by Jack Twist
Chapter 23
It had clouded over by the time we reached the gates into Nui Dat. The ‘pearly gates’ they were called but the atmosphere was more hadean than heavenly as we passed through. An APC stood on either side of the road and a big MP sergeant, in slouch hat, not bush hat, glared at me as he shouted, “Slow down.”
The famous camp itself, which had nestled discreetly among the rubber trees, was littered with empty spaces. For several years now each one of those spaces where tents had stood represented a home of sorts to the hundreds of men who had come and gone. I wondered again how long it would take until it looked like no one had ever been there. We passed piles of tents and equipment and soldiers packing and stacking until we came to our designated check point.
“Wirraween, Sir,” I called to an artillery captain who waved me on and pointed. We turned down past the infantry lines, ‘grunt valley’, until a corporal stepped out in front of us. I gave him the password as a tent was quietly dropped nearby. Someone laughed softly but when I looked the men had begun folding it up without speaking.
“Hurry up,” said the corporal in a low harsh voice. “They’re waitin’ for ya.” He pointed.
A few large raindrops hit the windshield as we made our way under a large rubber tree where three tents still stood. A dozen or so blackened faces turned towards us but there was no greeting. I noticed Al twitch as another corporal, short and tough-looking, came towards us. He had to stretch up to see past me. He was glaring at Al.
“Who the fuck let him out?’ Al looked directly to the front, a deathly pale. “Heh! Jackman! Who let you out?”
“What do we do?” I asked him. “It’s my first time on the job?’
He turned his belligerent face at me. Drops of perspiration were running down his face over the black grease. “You wait for fuckin’ orders, don’t ya. And when you get ‘em, you carry ‘em out.” He looked at Al again. “Don’t ya, jackman.”
“Listen, mate,” I said. “You get us our orders and we’ll carry ‘em out. Take it easy.”
“Gilly,” someone called from behind him. “Come on.”
The sergeant who stepped in front of his corporal wasn’t much taller and looked younger. Blue eyes shone out from the black. If not for the alertness and serious intent of those eyes it might have been a clown’s face.
“You got any problems with following orders, driver? Like your mate here?”
“No.”
“ ‘Cause we don’t want no risks. We’re short. We’re extremely fuckin’ short and we don’t want no one goin’ to pieces on us. Even on the drive out.” I nodded. “Now we’re not takin’ your mate. Okay? We don’t want no risks. And he’s a risk.”
“Shit, look at this, Sarg.” It was the corporal.
“What?” shouted the sergeant.
“Have a look.”
The sergeant left me and then called, “Heh, driver. Come here!”
I got out of the truck, starting to feel like Al looked.
“Can you tell me what the use of that is?”
I looked at the truck’s tray. It looked like the usual troop-carrier, seats running down each side, enough to hold up to ten men on each. I didn’t know what to say.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” said the corporal.
“The seats are supposed to be in the middle, son,” said the sergeant. “Lookin’ out. If we engage enemy on the way out we’d rather shoot them, not each other.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “First time out. No one told me.”
“I bet your mate didn’t tell you,” said one of the soldiers.
“Fuckin’ pogos,” said another.
“Can you change ‘em over now?” asked the sergeant.
“Don’t know. Never done it before. I’m usually on dump trucks. Just a sec.” Al was sitting motionless in the co-driver’s seat. He looked like one of those birds that keep perfectly still, hoping no one will notice them.
“Al. How the fuck do you change the seats over?” He was annoying me now. Couldn’t he see we only had to follow orders a little longer and we’d be out of here? And soon enough, out of the whole campaign, the whole country. What was so special about him? It was nearly all over, for Christ’s sake. Yeh, Al. We all agree it’s a horrible, fucked-up world, but sometimes you’ve just got to get on with it. These crusaders, whether committed soldiers like Greg Urquhart and Lyle O’Malley, or revolutionaries like Al, dragging the rest of us into their slipstreams.
“Al! The fuckin’ seats in the back! What’s the deal?”
“You need a special spanner,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“Well where’s the spanner?”
“Back at Vungers. They do it back there.”
“I didn’t see anyone changin’ seats over.”
“Most of ‘em are done already.”
“And we can’t do it here?”
He shook his head. I cursed and turned to face the wrath of these black-faced infantrymen. “It has to be done back at Vung Tau, Sergeant. Sorry. I didn’t ...”
I was met with a chorus of abuse.
“So we’re s’posed to sit there lookin’ at each other,” the corporal spat bitterly. “And give the enemy our backs.”
“ ‘Kay, listen up,” said the sergeant. “We’re out a’ time anyway. You’ll have to watch carefully on your opposite side. If anything happens, do not shoot.” He waited a moment. “Drop immediately to the middle and get over to the other side. Corporal Gilbransen will give the orders. You will be extra vigilant. Look fuckin’ hard.” He lowered his voice.
“ ‘Kay. Let’s go.”
