Nam-A-Rama

by Phillip Jennings

  I sat with the pad and pencil and couldn’t. There was no way to start. I fiddled with the pencil, tapping it on the paper until Gearheardt loudly cleared his throat. We were in the hooch, Gearheardt’s cot directly across from the foot of mine. I was supposed to write the letter in the admin office so I could use the typewriter. But I didn’t like being in there.

  I couldn’t get beyond the salutation. Maybe we did need brainless idiots to write these letters.

  “Jack,” Gearheardt said, “maybe you’re putting too much emphasis on just the dead son and NOK’s part. Whatever you say, they’ll still be whining and moping around the house, forgetting to feed the dog. And the kid will still be dead.”

  When I didn’t look up and encourage the asshole, he went on.

  “In fact why don’t you send the Next of Kin a bill? For the shipping charges. Your son shows up C.O.D., and that gives you something to think about, Jack. I think the NOKs would appreciate having something to take their minds off of the loss of the kid. Maybe the cost of his uniforms and guns and things, too. You know, Your son did not complete his contract to spend a year in Vietnam. We must ask you to remit the sum of $3,500 to the U.S Government, care of the Secretary of Defense.”

  “I don’t think so, Gearheardt,” I replied through my clenched teeth. “I’m really not needing your bullshit right now.”

  He thought for a minute. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Just tell his folks he was the greatest fighter since Audie Murphy, and without him we might have lost the war. That’s the best you can do, Jack. Tell ’em the son-of-a-bitch was a fighting machine.”

  I looked over at him, lying on his bunk with a coffee-can ashtray balanced on his chest. He raised his eyebrows.

  “I didn’t start this damn thing, Jack,” he said. “Maybe we ought to go up to Hanoi and stop it.” He smiled the Gearheardt smile.

  I lay back on my cot and closed my eyes. After a while, I began reliving the five minutes in the LZ where I had lost Porter. His last words were “Fuck me.”

  I had done well. The adrenaline rush had been exhilarating, climaxing when we entered the darkness climbing out of the zone and I knew I was going to live.

  The truth was that Captain Glassner wasn’t the screaming asshole I always mentally called him. After every mission where we lost pilots or crew, he came into the officers’ club and announced, “God has made his selection! And it was a good one! Fuck the dead!”

  I began to drift off. The adrenaline was almost out of my system after twenty-four hours. Was there really a mission to Hanoi?

  I started to ask Gearheardt, but he was reading letters from his girlfriends and humming. The tune was “Fascinating Rhythm,” but I knew his new words were “Parachutin’ Pussy.”

  There had to be a plan.

  13 • Heaven Is an H-34 in Vietland

  “Okay, gents, let’s synchronize our watches. Shit, what happened to my watch? Major, give me your watch. Okay, thanks, I’ve got zero six forty-three and thirty seconds. On my mark, we’ll set to zero six forty-four.”

  He stared at his watch. “Major, is this damn thing working? Oh, there it is. Shit, now it’s zero six forty-four and fifteen seconds. What the hell is this little gizmo over here, Major? I thought that was the second hand. Okay, coming up on zero six forty-five, on my mark. Mark. Everybody got six forty-five? Of course it’s past that now, but you know what I mean. What time do you have there, Major? Oh, this is your watch? Now we have to synchronize with the artillery battalion. How do we do that, Major? It won’t make much difference if the squadron is all on the same time if those goofballs over at artillery are slow. They’ll still be shelling the zone when we’re trying to land. We don’t want that.”

  Major Gonzales stepped to the front of the briefing tent and handed the Skipper a watch. “This is your watch, sir. I took it to make sure that we were synchronized with Group, the Air Force, and artillery.”

  The Skipper looked at it. “This thing is two minutes off from the one we just synchronized to, Major. Now we have to do the damn thing all over again.” He grabbed the watch the major held out. He stood looking at both of them draped over his large hand. They were the same Marine Corps issue, black-faced with olive drab canvas bands. After a moment of concentration he said, “Which one was the one that was synchronized with the artillery?”

