War Year (7 page)

A guy not much older than me sat down on a pile of sandbags and took off his hat, wiped his forehead. “Same as usual, Pop. Except Intelligence—no attack tonight.”

“Bet's off, Professor!” The Prof laughed.

“Let me guess,” the lieutenant said. “You're Horowitz and you're, uh, Farmer.”

“Sorry, sir. I'm Farmer and he's Horowitz.”

“Glad you could make it. Another dozen and we'd be all set. Anybody got a butt?”

Pop threw him a pack of Winstons. He took out one and tossed it back. “Reminds me—we've got an SP pack down at the pad. Somebody wanta go get it?”

“On my way,” Professor said.

“What's an SP pack?” Willy asked.

“Mostly cigarettes and candy,” the lieutenant said. “Pop, you about ready to put overhead on this bunker?”

“Yeah, I've got Doc an' Fats on it.”

“OK… what can I do besides drink one of those beers?”

“Thought we'd just take it easy until we get the overhead.”

“Suits.” He cracked a beer. “See, that's the way it is. I command this platoon, but Pop leads it. Pop, if I ordered you to eat a pile of shit, would you do it?”

“With a grin on my face, sir.”

“I just bet you would. Anyhow, anything Pop says, goes. Anybody else tells you to do something, you can try to reason with him.”

Doc and Fats came puffing up the hill, balancing two eight-foot logs on their shoulders. They dropped them by the hole and flopped down panting.

“Got six more this size,” Doc said. “Afternoon, sir.” Pant, pant. “How 'bout lettin' us take a break while the new guys haul up a couple?”

We got to our feet. “Just show us where they are,” Willy said.

“I'll go with yuh,” Doc said, getting up. “Oh, my achin' back.”

“Give yourself a Darvon, Doc.”

“Fuck, sir, I'll stick to aspirin. Let's go.”

We found the logs, and Doc showed us how to get one on each shoulder. They didn't start to get heavy until we'd gone about ten steps. We barely made it to the top.

“Good job,” Pop said. “OK, Fats, you an' Doc get the next two. Then Farmer and Horowitz again.”

“What kind of cigarettes you smoke?” Prof was opening a cardboard box with his bayonet.

“Pall Malls for me,” I said.

“Same.”

He opened the box and tossed a carton to us. “That's all we got, you'll have to split it. Won't get any more for a week.”

“Five's plenty.”

“Not for me,” Willy said. “What else you got?”

“All the menthols you can smoke. Everything else is pretty much spoken for.”

“Ugh. Gimme a coupla packs of menthols, then. Just in case.”

“Have a carton. You can always throw 'em away.”

Willy and I helped Pop and the lieutenant stack sandbags around two sides of the hole. When Fats and Doc came back, all of us wrestled the six logs into place on top of the sandbags, then we went back to get the last two.

By the time we brought the two logs back, they'd covered half the bunker with three layers of sandbags. We placed the logs and finished piling up sandbags; wound up with four layers.

“Well, what do you think, Pop?”

“Four layers'll probably stop a sixty-millimeter mortar. Not much else. It'll do for tonight, though.”

“Let's get some chow and call it a day.”

“Goddamn it, Fats; get some chow, get some chow!—everybody else
hates
C-rations.”

“Lieutenant Byrnes!” A private came running down the hill.

“Yes?”

“Command post wants you on the double!” He came to a staggering stop. “A Company's made contact, out in the boonies. Company-size ambush.”

“Holy shit!” The lieutenant scrambled up the hill.

Pop grabbed the guy's arm. “Any casualties?”

“Yeah. Don't know how many yet.”

“Prof, better get ready to blow an LZ. Your demo bag up tight?”

He picked up a bag and rummaged through it. “Plenty of caps, fuse, det cord. We'll get a box of C-4 down at the pad.”

Then the artillery roared, BLAM BLAM BLAM-BLAMBLAM; I jumped out of my skin and so did Willy, but the others didn't seem to notice.

“Farmer, Horowitz, go with the Professor. Wait on the pad 'til we send word.”

We put on our packs, picked up rifles, and walked down to the pad. While we were on our way, three jets in tight formation streaked over the hill.

