13th Valley

by John M. Del Vecchio

  The driver nodded and flashed a peace sign to every American driver who passed in the opposite direction. “Right on, Bro,” one yelled. “¿Que pasa?” shouted another. “There it is, Babe,” screamed a third. The captain shuffled about in the front seat and stared at the passing villages.

  “See that village, boys?” the captain said. “That was one of my first. We resettled the people there. They’d been driven out during the ’68 TET Offensive. VC burned the place to the ground but I had them back in and resettled by the end of September last year. Now it’s one of the boomingest places south of Hue. I got the three-two-six engineers to come in with their bulldozers and build up foundation pads for the houses and then I had them help the people put in a culvert system. You know, that village flooded sixteen of the last twenty years. Amazes me these people put up with it. You’d think they’d have figured out ways to stop the flooding a long time ago but they seem to think it’s inevitable or something. Damn people won’t get up to help themselves half the time.

  “Anyway,” the captain continued without looking to see if anyone in the jeep was listening, “I had nine thousand refugees from north of Hue in camps along this section last year. Nine thousand right in here. I can hardly remember how they all fit. There’s only four hundred left. All the others have settled back to their original villages. Except the Montagnards. They’re mostly still here but we’ve got a new village site picked out for them that their chief just okayed. Out on 546. By Lang Minh Mang. “You boys know where that is?” The driver remained oblivious. The red-haired man said nothing. Chelini waited. He was about to say, “No Sir, where is it?” but without the others replying he hesitated, then decided not to reply. The captain fell silent. The driver continued to nod to the passing military vehicles.

  Paralleling the roadway were two sets of rails. As the jeep approached the turnoff for Camp Eagle, a combination freight-passenger train, the daily from Quang Tri and Hue over the Hai Van Pass to Da Nang, chugged slowly south. The engine appeared to have been made around the turn of the century. Its big black cylindrical boiler lay atop a flat platform sided by large spoked wheels. A small boxy cabin was welded to the back. The engine pushed seven empty, ancient and dilapidated cars: two flatbeds, two wooden boxcars and three gondolas. Behind the engine was a caboose and following that, twenty-eight vintage wooden passenger cars and boxcars packed with people and goods. Atop each car behind the engine sat a Vietnamese soldier armed with an M-14 rifle.

  “That looks kind a stupid,” Chelini said.

  “Better ta blow away the empties up front, Cherry,” the red-haired man growled.

  Chelini looked at him. His eyes were closed, his jaw slack and his mouth open. He had to be asleep. How could he know there was a train there?

  The jeep entered the dirt road after the train cleared the intersection. At the corner two American MPs were playing with half a dozen children in front of a ramshackle, weather-beaten bunker. Chelini waved to the children and two waved back. He smiled. He looked at the bunker. It was high above the ground, circular, made of layers of sandbags stacked atop rusting, dirt-filled fifty-five-gallon drums. The sandbags had rotted and frayed. Dirt spilled badly from one side causing the entire tower to list. It stood alone and Chelini could not determine its original function. Behind the bunker he could see a junkyard or salvage yard for the squashed carcasses of corroding military vehicles.

  Further down the road were garbage dumps. Scavenging amongst the clutter, old Vietnamese women, darker-skinned than those along the highway, Montagnards, collected bottles and cans and pieces of wood. At the finding of a belt by one digger all the ladies gathered around her and shrieked and cackled. It gave Chelini a creepy feeling yet he enjoyed watching the scavengers. Beyond the dumps the jeep passed a vacant firing range where children were searching the clay for expended cartridges.

  As they traveled the road became progressively drier and they rode into thicker and thicker lingering clouds of dust from passing vehicles.

  “Why do you do that?” the captain demanded of the driver.

  “Do what, Sir?” the driver asked.

  “Nod like that. To everybody. Do you know every one of those drivers?”

  “No Sir.”

  “Do you think this is some country road? Are you some kind of hick or something?”

  “No,” the driver answered.

  “Then why do you do that?” the officer demanded again.

  “I’m an enlisted man, Sir,” the driver said, “and so are they.”

