by Robert Roth
It had rained for five straight days, never stopping for more than a few hours. However discomforting this made the marching, it was mainly at night — when the wet chill of their clothes kept their bodies shivering and awake — that the men of Hotel Company cursed the rain, doing so with the knowledge that for the next few months all that could be hoped for was an occasional day without it. Weeks had passed since the last time they’d camped in an area safe enough to build hootches. The loss of sleep due to the rain caused the men to become even more irritable than usual, and the absence of night attacks encouraged a willingness to undergo the added risk of hootches. Rather than having his men and himself endure a sixth straight night of rain, Trippitt was forced to allow them to erect hootches. Knowing that they would have to take them down the next morning, the men built these shelters carelessly. When finished, they could see the moonlight reflecting off their wet hootches and they knew another danger had been added to those they were already enduring.
Hotel Company went a week without any contact except for occasional sniper fire. Helicopter pilots had spotted Viet Cong in their area, but so far none had been seen from the ground. It was shortly after twelve o’clock as the company approached the large tree line, that was to be its camp for the night. Kramer watched his men stumble through the rice paddies, realizing that for the last two days he had not heard one of them complain about the constant marching. All curses and gripes had been directed at the weather. They had endured the marching long enough to finally accept it, and he knew that soon they would also accept the rain.
The company got on-line and swept the high ground. It contained a large village and no one was surprised to find it abandoned. However, they were surprised at its size and the presence of a few concrete structures. All that remained of most of these buildings was a battered wall or two protruding up from a pile of rubble, but a couple of them still had roofs.
Trippitt called together his platoon commanders. They met him in the shelter of what had once been a small pagoda. Three of its walls were still standing, and the roof remained largely intact. Trippitt was sitting on a hunk of concrete and removing his boots and socks as he assigned the patrols. Kramer noticed Lieutenant Howell, the commander of Fourth Platoon, staring at Trippitt’s feet. When Trippitt finished and asked if there were any questions, Howell spoke up. “Sir, what are we going to do about the men’s feet?”
Howell had spoken in a relaxed tone, and Trippitt replied in the same manner. “What do you mean, Lieutenant?”
“Some of the men are having trouble walking.”
There was a hint of irritation in Trippitt’s tone as he answered, “They seem to be doing all right.”
“Yes sir, but it’s been two weeks since we’ve had anything but rain. They’re starting to get immersion foot.”
Kramer had noticed the same thing with some of his own men, and he listened with curiosity for Trippitt’s reply. “Lieutenant, it’s your job to see that your men take care of themselves.”
“But sir —”
“Make sure they dry their feet at least once a day.”
“But sir,” Howell almost shouted, “the only time they get a chance to take their boots off is every fourth day when they don’t have an afternoon patrol. You don’t expect them to sleep without their boots?”
‘You’re damn right I don’t! We’ll be in bad enough shape if we get hit at night.” Trippitt now began speaking to all of his platoon commanders instead of just Howell, and he did so in an angry tone. “Listen, you and I know there’s a lot of shitbirds in this company that’d like nothing better than an excuse to get out of here. It’s your job to see they don’t. I know damn well their feet’ll be all right if they just dry them off once a day. Make sure they do.”
Trippitt’s platoon commanders remained silent, each of them wondering when this was supposed to be done.
Second Platoon had one of the afternoon patrols. It rained continuously as they marched to a patch of high ground two kilometers away. When they came upon some deserted hootches, Kramer debated with himself whether to let his men take advantage of them to dry their feet. The only way this would be possible was if they were allowed to build fires. There was no dry wood around and it was getting late, so he decided to head back immediately. As his platoon reached camp, he noticed a few of the men limping and he knew that they wouldn’t get a chance to take their boots off and dry their feet until the next afternoon when it was Second Platoon’s turn to remain behind with the CP. Kramer was wondering how many more of his men would be limping by then when he received word of something else to worry about. Forest’s platoon had surprised a squad of NVA, killing four before the rest had gotten away.
At dawn the next morning, Trippitt moved the company to the area where this had happened. The other platoons went out on their patrols while the men of Second Platoon set up hootches, built fires, and removed their boots for the first time in four days. As Kramer checked their position, he noticed that his men’s feet were sickeningly blanched and shriveled, and that some of them were raw and bleeding.
