by Gayle Rivers
I was mesmerized. I felt myself sinking into the gun at my shoulder. My chin found comfort on the stock like a sleepy head on a pillow. Nothing else mattered now. The rest of the world retreated beyond my sight. There was just me, the weapon, and this
guy-
I pulled off . • . one . . . two . . . three. I drew him from his head to his waist. Ping, ping, ping. I cut him in half. While he was still thinking about the first bullet, the third was tearing into his stomach. The guy's reflexes were still happening, but he was already dead.
In a way, it was quite funny. I was watching a human being who had as much chance as anybody. But he never really had any chance at all, so why bother to move in the first place. Because he was just a normal guy trying to survive an environment he did not want to be in anyway.
I felt completely a winner. I had beaten the opposition, won the game. I snapped out of it, and I was back on the road.
Everyone was firing. Prather jumped to his feet and ran in among them, blasting away from the hip. He was over the top now; he did not care what happened. We finished them off in two minutes without being touched. They wore parts of American uniforms and carried a mixture of arms, mostly new,
mostly American. Tan identified them as Cambodian. We fell back into the trees and waited for the next lot; we were in no condition to run. No one came.
Finally Prather went down the road. A minute after he had disappeared out of sight around a bend, we heard a high-pitched scream. There were more around the corner, I thought, and Prather had shot one. But no weapon had been fired.
"Help me," Prather called out.
At first we could not see him. Then he appeared in the middle of the road, dragging along on his stomach.
"Help me! Someone come and get me!"
"Don't anybody move!" I said.
"Please! For Christ's sake, come and get me!"
For all I knew, there were a dozen guns trained on him.
"It's a booby trap. I'm hit by a booby trap. There's no one here. But booby traps."
Jackson climbed to his feet and started for Prather, One of the Cambodians on the road surfaced and fired at Jackson. He missed. Morrosco shot the man. And he kept firing. Round after round thudded through the lifeless body. I knocked the barrel down to the ground. Tan ran past Jackson and Prather and went around the corner. I heard two grenades go off. He ran back to us.
"There's nobody else. I set off more booby traps, so watch out."
One by one, we joined the prostrate Prather on the road. He had been speared through the side by a stake the size of a night stick. It had entered the flesh above his hip, and the point was exiting beside his kidney. We dragged him to the side of the road and debated leaving the stake in him for fear of dragging out his stomach or kidneys, and because he was not bleeding. But no one could carry this spear in his side. "Pull it out! Out!" he cried hysterically. He began to tremble so much we could hardly hold on to him. I looked at Tan. He hit Prather a vicious
punch in the temple. Prather fell back unconscious. Morrosco staggered forward and fell down beside Prather.
"Bring Wiley forward," I said to Jackson.
"Why don't you bastards let us die," Morrosco said. "Leave us alone. Let us both die. What's the point anymore?'*
"Get Morrosco out of here," I told Tan.
He led Morrosco away just as Jackson brought Wiley forward. Wiley was very calm. He felt that death was a matter of waiting, and he was prepared to wait.
"Morrosco is in terrible shape," I told him. "Look after him. Keep him quiet."
"He needs me. I'll take care of him. Until it all ends. Where is he?"
Jackson led Wiley to Morrosco's side. Wiley spoke softly to Morrosco, calming him.
"All right, here we go," I said to Tan. "As I lift the point of the stake, you cut the flesh behind it."
As soon as Tan started cutting, the bleeding began. The pain brought Prather around, so Jackson sat across his chest while we worked. By the time the stake was out, Prather's entire side was exposed. The stake had rested on the hip bone but hit no vital organs. We improvised 1 a bandage and tied him tightly.
We gathered weapons and stripped the bodies of their uniforms and put them on. By now we were dressed half in uniform, half in peasant garb. We put a complete uniform on Prather. Night was approaching. We moved down a trail in what we hoped was an easterly direction. We gave up on Highway 9; from what we had seen, we could expect ambush at every bend in the road. Prather could walk, though he went into delayed shock an hour later. Wiley could see enough from one eye that he did not have to be led. It was a good thing we did not have the physical burden of carrying these two, because the booby traps had shattered us mentally. Because we could never outwit luck. I saw Wiley pouring water from his canteen over his face. It went through my mind to stop
him, but I did not bother. Even water seemed unimportant now.
We started to break into the hamlet of Ban Palai. We needed that place more than we had needed any stop on the trip,'and we passed it by; we were too weak to face any resistance. We continued east until we could go no farther. We fell out by a river for the rest of that night and part of the following day. The sound of crying and moaning never ceased.
I carried wounds for a hundred men, and I was the fittest of us all. As I listened to the cries of men I had lived with for three months, my resolve to survive redoubled. I would see this thing through. I would carry these men until somebody, somewhere in an American uniform would have to welcome us. Or look me in the eye and kill me. Nobody else was going to kill me. I had Stacey's face before me. The briefers ...
