I was afraid to answer, afraid the whisper wouldn’t work. A cough or a sneeze would get us all killed. Memories of being tortured in boot camp for slapping a sand flea fluttered through my mind. The DI had said the entire platoon was dead because of that noise. God, even Parris Island was beginning to make sense. I knew I was in trouble.
Shadows kept multiplying from the foot of the mountains. Every other man in the column was bent over to the waist, lumbering under the weight of huge packs. The men in between the carriers walked more upright, with smaller packs, and carried rifles. I had a human supply train in front of me. This would be pay back, long-awaited pay back.
My stomach still churned. In a few seconds I’d kill a lot of people. My stomach bellowed loudly, then rumbled with more than enough noise to carry to Hanoi. A brackish taste filled my mouth. I wanted to spit, but there wasn’t any saliva.
Doubt strangled me. Fifteen of us were about to ambush a column of gooks I couldn’t see the end of. A quick violent shiver shot from my neck to the base of my spine.
Bloop. Sam’s blooper gun! I pulled the trigger. Orange tracers spiraled away from me. My first target exploded backward, arms and legs flailing. I laid on the trigger for what seemed like eternity. Frantic screams screeched from the rice paddy, piercing even the explosions. I could feel the screams more than I could hear them. The NVA scrambled for cover that wasn’t there. Some ran from the machine-gun fire and directly into the row of M16s, while those at the front of the column retreated into a shower of lead from the M60. The crossfire was a human lawn mower.
I swept the machine gun from one end of the column to the bottom of the mountains. The phosphorous ends of the tracer rounds broke off the bullets and sizzled like miniature sparklers as they found their mark.
Chan changed clips in his rifle as fast as he could. The barrel of the M60 glowed red, then white. Adrenaline and fear pushed me, while my whole body vibrated to the rhythm of the gun; I became one with my weapon, and we were killing. The barrel became transparent from the heat of continuous fire as I poured another hundred rounds into the rice paddy.
A fluorescent lamp couldn’t have pinpointed my position any better than that glowing barrel. I knew the barrel might melt and jam, but I couldn’t stop. I felt like I did in my first fistfight, scared to stop swinging for fear of getting hit.
Chan dropped his rifle and started frantically feeding ammo into the gun with both hands. Sam’s M79 blooper-round explosions sounded consistent, almost automatic. His loading speed was phenomenal.
Louder, more powerful explosions of grenades and ChiComs sporadically thundered above the blooper rounds. The speedy bursts of M16 fire mingled with the slower, more powerful cracking of AK fire in a chorus of insane chaos.
Total confusion engulfed the rice paddy. A few NVA fired back. Others dragged dead and wounded toward the safety of the mountains. A flare sizzled into the dark sky, arcing over the paddy, then popping into a tiny sun and drifting down. The lights were on. The miniature red sun added a 3-D effect to an already bloody picture.
Chan screamed and reached for his rifle. Three gooks were running at us, bobbing and weaving in a suicidal charge to knock out the gun. They fired full automatic, spraying bullets all around us. They were screaming. I swept the stream of tracers from left to right, bearing down on them like a sputtering laser beam. A ChiCom blew up ten feet in front of us, stealing my night vision with a white explosion. Incoming bullets kicked dirt into my eyes and mouth. The barrel melted. The gun jammed. The sweeping laser stopped along with my breathing.
I fumbled for my pistol like a drunk in a shoot-out. My vision turned spotty. I heard Chan firing. The grunts on my left opened up full automatic. Blurred images of two men ten meters away came through the spots in my eyes. Their heads jerked back like poorly manned puppets, legs crumbling last, not knowing the upper half was lifeless.
Silence. The loudest silence of my life. My heart pounded the breath out of me faster than I could bring it in. The bloodlust evaporated into the gunpowder air. Pay back. The frustration turned into fatigue … Chan …“Are you hit?”
“No. Are you?” he asked.
“No. I’ll be okay when I see the sun.”
“Praise the Lord,” whispered Chan.
