by Peter Ness
‘It’s just a flesh wound mate. You’ll be fine. Stay down,’ he yelled over the din of sharp rifle cracks. A line of holes pitted the ground nearby. Dirt bounced up, spitting up into his screwed up camouflaged face.
The lance corporal stood up now, racing off after Jesse towards the edge of the ridge. Bullets blazed out the nozzle of Jesse’s M60 machine gun, tearing up trees and ricocheting off rocks in the valley far below. The enemy on the opposite hill, on the left flank fired back. Bullets whistled past their heads, spitting up the ground around them.
The ka-boom! of a mortar smashed into a cliff just below, spraying and splattering rock fragments over them. The terrifying thud of a second mortar landed further up the ridge. It fell short of the desired machine gun target. Lining the retreating Viet Cong up Jesse’s M60 barked, spraying bullets at their legs. He laughed, as he deliberately let them escape. Scaring the shit out of them was much more fun than killing anyone.
A group of planes swooped into and swept up the valley, firing projectiles. The entire side of the opposite side of the valley lit up with bright crimson light, blackened mushroom clouds expanding above reddish-orange fireballs of napalm, which whooshed up the gullies. The planes circled overhead as the smoke began to clear.
Without warning, a group of five US army Huey Cobra helicopters rose up over the ridge behind them from the south. Missiles roared overhead pounding the enemy, silencing any remaining mortars. The helicopters rushed low now chopping their way over the top of the trees. Their churning M60 bullets spat at the ground, peppering the retreating Viet Cong on the ridge just across the valley. The helicopters veered off, taking another pass as their chopping blades slewed the air. A second group of helicopters fluttered in low, the bushes and grass flattened by their beating blades. Soldiers slid, slithering down long dangling ropes into the thick jungle below. The Viet Cong, now in full retreat mode, no longer fired back.
Jesse glanced briefly across his shoulder towards Ashton, and commenced firing toward the feet of the retreating Viet Cong again. Grabbing an injured soldier, Ashton flung the man onto his back and spinning around carried him to safety. The man groaned in agony.
Rat-a-tat-tat! Bullets from Jesse’s M60 whined, echoing across the valley, shredding the tops off the trees on the other side. With a pit! pit! pit! a line of holes spat up behind the retreating Viet Cong soldiers. A few seconds later Frankie and the officer caught them up. The officer rubbed the burning sensation on his tender, itching neck. Ashton dropped down next to Jesse and passed a glittering belt of M60 bullets across. Frankie and the lance corporal squatted down behind a rock ledge and began to patch-up the wounded soldier. The officer stood by them screaming into the radio, arranging another air strike.
‘No! You’re still hitting our men, goddam you! The missiles need to be landing further up the hill and to the left of us, and on the northern side of the valley. I repeat. — Further up the hill on the northern side.’ He read out new coordinates. ‘How long? Two minutes? Roger that. Is that all? No, just seconds.’ His eyes swung into the air.
Several US military jets squealed overhead and began to napalm the valley below. The ridge on the other side of the valley lit up with a flash.
More jets screamed with a shwoosh! up the valley in a targeted strike at enemy bunkers. The ground vibrated, then shuddered, from the loud impacts.
As the dust cleared, the sergeant signaled the platoon that it was time to move out.
‘Move out! Now! Move out. Keep your heads down!’ he hollered hoarsely.
The corporal no longer with them, knees shaking violently the lance corporal gave hand signals to coordinate the section for the sweep.
‘Gun group take the high ground. Rifle group move down the hill to the right,’ he signaled, rubbing at his throbbing neck. ‘Darn that’s sore.’ Their platoon began forming a line, tagging onto the end of Charlie Company. They were ready to sweep in from the right, once the air strike did its job. ‘Tag onto the end of the frigging line,’ he screamed.
Still hugging the ground, Ashton kept his head low. He snuck a look over a fallen tree every so often. On their flank, further up the valley, loud explosions and cracks of heavy, continuous, gunfire barked out. Rolling over with blood oozing down his arm, Ashton moved forward on his elbows. Dragging himself to his feet now, he joined the sweep line.
‘Darn that hurts like hell.’ He rubbed at his burning tender neck as well. They trudged through the trees in a line, rifles cracking. Jesse’s M60 bullets tore through the air, spewing out reams of shell casings. Little by little the line edged forward.
