Sergeant Dickinson

by Jerome Gold

  “I think we can get more of them, sir.”

  “No.”

  “We can pull the same trick again, kill more of them, and then pull out.”

  “Goddamnit, Dickinson, no. They weren’t wearing rucksacks, do you know what that means? That means the main body is near here. Plus, some of them got away. That means even if the main body didn’t hear the firing, they’ll soon be warned anyway. Plus, we have to meet the choppers in less than three hours or walk out of this shithole.”

  “Even so, sir…”

  “Dickinson, I know what’s wrong with you. You’re crazy, that’s what. Get your rucksack on. We’re pulling out while we still can.”

  We sat on the crest of a hill watching an American unit get mauled. It looked like a platoon had stepped in it against a company of NVA. Two 104s flew down the valley and strafed the Americans. When they came around again I fired off a magazine at the lead one.

  “We need a Thompson,” Geyer said. “These Armalites don’t throw a heavy enough round.”

  “I just get so tired of that shit.”

  “What’s-his-face—Terry—used to carry a Thompson.”

  “They’re coming around again.”

  “How far are you supposed to lead them?”

  “I don’t know. Try three lengths.”

  We couldn’t tell if we hit it. We didn’t see any smoke anyway.

  “I’ve heard stories about American troops shooting at their own aircraft.”

  “So have I.”

  We looked at each other and started to giggle.

  “Christ, that’s what we’re doing.”

  “Yeah, we are.”

  We just giggled.

  Coming fast into a fight that has already started you have to pick something physical to focus on, there’s an APC, you say, and it’s burning, and then you pick a second thing, say the dead Americans beside it to the left, and from there you expand your vision and your other senses so that you can begin to put order on it, you know that where you see a muzzle flash with the tip of flame pointed in your direction you have the enemy, and your ears will tell you where the AKs are firing from and where the M-16s are although that isn’t always indicative of enemy and friendly positions because sometimes Americans use AKs too. The important thing is to hang on to the material thing that you started with, the burning APC, because as you take in more and more you begin to doubt that any of it is real, but you can refer back to the APC and know that it, at least, is real, you have to put your faith in the idea that the APC is real, you don’t want to get caught up in the sensations, you don’t want to get lost in the illusion.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Once you know that you’re going to die, once you’ve embraced the fact of your dying and made up your mind to it, all of life is reduced to a waiting. This is my third tour. I’ve been waiting for four years.”

  Cbarles says nothing.

  CHAPTER 18

  The NCO Club, early afternoon. Charles and I occupy a table close to the door. We nurse our beers, alone in the bar. We can hear the bartender moving stock around in the storeroom.

  “I’m cold. I’m always cold now,” I complain.

  “The monsoon is coming.”

  “Oh, good. Then I can be wet, too. Well, tell me, did you find what you were looking for?”

  “What was I looking for?”

  “You were going to Dak To, remember? To see what your friend saw?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did go to Dak To. It was the same as Dak Pek and Dak Seang and every other camp on the border.”

  “Did you find out why you were staying? In Viet Nam? You said something about trying to find that out at Dak To.”

  “Yes, I did say that. And no, I didn’t find out. I think I’ve simply stopped asking the question. What a memory you have! I’d already forgotten all of that.”

  “My memory is my major failing. So I’ve been told.”

  “Meaning that it’s poor?”

  “Meaning that it’s too good.”

  “I could see where that would be a liability here.”

  “It’s the cumulative effects of memory that are the liability.”

  “Who told you all this?”

  “Nobody. I made it up.”

  “I have one, too. War weariness is simply the conviction that life is not worth the sacrifices one must make to keep it.”

  “Are you war weary, Charles?”

  “Only when I’m not running on adrenaline. Which is most of the time, I suppose. It takes so much energy to sustain ecstasy. But what do you think? Am I accurate on the subject of war weariness?”

  “I don’t know. Sure, why not?”

  “It’s important to be accurate.”

  “Are you writing again?”

  “I’m thinking about it. Maybe it’s just habit, to think about writing. I’ll see.”

  “I dreamed about you last night. We were talking here in the Club.”

  “Oh?”

  “But I don’t remember what we said.”

  “You have no memory at all, Dickinson.”

  “I hardly ever dream anymore. At least I don’t remember if I do. I dreamed about an old friend, too, last night. Roy Hutchins. But I don’t remember what he said either.”

  “I try not to pay too much attention to my dreams.”

  “Here’s another one: Meaninglessness is itself meaningful.”

  “Dickinson, I think you’ve been in Asia too long.”

  “What else is there? Should I go back to Bragg so I can tell stories about everybody who was killed? Christ, in just the last ten days Worden at Duc Co, Moore at Plei Djereng, and Brown at Ban Me Thuot were killed. They were all old-timers, they all had at least two tours behind them. Death is such a contemptible bastard. But what else is there? To defeat Him, you have to become Him.”

  “Long live Death.”

  “Yes! Long live Death!”

  “Save yourself, Sergeant Dickinson. You are too near the sun.”

  “I’ve gone too far, Charles. I’m being pulled in. The sun has its own gravity.”

