by Ron Lealos
“I don’t know why I’m still fighting, Luong,” I said. “No one in my family has been raped or murdered. No one has mortared Seattle. No one has been relocated to Walla Walla. But people I touch lately seem to get shot. Like Nick. Don’t know how much more I can handle.”
The Gerber fighting knife was in the leather sheath at my waist. I put the knife on the berm of the NDP next to the Redfield sniper scope.
Luong snapped his canteen back into the canvas. Flames from the continuing fire in the trees reflected in his black eyes.
“What your vil like?” Luong asked.
“Rains a lot in Seattle,” I said. “The city is on an inlet from the Pacific Ocean called Puget Sound. Hills and lakes surrounded by trees. It’s green all year around. Lots of birds. You know, Luong, birds are one thing I miss in the Delta. Rarely see any. I guess they don’t dig napalm. You know a leg they call ‘Kentucky’ back at Bien Ha?”
Tran grunted. Not in alarm, but the sound of a baby-san learning to exercise his voice even in a foxhole and asleep. His skinny, yellow fingers opened and closed as if he was trying to hold a silver rattle.
Luong knelt beside Tran in the hard clay and stroked his head. The green plastic poncho squeaked when Luong’s knee rubbed against it. He moved back next to me and touched the polished walnut butt of the sniper rifle.
“Think went on night patrol with Kentucky squad,” Luong said. “Maybe he RTO?” Radio telephone operator.
The flames in the palms and banyans were dying. No more small-arms fire.
The paddy stink mixed with the smell of burning trees and hootches and the body odor of two unwashed soldiers.
Through the Redfield scope, I could see black forms backlit by the flames. The VC were picking up the dead and heading to the tunnels before a sweeper team was sent in.
“That’s the grunt,” I said. “Know why he’s called Kentucky?”
“Khong,” Luong said.
“Kentucky’s squad scorched a vil by Cảm Thông,” I said. “He found an injured crow. First bird any of the boonie rats had seen in months. Kentucky took the crow with him and nursed it back to health. Fed it C-rations and plucked its flying feathers when the crow got better. Named the crow Free for the Freedom Bird 727 that flies grunts home. Back at Bien Ha, Kentucky taught Free to say ‘motherfucker’ and ‘slope asshole.’ And smoke dope. Man, that crow loved to get loaded.”
The cigarillo can that held the stash in my breast pocket wasn’t there. I patted the fatigue anyway, but the weight of the can was a phantom. Like a grunt with a blown-off leg still thought he could feel his missing foot.
“Took Free into town and insulted every dink he could,” I said. “Kept the crow tied up on a perch outside the sandbag door to his hootch. One morning he woke up and found Free skinned and hanging by his neck from the perch. A note was nailed to the crow’s pink body. It said, GI DIE. His buddy, Mallincrot, asked him if they could barbecue Free and if Kentucky thought it would taste like chicken. Kentucky said Free would probably taste better than the Kentucky Fried Chicken he got back in The World. Ever since, the grunt’s been called Kentucky. No one remembers Kentucky’s real name.”
The shapes in the vil had disappeared, and the 105s were silent. Time for the artillerymen in this sector of the Delta to bag some z’s or get loaded.
The plastic magazines for Luong’s M16 still hid his chest. He unhooked two and set the black magazines next to his rifle.
“Giac ngu, Morgan,” Luong said. Sleep. “I watch for VC.”
A black-nosed spider crawled from the oil-rag wrap of the Redfield scope. I flicked the spider away with fingers stained brown-red and began to pack the riflescope.
“Can’t sleep, Luong,” I said.
Luong loved to touch the walnut handle on my sniper rifle. Must have reminded him of the hardwoods of his Central Highlands home. He rubbed the stock with his right hand while his left was around the trigger guard of his M16.
“Believe in Jesus, Morgan?” Luong asked.
The Redfield scope fit easily in my pack alongside the C-rations and a mildewed copy of War and Peace. I stroked the book.
“I’m a living testament against the old line that there’s no atheists in a foxhole, Luong,” I said. “Maybe there was a time when I believed. No more. No God would let the shit that happens here go on. I’ve seen too many faces in a death look that didn’t say they were going to a better place. Besides, if there was a God, how would I ever be forgiven?”
