Jungle Rules

by Charles W. Henderson

  Even though duty in Vietnam had little respect for the Monday-through-Friday workweek typical of life “back in the world,” a slang expression for civilization in America that even Jon Kirkwood found himself frequently using as he passed the midway point of his thirteen-month combat tour, Lieutenant Colonel Prunella had made great efforts to make duty in his shop as much as possible like the weekly routines Stateside. He believed that the more things he could keep consistent with those at home, the Marines under his supervision would encounter less stress in their lives and duties.

  This week, since the Fourth of July fell on a Thursday, the colonel had

  closed shop on Friday, too, and gave all hands four days off, like most people back home in America would enjoy. Kirkwood thought about how much he really liked Colonel Prunella, even though he kept himself removed from the daily grind of First MAW Law, and spent the last several weeks mostly on the tennis court with Movie Star or the wing adjutant, who had won a national tennis championship in college and whom Prunella had only beaten in the game once in six months.

  The captain sighed as he thought of the good boss leaving in days, and Dicky Doo with Charlie Heyster at his side taking over. As Kirkwood rolled on his back, he could hear Michael Carter snoring below his self-styled altar to his martyred political heroes, who now included black-bunting-draped photographs of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy alongside those of Pope Paul VI and Bobby’s big brother President John F. Kennedy.

  Carter had barely finished his wall of martyrs rearrangement and gotten the objects balanced with the addition of Martin Luther King’s photograph, and had finally stopped crying every time he knelt at his footlocker to pray, when word of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination flashed on American Forces Vietnam Radio. The devout stick man began a prayer marathon on the morning of June 6, Vietnam time, as soon as news of the younger Kennedy brother’s early-morning shooting on June 5 in a Los Angeles hotel by an Arab terrorist had reached that side of the world. The Boston defense lawyer held a rosary in his hand, chanting constant prayers, until the next day, when word finally came that Bobby had at last died without regaining consciousness. The lawyer refused to eat, sleep, or work while Kennedy clung to life, devoting his full attention to prayer for the mortally wounded presidential candidate and his family.

  As Kirkwood lay on his back, looking at the wall of smiling, dead politicians looming beneath Carter’s wooden crucifix, across the barracks from him, where the stick man snored below the garish scene, and as Terry O’Connor busily scratched a fountain pen across stationery with a light-blue map of Vietnam in the upper right corner and a gold Marine Corps emblem centered at the top, seated at the little desk by the window, writing a letter to Vibeke Ahlquist, the slamming of the front doors startled the daydreaming lawyer from his daze.

  “Carter, you maggot! I’ve got the goods on you now!” Charlie Heyster shouted as he stomped down the aisle, where the blond man now sat up on his bunk and rubbed his sleepy eyes.

  Jon Kirkwood swung his stocking feet to the floor and cut off the major-select before he could lay his hands on stick man.

  “Whoa!” Kirkwood said, putting out his arm, stopping the enraged lead prosecutor and soon-to-be interim military justice officer for the wing. “What goods? As this Marine’s attorney, I advise him to remain on his rack and keep his mouth shut.”

  “Oh, get out of my way!” Heyster snapped, and pushed Jon Kirkwood backward.

  “That’s assault,” Kirkwood said, and looked at Terry O’Connor, who stood and walked to the side of his pal. “I have witnesses. You’ve had it now.”

  “You’ll feel like joking when Major Dickinson writes Miss Carter up for robbing marijuana from the evidence locker, and you two join him in the brig for your complicity,” Heyster said, and scowled at the trio.

  “What are you talking about, Captain?” Michael Carter said, combing his tangle of unruly blond hair with his fingers as he spoke, and yawned out a breeze of bad-smelling sleep breath when he finished asking his question.

  “Major Dickinson has launched an internal investigation after he discovered a large number of kilogram-sized bags of marijuana missing from the evidence locker,” Heyster said, looking directly at Carter. “We know that someone from inside took the dope, because the only evidence taken were those bundles associated with cases that we have completed, and were now awaiting disposal by the provost marshal. The major has focused his search on the enlisted troops working in the office, such as the colonel’s driver. However, I suspect culprits elsewhere.”

