Fallen Angels (19 page)

Peewee was trying to bum what was left of the leech off my wrist with a cigarette. The damn thing was disgusting.

“What did they say?” Sergeant Simpson looked at Gearhart when he put down the phone.

“They wanted to know if we saw any identifying patches on them,” Gearhart said.

“How did you figure there were so many?” Walowick asked.

“They were talking too much,” Gearhart said. “Too confident.”

If it had been me, I thought, I would have screwed it up. I would have.

Sergeant Simpson extended for thirty days. Nobody wanted to look at him, nobody wanted to see him. It was as if he had decided to die. That’s what we all felt. They gave him another stripe. He was a Master Sergeant. Big deal.

Most of the guys that extended in Nam did it for the rank, but some had other things in their heads.

It was as if the idea that any moment they could be killed excited them. I knew a kid on 119th Street off Eighth Avenue like that. He had run with a gang and was always in a knife fight or something. When he finally got killed — gunned down outside the Showcase Bar on 125th — nobody went to his funeral.

We could tell the action was picking up all over. The air strikes were picking up. The rumble of the big guns started as soon as it was light enough to see and sometimes lasted far into the night. Most of it was outgoing, but not all of it. Once in a while a mortar shell would land near the base, and then we would all run out into the trench built in front of the tent.

We reinforced that sucker with some two-by-fours that Lieutenant Gearhart had had flown all the way up from Saigon. Most of the patrols going out were Vietnamese, and Johnson said that he didn’t think most of them were really patrolling.

“They ain’t out a kilometer before you hear popping,” he said.

He was right. Half the time the ARVNs would go out, especially at night, they would be back within a half hour saying that they had been hit by a company of charlies. Then we would go on alert and send out a few rounds and spend the rest of the night in the trenches.

I won thirty dollars in the football pool. I had Green Bay and a point total of forty-eight, which

was closer than anybody else. I sent the money to Mama.

I got a rash or something on my feet. Peewee wanted me to put some of the salve he had bought from the old woman on them but I said no. I remembered how his face had broken out. At the new camp we had been working more in higher ground, and I thought the small cracks between my toes would heal. They didn’t. A medic from Tam Ky came by with the pills and gave me some powder for my feet and told me to keep them as dry as possible.

“Your feet get messed up and you’re going to end up with a profile.”

Yeah, thanks.

Lobel damned near dragged Jamal into our hooch.

“Go ahead, tell him what you heard,” Lobel said to Jamal.

“Sergeant Simpson and Captain Stewart got into a fight,” Jamal said. “Captain Stewart told Sergeant Simpson that if he didn’t shut up and get out he was going to bust him down to private.”

“Who the hell does he think he is?” Brunner asked.

“What they fighting about?” Johnson asked.

Brunner got up and walked away.

“He found out that Captain Stewart is volunteering Alpha Company all over the place. He asked him what he’s doing that for, and Captain Stewart said that if he didn’t want to fight he shouldn’t have extended.”

What Jamal said went down hard. We didn’t mind doing our part because it had to be done, even though we always didn’t have answers to why we were doing it.

But nobody wanted to go out and risk their lives so that Stewart could make major.

The mortars started coming in more regularly over the next three days, and the ARVN patrols started staying out shorter and shorter times. We didn’t go out for almost a week, but when I saw Captain Stewart talking to Gearhart I figured something was up. I was right. We were headed for another patrol.

The “patrol” turned out to be a company-sized sweep. We were supposed to take off at 1000 hours. At 0930 hours three Hueys, escorted by two Spook-ies, huge C-47 gunships, came in. It was the rest of our outfit.

Lobel wrote a long letter to his father, telling him that he was sorry about joining the army. He put it in his gear at the hooch before we went on the sweep.

“You really sorry?” I asked.

He shrugged, and I dropped it.

I wondered how my father would take it if I got killed. I told myself that I didn’t care. The more I thought of it as we waited to load up, the more I began to understand how Lobel felt. Having people care about you was probably the only thing that made any of it right. Having them not care made your whole life wrong.

