The Return: A Novel of Vietnam

by Charles W. Sasser

  He gestured toward the pigpen in case I missed the reference.

  A stinging rebuke formed on the tip of my tongue. It never came. Instead, we were abruptly distracted by a sudden fierce clatter of distant rifle fire. It came from down-canal to our right flank, from the approach corridor of the Shit City SEALs and Viet Frogmen. Earlier, there had been isolated, intermittent fire, but it now sounded as though the indigent unit called Lien Doc Nguoi Nhai had walked into something significant. Mortar explosions punctuated the unseen firefight.

  Somebody was getting his ass kicked.

  I grinned tightly at Sgt. Wallace when, minutes later, as though choreographed, an even more fierce firefight broke out to our left flank, from the direction in which Bravo’s hammering platoons were approaching. Apparently, Captain Bruton the Crouton’s plan worked. VC trapped between all of us were getting the shit kicked out of them.

  “It’ll soon be over,” I predicted. “Wallace, Dog, get back to your men and hold what you got until we receive word to be extracted.”

  “How we goin to receive the word?” Dog grumbled as he trudged off. “By carrier pigeon?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  I supported myself heavily on Doctor Cochran’s bamboo fence, feeling weak and nauseated and so old, so damned old. Old men tire easily. As a thirty-year-old army grunt lieutenant, I had humped the boonies all over AO Kudzu. Today, I merely walked from Van’s taxi at the canal, down the length of Vam Tho’s main street to Cochran’s clinic, and I felt more exhausted than ever I had after a two- or three-day patrol in Charlie Land. Standing there, gazing the length of Vam Tho to the black Honda that had apparently followed me out from Saigon, I craved nothing except to lie down and sleep. Sleep for the rest of my life, for the rest of eternity.

  “It’s the living shits, Pollack,” Pete had complained during one of our old man Florida walks. Every day, we changed into hiking shoes and soiled sweats—my shirt read Army, his Navy and drove down to the Arrowhead Mall and walked the mall with all the other gray hairs and blue hairs.

  “What’s the living shits, Pete?” I cajoled him.

  “God must have a warped sense of humor. It don’t matter a damned what kind of man you were or how you lived, we all get the same treatment at the end of life—hernias, hemorrhoids, heart trouble, flab and old age.”

  “I always begged Elizabeth to shoot me if I ever mentioned moving to Florida to retire,” I responded sympathetically. “Guess where we ended up? It was just too damned cold to live up north. In a way I’m glad she didn’t live to see how it’s turning out for you and me. God, Pete! How I hate getting old. People don’t even look at you anymore. It’s like you’re already gone, that you’re not worth even a second look anymore. I’d like to grab one of these hardbody young studs, lock his heels, and tell him, ‘Hey, asshole. I used to look like you. One of these days, you’ll get old too.”’

  “Why bother?” Pete said. He stuck out his chest and pumped his arms as we passed between Sears and a potted plant where a toddler in a stroller with a pacifier in its mouth was reaching up to tug on its mother’s short skirt. She had nice legs. Neither of us was too old to notice that.

  “I used to get on a boner that lasted all night,” Pete reflected. A lewd grin twisted the scar on his lip.

  “Now it takes you all night to get one.”

  “Maybe it takes you all night.”

  “You’re trying to tell me—“

  “Shut up, Pollack, and walk. It uses up too much breath to walk and talk at the same time. Besides, if I see some more legs and the blood rushes from my head to my dick, I’m liable to fall out on this march.”

  Twice around the mall, three times on a good day, and then back to Pete’s for a few beers while Mhai watched us from her revered place on the wall.

  It occurred to me that I had walked much farther today than from Van’s taxi to C. C. Cochran’s clinic. I had, instead, walked back more than thirty years in time. Back to a time and a place I swore to forget ever happened or ever existed.

  Instinctively, subconsciously, I let my eyes scan the banana grove where the old commie had disappeared from the parked black Honda. Where long ago, VC sniped at us and taunted us beneath approaching monsoon clouds. I noticed there were now clouds far off in the south, black clouds, and they appeared to be hurdling toward me at the same extraordinary speed as on that previous day. I thought I detected movement among the trees, but my eyesight was not nearly as good as it had been. It was likely only shadow, a play of light and shade and breeze through the palm fronds. The black Honda on the other side of the canal seemed to be absorbing all the light out of the sky and turning it into darkness. A breeze stirred dust in the street.