  “Namely us?” O’Connor said, smiling. “You sure Dicky Doo didn’t peddle the stuff on the side, and now wants to pin blame on someone unknown so he can clear the books with CID? Sounds mighty suspicious and very convenient to me.”

  “It would take a low-life scum like you to suggest that a regular Marine officer might commit such an act, Captain O’Connor,” Heyster said, and then looked at Michael Carter, who had reclined on his bunk and blinked lazily up at the men. “Look at him. He’s all dulled out on reefer right now. How much you smoke of it, Michael, and how much did you sell?”

  “You have no idea how stupid you sound, Charlie, do you,” Jon Kirkwood said, looking at Carter and then back at the belligerent lead prosecutor.

  Heyster glared at the dark-haired captain.

  “What motivates a person to sell dope?” Kirkwood asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “Money, of course,” Heyster responded, and then looked at Terry O’Connor, who stood next to his taller friend and cast a sarcastic smirk at the prosecutor.

  “Michael Carter’s family owns half of the office buildings in downtown Boston, and several more on Park Avenue in New York City,” O’Connor bubbled, blinking his eyes and smiling at Heyster. “Stick man counts his money by the millions of dollars. His butler makes more than the three of us put together.”

  “So maybe he rips off the evidence to get high, and gives the rest of it away to those lunatic friends of yours,” Heyster said, jutting out his jaw. “That character Lobo, I’ll bet he would smoke a joint. Even Buck Taylor, too. He’s pretty radical, now that I think about him. Oh, yes, and let’s not leave out that bleeding-heart sister, Mike Schuller, trying to reform inmate life at the brig.”

  “You’re reaching way out of bounds with your stupid accusations on this one, Charlie,” Kirkwood said, and took the major-select by the arm and began leading him toward the barracks door. “Now, crawl back under your rock. Oh, and say hello to Chopper if you see him.”

  “Fucking assholes! I’ll get you, Kirkwood, for that cockroach trick. Don’t think that I’ve let it slip from my mind,” Heyster said, stomping out of the barracks.

  Jon Kirkwood smiled and shrugged at the two captains.

  “Well, with that comment, I guarantee you that he believes you’re the one who put the roach in his tobacco,” O’Connor said, walking to the foot of his rack and sitting down.

  “He’s never gotten over it, has he,” Kirkwood said. “Even Dicky Doo eventually gets past the harassment. The day he got back from Okinawa and sat in his chair, and the arms fell off on the floor, I thought he would explode. He got over it.”

  “Well, I think that the drawers crashing out of his desk, and the one entire pedestal collapsing to the floor under it had a lot to do with him getting past the chair,” O’Connor said and laughed. “He still hasn’t figured out the electrical problem! Lights flicker in his lamps and he yells at poor Derek Pride to call base maintenance.”

  “Dicky Doo as staff judge advocate and Charlie Heyster at his left hip is really scary, gentlemen, all joking aside,” Michael Carter said, standing up and putting on his pants. “I think I will go to the club and have a few drinks before the party, just to get myself in a better mood now, and try to get this internal investigation off my mind. I find it deeply disturbing.”

  “Hold on and we’ll tag along,” O’Connor said, walking to his wall locker.

  “I’d still like to catch Tommy McKay befo
re tonight, so we can have that last good talk,” Kirkwood said, looking at his watch.

  “You know, Jon, he may not show up at all. Not even for his own going-away party,” O’Connor said, shrugging as he buttoned his shirt. “You’ve always got tomorrow, the weekend, and all day Monday to catch him and have that talk before he flies out Tuesday. Besides, we may see our buddy Wayne and that sweet-looking Gwen Ebberhardt at the club. He said he had to meet her in town, at the hotel by the consulate, and that they would probably drop by the Officers’ Club before the luau.”

  “True,” Kirkwood said, and picked up his shirt off the corner of his wall locker door. “I had almost forgotten that she had lain over here this week, and will fly out with McKay and the colonel. Will Tarzan and Jane be back at China Beach this weekend?”

