by J. M. Graham
Approaching the crash site from the mountainside, Sergeant Blackwell sent a flank of two men into the tree line to warn of ugly surprises while Middleton spread his fire teams out and headed for the helicopter. They waded through the knee-high grass, rifles set on full auto, anxious to pour fire on any moving object that would show itself. The closer they got, the higher their rifle barrels were raised. By the time they were close enough to see the shiny bullet craters in the 34’s paint and the spider webs spreading around the cluster of holes in the windscreen they had their M16s pulled tightly into their shoulders and looked at everything over their gun sights. They could smell the battered helicopter, and the rain gave the dull green fuselage a freshly washed sheen.
The firing on the mountainside had stopped as abruptly as it had started and the sergeant wondered what the platoon was doing, but he would have to wait to satisfy his curiosity. At the moment his full attention was dedicated to the broken H-34 in his sights.
The fresh Marines pouring onto the valley floor gave Middleton’s squad a warm feeling. It was like coming in from night ambushes or day patrols in the deadly Phu Locs and seeing the concertina wire and bunkers on the perimeter of An Hoa. You didn’t feel so alone and exposed anymore. You felt the benefit of safety in numbers. If misery loved company, it especially loved heavily armed company joining the fight, and with the Sparrow Hawk platoon spreading out behind them, the lone squad felt they had the upper hand for the first time, or at least sufficient numbers to prevent them from being overwhelmed. Whatever they found at the crash site, they wouldn’t have to face it alone. Their tentative steps changed to deliberate strides filled with a confident aggression that said peers were watching.
The distant thumping of the transport 34s heading back across the valley drummed an eerie echo from the wreck that sounded like ghostly pleas, like a dying goose calling to its fading gaggle. Sergeant Blackwell signaled Middleton to skirt the tail, then waited at the nose until he could see the squad leader and a fire team at the tail. With a wave of his hand, they moved on the starboard opening in unison, rifles raised, taking short steps that wouldn’t jar their aim. They reached the dark port together. The abandoned M60 and its sprawling belt lay just beyond the door gunner’s boots.
Middleton could see nothing past the gunner’s body and shrugged at the sergeant’s questioning look. Sergeant Blackwell aimed his M16 into the cargo compartment and nodded almost imperceptibly. Middleton nodded back and ducked into the dark interior. Light from the port opening chased the darker shadows into the corners, but the pitch of the deck was steep and Middleton’s boots slipped back toward the opening. He pushed a hand down to keep from falling. It came back red and sticky. Two bodies lay in an awkward stack against the lower bulkhead, a tangle of unrecognizable arms and legs.
“Reach?” Middleton said tentatively, throwing out the name with no real expectation of an answer. Then he noticed the fresh boots and bloused cuffs on the FNG. “It’s just Tanner and the new guy,” he said, regretting the “just” as soon as it crossed his lips. He climbed forward, trying not to slide down into the gunner’s helmeted head, and pulled himself up far enough to see into the blood-spattered cockpit. He lowered himself until his weight was off his arms. Of all the things the squad leader thought he wanted in this world, nothing compared to being away from this dead machine and the men who flew it beyond their lives. He squatted on the stained deck and slipped back into the daylight.
“No Reach, no Chief,” he said, searching the areas of flattened grass with a worried gaze, half expecting to see more bodies. “Do you think the VC took them?” He could see on the sergeant’s face a passing flinch of pain as that possibility was considered.
Sergeant Blackwell studied the ground outside the chopper, searching for a clue, anything that would ignite a spark of hope that capture wasn’t the case. He prodded the grass with the toe of his boot. “Someone blew lunch,” he said. “Does that look like turkey chunks to you?”
Middleton looked down at the mash and globs of mucus without comment, thinking that if it was turkey, the meal looked much the same as it did before being eaten.
“And why did they leave the M60 on the ground?” the sergeant continued. “It looks like they started to take it.” He pushed at the linked rounds with the same inquisitive toe. “And they didn’t even try for the other one.”
