The Last Road Home

by Danny Johnson

  I climbed aboard. Since there were no seats and the only thing between my ass and bullets was a thin metal floor, I shoved my duffel into a corner and sat on it. The pilot looked back and said it would be about an hour and a half in the air. A wild-eyed kid manning the M-60 checked and rechecked the gun, hands and fingers flying like he’d eaten a handful of speed pills, all the while singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” at the top of his lungs. As soon as the chopper lifted off, he flipped off his steel pot and let the red bandanna tied around his blond head flap in the wind. When he looked back at me, there was a peace sign drawn in black on the cloth. He searched the ground in hopes of getting a chance to cut loose on something.

  I liked that the bad smell dissipated when we gained altitude. The sun was low on the horizon behind us. I looked out the door at patches of green and brown intersected by the watery reflection off of flooded rice paddies. Farmers walked behind their water buffalo the same way I’d done with Sally Mule. It was hard to believe a war was going on somewhere down there.

  The roar of the overhead engine dulled my senses, and the bounce of turbulence was soothing. I closed my eyes and dozed. Fancy was on my bed; sweat glistened off her brown skin and teeth clamped her bottom lip as we made love. I could feel my own pleasure as we moved against each other.

  A sudden, hard right-hand bank caused me to slide into the door gunner. He slapped me on the head. “Get your cherry ass out of my way.” When I looked out, the ground was coming up fast.

  I could see an open space of red dirt, and could pick out a couple of huge tents, a variety of trucks and jeeps, and two big 105-artillery pieces flanking either side of the compound. The firebase sat on a hill that looked like it’d had the top sheared off and flattened. Green hills and mountains, like a desert in the middle of an oasis, surrounded it.

  The chopper slammed hard on the ground. I grabbed my pack, hopped off, and squatted to duck the blades, using my soft boonie hat to block the flying dirt. I waved at the gunner as they lifted off. He flipped me the finger.

  When the air cleared, I surveyed the camp. It was a small, fortified combat base, surrounded by triple concertina wire and heavily sandbagged guard posts spaced about five hundred feet apart around the circle. The two big tents that used to be green but were now brownish red from layers of dust sat in the center. Mounds of double-stacked sandbags bulged like yard-mole trails, and identified underground bunkers. Beyond the wire, Seabees and daisy cutter bombs had cleared a three-hundred-yard kill zone between the camp and the jungle.

  I made my way toward the largest tent, figuring it was the HQ. A flag flying outside the tent identified the base as First Force Recon. A hand-painted sign was tacked on a post in front: NORTH VIETNAM 2 MILES, LAST GAS STATION BEFORE ENTERING. I told a marine standing nearby I was supposed to see a Sergeant Snake. He pointed to my right. “Go down to the fourth bunker. I think he’s in the bush today, but you can wait for him there.”

  A bleached skull with a string looped through its eye and a bullet hole in the forehead hung over the entrance to the bunker. The ladder leading down was built from wooden pallet skids. It was about six feet deep and dark at the bottom. When my eyes adjusted, I could make out two wood-framed bunks, one on either side, and extra gear stored in the far end of the eight-foot length. I dropped my stuff on the bunk without anything on it, then sat in the cool shadows, ate some c-rat peaches, and smoked a cigarette. I pulled an extra uniform from my pack to use for a pillow, lay down, and went to sleep.

  * * *

  Something jolted my rack. “What the hell you doing in my house?”

  I jerked up to find a green-and-black-camouflaged face staring down at me. A lantern gave enough light to see.

  I pushed into a sitting position. “Well, if you’re not Snake, I guess I’m in the wrong place.”

  “I’m Snake. Who’re you?”

  “Hurley. Gunny Phillips said I was to report to you.”

  He took a seat across from me. “Old Gunny, huh? I suppose that old fart’s still at DaNang pulling out dumb-ass boots and telling them what a wonderful thing it is to be a sniper.”

  “Guess I’m one of them.”

  “What do they call you, other than stupid?” He was a rangy, tall, big-jawed man, and his drawl was definitely southern, but not South southern, more like Texas southern.

  “Junebug.”