  Chelini chuckled inwardly. He wanted to flash the finger at the captain’s back but he didn’t dare. The red-haired man opened his eyes for a second and gave the finger to the officer. Then he nodded to Chelini and closed his eyes again.

  The terrain changed subtly from the greener piedmont at Phu Bai and along Highway One to the dry red-brown of the foothills. Strings of barbed wire, stretched and looped concertina and pegged tanglefoot, extended from bunkers to a tiny guard-house with a small sign announcing, “CAMP EAGLE—GIA LAI GATE.” A lethargic MP glanced up from a paperback and nodded them through. With his left hand out the side of the jeep, below the captain’s view, Chelini saw the driver flash an inverted peace sign.

  The jeep jostled down the rutted dirt road away from the perimeter line and through an area of open nothingness. Rooster tails of dust rose from the wheels. Old Marine Corps Quonset huts appeared to the right in a shallow draw. In front of one half-cylindrical building was a red and black sign shaped like a bulldozer, “Home of the 326th Engineer Battalion (Airmobile).” A little further on to the left a line of trucks were awaiting gasoline at the 426th S & S fuel point. Beside this was headquarters for Company A, 5th Transportation Battalion (Airmobile). Chelini glanced back. Behind him dust formed an opaque wall. As each new unit appeared he squirmed in the seat and squinted through the dust searching for the headquarters that would house his assignment. Next unit down the road was the 801st Maintenance Battalion looking like a giant bunker complex. All these support units were airmobile and Chelini began to understand what the SERTS instructors had meant when they said everything in the division could be picked up by helicopter and moved.

  Where the road turned from west to north there stood the hangars of Eagle Dust-Off, the division’s medical evacuation helicopter unit. The hangars were open. In one Chelini could see mechanics working on the jet engine of a ship. In another six men were playing basketball.

  They came to the infantry areas: 1st of the 501st, 2d of the 327th and at the westernmost point of Camp Eagle, down the hill from brigade headquarters where they delivered the captain, where the jeep slowed and crept and turned, Chelini suppressed his excitement at seeing the 7th of the 402d.

  During the ride back to Phu Bai and the jeep trip through Camp Eagle an anxiety plagued Egan and would not allow his muscles to either relax or tighten. In the jeep he sprawled across much of the rear seat. He felt like a plastic garbage bag filled with oil or pudding. He kept his eyes closed against the harsh sun. The jeep jolted, his head snapped on a limp neck. Don’t mean nothin, Egan moaned to himself. It don’t mean a fuckin thing. Through his shut eyes he could feel something glinting silver in the sun before him. He cracked the lids, dust and glare stung and he closed his eyes more tightly. Something glimmered. An amber glow through a draft at Louis’ Tavern in Paddington just south of Sydney or the instruments and light show at Whiskey-A-Go-Go. He opened his eyes again. The cherry beside him was awed by the antique which served as a cargo and commute train. Egan shut his eyes and said something but he did not hear his own voice. The jeep turned and his head flopped on his neck. The glitter turned. It was coming through an ice cube in a cool drink of citrus with water. The glass was moist, wet on the outside, dripping over the small fingers holding it. Wet fingers, fine and fragile. Over the glass oval lip, beyond the glint of the cube, between outstretched delicate arms the face of a dark-eyed girl glistened, looked at his face then cast down.

  He opened his eyes. They were p
assing through the Gia Lai Gate. Back, he thought. Mick, you’re back in the motherfuckin Nam.

  The dust clogged his nostrils and he began breathing through his mouth. The dust dried his throat. The captain was fussing. Egan didn’t want to hear it. He squeezed his eyes harder and shut his mouth and sucked air slowly through a slit between his chapping lips. Through his eyelids the warm sun was Mexican fire opal refracting on a ring on her finger on a warm spring day in a small town in western New York.

  It was that light, that certain light, that glare that hit him across squinting eyes. That glistening would trigger in his mind the thoughts and memories and questions which would not stop. There it was in his mind, on his mind, the affair, the beautiful Stephanie. Their love had blossomed, withered, reblossomed, matured and withered again, and it was still with him, on his mind, never out of mind. A haunting relationship which periodically reran itself in his brain and tortured him. The story would be in his mind for ten days or two weeks and it would produce in him a sadness, a loneliness of a depth only an infantryman in a war zone could feel so deeply, could hurt over so much and then at times could so completely forget for weeks and weeks. Then it would spawn again and begin its run, embellished as memories often are until one cannot separate the real from the imagined.