The next day Second Platoon drew a short patrol. Roads walked the point. A decent hootch and a rain trench around it had enabled him to get his first good night’s sleep in weeks. But by the time he halted in front of the patch of high ground that was the object of the patrol, Roads was exhausted. In their rundown condition, the luxury of one night’s sleep had proved of little value to him or the other men.
The rain became heavier as Second Platoon started sweeping through the high ground. Though he could hardly see the length of one stride, Roads forced himself to search the brush — looking for that booby trap that had a better chance of finding him first. He’d find it though, somehow he’d find it. There was no way he’d let it find him — no matter how many fucking tree lines they made him walk through. Their game. Their rules. But this was one nigger that was gonna beat them at it.
The brush cleared in front of Roads. He looked up to see the rice paddies that meant he had made it through another tree line. Instead he saw something else — 'A fucking ville.’ Each abandoned hootch meant one more bunker that had to be searched. ‘Fuck it!’
Roads stood shivering, anxious to be finished with the job and head back to camp. At least then the marching would warm him. He waited impatiently for Rabbit and Forsythe to finish searching their bunker so he could get the flashlight and .45, and start on the one that had been assigned to him and Chalice. At least then he’d be out of the rain — ‘Maybe some Gook had the same idea.’ He heard Rabbit complain that the flashlight wasn’t working and decided not to wait for the .45. Without throwing a frag in first, Roads crawled into the bunker. The supply chopper was two days late because of the rain, and Kramer had told his men to conserve their grenades.
Roads hesitated a few seconds just inside the entrance. He still couldn’t see anything. The bunker was too dark. They always were. Always empty, too — the ones he had checked. Still, always frightening. But it was a calm type of fear, a fear that repetition makes bearable. At least he was out of the rain. Roads crawled forward on his hands and knees, carefully checking the floor for booby traps. Suddenly he stopped — aware of something different about this bunker — the smell. The damp musty odor, that was always there. But not the other one — ‘Different’ — warm, heavy — ‘Living? . . . What the fuck is it?’
Roads drew his rifle forward, regretting he had not waited for the .45. He fingered the safety — ‘On.’ If there was another person in the bunker, that person had to be aware of him. But still, he hesitated taking his rifle off safe — ‘Might panic them. . . . Panic. Panic. . . . Don’t panic.’ Roads adjusted his grip so that with one hand he would be able to click his rifle on semiautomatic and begin firing almost instantly — ‘Good.’ Feeling along the floor with his other hand, he crawled slowly forward. A board creaked beneath his knee. He froze, waiting, waiting for another sound — that of a shot. None came. Still trembling, he remembered the sound of the creaking b
oard — deafening within the silence of the bunker — ‘Deafening. Deafening?’ — firing his M-16 would burst his own eardrums. He pointed it straight ahead anyway. This was merely a fact, nothing to be considered.
Sweat burned his eyes — only a few seconds ago he had been shivering —‘Keep cool.’ If someone was there wanting to kill him, that person had lost the perfect opportunity. Roads became slightly more relaxed. He sensed that the bunker’s opposite wall was within his reach — ‘Little more to go.’ Feeling almost relieved, he swept his hand over what remained of the floor.
Suddenly, against the wall — ‘Cloth!’ He jerked his hand back, freezing with his rifle at the ready. The cloth had contained something soft and warm — ‘Flesh. I’m not alone!’ Again he waited. The silence demanded he do something, demanded he ‘GET IT OVER WITH!’ Not sure what to do, he clicked his rifle off safe, at the same time shouting, “Dung lai!”
— Vietnamese for “Don’t move.”
No response. No sound.
Fingering the trigger, Roads fought the urge to fire blindly into the darkness. ‘Do SOMETHING!’ — he thrust the rifle forward to pin whoever was in the bunker against the wall. The barrel hit bamboo. Baffled, he drew it back quickly. ‘What to do? Can’t just sit here!’ He stretched his hand forward to the spot where he had felt the warm flesh. Again he found it — ‘Soft, but no sound’ — this time trying to define its shape with his hand. It moved. He flinched, wiltingly, now knowing that whatever was there was too small to be a threat. It squirmed beneath his grasp. He could lift it with one hand. Roads scrambled back across the floor in search of light. Before reaching the entrance, he knew what he held. He would have realized sooner, but it was hard for him to believe that what had once seemed so threatening was merely a half-starved puppy.
