War Baby

by Colin Falconer

* * *

  It was a strange war, Ryan said. You could eat freshly baked croissants for breakfast and two hours later you were in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by punji traps and bouncing mines.

  The Huey left them at a staging post for a company of the 173rd Airborne. As it lifted back into the air it kicked up squalls of gritty ochre dust that stung the eyes and nose and clung to the throat like cement dust.

  Webb looked around. A knot of black Marines read their tags, their eyes sullen with resentment. ‘Well, bull-sheet. Co-respondents! We in for some good shit today. These motherfuckers like their meat raw.’

  ‘Hey, hand-job,’ one of them called to Webb, pointing to the patch on the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘What’s a Bao Chi?’

  ‘It’s gook for motherfucker,’ his partner said.

  Ryan did not seem disturbed by the abuse. He took out a packet of Marlboro and offered them around.

  ‘Motherfuckers!’ one of them said, taking a cigarette. ‘You come slumming, man?’

  ‘Don’t you want people back home to know what you’re going through out here?’ Ryan said.

  ‘Some white boy in Cape Cod going to give a hot damn that I’m gittin’ my ass shot off here?’

  ‘These guys don’t have to be here, cocksuck,’ another one said.

  ‘You shittin’ me? They ask to come here?’

  ‘Wish I could get me some of that. I’d be home day before I get here, man.’

  Webb stared at their helmets. In other armies the helmet was just another part of a soldier’s uniform but out here every one was different. Red packets of Winston and silver cigarette lighters and plastic bottles of rifle cleaning fluid were tucked inside hatbands and scrawled graffiti identified their new friends as Born to Kill, Love Child, High on War and Why Me?

  Ryan took the lens off his camera. He asked them if he could take a photograph. Webb thought Born to Kill and Love Child looked as if they would rather stitch a line across Ryan’s chest with their M-16s.

  ‘You make good bread with these pictures?’ Love Child asked him.

  ‘Let it be, shitkick,’ High on War said. ‘Somebody got to tell the people back in the world the shit going down over here.’

  Ryan raised his camera and fired off three quick frames; the four black Marines on the sandbags, their M-16s across their chest, one with Black Power scrawled in stencil across his flak jacket; High on War with the Ace of Spades tucked into his helmet band; Love Child cradling his M-16 as if it were a baseball bat.

  Another Huey dropped onto the LZ and two corpsmen loaded the body of a soldier who had died earlier that morning. There was a fleeting image of a body bag, a pair of jungle boots, a cloud of green iridescent flies.

  ‘Hey, freshmeat,’ one of the soldiers shouted at him, ‘they going to be mailin’ you home to Mamma in a glad bag too.’

  Ryan clapped him on the shoulder and steered him away. ‘They don’t mean anything by it,’ he said. ‘They’re just scared.’

  Webb nodded and said nothing. It was going to be a long day’s haul.

  * * *

  They set off, single file, into what the Americans called ‘Indian country’, foot-slogging all morning through rice paddies and fields, the flat landscape broken only by occasional bamboo thickets or the simple hooches of the farmers. Wooden guard towers loomed over the fields.

  What am I doing here? Webb thought. I’m twenty-two years old, I have a couple of years’ experience as a cadet photographer with a provincial English newspaper, and now I’m alongside some of the best combat journalists in the business, pretending I’m one of them. I’m going to make a fool of myself, and I could get crippled or killed doing it.

  The point of the column entered the jungle line. The sun was directly overhead, squeezing the juice out of them. The only sounds were the jangle of webbing and the slop of water in belt canteens.

  There was a shout from the tree line, and the soldiers in front of Webb crouched, ready to drop. They waited there, in the sun, for what seemed like hours; Webb felt his thigh muscles starting to cramp. Sweat ran into his eyes.

  Ryan shouldered past him, heading for the front of the line in a low, crouching run. What the hell? Webb thought, and followed.

  Three officers were gathered around a tunnel, an ARVN Ranger with them. They were discussing options. Finally one of the lieutenants produced a hand grenade, removed the pin, and threw it down the hole. There was a muffled explosion and a cloud of choking dust.

  They dragged three Viet Cong bodies from the tunnel. So this was their dreaded enemy, Webb thought. They looked like rag dolls, an untidy tangle of limbs in dusty and sweat-stained black pajamas. Other grunts gathered around, and Webb heard a flashbulb pop. They’re taking pictures for their souvenir albums, he thought with disgust. And then he remembered that was what he was here to do; take photographs. Half a dozen soldiers had magically produced Instamatics from their packs, but Webb, with two expensive Leicas slung around his neck, held back.

  He looked around and saw Ryan. He wasn’t taking photographs either; he seemed to be waiting for something. Then he realized what it was; one of the Viet Cong was still breathing.

  The captain had noticed now, and he called for the corpsman, but the Vietnamese Ranger shook his head and knelt down next to the injured VC.

