The Berets

by W. E. B Griffin

  The Cessna L-19s and De Havilland of Canada L-20s made their takeoffs without trouble. The two-place L-19 had been designed especially for Army Aviation, which meant it could take off and land from short dirt strips and roads at the front. The L-20 “Beaver” had been designed for civilian use in the wilds (the “bush”) of Canada and Alaska. They became airborne somewhere between forty and fifty miles an hour. Since the Card was making twenty-five knots into a ten-mile-per-hour wind, in effect the L-19s and Beavers were almost at takeoff velocity when they were sitting on the deck with their brakes locked off and their engines not running.

  The Beaver and L-19 pilots had been instructed to keep their wheels on the deck until their airspeed indicators indicated seventy miles an hour. They all took off without incident and disappeared to the West Southwest.

  When the decks were cleared, the Card made a slow, ten-minute, 360-degree turn. While it was turning, the Mohawks were brought up from the hangar deck on the elevator and pushed and trundled to the aft end of the landing deck. There were seven of them.

  The takeoff of the first Mohawk from the Card would be the first takeoff ever of a Mohawk from an aircraft carrier. There was absolutely no question in the minds of anyone connected with Grumman (there were two Grumman technical representatives—“tech reps”—aboard, one of whom was a retired naval aviator) that it should pose absolutely no problem. They had a good deal of experience in taking aircraft off from the decks of aircraft carriers, and the flight envelope of the Mohawk (how quickly it could become airborne) was better than the envelope of other Grumman aircraft, which routinely made hundreds of takeoffs every day from aircraft carriers around the world.

  The theory that the Mohawks were capable of taking off from the Card had been tested at length at Fort Rucker and Bethpage, Long Island. It had been proved possible to get a Mohawk easily into the air from a runway exactly as long as the Card’s deck. Parker had made three such takeoffs himself.

  It therefore logically followed that if the Card was headed at twenty-five knots into the wind, bringing the aircraft to a relative airspeed of thirty-odd knots before the brakes were released, it should be able to take off with no problem at all.

  Theory was fine. But Phil Parker was worried—and about several things. He was the senior Mohawk pilot present, in effect the commanding officer. As such, he had wondered, what was his duty? To make the first takeoff himself, following the infantry school’s “Follow me!” creed? Would that be inspiring his men to follow his example? Or would it inspire them to whisper that Phil (or “the coon”) fixed it so that he would be the first man ever to take a Mohawk off an aircraft carrier?

  Or should he send the best-qualified pilot up first? The best-qualified pilot was by definition the pilot with the most Mohawk time. The best-qualified pilot aboard had seven hours more Mohawk time than Parker himself did. That hardly made him that much better qualified.

  If he himself went into the drink, the next best-qualified pilot was also the next senior in rank, and would therefore have the responsibility to decide whether to abort further takeoffs and take the Mohawks into Saigon on the Card, or to try it again.

  Parker suspected that since taking the planes into Saigon would mean that they would have to take half their wings off (a hell of a job), so they could be trucked from the dock to Tan Son Nhut Airfield through Saigon, his successor would opt to try another takeoff. Which would likely put two Mohawks in the drink.

  In the end, he had decided that he would make the first takeoff and then circle the Card until the other Mohawks had taken off. He was not at all surprised that the most experienced Mohawk pilot was miffed at the decision.

  “Pilots, man your aircraft! Pilots, man your aircraft!” the loudspeaking system boomed.

  With Parker’s exception, all the pilots were sitting in their aircraft, not from any burning ambition to rush into the air, but because that was more comfortable than standing around on the deck.

  “Launch helicopters!” the loudspeaker boomed. “Launch helicopters!”

  Two H-34s had been kept behind, so they would be able to do whatever they could if a Mohawk went into the drink. If all the Mohawks made it safely into the air, they would land and pick up the army personnel who had been needed to get the Mohawks running and into the air.

  Parker climbed the little ladder and got in the pilot’s seat, strapped himself in, and put on his helmet. He turned on the Master switch and watched as the instruments and the gyros came to life.

