Eagles Cry Blood

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  Lieutenant Bourne grabbed his small traveling bag off the back seat of the car and stepped back away from the curb, allowing the AC Cobra to scream away leaving the smell of burnt rubber lingering next to the cement curb. Bill didn’t look back. He assumed that he would see people again, and that sentimental good-byes were therefore a waste of time. Paul fixed, the angle of his green beret before he entered the airport building. Los Angeles International was always a show in itself with all of the movie stars, hippies, and weirdly dressed left-wing religious groups parading down the long hallways and constantly entertaining the other passengers between their flights. Paul went straight over to the debarkation gates and entered his waiting aircraft through the accordion tunnel attached to the stainless steel fuselage. He found an empty seat in the back near the rear toilets and slid in next to the window. Paul had received a lot of hostile stares when he had walked through the long airport corridors to his airplane. A Green Beret uniform wasn’t well liked by the hippies, and the American middle class was beginning to turn from the government’s support of the unpopular war as the years passed. Paul pressed his lips tightly together and shook his head. He hadn’t started the war, but he knew that he wasn’t going to run over to Canada and hide until it was over with, either. His kids wouldn’t have to hold their heads in shame when they were asked what their 8

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  daddy had done in the war. He had fought. The Canada runners would always be a part of any society and they would return after the war to breed other little runners who would either hide behind their mothers’

  skirts or verbalize the wrongs of the world when it came their turns to defend the nation.

  A man wearing a wide-brimmed leather hat took the aisle seat in the same row where Paul was sitting looking out the window at the men loading baggage onto the plane. Paul placed his travel bag on the seat between them in order to prevent an over-talkative hippie from joining the man in the leather hat. Paul had heard enough of the left-wingers spewing forth their one-sided garbage about the immoral aspects of the war. Paul bit his lips as he thought.

  A soldier obeyed orders and he was a soldier, couldn’t they see that? It was the politicians who should be yelled at if the people really wanted to stop the war, not the poor soldier who died for their mistakes.

  The man sitting near Paul glanced at him and nodded his head. Paul didn’t return the friendly greeting, but instead removed a magazine from the rack on the seatback in front of him and feigned reading an article on the South Sea Islands.

  The aircraft was in flight for almost an hour before the man, who was still wearing the leather hat, turned in his seat and spoke to Paul.

  “You going up to San Fran?”

  “Oakland.” Paul made his answer purposefully short.

  “You a soldier?”

  “Yes, I’m with the 5th Special Forces Group out of Vietnam.” Paul glanced at the man, closing his eye halfway.

  The man ignored the threatening glare. “I’m with Sunstorm. It’s a new rock group.” The young singer was trying really hard to strike up a conversation. “We just had an audition in the Los Angeles Columbia Studios. Man, we made it big!” Pride filled the singer’s voice.

  Paul looked over at the beaming man and saw the joy coming from his eyes. “I’m glad for you.” Paul smiled.

  The aspirant rock star and the seasoned warrior talked about their stays in California and the good times they both had had in Los Angeles. The conversation was interrupted when the lights above the cockpit door flashed on, announcing for the passengers to stop smoking and fasten their seat belts.

  “Quick trip,” the singer commented as he pulled his leather-bound pad out of his jacket pocket and wrote something on one of the pages.

  Paul left the plane as soon as the door was opened by an attractive stew-ardess, and headed for one of the nearby restrooms where he could adjust his tailored uniform and wash his face before he caught a taxi for the Oakland Military Terminal on the other side of the bay.

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  He soaped his face and was rinsing with cold water when he heard the singer’s voice behind him. The first thought that passed through Paul’s mind was that the man was trying to hustle him.

  “Here . . .” The singer pushed a folded piece of paper into Paul’s rear pants pocket. “Take this, and I hope you have a good time in San Francisco.”

