by Ken Babbs
The clatter of rotor blades brings us to our feet. Ben-San lies on the ground. His breathing is ragged and he moans softly. A helicopter circles, farther down the hill. Soonto rummages in his duffel.
“Pop that sucker,” Cochran says.
A red plume rises from the smoke grenade, and we wait, willing the chopper closer. The clatter gets louder and Cochran fires his pistol, five tracers arcing like stars falling backwards. The white YV painted on the nose of the chopper gets closer and the bird hovers overhead. The crew chief looks down at us from the belly door, Doc Hollenden hanging over his shoulder. The crew chief hooks a harness to the hoist cable and lowers it.
“Get Ben-San ready,” Cochran hollers over the noise.
Brush and tree branches whip around us. Dirt and rocks pepper our faces and arms. Soonto and I slip the collar under Ben-San’s arms. His eyes are open, but his face is a grisly mess. His mouth gapes in a blackened grimace. I take it for a smile, a good sign. Up he goes, spinning slowly. The crew chief and Doc Hollenden pull him in.
Cochran motions me to go next. Once inside, I fall against the bulkhead. The pilot looks down from his perch. Emmett. He nods to me and turns back to the instruments, holding the chopper steady. Soonto comes aboard and then Cochran. Emmett turns the chopper, points the nose downhill and we follow the stream to the river. He pours on the turns and we race for the coast. Two other helicopters circle the spots where the crashed machines smolder, smoke wisping skyward.
The crew chief takes off his helmet, points at the pilots, mimics talking, hands the helmet to Cochran who scowls, shakes his head, closes his eyes and turns away. The crew chief looks at me. What the hell. I put it on.
“How come you’re here?” I ask over the intercom.
“Beamus radioed for help,” Bennett says. “You’re in a shitload of trouble. When we get back to the base, they’re going to ream you a new …”
I hand the helmet back to the crew chief.
We land in Quang Ngai and taxi up to an Air Force C123 with its ramp down. An Army doctor and two medics wait with a stretcher. Doc Hollenden helps them lift Ben-San on the litter. He lies limp, shot full of morphine. Props turning, ramp closing, the plane hits the runway on the roll and takes off for the Nha Trang Army hospital.
Back at the chopper Emmett is having an argument with a Vietnamese Army Major. In his awkward English the Major is ordering Emmett to fly him south to Quin Hon but Emmett is having none of it.
“This bird is going north, back to its nest.”
Emmett turns and stalks away.
“Watch it,” Wee Willie Weems yells.
Emmett wheels around. The Major is fumbling with the straps on his holster. Emmett whips out his stainless steel Colt Python and in a slick smooth draw fires three quick rounds into the asphalt, the first one a tracer. The Major’s eyes widen, he mutters something and beats a hurried retreat across the tarmac.
“What are you lame brains staring at?” Emmett says. “Let’s mount up before any other asshole wants a piece of this.”
“Is that a peace maker?” Willie asks me. “Just the size of it makes me sue for peace.”
“By the look on that Major’s face, I’d say what he needs is a pacemaker.”
We haul up the coast in fading light to Da Nang, land and shut down and face a waiting clatch of pilots. Doc Hollenden shoos them away and hustles us to the dispensary. He lathers fiery disinfectant across our backs, then orders up some hot chow followed with double shots of whiskey before we stagger to our room and collapse in the sack, alongside two empty beds.
Grilled relentlessly. Why did you go back on your own? Why didn’t you maintain radio contact? Why did you expose yourselves to ground fire? Why did you leave the downed helicopters and force the search aircraft to look all over hell for you in disintegrating weather threatening even more lives and equipment? Questions bang a putrid drum, but the bottom line is we got Ben-San out of there. If the Viet Cong got him they’d have killed him.
“Well, there’s that. You have anything else to add?”
“Yes, sir,” Cochran says. “I’d like to recommend Sergeant Soonto for a medal.”
The Hammer scowls, non-commital, then motions us away.
