“Put some on, but not too heavy. The gooks can smell it if the wind is right.”
Jackson leaned over Striker and handed me a watch with the face down.
“You got first watch. Don’t let the luminous hands show or we’re all dead.” Jackson smiled. His smile was more luminous than any watch. “Wake Striker at 2400 hours.”
As soon as they closed their eyes I felt like I was the only target in Vietnam. Every bush and every tree began looking like an enemy soldier. I tried to calm down by thinking of how miserable I felt. It was no use. I was too excited to be miserable.
The quarter moon slid in and out of occasional clouds, seesawing visibility from ten feet to three hundred. Between each lapse in visibility trees and bushes seemed to move. All the John Wayne war movies I’d ever seen began to haunt me. The Japs always disguised themselves as bushes. I started to wake Striker up but didn’t. The Vietnamese had probably never even seen a John Wayne movie.
Jackson and Striker had pulled their shirts up and retracted their heads like turtles in an effort to evade the constant whining of mosquitoes. I checked the watch. Only twenty-five minutes gone. It felt like twenty-five days, but so far so good. Not a single bush had snuck up on me yet. Maybe the night would go by without incident.
One more scan of the clearing dispelled that hope immediately. The shadowy figure of a man, crouching as he cautiously moved in, step by step, emerged from the blackness of the jungle. My heart thumped so strongly I could feel my chest moving.
I clicked my rifle off safety and felt for my spare magazines.
Striker slapped at a mosquito. I quickly put my hand over his mouth. He froze stiff, his eyes opened wide.
“Gooks,” I whispered so low I wasn’t sure he heard me. He rolled quietly toward Jackson and gave him a nudge on the shoulder. They looked at me. I pointed at the shadow. They both came up on their left elbows and peaked over the brush that hid us.
Three shadows were now visible leaving the thick jungle and proceeding across the clearing. They weren’t on either of the trails. They were coming straight at us. We took aim. Fifteen meters away they veered slightly away from us. Now a large group of figures appeared at the edge of the clearing. We held our fire.
My eyebrows were back to my hairline. I could see at least forty shadows moving into the clearing. Jackson held out his hand and motioned to get down. The faint whisper of an aircraft high above stole my mind for an instant, and for an instant I prayed to be on that plane, or any plane.
I melted myself into the ground, and I prayed silently, Yea though I walk through the … Oh, God forgive me, I can’t remember the words!
The rustle of feet swishing through damp saw grass pounded into my ears. I could hear the booming of heavy artillery off in the distance, probably out of Phu Bai. Thirty seconds later two rounds exploded, judging by the sound, about two thousand meters away. The feet started moving faster.
I wanted Red to be here. Flashbacks of boot camp blended with fear. One slap of a mosquito and my life was over. One sneeze. One ill-timed twitch. I remember when Private Allen slapped that sand flea in front of me. The DI kicked him in the shins and knocked him down. Then he made the whole platoon lie down and he screamed at the top of his lungs, “Private, you have just killed your entire platoon!”
My arm was aching like crazy, but I didn’t dare move even my eyes to see why. I could hear the enemy huffing and grunting as they filed by. I could feel each second individually. I felt like I’d spent days lying here with my face in the mud.
Finally silence. No more feet shuffling by. I wanted to look up. Suddenly a gripping terror seized control of my mind. The gooks were standing over us. They’d shoot me in the head when I looked up. Two minutes passed.
“All clear.” To me Jackson’s whisper was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing, “Hal-le-lu-jah.” Somewhere bells were ringing, and the sun would come up tomorrow.
I looked up and straight into Striker’s eyes. He had a tourniquet grip on my arm.
“My trousers are wet,” he said as he released me. “And it ain’t rainin’.”
My back hurt, my legs were numb, and the blood still wasn’t back in my arm. My neck cracked; it felt better. Then it hit me. It grabbed my funny bone and squeezed it just like Striker had been squeezing my arm for the last eternity.
“Your trousers are wet?” I looked into Striker’s muddy face. He nodded yes. It started with a snicker then grew to a contained laugh then out of control. I laughed so hard I snorted. Tears of sheer delight gushed uncontrollably down my face. Jackson leaned over Striker and shook my shoulder.
