September Song

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Captain Ramirez appeared above the foxhole. “Are you all right, Colonel O’Malley, sir?”

  “How did the NVA know this was my hooch?”

  I scrambled out of the hole and glanced at the small craters which had crept almost to the edge of the foxhole.

  “Well, they missed.”

  “Yes, Sir, SIR.”

  “Would it be safe, Captain, for me to photograph the battlefield?”

  “The CO said you’d want to do that. The NVA is probably licking its wounds today.”

  Yeah, that was why they sent those mortar rounds over at me.

  We walked through the camp. The gyrenes were sitting in little groups, heads bowed silently, weapons next to them. Occasionally they lifted a hand to brush a way a bug.

  Victors.

  The men at the bunkers were a little more alert. It was unlikely that there would be another attack. Still, Charlie had done crazier things. Beyond the bunkers men were emptying gasoline containers on the dead bodies.

  “When will you restore the perimeter?” I asked.

  “Tonight,” Captain Ramirez replied. “In the dark. We’ll sneak out there, fix the fences, and plant more mines.”

  “Dangerous duty.”

  “Yes, SIR. The men that will do it know their jobs.”

  “I would hope so.”

  “Charlie usually takes his dead with him,” the Captain continued as we walked among the bodies. I didn’t want to, but I was snapping away with the Kodak, striving to find some dignity, some hope, some promise in the dead bodies. A few of them wore Catholic medals.

  “None of us like this burning stuff,” the Captain continued. “We don’t have much choice. Many of them are booby-trapped.”

  How do you go into battle with a booby trap on your body? You know you’re going to die one way or another. Brave men? Or men who were afraid to argue with their officers?

  “How many dead?”

  “Over three hundred. Same number perhaps beyond the perimeter. They threw a battalion at us. That’s unusual for them. If they had broken through, there would have been a lot more to push into the base.”

  “Did they come close?”

  “No, SIR. We don’t know why they thought they could. Life is cheap in this country.”

  The gunnery sergeant who was running the burial party, if it could be called that, ordered us back to the bunkers. He trailed a streak of gasoline away from the bodies and toward the bunker. Then he lit a cigarette, tossed it casually into the streak, and ran like hell.

  I caught it all on the Kodak. Full color.

  Then a dirty orange flame spread across the battlefield. The bodies blossomed like transient spring flowers. Many of them exploded as the booby traps went off. I caught those in the Kodak too. The stench of burning flesh floated in our direction on a light breeze. Some of the men with me vomited. Captain Ramirez himself looked sick. Perhaps hardened to war, I didn’t feel anything at all.

  Well, when I got back to my hooch I vomited all over the place.

  The CO knocked on the doorjamb.

  “Colonel O’Malley, there’s been a development which might interest you. Our intelligence people have taken infrared pictures of the hills around us. They have located the tunnels and the bunkers and the ammunition stores. Our B-52s from Saipan are coming over to take them out. Would you care to watch from my command tower?”

  I wasn’t sure that I would. However, I followed him.

  Despite the stench of the burning bodies and the smoldering fires at the site of last night’s battle Khe Sanh seemed quiet, almost peaceful. The gyrenes were eating their K-ration lunches, a couple of kids were picking at their guitars and singing the blues. The CO watched the sky with powerful binoculars.

  “They’re coming,” he said to me. “They’re so high we will not be able to see them with the naked eye. Neither will Charlie. We’ll know they’re here only when the earth begins to shake.”

  Then the earth indeed began to shake. Our observation tower quivered like it was hit by a tornado. The ridge of hills in front of us seemed to explode from end to end as if a volcano had erupted. Huge clouds of dust and smoke and flame shot skyward obscuring the blue sky and the sun. The ridge shuddered like a dying animal. Slowly the volcano spread in both directions, eventually forming a circle of fire all around us. Waves of sound enveloped us from all sides.

  I hope they don’t miss, I thought. There’d be nothing left in here. However, they didn’t seem to miss.

