by C. L. Hoang
That hardly seemed an appropriate subject to write home about. And so I never did.
One afternoon about a week after Tết, Dean Hunter popped in at the dispensary toward the end of my shift. I felt a wave of relief when I looked up and recognized his familiar face, albeit with a days-old beard and bleary eyes.
I hurried to him. “You look like hell, old man. But it’s sure great to see you.”
“Have time for a swig?” he asked.
“I sure can use one.”
We strode to the officers’ club, ordered a couple of bottles of the local brew Ba Mươi Ba (“33”). They had run out of American beers days ago, and with backed-up traffic on the runway, it was anyone’s guess when the next supply might come in. But Dean and I had developed a taste for the local drink anyway, and after plopping down in our seats, we kicked back and took nice long drafts of it in silent contentment.
“Glad to see you in one piece,” I finally said. “Been rough for you, too?”
“Not near as bad as for you guys, from what I heard. We were damn lucky Charlie didn’t get a chance to start in on the hospital that night. Our CAV guys rolled in first, saved our butts in the nick of time.” He paused, emptied his bottle. “Next day, my buddy and I got called out to a camp at the Black Lady Mountain in Tây-Ninh. Big fucking mess out there. Heavy casualties.” A long exhale. “Haven’t slept much since. We just got back this afternoon.”
Then with a wink, he changed the topic.
“Bet you don’t know yet. We’re going to be next-door neighbors, kiddo.”
It turned out that Dean and the officers of the 145th Combat Aviation Battalion (the Huey pilots), with whom he’d been bunking at their rented two-story BOQ in downtown Biên-Hoà, were moving back on base for better security.
“It was a close call this time,” he explained. “We were fortunate to have escaped unscathed. But we ain’t betting our lives on luck no more.”
“Swell. Makes it easier to coordinate our next trip to Sài-Gòn.”
There was no immediate response.
“You realize it’ll be a while before we’re allowed back in the city,” he said at last. “There are still pockets of intense fighting, the knock-down, drag-out, house-to-house kind that may go on for weeks. The government has imposed a curfew to restrict movement around the capital.” He concluded with a shrug, “We’ll have to wait on that next trip.”
“Any idea how our friends are managing?”
“Last time we were there, I wrote down Mme Yvonne’s phone number,” he said. “So I called to check. She and Mr. Bill are doing okay, but the business is closed for the time being. She hasn’t heard from any of the girls since before Tết. None of them has phone service at home, and nobody in their right mind ventures outside these days.” Noting my disappointment, he added, “Nothing we can do. I’ll keep you posted, as soon as I hear anything.”
I heaved a long breath, suddenly feeling drained. “What about Dick? Any news of him?”
Dean got up and motioned at my empty bottle. “Another one?”
I nodded. In the corner, a group of pilots conversed in hushed tones over their own pile of dead soldiers, probably unwinding after a long mission day. Someone stood and dropped his dime in the jukebox, and the wistful sound of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” drifted up over the cigarette smoke. The voices fell quiet.
“I can’t figure the guy out,” Dean remarked upon returning from the bar with two opened bottles. “He must have a death wish or something.”
According to Dean, Dick and some other journalists had ignored warnings of deteriorating conditions and squeezed their way into the USMC combat base at Khe Sanh, a remote outpost up country, near the DMZ. Rumors of an imminent showdown had lured them to this forsaken spot, which controlled access to the strategic Hồ-Chí-Minh Trail. On January 21st, ten days before Tết, their suspicions bore out when three NVA infantry divisions with thirty thousand soldiers supported by tanks, heavy artillery, and sapper units launched a full-scale siege of Khe Sanh, defended by six thousand combined troops from the USMC and the ARVN. It was the onset of what would become the longest, bloodiest, and most controversial battle of the war.
“The only road access, Route 9, was completely cut off,” Dean said. “The airstrip is pounded day and night by rockets, so nothing can land or take off.” He blew out a rush of air. “They’re all trapped in there, the dead and the living. No telling for how long.”
