by Ron Lealos
A warm hug in the middle of ’Nam rice paddies. My father, the Colonel, wouldn’t hug me if it meant a star on his shoulder. At least he didn’t make me salute. I wasn’t afraid of crying for fear of giving away my position to the enemy. Only hearing another scolding lecture on the need to “be a man in a world full of pussies.” I watched Luong hold Tran to his chest.
After the firefight, the absence of sound was almost as scary as the fury of the bombs. From ear-crushing waves to dead silence. I could almost hear the chirp of baby birds on a spring morning in the Cascade Mountains. But there weren’t any birds. And the trees were on fire.
Tran made soft, gurgling noises while Luong bounced the baby-san on his shoulder. Tran’s head swiveled slowly side to side. The leisurely scanning movement of a GAU-2A minigun turning on its pod in search of targets and firing rounds per minute. But Tran didn’t have any weapon but his innocence.
I tossed Luong one of the canteens on my web belt. He unscrewed the metal cap and tried to give Tran a drink. The baby-san kept his lips closed tight and watched the flames in the distance.
No survivors. At least none that I could see move. No patrol would risk going out in the night to count the bodies. Or carry the pieces away. That would wait until the morning sun rose on the stinking paddies that now soaked up body parts as protein. But the day belonged to the grunts.
The walls of the bunker were flat and smooth and pocked by worm and ant holes. Luong sat, back resting against the clay, and patted Tran’s butt. He softly sang some Montagnard lullaby. The sound soothed Tran. His black eyes fluttered a few times and closed.
Mom sang bedtime lullabies to me until I was three. By then, I had a little green uniform and size-five kids’ combat boots, along with a Daisy air rifle that the Colonel had wired a plastic bayonet onto. I ran around the house in uniform, my head covered by a camouflage helmet. My playthings were metal toy soldiers, tanks, and deuce and a halfs. The Colonel told Mom to stop the “fucking pansy-ass singing” before she “turned me into a fruit.”
The M16 would be my security blanket for the night. Sleep would be impossible so close to a kill zone. I set the (useless for now) Starlight scope on the clay and put both hands on the ArmaLite.
Luong stroked Tran’s black hair and watched the fire from the mortars burn to embers.
Another long night of sentry duty filled only by boredom combined with the fear a sniper with a night scope might have me in his crosshairs.
The letter I had been writing for over a year to my old man, the Colonel, replayed in my mind. One day, I might put the words on paper and send it. For now, it was enough to know I had good intentions but not courage enough to use the free mail service given to grunts. Assassins too.
The normal “I miss you” schmaltz was insubordination to the Colonel, so I didn’t give him any of that. He never gave it to me either, since he didn’t write. I was a man doing a man’s job. Not a kid like everybody else in these fucking swamps fighting a war made by old men for reasons long-ago forgotten.
I did my best writing when I smoked a couple OJs—opium-soaked joints. OJs came wrapped as Camels or Marlboros and looked exactly like the real deal. A pack of twenty cost ten bucks. Tonight, I only had my memory to work with, and I didn’t need a pencil since I’d never get around to anything but fantasy.
Dear Colonel,
They call infantrymen in ’Nam grunts. Or boonie rats. Or legs. Last week I saw Kawolsky’s leg. It reminded me of a baton at the Fourth of July parade in Woodinville, the way it twirled end over end against a background of blue sky. Chunks of flesh and bone flew off like the flashes from a sparkler. The red of his blood, the white of his skin, and the blue of the sky, was a real Old Glory. Like the flag you wear stitched on your VA campaign hat.
Kowalsky stepped on a toe popper land mine. Missed his toes but took his leg. When Doc zapped him with morphine, the last thing Kowalsky screamed was, “Doc, find my fuckin’ leg. Find it, goddamnit. I know you can sew it back on. My old lady don’t want no one-legged gimp in the house.”
Buffalo wasn’t as lucky. He earned his Purple Heart the hard way. Went to collect a souvenir ear off a dead VC. Booby-trapped with a 105 round. The explosive power of a 105 in a man’s face is something to behold. No more reason to save shaving gear from the C-ration supplementals.
