed.
“So why say anything?”
“I’m not sure. I think it makes me feel better when I think I’m living better than you.” Banjo laughed. “How ‘bout a cookie?”
“You’re so generous, Mr. Bates.”
“Not at all, Mr. Connors.” Banjo bowed, smiling. “Mason?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”
When you put your mosquito netting down around you, you felt isolated, even in the crowded tent. You were still in plain view of everyone, but the feeling was that you now were private, separated. I settled into my poncho liner to sleep.
Blackness surrounded me and something formless pursued me. A presence dove into my mind and flooded my heart with overwhelming fear. I snapped awake, raised on my elbows. Through the gauze of the netting, I saw Connors looking over from the other side of the tent. I tried to remember what scared me, but I could not. Nothing was happening in the camp. I eased myself back down, feeling tired, and watched the top of my mosquito netting.
The next day, Gary and I flew attached to Major Astor’s platoon on his first mission as leader. Most of the day was spent flying C rations out to resupply the various patrols beating the bushes for Charlie. So far, no Charlie. Occasional sniper hits were reported. Old campsites. New campsites. Even a few captives. But for all practical purposes, the jungle and bush we scoured was uninhabited.