  Vietnam had ended at Vam Tho for both Pete and me, separately but together in a very real way. It ended in events whose ghosts and demons both of us carried with us, Pete to his grave. Perhaps it would have been better had I stayed home and died the same way. What difference did it really make, now, who Mhai was or what happened to her? What good could possibly come from disturbing the old pratas in Vam Tho?

  But once the doors to the past are reopened, it is difficult to close them again.

  On this side of the parked vehicles, on this side of the canal, was where Doc Steinmeyer had laid out Sgt. Holtzauer and Bugs Wortham for treatment. The berm that protected them against sniper fire was still there, but it appeared lower now, and rounded down with age. Its shoulders, like mine, were slumping.

  I never meant for things to get out of control the way they had. I shivered as Bugs’ screaming from the past rocked my present. He just kept screaming. He wouldn’t shut up.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Bugs screamed and he screamed, like he was on his way to hell with the image of the girl and her pregnant mother they killed flogging him on his way to eternal damnation. Bugs Wortham went mad that day in Vam Tho. His screaming sharpened nerves to jagged edges. Even the VC in the banana trees became unnerved by it. Their mimicking and mocking ceased. Instead, one of them shouted, “Dinky dow. Shut up! Shut up! Shut UP!”

  That ignited Sgt. Tolliver. He laid his trigger on full auto and burned up an entire mag of 5.56 shooting into the trees.

  “Motherfuckers!” he roared. The veins in his neck popped out. His face turned purple.

  “Hold your fire!” I yelled at him.

  “Shut them up, Lieutenant!” he yelled back. “Shut him up!”

  He rolled over on his back and lay in the weeds panting. He pressed his palms against his ears.

  “Shut him up, willya, Lt. Kaz?” he pleaded. “Please shut the motherfucker up.”

  “LT., I can’t shoot any more morphine in him,” Doc Steimeyer protested. “It’ll kill him sure if I give him anymore.”

  “Is he dying?”

  “He will if we don’t get him med-evac’d. Septicemia doesn’t take long to set in when you have your gut split open.”

  Bugs kept screaming. Men began reacting to it, and to their fears, anger and frustration it brought out in them. Sgt. Wallace, who had been out trying to soothe the men, came loping back through the middle of the village. He went directly to Bugs, grabbing him by his bloody combat shirt and yanking him up from the ground. His head lolled back on its skinny chicken’s neck and the shriek that tore out of his ruptured bowels came from nowhere on this earth.

  “You turd!” Wallace bellowed into his face. “The least you can do is fuckin die like a man.

  The Doc and I jerked Wallace away. Bugs slumped back to the ground.

  “Mother Kaz, you can hear him screaming from everywhere in the village. Do you know what it’s doin to the troops, sir? It’s shakin hell out of them. They’re startin to think about Mangrum and Sgt. Richardson and all the others that have got it. You got to get him med-evac’d outa here.”

  “It’s almost over,” I assured him. “Listen. You can hear our guys kicking ass out there.”

  Sgt. Wallace looked at me gravely. “Sir, have you been listenin?” he asked. �
�Listen real careful. Them are mortar rounds goin off out there.”

  That was when it struck me. Those were mortar explosions dominating the din of the two separate battles, one involving our own Bravo platoons on the left forward flank, the other involving the Viet Frogs and SEALs on the right

  “We don’t have any mortars on this ops,” Wallace said. “You can hear M16s and M60s, but there seems to be more AK-47s and -50s bangin than our weapons. It sounds to me like we’re outnumbered and outgunned. If the gooks are gettin creamed, don’t you think the cocksuckers in the banana trees would be pullin out instead of hangin around?”

  That was a good point. While we were setting our hammers and anvils to catch this Commander Minh fella, he had developed enough intel to set his own traps for us. Murphy’s Law. Anything that could go wrong, would.

  “Sir? Lt. Kaz?” The tone of Bubba Lawmaster’s voice indicated we hadn’t seen anything yet. The RTO had turned pale.

