Better Times Than These (53 page)

“Have you enjoyed your dinner, monsieur?” the man next to him asked.

“Oh, yes. It was very good, delicious,” Kahn said.

“Ah, I am glad,” the man said. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Paul Chogny, proprietor of the hotel. I see your friend has deserted you.”

“Not exactly,” said Kahn. “He went into the town for . . . uh . . . a little fun . . .”

“Yes,” Chogny said, “there is fun to be had there now. For more than a year. It used to be so quiet.”

“You’ve been here for a while, then, I guess.”

“A long while, my friend—for more than thirty years. I suppose you could call that a while.”

“No kidding?” said Kahn. “You’ve owned this hotel all that time?”

“Oh, no, only for a few years—five, to be exact. Originally I came here with the army.”

“Thirty years—that’s before the, ah . . .”

“Yes, before the Second World War. I was here first in nineteen thirty-six.”

“And you’ve stayed on ever since?”

“Ah,” Chogny said, sipping his Pernod, “not exactly. You see, when the Japanese came in nineteen forty, I managed to get across to Burma and fought with the British there until the war ended.”

“And then you came back?”

“Theoretically, I was still in the army. By that time we were having trouble with Ho Chi Minh, and so I got back with my old unit, and fought with them until Dien Bien Phu. After that, I came down here and married a Vietnamese—you may have seen her behind the counter inside. I worked at this hotel as manager and finally borrowed enough money to buy it.” Chogny turned to the bartender. “I would like to buy my friend a drink,” he said. The smile faded slightly from the bartender’s face, but he took the glass from Kahn and filled it again.

“It’s a very nice hotel,” Kahn said. “The food is excellent.”

“Ah,” said Chogny, “last week we had the good lobster, and a wine from Bordeaux. It is hard to get some of this these days.”

“I suppose the war is affecting you, isn’t it?”

“Of course—but not always in a bad way. I mean, you could see we had a good business tonight. Every night, now that the Americans are here. But it is not easy to serve the best dinners. Still, they come.”

“What about the VC?” asked Kahn. “Do they give you trouble?”

Chogny shook his head disdainfully. “They leave us alone. I don’t know why . . .” He finished off his Pernod and ordered another. “I think,” he said, “it could be because I know someone—I once knew him, anyway. He is very important in the Vietcong here. In fact, I hear he runs not only this province but the area you call Two Corps.”

Regarding Kahn’s raised eyebrows, Chogny continued:

“I haven’t seen him for years, but I hear things, you know? He and I were old friends once.”

“Have you told someone about this?” Kahn asked. “I mean, if you know him . . .”

“Oh, they all know him. He is very well known.”

“I take it, then, he’s out with the VC somewhere. I mean, he doesn’t live here or anything.”

“Oh, no.” Chogny laughed. “If they could catch him, what a prize he would make! They’d take him to Saigon and skin him in the middle of Tu Do Street. But he’s a shrewd fellow—I know. We were on the same side all the way to Dien Bien Phu. He lost his leg there—to artillery, you know; right off at the knee.”

“But you don’t see him anymore?”

Chogny laughed. “Oh, no! Five, maybe six years ago, I think. On the street in Phan Rang; we had a drink together in a little café. He was under the name of Vinh.”

“That’s not his real name?”

“Sacre bleu!”
Chogny exclaimed. “No. I think his real name is Trung, something like that—all these Asian devils’ names sound alike, eh? Last I heard he was going by the name Bac or Boc—I can’t remember which. Slippery fellow—they’ll have a hard time catching that one . . .”

Kahn savored the warmth of the brandy as it drained into his stomach. He felt good. He almost wished the court-martial could be right now. His mind felt clear. He could tell them what he felt . . .

Below, the city lights sparkled gaily and the fishing boats twinkled like fireflies around the ragged islands in the bay.

“This must have been a lovely place before the war,” Kahn said.

“Ah,
mais oui,
Lieutenant,” Chogny said, leaning back on the stool to catch a rising breeze. “But there has always been a war.”

33

T
he court-martial opened promptly at 0900 hours in a small, airless room on the first floor of the II Corps Field Force Headquarters building in a compound near the center of the city. The president of the court was a stern-faced colonel named Maitland, whose most distinguishing feature was a pair of enormous black eyebrows that peaked up at the ends to give him an apelike countenance. At either side of him sat the rest of the court—a major, two captains, two master sergeants and a sergeant major of Japanese descent who wore, on his immaculately pressed khakis, the ribbon for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Set out on the long table were seven yellow legal tablets, each with a pencil laid neatly across its top. An American flag drooped listlessly on a wall.

Before them sat the accused—six melancholy and frightened men—postured respectfully behind a desk at which their defense counsel, Captain Gore, was poring over some papers.

The Judge Advocate, an earnest-faced captain named Carter Fox, rose at a nod from Colonel Maitland and swore in the court in a rich Virginia accent. He ran his fingers through his longer-than-regulation blond hair, then grimly ticked off the charges and specifications against each of the accused: “That on the sixth day of February at the Second Platoon positions on Hill Sixty-seven, Sergeants Groutman and Maranto, Specialists Fourth Class Trent, Harley and Mullen and Private Acquino did with malice aforethought assault, rape and commit other wrongful sexual acts against two Oriental human beings known as Co Vin Duc and Co Ba Duc, aged approximately sixteen and fourteen years old, now deceased.” The complete readings against each of the six took nearly half an hour. Then Maitland indicated he was ready for the Judge Advocate’s opening statement, and the six accused shifted uneasily in their seats.