  He laughed. “That’s a dumb-ass name to leave on a headstone.” He fluffed his pillow and stretched out. “I’m tired. We’ll talk more in the morning.” He doused the light.

  I noticed he had stacked two weapons against the wall: a Remington like mine and an M-14. I pulled off down to my boxers and T-shirt, lay down on the hard cot, and covered my genitals with my shirt.

  “Put your pants back on,” came from the dark. “And your boots.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  I was dreaming about Fancy, seeing the blood on her face after she was shot, when rockets and mortars started slamming into the ground above. Dirt showered my face. Snake had his M-14 and was headed up the steps before I knew what was going on. I grabbed my Remington and followed. The moonlight glinted off his bare back as he sprinted to a reinforced position close to the wire. I could see marines falling behind anything that gave cover and pouring fire outward from the camp. Snake and I went in behind some sandbags. He stuck his head up and let go with a burst on full automatic. He looked over at me. “You going to use that rifle or lay there and piss in your pants?”

  Gooks screamed like wild animals as they attacked the wire with satchel charges and bodies. Whistles and bugles were blowing, and incoming rounds sounded like bees as they spit into the sandbags and ground around us. I wanted to scream myself, but no sound would come when I opened my mouth. I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking, fumbling as I loaded. I couldn’t see shit in the pitch-black dark at first, but when the flares started popping, targets were everywhere. I aimed the Remington and fired.

  “Come lower,” said Snake. “Exhale out, let your finger relax, then squeeze when you go from one heartbeat to the next.” He sounded like he was sitting in his living room having a glass of tea. Then he demonstrated what he’d just told me, and one of the attackers flew backward. They were so close it would have been hard to miss. My next shot caught one in the upper right of his chest and Snake filled him with four more rounds before he could hit the ground. The gooks trying to get to the wire began to trip over dead bodies.

  It was over in half an hour. I’d never felt such a rush in my life. I sat still and sucked air like a man who’d almost drowned. All I could think was: “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” not believing I’d actually survived. When my heart rate dropped to normal, I thought I might faint. This was intensity and terror on a level no man can be prepared for.

  Snake’s white teeth were shining in the dark. “Now we can get some sleep.”

  I’d killed my first NVA, not from a treetop the way I’d imagined, but up close and personal. “They do this every night?” I couldn’t help the little swagger in my step.

  “Just on the days we get new guys.” He lay down on his bunk and was snoring in five minutes.

  I lay awake most of the night, listening for the whistle of incoming rockets. The hypervigilance in my head wore down after a while and I drifted off.

  Sounds of people and vehicles outside woke me up. I could see a wedge of daylight at the open end of the bunker. My brain was fuzzy as it tried to get up-to-date on where I was and why.

  Snake’s bunk was empty. It hurt my feelings a little that he didn’t give me a shake.

  When I got outside I could smell coffee, so I went back and grabbed my canteen cup. A dozen or so guys were hanging around the smaller of the two tents.

  Snake was sitting on a sandbag. He pointed to the tent flap. “Go get some marine oil.” The coffee was so thick a spoon could stand at attention, but it was hot and strong and I was in need of something to kick-start my brain. “Sleep good?” Snake asked.
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br />   “Yeah, you?” A marine never admits weakness.

  “Like a baby on a momma’s tit.”

  “What’s the schedule today?” I was hoping we’d get down to learning this sniping thing.

  “I’m going to rest up. You, on the other hand, have the new guy’s privilege of shit-burning detail. Latrines are right over yonder. They’re expecting you.” He pointed to the far end of the camp, slapped me on the shoulder, and pulled himself up. “When you get done, pack a ruck good for about three days, plenty of c-rats and water, and make sure your ammo sack’s full. Tomorrow we’ll see how you like the bush.”

  Smelling fuel oil and burning shit in hundred-degree heat and 98 percent humidity is enough to break anybody down. It was misery and it didn’t have any company. Snake wouldn’t let me back in the house until I found a water truck and washed off the stink. Before sundown he headed up the ladder. “Come on, son, let’s go get some grub.” I flipped him the finger.

