One Very Hot Day

by David Halberstam

  “What does the Colonel think?” Beaupre asked.

  “The Colonel doesn't like it one damn bit. They're trying to decide now whether to abort or not, and just pick you boys up and let you sleep the rest of it off. But I think they're afraid to mention it to the friendlies because the friendlies would think they're chickening out. So you may have to keep walking. Sorry. Give my best to the friendlies.”

  It was what happened to the flanking party which removed any of Beaupre's remaining doubts. It was all too well done, too professional. It was an eerie feeling as if the VC were playing games with him. He saw himself as a blip on someone else's radar scope; they were watching his every move, and waiting for him, in their own good time and good place. He knew with a terrible certainty that they were going to be ambushed. The VC were probably picking out, he thought, the particular part of his anatomy where they would get him, arguing among themselves for the choicest part. The Vietcong knew everything about the operation; they had, he thought, probably drawn the damn thing up for us.

  He looked at the map and calculated the distances and the times of the ambushes: eleven-forty-five and twelve-thirty. He looked at the route ahead alongside the canal. About one-fifteen they would enter their second village, Ap Thanh, on their way to the final linkup, a linkup which would probably never take place now. He looked at the map some more and he decided that the ambush would come after the village; the VC would wait, and the Arvin would come into the village tense and nervous and ready and the VC would not be there, and so the Arvin would become careless and sloppy again, and then right after the village, hit them. He took the map and showed Anderson where he thought it would happen.

  “The party will be right there. The first place where there's a good open shot at us.”

  There was, he showed Anderson, a smaller canal a little more than a quarter of a mile from the main canal, running parallel to it. They had to get off the main canal; the party was waiting for them on the big canal, he was sure of that. It was a terrible thing to do; in any other war if you were that sure of an ambush, you could flank it and then bait it; but that would be too much here, the troops weren't good enough. Now the only important thing to do was avoid contact with the heart of the ambush. They had to get off the main canal.

  He went back on the radio and said very clearly and slowly, spacing his words carefully: “Tell the Colonel that we are going ahead just like he wanted. Straight ahead. Tell him I don't like the idea of going back or detouring.”

  He repeated the message nice and slowly, “We don't want to detour or abort. We don't think there's anything to worry about.”

  The CP, somewhat confused, said sure, he would pass the message on, if that was what Beaupre really wanted.

  Then Beaupre told Anderson, “You get your young friend there, and make sure he passes the same message on their radio, the exact same message, and make sure he repeats it a couple of times. Shouldn't be any problem getting them to repeat it. Tell that fella he doesn't have to talk to Dang about it. Tell him not to clear it with Dang, but to make sure it gets out. Tell him I'll work on our friend Dang.”

  “The warrior Dang?”

  “Yeah, that's the one.”

  Anderson started to walk away.

  “And tell your Vietnamese friend to start checking out some of those people back at his headquarters and find out who they really love,” Beaupre said.

  Beaupre went to find Dang. The troops were moving again, and he had to make his way back through the column. They were bunched up and chattering, and he thought of the open field ahead which the Vietcong had prepared for them, and he thought what a goddamn silly business to die here, surrounded by soldiers like this as if it were really a great joke, not even a war, to walk laughing into the ambush. He was frightened now; until now this war had too often made him sloppy and lazy, even arrogant. He had been contemptuous of his colleagues, his allies, the people, even from time to time, the enemy. It was he who had told the Chaplain the men were not frightened enough to pray. But now he cared, and he did not want to die; he did not want to be among the laughing ten pins.

  “Captain Dang,” he said, “this has not been a good day.”

  Dang smiled and said yes, and praised him for being revived by the Vietnamese soup. “You see how Vietnamese you have become. By the time you leave here, you will speak Vietnamese and you will take the nuoc mam back to the America with you.”

  “No,” said Beaupre, thinking to himself, I must do this properly; if I never do anything again properly, I must do this right. I must be careful. I must not antagonize this little bastard. I must talk to him like I love him. I love him.

  “There have been two other wings of this operation, and there have been two ambushes already. We are the third wing.”

  “There has been a battle, two battles. Many Communist Vietcong have been killed. Many, many Vietcongs.”

  “In America we call this a pattern. A dangerous one.” If I think he is a great man, perhaps it will show in my face. He is a great man. I am sure of it now, a great man.

  “If the Communists come after me, there will be many more dead, I promise that.”

  A great man, Beaupre thought, he is a great man.

  “Captain,” he said, “I have an idea. It really goes back to something you taught me when I first came to your country and you were explaining guerrilla war and the enemy to me.” And he talked and hoped the Captain would listen, a great man, he reminded himself as he began.

  He finished and he walked away from Dang. He wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to be an adviser to the VC. All the advisers thought about it. Just for a week, he thought, even if it meant wearing black pajamas and walking all night. Not so much grinning, he thought, he was sure the VC were sterner and never grinned. Their weapons would be clean. Dang would be on the other side. There was a quality of luxury to his thoughts.

