Ritchie said, ‘OK.’ That’s all he said: ‘OK.’
Saul stepped up to the pier with his M16 in one hand and the radio in the other. He said to Ritchie, ‘My girl’s pregnant. Does that just take the cake or what?’
‘You should go home,’ he said unexpectedly.
‘I probably should,’ Saul said, and then he started hoofing it up the pier with Williams.
They walked through a very small village that seemed deserted. Four thatched houses were clustered together on a patch of brown, muddy ground. A bicycle wheel rusted in the rain. A basket of rotten vegetables sat overturned on a table. Sheldon photographed them, and walked on.
Saul took point, followed by Williams and then Sheldon. Saul was a good soldier. He paid attention, didn’t allow small things to distract him, and didn’t talk while they walked. But he was also in his early twenties, and so didn’t walk slowly enough, didn’t pay close-enough attention, and didn’t talk softly enough when he did open his mouth.
As the jungle opened into a small rice paddy, Saul took out a compass, took a bearing, and then pointed a little off to his left. He turned and looked behind him, right past Sheldon, and got a sense of the terrain they would see on their way back. This was a valuable lesson that Sheldon had been taught in Korea. Once again, his drill sergeant’s voice came back to him: ‘The reason nothing looks familiar when you’re heading back is because it isn’t. You’ve never seen it before, have you? If you don’t turn around, how will you know what to look for? Huh? You! Shithead! What’s the answer?’
On that day, it was another shithead. But it could have been Sheldon, and often was. By the time his own day came at Inchon, he’d be glad for the lessons he’d learned.
They smelled the plane before they found it. The F-4 had only been halfway through its bombing mission, and so went down with lot of fuel that burned with a different smell than napalm, rice paddies, cattle, and people. According to Herman, it was only a two on the ‘gag-o-meter’, whereas the rotting corpses of children in the hot sun was a nine.
A ten was saved for the smell of letters received from bureaucrats.
Saul couldn’t tell from the smell which direction they needed to travel. But soon they started to find pieces of the plane on the ground. Just little scraps at first, like bolts, and bits of twisted metal, but enough to know they were getting closer.
Sheldon looked at his watch. They’d only been in the jungle for fifteen minutes.
Saul directed them towards a small rise up the side. It was a good idea, because it gave them a more commanding view of the grid. Before they reached the top, Williams gave a whistle and said, ‘Over there. Check it out.’
Saul and Sheldon turned to their left, and there, about a half-click away across easy ground, were large chunks of the plane.
‘Anyone see the shithead pilot?’ Williams asked.
Saul pointed off to the left. ‘That could be the parachute.’
‘Right, then. Let’s go see if there are any pink bits in the cockpit first,’ said Williams.
As they were walking down the hill towards the jet, Sheldon made out an incongruous figure leaning against a tree by the side of the footpath. Saul walked right past him, as though he weren’t even there. As Williams approached, Sheldon shouted, ‘Herman, on your right.’
‘Oh, that’s just Bill. Forget about him. Fucker shows up all the time. Never helps, though.’
When Sheldon caught up, he saw that it was indeed Bill Harmon, his friend from New York. Bill was wearing shabby trousers, penny loafers, a blue button-down, and a Harris Tweed jacket. Bill did not show up during these trips between 1975 and 1980. It was only after he died that he popped up and chimed in. Only Sheldon wasn’t sure that Bill was really Bill. He looked like Bill. He had the same stupid things to say that Bill did, but he didn’t feel like Bill. His presence was both more vast and more juvenile at the same time. Bill, in life, had never left Sheldon feeling perturbed. This guy did.
‘What are you doing here, Bill?’
‘Antiquing.’
‘What?’
‘The French colonials were here for ages. Indochina has some amazing hidden treasures that I can get top dollar for back at the shop.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, and we’re in Vietnam. Of course I’m drunk. Want some?’
‘I got to go. We have to find the pilot.’
‘Pilot’s dead,’ said Bill. ‘They put a bullet in him before his parachute hit the ground. Very unsporting. There’s really no need for you to go on.’
‘So I’ll tell the guys and we can go back.’
‘They won’t believe you.’
‘Why? Are you the ghost of Christmas past?’ And without waiting for a reply, Donny shouted, ‘Hey, Williams. Hold up. The pilot’s dead. We should go back to the boat.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Bill said so. He knows.’
‘Can’t put your faith in Bill, Donny.’
‘But sometimes he’s right.’
‘Sure, but who knows when? Besides, it’s not my call.’
‘Well, then tell Saul.’
‘Fine.’
And so Herman told Saul, and Saul just shrugged and kept on going. After a few moments, though, he became pensive and stopped. For the first time on the trip, he turned and addressed his father directly.
‘What are you doing, Dad?’
‘I want us to go home. I want you to grow up.’
‘You should have thought of that before suggesting I come here.’
‘You’re right, and I’m sorry. But I never said you should go back. This second tour was all your idea.’
‘You don’t remember our conversation very well, do you?’
‘I might have said something about America being at war. But if I did, I didn’t mean you had to go back. You did your duty. More than most people.’