Two squad members dragged Tanner’s body into the open air and went back for the new guy whose name they couldn’t remember. The sergeant stooped and grabbed something from the shadows where the bulkhead met the deck: a web belt sliced neatly through both layers. He held it up, looking across the grassy expanse where staggered paths of trampled grass led zigzag courses to the tree line. “It looks like the bastards went across on line,” he said. “Why would they do that?”
Middleton looked at the abandoned 60, the riceless puke, and the belt. “I think Reach skyed up and took the Chief with him,” he said. He looked to the edge of the tree line where shadowy shapes could have been anything. “And I think they had to didi because Charley was after them.
The Sparrow Hawk platoon filed past the wreck, their legs soaked to the knees by the wet grass. Lieutenant Hewitt peeled away with a radioman and one fire team, leaving Sergeant Litinsky to take the rest into the tree line to secure the dark green areas from where danger was likely to come. Corporal Pusic followed the officer’s CP to the chopper. He was out of his element here, and he knew it. In just the last hour he had gone from eight long months in-country to being the FNG in the field. It was the kind of culture shock he had been sure he could avoid, and the short-timer’s calendar in his desk drawer agreed with him more each day. That desk seemed far away now. His mind raced to find a way back there so he would have a chance to mark that calendar again. He could see Staff Sergeant Blackwell from 1st Platoon standing beside the chopper wreckage with Bronsky while other Marines labored moving heavy loads from inside.
When Sergeant Blackwell saw Lieutenant Hewitt heading in his direction he called out, “Sir, I have people in the tree line,” pointing vaguely to the general area where he imagined they might be.
The lieutenant spoke over his shoulder to his radioman without breaking stride. “Tell Litinsky we have friendlies in the trees.”
When the small group got close enough, Pusic could see the fruits of the Marines’ labor lying in the grass: five bodies, too still, too quiet. The dead had an awkward composure of their own. Their angles lacked life, and they conformed to any uncomfortable position they were assigned without complaint. Death had freed their limbs to assume attitudes restricted only by the limitations of human joint dynamics. The position of their heads didn’t seem quite right. Viability gone, they were just grotesque husks of stolen potential.
Pusic’s daily efforts had all been designed to avoid the realities of combat. Now, ten lifeless boot bottoms were showing him the blind grooves in their treads. That was the trouble with Vietnam. No matter what your job and how safe your situation, the horror of battle was always close.
The distant murmur of a Cessna Bird Dog droned down from where it drifted just below the cloud ceiling. The engine had an almost soothing sound. It spoke to the Marines with a familiar voice that reminded them of home and clear summer days with civilian pilots in their Pipers and Cessnas, looking down on Home Town USA from a bird’s perspective. The six-cylinder engine that filled the cockpit with noise was a calming voice from the other side of the world to those on the ground. But there were other, more significant reasons for taking comfort in the little aircraft’s ethereal song. The Bird Dog pilots were forward air controllers, and though the FACs had no real armament beyond the marking rockets under their wings and the pilot’s personal firearms, their innocuous sputtering carried with it a lethal promise, like the tip of a dorsal fin at the ocean surface held the promise of flesh-ripping teeth below. With a map, a radio, and some calculations scribbled on the windscreen with a grease pencil, the FAC could rain death down on any spot he chose. The Fowler
flaps could drop the little machine into a rollercoaster dive, swooping close to the ground and teasing the enemy into a lethal mistake.
The Bird Dogs were like the weak kid in school who thumbed his nose at the bullies because he had strong brothers who would pound the snot out of anyone with the lack of foresight to think he was an easy target. The FAC’s big brothers were F-105s and F-4s that could split the sky at five hundred knots and make the ground shudder. With the Bird Dog’s simple direction to “hit my smoke” a jet-powered arsenal would rip and burn the jungle until the trees themselves wept in regret.
Sergeant Blackwell looked up at the little aircraft hanging suspended on invisible air currents. “The LT must be pretty pissed to put eyes in the sky,” he said. “Get ready for some fast movers.” Those around him looked up as though seeing the strutted wings ducking the clouds could put a face on Lieutenant Diehl’s anger.
