by J. M. Graham
Strader eavesdropped on the litany of maladies. After announcing to the room to clear all weapons, the corpsman listened with a thinly disguised lack of interest as each Marine described the problem that brought him to sick call. He would scratch his chin, then fill in the space on the sick call form for the medical complaint while saying it out loud as though he were dictating to a stenographer. It seemed that most everyone was falling into one of three categories: if they shivered with the chills, he diagnosed “ague”; if they felt dizzy, he proclaimed it to be “vertigo”; and if they just didn’t feel good, the problem was “general malaise.” A few wandered outside the scope of his diagnostic purview. One Marine kept dancing from one foot to the other while pulling on the seat of his pants. Strader guessed dysentery and was happy to hear that the corpsman concurred. One pulled the neck of his T-shirt down to reveal a red boil on the back of his neck that seemed to have an eye in the center of it. The next man in line stepped back a pace. The corpsman wrote “carbuncle” and sent him to the bench. One of the crew from the 155 battery swore he couldn’t hear anything out of his left ear, and to prove it he said “huh?” to every question the corpsman asked.
A Navy lieutenant pushed his way into the room and everyone on the benches snapped to their feet. The officer waved them down saying, “At ease, at ease,” as though the Marines’ stubborn adherence to military protocol was a nuisance and the newness of having it directed at him was more than a little embarrassing. The Marine Corps officers accepted the required courtesy as a necessity, a demonstration that reinforced military discipline. It was an exercise clearly intended to define the difference between enlisted and officer. However, the young Navy physicians were a different breed. They were generally conscripts who had discovered, much to their chagrin, that upon achieving the MD they had pursued through years of postgraduate work they were suddenly and eminently eligible for the draft, even if they had served before and used the G.I. Bill to get the coveted medical education that now turned to bite them in the gluteus maximus.
The corpsman pointed at Strader. “Sir. That one needs a medical clearance so he can DEROS out of here.”
The officer hooked a finger in Strader’s direction. “Come with me,” he said. He held his hand out and wiggled his fingers until Strader realized that he wanted the checklist. He handed it over as they walked.
The doctor was tall and lanky, and his frame swayed when he walked as though the physics of his structure was in a state of flux. His hair was cropped close enough to make his ears appear oversized, and his gray military eyeglasses emphasized the whiteness of his skin. He perused the information at the top of the sheet. “Strader, Corporal,” he read.
“Yes, sir,” Strader answered.
“Going home, huh?”
“That’s the plan, sir.”
They passed a couple of examination rooms and stopped in front of the third. “Where did you go for R&R, Corporal?”
“Sir?”
“You did go on R&R, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir. About six months ago.”
“Well?”
Strader looked down and noticed that the doctor’s boots weren’t terribly scuffed, but the bottom half of the canvas sides was stained dark, like something red and sticky had infused the material again and again until taking permanent root. “Bangkok, sir,” he said.
The doctor’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly. “And have you experienced any burning during urination since then?”
“No, sir,” Strader answered indignantly.
“Does that mean you were lucky or that you took the communicable disease classes to heart?”
“Well, the condom lecture stuck in my mind.”
“I didn’t think applying prophylactics was something that required instruction. What do the Marines have to say on the subject?”
“The sergeant just said to put the rubber over the tip and roll it on until you ran out of one or the other.”
An awkward smile spread over the doctor’s face as though it was visiting a place where it used to live but no longer felt at home. “Okay, okay. I just wanted to see if you had fun on R&R. Mine comes up next month and I’m doing a little comparison shopping. So, you recommend Bangkok, then?”
“I guess so, sir. You would probably want to stay at the R&R Center at the Windsor Hotel. Beer is expensive, though, about twenty baht, which is about a dollar, especially on Patpong Road, where the clubs are.”
The doctor set the checklist on the exam table and pulled the black government pen from his shirt pocket. “Are you saying you couldn’t afford to get drunk?”