  He was no more than fifteen or sixteen years old. His black pajamas had been shredded by grenade fragments, and there were gaping wounds in his stomach. The Ranger took out his knife and very deliberately pushed it into one of the holes and twisted the blade.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ one of the soldiers said, and turned away. A lieutenant stepped forward to intervene but the captain grabbed him and pulled him away.

  Webb wanted to vomit. The boy - suddenly Webb could not think of him as an enemy - was kicking feebly and screaming.

  The Ranger was shouting questions at him, probing deeper into the wound. Webb saw the blood on the boy’s ears. It was pointless, the concussion of the explosion had blown out his eardrums.

  ‘Captain,’ Webb said.

  The officer hesitated. He looked grey. He saw Ryan pick up his cameras and that made up his mind. ‘That’s enough,’ he said.

  ‘But he’s VC!’ the Ranger protested.

  ‘We’ll call in a dust-off.’

  The Ranger spat in the boy’s face and wiped the knife blade on his pajamas. But instead of backing off he took out his revolver and held it against the boy’s head. ‘We just kill him now.’

  The captain looked back at Ryan, who had moved to within ten feet. ‘Let it be. That’s an order.’ The boy was still writhing, clutching at his stomach. ‘Get the corpsman here,’ he said, and walked away.

  * * *

  The night was so black Webb had to touch his eyelids with his own fingertips to satisfy himself that they were open. Just on sunset Ryan had laid down next to him, his helmet down, his lucky green towel carefully arranged over his face to leave just enough room to breathe. He had tucked his hands under his arms to protect them from the hordes of mosquitoes.

  ‘What do you think happened to that kid?’ Webb whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ryan said. His voice was muffled by the helmet and towel.

  ‘You think he’s dead?’

  ‘Probably.’

  Webb listened to the maddening whine of mosquitoes inches from his face.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Ryan said. ‘But the war’s not going to stop because a couple of blokes with cameras don’t like what they see.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything. Ryan. I just watched.’

  ‘Didn’t you take any snaps?’

  Snaps? ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Good-oh. That means I’ve got an exclusive.’

  A long silence.

  ‘That was barbaric,’ Webb murmured.

  ‘It’s a bloody war. What did you think it was going to be like?’

  After a while, Webb said: ‘I should have done something.’

  ‘We did do something. We s
topped that prick shooting him this afternoon. It won’t do any good. They’ll take him to Long Binh, and if he lives the Vietnamese will get hold of him and they’ll torture him again. And then they’ll shoot him.’

  ‘That was wrong.’

  ‘Look, I’ve got news for you, sport. This war is not about your conscience. What happened out there was no concern of mine or yours. We’re just doing a job. There is absolutely no situation where we should stop working because it’s what we show the rest of the world that’s going to stop this bloody madness.’ Webb heard him shuffle around, settling himself under the towel and helmet once more. ‘Now go to sleep. We’ve got another long hike through the boonies tomorrow.’

  * * *

  He heard gongs banging somewhere in the jungle, smelled shit and incense. A fecund jungle inhabited only by women, children and old men. They walked all through the morning, the heat crushing them. Already Webb had almost emptied one canteen of water. They stopped to rest in a rice paddy, squatting down with their backs against the embankment of an irrigation channel.

  One of the Marines, a raw nineteen-year-old from Kentucky, grinned at Webb as he fumbled with his cameras. ‘Except for them dead gooks I guess you ain’t had much to snap at,’ he said. The tag on his fatigues read McCague.

  Webb shook his head.

  ‘Can’t say I’d mind a contact right now, just for a chance to lie down for a while.’

  ‘We’re sitting ducks out here.’

  ‘Shoot, we sitting ducks wherever we are. That’s the whole point, mister. Only way we ever get to find gooks is when they ambush us.’ McCague sucked some water from his canteen. ‘Want to get yourself a picture?’

  ‘Sure,’ Webb said, without thinking.

  ‘You send me a copy?’

  ‘What have you got in mind?’

  ‘I was figuring to put a few rounds into that tree line over there. Be just like the real thing. Who’s gonna know, right?’

  Webb thought about it. He had missed two golden opportunities for film the previous day and now it looked as if he might go home empty-handed. He needed something to sell.

  McCague did not wait for his decision. He was on one knee, aiming his M-16 at an imaginary enemy on the other side of the rice paddy. The rest of his rifle squad were watching him, laughing.

  ‘You crazy motherfucker, McCague,’ one of them said.

  If McCague had been home in Kentucky he would be spinning the wheels of his hotrod in the main street, Webb thought. Now someone’s let him loose with an Armalite in the boonies, and life’s still a big joke.

  ‘Ready there, mister?’ McCague said.

  Webb fumbled for his Leica. Without waiting for a reply, McCague fired a rapid burst into the tree line two hundred yards away. Almost at once there was a sound like angry bees in the air around them. McCague sat down suddenly, staring in dull surprise at the three small holes in the front of his utilities.

  ‘Jesus, shit, someone’s busting caps at us!’

  ‘Christ, man, get down!’

  ‘Corpsman up!’

  McCague was lying on his back now, his spine arched, his chest heaving, trying to suck in air. His mouth was gaping open like a beached fish.