We pushed out at noon the next day. The men were impossible to move with words, so I got up and started to leave, and they decided to come with me. Morrosco begged to be left to die, but Wiley made him come. No one could have slowed us down, because none of us could move faster than the others. Wiley had never panicked from his loss of sight, and now he was almost serene. He had a strange application, where he felt he was going nowhere, so there was nothing to see. He devoted himself to Morrosco. I think going blind had had an effect on him similar to mine at the river when I stopped for water. His values had changed. There was nothing more important to him than the men around him. And his inner thoughts, I supposed. I did not know.
We were moving along hill contours, still hoping to go to Ban Houaysan. We stopped once, and I tried the radio. It was transmitting as before, but we were not getting feedback, even as static. We were too low. I decided to leave the others and climb to high terrain to the east for transmission. I would catch them up or meet them at the airfield.
"You're not leaving," Tan said.
"We stay together," Jackson said.
"We'll never separate again," Wiley said.
We walked together into high ground, onto an eastward-facing slope. I transmitted for half an hour, and this time we were heard. The response was worse than ever; our batteries were failing. I was calling out for someone to come and save our lives, and all the answer we got was white sound. I could stand it no longer.
"Listen to me!" I screamed into the mouthpiece. "Five Fingers! We've been to China. To kill Giap. Rivers. Prather. Wiley. Morrosco. Jackson. Tan." I hesitated. "Toliver. We want out! Get me the White House. I want the White House to get us out of here. Nixon. Westmoreland. They sent us in here. They get us out, or I'm going to kill them. Do you hear me? Kill them! Stacey. Tell Stacey he's a dead man. Five Fingers!..."
Jackson took the microphone away from me and put one hand on my shoulder.
We returned to Highway 9. I was ready to push off when Tan brought me up short.
"Why are we going to take the highway to the airport? It's safer and shorter across the countryside."
"Don't ask me why anything anymore."
We set out on a direct bearing toward Ban Houaysan. We passed under the road once, then lost sight of it. Helicopters passed behind us, moving very fast. Half an hour later, we saw a massive bunch of choppers to the s
outh, along the highlands. Then Skyraiders carrying out an attack to the northwest. It looked as if there was a major battle raging along the border.
I decided again to go to high ground on my own and transmit. I walked away with the radio, and no one tried to stop me. But the hill was murder to climb because of my leg. Half an hour later, Tan was beside me. He took the radio and sent me back to the others. He kept his weapon and ammunition and gave me the rest of his gear. I watched him go, then turned down
the hill. His belt dragged on the ground, his canteen banged into my leg. It was hot. The gear was heavy. I dropped it and walked on. Tan came back a quarter of an hour later, moving very fast.
"I couldn't get to the top. There's NVA ahead of us. Directly in our path, between us and the airfield. We've got to get out of here."
"Where do we go then?"
"Let's go to Vietnam."
"How far?"
"Ten miles. Five maybe. You could see it if you went high enough. Just across the river."
"What do we do when we get there?"
"Whatever."
We forgot about the airfield. We decided to break into one last hamlet, rejuvenate ourselves, make one final effort with the radio, then push for the border. We would cross the river and move to high ground, hopefully to be picked up. We went into the first hamlet we reached after nightfall. The peasants were terrified; they babbled about a VC unit that had been through, asking if a NVA unit had made an arms drop for them. Obviously both units would be coming back. We cranked up our radio once more, but the batteries were flat. The head man kept begging us to leave. We ransacked the place for food and bandages, with the villagers frantically trying to clean up behind us. We wrapped Morrosco in clean clothes and moved straight out. We expected to hit the border that night or early the next morning; it was very near, but we were moving bloody slowly. We sought high ground so that when the sun came up, we could look down on the border.
A VC unit overtook us on the trail. We went to ground. As they filed past, Morrosco began to shake and whimper. His body shrank as if he were curled up against the bullets that were about to slam into him. I leapt on him and clamped his mouth with my hand. I tried to intimidate him by putting my face
down on his, but Morrosco was preparing himself to die. His eyes were rolling as if he did not know I was there. This made me very angry, because I was determined to get as many of us out as possible. I knew we were coming up to the last effort I would ever get out of these guys. They all promised only to keep moving until we were in South Vietnam. Then the hell with it.
We did not have much left to fight with. Jackson and I were leaning on Prather for support. Morrosco's bowels never ceased flowing, and he was growing weaker with each step. Tan's malaria was worse; he and Prather never stopped shaking.
We reached the border at daybreak. When the sun rose, we had Vietnam before us. As we rested on an outcrop overlooking the Nam Mo Valley, I asked myself why we should go on. Why not try the ratfio again, transmit from here? And wait to be picked up. It would be easier than moving this lot. Prather spoke before I could suggest it.
"We're going to make it," he said. "We're going to walk to that clearing over there. And sit there until they come and pick us up."
He pointed to a bare patch on a hill facing us about four miles away on the far side of the Nam Mo. His remark bowled me over. After all this struggle, it was so badly timed ... or was it? I looked to the others. Morrosco had not heard, or did not have the strength to reply. Wiley was going to walk as long as the rest of us did; progress, safety, home, none of it seemed to register with him. Tan's only reaction had been to stiffen perceptibly. I saw him gazing toward the far hill. Jackson exchanged glances with me.
"Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner . . ." Prather sang in a throaty, broken voice.
Prather raved on about the high road and the low road, and he was growing happier by the minute. The malarial shaking had gotten worse, and at first I thought he was delirious. But he was not talking
through a fever. He was believing it and was trying | to make us do the same, trying the old "chin up, 3 men" repertoire. I could not stand it. I dared not relax for one moment, or I was finished. I walked? away, out to where I could look to the east. I had a different purpose from the others—not different from' Tan perhaps—I was determined to see the faces that ; had sent us in. And I had the feeling that we were' not going to be allowed to make it home.
"Come on, Pete," I heard Prather say. "TodayV the last day. We walk up that hill, and it's all over. Barry and I will help you. We'll stay with you. There's j only a little more now."
Jackson joined me.
"We should be running into Yanks soon," I said.
"That's a pretty view," he answered.
I looked out and saw it for the first time. Vietnam j stretched before us green and lush. The Nam Mo j twisted below us like fallen tinsel. It was a spectacular I view. I started to talk about my home in New 1 Zealand.
"You know," Jackson said. "I'm never going home." J
"What do you mean?"
"I'm going to walk out of here, and I'm never j going back to America."
This was a wild statement for a guy who was . . • , well, he was not now the Green Beret I had left with. I think I had misjudged the depth of Jackson's insight, 1 or it had grown as the trip progressed.
"Those sons-of-bitches . . . those sons-of-bitches . . t | and I'll never know ..." he said.
Was he talking about not learning? Or about dying? I was in no frame of mind to dig and pry and discuss. We were just having one of those conversations where two people are thinking aloud to one another.
Jackson returned to the others, and I sat there on my own. I was roused out of my reverie by a swoop of jets taking up the attack where they had left off the night before. They came rushing out of nowhere j and hit the ground very hard due north of us. I made
Up my mind to get to the far hill and bleed the radio dry and shout and go no farther.
We moved out. We had almost no gear left. I had an Armalite, but had lost the shotgun somewhere. I still had my sidearm, but I had thrown Tan's away the day before. Prather was carrying an Armalite, but he had no clips. The others were all very low on ammunition. We stumbled down to the Nam Mo in half an hour. The river was deep and very swift. We walked up and down for an hour without finding a good crossing point. We linked arms. Tan led us into the current. Halfway across our footing broke, and we were swept downstream for a hundred yards, still clinging to one another. The line swung around, and I made the shore first from the tail end. The others clambered ashore. Prather and Jackson had lost their weapons, and Morrosco his sidearm. We were virtually unarmed now.
Water had filled the bandages about Morrosco's waist; they must have felt like a lead weight, because he began tearing at them. The bandages were filled with excreta. He started bleeding profusely.
"Leave the goddamn bandages the way they are," Jackson shouted.
Morrosco pulled at another.
"I mean it," Jackson said, rising to one knee.
Morrosco stopped and fell back exhausted. I turned to Wiley. The water had washed away the dirt and encrusted blood, and I was filled with horror when I saw his condition. His entire face and one side of his neck were swollen like a goiter. One eye was blood red and rolled in to his nose. The other peeped through a slit in a great swollen lump of flesh. His nose was twisted and swollen twice its size.
We lay by the riverbank, then panicked briefly when someone mentioned the radio. The dialing face had been smashed, but the radio still worked. We struck out for the last bare patch, three miles away.
When we got high, we saw people by the river behind us. From the distance, they looked like VC.
They must have followed us all night. They were! searching for a crossing point. We lost sight of themi as we crested a ridge.
Prather grew stronger with every step. He moved from one to the other of us, pulling us toward that distant clearing. We we
re making slow progress, so I left him to herd the others, and Tan and I climbed higher to use the radio.
We got immediate response to our transmission, though it was unintelligible. Someone had heard us earlier and was listening for us. I called out for help, giving rough co-ordinates as Tan fed them to me. I described the land we were standing on. Four miles east of the river. I yelled out that I could see helicopters to the south and off to the east.
"The batteries are going," Tan said.
"For bearing! For bearing!" I shouted. "Get a directional finder on us. For bearing ..."
The radio died. Tan and I played with it until the others caught up, then we abandoned it and continued to climb a hill like a thousand other hills we had climbed. We moved out on open shrubland, and the going grew easier.
We heard the crump of heavy artillery and the scream and whir of battle aircraft. We were within a quarter of a mile now of the clearing. I fell back to help Morrosco, and Prather pulled out slightly ahead of the rest of us. We could all see the clearing now; beyond that we would not go. Morrosco sagged, and I looked up for Prather to help. He was striding out with something close to a smile on his face. We had made it, he was telling himself. I could not stand even that little bit of carelessness, so I went forward to tell him to be more cautious, to slow down a bit. Prather was completely unarmed, his arms swinging freely at his side. He was rambling on and looking nowhere. And I saw his foot open up the ground .. . and an explosion rushed skyward . . . and Prather disappeared before my eyes.
CHAPTER 23
And where he had been, another mine came flying up . . . and another nearby . . . the sun was pouring through the trees and seemed to freeze the metal cylinders in time....