  Major Gonzales made a face but didn’t let the frowning Skipper see it. “Here, sir. I think it’s this one. We can check it because it will be the one that is not in synch with the squadron. Or if it is, then it doesn’t make any difference.”

  “Huh?” the Skipper said, looking an awful lot like a man who left the officers’ club tent at 0330 that morning.

  “Captain Shinn, what time do you have?” the major asked.

  “I don’t have my watch, Major. I think the hooch maids stole it. Sorry.”

  “How about you, Adams. What’s the time exactly?”

  “My watch is broken, Major. I think the Skipper said it was about six forty-five.”

  “How many of you have your watches on, gentlemen?” the major asked nastily.

  No one raised their hand or looked him in the eye.

  “Do you mean to tell me that we have been dicking around with the damn time for the last thirty minutes and not a one of you is even wearing a watch?” We knew he was mad because he never cursed even a little bit. We also knew that Group was on his ass because the squadron had been late the last few strike missions.

  Adams raised his hand. “I’m wearing mine, Major. It’s just broken. I think that Fuller dropped his—”

  “Shut up, Adams. I could care less how you broke your watch.” He turned to the Skipper, who was still staring at the two watches in his hand as if the Oracle of Gidema was going to rise out of them and give him knowledge. “Skipper,” he said, “we should get on with the briefing. We need to be in the air by zero seven fifteen. I’ll worry about the time, sir.”

  “Well, get it right next time, goddarmn it. Group is on my ass. Put out a squadron order that no one is to wear a watch until I say so. I’ll have the official time, or at least you will, and the others can just ask. I’m fed up with all this watch business. Let’s shape up, Major. Get on with the briefing.” He stormed out of the tent. After a moment he stuck his head back in. “Is this where the strike briefing is to take place?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. I thought this was just where we were fixing our watches.” He stepped back in. “Where are all those charts and maps and things? Vervack, get your ass up here and start the briefing.” He took a seat in the front row of folding chairs.

  The squadron intelligence officer, who was not a pilot, strode confidently to the front of the tent. He set up a large map on an easel and then turned to the squadron. He had a long, handlebar mustache and beady eyes. The middle of his face would have fit comfortably on a ferret or a wolverine. He didn’t like pilots.

  Sometimes after a strike mission where we had gotten totally shot up, we saw him go behind the debriefing tent, and his thin shoulders would shake as if he were laughing. We had decided to kill him long ago, but he was rumored to be “connected.” We weren’t sure what that meant, and I assumed that it was just our excuse not to kill him.

  He put his hands on his hips and surveyed us all. His utilities were starched and crisp. His first lieutenant bars danced in the morning light when he moved.

  “The squadron is going into the Cau Cau Valley this morning. We will be joined by 361, 364, and an Army Cobra squadron flying escort; 261 will be providing medevac as well as search and rescue.”

  “We will be airborne at zero seven fifteen. We will proceed by flights to LZ Blue, where we will pick up our troops, who are from First Battalion Ninth Marines, Charlie and Delta Company. At zero seven forty-five we will be airborne again, rendezvous with the Cobra escort at Checkpoint Alpha, the mouth of the Ng Thrin River, and then proceed to the strike zone to arrive when the artillery lifts at exactly zero eight hundred hours.” He loo
ked around, hands still on hips. His tight smile hadn’t wavered, yet.

  “Any questions so far?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Buzz began, “who’s this fucking ‘we’ you’re talking about?”

  “Whether you like it or not, I am a member of this squadron, Lieutenant Eckerd.”

  “Well, this turd is a member of my body until I can get to the four-holer, Lieutenant Vervack.”

  Major Gonzales stood up and faced the squadron. “That’s enough, gentlemen. Get on with the briefing, Lieutenant Uervack.” He frowned at Buzz and sat back down. The Skipper sat beside him admiring the two watches he was wearing on his left wrist.

  Lieutenant Vervack continued, uncowed. “You have the coordinates of the pickup zone and drop zone on the handouts for your kneeboards so I won’t cover that unless there are any questions. We don’t expect there to be many enemy in the strike zone—”

  “Good, let’s not go there.” It was from a lieutenant at the back of the tent.