The company hit the landing zone at 1117 hours. Some squads from Second Platoon went in first. They didn’t get any fire, but they looked confused on the ground. We soon got the word that there were punji sticks in the tall grass we were jumping down into. They were sharpened sticks stuck into the ground or in pits. Usually they were covered with shit, either human shit or animal shit, so when they stuck you, you got infected. No one in our squad hit the punji sticks as we landed, and we started moving out toward the wood line. There was no resistance.

We got into the wood line and formed a skirmish line. Monaco spotted a mine symbol. He called Gearhart over and showed it to him. There were three leaves rolled into the shape of a triangle at the base of a tree. We looked around for the mine but didn’t see one. Then Johnson found it. It was one of our C ration cans rigged to a limb that you would have to push out of your way if you were over six feet tall.

Monaco blew the mine, and we went on.

“Look for shells, burnt leaves, anything that says charlie’s been here,” Captain Stewart said.

“We found the damn mine,” Peewee muttered to me. “The tooth fairy didn’t leave that sucker.”

The wood led up a hill, and the grass was getting taller. I hated it. You couldn’t see through the grass and you were scared shit of stepping on a mine.

“Keep your distance! Keep your distance!” Gearhart.

We were going uphill. You had to lean forward and sometimes catch at brushes with your hands. You didn’t want to touch anything that you didn’t have to, or pull on anything.

I went through a brush and nearly had a heart attack when the thick branches hooked my M-16 and jerked it out of my hand. I turned and saw Peewee. He disentangled my piece and handed it to me. He smiled.

We got a quarter of the way up the hill when a guy in the next squad called out.

“What is it?” Stewart called to him.

“Looks like a spider hole!” It was a corporal, tall, sleeves rolled up, tattoed arms.

Stewart stopped the company and a couple of men approached the hole. A spider hole is a hole dug in the ground that’s big enough for one man, sometimes two; but sometimes they’re disguised and there’s a tunnel entrance in back of them. The corporal fired a few rounds into the hole and then looked in.

“Empty!” he said.

“Look around for more!” Stewart called out. “And be alert!”

Just then the whole damn mountainside opened up. The tall corporal spun around from the impact of the bullets and came flying forward.

“Up the hill! Up the hill!” Gearhart was on his knees and pointing up.

Simpson was firing, and I opened up. We started scrambling up the hill toward where the fire was coming from. I heard the rounds whining and buzzing around my head like angry bees. I was doubled up, firing from a crouched position.

I moved against a tree and aimed at where I thought they had to be.

“This way! This way!” Gearhart was going up first.

I found myself going up after him. Johnson and Lobel were on our left. Johnson got down and started spreading fire. Brew was feeding him. I kept firing, moving under Johnson’s cover. We hit a ledge, and I almost fell over a dead Cong.

When we got to the ledge, we were less than thirty meters from the top of the hill. Gearhart had got a M-79 from some place and was shooting grenades to the top. Some guys threw some grenades over the top and Johnson and another sixty raked it over pretty good.

We made the last thirty meters in less than a minute, with everybody throwing grenades over the top. Stewart was on the phone. The choppers and the jets would be in the air already.

We got to the top, and there were three more Congs on the ground. One was only wounded. He was half-sitting up, and I think he was trying to get his hands up. Captain Stewart opened up on him, and his head snapped back and his arms flailed for a moment even after I knew he was dead.

We got to the crest of the hill and started firing down the other side. We didn’t see any Congs, but they had to be there somewhere. The fact that we had found four bodies was a miracle.

“Incoming!’’

I dove to the ground and bounced up to my knees as the blast hit. I tried to stand, but my legs went out from under me. What the hell was happening?

“To the left! That way! That way!” I heard Gearhart calling out. I saw Johnson; he had a rag or something around the sixty and was shooting it from the hip.

Another round hit, and I saw Johnson go to his knees.

“O Jesus! O Jesus!”

I looked around. It was Brew. There was blood gushing out from the top of his leg. I could see the bone.

“Medic! Medic!”

I tried to get over to Brew. My head was spinning. I thought I was too scared to move. I tried to force myself to move, then I looked down and saw that my pants were ripped open. I saw the flesh already starting to swell. I was hit.

