Back in the USSA

by Kim Newman

  JS

  Back in the USSA

  The big NVA guns, 155mms, opened up from their positions on the Co Roc Ridge about four miles away. In Laos. In another country.

  "Best stay put for a bit, eh?," Butler sniggered. "Bloomin marvellous, innit? I've been taking diarrhoea pills for the last month so's I can get good and constipated and keep the number of bog-trips I have to make at an absolute minimum. Now we get orders to evacuate bodily wastes. I'm going to write to my MP about this."

  "Well stick me in the envelope along with the letter. I've had enough of this now, I want to go home," said Terry.

  Three 155mm shells crashed onto the airstrip in rapid succession.

  "Hell's bells," said Terry. "Anyone got a tab?"

  "Only these," said Bob, fishing a packet of Players No 6 from a pocket at the side of his flak-jacket. "I was reading in the Mirror the other week that the fag company makes these specially as going-to-work gaspers. You have your nasty cheap little Number 6s at the factory or the office. Then, when you go out in the evening, to the pub or club, like, you have your proper king-sized fags."

  "Wouldn't mind being down the club this evening. What day is it?"

  "Saturday, man."

  "Never mind!" said Butler. "That means there'll be a film show in the parish hall tonight. Wonder what it'll be?"

  "Same as it's been for the last five weeks," said Terry. "The Reverend Noote will run The Browning Version, a travelogue called This is Belgium and Cliff Richard in Summer Holiday."

  "spect you're right," said Butler. "Never thought I'd get sick of the sight of a bus."

  "You think you've got problems?" said Terry. "I'm having strange erotic fantasies about shoving a Mills Bomb up Melvin Hayes's jacksie."

  Casper emerged from the mortar pit.

  "Getting a bit crowded this side," said Butler. "Shall we make a run for it?"

  Casper gazed at the sky, thought for a moment, then nodded. He hadn't said anything in two weeks. People dealt with the strain of the constant shelling in different ways. Casper was no crazier than anyone else. To Butler, Bob and Terry, he was becoming something of a lucky charm. There was no logical reason, just that everyone was getting superstitious.

  Before he stopped talking, Casper explained that if he looked at the jungle down a rifle-sight, his spirit soared like a kestrel over the trees,

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  enabling him to see treens hidden from ordinary men's eyes. He popped off shots regularly, but there was no way of knowing if he scored any kills. Casper was satisfied that each bullet told.

  Casper led off and the rest followed, separated by a couple of paces, making for the big underground bunker known as the Parish Hall. It was the battalion briefing-room, storage-space and place of entertainment. The flicks would be starting in an hour or so, and there was no sense in going back to their billet only to have to run over here again later. They'd just have to be early.

  "Ah fuck! Ah fuck, fuck, fuck!" said Terry as they scurried through the bunker's entrance.

  "What's up, our kid?" asked Bob.

  Terry pointed to a blackboard. TONIGHT'S LECTURE. ESCAPE AND EVASION TECHNIQUES. ALL ATTEND. Terry took a piece of greying paper from his bum pocket. His chuff-chart. He tore it to confetti.

  "I'm going to be played by Rodney BewesV

  Bob had sort of been hoping for someone like Albert Finney. Rodney Bewes was the star of Wish You Were Here, a television series set in a Morecambe guest-house run by Thora Hird (his mother-in-law) and wife Rita Tushingham, dreaming of a better life than cooking miserly fried breakfasts and rationing the toilet-paper.

  "Yes," said Powell. "He was recommended by the screenwriters, Clement and La Frenais. Ideally I'd have wanted Imre, but our relationship is still a little, ah, encumbered by the past. You should know about that. Still, Clement and La Frenais have done an excellent job."

  They sat in a bare office at Pinewood Studios. Rusting, metal-framed window, several layers of bland, green paint over the brickwork of the walls and flaking off a big, barely-warm radiator.

  "For Terry, we have a young man named James Bolam. Also an actor from the television, I believe."

  Powell was no longer the rude, shabby old man in the Cotswold cottage. In a sharp suit, he was as abrasive as ever, but every discourtesy seemed part of a relentless drive towards some distant but attainable goal. He was just like John Barrymore in The Red Shoes.

