by Eric Helm
She touched his hand. “I suppose you have got to work harder with Tet coming so soon.”
“Naw,” said Lockridge. “The Vietnamese have arranged for some kind of cease-fire during Tet. Our CO is trying to arrange it so that we have a fairly light schedule during the holidays. Let us all take advantage of the situation.”
“Jim,” said Jones, slightly annoyed.
“What?” asked Lockridge. “I’m not saying anything.” He patted Le Tran’s hand and said, “Frank seems to think that everyone we run into is a spy for the Viet Cong. He sees the Communists hiding under his bed at night.”
Le Tran pretended surprise. “Is this true?”
“No,” responded Jones. “It’s just… well, we’re not supposed to be discussing the details of our jobs with anyone outside the Corps.”
Le Tran lifted her eyebrows innocently and gestured at herself. “But surely you do not suspect me of being one so evil? I am just a girl.”
Now Jones was stuck. He wasn’t sure how to tactfully handle the situation. He shook his head and smiled weakly. “Well, we’re supposed to suspect everyone.”
“My, it must be awful to have to suspect everyone. When do you have fun?”
“Frank never has fun,” said Lockridge. “He just sits around his room studying the manual on being a good NCO and sends in applications for Officer Candidate School.”
“Yes,” said Le Tran, “you want to be an officer? You must be very clever.”
“Say,” interrupted Lockridge, not liking the way the conversation had turned, “could you find a friend for Frank? Then all of us could go out on the town tonight. Eat some dinner, drink, and maybe dance.”
“I do not know,” said Le Tran. “It might be difficult to find someone so quickly. If you would like to come home with me, my sister who is older than me, might like to have dinner with Frank.”
“Hey,” said Lockridge, clapping his hands together. “That’s great. We’ll have a good time.”
“Yes,” agreed Le Tran, uncrossing her legs slowly so that Lockridge could have a good view of her panties. She stood and took his hand, almost lifting him to his feet. “Please. You both come with me and we will see if my sister would like to have a good dinner tonight.”
Got you, Le Tran thought, as they moved toward the door. And it was so easy, too.
Tyme stood to the side of the helipad, watched the chopper settle toward it and kick up a cloud of swirling red dust and then turned his head as the gusts became a hurricane. When the wind diminished and the roar of the engine dropped off, he looked up again. The crew chief was shoving cartons from the cargo compartment, letting them fall to the dirt.
“Say,” he called out, “you want to lend a hand here?”
Tyme moved forward. “What do you need?”
“Just help me out so we can get out of here,” said the man.
“I’ll help unload, but I need a ride to Saigon.”
“We’re not going to Saigon. We’re going to Tay Ninh.”
“That’ll be fine,” said Tyme as he grabbed a box and lifted it. “I can catch a ride to Saigon from there.”
“Who’s responsible for this stuff?” asked the crew chief.
“If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll get either Captain Bromhead or Lieutenant Mildebrandt for you.”
“That’ll be fine.”
Tyme grabbed the orange sack that held the mail, both official and personal. He didn’t want to let go of it. Instead, he wanted to paw through it, and grab what was his so that he could read it on the chopper, but he knew Captain Bromhead would be annoyed. The captain was a stickler for detail, even when the details didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
As he turned to add the sack to the pile of supplies, Mildebrandt appeared at the gate, walking slowly toward them. Mildebrandt was a big man, probably six-three and weighing close to three hundred pounds. There wasn’t a sign of fat on him. He had short jet-black hair, light eyes and a Roman nose. The fatigue shirt he wore was stained with sweat under the arms and down the front, though he pretended not to notice the heat or the humidity.
When he was close, he yelled over the roar of the engine, “What all we got?”
“Supplies and the mail.” Tyme hesitated and then asked, “I don’t suppose you could dig mine out before I take off?”
Mildebrandt looked at him for a moment. “You’re getting a trip into Saigon. I’d have thought you wouldn’t be worried about the mail.”