  Paul dried his face and looked around the empty room. He reached back, removed the folded piece of paper, and opened it. The heavy lines created by a felt-tip pen spelled out the figure of one thousand dollars.

  Lieutenant Bourne whispered under his breath. “The guilt-ridden son of a bitch!” He started tearing the check but then stopped, returning the green paper back to his pocket.

  Paul left the restroom and walked over to a nearby bookstand and bought a box of envelopes and a stamp. He wrote a short note to Bill on the back of the check, telling him to have a good time on him if the check didn’t bounce.

  Paul shoved the white envelope into the mail drop outside the bookstore and forgot about the singer and the money.

  The black taxicab took Paul from the civilian airport over to the Oakland Army Terminal on the far side of the city. The entrance to the facility was packed with troops unloading from the line of buses. Paul could just about tell from what part of the country they were assembling from by the uniforms they wore: tan short-sleeved khakis were worn by troops coming from the southern states and dress greens were worn by soldiers arriving from Fort Ord and the northern posts. Paul paused under the familiar arches leading into the busy terminal, acknowledging the fact that he had passed this way before. He then turned sideways and squeezed through the crowded doors, smelling the odor of too many people packed together in one place. Paul walked quickly around the stacks of duffel bags toward the 24-hour snackbar and found all the tables filled with troops killing time as they waited for their flight numbers to be called out over the intercom system. Paul bought a Styrofoam cup of black coffee and walked over to a large bookstand across from the snackbar. He felt an old fear starting to creep up his throat, drying the tissue as it groped for his tongue. His eyes flashed over the tide of the books but his mind failed to absorb the brightly printed words.

  Burned . . . black . . . smell . . . gag . . . charred . . . bodies . . . Help!!! Help!!!

  napalm . . . machine guns . . . Run!!! No! . . . stay . . . Stop the noise! . . . Fight! Kill!!! .

  . . Must kill! . . . aim . . . Damn you! Aim your gun!

  A crystal-clear picture formed in front of Paul’s open staring eyes. He could see his own face pushed against decomposing bamboo leaves with his own sweat working as a glue for the small pieces of yellow, dry, dead leaves stuck to his face.

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  “Aim! Get your face off the ground! ” Paul thought that he was screaming but the words were barely audible. The Vietnamese soldier’s face that had replaced his own blurred and then disappeared amongst the books.

  “What did you say?” a soldier standing next to Paul asked, bringing him back to the air terminal. Paul ignored the man and fought with his own emotions, trying to gain control of his fear. He reached up and removed a random paperback from the rack and thumbed through the pages without looking. He had been through this emotional nightmare before, and knew that the only way to handle the terrible emasculating force was to face it head on, just like he had faced his first parachute jump.

  Lieutenant Bourne didn’t like losing control of his emotions, and he always worked very hard preplanning all of his actions so that he wouldn’t have any unwanted surprises and could reflect total control in front of his subordinates. Paul had won the Leadership Award and a good reputation from his Officer Candidate School classmates for his ability to function under extreme pr
essure. Paul’s eyes focused again and he read the title of the book he had been randomly flipping through: My Ten Years Living in a Gay Community.

  His face flushed bright red, Paul quickly glanced around to see if anyone had been watching him and then placed the paperback in the rack behind another title. Paul quickly took a western novel from the shelf and paid the old woman operating the cash register for the book.

  The waiting room was half full of soldiers either faking sleep or boastfully telling each other stories of their conquests over beautiful women while they were on their thirty-day leaves. Paul found an empty seat and turned the pages of his novel as if he were reading, but his thoughts had returned to Vietnam and the fear was repeating its effort to creep back into his mind and gain control over his body. Paul made a great mental effort and again van-quished his old foe back to the hindmost chambers of his subconscious mind.