  “They’re committed to the party tonight, but with Friday, Saturday, and Sunday wide open, my bet’s with yours and China Beach,” O’Connor said and then laughed. “I want to see Dicky Doo and Stanley when she shows up.”

  Michael Carter frowned and bit his fingernail, thinking.

  “What’s wrong?” O’Connor asked the tall, skinny man, putting his arm over his shoulder.

  “I know it’s been a few months ago, but didn’t Wayne say that his wife had told the major and Stanley on that flight to Okinawa that her name was Crookshank, and that Gwen Ebberhardt worked on another crew?” Carter said, still gnawing on his finger.

  “Oh, my! That’s right!” O’Connor said and laughed. “Wayne had his weekly MARS [Military Affiliate Radio System] telephone call with her right after that shitty flight, and said then that he hoped she and Dicky Doo never met in a social setting, because she had lied to the major about who she was.”

  “Well, you know he has always blamed the old papa-san in the coffee shop at the passenger terminal for his and Stanley’s shitty ordeal,” Kirkwood said, and shrugged, chuckling. “Suspecting a flight attendant of intentionally giving him the trots would be a reach for him, I think, especially when Dicky Doo has the local Vietnamese so convenient to persecute. He’ll probably just blow off the identity thing to female fickleness, and her not wanting to get familiar with him and Stanley while she was working. You know, guys like those two have built-in rejection acceptance when it comes to attractive women.”

  “That’s right, he still insists that the old guy that does the cooking over there is a Viet Cong spy,” O’Connor said with a laugh, walking toward the door with his two friends. “I think he still has the counterintelligence guys pestering that poor fellow at least once a week.”

  “Stinky sure has it in for that unfortunate old fart at the gedunk,” Kirkwood said, pulling open the screen door. “I thought I would bust a gut laughing when Buck Taylor relayed what his buddy who made that same flight had told him about Tufts squirting his drawers full and smelling up the entire airplane. Halfway to Okinawa, and he shits all over himself. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

  “Stinky Stanley Tufts,” Carter said, laughing. “I like that nickname almost as much as the one the troops gave that cockroach that flew out of Heyster’s tobacco, and they now keep fed and protected in Major Dickinson’s office. Holy cow! I thought Charlie would uncork one and sock you when you told him to say hello to Chopper.”

  NO ONE EVER questioned Sergeant Michael Fryer’s toughness until Major Sidney Rich took charge of Second Battalion and put him to the test. Captain Jesse Holt stood up for Fryer and the other men of Echo Company, but when Major Rich pressed the subordinate commander, he always folded. This pissed off the black sergeant, who led First Platoon without benefit of a lieutenant to command the small unit and keep peace with the brass. So Fryer, desperate for his men, went to general quarters, finally vocalizing his frustrations, after the forty-second man in his company had died in combat, with no sense of concern for the losses expressed by the major.

  “Press on, men,” he would say. “Suck it up. That’s what Marines do. Come home carrying your shield or lying on it. We live by the Spartan ethic.”

  “Fuck the Spartans,” Fryer had said to Captain Holt one evening after he overheard four of the men in his second squad plotting to frag the captain and Major Rich. “We don’t operate as a team no more. We zombies now days. He keep going to the head of the line for every operation that nobody else want. Shit too dangerous, so leave it to Major Rich to volunteer us. We ain’t seen a day off in three months. Not one day off!”

  Then two days ago, twelve men in his platoon died in an ambush that left Echo Company in total disarray, bringing the unit’s body count to fifty-four brothers killed in action. Then this morning two more from his platoon died after the major had ordered the company back into the same area the same day they had bugged out, facing an enemy regiment with vastly superior numbers, and taking them on again within hours of their retreat, with no improved firepower or additional supporting arms. Michael Fryer and Captain Holt both agreed that Major Rich had decided to put them right back in the meat grinder, without rest or even a meal, as a harsh lesson for their previous failure. He had looked bad at regiment, and was determined to wipe out that blot before anyone could write the score in the book.