  “—after the bombing missions from zero seven hundred to seven thirty, and the artillery barrage from zero seven thirty to zero eight hundred.”

  “If we got zero enemy at zero eight hundred why don’t we zero go?” It sounded like the same guy.

  Major Gonzales stood up again. “I said knock it off! We are going to finish this briefing, get in those helicopters, and fly those troops into the strike zone. I don’t want to hear another wiseass word out of any of you. Do you read me?”

  Vervack walked to the easel and took out his famous red pencil. He began drawing symbols on the map in the area of the strike zone. “We can possibly draw fire from here, here, here, and you should watch your departure over this area here. Mostly small arms, with some light machine gun. No reported fifty-caliber but we won’t know until we get there. They usually keep their heavy stuff as a surprise for us.” He turned from the map and smiled. Buzz mouthed, “We, you asshole?” but didn’t say anything out loud.

  “We could possibly encounter some really heavy stuff, say thirty-seven-millimeter, if we wander too far off of the flight path and get over by this ridgeline. Let’s try to stay away from there.”

  “I’ll sure try,” said Flager in a high voice, but nobody laughed. Thirty-seven millimeter would put a hole in you about the size of a basketball.

  “If you’re shot down and can’t get onto one of the SAR choppers, hook up with the Marines in the zone. If you should get separated, head for this village,” he pointed to a black speck on the map, “which is reported friendly.”

  “Let’s attack them.”

  The major snapped his head around, but no one was smiling, and he turned back to the front.

  “That’s about it. Any questions?”

  Major Gonzales stood up and faced the pilots. “Okay, gentlemen. You have your flight and aircraft assignments. Let’s try not to botch this one up.”

  I was fairly calm. The first few missions after I got back to the squadron from being a FAC were easy and relaxing compared to the ground war. Then, near Bong Nhgn, Bootig’s aircraft exploded as we headed into a hot zone, killing the crew and eleven Marines who were on board. The next day, Brown, and a kid I didn’t know very well, lost an engine on takeoff and plowed into the aircraft taking off next to them when he tried to turn back to the LZ—a no-no with an engine failure at that height, but who knew what else was going on in the cockpit with all the groundfire coming through the formation—and set a new squadron record of eight crew and ten Marines on the ground killed. Still, this morning’s mission was not unusual or particularly dangerous. As bad as the zone was, at least I wasn’t staying behind in it.

  Gearheardt and I sat side by side near the rear of the briefing tent. Gearheardt was his usual self, grab-assing with the other pilots and making fun of the major and the intelligence officer. I was more subdued, still thinking about the dead rat that I had found in my sleeping bag when I returned from my brief tour with the grunts. The rat had not died of natural causes, and I couldn’t help but think it was tied to the Barbonella mission. Gearheardt took it in stride, assuring me that it only meant that someone or ones in the squadron was on to us and that they thought we were rats and were going to kill us. I had run out of responses to his logical acceptance of the bizarre.

  At the front of the tent a huge wail went up as Tilton was selected to fly co-pilot with the Skipper. Tilton seemed oblivious to the fact that the Skipper was sitting five feet from him as he lunged at the operation officer.

  “I’m not flying with him, you bastard!” Tilton yelled. “The Skipper can’t fly a helicopter to save his ass, but he never gives the co-pilot the controls.”

  “Somebody has to fly with him,” Captain Reynolds said calmly. He went through this every mission and was not easily moved. Rumors that cash could get you out of the Skipper’s aircraft were probably untrue, since once assigned, everybody in memory had flown and actually survived. Gearheardt, of course, was always volunteering to fly with the Skipper, so they never let him.

  There was no doubt that it was a challenge to your nervous system. I had had my share of hops with him and come back wringing wet and exhausted. The Skipper, among other irritating characteristics, had a habit of lighting a cigarette as soon as he got airborne and keeping one lit for the whole flight. He would squint over the smoke drifting up into his face as he struggled to keep the aircraft moving in only one direction, a massive feat for him. To make matters worse, he constantly keyed the microphone, intercom or the squadron channel, it didn’t matter, and muttered to himself.

