by Eric Meyer
There was something missing, and it took me a short time to work out what it was. Photos. Nothing adorned the wall, save two framed pieces of oriental art. He grabbed a clean uniform and went through a door into the bathroom, calling out, “Give me ten, and help yourself to coffee.”
He had a filter machine on a small table, already filled with ground beans and water. I switched it on and sat on the hard, uncomfortable armchair to wait. He was as good as his word, and ten minutes later he emerged. Scrubbed clean, his uniform good enough to go on parade.
“It’s all yours.”
I didn’t have fresh clothes, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was to scrub off the dirt, the grime, and the blood. To flush down the drain the acrid stink of battle. I brushed past him, and a trickle of water had overflowed the shower tray onto the floor. I stumbled, threw out a hand, and met…a female breast. He jerked away as if he’d just encountered a ten-thousand-volt power line, and I mumbled an apology and went on into the shower.
The hot water was a blessed relief, flowing down over my naked body, washing away the dirt and filth. I soaped myself down with a soap that oozed a rich, almost feminine fragrance, no surprise there, and dried off. It wasn’t pleasant pulling on my grubby uniform, but it sure felt better. All the time I was working out how to handle what had come up. In the end I decided to tackle it head on, and I walked back into the room. Bao was seated on the bed, upright, staring straight ahead, like a prisoner about to be interrogated. Which about summed it up.
“You want to tell me about it?”
He didn’t meet my eyes. “Nothing to tell.”
I sighed. “Pal, if you want to do this the hard way, feel free. I just thought you’d want to explain.”
“Nothing to explain.” A low murmur, and I didn’t pick it up at first.
“Lieutenant, you’re not a guy, are you? You’re a woman. Listen, that’s fine with me, I happen to like women a lot. I married one back home. But a guy needs to know who he’s fighting alongside, is all.”
The head tilted toward me. “You won’t say anything?”
“Nope, it’s not my business. You’re ARVN, so it’s up to you how you handle things with your army. I’d just like to know what’s behind it.” I had a sudden thought, “Say, you’re not masquerading as a man to get access to the men’s quarters, are you? Getting close to your client base?”
She looked shocked. “You think I’m a whore?”
“No, I don’t, but why don’t you tell me? It just seems strange.”
The head drooped in resignation. “Very well, I will explain everything. Before it happened, I was a decent, honorable woman, looking forward to getting married and having a family. It’s true. I am a woman.”
No shit.
“My name is not Tam Bao, it is Le. Tam Le. Lieutenant Tam Bao was my brother, until the VC tried to force him to switch sides. He refused, of course, and they slaughtered him. Hacked him to pieces with machetes, and I heard every scream until at last, he died. Then they raped me, and used me again and again, a torture that went on for a week.”
“How did you escape?”
“It was a doctor, a young Vietcong volunteer by the name of Trung Kieu who took pity on me. He was disgusted at the way they were treating me, and one night he unlocked the room where they were holding me and showed me to the nearest tunnel exit. After that, I ran and ran, but my life was over. I’d lost my brother, my virginity, and all I had left was vengeance against the man responsible. So, I took my brother Bao’s uniform and joined another ARVN unit where his face wouldn’t be known.”
Something she said rang a peal of bells in my brain. “You said they hacked him to death? With machetes?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t believe how terrible it is to see someone close to you dismembered like an animal in a slaughterhouse.”
“As a matter of fact, I would.” I told her about finding the remains of my platoon in that well, and she paled. It was taking some getting used to; calling someone I’d known as a man as ‘her.’ “I knew they were killed, but I’d no idea it was like that, so similar to my brother’s murder, except this time an entire platoon. You knew these men?”
“I served with them. Fought with them.”
“Perhaps you will find those who did this terrible thing and get revenge.”
“You’re right. Problem is, I don’t know who to look for.”
A dark expression of disgust crossed her face. “Trinh Tac. Commissar Trinh Tac.”
“Excuse me?”
“He is the man who killed my brother, the man who employs this particular method of killing his enemies. He is the man who raped me, and encouraged his men to rape me, over and over. The man I intend to kill.”
