Night Work: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 2)

by Dennis Foley

  “They are on their way back to the Replacement Battalion for reassignment.”

  “Why?” Downing asked, surprised.

  “Seems like there were plenty of units that were ready to get rid of their sick, lame, and lazy by sending them to me. Half those folks never volunteered to come to the LRPs. Some were legs, some were the wrong MOS, and I even got a few that had less than a month left in-country. Some wanted in, but we didn’t want them. All together, they’re rejects.”

  Downing frowned. “You aren’t being too picky, are you?”

  Sangean didn’t blink. “I’m being as picky as you’d be selecting the other five men you’d walk that border with, Colonel.”

  Downing let the answer sink in. “I see. Well, let’s get the rest of the bodies you need—ASAP—and get you full strength.”

  “Colonel, I don’t know if this is a good time for you, but I have to bring up the assets problem again. We—Hollister—has brought in our request, and all we have is a committed Cobra platoon. Now, we’re very happy about that. But we simply can’t do the job for you with odds and ends to support us.”

  “I know you need more responsive support,” said Colonel Downing. “Believe me, we are working on it. Major Fowler has been trying to identify the units …”

  A flush came over Sangean’s face. “Sir, Major Fowler has been flat on his ass!”

  Hollister was sure this would draw an angry response from Downing, but the colonel simply walked around his desk and opened the door. He crooked his finger at Major Fowler.

  Fowler entered.

  “Give us a rundown on the progress you’ve made on getting combat-support resources for the LRPs. Major Sangean seems to think there’s a little too much delay in answering his request for support.”

  Fowler smiled as if he was fully prepared. “There’s no problem, Colonel. We’ve identified a slick platoon, an FO party from Field Force Artillery, two full-time FACs, and I think I can almost guarantee a hundred-and-fifty-man reaction force.”

  Hollister hated the smug look on Fowler’s face. He was sure Fowler had those resources available all along and was just screwing with the LRPs as his own little demonstration of frustration at not being given a field command. Hollister hated him for it and would not forget it.

  “Good, good,” Downing said. “How soon?”

  “Should have everyone but the reaction force by the end of the week. The others will be confirmed by then, too, but not relocated to Cu Chi until the end of the next week. They’re a ground troop from the Seventeenth Cav,” Fowler said, matter-of-factly, as if he pulled off things like that every day.

  “Well, I want the LRPs fully supported before the border operations begin. You understand?”

  “Yessir,” Fowler said. “Like I told Captain Hollister, none of this is a problem. We’ve been on it from the day he brought in the request. The only delay was in finding the right units and the right bodies. We don’t want to give them support that is not up to their missions.”

  Hollister fought the urge to call Fowler a fucking liar. He knew he could never trust the man with anything important and would try never to need him for anything again.

  “I know, I know,” Sangean said. “Fowler is a lowlife. But there is nothing we can do about it except get mired down in a pissing match with a headquarters puke. We can’t afford the luxury. Now, you work off your steam by getting with Sergeant Major Carey on the personnel problem and finding out where Captain Vance is.”

  “Yes, sir. And you?”

  “I’ve got to spend some time with the G-2 folks to get the situation along the border. I want to see the faces that are writing all these fairy tales about zillions of NVA soldiers still massing on the border after having their asses waxed during Tet.”

  “Okay with me. Where do we meet?”

  “See you at the club at sixteen thirty.”

  “Airborne,” Hollister said as he walked toward the G-l Section and Sangean started toward G-2.

  Sergeant Major Carey was drinking chalky fluid from a bottle of antacid when Hollister knocked on his door. “Got a minute, Sergeant Major?

  He capped the bottle, wiped the antacid from the corner of his mouth, and waved Hollister in. “Sure. Come on in, Captain.”

  Hollister took the chair Carey pointed to and pulled his notes from his pocket.

  Carey belched and raised his hand apologetically. “Sorry, that stuff is supposed to put the fire out in my gut, but it just seems to give me gas.”

  “Why do you drink it?”