“Sir?”
Mildebrandt bent over and snagged the bag. He broke the seal, searched through it and handed three letters to Tyme. “I’ve just gotten myself in trouble with the captain.”
“Thanks, sir.”
“If you’re coming with us,” said the crew chief, “you’d better get on board.”
Tyme climbed onto the chopper and sat down on the red troop seat. He studied the postmarks on his letters, and put them in the order they’d been written. Then he stuffed two of them into his pocket and ripped open the first.
As he pulled the letter from the envelope, he almost lost the enclosed photo. He turned it over and saw Sara in the smallest bikini he had ever laid eyes on. She was standing on a beach, the water behind her, one shapely leg bent at the knee. She was waving at the camera, a smile on her face. Her long blond hair was pushed behind her shoulders. Tyme wished he was with her. He touched the picture gently, as if he could feel her through the thin paper.
Ignoring the stories of her activities, he read the letter quickly, looking to see if she still missed him and still loved him. Satisfied that she did, he read the letter slowly and then carefully put it into his pocket.
He read the other two letters over and then read each of them carefully a third time, looking for things between the lines, hints that she was tiring of the long-distance affair. But she seemed to care deeply for him. Happily he put the letters into his pocket and then leaned back against the gray soundproofing of the transmission wall of the Huey. He closed his eyes and thought about his last night in the World, the one Sara had promised would be special because he would be gone for a year.
Tyme was completely relaxed, almost asleep. With part of his mind he could hear the steady hum of the engine and the constant pop of the rotors. The air, even at three thousand feet, was heavy with heat and humidity, but it was cooler than it had been on the ground. He opened his eyes once but couldn’t see anything except blue sky and a few scattered clouds through the windshield.
In the distance he heard the ripping of cloth and recognized the sound as a burst from an RPD. He glanced to the left, where the sound had come from, and saw a line of tracers flash past. He jerked upright, the blood hammering in his ears and his heart pounding in his chest. He blinked rapidly, turning to the right so that he could try to spot the enemy.
The crew chief to his left opened fire with his M-60 machine gun, the weapon chattering as the belt fed through it. The muzzle-flash was nearly lost in the brightness of the late-morning sun.
The chopper banked, and from far away, just barely penetrating the noise from the helicopter’s engine and rotor, Tyme heard the enemy machine gun firing again. The copilot looked over his seat at Tyme and then turned his attention back to the instrument panel.
There was a snapping behind him, and then Tyme felt the aircraft vibrate. He glanced at the front of the Huey and saw the windshield disintegrate into splinters as the bullets from the enemy weapon slammed into it. Sparks cascaded from the circuit breaker panel overhead and smoke began pouring out. The pilot broke to the right, away from the enemy machine gun position. Over the noise Tyme heard someone shout, as if the intercom no longer worked.
The crew chief stopped firing and reached around from his well, grabbing at the sleeve of Tyme’s fatigues. He pushed the boom mike out of the way and shouted, “We’re going down. Buckle your seat belt.”
Tyme dropped onto the red troop seat and fastened the seat belt. He wished he had brought his steel pot instead of his green beret. His knuckles tur
ned white as he clutched his weapon and the chopper fell out of the sky. As the ground rushed up toward him, he hoped that the pilots knew what they were doing. He told himself to trust in their skill, since the training for pilots was one of the longest the Army had. But he also knew that the standards were dropping.
Suddenly the noise from the engine ceased, and the pilot slammed down the collective. Then they rocked back, as if the aircraft was trying to throw them off its back. Only sky and clouds were visible through the windshield. Out the cargo compartment doors was the deep green of the jungle rushing up to meet them. Tyme felt the air change from the almost cool and pleasant atmosphere experienced with altitude to the damp, wet, heat of the jungle.
Then the aircraft leveled, and he saw the jungle in front of him. Someone yelled, “We’re going into the trees,” and as the helicopter smashed into the jungle, Tyme realized the voice hadn’t been panicked. It had been warning him so that he could prepare himself for the coming crash.
