“You better watch it or the President could send you to Vietnam.”
“Exactly. Let’s get this thing on the road. If we’re ending this thing, I hate to just keep blowing the hell out of the countryside.” He got up and I followed him. “See you after the strike.”
We walked toward the flight line. Ahead of us the pilots were finishing preflight and climbing into the cockpits. Faces were getting serious now. I punched Gearheardt lightly on his arm and turned toward my aircraft. He stopped me.
“Where is it we’re going this morning? I was dozing through Vervack’s briefing.”
“Your co-pilot knows. It’s a piece of cake. We took a strike in there a couple of weeks ago and didn’t find anything.”
The squadron lost Downing, Gaines, Webster, and Kinkaid in the strike zone. Brewster and Flemming managed to get their ship airborne, but only made it halfway back to the pickup zone. They were picked up by the SAR ships and taken to Danang med, where Brewster was operated on for a head wound and Flemming lost his leg. Tilton and the Skipper were shot down in the LZ, and Tilton attacked the Skipper with his fists and then his kneeboard when the Skipper insisted they go through the engine shutdown procedures before they left the burning cockpit. We never saw Tilton again. The rumors were that he either defected or was AWOL and selling burgers at Marineland of the Pacific. The Skipper inadvertently had listed him as KIA on his after-action report, and that was as good as a get-out-of-jail-free card, since no one was allowed to question the Skipper’s administrative action forms, and certainly not his after-action reports. The Skipper’s crew chief, transferred shortly thereafter to the USO in Bangkok, later wrote and said that the Skipper hadn’t been shot down but had crashed in the LZ while trying to synchronize the two watches on his arm and fly the aircraft at the same time.
When we debriefed after the strike, the Skipper was pumped up.
“Fantastic job, gentlemen. Our squadron showed the others how to do it today. I’ve been given word by Group that we got more Marines into the LZ than any other squadron. Well done.”
Captain Reynolds, always a stickler for details, stood up. “Begging the colonel’s pardon, sir. The message from Group said that we left more men in the LZ than any other squadron. I think that they were referring to the fact that we lost three crews, sir. I’m not sure they meant it as a compliment.”
“Well, damn it to hell. There always has to be something. Before we leave this Godforsaken place I’d like to see this squadron fly one perfect mission. I suppose Group will be on my ass again. Major Gonzales, get the names of those men who we left in the zone. Also put out the order that the new squadron superstition is that you need to wear two watches on your arm for strike flights.” He held up his arm showing his two. “I got the shit shot out of me but still made it out, and I’m wearing two watches. The news boys love this kind of stuff. You got that, Major?”
Major Gonzales slowly got to his feet. His face looked pained. “Sir, I have the names of those crews we left in the zone. What do you want me to do with that list, sir? You do understand that—”
“For God’s sakes, Major. You mean you don’t even care about those men we lost? I’m shocked, but war is a strange business and affects us all differently. Take today. It left me exhilarated and those other men dead. Can’t get much more different than that. Very well, gentlemen, carry on with the debriefing. I have paperwork to do.”
The squadron sat in stunned silence after he left. Even the craziest of the pilots felt loss. Finally Major Gonzales looked up from where he had been staring at the floor. His gaze drifted around the room, stopping briefly on the faces of those who tormented him most frequently. “I think that the Skipper has taken the concept of detachment to its ultimate utilization,” he said evenly. “Command affects all of us in different ways. I can tell you that the Skipper doesn’t approve of the conduct of the war and is struggling to do his duty.” He sighed, and I almost felt affection for him. “You men heard the new squadron superstition. See Captain Beavers in S-4 and get new watches. Let’s not let the Skipper down. Those of you who bunked with the pilots we lost today, see me after the debriefing to talk about personal effects. Now Lieutenant Vervack will ask you a few questions about what you saw out there this morning—armaments, bunkers—you know the drill. Then you’re all dismissed.” He turned away and then looked back. “The squadron did okay today. Those of you that helped get the bodies out of the zone will be remembered.” He left.
Lieutenant Vervack went forward and repositioned his charts and carefully exposed a new quarter inch of red wax on his marker by unrolling the woodpaper around the end. When he turned back to the pilots, there weren’t any.