I emptied my new bottle in one long draft. That was enough news for one day.
“You wait and see,” Dean went on. “Both campaigns, Khe Sanh and the Tết Offensive, will be the last straws that break Charlie’s back. But that’ll come at a price to us as well.” His voice took on an urgent note. “It’s a dangerous time, kiddo. Don’t play foolhardy like Dick. I’ll let you know when we can get to Sài-Gòn again.”
I nodded thank-you but my heart was troubled by the possibility, more distinct than ever, that I might never see some of my friends again, particularly Lee Anne. Who would have imagined? In a matter of weeks, the war had caught up with every one of us, gripping us tight in its claws of death and violence, touching our lives in ways most personal and unexpected.
Dean gave my shoulder a gentle tug. “Come on. Let’s get you some fresh air.”
We got up and left, as the final strands of “Homeward Bound” dissolved in the lazy-blue haze of cigarette smoke.
“What say you—we get you a new hooch mate, Connors?” Captain Morgan asked me one morning, his head of prematurely gray hair bent over the paperwork backlog on his desk.
Caught off guard, I offered no comment.
He looked up. “Paul Nilsen. Remember him? His hooch mate DEROS’ed around the time Bob was—” He stopped short, cleared his throat, then continued. “Anyway, I figure it may help him to have someone around to talk to. Since you rescued him that night, and there’s a spare cot in your hooch . . .”
“It’s a two-man hooch,” I said. “I’ve no problem with that.”
The Kid moved in that same evening. We hadn’t run into each other much since the night he was taken to the dispensary, and at first he appeared self-conscious and kept to himself. But I took an instant liking to him. There was an innocent kindness about him, very Boy Scout-like. Watching him unpack his personal effects and carefully lay out some family pictures atop his footlocker—like a college freshman, first time away from home—I couldn’t resist teasing him. “I’ll try and keep my mess from spilling over to your side. But if not, you’re just going to have to excuse me.” He looked uncertain, then smiled.
I gathered from other colleagues that Paul had proved a decent GMO after all. Once recovered from the shell shock of that first night of Tết, he had gradually adjusted to our volatile situation, gaining greater confidence with each passing day as he continued to work with the sick and the wounded on base. In a twist of irony, his gentle, nurturing nature—having overcome the initial turmoil—seemed to have found its niche here in the war zone of Biên-Hoà AFB. Though far from thrilled to be in country, he now at least had a purpose.
It had been quiet in the hooch since Bob was gone, but now there was life again: the sound of voices and laughter, and sweet, sentimental music from Paul’s record collection. Just as Bob had been stuck on “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” Paul had a short list of favorites he kept playing over and over, especially Tom Jones’ “Green, Green Grass of Home.” Sometimes he’d hum along with the melody, eyes half closed in deep reverie.
“You must be sick and tired of this number by now,” he said with a sheepish grin when he saw me looking. “Yeah, it’s kind of hokey. But it makes me feel good inside.”
I asked what he missed most from home.
“I’m no big-city boy, you know,” he answered. “It’s the simple things in our backyard that I really miss. In ‘Little Switzerland,’ where I’m from, we’re bles
sed with beautiful scenery. I wish I had some photos to show you: rolling woodlands as far as the eye can see, shiny white bluffs all along the Upper Iowa River, and of course, lilacs—lilacs everywhere in springtime. It’s truly God’s Country.” He turned away, embarrassed by this sudden gush of emotions. His voice was softer, more sober, when he resumed his thought. “It’s those images I try to bring up in my mind each time we hit the ground inside the bunker.” Glancing back at me, he added, for the first time, “Thank you, Roger. For what you did for me that night.”
Not long after Paul became my hooch mate, on-base activities returned to SOP—kind of. To our collective relief, since C-rats had long grown stale on everybody, the mess halls once again served hot chow. Even more exciting was the rumor that good old American brews might soon make a comeback at the clubs.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for all the good news, but you know what I’d give my left arm for right about now?” Paul admitted to me one day, before dinner. “A nice, juicy steak of prime championship beef. Mm-mm.” He chuckled at my surprised reaction. “What can I say? I’m a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. Every year at the local fair auction, my dad and some neighbors would split a side of blue-ribbon beef from the 4-H Club. They’ll have some set aside for me when I come home, and let me tell you, it’ll be well worth the wait. Yes, siree.”
