by Dennis Foley
It was late enough for his presence in the Intelligence Section of the Division’s headquarters to not be under much scrutiny. Most of the staff had gone to bed and only a single radio operator manned a bank of radios and telephones in the far end of the large room.
As Pascoe had done every day since Minh’s death, he carefully read every intelligence report forwarded to his division from MACV Headquarters. They were English translations of information collected by all of the Vietnamese units in the corps area. He had read so many he was able to recognize what six digit grid coordinated where anywhere near the area were Scotty and Nguyen were last seen. He read the documents looking for any sign they had either been actually captured or, more likely, their bodies had turned up some where. The last thing he wanted was to be surprised about any possible news of Nguyen and Hayes that could blow back on him.
He found more reports of continued infiltration of Viet Cong across the no-man’s-land on the near side of the border but nothing about the two missing soldiers. He rubbed his eyes and finished the last of the phonebook-sized stack of carbon copies of the documents which had originated in Saigon and called it a night.
Returning the reports to the in-box he had found them in, he looked around for something to clean the carbon ink from his fingers. The roll of toilet paper used to clean the grease pencil markings from the tactical map on the wall was the only thing available for the task, but it had the habit of moving to a new location each night. And even it would only take part of the stain from his hands. He would have to scrub the rest off in the shower, as he did every night.
He stepped to the tactical map mounted on the wall and studied the red boxes indicating enemy units, still looking for the seeds of a plan he could devise and suggest offer to the new division commander with some degree of promise of success. He knew it wouldn’t be long before Devlen would ask him how it was going. He needed to come up with a plan, get Duong enthusiastic about it and then let Devlen know he was following through on Devlen’s instructions.
He put his cap down on a field table, pulled his pen out of his pocket and found a lined pad to take notes. He spent the next two hours working on two assumptions: One, that the infiltrators had to be as human as anyone else and likely to show a pattern of movement related to using the easiest way to get from Cambodia to their underground units around Saigon. And, the hundreds of tiny hamlets and farms had to be filled with South Vietnamese who would be able help point out infiltrator traffic when they found trails in their rice fields. Pascoe was sure some money would encourage them to be more forthcoming with information. If he could get the money, he could get the information. And with the information they could setup more effective ambushes in the most likely infiltration routes.
This would mean the ambushes would need to be set closer to the inhabited parts of the province. He liked that too. The more distance he put between himself and the heavy firepower the communist forces had just inside the border, the better.
He sat back and looked at his notes. They showed promise. Satisfied, he needed a drink.
Reaching out for a tree branch as they got to their first new hiding spot, Scotty stopped and to listen for movement anywhere near them over the sound of his rapid and labored breathing. The movement from the thicket to the first new one took almost two and a half hours even though it was only eight hundred meters.
Scotty could tell Nguyen was in pain during the entire move, but he said nothing and just held on. They would rest up and do the same thing again the next night.
Inside the new clump of trees, Scotty found a place to put Nguyen down. But when he helped Nguyen slip off his shoulder he found Nguyen was unable to stand under his own power. Scotty helped him to a more comfortable position on the ground. “How you doing, Dai Uy?”
Nguyen waved his hand to let Scotty know he would be okay, but Scotty knew better. “We need some food, Dai Uy. Soon as it gets light I’ll look for something we can eat.”
Sergeant First Class Peter Jackson and Major Keith Laury sat silently waiting for Pascoe to speak.
Pascoe leafed through the files each brought and collected his thoughts before saying anything. He tried to conceal his anger from the two sitting in front of his desk. From their appearance and from the contents of their files it was clear to Pascoe they were not only completely unqualified to serve as advisors, they were not likely to be trainable during the time he had left in Vietnam.
“How much do you weigh, Sergeant? Pascoe asked.
“Well, sir. I’ll admit I’m a little overweight —”
“A little overweight?” Pascoe’s face reddened. “You’re a goddamn whale. You’ve got to be over three hundred pounds!”
“But, sir, I’m trying to lose weight and I’m sure I can get it down.”
Pascoe looked back at the sergeant’s records. “You’ve only got four months left in-country. How damn much weight do you think you can lose by then? No, don’t answer that. Let me tell you how much. If you stopped eating now,” Pascoe pointing to the unseen rice paddies outside the building, “you wouldn’t lose enough to be able to make it a day out there on patrol with the Vietnamese. I’d be hauling your ass out of the paddies with heat exhaustion or a heart attack.
“Where the hell have you been that you could get this big and no one said anything to you?”
The sergeant looked down and his hands, toying with his cap. “I’ve been an Assistant Mess Sergeant at MACV since I got here.”
“What?” He looked down at the sergeant’s records again. “You’re not even an Infantryman?” Veins stood out on Pascoe’s neck.
“No sir. I was. I was for ten years and then I hurt my back in Germany in a Jeep accident and they reclassified me.”
Pascoe leaned forward and spoke slowly. “Well, Sergeant, here’s how it’s going to work here. I want you to get your ass out of my office right now and I want you to find a notebook. I want you to write down in that notebook everything you eat every day. And I mean everything. And I want you to spend an hour each morning and each evening out in the compound exercising. I want to see you out there sweating every time I go to breakfast and every time I head to my quarters at night. You got that?”
