Into the Treeline

by John F. Mullins

  Jim accepted a cup. “You call up Mrs. Alexander in DA?” he asked.

  “Fuckin’ nearly every week. I think I’m about to piss Billie off. Maybe after I piss her off enough she’ll get me the hell out of here.” Mrs. Billie Alexander was in charge of Special Forces NCO assignments and as such was either loved or hated and feared, depending on which assignment she had given you last and which you were hoping for next.

  “So what’s the story on this ceremony?” Jim asked. “Another army sideshow?”

  “Yeah,” Saunders said. “With you as the main attraction. Might as well go out and face the music.”

  Jim cursed under his breath as he stood in front of the massed company. Before him was Colonel Cable, smiling slightly as both listened to the droning voice of the adjutant.

  “Attention to orders!” he said. “By direction of the president, the Silver Star medal is presented to Captain James N.M.I. Carmichael, 05324976, Infantry, United States Army, for gallantry in action while engaged in military operations involving conflict with a hostile armed force in the Republic of Vietnam.” The adjutant went on to describe his actions on that day. Much of what was said he did not recognize; events only half remembered were described in full and glowing detail in the citation. It was as if they were talking about someone else, someone who was brave, but also exceptionally foolhardy.

  Exceptionally valorous actions? I was just trying to stay alive. My gallantry in action was in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon myself, my unit, and the United States Army? What about throwing a company into a fight with a battalion? What about losing at least half of that company, maybe more? Was there nobody to speak for them?

  As Colonel Cable pinned the medal to his pocket flap he recognized that the reality of any situation was only what people wanted to recognize as the reality. With the stroke of a pen he had become a hero; it could have as easily gone the other way. Thus, because of the arbitrary decision of some anonymous staff officer, it was so. A battle that had been like so many others, with no clear-cut winner, was now being represented as a brilliant action and a vindication of the policy of letting indigenous troops do the fighting. Though with good American leadership, of course.

  When the ceremony was over the officers crowded around to shake his hand, congratulate him, bask in his reflected glory. All he wanted was to get away. The whole situation seemed so phony. He turned down invitations to join them at the club, pleading prior engagements. To get away he approached Colonel Cable, who had been standing off to the side.

  “How is your son, sir?” he asked. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch.”

  “He has his good and bad days. Like everyone else. We’ve taken care of the injuries. The physical ones, anyway. The mental are harder to deal with. Part of the time he’s suicidal, the rest he’s angry. It’s that anger that will make him survive, I think. He has a very strong will.”

  “Was the wound caused by what you thought?”

  The doctor nodded. “A man in his company who he had just busted from E-5 back down to private. For smoking pot. Wouldn’t have been so bad if he had just been smoking in the rear, Neil said. He would have had to have busted half of the company if that was the case. This guy was smoking all the time, on the perimeter, on patrol, just before air assaults.”

  “What are they going to do to him?”

  “Court-martial, Leavenworth, the usual. We’ve come to a hell of a pass, haven’t we? Still as eager as you were to get back over there?”

  “Probably not as eager. But that doesn’t matter too much. I should have orders in a few days, and eager or not, away I go.”

  “Well, take care of yourself.” The doctor touched the medal dangling from Jim’s chest. “These are nice. I used to think I’d have done just about anything to have one. But they aren’t that great as casket decorations. Keep your head down. Tell Lisa we miss her at work. I’ll see you before you leave?”

  Jim promised, then went off in search of Lisa, returning so many salutes his arm got tired. Finally he gave up and went to the car to wait for her, only to find her already there.

  “Listen to this,” she said, turning the car radio up. The newscaster was describing a major offensive just then taking place in Vietnam. The Viet Cong, taking advantage of the usual Chinese New Year’s truce, had attacked cities all over the country. The reports were confusing and contradictory, but it seemed that major victories had been scored by the enemy. Further details would follow as they came in. The newscaster’s voice was followed, appropriately enough, by the song “Eve of Destruction.”

  “Chinese New Year’s?” Lisa asked.

  “They call it Tet,” he replied. “Biggest holiday on their calendar. Anyone who can get away goes home to spend it with their families. Both sides usually declare a truce. So much for truces. Let’s go home, maybe we can catch more news on the TV.”

  Over the next few days he stayed glued to the television. There was an air of hysteria in the news. The enemy, it seemed, had taken all or part of many of the cities. Pleiku, Qui Nhon, Hue, Saigon, Can Tho; the names rolled by in a litany. It was described by pundits as clear proof that the war was being lost. These same pundits had only a few days before been extolling the progress of the conflict.

  To Jim’s soldier’s eye, reading behind the headlines and the hysteria, it seemed far less bad. True, the VC had scored successes in the cities, but except in Hue they had very quickly been thrown out again, suffering horrendous casualties in the process. In no place had the conventional units of the U.S. forces been hit except for harassing rocket and mortar fire and probes. The Main Force North Vietnamese units seemed to be staying completely out of the fray, hiding in their jungle redoubts and letting the Viet Cong take the brunt of the fighting. From his experience, Jim knew that body-count figures were often inflated, but if only a portion of this were true the VC were suffering casualties from which it would take a very long time to recover. It seemed to him that instead of a disaster there was a very great opportunity presenting itself. He hoped the generals at USARV were smart enough to exploit it.