In the dim light, Luong’s gold crucifix was still visible. He stroked it like it was the butt of my sniper rifle.
“Jesus forgive you, Morgan,” Luong said. “Go see priest. He tell you.”
The fires were just a flicker on the eastern horizon. I held the Starlight scope to my right eye and searched the paddies for movement.
“There was a chaplain at Bien Ha,” I said. “They called him Shakey. Not Padre, like every other chaplain in this fucking place. Shakey dropped to his knees every time a mortar round popped anywhere near the base. The grunts used to get off on yelling ‘incoming’ just to watch Shakey make the sign of the cross while he groveled in the clay. Kentucky liked to toss a grenade and have it roll against Shakey’s boot. Jesus, Shakey would shit his fatigues and hiss, ‘Holy mother of God,’ with his eyes closed tighter than Pat Nixon’s legs.”
The black-nosed spider was back. But this time he was in the clutches of a centipede. I crushed the centipede with the bottom of a Willie Pete grenade and brushed the two bugs down the mounded clay that was the lip to our night bivouac.
“Shakey was no advertisement for religion,” I said. “Got so bad, Shakey’s teeth were falling out and he was afraid to wash his fatigues because a visiting Bishop had blessed them. Lucky pants. Sent him back to The World on a mental.”
Maybe Luong understood what I said. Maybe not. My stories weren’t for Luong anyway. War stories fueled the insanity of ’Nam. They were the gallows humor that kept me and most others from pulling the pin on an M26 and eating the grenade.
Luong added two more M16 magazines to the pile of weapons. Now I could see the hump of his breastbone.
“Priest in my vil French,” Luong said. “Priest stay until NVA set him on fire in church. Burn all dem.” Night.
If we came under attack, the arsenal in front of Luong and me and the extra ammo behind us were enough to defend against two squads of VC. Until the Chicom M63 mortars fell. The only thing that kept the good guys on the winning side of the scoreboard in this war was superior firepower. While the VC packed old Russian and Chinese rifles that crumbled in their hands, we had the best ordinance that the American military industrial complex could provide. And profit from.
Tran was a child of war. No squealing like an American brat. Death was the sentence for loud noises in the dark. Tran whimpered. The sound of a lost ’Nam puppy cowering on the side of the road, frightened by the Patton tanks that rumbled by.
I watched Tran’s yellow hands reach again for something that wasn’t there. No mama-san to share a meal from her shriveled, empty breast. No papa-san to tell him stories about the generations of rice farmers who had cultivated the land while centuries of soldiers came and went.
“Maybe he’s hungry again,” I said. “You didn’t feed him much the first time. Most of the baby-sans have stomach worms, so they get hungry fast.”
The M16 barrel pointed downhill when I set it in the clay.
“You watch,” I said. “I’ll feed him.”
Luong handled the Starlight scope as if it was booby-trapped. His hands turned the scope slowly side to side, inspecting the hard-plastic cover. The scope inched toward his right eye.
“Vang,” Luong said.
Tran’s black eyes were wide open. His jaw worked up and down, chewing on his thumb. The poncho was pulled below the waist of his naked body, and he was in a pool of piss and diarrhea.
Black eyebrows formed perfect crescents at the base of Tran’s forehead. His cheeks were yellow bomb craters. Not t
he chubby pink of a Gerber baby. But his skin still felt smooth and soft against the roughness of my clay-stained fingers.
Even in the dark hell of this hole, Tran smiled at my touch. The dirt caked on my face made it hard to smile back. But I did. No way to stop the reflex. Something like napalm warmed the inside of my chest.
I picked Tran up and laid him on the shoulder of my flak jacket. The baby cocktail puddled in the clay from draining the poncho. The paddy and fire smell was now joined by the odor of dirty diapers that Tran never wore.
If there weren’t ants before, they would soon come to soak up the slop. Maybe even a few wet, black leeches that made the trek from the paddies.
The filthy sleeve on my fatigue served as a rag to wipe Tran’s bottom the best way possible in the night in a foxhole somewhere in the shit of the Mekong Delta.
Tran continued to suck his thumb and watch Luong while I made an assassin’s effort to take care of the baby-san. Tran grabbed my ear under the bush hat and pulled no harder than the tug of a heavy earring. It tickled. This smiling thing was getting serious.
