by Dale A. Dye
“The other one looked like she’d been pulling butts for a flamethrower,” Willy interrupted with a chuckle. He was feeling better than he had for weeks just listening to Spike, feeling his enthusiasm, sharing the joy of good memories from a bad place.
“Now this is no shit,” Spike continued. “So there’s only these two skivvy-girls available that time of night. Naturally, given the choice between the two of us, the foxy one plops down on my lap and the monster moves in on Willy Pud. “
“Which is about the time I started thinking about money,” Willy said. “And it seems I had exactly none.”
“Yeah…he tells me right there when we’re about to do business that he’s dead broke, see? I ask him what happened to his cash, and Willy tells me this sob story about how he had to send it all home…his old man needed an operation or something. He looks all sad and dead serious, so I’m buying it, right? I’m fairly flush, so I pull out a wad of MPC and hand him a bunch of it.”
“Just helping a buddy through tough times,” Eddie Miller said. “That’s what you do.”
“Yeah, there it is. So I give him a wad of cash. Now you got to remember it only costs about twenty bucks to get laid at the going rate in Danang. Willy’s got about a hundred of my money in his hot little hand.” A waitress arrived with more beer and began to clear their plates so Spike paused to light a cigarette until she was out of earshot.
“Now here he sits with this ogre on his knee and he keeps looking over at the pretty young thing sitting in my lap. So Willy Pud, gets all teary-eyed, you know, and thanks me for lending him the money—and then the asshole leans over to my girl and promises her the whole hundred he’s holding if she’ll shit-can me and go with him!”
“Which she promptly did….” Willy laughed at Benjamin’s shocked expression. “Tell him the truth.”
“Damn straight she did,” Benjamin said. “And I wound up with the female Fu Manchu. Lucky I didn’t get a dose of the clap. If I could have found you in that whorehouse, I would have kicked your ass, Willy Pud.”
“Funny how we always wind up talking about the comical stuff,” Eddie Miller said while he poured beer into their mugs. “You get a few of us together and that’s what you hear, you know? The bullshit we did in the rear or the stupid pranks just to deal with boredom. Everybody remembers the combat but we just don’t usually talk about it much.”
“No surprise to me,” Willy Pud shrugged. “Some of the crap we went through, you know, there just ain’t the right words…”
“And among old bush-beasts like us, words aren’t necessary.” Spike Benjamin lifted his glass and they toasted. The three of them sat for a few minutes in silence, basking in the glow of a common bond, shared experiences beyond what most humans could claim.
“You never said why you’re here, Willy Pud. Is this just a visit or are you planning on staying a while?”
“Depends, Spike, on a lot of things. I need to talk to you about that pretty soon.” He reached into a paper sack on the bench beside him. “But first…I brought something for you.”
“What the hell is this?” Spike opened the bag and revealed a cardboard tube. There was a stencil in white on the side: Grenade, Hand, Fragmentation, M-26, HE, Comp B.
“It’s a grenade canister, Spike. You’ve seen enough of ’em to remember.”
“Hated these fucking things,” Benjamin said to Miller, shaking the tube and then setting it down on the table. “It always seemed like every time somebody tossed a frag, I wound up catching shrapnel.”
“You might like what’s inside a little better.”
Spike twisted the top off the tube and pulled out the ostrich-hide leather belt that Willy Pud had specially made by a craftsman in Chicago. The hide was dyed black, exotic and beautiful, but Spike was focused on the buckle. It was a square, nickel alloy, interlocking affair bearing a raised, five-pointed star, an NVA belt buckle, one of the most coveted souvenirs among Vietnam combat veterans.
“Damn, that’s sweet.” Eddie Miller said. “That’s an officer’s buckle. You don’t see too many of them.”
“No, you don’t.” Spike Benjamin said looking at the belt. “I always wanted one, but never managed to get to one before the grunts claimed it.”
Willy Pud knew he’d done the right thing by his old friend. The belt had been expensive and cut into his cash, but the expression on Benjamin’s face was worth every penny he’d spent. “I remembered you wanted one,” he said, “so when I decided to come see you, I just pulled that buckle out of my souvenir stash and had a guy make up the belt. You’re still skinny as a rake, so I think it should fit.”
