by Dennis Foley
Through his burning eyes Hollister looked out at the killing zone. He tried to memorize the details of the small clearing, knowing that even darker hours would surely follow. He picked up the piece of commo wire that had been stretched out to the left of the ambush and yanked on it. He got an immediate response—two tugs. It meant that Camacho was awake and on the job. Camacho was just beyond the turn in the trail leading into the clearing. His job was to give early warning if an enemy patrol approached from the ambush’s left.
Picking up the second wire, Hollister tugged again and received two tugs from Theodore, who had the same job on the right flank of the ambush. Hollister dropped the wire, satisfied—for the moment. He had worked quickly to get the ambush set up. There was a long night ahead of him and he felt frustrated that once the ambush was in place there was nothing to do but wait.
He hated being at the mercy of the enemy. He fought the urge to recheck the others or even take a few steps up or down the trail that ran through the center of the clearing. He hoped he wouldn’t get sleepy, but he knew better.
Home. That would do it. It always did it. He would think of home. He knew that whenever he thought of home he could keep from falling asleep.
Susan could do it best of all. He wondered how many other American soldiers thought of American women while they were trying to fill the hours on ambushes, guard duty, radio watch, and a thousand other tedious night shifts in the war.
His mind wandered to the night at the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Forty-second Street in Manhattan. He was waiting that night, too. But that night it was good for him to wait.
He had watched her as she walked through the bus terminal. She made eye contact with no one. She was classy, even cocky. It was the first thing he saw about her—her attitude. He then took note of her pleasantly tight Levi’s, her boots, and her navy watch coat. Her hair was light brown, long and very straight. Hollister liked the way it flared from her face and flowed behind her when she walked. She said a lot to him by holding her head up and moving with a purpose. She knew exactly where she was going, and Hollister wanted to know too. So did every other man in the Port Authority.
Checking his watch for time till his bus, he picked up his bag and followed her through the terminal.
Trying not to look too eager, Hollister sat down on the stool next to her at the coffee counter. She didn’t even look up. She simply kept surveying the plastic-covered menu.
“What’ll it be, honey?” the waitress asked, pulling a stubby pencil from her netted hair and tapping the point on her order pad.
Susan made a quick check of her watch and then smiled at the heavyset woman, “How ’bout a piece of blueberry pie and coffee—black?” she replied.
“I’ll have the same,” Hollister said.
Both women looked at Hollister as if he hadn’t been invited. He smiled sheepishly—busted!
The waitress put the pencil back in her hair and stuck the two order slips on the rotating wheel in the window behind her, flipped two coffee mugs onto the counter and filled them.
“Pretty clumsy, huh?” Hollister asked.
“Yes,” Susan replied without looking at him.
“Well, maybe I could start with some other clever icebreaker.”
“Don’t bother. It isn’t likely to work,” Susan said as she turned to look at him, making sure that her expression meant business.
He looked into her eyes. They were incredible. Gray, almost metallic. He preferred to think that her gaze was playful flirting. He wasn’t going to give up that easily. “My name’s Jim—Jim Hollister. And I wasn’t really hitting on you.”
“Oh?” she replied, not believing him. “Well, it sure felt like you were working up to it.”
He smiled broadly. “Well then, in that case, how’m I doing?”
She burst out laughing. “I have to give it to you. You don’t come on too strong, but you do make up for it by being persistent and overly optimistic.”
“Whew, that’s great to hear. I was afraid that I was losing my touch.”
“Ohhh, so you do this often?” Susan asked almost playfully.
“No, ah … no I don’t. I haven’t. I meant I haven’t had much of a chance lately.”
“Too bad. Been in jail, or what?” Susan asked.
The waitress returned and quietly slipped the pie in front of Susan and Hollister. As if on autopilot, she poured more coffee and dropped the checks between the two cups. Susan started eating her pie.
“Worse. Been in the army for the last three years.”
Susan made a face. “Hmmm, I was hoping the short hair might mean Olympic swimmer or something.”
“We’re not going to get into one of those ‘I don’t date guys in the service’ conversations, are we?” Hollister asked.
“No, you won’t have to worry about that,” Susan answered.
“That mean you do date GIs?”
“No,” Susan said flatly. “It means that we aren’t going to be talking that long.”
“That’s too bad. I was hoping we could have dinner together, or something.”
Susan pushed the stale pie away from her. “We just did.” She got up from the counter.
“Hey, you aren’t leaving?” Hollister asked.
“I am leaving and we have finished this conversation,” Susan said.
“Angry?”
“No. I just don’t need the aggravation. Anyway, I have to meet a friend whose bus should be here by now.”
“So, what are the chances of—” he started to ask.
“Pretty slim,” Susan replied, without much conviction. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a card. “But don’t let that hold you back.” She handed him the business card, spun on her boot heel and walked away.
He decided that he loved the way she walked. Her legs looked great in the jeans. He watched until the crowd folded in behind her, then he looked down at the card. It read: SUSAN T. WILKERSON, Editorial Research Assistant, Skyline Magazine—New York.
