“Put out the cigarette, you stupid fuck,” someone down the line yelled. “Christ, you want to get us all killed?”
In the southwest, near the mountains, red tracers originated out of the blackness in the low sky and raced toward the ground in a continuous stream. Green tracers in short, broken streams rose from the ground toward the spot where the red tracers began. There was no sound, only the streaks of crimson and emerald intermingling on a dark canvas. Singer was transfixed by the beauty of the lines of bright red and green racing back and forth with the backdrop of the ghostly mountains, their shapes standing out even against the murky sky. He wondered who might be dying, thankful to be watching from a distance. Then he saw Sergeant Prascanni tripping and going down, not moving, but the deadly tracer light show remained beautiful.
That night Singer dreamed of watching fireworks, sitting on the lake-shore, the blossoms of colors exploding over the lake. In his dream it was a hot, sticky night, the kind typical of the Fourth of July. Susan was next to him, and he had his arm around her. He could smell the lingering scent of shampoo in her hair when she leaned her head on him and the smell of her sweat in the hot night, which he found pleasant and made him think of lying together sweating and exhausted. Then he woke to the gloomy view of rice paddies and distant mountains and he felt tired, despite the sleep.
Throughout the following days they filled sandbags and strung concertina wire, working shirtless and sweating in the hot sun. Occasionally in those first few days, when the wind was right, Singer heard sounds from the north of what could have been gunfire and explosions but were too muted to say with certainty.
“Hue,” Rhymes said.
“I thought we were going there.”
“Soon enough.”
Singer lost track of the days. His arms hurt from digging and throwing sandbags to build bunkers, each large enough to hold a squad if everyone crowded in. Maybe this was how they made each unit pay their dues before they let them fight. If Bear was bothered by Ghost’s daytime absences, he didn’t let on, and seemed content that he showed up each evening and was still there at dawn. Singer wondered though if Bear trusted him enough to let him pull nighttime guard alone. It became sort of an obsession for Singer, or a diversion to the mindless work and oppressive heat, to discover how Ghost slipped away each day unnoticed. But even though he tried to watch, he never saw Ghost leave. At some point he’d realize he hadn’t seen him and would look around, unable to find him. He never did see him lift a single sandbag or touch a strand of wire.
Sergeant Milner regularly appeared and stood up on the hill surveying the work, sometimes yelling out an order that everyone seemed mostly to ignore. During each break Rhymes sat with a book, and only sometimes put it down when Singer talked to him.
“You brought all those with?” Singer asked, seeing the pile beside Rhymes’s ruck.
“What’s life without a good book?”
This made Singer quietly confused by something he never considered before, that life might be empty, or at least incomplete, without a story to read. He had never found this to be true, but Rhymes said it with the conviction of someone who firmly believed it.
The days of labor were beginning to take on a dull routine, and the irritation of boredom started to grow around the edges. Some days Singer found himself even sitting down near Red, who had regained his enthusiasm for citing statistics and telling memorable games play by play. Singer even asked a few baseball questions, a game he cared nothing about at all, but Red seemed pleased. It killed the time and temporarily displaced Singer’s anxiety over their lack of action.
Even the old guys were showing signs of stress over being stuck in the work of firebase expansion, something any laborer could do.
“This is fucking nuts. They brought us over here again for this shit. Sending us back was just political bullshit.” Trip threw down a wirecutter and his gloves and walked away.
It was Rhymes who eventually retrieved him. They walked back down the hill side by side and Trip went back to work as if nothing had happened. Rhymes never did say what he told Trip to get him to return. When Singer asked, Rhymes merely said. “This is not a good place to get crosswise with the brass, or anyone else for that matter.”
Sergeant Royce just ignored the whole episode, and luckily Sergeant Milner wasn’t there and likely never heard or, as Bear said, he would have probably loved to nail Cav boy with an Article 15 and hang his ass. Sergeant Edwards probably heard, or that was at least what they figured, but he understood such things and might have even thought the same as Trip, though he could never say it.
Things reached a peak—or the bottom, depending on the view—when in the middle of the day Shooter opened up with the M60 from the top of one of the completed bunkers, sending a trail of red tracers out into the empty paddies. The gunfire sent everybody diving for the ground. When the sound of the machine gun stopped, Singer could hear Shooter laughing, a high-pitched, crazy wail with a rhythm similar to gunfire. Some men cursed. A few laughed, as well, after looking around and then standing up.
“That fucker is one crazy white guy,” Bear said.
Rhymes shook his head and went back to work, ignoring Shooter and the commotion. Sergeant Milner stormed down, ranting about undisciplined fire and endangering men.
Shooter spun around with the M60, so that Sergeant Milner ducked. “Got to get more ammo, Sarge.” He left Sergeant Milner alone, talking to himself.
Singer saw Sergeant Edwards watching from up the slope, and he seemed to smile. Later he saw him talking to Shooter, though, they both stood relaxed and it looked to be a friendly conversation. It was understandable. Singer wanted to fire his weapon, too, and perhaps if Shooter had told him of his plan he would have stood beside him with his M16 and run through a clip or two. Though he saw that Rhymes didn’t like it and probably would have chewed him out, which would have upset him, so maybe it was better he hadn’t known.