“You’re certain?”
“Private Yeager, there can be no doubt. When you are looking at his brutal features, his yellow and black teeth staring down at you, his foul, stinking breath threatening to asphyxiate you, I would never forget. It is him.”
“Any idea where to find this hombre?”
“The tunnels of Cu Chi. That is the place he inhabits during the day, only emerging from his stinking pit by night to feast on the enemy.”
I almost smiled. “You make him sound like a mythical beast.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, that would describe him exactly. A slavering beast.”
I left the room then and walked through the chaos of Tan Son Nhut, recovering after the attack. Morgan and the guys were walking toward the vehicle park, and I ran to catch up.
“Sergeant, it’s me, Private Yeager, reporting back for duty.”
He looked me up and down and sniffed. “You smell like a tart’s bedroom. Where’ve you been?”
“Taking a shower, Sarge.”
“In a brothel?”
There was no need to lie. “I was on the base.”
“Sure. We’re heading out. They’re waiting for us at Cu Chi Base Camp. Westmoreland is pissed, and he’s launched Operation Cedar Falls a couple of days early. We’ll join the 25th Infantry, and they tell me the chow is good. They’re also good people, so we can expect a welcome. You know why we’re going?”
“You mentioned Cedar Falls. Hammer and Anvil operation, and Cu Chi Base Camp is in the center of the anvil.”
He frowned. “Remember why they sent you along? You’re the man who knows about tunnels.”
“I thought Coles was the tunnel rat.”
“He is, below ground, but you’re the man who knows how to find them. Say, what about that ARVN Lieutenant, did he find you? He was a local guy and said he can help.”
“Yes, he did find me. He’s in his quarters. I’ll tell me him we’re leaving.”
“Make it fast. We need to get on the road and settle in before it gets dark. Charlie likes the dark.” He grinned, “Until we light him up with napalm. Then he’s not so keen.”
Lieutenant Tam was waiting with a kitbag ready packed, as if she had some premonition we were about to leave. We walked out, and I had to resist the inclination to think of the Lieutenant as a she, as Tam Le. I reminded myself Lieutenant Tam, male ARVN officer, was a guy.
And don’t forget it, Carl.
She’d been through enough, and she was doing this to avenge her brother. Like me. Revenge is sweet, so they say. That suited me just fine, although I’d take any kind of revenge, sweet or sour.
She shook Morgan’s hand, and I noticed his nostrils twitch. That damned soap, and he’d put two and two together and make four.
Shit!
We drove out in a convoy of three jeeps, more than enough for such a small unit. On the way we skirted the Saigon River, and as we drew nearer Cu Chi, we encountered lines of truck, jeeps, and towed artillery heading south. The 25th Infantry, the ‘anvil’ on which Ho Chi Minh’s legions would land, getting hammered by the ‘anvil,’ 1st Infantry sweeping in from the west. They expected the enemy to go to ground to avoid being swept up by our forces, and that meant the tunnels. Which meant us.
The distance was sho
rt, little more than thirty klicks from Saigon to Cu Chi Base Camp, and we drove into a vast, flat stretch of ground on which they’d built rows and rows of hutments. Accommodation, officer, storerooms, vehicle workshops, repair depots, armories, cafeterias, cookhouses, even a modest airstrip. They had everything they needed to conduct a war, except the enemy. And as we drove in, they were starting to take care of that little problem.
They gave us tents, claiming they were short of hutments due to new troop arrivals in support of the start of the campaign against the Iron Triangle, and we spent a sleepless night. It wasn't Cu Chi base that was the problem; our own people, the troops of the 25th, surrounded us. It was what was happening overhead, hundreds of aircraft flying over, squadrons of Hueys and flights of low-level fighter-bombers. We found out afterward they used the fixed wings to drop napalm and Agent Orange. In the morning I went to look for the cookhouse, someplace we could get breakfast, and I asked the cook about the noise. He had a long, lugubrious face, one of those people who see the glass half empty. In his case, more like a quarter empty.