Three helicopters swept over the hill behind with a roaring of supporting firepower. Ashton’s eyes flicked up, mentally noting the jets circling overhead like eagles ready to swoop down onto their prey. A bullet snapped at Jesse’s heel. Ignoring it he continued firing, moving forward.
#
An hour or so later, the sweep through enemy lines finished, they took up defensive positions. It was hurry up and wait, the norm in this man’s army. Jesse sat, his back against a log, tying up a wound on his left leg. A blood-smeared rag hung around his forehead, the odd drip falling onto a nearby branch, oozing down it.
Sitting, leaning back against the frayed remains of the tree stump Jesse surveyed the battle worn troops. He rubbed at the searing pain of his throbbing burning neck. Ashton sat to his far right, scratching his itchy neck as well. The smell of brewing coffee wafted over, waking Jesse’s senses. Further across, Jesse noticed an officer standing behind Frankie. The lieutenant spoke into the radio giving a status report. He too rubbed at a stinging neck. The lance corporal squatted down next to Jesse, humming an anti-war song. Chewing on a chocolate bar he cleaned his SLR rifle. Except for that and the occasional chatter, all was silent. The fighting appeared to have ceased, for now.
A sudden crack of twigs came from behind them, followed by sharp high-pitched clicking sounds. Alert now, Jesse dove forward grabbing at his machine gun, swinging his head around. Shadows flickered, playing tricks in the moist smoke-filled air. Where were they? His eyes searched the thick jungle foliage.
Crack! Out of the corner of his eye Jesse caught the fleeting shadows of several tall, thin, figures flashing past through the smoke. He twisted around to his left pointing the M60 machine gun towards an oncoming figure. Too late! Something crashed into the side of his head, thrusting him tumbling backwards. Dragging himself back up now Jesse clutched at his neck, face screwed up in agony. The other soldiers clutched at their necks as well, immobilized. Just then Jesse’s body slumped forward sharply and hit the ground. They all did. The arena of war was silent.
Time suddenly stopped.
A Tall Pale alien with bright blue, cat-like eyes with white pupils stood, face covered with a grey robe, peering down at Jesse intently. He prodded Jesse with his foot. His huge white pupils bounced out glaring down at his prey, frighteningly, repulsively. This shoulder-length silver-haired man was no human. A brass pendant dangled down from the alien’s neck, swinging in the light breeze. The pendant’s flashing green strobe light blazed across his chest, its spinning beacon slashing out at the smoke-filled forest.
Only the nearby trees still crackled smoldering, smoke wafting across the jungle. Stench of burnt human bodies, blood and entrails hung in the stale air, like an abattoir.
The Tall Pale alien’s head swung round, eyes darting towards two slightly shorter, thin, female grey aliens standing behind him. Their features bore no resemblance to his. The heads of the female aliens were slightly larger and more oval-shaped. Their large eyes reflected a bright, glittering sapphire blue. The sun slid out from behind a cloud. A thin pitch black film briefly bounced sideways across their eyes to protect them from its glare, for the same reasons that human wear sunglasses.
The Tall Pale alien eyed them off. Their narrowed slit-like mouths, with tiny, razor-sharp glassy teeth suggested they ate either insects or fish. Their heads were hairless with only a few small, faint, leopard-like spots on e
ither side. Unlike he they had no discernible ears, just slight raised or puffed up areas covering each side of the foreheads with a tiny indent where the ears should be. His five fingers were longer than humans, but these creatures rotated small pencil-like devices in their slender four fingers with even more flexibility. To them, the humans were the aliens. Their slender legs buckled, shaking from fear of humans.
The female greys looked like the Roswell Grey aliens we see depicted in folk-lore, just much cuter, like they just popped out of a Star Trek film for the day.
From where the Tall Pale alien stood the clean, white, seamless coveralls the female aliens wore appeared almost transparent. A metallic insignia perched on their chest. The vegetation behind them shone through their camouflage clothes, but not through their exposed grey, clammy, skin. A small, flat, metallic object attached to the side of their neck — a communication device, or universal translator — protruded.