  CHAPTER 47

  It was still dark when my cot rattled. Snake was standing over me. “Off your ass and on your feet, sonny boy. It’s time to play war.” He tossed a tiger stripe camo shirt to me. “Put that on.”

  “What time is it?” The shirt smelled like shit, and had no name or rank or any other military insignia. Snake was wearing one just like it.

  “Time to get your ass up, we got a long walk. Let’s go.” He started for the ladder.

  I rolled out, grabbed my rucksack, strapped the machete on the back, and slung my rifle. By the time I got outside, Snake was already at the guard post, and I had to run to catch up. The dim glow of early morning showed in the sky beyond the mountains. “Where we headed?”

  “To teach you how to use that killing machine you’re carrying.”

  Snake moved at a steady clip, following a track he obviously knew well. After an hour we came to a rice paddy and started across the dike. We’d got most of the way when a kid who looked to be about ten years old came running to meet us. He had on a boonie hat that was way too big and a wide, gap-toothed grin. “Chao anh, Sergeant Snake. Chao anh.”

  Snake picked him up and swung him around. “Hello, Huy, how you doing, boy?” Snake sat down in the dirt, and the kid plopped on his lap. They chatted back and forth in broken Vietnamese and hand gestures. Finally, Snake reached in his ruck and handed the boy a c-rat box. “You go home now.” Snake patted him on the butt and pushed him back toward the village. The kid waved with one hand; he had a death grip on the rat box with the other.

  “Making friends with the population, huh?”

  “Come by here every chance I get on the way out. These are basically good people who are caught in a shit storm they didn’t make.”

  It surprised me to hear a grizzled man like Snake talk that way. After seeing his fierceness in the firefight when the camp was attacked, it would have never occurred to me he could sit in the mud and play with a kid like a kind uncle. I liked this side of him, but wondered how he kept the two separate.

  At the end of the dike we veered left, skirted the village, and headed into the jungle. Snake found a small path and worked up a high hill, slowing his pace and walking more cautiously. His head moved constantly. I could swear his nose twitched, like he was smelling the air. After crossing the crest, he took us in a southwest direction leading down to a wide valley. There were bomb craters everywhere, and the vegetation was dead as a winter cornfield. When we got to a cleared spot, Snake swept the area with his binoculars.

  He dropped his ruck. We sat and wiped sweat while he talked. “I want you to pay full attention for the next couple of days. You either learn and live, or stay stupid and die. This ain’t a practice game.” He waved at the mountains around us. “There are little brown people out here that want to kill you. If they catch you and know you’re a sniper, they’ll make you suffer a long time before letting you die. First thing, take off one of your dog tags and stick it in your bootlaces so if you get blown up somebody can ID you.” He waited while I did what he said. “From this minute on, forget everything about the world back home, because if you’re going to survive in this work, you’ve got to learn to focus on nothing but the work, to become part of what’s here, and understand your job is to kill people, plain and simple. There ain’t nothing back there that’ll help you out here. Understand Uncle Charles is one tough little bastard, and he’s fighting for a purpose. We’re just fighting ’cause they tell us to.” Snake’s jaw was set hard, and his words were almost angry. “Any questions?”

  If he was trying to scare me, he succeeded. The serious expression on his face caused my butt to pucker. “No.”

  He handed me the binoculars. “You see that piece of steel hanging off that banyan limb?” I followed the direction of his arm. “That’s your four-hundred-yard target. Now, imagine in your mind a hundred-yard football field behind it, and at the end of that you’ll see the five-hundred-yard target. Flip the field over and you’ll have the six-hundred-yard target. There’s no yardsticks out here, so that’s the way you adjust your distances. I hung these things out here almost a year ago to sight my rifle.”

  “I see them.”

  “We’re going to concentrate on the five-hundred-yard target so you can learn to allow if the shot is shorter or longer. To get a feel for the wind, watch the tops of the elephant grass, see how much it’s moving and from what direction. If you’re somewhere you don’t have grass, watch the treetops. You have to learn this good because you’re usually only going to get one shot and it has to count. You miss and some very pissed-off folks will be on your ass.”

  “Aren’t you afraid somebody out here will hear us?”

  “You know the kid on the dike?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s up in the bush at the top of this hill. If somebody’s coming, we’ll know.”

