by Robert Mason
Long was about ten years old, with waist-length black hair. Her eyes were black, and her skin was darker than that of most Vietnamese. She was a gorgeous and radiant little girl.
“Do you have a wife?” she asked when we first met. I said yes.
“Is she tall like you?”
“No, she comes up to my chin.”
“Ah, very tall. Does she have hair on her arms like you?”
“Not like me, like you.” I brushed the peach fuzz on her arm.
“Oh, that is good.” She laughed. She had never seen Caucasian women.
We became friends over a period of months. Long usually sat beside me on the sandbar while the Huey was washed and talked about how nice it would be when the war was over. She believed that it would be over very soon. There was talk of peace overtures going around. She could not imagine how the VC could beat soldiers that marched through the sky.
When a ship was rinsed out, the crew chief would normally want to let it dry a little. Then he would get undressed to go for a “short swim.” The inspiration for this healthy and athletic act came from the older girls, who pretended to be mermaids and beckoned sweetly from downstream islands.
The mermaids showed up at the river the day after the general placed An Khe off limits as a result of the high rate of social disease. For months, while an American-regulated village of ill repute was being constructed just outside town, the mermaid business flourished. I never drifted down the river myself, but from what I could see, it looked very sweet indeed.
Eventually the ship would dry and the crew chief would come back smiling. Long would get up to say good-bye. Standing, she was only a ccuple of inches taller than I was sitting.
“Good-bye, Bob. Be well.” She smiled and wandered off to sell her wares as other Hueys landed among the sandbars.
When I flew a ship to the sandbars, I usually tried to teach the crew chief some basic flying so that he could take the ship in case a pilot got hit, and get it to the ground in one piece. The results of this training were disappointing, because there was never enough time to pursue it. Consequently I never saw a crew chief who was able to fly even a rudimentary approach.
What seemed to me the most basic of human skills—hovering a helicopter—somehow eluded even the most intelligent crew chief. But among the men I tried to train, Reacher was notable. I had flown with him so much that he was almost able to hover, and I believe that in an emergency he might have got a ship down on the ground in one or two pieces.
Rumor was it was getting hot again in the Ia Drang. While the First of the Ninth was over there snooping around, we continued our ass-and-trash missions around the home base. The pilots were tired of this kind of flying, and the ships suffered the mechanical equivalent of lassitude and dishevelment. The flyable rate was less than 50 percent. On the same day that a Chinook was shot down, our company broke four Hueys from just sloppy flying. At the news of the four accidents, the general reaction was “four less Hueys to fly.” Malaise had set in.
A brand-new replacement, Captain Hertz, was assigned to fly with me one afternoon. Nate flew with another replacement, and the two of us were going to fly to Qui Nhon and back to check these new guys out.
When the sky was a dull orange behind us, we crossed the An Khe pass heading east. Hertz had been flying since we left the ground. He was doing okay, flying on Nate. We talked a little in the air. He told me he had a lot of flight time in the States.
A formation accident in the Cav had killed ten people. We heard reports about other wrecks around the country. Night-formation skills were critical. One guy, fucking up just a little bit, could wipe out a bunch of people if those rotors connected.
As it got dark, Hertz began to drop behind Nate. I encouraged him to close up, because dropping back too far caused you to lose perspective relative to the lead ship.
“Move it right up close, just like a daylight formation.”
Hertz moved to about two rotor disks’ distance of Nate. Unfortunately, he also started to oscillate, swinging too far away, then too close. As he tried to adjust for the swing, he overcorrected. I said nothing. On one swing toward Nate, he scared himself and dropped farther back.
“You gotta keep it closer,” I said. “If we were in a regular formation, we’d be screwing up everybody. If Nate decided to make a left turn right now, we wouldn’t know it until we were right on top of him.”
“I was just dropping back for safety.”
“I know. But, believe me, it’s safer closer.”
“Okay.”
As he pulled back up into the slot, he once again began the oscillations. He was on a pendulum that swung out away from Nate and then back toward him. He either knew a real slick trick, or we were going to blend rotor blades with Nate. At the last possible moment, when I realized he had no slick trick in mind, I grabbed the controls.
“I got it.” I Hared back abruptly and pulled back into position.
“Why?”
“Because you were going to hit Nate.”
“I wasn’t even close,” said Hertz.
“You were close enough that I had to get on the controls.”
“Well, I don’t think so.”
“Well, we’re up here tonight for your benefit, not mine. Try it again.”
He set up again, and again began to swing in and out. His trouble, I believe, was his fear of collision, which was rational but which wrongly affected his judgment. He overcorrected, compounding the error until it grew out of control. On a wild swing away, I asked, “Are you okay?”
“Roger,” said Hertz. Then he swung in toward Nate, and once again I took the controls. “I got it.”
This pissed him off. “No one has ever taken the controls away from me, especially not a warrant officer.” Ah, what we had here was a dyed-in-the-wool snob who hated warrants.
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, Captain, you should be thanking me for saving your life. I need night training like I need an extra asshole.”
“When we get back, I’m reporting you for insubordination.”
