“He, ah, came up to me about three days afterward and asked if he could talk to me. He said, ‘Do you know what happened?’ and I told him I did because Lieutenant Brill had told me, and he said that he did not believe Brill had told me the truth and asked if I wanted to hear the real truth, and then he told me the same thing he testified to this afternoon.”
“Did you believe him then?”
Kahn looked past Gore to the table where the earnest-faced Virginian, Captain Fox, was chewing on his pencil and watching him with a barely disguised look of contempt, as though he thoroughly anticipated that Kahn was going to wriggle off the hook by giving the answer he and Gore had discussed earlier—that Miter was an unstable soldier who frequently needed to visit the Chaplain and was against the war and could not be depended upon. Kahn imagined that as he said this, the expression on Fox’s face would dissolve into a look of full-fledged disgust.
“Could you answer the question, please?” Gore said in a slightly bewildered voice.
“Did I believe him?” Kahn said calmly. “I’ll have to answer it this way—yes and no. I guess I did believe him . . . but . . . I didn’t want to, and I suppose I made up excuses in my own mind why I shouldn’t, and I—”
A pained look shot across Gore’s face. “Ah, when was the next time you spoke to anyone about the incident of February sixth?” he interrupted hurriedly.
“Please the court,” Fox said, rising quickly to his feet, “I believe the witness has not finished answering the first question.”
“He answered it,” Gore said nervously. “I don’t want to get into it too deeply. I have my line of questions all drawn out.”
“I’m sure you do,” Maitland said condescendingly. “However,” he said, turning to Kahn, “Lieutenant, did you have something more to say on the question you were just asked?”
Kahn swallowed hard. Gore was staring at him sternly.
“Yessir, I do,” he said.
“Please go on.”
“Well, what I was trying to say is that . . . uh . . . I knew deep down the first time I talked to Brill that something wasn’t right about it. I’m trying to be as honest as I can. I was going to look into it the next morning. But after the colonel came, and he didn’t seem very interested, I just sort of let it drop. I pretty much knew what happened after I talked to Miter, but all I wanted then was not to have to deal with it . . . I guess that’s how low I had gotten.”
Kahn paused for a moment. All the while he had been talking he had stared straight ahead, and now he looked at the court. They were leaning forward attentively, all of them.
And it was low, he thought. Raping little girls. Killing little girls. War! War! War! Rape, pillage, burn—the words came back to him now the way they had that day on The Tit. A few months ago, this time of day, he might have been playing bridge at the fraternity house, or guzzling beer, or studying for a test in Intermediate Light . . . instead of sitting here stark bareass alone before a court-martial. At the age of twenty-four, he’d come a long way. Yet in the instant he had begun to tell the truth—and he knew this time it was the truth, not his truth, or anyone else’s, but the real, honest truth—he had felt a quick flashing revelation, much like the glimmer he had felt once out in Happy Valley looking up at the stars and mountain peaks. A few seconds ago, when he’d answered Gore’s question truthfully, the ring of self-preservation around Billy Kahn began to collapse like a house of cards, and a shiver ran up his spine like steam in a riser pipe until he felt his face flush and tingle. He also knew instinctively that he had set a trap for himself, into which he would now proceed, wittingly, the best way he could.
“I’m not trying to make excuses, but dead people . . . get to where they don’t mean much after a while; they’re just like hunks of meat. Mostly, the best thing you can do is to go on with whatever you’re doing and forget about it.”
Captain Gore had returned to his seat and was slumped motionless in the chair looking over his glasses at Kahn with a wan expression. Colonel Maitland, his eyebrows raised, cleared his throat.
“Does the defense wish to make a statement at this time?” he asked.
Gore replied, half-rising, “I believe he’s making it, sir.”
Maitland turned to Kahn.
“What about what you told the investigating officer when he came out to question you?”