“No, sir. I was shit-faced every night, and most days, too. But I have to admit that most of my money went to some very lovely escorts. Twenty-four hours for five hundred baht. After seven days, I needed to come back here for a rest.”
The doctor leaned over the checklist, glancing at Strader all the time. “Five hundred baht, twenty-five dollars,” he said.
Strader seemed embarrassed and shrugged his shoulders. “Right, sir. It’s kind of like trying to buy your way back into the human race.”
The doctor nodded and turned his attention to the illegible signature he was affixing with a flourish. “Didn’t bring back any souvenirs?”
“Like I said, sir, the condom lecture had a real impact.”
The doctor smiled again. “Go home, Marine,” he said, and within minutes Strader was headed back to the company area with the checklist folded around one less hurdle to the finish line.
First Sergeant Gantz entered the company office as the duty officer from the com shack was applying a level of pressure on Corporal Pusic that might pry one of Golf Company’s personnel loose.
“Good morning, sir,” Gantz said. “Can I do anything for you?”
The officer turned away from Pusic’s desk, flipping open his notepad. “Your 1st Platoon had some trouble in the Arizona last night, Sergeant, and needs a chopper. I’ve got one short-handed sitting on the runway, but Lieutenant Diehl requested a security escort.”
“They’re sending a VC back to intel?” Gantz asked, heading for the coffee.
“More likely the adjutant. The security is for one of ours.”
The sergeant turned, empty cup in hand. “One of ours? Sounds like we should notify the aid station that a psych case is coming in.”
The officer glanced at his watch. “We’ve got plenty of time to organize a reception. What I need now is one of your people on that chopper ASAP.” He made a point of looking at his watch again, and then waved his notebook. “First Platoon’s workhorse will be at the LZ in fifteen minutes.”
Pusic grabbed his starched soft cover from its perch on top of a file cabinet. “Should I double-time over to the officers’ mess?” He wanted to get clear of the office while decisions were being made that might affect him personally if he were within sight.
Before the lieutenant could respond, Sergeant Gantz cut in. “Don’t bother the captain at breakfast, Pusic. Get over to the platoon area and find somebody.”
Pusic’s relationship with the platoons was already less than cordial. The Corps was divided into the haves and the have-nots, and Pusic was definitely aligned with the haves. They always viewed his arrival in the hooches with suspicion, as though he were intelligence gathering for the staff or delivering bad news in the form of an order from above. If he showed up now just to pluck someone from the safety of his rack and send him into the Arizona, the grunts would not look on it favorably. Though they knew the order was coming from command, they would hold it against him anyway, and the animosity would just feed his alienation. His mind raced for an out.
“Third Platoon was manning lines all night and the 2nd is the Sparrow Hawk reaction platoon,” Pusic said. “With units in the Arizona, they’ll pitch a bitch about reducing strength.”
Sergeant Gantz turned back to the coffee urn and filled his personal cup illustrated with first sergeant’s stripes on one side and a bulldog in a World War I doughboy helmet o
n the other. “I don’t give a shit who you get, but get someone.”
From where he stood behind his desk, Pusic could see through the screening to the dusty road in front of the office. On the far side of it, Strader trudged along with his M14 slung upside-down on one shoulder and his belt of magazines dangling over the other.
Pusic’s out was being delivered as though by divine providence. If he was going to piss off one of the troops, who better than one who was leaving in a couple of days? He pointed a finger in Strader’s direction.
The sergeant, sipping his coffee as steam vapors rose above his razor-cut hair, let his attention follow Pusic’s finger. “Who’s that?” he said.
“That’s Corporal Strader. You saw him last night in the chow hall.”
The sergeant took another sip, squinting over the cup. He wasn’t making the connection.
Pusic stepped around the buffer zone of his desk feeling a rush of relief wash over him like a blast from the fan. The focus of bad tidings was swinging away from him to another target, and all he had to do was play the spotter and direct fire. “He’s the one from the chow hall you told to get away from our table and take a shower.”