When the sergeant’s eyes dropped back to earth, they settled on Pusic lurking behind the Sparrow Hawk radioman. He couldn’t have stood out more had he been wearing dress blues. The sergeant’s brow wrinkled in confusion at seeing a familiar face outside its normal habitat, like seeing your priest in his street clothes. It took a minute for the juxtaposition to work itself out in his mind. “You lost?” he asked, watching Pusic try to wilt behind Lieutenant Hewitt’s people.
Pusic focused his attention on Corporal Middleton, who was kneeling by the bodies reading from dog tags while Doc Brede filled out the casualty cards. “Woods, Daniel A., Warrant Officer, Protestant,” Middleton said in a hushed voice, trying not to look at the damage AK rounds had done to the young copilot’s body. Brede filled in the appropriate spaces on the tag and wrote KIA in big letters. Pusic watched the two Marines at their task. This was something he could understand: paperwork. Everything in the Corps boiled down to a clerical notation somewhere, from a lost gas mask to a lost life. Middleton moved on. “Kobert, Eric R., Lance Corporal, Catholic.”
Corporal Pusic forced himself to search the still bodies with his eyes. Two wore pilot’s flak gear; one wore new utilities; one was too young, with a pockmarked face; and the last had the wrong color hair. He moved to get a better angle on the helicopter’s interior. “Anybody else in there?” he asked, trying to ignore the sergeant’s stare.
Sergeant Blackwell looked past Lieutenant Hewitt’s people, expecting to see faces further up the Corps’ food chain, the kind of rank with the weight to drag a company clerk along when they went into the field. Maybe the captain, or worse, someone from the battalion’s larger brass circle that Corporal Pusic orbited. Nothing was obvious. It appeared that the spic-and-span corporal was here alone.
“I asked if you were lost,” the sergeant said in a voice meant not to be ignored.
Middleton looked up to see who the sergeant was talking to with such an edge.
Lieutenant Hewitt barked a sit rep to An Hoa over the radio and beckoned Sergeant Blackwell with an impatient wave of his hand.
Sergeant Blackwell pointed a finger at the clerk’s face without comment, as if to punctuate a pause in a conversation that was far from over, then turned toward the Sparrow Hawk CP.
Pusic craned his neck to see into the damp shadows of the helicopter, half hoping, half expecting to see Strader’s sun-browned face crawling out, prisoner in tow, to save his clerical ass and the lifestyle to which he was accustomed.
Middleton hurried through the information on the new set of dog tags in his hand. “Crowell, Fredrick P., Warrant Officer, Protestant,” he said. There was no need to bother with the other two bodies, familiar corpses he had helped carry from the mountain, tags with all the information needed by posterity already flapping from their bootlaces. He stepped away from the bodies, leaving Doc Brede to finish his work.
Pusic surveyed the wide expanse of wet grass that ended at the lush green tree line and the Marines from the Sparrow Hawk platoon moving along it. Being this far outside An Hoa’s perimeter gave him an odd, exposed feeling, like he was standing on the parapet of some tall building gazing at the emptiness below, with nothing but empty air between him and a wet stain on the pavement. He could hear the voice of Sergeant Blackwell in animated conversation with Lieutenant Hewitt. Other members of the squad from 1st Platoon worked close to the wrecked helicopter, and though he knew he had plenty of company standing on this green building’s precipice, he still felt alone, as though everyone around him was blind to the portent of the view and he was the only one with acrophobia.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Middleton said, standing by the feet of the dead Marines as though moving away would be a kind of betrayal.
Pusic examined the tired-looking Marine with his M16 slung barrel-down over a shoulder. “They sent me to find the . . . the prisoner,” he said, then let his eyes sweep over the bodies.
Middleton looked the clerk over as though he was giving an inspection and didn’t like what he saw. “You won’t find him there, pogue.”
The Cessna Bird Dog finished a lazy circle that carried it from the valley to the higher slopes of the Ong Thu. It banked to port, then dipped its nose. A sudden whoosh sent a rocket of white smoke into the trees that rose into the air like a ghost trying to escape the confines of the jungle.