“It was a lie, sir,” Kahn said. “He asked me if I had heard the girls were raped and murdered and I told him that all I knew was what Brill had told me. That wasn’t the truth. I don’t know why I said it, except that I knew we were all in for a hell of a lot of trouble if I said the truth—just like I knew I’d be opening a big can of worms if I had gone down there and started asking questions. Once you start to lie, it goes on and on. I guess this is where it ends, though.”
Kahn noticed that Fox had been looking across at Gore almost sympathetically.
“Does defense counsel wish to question the witness further?” Maitland asked.
“No, sir,” Gore said.
“Would you, Captain Fox?”
“No, I think not, sir.”
“Very well,” Maitland said. “What we have just heard has saved us all a great deal of time. You may step down, Lieutenant Kahn; thank you.” He looked at the other court members.
“The court will now go into closed session. It’s getting late, but if you gentlemen would like to wait out in the hall I don’t think this will take very long.”
The three of them—Kahn, his defense counsel and the prosecutor—filed out into the hallway. The MP stepped out behind them and assumed a wooden position in front of the door.
Gore marched straight to a windowsill and stared out at the sunset. Fox and Kahn lit up cigarettes at opposite ends of the hall. After a while, Fox went up to Gore and the two began a muffled conversation. At first the prosecutor did most of the talking and Gore occasionally nodded his head. Then the defense counsel began talking and Fox began nodding, and at one point there was a bitter, stifled laugh from Captain Gore.
The door to the courtroom opened suddenly, and one of the new captains on the court said something to the MP, who had snapped to attention. “They’re ready for you, sirs,” he said to the lawyers. As he walked back into the courtroom, Kahn felt weak and sick. He had a flash of how Carruthers must have felt entering his tent for punishment.
The three of them stood before the court: Fox off to the right; Kahn squarely in front, with Gore at his side. Maitland got right to the point.
“Lieutenant William Kahn, it is my duty as President of this court to advise you that the court in closed session and upon secret written ballot has found you guilty or not guilty as follows:
“Of the charge Misprision of a Felony—not guilty.
“Of the charge Dereliction of Duties, failing to enforce adequate safeguards for prisoners—not guilty.
“Of the charge Failure to Obey a Lawful Regulation—not reporting a nonbattle death—guilty.
“Of the charge Making False Statements Under Oath—guilty.
“Do you wish to make a statement before court passes sentence?”
Gore glanced at Kahn. “None, Mister President,” he said.
“Very well, then.” Maitland returned to the sheet of paper before him.
“Lieutenant Kahn, you have been duly convicted on charges of Failure to Obey a Lawful Regulation and Making False Statements Under Oath. It is my duty to advise you that the court has adjudged that you shall receive a reprimand in your officer’s personnel file and pay a fine of fifteen hundred dollars to be deducted from your pay at the rate of two hundred dollars a month until paid, or paid in full before you may be separated from the service. Is there anything else from counsel?”
When no one spoke, Maitland looked directly at Kahn, his eyebrows furrowed down so that he resembled a neolithic primate. “This proceeding is closed,” he said.
A cool breeze was flowing in off the South China Sea and the sky was low and overcast when they stepped out i
nto the dirt street. A stream of raucous servicemen was pouring past the compound, riding in cyclos or jeeps or on foot, headed toward the old center of town, where the action was. At the bottom of the steps, Captain Fox turned and waved at Gore, nodded politely to Kahn and disappeared into the night. The accused, now convicted, and his counsel walked without speaking for a while. Then Gore turned to him, as always peering over his glasses. “You are certainly not my ideal client,” he said, to which Kahn replied, “No, I suppose not,” and Gore said, “You could use a drink? I could,” and Kahn said, “Yeah, a drink would be good.”
The rain that night came out of the west and spread over the Valley of The Tit in a steady, pin-prickling drizzle that would not reach Nha Trang before morning. Huddled in its shelters on the hillside, Bravo Company waited sullenly through the storm, gripped in a state of agitation for which there was no explicable reason.
Far down the valley, the reason moved.