  Then he looked down at the deck and made a circular motion with his index finger: “Wind it up!”

  When he had closed the canopy, it was hot and muggy inside the Plexiglas, and he felt a drop of sweat roll down his back. He thought that it was probably going to be this way from now on in Vietnam—hot and steamy.

  When all the instrument needles were in the green, he gave a thumbs-up signal to the Grumman tech rep. The retired naval aviator was functioning as launch officer. He had equipped himself with an old-fashioned cloth pilot’s helmet, which Parker thought made him look like Amelia Earhart, and a pair of handheld flag signaling devices he called “paddles.”

  Faintly, over the whistle of the turboprops and the higher pitched whistle of the stubby propeller blade tips themselves, he heard the command “Launch aircraft!”

  He checked the position of the flaps, reset the brakes, and then ran the engines up. He gave another thumbs-up signal to the Grumman tech rep, who then, enthusiastically, even violently, waved his paddles.

  Parker flipped the brake switch off and felt himself being pushed back against the seat by the forces of acceleration. He was off the deck long before he ran out of it, and as the flaps and wheels came up the Mohawk quickly picked up speed and altitude. He began a slow, climbing turn around the Card.

  He saw the second Mohawk take off. When he was sure that it was safe to distract the pilot, he pushed the Radio Trans button on the stick.

  “Form up on me,” he said.

  “Gotcha,” the pilot of the second Mohawk said, and then, as the third Mohawk was taking off, came back on the air.

  “Hey, there it is,” he said.

  From this altitude they could make out the land mass of Asia. Specifically Vung Tau, Parker decided, also known as Cap St. Jacques.

  One after the other the rest of the Mohawks took off without incident and climbed out and formed a V behind him.

  He switched his radio frequency.

  The sense of romance, of leading a flight of aircraft onto the Asian land mass, into the mysterious Orient, was shattered almost immediately.

  “Tan Son Nhut Approach Control, Air France 404.”

  “Go ahead, Air France 404.”

  “Estimate Tan Son Nhut in thirty minutes. Have you got me on radar?”

  “I have you, Air France 404, at two five thousand, heading 270, indicating 350 knots, distance 150 miles.”

  “Air France 404 requests landing instructions.”

  “Air France, maintain your present heading. Descend to five thousand. Radar indicates a Northwest Orient DC-8 inbound twenty miles to your right and several unidentified small aircraft flying in a circle at five thousand ten miles off Cap St. Jacques. Report passing through one zero thousand.”

  “Ah, Roger, Tan Son Nhut,” Air France said.

  We are not, Parker thought, the forces of virtue and right flying in like Jimmy Cagney in Devil Dogs of the Air to the sounds of trumpets and drums to defeat the forces of evil and save the world for democracy, but “several unidentified small aircraft flying in a circle.”

  (Two)

  The Hotel Caravelle

  (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, BOQ #2)

  Saigon, Republic of Vietnam

  1705 Hours, 10 January 1962

  Major Philip S. Parker IV felt tired, hot, and dirty when he finally got to his room. He quickly determined his priorities: (a) a bath; (b) a cold beer; and (c) several more of (b).

  A little procession of vehicles had been on hand to
meet the seven Mohawks from the Card when they landed at Tan Son Nhut Airfield. There was a colonel, the MAC-V aviation officer, who’d come more for personal curiosity and courtesy than anything else. The Mohawks of the Twenty-third Special Warfare Aviation Detachment didn’t belong to him but to the Fifth Special Forces Group, whose colonel was also on hand. And there was a neat young man in a seersucker suit and with a Harvard nasal twang who said he was from “the Embassy.”

  He sounded, Phil Parker thought, the way Craig Lowell had sounded when he had first met Second Lieutenant Lowell at Student Officer Company, the armored school, years before. Lowell sounded that way sometimes even today, especially after he and Toni Parker (who also sometimes sounded that way) had had enough very dry martinis to lessen their resolve not to talk like that in front of the peasants.