  "Aye, I think I know him," said Bob. "Little bloke. Terry is big and coarse. This fellow has the right accent, mind. I suppose he'll do at a push. Is it too late to get rid of Rodney Bewes? There's Albert..."

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  Back in the USSA

  Powell smiled. "Now, for Thelma, we've got Brigit Forsyth."

  " Thelma You can't put her in the film! I only mentioned her a few times in the book. It doesn't seem decent, bringing personal business in like that."

  If Powell put Thelma in his bloody film, her Dad would probably belt him. Bob would lose the house in the divorce settlement.

  "How is that charming girlfriend of yours, by the way?"

  "You mean Diana? I'd've thought you could tell me, Micky. It's a while since I've seen her."

  "Oh," said Powell, wistfully. "I took her to a press do in Wardour Street a couple of weeks ago. Last I saw of her she was talking to a trendy young director with mutton-chop whiskers and a spotty hankie tied round his neck."

  Bob had been at the same party. Diana had wandered over to say hello, given him a peck on the cheek and ran off with her director, who wanted to put her in something called Devil Bride ofDracula. He couldn't honestly say he was too upset; he'd been out with four women (an actress, a painter and two models) in the last month.

  "Now we've got Reg Varney to play Butler," said Powell. "He's a little on the old side, but he can put a lot of cheek into it. Hartnell's a little long in the tooth as well, but I have to have him for Sergeant Grimshaw."

  "You've cast Dr. Who as Grim! Micky, that man was a monster, a bloody psychopath with stripes. Not some doddering old eccentric."

  "Padre Noote will be played by Derek Nimmo."

  Bob smiled. "Now that's good. Nimmo for Noote is spot-on, Micky."

  Oh he is now, is he?

  "But, err..."

  "But what, Bob?"

  Tell him, kidder. Tell him how that chinless clown of a sky-pilot turned out to be the best man in the battalion.

  "Noote wasn't just a caricature. He was a very courageous man."

  "Don't worry," said Powell shuffling through sheets of paper, scribbling his initials on some.

  He was at Pinewood as a technical advisor. He'd been there two days showing the extras how a British soldier wore his kit and how to slouch the right way. For this, he was getting an exorbitant £150 per week, with £15 of that to Kenneth. He'd been shocked to find the jungle sequences would all be shot in the studio.

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  A knock at the door. "Come!" snapped Powell. A woman came in, dressed from neck to toe in an immense fur costume. She held more fur under her arm.

  "Want to see this now?"

  Powell nodded. She put the fur thing under her arm and onto her head. She was a giant teddy-bear.

  "Jump up and down a bit," said Powell.

  The teddy-bear did as it was bid.

  "Good," said Powell. The woman took off her bear's head. "Is it easy to move around in?"

  "I'll use nylon for the fur," she said. "Cheapest and lightest. It'll be uncomfortable under the lights. You'll need to damp everyone down between takes."

  Powell sniggered. "Let 'em suffer for their art. Run off two dozen. All different styles and sizes. Make some of them quite battered. Miss out the odd ear and eye. They should look like they've been loved for a long time."

  "All in shades of brown?"

  Powell gave her the thumbs-up. She left.

  Bob didn't know quite what to say. "The Viet-Cong dress in black pyjamas, generally, Micky."

 
; Bob had long since given up asking to see the script. Powell kept making excuses.

  "I said your book had no magic in it," said Powell. "Well I may have been mistaken. I managed to find some."

  "I still don't get it. Why teddy bears?"

  "You will."

  Another knock at the door. A bespectacled woman clutching a clipboard popped her head in.

  "Just thought I'd let you know, Micky, that the young man from the Lord Chamberlain's office is still waiting outside. You've kept him for seven hours, now."

  "Poor little lamb," he said. "What's his name?"

  She consulted her clipboard. "Puttnam."

  "Puttman. Good."

  "No, I said Putt-Nam."

  "And I said Putt-Man. Make sure it gets spelled that way on all correspondence. Shall we let him in?"

  The woman shrugged.

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  Back in the USSA

  "Go on then."