We chatted as I loaded my plate. "Is it like this every night?"
He grimaced. “Most nights since they started Cedar Falls early. Before it was fairly quiet, but since then it's like camping in the middle of a major international airport."
"What's the target? The Triangle?"
He grimaced. "You got it in one. Waste of time, you know about the tunnels?"
"I know about the tunnels."
"Right. The brass plan to strip away their cover, to expose them, clear the jungle with defoliants and napalm, and leave the bombers to do the rest. Did you hear that B-52 strike go down in the night?"
I’d heard it. The ground shook as if a giant had picked up the entire country and given it a good shake. A pity they hadn’t shaken out some of the poisonous and annoying bugs that infested it, like the VC, but I had a shrewd suspicion they hadn’t done significant damage to the enemy.
"You know we could be standing right over a tunnel now?"
I unconsciously looked down at the ground, as if I was about to see one of those crazy lampshade hats emerging through the soil. My nerves must have been close to breaking point, for in a hysterical moment I saw a VC popping out to order two MREs to go with side orders of fries.
"Here?"
"Right here, it’s possible. They've been digging them since the French owned the territory in the 1950s. That was the First Indochina War. They're like moles, these people, always digging. They could be underneath the city of Saigon by now, and nobody the wiser."
Any more good news? I could do without this early morning forecast of imminent doom.
I helped myself to some chow and went back to our tent to tell them what was on offer. Morgan and the rest of the men hurried across to the cookhouse to get stuck in, and I went to the tent next door. The one occupied by Lieutenant Tam Bao, except now I knew different, and I called quietly, "Lieutenant, chow’s up."
His face poked through the tent flap, and unlike the rest of us he was clean-shaven. Until I realized he wouldn't need to shave, because he wasn’t a guy. He was a she.
"Thank you, Private Yeager. I'll go over and help myself, but I was waiting for the crowds to clear from the bathrooms. I have to be careful."
I left her to it and began pulling on the rest of my gear. I'd been wearing a T-shirt and pants, and now I pulled on my shirt and camo jacket and began to help myself to ammunition. We were due out that morning, and if we ran into the enemy, I wanted to be certain I had plenty to shoot back with. Especially if we ran into one particular enemy, Comrade Commissar Trinh Tac, a man who owed a debt to my platoon. And I intended to extract payment, in full.
An hour later we were ready to go, with the Lieutenant Tam dressed in the familiar tiger stripe colors. Tam carried an M1 carbine, the standard issue assault rifle of the ARVN, unlike the rest of us who carried M-14s. Except for Corporal Martin Byrd, who clutched an M-60. He was attached to that weapon like it was a lover, and nobody objected. I remembered him firing from the jeep back at Tan Son Nhut, and without him we wouldn't have lived to tell the tale.
Danny Goff carried the radio, and they gave us a ride in an M113 Bradley, which took us to the edge of our patrol area. We were about five klicks from Bong Trang, and it awakened memories. We said goodbye to our ride and started walking along a narrow path through the thick jungle. Occasionally, we'd pass Vietnamese civilians, and each time it was a tense moment until they'd gone past and no shots had been fired, no grenades had been thrown. But I couldn't forget, and every time we saw a man in peasant’s clothing, especially the black pajamas so many of them seemed to wear, I was ready to open fire. When I explored my emotions, I knew I was edging toward an anti-Vietnamese psychosis. Although I was certain they disliked me as much as I disliked them.
Everyone I saw was a gook, a VC, a potential target. They could belong to the group who'd slaughtered my platoon, and I wanted to shoot every last one of them. It was a raw wound inside my psyche I had to work hard to ignore. They were just people, everyday people going about their daily business. Shepherding teams of water buffalo, sometimes pulling carts laden with goods they were taking to market. Innocents, noncombatants, although Morgan was careful to search each and every load, and each and every peasant, just in case.