  “I been havin’ ulcer trouble for almost eleven years now. The docs keep telling me to give up cigarettes and coffee and bourbon. Hell, what fun would that be?”

  Carey was one of the real old-timers. His hair was thinning, and his skin was starting to liver-spot. He had been a two-stripe first sergeant in the Korean War and had seen the arrival of the supergrades of sergeant major and command sergeant major. Hollister had only spoken with him a few times, but he liked Carey and trusted him.

  “You might as well hang it up if you have to give up all that,” said Hollister.

  “Well, I told the medics I would rather have the bellyaches. But I’m looking for a smoother bourbon. That’s therapeutic, isn’t it?”

  Carey had a great smile, even though his mouth and eyes were surrounded by rows of parallel lines and wrinkles.

  “If I come across some,” said Hollister, “I’ll let you know. Count on me to take point for you.”

  “So what can I do for you, sir?” the sergeant major asked.

  “Bodies,” Hollister said.

  “Dead or alive?”

  “Need more of the live ones and less of the dead-on-their-ass ones. We’re still a bit short, and we have to throw some of them back in,” Hollister said.

  Carey made a face. “Hmmm, yeah, I heard from Morrison that some of my less-than-straight-shooting senior NCOs been using your place for a dump.”

  “That happens. I don’t want to worry about who or why. I just need to move them out and get some more fresh faces.”

  “I talked with Morrison. We’ll be shipping out some warm ones from the Replacement Battalion tomorrow, and I’ve got about a dozen more volunteers from the One hundred and first and the One hundred and seventy-third. It’s kinda hard to get volunteers from leg units like the First Division, the Ninth, and the Twenty-fifth. But we’ll get them for you.”

  “You get the word that your new XO is in?”

  “Yeah, I need to find him to take him forward,” Hollister said.

  “He’ll be here in a bit. I just sent a driver down there to find him. Where will you be?”

  “You tell me where you want me, and I’ll stand by to find him.”

  “Sir, I’ll keep him here. You finish your business here, check in with me, and we’ll link you two up.”

  “Good deal. Glad you and Morrison are talking.”

  “How’s he doing?” Carey asked.

  “Morrison?”

  “Yes. He was a PFC in my platoon in Germany. He’s really a good man who had some bad breaks. I think the LRPs and Morrison will be good for each other.”

  Hollister smiled. “I think you’re right, Sergeant Major. I didn’t think he was going to cut it when I first saw him. But I’ve changed my mind. He’s thorough and competent. The troops give him a little shit about his weight, but he’s losing it fast and the troops appreciate his efforts. He’s got what I think a first sergeant needs.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “He’s got the troops in mind whenever he does anything. Thanks for sending him our way.”

  Carey smiled.

  The tangle of buildings, warehouses, hooches, latrines, and sheds that had grown up at Long Binh Post was a difficult maze to negotiate if you didn’t work there. Hollister’s efforts to make some other visits to the Signal office for new SOIs and to the motor pool to try to scrounge a jeep took longer than it would have if he knew the shortcuts. He wished Cathcart was with him.


  The jeep he was assigned was in bad need of a new front end. It pulled to the left and took a constant tug on the wheel to keep it from driving into the oncoming lane. Still, it beat having to walk or hitch a ride everywhere.

  Hollister found the Transit BOQ and made arrangements for him, Sangean, and Vance to stay the night. Sangean got a field-grade room, and Hollister and Vance took a small room with a double bunk.

  Leaving the jeep at the BOQ since they wouldn’t need it until morning, Hollister walked across the street to the MARS station. Like all MARS stations, it was packed with soldiers trying to make calls home to girlfriends, wives, and families.

  The priority system surprised Hollister. He was put ahead of the troops who were waiting, but assigned to IIFFV Headquarters. Emergencies came first, then troops in from subordinate units, and then IIFFV Headquarters and Long Binh Post personnel. The good news was quickly marred by the fact that he had to give up after several tries. The operators were unable to patch a line through to New York. So he had to give up his chance in line to let another soldier try and call the woman in his dreams.

  The PX was as crowded as the MARS station. Hollister had a list of things to get for himself and for others who had hit him up back at Cu Chi when they found out he was going to the rear.