“That'll be air support,” Prof said. “Watch.”

Two of the jets peeled away and climbed, while the third went on for a half-mile, shot two rockets and a long burst of machine-gun fire, and climbed. A minute later the other two, about ten seconds apart, screamed over the hill again. The first dropped a load of bombs and the second dropped a large barrel that burst into an orange-and-black flower at treetop level—napalm. They made a tight U-turn, rejoined the first jet, and sped for the horizon in tight formation.

“Whew! How do they know they aren't getting our boys?”

“Sometimes they do. Can't be helped.”

Doc and the lieutenant came down the hill, carrying two chain saws and two axes. “Prof, you can scratch the C-4, they've got a natural LZ.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Yeah—look, the ambush dropped back after first contact, but they expect a night attack. They're digging in; you three got to go drop trees for their overhead.”

“Coming back tonight?”

“No, you better count on staying. Doc's going along; they've got twenty casualties already. Sure to pick up more tonight.

“You new guys got plenty of ammo?”

“Two hundred rounds.”

“Ammo dump's over there—better get another 500 apiece.”

“Sir, our weapons aren't zeroed yet.”

“Doesn't mean anything,” the Prof said. “Never see your target out there anyhow.”

“That's right. You get the first slick out—it's still a hot LZ, you'll probably have to jump.”

I ran to get the ammo—I could hear the soft thrumming of a helicopter coming up the hill. Hot LZ? Jump?

How far did they expect us to jump without a parachute?

SIX

The slick brought us down, dropping like a rock, to within five feet of the clearing below. The copilot jerked his thumb and we jumped out.

Five feet isn't a long way to fall unless you happen to have a fifty-pound pack, a rifle strapped on your back, and a heavy chain saw in each hand. I hit hard, and fell over on my face. One chain saw ripped a chunk of skin out of my right leg. The chopper zoomed away, straight up.

“Hot LZ” means the pilot won't land, for fear of getting shot up. A couple of feet more couldn't have made that much difference, though. Besides, nobody was shooting anybody.

“Over here! Keep down!” A GI waved from the edge of the clearing.

The four of us got up and ran in a low crouch to where he was standing. “Are we glad to see you. You a medic?”

“Roger.” Doc was staring straight ahead while he took the medic bag off his shoulder. I came up even with him and saw what he was looking at.

They had all the wounded and dead gathered in one place. The dead men, three of them, were wrapped in ponchos. Blood had leaked out and settled in a pool under the three corpses.

Two of the wounded were sitting up, smoking; one with the side of his head all bandaged and the other with an arm in a makeshift sling. The other wounded were lying down, some of them unconscious. One man was naked from the waist down. Both his legs were blown off at the knee, stumps covered with scarlet bandages held in place by web-belt tourniquets. I heard Willy puke and clamped my jaws shut and swallowed hard again and again.

“God
damn
it, you didn't bring any blood?”

“Man,” Doc drawled, “ain't
got
no fuckin' blood at the fire base. We come from Alamo.”

“Sorry. We need it though, man, need it bad. Got any morphine?”

“Yeah, twelve syrettes, maybe fifteen.”

“More'n all of us put together. Wanna go down the line and see if anybody needs another shot—but go easy, no tellin' what's gonna happen tonight.”

“Ain't nothin' gonna happen tonight, man. The engineers is here. Charlie's scared of the engineers.” He grinned and the grin was a skull's leer in a gray Halloween mask. I didn't know Negroes got pale.

“Let's go find some trees,” Prof said, and clapped Willy on the shoulder. “Gonna be all right, Horowitz?”

Willy knocked his hand away. “I'll be OK.” We went on into the woods.

About ten yards in, we hit the perimeter. Two guys were digging like mad while the third stood in front of them with an M-16. “Hands up, Prof,” he said.

“Friendly, goddammit,” Prof smiled. “Long time no see, Benson. Where's the captain?”

“That way.” Benson gestured with his gun. “You gonna cut us some overhead?”

“Long as you keep Charlie away,” Prof said.

“Hell, I thought you engineers was tough—chop 'em up with your chain saws.”