The grilling over, we run into Emmett. I look at Cochran. He nods, let’s take him on. Emmett. Cock of the walk. Belligerent as a tomcat. Let’s talk to him, mano a mano, see if his back’s bent out of shape from all our shenanigans, going all the way back to the poker game fiasco.
“Hey, Grits, what went down out there?” I ask him before Cochran can start in.
“I was in the air carrying ARVNs to an outpost that had called for help when we got diverted to the crash scene. Luckily the Doc was with us.”
“Don’t think we aren’t appreciative. We thought we’d have to spend the night out there and you know what that would’ve meant for Ben-San.”
“We didn’t know what we’d find. I was able to get low enough that I didn’t run out of cable when I lifted you out because with that tree gone there was enough room to hover. It was still a tight squeeze.”
Emmett doesn’t say anything about it but we know it took an expert hand on the controls. Cochran gives me the nod and we break it off, forego any kind of big head-butting confabulation. There’s already enough rancor swirling around the ready room. The deaths have hardened the faces, hardened the talk. ARVNs have become gooks, slant-eyes, slope-heads, sneaky bastards. And to think, they asked us over here to help. And what about Rob Jacobs is the question on everyone’s mind. He still hasn’t been found. The crew chief was thrown out of the chopper in the crash and his body has been carried off the mountain and flown to Quang Ngai where an identification and burial team takes over.
Captain Beamus organizes the administrative tasks. Establishes an accident board. Grabs Cochran and tells him, since he is the squadron Career and Welfare officer, to start writing letters of condolence.
“Hey, that’s the C.O.’s job. I can’t write his letters for him.”
The Hammer is out at the site, directing operations. He’s hoping Rob Jacobs’s body will be found, squashing the rumors he might still be alive, that he was thrown clear, wandered off into the jungle, maybe captured and killed. Cochran sweats and agonizes over scrawled pieces of paper, determined not to fill them with meaningless bullshit.
“How can I capture his essence?” he asks me. “The pride Rob Jacobs took in his cavernous mouth that could chomp an apple in half in one bite, his joke sneeze, his sordid trips to town to prove himself alive?” He answers his own questions. “Impossible.”
Cochran searches out Captain Beamus to volunteer for the team searching at the crash site.
“What for?”
“So I can help. I used to be on a mountain rescue team when I worked for the Forest Service. I assisted on lots of rescues.”
Captain Beamus eyes him suspicioulsy. “Can’t do it. We’ve committed enough pilots to this operation. Something might come up where we need everyone. We’re still a functioning squadron.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, contingency situations.” Cochran stalks off.
Beamus calls after him, “Keep working on those letters, Lieutenant.”
Instead, Cochran goes to the ready room and flops down in a chair. He flips a bullet in the air and catches it, looks at the red tip.
“At least these were good for something,” he tells me.
“Yes, Emmett’s generosity paid off in aces. When were you ever on a mountain rescue team?”
Cochran puts the bullet in his pocket. “I just said that to get out of this shitty job.”
Colonel Swinn, the base commander, orders the operation halted, so we can get everybody out before the VC hit us in strength. It is certain, he says, that Rob Jacobs’s remains were consumed in the fire.
Back to the paper-scrawl torture. Cochran flings pencils and erasers around the desk, applying the mental, gnashing the dental, mashing the mind, heart and body of a friend and now-deceased squadron mate upon an
empty page.
Three days later, the letter still not finished, Captain Miles Standish Briggs, the Admin Officer, takes over, follows the letters of condolence format in the Marine Corps Personnel Manual, gets Beamus’s okay, takes the typed sheets to the Hammer who inks in a few changes and an hour later signs the smooth draft.
Cochran arrives at the briefing the next morning to find Captain Ed “Ramshackle” Pomfrey, the squadron Safety Officer, asking if anyone has any suggestions that would help out in case of another incident or accident.
“Yes, now that you mention it, I have something,” Cochran says. “We’ve had radio discipline beaten into us so much that when we get in a dangerous situation, and should say something, we don’t, for fear of catching hell.”