The night became deathly still. The moon slid behind thick, dark rain clouds. The sting of ants and mosquitoes returned. I felt like talking to Chan, but I knew better than to relax now. I leaned against my pack and stared into the rice paddy.
I felt tired and dull and years older than eighteen. My energy and emotion dripped out of me along with the sweat. My mind escaped to home for an instant. Soft images flowed peacefully through my mind with a harmony of happy scenes. My mom, my stepdad, Paul, and Christmas and Pass-a-Grille Beach and Nancy in a bikini. I’ll go to college, I thought. I’ll get an apartment with Sid or Ben or Joe. Maybe I could still play football at a little college somewhere. The happy images vanished as the last groans of a dying man drifted through the dank night air. I opened my eyes and waited for the sun and wondered if I would hate the night when I got home.
Dawn finally came, lifting pressure from me with each inch of the yellow sun peeking up behind us. The first movement came from the chief. He moved smoothly from position to position until he made his way to us. He looked to be always in perfect balance.
“We’re going out for a body count. Keep us covered.” He turned to the tree line and gave a wave. As the chief started into the paddy, Doyle and Striker came out of the tree line with their rifles on their hips. Swift Eagle stopped. He looked over his shoulder at Chan and me. He gave a nod and a thumbs up.
“You did good.” His stoic face showed the same expression it always did—none; but his piercing black eyes left no doubt. We had just gotten the seal of approval. We were salts. Old salts.
A body count was grim business. Each corpse told a different story. I wanted to look. I didn’t know why. I felt like a morbid tourist gawking hungrily for a glimpse of blood.
The three Marines approached each unmoving body with equal caution, kicking each one hard to get a groan. Doyle hustled around from body to body, picking up rifles and grenades. Swift Eagle waved nonchalantly toward the tree line. The lieutenant came out with Sudsy and his radio close behind. Once in the center of the paddy, Sudsy pulled the pin on a smoke grenade and dropped it. Chan mumbled something as the green smoke billowed into the pale blue sky.
“What?”
“Someone got hit.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, but why else would they be spotting for a chopper?” he replied.
The lieutenant looked toward us and shouted, “Guns up!”
We gathered up our packs, grenades, and the little ammo that was left and ran into the rice paddy. As we reached the lieutenant, Swift Eagle pointed at a blood trail leading into the nearby bush.
“We count nineteen, Lieutenant, but we’ll find more if we follow some of these trails.”
“Take Striker”—he paused and looked around—”and the gun team and follow that trail, but don’t go more than a hundred meters away.”
A helicopter appeared overhead and began circling down toward the smoke. Chan beat me to the obvious question. “What’s the chopper for, Lieutenant?”
Just then Corporal James and Unerstute lumbered out of the tree line carrying a body wrapped in a camouflage poncho liner. The greens, browns, and black of the liner were stained dark with dried blood. The jungle boots of a dead Marine hung limply from one end of the liner. I should have been hardened to the sight of dead comrades by now, but I wasn’t. The dead enemy were frozen in a grotesque silence. Some clutched invisible weapons that comrades had pried from their dead hands. Some fought death with open mouths, screaming in silent anguish, while others conceded to it with serenity. They looked curiously black and white, like an old Civil War photograph, as if they had never really been alive. Dead Marines maintained the painful color of loss to me. Red freckles on a young white face and cold d
ead blue eyes. A letter not finished.
“Who was it?” I asked quietly.
“Billings,” the lieutenant said abstractedly.
“I never even met him,” I mumbled.
“Doesn’t matter now. I want you and Chan to go with the chief and Striker. If there’s nineteen here, we must have bagged a load of ’em last night.”
“My barrel melted last night,” I said.
The lieutenant looked at me angrily. His lower lip disappeared as if he wanted to bite it.
“I thought that was the longest twenty-round burst I’ve ever seen.” He looked away, shaking his head in disgust. “That’s the kind of fire discipline the Army employs, John.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I should send you over to the Seventh.” He smiled and looked at the chief. “Old Bill’s gunners don’t like firin’ in the dark.” He looked back at me. “Tough night.”