‘It was your idea to join me here. I can’t go back. I can’t write a report saying that Bill Harmon appeared in the woods and had the inside scoop on the pilot’s whereabouts.’
‘You loved Bill.’
‘Still do. But he’s hardly a quotable source, is he?’
‘This is madness!’
‘Your madness. So what’s it going to be? You heading back, or do you want to watch this play out?’
‘I want to be with you.’
‘Well, come on then. And be quiet. There are VC around here.’
And so they walked on, leaving Bill behind.
In what seemed like no time at all, they arrived at the plane. It hadn’t crashed straight down or managed a controlled landing. It had its bits shot off in mid-air, and it had fallen to the ground with the graceless tumble of a meteor.
The cockpit was somewhat intact, because that is how randomness works. Sheldon took a picture.
Saul, on some impulse, said, ‘Herman? Go check the cockpit. I’m gonna see about that parachute.’
Saul then turned to his father and said, ‘Well? You coming or staying?’
‘I want to be with you.’
What Saul wanted was to bring his shithead brother pilot home. That’s what he’d been sent to do, that’s what he had been trained to do, and that’s what he wanted to do. Because an American shouldn’t be rotting in some green pile of Asian compost. He should be home with his family.
The parachute was hanging from a very tall tree just at the end of the marshland that Saul and Sheldon had to cross in order to reach it. The pilot was black, which surprised both of them. You didn’t see many black pilots in 1974. And the pilot, like Bill had said, was dead. The poor bastard hadn’t even been given a chance to land. The Vietnamese didn’t understand the blacks. They had never seen anyone from Africa before. They thought they were whit
e men dyed black as camouflage. There were documented cases of the VC using steel brushes on these men, trying to get their blackness off.
‘Right, that’s it. Let’s go,’ said Sheldon.
‘We’ve got to get him down.’
‘No we don’t.’
‘Yes we do.’
‘No. We damn well don’t!’
‘You carried Mario home. You told his parents. His father hugged you and cried.’
‘I was on a secure beach. You’re in the jungle alone. This poor man here …’
‘Come on. Help me cut him down.’
‘Saul, be reasonable. The VC know you’re coming for the pilot. They know it, and there’s a 50-50 chance they got here before you.’
‘Then why not shoot me?’
‘Because an injured man needs to be carried, and that way they immobilise two or three men and not only one.’
‘Why not capture me?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
And then Saul got enraged, and everything came to a head. ‘There’s a negro hanging from a tree. A negro who is an American soldier. How do I let him stay there? How do I walk away from that man? Explain to me how I can walk away from him and still be your son, and I’ll do it. I swear I will.’
And, at this precious moment, Sheldon had nothing to say. Nothing at all.
So Saul swung his rifle across his chest like a bow, and started climbing the tree.
When he was high enough, he grabbed a branch, and used his service knife to slice away at the cords and silk of the parachute. The pilot’s feet were just over six feet from the ground. It wasn’t a long fall. Somehow, though, it felt like a slow one. A certain nausea came over Sheldon when the man tumbled to the ground.
As Sheldon watched, the first waves of resignation passed through him. He’d been here ‘on assignment’ so many times, watched this event so many times, that he knew both when and how terror comes. It would all happen soon now. In just a moment, Saul would start off down the only path towards the plane, just as Herman came up the same path — having burned some maps and papers to deprive the enemy of intelligence.
He knew what would come. Still, just in this moment, it had not happened yet. He was between the knowledge and the reality of what was to come — just where Cassandra found herself before it drove her mad. It was a precious moment. So precious that Sheldon delayed, allowing himself to sleep each night with this knowledge of what would happen.
During this moment — as Saul dropped from the tree and put his knife away, and took off the pilot’s dog tags and put them in the upper-left pocket of his own shirt — Sheldon watched as his son became a man.
It was not a grand moment. There were no witnesses to it. There were no heroics. It was merely a small gesture of dignity and respect between one man and another. And in that, for Sheldon, the possibility of a better world was created. All we had accomplished thus far — as little as it may have been — took place in the unseen and forgotten efforts of Corporal Saul Horowitz recovering the mortal remains of Lt Eli Johnson.
And so, before the end, there was a moment of grace.
In that moment, Sheldon raised the camera to his eye and took their picture.
The release of the shutter freed time to carry onward. Sheldon watched Saul step on the trip wire that set off the explosion that would kill his only child. He watched from a position in front of Saul and Eli Johnson, just off the footpath to their left.
When it happened, Herman came running up behind him and towards Saul.
The VC had packed the bombs with nails and ball bearings and — perversely — casings from American rifles they’d picked up off the ground from a previous battle.
All these items tore through Saul’s legs, his groin, and his lower torso.
Before the pain registered on his face he collapsed, because there were no longer bones, muscles, or ligaments to hold him up. Lt Johnson’s body came down on the side of the path, and would not be recovered by the team. Only his dog tags, in Saul’s pocket, would make it back to the US, his parents, and the coffin they would be buried in.