  CHAPTER 19

  They had been shelled regularly for a month. Circling the camp, you could see that they had to be living underground, there was nothing standing and complete above ground. Seeing that red knoll exposed in the midst of jungle and mountain you realized again how fragile was everything we constructed.

  “I’ve see it before,” Geyer said. He had been at A Shau.

  “I have too,” I said.

  We set down near what had been the latrine, the helicopters not cutting their engines. “Keep a tight asshole,” said Ortiz.

  Pappy Aarons stood up and waved at us from inside the inner perimeter. “Let’s go! Let’s go!” Pierson yelled. “Spread the Nungs out!” We dumped out of the choppers and followed Pierson at a run toward Pappy, the Nungs on their own making for the trenches on the perimeter. The helicopters took off and then it was quiet. An insect went by my ear at incredible speed and smacked into the wood of the team house. We got down.

  “They started sniping at us this morning,” Pappy said. “We lost our LPs last night.”

  “Oh shit, oh dear,” Geyer said.

  “Geyer, I thought they killed you at A Shau.”

  “Another incarnation.”

  “You’re Dickinson. Last time I saw you was…”

  “Vientiane.”

  “That’s right! Years ago. Well, I’m glad to see you all. I can’t think of a better bunch of guys to die with.”

  “I don’t want to hear talk like that, Sergeant,” Pierson said. “Where’s Captain Wilson?”

  “He’s in the medical bunker, sir. Over there.” Pappy waited for Pierson to leave. Then he said, “We have about four hundred strikers, all Yards except for the Vietnamese. There’s twelve of them but they don’t count. The Yards are Bru, good fighters, but we’ll see. The loss of the LPs last night has them spooked, they lost relations there. We’ve evacuated all the dependents, so we don’t have to worry about t
hem. We have Division artillery on call, one-oh-fives, one-fifty-fives, and eight-inchers. So far they’ve been pretty responsive. We’ll see. Air support’s a problem because of the fog. We haven’t had any. Air support, that is. We’ve had plenty of fog. It usually clears in the afternoon for two or three hours, but the NVA keep their heads down then. They’ve been shelling us every day, usually about nine in the morning and about nine or ten at night, sometimes a little earlier at night. They’re consistent about the time in the morning. You can count on incoming beginning at zero nine hundred. It’ll last for twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. Occasionally we get a round or two at some other time of day, but you can’t count on those. Mostly they throw over mortar and rocket. You can’t see it now, the fog’s coming in, but there’s a mountain over there about four and a half klicks out. They’ve got one-fifty-twos dug in there but they haven’t used them on us yet. They use the one-fifty-twos to pound Division. We haven’t seen any sign of armor like they had at Lang Vei, but we’ll see. The NVA, gentlemen, have gone to a lot of trouble setting up for this little confrontation. There is no doubt in my military mind that they intend to take this camp, and that they can take it if they’re willing to pay the price.” Pappy let that soak in, then spat between his boots and grinned in distaste. “Westmoreland came out a couple of weeks ago to give us a pep talk. Told us the eyes of the world were watching us, ‘the eyes of the world,’ he said, and that we were professionals and were setting the example for everybody in the country. All the Americans, I guess he meant. Then he chewed me out because my jungle boots weren’t spit-shined, and he told me to get a haircut.” Pappy spat again. “I think he was afraid we were going to bug out. Hell, bug out where? There are ten klicks between us and Division, and the NVA have them all.”

  “Have the vultures come in yet?” somebody asked.

  “No, at least we’ve been spared them. We get to do this one by ourselves.” Pappy laughed. “You know you’re in deep shit when the vultures don’t want to come in.”

  That night all of our ambush patrols were ambushed on their way out. They withdrew, leaving their dead and some of their wounded. When we were mortared later, you could hear the pop! from the round hitting the bottom of the tube sending it over to us, they were that close.

  Pierson told us, “Here’s the situation. The Bru are refusing to leave the camp. All right. The Nungs will take over patrolling beginning at dawn. Two Americans will go out with each patrol. Also, I’m taking over command of the camp. Captain Wilson will be going in on the first medevac chopper tomorrow. He has a few pieces of mortar frag in his ribs.” At this there was the hint of contempt in his voice. “All right. There’s a column of Laotians heading our way. The message didn’t say what kind they are, but they should arrive tomorrow.”

  “Laotians won’t make any difference, Captain. It’s the NVA we have to worry about,” Pappy said.

  “You’re always a delight to talk to, you know that, Sergeant Aarons? You’re always a delight. All right, something else. I’ve called for a B fifty-two strike for zero four hundred. They’ll be bombing close. Close. Keep your heads down. Don’t warn either the Bru or the Nungs until zero three forty.”

  “Do the Vietnamese know?”

  “Yeah. I know, but don’t warn the troops anyway. That’s all I have for now. If you get a chance to grab any sleep tonight, take it, but let somebody know where you are.”

  The wind came up and the sky cleared. It was cold. “You can see the shadow of the mountain where they have the one-fifty-twos,” Pappy said.

  “I hate it when it gets like this,” one of Wilson’s people said.

  “I’d rather have it like this and clear than warmer and fogged in,” somebody said. “I want to be able to see them when they come.”