  She left.

  "Bob, for the next ten to twelve weeks I'm going to be doing one of the most stressful jobs in the world. If I get more than four hours' sleep a night, I'll be lucky. The reason I'm not going to show you a script is that I don't want to have any more arguments than are strictly necessary."

  "I understand, Micky, but..."

  Powell stared him in the face. The intense stare of an angry headmaster.

  "Good. Now I need a big favour from you. The usual drill with the Lord Chamberlain's office is that you show them a completed film. If they want anything cut, they ask for it. Things are a bit different with me. Ever since I made Peeping Tom, I've been on the blacklist. I get my own personal censor for the duration of principal photography. You don't have a huge amount to do on the set all day. I'll get someone to let you know which days you'll be needed. For the rest of the time, I'd be greatly indebted if you were to keep young Puttman as far out of the way as possible. Give him la vie Boheme, take him to parties, introduce him to loose women. Bloody hell, try and get him addicted to black bombers or the white mischief. Only thing is, there's a restaurant near here called Les Oiseaux. For God's sake, don't ever take him there. I promise you, Bob, by all I hold dear: the more you keep this cretin out of my hair, the better our film will be."

  His shoulders started to shake. It was a moment before it became clear he was laughing.

  "Not that I've got a lot of hair anymore. Ah, young Mr. Puttman from the Lord Chamberlain's Office! Come in! Come in! I want you to meet Bob..."

  The official version is that fourteen hundred men surrendered at Khe Sanh. Actually, on the day Major Lampton, the highest-ranking surviving officer, ran up the white flag, I'd say that there were about two thousand us left, though a lot of them were stretcher-cases. Of the original garrison of eight thousand Vve no idea how many were killed or wounded, but it was a lot.

  When the situation became hopeless, we took advantage of three mornings of exceptionally heavy fog to try and scuttle the place. The Raf the Army and the Navy threw in every aircraft they could. While the bombers and fighter-bombers tried to keep the enemy artillery busy, helicopters and light aircraft zoomed in, filled up as fast as possible and got out again. Regular

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  Dunkirk, it was. Orders were to abandon everything but helmets and flak-jackets and just get aboard.

  The Loamshires — us — were to hold the perimeter, along with a West African Commonwealth unit and a few companies of Gurkhas. We were bitter about this. Three Para had been got out, as had the Greenjackets, the Somerset Light Infantry, Princess Walliss Own Royal Borsetshires and most of the gunners and engineers. The powers-that-he decided a mixed bag of non-Brits were expendable. And us? One of the blokes in the platoon, Eddie Booth, put into words what we were all thinking: "We've been tossed in sos the f***ing government isn't seen to be saving the white cream and just leaving the wogs. "

  "Well, they've bloody left me, white honky," said Eddie's best mate Bill Reynolds, who came from Jamaica. Strange pair, Bill and Eddie. They used to insult one another's skin-colour all the time, but they were inseparable.

  It was our bad luck to be in an unfashionable foot-and-mouth regiment that didn't have anyone fighting its corner in Whitehall.

  We wondered where the ARVN were. It was their bloody country we were fighting for, after all. The word was that most of them were so useless top brass didn't want them in the way. But the big question is where were the Russians? The Russian Air Force would have been big enough to provide plenty of cover and helicopter more of us out. It seems HM government was too proud to ask for help, but we heard a whisper they actually refused a Russian offer of help. Was a little national humiliation too much to ask to save hundreds of lives and hundreds of men from the horrors of captivity?

  Day four of the evacuation dawned bright and sunny. A few wokkas tried to come in, but without cover it was hopeless. Three were shot down and only two made it out again. The next day was the same, only I got promoted to lance-corporal. The day after the enemy were on top of us anyway. We surrendered.

  Captain Vinh was tall for a treen—five foot ten, maybe six foot. He wore a spotless olive-green uniform, unembellished by insignia. Only the red star on his pith-helmet broke the anonymity. And the livid purple scars on the left side of his face.

  Vinh noticed Bob was trying not to stare.

  "Does my face offend you? My unit was attacked by your British Air Force two years ago, just North of the Demilitarised Zone. I lost a lot of comrades."