The rank air sucked through my yellow teeth, and I searched my pack for the P-38 can opener, a grunt’s most valuable tool when he was in the boonies, after his M16. A bent or broken P-38 meant having to beg for a working opener from other grunts who would want to make a deal for pound cake or peaches. Or use a KA-BAR that caused the food in the olive-colored cans to spill on the clay, risking a wound that would become an oozing gook sore in a day.
“This detail ain’t in the Phoenix program handbook,” I said to Luong.
The P-38 easily opened a can of applesauce. The old bent spoon from my pack that had seen countless C-ration meals fit just fine in Tran’s little mouth. The coolness of the spoon on his gums made Tran slow to let go for another bite of applesauce. I moved the spoon around in his mouth and gave him time to enjoy the treat. There weren’t any other foxholes calling our name.
A rare cloudless night and the Southern Cross glowed bright above the horizon. Not an artillery shell, mortar, or rifle disturbed the silence. The moon reflected on the brown water of the paddies broken by the clay banks of the dykes. Only embers remained in the burned vil. A breeze that dropped the temperature to a cool eighty-five degrees blew the stench of the bunker into the stink of the paddies.
A shooting star flashed across the northern sky, a white tracer marking its path.
Tran was soft and gentle and falling back to sleep in my arms. His black eyelids would close slowly and then snap open. I rubbed my hand on the thin black hair of his skull.
Luong was focused on the trail, the M16 in his hands and the Starlight scope next to him.
My teeth chattered. It seemed as if everyone I touched died. Part of it was my MOS. Innocent women with green eyes and unknown enemies. Liem. But the stench of death that covered me must attract the grim reaper even when I wasn’t his tool. Nick. I didn’t want Tran and Luong to be the next victims.
I sang softly to Tran. His eyelids fluttered less.
“All along the watchtower, the thief he kindly spoke, ‘There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.’” Hey, it was the best I could do. At least I wasn’t singing the Jimi Hendrix version, even though he was a member of the 101st Airborne.
The pack made a decent pillow for Tran. I laid his head on the nylon and wrapped the baby-san in the poncho.
Luong moved over a few inches when I joined him at the lip of the bunker. I touched the smooth butt of my rifle for reassurance, but left it on the clay berm and held on to an M26 grenade.
“You ever cross paths with a leg named Baby Huey?” I asked Luong.
In the light of the moon, any silhouettes would be easy to see without the scope. Luong continued to scan the distance with his black eyes.
“Khong,” Luong said.
The normal cures for the fears weren’t available in an NDP without risking being found by VC who wouldn’t hesitate a heartbeat to bayonet a baby found with two enemy soldiers. No pot. No tranqs. No acid. No whiskey. Just stories.
“He was in the Second Battalion out of Chu Li,” I said. “Baby Huey was on patrol near Hoa Vu when his squad found a tunnel complex. The LT picked the Baby’s number to go down the hole. Baby Huey was over six feet tall and covered in pink fat that hung over his web belt and out the buttons of his fatigues. He was dumber than a banyan stump and smiled all the time like he was back in Iowa at the soda fountain drinking vanilla milkshakes. Baby Huey went in shirtless, headfirst. Got stuck. Three grunts pulling for five minutes on each leg couldn’t get him out. All the time he was stuck, the grunts could hear his muffled voice yelling, ‘Don’t pull off my pants, don’t pull off my pants.’ On the last pull, the grunts got some help, and Baby Huey’s pants came out before him. He was wearing pink-and-black bikini shorts. The patrol serenaded Baby Huey with ‘Itsy, witsy, teeny, weeny, pink and black polka-dot bikini, was all that covered Baby’s tunnel today.’”
Luong hadn’t moved. His face held the intensity of a soldier that knew danger was closing in.
I touched Luong’s thin bicep. He still didn’t look at me, but stared straight ahead into the darkness like a bird dog with an M16 pointing to a duck.
“American music not your thing?” I asked. Luong never sang along.
Flea and mosquito bites were some of the tiny wounds that became gooey sores in the humidity and filth of the Delta. Maybe it was Nick’s monkey. My neck and head itched worse than from the case of lice the medic had treated two months ago. I scratched and squirted on more bug juice.
