A Rumor of War (7 page)

He came into the classroom, let out a spine-chilling war cry, and buried a hatchet in one of the wooden walls. Without saying a word, he wrote something on a small blackboard, concealing it with his V-shaped back. He stepped aside, pointing to the writing with one hand and to a marine with the other. “You, what does that say?” he asked.

Marine: “It says ‘ambushes are murder,” sergeant.“

Sergeant: “Right.” Shouts AMBUSHES ARE MURDER,“ then returns to the blackboard, writes something else, and again asks, ”What does that say?“

Marine: “And murder is fun.”

Sergeant: “Right again.” Removes hatchet from wall and brandishes it at the class. “Now, everybody say it. AMBUSHES ARE MURDER AND MURDER IS FUN.”

Class, hesitantly, with some nervous laughter: “Ambushes are murder and murder is fun.”

Sergeant: “I can’t hear you, marines.”

Class, this time in unison: “AMBUSHES ARE MURDER AND MURDER IS FUN.”

Unshaven and filthy, the company returned to Camp Schwab in time to learn that while it had been murdering fictitious guerrillas, real ones had caused mayhem in Vietnam. The Viet Cong had attacked the American air base at Pleiku, inflicting what was then considered heavy casualties: about seventy airmen had been killed or wounded. A few days later, the first U.S. planes began to empty their explosive bowels over the North. The sustained bombing campaign that came to be known as Operation Rolling Thunder had begun.

The battalion had fallen back into its domestic rut, but the news of these two events—the Pleiku raid and the retaliatory bombing—rekindled the rumors about “going South” and changed the atmosphere in camp from boredom to expectancy. The rumors were denied on February 15, when we got word that One-Three was going afloat in a week, its destination Hong Kong or the Philippines. They were then confirmed on the 17th, when we were alerted to mount out for Danang on the 24th.

Thus began three confusing weeks of alarms and counter-alarms, stand-tos and stand-downs. Charley Company was sent back into the bush for another two days of exercises, presumably as a rehearsal for the live-ammunition drama in which we would be playing by month’s end. The weather, bright and warm while we were in garrison, turned sodden, giving us additional practice at being miserable. The platoon was nonetheless enthusiastic, all but Sergeant Campbell.

“Seventeen cotton-pickin‘ years I been doin’ this,” he said as we sloshed in the rain across a silty, salmon-colored stream. “Too old for this boy-scout bullshit, lieutenant. I’d like to get back to Parris Island, get my twenty in and get the fuck out. Spend some time with my old lady and my kids for a change.”

“Hell, this ain’t nothing but red clay, Sergeant Campbell,” said Bradley, who was behind us. “Me and old Deane here usta walk through stuff like this just coming home from school.”

“I was talkin‘ to the lieutenant, turdbird.”

“Yes, sir, Sergeant Campbell.”

“Like I was sayin‘, lieutenant, get my twenty in and get out. You know, there’s eighty acres I bought in South Carolina and I figure to retire on that.”

I laughed, “Wild Bill Campbell, the gentleman farmer.”

“Well, sir, go ahead and laugh. But I’m gonna get on the State Troopers when I get out and with that and my retirement, I figure old Wild Bill’s gonna have it number fuckin‘ one while the rest of these turdbirds’ll still be walkin’ in this shit.”

“Shee-hit,” someone said. “I ain’t gonna be walkin‘ in this any longer’n I have to. I ain’t no friggin’ lifer.”

“That’s because you ain’t good enough, you silly little shit.”

Finishing the exercises with a ten-mile forced march, we swung through the main gate looking and feeling warlike. But on the 24th, the battalion found itself still on the Rock. For over a week, orders were cut, then countermanded. We heard that the Danang operation had been called off. We were going to Hong Kong after all. Then word came that One-Three was to stage for a landing on the Danang airfield. It was scheduled for March 1. On the 1st, it was postponed to the 3d, and on the 3d to the 5th, when it was canceled altogether. According to the Word, that anonymous source of truths, half-truths, and falsehoods in the service, the battalion would remain on Okinawa until April
8, when it would sail for the Philippines
.