The other customers at the coffee counter broke out in cheers and applause for Hollister’s partial victory. He blushed, realizing that his efforts had been watched by all. But he smiled and took a mock bow.
A raw burn ran up Hollister’s leg. He flinched but stopped himself in mid-response to keep from making noise. It had to be a land leech. The little bastards lived on the floor of the rain forest and found juicy Americans by some kind of radar. When he sat still long enough, they always found him; he’d become conscious of the burning sensation when the raw spot they created made contact with rough clothing or his salty sweat.
There was nothing he could do. He’d just have to wait until daylight to root the little pest out of his boot. The leech wasn’t dangerous, but by the time he could get around to removing it, it would probably have some friends with it.
He looked at the luminous dial on his watch and resisted a sigh. It was only midnight. He wrapped his arms across his chest for warmth and tried to think of something else.
It was going to be a very long night—his two hundred seventh night in Vietnam.
Phuc could barely make out Sergeant Thanh in the dark night and driving rain. But he knew that the rain and cloud cover would conceal their movement to the hamlet. Still, the same rain would cause trouble in communications, footing, visibility, and resolve.
“Your squad will lead, Sergeant Thanh.”
“Yes. We are ready. May our night be successful,” Thanh dutifully replied as he led his squad past Lieutenant Phuc.
Silently, the platoon then took up march interval and slipped back into the tree line. Phuc fell in behind the last man in Sergeant Thanh’s squad. He took a deep breath, hoping that he would be up to the task before them.
The people of My Phu had resisted the local Viet Cong and had informed on the VC cadre in the district. The mere fact that they had been disloyal to the Viet Cong was enough for the VC to teach the farmers a lesson. But since they were responsible for the death of three loca
l Communist guerrillas, an example had to be made.
Phuc had been instructed that by dawn there must be nothing but corpses in My Phu.
After more than an hour on the march, Phuc held up his platoon to get his bearings. Without a proper compass or map, he walked off the line of march to the top of a nearby knoll to look out over the valley below them.
As far as he could see through the rain, there were geometric squares of rice. They were like the rice fields near his home in the north. And the rain made it all look so clean and lush.
The valley supplied rice for a large portion of South Vietnam and was named for the largest nearby city—An Hoa. Somewhere in that valley sat Phuc’s objective. He looked at his watch. It was nearing two. He would have to move his men faster to get the job done and be able to slip back into the hills before daybreak.
Hollister found himself drawing up into a ball to preserve body heat. To take his mind off the cold, he looked up and down the ambush to check on the others. They were alert and motionless. He wondered what was going through their minds. Were they thinking of sleeping bags? How many of the others had leech problems? How many of them had scooped out a depression in the ground below them to piss without having to get up and leave the site?
He was proud that he would not hear about it until they were back at the base camp. Only then would they bitch and complain and brag. And they would do it in great detail and with much bravado.
The fabric of someone’s jungle fatigues made a soft swishing sound as he shifted his position. Hollister looked in the direction of the noise and saw Doc Norris facing to the rear.
Doc was prepared for two jobs. For rear security, his weapon was at the ready. And if they made contact, he would take on his primary job as medic just as soon as the shooting stopped.
While the others had placed ammunition within easy reach, Doc Norris also had the tools of his trade ready. His aid bag was unzipped so he could pull out exactly what he needed. Next to his bag were extra combat dressings, lengths of surgical tubing, a bottle of saline solution, and an open can of blood expander. They rested on a cravat that he could use to scoop up the medical supplies if they had to move in a hurry.
Hollister wanted to occupy his mind with more pleasant thoughts, but he had to resist the temptation to take too many more mental trips. There was nothing easy about being the honcho of an ambush patrol.
The Viet Cong spread out as they approached the hamlet. The lead elements of the platoon had gone ahead to scout the area, then serve as guides for the others to move quietly into firing position without spooking the livestock. Once in place, the platoon was less than ten yards from the nearest farmhouse.
Phuc spotted a small light and some movement near one of the six thatched houses. He raised his hand in alarm. His soldiers froze as a little girl returned from her family’s outdoor privy. She could not have been more than nine years old.
At the hard-packed dirt porch of her house, she stopped to put her small kerosene lamp on a shaky wooden bench by the front door. Next to the bench a ceramic crock held drinking water. The girl lifted the lid and dipped an empty soda bottle into the water.
Phuc decided not to wait for her to go into the house. He signaled his squad leaders to continue moving into position.
His plan was simple. Surround the hamlet to prevent anyone from escaping, and then level it with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.
Phuc moved up and down the line of men and silently checked their readiness. Reaching Sergeant Thanh, he pointed at the three water buffalo in the small livestock enclosure. Thanh nodded. He had instructed some of his men to shoot the large beasts first. They were more concerned with the danger of stampeding the water buffalo than about the people they were ready to kill.
Satisfied with the preparations, Phuc raised his pistol. Up and down the line the soldiers took aim. Phuc tried to look confident. Faltering would be taken as a lack of resolve to their cause. The swiftness of his execution must be symbolic of his commitment to victory over the south.
