Into No Man's Land

by Ellen Emerson White

  “Okay,” Apollo said, and grinned. “If you say so.” He had “FTC” written on the front of his, which he said meant “Fun, Travel, and Comrades.”

  When a resupply chopper showed up later and dropped off a mailbag, I got twenty-three letters. Twenty-three! Wow! My mother, my father, Molly, Brenda, my aunt Kelley, Father McDougal from St. Anthony’s, Mrs. Rollins from down the street, Harry — my best buddy from the football team; he’s going to the police academy now — wow! I feel rich.

  “So, someone does like you,” Bebop said. “I’d about given up.”

  He’d about given up?

  With so many letters, I wasn’t even sure where to start. I wanted to take it slow, enjoy every single word. I guess I didn’t really think no one’s been writing to me — I know better — but, well. . . . The letters were full of news — and full of questions. Where I am, if I’m okay, what I’m doing, if I’m okay, if there’s anything I need, what it’s like, and if I’m okay.

  “Poor little Mighty Mouse,” Mooch said. He had come over behind me, and was reading over my shoulder. “Tell them you need Tabasco, and Kool-Aid, and all the food they can fit into a box, so you can share with me.”

  Kool-Aid would be great, actually. Iced tea mix, maybe, too. The water tastes so awful, especially after we add the purification tablets, that people use Kool-Aid to try to make it easier to get down. Of course, when you’re thirsty enough, that’s not a problem.

  “If there’s one from a girl, you have to let me read it first,” Hollywood said, lounging against some sandbags a few feet away.

  I like Hollywood a lot — but let him anywhere near my sisters? Even with Brenda already married? Not a chance. So, I handed him one from my grandmother.

  “You’re a funny guy, Mighty Mouse,” he said.

  Bebop was playing low, slow notes on his mouthpiece — long tones, he calls them — and looking grouchy. I think he’s the only one in the squad who didn’t get mail today. So I gave him one of Brenda’s and told him to read all about my niece and nephew. He actually looked pretty happy about that, stuck the cap on his mouthpiece and put it away in his shirt pocket.

  Hollywood wandered over. “You get any pictures of girls, at least?”

  I passed him a photograph of my dog (okay, okay, my sister’s dog, but I love her, too) Maggie. She’s a black setter mix, really sweet, and I think about as pretty as a dog can be. But, when it comes to dogs, I’m the guy who actually cried when I saw The Incredible Journey. That old Bodger really got to me.

  Might not share that with the guys. But the other night, when we were talking about movies, just for fun I told them I cried like a baby at the end of Mary Poppins. Even Rotgut laughed at that one.

  “Is she a good dancer, at least?” Hollywood asked, handing Maggie’s picture back.

  Oh, yeah. My dog can really cut a rug.

  Twenty-three letters. Wow!

  January 5, 1968

  A guy in first platoon got bitten by a rat last night. He woke up, and the thing was sitting right on his chest! Said it was about as big as a cat, which I believe, because these jungle rats are monsters. I pretty much sleep with one eye open — and keep my KA-BAR knife handy, just in case. You can hear them squeaking and squealing all night long. They fight like maniacs, too, so maybe they are rabid. Scary. He was medevaced out, and will be gone for ten days for treatment. Apparently, you get the injections in your stomach. Sounds terrible.

  We also had four new replacements come in. None in my squad, but one got assigned to my platoon. Having replacements show up is good — it means I’m that much further away from being “the new guy.” Now, they’re the new guys. Until the next wide-eyed boot in clean fatigues shows up.

  Shadow and Rotgut have been here longer than anyone else I know, and they got here last summer. Most of the rest of the guys came in-country during the last two or three months. That makes me feel better, since it means they’re not quite as salty as I first thought. Most of us signed up right out of high school — or as soon as we turned eighteen. And yeah, most of us fell for the “Let the Marines make a man out of you” line. The Professor is almost twenty, so he’s an old guy around here. He dropped out of Northwestern University, because he didn’t think it was fair that people who couldn’t afford college were getting drafted. That makes him cool in my book — even if he was majoring in philosophy.

