Baptism

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  McDonald read the replacements’ thoughts and answered the unasked question. “We live good in the base area, and we work hard in the field. That sort of sums up any Special Forces operation. We don’t practice suffering.” The master sergeant pointed to a cluster of buildings. “Those are yours. Your sleeping quarters are to the left… showers and latrine are in the center, and your classrooms are to the right. All training companies are separate from each other.”

  “Why do you do that, Sergeant?” Barnett asked, and Woods noticed that for the first time since he’d known him, Barnett’s voice had a touch of respect in it.

  The sergeant’s answer was given in the tone of voice that one professional would use when he talked to another. There was none of the newbee bullshit or the you’re-just-a-dumb-replacement tone to his voice. “We’ve found out that segregating our classes makes it easier on everybody.” The sergeant stopped in front of the barracks he had pointed out to the group. “Find yourself a bunk and put your gear on it. Remember the number stenciled on the ammo box above the bed and fall back out here so we can go over to the supply room and issue you some bedding.”

  Woods followed the group into the building and found an empty bed next to Barnett. He dropped his duffel bag down on the bedsprings and turned to go back outside.

  Barnett spoke to him over his right shoulder. “I’m going to like training here!”

  “Yeah, this is the best place I’ve seen so far in Vietnam!” Woods held the screen door open for Barnett. The master sergeant had lit up a cigarette while he waited for the five men to fall out.

  “How many soldiers are in each class, Sergeant?” Woods asked.

  “Sixty. We start a new class every two weeks.” McDonald took a long drag from his cigarette.

  “Are you a Recondo, Sergeant?” Barnett looked the senior sergeant directly in the eyes.

  McDonald read through Barnett instantly and took his time answering his question. “All of the cadre in the Recondo School are Recondo-trained: also Ranger, three Special Forces MOS’s, and all of them have served at least one year in combat. That includes our supply sergeant and mess sergeant.” McDonald took another long drag on his cigarette, and Woods could see the scar on McDonald’s underarm, where his sleeve was rolled up, that went from the palm of his hand up to his elbow. “What’s your name, soldier?” Barnett didn’t have a name tag sewn on his jacket.

  “Spencer Barnett, Sergeant.”

  “Well, Spencer Barnett, I think you’ll find everyone in this school to your personal liking. We don’t allow phonies to join us, our mission is too important.”

  Woods noticed that the master sergeant wasn’t intimidated by Barnett’s hostile glares.

  “Have you killed anyone?” Barnett accented the word.

  McDonald chuckled and then reached over and lightly placed his hand on Barnett’s shoulder. “A boy from South Carolina is normally raised to be a bit more tactful with his elders.”

  “How did you know I’m from South Carolina?” Barnett was genuinely surprised.

  “I’d say a bit northeast of Spartanburg…”

  “How in the hell did you know that!”

  “I trained for most of one summer up near Hogback Mountain. Your accent gave you away.” McDonald squeezed Barnett’s shoulder and let him go. “Now let’s go over and draw your basic issue for the school so you can relax and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.”

  Barnett followed the master sergeant like a puppy dog over to the supply room. Woods had to struggle in order to suppress a smile; he had never seen the hard-core Barnett so taken in by an NCO.

  Woods put his books and other material he had been issued in the ammo box attached to the wall above his bed. He sipped from the can of soda that he had bought at the NCO club. The club was open all day long for anybody to use. Woods was surprised that beer and hard liquor were sold during the day. He noticed when he had bought the soda that the NCOs who were in the club were mostly drinking beer and talking about their assignments at A-camps and projects along the Cambodian and Laotian borders. Woods looked over at Barnett’s bunk and noticed that his clothes were folded up on his cot. A shower before supper sounded good, and Woods slipped out of his dirty fatigues and wrapped an olive-drab towel around his waist for the short walk over to the shower room.

  A towel was hanging from one of the hooks. He could hear water running and stepped over to the open door to see if it was Barnett inside. The breath caught in Woods’s throat. Barnett was standing to one side of the shower head, shampooing his hair with his eyes closed. David could see the round burn marks that started at each of Barnett’s knees on the inside of his thighs and went up to his crotch. They were spaced about two inches apart. The scars were old ones and had turned white with age. Woods couldn’t help but notice that Barnett wasn’t circumcised, and one of the quarter-sized, circular white scars could be seen covering the top of his foreskin. Barnett opened his eyes just as Woods turned to leave.

  “Hey! A shower’s a good idea!” Woods tried acting like he hadn’t seen anything. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Sure… lots of room in here.” Barnett turned his back on Woods. “These are real showers, with all of the water you want.”

  “Special Forces people know how to do things right.” Woods stepped under a shower head and turned it on. He let the water hit his face and thought about what could have made those horrible scars on Barnett. When Woods stepped to the side of the shower to soap down, he saw that Barnett was gone.

  When Woods had finished getting dressed, he walked alone over to the mess hall. There was a line. He could see Brown and Kirkpatrick in the line, and Masters about three men behind them, but Barnett wasn’t there. Woods took his time eating the excellent casserole and went back up to see if he could have seconds; instead of the cook being pissed at him, Woods noticed that the man was pleased over the request for more. The second helping took longer to eat, and Woods thought about the shower incident. The scars were too uniform to have been an accident.

