Message from Nam

by Danielle Steel

  “San Francisco, eh?” he asked, chewing on a cigar. “Great town. My wife and I love it.” Everyone loved someplace. San Francisco, Savannah, North, South, New Jersey, it didn’t matter where you were from. You were alive and you were new, and they were so desperate to go home and just stay alive, just touching someone from anywhere meant everything to them. “We’ve had a lot of heat around here,” he explained. “The NVA are determined to get through, and we’re just not going to let them. We held this area pretty solidly last year, and then we lost it. And now that we have it back, we’re not letting it go again.” But Paxton couldn’t help wondering how many men it had cost them. Taking a hill, a valley, a village, it all meant such loss of life. So many boys dead, and so many wounded. He explained again that they were doing pretty well. They had lost only five boys so far, and had a few dozen wounded. Was that okay, then, she asked herself, “only five boys” was fine … but which five? How did one choose? How did God? And why had he chosen Peter? “Would you like to come up a little closer? We’re taking a lot of shells, just stay in the areas my boys tell you.”

  Ralph was pleased. He wanted a better view for the camera of the forward movements. And they stayed there all afternoon only falling back finally at three in order to eat some C rations before they went back to the heat of the action. And so far, no one had been hurt. It had been a pretty tame day all in all. They were just holding their position relentlessly, and now and then they claimed that they could see Charlie. But the truth was, you couldn’t. You couldn’t see anything, except smoke and gunfire, and the bushes.

  “Well, kid, how’s it feel? You’re in it now.” Ralph sat next to her for a few minutes to smoke a cigarette and finish a cup of coffee.

  “How did it feel when the Times sent you to Korea?”

  “It scared the shit out of me,” he said with a grin.

  “That’s about right.” She smiled nervously at him. Her stomach had been in a knot since early that morning.

  “Did you eat?” She shook her head. “You should. It’ll help. You’ve gotta keep eating and sleeping no matter what they’re doing out there, or you may get careless and do something stupid. Keep your judgment sharp. That’s the best piece of combat advice I can give you.”

  She was grateful for him. He was a nice guy, and a terrific reporter. She could see why the others were jealous of him. He was good, very good, and constantly on the alert for anything that might happen. “Thanks for the boots,” she said to him, and he patted her on the shoulder.

  “Keep your helmet on and your head down, and you’ll be fine.” And with that he was off again, climbing rapidly through some trees behind some soldiers, while she wondered if she admired him or thought he was crazy. And just as she thought that, there was a huge explosion. The cameramen ran down to where he’d been, and the sound man right behind them, and without thinking of anything but him, she found herself running too, and when she got there, there were men lying all over the place and he was holding one of them, with the boy’s chest hanging wide open.

  “We need medics here,” he said calmly but firmly, and someone ran to get one, and suddenly there was a radio operator in their midst calling for a “Dustoff.” “I’ve got six men down,” he said into the phone, and as he said it Paxton felt one of them touch her. His arm was blown off, and there was blood everywhere, and he had the face of a child as he looked up at her, and all he said was “I’m thirsty.”

  She had a canteen at her side, but she wasn’t sure if she should give him anything. What if he wasn’t supposed to drink? If giving him something would kill him … Two medics arrived and a priest in a helmet who was attached to the unit and they started going around to the boys who’d been wounded. But the boy in Ralph’s arms had already died, and he was helping them with another.

  “I’m thirsty.” No one had come to her boy yet, and he looked at her with anguish. “What’s your name?”

  “Paxxie.” She stroked his face and laid his head down gently in her lap as blood poured all over her legs and she tried to pretend she didn’t feel it. “My name’s Paxxie,” she said softly, stroking his hair back gently from his face, and fighting back an urge to bend down and kiss his cheeks like a baby, as she cried for him. She tried to smile through her tears but he didn’t see it. “What’s your name?” she asked, to keep him talking.

  “Joe.” He was sounding vague from the loss of blood and shock, and he started to close his eyes as she held him.

