One Very Hot Day

by David Halberstam

  They ate in silence for a few minutes, and then Thuong, as though suddenly embarrassed, began to talk about himself, and to praise Anderson. He was a good soldier, a fine officer, if Thuong were Anderson's colonel, he would be proud to have a young officer like him; besides there would be jobs and countries ahead where people would be more grateful for his help; he was, after all, learning more lessons than he realized in Vietnam and what he was learning here, even the difficulties and the frustrations, would help him and he would be able to benefit from them. Someday he would be in another country and someone would ask him where he had served, he would answer Vietnam, and the other would say, “Ah, that is not only a brave man, but a patient one as well.” They parted that night friends for the first time, with Thuong protesting strongly about the failure to eat fresh shrimp, and a promise that they would return again when the shrimp would be there to eat a happier meal.

  But the promise was never fulfilled. Two days later, on another operation, Thuong had been nicer and gentler with him but no longer forthcoming. The ease of the previous evening was gone, and so too, soon was any benefit. It was as if Thuong were embarrassed by the weakness he had shown, and had retreated once more to his position of pride. The very fact that Anderson was such an excellent officer drove Thuong to a position of coolness and aloofness. Thuong was more aware of this than Anderson, aware of the fact that if Anderson were an inferior officer, if he were a Rainwater, then Thuong might be more pleasant to him, and that if Anderson weren't so nice, so constantly polite, Thuong might be more friendly to him. So they continued as uneasy counterparts and allies, Anderson working hard at the relationship. The harder he worked, the more aloof Thuong seemed to be, until Anderson himself would react and move back, show a coolness and occasionally become rude to Thuong. When this happened, Thuong would for a time become more pleasant with Anderson. Anderson belatedly in their relationship realized to a limited degree what was happening, but the other way was too much a part of him. He had been brought up a certain way to treat people in one manner, particularly people who were not so well off as he was. He could not, even for the sake of his job, even for the professionalism which he sought so much and wanted so badly, change twenty-five years of his background and upbringing. It was too high a price to pay; he was willing to pay with his life in this country, but he was unable to change this one weakness. He could not behave like a bastard with a yellow man in a poor country. So from time to time, largely because he could not control it, he would become angry and Thuong would react, but mostly he contented himself with fighting the struggle with kindness and losing with kindness.

  So it was that they continued like two intimate strangers. There was no disagreement about the war, no lack of respect for each other's courage, and they had only one serious fight. It came when Anderson had been in the country three months, on a day of crushing heat, when an entire squad had passed out from heat exhaustion. They had gone through two villages, parched and barren at that time as if the very life had been baked out of them. The third village had seemed routine, perhaps a few more women in it, and they too seemed baked out. Anderson had sprawled out as quickly as he could under a tree, too fired to move, and had fallen into a stupor bordering on sleep. He had been disturbed by some noise from the center of the hamlet, but it had faded quickly. Then it began to ring in his ears and refused to go away, like an alarm clock that he did not want to answer. It remained so insistent that finally he began to listen. First there was male shrillness, with a sort of giggle; then a higher shrillness, probably female, sharper and a little louder; then a voice, clearly male, not so shrill, giggling a little more; then even more female shrillness with real anger, the voice higher and higher; then male again, shrill no more, the giggle now a laugh, and then other laughs; and then finally once more the other voice, obviously female, now the pitch of a siren, hysterical. He was fascinated so that even in the heat he rose, stumbling at first, and walked toward the voices. There he found five women and fifteen soldiers arguing and shouting. The soldiers all seemed to have ducks and some of the women were fighting with them. One of the women still had her hands clasped to the neck of a duck, and the duck was being stretched between them. While they fought, she kicked, though at close range, because the neck of the duck was so short, and the soldier howled with laughter every time she kicked. Anderson watched them for a while, fascinated by the scene as all of it, detail by detail (there were chickens as well as ducks), stamped itself on his brain. It was widespread, not just one woman, one duck, one soldier; it seemed his entire company was against the village, a small village (how many ducks could they have?). It was widespread looting, nothing less, and Anderson was furious; he did not realize that it had started when the women had refused the soldiers water, a mistake they would never make again, even on the hottest of days. He watched in growing anger as the soldiers laughed and began to play and mock the women. Let's leave the ducks and take these young girls, said one soldier. Then one of the soldiers, seeing him there, not wanting him left out, the troops after all liked the American advisers, walked over and offered Anderson one of his two ducks, smiling conspiratorially at Anderson, they were both in this together, there were enough ducks to go around. Anderson declined the offer angrily and went to look for Thuong.