“Don’t …” The sentence turned into a chuckle. Then Striker began laughing. I covered my mouth with my arm to hide the noise, but it only made me laugh harder. Jackson’s chuckle grew louder. Smilin’ Jackson could laugh louder and harder than anyone I’d ever met. I felt an urgency to quiet him down before he got going, but it was no use. I was out of control. Jackson rolled onto his back, his knees pulled in to his stomach as if he were in great pain, and laughed. Great, big, fat, from-the-pit-of-his-stomach belly laughs.
Jackson sat up in a panic.
“Oh God! Grenade!”
In the span of two seconds we crawled, hopped, and ran ten meters away. We were hugging the ground again when the grenade went off, spitting dirt all over us. Striker and I sat up immediately after the explosion with rifles at the ready. Jackson chuckled. We stared at Jackson in disbelief. Jackson’s chuckle turned into a cackle. Striker shook Jackson by his shoulder, which only made him laugh harder and louder.
“If you don’t stop, I’m going to butt-stroke you,” Striker growled.
“Okay, okay,” Jackson replied, the words squeezing between the snickers. “It was my grenade. I pulled the pin when the gooks were walking by.”
“We better get out of here!” I said, trying to keep my panic to a whisper.
“Keep cool,” Jackson said with a pat on my shoulder. “They ain’t turnin’ that big column around. They’ll figure somebody tripped a booby trap.”
“Just the same,” Striker whispered with a quick look around, “I don’t wanna stay here!”
Jackson thought for a moment and pointed back toward the bridge. “Okay, let’s move back closer.”
It was a nervous two-hundred-meter retreat, but I felt better after the move.
By the time the sun came up I was ready to write a letter home. My friends would never believe this one, but I wanted to tell them anyway. I especially wanted to tell Chan.
Two big deuce-and-a-half trucks sat at the north end of the blown-up bridge. Corporal Swift Eagle stood beside one of the trucks, looking in our direction.
“Move it! Hurry up! We’re movin’ out!”
Chan leaned out the side of the lead truck and waved. I trotted up and started to get on board.
“Where do you think you’re going?” said Swift Eagle.
I looked at Chan.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“S-2 school. The Marine Corps has expressed their desire that I acclimate myself to the Vietnamese language. Don’t worry, I’ll return in two or three weeks. You take care of yourself, buddy.”
“You too, Chan,” I said, rather dumbfounded.
“Move it! Move it! Get your gear together. We’re saddling up!” the big Indian was shouting at me.
Chan’s truck pulled away. We waved one last time. I felt alone. I wasn’t all that hungry, but my stomach sure felt empty. I kept watching until the truck rounded a bend and was out of sight.
“Move it! Move it!” I turned around.
“Hey, Chief!”
“Yeah,” he said as he tied his jungle trousers securely around his boot tops. “You better do this too, boot. It won’t keep all the leeches out, but it stops some of ’em.”
“Where’s Chan going to school?”
“Phu Bai first, then down to Da Nang at China Beach.” He looked up. “It’s nice—real nice! About as good as R&R.”
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p; “That sucker,” I mumbled. I knew it was envy and that I should be happy for him, but I wasn’t. First time we hit the bush and he gets R&R.
“Hey, cheer up!” Swift Eagle said. “At least he won’t get killed at China Beach.”
“Right, Chief.” I decided to be happy for him even if it made me sick.
“Saddle up!” I ran to the north-end gun bunker to grab my pack, helmet, canteens, and machine-gun ammo. The old gunny was leaning against the bunker with his pack and helmet on. My gear lay beside him.
“God! What a night, Gunny.”
“Hurry up and get your gear on, son.”
“We must have had one hundred gooks walk right by us! Right by our noses!” He acted as if he didn’t hear me.
“How old are you, John?” He handed me my flak jacket and spit out a shot of tobacco.
“Eighteen, Gunny. Why?”