Grunts. Can’t figure that one. Could be from humping a hundred-pound nylon and aluminum pack in the jungle all day. But grunting ain’t the sound I hear or make. It’s more of a “fucking motherfucking cocksucking asshole pack” sound. Don’t make that grunt sound when I shit either. Don’t need to. It runs out on its own, real quiet-like.
Visited a vil a few days back. Wasn’t on the map and won’t ever be. No tour buses stopping to snap photo ops. Lots of crispy critters lying beside burned out hootches. The napalm jelly that didn’t torch off covered the clay like Vaseline. A mama-san who must have been out taking a shit was the only dink we found alive. You know, when we liberate one of these vils, the locals give us this look. It isn’t welcoming and friendly. It’s more of a “if I get the chance, I’ll roast your balls on a sharpened bamboo stick” look. And here I heard we were winning hearts and minds. Headquarters calls a pacified vil an “oil spot.” Be better if the REMFs called it “meltdown.”
Oh, back to Kowalsky. He was medevaced to Da Nang Hospital. Put him in the White Lie Ward. Seems his leg wasn’t the worst of it. The doughnut dollies promised Kowalsky he was gonna be okay and on the next Freedom Bird back to Fort Lewis. Hey, maybe he’ll look you and ma up.
Just joking. He’s dead.
Man, is the jungle here fucking beautiful. Lush green trees. Wild orchids. Banyans bigger at the butt than an Oldsmobile. Fruit that drops ripe and juicy into your hands. Meadows filled with ten-foot-tall elephant grass that sways in the wind like wheat in a field outside Spokane. Monkeys swinging from limb to limb and chattering monkey talk. Butterflies in glorious greens, blues, and yellows. B-52 craters the size of the gym at Mercer Island High School. Stick forests a few weeks after the Agent Orange fertilizes the leaves. Pointed black snags and fat stumps from trees given a coating of napalm. Fertile soil so full of shrapnel that a mine detector is useless. It never stops pinging.
Man, I can’t wait to see the jet setters make ’Nam the next undiscovered hot tourist spot. Hey, I forgot the white sand beaches. Man, you can see for miles from your own personal guard tower. You’ll feel safe because of all the razor wire and claymores surrounding you and the M60s aimed at the jungle. Catch a gorgeous sunrise over the black smoke of the shit detail burning the slit trench in diesel. The smell comes off your clothes after a couple washings. Think I’ll use the Yashica 35mm I got in Bangkok on R&R to snap a few pics of this place. Make up a brochure when I DEROS. “Visit friendly, scenic Vietnam.”
I knew you’d ask what I do for fun since I kicked mainlining. Now I mostly just mellow out behind a few tokes of opium. The zips get the good stuff right out of the Golden Triangle. Don’t worry, the CIA is getting most of the profit, so it’s dollars well spent. Margolis scored some windowpane acid. I’m telling you, those flares and howitzers are trippy at night behind a couple hits of windowpane. If I gotta pay attention, the medic just slips me a few Dexedrines to put a little edge on. But I really get laid back with a half-dozen Quaaludes. The juicers think I’m a soul brother the way I stagger around. At least I don’t chuck my cookies on my bush boots like the beer freaks. A lotta guys just smoke dope. I think that’s for pussies or when there ain’t something more kick ass on the base. But there always is.
In your war, I wonder if there was honor. Blowin’ away a few Krauts must have made you feel good. Cappin’ gooks just leaves me empty. Sending home a snapshot of you holding up a dead Jerry, cigarette in his white lips and you smiling, captain’s bars on your shoulder. You know, the picture in your “War Album.” Now that should have given you a woody even knobbier than looking at them black-and-whites of Ava Gardner’s legs I found in your drawer. Anyway, did you feel tha
t you’d sacrificed for God and country? Keeping the world safe? A real patriot?
I greased a woman the other night. She was sleeping when I pushed her out of bed and into the garden. Put a silenced bullet in her brain next to a clump of white orchids. The ants got there before I could di di mau back to base. She was beautiful. Innocent too. But I didn’t find that out until later. Hey, it was orders and in my brief. Was I honorable?