“Yes … ah … a good point,” Captain Pomfrey says, glancing from the Hammer to Captain Beamus. Neither comments so Ramshackle says, “If there’s nothing else …” then lets it drop and sits down.
The Hammer gets up and briefs the day’s hops as if everything’s back to normal. Were it only so. That evening the special services movie projector is grinding out a skin flick on the wall of a darkened BOQ room. Cochran goes in to see what’s going on.
“Where’d that come from?”
“The First Sergeant found it in Battern’s gear,” Lieutenant Ted “Too Tall” Tolliver says.
“Sergeant Battern? The crew chief who … ?”
“Yeah. The First Sergeant figured the movie shouldn’t be sent home with Battern’s stuff but it was too good to be thrown out.”
“How the hell did it get in here?” Cochran says.
“I confiscated it,” Emmett says. “Who cares, anyway?”
Cochran leaves and walks down the hall into our room. “I can’t believe it,” he mutters. “I can’t believe it.”
There’s more to come. At the all-pilots meeting the next morning we get hit up for a donation.
“What say we chip in and buy Ben-San a radio?” Emmett says. “There’s a nice model in the PX. Portable, AM, FM and shortwave band. It will make the time pass faster in the hospital.”
Nods and agreeing noises.
“I don’t think it’s such a hot idea,” Cochran says. “Sure he’s lonely, who wouldn’t be, and it could happen to any one of us, but if we’re really concerned about the man himself, let’s all write him a letter. Fifty letters would cheer him up a lot more than the radio.”
That shuts everyone up, a real damper. No one wants to write a fucking letter. The Hammer jumps into the breech.
“Good point, Cochran. I agree one hundred percent about the letters, but in this case I think we should do both. How does that sound?”
No arguing with the Hammer. Everyone murmurs their assent. The Hammer gives Cochran the eye and when the hat comes around he drops in a dollar.
“Let’s see how many letters get written,” Cochran says.
Word comes from Ben-San he wants to talk to me so operations lays on a chopper and assigns me to deliver the radio and letters. Cochran can’t go. He’s gotten roped into another job: helping build an orphanage in town.
One night Cochran was playing folk music on the tape recorder, and the chaplain, Father Sam, the chaplain what am, paused at the door. He stood, listening to the clear female voice:
I had an old dog and his name was Blue,
Betcha five dollars he’s a good dog too.
“That’s my cousin Joan,” he said, a big grin creasing his face. He joined in on the song:
Old Blue treed and I went to see,
Blue had possum up a tall oak tree.
Cochran added his voice:
Old Blue died and he died so hard,
Made a big dent in my backyard.
They sang together, voices clashing horribly:
Shook so hard shook the teeth from his head
Shook his clothes to pieces, to the very thread.
“Come on in,” Cochran said. “I never could carry a tune.”
“And are you, my son,” Father Sam asked, walking into the room, “a follower of the true faith?”
“Lapsed, Padre, or is it prolapsed, definitely not relapsed. Now I’m a follower of Lapsong Chung, the ancient Chinese philosopher, you know, he-of-the-best-laid-plans-of-planting-too-early-in-the-is-nippedin-the-bud school of thought, so save your breath, Padre.”
“And is that the great man’s image?” Father Sam asked, pointing at Cochran’s wooden statue of Shy Man Shitting In The Woods.
“The very same.”
“Ah well, then that’s that.”
The chaplain started talking about the orphanage he was working on. It started out as an Ice Queen project. What was once a shack with some beds and a dirt floor became her pet project and she espoused its needs to an American journalist and pretty soon, women in the states, having gotten wind of the chirrun’s plight, sent, mas dineros.
The Ice Queen loved getting the cash, thank you, it allowed her to buy milk, for instance, canned in America, labeled with the Hands Across The Sea logo, sent to Vietnam, stacked on shelves of every grocery store shack in the country, even in Dogpatch.
“Hey, that shit is supposed to be free. Why is she buying it?” Cochran wanted to know.
“That’s not important,” Father Sam said. “What’s important is that we are helping these unfortunate war orphans.”
“What a laugh. You know as well as I do that cold bitch is taking a big bite out of the money.”