  I took a prone position and chambered rounds, getting the hang of it after thirty or so, and began pinging the first target regularly. Snake watched with his binoculars and kept correcting, telling me to feel the target and let the natural settings help me adjust my sight. By the time we moved to the second, I was starting to understand and didn’t waste near as much ammo. Six hundred yards was a long way, and, while I got so I hit it, most of the shots weren’t center mass, the sure kill zone. We practiced until dusk, then rolled out ponchos for sleeping. Night fell, and we found a soft spot in the grass, used C-4 for heating ham and lima beans, then wrapped into ponchos and lay down. The air got chilly, and the sky clouded over. The dull boom of artillery sounded in the distance and occasionally we heard the roar of jets and saw flashes from bombs being dropped. Eventually things got quiet. “Dark out here, ain’t it, Sarge?” It was like the blackness was stuck to you.

  “Like a shantytown at midnight, son. You’ll get used to seeing with your ears as much as your eyes. The jungle will teach you its sounds, and you’ll learn to recognize what ain’t natural. Your eyes will get to be like a cat’s. Them and your brain are all the tools you got to work with out here.”

  “What about snakes? No offense.”

  He laughed. “None taken. They might crawl in with you, but all they’re doing is trying to stay warm. Nights up here can get cold. Try not to do too much rolling over in case one climbs in, it tends to piss ’em off. Tigers are what you got to be careful of, them and Rock Apes walking up on you.”

  “Rock Apes? What the hell are they?”

  “Oversized monkeys or undersized gorillas, take your choice. They’ll throw rocks at you, or run up and scream and holler. Saw one on a night mission with the recon boys last year. The guy on watch started yelling like somebody was killing him, and when we got there one of them apes was beating the dog shit out of him. Funniest thing I ever saw.” He rolled over. “Try not to snore, it attracts attention.”

  CHAPTER 48

  In the predawn dark the next morning, we sat eating canned peaches and drinking c-rat coffee. I pulled out a pack of smokes.

  “Don’t light that.”

  “Wh
y?”

  Snake reached over and clipped it from my mouth. “Charlie will sniff an American cigarette from half a mile, same with aftershave or smelly soap. You need to smell like the ground, the mud, and the shit water in the paddies. These boys are at home in the jungle, know what’s supposed to be here and what ain’t, and if you want to live you got to learn the same way.”

  We spent most of that day practice shooting until my shoulder was sore. I started to feel like the rifle was an extension of my arm. In the afternoon Snake took me on a walk across the valley and along a small creek that threaded between the hills. He taught me the telltale signs of booby traps. We went over hand signs for when we would be “creeping” as he called it, things like cupping a hand to your ear if you heard voices or making a circle over your eye if you could see a trip wire, the silent language of a sniper.

  This world suited me, my mind recognizing it as a true place I could be invisible and watch the world. I remembered the feeling from my time in Grandma’s woods. This was where I was supposed to be.

  We lay back at camp and watched the stars light up like a million little lamps coming on at once. Snake took off his boonie hat and rubbed his head. I’d noticed he had a good amount of gray in his “high and tight” cut. “How long you been in the corps?”

  “This is my twentieth year. Went in right after the big war and learned the trade in Korea.”

  “How was that? Compared to this, I mean.”

  “Cold.” Fighter jets screamed to the east of us, followed by several giant fireballs of napalm. We watched until it died down. “The ground froze so hard you couldn’t dig a hole to hide in; so cold you couldn’t feel your fingers to adjust your sights. We killed all we could, but the Chinks kept coming.” He stretched his head back and rubbed his neck. “They’d start screaming, and charge at you like a pack of rabid dogs. At times it got down to hand-to-hand, using rifle butts and shovels. I was about your age then. Never thought I’d live to be this age. I saw boys do stuff no man should be capable of.” Snake’s voice struggled some on that last part. He looked at me. “That’s all war is, Junebug: survival. It ain’t about flag and country. Hell, fifty years from now, nobody will give a shit you were even here.” He got quiet. “We didn’t win that one and we ain’t going to win this one.” He pulled his boonie hat over his eyes and lay down; the talking was over.