“Im lang, Morgan,” Luong whispered. Quiet. “Someone coming.”
Luong’s shoulder touched mine. The muscles on his upper arm knotted, and he sank lower in the bunker, eye on the sight of his M16 aimed across a paddy to the east.
The magazine in my M16 was in tight and on rock and roll. Quickly, I checked it anyway, barrel alongside Luong’s rifle.
The shadows that moved slowly across the paddy dike three hundred meters north were VC. Their silhouettes were dark against the moonlight reflecting from the brown water of the paddies sprinkled with new stalks. A dozen gooks. Heavily armed, silent, and headed in the direction of Firebase Amazon near Dieu Ban.
Luong’s hands and knees made no sound on his crawl across the bunker toward the sleeping Tran. If the baby-san made as much as a whimper, Luong would quiet him.
The Starlight scope gave a black profile of the VC and magnified even the smallest detail. The leader carried an AK-47, a rucksack, bandoleers of beer-bottle grenades, and canvas ammo pouches. All the Charlies wore sandals, bush hats, and dark pajamas loose at the ankles like black bell-bottoms. Bamboo tubes of rice held tight by leather thongs hung from their necks. Half the squad had white bandanas tied around their throats in foursquare Boy Scout knots.
Two of the VC held RPG-7 Type 69 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and enough grenades to melt an attack force of M48 tanks. The grenades each had four knifelike fins that opened out as soon as the projectile was clear of the tube, giving the grenades the accuracy to penetrate a tank from five hundred meters. The RPGs were as long as the VC that carried them were tall, and almost as heavy.
A Charlie in the middle of the line packed a Chicom RPD machine gun over his shoulder. His chest was crisscrossed with 7.62 cartridges, and he was bent at the waist under the load that must have weighed over a hundred pounds.
The VC behind him balanced a piece of metal on his head that looked like the frame of an old plow converted as a base for the machine gun.
The rest of the soldiers were loaded with backpacks, spare ammo, grenades, and AKs. Loaded for bear. Or long noses.
One of the VC limped and was having a hard time keeping up with the man or woman in front of him. A rip in his pajamas showed a skinny leg bandaged from the calf to the thigh and covered with a dark stain.
My breathing was slow and silent, and my face was blacked out by greasepaint. The same for Luong. The wild card was Tran. I looked over the s
houlder of my camouflage fatigues at the baby-san and Yard.
Luong squatted next to Tran, who was asleep wrapped in my poncho, sucking his thumb. An M16 was at Luong’s side, and he flashed me the peace sign with calloused fingers.
The VC continued walking on the dike trail, heads as high as the weapons would allow. The limping gook stumbled, a ray of moonlight reflecting off his mouth like a silver tracer. The ray was magnified a thousand times in the Starlight scope and blinded me for a few seconds.
A three-quarter moon was in the eastern sky. Cloudy yellow halos surrounded the stars, making them look bigger and softer. The lingering smoke from the earlier hootch fires mixed with the smell of the shit field, Tran’s dysentery, and the earthy smell of damp clay. A night mist rose from the paddies, making the VC even more phantomlike.
The sound came first. It was a low-pitched hiss joined by a soft whir. The one that kills you is the one you don’t hear. Tonight, the 105 round sprayed the shit out of the VC squad, who didn’t hear a thing until it was all over and their blood fed the rice shoots that had grown in the paddy for a thousand years.
A heartbeat before impact, I jerked the Starlight from my eye or the rays from the blast would have been more than painful. The paddies lit up like a forest fire from the explosion of the C-4.
Marking and spotting flares were fired from trees to the north. No need. The first round was a direct hit. Even without the scope, I could see there were no more VC on the dike. But the mortars kept up for another minute, accompanied by M60 machine gun and rifle fire.
It must have been easy for the grunt RTO to call in the arty with such precision in the dark. He only had to move his coordinates a few hundred meters south from the firefight earlier and he had a bull’s-eye.
Concussions shook the clay, and Luong held Tran to his chest. The baby-san’s black eyes were open almost as wide as his mouth, which screamed something I couldn’t hear. Tran’s hands covered his ears, and his bare feet kicked Luong’s ammo belt.