  The raid seemed to go on forever. The circle of fire rose higher. The ground quivered more violently. The sun darted in and out of sight. Secondary explosions ripped the ridges as ammunition and fuel stores blew up. My nose was clogged with the acrid smell of exploding bombs, my mouth as dry as the desert, my ears had stopped working. My stomach wanted to vomit, but it no longer knew how.

  Make it stop, I begged whoever might have the power to make it stop.

  Then suddenly it did stop. The CO, two of his aides, and I were lying on the deck of the watchtower, blown over by the blasts. For a few moments there was silence again as we waited to be sure that the B-52s had left.

  “A little more than I expected,” the CO observed. “Poor devils over there probably can’t figure out what hit them.”

  Then our own artillery began to fire into the ring of dirty orange-and-black flame to remind the enemy that the firepower was all on our side. I remembered that I was a photographer and began to blaze away. I was furious at myself that I had taken no shots during the raid itself.

  Finally, all the shooting was over. The smell of incinerated bodies, never blotted out by the raid, once more dominated Khe Sanh.

  “They’re going to get that every day from now on. It will make them think pretty seriously whether they’re in the right place. Want to stay for the next show, Colonel O’Malley?”

  I didn’t.

  My last memory of Khe Sanh was the stench of burnt human flesh as the transport plane hurried down the runway and lifted into the air. I am scribbling these lines on the ride back to Tonsunhut.

  I didn’t exactly cover myself with glory this time.

  Keep praying for me.

  Love to all.

  Subic Bay, Philippines

  All my loves,

  Well, if you wanted me out of harm’s way, the same has to be said of the United States of America. After the AP sent my pictures of “Burial Party Khe Sanh” around the United States, I was informed by a very officious Colonel that the Embassy wanted me out of country immediately.

  I raised hell, of course. You can’t do this to me. It’s censorship. I’m an American citizen. I’ve served my country in both the military and civilian roles. I hold the Legion of Merit and the Medal of Freedom etc. etc. You’ll have to remove me by force etc. etc.

  The colonel retreated. I thought that perhaps I had done too good a job. I wanted out immediately too. However, to paraphrase the poet, I did not want to seem to be going too quietly into the daylight of home.

  I called the AP and told them what was happening. They promised to raise hell. I packed my clothes and waited. The Colonel returned with a squad of soldiers. I protested loudly and obnoxiously as I was dragged from the hotel and placed in a staff car.

  My behavior was atrocious at the entrance to the hotel, where NBC had thoughtfully placed a camera. I was wearing my Medal of Freedom, which I had brought along just in case I needed it.

  “I am told that General Westmorland thinks my pictures are obscene,” I informed the American public. “I think that his attempt to fight a guerrilla war like he is George Smith Patton Junior is obscene.”

  “Ambassador O’Malley, is it not true that you are opposed to war?”

  “I made that clear when I left the administration. Can you tell me the name of any journalist here who is in favor of it?”

  “Are you going to sue the government for this arrest?”

  “Am I being arrested? Am I, soldiers?”

  Grins and laughter from the
GIs who were responsible for escorting me to Tonsunhut. They had already decided that I was cool.

  “The budget deficit is too high as it is,” I replied as the Colonel in charge shoved me into the car.

  “Your career is already in jeopardy, Colonel,” I warned him. “You touch me again and you will have had your last promotion.”

  The GIs looked away to suppress their giggles.

  All in all, I had a grand time.

  I have every intention of suing the government and General Westmorland when I return home. I must have really driven him up the wall. He’s too smart a man to indulge in such a fit of pique. Ed Conway, I’m sure this letter will reach your eyes. Do we not have grounds to seek relief?

  Anyway, instead of flying me to Chicago or to San Franciso or even Hong Kong, they dumped me at Clark Air Base which is near this place and left me to shift for myself. One more ground for action.