“Right. Well, it’s turnaround time. Nate is going to fly on us on the flight back. You take the controls and just aim this thing back to the west. You got it.”
Hertz took the controls. We said nothing more on the flight back to the Golf Course. I did consider the possibility of a steep bank, flip off his belts, open the door, and assholes away. But that was impossible.
Hertz made the approach to our area nicely. In fact, the only thing he had done wrong was the oscillating in the formation. I could’ve helped him on that if he had just relaxed. On the ground, he opened the door and stomped off. I logged the book, entering myself as the aircraft commander, Hertz as pilot.
“How’d it go?” Gary asked as I dumped my gear on my, bunk.
“Shitty. That new guy Hertz tried to kill me and Nate, and when I had to grab the controls, he got pissed off.”
“Yeah. I heard him yelling at Farris a little while ago.”
“What’d he say?”
“I couldn’t tell, but I heard your name a couple of times.”
Nate walked in grinning. “Mason, you really pissed off that new captain.”
“I know. He said he was going to turn me in for insubordination. Maybe they’ll send me home early.”
“No such luck.” Nate sat down on my bench. “Farris ended up chewing his ass.”
“Really? What’d he say?”
“He said that regardless of rank, you were the aircraft commander. And he said, ‘If Mason said you were too close, then you were too close.’”
“Really?”
“Yep.” Nate fiddled with a plastic chess piece on the board I’d left set up. “Hertz has to apologize to you, too.” Now I felt very good.
“Wanna play a short game?” Nate held up two pawns.
“Anytime,” I said.
III. SHORT-TIMER’S BLUES
10. Grounded
And still the little men keep coming, with their awkwa
rd, sauntering gait, the mark of a lifetime of transporting heavy loads on carrying poles.
—Bernard B. Fall, in The New York Times Magazine, March 6, 1966
April 1966
When a First of the Ninth platoon landed near Chu Pong, they captured NVAs who said that there were at least a thousand more men in the area. Moments later the platoon was under fire and trapped. While trying to get them out, two slick ships were shot down, and fifteen men were killed.
This was bad news to many of us. The strategy of attrition was an endless cycle of our taking and retaking the same areas.
“Why the fuck don’t they keep some troops out there?” said Connors. “This is like trying to plug fifty leaks with one finger!”
Week after week, the magazines reported kill scores that we knew were inflated with villagers. There were quotes from generals who reported we had them on the run, and quotes from the leader of the posse, LBJ, that victory was just around the corner.
The perimeter of the Golf Course was now mined, searchlighted, patrolled, and guarded. In seven months the VC had been able to get only a few mortars over it and a handful of men through it.
When the Eastern mind encounters such a hard obstacle, it is inclined to use a kind of mental judo to bridge it. The VC asked themselves how they could get the Americans to give them rides in their helicopters so that they could inspect our defenses.
“Mason, you and Resler go over to the bridge and bring back some prisoners,” said Farris.
Gary and I lifted from row three and flew to a small field near the southeast corner of the perimeter. Here a second lieutenant ran over with his M-16 held by the sights.
“Got two suspects for you,” he said. He pointed behind him to two kids, maybe twelve years old. They were smiling as the grunts gave them chocolates. One of them smoked a cigarette awkwardly.
“Those two?” I asked.
“Right. We caught them wandering too close to the perimeter.”
“Maybe they don’t know they’re not supposed to be here.”
“No, they know all right. Our orders are to arrest anyone who gets too close. You’re to take them to the cage.”
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“You know where finance is?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, there’s a barbed-wire pen in a field near there. You’ll be able to find it easy.”
“Okay.”
The lieutenant motioned the prisoners toward our ship. The two boys grinned with childish expectation and ran over.
“Do they get blindfolded or something?” Gary asked.
“Naw,” said the lieutenant. “They’re just kids.”
One of the boys sat in the web seat and the other sat on the floor with his legs dangling out—like the grunts did—and Gary and I strapped back in.
Coming back into the Golf Course, we went out of the pattern and circled around the division to reenter traffic on the downwind leg. The boys were all eyes. The one on the floor punched the other and pointed at something. They both laughed.
Gary told the tower we were going to the pen, and they cleared us to fly down row three and beyond. We crossed the northern perimeter, the troopers’ garrison, the tube emplacements, the antimortar radar installation, the sky-crane pad, and the long rows of Hueys. Beyond the heliport we flew over the tent cities to a field.
Two clerks on guard duty came over to corral the prisoners. The boys jumped off smiling and went where they were pointed. Five or six prisoners crab-walked around under the three-foot-high barbed-wire ceiling of the cage. One of them waved to the boys. They called a greeting. It did not look like a good place to spend time, but as we were told, no one stayed there very long anyway.
“After we question them, we either send them back home or turn them over to the ARVNs. These two little fucks will probably be sent back home,” said the sergeant in charge.
Back in the air, I had the feeling that we had just been tricked. They had just done an aerial survey of the entire First Cav compound, and they didn’t even have an airplane.
