by Dennis Foley
The plastic container on the tray next to Kerry’s bed had a bent straw sticking out of it. Hollister picked it up and shook it. Empty.
“Sure. I’ll be right back.” Hollister grabbed the container and walked back to the nurse’s station.
“Can someone point me to the ice, Lieutenant?”
Her last name, Boyer, was hardly visible on the faded name tape she wore. She stood and took the cup from Hollister. Her pretty face was a pleasant surprise in the drab and gloomy hospital. “Sure can. But how ’bout you? You thirsty?”
Hollister thought about it. He was thirsty but he really wanted some coffee.
“You got coffee?”
Lieutenant Boyer motioned for him to follow her. As he did, Hollister got his first good look at her. She was tall, maybe five feet seven. She had her hair up with some kind of a barrette, but very feminine wisps fell loose from the clip and curled at her collar. She had a tiny waist and a very pleasant-looking ass, even covered by some pretty unattractive women’s fatigues.
He was amazed at how small her jungle boots were. But best of all, she trailed a sweet scent of woman—nothing more elaborate than that. She just smelled like a freshly scrubbed American female. Hollister thought of what a joy it was in a country that smelled like a dirty sweat sock.
She led him to a small kitchen area, stopped, and turned around—catching him admiring her from behind. She said nothing.
The little mess area held an ice machine, a GI coffee urn, and lots of utensils and containers that had obviously been scrounged from the supply system. There were also two chairs. She pointed to them.
Hollister made a gesture back toward Kerry. “But he—”
“He’s so doped up that nothing bothers him except being strapped down in that rack. Most of the time he sucks on the ice to have something to do. We’re pouring so much IV fluids into him that he can’t be thirsty, just bored.”
The nurse poured two cups of coffee and handed Hollister one. “Cream, sugar?”
“Oh … no, thanks. Just black is fine for me, please.”
She shook her head, stirred a clump of sugar into her coffee, and smiled knowingly. “Tough guys drink it black, huh?”
Hollister knew that she was teasing him. “No, it’s not that. I just can’t take that GI reconstituted milk.”
Lieutenant Boyer laughed. She had a pretty laugh that transformed her serious nurse face to that of a lovely woman.
But Hollister couldn’t play with her anymore. “So, what’s the verdict on Kerry French?”
She lifted her cup to her lips, blew across the surface of the coffee, and took a sip. Putting it down, she took the container to the ice machine and flipped the damaged lid up. Holding it with one hand, she scooped up a cupful of ice. “He’s in very, very bad shape. His pelvis is broken in several places. Both his legs are broken, he has lost his spleen, and they are talking about going in again—he’s still bleeding. He’s got some pretty banged-up internal organs. His left arm and shoulder blade are broken, and he’s lost one eye. If he knew what kind of shape he was in, he’d die right now.”
Hollister felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. Something triggered the memory of the day at Benning when they were commissioned. They went to the Post Exchange with silver dollars to find their first salutes. It was a tradition that newly commissioned second lieutenants gave a dollar to the first soldier who saluted them.
Kerry gave his to a bear of a sergeant from the Airborne Committee. Hollister gave his to a newly promoted Specialist 4 who still had tailor’s chalk above and below his new sleeve insignia.
The nurse’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “It’s good that you came to see him. It’ll improve his mood.”
Hollister played with his cup while he was still trying to absorb the extent of Kerry’s injuries. “I had no idea how bad it was.”
“And I just gave you the highlights. I don’t know how he is alive at all. The rest of the guys in that chopper were burned to a crisp.”
“Why didn’t Kerry?”
“Story I got from the Dust-Off medics was that the chopper crashed and rolled down the side of the hill. They aren’t sure if it took ground fire or what. He was thrown out of the chopper before it burst into flame. They found him three hundred feet below the chopper ashes in a rocky streambed. The attending physician said that he was lucky to end up in the stream. The cold running water kept him from going into deep shock.
“I can tell you he was in really bad shape when he arrived.”