  “Come on, Joe, wake up … you can’t go to sleep now … that’s right … open your eyes.” She smiled at him, and all around them everything was frantic. They were trying to carry the wounded boys into a clearing. The priest was helping them, and Ralph and the cameraman, too, and one of the medics was pounding on someone’s chest, and in a minute she could hear the helicopter whirring overhead but they were shooting at it from the brush and it had to move away again as the medic who’d been pounding the boy’s chest shouted, “Shit!” He had lost him.

  “Where are you from, Joe?”

  “Miami.” It was only a whisper.

  “Miami. That’s great.” There were tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat and she felt sick and her legs were soaked with his blood as she held him, and the radio operator sitting right next to her in the grass was telling the helicopter to take off again. It was just too hot there.

  “The hell I will …” the voice came back to them. “How many you got down there?” The voice was steady and strong and he wasn’t going anywhere without their wounded.

  “I’ve still got four who need you pretty bad.” And just as he said it, there was another huge explosion.

  “Shit!” someone said, and the medics were off again, and someone came back to talk to the radio operator and give him a report on the wounded.

  “Make that nine. I’ve got five more for you, Niner Zulu. Can you get me another bird down here quick? We’ve got some guys who aren’t gonna wait too long.” And as she listened, Paxton closed her eyes, and knew that the boy on her lap was one of them. She tried to catch the operator’s eye, but he was too involved on the phone, and Ralph was long gone with his cameramen somewhere else.

  “You okay?” a passing voice asked, and she heard herself respond, much to her amazement.

  “We’re fine. Right, Joe? Right …” He was drifting off to sleep, and she touched his cheek to wake him, trying not to look at the arm that wasn’t there and the bloody stump that was bleeding onto the ground beside her. She thought of trying to fashion a tourniquet, but she was afraid of making things worse, and a moment later a medic was with him.

  “You’re doing fine, son, just fine.” And then he smiled up at Paxton. “You’re doing okay too.” And then she realized, the man reassuring her was the boy from Savannah, and she felt as though they were old friends now.

  “This is Joe.” She kept her voice light but glanced worriedly at the arm as the helicopter hovered, and she could still hear the pilot’s voice on the radio near her.

  “This is Niner Zulu. We’re going in. But we’re coming in quick. We’re not coming down. Just toss ’em in as fast as you can and we’ll make a quick exit.”

  “Shit,” she heard someone say. It was the word of the afternoon, but it seemed appropriate so far, from what she’d seen around her. “How the fuck does he think we’re going to ‘toss ’em in’?” the RTO asked anyone who would listen.

  “Don’t worry about it,” one of the men said unhappily. “If he waits much longer, we won’t have to.” Of the second five, two had already died. They only had seven wounded left to transport, and four had died in all. It had been a stinking day, after a good beginning.

  But the chopper came down and hovered long enough for the medics and the troops to put four men on board, and then a second helicopter came for the others. They were Huey medevacs and they looked beautiful to Paxton as they came in. She watched as two of the men loaded Joe, and she found herself praying out loud that he would make it. And as she turned around, she
suddenly saw two of the others on the ground, their eyes open and unseeing, and the ARVN boys beside them. And she stumbled away, and was sick in the bushes: Ralph found her there a little while later, looking ravaged and pale, with her fatigues covered with blood, and even her hair smeared with blood where she had touched it.

  “Don’t feel bad, kid. I got sick every day for six months when I was in Korea.” He sighed and sat down for a minute beside her. Things had calmed down a little bit, but the touch of death was everywhere, but at least the shelling didn’t seem as intense now. He was thinking of going back to Saigon that night, instead of staying. “We got a lot of good stuff today,” he said, and Paxton looked at him with horror.

  “Is that what you call this, ‘good stuff’?” She was suddenly reminded of Jean-Pierre, and his perfect shot of the “dead little girls holding hands.” It broke your heart to see it.

  Ralph said with open irritation, “I didn’t start this war. I came to cover it. And maybe if I make people sick enough, they’ll make it stop. But if you came to cover cocktail parties at the officers’ club, you’re in the wrong pew, because this war isn’t pretty. And if what you want is laughs, maybe you should wait till Bob Hope turns up for Christmas.”

  “Oh, go fuck yourself.” She was angry and tired and depressed and sick from what she had seen. “I’m here for the same reason you are.”