I smiled at him. “Sure sounds like something I’d be thinking about inside the bunker.”
Seeing how well he had adapted to the daily happenings, I made a point of showing him around on our free time, as Bob had done for me earlier. It also helped to distract me while I waited to hear back from Dean with news of our friends.
For various reasons, sundown was usually an eventful time of day. Many memorial services were held at that hour, sometimes capped off by a Missing Man Flyby in honor of fallen pilots. It was remarkably stirring to behold the sight of four aircraft flying over in V-formation, with the leader—the Missing Man—suddenly pulling up and away into the clouds. In case of helicopters, the aircraft approached from the south, then the Missing Man banked left and flew off into the sunset. The first time we came upon such a flyover and I explained its symbolism to Paul, he stood and gave an awkward salute, following the airplanes with moist eyes until they disappeared from view.
Another evening, we spotted a big black bird with long, glider-like wingspan spiraling up into the crimson sky, much like a raven riding one last thermal at the end of a summer day.
“What in the world is that?” Paul wondered out loud, squinting at the unusual spectacle.
“That, buddy, you never saw—or weren’t supposed to have seen. It’s a rare U-2 spy plane out on nightly recon somewhere up north.”
I shared what I’d learned earlier from Bob. Nicknamed Dragon Lady, the specialized aircraft was shrouded in secrecy and flown by CIA operators instead of USAF pilots. Reputed to attain an incredible altitude of seventy thousand feet, it floated beyond the reach of Soviet fighters and missiles and outside the detection range of radar. Although no official ever confirmed it, most of us were aware that Biên-Hoà AFB actually housed a pair of these rare birds.
“No U-2 is allowed to operate on foreign soil, supposedly,” I told Paul. “Now that you’re in possession of national top secrets, you realize they’ll have to kill us both, don’t you?”
He looked thoroughly impressed.
As darkness erased the last vestige of daylight from the sky, the horizons continued to retain a deep red glow. “How long is it before the sun completely sets around here?” Paul, who had seldom ventured out late on his own, marveled at the phenomenon one evening.
“A long time,” I replied. “It’s no sunset you’re watching, over there in the distance. It’s the bombs exploding, courtesy of our Flying Fortress B-52. That goes on all night long.” I placed my hands on his shoulders. “Hold still for a minute. Feel the rumblings in the ground?”
Paul nodded. “All night long, huh?” he repeated pensively.
It was a good thing we got out rather than hang around the club after dinner and discuss the politics of war. Since late February when Walter Cronkite wrapped up his visit to Việt-Nam before going on the air to declare the war “a stalemate,” more and more journalists also felt compelled to offer their own editorial opinions on the matter. It was great irony that at the same time Hà-Nội was ordering a general retreat from their Tết Offensive debacle, American media seemed to have given up on a victorious outcome for our side. While the communists paid a dear price for their failed aggression, which would leave their military reeling for the next two years, they scored a publicity coup with members of the American press, who in large part deemed Tết, at a minimum, a psychological defeat for the Allies. Picking up on this dismissive pessimism in one newspaper clip after another with our mail from home, many of us in country were driven bonkers with frustration.
“One patient at a time, that’s my argument in this debate,” I kept reminding Paul and myself. “As long as we’re here, let’s just do our job as best we can. Enough hand-wringing, already.”
For his part, Paul showed little inclination to opine on the subject, opting instead to keep his nose to the daily grindstone.
One evening in early March, as he and I were closing shop, getting ready for our routine excursion around the base, the telephone rang. It was Dean, calling from his office at the Biên-Hoà Provincial Hospital. My pulse quickened.
“Can you get away this Sunday?” Dean asked. “We’re going to 3rd Field—to see Dick.”
