Don't Cry For the Brave
Page 3
“You OK?” I reached over and put my other hand on her shoulder.
The touching seemed comforting and natural to us both.
“No, I’m not OK. I’m lonely and I’m scared, Bob.”
“Lonely I understand. Like in a crowd on the subway. But scared?”
The tears flowed. She picked up the table napkin and sniffed into it, ignoring the food the waiter had placed silently before us.
“Lucky we’re in a decent restaurant, I mean one with real linen,” she said, looking at the soiled napkin, her eyes sparkling with the tears.
“Scared, Gail?”
“Scared for you, for all those boys at the club, well maybe not all of them. Some are never going to smell gun smoke except on the practice range.”
“Sure.” My own subterranean fears stirred.
“I see it every day in theatre, Bob, and I work in a well-equipped hospital, not a field hospital, not a MASH unit. It’s murder and mayhem, senseless madness.”
I nodded assent, picked up my beer and drained what was left, feeling the sweat break out under my arms. She hadn’t touched her beer, or the food.
“Do you want to go, Gail?”
“Yes… I’m sorry, because this is really lovely and I’d like to come here again sometime, with you, but I’d like to go now… ”
“Back to quarters?”
“No. I’d like to talk… if you don’t mind.”
“Sure,” I said, wondering what that meant precisely, because talking in the night streets of Saigon wasn’t something you could do with any ease.
I looked at the tab and threw some bills on the table, only slightly regretful about the prawns, which looked appetising against the white rice and salad, but I had no feeling that I was being messed about by a trivial woman. I thought that Gail was wound up nearly to breaking point. Chance had put me in the right place at the right time.
When we were out in the hot darkness of the street I turned her towards me, regardless of the touts and pimps who lurked in the dark, watching. I buried my face in her fragrant neck and she pulled my body toward her tightly, melting into me with soft differences of pressure in different places. I could visualise all her hollows and curves.
“Maybe we can find somewhere to sit,” I said, which was wishful thinking.
“There’s military police, drunks, beggars everywhere, Bob.”
“I have nowhere. My quarters are crawling. The only place I can suggest is we find a small, quiet hotel.” I thought there wasn’t a chance she would ever agree to this.
She snuggled closer to me and startled me again. “That’s it. Take me somewhere where we can be alone.”
She was quiet in the dirty Renault cab, with its slashed seats and rattling motor. I gave the address of a clean little hotel on Vo Thi Sau Street where I took local girls occasionally. Gail never said, as a woman might, that I seemed to know the right place.
I had found that in Saigon there was a fringe of mainly Vietnamese women who were not whores but were not integrated with their families; they were shop and bar girls, clerks, telephonists, beauticians, care workers; girls, or more often women in their twenties and thirties, who had little hope of a conventional Vietnamese marriage. They wanted independent lives rather than be buried in spinsterhood within the family home. Many of them probably had the dream of marrying a US serviceman; some really believed they might and a few of them would. It was these women that I had toyed with after I had tasted and been dissatisfied with the mechanical sex of the brothels; they could be pleasant companions in grim times.
Checking in, in the shadowy lobby of the My Tho Hotel, was accomplished with a few discreet words to the old man behind the desk and the almost invisible passing of greenbacks. We mounted the stairs to the third floor and I shut and locked the door.
“Leave the lights off, Bob.”
The room was illuminated by neon lights from across the street which flickered through the tattered net curtain, blue, red and green.
We clung together, standing in the tinted darkness, which smelt of scented disinfectant.
4
As we sat naked on the bed in the My Tho Hotel at dawn we paid little attention to the need to get a shower and go to our duties, or to the tiny room we were in, with its stained wallpaper and bedraggled curtains. We didn’t bother to look through the grimy windowpanes at the crumbling shops and tenements across the street, or feel the thin, damp towels, or smell the sickly detergent odour.
I reflected on the speed and unpredictability of the events of the few hours after our meeting. For me, every feeling was sharpened; adrenalin was surging under a potential sentence of what might be maiming or death; for her, the agony of witnessing agony.
“Hi, pal,” I said, placing my arm around her shoulders and squeezing her gently.
“Me too,” she said.
“I mean, really… ” My voice croaked.
“I know you do. I’m the same way. I mean it.”
Of course she didn’t know me any more than I knew her. My cock surged, but I resisted the impulse to push her back on the mattress. Gail had moved a part of the past into the present, a past we shared in a limited way; some common acquaintances, a few recognised local personalities, walks in the same parks, watching baseball from the same stands, shopping in the same stores, seeing movies in the same theatres, sharing our streets and skies. I was part of her little piece of America, but if you examined our viewpoints more closely I calculated that we might see things from different sides of the street; I wasn’t sure about that.