  “Sir, I’m pickin up somethin on the radio. Just snatches of it. Dalton Salton is tryin to get through on the air to the FSB for artillery support, but he can’t reach them. He’s been jammed same as us, and it looks like the helicopters are grounded because of the storm comin. Sir, it sounds like Captain Bruton is tryin to call 155s down on his own position. Sir, our platoons out there are in some deep shit.”

  My hands trembled as I lighted a cigarette to help calm my nerves. Sgt. Wallace watched me. I gave him the pack and he shook out a smoke for himself. His thick lips barely moved.

  “L. T., they’ve got us surrounded. The gooks are goin to kick Bravo’s ass out there—then they’re comin for us.”

  They’re comin for us.

  No one out there that day beneath the black clouds could possibly realize the chilling impact of those few words, nor what effect they exerted on a platoon of American GIs faced with the possibility of our own extermination.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Never in my life had I wanted to go back to that day.

  I stood at Doctor Cochran’s bamboo fence and perspiration stung my eyes. I failed to hear Bonnie My’s approach, so preoccupied had I become with the past. She touched me lightly on the arm. I pivoted to confront the threat, an effort that caused instant dizziness. Bonnie My jumped back to regard me curiously.

  “For goo’ness sake,” she gasped. “Lunch is serve.”

  I raked the back of my hand across my forehead. The day was hot, but not that hot.

  “I’m sorry if I gave you a start,” I apologized.

  “You were such in deep thought. You were thinking perhaps of Lt. Pete?”

  “Yes.” I leaned against the fence until the dizziness went away.

  “My husband is bringing more tea,” Bonnie My said. I followed her obediently back to the little garden table and chairs, relieved by her interruption. Doctor Cochran looked ready to return to Pete’s and his side of the events that occurred on that different day. I was happy to let him. It allowed me to postpone my own confrontation with the past, maybe even to avoid it altogether.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  So far, VC hiding in the jungle were only firing harassment at the slowly-moving company of Nguoi Nhai from Shit City. As a few more VC bullets whistled past, Sgt. Piss Hole, tired of it, pointed down the path from which the shots came.

  “Bac-si, bang di!” he ordered a grenadier, who popped a 40mm M79 grenade arching downrange toward the unseen target. The explosion and puff of smoke in a clump of trees caused a temporary cessation of sniping.

  Expression fixed and determined, Pete called a halt to discuss tactics with Ensign Cochran and Piss Hole. He squatted on his haunches, Viet style, and doodled in the dust with a stick.

  “Minh knew we were coming and was waiting for us,” he said. “The way I see it, our longest hump is back toward the river. I’m sure that’s what Minh expects. He’ll have us cut off by now and will try to lure us into an ambush. That leaves us one other alternative. Our best bet, I think, is to keep going and try to link up with the army at Vam Tho. Minh will try to stop us, but...”

  He left the thought unfinished. No need to spell it out.

  “If I don’t miss my guess,” he added, “Captain Bruton is being faced with the same decision about now.”

  Neither Cochran nor Piss Hole offered a better plan. Pete glanced at the sky, which had grown increasingly threatening as the morning progressed. An occasional raindrop squeezed from the bruised and swollen sky, but so far the deluge held off. Combat soldiers normally hated rain. However, a real canal-swelling, mud-making, blinding gully-washer today might be exactly made to order.

  “Let’s cast off,” Pete said, standing and tossing his doodling stick aside.

  The column slowed as it inched its way caterpillar-style toward Vam Tho, bunching up when the lead squads came to a high patch of reeds that lay on both sides of a small canal. They were not going to blindly enter the sight-masking reeds. Piss Hole ordered both sides of the canal doused with M79 steel before the company moved out once more. Previous Nguoi Nhai bravado was rapidly slipping away as they found themselves the hunted instead of the hunters.

  They crossed the canal in waist-deep water and mounted the pile of mud on the other side. To the front stretched a large rice paddy that extended all the way to Canal Six on the left, a distance of roughly five hundred meters. Vam Tho still lay out of sight down the canal and through more forest.

  On the right, the shallow intersecting canal they had just crossed curved abruptly away from them to edge that side of the rice field. Congealed with wild bamboo and elephant grass, it cut across in front of where a small farmers’ village squatted in a thick grove of coconut palms. The hooches were about eight hundred meters away across open land.