———
The perimeter of tangled concertina, land mines, antiper sonnel mines, trip wires, and observation towers was constantly infiltrated by the haphazard return of nature; that is, weeds. With the mines in place, no one could go out to trim the weeds. Weeds were not only messy; they could conceal the approach of the enemy. The solution was to have men spray defoliant chemicals out the doors of a hovering Huey. There was no way to get out of the minefield if the engine failed. To someone as nervous around explosives as myself, the chance that just the air pressure under our hovering ship might trigger a mine seemed possible. And what about the sticks and stuff that blew around in our rotor wash? The imagined dangers were endless. I never thought for one moment about the defoliant itself.
For two or three days, Resler and I drew the job. As with most noncombat chores with the Huey, it became a game.
“Whatever you do, don’t catch the concertina with the skids,” said Resler.
“What do you think? I bought my license at Sears?”
We flew slowly along the rows of concertina just missing the short iron posts that anchored it. A man used a long nozzle to spray a mist of chemicals that swirled into the wire and around the ship. At the end of a three-hundred-yard pass, we rose slightly, turned, and went back, paralleling the same route ten feet farther over. One of the men in the back of the chopper waved to the man in the observation tower. He waved back, and with his finger traced a circular path beside his head for good measure. Guard duty is shit, but at least I’m not stupid.
For three hours Gary and I painstakingly covered every square inch of our assigned section of the perimeter with weed killer. The stuff swirled into the cockpit, but was odorless and tasteless. The men of the spray crew were protected only by buttoned-up collars and pulled-down baseball caps in their never-ending job.
One morning we drew the assignment of flying to la Drang as a courier ship. We carried the courier, who carried a pouch containing important messages being sent to various field commanders. It was the kind of job I loved best. No formations, no hot LZs, no screaming grunts, and no red tracers.
After crossing the Mang Yang pass, we flew to a small LZ somewhere south of Pleiku. The courier hopped out and asked us to shut down. We did, then wandered over to a group of brass who were interrogating an NVA. The man’s arms were bound behind him. He shook his head quickly when the interpreter shouted sharp questions. A heavy-set colonel reacted angrily and asked again. A major stood behind the prisoner with a .45 drawn but held by his side.
“Tell him to talk or we will kill him,” the colonel said. The ARVN translator grinned. “Tell him!” The interpreter switched his face to stern severity and wheeled around and yelled piercing Vietnamese accented with gestures. The prisoner flinched at the words but resolutely shook his head.
“Did you tell him we’d kill him?”
“Yes. I say you talk now. If no talk now we kill now. Boom.” He smashed his fist into his hand.
“Good. Tell him again.”
He did, but the prisoner stubbornly refused to talk.
“Goddamn it!” the colonel shouted. “Major, put your automatic to the back of his head,” he said quietly, so as to not tip his hand. “When Nguyen here asks him again, push the barrel against his head.”
“Yes, sir.” The major raised the weapon.
The interpreter pounced upon the man, unleashing a torrent of threats, and the major prodded the back of his skull with the muzzle of the gun. The man flinched at the gun stabs and closed his eyes, waiting for the explosion. When the interpreter stopped screaming, he shook his head. No.
The colonel brushed the interpreter aside and put his face in front of the prisoner’s. “Listen, you slimy little gook. You talk. Now.” He glared. “I’ll blow your slimy brains all over this goddamn jungle.” He moved his face closer to the prisoner’s. “Cock that gun, Major!”
“Huh?”
“Coc
k the goddamn gun and let him hear it. I don’t think he believes we’ll kill his ass.”
“But we can‘t, sir.”
The colonel wheeled to the major. “I know that and you know that, but he doesn’t. Cock it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The major sheepishly pulled the slide back and let it snap. The loud click-clack made the prisoner flinch. He seemed to brace himself for death. He lowered his head. The major kept the gun at the base of his skull. Before the interpreter even asked the question, he began to shake his head slowly. No.
“Okay, okay. Let’s take a break,” said the colonel. “God damn gooks!” He looked around to see the courier and Gary and me. “What do you want?”
“Dispatches from division, sir.” The courier handed the colonel a fat envelope and saluted.
“Right.” The colonel nodded. “The fucking paperwork can find you no matter where you are.”
“Yes, sir,” said the courier.
The colonel looked up from the papers. “Well?”
“I have to get a signature on the cover sheet, sir.”
“You’ll get it. You’ll get it.” While he patted his fatigues for a pen, he noticed the prisoner staring at him.
“Major, I want you to blindfold that slope. And I want you to tell him that I’ve decided to execute him.”
“Sir?”
“That’s right. Tell him. Tell him.” The colonel shook his head wearily. “Jesus, Major, this is basic stuff. I’m going away for a while, and I want the interpreter to talk nice and friendly to the gook and tell him that maybe he can save his miserable skin. Like if he decides to talk. Get it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Here’s your cover sheet.” The colonel handed the paper to the courier. “Nice day for flying.” The colonel looked at me.
“Yes, sir, it is,” I said.
He nodded over and over as if agreeing to several things, then stopped suddenly and looked at me sternly.