The old Korean war-era helicopter floated down to the smoke grenade that was spreading green vapors around like a fog. It looked like the last landing for the rattling, choking machine. Sam crouched over the dead man a few feet from the chopper’s giant rotors. He pulled an empty, bloody pocket inside out. He was going through his traditional last-minute search for anything from cigarettes to dry writing paper. It gave me the creeps, but Sam could defend his unwholesome practice by rattling off an endless list of invaluable items that he personally kept out of the hands of pogues in the rear.
“Hey, Sam!” I called as I stumbled over the stiff hand of a dead gook. “Hold that chopper!”
“Move it, Marine!” the chopper gunner shouted at Sam as I reached the chopper door.
“Hey!” I screamed over the noise of the rotors. “I need an M60 barrel real bad. You got a spare?”
The door gunner ignored me and yelled at Sam, “Hurry up, dude! Get that stiff on here. We’re not staying for tea!”
Feeling a bit insulted, I tried again. “I need an M60 barrel!”
The gunner leaned out of the door and replied with a nasal New Jersey accent, “This ain’t no supply train, girene.”
Sam and Doyle picked up the stiff, sidestepped up to the open hatch, coordinated the toss with a three-count, and heaved the body in. The door gunner struggled to drag the dead weight away from the hatchway, grabbing the end of the poncho and pulling. He turned to cover it with a large green canvas. I seized upon this moment to remove the barrel from his door gun. He turned, realized immediately what I’d done, and started to curse. His voice sank in mid-sentence when he noticed the barrel of Sam’s blooper gun pointing at his nose. Sam smiled through his rotted teeth like only Sam could.
“Don’t speak, jerk face. Just take off. We need the barrel a little bit more than you do.”
I guess the door gunner could sense that Sam was a bit strange. He said nothing, and motioned thumbs up to the pilot. The helicopter got away without being fired on.
I gave Sam a pat on the back and hustled back to the chief. We followed the bloody tracks of what was obviously someone being dragged into the bush. Fifty meters in, Swift Eagle held up his hand. He bent forward slightly. He looked like an Indian sneaking up on a settler. He motioned for us to come forward.
At the chief’s feet lay two bloody, khaki-clothed NVA soldiers. One was dead. Very dead. Bullet holes ran from his face to his ankles. He was being dragged by means of a hook jammed under his chin and through his mouth. The man doing the dragging wasn’t in much better shape. Both legs dangled from the thigh area by some skin and a few tendons. He was bleeding to death but still found the strength to reach out with his left hand, grab a handful of elephant grass, and pull himself a few inches forward. Then with his right hand on the hook, he pulled the dead man a few inches forward.
He didn’t know we were watching. We couldn’t speak. It didn’t seem real.
The chief broke the silence. “Okay. Pick the live one up and drag him back.”
Striker and Chan grabbed his arms, but his grip on the hook would not loosen. Swift Eagle finally pried it free, and we started back.
Striker was impressed. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “Did you believe that? Jesus Christ!”
Chan gave Striker a cold, haughty look.
“Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!” Striker repeated with more emphasis each time.
Chan stopped walking. I could feel his anger growing. “God already knows about it, Striker. If you like his name so much why don’t you try praying?” Having said his piece, Chan strengthened his grip on the wounded NVA and began walking again.
Striker looked puzzled. The big black mole between his eyes disappeared as his bushy eyebrows came together in a frown. “I didn’t know Jesus Christ was the same as God.” Striker’s muffled tone sounded like a little kid who had just been scolded.
Chan looked shocked, then almost sad.
“Why don’t you let me tell you about Jesus?”
“Tell me about this guy we’re carrying,” Striker sneered. “He believes in Buddha. Tell me why Jesus is any better than Buddha?”
“Buddha’s grave isn’t that far from here,” Chan replied quickly. “He’s dead. His body is still there. He was a schmuck just like you and me. Humanoid. Get it? Muhammad is the same story. He’s dead as a doornail. He was just a man.”