Sometimes when I’m a few tokes over the line on the opium pipe, I think about courage. What I mostly do is hump around in the boonies to get from one place to the other so I can hide in the bush until dark and sneak up on somebody and put a bullet in their heads and slink back to base to get loaded and wait for the next victim’s name to be imprinted on my soul. The Hueys fly over my head, full of body bags, dripping red out the open doors, the metal grating on the deck so slick with blood you can’t stand up. Did those wasted soldiers have courage? Did they meet the enemy face to face and the better man won? How the fuck would I know? It ain’t my style.
I hear there’s lots of stories back in The World about the lack of discipline among the troops in ’Nam. What a crock! LT Marinovich went against the boonie code. Kept sending a man down the tunnels, not just tossin’ a grenade in the hole and callin’ it sanitized. Made his squad flip a coin for honors. Tuesday night, after several warnings, he was sentenced to death by fragmentation grenade. The M24 rolled into his laager while he was readin’ a letter from his wife. There was a color picture of her. Pieces of the Kodak moment were smeared in blood to the part of his arm they found in the bamboo tree the next morning. Don’t break the rules if you can’t pay the dues.
There was a general in town last week. Top made the troops turn in their filthy, ripped fatigues for new ones and stand at attention while the general landed in a cloud of dust from his own private Huey. The rotors didn’t even stop turning before he was on his way. They stood proud and brave and at attention in the hundred-degree-plus oven of this shithole while he pinned a medal on Sergeant Ripperton. Phoenix agents like me just got to watch, snickering from our sector of the base. The opium sure helped. The grunts got their old fatigues back too.
Mail call is a big deal here. If we’re in the bush, the Hueys drop the bags with the Coke on ice and ammo. I sit on my pack suckin’ on a J and watch my buddies stand in a crowd nervous as a sapper in the wire waiting to see if the girl back home wrote and their name will get called. Sad to see some of them slink back to oiling their M16s and brooding over the lack of a note from The World.
There’s a downside to getting stoned in the middle of a war zone. My mind sometimes goes on a bummer thinking about things like the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Stars and Stripes wrote that it’s been rescinded. Now the Pentagon says they have the constitutional right to wage war since the president is the commander in chief. Shit, makes me feel better that I’m greasin’ women under the authority of the commander in chief and not just some fuckin’ resolution.
Luong touched my shoulder. The shock of his fingers made me jump hard enough to knock one of the M24 grenades into the bunker.
“Okay, Morgan?” Luong asked. “My turn guard.”
Through the greasepaint and the mist of the night, the whites around Luong’s black eyes were sharp and bright. He left his hand on my shoulder.
The M24 sat against the ankle of my bush boot. I picked it up and put it next to the stack of ammo in front of me.
“Just writing a letter,” I said. “Only a couple hours until daybreak. I’ll stay up too and take care of Tran. Maybe sing him ‘Amazing Grace.’”
Tran’s little fists were clenched tight, and he shadowboxed with a dream warrior. The poncho was slick and had slipped to his feet, showing the bulge of a malnourished belly filled with last evening’s C-ration pound cake. Tran’s head moved from side-to-side as if he was trying to fight against the battle with his tiny neck, black eyebrows scrunched in a frown.
Water had seeped into the bottom of the bunker during the night. The water would be sucked into the air by the day’s tropical humidity, but Tran, Luong, and I would di di mau at first light, leaving the banana spider that wove a silver web above Tran’s head to catch a long-legged insect’s meal of mosquitoes and flies.
I moved two meters across the bunker and picked Tran up without disturbing the spider. Hated the fucking things. Spindly, spastic legs thinner than the wire on my garrote below a hairy, black body long and thin as the 7.62 bullets for my M16. But I was scared to kill one and be infested by nightmares of falling into a punji pit, bleeding to death on the shit-soaked stakes, and covered by fucking banana spiders bigger than Tran’s head. Eight-inch legs tickling my face, mouth sucking my blood. Visions of Liem were enough.
Tran’s chin rested snugly on the shoulder of my camo fatigues, cheek nestled against my neck. He tucked his arms, fist still closed, under his belly and pushed his knees into the bandoleers on my chest. Little slurping sounds came from his mouth, and dribble wet the start of the beard above my collar.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sight,” I sang. I patted Tran’s bare back to the rhythm of the only lullaby I could think of.
Tran shivered in the eighty-degree coolness of the Delta night and made short hissing sounds from his baby-san-toothed mouth.