  After the first ambush Thuong had not been bitter — irritated, and perhaps even a little bit bored by Anderson; after all, every time there was an American death, Thuong did not go up to Anderson and express condolences for some sergeant, some heavy, fat sergeant, who had come over here to sleep with Vietnamese whores. But after the second ambush, he was bitter and angry. Chinh had been killed leading a flanking party and Chinh was one of the few officers in the entire division that Thuong both admired and trusted, a thin muscled little man from the north, looking in his uniform like someone's younger brother, smaller than all the other officers, wearing his hair very long, deliberately, Thuong was sure, because the style of the others was to wear it short and cropped like the Americans. A fine soldier, admired by his men and his contemporaries. Thuong envied Chinh his hatred for the Vietcong; Chinh did not talk about it but Thuong assumed it was something to do with the north, the death of a father or a mother, perhaps only an uncle. But in addition to that complete and simple and almost gentle bravery, he was a genuinely good and trusted friend, a man with an uncommon sense of humor which slipped out from time to time when they were among close friends. Chinh did a great variety of imitations, impeded in seeking new ones because the old ones were so popular and were always requested: a French officer waxing his mustache in front of an imaginary mirror, trying to get the mustache to the right point of arrogance, then taking his beret, working on that for several minutes in order to get the right angle, the angle which would show that he had killed many men and loved many women, then finally gaining the angle, smiling and winking at himself, and blowing the mirror a kiss and going off to war. Then a Vietcong officer giving a course in political instruction, very solemn and serious, making sure that no one slept during the lesson, which was a class on How to Love and Emulate Ho Chi Minh's beard, the pointer flicking back and forth to the imaginary blackboard, while the instructor pointed out strand after strand in the beard, giving authorized lengths for every hair, decreeing that no one could have a longer beard than Ho but that uniformed soldiers' must be an inch and a half shorter and that political cadreme
n could not wear them at all since it was well known that the Americans suspected anyone with a beard; then the Commissar, finishing the class and before starting the next lesson, which was on food discipline, slipping away and greedily stuffing food into his mouth. Then Ngo Dinh Diem, reviewing the local Cong Hoa youth parade, the province chief giving the great Fascist salute, but Diem, absentmindedly, and a little dazed from the heat, losing his bearings, turning around, forgetting that he had completed the review, and the Province chief, relaxed and rather sloppy after being told by a Diem aide that his salute was the best of the week, rushing to snap to attention again, and then Diem forgetting once more and the whole process repeated once more. Finally an imitation on how to love your American counterpart, in which Chinh did a series of reverse imitations of Raulston, first putting his arm around the American's back each morning and slapping him on the back, feeling his arm muscle, and expressing great delight and surprise at the size of it, then opening his wallet and bringing out photographs of his family and showing them to Raulston, winking at the audience and saying, Americans love children, it's a good way to win them over, and then suggesting to Raulston that they might change dollars; he had even learned some of Raulston's vocabulary and kept referring to him as “old American buddy,” which delighted his friends, “old American buddy, let's us change some old U.S. dollars for some Vietnamese piastres or disasters, huh old buddy.”

  The Americans, Thuong thought, would say what a tough little bastard Chinh was, and he cursed the Americans, remembering as he did, what Chinh had said: you are too hard on them, my young friend, it is the trouble with all you intellectuals, at which point Thuong had protested angrily about the word intellectual, but Chinh had brushed him aside — you are too hard on them because you do not disagree with the way they fight, in fact you admire that, but you disagree with why they are fighting. You think it is pointless for people to fight so well for so little, but you are too hard, that is their business. They are nice people. They are brave although their food is bad, and their cigarettes are for women. So what. I know you, Thuong; if they fought not so well, you would probably like them more. It is fortunate for us that we are not all intellectuals like you.

  Thuong walked among the troops, telling them not to sleep today. They could sleep the next time out, telling them he had made a secret agreement with the VC to ambush only the lazy ones, the ones who slept in the field. As they approached Ap Thanh, he told the advance elements to recon with fire and he ordered them to fan out, telling them that he was tired of carrying five bodies off the field instead of one, that he was likely to pull a back muscle if they weren't more careful. Beaupre heard the order come back up to the point and was pleased; even though he was sure in his own mind there were no troops in the village, he was certain that the noise would be heard by some of the VC and would convince them that the Arvin were falling into the baited trap.

  The noise as they approached the village was terrifying: light machine guns going off, even the occasional thump of a mortar. Anderson, at the back of the column and moving now to his right and toward the open field in front of the village, was not sure what was happening or why it was happening. He had not heard the order to recon with fire; it had gone up the file, but not down, and he cursed the Vietnamese for not passing on intelligence. He was sure they knew something he did not know. He saw the soldier next to him firing a grease gun, and he quickly fired half a clip from his weapon toward a bush. He heard some moans from behind him and began to crawl forward. It was damn stupid of the Viets not to let him know what was going on there, he thought, and damn typical. The firing was very intense, but he could not tell exactly where it was coming from: usually he could — could sense the pockets of the enemy and see the flashes of firing — but this time he scanned the tree line without success. He felt frustrated.

