by Ken Babbs
He cuts around a table and runs for the stage. The Hammer swipes at him with the flagpole. The pennant swoops across the upswept hair of the lady players. They screech and duck. Cochran dives for the bartender’s legs, but the skinny lout vaults onto the stage and escapes. I trip over Cochran and sprawl against the platform. Rosey smacks into me, then Katrinka, and we roll in a tangle of arms and legs and breasts and bright red hair and fluffy pompadour. The Hammer jerks to a halt, the flag pole pointed toward the bingo announcer, the bartender hiding behind his back.
The announcer looks at the marker in his hand.
“B-Twelve, B-Twelve, please fill in B-Twelve on your cards. Say, Harry,” he says to his assistant, “take over for a minute, will you?”
He turns to the bartender, “Would you mind unclinging yourself from my back? And,” he daintily pushes the flagpole away with a finger, “can’t you point that thing another direction?”
“N-Seven, fill in N-Seven.”
Cochran and Rosey and Katrinka and I stagger to our feet. Katrinka’s pompadour is falling apart in octopus-leg tendrils. Her strapless dress is skewered sideways, a breast exposed. She stuffs it back in. Cochran tugs at his tie and pulls it off. His shirt buttons pop. Rosey’s emerald-green eyes sparkle with excitement.
“Oh, Huck, you were wonderful.” She clings to my arm, squeezing me with her goodies. The Hammer sets the flagpole upright. Stands at attention.
“Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Rappler, Commanding Officer, Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron number One Hundred and Eighty-Eight reporting a severe dereliction of duty on the part of that poor excuse of a bartender hiding behind your coat tails.”
The bartender bunches his fists, “You and me, buddy,” he snarls. “Not yer whole damned pack.”
The bachelor pilots are casing the bingo ladies, ready for any sign of testiness.
“G-Fourteen, please fill in G-Fourteen.”
“Now, now, I’m sure it’s a simple misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding, hell. That bartender’s got to go, and go now.”
“They’re cut off, boss. You can see how crazy they are. Any more drinking and the club’s a goner.”
“Let’s talk it over in my office, gentlemen, shall we, so the ladies can continue their game?”
“O-Six. Fill in O-Six on your cards.”
The manager walks down off the stage.
“BINGO! BINGO!” a female voice calls.
We follow the manager. The flagpole charts our course across the room. The Hammer and the bartender yell in the manager’s opposite ears. Rosey hangs onto my arm. The flotilla suddenly veers and stops. The Admiral’s wife pokes her finger in the manager’s chest.
“BINGO!” she cries. “I have a bingo.”
The manager closes his eyes. He opens them and flutters his lids. “I’m sure you do, madam. Take your card to the platform and have it validated.”
“Don’t think for a minute you’re going to cheat me out of my bingo with all these shenanigans.” She waves her card at him and heads for the platform. The pilots scatter and give her an unobstructed path. The manager steers the Hammer to his office. “Right this way, sir.”
“Insult to the squadron … to the Marine Corps,” the Hammer is saying.
The manager’s eyes widen. “My God! All of you?” We squeeze in. The flagpole threatens the lights.
“Now, gentlemen, please, won’t one of you explain?”
“Officers!” the Hammer shouts. “Every one of these men officers. And that bartender! Either he goes or I write a letter.”
“Not tonight,” the manager protests. “I can’t possibly let him go tonight. Oh no. We’re much too busy for that. He’s the only man I could get.”
The bartender crosses his arms and gloats.
“Then I write the letter. And not only that, I’ll pull my squadron out of here and you won’t have any need for a bartender—“
“Let ’em go,” the bartender hollers. “I kicked them out already.”
“Tomorrow,” the manager pleads. “Can’t we settle this tomorrow?”
The shouting, banging and shufffing drowns out a persistent ringing. Captain Beamus picks up the phone, holds a finger in his ear, nods, and pokes the Hammer in the back. The Hammer wheels around.
“Phone call, sir. Group Commander.”
“Who? Colonel Strammond?”
The name elicits immediate silence from everyone. The Hammer takes the phone and listens. He snaps to attention.
“Yes, sir. I understand, sir. Right away, sir. You can count on the Hammering Eights.”
He hangs up, turns and stares through the crowd, out the window, across the docks, over the masts of the ships; across the breakwall and ocean, to the distant horizon and the steamy lands far beyond.
