One Very Hot Day

by David Halberstam

  Vietnam had troubled him with consistent regularity ever since; he had been pleased with the assignment to My Tho, that was where the action was; indeed, if he were a man easily embarrassed, he might be embarrassed by the letters he had written his wife in the first month (“they are a shy and sensitive people,” he had written, “and one must be always interested and trying to make an effort. And always formal. They like formality. It's part of their tradition and their culture. Some of the guys here get pretty chummy with their counterparts, and slap them on the back, but I don't think that goes over so very big. I think the better class of oriental people resent it”). At the beginning he had sometimes sensed the possibility of really contributing: he had had two of his suggestions accepted by his first counterpart, one a prize for the soldier with the cleanest rifle, a weekend trip to Saigon, was discontinued when the first recipient extended the weekend to three months. He had sensed a breakthrough at the beginning and had talked excitedly about this with the Deputy Division Adviser, a disappointed older man about to go home to retirement, who had waited through Anderson's enthusiastic discussion and then had said only, “Watch out for these goddamn people.” Anderson had not paid much attention to the Colonel and indeed he had thought of writing to his wife and telling her that he might reup for a second tour. He decided not to bring the subject up at the time; nevertheless, his letters continued to report on the gentleness of the people, the good humor of the soldiers, the charm of the children, children everywhere barefoot, bareass, laughing, begging for candy, grinning and even shouting out newly acquired American curses; in all, he was taken by what he decided was the purity of the country despite all the death and suffering. This sense had come to him one day early in his tour; it was in the second month and they had walked through most of Dinh Thuong province, mile after mile, with Beaupre complaining bitterly, “Jesus Christ, we have walked so far we must be in Cambodia. You speak any Cambodian, Anderson, you ask the next peasant how far to Phnom Penh.” But Anderson had not minded, he was still able to learn about the country, still reveled in the greenness, and he was charmed by the peasants shepherding thousands of baby ducks from one bog to another.

  On that hot day even his sweat felt good, clean and healthy. They had passed through three villages and were on their way to a fourth and were just outside it when Anderson saw some movement at a distance, a file of men, he decided; it couldn't be VC, he was sure of that, the VC would not move in such a tight file. He decided it must be Civil Guard but then as the file drew closer, he saw that they were not soldiers at all, not even men, they were young women astonishingly young and pretty, all dressed up in their ao dais in so many colors that for a moment the file looked like a moving rainbow. Then the two columns approached each other, only ten yards between them, the troops weighed down by their weapons, incredibly clumsy, and the girls dainty and graceful, no longer a rainbow, now a ballet troupe. He had a sense they were floating by. As they approached, Thuong shouted angrily at the troops telling them to keep their soldiers' mouths closed.

  “What is it?” Anderson asked.

  “A wedding,” Thuong said. “We still have time for it here.”

  For a moment as the two columns passed each other silently, Anderson wanted Thuong to stop so they could pay their respects and tend their best wishes; he was touched by the moment and proud of it, this was why he was here. But Thuong seemed to sense his question and shook his head and they walked on. As the two lines passed, the girls did not look at the troops, their eyes fell to the ground, but later he heard a light chorus of giggles. But Anderson was moved by this, and for a time it symbolized the country for him, so that later he was able to remember the wedding party and forget the soldiers who were saying, behind him:

  “There goes the last virgin in Vietnam.”

  “Ah, she will be thinking of you tonight, Phuong. You have just ruined her marriage.”

  “It is always the same.”

  The first month had been the high point of his tour, of seeing and touching and learning about the country. By the third month all real hope of a breakthrough was clearly ended; by this point he and Thuong were well into their long, difficult, almost torturous relationship, neither friend nor enemy, neither stranger nor confidant. The illusion of breakthrough was gone and Anderson was resigned to the frustrating daily task of being an adviser, of forgetting about big victories and trying to ward off big defeats. He reconciled himself to this surprisingly well; he looked for the positive side of the day and discounted the frustrations. Yet increasingly, he wondered whether he should have tried for Special Forces; there they had no trouble with the Vietnamese, they had all the money they wanted, and they ran the whole show. By the time he left for Vietnam, there was so much talk about Special Forces in the States that anyone not in the Army who heard of his assignment, automatically assumed that he was in Special Forces. His wife's letters indicated that the problem still existed; whenever her

  friends saw a television show on the Special Forces, they would call Mrs. Anderson and tell her to rush to the television because her husband might be on the show. Anderson was so enraged by this that he had written excessively detailed instructions on the mission and responsibilities of both advisers and Special Forces, letters sufficiently detailed to resemble field manuals, and noted that Special Forces came in twelve-man teams: “two officers, nine enlisted men, and one television cameraman.” His wife, surprised by the intensity of these letters, faithfully reported it to her friends, who just as faithfully continued to call her whenever there was a television special on the Special Forces. Indeed, pinned up over Anderson's bunk was a long article from a major magazine about a Special Forces camp which had been overrun, quoting a lieutenant there as saying: “All I want now is the Combat Infantryman's Badge” and underlined with Anderson's own comments: “Then come on down here to the Delta and earn it.”