  I was asking Bebop how come he’s not in the Marine Corps Band. Seems like he ought to be. He says the last thing they want is a hard bopper (whatever that means), and besides, he doesn’t “look right.” Meaning that he’s not white, I guess. And, the truth is, like me, he kind of wants to fight.

  Well, no, it’s not that we want to fight, we just — okay, I admit it. Part of me really wants to fight. Find out what kind of man I am. Or even if I’m a man. I mean, that’s why you sign up for the Marines, right? Not to sit behind a desk somewhere, filing papers or handing out supplies or something. Yeah, you also sign up to serve your country, but if that’s all you wanted, you could be a squid, or a doggie — or even ride around with the Coast Guard.

  But it must be really awful if it turns out you’re a coward. Better to know, I guess, but you’d just spend the rest of your life all ashamed. The last thing I want to do is let down the guys. I’m probably supposed to want to fight for God and country — but I really just want to make sure I’m there to back up other Marines.

  Sometimes I’m really scared. Especially at night, alone, on guard. Or when we go on night ambushes. I’m not sure what’s worse — when it’s all foggy and you can’t see anything, or when it’s clear and everything looks like a bunch of enemy soldiers sneaking up on you. Shadow says you should just keep your eyes moving smoothly, and not focus too long in one place. That way, you’ll notice if something in front of you changes or moves. I hope.

  I learned how he got his name the hard way. A couple of nights ago, I was on perimeter guard, and suddenly, he was standing right next to me in the fighting hole. I didn’t even hear him coming over — the guy just appeared out of nowhere. So, that’s why they call him Shadow.

  We’re heading out on another LP now; I’d better go get ready.

  January 7, 1968

  Used my weapon for the first time. I mean, for real — not just a mad-minute, or test-firing. We were on patrol down on the west side of the hill, and I saw movement off to the side in this bamboo thicket. I took maybe half a second to think about it, switching my rifle from safety to automatic. Then, whatever it was came leaping right out toward Apollo and I blew off a full magazine without waiting to see what it was. The whole platoon dropped in place, and there was a whole lot of shooting and yelling for a few minutes. Gunny Swanson had to scream “hold your blank-ing fire!” about ten times before anyone listened. LT was running back and forth, trying to figure out what was going on, and who had started firing first.

  Rotgut was behind me, and he grabbed me by the collar, growling something about “stupid boots who get everyone else killed.” And Apollo was really mad, since I had fired right next to him like that and almost scared him to death. Shadow and Gunny Swanson came back to yell at me, too, and I was trying to tell them that I was sorry, but I’d seen something move.

  Right around the time Lieutenant Fanelli showed up to do some yelling of his own, Fox suddenly said, “Oh, man, look at that.”

  Apollo leaned forward, and there, maybe a foot away from his leg, was this huge cobra. An actual cobra. Neck puffed out, mouth open, fangs extended, like it had been just about to strike. I must have hit it a few times, because it was all bloody, but it was still moving. Rotgut whacked its head off with his machete, and then we all just stood there, staring at the biggest, ugliest dead snake I ever saw. The thing must have been twelve feet long, maybe more.

  “Looks like Mighty Mouse was on the job!” Hollywood said, all cheerful.

  Apollo had
this sick expression on his face — and I didn’t feel so hot myself. That would have been a really bad way to go. Not that any way is good — but, still.

  “Enough eye-balling, ladies,” Gunny Swanson said. “Let’s saddle up!”

  So, we moved out. The rest of the patrol was routine, but I was still creeped out, even when we got back to the hill.

  I bet Apollo was, too.

  January 9, 1968

  I’m getting mail pretty much every time resupply delivers a bag now, and that makes being here seem a whole lot easier. I also got a package from my mother with brownies, Life Savers, a Red Sox cap (I’m wearing it right now), some blank stationery, a couple of pens, a toothbrush, and other great stuff. My father even cut a bunch of articles out of the Globe about the Patriots’ games I missed, and the play-offs. Smedley grabbed the ones about the Dallas Cowboys, and hasn’t brought them back yet. The rest of the squad went through my brownies so fast that I only got three. Tasted really good, though — not stale at all.

