We wait in ambush, enjoying the anticipation of violence. Five minutes. Ten minutes.
Fifteen minutes. Then the Viet Cong rats crawl out of their holes. We freeze. The rats skitter along the rafters, climb down the screening, then hop onto the plywood deck, making little thumps, moving through the darkness without fear.
Chili Vendor waits until the skittering converges in the corner. Then he jumps out of his rack and flips on the overhead lights.
With the exception of Rafter Man we're all on our feet in the same second, forming a semicircle across the corner. The rats zip and zing, their tiny pink feet clawing for traction on the plywood. Two or three escape--so brave, or so terrified--in such situations motives are immaterial--that they run right over out feet and between our legs and through the deadly gauntlet of carefully aimed boots and stabbing bayonets.
But most of the rats herd together under the board.
Mr. Payback takes a can of lighter fluid from his bamboo footlocker. He squirts lighter fluid into the little hole in the board.
Daytona Dave strikes a match. "Fire in the hole!" He pitches the burning match into the corner.
The board foomps into flame.
Rats explode from beneath the board like shrapnel from a rodent grenade.
The rats are on fire. The rats are little flaming kamikaze animals zinging across the plywood deck, running under racks, over gear, around in circles, running faster and faster and in no particular direction except toward some place where there is no fire.
"GET SOME!" Mr. Payback is screaming like a lunatic. "GET SOME! GET SOME!" He chops a rat in half with his machete.
Chili Vendor holds a rat by the tail and, while it shrieks, pounds it do death with a boot.
I throw my K-bar at a rat on the other side of the hootch. The big knife misses the rat, sticks up in the floor.
Rafter Man doesn't know what to do.
Daytona Dave charges around and around with fixed bayonet, zeroing in on a burning rat like a fighter pilot in a dogfight. Daytona follows the rat's crazed, erratic course around and around, over all obstacles, gaining on him with every step. He butt-strokes the rat and then bayonets him, again and again and again. "That's one confirmed!"
And, as suddenly as it began, the battle is over.
After the rat race everyone collapses. Daytona is breathing hard and fast. "Whew. That was a good group. Real hard-core. I thought I was going to have a fucking heart attack."
Mr. Payback coughs, grunts. "Hey, New Guy, how many confirmed did you get?"
Rafter Man is still sitting on his canvas cot with my boot in his hand. "I...none. I mean, it happened so fast."
Mr. Payback laughs. "Well, sometimes it's fun to kill something you can see. You better get squared away, New Guy. Next time the rats will have guns."
Daytona Dave is wiping his face with a dirty green skivvy shirt. "The New Guy will do okay.
Cut him some slack. Rafter ain't got the killer instinct, that's all. Now me, I got about fifty confirmed. But everybody knows that gook rats drag off their dead."
We all throw things at Daytona Dave.
We rest for a while and then we gather up the barbecued rats and take them outside to hold a funeral in the dark.
Some guys from utilities platoon who live next door come out of their hootch to pay their respects.
Lance Corporal Winslow Slavin, honcho of the combat plumbers, struts up in a skuzzy green flight suit. The flight suit is ragged, covered with paint stains and oil splotches. "Only six?
Shit. Last night my boys got seventeen. Confirmed."
I say, "Sounds like a squad of poges to me. Poges kill poges. These rats are Viet Cong field Marines. Hard-core grunts."
I pick up one of the rats. I turn to the combat plumbers. I hold up the rat and I kiss it.
Mr. Payback laughs, picks up one of the dead rats, bites off the tip of its tail. Then, swallowing, Mr. Payback says, "Ummm....love them crispy critters." He grins. He bends over, picks up another dead rat, offers it to Rafter Man.
Rafter Man is frozen. He can't speak. He just looks at the rat.
Mr. Payback laughs. "What's wrong, New Guy? Don't you want to be a killer?"
We bury the enemy rats with full military honors--we scoop out a shallow grave and we dump them in.
We sing:
So come along and sing our song
And join our fam-i-ly
M.I.C....K.E.Y....M.O.U.S.E.
Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse...
"Dear God," says Mr. Payback, looking up into the ugly sky. "These rats died like Marines.
Cut them some slack. Ah-men."
We all say, "Ah-men."