  “Are you? Good. Because this war needs more people like you and me. People who are willing to tell the truth about what they see, and maybe even die for it. People who aren’t afraid of the truth. Is that why you’re here?” She glared at him. He was pressing her, but he liked the way she responded. She was tough and strong and she cared, and had guts. There were a lot of things he liked about her. She was “number one,” as the men called the things they approved of.

  “Yeah. That’s why I’m here.” She glared at him. “I’m here to tell the truth about this fucking ugly war. Just like you, mister.”

  “Is that the only reason?” he asked pointedly, as they both calmed down a little bit, and she decided to tell him what she’d told Jean-Pierre about Peter.

  “My fiancé died here almost two months ago.”

  He thought about it for a long time and then he looked at her and said something that shocked her. “Forget him.”

  “How can you say a thing like that?” She was horrified, and hurt on behalf of Peter.

  “Because whatever the reason is that brought you here, you have to forget it now, if you’re going to do a decent job here. He’s gone. You can’t help him. But you can help other people like him, you can help a whole country by reporting honestly and objectively. If all you want to do is avenge him, or chase after his memory, you won’t do anyone any good, not him, not yourself, not the people you’ve come to write for.” He was right, and she knew it, but it still hurt to hear it. In one day, he expected her to grow up and give up the memory of the boy she’d loved all through college. But he was right. As a writer, she had to tell the world what she saw, not tell them the story of Peter. It was a terrible thing he’d said to her, but they both knew there was a lot of truth to it.

  They moved on to Hai Ninh that afternoon, halfway back to Saigon, and they came across some fighting there, and some developments that interested Ralph. And by the time they were ready to go, the commanding officer there told them it was too dangerous to go back that night. They would have to wait until morning. They slept in trenches with the men, and Paxton lay there, looking up at the stars and thinking of Peter. Had it been like this here for him? Had he been scared? Did he think it was beautiful? Had he thought of her? And in the end, did it even matter? Maybe Ralph was right. Maybe none of it mattered, except the truth, and the people who knew it.

  “You okay?” He moved closer to her and offered her a cigarette, but she declined. She was so tired, and sick from what they’d seen, that she hadn’t even eaten dinner. And the C rations they’d been given weren’t too tempting. The rice and pho, a white noodle soup, the ARVN ate looked a lot better.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  She smiled. “You don’t look so great either.” But she had to admit he looked better than she did.

  “I’m sorry if I was hard on you today. But this is a tough place. And you can’t compromise your ideals, or ever forget why you came here. Once it gets personal, it’s all over. And even if your trip started out that way, it’s not too late to change your sights and keep a nice clean, objective goal in mind. Just remember who you’re writing for, and what you want to say to them. It’ll keep you human. But you can’t make this a personal vendetta. Some of the grunts do that, their buddies die, and they go half crazy, they run out into the bushes to go after Victor Charlie, and they live about fourteen seconds until they step on a mine and it blows their heads off, and they go to the big PX in the sky, as they put it. Whatever you do here, you can’t ever stop thinking. The guys who survive here don’t forget that for a minute.” It was good advice, and she knew it.

  “I keep thinking about that boy today … Joe … from Miami … I don’t even know his last name … I keep wondering if he’s still alive.”

  “He probably is,” Ralph reassured her, “He was lucky. In Nha Trang, we were right near the 254th MDHA unit. They probably had him on an operating table in fifteen minutes after he got picked up. You probably made all the difference.” He patted her arm, and tried to reassure her even if it wasn’t true. It didn’t matter. She had done her best, and maybe the kid had lived because of her. There were so many of them, and he had seen so many die and get wounded. You got jaded after a while, and tired and bitter. All those kids being turned into raw beef. It made you sick. It made you wonder why a girl like her wanted to be there. They all had to be a little crazy. And if they weren’t when they started, they were when they left. He smiled at her then. “You know, I can never get your name straight. I know the last name is Andrews. But the first name is something like Pattie, or Patton, isn’t it?”

  “Paxton.” She grinned. “Just make sure you don’t call me Delta Delta.”

  “I might have to if I can’t remember Paxton.” And then he thought about it for a while, and suddenly he started to laugh as they lay there in the trench side by side and she found herself staring at him in irritation.