The Tall Pale alien, Izumo,[12] touched a metal clip on his neck, and turning spoke to his companions. He held a small hand-sized tablet device up and pointed it at Jesse’s immobilized body. The three-dimensional rotating hologram image of an organic implant of a greenish-reddish grub writhing in Jesse’s inflamed neck danced above the tablet, displaying a heat signature. An irregular, pulsating, sine-like wave bounced up and down in the air above the hologram now as the grub moved around restlessly. With a snap, the image vanished, and then a split second later so did the tablet device, replaced with a pencil-like object.
‘Where-ever the Prima[13] go, the Cydroid are never far behind; and, that is Cydroid technology. So we know that the Prima is on this planet,’ Izumo clicked, primed with confidence. ‘But, we’ll find the Prima first,’ he said it as if it were a competition, a game.
Except for the small shiny pencil-like objects, none of these aliens had weapons with which to protect themselves. Yet, they stood in the middle of a scarred battlefield, their sole advantage being technology. The two female aliens breathed heavily, suggesting our atmosphere differed either in composition, or thickness, to the world from which they came. They trembled fearfully, clearly unnerved and wary, eyes darting back and forth across the human corpses strung out in the jungle floor.
Izumo knelt down and pulled the small grub from the back of Jesse’s neck. Two beady and tiny blue, frightened eyes glared up at him.
‘Prima — are you the Prima?’ they squealed up at him.
The screaming pierced the eerie jungle silence like a knife slashing through a horror movie. Izumo smiled, unnervingly. Shaking violently and squealing like a pig, the grub shriveled up, dying. The pungent sulfur smell of gas evaporating from its body hung like fog in loose air.
‘Mira and I — we scared of these humans,’ Lena clicked, legs shaking nervously, backing away from the humans on the ground and circling them fearfully. Her eyes darted backward and forward, surveying the humans and looking for any possible escape route. ‘What do you want, Lord? Hurry, tell us your command.’
Izumo stood his ground, intently surveying the scene, focused in thought.
‘Yes, my Lord we scared. If they see us, we die,’ Mira added, gathering her confidence again. ‘Quickly now, tell us your command, my Lord. But first, tell us I do pray, why do we choose this lower-level insect infested, inferior world full of writhing snakes, mosquitos, humans, leeches and microbes?’ Mira queried, her eyes searching for anything moving. ‘These things kill each other,’ she spat out in disgust. ‘They claim to have a god. Yet, even so — it is clear as a star cruiser — their god abandoned them — long ago. Take a look around — all I see is a world self-inflicted with hatred and despair, full of misery and suffering, worthy only of contempt—. My Lord?’
‘Yes, I too smell death and see destruction. I too see misery. And I agree. Yes, their war games are real,’ Izumo replied coldly, not showing any fear of the humans.
Yet, his eyes darted around, jittery. Izumo didn’t feel safe around these ugly humans either — they smelt like putrid sump oil from a discarded space mining cruiser.
‘But, they are young. They still have much to learn, my children,’ Izumo sighed, looked at Mira and shrugged. ‘You know the prophecy, so you know why we’re here,’ he added sharply. Why did these females need to question everything? Darn aliens.
‘Ah! The prophecy,’ Mira clicked back in a cicada-like chirping, tentatively stepping over the lance corporal, kicking him out of the way in disgust. Revolted by it all, she just wanted to leave, and as soon as possible.
‘Ah! But, for the prophecy,’ Lena clicked, flashing a pencil-like object about to cover each human she encountered. ‘Tell us, my Lord, what should we do to them? Mira and I, we follow your command.’ In other words, they would follow his orders if it got them out of this confounded place.
‘Questions my children. Always you have questions. Whether it is in this brane world or the next we cannot track down the Prima by ourselves,’ Izumo sighed, pointing at the soldiers. ‘Remove the worms from the necks of these warriors and re-tag them. Re-animate the dead animals (humans). And—, make sure this one survives to the end of this war,’ Izumo kicked Jesse in the ribs like a sack of meat, barking the order.
A perplexed look clouded Mira’s face.
‘Yes my Lord,’ she bowed, in curtsy. ‘One more question Lord — Pray, tell us — what exactly is a Prima?’
Izumo never replied. The female grey aliens turned to look for him, watching as him disappear into the thick all-encompassing mist which was rapidly closing in around them, quickly, nervously running after him.