After the funeral we insult the combat plumbers a few more times and then we return to our hootch. We lie awake in our racks. We discuss the battle and the funeral for a long time.
Then we try to sleep.
An hour later. It's raining. We roll up in our poncho liners and pray for morning. The monsoon rain is cold and heavy and comes without warning. Wind-blown water batters the ponchos hung around the hootch to protect us from the weather.
The terrible falling of the shells...
Incoming.
"Oh, shit," somebody says. Nobody moves.
Rafter Man asks, "Is that---"
I say, "There it is."
The crumps start somewhere outside the wire and walk in like the footsteps of a monster.
The crumps are becoming thuds. Thud. Thud. THUD. And then it's a whistle and a roar.
BANG.
The rain's rhythmic drumming is broken by the clang and rattle of shrapnel falling on our tin roof.
We're all out of our racks with our weapons in our hands like so many parts of the same body--even Rafter Man, who has begun to pick up on things.
Pounded by cold rain, we double-time to our bunker.
On the perimeter M-60 machine guns are banging and the M-70 grenade launchers are blooping and mortar shells are thumping out of the tubes.
Star flares burst all along the wire, beautiful clusters of green fire.
Inside our damp cave of sandbags we huddle elbow-to-elbow in wet skivvies, feeling the weight of the darkness, as helpless as cavemen hiding from a monster.
"I hope they're just fucking with us," I say. "I hope they're not going to hit the wire. I'm not ready for this shit."
Outside our bunker: BANG, BANG, BANG. And falling rain.
Each of us is waiting for the next shell to nail him right on the head--the mortar as an agent of existential doom.
A scream.
I wait for a time of silence and I crawl out to take a look. Somebody is down. The whistle of an incoming round forces me to retreat into the bunker. I wait for the shell to burst.
BANG.
I crawl out, stand up, and I run to the wounded man. He's one of the combat plumbers. "You utilities platoon? Where's Winslow?"
The man is whining. "I'm dying! I'm dying!" I shake him.
"Where's Winslow?"
"There." He points. "He was coming to help me..."
Rafter Man and Chili Vendor come out and Rafter Man helps me carry the combat plumber to our bunker. Chili Vendor double-times off to get a corpsman.
We leave the combat plumber with Daytona and Mr. Payback and double-time through the rain, looking for Winslow.
He's in the mud outside his hootch, torn to pieces.
The mortar shells stop falling. The machine guns on the perimeter fade to short bursts. Even so, the grunts standing line continue to pop green star clusters in case Victor Charlie plans to launch a ground attack.
Somebody throws a poncho over Winslow. The rain taps the green plastic sheet.
I say, "It took a lot of guts to do what Winslow did. I mean, you can see Winslow's guts and he sure had a lot of them."
Nobody says anything.
After the green ghouls from graves registration stuff Winslow into a body bag and take him away, we go back to our hootch. We flop on our racks, wasted.
&nbs
p; I say, "Well, Rafter, now you've heard a shot fired in anger."
Soaking wet in green skivvies, Rafter Man is sitting on his rack. He has something in his hand. He's staring at it.
I sit up. "Hey, Rafter. What's that? You souvenir yourself a piece of shrapnel?" No response. "Rafter? You hit?"
Mr. Payback grunts. "What's wrong, New Guy? Did a few rounds make you nervous?"
Rafter Man looks up with a new face. His lips are twisted into a cold, sardonic smirk. His labored breathing is broken by grunts. He growls. His lips are wet with saliva. He's looking at Mr. Payback. The object in Rafter Man's hand is a piece of flesh, Winslow's flesh, ugly yellow, as big as a John Wayne cookie, wet with blood. We all look at it for a long time.
Rafter Man puts the piece of flesh into his mouth, onto his tongue, and we thing he's going to vomit. Instead, he grits his teeth. Then, closing his eyes, he swallows.
I turn off the lights.
Dawn. The heat of the day comes quickly, burning away the mud puddles left by the monsoon rain. Rafter Man and I ditty-bop down to the Phu Bai landing zone. We wait for a med-evac chopper.
Ten minutes later a Jolly Green Giant comes in loaded.