  This time Echo Company killed seventy-six North Vietnamese soldiers in the regiment that they took on, surprising the enemy in an insane counterattack while licking their wounds, and Sergeant Fryer lost two friends from his platoon.

  Staggering from fatigue after so many days in battle, the black sergeant wearily marched his Marines through the wire at Fire Base Ryder: the last platoon from Echo Company to reach home. The sergeant felt certain they would find a hot meal welcoming them back, and a congratulatory greeting from the battalion commander for kicking serious ass. Yet what he found was Captain Holt standing atop a bunker with the first sergeant, going over a list of housekeeping items, and the men hard at work with picks, shovels, and hundreds of empty sandbags. Several cases of C rations sat on a pallet by the skipper’s command post tent: Echo Company’s dinner.

  “What the fuck, sir?” Fryer said, dropping his pack by the bunker where the captain stood.

  “Division and Three-MAF got the commanding generals heading our way first thing in the morning,” Holt said, shaking his head at the tired sergeant. “Major Rich has everybody turned to improving positions, policing the area, polishing brass. You name it and we got to do it.”

  “This ain’t right, sir,” Fryer said to the captain, and then looked at First Sergeant Eddie Lyle, who shared in the sergeant’s frustration but agreed with Captain Jesse Holt that arguing with the battalion commander would only leave them having their virility put to question by Major Sidney Rich.

  Along with his hardness on the men, Rich allowed himself no slack either. He hardly slept, and had no qualms of walking out to the forward listening posts in the middle of the night, just to see if he could catch a Marine dozing off. He would march and never lose step, even with blood oozing out the air vents in the sides of his jungle boots.

  “Spartans recognize no pain. We block it from our consciousness. We endure, and we win,” he would boast with his blistered feet soaking in a pot of salt water turned pink with his blood from the long march.

  “Sergeant Fryer, I know what you feel,” First Sergeant Lyle told the Marine NCO, wrapping an arm around his neck and walking him back to his platoon area. “The skipper and I talk about that insane fuck all the time. There’s nothing we can do.”

  “I can talk to the major,” Fryer said, stopping and then looking back at Captain Holt.

  “He’ll humiliate you and make you feel worse,” Holt said, jumping off the bunker and walking to where the first sergeant and the platoon sergeant stood.

  “So be it, then,” Fryer said, taking off his helmet and wiping his forehead with his bare arm. “Two-thirds of my platoon is way past due for some R and R, and the rest are coming due now. I know the whole company ain’t much different.”

  “We’re all due for a trip to China Beach at least,” Holt said and shook his head. �
�No way he gonna stand us down for even a day. Hell, man! He ain’t even giving us a break this afternoon for the Fourth of July!”

  “I want to just ask him, sir, anyway,” Fryer said, taking a deep breath. “I owe my men to at least see me going to bat for them.”

  “If you’re willing to take an ass-whipping so your troops feel better, then more power to you,” the captain said, and put his arm around Fryer. “I admire your spirit. Give it a shot, but don’t count on a damned thing but bitter disappointment.”

  Michael Fryer walked back to his platoon area with a renewed spring in his step, carrying his pack and his rifle in his hands. After he delegated the housekeeping duties to his three squad leaders, he washed the dirt off his face and trudged with his rifle slung on his shoulder to the battalion commander’s tent, with Captain Holt at his side.

  “Sir, I have a Marine who wishes to speak to you,” the company commander said as he stepped inside the major’s command post tent, where Rich busily drew a new battle plan on a plastic overlay he had spread atop a tactical map.

  “Make it quick, Captain Holt,” the major said, looking up from his work. “Head-shed brass coming down tomorrow to take a look at us. We’re the hottest battalion in either division. We got more body count than some regiments, in fact.”

  “Does that mean we have some relief in sight?” the captain asked, hoping that the answer might negate Sergeant Fryer’s request.

  “We have a war to fight, sir,” the major said with a frown. “No rest for the wicked, I’m afraid.”