  Clark Field, some of you may remember was the air base where that military genius Douglas MacArthur had all his B-17s lined up in a neat row for the Japanese to destroy eighteen hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  Anyway, I took a taxi down here to the huge naval air base built where John Wayne and his PT boats worked in They Were Expendable. It now has the honor of being known as the biggest whorehouse in the world, a ranking that was held by Naples when I was defending our Republic and the free world in the European Theater.

  On the basis of what I see around here I am in no position to reject the claim. Indeed it makes Saigon look like a Trapestine cloister.

  Those who defend it argue that the naval and Marine aviators who come here for “R and R” are men who live in constant danger of death. Even in peacetime, I am told by the few sober flyers I encounter, 10 percent of the aircrews perish during a cruise. Now the casualties are much higher—40, 50 percent. If they survive a crash, they face years (seven if my calculations are correct) in a Vietnamese prison. So Subic is a place to let off steam, to release tension, to defy death with booze and women, especially women.

  I think of Father Boyle and the juices of life.

  Yet the things they do to women, children really, are an abomination. Can they face death with easy consciences when they think of infidelity to their wives and cruelty to these children?

  I ask my sober and chaste flier friend about this. He shrugs, “Captain, I don’t know. They’d probably say that they just want to have a little fun before they die and that when they go home they’ll be faithful to their wives.”

  Just like the GIs in country who say they’ll stop using smack when they return home. Maybe they will. Yet I can’t imagine that memory and conscience will let them off easily.

  I do not believe that the title “Captain” represents a demotion. It is the naval equivalent of Colonel.

  “Smack,” by the way, is alleged to come from the Yiddish schmeck which in turn comes from the Old High German smac which means, not unreasonably, smell or perhaps taste. Stick with Ambassador O’Malley and you’ll learn a lot.

  I suppose the Roman Legionnaires had places like Subic to which they could repair for R and R during interludes between battle. It is still vile. Nonetheless, I have wandered about with both my cameras recording this extraordinary result of American imperialism during a foolish war. Tomorrow I will find a taxi driver to take me to Manila and try to negotiate a first-class fare to Chicago.

  Yes, Rosemarie my darling, I said first-class. Out here I am willing to admit as a defensible hypothesis, but only temporarily, that the Great Depression is over.

  I noted on the radio in my hotel (ABC Manila) that there is some contretemps in the United States about a former American Ambassador who was physically ejected from the country by the United States Army.

  I can’t image who it was!

  I expect to see you all in a day or two. Please omit red carpets. Flowers will be acceptable.

  All my love to everyone.

  14

  Tonsunhut Air Base

  My loves,

  I’m not sure that anyone is still listening to my letters. At any rate, as I said to my saintly wife on the phone, I never was missing. The United States Navy, which is no more efficient than the Army, it turns out, might have thought I was missing. However, I knew where I was all the time, even if they didn’t. How can you be missing when you know exactly where you are?

  In any case I am back in country, much I daresay to General Westmorland’s dismay and with a whole new set of pictures. The United States Air Force is apparently favorably disposed to flying me to San Francisco. However, for some odd bureaucratic reason, it cannot do so until the United States Navy satisfies itself that I am not missing. I for my part am steadfastly refusing to leave until my luggage, which includes many rolls of film, are flown in from the Kittyhawk.

  I give you my solemn word of honor—which most of you will with considerable reason discount—that I will not venture forth on any more photographic missions. I have, by the way, been promoted to Colonel again.

  I must give you a brief account of Chuck O’Malley’s last ride in an F-14. Which was also his second such ride.

  I should note that while the United States Navy didn’t know where I was (still seems not to), the Vietnamese fishing boats did.

  My sober naval aviator friend—Commander Tom McCarty by name—found me just before I was about to board the taxi for Manila and offered me an interesting bit of frosting on my cake—a flight in his F-14 to the Kittyhawk. The name of this carrier, I’m sure you will remember, is that of the beach on the Atlantic where the brothers Wright made their first flight.

  I figured why not. I’d be flown back the next day or the day after. It might be the last time I had a chance to land on a carrier. Some of you might say that in retrospect that it could have been the last time I flew anywhere. But that is both unfair and untrue, in the strict literal sense of he word.