“Bite your tongue, young man. I won’t put up with that kind of language. This is a noble cause. Don’t you denigrate the good intentions of those who are concerned enough to do something for these poor kids.”
“Your mouth runneth over, Chaplain. You want to help those kids and make sure they get what they need, then it’s not money that’s pocketed before they ever see the benefit. Here, hold this.”
Cochran rummaged around inside his seabag. “I had this stuff saved for an emergency but it will probably go bad before I ever use it.” He pulled out syringes and bottles of pills and ointments, boxes of medicine and dressings and antibitotics.
“Where did you ever … ?”
“Won it off a corpsman in a friendly game. Never can tell when you might need some personal treatment, you know what I mean, Padre; don’t want to get it logged in the old record book.” He gave the chaplain a wink and ripped the blanket off his bed. “Here you go.”
“But that is governent property.”
“Naw. I fleeced it off the supply clerk. It’s free bait and belongs to whoever has it wrapped around his scrawny limbs.” He dropped a parachute on the floor. “Good clothes- making material.”
Five pounds of hard candy, hoarded for trade at the outposts, joined the pile. Canteen cups. Soap, toothpaste, razors and shaving cream. Books, pencils, paper, talcum powder, toothbrushes, shoe polish, brasso. All wrapped up in the blanket, toted on Father Sam’s back and deposited in his room.
Word got around and the stack grew so large it spilled outside, where it was covered with a tarp. Cases of nonperishable food. Lumber and nails and building materials. Enough, Father Sam pleaded, enough. The pile was getting too big. They loaded it all in the back of a six-by-six truck, and lumbered into town followed by a weapons carrier full of Marines who gave the orphanage a face lift. New roof, paint job, partitions, inside plumbing and a kitchen. The orphan kids pawed through the packages, clutched at the Marine’s legs, dodged Sisters’ clutches.
Word of the work made it to the Ice Queen and she hustled over to encounter a beaming, pleased nun whose demeanor underwent a quick change under a barrage of questions. What of the plans we made, the Ice Queen demanded, my committees, the ladies we were recruiting to help? Father Sam pointed to the building and the kids, and that was explanation enough.
While Cochran is tied up with the Chaplain and the orphanage, Wee Willie Weems and I fly to the Army hospital in Nha Trang.
We land and shut down and catch a ride from the flight line to the hospital buildings, and find out w
here Ben-San is, then head that way. We’re a couple of rasty-looking characters in our dirty flight suits and wrinkled fore-and-aft caps, clomping past starched white nurses and orderlies, doctors with stethoscope necklaces, clipboards like shields, ball-point pens sticking out like spears from their shirtfront pockets.
“You look a lot better than the last time I saw you,” I tell Ben-San, our winsome old roomie whose head and arms and hands are swathed in white bandages, his eyes black chunks of cinder stuck in the snow.
“Yeah, that was grueling, but don’t let this fool you. They’re ripping me to shreds.”
“Ha ha, I bet,” Willie says. “Those roundeye nurses?”
“No, the fucking doctor. Every day, when he peels off these bandages, cheery as a bar girl caging drinks, he tears off the scabs with them. New way to treat burns, he says. Doesn’t leave such awful scars. Hurts like a bastard, though, so screw the scars, I’ll take them over the treatment. He thinks that’s a great joke. What have you got there?”
“The guys chipped in and bought you a radio,” Willie says. “Plus we got a whole passel of letters. How many are in the bag, Huck?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Twenty some. Hey, go find out where we can plug the radio in, Willie.”
He leaves and I pull a chair up close to the bed. “What’s going on, Ben-San? I heard you wanted to talk to me.”
“Huck, what are they saying?”
“The crash? Hell, everyone knows that wasn’t your …”
“No, not that. What about Yoshika? Any of them think I still have a chance with her, you know, messed up like this?”
“God, no one’s even thought about that. We just want you back on your feet.”
“I want to marry her, now more than ever. I’m not staying in the Marines, even if they’d have me. Will you help me out?”
“Me? What can I do?”