When I thought how this would have played out in Saratoga Springs if there was no war and I met her at this time, I realised that it wouldn’t and couldn’t. I wasn’t a good match for her. We could meet at a class reunion, share a joke about school; we could like the look of each other sexually, but I wouldn’t ask her for a date, and she wouldn’t expect it. She mightn’t think too much of the fact that I was a kid from Overton, but she would know that her father would, and her stepmother and her brother. Her family would be likely to think that Gail deserved a beau with a bit of class; and she, for her part, would have the choice of some attractive and talented men with bucks in the bank. On my side, there would be the almost subconscious impulse that would steer me away into relationships where I felt easier.
Despite the suddenness of our coming together, I sensed that Gail was a discriminating woman and I was flattered by her attention. She was no virgin but the purity of her views, what little I knew of them, seemed to reflect a purity of heart. At first I had thought, absurdly, that she had reached out to me because I really was her secret teenage love; that she had fallen in love with me in high school and been too shy to give any sign. It was a wonderfully romantic illusion which excited me – and took only hours to fade.
What Gail had said very simply when we attempted to dine at Vu Pham’s was true. She was loose in a herd of males who wanted to possess her body for sexual reasons alone, and who had neither the time, nor the concentration to deepen the relationship beyond sex. She had spoken of a special friend, a flyer, killed in action more than a year ago. My sudden appearance in the chaos was the incarnation in a person of the home and stability she yearned for, and in her weakness she was clinging to me. And of course, in my weakness, in my increasingly craven fear, I was suddenly clinging to her.
The possibilities and impossibilities didn’t grate on me as I considered them. It was 1967. We had met in Saigon. We were immediately and explosively lovers. We would see each other every day we were free as the clock counted down to my departure for Hoi An. We would surf together on a great roller that had to break; it would be ecstasy; it would be pain.
Gail astounded me again before we left the room that morning. “Bob, would you buy me a little ring? Nothing much. I don’t want to put you to expense.”
She looked at me with completely innocent candour. I saw no trace of guile.
“Protection?”
“Yes.”
5
After the introspection of enclosure in the city of Saigon, I was overcome as I looked up at the vast yellow sky, the flimsy buildings of the camp, and the distant hills like sleeping reptiles. One of my companions joked as we jumped from the tray of the truck and hit the red dust, “It’s getting closer.” And it was; the dragon of war.
We rookies were met by the Adjutant, Peter Weston, clipped in his greetings and trim in his figure. We hoisted our kitbags and followed him to our temporary quarters: two-person cubicles with bunk beds and adjoining showers. Weston allowed us no time. He shepherded us back to HQ to meet the commanding officer, muttering rules and timetables which I hardly heard.
Lieutenant Colonel Vaughan, the CO, was a thin, spider-like man with black hairs on the back of his hands, and a wall eye which meant that you couldn’t be sure where he was looking. Vaughan shook hands with each of us and added a personal word of welcome. He got confused between Farnley for A Company, and Freeman for B Company. I was destined for C Company, and to me Vaughan confirmed his study of the paperwork by saying, “You’ll find a few buddies from New York State here, Bob.”
Later in the mess, Vaughan introduced our company commanders, and the rest of the complement of officers. I didn’t recognise the man who lunged out of the crowd around the bar to claim me. He was the track hero and distinguished alumnus of Saratoga High. Jim Blake was intense. He had lost the smooth curves of flesh on his cheeks that I remembered from school, that suggestion of a confident and untroubled upbringing.
I already had a mental picture of Blake from Gail’s comments about him. She described him as warm-natured and withdrawn. I already knew he was clever academically and of course a distinguished sportsman. Gail had said that their childhood was tranquil, despite the departure of their mother with another man. She said her brother had scarcely spoken to his mother since then. He was fourteen at the time and he never liked the stepmother he was presented with a few years later. Blake had a lot of girlfriends, but Gail thought she was the woman in his life, which she accepted in a motherly way; they were friends and confidants.
Blake immediately took me aside and said that any person close to Gail was OK with him. Gail had written to him saying she was engaged, a surprising plan assembled by us overnight at the My Tho Hotel and unhesitatingly confirmed in the following weeks, and Blake treated this as though it was entirely natural. I anticipated that he had looked at my personal file, knew who my parents were, where I lived, my graduate qualifications, my ROTC service. There was not much in the record to concern or disappoint, and not much to please if you thought your sister was a princess. Not surprisingly, he had no memory of me from high school, which he frankly admitted.
Blake eyed me critically, but I guessed that I had passed the preliminary inspection. I was uncomfortable at having this special connection with a superior officer. In future I would be under surveillance to a degree.
In appearance Blake was unlike his gentle sister. Perhaps the only physical quality they shared was the blue-purple eye colouring. He was over six feet tall with a powerful physique from his hundred metre days. The strength of his shoulders and triangular back was not obscured by his uniform. He had a square head of short, clipped fair hair, a prominent jaw and deep eye sockets. His expression was good humoured but I had the feeling that this covered the essential hardness one would expect of a seasoned infantry captain.
“Going to get hitched, huh?” Blake said, when the beers and whiskey chasers had been set up on the bar. He spoke in a detached way as though this was a far distant event, which it probably was.
“When I’m out. After VV Day.”
“The Springs?”
“Maybe. Gail would like that.”
“What’ll you do?”