The silhouette of Luong’s head and shoulders was outlined above the rim of the bunker against the morning light. The barrel of his M16 was pointed toward the tree line to the north where the remains of the VC squad were already being processed as feed for the next rice harvest.
The song calmed me as much as it seemed to soothe Tran and the spider that barely flicked a long leg to the peace movement anthem.
* * *
Shades of milky blue rose on the eastern horizon over the shadows of palm and banana trees. Smoke still came from the hootches burned in the night’s firefight across the paddies. Mosquitoes lifted from the brown water in hordes of gray.
The fuel pellets easily ignited in the old C-ration can I used for a cooking pot. I added a chunk of C-4 to make the stove hotter and burn longer. The blue flames were low and hidden by the rim of the laager and the early dawn light.
Tran was on my knee, watching me add the dried eggs and pieces of ham I had mixed in the bowl made from another C-ration can shaped to fit above the flame. He tried to grab the handle of the Gerber fighting knife with his little fist, and I put the Gerber in its leather sheath. Tran sucked his thumb with short breaths that moved his belly against my fingers. A ball of snot blocked his left nostril like a green nose plug.
The cowboy coffee would have to be sacrificed for Tran’s meal. Luong and I would survive on the Dexedrine that helped us get through the night.
Sunlight streaked the paddies with gold and silver over Luong’s head. Nylon cord tied the flaps of Luong’s Aussie bush hat, tilted to the side of his head, exposing the scar under his hairline to the sun’s rays.
A chemical smell of the fuel pellets and C-4 joined the stink of Tran’s diarrhea and the shit fumes off the paddies.
The old, bent spoon from my ruck was too big for Tran, but he tried to use it anyway. I guided his hand into the C-rat plate filled with warm scrambled eggs and ham and then somewhere in the direction of his drooling mouth. What didn’t make it between his lips fell to the clay bottom of the bunker.
Fat earthworms started their morning search for food and crawled toward the eggs, which had turned pink in the soil.
With the hand not holding the spoon, I reached for the medpack in the ruck and took out a tube of antibiotic ointment that I used on the ulcers that dotted my leg. I sang “The Itsy, Bitsy Spider” while I softly rubbed the ointment on Tran’s shiny gook sores.
The bent spoon fell to the clay, and Tran whimpered at my touch. His back pressed against the M16 bullets crisscrossing my chest, and his bare butt pushed on my knee. But he didn’t cry.
Packing a ruck and holding a baby-san was a class not given at Special Ops school. One hand balanced Tran on my knee while I stowed the co
oking plates, poncho, fuel, and spoon tight against the copy of War and Peace. Everything had to be arranged perfectly. No metal against metal. A clang in the bush was a siren that called death by AK. I gave Tran a drink from the canteen before I hooked it to my web belt.
The syringe of morphine hung from my neck on a leather thong. Tran saw the sun glance off the plastic tube holder covering the needle and grabbed for the “sweet sleep.” His little fist wrapped around the tube and headed toward his mouth.
I gently took the morphine from Tran’s hand and stuffed the dope through the V-neck of my camos. The back of my collar had “77” stitched into the green cotton. No insignias or name anywhere on my uni. No dog tags. No wallet. No letters from home. No military ID of any kind. If my corpse were found, the big Rand computer in Saigon would sort out who was in the body bag. Or not.
The sun made shadows through the palm trees over Luong’s right shoulder. On the back of his neck, a mosquito was still as a sniper.
“Want some do an, Luong?” I asked. Food. “Tran ate the eggs, but Morgan’s Café has peaches covered in gravy.”
The bandoleers that crossed Luong’s back moved slightly on top of the sweat stains of his bush uni. Luong was an expert at being perfectly still. Blending into his environment. Becoming a log or a lump of clay or a rock. Luong could stay motionless and undetected in the middle of a hamlet for hours.
“Khong,” Luong said. No. “Need to di di soon, Morgan. Get to Cần Thơ and leave baby-san.”
Tran reached again for the leather thong that held the syringe. His black eyes wide, he watched to see if it was okay.
Tiny fingers. Crusted in dirt and puffy on the top. I squeezed his hand softly and held it to my chest.
“Khong, baby-san,” I whispered and smiled into those bottomless black eyes that held the battles of a hundred years. “GI need thuoc to keep us both alive.” Medicine.