It shuddered in the jungle-covered hills beneath dripping leaves, vexed to savage fury by weeks of cold anticipation, hard-won calculations and somber plans. At last its orders came. A core of scraggly, raggedy-assed brown-skinned men with vague and inarticulate hopes and dreams moved across the valley floor and into the first hamlet, where mothers and fathers and children squatted by candlelight or cooking fires in dirt-floored huts—into which The Reason entered and said that it was Time. Weapons wrapped in oilcloth or cellophane were dutifully removed from secret places, and The Reason moved again—larger, more powerful—into the rain.
By the light of the pressure lantern in his leaking tent, the new Commander of Bravo Company had concluded a letter which began “Dear Becky”:
I’ve torn up every letter I tried to write you until this one, but it’s going out in the morning mail.
It has been more than four months since you wrote that you were dumping our relationship to go with Widenfield and do all that silly crap you and he are involved with. I don’t know if you planned it that way or not, but your letter arrived exactly a year to the day we met at Cory’s party. Nice timing.
All those months we were seeing each other before I left I kept my mouth shut about what you were doing. I figured you would come to your senses sooner or later, but in fact, you only got worse. I don’t know why I put up with it for so long, except that I loved you and hoped you would change.
It has taken me a long time to get used to the idea, but at last I can truthfully say it is finished between you and me. Not that you’d give a damn. I’m sorry, but not sad, because there are things more important than merely loving somebody and I’m just beginning to understand them.
I’m really in the war now—not just running errands for the general. I am commanding a rifle company in the field, and for the first time in my life I can honestly say that I feel completely and totally in control—of myself, of the Company, and of where I fit into this world.
I needed to write this letter, so I did. Now the radio is squawking and I’d better go out and see what’s up. Before I do, I’d like to say good luck, and goodbye.
Regards,
Frank
He left the letter on the field table and walked outside. Bateson, the RTO, was hurrying toward him, and they met halfway in the rain.
“Lieutenant, sir,” Bateson said breathlessly, “LZ Horse is getting zapped, and so is an ARVN compound up by Tien Trang. Battalion put out a Condition Red as of now. They’ve overrun some Artillery battery too. The colonel says to be ready to help out if he gives the word and for us not to call unless it’s bad because they got all the traffic they can handle right now.”
Holden stood motionless for a moment, the rain dripping off his helmet, “All right; go stand by the radio and get me some runners to keep me posted,” he said. “And get somebody to tell Sergeant Dreyfuss to start putting out the word and then tell him to find me—I’ll be down on the perimeter somewhere.”
Holden walked back into the tent and picked up the letter. He folded it neatly and tucked it into his top pocket. Then he slipped on his poncho, strapped on his .45 and picked up his rifle and several clips of ammunition, which he stuck into the pistol belt. One last look around the tent; then he turned out the lantern. As he walked out into the wetness, there was a faint, featureless grumbling of artillery. It seemed far away but fairly constant, and through the rain he could make out the flashes, pink and low behind the mountains. Below him, an unseen tidal wave was swelling across the valley, gathering strength from hamlet to hamlet.
No one saw the flash, but the single crump of a mortar incoming reverberated up the hillside. People began to shout and curse, and in the few seconds before it landed, Holden suddenly realized he’d made his first mistake a few hours earlier by not looking into the comings and goings of the women carrying the rice into the huts at the bottom of the hill—because, damn it, there wasn’t any harvest yet, so why should . . . ? In that same instant there was the sigh of the incoming round, and he went to ground cursing himself again for not having dealt with the rise on the perimeter where the machine guns couldn’t get to—Damn, damn, I should have done it! I should have!
The round burst behind him, far uphill where the old positions had been. Holden got to his feet and dashed back to the CP, grabbing the telephone to the mortar section, screaming for illumination flares, which came almost instantaneously because they had anticipated the call. Bateson had Battalion standing by as Holden yelled into another phone linked to the listening post down the hillside. As the flares lit up, the garbled cursing at the other end communicated a dark picture of what was yet to come. Then Holden heard the bugles too.