14 • South Vietnam Adieu
The beginning of the end of my tour in Vietnam was on my birthday. Traditionally, the squadron operations officer didn’t schedule you to fly on your birthday unless it was absolutely necessary to winning the war. Because the new squadron operations officer—Captain Shinn had augered into the side of a hill on a night medical evacuation attempt—was a complete prick, we were all flying on our birthdays. Captain Wilson, the new ops officer, decided that flying to Danang to bring back barbed wire was of vital necessity to winning the war and that I was not to be excused just because I was turning twenty-four.
“I’m not going to fly today, Captain. It’s my birthday.”
“Happy birthday. Now get your butt into that cockpit. Winston is your co-pilot. Buckum and Sterling are flying wing. You don’t hear any of them pissing and moaning about flying on their birthdays.”
“It’s not their birthday.”
“I don’t give a damn. Drop the concertina wire at these coordinates when you return. Then you can have your cake or whatever it is you think you’re entitled to.” He thrust out the frag sheet and I took it. I had always thought not flying on your birthday was a bit silly anyway. In fact I had decided that I would prefer flying on my birthday because it decreased the odds of me being killed since the chances of being killed on my birthday seemed statistically much lower than not on my birthday. When I expressed this to Gearheardt, he disagreed vehemently.
“War and especially death in war is about irony,” he reasoned. “Therefore it is a waste of death not to die ironically. It deprives your survivors of a great opportunity to wail ‘And it was on his BIRTHDAY’ as if your cold, head-and-armless body would have been less gruesome were you zapped on one of the other 364 days of the year that weren’t your birthday.”
“I’m sorry I brought it up, Gearheardt. I should have known you would have some bizarre—”
“What’s bizarre about it?”
I thought about it. “I suppose you’re right. Where do you come up with these notions? You never struck me as a barracks philosopher.”
“AG.”
“The Assistant God tells you these things?”
“Sure. He’s writing a book about dying in combat. Called Better Them Than Me. Whenever he gets a vision that someone is going to die on a mission, he interviews them to add irony to their death. He says that those dying on their own, not on their birthday, or Christmas, are perpetrating undue misery on their loved ones, and his job is to lessen the pain. He’s decided that Labor Day and other little pissant holidays don’t count, by the way. The only biggies are your birthday and Christmas, unless you’re Jewish.”
“So if you are, then dying on Jewish holidays—”
“Sky-Kyke filed for non-flight status on 324 ‘Jewish holidays’ so far and kind of ruined it for everybody else. The four days in May that Jews aren’t supposed to let their feet leave the earth—called ‘shuffalom’—was a new one to AG and he’s still researching it. He’s trying to contact the chaplain in wing headquarters who is really a rabbi, but so far he hasn’t had any luck.”
“Almost Captain Armstrong, are we going?” Winston was impatient. He stood in the door of Gearheardt’s hooch in full cockpit regalia, including flak diaper, which made it appear he was in some sort of remedial pott
y training. I grabbed my helmet bag and flak vest and stood up.
“So I’ll see you in a couple of hours, Gearheardt. Don’t go to any trouble for my birthday when I get back.” I strapped on my shoulder holster and pistol belt with the Randall knife dangling from it. It was specially made for me with my name on the blade.
“I was going to have a little get-together but couldn’t find anyone else who wanted to.” Gearheardt always told the truth.
“Just as well. I hate guys that drink themselves silly in my honor, except you of course, Gearheardt.” I lingered a moment while Winston started toward the tarmac to preflight the helicopter. No one else was in Gearheardt’s hooch. I sat back down beside him on his cot.
“Are you sure President Larry Bob said it was this week?”
“You heard him.”
“Let me hear the tape again. I want to make absolutely sure. I was going to do it later, but I didn’t realize that Captain Asshole would have me on the flight schedule today.”
Gearheardt reached behind him and grabbed a small tape recorder. The tape he took from the toe of a well-worn flight boot stuffed with socks. Someone who was looking for the tape would have had to brave the smell of rancid cheese. He slipped in the tape and after a couple of false starts, the deep sonorous voice of the President and our responses were clear on the tape. It had been made on the day that the squadron had set the Group record for most crew lost on a single mission.