Santini waited outside the interrogation room while the Vietnamese soldier continued to question the woman. He had listened for a few minutes, but had felt himself sickened by the whole process, so he had left the map room, telling the sergeant there that he would wait in the corridor.
Pacing up and down, he picked at the thick rough planks that formed the wall. He kicked at its base and studied the wood, making pictures out of the grain. Once or twice he put an ear against the door, but heard nothing.
Finally the door opened. The Vietnamese soldier who had interrogated the woman left without a glance toward Santini. The prisoner, trailed by an MP came next. She wore a rough tan cotton shirt stained with blood, and her hands were still bound behind her.
“Where are you taking her?” Santini asked the MP.
The MP reached out and put a hand on his prisoner’s shoulder, stopping her. “First I’m taking her over to the provost marshal and then we’ll probably take her to the POW compound.”
Santini looked into the Vietnamese woman’s eyes, wondering if there was something smoldering there. He could see pain in them, but he didn’t think there was hate. The enemy expected rough treatment, but if it was tempered with kindness, if he demonstrated that the Americans weren’t as brutal as their Vietnamese counterparts, he could make an ally.
“Why don’t you swing by the hospital first?” Santini asked.
“Why?”
“Use your head, man. She’s just a girl and may not have known what she was doing.”
The MP shrugged.
Santini shook his head and stared at the man. He was young, probably no more than nineteen or twenty, like so many of the soldiers being sent to Vietnam. The Army took them in, sent them to a school to get them an MOS and then shipped them immediately to Vietnam. No training was given to them about the people of Vietnam. No thought was given to the fact that the locals were human beings. There were no indoctrination courses suggesting the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese were less than human, but there was nothing to stop that belief from developing.
The Vietnamese soldier returned, looked at the three people and shook his head. He mumbled something and then spun around, heading for the door again. It was as if he no longer cared what happened to the woman now that she had given him all the information she had.
Santini moved forward and touched the woman on the shoulder. She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. He could see fear in there now.
“Okay, Sergeant, here’s the deal,” said Santini. “I have a jeep outside. You and I and the young woman are going to get in it and we’re going to drive her over to the hospital and let them treat her.”
“I’m not sure we’re allowed to do that.”
“Consider it an order. I’ll go with you. Then we’ll take her to the POW compound or over to the military prison. Or maybe we’ll take her over to the Fifth SF Headquarters so that a couple of our people can talk to her.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll have Major Madden call the provost marshal and clear it. You won’t catch any flak.”
“Hey, Santini,” came a voice from inside, “you want a briefing or not?”
“Can it wait for a couple of hours?”
“Okay.”
“Then I’ll come back.” He pulled the MP away from the door and shut it. As they moved down the corridor, Santini asked, “How much do you weigh, Sergeant?”
The MP shrugged. “About one-ninety, I guess.”
“And you’re what. Six-one? Six-two?”
“Just over six-two. Why?”
“Well, I noticed that you’re armed with a .45 and a nightstick. You tower over the lady. She seems to be tame enough. Is it necessary to keep her hands tied?”
“SOP. You can’t trust these Vietnamese. She could pull a knife or something.”
They reached the stairway leading up out of the bunker. Santini stopped and said, “I watched you in the interrogation room. It was obvious to me that she wasn’t armed. I think that between the two of us we could take her in a fair fight, and if she makes a run for it, I doubt she’ll get far. You can gun her down if she runs. So why don’t you untie her?”
“Look Sergeant,” said the MP, “you’re not in my chain of command. I have rules and regulations I have to obey. One of them is that the prisoner is to be restrained during transportation.”
“True,” said Santini, “but I still outrank you by two stripes and I would like you to untie the prisoner. If she escapes, it’ll be my fault.”
The MP stood for a moment, staring at Santini. Then he shrugged. “If you want to be nice to them, I guess it’s no skin off my nose.” He spun the woman around and fumbled at the knots on the rope.