Chapter Sixteen
“There wasn’t a whole lot more than what I already told you on the phone,” Dean said.
It was Sunday morning. We were on our way to Tân-Sơn-Nhất AFB by Army helicopter.
“Dick called on Thursday afternoon and told me he was in 3rd Field Recovery Ward,” Dean repeated patiently. “After we hung up, I called you and Mme Yvonne. She’ll be waiting for us at the civilian terminal so we can all head to the hospital together. Just not sure how long we’ll visit with him. He sounded groggy and could barely talk.” He put up a hand to stop my question. “I have no information on his condition. We’ll find out together.”
It had been many weeks and much upheaval since I had last seen Mme Yvonne, just days before Tết. I instantly recognized her tall, thin silhouette among the crowd of local passengers, and we rushed toward each other to exchange hugs, somewhat surprised by the surge of pent-up emotions. She had on a simple floral dress, with a large handbag slung over her shoulder. Her face revealed signs of stress, though she managed to greet us with a broad smile.
“Bonjour, mes amis. Comment allez-vous?” she said. “It’s wonderful to see you both again. It’s been much too long.” Her eyes filled with apprehension. “Please tell me straight, was Dick seriously injured?”
“Let’s go find out.” Dean wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders as we headed out.
At 3rd Field Hospital, a short jeep ride from the main gate, Mme Yvonne and I waited in nervous silence outside the front office while Dean went in to make inquiries. He soon emerged waving a visitor’s badge, which he handed to Mme Yvonne.
“We can go in now,” he declared. “Right this way.”
After we crossed the front lobby, he led us down a tiled hallway that opened on both sides to well-lit rooms occupied by smiling, chatty young men—all recovering, many of them likely to be sent home soon to their loved ones. As we traipsed past the recovery ward with no hint of slowing down, I shot Dean a quizzical glance.
“Don’t worry. I was told our friend is doing well enough to receive visitors,” Dean assured us. “But the recovery ward is one hundred percent full, as you just saw, so they gave him a bed just around the corner, inside the Death Ward.”
“The Death Ward?” Mme Yvonne stopped in her tracks.
Dean hastened to her side. “Sorry. Bad choice of words. It’s where they keep the
‘expectants’—” He let out a sharp breath, running a hand through his crew cut. “Another atrocious term. I meant the worst casualties, who aren’t expected to make it but are carefully monitored for any hopeful signs.” Then, in a softer voice, “Just want to give you the heads-up before we go in, ’cause it ain’t pretty in there.”
We rounded the corner, tiptoed down another hallway and into a long, dark room toward the middle. It was lined with two rows of beds that held immobile bodies draped in bloodied white bandages and hooked up to IV poles and an assortment of monitoring equipment. Except for the whirr and hum of the machines, occasionally interspersed with delirious mumblings or muffled groans, the place was uncannily quiet. A pall hung over it, the smell of preying death—heavy, suffocating.
“There’s our man,” Dean whispered, pointing toward the far side of the room at a bed by a second door that exited into the next hallway. Dick was propped up against a stack of thin white pillows. Dressed in a blue hospital gown, he sat motionless as if lost in deep contemplation, his eyes wide open but apparently not seeing.
As we moved closer, he looked up. I was relieved to detect recognition in his eyes. Mme Yvonne hurried to the bedside, bent down and hugged him around the shoulders—very gingerly, so as not to disturb the wide tapes wrapped around his torso. Aside from appearing haggard and unshaven, he wasn’t hooked up to any accessories, which was a good sign.
“Hello, stranger,” Dean and I said at the same time. Dick nodded, still speechless.
“I brought you some flowers, chéri.” From her shoulder bag, Mme Yvonne retrieved a little vase of yellow roses and set it on the small stand by the head of the bed, next to a telephone. “I’ll give them a drink of water before we leave. So, how are you, darling?” Her eyes welled up even before his answer, and she turned away to dab them with a handkerchief. I’d never seen her this emotional. It was rather odd and unsettling.