During this time, Kahn had watched passively from the rear of the room, studying the faces of the six. Groutman had not surprised him. He could almost have predicted it. Even before he had gotten the company, even back at Bragg, Kahn had disliked Groutman, even feared him a little, and made a point of staying away from him, and when Brill had come to him and wanted to make Groutman Platoon Sergeant, Kahn had reluctantly gone along, but he had never liked him. Never. The others he barely knew. They were faces and names among dozens and dozens of others in the Company. But, he thought, maybe he should have known them better. The fact was that he had pretty much stayed away from Brill’s platoon. Just shunted it aside and let things take their course. Once he had thought of letting Sharkey or Donovan, or even Inge, step in and shape it up. What if he had? If, if, if . . . maybe things would be different now.

Captain Fox exuded a sense of outrage as he outlined the prosecution’s version of the crime. “My main regret,” he declared, “is that the officer apparently responsible for these events will not go to trial.”

The court listened with interest, and occasionally one of them would shoot a glance at the table where the accused were seated. It was not a pretty story, and as summed up by Captain Fox it was exactly the kind of thing the Army takes a very dim view of.

“Very well, then,” Maitland said when Fox had finished, “you may call your witness,” and Pfc. Harold N. Miter, Jr., was summoned to the chair.

Fox wasted no time getting to the matter at hand.

“Private Miter, did anything of an unusual nature occur the night of February sixth at your company position?”

“Some guys raped the girls,” Spudhead said nervously.

“What girls?”

“The two detainees. They were VC nurses. Lieutenant Brill’s patrol had brought them in earlier that day.”

“Lieutenant Brill—was he your platoon leader?”

“Yessir.”

“Now, you say ‘some guys’ raped them. Can you tell me who they were?”

“I don’t know who all of them were. I wasn’t there for the whole time. It went on most of the night.”

“Do you know who any of them were? Are any of them present in this room?”

“Yessir,” Spudhead said.

“Will you identify them for the court, please?”

“Sergeants Groutman and Maranto were the only ones I saw, sir.”

“And what were they doing?”

“They were raping them.”

“Simultaneously?”

“Well, they were both doing it. Groutman was on top of the little girl and Maranto was with the big one.”

“What hour of the day was this?”

“It was about twenty-one hundred hours.”

“So it was dark?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And where were you positioned?”

“I was right next to them. They were out on the ground under poncho liners.”

“Tell us what you saw.”

“I saw the poncho liners go up and down for a while.”

“What did you conclude from that?”

“Uh, I don’t understand your question,” Spudhead said meekly.

“I mean, when you were standing there watching these poncho liners going up and down with men and girls beneath them what did you think was going on?”

“I thought . . . I thought that the men were raping the girls.”

“How do you know the men were raping them?”

“Ah . . . well, there had been a rumor earlier that some of the men were going to rape them.”

“And you inferred from this and from what you saw that that was what was happening—is that correct?”

“Yessir.”

“Did you see anyone else raping the girls?”

“Not exactly.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Well, all during the night men came and went. I don’t know how many of them there were—or really who they were. I heard some of them talking about it later, but I didn’t actually see them raping.”

“Who talked about it later? Are any of them in this room?”

“Yessir, there was Harley and Acquino and Mullen—and Trent. They all talked about it.”

“How did they talk about it?”

“They just talked. They said they had had sex with the girls. They were laughing about it.”

“I see,” Fox said, stepping back to his desk. He picked up a legal pad and examined it for a moment, letting Spudhead’s testimony sink in.

“Now, Private Miter, going to the next day. In the morning, what events occurred?”

“It was about oh nine hundred, I think, and Lieutenant Brill came down to the positions with the man prisoner and—”

“Just a moment. You say there was a male prisoner. Who was he?”

“They caught him the same time they caught the girls. He had been tied up all night back up the hill.”

“And Lieutenant Brill came down and he had this man with him?”

“That’s right. There were two other guys who were actually leading the VC; Lieutenant Brill was walking in front of them.”

“Go on.”

“Well, when the lieutenant got there he bent over and looked at the girls, and he looked very mad, and then he told the VC he could have a choice of shooting them or he would be shot.”

“Just like that?”

“There was other talk—a lot of people standing around—but that’s what Lieutenant Brill said.”

“He said this directly to the prisoner?”

“He said it through an interpreter.”

“What happened then?”

“Lieutenant Brill got the interpreter to get the girls on their feet. They were in pretty bad shape. Their clothes were torn, and the older one had blood all over her . . . pants. She looked like she was having trouble standing up. The VC didn’t want to do it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because at first he didn’t want to take the weapon. He wouldn’t hold out his hand.”

“What weapon was this?”

“It was an M-sixteen rifle.”

“Whose was it?”

“I don’t know. It was somebody’s in the crowd. Lieutenant Brill just grabbed it from somebody.”

“Please continue.”

“Lieutenant Brill took out his forty-five and pointed it at the VC and told him—had the interpreter tell him—to shoot the girls. The VC took the weapon and he started to aim it, but he was having trouble with the safety. He couldn’t get it to go off. I guess he’d never shot one before. But Lieutenant Brill helped him with it and he said something to him, but I don’t know what it was because it was in Vietnamese.”

“What happened then?”

“I don’t know, sir. I turned away and went back to my position. I knew what was going to happen and I couldn’t watch.”

“I see. Can you describe for the court, then, the mood of the men who were standing around. How were they behaving?”

“They were just standing there. They weren’t laughing or talking or anything. They looked kind of funny.”

“What do you mean, ‘funny’?”

“They looked like they wanted to be somewhere else.”

“I have no more questions, Private Miter. Thank you.”

Gore rose up slowly and approached the witness chair looking over his glasses at Spudhead Miter.

“You say it was about twenty-one hundred hours when you witnessed what you believe was raping of the two girls—is that right?”