“Just curious. I got a boy with a baby face like yours. He’s eighteen too. He’s in his senior year. Didn’t you finish high school?”
“Yeah. I graduated last June. I started school when I was five.”
“When did you turn eighteen?” He handed me my cartridge belt and canteens. I wondered what he had on his mind. This was the first time he’d ever talked to me.
“October 12th.”
“Did your parents sign for you to get in the Corps?”
“Yeah. It took some fast talking, too.”
He shot a stream of tobacco juice at a large anthill beside the bunker then stepped up close to me, put his right hand on my shoulder, and stared me right in the eye. Deep wrinkles stretched across his tan forehead and all around his dark blue eyes. He suddenly looked very old and solemn.
“You can’t be eighteen anymore, John. You have to think older if you want to come out of this hole alive. Do you know what I’m trying to tell you?”
“I think so, Gunny.”
He bent over, picked up my helmet, and put it on me.
“There ain’t many Marines better than Big Red. You do what he says when he says it. Swift Eagle, too. That Indian is all Marine. Watch him and learn.”
“Is this as tough as World War II, Gunny? They told me you were on Iwo Jima.”
“I was at Chosin Reservoir, too. This war is the worst yet. We ain’t tryin’ to win, and we ain’t tryin’ to lose. We could stop it in a month if we invaded the North.” He took a couple of quick steps as if he were too angry to stand still. “Every war stinks, but I ain’t seen this kind of stink before. You stick close to Red, you’ll be okay.” He slapped me on the back.
“Saddle up!”
My stomach started churning. I missed Chan already. A sense of foreboding smothered my excitement as the small column meandered through the village.
Two thousand meters out we crossed the last rice paddy. One hundred meters beyond that we crossed a small muddy strip of water that looked ankle deep. On the first step the muck was up to my chest. The rancid odor clung to me for the next few miles; unfortunately, that wasn’t all that clung to me. Big black leeches stuck to anything they touched, anything going through the water. They’d suck blood until they swelled up like a balloon, then they’d drop off. Red turned around in time to see me trying to pull a leech off my neck.
“Don’t do it! If you pull it off, the head stays in your skin and you get infected. You have to burn ’em off.” He lit a match and touched it to the leech. It fell off.
The terrain rose slightly and changed from the swampy areas in and around the paddies to hard, rocky, rolling hills with not a tree anywhere. My pack straps were ripping into my collarbone. The four 100-round belts of machine-gun ammo already had my neck bleeding, and stinging flies were feasting on the blood. I tried to walk fast to get in front of Red, but the weight of my gear made it hard to walk at all.
“Red,” I called quietly from behind him.
“Yeah.”
“These flies are killing me, man. My neck’s bleeding.” He slowed his pace until I got beside him.
“You’re packing too much gear, boot!”
“I already know that!”
“First time we cross a deep river, ditch that E-tool.” His expression turned to disbelief. “Hey, you jerk! You’ve got the gun ammo facing in!”
“What?”
“The bullet casings should be facing your neck, not the bullet points! Well, you can’t do anything now but turn the belts over when we stop.” Red managed to yank my collar up, shielding my bloody neck from the flies and direct contact with the ammo. It helped, but not much.
After four hours of humping in the general direction of the mountains that surrounded Tra Ve, I hurt everywhere. My feet managed to cause enough pain to take my mind off my shoulders, back, and neck, but not for long. Finally we climbed to the top of a small, rock-strewn hill and set up a perimeter.
No one knew where we were going. Somebody shouted, “Dig in!” I pulled my E-tool off my pack and tried to puncture the hard ground. A parking lot would have been easier.
I finally gave up on the idea when I noticed I was the only one shoveling. Red was already heating up a can of meatballs and beans.
“Aren’t you diggin’ in?” I asked, wondering why he had told me to ditch my E-tool.
Before Red opened his mouth, the hollow thumping of a mortar round leaving the tube echoed across the hilltop, bringing a wave of quiet over the chattering Marines. Some men looked up, while others flattened against the rocky surface of the hill.