A flash of recognition ignited the sergeant’s eyes. “He’s one of ours, right?”
“Yes, he is. First Platoon.”
The sergeant shoved the screen door open until the spring vibrated in protest. “Strader, get your ass over here,” he said.
Strader hesitated when he saw the door of the company office swing open and the first sergeant’s bulk fill the doorway. He hoped he hadn’t drawn the sergeant’s ire just by walking by. He didn’t want to spend one of his last days in An Hoa burning latrine barrels or filling sandbags, and he knew how creative the sergeants could be when they took it upon themselves to cause someone a ration of discomfort. There was always a chance that the sergeant’s interest lay elsewhere. But then he heard the hard-edged summons. His shoulders sank as the balloon of promise he had just begun to inflate with the first signature on his checklist sprang a leak. He jogged across the road, small dust clouds rising above his ankles.
Pusic retreated behind the safety of his desk and returned his crisply starched and sculpted utility cover to its spot on the cabinet. It seemed prudent to divorce himself from the proceedings as much as possible. Whatever hard feelings Strader might develop in the next few minutes, it was best they were directed at the sergeant or the lieutenant. He dropped onto the wooden office chair and leaned back, making the abused joints creak.
The sergeant leaned out of the door as Strader reached the walkway. “You got an hour free,” the sergeant said.
Strader let the belt slide from his shoulder to hang over his forearm. “Well, I’m pretty busy, Sergeant,” he said, noticing the officer peering over the sergeant’s shoulder.
“That wasn’t a question, Corporal. You do have a free hour, and I’m gonna use it.”
Strader had hoped that what little time he had left on the base would be free of petty griefs, but if it wasn’t to be, he resigned himself to a lost hour and would consider it well spent if it got the sergeant off his case. He should have skirted the command area and passed anonymously behind the storage tents, and he could only blame the intoxication of his impending freedom for making him careless.
“There’s a 34 sitting by the control tower. Go get on it,” the sergeant said, fighting the function of the door spring and steadying his coffee cup so a spill wouldn’t mark the steps.
“Where am I going?”
“First you’re going down to the runway. After that, just go where the chopper goes.”
The lieutenant pushed his head into the sunlight. “I’ll be radioing the chopper to take off in three minutes.”
The sergeant looked through the screen door and down the road as though he could see the chopper waiting. “When it lifts off, be on it.” He freed the door to close with a slap.
Strader stood frozen on the walkway staring at the closed door, which hummed with the spring’s tense vibration. His mind raced to formulate a response that would dissuade the sergeant from inflicting the one-hour headache he was facing, but he knew from experience that trying to reason with top NCOs usually led to more problems and bigger headaches. From inside the office he could hear an oscillating fan set to high sweeping the room with a lighthouse beam of rushing air and a voice repeating coordinate numbers to the air control tower. An hour’s busy-work was one thing—it generally cost little more than sweat and frustration—but flying over the countryside in a chopper involved a certain amount of risk, and he was becoming comfortable with the idea that his danger days were at an end. He cursed himself for letting his mind relax.
The sergeant’s face appeared behind the screen door. “What is your malfunction, Marine? Did you not hear my order? If you are not on that chopper in three minutes I will bring a shitstorm of hurt down on you that will make your grandchildren cry. Do you hear me, Marine?”
Strader simply looked at the sergeant, then nodded. His shoulders sagged and his lungs expelled a long flush of air in resignation. He hopped down into the road and headed for the runway.
At the edge of the plateau that held the offices the road sloped downward, and he could see the big green helicopter sitting by the tower, the giant grasshopper nose pointed at him like an entomologist’s hallucination. The huge main rotors hung lifeless in an arch, but as he watched they started a slow movement, turning lazily at first but growing in speed until the centrifugal force began to affect the rotor sag and the curvilinear motion stretched them out onto a flat plane where the aerodynamics of their design could do their work. He could hear the big-throated exhaust in the distance. If the chopper lifted off without him, the sergeant could make enough trouble to delay his departure, and he didn’t want to spend any additional time in-country answering a charge of disobeying a direct order. He slipped his rifle from his shoulder and started to run.