Corpsmen run up the ramp at the rear of the vibrating machine and reappear immediately, carrying canvas stretchers. On the stretchers are bloody rags with men inside. Rafter Man and I run into the chopper. We lift a stretcher and run down the metal ramp. The chopper is already beginning to lift off.
We place the stretcher on the deck with the others, where the corpsmen are sorting the dead from the living, changing bandages, adjusting plasma bottles.
Rafter Man and I run into the prop wash, running sideways beneath the thumping blades into a tornado of hot wind and stinging gravel. We stop, hunched over, holding up our thumbs.
The chopper pilot is an invading Martian in an orange flame-retardant flight suit and an olive-drab space helmet. The pilot's face is a shadow behind a dark green visor. He gives us a thumbs-up. We run around to the cargo ramp and the door gunner gives us a hand up into the belly of the vibrating machine just as it lifts off.
The flight to Hue is north eight miles. Far below, Viet Nam is a patchwork quilt of greens and yellows. It's a beautiful country, especially when seen from the air. Viet Nam is like a page from a Marco Polo picture book. The deck is pockmarked with shell holes, and napalm air strikes have charred vast patches of earth, but the land is healing itself with beauty.
My ears pop. I pinch my nose and puff out my cheeks. Rafter Man imitates me. We sit on bales of green rubber-impregnated canvas body bags.
As we near Hue, the door gunner smokes marijuana and fires his M-60 machine gun at a farmer in the rice paddies below. The door gunner has long hair, a bushy moustache, and is naked except for an unbuttoned Hawaiian sport shirt. On the Hawaiian sport shirt are a hundred yellow hula dancers.
The hamlet beneath us is in free fire zone--anybody can shoot at it at any time and for any reason. We watch the farmer run in the shallow water. The farmer knows only that his family needs some rice to eat. The farmer knows only that the bullets are tearing him apart.
He falls, and the door gunner giggles.
The med-evac chopper sets down on a landing zone near Highway One, a mile south of Hue.
The LZ is cluttered with walking wounded, stretcher cases, and body bags. Before Rafter Man and I are off the LZ our chopper has been loaded with wounded and is airborne again, flying back to Phu Bai.
We wait for a rough rider convoy in front of a bombed-out gas station. Hours pass. Noon. I take off my flak jacket. I pull my old, ragged Boy Scout shirt out of my NVA rucksack. I put on my Boy Scout shirt so that the sun won't roast the flesh from my bones. On the frayed collar, corporal's chevrons that are so salty that the black enamel has worn off and the brass shows through. Over the right breast pocket, a cloth rectangle which reads First Marine Division, CORRESPONDENT. And in Vietnamese: BAO CHI.
Sitting on a bullet-riddled yellow oyster that says SHELL OIL, we drink Cokes that cost five dollars a bottle. The mamasan who sells us the Cokes is wearing a conical white hat. She bows every time we speak. She squawks and chatters like an old black bird. She flashes her black teeth at us. She is very proud of her teeth. Only a lifetime of chewing betel nuts can make teeth as black as hers. We don't understand a word of her magpie chatter, but the hatred in the smile frozen on her face says clearly, "Oh well, Americans may be assholes but they are very rich."
There is a popular sea story which says that old Victor Charlie mamasans sell Cokes with ground-up glass in them. Drinking, we wonder if that's true.
Two Dusters, light tanks with twin 40mm guns, grind by. The men in the Dusters ignore our thumbs.
An hour later a Mighty Mite zooms by at eighty miles an hour, the maximum speed of the little jeep. No luck.
Then a convoy of six-bys appears, led by two M-48 Patton tanks. Thirty big trucks roar by at full speed. Two more Patton tanks are riding security at tail-end Charlie.
The first tank speeds up as it passes us.
The second tank slows down, bucks, jerks to a halt. In the turret is a blond tank commander who is not wearing a helmet or a shirt. He waves us on. We put on our flak jackets. We pick up our gear and swing it up onto the tank. Then Rafter Man and I climb up onto a block of hot, vibrating metal.
Down in a hatch by our feet is the driver. His head protrudes just enough for him to see; his hands are on the controls. The driver jerks the wobble stick and the tank lurches forward, bouncing, grinding, faster and faster and faster. The roar of an eight-hundred-horsepower diesel engine accelerates to a rhythmic rumble of mechanical power.