After Shooter’s episode there were a few more eventless patrols into the paddies below them, likely more to remind them of their real role as infantrymen than to actually look for the enemy. At least it gave Singer a chance to feel like a soldier and to embrace the illusion that he was really doing something.
On one of the patrols, they were working a brush-line at a field edge. Singer was taking it slow, then held up to check for what he thought might have been a trip wire but was just a vine. Sergeant Edwards must have come forward to check with Sergeant Royce because Singer heard him as he was down on one knee checking.
“Why do you have Singer on point again?” Sergeant Edwards asked.
“He wants to,” Sergeant Royce said.
“Rotate your point man, Sergeant.”
So Singer got pulled off point right then. Afterward, even though he asked, it was only occasionally that he was allowed, which meant some of the second tour guys had to take a turn. Whether he did it because it was the most dangerous and thus the most exciting position or by doing it he might spare Rhymes and Trip, he wasn’t quite sure.
The patrols were a small relief in the days that mostly involved shoveling and the piling of sandbags. In the end, they had a perimeter with a bunker line and triple coils of wire strung and staked to the front. When the perimeter was done and the men had comfortable positions to defend, they moved on. Despite the relative safety of their new perimeter, Singer was relieved at the news.
Trucks carried them the short distance north into the city of Hue. The first sign of the fighting that had taken place came even before they reached the city. They crossed an engineer’s floating bridge installed across a small river beside concrete-and-metal wreckage of the former bridges. A contingent of gaunt Marines with fifty-caliber guns were in place as guards.
“Where is this?” Shooter asked from the front of the truck.
“An Cuu Bridge, Phu Cam Canal,” a Marine said. “Hue’s open now. You Cherries on the tourist plan?”
“Fuck, you’re the Cherry. Every man here is a second-tour
man,” Shooter said. “What took you guys so long to kick a few farmers out of town? They’re always sending us in to mop up stuff you guys can’t finish. Talk to me after you’ve done two tours. Fucking jarheads.”
They were already over the bridge, well beyond the Marines, and Singer doubted that they heard. But he kind of liked being included as a vet in Shooter’s boast even if it wasn’t true.
The signs of destruction grew as they moved farther toward the city center, where Rhymes said the Perfume River and Citadel were. What the hell the Citadel was, Singer had no idea, but he figured better to wait and see rather than ask and sound like he didn’t know anything.
“Jesus,” Singer said, seeing all the bombed-out buildings and bullet-pockmarked walls. The scenes resembled images in his high school history books, though Vietnam fighting wasn’t in any of those books. They had never even discussed the war. He covered his mouth and nose at the pervasive smell, which reminded him of the stench around small lakes in the spring that had frozen out and whose shores were lined with piles of rotting fish. The source of the smell wasn’t evident, and he tried not to imagine the scenes of dead or where the corpses might lie.
“They say the Marines saved Hue,” Rhymes said.
“It looks like they destroyed it,” Trip said.
“Never seen nothing like this,” Bear said. “They bombed the hell out of this place.”
On a main street called Hùng Vương, Ghost crossed himself and started on some Spanish homily with the cadence of a prayer as they passed a huge rubble pile that might have been a church. Parts of benches, maybe pews, protruded from piles of stone, and within the debris was a pointed structure that could have been a steeple that still held two arms of what looked to have been a cross.
A few Vietnamese were bent over, straining to move bricks or look under collapsed concrete walls at what must have been homes. A woman squatted beside a half-wall, face buried in her hands while her body convulsed in inaudible sobs. But mostly, the streets were empty, though they passed an ARVN patrol whose faces offered nothing but exhaustion. There were no children playing on the streets or sidewalks. None rushed out to run beside the trucks begging for treats. Singer saw one child looking out from a first-floor window, a frightened face pressed against the iron grate across the opening. A few people here and there stood in undamaged doorways and shopfronts, looking nervous and afraid to venture out. A woman pulled two young children closer to her side, keeping her arm wrapped tightly around them, and stepped deeper into the shadows. Not the hero’s welcome Singer envisioned.
“Where is everybody?” Singer asked.
“We saw some of them on the road when we came up from Chu Lai. Most probably left weeks ago at Tet, when the fighting started. The Americal guys said it was bad here,” Rhymes said.
“It looks quiet now, almost like a ghost town.”
“Don’t let that fool you. A few weeks ago you would have had to fight to come up this road and it might have taken days to make a hundred yards, with half of you dying.”
“Jesus. That must have been something. We were stuck filling sandbags while that was going on.”
“It was probably mostly over. In Chu Lai they were all talking about Hue, said the NVA held the town for weeks and didn’t run even when the Marines came in.”
“What happened?”
“After almost a month of fighting, most the NVA left. It must have been some heavy shit if it took the Marines so long to take back the town. Be thankful we didn’t get here a month ago.”