  Pete halted the element while he studied the situation. Either way they went begged for trouble. They couldn’t risk crossing the clearing and exposing themselves to fire from all sides. At the same time, Pete calculated, Minh likely had troops set up in the trees on both sides of the rice paddy waiting for the invaders to be funneled into traps. More enemy soldiers had been seen earlier hurrying to the rear to close off that avenue. Pete had to hand it to Minh; his tactics were flawless. Of course, they only worked if a commander had had advance intelligence.

  Suddenly, the rattle of automatic weapons shattering the morning calm eliminated further time or need for speculation. Minh wasn’t waiting; he was going to call the shots. Canal Six came alive with the flicker and flash of weapons. The air filled with hissing, snapping bullets. Pete and Ensign Cochran dropped into a crouch and turned toward the canal, from which came the wall of bullets cutting into bamboo and reeds around them like a horde of vicious, deadly locusts. Bits of leaves and grass filled the air.

  Nguoi Nhai took cover behind the mud mound and opened return fire in the direction of the distant enemy. Tinh, whose frustrations had built during his morning’s sojourn on point, sprang on top of the bank. Screaming his hate at the VC who had caused his recent disfavor, he emptied his Ml 6 in a long burst, churning up water and mud as the unaimed bullets struck a short distance to his front. He hoisted his empty rifle aloft in defiance before jumping back behind cover and grinning at Pete as though he had redeemed himself by his act of courage.

  The range was too great for accuracy, for either side. Enemy rounds mostly passed overhead or struck short to make a lethal rain shower all over the field. But they were accomplishing their purpose. Pete grabbed his young exec.

  “They’re trying to fix us in place, C.C.!” he shouted above the din of the long-distance firefight. “Get ’em moving! Let’s get the hell out!”

  Cochran’s eyes stretched wide from alarm. “Where?” he cried.

  “We can’t let ’em pin us down.” He pointed at the hooches and grove of palms.

  “Through there. It’s our only way. Follow the canal around to the hooches. We’ll try to sweep wide to reach Vam Tho.”

  The two Americans and Piss Hole ran up and down the canal bank yelling and waving for
the Nguoi Nhai to cease firing and move out. The Frogs, obsessed with the noise and power of firing their weapons, continued to pour a useless barrage of steel across the rice paddy and over the heads of VC entrenched at the other canal. Pete grabbed Viets by the backs of their fighting harnesses and slung them in the direction he wished them to go.

  At that moment, blending with the continuous sound of rifle and machine gun fire, came the dreaded Thunk! Thunk! of mortar tubes joining the fray. What the company’s leaders were unable to accomplish, the mortars did. Nguoi Nhai firing came to a ragged and stunned halt as the little soldiers buried their faces in the mud and looked to their Ohmja Nguoi Nhai for new direction. Under his leadership they had grown accustomed to being the aggressors, the victors, the dominant studs along the My Tho River. Even in the defeat at River Base 35, they were the ones who went in and rescued most of their brother Biet Hai before Commander Minh overran the outpost. The tide now seemed to be changing.

  The Ohmja Nguoi Nhai would think of something for them to do.

  The first mortar rounds burst in the paddy about two hundred meters away, making explosive geysers. The enemy quickly adjusted his aim and his range. Geysers began walking steadily toward the cowering Frogs, almost in time with the pounding of Ensign Cochran’s heart. His stomach tightened into a small compact knot as if it were trying to suck his whole being into it for protection. Shrapnel whistled and cut the air. Cochran found it hard to get his muscles to work.

  Pete’s shouting snapped him out of inertia. “Let’s go! Let’s go! Di-di mau! Di-di! Move! “

  The hesitant Frogs finally stirred. The main body, led by Cochran and Piss Hole and driven from the rear by Pete, kept low within the banks of the shallow canal. Mud sucked at their boots, sapping strength, as they jogged to where the canal curved back toward the palms and hooches. One small group found the going too slow and tiring. It thought to make a run for the hooches by seeking the higher-level ground of a trail that followed the top of the bank. Among this group was Tinh, still attempting to demonstrate his loyalty and courage.