“I promise,” the manager repeats, squeezing his hands together. “I’ll take care of it first thing in the morning.”
The Hammer rouses from his revery. “Too late! We’re leaving.”
“Leaving?“ the manager cries in anguish.
“Leaving?” we howl angrily.
“Leaving!” the bartender laughs triumphantly.
“That’s right. Squadron recall. Everyone back to the base.”
The Hammer hands Cochran the flagpole and marches out of the office. Cochran strides behind. The band breaks into song: Dontcha treat me this away. The flag and pennant unfurl in the breeze of the brisk pace. Katrinka flounces next to Cochran. I’ll be back on my feet some day. The rest fall into two marching ranks. Rosey and I are the last ones out. Don’t care if you do, it’s understood. I grab a drink off a table and slug it down. Survey the empty room. Chairs askew. Floor littered with broken glass and spilled booze. You ain’t got no money you just ain’t no good.
“We’ll be back,” I shout, punctuating my promise with a crystalline crash. I kick the broken shards. “Marines! You want ’em? You got ’em!” Hit the road Jack, and don’t you come back no more.
Half an hour later, with the women waiting outside in the cars, the pilots muster in the ready room. The new squadron flag stands alongside Old Glory, next to the acetate schedules board. The murmuring questions and rumors hush as the Hammer mounts the podium. He grips the sides of the lectern. His knuckles are strained, his mouth grim.
“This is it, men. We’ve worked and trained hard these past few months preparing ourselves, and now that the call has come, we are ready.”
He pauses and sizes up every man among us. Damned if he can’t zero in on a fella. I lean forward to catch his words.
“A friendly nation is under attack by the Red Horde. They have asked for our help and President Kennedy has responded. Pack your gear. We’re going to Vietnam.”
II
VIETNAM
Summer, 1962
Soc Trang
The Delta
“We went in like boy scouts …”
Shu Fly pie and apple pan dowdy
Makes your eyes light up and your lips say howdy
4. Keeps the Manly Juices Flowing
Come on, Doc, straighten things out, will you … confusion abounds … Vietnam … its meaning lies hidden like an artichoke heart … layer under layer … brown swarthies topped by French polyglot Legionnaires hidden beneath Japanese Yallerbellees flanked on the left with red pagan Kali … on the right is orange Buddha and, intertwined ‘mongst all, the Catholic crucifixation … they, the Papists, control the government in South Vietnam … the atheist communists control North Vietnam … and now the unholy want to topple the holy … is it a holy war or a civil war … during the day the government agents tell the villagers to be true to them … at night the North Vietnamese agents tell the village leaders, you join up with us … if they don’t, the Cong kill them … nothing civil about that … and what are your secret revelations, Señor Huckelbee … did you look down on the pope’s nose or consider it a delicacy … forgive me Daddy, for I have sinned … I gave the turkey sacrament to the dog under the table … would you consi
der that blasphemy … hardly … nary a leaf on our family tree ever turned nose up against Papacy … not in hardscrabble Texas … and certainly not in Mexico … nor Vietnam neither … where Catholicism rules … or ostensibly so …
Kyrie eléison, miserere nobis: Lord have mercy on us … Pilots in camouflaged flight suits covered with bulky flak vests kneel on a mesh landing pad. Qui tollis peccata mundi: Thou hast takest away the sins of the world … The priest wears a surplice and carries a prayer book. He waves his free hand in blessing. Miserere nobis: Have mercy upon us, we who are under the bullet …
In Saigon, IV Corps American advisor Colonel Angus Bomar smokes his pipe like a thoughtful professor. Jabs a red stickpin into a wall-sized map where red circles pinpoint VC strongholds. Ho Chi Minh’s picture is a punctured bullseye.
“Tide’s turning, men. Best defense is a good offense. Strategic hamlets make the difference.” He rotates his pipe. Fires a stickpin into the map. “Send a team in where she hit, boys. Chieu hoi.”
His staff joins in chorus, “Chieu hoi, chieu hoi, defect defect.”
Deum de Deo, lumen de lunine, Deum verum de Deo vero: God of light, very God of very God … “Goddamnit, I said add fifty and fire for effect,” an airborne American artillery spotter screams over the radio. “He dropped fifty.”
“Affirm, Gumshoe,” a weary sergeant on the ground acknowledges. “Turn the dial this way,” he patiently instructs an Army of Vietnam soldier. The ARVN looks sixteen; he’s probably thirty-two. His hand clutches the elevation knob of a U.S. Army 105-mm howitzer.