“I’m thinking of teaching.”
“Teaching high school?”
There was a touch of incredulity in his voice at first, but I thought that was only the gut reaction of a man who had set his sights very high. It was obvious that the cataclysm we were in was changing the shape of our thinking. The old perspectives, seen from Saratoga Springs, were blurred. All that really mattered was that his sister had a decent, reliable guy.
After dinner a group including Blake played cards, and although I would have liked to go to bed, I felt obliged to make my exit with Blake. We talked of baseball, football, basketball, and the pleasures of Saigon. Not a word about the war. Most of us were drunk.
When the poker game was over, and it was past twelve, Blake rallied the mess to a game of forfeits. If you didn’t drink your beer down continuously, you had to replenish everybody else, and finish yours. So the game progressed from person to person to the last man standing. It was the kind of contest I would never have entered willingly, but I felt constrained to follow Blake and he encouraged me.
Weston came into the bar occasionally and watched from the shadows, but made no move to break up the party. Colonel Vaughan had retired long before.
The officers played the game shouting, joking raucously, slopping drink on the floor, and falling over each other, seeing those with weaker heads go down on their knees and crawl away. Blake seemed to be half a foot taller than anybody else, urging us on. I remembered him standing over me triumphantly as I subsided helplessly in a heap under the table and passed out amid guffaws of laughter.
*
A month after my arrival at Camp Emerson, Gail wrote that she would be visiting the Hoi An field hospital with the Surgeon General’s inspection team and we might get a chance to meet briefly. With Peter Weston’s help I called the General Military Hospital in Saigon and spoke to Gail.
“I’ll be on duty all the time, Bob, but according to the schedule we’ll be lunching at the hospital, and one and a half hours has been allocated. I’ll see you then.”
“I’ll sort out my end,” I said. I would be working with my platoon and therefore would be my own boss for a few hours.
On the day, I commandeered a Jeep and drove to the hospital. I parked and strolled around the wide verandah of the building. I saw a figure standing by the entrance watching me.
“Got a painful injury, Lieutenant?” Blake said, smiling, but not appearing to be pleased.
“I arranged to meet Gail.”
“I thought I’d say hullo to my little sister.”
Gail burst out through the doors into the awkward silence. After a few moments of reunion hugs, she said, “What am I going to do with you boys?”
Blake looked at me with stony amusement. “Well, Lieutenant?”
I thought Blake was trying to pull his seniority. “Look,” I said, “I’ll take off and leave you two. Maybe if I come back around 13.45 I can have a word with you Gail, before you go.”
“Good idea,” Blake grinned.
“OK, Bob,” Gail said, “but please be here at, say, half-one. I have to see you.”
“Sure,” I said, and walked away smarting. At least Gail had split the time equally.
I drove the Jeep idly around the vast workshop of vehicles, tanks, field guns and prefabricated bridges until the heat was uncomfortable. I stopped at the officers’ mess. I had a beer and some idle chatter with other officers, and returned to the hospital on time. Blake and Gail were waiting on the verandah. Blake broke away and marched off without greeting me.
I embraced Gail and we went inside. “What did you two do?” I asked.
“We went into the canteen and had a coffee and a sandwich. I’m sorry, Bob. Jim knew I was coming, but
it was you I intended to meet. He just turned up and he isn’t used to sharing me.”
“OK. That’s the way it is. Is there somewhere we can go for half an hour?” I asked, looking through the canteen doors at the crowd.
She squeezed my hands. “I’ve spoken to the sister-in-charge and I can show you one of the new operating theatres. I know you’ll be interested,” she said, with the dimples in her cheeks showing.
“Just what I wanted to see.”
She led me through doors which she unlocked and re-locked as we walked into an area under refurbishment. In a side room there were gurneys and mattresses, paint pots, brushes and stacks of plasterboard. She pulled a mattress from a pile and spread it on the floor. Our disordered clothing and haste was exciting, and there was a sweetness in her reaching out to me which lingered long after the event.
*
I had another week training with my platoon before we were in a force which was dumped south of Khe Sanh. The area had been pounded with 150mm shells and partly defoliated; it was raked over by the M60s of the Bell UH1 Huey gunships which transported us. We were part of the line that would advance through several villages in a clearance operation.
I had plenty of military tactics in my head, a knowledge of how to maintain and use our weaponry, mainly M16 rifles, an understanding of our wireless communications and scrambler, and even a smattering of insight into tasks considered of a lesser order, like first aid, trenching and food hygiene; but I had nothing I could call real experience of any of these things.
I knew the names of my men. I had talked a little with each of them and seen their records, but I had no idea of their capabilities. Three were rookies like me; the remainder, including Sergeant Bertolucci, were battle-hardened. I was received when I first met them, rightly, with joky unease and suspicion. It would take time before I obtained more than nominal obedience from them. In the meantime, I would have to rely on Sergeant Bertolucci. He appeared to me to be a depressive character, but at times when I was with the platoon at ease, usually eating or drinking, he could show that Italian sense of enjoyment of the moment which was infectious.