“Why is he still here? Why isn’t he in intensive care or something?”
“This is intensive care. Anyway, we can’t move him till he is stabilized—maybe a couple of more days.”
Hollister took the ice container out of her hand. “Can I spend some time with him?”
“Sure. If you get in the way, I’ll let you know. It’ll take his mind off things—must be pretty screwed up anyhow. He’s pretty much in and out of it most of the time.”
Hollister spent the rest of the afternoon with Kerry. Their conversations were spotty, interrupted by short periods when Kerry drifted off to sleep. Periodically Lieutenant Boyer came over to check on Kerry, replace bags of fluids, and make notations in his chart. While she did, Hollister stepped outside the tent to grab a smoke.
He felt a little guilty when he jumped at the chance to leave for an hour while they bathed Kerry and fed him through the tube in his nose. Hungry, Hollister walked over to the mess hall, and after a little negotiation with the headcount, he was able to get a meal—also covered with a light layer of Cavalry dust.
It had been dark for about an hour when Lieutenant Boyer came to Kerry’s bed for a last check. Satisfied that the sleeping lieutenant was okay, she looked at her watch and then at Hollister. “He’s out of it for the night. He won’t know if you’re here.”
Hollister got to his feet and folded the chair he had scrounged earlier. “Well, I hope he’s comfortable.” He stretched and looked from Kerry to the nurse. “Hey, where can a guy get a drink around here without dust in it?”
“You can get one over at the Officers Club, but you have to take the dust with the drink. It’s a Cav tradition.”
“So where’s that?”
“Follow me. I’ve been on duty forever and I could use a cold dusty one, too. You buying with all that big-time jump pay?”
Hollister realized that she had inventoried his uniform and recognized that he was in a parachute outfit.
He liked the thought of having a drink with her. After waiting for her to pass a few slips of paper to her shift replacement, he motioned toward the exit. “Okay, I’m buying. Lead the way.”
The Officers Club was a sorry excuse for a place to drink. It was half a Quonset hut and four tables. Against the plywood end wall, a counter served as a bar, tended by a Vietnamese bartender.
Two other nurses were seated at one table. A male Medical Service Corps officer sat by himself at another, sipping a beer and writing a letter.
“Where is everybody?”
Boyer looked up on the wall. A blackboard had an announcement on it that read: MOVIE TONIGHT. She pointed to a window in the side wall of the hut.
Through the opening Hollister saw an outdoor theater. A plywood screen was attached to the trees, and rows of planks had been nailed to tree stumps in front of it for seats. All of the benches were filled with off-duty medical personnel, beers in hand, waiting for the movie to start.
Hollister and Lieutenant Boyer mounted stools at the end of the bar. They ordered, drank, talked, and ordered some more. They wouldn’t get to know each other. They didn’t want any soul searching, and they would only talk about totally unimportant things. Hollister didn’t want to bring up Kerry French. He knew enough about his friend’s condition.
The drinks flowed and they laughed. He liked her. There was plenty of her that he wouldn’t get to discover, but he liked what he saw and heard—mostly her laugh. It was rare, but genuine, and she seemed to be genuine, t
oo. Too soon for both of them it got late.
“You suppose there’s an empty rack somewhere in the hospital where I could get some sleep?”
The nurse’s eyebrows rose while she was taking a drink of her bourbon. “Hmmmm,” she mumbled through the drink. She put it down, reached in her pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to Hollister. “Sorry, I forgot. Brownie left this for you.”
“Brownie?” Hollister opened up the note. It was from the ambulance driver—if Hollister needed to, he could sleep in the ambulance. The note included directions to the medical battalion motor pool and the bumper number of the vehicle. It also thanked Hollister for bailing him out with the MP. It was signed, PFC Clarence P. Brown.
Hollister found the ambulance. Inside, Brownie had made a bed on one of the padded platforms in the back of the ambulance. Clean hospital sheets were topped with a clean army blanket, a pillow, and a pillowcase. On the other platform the medic had left a pair of clean socks and a Red Cross sundry packet. It held a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, a razor, two blades, a comb, and a small bottle of mouthwash.