  Parker did not like the young man from “the Embassy” but was able to resist the urge to clench his jaws and give his well-known and skilled imitation of his wife and his buddy in their cups. The young man from “the Embassy” was obviously from the CIA, and in his last briefing before going to California to board the Card, Parker had been told that the Twenty-third Special Warfare Aviation Detachment would be under the “operational guidance” of the CIA.

  The primary reason Parker did not like the young man from the Embassy was that in a failed attempt to conceal his surprise and disappointment that the commanding officer of the Twenty-third Special Warfare Aviation Detachment was a big black buck nigger, he did everything short of saying some of his best friends were Negroes. It had been even more difficult to resist the temptation to do his famous impersonation of the southern darkie cotton-picker—foot-shuffling, moronic grin, the works—than to resist the temptation to clench his jaws while speaking.

  But he had behaved himself. He had left the young man from the Embassy with the feeling that things were not quite as bad as he had thought they were when he had looked up at the Mohawk cockpit and saw that black face under the helmet.

  The Special Forces colonel and the young man from the Embassy had somehow acquired the notion that the trip from the States on the Card and the twenty-minute flight had pushed the Mohawk pilots to the brink of exhaustion. Whatever else he might be, Phil Parker was a soldier, and smart soldiers never protest when their superiors have come to the conclusion that their duties have exhausted them and that they require several days of rest and recuperation.

  When the Special Forces colonel told Parker to “get your people settled in the hotel, get your feet on the ground, maybe take a little look around Saigon, and then come to see me sometime Monday morning,” Major Parker replied, “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Parker sent the pilots into the hotel. He then took the bus with his enlisted men to the Special Forces compound to make sure they would have what they needed (and to make the point to the Special Forces first sergeant that he was concerned with their welfare, and that he had not just given a draft of coolies). And then he went on to the Hotel Caravelle.

  The hotel was French Colonial. It reminded Parker of a hotel he and Toni had stayed in on leave in Morocco. That was a mixed blessing, he thought. The food would probably be very good, and the plumbing would probably not work very well.

  He stripped to his shorts and then unpacked his luggage while he ran the water in the tub (the shower was a French “douche,” a shower head on a flexible pipe), hoping that it would cool below tepid. It did not. When he came out of the shower, he felt cleaner but no cooler.

  Civilian clothing was not only permitted but encouraged, the Special Forces colonel had told him; but he had not said, nor had Parker asked, what the civilian dress code in the hotel was. Could he get by in a polo shirt? Or, as a field-grade officer and gentleman, was he expected to wear at least a shirt and tie if not a jacket?

  He had just about decided on the polo shirt when there came a knock on the door. The question was answered. His caller was a commissioned officer of the United States Army. He was attired in yellow Bermuda shorts, an open-collared sport shirt of many colors, and a straw beachcomber’s hat.

  “Bienvenue à Saigon, mon major,” Lieutenant Tom Ellis said, thrusting a bottle of beer at him. “Voici une—or is it un?—bier.”

  “Where the hell did you learn to speak French?” Parker asked. “What the hell are you doing in Saigon?”

  He took the beer and drank from the neck.

  “I am in Saigon as a message center runner,” Ellis said. “I even have one for you.”

  He handed Parker an eight-by-ten-inch envelope. It bore the printed return address “Station Hospital, Fort Bragg, N.C.” and was addressed to him, somewhat vaguely: “Major P. S. Parker IV, Vietnam.” It was obviously from Toni, and he tore it open eagerly.

  It was a copy of the New England Journal of Medicine. The index was on the cover, and one of the articles had a stamped red arrow by it.

  “Observed Resistance of Certain Strains of Oriental Gonococci and Spirochetes to Penicillium-Based Treatment” by Thomas P. Yancey, M.D., Chief of Venereal Disease Service, Massachusetts General Hospital, could be found starting on page thirty-two.

  Parker chuckled and handed it to Ellis.

  “Do you think the doc’s trying to tell you something, Major?” Ellis asked.

  “This isn’t the only reason you came to Vietnam, to give me this?”

  “Not the only one,” Ellis said. “Put some clothes on, and we’ll go to ‘le cocktail’ and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “‘Le cocktail’?”