The rain had let up considerably, but the water still dripped down his face and off his nose. He took aim with great care. He couldn’t wait. If he did, he might not be able to go through with it.
His pistol jerked back with a crack as Phuc fired a single round. The little girl was knocked off her feet as the report of the pistol began the fusillade of automatic weapons fire.
The pistol bullet passed through her tiny chest and collapsed her lung, leaving her on her back. She couldn’t move. All she could see was the matched roof overhang that had shaded her family’s porch for three generations. No one could have heard the gurgling in her throat as the house’s wooden beams and thatched walls shattered, splintering and raining down on her.
The sound of rifles firing on full automatic was deafening. First one and then a second structure caught fire. The darkness was pushed back by the flames of the burning hooches and the muzzle flashes of the weapons.
They fired and reloaded as fast as they could. Phuc could smell the offensive mixture of cordite and burning flesh. The pigs squealed but the water buffalo lay dead, no longer a threat to the Viet Cong soldiers.
Phuc looked around to see if there were any civilian witnesses, but he was unable to see anything outside the immediate circle of illumination.
Enough. He pulled a small tin whistle from his shirt pocket and blew it. The firing stopped.
Above the metallic sounds of the soldiers reloading their weapons, he could only hear the crackling of timbers burning and crashing to the ground in showers of sparks.
Phuc reached into his rucksack and pulled out two empty American C-ration cans and held them over his head. The squad leaders passed the word to the soldiers. Each man who had fired Viet Cong weapons bent down to pick up his brass, then dropped expended M-16 cartridges in their place. The ones who had fired M-16s left their brass on the ground, and a couple of them threw down empty M-16 magazines.
Phuc threw the C-ration cans toward the ruins then raised his hand to shade his eyes from the glare of the fire. He looked at the burning huts. The little girl’s blackened hand poked through the blanket of debris. Quickly looking away, he signaled the squad leaders to withdraw.
Without a sound the platoon pulled back from what was once a hamlet that was home to six families. Nothing was standing. Chickens, pigs, and fire were the only sounds.
As the platoon slipped back into the tree line surrounding the fields belonging to My Phu, Phuc took one last look. It was gone. There was no more My Phu.
CHAPTER 2
FOUR A.M. IT was the hour that made American soldiers border on self-destructive behavior. Like every other boonie rat, Hollister hated it. It had been bad enough in Ranger School at Fort Benning, but in Vietnam it could be deadly. At that hour Hollister’s watch seemed to stop. His reality blurred and nothing registered the same as it did in the light of day.
Once, early in Hollister’s tour, he sat bolt upright on another ambush, convinced that a mortar round had just landed within a few meters of his position. But then he couldn’t understand why the others didn’t notice it. He doubted his senses. He was sure it had happened and that other rounds would soon land. But none of the others showed any sign of alarm. He felt foolish, confused and unsure of his own powers of perception. It made him wary of anyone’s perceptions at night after days or weeks of little sleep.
He fought for clarity. His eyes watered and the raw spots on his knees and elbows burned like fire from the hundreds of hours he had spent in the same position on the same kind of gritty, muddy, decaying rain forest floor.
He tried to caution himself not to let the surrealistic perceptions of the night screw up his judgment. It was so easy for the trees to become VC soldiers and the rustling of the brush to be sappers crawling his way.
He had learned one thing about that limbo world between consciousness and sleep—each man has a different reaction to the hallucinations that overtake him. He had seen soldiers try to p
ut imaginary nickels into the trunks of trees, thinking that they were Coke machines. Once while on ambush near the Laotian border, one soldier simply started singing. He wasn’t even conscious that he was doing it. The surprise ballad caused the others on the patrol to leap on him to shut him up.
Aching for relief, Hollister shifted his position without success. His muscles were unbelievably stiff. The joints in his fingers ached and the skin across the insteps of his feet hurt from the wrinkled jungle boot tongues and the constant pressure of his bootlaces.
Trying not to focus on how far off dawn was, he yearned for the warm sunlight, still looking back over his shoulder for some hopeful sign of a new day. All he found was the moon, which had started to peek through the fast moving clouds.
The hands on his watch seemed to be frozen. Hollister searched for games to keep focused. In his mind he tried to picture each of the other five scroungy members of his patrol dressed up—formally.
Vinson, a long-legged boy from Tennessee, was more Adam’s apple than a tux could ever tolerate. Hollister often wondered how such an awkward softball player could be such a competent field soldier. Vinson was every bit as skilled as he was quiet, and Hollister could always count on him. Quiet, solid, reliable, but never a tux.
Three other soldiers were alive because of Vinson’s quick thinking and selfless actions during a patrol that had been hit coming out of a hot landing zone some weeks earlier. Hollister made a mental note to check on a Bronze Star recommendation that he had submitted on Vinson. He didn’t want it to get lost in the giant paper-eating machine that was called higher headquarters.
Next to Vinson, Staff Sergeant Davis sat up to make some adjustment to his web gear. Davis was a stocky black soldier from Missouri. Hollister thought that he had probably worn a tux before and would look good in one.