Hollister smiled. Something from his Kansas upbringing made him quick to do things for others, and they always seemed to come back to him when he needed them.
He undressed, brushed his teeth, crawled into the ambulance bed quickly, and said a few words of prayer for Kerry. The thought of his buddy so badly injured made him think of the terrible word maim once again.
Hollister was still wiping the sleep out of his eyes when he entered the ward. He wouldn’t be able to spend much time with Kerry because he had to start thumbing a ride back to An Hoa. He thought about what he wanted to say. It might be the last time he saw him. He had never had a chance to say some things to Lucas.
“Hey, stranger.”
He looked up and saw Lieutenant Boyer. She was heading toward the kitchen area, an empty cup in her hand.
“Cup of coffee?”
“Yeah … sure. My head feels like I put it in a vise last night.”
“Cav booze is not the best,” she said. He turned around and followed her to the coffee. She found a cup and looked in it. She poured some hot coffee into it, swished it around, and then poured it out under the tent flap. She then filled it and handed it to Hollister. When he looked up from the cup, she said, “Don’t know any easy way to tell you. Your friend didn’t make it through the night.”
“What?” Hollister said. “He was okay when he went to sleep last night.”
She reached out and gently touched the back of Hollister’s hand. “It happens sometimes. He threw a blood clot and it killed him.”
Hollister dropped his head. He didn’t want her to see his eyes flood with tears.
She reached over and touched him lightly on the shoulder.
Less than an hour later Hollister caught a chopper leaving An Khe. The inside of the slick was a wreck. Hollister had never seen a Cav chopper before. None of the insulation material was still in place, the decks were scarred and discolored, and paint was worn off the chopper everywhere he looked. He hoped that the engine was in better shape than the bodywork.
But the beaten-up chopper fit his mood. He had lost two good friends in a matter of months, and there was no reason for him to believe that the losses would end anytime soon.
The next morning he was crossing the compound, on the way to let Captain Michaelson know he was back. Just as he looked up, Michaelson was coming out of the orderly room.
“Hollister! Just the man I’m looking for.”
Hollister saluted.
Michaelson quickly picked up on Hollister’s mood. “Bad?”
“Yessir. He died—chopper crash. He hung on for a few days, but then he just … well, he just went in his sleep.”
“Sorry. Listen, grab a beer and meet me in Operations. We have to talk about a few things.”
Thinking he might look like he was feeling sorry for himself, Hollister straightened up. “Yessir, be there in zero two.”
Michaelson took two steps then stopped. “Hollister.”
“Yessir.”
“Glad you’re back, Ranger. We need you.”
Captain Michaelson, Hollister, and Lieutenant Perry huddled over a map spread out on a field table in the Operations tent.
Michaelson tapped the blue line on the map with the end of his pencil. “We’ve got a whole shitpot of intel that sampan convoys are using this major stream coming out of the high ground west of the valley.”
“What have you turned up on the other ambushes?” Hollister asked.
“We blew away one small boat the day you left. But we had to wave off on one last night because the team leader couldn’t be sure that he didn’t have a boatload of civilians,” Captain Michaelson said.
“So what’s the story on this route?”
“It comes out of a part of the hills that has a lot of caves,” Lieutenant Perry answered. “The Vietnamese tell us that these caves have been used to cache supplies since the French were here.”
Michaelson relit his cigar and leaned back in the creaky folding chair. “We wanna try something different. The area has just too damn many LZ watchers.
“The ambush the other night was just a fluke, and I’m suspicious that the one last night might have been a setup. I think they sent civilians downstream to get us to waste ’em and then spend forever trying to explain the accident.”
“Okay—how do we get around it?” Hollister asked.
“We need to walk in a heavy patrol from way the hell up above the ambush site and throw a bunch of diversion inserts about ten klicks to the north and east of there to make them think we’re moving the area of saturation ambushes.”