  Thuong was at the far end of the village, which was unusual because normally he was in a position where he could watch the entire company; the significance of this, that Thuong had sensed something and wanted no part of it, did not strike Anderson until the next day. Thuong was very genial; he shifted in his place, making room for Anderson. He recalled Anderson's prediction made much earlier in the day about the heat ahead, when he Thuong had not sensed this. He recalled his own boyhood days when it was this hot, riding water buffaloes if you were lucky; he had loved water buffaloes in those days, and had ridden them without a thought of fear; now when he was older and stronger he was afraid of them. He talked and Anderson tried to break in, but Anderson, still true to his upbringing, was polite, and Thuong continued. Ah, the water buffaloes, when he was young they seemed so big that it was impossible since you were small to imagine anything that big could be stupid, but now he knew that size was not important, he knew how stupid these animals were. Anderson, bewildered by this man, usually so reticent, finally blurted out that there was a fight between the troops and the villagers. Thuong was surprised. His troops? His troops never stole. But Anderson insisted, good old American insistence, he had seen it, perhaps twenty ducks and chickens. Thuong smiled, a little indulgently this time; it wasn't possible, there weren't that many ducks in a hamlet like this. But, said Anderson, he had seen it. You are teasing me, said Thuong, you shouldn't tease a Vietnamese officer on a hot day. But Anderson insisted, the hands were on the ducks' necks, he had seen it.

  Finally, Thuong, annoyed now, a look of irritation on his face, waited and then asked Anderson how many times a month he was paid. Once, said Anderson. When was that, Thuong said, still innocently. The first of the month. That was interesting, said Thuong, all armies are alike, are they not. It was the same for the troops here, though of course there were no checks here, even for officers. The trouble was, and Lieutenant Anderson must excuse him, because this had happened from time to time before, it was certainly not the proper way to run an army, and Thuong was the first to realize it, but what could he do, but it was a poor country, the trouble was, they had not been paid, and now it was the fifth of the month. Of course they could complain to the President, but that was not considered wise. So they are paying themselves, drawing their salaries. They are not really stealing chickens, Thuong said.

  So there is really nothing I can do, he said, although I am sorry for the villagers.

  Normally, Anderson would have taken it, as he had taken everything else. But he was angry and bitter, and the hot weather had affected him too.

  “Sure,” he said, “sure you're right, and I'm touched by the way you explain it. It makes it easy to understand. Only why don't you fight it?
Fight Saigon. Fight Dang. Fight Co. But don't fight these poor damn people. Why don't you stop your troops, Lieutenant?”

  “I am glad you care more about my people than I do, Lieutenant.”

  “And I am sorry I do.”

  With that they had walked away but it had gone very deep.