I
don’t know if this series of countermanded orders was a planned deception or simply an example of the confusion that precedes most major military operations. If it was the former, it did not succeed in deceiving anyone but us. The bargirls in Heneko, always founts of accurate intelligence, spoke disconsolately of our impending departure. “You from One-Three Battalion, go Vietnam skoshi-skoshi. I tell you true. Maybe sayonara all Third Marine. Number ten [the worst], no money Heneko no GI here.” Another omen appeared in the island’s English-language newspaper, which reported that sixty prostitutes had migrated from Saigon to Danang “in anticipation of a rumored landing of U.S. Marines.” There were other, more serious indications that the South Vietnamese Army, the ARVN, was nearing collapse. The news in the
Pacific Stars and Stripes
and on the armed forces radio network was a litany of defeats: outposts overrun, relief columns ambushed, airfields raided and shelled.

Despite these signs, we no longer expected our future to be a violent one. Concluding that the past alarms had been drills to test the battalion’s “combat readiness,” we settled down for a prolonged confinement on the Rock. Boredom reigned again and was combatted in the usual ways. On Sunday, March 7, at least half of One-Three’s thousand officers and men were enjoying a weekend of I-and-I— intercourse and intoxication—in Kin and Kadena, Ishakawa and Naha, city of the Teahouse of the August Moon.

One who remained on base was Glen Lemmon, the battalion duty officer for that day. Early in the afternoon, a message arrived at HQ, where Lemmon sat, yawning and making entries in the OD’s logbook. He read it and, quickly snapping out of his lethargy, picked up the phone to call the CO, Lieutenant Colonel Bain.

   
Messenger
: Prepare you, generals.

    The enemy comes on in gallant show;

   Their bloody sign of battle is hung out,

   And something to be done immediately.

—Shakespeare

Julius Caesar

About the time Lemmon picked up that phone, Murph McCloy and I were on the terrace of the Officers’ Club, drinking beer and admiring the view. The club stood atop a high hill, and the scene below was straight out of
South Pacific
, lacking only a lovesick Ezio Pinza singing to Mary Martin. A turquoise lagoon shimmered in the sun, mahogany-skinned fishermen paddled skiffs across its still surface, and beyond the barrier reef the bright expanse of the East China Sea stretched to the horizon. Content, we lay back in our deck chairs, the sun warm on our faces and the beer icy-cold in our hands.

“P.J., this sure is gracious living,” McCloy said. The telephone rang, and Sammy, the club’s Okinawan manager, popped out onto the terrace. “Any offasuh from the One-Three Battalion,” he paged, “call your OD right now!” McCloy volunteered. I figured it was nothing more serious than another fistfight at the Enlisted Men’s Club, but when Murph returned, his face was flushed, as if he had a high fever. In a way, he did.

“P.J., that was Lemmon. He’s OD today and he just got the word. We’re going South.”

“What?”

“We’re going to war!” he said, as if it were the most wonderful thing that could happen to a man. Then he left the club at a run.

Nearly a month of hearing the boy cry wolf had made me cautious, so I went inside to call Lemmon myself. He assured me that this was no flap. Had the message right in front of him: One-Three was going South by air. We were to mount out from Kadena Air Force Base sometime tonight and land at Danang the next morning.
Danang tomorrow morning
! The words yanked me out of the sluggishness induced by the hot weather and six beers. I felt an adrenal surge, a tingling in my hands and an empty sensation in my stomach, as if I were in an elevator that was descending too fast.

What was I supposed to do? I had never been to a war before. “Well, neither have I,” Lemmon said. “Main thing is to get yourself squared away first.” He read me a list of instructions: make up a field transport pack, stow extra gear in a seabag, et cetera. When that was done, hayako down to the company area. Don’t worry about the troopers, the NCOs would take care of them. That was all he could tell me. Meanwhile, he had to round up the rest of the officers. “What a day the nummies picked for a mount-out,” he said, laughing his strange laugh, which was more a cackle, as dry and harsh as the west Texas plains where he was born.
Heh-heh-heh
, the nummies picked a Sunday; everybody was scattered all over the island, getting drunk or getting laid, and when he reached them in their brothels and bars, they were too stoned to understand what he was telling them.

“I called down at the Kadena O-Club, figuring the boys’d be down there guzzling those French-seventy-fives. Williamson picked up the phone. I told him to hayako his ass back to Schwab because we were going South. He says, ”Oh, bullshit.“ I told him, ”No bullshit, Williamson, we’re mounting out today, goddamnit.“ He tells me, ”Lemmon, I am too shitfaced to go to Vietnam. Send somebody else,“ and hangs up. I called him back and got the same crap. Well, little while later, Major Lyons comes in here and I tell him about my problem with Williamson. So Lyons phones Kadena, gets him on the hook and says, ”Mister Williamson, this is the battalion executive officer. If you’re not here, sober, in an hour, I’ll hang your young ass.“ Heh-heh-heh. Phil, it’s really somethin‘ else, all fucked up…”

Lemmon hung up, leaving me to guess the point of that story, if it had one.