Et iterum venturus est cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos: And he shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead … Sneaky Petes, Special Forces troopers, slither though the mountain jungle. Montagnard tribesmen lead the way. Their eyes probe for buried stakes, tips covered with human excrement, sharp enough to penetrate a GI boot. Break the skin, hello infection. Goodbye locomotion. The VC know a man lame is more trouble than a man dead.
Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum: I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. Baptism of fire. Eleven thousand American advisors move pins in maps. Spot artillery shots. Fly support missions in goony birds and two-seater T-28 trainers converted to fighter-bombers. Teach the disassembly and detailed nomenclature of the Browning .30-caliber air-cooled light machine gun: strip off the cover plate, hold it in the air, name it and pause while the Vietnamese instructor translates to thirty new Vietnamese instructors squatting inside a grass hut. Seven more weeks and each instructor will teach the same thing to thirty more instructors.
Operate a field radio relay station. Advise a South Vietnamese ranger battalion. Build a strategic hamlet in the Seven Peaks area. Lead a patrol out of Mang Buk. Fly with the modern Marine Expeditionary Force, code named Shu Fly: a helicopter squadron and its supporting units based at Soc Trang, Ba Xuyen Province in the middle of the Mekong Delta, 85 miles southwest of Saigon, 20 miles from the coast.
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem: O Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. Under the bullets flying like motherfuckers on full auto going off so loud you can’t hear the screaming, “Die, Dillinger, die … eat lead, Pretty Boy Floyd … take that, Capone …” up and down the line, spraying the canal and arcing into the sky until the magazines are empty and we drop the tommy guns and grin like kids at Christmas. We’re testing the leftover weapons stored in arsenals since the First World War. They gave us .45-caliber Thompson submachine guns with the 500-round cylinder magazines you blow off all at once. You can’t hold the gun steady, it recoils up and to the left no matter how hard you try to shoot straight and we’re supposed to carry these in the choppers? Shades of G men and 1920s gangsters and the St. Valentine’s massacre.
Fun’s over, we give the Gunny the guns and go back to the tents, walking past the portable showers and water heater and water tank pumped full from the canal and treated heavily with chemicals; showers run a couple of hours a day, naked men with slithery butts and suds-upped crotches, how ribald can you be, but who’s to see? VC maybe, eyeballing through binocs, “Look at the size of that.” In metric, of course. Until the flight surgeon has canvas sides hung around the showers. We waltz past the big concrete-sided hangar, open to the front, a building left over from the former WWII Japanese air base. Next up is the mess hall, one of the few brick buildings, and then the rows of tents where we bunk, six to a tent, walls and ceilings shored with two-by-fours, tent flaps tied up on the sides to let in whatever air is moving.
We sit on the porch, chew the shit, slurp cold drinks in our mess cups.
“How’s about some of them horse ovaries, Huck?” Cochran asks, forcing me up to get out the cheese and crackers.
When we’re filled up, half drunk, talked out, we hit the rack, swelter under mosquito netting, sweat soaking through our skivvies.
I sit upright in bed. The canvas cot lurches. Diesel generators roar.
Lights from the concrete hangar throw an eerie glow across the sky. A monsoon breeze ripples the tent. The parachute hanging from the roof billows and waves.
The screech that woke me keens again. I wasn’t dreaming. Reach for the flashlight with one hand, my .38 with the other. Shoot blind or chance the light? I hit the button. The beam spotlights two rats. Fangs bared. Jaws slathering. Hydrophobic. Black-button eyes. Red at the rims.
“Git, you bastards.” I sight along the barrel. The light goes out. Corrosion’s killed it. My stomach flip-flops. This damn climate. The light wavers and reappears. The rats are gone. Back to their dugouts under the floorboards. The scavenging bastards. Prowl the tents at night. Eat the crackers and sardines scattered among the liquor glasses and ashtrays. Traps and poisons don’t bother them. Can’t kill the rats how we supposed to stop the VC? Owww, a cramp ties up my guts. The wind whirls and the tent shakes. A spasm yanks my intestines. Here it comes. The first hard drops spank the tent roof. I rip the mosquito netting off, hit the deck in my bare feet, and tear outside into a smacking wall of rain rushing in on the wind.