Madman Muntz, squinting over the top of his hole, could barely make out the moving forms below, but he saw enough in the eerie light to know that this was no ordinary probe. There seemed to be several groups; in one he counted about fifty people, in another twice that number and in a third, which had already reached the base of the hill, there were about two dozen men.
Then, as his eyes adjusted to the light, his breath caught up in his throat. Behind the three groups there seemed to be a huge mob stretching as far as he could see in the fast-fading flare. Among them he thought he even saw women and small children carrying boxes and baskets. And people were blowing whistles and bugles.
Muntz depressed the barrel of his machine gun to the first wave, but they were still too far away for him to open fire. They were plodding uphill very slowly and deliberately, and all at once he thought of rats: a horde of rats, which brought to mind a story he had once heard about rats—or something like rats—that gathered in groups once a year to make their way to seaside cliffs over which they plunged to their deaths, apparently happily, stopping for nothing. That in itself was very scary.
By now the mortar section had begun to plop shells down into the rice paddy, but they seemed ineffective as the ratlike horde continued its advance. Holden was still in the CP tent, feeling a little panicky because he didn’t know if he should remain there by the phones and radios or be outside directing the fight. He could think of about ten things he ought to be doing—and even then he still didn’t have a clear idea of what was going on. Bateson had the Artillery Section on the radio, and Holden requested firing of Defensive Targets, which had been preset some time before. All four field phones were ringing like crazy, and while waiting for an answer, Holden screamed at three of the worried-looking runners Bateson had selected, “Don’t just stand there—answer the goddamn phones!” and the runners gratefully leaped for the phone table and began taking calls.
The popping of small-arms fire below grew steadily as the fighting was joined. Holden glanced at his watch: exactly 9 P.M. He closed his eyes. “When I open them . . . this will be gone.” He knew when he thought it, it was silly. Then the incoming mortars began raining down on them, and were answered by their own mortars and by the first of the DTs, which cracked and split violently in the valley.
In his hole on the perimeter, Crump had been taking an occasional well-aimed shot at
the advancing enemy, but there were so many of them now, he was having difficulty deciding whom to shoot at. They were coming up in long files, through the sheets of rain, taking cover wherever they could, but always coming. As another flare lit up, Crump rapidly squeezed off three rounds, and several men in one of the files toppled in a dominolike heap. Others clambered over or around them.
Off to one side, standing plainly in the open, one man was spurring the others on by waving a pistol and yelling.
He was standing in an odd way, bent over a little to one side, and in the dimming light Crump saw that one of his trouser legs was pinned up at the knee and he was leaning on a crutch. As the flare flickered out, Crump got a look at the man’s face, which seemed terribly familiar, and as he lined his sights directly at the trunk of the one-legged man, the flare died out. Another burst, but the man was gone, and Crump was left to curse his luck and wonder if he’d been right.
The tone of the call that came into the TOC from Bravo Company, even through the radio jargon, was so desperate that any officer or enlisted man in hearing distance stopped what he was doing and turned to listen. They too were on alert at Monkey Mountain, but what the caller said—“I think we’re being overrun”—pierced the tent like a distant scream in the night. For an hour Patch and his staff had been directing support for the fighting, but as the attacks on their tentacles mounted, more men and equipment were being consumed than could be marshaled. Captain Flynn, the aide, was trying to soothe the frightened voice on the radio when Patch took the handset.
“What is your situation? Over.”
“Sir, Lieutenant Range is dead and so is Lieutenant Peck, and the CO—I don’t know where he is . . .”
“And the First Sergeant?”
“He’s in pretty bad shape. Most everybody’s hurt or killed. Everything’s falling apart—we gotta have help fast, sir.”
“Who’s running things now?”
“Lieutenant Inge. He’s out now trying to pull the men together so we can make a stand if we have to. Please hurry, sir. Over.”
Better Times Than These Page 43