“Yessir.”
“And I want to see the log you keep every other day. On my desk. You got that?”
“Yessir.”
“Now, get out of here and find that notebook.”
The sergeant got to his feet and saluted.
Pascoe returned the salute and watched the huge perspiring soldier waddle through the door to the hallway. He then picked up the second folder on his desk to take a second look.
The major sitting in front of him waited while Pascoe took an uncomfortably long time with his records.
“What am I supposed to do with you, Laury?”
Surprised at the question, he replied. “Sir? I was sent here to be your Operations Advisor.”
“Get up.”
“Sir?”
“Get up and look out that window.” Pascoe pointed to the glassless window.
The major stood and looked out the window across the compound.
“Look up,” Pascoe said.
“Up?”
“Yes, up. Now, what do you see?”
Laury looked at the sky gathering with clouds. “Nothing, sir.”
“Do you see any North Vietnamese aircraft? Any Viet Cong choppers?” Pascoe asked.
“No sir. They don’t have any aircraft in South Vietnam,” Laury answered.
“That’s right. So what am I going to do with an Air Defense Artilleryman in an Infantry Division?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Sit.”
Laury took his chair again.
Pascoe slammed the folder closed. “You have no experience with troops do you? No, don’t answer that. I can tell from your file you haven’t done shit. You are neither airborne nor Ranger qualified. You’ve been an ROTC instructor and an Assistant Post Exchange officer. But the highlight of your career to date is that you’v
e been the Recreation Officer at Fort Bliss, Texas.
“Well, Laury, what are you going to do for me here? Hand out soccer balls?”
Laury searched for a reply. “Sir, I volunteered for this job. I know I don’t have any combat or infantry experience, but I can learn.”
“This isn’t school, Major. It’s the real thing. Vietnamese soldiers are poorly trained, poorly equipped, poorly motivated and poorly paid. Do you think they deserve to be poorly advised?”
The major broke eye contact with Pascoe and looked at the floor. “No sir. I guess not.”
Pascoe leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh of resignation. “Well, I’ve got you. So here’s what we’re going to do.” He nodded across the compound. “I want you to go over there and get out every After Action Report on every operation this division has conducted in the last two years and read them cover to cover. I want you to know the manpower, training and equipment status of every company in this division.
“I want you to talk to these troops—use the interpreters if you need to—but find out what they do and don’t do, what they are good at and what they can’t get their heads out of their asses to do. I want what you find out to guide you in making recommendations to the new Operations Officer for what he should prioritize in setting up his training schedules.”
Pascoe then turned around in his chair and pulled a beige paperback book off the shelf. He threw it across the room to Laury who caught it. “I don’t care what your religion was when you came here. That’s your new bible now—the Division Operations Manual. I want you to memorize it. I want you do know every word in and be able to quote it to me if I ask. You got that?”
“Yes sir.”
“Go,” Pascoe said.
The major stood, saluted and left Pascoe’s office not waiting for a returned salute.
As Laury got to the door Pascoe stopped him. “One more thing…”
The major stopped and turned back to Pascoe. “Yessir?”
“Everything you read—I want you to have that whale of an assistant of yours read everything too. You got that?”
“Yessir.” Laury left the office.
Pascoe turned to look out the window trying to calm his anger. Colonel Wright had done it. He had gotten back at him for embarrassing him in front of General Devlen. He knew he couldn’t complain to the general. But he would come up with a plan to make it backfire on Colonel Wright. Maybe if he would let the General see the two new replacements at his next visit, their malassignment would be obvious to General Devlen and he would take action. It also wouldn’t hurt if the Vietnamese complained through their channels.
Somehow, he would make Colonel Wright pay for screwing him.
The day’s haul was disappointing. After getting some sleep, Scotty spent the better part of the afternoon catching tadpoles and small frogs in the marsh water. He had caught several but knew they would yield less than two ounces of edible meat. Still, it was food.
While he was catching supper Nguyen had been separating the edible parts of a pile of water lilies. He then sorted lily parts and waited for Scotty to skin the small amphibians to salvage enough edible protein.
Nguyen served the tasteless Asian swamp salad on a large flat leaf Scotty couldn’t identify and encouraged Scotty to simply combine the small slivers of raw meat with the lilies and eat it all.
Scotty fought the urge to gag putting the first bite in his mouth. He’d eaten worse in Ranger School, but he never thought back then there was a real reason for it in training. He had always thought it was one way to separate the men from the boys. Now he was living the very reason for the extreme cuisine he had eaten in the Florida Ranger camp tucked into the swamps—survival.
He found he was so hungry for anything the food soon took away some of the cramping and some of the light headedness. He washed it all down with more than half a canteen full of the brackish water heavily overpowered by the chemical taste of the purification tablets. In the back of his mind he was hoping whatever purification the tablets held for water would extend to the food and protect him from whatever evils the marsh vegetables and uncooked paddy life might possess.
After eating, Scotty cleaned up any signs of having prepared a meal and buried all the scraps as he had done with the excess equipment in the first thicket.