Sergeant Blackwell finished with Lieutenant Hewitt and started back, tethered to Bronsky’s radio by the coil of cord. He signed off and tossed the black handset back to Bronsky. Despite all the rain and wet grass, the handset was still dry inside its coating of clear C-rat plastic. “The platoon is on the way down with two dead and three wounded,” the sergeant said, stopping by the open side of the helicopter between the wreck and the line of bodies on the ground. “Lieutenant Diehl says they should come out onto the valley somewhere just south of the lake in about an hour.”
Middleton looked to the mountain where a diffuse column of white smoke was struggling through the weave of branches. “Who’s dead?” he said, watching as the lazily rising smoke and the humming Bird Dog worked in soothing concert before their intended collaboration rained a pyrotechnic shitstorm onto the slope.
The sergeant seemed not to hear the question. He only had eyes for the company clerk standing in the wet grass, his starched uniform soaking up the light rain. “Are you people out of your fucking minds back there?” he said to Pusic. “The stress of beer limits at the EM Club or not enough pogey bait at the geedunk making you soft in the head? Sending a Marine into the Arizona with only a couple of days left in-country; that was a shit-for-brains move.”
Pusic felt the sergeant’s words like punches. He had to deflect the anger to another target, but he had to do it without burning any bridges, especially bridges that he needed to carry him across the rest of his tour. He had to point an accusing finger, but it had to be nonspecific, the target anonymous. The only thing that could help him was the natural enmity between the ranks. “I didn’t send anyone anywhere. I’m not running this company. I take orders like everyone else. If you’re looking for someone who gives orders,” he added, “you’re going to have to look a lot further up the totem pole than me.”
Blackwell and Middleton exchanged glances. “Is he making a joke?” Middleton asked in disbelief.
“I don’t know.” The sergeant looked the clerk over from helmet to boots and back again, as if the trip might provide a better understanding of the man’s motives. “That wouldn’t be a crack aimed at the Chief, would it?”
Pusic’s face registered his confusion, and he looked around cautiously in case 1st Platoon’s wild man was somewhere near. Maybe totem pole was a poor choice of images that might be misconstrued as an insult, and he didn’t want to say anything that would set the Chief off.
“Why the hell would I do that?” Pusic said.
“You said you were looking for him,” Middleton said.
“Like hell, I did.”
“You said you were here looking for the prisoner.”
“Yeah, the prisoner escort and, of course, the prisoner, too.”
The
sergeant stepped up close to the clerk, uncomfortably close. “The Chief is the prisoner. And you people sent Reach . . . Strader . . . out here with two damned days left on his tour.”
The clerk felt his throat constrict like the Chief already had a crushing grip on it. It was amazing how quickly the status quo could dissolve into garbage in the Crotch. One day things were going along smoothly, and the next the villagers were screaming for your blood. He didn’t see how he could possibly catch any blame for the Chief being a prisoner. Beyond that, any personal responsibility he might bear for Strader’s presence was speculation for these Marines. “I don’t know anything about crimes the Chief committed,” he said, though horrifying transgressions he might envision only in nightmares were, to his thinking, well within the Chief’s capabilities.
The sergeant seemed to be suddenly uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “That communication with the com shack was in error. There was no prisoner. And since no prisoner, there was no need for an escort.”
Pusic was confused at the sergeant’s discomfort, but he just shrugged. The backbone of discretion is silence, and since anything he might say would only fuel the fire or provide information he didn’t want to share, he kept his mouth shut.
The sound of a distant blast furnace forced its way into the valley from the north, and two machines dropped through the clouds and materialized in a roaring streak above the bridge at Phu Loc. F-4 Phantoms in mottled camouflage banked to starboard, and the dripping thatch roofs of Phu Phong 3 passed in a blink below their wingtips. The F-4 pilots confirmed the Bird Dog’s position then zeroed in on the mountainside. The trailing Phantom banked to port, showing its light underbelly to the trees, and pointed one wing at the ground, ripping a wide arc that would carry it around to its starting point in a circle filled with crushing G-force. The lead Phantom concentrated on the distant smoke. Two air-to-surface missiles flashed from under its wings, and it was already into its own arching circle when the missiles punched through the smoke and great chunks of the Ong Thu leapt up in protest.
