Fields of Fire

by James Webb

  “Yeah. Rain. You ain't seen the monsoon yet, Lieutenant. We got to start checking feet. Wait till you see a man take a boot off and leave half his foot in it.” Gilliland massaged the ground as if in deep thought. “It'll be another couple of months before it's real bad.” He pondered the C-ration cardboard he was sitting on. “You know, if anyone ever asked me what the most important development of Vietnam was, I'd just have to say C-ration cardboard.”

  Rabbit nodded to Hodges. “The man's gone dinky-dau on his last day in the bush.”

  “No, I mean it. We sleep on it. We burn it to keep warm. The villagers put it in their thatch to keep out rain. They make hats with it. What the hell has done that much good?”

  “Rubbers on R & R.”

  “Well, I wouldn't know about that. I saw my wife in Hawaii.” Gilliland reached defeatedly for a C-ration box, coming up with a can of date pudding. “Shee-it. This gets old, you know, Lieutenant?”

  Hodges eyed him, sipping cocoa now, and grinned amusedly. “That's a hell of a thing to say on the day a man re-ups, Sarge.”

  “Well. You can bet your ass I'm not re-upping for this. Two tours of this is enough. That's right. You worry about the monsoon. I'm gonna be dry.”

  The whole platoon had been ribbing Gilliland for days. Hodges jibed him again. “You'll be back, Sarge. You got expertise now. They ain't gonna let you switch from the grunts.”

  Gilliland worked to open the date pudding. “I gave 'em ten years of this. Ten years and three Hearts. And for what? Now it's their turn. I want ten years of Motor Transport, something like that. I need some expertise I can retire with. What the hell can an old grunt do when he gets out?” He peered bleakly at Hodges. “It's not like I'm getting flaky on 'em after ten years, you know. I got to think of my future.” He found a plastic spoon in one low trouser pocket, wiped it on a skivvy shirt crusted with sweat and mud, and ate the pudding in four huge, untasting bites. Hodges pointed at the pudding and grimaced: “Date pudding? For breakfast?”

  Gilliland waved him off. “Ah. It all tastes the same.”

  Rabbit threw his empty can toward the trash hole, and continued to rib Gilliland. “C'mon, Sarge. You know goddamn well the Sergeant Major ain't gonna let you switch. Nobody leaves the grunts. It's sacrilegious to even think it.”

  Gilliland eyed Rabbit, then snorted. “He's a hell of a one to talk, ain't he? Walking round the rear with an AK-47, flak jacket all zipped and helmet snapped, like he's the toughest grunt that ever walked. Shee-it. You know what he did his whole career? You think he was a grunt? Hell, no, Doc. He was a damn office pogue. That's right. A Remington Raider. If that fat fucker tells me I can't switch I think I'll break his head.” Gilliland pondered it, his face becoming intense. “Hell, no. I'll go you one better. I'll turn that son of a bitch in. Yeah.” He grinned sardonically to Rabbit. “Yeah, that Sergeant Major's a real winner. Sitting back there in An Hoa, selling off our rations to rear pogues. You ever wonder why we never get beer and soda out here?” Gilliland snorted again. “Beer and soda per man per day. Right? That man is making a mint back there, on our rations.”

  Hodges nodded absently. He had heard the stories, but could not be convinced that such a thing would occur. It would be the greatest of heresies. “Well, good luck, Sarge. If it all works out for you we'll never see you again.”

  Rabbit grabbed a wad of C-ration toilet paper and headed toward the perimeter's edge. “Yeah. And if it don't, remember you always got a home with us.”

  Gilliland lit another cigarette and begrudged them a grin. “Well, don't think it hasn't been a kick in the ass. Even if it hasn't.”

  Rabbit walked through wet weeds, stepped over a low paddy dike, and reached Waterbull's team, just in from the LP. “You crazy bastards. You almost did it. Six more inches and you'da burned a hole in the Skipper's ass.”

  Wild Man looked up from a canteen-cup of coffee. “Wasn't me. I was gonna use a LAAW.”

  Rabbit grunted: “Sure.”

  “It was Bagger again.”

  Bagger grinned awkwardly. “Only six inches from getting me a company commander? Hell. I just might stay out here an extra day and try again.” He dragged ceremoniously on a cigarette. “But I kinda fucking doubt it.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Hawaii.”