  A voice echoed metallically around the huge vaulted waiting room from the loudspeaker system calling off a list of flight numbers, which gave Paul a chance to concentrate on something else. He heard his flight number called next to last and stood up fixing his gig line. Paul glanced around at the hundreds of milling soldiers who were locating their baggage that they were carrying on the plane with them. All of the men were suffering from the pre-Vietnam jitters, and were using any excuse they could find to occupy their hands by keeping busy adjusting satchels and straps. There were no mothers and fathers in the large halls to soften the blow of getting on the planes that would separate some of them permanently from their loved ones.

  The lines in front of the locked gates grew rapidly. Everyone had gotten in their flight lines too early, and the men began shuffling and trying to strike up small talk in order to hide their growing fears.

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  A small group of signal corps soldiers were laughing in the back of one line and pointing at a young paratrooper who was totally disoriented and visibly lost in his personal fear. The young blond soldier stood stiff-backed, staring out in front of his place in line, unable to hear the taunts coming from the black soldiers. Paul pushed his way through the pack of black signal corps soldiers and placed his arm over the boy’s shoulder. The stare Paul flashed at the noncombatants shut them up.

  “Hey, trooper. Do you have your boarding pass ready?” Bourne tried to break through the young paratrooper’s fear and gain his attention. The young warrior was too far into his own fear of the unknown to respond to the lieutenant’s question. The youth reminded Paul of the first man in a jump school stick, standing in the open doorway twelve hundred and fifty feet above the surface of the earth, waiting for the red light attached to the doorframe to go out and the green light to flash on. Only remote control of the man’s nervous system kept him on his feet.

  Paul snapped his elbow in the jumper’s side.

  “Paratrooper! Which unit are you going to join in Vietnam?”

  The young man continued looking through Paul but found an answer in the part of his brain that was still functioning and returning to reality. “The 173d Airborne, sir!”

  “You’re lucky! That’s one of the finest units over there.” Paul looked at the group of grinning black signalmen. “It’s made up of some damn fine fighting men.” The lieutenant grinned. “Not everyone fights in Vietnam.”

  The black group who had been picking on the lone paratrooper turned their backs on the lieutenant. The young paratrooper’s eyes slowly focused, showing that the teenager had returned to the outside world from his inner self. Embarrassment replaced the boy’s fear.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry, sir. I was thinking about something else. Were you talking to me?” The fear lines in the youth’s face relaxed and a handsome grin took its place.

  “I was just saying, we should have a good flight if the weather stays this nice.” Lieutenant Bourne smiled a knowing comrade’s grin at the young soldier. “Hang in there. We’re all in the same boat, paratrooper!”

  The young trooper’s eyes thanked Lieutenant Bourne.

  A pair of air force sergeants opened the gates and let the waiting army men board their leased commercial aircraft. There was another air force sergeant seating the soldiers when Paul and the young paratrooper stepped through the small airliner’s doorway. The sergeant was filling the aircraft from back to front, disregarding the wishes of the soldiers. The young paratrooper cut in front of an indifferent black soldier wearing a First Cavalry shoulder patch and took the empty seat next to Lieutenant Bourne.

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  “I’m Pfc. O’Toole, sir.” The young man shook hands with the lieutenant.

  “Have you been over to ‘Nam before?”

  “Yes. I went over with the 173d when I was seventeen years old. That was before they changed the regulations to a person having to reach their eigh-teenth birthday before they could be shipped.” Both men smiled as Bourne added, “I ran recon.”

  “I just turned eighteen in jump school.” The trooper’s face lit up. “My Dad was a Ranger during World War Two.” Pride filled the young voice. “I think that I’ll volunteer for recon, too.”

  The two soldiers talked about different recon techniques during half of the flight to Vietnam. Paul wondered if he had been so energetic the first time that he had gone to war, deciding that he had probably matched the young man’s enthusiasm.