  “What is it? My name?”

  “No, I like your name … but I just had the funniest goddamn thought. You’re from the Morning Sun in San Francisco, right?” She nodded. “Do you have an uncle there?”

  “Not really.” She blushed, but he couldn’t see it. “A mentor, I guess you’d call it. My almost father-in-law is … pretty high up on the paper.” She didn’t want to tell him he owned it.

  “And the bureau chief here said he was getting frantic telexes from all the powers that be at the Sun that someone’s nephew was coming over here for them, and whatever the hell he did, he was to keep him out of trouble, and away from combat.” He looked her in the eye with a grin. “Miss Paxton, I think that means you, and no one figured out you were a girl. Shit … and what do I do? I take you to the two hottest spots we’ve got in one day.” He started to laugh and so did Paxxie.

  “I’m glad no one figured out who I was.”

  “So am I.” He smiled at her as they lay there, listening to the sound of an occasional sniper. “I don’t know how you write. But you’re a good sport, and you’ve got guts. The rest ought to come pretty easy.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled at him.

  “Anytime. You can come out on missions with me anytime you want. Providing you don’t tell your uncle.”

  She smiled again, and as she lay there, drifting off to sleep eventually, she thought of Ed Wilson. She’d only been in Viet Nam for two days, and it felt as though she hadn’t seen him in years … him, or Gabby, or San Francisco … or Peter.

  CHAPTER 13

  Ralph and Paxton drove back to Saigon the next day with their crew, and they were all quiet on the drive back. It was impossible
to see death and pain and the loss of men and not feel it.

  “It gets to you, doesn’t it?” Ralph sat quietly, sitting next to her. He had let the sound man sit in the front with their driver.

  “Yeah.” She nodded. She was still thinking about the boy from Miami. What would his life be like with one arm? Or worse, what if he hadn’t lived through it? And what were they fighting for over there? No one seemed sure anymore. It all seemed crazy.

  “You’re going to get an education here,” Ralph said. “Most of the people who stay for a while are never the same again.”

  “Why?” She was still looking for the answers.

  “I don’t know … they see too much … they care too much while they’re here … they get bitter and angry and disillusioned. They go back to the States and people hate them, and treat them like murderers. No one understands. Back in the States, people are listening to the radio, and hanging out in bars and buying cars and chasing women. They don’t give a shit what’s happening here. They never did. And they don’t want to hear it. Viet Nam? Where’s that? Who cares? It’s just a bunch of gooks fighting with each other … fighting with each other, and killing us. But everyone forgets that. These boys over here are getting their asses shot off for nothing.”

  “Do you really believe that?” It hurt her hearing it, especially when she thought of Peter. It was easier to believe that he was a hero for dying here. But the truth was that, even to her, he wasn’t.

  “I do. And the sad thing is, so does everyone else. Nobody really cares what’s happening here. I don’t think they even understand it. I’m not sure I do. We’re trying to save the South from the North, like we did in Korea. But this isn’t the same thing. The people in the South are fighting us too. You can’t even tell who’s VC and who isn’t. Shit, most of the time I think they all are. Christ, look at the kids. Most of them would blow your face off with a grenade just as soon as look at you. And knowing that makes people crazy. Nobody knows who to believe anymore, who to respect, who they’re fighting. Half the grunts over here have more respect for Charlie than they do for their own COs, the VC fight harder than anyone. And the ARVN, the southern army, is a joke. See what I mean? It’s all crazy. And if you stay long enough, you get crazy too. Keep that in mind when you start to think about staying. The day you stop wanting to catch the next plane home about ten times a day, that’s the beginning of big trouble.” He was teasing her a little bit, but he was sharing some important truths, too, and she knew it. There was something strangely seductive about Viet Nam, something that made you want to stay, something about the air and the smells and the sounds and the people, the odd contrast of Saigon and the incredible beauty of the countryside, the innocence of the faces, and the agonies of the people. You wanted to believe that they were pure, that it was all hurting them and you could help them. But that was the question now. Could we help them and save ourselves? Or was it all hopeless? As they drove into Saigon at noon, Paxton had none of the answers.