“Damn!” Singer said, regretting that he hadn’t gotten in on the fight and wondering when they would get their chance. Still, it was puzzling how they could drive up this road unmolested and that none of the remaining residents showed gratitude. No one applauded their arrival. No flowers were thrown to them. No women rushed up to hug and kiss them. He didn’t feel much like part of the liberating army.
On the north end of Hùng Vương, near a compound signed MACV, which hadn’t entirely escaped the damage, they dismounted the trucks, which immediately turned around to retrace the route with just the drivers and a man riding shotgun on each. An APC blocked the compound entrance and guards with M16s looked on with disinterest.
The Perfume River lay ahead, a wide span cutting east and west, appearing to bisect the city. Hùng Vương went straight, the road rising on to a metal-span bridge that clearly wasn’t right. The first section dropped toward the water, as did a length from the other side, and part was simply missing.
“Guess we got to swim,” Bear said.
They formed up in platoons and moved off on separate assignments. The fourth moved north the short distance to the river, then went west on Lê Lợi Street, paralleling the waterway.
Before they started walking in a staggered double column, Rhymes slid up next to Singer.
“You have a round chambered?” Rhymes asked.
Singer opened the bolt just enough to see the brass. “Yup.”
“Keep your safety on, but stay alert. Don’t get careless.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be secure?”
“It doesn’t look secure. You never know who stayed behind.”
They pushed down Lê Lợi past the blackened hull of a burnt-out truck, its tires burned away. Past blocks and bricks, tree limbs and torn sheets of corrugated metal scattered in the street. The Perfume River on their right was wide and muddy, with a fast flow that carried debris of tree limbs and boards easterly. No boats plied the waters.
“What’s that?” Singer asked, pointing at the huge walls across the river.
“The Citadel,” Rhymes said. “The walled city of the emperor. Built 900 years ago.”
“You were here before?”
“I read about it.”
“Looks like a fortress.”
“It is or was.”
“Your man there knows everything,” Bear said.
“Shut up and watch our flanks,” Sergeant Royce said.
Even with towering walls broken and breached, giving some clue to their thickness, and shattered towers that would have been fighting positions, it still looked impressive and a tough obstacle to take. The challenge of fighting in Hue was beginning to form in Singer’s mind and he worried it was where they’d stay.
The odor of death lingered even in the air beside the river, but he’d already become used to it and no longer felt the need to cover his nose or suppress a gag now and then. They were on foot, moving through what truly looked like a war zone, away from the tedium of bunker construction that offered to save no one except the nameless men who might come to occupy them in the months ahead. Here there was hope of heroic acts and of actually saving people, though, from the look of things, for many they were already too late.
On their left they passed the shell of a two-story building with bullet-scarred walls and dark, distorted window shapes blown out by gunfire. A yellow flag with three red horizontal bars across the center flew from a pole in the litter-ridden courtyard, a smaller version of the one that hung above the Citadel on a pole that still stood atop the center tower. The flags hung limp in the heat, lifting half-heartedly at a sporadic breeze.
During the patrol down Lê Lợi Street the only people they saw were four ancient Vietnamese men bearing a box that surely was a coffin, trailed by a woman and two girls of almost the woman’s height. They passed almost soundlessly, except for footsteps and soft sobs. Singer stopped and watched them pass until Rhymes prodded him to get going.
Near what seemed the west edge of the city, a tall concrete tower loomed on a small island connected to each shore by an unbroken trestle that stood starkly vacant. A thread across the water, connecting things, though Singer couldn’t say what. The tower stood dominant and undamaged, a contrast to the scenes of rubble, and Singer wondered how it had been spared. In the far distance were the indigo forms of mountains that made Trip stutter-step before he looked away, making Singer wonder what he saw.
Once they closed the distance to the is
land, Singer saw the railroad tracks leading across the bridge. A mounted quad-50, which Singer marveled at, unable to imagine the firepower, sat nearby. The Marine in it waved as fourth platoon turned to follow the tracks single file, north onto the bridge. At first it seemed they were going to cross the river on the walkway that ran beside the tracks to the fortress that extended the entire way until the massive wall bore north to parallel the rail line. But instead they dropped off beside the tower onto the island. There they found two unoccupied concrete, one-story houses which still contained the meager furnishings of the former occupants, who had likely fled the fighting. Sergeant Edwards set up a command post in the westernmost house while Singer and the others were assigned defensive positions around the island perimeter.
At night, the men of the fourth platoon lay in shallow holes around the island’s edge. Singer gazed into the blackness, straining to see the far riverbank, but somewhere over the water the blackness merged, swallowing distant shapes and forms. The night air was calm and held the daytime heat. It was quiet enough that Singer could hear the current slide and bubble against the island’s banks, only the sound giving a hint of the river’s eastward flow in the darkness. The mosquitos that had swarmed at twilight, forcing Singer to roll down his sleeves and apply bug dope that was little deterrent, had largely gone quiet.
“Where does it go?” Singer had asked before the last light gave out.
“The South China Sea. About six miles,” Rhymes said.
“And the mountains?”
“They look closer than they are. They extend into Laos about thirty miles as a crow flies, I would guess. A short helicopter ride, but a long march.”
Perfume River Nights Page 6