Hollister looked up at Michaelson. “Okay, sir. When do I leave?”
“I want you to do a detailed map recon and then make a good aerial recon of the area before we nail down any of the details. The longer we take to get this one off the ground, the more confident they’ll get out there.”
“Can I pick the teams today to give the team leaders time to get prepped?” Hollister asked.
“Do it,” Michaelson said, gently breaking the ash off his cigar on the edge of his jungle boot sole.
“How soon and how long?”
Michaelson handed Hollister a message from the Air Force Meteorological Section at Tan San Nhut Air Base. It contained weather forecasts for the upcoming two weeks. “Roll your own. If they’re using that stream and those caves as their supply and backhaul route, they’re just as likely to be there in a week as tomorrow.
“So it’s up to you. I’m more interested in this one going good than going fast. We’ve been taking too many lumps, and I think that we need to work on our batting average,” Michaelson said.
“Yessir. How are we doin’ on replacements?”
“I think we’re doing okay on team members, but I haven’t found a turtle for you yet. I still want to get you ready to fill in for Cap’n Shaw, but I also have to replace you.”
Hollister stood up, assuming that the meeting was over.
“Jim.”
“Yessir.”
“Let’s do this one by the numbers. It can have an impact on everything from troop morale to the future of the detachment.”
There were officers and NCOs in the Brigade who didn’t like the idea of the detachment and its mission. Many of them were jealous of the elite status of the unit and were looking for reasons to badmouth it. Hollister hadn’t even left the tent and he could feel the pressure growing.
At the far end of the mess hall, Hollister, Allard, Davis, and Camacho had maps spread out. Allard and Davis were selecting possible ambush sites while Camacho and Hollister were searching for landing zones, routes, and pickup zones.
They kept it up through the morning until the mess sergeant threatened to run them out so he could serve lunch, so Hollister and his NCOs put their maps away and bellied up to the long tables to eat. After a typically heavy meal—pork roast, mashed potatoes, and Parker House rolls—d
esigned by food service people in the basement of the Pentagon, Hollister was pleased that they would be going out on a recon. At least in the chopper he wasn’t likely to fall asleep.
“How we look for fleshing out Two-three?” Hollister asked.
“Well, sir, I think we’ll be okay,” Davis said. “I got Theodore to replace Vinson on the radio, and we got a medic from the first platoon. They were one over on witch doctors.”
“I think I want to leave Sergeant Davis back here to work on training and refitting the platoon while we go out heavy with Allard and Camacho as assistant patrol leaders. What do you all think?”
Davis smiled. “I’m sure Allard wants to go out to get another notch on his belt, and Camacho needs the field experience. I am old enough and wise enough to know that I should be back here sharing my fabulous combat experience with the FNGs.”
Camacho and Allard booed Davis.
After they all had a good laugh, Davis got serious and answered Hollister’s question. “Yessir, I actually think that’s a good plan—best people in the right places.”
“Okay, then, let’s go round up a chopper and take a look.”
Hollister, Davis, Camacho, Allard, and Captain Shaw sat in the back of the chopper with maps in hand.
In order not to give away their intentions, the recon took place while one of the first platoon teams was being extracted from a completed, but unsuccessful, ambush patrol.
This allowed the recon ship to take up a large lazy orbit a couple miles from the cluttered air over the extraction. From the ground it looked as if the recon ship was just a backup chopper holding high and wide for the nearby extraction.
Inside the chopper Allard and Davis tried to confirm the viability of the ambush sites they had selected in the mess hall, while Camacho, Hollister, Shaw, and the pilots scrutinized the few holes in the canopy for possible landing zones. All had to yell over the turbine noise and buffeting since there were not enough headsets for them to use the intercom system in the aircraft.
While they reconned the objective area, Captain Shaw photographed the terrain using a tiny Pen EE half-frame 35mm camera, a new toy issued to the LRPs. The vibration of the chopper made it difficult to take the pictures, but even blurred ones would be useful.