  It was like a terrible storm; it threatened to go on forever, building in intensity, and then, almost without warning, turned to half power, and almost before that change could register, it was only a trickle and it was over. By the time Anderson reached the village, the first patrol was inside; the troops were laughing and joking among themselves and at first Anderson was puzzled, not realizing what had happened, and then finally it struck him that it had only been a reconnaissance, and he felt foolish and angry at the Viets. No one ever tells you anything in this country, he thought. He looked at them, half expecting them to laugh at him, and then he realized that they were not aware of his anger and foolishness, that if they had seen him during those minutes, they assumed he too was firing as they were, that he was not in battle, that he had not dodged bullets. He felt his anger slip away and he remembered that he liked these people. He smiled at them.

  “How many men did we lose taking the village?” he said. “It was a great battle,” and they all laughed with him.

  Ap Thanh was a tiny village, the kind the Colonel frequently said showed on Vietcong maps but not on their own. But it had a quality even beyond that. Beaupre was struck by how much it reminded him of a ghost town, but not even a real ghost town, instead, a cardboard one set up by a movie company. It was smaller than any village he had seen in Vietnam, with only a few huts, and they appeared to have been deserted long ago. It was completely silent, not just in contrast with the barrage of a few minutes ago, but silent in itself. Even Beaupre, who liked to regard all Vietnamese people and all Vietnamese villages as being alike, was touched by it; he had seen almost everything else in this country but he had never seen this. He asked Dang what had happened to the welcoming committee, but Dang did not see the humor and told him that the Communist Vietcong was responsible for this.

  “Most likely a massacre, Captain Dang,” Beaupre said, picking him up.

  “Yes,” said Dang, “that is the word, massacre. From your Indian films.” He seemed quite pleased with himself.

  Beaupre watched Anderson talking with the young Vietnamese lieutenant, probably, he thought, asking where the people were, and felt for a moment a rare bit of sympathy for the Vietnamese people. Beaupre felt a little better now, well enough to risk sitting down, and he moved to the shade, but that did not help him to escape the heat. The sweat seemed to pour out even more freely now that he had stopped walking. He thought perhaps when he finished this operation, if he did, he would go easier on drinking. There was no point in it, he was sure he could go lighter, he would let someone else close up the bar. He was sitting there rolling water around in his mouth but not drinking it, he was proud of that, when they found the old man.

  Beaupre had seen many old men in Vietnam before, withered and thin, but this old man was the frailest and most withered he had ever seen, in a very white pajama suit, Beaupre noticed. Whoever that old sonofabitch is, he still has someone to do his laundry. They had found him by accident in one of the huts; they had searched the hut once earlier, but he had been so thin and still that they had not noticed him. Beaupre, hearing the explanation, could believe it.

  They surrounded him but did not search him. Dang decided to do the interrogating. Anderson was there, and Beaupre, intrigued, moved over and signaled to Anderson that he wanted a running translation. Anderson nodded.

  Dang said something. “Dang's asking where all the people are,” Anderson whispered, and the old man looked at Dang, looked up and down the village.

  “The people are all gone,” he said. It was said as fact. It was indisputable. For a moment Dang said nothing.

  Then Dang said something else, a number of things quickly in a row: where have the people gone, what have you done with them, where is the enemy, have you helped the enemy. For a moment the old man said nothing. Then he said something very slowly and proudly. Beaupre saw the looks of surprise on the faces of the Vietnamese before he heard Anderson's words: “He says that he's never done anything to help the French, he says he never told them anything.”

  They were all astounded. Even Beaupre was stunned. “Sonofabitch,” he said, “what's Dang going to say now?”

  He saw a t
iny smile appear on the face of the young Vietnamese lieutenant; the others, if they found it funny were controlling their smiles. From reading their faces the old man might have been reciting a pledge of allegiance to the government. The old man said something more: “The French tried, but he never talked,” and Anderson said, “He did not let the French fool him.”

  “Dang's telling him that it's all right, that the old war is over and the French have all gone,” Anderson said.

  The old man began to talk again. “The old guy is saying that he never helped them, and there's people here who'll swear to it, that his loyalty is known, and he's glad they've gone. But he wants to know why everybody's here if the French are gone. Now Dang's saying there's a new enemy even worse than the French. The old man wants to know if they speak strange languages like the French. Dang's pretty annoyed and a little pissed off. He says yes, they speak funny and strange languages. The old guy says in that case he won't help them either, that he never helped the French, the French came and asked him a lot of questions, and he told them a lot of lies [“I believe that,” Beaupre interjected. “That's the first thing all day I believe”], and the next time the French came he sent them to a place where soldiers just like us killed some of them. He says the next day the French came back and killed a lot of people including his wife and son, and he was hiding or they would have killed him, so he certainly wouldn't help them after that, and now he's very glad they're gone, he never liked the sound of their language. The old guy doesn't seem to like Dang too awfully much. He just asked Dang if he fought against the French. Dang's saying of course he did, everybody did.”