Before dark he checked Nguyen’s wound and rationed out more Darvon to help him with the unending pain. Nguyen thanked him for the care and the dinner, but Scotty told him he needed to rest and not talk. After dark they would be moving out again. Things seemed to be going as well as could be expected, then Scotty heard it: Rain.
Her watch told her it was almost time to leave for her shift at Ronnie’s. Eileen was worried Kitty had been in her room since late afternoon and it was getting dark.
Ever since they got the news about Scotty Kitty’s constant smile was gone. Eileen worried about the impact of Kitty’s mood on her health.
She tried to slip into Kitty’s room without making any noise in case Kitty was sleeping. The room was dark—the lights out and the curtains drawn. Eileen tiptoed across the floor but before reaching Kitty’s bedside saw her turn over.
“Eileen? That you, hon?”
Eileen sat on the edge of Kitty’s bed and stroked her hair. “Yes. Hope I didn’t wake you. How you feeling?”
Kitty sat up a bit in her bed and pulled yet another tissue from the box on her nightstand. She blew her nose and wiped tears from her eyes before replying. “I just don’t know if anything in this world could break my heart more than this.”
“You know, Kitty, if he were here he’d tell you you can’t let this get to you so bad it makes you sicker. You know that, don’t you?”
“Of course he would. He’s grown up so much since high school and he’s the best son… But he’s missing.” She broke out in quiet heaving sobs and tears streamed down her face again.
“You’re going to think I’m completely crazy, but I think he’s alive too. I feel way down in my gut he’s not dead and he’s gonna’ be okay. Is that crazy, because I believe it as if I know it’s true?”
Kitty took Eileen’s hands in her own. “It’s because you love him and your heart won’t let you think anything else.
“I want him to be okay and I want him to come back to me, to us. I want you two to have the time together you deserve.”
“Then you need to keep your spirits up and stay healthy so we can welcome him home.”
“Do you pray, honey?” Kitty asked.
“I didn’t. I do now.”
Chapter 22
IT TOOK SCOTTY AND NGUYEN three more days to move only four miles. They held up in what remained of a small rice farm which looked to Scotty to have been abandoned back when the French were still fighting in Vietnam. The structures which had once been the farmer’s home and his livestock pen had collapsed and were overgrown with weeds and brush winding up through the thatch and bamboo once offering shelter for his family and his animals.
Scotty had moved them into what remained of a lean-to once the shelter for the farm’s stores of rice, water and edible roots. After searching the few earthen crocks, Scotty was only able to find a few handfuls of rice which had somehow survived the years. He knew they couldn’t start a fire to cook the rice, but at Nguyen’s suggestion they soaked the rice in water for several hours to soften it—making it palatable if not pleasant tasting.
Over the week and a half they had been moving both Scotty and Nguyen’s health were showing the toll. Nguyen’s wound had crusted over and was slowly oozing awful smelling pus from a raging infection. But he refused to complain and refused to quit. Each time Scotty asked him if he needed to stop longer he would insist Scotty not be concerned but to focus on their survival. Scotty had never seen real courage before—not like Nguyen’s.
Scotty’s condition worsened. He couldn’t remember all of the earmarks of malaria but assumed it was what he was suffering from. He ached everywhere and alternated between periods of fever and chills
he could shrug off.
After a night of more chills than fever, Scotty yearned for the sun to come out to help warm him up. But with the dawn the skies filled with rain clouds. He would spend another miserable day waiting for darkness to fall.
Scotty got no rest during the day. Whatever he had was getting worse. His eyes hurt and he couldn’t fall asleep because he was experiencing pain in his lower back.
Certain he would not be able to sleep, he crawled to the margins of the brush hiding him and Nguyen for the day and scooped water from the flooded paddy field and poured it over his face and neck to try to bring down the fever.
He looked up at the sky hoping for rain which would bring cooler temperatures and make him feel better.
Pascoe looked through the doorway of the mess hall and saw the low ceiling hanging over the compound. He tried to remember the dry season which had been in its waning days when he arrived at the Sugar Mill. Knowing there was absolutely nothing he could do about the coming rain, he pushed the screen door open and stepped out into the compound.
As he walked to his office to start his day he saw Sergeant Jackson sitting on a porch across the compound with a Vietnamese sergeant. As they spoke Jackson took notes. Pascoe also noticed Jackson mopping the perspiration from his face even though it was still the cool part of the day. He made a note to check on Jackson’s weight program.
The pile of paperwork on Pascoe’s desk never seemed to end. As quickly as he would read and respond to the endless demands from MACV headquarters for input regarding operations, training, equipment, enemy sightings and funds expenditures he would find more of the same replacing them.
He looked up from his desk and caught sight of Sergeant Jackson across the hall in the Vietnamese operations section talking to a file clerk. “Jackson!”
The sergeant turned toward Pascoe’s voice.
“Come in here.”
The sergeant found a spot in front of Pascoe’s desk. “Yessir?”
“Sit down.”
The sergeant took the single chair in front of the desk and sat waiting for Pascoe to speak.