“And, Sergeant, let’s try to remember that these are people, too. They may be the enemy and they may not like us, but they are people.”
“Yeah,” he grumbled. “I’ve seen what these people do to the Americans they capture.”
Santini wanted to respond to that. He wanted to tell the MP that it made no sense for them to come down to the level of the VC or NVA. No matter what anyone said, the enemy was human. In battle you were supposed to kill or capture them. But once the battle was over, you weren’t supposed to move among the wounded and cut their throats. A soldier could be ruthless in battle, he could kill a sentry or an enemy to gain the objective, which ultimately was the winning of the war, but he didn’t have to become an animal to do it.
Instead, he said, “Thank you, Sergeant.” He took the woman’s elbow and guided her up the steps. She stared at him, but he thought some of the fear had left her.
The MPs at the gate looked troubled when they appeared, but said nothing as Santini signed out. They watched Santini help the woman into the jeep and the MP climb into the rear. Santini started the engine and turned down the road so that he could get them over to the Eighth Field Hospital.
They were stopped at the door and held there by an orderly who didn’t want the Vietnamese woman inside, but then one of the nurses saw what was happening and rushed over.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
Santini liked her immediately. She was a small woman, barely larger than the Vietnamese girl, with short black hair and a thin face. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she blinked rapidly, as if she had just left a dark theater for the bright light of the afternoon sun.
“Your man won’t let us in,” said Santini. “I wanted someone to take care of the woman.”
The nurse saw that the prisoner had been beaten. “This is your handiwork?” she asked Santini, anger in her voice.
“No, ma’am, I’m just trying to correct a bad situation, is all.”
The nurse put an arm lightly around the girl’s shoulders. “You come with me.” When both Santini and the MP started to follow, she ordered, “You wait out here.”
As the MP started forward again, Santini put a restraining hand on him. “You wait.” To the nurse he said, “I need to come with you because she’s VC, but I won’t get in the
way.”
The nurse stopped and looked over her shoulder at Santini. It looked as if she was going to deny him permission, but then she nodded curtly. “Okay. You can come along, but the other one has to wait out here.”
“It’s all right, Sergeant,” Santini said. “I won’t let the prisoner escape. You just relax.”
“But—”
“You wait,” said Santini. “I’ll keep an eye on her.” With that Santini vanished down the hall with the nurse and the Vietnamese girl.
CHAPTER 4
DUC HOA
After a quick lunch in the team house, Gerber and Fetterman followed Sergeant Albright across the compound. There wasn’t much to see. Red dust clung to everything. A short tower, with a ladder leading up into it, was surrounded by a wall of sandbags, and open swamp stretched as far as they could see to the south, where the Song Vam Co Dong wound its way toward the South China Sea.
Albright climbed into the jeep. “It isn’t much, but it’s the best we have.” He turned in the driver’s seat and leaned to the rear so that he could flip on the PRC-25. “SOP is for us to have the radio on all the time we’re off the compound.”
Fetterman got into the rear and studied the radio while Gerber took the passenger’s seat. Albright turned the ignition switch and the engine caught, died and caught again. It rumbled for a moment, seemed about to die, belched a cloud of black smoke and then started running smoothly.
“Yeah,” said Albright, “I know what you’re thinking, but once it gets warmed up, it works just fine.”
“If it breaks down, can you fix it?” asked Gerber.
“No, sir. I just call in on the radio and someone comes out to take a look. It’s really no big deal.”
Fetterman touched Gerber on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, sir. If the jeep breaks, I think I can fix it.”
“We can head to the south or to the north and west,” said Albright, leaning an elbow on top of the steering wheel.
Without a word, Fetterman handed a map up to Gerber. The captain took the map, opened it and refolded it until Duc Hoa was in the center. He saw that there were plantations scattered throughout the area, a dozen or more canals, swamp and numerous villages, some of them so small they weren’t even located on the map. There was a general area for them.