  Barnett wasn’t back at the barracks when Woods returned, and he started getting worried about him. Master Sergeant McDonald had told the group that there was going to be a movie set up behind the NCO club as soon as it got dark, and Woods decided on catching it before he went to bed, knowing that the next day a lot of hard training would begin.

  Barnett sat in the corner of the NCO club sipping from a glass of straight bourbon. The corner was the darkest place that he could find. He was brooding. He had gone through basic training and AIT without having anyone see him in the showers. It had been very difficult, but he had done it. The doctor who had examined him at his induction physical had believed his story about a farm accident with a raking machine. The doctor was ready to believe anything. It was the long wait out in the sun that afternoon that had forced him to act so stupidly! When he saw the showers, he just couldn’t wait until late at night when everyone else was asleep. He had weakened and tried showering in the daylight when, of all people, David Woods had walked in on him!

  Woods went over to the dimly lit bar and ordered another Shasta orange soda; he was beginning to think that he was addicted to the great-tasting drink. Barnett saw Woods first, drained his glass so he could leave, and then thought better of it. He was going to have to spend the next three weeks with Woods, and then maybe they would draw different assignments and he would be rid of him. He decided to gut it out.

  “Mind if I join you?” Woods pointed to the chair across from Barnett.

  Spencer shrugged his shoulders. “I was about ready to leave, anyway. Help yourself.”

  Woods took the seat and stretched out his legs sideways, away from the table. “I think that I should have gone into Special Forces.”

  Barnett didn’t comment.

  Woods continued talking. “They’re probably the best soldiers we’ve got in Vietnam. Of course, I don’t have enough rank. I think you have to be a buck sergeant.”

  “My stepfather did it,” Spencer said, ignor
ing what Woods was saying and speaking in a low voice. “They’re burns from his cigar. When I was a little shit, I wet the bed. He thought that if he burned me down there, I would stop wetting the bed.”

  Woods acted like he hadn’t heard a word and talked right through the confession. “Do you think if I made buck sergeant, they’d let me join Special Forces?” Woods stood up. “What are you drinking… bourbon?”

  Spencer nodded.

  David went back to the bar and ordered three double bourbons and poured all of the drinks into one glass before returning to the table where Barnett sat alone.

  “I don’t know what went wrong in my life. I’m middle-class, smart… well a little smart.” Woods dropped back down in his chair. “But look at you… a dumbass Southerner and you end up a slightly better soldier than I am. I mean, five points higher on the rifle range makes you an expert!”

  Barnett smiled.

  “Mind if I join you guys?”

  Woods turned in his seat and saw Master Sergeant McDonald standing there. “Sure, Sergeant!”

  McDonald took an empty chair and sat down. He didn’t mince his words. “You seem to be drinking a lot, Barnett. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

  Barnett pushed the full glass of bourbon away from him. “I’ve already decided to change what I’m drinking… Shasta orange sounds good!”

  Woods smiled.

  For the rest of the night, the conversation around the table was Recondo tactics. McDonald enjoyed talking to the pair of young soldiers as much as they enjoyed listening to the veterans. Periodically throughout the evening, other sergeants who were cadre at the school, and some NCOs who were just visiting from the A-camps, would join them and talk for a while about the war and the different tactics they had used to get out of trouble, or new techniques the North Vietnamese were using in the jungles. Woods and Barnett were learning more about the war just listening at the table than they would have by serving six months in the field with a line unit.

  Woods waited until there was a break in the conversation and they were alone with McDonald before he asked a question that had been bothering him all day. “Sergeant McDonald, why are the NCOs allowed to come in here during the day and drink?”

  McDonald smiled. “None of the men you see in here during the day are working; in fact, most of them are from the A-camps along the borders and from the Greek Projects. The camps send back a couple of their men every so often for a few days off, and they visit here and at the main Nha Trang clubs. If you noticed, a lot of information is passed between SF units over a table in the bar, and no one gets drunk.”

  Woods nodded his head in agreement; he hadn’t seen anyone drunk in the club.

  “Well, it’s going to be a long day tomorrow, and I need some sleep.” McDonald got up to leave the table.

  “Thanks.” Barnett smiled.

  “For what?” The master sergeant frowned.

  “For talking to us.” Barnett blushed. He was a little embarrassed.

  McDonald shook his head from side to side. “That’s my job. And it doesn’t end at five o’clock.”

  The bright perimeter lights threw off enough light to see by on the sidewalks. McDonald decided on checking the training company barracks one last time before turning in himself. He entered through the back doors and walked down the aisle. Most of the men were already sleeping; the luxury of hot showers and soft cots were too good to miss. He saw Barnett and Woods slip in the front door and nodded to them. He waited until he was outside before shaking his head in total wonder; who would be dumb enough to send five raw replacements directly to a Recondo School? The message that the school had received earlier in the day that five new arrivals in-country would be assigned to the school from the 1st Cavalry Division was given to him by the school commandant, and he was ordered to personally insure that they were taken care of during the whole three weeks. McDonald was a professional soldier and was going to give it his very best shot. He lit up a cigarette and stood next to the barracks and smoked it while he thought. If the other three were as sharp as Barnett and Woods were, then his job would be easy. He shook his head again. Barnett couldn’t be much over seventeen years old.

