Albers laughed. “I get a kick out of talking to you. Smart kid. College, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But dumber than a box of rocks. Look, you’ll never print this stuff. Your superiors won’t allow it. And the story sure as fuck won’t get stateside. But just so you know: if by some miracle you do publish this and you quote me, I’ll come over there some night with a couple buddies and we’ll beat the living shit out of you.”
I wrote my expose about the tunnels under Cu Chi Base Camp. For the lead I used “Reeko the Rat” and the tunnel he explored under Delta. Three tight pages of my best writing. Front page stuff for The Road Paver. Slam-dunk for Stars and Stripes. I credited “background sources” for information about the tunnel network so I didn’t step on Albers’ toes. I claimed it was all widely known by officers in higher headquarters.
Major Roberts rejected it.
He said our battalion paper should not alarm the families of men who mail the paper back home. But he said a version of the article, if properly edited, could be submitted to Stars and Stripes.
I revised the article, aiming it specifically for Stars and Stripes.
Roberts rejected it.
He said I should eliminate what he called “speculation” and stick with “substantiated facts.” But I couldn’t substantiate the facts because nobody would go on record about them.
So I tried another angle: “If one tunnel, why not more?”
Roberts rejected it again. Said it was pure speculation this time, unworthy of responsible reporting in a war zone.
“Then that’s it,” I said. “I’m done. This is a waste of time.”
“No, keep working on it.” He handed the article back to me.
“No point in trying, Sir. You’ll reject anything on this topic I write.”
“You don’t understand. I’m ordering you to work on it until it passes my inspection.”
So I cut the damned thing to a two-sentence news release of “substantiated facts” for which I had beaucoup witnesses:
HEADING: “Perilous Foundations.” 18 April 1969 a tunnel was discovered under a hooch in the 182nd Engineer Battalion located at Cu Chi Base Camp. The tunnel was destroyed without further incident.
Roberts chortled and praised it as a marvel of journalistic precision. He said it was still inappropriate for our newspaper, but he insisted we send it to Stars and Stripes.
“They won’t accept it.”
“Don’t be so negative.” He grinned. “Send it anyway. It’s really good.”
Stars and Stripes sent it back with this note: “Lacks lively writing and relevance to the ongoing war effort.”
I’d been diddled. Made the butt of hee-haws at the officer’s club.
Actually, I was lucky. Roberts could have reassigned me to the boonies.
****
Friday, July 18, 1969 - Cu Chi Base Camp
Dear Janice:
We’re in the monsoon season. It’s worse during the months of July, August, and September. The poor guys in the boonies must be suffering.
We had a visitor in our hooch last night. Ray Gunderson is a friend of Curt Myers in personnel. Ray was heading for the 90th Replacement Center at Long Binh and decided to stop by and say hello to Curt before flying back to the States.
Ray’s face is pock-marked on the right side. So is his right arm and leg. The marks are deep and disfiguring. There’s a pink scar where his right eyebrow should be. After Ray knocked back five or six gulps of Jim Beam from a quart bottle Curt had stashed in his locker, he told us how he got the pock marks.
He said the VC used fishnet to tie a U.S. fragmentation grenade at waist level to a tree trunk and fastened the loosened pin to a trip wire. Leaves hid the grenade. The explosion killed the point man and peppered Ray with sharp-edged, BB-sized shrapnel. When Ray came back from a hospital in Japan, his company, at his request, made him their interrogator.
He said his best interrogations were with two or more suspected or confirmed VC. Ray said he’d tie them to trees at some distance apart but so they could see each other. Then he’d wrap det-cord around their necks, attach fuse-detonators, and ask the first guy to give him information about whatever Ray wanted to know. If the guy didn’t talk, Ray ignited the fuse and the det-cord popped the man’s head up in the trees “like a cork out of a bottle of spurting cherry soda.” Then Ray went to the next guy who’d already be jabbering whatever Ray wanted to hear.
Love, Andrew
INTERVENTION
“Where’s the guy who handles award recommendations?” asked a bull-necked junior officer as he swaggered into the S-1 office and stood over Dickhead Connor’s desk.