  For him it meant line after line. On a couple of occasions a soldier here or there would half offer his place in line either because Hollister was an officer or because of the uniform and the LRP arc on his shoulder. In each case Hollister declined. It was something he had promised himself not to do when he got his commission. He was proud that he had been pretty good at remembering the promise in the years since he had walked across that stage at Fort Benning and gotten his gold second lieutenant’s bars.

  He got a strange look from a young soldier who spotted the small shaved patch on his head. Hollister decided he didn’t want to explain it and announced, “B-52 wound.”

  Toothpaste and cigars for Kurzikowski. Hollister himself needed razor blades, soap, stationery, and envelopes—all the PX had was the silly-looking stuff with the drawing of a soldier and an Asian wearing a conical hat in the corner of each sheet. Under the imprint it read: PROUDLY SERVING IN THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM. There was little choice, so Hollister took it. He needed a new watchband to replace the one he had broken on patrol, so he moved to yet another line at the watch counter.

  And there was more: stacks of stereos, cameras, watches, jewelry, and useless uniform items—useless, that is, unless you were stationed in the rear.

  Hollister looked over a TEAC tape deck and remembered the one his hooch mate had had on his first tour. He remembered the fallen hoochmate, too. It tugged at him and took away his enthusiasm for the stereo equipment.

  He knew the flimsy paper bags the merchandise came in wouldn’t make the trip back to Cu Chi, so he bought two zippered two-handled AWOL bags. After stuffing all the things he needed to get into one of them, he made one last pass around the single-room PX for anything else. Sure, there was plenty he wanted, but he resisted spending the money.

  Across the dirt street from the PX was the Class VI Store. Class VI stores were the only places in Vietnam where soldiers could buy bottled booze and not pay the outrageous prices charged on the black market.

  Inside, Hollister waited in another line to buy a few bottles of Scotch to take back to Cu Chi. He also bought a bottle of Wild Turkey to leave at Sergeant Major Carey’s office.

  He knew Carey had the job of putting the right people in the right places for over two hundred thousand slots in Vietnam. He felt that Carey had made the LRPs a special case. He wanted him to know he appreciated it.

  Hollister pulled his ration card from his wallet and checked the number of bottles he was authorized to purchase. He was well within his limit since some of the booze he had back at Cu Chi had been bought by others for him when they had made similar trips to Long Binh and Saigon.

  The water in the latrine that serviced the BOQ was clean enough, but smelled of some kind of petroleum product. Hollister didn’t much care. All he wanted to do was wash some of the collected grime off his face and hands before meeting Sangean at the club.

  Back in the BOQ he realized he had a few minutes before he had to meet his boss. He considered using the time to write, or at least start, a letter to Susan or his folks.

  He decided to compromise, take some writing paper with him to the club, get some writing done, have a drink, and wait for Major Sangean.

  At that hour—sixteen hundred—the club was like it had been on his last visit, almost empty. He knew how fast it would transform inside an hour—the end of the business day. That the troops assigned to the headquarters tasked with supporting the LRPs would call it a day at retreat and head for the clubs, of which there were several, and proceed to get shit-faced drunk angered him. All the while LRPs were out in the field worrying about the likelihood of being compromised and knowing the only hopes they had of evening out the score were reaction time and supporting fires. And these two things came from a headquarters that was overworked when people were at their duty stations.

  The waitress came to his table at the corner of the plywood bar and took his order. He decided to try to keep it light, so he ordered a San Miguel.

  “No hab,” she said.

  “How about Crown?”

  “No hab,” again.

  “OB?”

  “No.”

  “Aussie beer?”

  “No.”

  “Thai?”

  “No, Dai Uy. You mus’ o’da what we hab,” she said—frustrated.

  “Okay, what do you hab?” He kidded her.

  It went past her. She stared up at the ceiling and tried to remember. “We hab Carling, Blatz, Ba Mui Ba, Bier La Rue, and Bud-wai.”

  “Scotch, then.”