  McDonald grumbled under his breath. “This fucking war!” He didn’t mind serving; that was his job, but sending kids over was almost criminal.

  The latrine lights were burning, and McDonald stopped under the glow from one of them and looked at his watch; it was a little after ten. He opened the door and went over to the nearest booth. The door was still a little sticky from the fresh coat of light green paint. The whole latrine smelled of paint thinner. He latched the door and took a seat on the commode. A message had been written in bold letters on the door at eye level: I KILL HONKIES!

  McDonald knew that a detail had just finished painting the latrine that afternoon. The person who wrote the message had to be one of the men assigned to the new company, and all of them had just arrived the day before and during that afternoon. He left the latrine and walked over to the supply room. A table of NCOs were playing poker in the back room with the supply sergeant. McDonald waved but didn’t join them. He went over to the small card file in which the troops had recorded their bedding issue and removed all of the new three-by-five cards where each man had printed out what he had drawn from the supply room. McDonald returned to the booth in the latrine and matched each bedding card against the message on the door. He eliminated all but two of the cards. One was a perfect match, and another a very close one.

  The new trainees were woken up an hour before daylight and given time to shower and eat breakfast before the first formation. Master Sergeant McDonald was waiting for the men to fall out. He was getting more angry with each passing hour as he thought about the message on the latrine door. He was hoping that it was just a joke or some scare tactic of some weird sort. The bedding cards didn’t reflect races, so he had to wait and see who the soldiers were during the formation.

  Barnett saw McDonald standing near the barracks and waved a friendly greeting to the senior sergeant, who responded with a smile and a curt nod of his head. The men were falling out of the barracks wearing the normal-issue jungle tiger-striped fatigues the Special Forces men wore in the field, with matching hats in the same black, green, gray, and white pattern. There were no name tags or markings of any kind on the jackets. The whole idea was to have the men think like a new team, rather than have them identify with their units and form small cliques.

  McDonald waited until all of the men were standing in ranks before he approached the duty NCO and handed him a note with the two names on it. He whispered to the sergeant that he wanted both of the men to report to his office immediately and left the formation.

  The duty sergeant looked at the note and called out the two names. “Fillmore! James! Report to the orderly room and Master Sergeant McDonald!”

  The two men fell out of the formation and walked the short distance to the orderly room for the Recondo School. McDonald watched through his screened window. One of the men was black and the other was white.

  “Fillmore?”

  “Yes, Sergeant!”

  “Come in here.” McDonald held his door open and beckoned for the young soldier to enter.

  Fillmore took a seat and twisted his head around so that he could see the senior NCO. “Is something wrong, Sergeant?”

  “Nothing serious. I just want to ask you a couple of questions.” McDonald stared directly into the young soldier’s eyes. “Where are you from back in the States?”

  “Mississippi, Sergeant.”

  “Billy-Bob? Is that what you go by?”

  “Yes, Sergeant… all my life.”

  “Do you hate blacks, Billy-Bob?” McDonald kept watching the soldier for a reaction. The young man blinked and pouted his lips slightly before answering the senior NCO.

  “Not ’specially. Do you have someone in particular I should hate?”

  “No… just in general.”

  “I might be from Mississipp
i, but that don’t mean I have-ta hate anybody in general.”

  McDonald noticed a gold Christian cross hanging around the soldier’s neck. “You a Baptist?”

  Fillmore frowned over the question. “Pentecostal.”

  “You can return back to your class.” McDonald lit up a cigarette. “They should still be in formation. Send in James.”

  The door opened, and Specialist Fourth Class Mohammed James stepped into the sergeant’s office. He was wearing a knit black, red, and green skullcap on his head.

  “Take a seat, Specialist.” McDonald pointed at the chair. James hesitated just long enough to let the sergeant know that he sat down when he wanted to and not when told. “Been in Vietnam long?”

  James glared at the sergeant before answering. “Fifteen months!”

  “Second tour or a six-month extension?”

  “Second tour!”

  “Did you go home on leave?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Where’s home?”

  James licked his upper lip and didn’t answer.

  “I’ve got a problem, Specialist James.” McDonald made his fingers into a tent on the desk in front of him and pressed his left upper arm against the cool steel of the pistol he carried in a shoulder holster under his loose-fitting fatigue jacket. “It seems that someone wrote a message on one of our latrine doors that I don’t particularly like.” McDonald could see James’s eyes hood and a slight tightening of the muscles in his jaws. The senior sergeant had been a part of too many interrogations of enemy prisoners not to have noticed the tension in the black soldier sitting across from him. “Do you know anything about it?”

  There was a very long pause before James looked at McDonald. A glare of pure hate was released before the words. “Naw… I don’t know shit!”

  McDonald smiled and leaned forward in his chair. “Do you kill honkies?”