“I really don’t know what to say, Willy Pud…and I’m a guy who’s always supposed to know what to say. Thanks, man.”
“That’s enough.” Willy watched Spike stand, strip the belt he was wearing on his khakis and thread the new one through the loops. He twirled to show it off to his friends. “What do you think?”
“If you had the rest of the NVA uniform, I’d shoot your ass,” Eddie Miller said. “I’m jealous.”
Benjamin reclaimed his seat and his beer staring at Willy Pud. “Don’t tell me this is the one—you remember—from that time down on Go Noi Island?”
“One and the same, Spike. I’ve had it a long time…keeping it for you.”
“Damn, Go Noi…” Eddie Miller shivered. “I remember that fucking place.”
“Bad spot,” Willy confirmed. “Spike and me were operating down there one time in late ’68, I think it was. We were out on one of those Sparrow-Hawk quick-insert deals where you jump on the gooks before they can hide from sight. We’re stumbling around on those little islands down around Go Noi and we run right up on a regimental CP. Shit hits the fan, we’re way outnumbered and screaming for air and arty. Ammo is running low so me and Spike start digging around among the wounded and gathering up all the spare ammo we can find. We’re out there running around and the gooks start dumping eighty-deuce mortars on us, see? So we duck into this bunker to get out of the shrapnel fan, right?”
“And the bunker happens to be occupied,” Benjamin laughed, “by two highly pissed NVA officers.”
“Yeah, and one of them is aiming a pistol at my face. So Spike strips off one his cameras and smacks the guy in the gourd with it. Then he grabs the dude’s pistol and empties it into him.”
“Unfortunately, the other guy was a bit quicker on the draw.” Spike reached under the table to rub his thigh. “He winged a shot at me on the way out of the bunker and caught me in the thigh just below the nuts.”
“And that ain’t the end of it,” Willy said. “I’m trying to drag him out and screaming for a Corpsman…and all Spike wants to do is go back down into that bunker and get the officer’s belt-buckle. He was still bitching about it when we loaded him on the medevac.”
“You went back and got it, didn’t you?” Spike smiled at his old friend, thinking about the risk that must have involved in the middle of a major firefight.”
“Yeah. I would have given it to you before but I just forgot, I guess. When I saw your byline and found out where you were…well, hell, I just dug that buckle out of my gear and decided to get it to you. Better late than never…”
“You dumb-shit! You mean you came all the way down here just to give me this belt buckle?”
“Well, yeah…that and one other thing.”
“What other thing?”
Willy Pud glanced at Eddie Miller and decided it was safe enough to talk. He didn’t know the St. Louis cop very well, but the man seemed trustworthy, a kindred spirit that could keep his mouth shut. And having a cop around might prove handy.
“Listen, Eddie, we’re about to talk about something here that’s gonna sound unbelievable. It’s something important and it’s something that we can’t go around talking about in public—at least for a while.”
“You want me to split, just say the word. I get it…and if it’s some kind of atrocity or something like t
hat, I probably don’t want to hear it anyway. Who needs another My Lai?”
“It’s serious stuff, Eddie, but you’re welcome to stick around and listen. I don’t think you’re gonna like what you hear, but maybe you’d want to give me and Spike a hand with it. A cop might be able to keep us on track.”
Miller just nodded and picked up his glass. “I’m in for the story. We’ll see after that.”
Spike Benjamin dawdled with his beer mug and stared across the table at Willy Pud. “I’ve got a feeling I know what’s coming,” he said. “Salt and Pepper…”
“Yeah…it’s time we talked about it, Spike.”
“You sure, Willy Pud? Last I heard the subject was classified higher than H-bomb specs.”
“It’s been kicking my ass ever since I came home and got out of the Marine Corps, Spike. I don’t know how much more of this crap I can stand with people thinking we’re all a bunch of ticking time-bombs and psycho-vets. We ain’t the criminals, man. They are—and it’s time people found out about it.”
“Why?”
“Why? Spike, there has to be some justice in this fucked up world. That’s why.”