“That would be Specialist Atherton.” Connors jerked his thumb over his shoulder in my direction.
The lieutenant strode back to my desk. “You the awards clerk?”
“Yes, Sir. What can I do for you, Sir?” I looked up but remained seated and did not salute, which is technically acceptable for a clerk sitting at his desk in an office and responding to a junior officer. Not standing was a little cheeky, maybe even rude, but the guy’s swagger and pushy voice irritated me.
“I’m First Lieutenant Douglas Paddington, Commander of Echo Company.”
He was a typical football playing frat boy. Wide head. Thick neck. Muscled biceps. Closely spaced eyes. ROTC without a doubt. I was sure the only reason he’d been given command of an entire company was because captains for engineering companies are in short supply.
Paddington squinted at the papers on my desk. He tipped his head and turned with one finger a memo in my in-box so he could read the subject heading. While still looking at the memo he said, “I’d like to recommend some of my road crew for awards.”
His behavior infuriated me. I used two fingers to straighten the memo back the way it was.
Paddington’s eyebrows arched. “I’ve been told you’ll write the award recommendations.”
“That’s technically the responsibility of the recommending officer or NCO, but I’ll be glad to help any way I can, Lieutenant Paddington. Please pull up a chair so we can talk.”
Paddington pursed his lips and flicked his eyes up and down our poster of Vietnam we had tacked on the wall. He acted as though his two “louie” bars gave him the authority to assess our operation. The colonel’s approval apparently wasn’t good enough.
“Sir? There’s a chair right there beside my desk, if you’d like to sit down.”
He settled in the chair and I took notes as he briefly described a fire that occurred the previous day at Sáng Mât Trâng Village. The fire halted his paving crew’s work on a road that bisected the town. Paddington summarized, in very broad terms, the actions of eight of his men who joined the villagers to fight the fire and said he wanted to recommend them for Bronze Stars, especially Staff Sergeant Miller.
Bronze Stars? Eight of them? I was stunned. We award Bronze Stars for exceptional valor and outstanding achievement. The actions Paddington briefly described were commendable, but they didn’t come close to meriting Bronze Stars for achievement, and certainly not for valor against an enemy.
Paddington’s request was peculiar, and it made me uneasy. After months of handling award recommendations, I knew an officer or NCO can have ulterior motives for recommending medals for his men. Recommendations can be used to mollify angry or contemptuous subordinates and help suppress rumors of the superior’s incompetence. There was more to Paddington’s recommendations than he was telling me.
“You have rough drafts that describe each man’s actions?”
“Ah, no. I didn’t— ”
“We can’t just say they all risked their lives fighting a fire, you know.”
“I realize that, Specialist Atherton. That’s why— ”
“You have notes, anything at all, about the actions of these men?”
“No, but— ”
“Then how can we inform higher headquarters that these men merit Bronze Stars?”
“Goddamn it,
that’s why I’m coming to you. I can write memos about regulations and Army policies, but describing what these men did in a way that conveys their bravery requires a special kind of writing that Colonel Hackett thinks you’re good at. That’s why I’m giving you the names. I want help with this! Here’s the list.” He removed a spiral notebook from his shirt pocket and tore out a sheet of paper and handed it to me.
After each hand-printed name he’d written a hooch number. “Ahh … Lieutenant, you’re asking me to do a hell of a lot of work that’s technically your responsibility.”
“As I understand it, Specialist Atherton, Colonel Hackett lets you reject recommendations you think aren’t—”
“They can always be revised or resubmitted over my—”
“Do not interrupt me!” snarled Paddington. He glanced over his shoulder. Then low and husky, “Before you waste my time rejecting my recommendations, I expect you to help me get these awards for my men.” Paddington pushed his face close to mine and spoke low and threatening. “Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, Sir. Fully understood. I’ll write rough drafts for your review. But I’ll need to interview the men. I guess that’s what these hooch numbers are for.”