“O Mama, O Mama, please don’t let me die!” “Get the choppers in here!”

I pushed myself over on my stomach and looked for my rifle. The next round lifted me, and I felt something hit my wrist and tear into the flesh. I felt as if somebody was putting a hot iron on my wrist, then dragging it through the flesh.

“O God! O God! O God, please!”

“Back off the fucking hill, they got it zeroed!”

I could get one eye open. I saw Gearhart backing down the hill. He was firing the grenade launcher and looking around. I felt somebody grab me by the collar. I couldn’t turn around. My leg twisted under me and there was pain. But more than the pain in my leg, more than my wrist dangling in front of me, was the thought that I was going to die. I was going to die.

“O God. O God, please. Please.”

I was trembling. I didn’t feel any pain, but I couldn’t move. There was stuff going on all around me. I saw guys moving past me. Blurs. I heard cursing. The sounds of automatic weapons seemed to be a rippling that swelled from somewhere.

What was going on? How long was it going to last? What had we run into?

“Howya doing, man? Howya doing?” Jamal was over me. He was opening my shirt.

“I got hit,” I said. I couldn’t see him too clearly.

“Yeah, I know.” He was looking at my chest. He lifted me and looked at my back. Then he laid me back down and started looking at my groin. I just kept looking into his face. Guys were still moving around. I tried to lift my head, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I was too scared to move.

Breathing was hard. I was panting. I wondered if I had been hit in the chest. I couldn’t tell.

“Watch the ridge line! Watch the ridge line!” Gearhart’s voice.

Everything began to fade except the sound of the sixty. My eyes were closed and I opened them. Jamal moved my leg.

“Ooh!” There was pain. It wasn’t too bad, but why couldn’t I move? Why couldn’t I breathe?

Now there were people over me. Things were getting clearer. I looked up and saw Peewee. His helmet was on the back of his head, his rifle under his arm. He looked down at me. I tried to say something to him, but nothing came out.

Choppers overhead. They were laying down a line of fire. They came down, then back up again. Two other guys were near me. I closed my eyes, and one of them pushed them back open and looked at them. Then he let them close. I opened them again. They were talking to Jamal. One of them was wiping my arm. I tried to turn to see what he was doing, and the other one pushed me back down.

More faces over me; I was being lifted. I was on a litter. My throat was dry.

“How you doing, soldier boy?” A clean-looking dude with a southern accent.

“Okay,” I said.

“You gonna stay that way, too,” he said.

He patted me on the shoulder. I was on the chopper. The chopper was different now. The straps on the side were huge, the handles were further out from the wall. There was more noise, even, than before.

Smells. Smells of dirt, of sweat, of funk. The smell of blood that I remembered from Jenkins. Bodies gathered around me. The chopper jolted up. There were guys kneeling near me, their backs toward me. I could see their backs.

“I still got a pulse!”

“You ain’t got no pulse, man.”

“I got a pulse … no, maybe not.”

There were boots and mud in my face as a guy shifted position. They were moving up and down next to me. I tried lifting my head to see what they were doing. My head swam. I looked between the guys working on somebody next to me. It was Brew. A guy was bent over him, giving him mouth to mouth.

I turned away. There was something over me, it was shining. I thought I was going to pass out. Brew’s arm came from between the two guys working on him. I took his hand. It was limp. I squeezed it and I thought that he squeezed back.

“Keep pressure on the wound!”

“It’s not helping! It’s too open!”

“Just keep the pressure.”

“Too many places, we got to try to keep putting it in.”

“Okay! Okay! You keep looking! How’s the other one?”

The boots scraped against my shoulder as they shifted position.

“Looks like shock, maybe a concussion.”

“He breathing?”

A face over mine, lifting my neck, a mouth over mine blowing air into me. I was a balloon, the air pushed into my chest. I gasped.

“He’s breathing!” “Watch him!”

“See if the legs are swelling.”

As they started probing my legs, I turned to see Brew again. There were tubes. A medic had what looked like the thing you use to take baby bottles out of hot water. He kept moving it toward Brew’s stomach.