  Was it crazy?

  I will not dispute that charge.

  Was I terrified at the prospect of landing on a carrier?

  Chucky O’Malley a coward?

  The takeoff from the Naval Air Base at Subic was routine enough, save that I swallowed my nostrils, my tongue, and much of my throat and lungs, when the twin-engine jet pointed its nose at the sky and went straight up.

  Motion sick?

  Not with three marazene tablets in me.

  I floated along in the sky and admired the beauty of the South China Sea, without a care or worry in the world. Thoroughly drugged, you might say. Alas, I do not know the Yiddish word for marazene, to say nothing of the Old High German word.

  “There she is,” Tom McCarty informed me on the intercom.

  “What? Where?”

  “The Kittyhawk! Down there!”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  He tilted the plane so that I was looking straight down. There was a patch of something white on the blue ocean, the wake of the carrier which trailed behind a black-and-gray dot. To call it a postage stamp would be to exaggerate its size.

  “NO!”

  “Yes, thank goodness it isn’t a night trap. Those are really scary.”

  He engaged in some jargon with the ship. We went into a steep dive, pulled out of it off to one side, banked on one wing which, marazene or not, turned my stomach several times.

  Then he pulled more or less level with the deck of the carrier—still an impossibly small softball field—and approached it all too rapidly. Like some crazy teenager driving at top speed into a bobbing garage. A line of lights on the left side of the ship blinking from green to red and back to green and a couple of people waving their hands.

  I grabbed for my rosary, sure this time that I would see the face of God in five seconds and he would demand to know why I had left my deeply loved wife and children for this madness. There was not the slightest doubt that we would crash into the superstructure on the right-hand side of the ship. We were going much too rapidly to land. He had better turn around and try again. However, we hit the deck
with a loud and vigorous thud. The plane lurched forward and then a massive and hidden hand reached up and slammed us to the deck.

  It was called, I would later learn, the arresting gear.

  God, it would seem, was giving me a second chance. Immediately I began to think of the stories I could regale my children with when I returned to Chicago.

  Chicago? Where’s that?

  Commander McCarty maneuvered the plane toward the island as I learned the ungainly superstructure was called. Each twist of the aircraft (as these people call a plane) stirred up a troubled stomach. The plane stopped, the wings folded up, the engine shut down, as if in relief. Another safe “trap”! The only issue now is how they would get me out of the plane.

  Tom helped me out of the cockpit, which I left most reluctantly. Two men whose job was apparently to tend the plane and help inept landlubbers—I remembered the word—reached up their hands to steady my descent.

  I was after all a former staff sergeant in the Army of the United States, former Ambassador of that great Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany, holder of the Legion of Merit and the Medal of Freedom. I had a certain dignity to maintain. Woozy head notwithstanding, I would disembark (if that were the correct word) from the F-14 with a certain elegance and grace.

  Right?

  Wrong! Of course.

  I fell on my face. The only reason I didn’t break my nose again was that a silver-haired officer with a broad smile caught me.

  Captain, maybe Admiral.

  I remembered the routine, probably from a movie.

  “Permission to come aboard, sir,” I said essaying a salute. It was not a sharp salute. However, even at its prime in Bamberg my salute was not very sharp.

  “Welcome aboard!”

  Some dignity preserved, though admittedly not a hell of a lot.

  They put me to bed in the Captain’s port cabin. Shot me full of some sort of chemical and permitted me to sleep for a day or so. I awakened periodically to hear a jet crash into the deck above me, and then went back to sleep. The next day they gave me the run of the ship with my cameras. A carrier is a fascinating phenomenon—a small city of five thousand people with its own hospital, dental office, chapel, kitchen, pastry chef. It plows through the ocean (in this case the South China Sea), cut off from the rest of the world, with the sole purpose of putting into the air every day five dozen aircraft (see!) which will deliver weapons of destruction on an unseen and perhaps nonexistent enemy and then reclaiming these aircraft when their work is done.