  The glint on Egan’s eyelids triggered the memories. She was as delicate as Mama-san’s daughter. She had pale skin and large lovely eyes that sparkled. Egan fidgeted. That was the feeling. The jeep, with the driver and the captain from S-5 and the cherry, rumbled down the dirt gravel road shaking the earliest moments of his relationship with Stephanie and jumbling those with more recent thoughts of Mama-san’s daughter and of his R&R ladies.

  The jeep whipped. Egan opened his eyes. He sat up, licked his lips. He glared at the approaching units and at the road choked by the dust of every vehicle which had passed for an hour. Egan looked at Chelini and at the back of the captain’s head. He turned and spat dry mud from his mouth. Crazy cherry, he thought. At least he’s got the brains to keep his mouth shut most of the time. I’ll give him that.

  Now Egan could not close his eyes. The driver brought the jeep up to the First Brigade Officer’s quarters where the vibration of a generator could be felt beneath the rock music on the stereo set it powered. “Motherfucker,” the driver said as he turned away from brigade. He had a low mild voice. “Motherfucker didn’t even say thank you.”

  The jeep slowed and entered the battalion area. An old white soldier was chewing out a lethargic black soldier by the basketball courts. Charlie Company was in informal formation with its gear spread out. Platoon leaders and platoon sergeants and company commanders were meandering and checking and asking questions. A supply truck was unloading cases of C-rations by Recon’s hootch and the clerks from S-l were preparing the stage at the theater for a floor show. It was already difficult to remember what the World had been like. Egan could not even be sure if the eyes of the gypsy in Sydney had been blue or green or brown.

  “Fuck,” he growled. “Just fuck. Twenty-six en a wake-up.” Oh man, he said to himself. Twenty-six en a wake-up. If we can just keep from hittin the shit. Twenty-six en that Seven-Oh-Quick Freedom Bird’s goina drop me off in Stephanie’s AO. Echo. Tango. Sierra.

  When the jeep stopped before Company A’s headquarters the dust which had tailed it along the road and into the battalion area caught it, swirled and engulfed the vehicle, passengers and all those who were within a five-meter radius.

  Brooks stood up coughing. First Sergeant Eduardo Laguana came out of the hootch, ineffectively swatting the dust away from his face. “Turn that thing off,” Laguana shouted. “You try to drown the company commander?”

  “Hey, L-T,” Egan called as he hopped from the jeep. “What’s happenin? ¿Que pasa, Top?”

  “Say hey, Babe,” the lieutenant greeted Egan. “You know, Danny, I knew you were coming in right now.”

  “Yeah, L-T. That’s my aura. You tuned into it. I’ve got one hell of a strong aura.”

  “No. That wasn’t it. I could hear Top up there in the office. He just got a call from brigade. Somebody complaining about my troop’s military courtesy. I knew it had to be you.”

  “That fucker complained? Fuck im. Hey, what’s happening anyway? This place looks like a giant cluster fuck.”

  “How was your R&R?”

  “Short, L-T. Too fucking short.”

  “You,” Brooks pointed to the back of the vehicle, “you must be Choolee-nee.”

  “Yes Sir,” Chelini said and he awkwardly saluted the lieutenant from his cramped seat beneath the baggage.

  “Yeah? Hum.” The lieutenant sized up the neophyte with sweeping glances. “I’m Rufus Brooks. This is First Sergeant Laguana and you’ve already met Platoon Sergeant Egan. Top,” Brooks thumbed at Laguana, “will get you squared away with a bunk for tonight and a ruck for tomorrow and all the paperwork Personnel requires. S-l says you’re a wireman.”

  “Yes Sir,” Chelini said. “I work on telephone systems.”

  “Hum,” Brooks stroked his chin. “A telephone man. Yeah. Good. You’re going to be Daniel’s RTO.”

  “What?” Egan said, startled. “L-T? This cherry goina be my RTO?”