“Must have been some other engineers you heard about. I'm chickenshit through and through.” Prof didn't smile when he said that.

We walked on through the woods. “Last time I saw that guy I helped put him on a Medevac chopper with a bullet in his arm.”

“They made him come back?”

“Yeah. Nice thing about the infantry, they don't let you get soft. Engineers who get wounded stay back in base camp the rest of their hitch.”

“Glad to hear
that
.”

“Mm-hmn. Best not to get wounded in the first place, though. There's the captain.”

“You boys took your time.” He was sitting by a radio with a map unfolded on his knees. He looked pale and his voice shook a little.

“Had to wait for a slick, sir, got here as…”

“OK, Prof, I know—drop your trees in the usual pattern, in a circle around the perimeter. Work fast, it'll be gettin' dark in a couple of hours.”

“Yessir.” We kept walking in the same direction. “Either of you know how to use a chain saw?” Prof asked. I didn't.

“Yeah, I worked on a farm one summer in high school,” Willy said. “We cleared away some woods with 'em.”

“Good. You know how to tell what direction it'll drop?”

“We always just made a notch on the side you wanted to fall, and then cut through from the back.”

“Kee-rect. You take the yellow saw, the McCullough, and I'll take the green Remington; it's kinda cranky if you aren't used to it. Farmer, you'll be our security. Carry our guns and let us know if any shooting starts. We won't be able to hear a blessed thing once we start up the saws.”

It was almost dark by the time we had dropped enough trees and cut them up into sections two ax handles long. While we were working two Medevac choppers landed—hot LZ or no—and took away the wounded men. Doc Jones left on the second one.

We didn't have time to dig a hole, but the artillery lieutenant said we could hop in his if caps started poppin'. We put our bedrolls under a tree by the artillery bunker and started to blow up our air mattresses. I was bushed, and I hadn't done much but stand around with three guns and a gas can, although they let me saw a couple of times to cut up logs.

“Now let me show you what every seasoned trooper takes onto the battlefield,” the Prof said, reaching into his pack. He pulled out three beers.

We drank the beer and tried to relax, but it was hard to keep calm and collected while the artillery bursts walked in a circle around our perimeter. That was supposed to keep Charlie away, and I guess it worked. I fell asleep about three o'clock in the morning, and there was no attack.

A godawful racket woke me just as the sun was coming up; birds and monkeys (and lizards, I later found out) screeching at each other. The Professor was already up, heating a can of C-rations the way he'd showed us yesterday.

“Morning, Farmer, drink coffee?”

“Yeah, sure.” He tossed me three little brown paper envelopes. Instant coffee, sugar, and powdered milk.

“Use one of those beer cans for a cup, heat it up with some C-4.” I had a steaming can of coffee in less than a minute.

“I forgot to bring any C's,” I said. And I was hungry.

“They've got a couple of boxes down by the command bunker. But I wouldn't advise eating anything unless you're starving.”

“I am, just about. Why not?”

“We're goin' on a burial detail this morning. Smell anything unusual?”

There was a faint sickly sweet smell, mixture of molasses and shit. “Dead people?”

“Dead and half-rotten, in this heat. We've gotta put 'em under the ground, so don't eat anything if you don't have to.”

“I thought they sent your… sent people's bodies back to the States.”

“Sure, American bodies. Those are Vietnamese you smell. We search 'em, then bury 'em.”

The coffee didn't taste so good. “Why do the engineers have to do it?”

“Sometimes the bodies are booby-trapped. Booby traps're our job, not the infantry's.”

“We gonna have to disarm booby-traps?”

“Nothing so fancy. We just blow 'em up from a distance.”

“Sounds messy.…”

“Yeah.”

I poured my coffee out on the ground. It had too much cream anyhow.

“There's one over here. X-ray?” That was one of the infantrymen who came with us to help with the pick-and-shovel work, and provide security. They all called us X-ray, as if to remind us that we weren't heroic grunts like them.

“Okay,” Prof said. “You two stay here for a minute. I'll check it out for booby-traps.” He went into the woods where the guy had yelled, and came back a couple of minutes later, wiping his right hand on his fatigues.

“All set. Here.” Prof handed each of us a cigar and lit one up himself.