We found no AK-47s, no grenades, or satchel bombs. No bundles of poisonous punji stakes on their way to be planted for an American soldier to step on and die from infection or worse. After a while it became monotonous, and Sergeant Archie Harrison, who was chafing for action, began to grumble. Maybe he was chasing a medal. Maybe he just hated gooks. There was plenty to hate.
"I could swear some of these people ain’t so innocent. We should be more careful before they shoot us in the back."
"We searched every person and every load," he replied, his voice calm and patient, but with a slight edge of irritation, "Dammit, we can't arrest every peasant in South Vietnam."
“Maybe we should."
He grinned. “Where would you put them? Did you plan on a massive building program for new prisons?"
"We have the fortified hamlets. We can ship them out and put them into the new villages, surrounded by barbed wire perimeter fences and guarded by the ARVN and the local cops. That’d stop ‘em carrying out sneak attacks on our men."
Morgan looked at Tam. "What do you think, Lieutenant? Would it work?"
She shook her head. "No, it's been tried, and it doesn't take account of Vietnamese culture and tradition, which is…"
"Fuck Vietnamese culture and tradition!" Harrison exploded, "We're here to stop the Communists taking over the country, and it's for their own benefit, so they should make a few sacrifices. Who gives a shit about their culture?"
"They do," the Lieutenant said quietly, "Vietnamese peasants have a strong attachment to their home villages. Their ancestors are buried there, and ancestor worship is an important part of our culture. When you tear people away from their homes, you're insulting their beliefs. Taking them away from their homes, their farms, their paddy fields, how would you feel if you were an American farmer? Snatched away from your livelihood and put in some strange place."
Harrison grimaced. “The thing is, Lieutenant, my country isn’t under immediate threat from the Communists. If it was, I’d be prepared to make sacrifices. Don’t forget our people are helping them transport their goods and livestock to the new locations, so they should be grateful."
She didn't reply, and Harrison seemed to calm down, walking ahead to investigate a noise he’d heard in the bushes. He stabbed at it with the muzzle of his rifle, and a small animal scuttled away. He laughed. "If that’d been a gook I’d have blown his head off."
Morgan had taken enough. "Yeager, take over point, and keep your eyes skinned. We're getting close to Bong Trang."
Tam quickened the pace to join me, and we strode fifty meters ahead. The Lieutenant seemed relaxed. More relaxed than I would have thought, all things considered.
"You don't think they're close, the Vietcong?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so. There’d be certain indications."
"Like what?"
She frowned. "Animals fleeing through the bushes, flocks of birds taking flight, and possibly peasants driving their carts in the opposite direction. The Vietcong strip them of their foodstuffs leaving them with nothing to eat, and the only option they have is to run and hide. Until they've gone and they can return to their villages."
“How long does that take?”
A pause. “In most cases, forever.”
I reflected that the poor bastards didn't stand much of a chance, threatened and brutalized, robbed and plundered by the Communists, and us Americans tearing them away from their ancestral villages. Although like Harrison had said, our people were helping them transport their goods and livestock to the new locations, so maybe it wasn't so bad.
We reached the village of Bong Trang, and so far, we’d seen no sign of Charlie, no unusual sounds, no bursts of gunfire from deep in the jungle, and no obvious booby traps. Just the incessant noise of American aircraft flying overhead, and further east, the crash of exploding bombs. Sometimes we saw through a break in the jungle canopy flames shooting up into the sky in the wake of low-flying fighter-bombers. Napalm. Artillery still fired occasional barrages, and I reflected the Iron Triangle wasn’t a good place to be right now, although there were always the tunnels.
"Do the tunnels protect them from the bombardment?"
Tamm didn't look at me but gave an imperceptible shake of the head. “They've been digging them for a long time, and they extend to several levels. The lower levels are impervious to everything except the B-52 bombers. Unless they take a direct hit, which is unusual."
"So, you don't think this is gonna work? I mean, the artillery, the bombardments, the napalm, the Agent Orange. Surely the place will become a desert with nowhere to hide?"
Tam paused, then looked at me. "Is that what you think? Private Yeager, when this is all over, they'll emerge from the tunnels and everything will be the same as before."