  Lieutenant Bourne placed the paper-cased pillow behind his head and slipped off into his own private world of thoughts for the remainder of the trip. The young paratrooper stuck to Paul during the unloading at the refuel-ing stops like chocolate on a preteen’s fingers. The flight was smooth and fast, taking less than twenty hours to travel from Oakland to Bien Hoa. Lieutenant Bourne’s eyes wandered over the faces of the young soldiers who were standing in the crowded aisle getting their personal gear ready to debark the aircraft. He wondered how many of them would be riding in the underbelly baggage compartment on the return trip home. Paul forced his mind to transfer over to more pleasant thoughts.

  “Officers, go over to the main processing building for your in-briefings . .

  . Enlisted men, follow your guides to the open air veranda!” The personnel sergeant had his hands hooked in his belt as he stood filling the center aisle of the airliner. He was at least forty pounds overweight and the sweat stains on his khaki shirt reached down to touch the black belt surrounding his ample waist. “Before any of you leave the aircraft I must inform you about a few combat precautions.” The sergeant paused in the middle of his memorized speech for effect. “First . . . in the event we receive any incoming rocket or mortar fire as we debark the aircraft . . . do not panic! Follow your guides and they will lead you to safety in the bomb shelters.”

  A captain standing against the bulkhead in the rear of the airplane raised his arm to gain the sergeant’s attention.

  “Yes, Captain?” The sergeant’s voice was bold.

  “When was the last time this airfield received any enemy fire?”

  The sergeant paused in answering the officer and looked down the row of scared young faces that were looking at him filled with fear of the unknown.

  “That’s not the point, Captain. It’s the policy here to inform newly arriving personnel about mortar and rocket attacks . . .” The personnel sergeant knew 13

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  that he had lost the effect he had wanted with the questioning remark from the officer and gave up his attempt trying to scare the new men. “All right, let’s debark!”

  “Don’t let Fats scare you guys!” the captain yelled so that everyone on the plane could hear him. “There are people waiting outside for you guys to get off and they want to see you step off the plane scared shitless!”

  “Not us, Captain! ” A roar filled the confined space in the plane as the men grabbed their gear and gro
wled defiantly at the departing sergeant.

  The long line of new troops wearing wrinkled khaki uniforms followed their guides dressed in camouflaged jungle fatigues to the covered briefing areas. A loud cheer rippled through a group of soldiers who were waiting behind a nearby cyclone fence for the airplane to empty so they could board it for their return trip home after a long twelve months in Vietnam. Lieutenant Bourne smiled as he walked past the fence and ignored the good-natured cat-calls. He acknowledged their earned privilege to harass the replacements, who in turn would harass the newcomers arriving a year from now when they left. Paul’s eyes caught Pfc. O’Toole staring at him from the first row of soldiers under the enlisted men’s veranda. He smiled and gave the young paratrooper a thumbs-up sign, and received a smile in return that spread out over the teenager’s face into a confident grin.

  “Morning, sir.” A soldier wearing an impeccable tiger-suit touched Lieutenant Bourne on his shoulder. “You don’t have to process in with the rest of the leg officers at Camp Alpha. We have our own processing section at the downtown B-Team.” The sergeant looked around at the group of newly arrived senior enlisted men and officers. “Are there any more Special Forces people on the plane, sir?”

  “No, I’m the only one.” Lieutenant Bourne followed the sergeant to a jeep parked next to the air terminal building and threw his baggage on the back seat while the sergeant unlocked the chain that secured the steering wheel. “We’ll do all of your in-processing for you while you’re at the B-Team.

  It’s one of the benefits of being a Green Beret.” The sergeant looked over his shoulder and pulled the jeep out in the congested traffic passing in front of the terminal.

  The familiar smells of nuc-mom, freshly turned earth, and burning wood that was particular to the orient—and especially of Vietnam—reached Paul’s nostrils the instant they left the area filled by the exhaust fumes from the aircraft.

  “Watch your arm as we go along the streets, sir. The little kids sometimes tear watches off your arm if they think that they can get away with it in heavy traffic.” The sergeant expertly wove the jeep through the unpatterned Saigon traffic.