The first round exploded against the base of the small hill’s southern side. The second round hit fifteen meters up the slope of the southern side. I stuck my face into the dirt and put my hands over my helmet. I wanted to hide, but there wasn’t even tall grass available. The third round hit the crest of the hill. I heard a scream. I clawed into the rocky earth with my fingernails. I heard another thump, followed by a faint whistle. Then a violent explosion shook the ground I was trying to become a part of. I peeked from under my helmet just in time to see another explosion ten meters to my right. Rocks and dirt came down on my back. The mortar rounds walked across the top of the hill like a giant’s footsteps, mangling anything in their path.
I shoved my face into the dirt and waited for the pain.
“Guns up! Guns up!” The command came from the other side of the hill.
Red jumped to his feet with the M60 in one hand and ammo belts in the other.
“Come on, boot! Guns up!”
I got to my feet with my M16 and two belts of ammo for the machine gun. Red shouted, “Gung-ho!” at the top of his lungs and darted up the slight incline toward the crest of the hill. His shout went through me like a shot of adrenaline. Suddenly I wasn’t terrified anymore. The emotional high that comes when life or death is on the line swept all fear to the back of my mind. An odd sense of exhilaration, almost pleasure, pounded through my system as we weaved across the top of the hill. More explosions behind me heightened the thrill. I was Superman and John Wayne. Nothing could stop this dash. I heard myself screaming, “Yeee-hii!” like a cowboy on a bronco.
I could see the lieutenant ahead, pointing at another hill one hundred meters south. Red hit the dirt and opened up on the hill. As quickly as it had started, it stopped. The mortars ceased. We had no target.
One man was wounded. Sudsy, the radioman, called for a medevac. The wounded man’s name was David Blaine. He was from Kentucky. His butt was peppered with shrapnel. He didn’t seem to mind a bit. It was a painful ticket out of Vietnam. I felt a bit of envy. I started daydreaming of ticker-tape parades and a hero’s homecoming.
“Hey, John! That’s a hard-Corps way to lighten your load!” I turned away from the bleeding Marine to see who was calling me. It was Red. He was holding something up and laughing.
“What is it?” I moved closer to inspect the object of his laughter.
“I think you need a new pack.” Red tried to restrain the laughing when he saw that I didn’t think it was all that funny.
My pack was in shreds. A direct hit. My wri
ting gear, food, and my little Instamatic camera—gone. Red gave my helmet a couple of pats.
“Don’t worry about it. You better thank God you didn’t have it on. Marine Corps packs aren’t worth crap anyway. We’ll get you an NVA pack like mine.” I looked at Red’s pack. I had admired it since I first saw it. It was bigger than ours. The straps were made of a much softer canvas, more comfortable. Only an old salt would have a pack like that; Chan and I knew that the first day we saw it.
“Where did you get it?”
“Hue City. It’s in good shape, too, except for this one M60 hole here.”
Red was still looking for the hole when I spotted a piece of my own pack twenty meters down the side of the hill. As I started toward the remnants, a sharp burning pain high on my right thigh stung me so badly that I bent over.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Red.
“I don’t know.” I felt the warm slow trickle of blood running down my leg. Two small holes in my trousers near the groin were the only evidence I needed.
“Red! I’m wounded. I’ve been hit!”
“What? Where?” Red dropped his pack. In a flash he was kneeling on one knee in front of me.
“Unbutton your pants, stupid! Let’s see how bad it is.”
“I wonder why I didn’t feel it sooner?”
“It just happens that way sometimes.”
“Wow! My own little red badge of courage!”
“This could have been real tough on your love life. Are you hit anywhere else?”
“Will I get a Purple Heart, Red?”
“Are you sure you aren’t hit anywhere else? What’s this?” He pointed to a tear in my left chest pocket. “What’s in that pocket?”
“My Bible.”
“Pull it out.”
I unbuttoned the flap over my pocket and pulled the small Gideon Bible out. A hole right under the word “Holy” sent a stream of goose bumps down to my toes. The hole went three-quarters of the way through the little book. A splinter-sharp piece of shrapnel one-quarter inch long had made it all the way to the book of Hebrews.
Guns Up! Page 5