by Dennis Foley
“Be our guest. You have a solid fix on our location?”
“Gotcha. Looks like you guys are kinda hard on Hueys. What’s left of that one I could put in my watch pocket,” the lead gunship pilot said, taking a slow pass over the remaining bits and pieces of the burned helicopter.
“We didn’t want them taking it home to Hanoi,” Hollister said, almost giddy with the promise their arrival signaled.
The Cobras made another pass over the VC’s position. “Looks like you got at least two over here,” they reported. “And there are some trails behind that work out of the trees and back toward the dirt road.”
“I’m not as interested in the body count as I am in any remaining spectators,” Hollister said, half asking for their assessment.
“Looks to me like the locals are just rolling out of their racks and scratching their asses. Doesn’t look like any of them have any interest in moving toward your location, though. Don’t sweat ’em. We’ll keep an eye on them while we get you all out. How’s your WIA doing?”
Curtis was sitting against a tree trunk. He was pale and exhausted, but alive. Hollister raised his voice enough for Curtis to hear him. He wanted Curtis to know that he wasn’t too worried about his condition. Though he had no idea what Curtis’s true condition was, he felt that speaking positively had to help him. “He’s a rock. If we don’t drop him in the paddy water, he’ll be drinking some cold beer by noon.”
Curtis gave another little smile.
The medevac chopper flared, throwing water up on the two LRPs who carried Curtis in a double fireman’s carry. The other four LRPs and Hollister, took up firing positions with the three machine guns and the M79 to be able to respond to any incoming fire.
The medevac went off without a hitch, as did the team pickup. As his chopper lifted off, Hollister looked out across the fields. It always amazed him how the aerial view of the area where he had spent an intense night looked so different from the way his mind had organized it in the dark.
They took a shallow turn to the north, and Hollister could see the small, fresh craters the mortars had made and the outline of the burned chopper. Most of its ashes were submerged in the water, which was marked with a multicolored oily slick made up of lubricants and fuels that spilled from the chopper when it blew.
At about five hundred feet, the air began to smell clean, and the musty smell of the damp ground was. nearly blown away from Hollister’s uniform. Many things ran through his mind, not the least of which was the recognition of how close they had come to being overrun. He was sure they were hit by a small, and probably under-strength, unit that had suffered losses in the Tet Offensive.
The contact had to have been a target of opportunity for the VC. If they’d had time, weapons, and manpower, they could have owned the chopper and seven LRPs.
The sun broke the low clouds out over the South China Sea like a dark orange ball. Hollister leaned against the fire wall in the chopper and said a little thank-you.
Chapter 15
THE REST OF THE company was just returning from a PT run when the chopper landed. They broke from the formation and cheered the returning team.
Sergeant Kurzikowski stood in the doorway to Operations, a cup of coffee in his hand. When he saw Hollister step out of the chopper and make eye contact, he gave him a small thumbs-up.
First Sergeant Morrison yelled at the off-loading LRPs to remind them to drop their gear on the pad and head to the mess hall for something to eat. “Any man who takes any weapons into the chow hall doesn’t eat!”
The reception was just not what Hollister thought it ought to be. He waved Morrison over. “How ’bout we come up with something else we can do for returning teams?”
“Like what, sir?”
“Like beer and soft drinks and someone to watch their gear while they chow down,” Hollister said.
“I’ll make it happen,” Morrison said with a smile.
Morrison’s response was what Hollister wanted to hear. He was tired of old NCOs who had reasons why things couldn’t be done or why it was someone else’s job. Hollister could tell that Morrison remembered being a lower-ranking EM, when little things meant a lot. He knew that Morrison would, in fact, make it happen.
As he slipped the magazine out of his rifle, cleared the round from the chamber, and started toward Operations, he couldn’t help but remember the days when he used to come back from missions to find rowdy First Sergeant Easy with a jeep trailer full of iced-down beer for the troops. He liked the job Morrison was doing, but he missed Easy. He wondered how he was getting along on limited duty.
Hollister sat on a small stool at the 25th Division’s clearing station. He had decided to go along with Sergeant Dewey to pick up Curtis’s gear and to try to talk to him after his wound was dressed.
The meeting didn’t happen. Curtis was asleep and Hollister had to get back to the company area for the team debriefing.
Still, he took a few moments to have his own wound looked at.
“It’s a greater threat to you as an infection than anything else. There’s no serious damage, but I’m going to slip a few stitches in to close it up and keep crap out of it,” me doctor said. “How’d you do this, anyhow?”
Reaching into his shirt pocket, Hollister pulled out the mortar fragment and held it up for the doctor to see. “Mortar round.”
“We didn’t get mortared last night.”
“I was on a patrol—west of here.”
The doctor stood back and looked at Hollister. “What’s a captain doing out on a LRP patrol?”
“What?” Hollister asked, unsure of the question.
“I thought those LRP patrols were just enlisted men.”
The notion angered Hollister. “What’s that mean? That it’s okay for them to go out and get shot up? They’re only enlisted swine?”
The doctor recoiled. “Well, excuse me, Captain,” he said, angry at being challenged.