  “Goddam thing. Whoa, hold on. Oh shit. There you go, baby. Watch it, watch it. Oh boy. Oh boy. Down, you bastard. Goddam sonofabitch. There we go. There we go. Oh shit, watch it.”

  Meanwhile the chopper would be lurching about the sky, one moment drifting toward a terrified wingman, the next minute plummeting toward the earth, crabbed so that the rushing air would sent dirt, maps, and anything loose billowing around the cabin. On the ground in the zone, no matter the groundfire or mayhem, he lectured his co-pilots on cockpit procedure and explained in detail why he had made the bizarre and engine-damaging power adjustments on the way into the zone. Once, when he had made a landing so hard that the tailcone broke free of the helicopter, he explained to his co-pilot how he had detected a fire in the tailcone and broken it off to save the rest of the aircraft, which was then abandoned in the LZ. Invariably the co-pilot had to take the rap for any damage to the aircraft, a career-shortening entry into a pilot’s logbook, which was about the last straw for most of them.

  Tilton was now reaching the point of making a fool of himself, crying profusely, slumped in the front row of folding chairs. I knew that his wife had recently had a baby. I heard him tell the XO that he had just shown a picture of his newborn girl to Adams, which was one of the signs that he would probably get shot down and killed now. He didn’t mind taking normal risk, but he couldn’t fly with the Skipper. Meanwhile the Skipper was writing on his kneepad, copying the radio frequencies (he never remembered them and always used Guard anyway) and the landing zone coordinates (his co-pilot had damned well better know where they were all the time) and humming, occasionally turning his wrist so that he could view his two wristwatches. He was a great CO actually—if you stayed out of his way and didn’t have to fly with him.

  Gearheardt tapped me on the shoulder. “Who’s your co-pilot?” he asked.

  “Winston,” I replied.

  “You and I were scheduled to fly together. Someone changed it.”

  “What does that mean? Crew schedule changes all the time.”

  “Have we flown together since you got back?”

  I thought about it. “No, I guess not.”

  “They aren’t going to let us get in the same aircraft. They’re afraid we’ll head north. I think they know the time is near.” He smiled and patted my knee.

  “Who are they”

  “The ones that don’t want us to go.”

  “Is the time near?”

 
“We’ll know more tonight. I have a call in to Larry Bob, and I think he’s going to give us the word. He didn’t go to all the trouble to get you out of that FAC job for nothing.”

  He chuckled to himself and said, “By the way, you know who they got to take your place as the FAC?”

  “I heard it was Cobb. Wasn’t it?”

  “Naw, Cobb ran off and shot himself in the big toe. You remember Jensen, the pilot that hung around Group headquarters and was pimping for the Wing hotshots?”

  “Him?”

  “Colonel Garrett caught something that turned his dick black. Blamed Jensen. So now Jensen is a FAC.”

  “I never was a fan of Jensen, but I have to tell you that I pity him with those poor grunts.”

  “Don’t pity Jensen. He’s the FAC, but he’s running the show out of some massage parlor in Bangkok. Has a telephone hookup and a big map. Just calls in air strikes by the grunts reading him coordinates. They love him, by the way. Bombs the shit out of everything in sight. What does he care, he’s in Bangkok.”

  Around us the last of the pilots were grabbing kneeboards and helmet bags. Most had put on flak vests, though few wore the flak diapers that were supposed to protect your family jewels. The aircraft had armor plating under the seat, at least. Tilton had resigned himself to flying with the Skipper and was getting briefed by the ops officer, the intelligence officer, and Major Gonzales all at once. Each was afraid that Tilton might screw up and not bring the Skipper back, and the squadron would get an asshole for a new skipper. They patted Tilton on the back, grabbed his arm at the biceps, rubbed the back of his neck like a prizefighter, and carried his gear outside to the helicopter. I heard a loud sniffle as he passed by the side of the tent where Gearheardt and I still sat. Alone now.

  “You’re calling the President? Today? After we get back from this strike?”

  “I’m not eager to stop the war. I kinda like it, you know. But I’m tired of waiting around for orders, and the other day I even had a chance to strafe and didn’t take it. I’m telling the president to shit or get off the pot.”