“ … I don’t let my boys down. You tell Almost Captain Armstrong—”
“I’m here, sir.”
“—that I’ve got everthing under control and he needs to quit bein’ such a goddam pussy about it. Tell him to kill somethin’ while he’s waitin’, for God’s sakes. ‘Swhy we gave him a damn gun.”
The President had been defensive and irritable from the moment we got him on the phone at wing headquarters by bribing the wing telecommunications sergeant. From his ramblings, it was clear that the “star” was still giving him trouble, now about how cold her ass was going to be drifting down from ten thousand feet over Hanoi.
“I told her that the boys in Korea were a hell of a lot more cold than her ass was going to be. She made some wiseass remark about this being Vietnam, but I finally got her to shut up and strike a deal. Damn preemer donna. I had to send ‘Slick Hair’ on a night mission to strike a deal that she gets to fire one of them anteeaircraft guns the Veetnams have. Lord love a duck, why a woman would want to straddle twelve feet of hot steel pipe shooting lead a mile up in the sky is beyond me. But we got the deal done. Hope she don’t hit anybody on our side. Someone’ll have my ass if it gets out.”
Gearheardt and I had exchanged looks when we first heard this, and now we did again.
“ … so you boys be ready. It’s a go on the twenty-seventh.”
“That’s my birthday, Mr. President.”
“Who’s that? That you, Gearheardt?”
“No, sir. It’s me, Almost Captain Armstrong, or Tom Dexter, for the CIA guys listening in.”
“Oh, there ain’t none of them smartasses workin’ tonight. I threw ’em a beer bust and let ’em dress the State Department secretaries up like Rooskies, and they get to interrogate the hell out of ’em. Highlight of their year, let me tell you.”
“Anyway, this alright? Doin’ this on your birthday? Don’t misunderstand, I don’t really give a shit, but I didn’t get to be President by not actin’ like I did. So, it’s the twenty-seventh.”
“Could I clarify one thing, Mr. President?”
“Is this that dang Almost Captain Armstrong again? Gearheardt, did you tell me he was a whiner ’fore I let him into this deal?”
“He’s okay, Larry Bob,” Gearheardt said, giving me the signal to “get with it.” “He just wants to make sure everything goes according to Hoyle.”
“Hoyle?”
“Never mind, Mr. President.”
“Mr. President, this is Armstrong. When we get to Hanoi, the secret way, and I need to ask you about that before you get off the phone, are we to make a deal with Ho Chi Minh, kill him, get him a date with Barbonella, or what? I think that we should be absolutely, perfectly, and unmistakably clear on this aspect.”
“Couldn’t agree more, Armstrong. And I agree with what yore sayin’. Let me put it this way. You boys have the full power of attorney for the United States of America, ain’t ever been given to any jarheads, I can tell you that, and you got guns and knives. I can’t make it any clearer than that. Now get your asses up there on the twenty-seventh and get this damn war stopped.”
“But, Mr. President—”
“Gearheardt, old buddy, I trusted you on this boy. What’s his problem?”
“No problem, Mr. Larry Bob. Jack and I are practically on our way.”
Gearheardt was grabbing my arm and twisting with a strength I hadn’t expected.
“Look, boys, the pressure is on me on this one. You do this for me and yore careers are golden.”
“Mr. Larry Bobident, you are going to be able to count on us to help you stop the killing and bloodshed that is—”
“Oh hell, son, don’t be naive. There’ll always be killin’ and shit like that. I got to stop it now ’cause this Nixon asshole has come up with his own plan, and he’s toutin’ it all over creation like it was the greatest thing since tits on women.”
“Nixon has a plan, sir, to stop the war?”
“We had a copy of it ‘fore the ink was dry. His plan is to ‘cut and run.’ Now there’s a helluva plan. He’s hired himself this curly-headed foreigner guy to outline it in ten-dollar words, but best I can tell, if Nixon gets in he’ll just have the boys high-tail it out as fast as their elevenry-jillion-dollar-a-copy airplanes will carry ’em.