The doctor opened a packaged suture setup and moved the rolling tray toward Hollister.
Feeling the anger boiling up, Hollister stood up and squared off with the doctor-major. “I think I’ve had all the medical attention I need here.” He started for the doorway at the end of the examining room.
“Hey, who is going to sew you up?”
“I’ll have one of my enlisted men do it,” Hollister said as he slammed the door.
By noon word had come down that Curtis would not only be okay, but that he would probably be back to duty within six weeks. They would evacuate him to Japan for treatment first. Hollister was determined to see him before he left, and the first sergeant helped him scrounge another ride to the hospital.
PFC Curtis sat up in the bunk, an IV in each arm. He smiled and managed a weak welcome. “Airborne, sir.”
“How you feel, Curtis?”
“Been better. Sure want to thank you for tying me up out there. Coulda bled to death.”
“I needed a good grenadier. Couldn’t let that happen,” said Hohlster—not entirely in jest. Curtis was one hell of a good grenadier.
“Well,” said Curtis, “you’re going to have to do without me for a while. They’re sending me to Camp Drake. That’s in Japan.”
Hollister nodded.
“If you don’t kill yourself on the Ginza, we’ll be able to use you when you get back.” He paused. “You know you could get some leg job in the rear if you want …”
“No, sir! I’m coming back to the LRPs. I couldn’t face my kids and tell ’em I humped a typewriter during the war.”
“You got kids?” Hollister asked, surprised at the soldier, barely nineteen.
“Oh, no, sir, not yet. But I got plans.”
They both laughed.
“Okay, I’ve got to get back. You let us know if you need anything.” He paused. “You did a great job out there.”
“Thank you, sir. There is one thing.”
“Name it.”
“Sir, I’d sure like to have my own team when I get back. I know
I’m young and I’m pretty junior, but I …”
Raising his hand to stop him, Hollister answered. “You get back, we’ll find a team for you. I promise.”
“Airborne!” Curtis said.
The jeep pulled into the company area and stopped next to the Orderly Room. Hollister stepped out of the jeep, his hat still held in his hand, unable to put it on over the laceration in his scalp. He thanked Dewey for the ride and walked across the company street toward Operations.
Sergeant First Class Rose was standing in front of the Company Aid Station. “Damn, sir! Word got back here before you did!”
Rose was the senior medic. He was wearing sterile gloves and holding his hands up away from himself.
“What are you talking about?” Hollister asked.
“Got a buddy over at the Clearing Station. Seems that leg doctor is some kind of pissed off at you, Captain.”
Hollister frowned. “Oh … that … I guess he’ll get over it.”
“You’re gonna be a long time before you wear a floppy hat again if I don’t clean up that wound on your head, sir. Bound to get infected and make an awful mess.” Rose bent at the waist and made a sweeping gesture of welcome to the Aid Station.
“You think so?”
“My guess is that at least a couple of APCs are in order.” It tickled Hollister that Rose knew what kind of headache he had. He smiled at the tall, freckled soldier. “Okay, but you have to promise not to tell that major at the Division Hospital that I really did need some treatment.”
Sergeant Rose finished swabbing the area with alcohol, then shaved a spot twice as big as the wound. “You’re gonna have a scar no matter what I do to it. It’s a pretty raggedy hole.”
“I’m not going to worry much about it until I get old enough to start losing all my hair.”
Rose filled a hypodermic needle with a local anesthetic and prepared Hollister. “This is going to sting a little, but after that I can hammer on you and you won’t know it.”
Hollister rolled his eyes up at Rose in a mock threatening expression.
“Okay, I know—no hammer!”
Rose injected the anesthetic in four locations. He put the hypodermic needle down, picked up a pair of surgical tweezers, and pulled the flap of skin at the edge of the wound.
“Hurt?”
“No. Are you finished?” Hollister asked.
“Only take a minute,” Rose said, pulling the suture through the skin and drawing it taut. “I, ah, saw the job you did on Curtis, Captain. You ought to branch-transfer into the Medical Corps.”
“You talk to your buddy about him?”
“Yessir. He’s gonna be okay. They’re either going to try to salvage that artery in his leg or replace it with one of those artificial ones. He was in more danger from shock than he was from losing the leg.”
“I want to spend some time with you this afternoon,” Hollister said.
“You mean more than this?”
“I mean talking about cross-training medics in each of the teams.”
“I’m sure with you on that, sir! We are miserable sorry in the department. I need to have some time with the team medics if they are going to learn anything other than stop the bleeding, clear the airway, treat for shock.”
“You’ll get it. That’s the last time a team goes out with no one qualified to push some blood expander into a WIA,” Hollister said, making eye contact with Rose. “I want the team medics up to where they can train the other men on their teams.”
Rose put his forceps down and nodded his head. “You’re covered, sir. You get ’em to me, and I’ll train ’em.”
Hollister knew he could trust Rose to get it done. The real work was his—making sure that a million and one things didn’t compete for the troops’ time to keep them from getting the training.
He smiled at Rose. “Okay, so what’s the story on that leg major at the Division Hospital? Looked a little lightweight to me.”