Chalice watched with surprise as Roads crawled out of the bunker. This surprise stemmed in part from what Roads held, but more from the expression on his face. Roads, who he had never even seen smile before, was now actually grinning and on the verge of laughter.
The sky cleared before them as the men of Second Platoon approached the company perimeter. This change in weather only lasted an hour, but that was long enough for the supply choppers to finally reach them. They also found H and S Company camped within their perimeter. As much as they had hoped for mail and supplies, the presence of H and S Company was far more gratifying. For they knew that it probably meant they would remain stationary for anywhere from a few days to a week.
Colonel Nash noticed that many of the men were limping around the perimeter. He immediately ordered the corpsmen to examine each man’s feet. Nearly every member of Hotel Company showed signs of immersion foot, and a few of them found it difficult if not impossible to walk. A corpsman came over to Nash and told him that a number of the men in First Platoon would have to be medivacked. His battalion was at less than three-quarters strength already, and Nash was enraged — not at the men themselves, but at the officers who were responsible for them. He quickly sought out Trippitt, and together they headed for First Platoon’s sector of the perimeter.
Lieutenant Forest sat heating some Curations when Nash gruffly ordered him to follow them. They approached a corpsman who was helping a man remove his blood-soaked sock. Each time the sock was touched, the man would cry out. Finally, the corpsman had to cut it with a razor blade. But part of the sock still remained stuck to his instep. The corpsman slowly pulled it away as the man squirmed in pain. Before discarding it, he held the piece of sock up to Nash. There was a patch of flesh over an inch in diameter still sticking to it. The corpsman then washed the man’s instep, exposing a mass of bloody tissue.
Nash was barely able to control his anger until he could get Trippitt and Forest far enough away from their men to berate them. He knew that conditions like this were inevitable; but he was also aware that Trippitt hadn’t done anything to try and prevent them, and that they could have been put off a while longer. Now it was probably too late to keep the rest of the company from ending up in the same condition as the man he had just seen. Making no effort to hide his anger, Nash ordered Trippitt to see that his men dried their feet and kept them dry for at least an hour before moving out each morning.
When the men of Hotel Company awoke the next day, no one was surprised to see that it was raining. Kramer immediately passed word for his men to take off their boots. All their gear was either soaked or very damp, so they still had no way of drying their feet. Kramer decided the only thing to do was to have them build fires. But there was no dry wood around. It was Sugar Bear who got the idea to use the wooden floors of the abandoned bunkers. Though this wood was damp, they were finally able to start a fire with it. From this main fire, the men took burning pieces of wood and started smaller fires within the dryer hootches. Six to eight men would gather in these hootches and take turns drying their feet.
Trippitt had three patrols planned for the day. Nash told him to eliminate one and shorten the other two. The entire company remained within the perimeter until eleven o’clock when the medivac chopper came for the six men with the worst cases of immersion foot. As soon as it took off, the patrols left camp. Anyone with a bad case of immersion foot was left behind. Since most of these men were members of First Platoon, the remaining men in it were divided up and sent out with Fourth and Second Platoons.
An hour after leaving the perimeter, Fourth Platoon got pinned down by some heavy sniper fire. Judging by the fire power they were receiving, Lieutenant Howell estimated that it was at least a squad firing at them. He immediately called in some helicopter gun ships. It took three of them over an hour to silence the snipers.
Howell swept his platoon towards the heavy brush from which the fire had originated. He did so expecting the usual results — none at all. Tt made little difference whether the Americans who searched for them believed the Viet Cong had escaped unharmed or had somehow managed to carry off their dead and wounded. All that was usually left for the Marines to see was their own casualties. To Howell’s surprise, this incident ended differently. They discovered the bodies of two NVA soldiers, but some of the more experienced men were sorry they had. Fourth Platoon carried the reasons for this discomfort back to the perimeter with them.