I sprinted back to the BOQ, crashing through the door with a bang loud enough to startle my unflappable roommate, Jim Cooney.

“Christ, what lit the fire under your tail?” He was a few numbers my junior and had just arrived on the Rock, so I composed myself and tried to sound coolly professional.

“Oh, we just got the word to mount out.”

“Where to?”

“Vietnam,” I said offhandedly, as if I commuted there once a month.

“Yeah?” Cooney replied, unimpressed. He would lose half of his platoon in August, at the Battle of Chu Lai. “Vietnam, huh? No shit.”

In spite of the past alarms, I was unprepared for anything more serious than a field exercise. My 782 gear, or field equipment, was strewn about the room and my utility uniforms were being washed by one of the naissons who did laundry at the BOQ, a girl named Miko. Well, there would be no need for starched uniforms in the bush. I dashed into the laundry room, stuffed a few dollars in Miko’s hand, gathered up my bundle, and ran out, with Miko crying in pursuit, “Caputosan, must finish, must finish.” I called back that I was leaving for Vietnam. “Ah, Vietnam,” she said. “Numbah ten. Too bad.”

Back in the room, I worked swiftly to make up a field-transport pack. This burden consisted of a haversack, knapsack, blanket, shelter half, poncho, tent pegs, ridgepole, guy line, an extra pair of boots, changes of socks and underwear, a spare uniform, mess kit, shaving kit, and entrenching tool. Adding a steel helmet, two canteens, side arm, flak jacket, field glasses, compass, knife, and rations, my kit came to sixty-five pounds. The pack felt like a Wells Fargo safe when I tried it on to adjust the shoulder straps. Would we be expected to make long marches through steaming jungles with all that on our backs? I slipped it off and it hit the floor with a thud. Following Lemmon’s instructions, I stowed extra combat gear in my seabag and packed my service “A” uniforms, most of my civilian clothes, and, regrettably, my books into a footlocker. I would have liked to bring the books along, but there wasn’t enough room in the seabag. I was also sure there would not be enough time to read in Vietnam. I didn’t know then that nine-tenths of war is waiting around for the remaining one-tenth to happen. The packing done, I stenciled CAPUTO, P.J. 2LT. 089046 c-1-3 on the footlocker and tagged it for shipment to the division warehouse at Camp Courtney. It would be stored there until I returned to claim it. The possibility that I might not return did not occur to me. I was twenty-three years old, in superb condition, and quite certain that I would live forever.

The scene at the battalion area was chaotic and the atmosphere one of crisis. Enlisted men were running in and out of the squad bays with the frenzied motions of figures in a silent film. Some were in full battle-dress, some still in civilian clothes, and others in only their underwear, odd bits of equipment slung over their naked shoulders. Working parties lugged crates from the supply sheds and piled them in the streets, creating an obstacle course for jeep and truck drivers. A mechanical mule—a heavy-weapons carrier that looked nothing like a mule but rather resembled an oversized toy wagon—dodged one of the stacks, went over a curb, and roared down a sidewalk, a 106-mm recoilless rifle bouncing in its flatbed. Charley Company’s area, like the others, resembled an outdoor army surplus store. Scattered everywhere were mortar tubes, baseplates, rows of packs with rifles propped against them, tent canvas, machine-gun belts—the linked cartridges coiled in the metal ammo cans—flak jackets, helmets, and a variety of communications gear. Testing the radios, the operators produced a concert of squawks, bleeps, and static hisses, above which their voices rose in monotonous chants. “Burke Six, Burke Six, this is Charley Six, Charley Six. Read you weak and garbled, say again weak and garbled. Give me a long test-count.”

“… Roger, Charley Six. Long test-count follows… ten, niner, eight…”

I recall very little of the next few hours. It was all noise and confusion, with officers yelling orders at sergeants, sergeants at corporals, corporals at lance corporals, lance corporals at privates, who, having no one to yell at, did all the work. The chain of command, if nothing else, was functioning smoothly. I remember the theatrical McCloy exclaiming, “The bronzed gods are off to war!” when he saw a marine with bandoliers crossed over his chest, Mexican-bandit style; a supply clerk who said, “These’re so’s your pecker don’t get blown off” as he issued sets of armored shorts; the strange feeling, a mixture of apprehension and anticipation, when I drew my pistol from the armory and saw the .45-caliber rounds, gleaming in the magazines like blunted yellow teeth.