  “That’s French for happy hour,” Ellis said. “And they really do it right here.”

  “I’m not sure I want to be seen in public with you, Lieutenant, dressed that way.”

  “You don’t like this? I bought it in Hawaii on the way over.”

  “In a place, no doubt, with a ‘Tourists Welcome!’ sign over the door?”

  “At the airport,” Ellis said. “I wasn’t about to run around Hawaii with a briefcase chained to my wrist. Or take a chance on missing the plane.”

  “You’re an officer courier? How did that happen?”

  “I asked the general to send me to Vietnam,” Ellis said. “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but as he pointed out, it’s close.”

  Parker chuckled as he pulled the polo shirt over his head. He put his legs in a pair of chino trousers and then started to tuck the polo shirt in.

  “If you do that, where are you going to carry your gun?” Ellis asked. The question surprised Parker and his surprise showed on his face. Ellis turned around and raised his shirt of many colors. He had a Colt .45 automatic pistol in the small of his back.

  “We’re supposed to go around armed?” Parker asked.

  “We’re supposed not to,” Ellis said. “And I suppose if you looked long enough you could find one or two dummies who aren’t.”

  “Are you playing cops and robbers, Ellis?” Parker asked.

  “No,” Ellis said simply, “I’m not.”

  “The only thing I’ve got with me is an old Colt revolver,” he said.

  “Well, take that, then, until you can get something better,” Ellis said. “I was shopping before. There’s a place selling aluminum-framed Smith & Wesson .38 Specials they stole from the air force. They want a hundred bucks for one.”

  “Where’d you get the .45?”

  “At Bragg,” Ellis said. “Issued.”

  “I’m not sure if you’re pulling my leg or not,” Parker said.

  “I’m not,” Ellis said.

  “Shit!” Parker said and went to his attaché case, unlocked it, and took out a large revolver wrapped in an oiled rag.

  “Where the hell did you get that thing?” Ellis asked.

  “My grandfather carried it in the First World War,” Parker said. “It’s a 1917 Colt .45 ACP.”

  “And it still works?”

  “It works fine, thank you, Lieutenant,” Parker said. He sucked in his belly and slipped the old revolver under his waistband. This was not going to be a lon
g-term solution to the problem. He was either going to have to get a shoulder holster or another pistol.

  “Le Cocktail” was as nice as Ellis had suggested. There were white-jacketed waiters at your elbow offering hors d’oeuvres free and drinks at ridiculously low prices. There was a man playing a grand piano, and the room was full of attractive Vietnamese women. Some of them, Parker decided, were half white, which meant half French. Their skirts were slit on the side. He found them very attractive. He wondered how soon his resolve to be absolutely faithful to Toni would falter.

  Over Japanese Asahi beer, Ellis told him that he had been bored with being the general’s aide….

  “Bullshit,” Parker said. “You weren’t the aide long enough to get bored.”

  “Okay. For personal reasons…”

  “Eaglebury’s sister?”

  “What makes you ask that?” Ellis asked.

  “You didn’t knock her up?” Parker asked.

  “Jesus Christ!” Ellis flared.

  “Sorry,” Parker said, deducing correctly that Ellis’s personal reasons were indeed Dianne Eaglebury and that he had in fact been in her pants. It was Parker’s belief that never is a woman’s virtue more strongly defended than by someone who has talked her out of it and is contemplating matrimony with the lady in question.

  “She’s not that kind of a girl,” Ellis said, confirming Parker’s analysis.

  “Right,” Parker said.

  “Anyway, I asked to get transferred to Vietnam,” Ellis said. “Most of my Cuba team is here.”

  “And the general said…?” Parker asked.

  “That luck was with me,” Ellis chuckled. “He just happened to have a requirement for an officer courier.”

  “What did you bring with you?”

  “Some stuff for First Group,” Ellis said. “At least, that’s where I delivered it.”

  “And when are you going back?” Parker asked.

  “The general said I was to check with you before I went home, to see what you needed.”

  “Can’t think of a thing,” Parker said.

  “Major, you just got here,” Ellis said. “Why don’t you think about it before you say that?”