  Thuong sensed the betrayal of the operation. He had more experience with it than the Americans. It had happened before to him in this war and when it had first happened, he had experienced anger and bitterness, but now he felt more fatigue than anger; it was the price of this war of Vietnamese against Vietnamese. The men on both sides, after all, looked the same, even to other Vietnamese, and it was not only impossible to tell in a man's eyes what cause his heart was committed to, but he had lost track of the morality; it was impossible also to say which was the higher purpose and the higher duty. They were now more blurred than before. When he was younger and it had first happened, he had felt a certain passion; someone was betraying not only himself but his colleagues and his men. He had gone back to Headquarters charged up, like a lawyer entering a courtroom. He came with facts, arguments, suspicions, and without doubts. He had his own suspect, a deputy officer in plans; had he not first called attention to the area and suggested the operation, was he not sullen and did he not seem to lack enthusiasm for the war, had he not been passed over and made to be disgruntled? And so Thuong privately made his suggestion, forgetting in the process those very qualities of his own which had placed him under so much suspicion, hindered his own career; in his anger he had become one of them. Then there had been a slip, and one of the government's agents had tipped them off by chance to the real betrayer, a young officer in the logistics section, a perfect officer, an upper class Catholic, enthusiastic without being aggressive, properly polite to all — even to Thuong, who was something of a rebel. The perfect agent, nothing wrong on the outside, the outside perfect, different only on the inside, in the hatred for everything he had seen and known in his upbringing. He was discovered and disposed of, and the other officer, to whom Thuong had confided his suspicions, asked him if he still thought of himself as a counter-intelligence agent, and for a time afterward referred to him as “Monsieur Deuxieme Bureau.”

  The experience had jolted Thuong; he had never again prejudged the suspect, and more important, he had learned to trust almost nobody. Of all operations Thuong distrusted provincial operations like this the most. He considered most of the province chiefs lazy and indifferent to their staffs; a little flattery to a superior and a younger officer was likely to be in a secure position forever. In addition, if something went wrong, as perhaps it was going wrong that day, it would be very hard for the Division to bring any pressure on the province chief. The province chief, no matter what happened today, would react and defend his own. It regarded the Division as virtually an enemy, and it was not about to lose face. So the province chief could call Saigon and tell the Presidency what had happened (it was the one thing in the province which always worked, the telephone line to the Presidency), and before nightfall the Presidency would call Co. The voice would be sharp and stern and brief. Co must tend to the Division and stay out of the business of the province chief; he was not to enter into politics, he was to fight the war. Their one victory out of this would be that they need not go on a provincial operation again for about six months. They could abstain and the province chief would be wary of calling Saigon (if he called, the Presidency would tell him to stay in his province and attend to politics and not try and run the army); then in the seventh month they would both have to confer on an operation for fear the other would complain to Saigon. They would schedule an operation and he, Thuong, and all the other little Thuongs, would go ahead and walk through some operation, not knowing whose hands it had gone through, not knowing if someone were sitting back and watching them (a year earlier in the Twenty-first Division, they had captured a Vietcong after-action report of a betrayed operation in which the VC, alerted beforehand to the government's moves, had complained about the tardiness of the Arvin to arrive at a certain checkpoint, and cited poor leadership as the reason).

  Thuong had once complained about these provincial operations to Chinh who was the commander of the battalion now on the East Wing.

  “What are you complaining about?” said Chinh.

  “These betrayals,” said Thuong.

  “Betrayals,” said Chinh. “Why worry. It happens once a year, twice a year. Not very often. What do you expect, Thuong, perfection? Do you expect our officers not to talk? They are Vietnamese like you and me. Maybe it's me who's tipped it off, by being so pleased with the idea of an operation that I make love to my wife too many times, and so the houseboy knows and perhaps he is a Vietcong. But I cannot kill the houseboy and I cannot stop making love to the wife, so the only answer is to kill more Vietcong. It is foolish to talk about betrayal.”

  So Thuong walked among the troops flying to make them more alert, trying to make them sharper in the deadening heat.

  “They got twenty out of your sister company,” he said, as he moved among them. “Would you like me to pick twenty out of this company for them? I can tell you which twenty, the lazy and stupid ones. You, you, and you. Do you want to die here today, die on such a hot day, or do you want to go back to your women as heroes?”

  “The women already know we are heroes,” said one of them.