  At times like this, he thought as he prodded the troops, he envied the Sneaky Petes, up there in the mountains where it was cool and with no Vietnamese, and with little montagnards who did whatever they ordered; he was not at all sure that they didn't have the best part of the war. It wasn't like that in the Delta, he thought: when they tell you about war, the one thing they never say is how slow it is.

  chapter three

  Beaupre was glad to leave the village; he was sure it belonged to the enemy and hated the folly of it all, sitting there having tea parties with the enemy, giving them medicine, being polite when they lied, smiling when they rubbed crap in our faces; all these villages were the same, with the same people, the same thin, mean, suspicious faces, the same lies and half lies; and every time they lied, he thought, we smile. They hate our goddamn guts, and they would as soon kill us as look at us; if Germans had looked at us like that in World War II, he thought, we would kill their asses right then and there; the Germans, he remembered, had been afraid to look at them like this. He remembered a Jewish platoon sergeant who, when he came to his first village in Germany, had assembled about ten villagers and had given them orders in Yiddish, telling them to smile, to stop smiling, to smile again, to frown, to cry, and to smile. Then when it was over the sergeant had walked away and had started to cry himself, weeping that we were all too soft, too nice, too gentle.

  Side by side now he walked with Anderson after the village, still angry and uneasy.

  “Goddamn, but I'm tired of getting crapped on in this country,” Beaupre said. “They sit there and crap on us, and after we leave they sit back and laugh how they did it.”

  “You think you're any different from me,” Anderson said. “You think we like it, any of the rest of us. You think the Vietnamese like it?”

  “But they put up with it. They take it, and because they take it, we take it. And the more we take it, the more we get. These goddamn Vietcong see it. They see when we walk in that here's an outfit that takes crap, and so they give us more, and we take more, and we'll take more tomorrow; and the more we take, the more they hate us. No wonder we don'
t get any damn respect.” Why here they come again, he thought bitterly, that nice government company; the one that took so much last time and they liked it so much, and now they're back for more, and they got that Beaupre with them. Sonny, go back in the hut and bring out that extra sack of it we've been saving.

  “That's the name of the game, taking crap, being nice, being patient. That's why we're here, and that's what we're paid for, and it's my job and it's your job, and you're senior to me which means you get paid a little better for taking a little more of it.”

  “You still believe that,” Beaupre said. “Don't you ever learn that the people who teach you that crap don't believe it, they're the last people to believe it. Don't you know that the officer who gave you the lecture on how not to screw Vietnamese women in small towns because it's bad for public relations, he's the first man to find himself a Vietnamese moose; that's why he was picked, because he's an authority on the way life really is, he's the only man back there who can give that particular lecture with a straight face. Haven't I taught you that if nothing else? Don't you know those people up in Saigon don't give a damn about winning friends, but it's their job to make you think it's important, and so they go ahead and they give those lessons.”

  “You'd be more of an authority on that subject than I would, Captain.”

  “You bet your goddamn ass. I'm more of an authority on that subject, on a lot of subjects, than you are.”

  “Sure you are, and you'd be tough. You wouldn't take any crap from them. You'd stand up to them, and if they didn't behave and show you the proper respect and smile, you'd take them back to My Tho, and you'd make Vietcong out of every single one of them, Captain. But you'd be tough.”

  “You can't make Vietcong out of them. They're already Vietcong and they were Vietcong back when you were still in West Point, Lieutenant. They've been what they are a lot longer than you've been what you are.” Some war, he thought, smile at all the peasants, be good, be nice. The Ipana War. What did you do in that Vietnam war? Killed three VC, and kissed 346 peasants.

  They separated, each of them angry at the other and angry at themselves for this burst of feeling. It was unusual; they had never been friends, there were too many differences in background and style for that, but there had been some mutual respect and most of their anger and their hostility and their difference in philosophy had been kept in the background. Occasionally it would come to the fore, but rarely with such feeling as now, and they both regarded it as a mistake and they were embarrassed by it. There were enough real enemies in this country without fighting each other. So instinctively they moved away from each other to cool down.

  Beaupre walked ahead, relieved now. If nothing else, he could have his first drink; he had, he realized, teased himself with the water; he had passed the first discipline of the day, and now each minute was an additional victory. But his thirst was terrible and he felt the power of the heat. So far his legs were responding well and were not wobbly. But it was as if he were surrounded and enclosed by the heat, a prisoner of it. The sweat rolled off his face and he could stick his tongue out and taste it; the sweat was in his eyes, and he felt under his hat, his hair soaked through (he was losing his hair, and he was convinced that because of Vietnam it was falling out even quicker, that enclosed under his hat there was a sort of Turkish bath taking place and his hair was being driven out). The stains under his armpits were gone; simply the rest of his uniform had caught up with the stains, from a distance his uniform looked just slightly darker than all the others. In the process he had started with the stain under his armpits, then a stain on the backside of his ass, then a stain at his knees, and then a stain around the rim of his hat, until finally his whole uniform was soaked. He looked at his watch and wondered whether he could hold out for ten minutes more. He tried, looking at the Viets, and saw that only a few of them were touched by light dabs of sweat. He made it for six more minutes, and then took his canteen, opened it and drank. He was surprised by the desperation with which he took the water, and then to his shock, by how much he had taken. When he restored the canteen, it was much much lighter.