  “If you can see them, they can see you.”

  “There’s the Big Dipper.”

  “Where? Yeah.”

  “I wonder where the Southern Cross is.”

  “I think you have to be below the equator to see it,” Bates said.

  “Oh.”

  “I think so.”

  “When I was with the Cav I knew this guy, we’d be out at night smoking and looking at the stars, and he’d say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if a flying saucer came down right now and just picked us up and carried us away?’ He was always saying that.”

  “You were with the Cav?”

  “On my first tour.”

  A couple of F4s came in and dropped napalm a few hundred meters outside the perimeter. It burst upward in a rolling sheet, orange and black, giving green to the jungle which we were already accustomed to seeing as gray or black, and spread right and left as though it were some concoction boiling over a great witch’s cauldron, acid and corrosive, not meant for mortals to ingest. But in the clarity of the night it was only a light show, nothing more; we were too far away to feel the heat.

  “God, that’s pretty,” Bates said.

  “First close air support I’ve seen in two weeks. They’ll be gone when the ceiling closes up again.”

  The F4s came around and strafed where they had dropped the napalm.

  “I wonder what’s there.”

  A guy holding a small radio in his hand called over to us: “FAC wants to know if we’ve got anybody in our wire!”

  “Fuck, I don’t know,” Pappy said. “They’re fools if they try it now.”

  The guy with the radio called: “FAC says the pilots are going to claim a hundred and twenty killed on the wire!”

  “I don’t give a shit! They can claim their grandmothers if they want to!”

  We waited. It was a waiting. We played a waiting game. They played another game, we knew its rules: To defeat Death you have to become Him. But we played a waiting game.

  Pierson said, “No B fifty-twos tonight.”

  “Why the hell not?” demanded Pappy. Then he added, “Sir.”

  “They won’t bomb close enough to do us any good. They’re afraid they might kill Americans.”

  “So here we are.”

  “Here we are.”

  “We need those bombs about two hundred and fifty meters out.”

  “I think I’m having a crisis of conscience,” Ortiz said.

  “We’ll stay at fifty percent alert tonight,” said Pierson.

  In the morning the patrols went out. Throughout the day you heard the shooting from firefights all around the camp. In the evening two of the patrols returned.

  “They were the ones who called for mortar fire,” I told Pierson. I was referring to the third patrol, which hadn’t come in.

  “Maybe they called it in on their own position. That happens. Who were the Americans with them?”

  “Bates and one of Wilson’s people.”

  “Bates wouldn’t have called it in on himself. Were you able to tell who was on the radio?”

  “No sir. He was using the whisper mike.”

  “Damn. Damn.”

  The helicopter with Wilson on it took off in the clear afternoon. Half a klick away it arced up and to the right and exploded. The black smoke separated from the scattering mass and rose upward. The fire followed the bits of the helicopter to the ground.

  “Never leave a battle while you can still fight,” Pappy said. “I never liked him anyway.”

  “You’re sure they were tracked vehicles, they couldn’t be anything else?”

  “Sir, if I’d had a goddamn camera with me I would have taken some goddamn pictures, but I didn’t have a camera,” Geyer said.

  “All right, all right. Could they be ’dozers?”

  “Sir, I can’t swear that they aren’t ’dozers. All I saw were the ground impressions. But ask yourself, what would they be doing with bulldozers?”

  “All right. I agree. They’re tanks. Dickinson, get Division on the horn. I want to talk with their G-two. You know what they’re going to say, Geyer? They’re going to say, ‘Get pictures.’”

  “No way we’d ever make it out there and back. We got tagged t
his time. We go out there again and that’ll be all she wrote.”

  “Got’em, sir.”

  Pierson took the mike. “I thought you guys might like to know, we’ve spotted tank tracks about five hundred meters west of our location. Over.”

  “Say again. Over,” said the voice from Division.

  Pierson winked at Geyer and me. “You heard me correctly. Over.”

  “Wait one.

  “We have no information concerning friendly armor in your area. Over.”

  “We do not believe this is friendly armor.”

  “Wait one.

  “We have no information concerning enemy armor in your area.”

  “Yes, but we have information.”

  “There is no armor in your area. I say again, there is no armor in your area. You are not at Lang Vei, Captain. Do not let your imagination override your judgment. Out.”

  “At least they didn’t tell us to get pictures,” Geyer said. “This is like A Shau. Worse. At least at A Shau when we were being overrun, they didn’t tell us we weren’t. They just didn’t do anything to help us.”

  “The Marines who were supposed to be supporting Lang Vei didn’t believe the NVA had armor either.”

  “That’s enough!” Pierson shouted. “You’re talking yourselves into a defeatist attitude. You cannot afford that. I do not want to hear any more talk about Lang Vei or A Shau or Plei Me. Geyer, I want you to get back out there with your troops. Dickinson, I want you at the radio. Take over from Wilson’s man—he says he hasn’t slept in three days.”

  “I couldn’t sleep now anyway, sir. I’m wired into the radio,” Wilson’s man said.

  “I advise you to sleep, Evans. You may not get another chance for a while. Why are you still here, Geyer! Get out there with your troops!”