  A funny-looking little new guy got put in our squad. Seems like a nice kid, but really uncoordinated, and has trouble with easy stuff like using his P-38 to open his C rations and filling sandbags. He actually keeps missing the bag with his shovel. About nine times out of ten. But it’s hard not to like a guy who says stuff like “Oops!” when he screws up. Mooch named him Pugsley, after the roly-poly kid in the Addams Family. Suits him.

  Got a great letter from Molly today. She promised, before I left, that she’d write to me what was really going on at home, and I could write her the real truth about anything that happens here. But, if it’s something bad I don’t want my parents to know, we agreed that I’d mail it to her friend Theresa’s house, instead. Any letter I send to my house, I know the whole family’ll want to read.

  She’s still doing some moping about this guy Jason she’s liked forever. I think he’s a punk, and not good enough for her. If I told her that, she’d probably just like him more. She says Mom’s going to Mass every single morning, and if Dad’s not at the firehouse, he goes, too. I guess they’re really worried about me. She also wrote that she wanted to start volunteering at the animal shelter, but they won’t let her, because they’re afraid she’ll try to bring too many pets home. She’s always finding stray animals — which is why we have three cats, and our dog, Maggie. Most of our relatives have at least one stray from her, too. I wonder if —

  Later —

  Had to go help some of the guys in one of the other squads with their bunker. Half the roof just caved in on them. Turned out, the timbers they’d been using for overhead cover had been eaten almost all of the way through by termites. The skipper keeps asking the main base to send us up some stuff to use for overhead cover, but they won’t do it. And the engineers won’t come and cut down trees for us, because their chain saws keep breaking. During the Hill Fights last spring, I guess most of the trees got hit by shrapnel, and when the saws hit the little pieces of metal, they get wrecked. A lot of the trees were destroyed back then, and you see jagged, broken trunks all the time. We run into a lot of old bomb craters, too, when we’re patrolling. The jungle is growing right back over most of them, but some of the others have turned into really foul-smelling little ponds.

  What a mess that bunker was. One guy named Baretto was still in there when it happened, and we had to work fast to dig him out. He got lucky, though — the way everything fell, he was in a pretty big air pocket. So, he’s even more filthy than the rest of us, but he’s fine.

  We haven’t had much rain, which is good, because then all our bunkers would probably collapse. The sky is almost always gray, though, and we have lots of fog. Actually, it’s not always fog — sometimes, we’re actually inside clouds, because we’re so high up. But when it’s clear, we have this really amazing view for miles around. Green hills, mountains, waterfalls — it’s like a nature film.

  Except for the fact that there are cobras down there. And maybe the NVA.

  We look down right over the main base from here. The airstrip is the biggest thing there, but even from four miles out, we can see the whole place really well. Compared to our tiny little hilltop, it looks like this really great city you wish you could visit sometime. The guys down there get showers, hot meals, and movies almost every night. They’re still probably finding stuff to gripe about, but up here, we call the main base “Summer Camp.”

  If you look north and west, you see Hill 881N, and more mountains behind it, spreading all the way to the DMZ and Laos. Down to the south is the Special Forces Camp at Lang Vei, and farther up Route 9 toward the main base is Khe Sanh Village. A bunch of Vietnamese civilians live there. The other day, Shadow pointed out this one place down near the village which is actually a French coffee plantation. Here, in the middle of a war zone.

  Wish they’d roast some beans and send them on up to us.

  Our hill has a higher peak, and then a lower one, with some lower ground they call a saddle in between them. Sometimes we use the saddle for one of our landing zones, but the main one is up at the top of the hill. Our platoon is spread out along the north side of the hill, so we look straight out at 881N. Hill 861 is just off to our right, maybe a thousand yards away. It’s a little too far for us to be able to wave at the guys over there, but sometimes, when we get bored, we try to signal each other with flashlights or mirrors. Kills some time.