  Rabbit squinted unbelievingly. “Hawaii? You married, Bagman?”

  Waterbull leaned over to Rabbit, gesturing ironically toward the muscled, baby-faced blond. “Where the hell you been, Doc? You mean you ain't seen Bagger's ‘These Eyes’ routine?”

  Bagger's face deepened to a scowling blush. “Aw, knock it off, Bull.”

  Wild Man mimicked the song.

  These eyes cry every night for you,

  These arms long to hold you again—

  “Come on. Cool it, turkey.”

  Waterbull guffawed. “The pictures, Bagger! Come on, now. The flicks!”

  Rabbit rubbed his bearded face. “What the hell is going on?”

  Bagger attempted to cut the others off. “Nothing, that's what. It's personal, and assholes here ain't got any right to butt in. So butt the hell out.”

  Waterbull ignored him. “Every time that song comes on, old Bagger sits down right where he is and breaks out the flicks of his wife. Then he just rocks back and forth and cries like a goddamn baby! Every time, man! We could be in the middle of a ville, on patrol, and old shithead here would drop everything. Man. I can't believe you ain't seen him, Doc. Hell. We could be in a damn fire-fight—”

  Rabbit grinned unbelievingly. “You're shitting me.”

  “No-o-o-o! Hell, it makes you wonder. Last night—”

  “Well, what do you know about what it feels like, Bull? Huh? You and the others. Go on off to Bangkok and get the clap from some damn whore of a wife!”

  “Oh, she ain't really a wife—”

  “Well, you bet your ass she ain't! And mine is.” Bagger took his wallet from its plastic bag and opened it, holding the picture up for Rabbit's perusal. “Now. Check out what the hell I'm missing, there, Rabbit. Tell me you wouldn't miss it, too.”

  Rabbit stared at the picture. It was slightly out of focus, and revealed a mildly attractive, rather stocky girl in pigtails and a cheerleader's uniform, kneeling between two pompoms. He nodded judiciously. “Uh huh. She's real nice, Bag-man. I don't blame you.” Bagger continued to hold the picture in front of him, as if demanding more. “Cheerleader, huh?”

  “You better believe.” Rabbit began to leave and Bagger flipped the plastic card holder once more, grasping his shoulder and extending two more pictures. One of them was the same girl with a small baby.

  “A baby?”

  “That's right. Jerry Dean Dolan, Junior.” Bagger blushed again. “He's two months old. I ain't seen him yet, but she says he looks just like me. She's bringing him to Hawaii. Don't he look like me?”

  “Say what?”

  “Don't he look like me?” Bagger appeared mildly threatening.

  “Huh? Well, it's hard to tell. I mean—” Rabbit eyed Bagger's expression. “Sure, Bagger.” Rabbit considered the picture again, and shook his head helplessly. “Good Christ. Who'd have believed it. My man Bagger is a daddy! Poor kid.”

  “Hey. Now you know why I hate this shit so much, huh? I got something to go back to. I got responsibilities. All you suckers got is yourselves. I got a wife and a baby to take care of. What the hell am I doing out here, anyway? Where's the goddamn ARVNs? Who needs this shit, huh? I ain't any hero. Goddamn John Wayne, anyway.” Bagger appeared spooked, as if he were beginning to hallucinate or remember a nightmare. “What if I get killed over here, for God's sake? What are you gonna tell my kid? Huh?”

  “Anything but the truth.” Rabbit waved Bagger off,

  trekking toward the edge of the perimeter. “Don't worry,

  Bagger. He'll never find out.”

  “Ahh. Screw around. Nothing's serious, is it?” Rabbit dug a cathole and squatted in the far weeds.

  He could hear
Wild Man and Waterbull continue to taunt

  Bagger.

  The hurtin's on me, yeah,

  I will never be free no my baby no no—

  Hodges lay in the oven heat of his poncho hootch, dozing absently while monitoring first platoon's patrol on the company radio. Captain Crazy, the company commander, was telling Rock Man to move into a village he had just taken sniper fire from. Rock Man, the first platoon commander, was arguing for an artillery prep before he moved in. There were resupply choppers in the air, and Captain Crazy was explaining that there would be no clearance for an artillery mission unless Rock Man was in bad trouble, since it would be necessary to down the helicopters.