  “Yeah, Daniel. Tompkins extended for a clerk job with supply. Now,” he added laughing, “you got zero five to get out of those civvie threads and make a strack troop of yourself. You and I are going to catch a bird to Evans. They’re briefing us about tomorrow’s CA. I want you to come up with me.”

  “You come here, Scholdier,” Sgt. Laguana said to Chelini; “we get you squared way. Bring jor equipment and we lock it away.”

  “Pop, De Barti, Thomaston and Whiteboy are up there already,” Brooks told Egan. “And Caldwell can’t make it. Hey, tell me, really, how was your R&R?”

  Egan looked at the lieutenant and chuckled. “God fuckin damn, L-T. Shee-it. That cherry’s goina be my R-fuckin-TO! I thought they’d drop him off with the Delta Darlins. I just get back en you loadin my ass with briefins en CAs en cherries. Now you wanta hear a cock story. And, Man,” Egan paused, “do I got some good shit to lay on you. Let me tell you bout the tattooed lady.”

  “Come on, Danny,” Brooks said stepping forward and putting his arm around Egan’s shoulders. “Tell me about it.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Chelini waited outside the orderly room shack for the first sergeant to call him. He felt completely lost. This was not a training unit where everyone was new or a replacement station where everyone was transient. This was the infantry, a permanent assignment and he was an outsider. The men were busy in closed groups or loafing in closed groups.

  The battalion to which Chelini had been assigned was on the last day of a five-day refitting and training stand-down. Before stand-down the men of the Oh-deuce had spent 105 days in the boonies, up the Sông Bo and Rao Trang rivers, on the hills by Firebases Veghel, Ripcord and Maureen, and in the swamps west of Quang Tri City. They were the division reaction force. It was not uncommon for them to be extracted from one jungle only to be inserted into another.

  Chelini went to the screen door of the hootch and tried to see inside. He could see nothing. He turned and scrutinized the battalion area. Before him was a quadrangle surrounded on three sides by buildings. On the far side a steep hill rose to a helicopter resupply point.

  At the center of the quad there was a boxing ring and a PSP basketball court. By the court the old white soldier was still chewing out the same lethargic black boonierat. From where Chelini stood the words were unintelligible. The black soldier had very dark skin. He was shuffling his feet in the red dust, casting upward scowls from a down-hanging head, bouncing and jiving with his knuckles on his hips. The old white soldier was shorter than the black man and much heavier. His head was round and bald on top with the sparse hair at the side shaved. The skin was very red, as if blood was trying to escape.

  Very near Company A’s office was a narrow moldy structure with a boat on the roof. Five white enlisted men with
deeply tanned arms, faces and necks and pallid torsos carried olive drab towels and shaving gear into the shower house. They joked and fooled and slapped each other with the towels and stepped gingerly over the muck patch which flowed past the four-holer EM latrine toward the drainage ditch. They did not even look in Chelini’s direction.

  Close to the screen door of the office where Chelini stood two men converged, stopped and commenced a strangely ritualistic clapping and shaking of hands and forearms and slapping of each other’s shoulders and tapping of each other’s fists. One of the men was black, dark brown, not as dark as the soldier at the quad’s center; the other was light brown, the color of wheatbread. The ritualized greeting went on for what seemed a long time.

  Chelini turned. A clerk opened the screen door. The first sergeant called him in by methodically curling one index finger. Chelini gulped. The first sergeant fumbled with a stack of papers and forms. His desk was clear of everything except essentials. He dusted the land-line telephone with his hand and directed the clerk to empty the trash containers. Then he handed Chelini the forms and a pencil. “Complete thees,” he said and turned away. Chelini nodded. Holy Christ, he thought. I’m lost. I’m stuck. I gotta get out of this unit. Chelini glanced at the forms briefly and began filling in his name on a weapons card. He looked up, out the door. The dark black soldier from the center of the quad had joined the black soldier and brown soldier at the front of the office. The greeting rite of raps and slaps and shakes began again.

  “Troop,” the first sergeant said. Chelini jumped. “Can’t you write any faster? You scared of that pencil?”

  “No, I just …”

  “Troop, you a college graduate, aint you?” Oh, shit, Chelini thought. Two strikes against me already. “You let pencil run you. T’row that pencil down.”