Rafter Man and I fall back against the hot turret. We are hanging onto the long ninety-millimeter gun like monkeys. The cool air of speed is delicious after hours in Viet Nam's one-hundred-and-twenty- degree yellow furnace. Our sweat-soaked shirts are cold. Flashing by: Vietnamese hootches, ponds with white ducks in them, circular graves with chipped and faded paint, and endless shimmering pieces of emerald water newly planted with rice.
It's a wonderful day. I'm so happy that I am alive, in one piece, and short. I'm in a world of shit, yes, but I am alive. And I am not afraid. Riding the tank gives me a thrilling sense of power and well-being. Who dares to shoot at the man who rides the tiger?
It's a beautiful tank. Painted on the long barrel: BLACK FLAG--We Exterminate Household Pests. Flying on a radio antenna, a ragged Confederate flag. Military vehicles are beautiful because they are built from functional designs which make them real, solid, without artifice.
The tank possesses the beauty of its hard lines; it is fifty tons of rolling armor on tracks like steel watchbands. The tank is our protection, rolling on and on forever, clanking out the dark mechanical poetry of iron and guns.
Suddenly the tank shifts to the left. Rafter Man and I are thrown hard into the turret. Metal grinds metal. The tank hits a bump, shifting sharply to the right and jerking to a halt, throwing us forward. Rafter Man and I hang onto the gun and say, "Son-of-a-bitch..."
The blond tank commander climbs out of the turret hatch and jumps off the back of the tank.
The tank driver has run the tank off the road.
Fifty yards back a water buffalo is down on its back, legs out straight. The water bo bellows, tosses its curved horns. On the deck, in the center of the road, I see a tiny body, facedown.
Chattering Vietnamese civilians pour out of the roadside hootches, staring and pointing. The Vietnamese civilians crowd around to see how their American saviors have crushed the guts out of a child.
The blond tank commander speaks to the Vietnamese civilians in French. Then, walking back to the tanks, the blond tank commander is pursued by an ancient papasan. There are tears in the papasan's eyes. The withered old man shakes his bony little fists and throws Asian curses at the tank commander's back. The Vietnamese civilians grow silent. Another child is dead, and, although it is very sad and painful, they accept it.
The blond tank co
mmander climbs up onto his tank and reinserts his legs into the turret hatch.
"Iron Man, you fucking shitbird. You will drive this machine like it's a tank and not a goddamn sports car. You hit that little girl, you blind idiot. Hell, I could see her through the fucking vision blocks. She was standing on that water bo's back..."
The driver turns, his face hard. "I didn't see them, skipper. What do they think they're doing, crossing in front of me like that? Don't these zipperheads know that tanks got the right-of-way?" The driver's face is coated with a thin film of oil and sweat; iron has entered into his soul and he has become a component of the tank, sweating oil to lubricate its meshing gears.
The blond tank commander says, "You fuck up one more time, Iron Man, and you will be a grunt."
The driver turns back to the front. "Aye-aye, sir. I'll watch the road, Lieutenant."
Rafter Man asks, "Sir, did we kill that girl? Why was that old man yelling at you?" Rafter Man looks sick.
The blond tank commander takes a green ballpoint pen and little green notebook out of his hip pocket. He writes something in the notebook. "The little girl's grandfather? He was yelling about how he needs his water bo. He wants a condolence award. He wants us to pay him for the water bo."
Rafter Man doesn't say anything.
The blond tank commander yells at Iron Man: "Drive, you blind son-of-a-bitch."
And the tank rolls on.
On the outskirts of Hue, the ancient Imperial Capital, we see the first sign of the battle--a cathedral, centuries old, now a bullet-peppered box of ruined stone, roof caved in, walls punctured by shells.
Entering Hue, the third largest city in Viet Nam, is a strange new experience. Our was has been in the paddies, in hamlets where the largest structure was a bamboo hut. Seeing the effects of war upon a Vietnamese city makes me feel like a New Guy.
The weather is dreary but the city is beautiful. Hue has been beautiful for so long that not even war and bad weather can make it ugly.
Empty streets. Every building in Hue has been hit with some kind of ordnance. The ground is still wet from last night's rain. The air is cool. The whole city is enveloped in a white mist.
The Short-Timers Page 6