“You don’t know the half of it. My buddy tells me they have contests seeing who can fuck with him the most. He seems to think anyone who is not a doctor is an errand boy. So they run all kinds of errands for him. Only thing is they never seem to find the right thing. He wants vanilla ice cream in their chow hall, and they pass the word until someone shows up with a manila envelope. He wants a prescription pad, and they find him a magazine subscription form. He gets furious, and they all play dumb. You know how us dumb enlisted men are, sir.”
“Sounds like he asks for it,” Hollister said.
Rose finished trimming the edges of the dressing and stood back to admire his work. “I think you are back for duty, sir.”
“No profile, huh?”
“No, sir. Can’t set the example for the troops if the officers are sick, lame, and lazy.”
“Damn!” Hollister kidded. “Well, how about those aspirin?”
Rose filled a small envelope with a half-dozen crumbly army aspirin, folded it closed, and handed it to Hollister. “My unofficial prescription is to take two of these every four hours, with plenty of beer.”
Hollister got up off the box he had been sitting on and started for the door. He took his hat out of his pocket and started to put it on—only to catch himself.
“You want me to write you a medical buck slip saying you don’t have to wear your headgear?”
“If someone is stupid enough to give me shit over not wearing my hat, I’ll ask him if he’d like it stuffed up his ass.”
“Guess that means no,” Rose said with a smile.
“Major Fowler, please, Captain Hollister calling from Cu Chi,” Hollister said, the telephone cradled in the crook of his neck.
He lit a cigarette and waited. The other end cracked with static. He looked out the window of Operations back toward Long Binh. There was clearly an afternoon thunderstorm brewing out there.
“Fowler. What do you want now, Hollister?” Major Fowler said abruptly.
“Sir, I have to call you again about that request I left with you. Is there any word on any more of it?”
“You got your goddamn nerve, Captain! We give you slicks to train with, and you fucking go and blow one up.”
“Sir,” Hollister said, a clear tone of sarcasm in his voice. “We didn’t blow it up. We got a body count in a firefight. Would you rather the team got shot up and the chopper stripped for equipment and radios?”
“Don’t be fucking insubordinate with me, goddamnit! Now if you want any more choppers, I have to feel better about the likelihood that you aren’t going to destroy them with some of your childish training. There’s a war going on over here, Hollister. What we need is more contacts, more ambushes, and more body count. Not more training!”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t need to be told about the war, Major,” Hollister said, disrespect dripping from his voice.
“You show me some reason I should give you more assets, and I might consider it,” said Fowler. “But you better goddamn work on your tone of voice with me, Mister.”
Major Sangean stormed into Operations, having heard some of the conversation. He motioned for Hollister to give him the phone.
“Fowler—Sangean. This is the last time you give any of my people any shit. Now you get me the rest of the items on that list in forty-eight hours, or I’ll be standing in front of your desk with a very bad attitude! You got that?”
Sangean didn’t wait for Fowler to respond. He slammed the phone into the carrier, then took a deep breath, and looked at Hollister.
“Let’s talk outside.”
They walked over to the mess hall and found a place in the back. One of the cooks held up a coffee cup, and Sangean nodded. The cook filled two cups with hot coffee and brought them to the plywood table where Hollister and Sangean sat.
“You know what the problem is, don’t you?” Sangean asked.
“Problem?”
“With Fowler.”
“No, sir.”
“Besides being the south end of a horse, he was one of the people
who came up with the idea of creating a Field Force-level LRP company—Juliet Company.”
Hollister frowned, and his wound hurt when he did. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, I got command of it—not him.”
Hollister leaned back in the chair and let the news sink in.
“Oh … now I see. No wonder everything I say to him is a burr under his blanket.”
“Fowler is a real slippery fuck,” said Sangean. He took a sip of his coffee. “He almost convinced Colonel Downing to put him in this job.”
“I can’t understand that,” said Hollister. “Why would Downing even consider him? He hasn’t had his boots wet since Ranger School!”
“Some of us are soldiers,” said Sangean. “And some of us are just officers.”
Hollister nodded. He’d been an enlisted man. He didn’t have to be told.
“Fowler is one of those guys that spends all of his time making himself look good to his boss, no matter whose face he has to step in to do it. For some reason I haven’t figured out yet, it works more often than not.”
“So, what do I do about it?” asked Hollister.
“Just watch your back. He’s bad news.”
“But if I tiptoe around him, we’ll never be able to get any help around here. It’s gettin’ pretty old having to take the leftovers. Old and dangerous.”
Sangean blew the steam rising from his coffee away from the surface and took another sip.
“You let me handle Fowler. It grinds his ass that when we butt heads, he comes in second.”
“But …”
“I want you to spend your time working on manpower and training for now. We aren’t getting enough bodies—or training them fast enough. At this rate we’ll still be at fifty percent foxhole strength by summer.”
“Okay, sir. I’m just as happy not to have to do any more business with Major Fowler.”
Sangean stood and checked his watch. “Maybe he’ll walk in front of a train or something.”
Hollister didn’t know whether to laugh or not. It was the closest to a joke that Sangean had ever come.
Inside Operations Hollister and Kurzikowski went over the training schedule.