  He checked his watch and realized it was time to check in with the CP. He sought Anderson, who carried the radio and told him to check with the CP (the Colonel had instituted the practice of American radios; most other advisory units depended on the Vietnamese radio communications but the Colonel wanted his own network; he knew the Vietnamese disliked it, but he thought it kept them more honest and kept them moving, and that it might save lives). Anderson got on the radio, and the CP came in very clear: no contact, east or north.

  “What about the helicopters?” Anderson asked.

  “Nothing there,” the CP said. “It was a perfect landing, just perfect.”

  “Why so perfect?” Anderson said.

  "Nothing there,” the CP said. “Big William says it's a chopper pilot's holiday. All three lifts came in without a shot being fired. Another day, another piastre.”

  “If it was so goddamn perfect, where are all the VC?”

  “Just a long hot walk in the sun,” the Lieutenant said. It was one of his favorite phrases. Beaupre nodded; so his fear had been wasted: he had been frightened of the helicopters because he had studied the war, and studied in particular its death, and had finally decided that the most dangerous part was the heliborne assault when you landed in the open and they might be dug in and ready. The advisory staff had not lost many men, but most of them, he was sure, without an exact count, had been in circumstances like that. He believed if you walked in, with company- or battalion-size units, the chances of death were slimmer, much slimmer. So this time he had been too smart. Now his unit would have to walk longer and further on the ground than the heliborne units, which not only meant a longer battle with the other enemy, the sun, but also that the factor of death was now against his unit instead of the Rangers because the heliborne unit was larger and therefore less likely to be hit.

  Anderson, he noticed, seemed happier with the news. He had missed nothing, after all, had not been cheated. He had missed a drama and then had found it had not taken place.

  “More goose eggs,” said Anderson. He was not yet cynical about death, but he no longer was fooled by these operations, and sometimes Beaupre sensed that he might come to like Anderson yet, perhaps by the end of the tour. Perhaps if his wife wasn't so blonde and pretty and tanned, and if there were one photograph of her instead of three, if she didn't write the Lieutenant twice a day, perhaps if she didn't, as the Lieutenant kept confiding to Beaupre, keep writing, saying she hoped he would return so she could be pregnant and have twins. In contrast there was no photograph over his own bureau and there were almost never any letters for him. He did not really know about his marriage. It was not very good, and he did not like to think about it. When they had first asked him to come back to counter-guerrilla warfare, he had agreed, in part because of his marriage: perhaps the tour would save it or finish it, he had thought in a vague way at the time, although he was not sure which he really wanted. This war, which solved so little else, would not solve his marital problems either, he suspected.

  “But you don't like the helicopters very much,” Anderson said.

  “No,” said Beaupre, “no, I don't.”

  “How come?”

  He wondered if he could tell him all; that it was not just helicopters, that it was everything new about this war; helicopters, spotter dogs which were guaranteed to find VC but were driven insane by the heat and bit Americans instead, water purification people, psywar people, civilians in military clothes, military in civilian clothes, words which said one thing and always meant another, all these things, and particularly helicopters, nowhere to hide in a helicopter, you try to get your ass down in a helicopter and it's still in the same place, exposed, worse, elevated for them, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, all too modern for him.

  “Because it was designed so they can see you better than you can see them. Check it out, you'll find it was Communists
who invented the helicopter,” he said.

  He moved back toward the point and told Anderson to watch the tail part of the file. The heat had already begun to take its effect; it was not so much that his legs were tired, but that he was glad now that the Vietnamese went so slowly. He wondered why he did this, why he went out on these operations. The Colonel, after all, had given him a way out; he was not going to be promoted, it would make no difference in what little was left of his career, and no difference either in what little there was of this war. He would not save the war, he had no illusions there; and he had been offered a gentle way out by the Colonel. He saw himself as a man without false pride, yet here he was walking where he didn't want to walk in a war he didn't want to fight; he cursed his foolishness and his pride which had brought him here — it was the kind of false pride he ascribed to people like Anderson. As he walked he thought of the Colonel's offer to pull him back; right now he could be back at the CP talking on the radio, giving off kindly assurances to angry men in the field — stay in there, don't sweat it, nobody here expects the impossible, arguing with the helicopter people, telling them how safe the LZs were, and all the time drinking great glasses of the iced tea the Colonel kept there (a practice started by his predecessor who had learned that when Saigon generals dropped in they always liked to have a glass to drink, and iced tea was better than water). He was, he knew, probably the most cynical of the officers in My Tho, and yet here he was, one of the handful walking through the operations, and probably the only one walking who would never get a promotion and who already had the combat infantry badge. He took another drink of water. He kept walking, and sweating, and he was just about to reach for the canteen again when they walked into the rain.