  Our whole company is spread out into a full defensive circle around the hill. The Command Post, the mortar and artillery guys, the howitzers, and the ammo bunkers are all inside the circle, for protection. When we go on patrol, we leave through the main gate on the far west side of the hill. Except that it isn’t very far, because the whole hill is — like I said before — about the size of a football field. But it sure seems a lot bigger at night, when it’s so dark you can’t even see the guys in the next bunker, forget the next platoon.

  Man, am I hungry. I’m really thirsty, too — they never send us enough water up here. Bebop heard that a guy in 1st Platoon got a box full of salami and pepperoni from his parents today. We’re going to go see if we can scrounge some from him — especially since we have C rat cigarettes to trade.

  Boy, would I give a lot if I could walk down the street to Harvard Avenue and get a nice, hot pizza right about now. . . .

  January 10, 1968

  Hollywood’s dead. I can’t believe it. My God, it was awful.

  Bebop and I were out by the perimeter, stringing some fresh layers of razor tape, and trying not to shred our hands in the process. We were arguing about something stupid — can’t even remember what it was right now — and goofing around a little, too.

  The skipper wants us to have trench lines connecting all of our positions, just in case, so Hollywood was working on that. We already have some trench lines finished, but we’re supposed to make them deep enough so that we can use them to walk around safely even if we get attacked. I think the Professor was digging inside our bunker, but I’m not sure.

  Out of nowhere, there was this big explosion behind us. Dirt, and rock, and maybe shrapnel, were landing all over the place, and Bebop and I hit the deck. We both got tangled up in the concertina wire, and my ears were ringing because the explosion was so close to us. So there we were on the ground, trying to untangle ourselves without getting cut up worse — and still stay low, in case there was another explosion or we were under attack. There was a lot of yelling around the perimeter, as people tried to figure out what happened.

  Then, we heard it. Real soft, real calm, real sad.

  “Oh, God,” someone was saying over and over. “Oh, no. Oh, God.”

  It was Hollywood’s voice, so Bebop and I forgot about the razor tape and went leaping back to our bunker. Took less time than it did to write that sentence. Hollywood was on his back in the dirt, and at first, we thought he was okay — until we saw that his legs were gone almost all the way up to his hips, and one o
f his arms was all ripped up, too.

  Bebop started yelling for a corpsman, and I could hear a bunch of people running toward us. Hollywood was just lying there, blinking a lot. There was so much blood I didn’t know what to do, but I bent down next to him, anyway. Held the hand that didn’t seem injured, while I used my free hand to try and rip off one of my cargo pockets and maybe use the cloth to slow thebleeding down.

  He knew who I was, but other than that, he was really out of it. “Am I hurt?” he asked.

  “No, no, you’re going to be fine, buddy,” I told him. “Everything’s cool.”

  He smiled at me, a little, but his voice was so quiet that it was like he was disappearing right in front of me. “Am I okay?”

  Inside my head, I was screaming, but I smiled back at him. “You got it,” I said. “Just take it easy. Doc’s coming over. You’re going to be —”

  He looked down at himself, at what was left of him, and the weird part was that he didn’t even seem surprised. Or scared.

  “Wow,” he said, really, really quiet. “What a mess.” Then he just — closed his eyes.

  I was still holding his hand, and talking to him, and I guess it took about three guys to pull me away, so that Doc could get through. I can’t really remember. Doc started slapping pressure bandages onto the wounds and began to get an IV going. Then, almost as quickly, he stopped, and just rocked back on his heels. Stared at him, without saying anything.

  I knew it wasn’t right for Hollywood’s head to be resting in the dirt like that, so I shoved my way back over there.

  I sat down on the ground, and held his head as gently as I could. I think I was talking to him again, in case there was still some part left that could hear, but I’m not sure. There was a lot of activity going on around us, but I just concentrated on keeping Hollywood company. No way was I going to leave the guy alone. Not my friend. No chance.