“And you want me to help you tell the story, Willy Pud? Write something for the papers about it? You think any editor in the world is gonna believe we actually saw two American turncoats fighting with the enemy over there?”
“Oh, shit.” Eddie Miller drained his beer. “I think I get it. Is that what we’re talking about here? I heard stories about a couple of guys who were supposedly fighting with the gooks.”
“Yeah, so did practically everybody else who was any kind of line-dog in the Nam.” Benjamin shook his head and lit a cigarette from the pack on the table between them. “It was standard Vietnam folklore. Every swinging dick had a story about how he’d seen two roundeyes fighting with the gooks. Usually, a white guy and a splib dude.”
“There it is, Eddie…except me and Spike happen to know it wasn’t myth. We saw those guys and Spike got pictures.”
“No shit?”
“No shit…and I was interviewed by some senior MACV officer who took my sworn statement about Salt and Pepper. I was told the whole thing was classified Top Secret. They hushed it up and took all of Spike’s pictures.”
“They gotta be dead, right? Or we’d have heard something.”
“Why? Why would the Army or the government want to admit something like that, Eddie?”
“Guess they wouldn’t. They got enough trouble as it is. The whole damn country is sick to death of stories about Vietnam.”
“I don’t give a shit about that. I want some justice. I think the guys who got torn up or died over there deserve to know about Salt and Pepper.” Willy Pud looked at his friends and thumped the flat of his hand on the table. “And I need to tell this story. I need to put it to rest…me, personally…so I can live with myself in some kind of peace.”
“Willy, we don’t even know who they were!” Spike Benjamin stared up at a ceiling fan. “Even if we could get somebody interested in this, we’d need to have some names, you know, some proof that we weren’t just blowing smoke.”
“Well, you pack some leverage with the Medal of Honor and all.” Miller said. “And Spike’s a solid reporter with a good rep, but I don’t know, man. I’m a cop, you know? I deal in evidence. Let me run it down like a prosecutor, OK?”
When Willy and Spike Benjamin nodded, Eddie Miller began to tick points off on his fingers. “So, what have we got? We’re alleging that a major felony was committed, serious business like treason, OK? We’ve got two eyewitnesses to that crime but no proof that it was committed as described. Everything that would support the allegations is classified and unavailable as far as we know. There’s no physical evidence that the alleged crime ever occurred. No names of the alleged perps, so we can’t go there. We don’t even have a bunch of upright citizens screaming for justice. If I was the DA, I’d bounce the case and refuse to prosecute.”
“We got victims, Eddie.”
“How’s that? Who’s hurt?”
“The way I see it, in this case every man who served over there is a victim. How about all the dudes who died serving honorably? How about their families? How about us…” Willy jabbed a thumb at himself and Spike Benjamin, “if you need to narrow it down.”
“And you think telling this story is somehow gonna help with that?
“Let me tell you what I think.” Spike Benjamin slammed his beer glass on the table and looked at his fellow veterans sitting across the table. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I think over the next decade or so there’s gonna be a concerted effort in this country to forget there ever was a Vietnam, or a war over there, or Americans who fought and died in it. That’s a shame…and the poor bastards who will have to live with the shame are the veterans. I think this country fucked around in Southeast Asia and gave birth to a brood of bastard children, literally and figuratively. Now we find ourselves trying to cope with crap like amnesty for draft dodgers, broken families, hordes of Vietnamese refugees all over the country. We’ve got way too damn many Vietnam Vets suffering with memories that they try to keep at bay with too much booze or smack, living hard and killing themselves.
“And the worst thing is…” Spike Benjamin drained his beer and wiped at his mouth with a sleeve. There was a wild gleam in his eyes that had nothing to do with alcohol. “The worst thing is that people are just ignoring all that like it wasn’t there all around them. Nobody is going to learn the lessons, you know? Nobody is going to stand up and point to Vietnam the next time somebody wants us to get involved in a limited war we can’t ever win.”
“That’s it Spike.” Willy Pud put his hand on Benjamin’s wrist. “That’s why we have to tell this story. We’ve got to make people pull their heads out of the sand. We’ve got to show them who the bad guys were in all this. It ain’t us. We’re the good warriors who had to fight a bad war.”