  But at the same time he saw how the event had mobilized people in the United States in opposition to the war. Not a day went by without a demonstration, angry protesters marching against anything even remotely military. It would have been unsafe to walk down the streets of San Francisco in uniform. And he felt a grudging admiration for the strategists in Hanoi. Unable to win a battle in Vietnam, they would take the fight to the streets of America. And there they would triumph.

  He got his orders during this time. He was to report to Travis Air Force Base for shipment to Vietnam on February 15, 1968. He was assigned to the Replacement Detachment, Long Binh, for further assignment as befitted the needs of the army. It was only a week away.

  He showed Lisa the orders. “Well, it’s what you expected, wasn’t it?” she asked, rather coldly, he thought. He dropped the subject.

  The next couple of days he could feel her withdrawing from him. It was not an unexpected reaction, but it saddened him. They, who had always found it easy to share everything, now were always most careful not to mention his departure.

  There was a pulling away that manifested itself in long uncomfortable silences, an inability to joke about life, a marked decrease in the tender little touches they had so often shared. In sex it was the opposite. It became more intense, almost frenzied. It left them exhausted, barely able to move.

  It was in this state that he finally asked her why she was pulling away.

  “Simple,” she said. “Damage control.”

  “Damage control?”

  “Yes, damage control. Limiting the hurt that is going to come. I’m tired of being hurt. I hate it. And it’s going to be very painful when you go away. So I shut off the hurt. And by shutting off the hurt I shut off part of what I feel for you.”

  “I understand, I guess. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

  “No you
don’t,” she said tonelessly. “Not really. You’re doing what you think you have to do and not I or anybody else is going to get in your way. I was foolish enough to think that you needed me, once. And perhaps you did. But not any more. All you need, all you want to depend upon, is yourself. You’ll always go through life not needing anyone, following that inner compass that only you can read. So am I shutting myself off? You bet I am, because you’ve shut me out. I won’t stop caring for you. I couldn’t do that. But don’t ask me to do more because I can’t. I can’t sit here day after day, loving you and not knowing what is happening to you, not knowing if you’re alive or dead. I did that once, and it almost destroyed me.” There were tears standing in her eyes. She angrily wiped them away.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We enjoy these last few days together, and then you’ll go away. And we remain friends. I’ll write, you’ll write, and when you come back, as I know you will, because whatever other quality you have, you’re a survivor, maybe we can see each other. I’d like that. But I can’t be thinking about you all the time and you won’t be thinking about me because you’ll be spending most of your time just staying alive. Now, go to sleep. I’ll promise to try to limit my damage control efforts if you’ll promise to quit looking like a whipped puppy every time I snap at you.”

  “A whipped puppy? I thought I was handling this very well.”

  “That’s what you get for thinking without the proper qualifications. Bad habit. Now go to sleep.”

  He arrived at Travis Air Force Base north of San Francisco, checked in, showed the Passenger Service NCO his orders, and was given a flight number and time to report. He asked for and was given directions to the Officers’ Club. He had no desire to sit in the terminal and think about Lisa. He already missed her. They had tried to appear unemotional when they parted. Casual, yes I’ll write, take care of yourself, good-bye. Hiding the pain. Perhaps a couple of drinks would make it easier to bear. Perhaps a lot of drinks would cause it to go away altogether. He doubted it, but in any case had no intention of getting on the plane sober. It would be a long, dry trip.

  He sat at the bar, ordered a drink, took one long and satisfying gulp, then turned away from the bar and surveyed the room. In a corner table he saw a face he thought looked familiar. He walked over.

  “Mark Petrillo!” he said. “Last time I saw you, we were leaving country in ’63.”

  “How are you doing, Jim? Why don’t you come join us?” “Gentlemen,” he said, introducing Jim, “this used to be one of the finest medics in Group. Before he got tired of working for a living, and got commissioned. You on the twenty-one hundred flight?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jim said, belatedly noticing the gold leaf Mark was wearing on his collar.

  “Shit, you never called me sir when I was an LT and you were a buck sergeant, so why are you starting now? Besides, I’m not used to this yet. Just got it yesterday. Reward for good and faithful service, and all that shit. You know these guys here?”

  “Only Al,” Jim said, smiling at the stocky fellow captain. “You going back to Project Delta, Al?”

  “I don’t think so. Mark sounds like he has a better deal. I heard you got hit. You okay now? Didn’t try to shoot your dick off again, did they?”

  Jim winced. “I hoped that story would go away. Guess not, huh?”

  “In Group? You know better than that. Especially when people like me are around to tell a couple of young lieutenants like these that the captain used to have the nickname of Piccolo due to the fact he took three Claymore pellets through the pecker. Had to play his dick like he was a symphony soloist so he could take a piss. You got an assignment, Jim?”

  “Long Binh, Unassigned.” Jim replied. “DA said I should try to get some command time, so I guess I’ll end up as a company commander. Probably in the fucking Americal Division, with my luck.” The Americal, having been patched together out of three independent brigades, was widely regarded as being the worst unit in Vietnam.