His feet struck the roadway like little explosions, and the web belt beat the heavy M14 magazines against his leg. As he reached the spot where the pathway to the platoon area met the road, the hot rod mechanical mule driver slid to a stop in front of him. The bed of the machine was empty of jerry cans now, and Strader waved for him to wait. “Hold up,” he said. The driver sat calmly, gripping the wheel that pushed at him from the oddly angled steering column. Strader pulled up against the mule. He caught his breath and pointed down at the runway. “Can you run me down to that chopper, fast?” he asked, fresh beads of sweat speckling his forehead and upper lip.
The driver turned his head casually as if to verify the existence of the helicopter. “Why not. Hop on, man.”
Strader tossed his belt onto the bed and hopped backward over the side rail, letting his legs dangle. Before he could settle, the driver popped the clutch and the mule swung wildly onto the road, spewing a rooster-tail of dust like a powerboat’s wake. Strader had to scramble for a handhold on the rail to prevent being tossed off. The driver worked his way through the gears as smoothly as a Grand Prix racer, and Strader could see that the Marine clearly enjoyed his work. There was little enough enjoyment to be had in Vietnam and you found what pleasure you could, and it was obvious to Strader that this Marine loved driving the crazy little machine. The engine whined as the driver slapped it deftly into high gear, and Strader could barely hold onto his rifle and the mule both as the uneven road slammed the springless wheels and drove the flatbed to the edge of control.
The driver looked over his shoulder at Strader, stretched out on the bed and bouncing about like so much loose cargo. “Hang on, man,” he said, laughing and wrestling the wheel. Strader felt the body blows as he went airborne and the bed bounced up to meet him on his way down. Each impact was like being hit by a pro lineman.
In less than a minute the mule left the road and rolled onto the interlocking metal plates of the runway, leaving a red cloud hanging behind. The driver steered under the chopper’s bulbous nose and slid to a stop next to the wheeled strut by
the starboard door. Strader crawled off the bed feeling as though his joints had aged forty years. He walked gingerly to the rear of the mule to retrieve his cartridge belt, compacted into a bundle against the tail rail. “Thanks, I think,” he said, rubbing his abused hips.
“No sweat, man.” The driver spun the wheel and drove straight up the embankment, past the control tower, and down along the rear of the platoon hooches that bordered the runway. He was having a good time, and for that Strader’s envy went with him.
The helicopter’s rotor wash met the attacking dust cloud that followed in the mule’s draft and flattened it to the runway. The wash whipped at Strader, and he had to clamp his utility cover to his head with a free hand.
Masked in shadow just inside the door, a Marine bent over the swivel-mounted door gun. He had the M60’s long feed cover standing tall and was carefully setting the linked belt of 7.62 ammunition on the feed plate. When he looked up from his work, Strader recognized the pinpoints of black powder stain on the teen surfer face, which filled out in a wide grin. “Hey, man. How was Pennsylvania?” the door gunner said.
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Strader said, tossing his cartridge belt through the door to land with a clunk on the metal floor.
“You our security?” the lance corporal asked, extending a hand.
Strader grasped the offered hand, locking thumbs, and with a heave the gunner hauled him into the chopper. “Security for what?” Strader yelled inside the noisy compartment.
“Prisoner escort,” the young Marine said, used to economizing on words in deference to the noise. He stepped to the gun mount at the port window and repeated the same loading procedure as with the door gun.
“I’m here to babysit a chieu hoi?” Strader said incredulously.
The door gunner was concentrating on positioning the rounds on the 60’s feed plate. “I don’t think its VC. It’s one of the grunts.”
Strader’s eyes narrowed as they always did when another MOS used “grunt,” often meant as a slur. He retrieved his belt from the floor and swung it around his waist, locking the post link in front, and clearing his weapon before he was told to. “There’s just the two of us? Where’s the crew chief?” he asked.