“You got it.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’m proud of my men. They risked their lives to help those villagers. I want maximum effort on this.”
“I’ll do my best, Lieutenant Paddington.”
That evening I visited two of the listed hooches and was rerouted to the EM bar. I had a quick beer with Sergeant Miller and another one with Specialists Gallagher and Kohler. They gave me accounts of the fire and their respective roles in helping the villagers. But they were embarrassed by the whole episode and asked me to spike any medals Paddington might request for them. Sergeant Miller said I might want to talk with the RTO, a guy by the name of Donaldson. His name was not on Paddington’s list.
The following night I tracked down RTO Donaldson, the unit’s on-site radio operator. He gave me his account and told me how to locate the helicopter pilot, Captain Steuben, whose name was also not on Paddington’s list. Later that night I bummed a ride halfway across the base camp to a pilots’ club where I found and interviewed Steuben.
Those five interviews gave me enough information to understand what had happened at Sáng Mât Trâng and why it was unlikely that any of Paddington’s men, as laudable as their actions were, would get a Bronze Star.
****
Sáng Mât Trâng Village was a small but growing center of commerce. In addition to thatched huts, it had several cinderblock warehouses and three or four wood-framed buildings on each side of the main road that bisected the town.
We were paving that bisecting road, QL-14, at the request of the 25th Infantry Division so they’d have faster access to their western artillery bases. Echo Company’s paving of QL-14 would also improve the commercial traffic in and out of Sáng Mât Trâng Village, which delighted the merchants.
The day of the fire, early in the morning, Lieutenant Paddington, Staff Sergeant Miller, and RTO Donaldson stood at the rear of Paddington’s jeep. They had parked in the middle of town alongside a stretch of QL-14 where gravel-laced laterite had been spread and leveled by bull dozers. Water tankers were now spraying the mixture and road rollers were compressing it in preparation for the asphalt paver advancing slowly from the east. Far ahead, beyond the western edge of the village, dump trucks and bulldozers were spreading the gravel and laterite mixture over the dirt road that was cut smooth several inches below the surrounding surface by giant earth movers working even further up the line.
Staff Sergeant Miller was a stringy, energetic man who couldn’t hold still when he spoke. He was medium height. High forehead. Dark thinning hair and fast growing black whiskers. Men respected him as the brains behind Echo Company’s paving operations. Although Paddington had formal command of the unit, Miller regularly made recommendations to Paddington and, for all intents and purposes, controlled the day-to-day operations. He stood beside Paddington and studied the spec sheets they’d unrolled over the back of the jeep.
At the same time, RTO Donaldson—a soft, fleshy young man, maybe nineteen or twenty, with ruddy cheeks and a stubby pink nose—was installing a new battery in his PRC 25 portable radio. The radio was vital for calling in dust-offs. Echo’s road medic was a good man, but working with heavy equipment produces injuries needing far more than roadside medical attention. A PRC 25 and a radio operator were also necessary for requesting combat support in case of an attack. But the likelihood of a VC attack, in this case, was low. Sáng Mât Trâng had no history of VC activity. It was a friendly village. And with Echo Company improving commercial access and boosting trade, the villagers had good reason to resist VC activity.
Miller looked up from his spec sheets and leaned back to stretch his neck and shoulders. But he also looked up because he’d heard a distant “poof,” like a gas stove burner igniting. He saw, over the tops of nearby huts and buildings, a rising cloud of smoke less than a quarter-mile north of the road, smoke that hadn’t been there moments earlier.
“Goddamn, look at that,” Miller said.
Donaldson looked up. “Got themselves a fire. No explosions. No gunfire.”
“Northeast corner of town,” Paddington said. “Must be the kilns.”
At the edge of town, twelve clay kilns formed the basis of Sáng Mât Trâng’s charcoal industry. The clay kilns were bleached white from heat and domed like Quonset huts twenty feet long, eight feet wide, and five feet high. Villagers cut and trimmed tree trunks and limbs two and three inches in diameter and dragged them behind water buffalo from the forest to the kilns. They cut the limbs and split the cut trunks into chunks, positioned the chunks in the kilns, and burned them in restricted airflow for seven days. The villagers then sealed the kilns and allowed them to cool another seven days before workers emptied and restocked them. Vendors bundled the resulting charcoal in gunnysacks for sale as heating and cooking fuel as far away as Saigon.