  “The women are smarter than you think. They come to me and they say how can Private Thuan be such a hero as he claims when he is so weak and lazy at home. They want me to explain to them,” Thuong said.

  chapter six

  At noon they stopped for lunch just outside their second village, Ap Thanh; it had been one of the smaller victories of Beaupre and Anderson that they had convinced Dang to keep the troops out of villages at lunchtime; otherwise the village inevitably supplied the menu. Beaupre had two sandwiches, thick slabs of ham prepared by the mess sergeant (in the beginning when he had come to them, the bread was always soaking wet; so the next time he would place them higher on his body to keep them dry, and, of course, they would still be wet; now he wrapped them and sealed them in a plastic wrapper). They were dry, but they looked so heavy and in the heat he could not bear the thought of eating, and he put them aside. Dang offered him some rice, and at first he turned it down, but Dang was insistent. It was not the day to eat American food, it was the day to eat Vietnamese food. Dang would not eat rice if he were in the north of Beaupre's country, and so Beaupre relented and gratefully began to eat a little rice and then a little more; then Dang offered him a simple soup broth and he drank that, and was revived slightly.

  “Our American warrior, Beaupre, will make a good Vietnamese soldier before he leaves,” said Dang, and Beaupre smiled, and promised to take Dang skiing in Vermont when he came to America, and they would eat ham instead of rice.

  “The Captain Beaupre is a skier?” Dang asked.

  No, said Beaupre, he came from a part of the country where it was hot and there was never any snow; he had never learned to ski.

  “Never ski, so you are really like the Vietnamese captain who do not ski, either,” said Dang, “and you make the jokes with the Captain Dang, ha-ha.”

  After lunch Beaupre stood up and walked around, checking on the unit; the heavy weapons were pointed in and security was minimal. By all odds it was stupid soldiering, but it was also true that the Vietcong were very unlikely to charge a government position during daytime, even a government lunchroom. Instead they would wait, concealed and ready in carefully prepared positions, and let the government come to them, let the Arvin stand in the open. Beaupre was afraid to sit down and rest, afraid he might pass out again and knowing that if he did, Anderson would have to turn him in. So he settled for half best; he leaned against a tree and smoked a cigarette, and played for an instant with the idea of both Dang and himself skiing in Vermont, “Ah, it is my good friend the Vietnamese skier, Captain Dang, Captain you are doing too much better than I am and I am losing face,” as
he pulled Dang out of a snowdrift.

  This particular reverie was shattered by Anderson who came up with the radio.

  “They have our goddamn number today,” he said. “Raulston and the thirteenth battalion just got hit. Few minutes ago. Bad. Damn bad. Heavy losses. Very heavy. They thought Raulston bought it at first, but they found him later, hit in the leg; they think maybe the VC went right past him and left him for dead. Raulston kept mumbling, ‘Everybody dead, everybody dead.’ He's close to it. Lot of dead. Worse than the first one. Same goddamn business. They were caught in the open paddy field. They were halfway across the paddy, and almost through when the VC opened up. Maybe half the battalion was wiped out. Hell of a cross fire. Each time they identified a machine gun, and started to work on it, another one would open up. Goddamn VC knew everything they were going to do. They got the Arvin battalion commander Chinh, that good one. He was at the head of the column when they got hit, and he didn't mess around. Took a flanking party and tried to sweep the VC, and they set out, him right at the head, and the VC waiting for them, and gunned the entire flanking party down. Badly torn up. Badly torn up. So they got both the rear and the front of the column. Body of this Chinh ain't nothing but torn up. About the time they got his body, the Colonel was yelling for them to send in a flanking party and to get someone to lead it, and they told him that it was already out and already torn up. So he wanted to know who was leading it and they told him it was Chinh and he's very impressed. It's bad over there, the CP says. They got one medevac chopper in there now, and another one is down. Three dead in one of the choppers, and the other chopper boys are pissed off to beat hell. They say it's all rigged against them. CP says he's never seen the chopper boys so angry. CP says they're moving the reserve force in, though Co didn't want to, and the Vietnamese are so nervous that they've landed the reserves far enough back from the tree line that they won't draw any fire, probably won't reach the tree line for another hour. Said the Colonel's pissed off and in a rage and frightened too. Says it's the first time he's seen any fear in him. Bad day. Thinks even the Colonel wasn't unhappy about landing the reserve force.”