  Hodges admired Captain Crazy. The big, bluff Italian, who had been an ARVN advisor during his first tour, was an excellent tactician. He was too offensive-minded for most of the troops, pushing all of his activities to the edge of periphery—as at the moment with Rock Man—but he produced a lot of kills, and was uniformly respected. Hodges and the others considered themselves lucky. At least Captain Crazy knew what he was doing.

  He wasn't nicknamed Crazy for his tactics. Hodges named him during the Captain's first week in the bush, because of two incidents. One was the Captain's insistence that any unpenned pig be killed in the villages they used for night perimeters. Captain Crazy was spooked by pigs running through the weeds at night, and he claimed troops mistook them for gooks, and mistook gooks for pigs. So, every new village saw its hog population slaughtered.

  The other incident was Captain Crazy's wound in the back of his head, from a B-40 rocket, in his fourth day. He refused to be medevacked, and instead led a small patrol back to Liberty Bridge, where the Battalion Surgeon shaved the Captain's head and placed a large X-shaped bandage over the wound. The bandage was visible from a thousand yards. The troops took to joking about the real reason for the bandage. Bagger claimed it marked the center of the bull's-eye for snipers. Wild Man maintained it was where they changed the rocks in the Captain's head. Hodges decided that any man who didn't accept a medevac back to the sanity of Da Nang was nothing but stomp-down crazy. And the name stuck.

  Rock Man was the Lieutenant in charge of first platoon. Hodges had named him Rock Man because he idolized the tactics of the Korean Marines, better known as the ROKs. Rock Man emulated the ROK Marines on all his patrols: he believed, as he had heard the ROKs also did, that razing the countryside, brutalizing the villagers, was an effective way to pacify them. Rock Man was hardly out of high school. He had taken one semester of college and then enlisted. He went straight from enlisted training into officer training, and then to Vietnam. You always know where first platoon is, Hodges was fond of joking. Just follow the smoke from the burning hootches.

  Hodges laughed, listening to Rock Man and Captain Crazy argue.

  “… Well, how about an air strike, then?”

  “You don't need an air strike for one damn sniper round.”

  “Three.”

  “Three what?”

  “Five. Jesus Christ, Six Actual, let me key you in. Can't you hear the shit we're in, now?”

  Hodges could hear the firefight in the distance. First platoon was perhaps a mile and a half away. There were high stacattos of AK-47s, punctuated by the boom of B-40 rockets. M-16s and LAAWs returned fire. He sat, listening alertly while monitoring Rock Man and Captain Crazy on the net.

  Snake approached from the perimeter's edge, looking toward the village where first platoon was fighting. “They are in the shit again. Get some, first platoon.”

  Hodges nodded, staring also. “Yup. Them gooks don't like old Rock Man.”

  Snake scratched his tattoos, sitting next to Hodges. “Yeah, Lieutenant. I figure old Rock Man and his animals done made a lot more VC than they ever end up killing.”

  Hodges lit a cigarette, agreeing. “There it is, Snake. Now, when they get inside that ville, they're gonna burn it down. And we'll go through there tomorrow on the way to the Chau Phongs and we'll hit us a booby trap, thanks to first platoon.”

  Then he lit Snake's smoke, and they watched the rest of Someone Else's War a mile away.

  MAMASAN squatted barefoot in the packed dirt just outside her thatch porch, her narrow haunches only inches off the ground. Her knees were spread and her arms were between them, holding a large, flat basket filled with crushed rice. She moved the basket in slow circles, like a miner panning for gold, causing the chaff to separate from the grain and seek the basket's rim. She was stolidly intent on her task, motionless but for the slowly moving arms and her rolling jaw, which worked betel nut like a cud.

  She was ageless, somewhere between twenty and fifty, though from the three dirty, numb, scarred children who played under the thatch one would estimate her age to be on the low end of that scale. All three were younger than five. Their heads were shaved but for tiny rectangular patches in the front, even the girl's head. The children huddled on the porch, staring mutely at four Marines who now walked past the hootch, shirtless and laughing, on the way to a nearby well. The hootch and well were both inside this latest two-day perimeter.

  The Marines called to her, still laughing: “Hey! What's happening, mamasan?” One tossed her a C-ration cigarette.