“Well, just how’s this poor sap gonna know who this Jesus is? And what about all your kinfolk in China?”
“Yeah, Chan,” I asked. “What about people in Africa or on some island in the middle of nowhere? I mean, I believe in Jesus, but I always wondered how they’re supposed to know about him.”
“There’s a God-shaped vacuum in every man, and men seek to fill that emptiness or reject it for the love of the world around them. You guys aren’t the first people to ask that question. I asked the same question myself. Jeremiah 29:13 says, ‘And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.’ But there is another passage in Romans that explains it better. I have it written down in the front of my Gideon, but it’s actually from the NIV.”
“What’s that?” Striker asked.
“It’s the Bible in today’s English instead of seventeenth-century English, and, yes, Striker, it says exactly the same thing minus a lot of thees and thous. You’re welcome to read it when we get back.”
“Let me have it,” Swift Eagle said. For a moment I thought I was hallucinating. The chief couldn’t have said that.
Chan held his M16 under his arm and reached into his breast pocket with his free hand. He handed the small black Gideon back to Swift Eagle, who opened it immediately. The wonderment on Chan’s face was matched by Striker’s.
“Romans 1 dash 19 dash 23?”
“That’s it. Romans, Chapter 1, verses 19 to 23.”
“ ‘Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.’ “
I couldn’t believe my ears. He was actually reading out loud. No one will believe this. What am I thinking about? He’d scalp me if I said anything.
“ ‘For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.’ “
“That’s heavy stuff, man,” Striker mumbled.
“ ‘For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.’ “
“I see the lieutenant up ahead,” Striker blurted.
“Shut up! I ain’t finished!” Swift Eagle barked.
“Sorry, Chief.”
“ ‘Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal men and birds and animals and reptiles.’ “
No one spoke as we neared the open rice paddy. I peeked back to see the chief’s face. He stared straight ahead as he walked, seemingly in deep thought. Striker, struggling with the weight of the dying NVA, looked angry and confuse
d. He didn’t ask any more questions. The new information scared him, I thought. As we reached the rice paddy, Striker and Chan laid the prisoner down gently. Chan tried to question him, but he was too weak and drugged up to know what was happening.
“He’s a lieutenant. That’s all I could get,” Chan said.
I felt a tap on the shoulder. I turned to see Sam’s pitted face. “I ran out of ace of spades cards. You got any?”
“No, sure don’t,” I said.
“Ah, crap! I wanted to get ’em all marked.” Sam turned and called to Doyle. “Doyle! Got any ace of spades cards?”
“Yeah,” Doyle answered.
Sam retrieved the cards and resumed tacking them into the foreheads of the dead NVA soldiers. I stopped him from tacking the dead lieutenant. I don’t know why. Final count: twenty-one confirmed. No prisoners.
“Saddle up!”
“Hey, Sudsy, where we going?”
“Dodge City.”
DODGE CITY
The last swallow of meatballs and beans always went down in a big lump. It all seemed to be glued together by some foul substance that was undoubtedly supposed to make the food last through another war. The only C-ration food that did taste right was the pound cake, and it was as rare as a pleasant day. It wasn’t that C-ration food was beneath me. I grew up on beans and potatoes in West Virginia. For the first twelve years of my life I thought everyone ate that way. Maybe it was because it was time for breakfast, and starting another day on meatballs and beans didn’t help my aching back or the big spider bite just under my left eye. But for whatever reason, C-rats just didn’t taste good. No flavor. Chan convinced me that by slightly burning the meatballs and beans, then covering them with Tabasco sauce, they began to taste almost like food.
Before the Marine Corps I had never so much as looked at uncooked food in a serious way. I could just barely boil water. Good ol’ Mom spared me the indignity of spoiling perfectly good food: She always cooked for me. Chan claimed to be an excellent chef. He would have to prove that if we ever got R&R. I was trying to look serious as he explained the wonders of vichyssoise and the delicacy involved in its preparation when the lieutenant strolled up to our position on the perimeter, chewing, more than smoking, a cigarette that hung out of the corner of his mouth.
Guns Up! Page 14