“So what’s the plan?” Eddie Miller shrugged and looked around the table. “Anybody got one? How are we gonna build a credible case?”
“We start digging,” Spike said. “We start digging hard and deep.”
“That’s a long shot, Spike. You guys said everything was policed up and classified after your patrol.”
“Not quite,” Spike said. “I got away with one negative. And that’s where we start.”
j
It was a long night but Willy Pud, Spike Benjamin, and Eddie Miller managed to form a task force the next morning. They moved Willy’s gear from Miller’s apartment to Spike’s renovated townhouse in mid-city and went to work, gulping black coffee around a low table in Spike’s den.
“Jesus, we gotta slow down on the good times,” Willy said as he swallowed a couple of aspirin. His mouth felt like the Russian Army had marched across his tongue in muddy boots. “No more celebrations until we’ve got something to celebrate.” He handed Eddie Miller a sheet of notebook paper covered with names and guesses about hometowns.
“This is everyone who was on the recon mission with you?”
“Yeah, that one there…the one I underlined…Hampton…was KIA. You’re looking at Spike and me. The other three guys could be anywhere if they’re still alive.”
“Likely any of them stayed in the Marine Corps?”
“Doubtful…but it’s easy enough to check.” Willy made a note to make some calls later in the day. He’d throw a little Medal of Honor weight at Marine headquarters.
“What about your Company Commander? You said he knew about the mission and why you ran it, right?”
“Damn, I forgot about the Skipper.” Willy jotted a name in his notes. “His name was Stacy…Phillip A., I think. He was from some place in Oklahoma…near Ardmore. I heard he extended over there. I’ll check that when I call about the other guys.”
Eddie scanned the list and shrugged. “There’s a couple of guys I know over at the Federal Building who owe me a favor or two. I can probably get the FBI to run
a check on these names and request a search through NCIC. If they fucked up anywhere along the line, we’ll get some leads—presuming they didn’t get blown away after you left.”
“I’ll check the names against the KIA data,” Spike said. “It’s easy enough for me to get access to that. If they got killed, we scratch them off the list and we save some time.”
“Yeah…and if they’re dead, we are minus a witness.”
“You guys refine the plan,” Spike said as he drained his coffee and stood. “I’ve got to go upstairs and print us a very important picture.”
“So first step is to try and find Ledsome, Goodman, and Purdy,” Eddie said and checked the time. “I’ve got to go on duty pretty soon. I’ll stop by the FBI offices sometime during the watch. You back me up with Headquarters, Marine Corps and we’ll compare notes tonight.”
“It’s a start…”
Willy was searching for phone numbers to start calling when Spike called down to them from upstairs.
“You guys come on up and take a look at this.”
In his well-appointed little dark room on the top floor of the townhouse, Spike stood blinking and wiping his hands on an old shop towel. “I’ve got the bastards framed,” he said pointing at a black and white print hanging from an overhead wire. “It’s a blow-up and a little grainy. As soon as the print dries, we’ll take it down and get a closer look.”
They stood around trying to see something in the gloom and inhaling the pungent chemical smells until Spike wiped the print with a soft sponge and laid it gently on a towel-wrapped board. “This is just a first effort,” he said. “Once we see what we’ve got, I’ll enlarge and try to bring up some better detail.” They carried the wet print down the spiral staircase to his desk in the den. Spike snapped on a light and the shadows they’d seen upstairs took form. “There they are—Salt and Pepper—the rotten bastards.”
They all leaned in trying to absorb details from the print. It was all new to Eddie Miller, but painfully familiar to Spike and Willy Pud. There was the hulking black man humping extra RPG rounds and towering over nearby NVA troopers caught in Spike’s frame. The white man with badly repaired GI glasses teetering on his nose was a little farther ahead of him and wearing a VC bush hat. The details were surprisingly clear despite the enlargement from a 35mm negative. There were no weapons trained on the two men, and they wore no manacles or ropes to indicate they might be prisoners doing forced labor. These guys were playing on the enemy side when Spike’s camera caught them at it.