“Boys, we just got to get outta this deal as best we can. Reminds me of when I was a little feller and we had this big old ugly snake coming around stealing eggs and chickens and whatnot. Scared the piss outta my little sister. So one day my daddy said,
“‘Son, this here’s gone on long enough. You need to find that dang snake and kill it.’ Sure enough, about noon I seen that snake wiggling cross the dirt near the barn, and I commenced to hit him with a club, and then I pounded him with a rock, and finally went in the barn and got me a shovel and chopped him all to pieces. My daddy walked up as I was grindin’ parts of that snake into the dirt and looks down and says, ‘Son, about five minutes ago me and yore mama took up on the snake’s side.’
“I think folks are just getting tired of seeing these little bastards takin’ a good poundin’ no matter how ornery they might be.”
Gearheardt and I looked at each other and frowned. This didn’t sound good.
“What about the Vietnamese, sir?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The Vietnamese, sir.”
“Well what about ‘em? I ain’t too worried about the sonsabitches we’re bombin’.”
“No, sir, I mean the South Vietnamese, the ones on our side. Are we just going to abandon them to the communists?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that, son. The important thing is that Nixon ain’t in yet, and we need to fix this war. How’re you boys doin’, by the way?”
“We had a pretty bad day today, Mr. PresiLarry Bob. We lost Downing, Gaines, and—”
“Spare me the details, Gearheardt. If I had to listen to everbody that died in Veetnam, I wouldn’t get my presidentin’ chores done till midnight. If yore worried ’bout them Veetmese folks, you better get somethin’ done up in Hanoi on the twenty-seventh. Heaven help us if that lying Nixon bunch gets in here. Again, boys, you got the full faith and credit of the U.S. of A. behind you, whatever that means. Now you have yore instructions. Go get ’em.”
Gearheardt tore the tape out of the machine, dropped it in a number ten food can that he used for a wastebasket, and set fire to it. “We won’t be needing that again.”
“Except in our court-martial as evidence that we shouldn’t be shot,” I said.
“Oh shit,”
Gearheardt said, “you’re right. Well, too late now.” With his K-bar he lifted the black, curled ribbon of charred tape.
I stood up to go again and was hit at the hooch door by a charging Buzz followed by Adams and Zuder, his two main henchmen. I fell back against Gearheardt’s cot and stayed on it.
“Not so fast, Almost Captain Armstrong,” Buzz sneered. He motioned for Adams and Zuder to stand outside the tent and not let anyone else in.
There wasn’t any doubt in my mind what this was all about. Lieutenant Buzz ran the squadron lieutenants, knew all that was going on in the squadron, and was rumored to write the menus. It was significant that he had never confronted us about Barbonella. At the very least he had to have heard the rumors that Gearheardt and I were under some kind of secret orders.
“I know your plan, gents,” he said as he pulled up Gearheardt’s ’s footlocker and sat down on it. “I beat it out of your pal Flager.” He lit the short butt of a cigar and blew the smoke toward us. He the burnt wooden match expertly through the door.
“Flager wouldn’t know a plan if it bit him, Buzz,” I said, hoping that he was kidding. I had always kind of liked Flager. I was afraid of him because he was crazy, but I liked him.
“No shit?” he said finally. “And I suppose you’re not planning to hole up in a massage parlor in Bangkok with aliens either.”
“Hadn’t planned on it, Buzz.” Gearheardt, who didn’t much like Flager, was smiling.
Buzz yelled out the door of the tent. “Adams, go tell Gomez he can let Flager up out of the four-holer pit.” He turned back to us. “For some reason I believe you, gents.” He turned around again. “Zuder, go on with Adams and help him clean up Flager. Take him down to Charlie Med if he needs it.”
Buzz pulled his footlocker closer to our cot and lowered his voice.
“You know why I believe you, gents? ’Cause I got your orders here.” He reached inside his flight suit and produced a manila envelope, popped it open with his thumb, and pulled out the contents: four pages of DDs and 1196s and serial numbers, stamped at the top with a red, half-inch-high BARBONELLA.
Nam-A-Rama Page 19