When Nash saw what they had found, he immediately called for a meeting with Trippitt and his platoon commanders. They arrived to find Nash in front of his hootch with two NVA pith helmets in his hand. He stared hostilely at the men before him for a few seconds, then began speaking in a disgruntled and angry tone. “Fourth Platoon found something you should all be interested in.” Nash held out the helmets. One of them had some writing on it that numerous bullet holes would have made illegible if similar writing had not been clearly printed on the other helmet. “Hotel 2/5” was written in large, black letters on the front of it. “I’m not sure about the reason for this, but I’ve got a pretty good idea. I’m warning all of you: You’re responsible for the actions of your men. It’s beyond me to figure out why someone would think of a dead body as a toy. Once you’ve killed a man, that’s damn well enough. I want you to make it clear to your men that anyone caught fucking with a dead body will be court-martialed. You’d think what happened to Charlie 1/9 would be warning enough, but I guess it isn’t. A few years in the brig might not teach anything either, but you can bet your ass I’ll do my best to send someone there if I get the chance. That’s it!”
It was obvious to Kramer what Nash had warned them about, but he was puzzled by the reference to Charlie 1/9. As soon as he reached their position, Kramer asked Tony 5, “Does Charlie 1/9 mean anything to you?” Tony laughed derisively before answering, “Those jerks could get ambushed in South Philly.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You never heard about the ghost platoon?” Kramer shook his head. “I ain’t sure how it started, but it was probably Charlie 1/9’s fault. Some guys — I’ve seen a few of them — get a kick out of fucking with dead Gooks — carving the name of their company across their che
sts, shaving their heads, cutting their ears off — real fun stuff like that. Well the Gooks don’t like you fucking with their dead, so they decided to teach Charlie 1/9 a lesson. Wherever Charlie 1/9 went, a platoon of Gooks used to follow them. Every chance they got, they’d hit ’em somehow — ambushes, mortars, rockets. It got so bad, the guys in Charlie 1/9 used to think they were haunted. Sometimes they’d knock off a few Gooks in the ghost platoon, but they still got the worst of it. They knew it wasn’t any accident because some of the dead Gooks had Charlie 1/9 carved on their rifle stocks. I don’t know whether they wised up and quit fucking with the dead bodies, but the ghost platoon sure as hell didn’t. More than one guy from Charlie 1/9 got found by his buddies with his balls cut off and his cock in his mouth. You find your best friend like that, and you do some heavy thinking. The Gooks kept ’em thinking. Last I heard, they sent 1/9 back to Da Nang to guard some PX or something.”
As Kramer listened to Tony 5, he purposely kept his face expressionless. This wasn’t because he was surprised or worried, but rather because the story amused him. In a macabre way, it seemed to exemplify so many other things he had witnessed, to testify to the cheapness of human life and make a sham of actions and ideas that ‘hypocritically’ placed value upon it. His mind flashed back to those intense moments when he and his men had recklessly advanced in the face of fire, and his senses partially relived the shrill intoxication of that advance, that zenith of sensation when the value of life became submerged and lost in the feverish excitement of the moment. Since then he had often tried to dissect those few minutes — not because he found them disturbing, but because they puzzled him, and hidden within them he sensed there was a reality on the verge of exploding before him as testament to and justification of the ‘truths’ he refused to ignore. A hatred rose within him, not for what he viewed as his own pathetic existence, but for the ‘hypocritical’ faces in his past who had tried to place a value upon their own meaningless lives by torturing him into the belief that life itself was something sacred and to be prized, that his blindness to the beauty it contained would someday fade and leave him also possessed with this vision that somehow, for some perverted reason, had eluded him. He suddenly ‘realized’ that those faces that clogged his past, in their own tortured striving, had deceived themselves with the very poison they had offered him, and with this realization his outrage waned to amusement. He looked on them as creatures more pathetic than himself, fools not even satisfied with the ‘lie’ that life was something to be endured. Kramer took sadistic pleasure in the wish that they could somehow be with him, here in this pitiable country where war had obliterated all facades of false meaning, where it was not enough to rob a man of something as meaningless as his own life, where even the violence of this act was incapable of drawing from the man that killed all the lie-produced venom which made the act possible, here, where there was even a need to disfigure and mutilate the hollow, already decaying corpse that had once enclosed that life.