  She ignored them until they passed, but after they wound around the bushes out of sight, she snatched the cigarette as if she were afraid it would suddenly evaporate as a mirage, and lit it with her pack of C-ration matches, having spit the betel nut onto the dust in a lumpy red glob.

  She rocked on her haunches, smoking contentedly, and Dan appeared. The Kit Carson Scout walked along the same dust trail, dressed neatly in camouflage shirt and trousers that had been custom-tailored for him and brought out to the bush by Hai, the other Scout, who had recently visited his family in Duc Duc. Dan's hair was growing long and he combed it down in front, in bangs as the early Beatles did, primarily in response to the urgings of some of the company command post Marines, who now called him Ringo.

  Dan had never heard of Ringo. He only knew that his hairstyle amused the Marines, and that they appeared to be mildly envious because they had to cut their own hair whenever the opportunity arose, while he was free to become a Beatle. And if they laugh, Dan mused, it cannot be bad. They appear to like this Ringo.

  Those who had known Dan intimately would have noticed that he was nervous underneath his calm mask. The only hint of nervousness in Dan was in the eyes. His wife would have noticed that they flitted anxiously along the trail, and had lost their usual acquiescence. But no one noticed today.

  He walked up to mamasan and dropped three cans of C-ration meat at her feet, feigning casualness. Then he dropped a C-ration can opener, still in its paper wrapper.

  “I bring you meat,” said Dan. He stood rigidly over her, just on the other side of the basket.

  Mamasan stopped sifting and stared at the treasure next to her, wishing to grab it and devour every gram of meat and fat. Then she looked up at the expectant rigidity of Dan's frame, at his suddenly hot eyes, and forced herself to resume the sifting.

  “We do not eat meat,” mamasan mumbled, hoping he would depart and leave the cans. He will not miss them, she thought. There is so much food for them.

  Dan did not believe her. They are not so different, he reasoned in his provincial way. This is the other side of the river from my home but they are the same. They look the same as me, different from the Marines.

  “If there was a water bull who died in your field, and it was not of your village, you would fight to steal two feet of its entrails,” Dan asserted. “Would you not?”

  “I would eat the entrails,” said the mamasan. She was no longer sifting. She stared down at her flat basket.

  Dan shrugged, making his point. “This meat is better. It is from young animals. It is tender.” He shrugged again, gesturing to the porch. “Give it to your children. They look very bad.”

  “They are very bad,” acknowledged mamasan, with a heavy hint of blame in her voice.

  “At least they are alive.
The VC killed mine.” Dan used his dead children as a weapon, to counter her unspoken accusation and justify the customized uniform he wore.

  His thrust struck home. Mamasan shook her head, taking an apparently pained drag off her cigarette. She spoke more softly. “I will keep the meat. For the children. Thank you.”

  “You remind me of my wife.” Dan still stood rigidly, peering with hunger at her squatting, wasted hulk. “They killed her, too.”

  Mamasan rocked on her haunches, smoking the last tobacco out of the cigarette, not yet looking at Dan. She flipped the cigarette away and Dan dropped a full pack of Lucky Strikes at her feet. She did not touch them, nor did she yet look at Dan.

  “Where is your husband?”

  Mamasan did not answer.

  “He is in the mountains, isn't he? Your husband is VC.” Dan laughed comfortably, trying to relax her. “I used to hide in the mountains, too. It was very lonely. I would dream of making love, spend all my free hours dreaming of it. Do you get lonely?”

  Mamasan still rocked.

  Dan eyed her shrewdly, a tiny grin at the edges of his mouth. “Oh, I spent many months back in the mountains. I remember all the hiding places, all the camps. I could lead the Marines to every camp. Even in the dark.”

  Mamasan looked quickly at him, too stolid to appear startled, but nonetheless noticeably awakened from her mask of apathy.

  Dan laughed softly. “I would not do that. It would be too senseless. I do not seek death.” He eyed her once again, suppressing something that almost resembled mirth. “Oh, it would be a great battle, though.” Mamasan appeared upset. “But, as with these others, it would solve nothing, would it?” He sighed. “It is such a game, this war. Sometimes I wish one side or the other would hurry up and win, just so it will be over.”

  Mamasan stared curiously at him now, still rocking. Slowly, as if she were reaching for a time bomb, she grasped the cigarettes and unwrapped the pack, taking out a smoke and lighting it. She puffed greedily.