While the men climbed onto the truck the sergeant strode up to the cabin, passenger side. “Get out!” he ordered Al. Al didn’t move. “I said get out!”
Still Al didn’t move. The sergeant opened the door, grabbed Al with both hands and dragged him out. Al hit the dirt so hard I wondered if he broke anything. When he turned around the dust on the side of his face was flecked with blood.
“I haven’t got time to deal with this shit now. I’ll make my report out later and you will be spending the rest of this war locked up! I’ll make sure of that!”
Al had scrambled to this feet. Someone spat at him from the back of the truck as he watched the sergeant who turned and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Let’s go. You know the road out to the Horseshoe?”
When we emerged from under the rubber tree the rain was steady. Men worked around us in quiet little groups as we passed through the continuing demolition. In the rear-view mirror I could see some of the men in the back of the truck. They looked grim and tense in the falling rain.
“What’s his problem?” asked the sergeant. “The enemy have never engaged a vehicle yet, to my knowledge. It’s not their style. They fight in the scrub. And we’re only patrolin’ ‘round the fire support bases.”
“He’s always scared.” But that wasn’t quite correct. Al hadn’t always been afraid to go out on the road. “And he’s a bit crazy. Crazy, that’s his nickname. He reckons no one should have to go out anymore. That bloke who was killed last week. That upset him.” The sergeant said nothing. “He’s cracking up. Hope he can hold on till we go home.”
“Did he know ‘im?”
“The guy who was killed? No.”
“What’s he know about upset then?”
“Did you know ’im?” I asked.
“No. Different company. But we lost our last bloke not so long back.”
“Were you there? Where it happened?”
“Yeh. Same operation. I wasn’t near ’im. Different platoon.” He stopped for a moment. “They called ’im ‘Wakey’. Every mornin’ he woke up, first thing he said was how many days and a wakey he had left. Wouldn’t a’ made any difference now, with the withdrawal.”
“How’d it happen?”
He was slow to answer and for a moment I was sorry I had asked.
“He had his back to the enemy, actually, behind a tree, reloadin’. Fuckin�
� grenade. RPG goes off behind, down behind the assault line. Piece a’ shrapnel pinned ’im to the tree, through the gut.” He was quiet again. “Boss was callin’ to ’im after it’s over. Tellin’ ’im he can come out from behind the tree. Then they find ’im stuck to it. Gut can be the worst. Prob’ly took ’im a while to die but nobody could hear ’im in all the noise.”
He sat quietly. I watched the road ahead intently. Al’s mutiny was against this man, who lived so many of his days hoping there would be another. It was like accusing the gun instead of the shooter, not that Al was accusing any of these men. But his pathetic little protest, no matter how he justified it in his own mind, was aimed in the wrong direction, at the wrong people.
The sergeant must have been thinking about it too. “I won’t be makin’ any report, about your mate. I’d probably be in as much trouble as ‘im. ‘Specially the way this war is now. And I’m too short for the hassle.”
He was short. We were all short. We just wanted to get home.
About half way out to the Horseshoe the rain began to fall heavily. The sergeant stared into the bush beside us, as did the men in the back, in spite of the rain.
“Just up here at this clearing,” he said.
I had hardly stopped when they all dropped from the truck onto the muddy ground and vanished into the trees. Not a word was spoken. In the grey haze of the rain they were like ghosts.
I turned the truck around, reversing three times, fearful of mines. Relieved to be heading back, I checked the rear-view mirror as I moved away from the clearing and saw nothing but muddy road and wet trees and falling rain. Conscious of extra engine noise I kept the speed steady, and drove in the middle of the road to avoid the slippery edges. When I came up behind a man on a motorbike I stayed there, forcing him over into the puddles.
Al was sitting under the big rubber tree drinking a cup of coffee when I got back. He had washed his face, exposing the missing skin on one side.
“Okay?” he asked. “No worries?”
“No worries. Where’d you get that?”
“Cook inside. I did basic with ‘im. Come on, I’ll get you one.”
“We’re due at the checkpoint to see what we take back.”
“You got time for one cup.”
He was more relaxed. Happy perhaps to see me back safely, or was it because he felt he’d made another political point?
Crusaders. I drank my coffee wondering if Abbie Klein was one. With her single-minded determination to keep track of her father’s baby, a baby of unconventional parentage to say the least. Shouldn’t her priority be getting herself out of here a.s.a.p., given the situation? It was her father’s problem. Shouldn’t he be left to sort it out when he’s up to it?
It would be a good thing, surely, if Julie Shields and the embassy had cut her visa and sent the girl home where she belonged. Crusaders. Disturbing the peace of us lotus-eaters. I just wanted to go home.
My tension eased as we finished our coffee and climbed into the truck. And somewhere, out near Dat Do, and the fire support base they called the Horseshoe, infantrymen were moving through the scrub in the steady soaking rain.