Herman screamed and started to cry almost immediately. He grabbed Saul by the lapels of his shirt and, with the strength of the terrified, hoisted him onto his back, much as Saul had carried Johnson, and Donny had carried Mario, and men throughout history have carried one another.
The shooting began as soon as Herman started running.
No one looked at Sheldon any more. No one paid him any heed at all. Even Bill was gone.
Herman ran a full click through the jungle, into the tiny village, out to the boat. Ritchie was manning the M60 and firing wildly into the woods to provide covering fire, but he didn’t know if there was even anyone there.
Trevor was still poised on the bench behind the Monk.
As soon as they were aboard, the boat started moving, and soon they were free of the land.
But it wasn’t over.
The Monk turned the boat around so they could open it up heading downstream, and put more distance between themselves and whatever was in the bushes.
Herman stuck a morphine syringe into Saul’s carotid artery and then stuck two pads on the femoral arteries of his legs.
This field dressing would keep Saul alive for three more days once the boat made it back to the port, but he would never regain consciousness.
Sheldon sat on the bench next to Trevor. There was nothing he could do for Saul — the son who had once stood on his lap to study his nose with the intensity of a scientist, and had put his fingers in his father’s joyful tears.
He watched passively as the boat rounded a bend towards a line of wooden rafts. He opened his eyes wide as machine-gun fire from those same rafts started pelting the hull.
As the bullets came in, the Monk let go of the wheel.
Trevor, who was already coiled, sprang forward and grabbed it, steering them directly towards the first raft at ramming speed.
The Monk impassively walked to the bow of the boat, stood upright at the prow, and then raised his arms like a Brazilian cliff diver, or Jesus and the criminals on their crosses.
Ritchie eviscerated one of the rafts with the M60. Splinters and the red spray of blood made a small cloud around it as the base broke apart.
Herman worked on Saul, Trevor piloted the boat, and the Monk stood there, untouched by man or movement as Saul bled.
This was Sheldon’s last vivid image in the dream. It was the one that woke him that night to talk with Mabel and ask his question. The one he still wakes with in the mornings. Somehow, the events of that day are not clear to him beyond this point. He knows the boat made it to safety. Saul was evacuated to Saigon, and died in the hospital. The letter was mailed as promised, and Rhea received her name. Trevor and Herman stayed on the boat until the end of their tour, and then went home.
The Monk never got shot. But one day, in another battle, he allegedly dived into the river and never came back up.
Chapter 10
They approach the small village of Flaskebekk over the port side, and Sheldon sails as close to the coast as he dares. He figures the coast guard won’t be interested in a small craft skirting the shore, and that the physical dangers are minimised in case something goes wrong. The weather is not going to change, and the current is not strong.
He has no idea, of course, what is under the surface, but one of the great benefits of the jon boat is its shallow draught. While not an especially seaworthy boat, it is an easy one to pilot.
The rifles he needs are named Moses and Aaron. The cannons they are named after, according to the guidebook that Sheldon leafs through on the voyage, are located at Oscarsborg Fortress on an island not too far ahead, called Søndre Kaholmen. Evidently, on 9 April 1940, the Germans sent a 14,000-ton warship called the Blücher into the
Oslo fjord to attack the capital, capture the king, and steal the national gold reserves. Though the fortress at Oscarsborg was poorly staffed and had limited defensive capabilities, it did have three 28-centimetre Krupp guns named Moses, Aaron, and Joshua, as well as a commanding officer who didn’t mind the odds.
As the ship came into the sound near Drøbak, Colonel Birger Eriksen and the few men under his command engaged the Blücher at eighteen hundred metres with Moses and Aaron. They only fired two shots, but they were decisive. The first round penetrated the hull, setting off the German ordnance and oil drums, and the second made it impossible for the ship to return fire.
As the ship burned on, the secret torpedo batteries on the island fired, sinking her and all hands from a range of only five hundred metres.
It is argued that Oscarsborg gave the government enough time to escape and form a resistance in exile that put Norway officially in the Allied camp. Norway soon fell to the Nazi invaders, and the puppet regime took over. Seven hundred and seventy-two Norwegian men, women, and children, who were Jewish, were rounded up by the Norwegian police and the Germans, and deported. Most were sent to Auschwitz.
Thirty-four survived.
Few of the Norwegian police received any punishment, and some were even kept on to retirement. The Holocaust itself was not on Norwegian university curricula for decades after the war. It took more than fifty years for Norway to build a national memorial commemorating the events, and a few more before the Norwegian Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies was opened.
The entire event, it seemed to Sheldon, was spoken of as though by witnesses, not participants. And where Norwegian actions were suspect, they were too easily dismissed in the easy memory of victimhood.
‘The question,’ Sheldon says aloud and looking south towards the Oscarsborg fort, ‘is whether we have enough gas to get there.’
The day draws on and on, and the sun never seems to move. Sheldon has never felt time pass so slowly. The entire journey from Oslo to just north of Drøbak is less than seventeen nautical miles, but time and distance on the water are a property of mind.
They sail for four hours before the small engine runs out of gas.
Norwegian by Night Page 12