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  Back in the USSA

  "I'm sorry," said Bob. A mistake: rule one of interrogation was to keep it polite, but neutral. Give away no information, no emotions, no nothing.

  Vinh looked him in the face, nodded slightly and offered a cigarette from a red and white packet. There were three other men in the room, guards with American-made Garand rifles. No cameras. Bob accepted the cigarette and a light.

  Noote warned against pictures of the NVA being nice to their captives. One tab might make Bob a propaganda snapshot: see how nice we are to the European imperialists?

  The interrogation room was half the interior of a wooden hut on bamboo stilts. They weren't in a prison-camp as such, but an ordinary village the NVA had taken over and fenced in with barbed wire for the temporary storage of prisoners. They'd been split into smaller groups. Just two companies of the Loamshires were billeted here. He was still with Terry, Butler and Casper. And Noote, who was the CO.

  The cigarette tasted surprisingly good. American Virginia tobacco. Two draws on it and Bob felt quite light-headed. It'd been a week since he'd last had a smoke.

  Vinh consulted a buff folder on his desk. There was a single sheet of paper in it.

  They'd all been kicked around by the guards, and by civilians when they were being marched here. They were fed more or less regularly— rice and bits of vegetables. Everyone had the shits of course.

  "Lance Corporal, Second Battalion, Loamshire Regiment," said Vinh. His English had a heavy American accent. A lot of NVA officers had studied at American universities.

  Bob said nothing. Name, rank, serial number, date of birth. That was all you had to give them.

  "I understand everybody calls you 'Bob'?"

  Bob tensed. How had he found that out? Probably no big deal. Captain Vinh was "interviewing" everyone. Someone probably dropped his name in an unguarded moment. Or had it beaten out of him, more like.

  "You come from an industrial area of England? Many people work in factories, often in unhealthy and unpleasant conditions."

  Bob tried to look pleasant and accommodating without saying anything.

  "Your government conscripts its working men and sends them to the other side of the world to burn the homes of peasants, to bomb women

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  and kids. Bob, you have studied at night-school to better yourself. You are, I am sure, an intelligent man. Have you ever asked what in tarnation you and your, ah, mates, are doing here?"

  Aye, you're right
enough there, Captain Vinh. How the hell do you know all this about me, Captain Vinh? Who's been blabbing?

  Vinh turned suddenly and banged his fist on the table.

  "Why are you in Indo-China?"

  Bob shrugged.

  "Let me level with you, Bob," said Vinh, sounding all reasonable again. "You can't give me any military intelligence. The entire active strength of the second Loamshires was captured. I'm not interested in what platoon or company you belong to, or your tactics or weapons or operating procedures, or any of that shit. All I want is the answer to that one question. It's not for my superiors, it's just something I cannot understand, something that keeps me awake. Why the hell are working men from Britain oppressing working men in Indo-China?"

  Terry would have said "that's the British working man all over, Captain Vinh. Can't resist a scrap." But Terry always had to be carried away from interrogations.

  Bob shrugged.

  "Bob, do you want to go home?"

  Bob nodded. No point in lying.

  "Here's some literature."

  He pushed leaflets across the desk. Pictures of British PoWs getting off a plane in Switzerland. The catch was that they had to sign a statement condemning British imperialism in South East Asia. And embrace international socialism, and convince the treens you meant it.

  "Thank you," said Bob. He'd wipe his arse with them.

  "You have a good think about it, huh?" said Vinh. "I know some of your comrades are certainly considering this offer very carefully."

  Though he walked with the aid of a stick since "Vimto" Vinh broke his ankle, Lieutenant Noote lead the morning stroll around the camp. I fell in with Terry, beside the padre, ambling along. Butler — just out of the cage after a weeks punishment — leaned on Casper, who hadnt spoken to anyone in months. Whistling through cracked lips, we made a racket out of "Colonel Bogey". Behind us, Eddie Booth and Bill Reynolds had suspended their colour-prejudiced bickering to poke fun at our yellow captors. "Ugly little treen f***ers," they muttered in agreement. Water dripped from the thatch of