  “Sounds like fun. You want that?”

  “Like I want the Bubonic Plague. Seems a little strange that I can lead a battalion of ’Yards in combat and it doesn’t count, but if I serve six months in a conventional outfit I’m okay. But they never said the army was fair.”

  “You might want to ask Mark about PRU, then. How about it, Major Mark? You got room for another captain? Even if he does have the bad habit of getting his ass shot off with astounding regularity.”

  “Oh, hell yes. There’s always room for more. You heard of the PRU, Jim?”

  “Provincial Reconnaissance Units? Sure. Used to be called Counter-Terror Teams. But I thought it was an Agency operation.”

  “It is,” Mark explained. “But officially you get assigned to the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support Branch of MACV. CORDS, for short. The Agency has always used military types to do the actual work. You interested?”

  “Maybe. How much ‘advising’ do you actually do?”

  “About as much as on an ‘A’ Detachment. You’re officially assigned as an advisor but since you have complete control over all the money you can use it as a lever to get what you want. I think you’d like it. These boys are doing some pretty good work. Can’t tell you much about it here, it’s classified as hell and the tender ears of these lieutenants might not be able to stand it. Or we could go ahead and tell them, but then we’d have to shoot them. If you’re interested I can get you into Saigon for a briefing. Then you can make up your mind.”

  “Fair enough. How long have you been with them?”

  “A year. Extended for another six months. I’m just going back to RVN after a greatly enjoyed extension leave. Shows you how much I like it, that I didn’t just stay home. So how did you get hit, anyway?”

  Jim was in the midst of describing the action when another Special Forces officer walked in, squinted in the dim light, then walked over to their table.

  “Thought I recognized that Okie accent,” Captain Finn McCulloden said. “How ya been, Jimmy Boy?”

  “Gentlemen,” Jim announced, “I’d like to introduce you to Bishop McCulloden, late of the Catholic Church, defrocked after they found him diddling the nuns.” Jim made a great show of kneeling and kissing McCulloden’s ring.

  “And I’ll bet you guys didn’t know you were sitting with San Francisco’s most notorious homosexual,” Finn responded, carefully wiping his hand where Jim had slobbered on it.

  “Why is it I get the feeling both of them are full of shit?” Petrillo asked.

  “Could be because Jim Carmichael would climb a greased telephone pole backward to tell a lie, rather than stand on solid ground and tell the truth,” Al Dougherty replied. “These assholes have been going at it since they were both medics, a long time ago. And you know how chancre mechanics are.”

  “No, Al, how are they?” Finn said. “I heard you had one for a butt-boy, back when you were in the navy.”

  McCulloden was, as it turned out, also leaving on the 2100 bird. He had an assignment to the II Corps Mike Force.

  “Death wish, Finn?” Jim asked.

  McCulloden shrugged. Other than SOG, the Mike Force took the greatest number of casualties of any Special Forces unit in Vietnam. It was the official reaction force, and as such was only deployed when someone was neck-deep in shit.

  “Death,” he intoned in his famous ecclesiastical voice, the one that had gotten him the nickname Bishop in the first place, “is merely nature’s way of telling you that you need a long nap.” Once during an exercise in the Philippines he and Jim had been given the mission of infiltrating opposing force headquarters. They’d gone to the nearest PX, purchased chaplains’ brass, and had passed themselves off as such. They’d not only infiltrated the headquarters, but had received a classified operations briefing. It had gone on well, until one of the officers said that the men hadn’t celebrated mass for a long time, and which of them was the Catholic?

  It was one time that Jim had thought quicker than Fin
n, and the latter had to search through dimly remembered ceremony—he hadn’t been inside a church in some ten years—to perform the mass.

  “The strange part,” Jim said, recounting the story to the others, “is that no one knew the difference.”

  For the next two hours they swapped stories, each better than the last. By the time they had to leave to catch the plane all were thoroughly drunk and the LTs were having serious second thoughts about the wisdom of associating themselves with such a crazy bunch. Perhaps Canada wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all, they thought.

  “You gonna go with PRU?” Al asked, somewhere over the Pacific.

  Jim pulled himself away from the window. He had been watching the tops of the clouds, their fluffy white surface exerting a hypnotic influence as they slid beneath. It appeared so clean up here. He envied the pilots who so often would slip the bonds of earth and escape to this ethereal realm where man was a puny and infrequent interloper.

  “Don’t know. How about you?”

  “Sounds like a pretty good program. Absolute freedom of action. You’re the only American assigned to a province team. The closest supervision would be from the Region, and they aren’t going to bug you as long as you do your job.”

  “Isn’t this the same thing they’re calling the Phoenix Program? How do they put it, in their wonderful euphemistic way, Neutralization and Elimination of the Viet Cong Infrastructure?”

  “Not so loud,” Al cautioned. “Yeah, the whole thing is called Phoenix. And PRU is the action arm of the program. The way it works, is you get a Black List of confirmed VC agents. You go out and try to capture them. If possible. If not, get rid of them. Same shit the VC does against the government’s people out in the villages. About time we used some of their own tactics against them, don’t you think?”