#
And then, time continued again.
A small, elongate, pink colored capsule-shaped orb floated up the valley.
Jesse opened his eyes, flashing a nervous, edgy look around and into the bushes. Pointing the M60 tentatively, he scanned the canopy. The aliens were long gone. He rubbed his neck. The burning sensation dissipated.
‘Perhaps I imagined it all? Maybe I’m going crazy? War affects men in different ways,’ he grunted.
Frankie wandered over now, his SLR rifle strung loosely over his shoulder.
‘How’re they hanging Jesse?’ he asked, hovering over Jesse who was sliding his boot off to check his bloody foot. That bullet that smashed through his boot splintering the side of his shin bone during the walk-through was no more than a superficial graze. Jesse scratched his neck and frowned, surprised. No wonder it never slowed him down. The other cut on his leg was just a nick. He sighed, relief dancing over his face.
The dead corporal suddenly appeared next to them, barking orders. Frankie turned, jerking backwards.
‘You — you’re supposed to be dead—?’ Frankie gasped, his face turning an ashen grey.
‘Dead—? Me dead—? Do I look like I’m dead to you? I’ll decide when I’m dead, not you. Now move it — you grunts!’ the corporal cut back in an irritated voice.
Through a gaping burn hole in the corporal’s shirt front shone patches of clean, pink, smooth, undamaged skin. The corporal scratched at his new itchy exposed skin below dried, blistered, wrinkled sunburn which he began to peel off. Blood and dry entrails smeared the shirt front around the edges of fresh skin. It stunk like the putrid smell of rotten eggs.
A sharp retort of gun fire came from the direction of the ridge on the other side of the valley. Bullets began spraying the embankment in front of him, so Jesse rolled over, aimed the M60 machine gun at the Viet Cong soldiers and fired back.
#
Jesse married my mother after he returned from Vietnam. I had just turned fourteen. They married in the Presbyterian Church, just opposite Locke’s café.
#
London: July 2012
‘Andrea — I’m scared,’ Peter said, clutching at his sister’s arm. ‘And—, I’ve got moose bumps. See.’
‘Goose bumps, you silly,’ Andrea replied. ‘Oh, darn. Can you hear the door squeaking? Mom and Dad are home.’
‘Hey! Andrea! Can you come down and give me a hand with
this?’ their mother, Jo Hani, hollered up the stairs.
#
Sometime later:
‘Well, are you gonna sit down so we can read some more, or what, Peter?’ Andrea asked.
‘Well, okay then. Just start already while I eat this apple,’ Peter replied.
‘And, no kicking this time,’ Andrea replied sternly, raising her finger. ‘I said “No kicking!”’
Chapter 8: The proposal
Six months later, Town we called a City: Saturday, December 18, 1971
They began dating the day Jesse returned from Vietnam, months before we kids found out. Mother had a string of children from a failed marriage. Well, there were just the two of us now, Jo and I; a godsend for Jesse. It freed Mother up for a date. On our first outing together we went fishing. Well, sort of. I never caught much that day, except for a few rock crabs, but Mother did. They were married six weeks later.
‘Must be a shotgun wedding,’ some joked. True, but she lost the baby anyway.
‘Don’t worry Jodi. It’s alright dear. You look just fine,’ insisted Megan the shop assistant. She finished tying Mother’s hair back. ‘I’ll fill in for you at the café today. Go and have a fun time.’ Megan turned, yelling at the tall giant of a man patiently leaning on the front counter. ‘Jesse. Hey you! Yes. You! Don’t be a stranger. Jodi is all yours now! And—, no hanky-panky. You’re taking the kids as well!’
We clambered noisily into the EH Holden, leaving Megan to pilfer the café yet again, which she always did with adequate flair.
Jesse’s trouser legs were far too short for such a tall, imposing figure, their tattered Scottish grey-green an odd choice. And, his red and black striped footy socks were a poor match. Indeed, Jesse looked a lot more comfortable in garage overalls and black rubber boots, his preferred dress. His cheap blue striped tie hung loosely suspended off his neck, leaving the question dangling as to why he wore one in the first place. The tie, like the faded and out of character jacket, remained on a full five minutes. As we climbed into the EH Holden the tie was tossed onto the dashboard. Dress style and sense were lost here.