  “Scotch?” she answered, her voice raised in protest. “Why you may me tell you beaucoup beer an’ then you o’da wi-key?”

  “’Cause I don’t like those brands of beer.”

  “Boo shid. They all da same kine. You jus’ mess wid me. You dinky dau. All GI dinky dau.”

  “Okay, I’m crazy. Now get your little fanny over to the bar, and get me some Scotch. I hardly care what kind. You just get it. Biet?”

  She harumphed, spun on the heel of her white plastic go-go boots, and wiggled her tiny behind all the way to the bar. He was sure it was for his benefit and that she was cocky enough to know he would be watching.

  Hollister pulled out his writing paper. He apologized to his parents for being so long between letters and told them how much he missed the farm, but probably not the cold, windy Kansas winter. He talked about Susan, about the weather in Vietnam, and about missing them. He didn’t mention the war. He didn’t talk about the dead LRPs. He didn’t talk about the Tet Offensive. He just wanted to tell them he loved them, was thinking about them, and missed them. He hated avoiding the war in his letters. But not as much as he hated the thought of seeing any more tears in his mother’s eyes. To him there was no point in making her worry more than she already was. He didn’t need to tell her anything about the war. She was a mother. If he died, she would know it before the army would.

  The letter to Susan he had started before he left Cu Chi. He was eager to tell her that he had tried to call her, then stopped himself. What good would it do to tell her he couldn’t get through? She would only get upset that they couldn’t speak.

  She had asked him about Tet. He decided to tell her that the stuff he had been picking up from the little news they got was a gross exaggeration of the truth. The NVA had not made a significant change in the course of the war—at least not his war.

  The headlines that were in every major U.S. paper claiming that the NVA had inflicted heavy losses on the Americans and South Vietnamese were simply wrong. The only thing the NVA did accomplish was to attack simultaneously fifty-six provincial headquarters and embarrass the American Intelligence community to a point it had never experienced before. He wanted her not to w
orry, not to think the North Vietnamese had made the war even more lethal than she had already guessed it was.

  The waitress came back and asked Hollister if he wanted another Scotch. He knew he had nothing important to do that night and not much scheduled for early the next morning. So he shoved the glass toward her and nodded yes.

  Major Sangean caught her on the way to the bar and told her to bring three doubles. In trail he had Peter Vance—still in khakis from stateside.

  Vance was unlike most of Hollister’s peers. Though he was young to be on the major’s list—only thirty—he looked older. His hairline had started failing him in high school, and his face and arms were weathered and taut from long days in an infantryman’s sun. Vance had a look that set him apart, too. He had a crescent-shaped scar near his left eye, the result of a grenade fragment that had caught him standing upright adjusting an air strike in an attack on a Special Forces A camp on his first tour in 1964.

  The scar, the slight squint, and his ever-present set jaw made him look as if he were in deep thought even when he wasn’t.

  Vance spotted Hollister and smiled broadly. “Well, I’ll be a sack of shit! I thought I’d washed you out of OCS, and then you turned up at the Ranger Department. When I thought they’d kill you there—you show up here.” He stuck his hand out and shook Hollister’s vigorously, holding on to the captain’s forearm with his other hand. His grip was as solid as his reputation.

  Since Hollister had graduated from OCS, Vance had already pulled two tours in Vietnam and one in Laos—on loan to a government agency that he wouldn’t be able to discuss in the club.

  Vance’s uniform read like a biography of his professional life. The Distinguished Service Cross topped four rows of combat ribbons sandwiched in between his CIB and his Master Parachutist wings.

  He had earned the DSC, America’s second highest award for valor, while serving as a company commander in the Airborne Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division. It was the same campaign that had killed Hollister’s OCS roommate—Kerry French. In it Vance had taken command of the remnants of a decimated infantry battalion and fought back a punishing attack launched by two North Vietnamese regiments just west of Pleiku. The battle was still being written about and would be studied in the years to come—a classic trap the Cav had walked into. Had it not been for Vance’s efforts to reorganize and counterattack, the Cav would have suffered losses so great that the stain on its combat record would never have been overcome.