The citizens of Sáng Mât Trâng Village built the kiln field a safe distance from town, but the town had grown. Villagers built thatched huts in all directions out from town, and they built along the edge of the kiln field, too.
On a previous day, Paddington and Miller had walked around the town and took note of thatched huts built next to the kiln yard. So they recognized the danger the fire posed for the town.
Miller looked at Paddington. “Should we offer help?”
Paddington grimaced and nodded his head, but he was slow to recognize the implications of his decision. Miller was not. If they shut down and sent men from either laterite operation, that would soon halt the asphalt paver.
Assuming he had Paddington’s full approval, Miller ran to the nearest road roller and motioned for the operator, Specialist Kohler, to turn off his machine and follow him. Miller pointed to the smoke rising in the sky across town. Then he ran to a dump truck loaded with laterite and idling alongside the road.
“Help me alert the other men! We have to help put out the fire,” Miller shouted through the truck’s open window to Specialist Gallagher. “The whole town could burn down.”
Miller’s shouted warning scared Gallagher, and he stuck his head out and yelled, “What fire? Should we take our weapons?” But Miller didn’t hear him. Men were already gathering around Miller without their weapons so Gallagher, a fine-boned, lightskinned, Bible believing Missouri boy who thought he was daring by growing a scraggly blond mustache, turned off his truck’s engine and breathed a quick prayer for safety and guidance. He left his weapon in the truck and joined the others.
While the men gathered around Miller, Paddington stood next to his jeep with his mouth gaping. Miller was redirecting the entire laterite crew! Of course Miller knew far more about engineering than Paddington, and Miller regularly made engineering decisions for him, but halting the entire laterite operation was going too far. Paddington turned to RTO Donaldson and growled, “Someday I’m gonna court-marti
al that son-of-a-bitch for insubordination.”
Laterite operations on QL-14 quickly ceased and seven men led by Miller ran toward the fire. While they were running, Miller yelled to Specialist Kohler, “Go back and alert Paddington to be ready for an attack in case this is a diversionary tactic of the VC.” Miller wasn’t worried there’d be an attack. He was just covering all the bases his newbie commander might not think about.
When Miller and his men arrived at the fire, they were transfixed in wonder. The smoke Miller had seen ten minutes earlier had come from a collapsed kiln that had been in use. It was also coming from the roofs of nearby huts built side-by-side that were set ablaze by the kiln’s explosive burst of combustible gases and superheated charcoal. The remaining charcoal in the kiln glowed with hellish intensity, but it was no longer a danger to the town. Flaming ash from the burning huts was the real danger.
The huts’ roofs were grass thatching. The frames were bamboo. The walls were slats of wood patched together with dried mud. Everything but the mud was kindling that was now burning with increasing intensity. The fire sucked air from all sides and formed a vertical blowtorch that blew flaming thatch and glowing cinders high in the sky to float down on other huts. A nearby hut caught fire while Miller and his men stood paralyzed by lack of equipment and the apparent inevitability of the disaster.
Women gathered in clusters watching their homes burn. Children squealed and jumped and ran with excitement. Other children held tightly to weeping mama-sans. Men of the village scrambled up bamboo ladders to the roofs of nearby huts and were beating smoldering embers with wet towels. A line of women formed a bucket brigade to bring water from the village wells for moistening towels and dousing sparks and cinders.
The fire consuming the huts settled quickly into a blast furnace of burning sticks, wood slats, and straw thatching. Waves of heat and swirling sparks roiled around a cauldron of combustion, a boiling red glow topped with immense yellow flames that leaped free of their source and flew up in the sky before flicking out. The heat was so intense the villagers were shielding their faces and turning their backs while beating out fires on nearby huts.
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