I skid around the corner and run between the tents. Water pours over my eyes into my nose and mouth. I grip my tortured stomach. Squeeze guts el memo, you goofball, gotta make it. Whoops. There go the legs. I hit the mud face first. Ah, what’s the use? I’ll jes’ lie here and squeeze this soft goo with my fingers, rub my face in the glop and die of nausea and dysentery.
Shouldn’ta said that. My stomach tightens. I twist into a corkscrew and clutch the Saint Christopher Rosey gave me along with the lingeringest kiss in mammary-pressure history. Choice time, body-boo. Either get up and get moving or let it loose right here. Yep. Abandon all decorum, mateys. Shovel me up with la basura in the morning. Dump me in the canal with the rest of the trash so the tide can flush me out to sea.
No no, can’t have that. Very unprofessional, Huckelbee. Is this the surrender of the hot dog eager beaver who left the note on the Ready Room bulletin board: Anytime, day or night, call on tent number four when there’s an emergency flight? Well, I’m getting the call now, all bowels, man your instruments, be ready for broadside fusilade, muy fortissimo.
Nemmine that, I can make it. Jes’ let me crawl down this leetle ol’ path, shit, flashlight gone, forget it. I know this route by heart. Ah, at last, there they are. Those sweet havens of mercy. Three screened-in huts atop a little hill. I’m gonna make it. An’ on dah turd day he rose again, a rose arose a rose. By any other name she’d still be a. One hand on his belly, the other squeezing his ass, he staggers to his throne. A wooden box covers a deep pit, three lids cover three holes. Smoke wafts from the lids. Someone throw a cigarette in there and catch the paper on fire? This is too damn hot. I gotta get outta here … out the door and downwind to the Staff NCO head. In the night, who’s to know? Screen door slams shut, pulled closed by a concrete block counterweight.
Relief at last. Hold yer head and think about your reward. The clean skivvy award. Never qualify. Jes’ look at these
mud-covered drawers draped around my ankles. I’m a mess. Fittin’ for dis place. An’ that smell. Wheeoh. El Smoko de Crappo. What about that fire upwind? Now I remember. Doc Eversham, the flight surgeon, isn’t satisfied that the Soc Trang camp laborers dip the goop with buckets from the pits every three weeks, then take the honey home for their gardens. No, he’s also gotta dump in gasoline and burn out, so he claims, those tropical bugs. He alternates the huts so there’s always two available. Lotta good it’s done. The bugs live on, everyone’s got the runs.
A wet plop sops my back. Sit and get wet or go outside and get wet. The seat’s already warm. Why move? Wipe the mud off my watch. Almost five in the a.m. Been here five months. Come to bring the lowly denizens out of the 13th century and into modern times. Portable USMC on land, sea and in the air: portable electricity, portable showers, portable toilets and potable water from the portable water-filtration system.
Must maintain a modicum of civilized concessions, white man’ s burden and all that, even though we’re melting pot multicolored. And quite comfortable, too. A tent for a home. Mosquito netting. Well-stocked fridge, thanks to the weekly Air Force booze flights. Gin and tonics after flying. For the fevah, of course. Barter across the fence with ARVN troops guarding the airstrip. VC promised to destroy the field before fall. Maybe. Meanwhile, eat French cheese on English crackers, pleasant hors d’oeuvres before the evening charbroiled Yankee steaks.
We weren’t always so casual. When we first got here and the ARVNs took pot shots at night, everyone poured out of the tents in response, and the enlisted men took up defensive positions around the choppers. The pilots milled sleepily in the ready room tent, until word came to secure, false alarm.
Now at the sound of a night shot, the most anyone does is turn over in bed or swat a mosquito snuck through the netting. Jaded already. And the tour’s not even half over, tsk tsk, cluck a tongue. Lay on some remorse. About boy scouts gone native. Counter remorse with optimism. The ol’ Esprit de Corps is still strong. It’s kept us from going balmy and turning on one another completely. Kept us working the job. Flying the helicopters. Deliver the goods. Short on money. Short on spare parts. Short on a clear-cut policy. Say, now that you mention it, what the hell are we doing here? You already answered it, dolt. Flying those helicopters. Supplies to the outposts. Wounded to the hospitals. Troops to the landing zones. Keeps the manly juices flowing. Sounds exciting. But right now it’s not so great. Ease off, boy. Don’t let your physical miseries give birth to pizzant thoughts.