  Webb was paralyzed with shock and disbelief.

  Something hit him hard in the side and he fell. He heard Ryan’s voice close to his ear. ‘Get your head down, you silly bastard.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘There!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There!’

  ‘Corpsman up, goddamn it!’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘There!’

  ‘Where, for Christ’s sake, where?’

  Webb listened to the bedlam around him. Now he understood what it was that Crosby and Prescott had been laughing at that first afternoon in the Hashish Hilton. Perhaps if he ever made it back to Saigon he would share the joke.

  The corpsman had reached McCague, was crouched over him, blowing air into his lungs. McCague was making gurgling noises, like a kid blowing bubbles in his bath. The medic pulled a scalpel from his kit and ripped open McCague’s shirt. There was a spurt of blood as he made two incisions in the boy’s neck, then he pushed a black tube into the trachea. McCague had stopped moving. The corpsman blew into the tube, watching for the rise and fall of the boy’s chest, feeling for the pulse at his neck.

  There was another shout from along the line, and another.

  ‘I’m hit.’

  ‘Medic up, medic up!’

  The corpsman grimaced; frustration, despair. He crawled away, elbows and knees, leaving McCague staring at the blue sky, the black tube flopping from the wound in his neck. Webb followed McCague’s stare, as if there were really something up there.

  Just blue sky, alive with death, pulsing with it. Webb hugged the earth, sucked it, embraced it. His camera was gone, dropped somewhere in the dirt. He looked around for Ryan. He had gone too.

  Madness. If I live through this I’m getting out of Saigon, out of Vietnam and I’m never coming back.

  * * *

  The Dakota dived low, with a sound like a foghorn. These things piss blood, Crosby had told him, and now he knew what he meant. It had three mounted machine guns, each with six barrels, firing eighteen thousand rounds a minute, every fifth round a tracer; it looked like a solid stream of red, death the color of carmine. How could anything live through that?

  It was followed in by a Phantom, its fuselage camouflaged in green and grey. Steel-ribbed cans tumbled down the sky, exploding in orange fireballs that broiled into choking black clouds. Webb opened his mouth in a silent scream, the concussion like hot needles in his ears.

  As the jets roared for home, the soldiers rose slowly to their feet from behind the embankment. The firelight was over. The forest crackled and burned and the choking black smoke from the napalm drifted.

  Webb found his camera. He looked at his watch; the whole thing had lasted less than twenty minutes. He would have guessed three to four hours.

  And he hadn’t taken a single frame.

  And I wanted to be a combat photographer?

  The platoon sergeant was staring at him. ‘You hit, man?’

  Webb looked down at his utility. There was a smear of blood on the sleeve. He let the sergeant strip off his flak jacket. Fresh blood had soaked into his shirt under his armpit. ‘Christ,’ Webb said.

  ‘You ain’t hit, man,’ the sergeant said. ‘Someone just bled on you.’ He pushed the flak jacket back over Webb’s shoulders and walked away.

  McCague was still staring at the sky. The rest of his platoon moved around him, their eyes pointedly turned away.

  In the distance he heard the chop-chop of the medevacs.

  He walked up the line, looking for Ryan. He found him with his back against the embankment, smoking a cigarette. There was a blood-soaked wound dressing on his left shoulder.

  ‘You’re hit,’ Webb said.

  ‘My bloody oath. Look, I know this is your first war, and you want a good view of it, but if someone shoots at you, it’s better to lie down and get out of the way.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Felt something thump me in the shoulder after I grabbed you. Medic gave me some mother morphine. Getting a nice buzz right now.’ He fumbled for his cameras with his right hand. ‘Make sure you get these to Crosby. He’ll ship them out for me.’

  ‘You still shot film?’

  ‘That’s my job.’

  Webb felt even more ashamed of his own miserable performance. ‘I found this,’ he mumbled.

  ‘My lucky towel. See what happens when I drop the bloody thing?’

  Two Hueys appeared through the haze of a purple smoke flare, each with a red cross painted on the nose. Webb turned away from the stinging dust storm as they settled in the dirt, then helped two corpsmen carry Ryan to the first chopper. He climbed in beside him.

  ‘Got a smoke, Spider?’ Ryan asked him. It was an Australian tradition, apparently. All whites were called Ch
alkie, anyone with ginger hair was called Blue, and anybody called Webb was Spider.

  Webb pulled out his cigarettes, but his hands were shaking so hard he could not light one. Ryan grabbed the lighter from him and lit one himself. Webb sat back on his haunches with his back against the fuselage. He balled his hands into fists, in an attempt to stop the trembling, afraid that others would see.

  They loaded McCague. He still had that surprised look on his face. Finally the crew chief grabbed a green poncho and covered him with it, leaving just the muddy jungle boots protruding.

  ‘It was my fault,’ Webb said aloud.

  Ryan’s eyes blinked open, and he frowned, not understanding, lost to the morphine.

  ‘My fault,’ Webb repeated. He fumbled for his camera, and then, feeling like a pornographer, he kicked back the poncho and took the photograph: shaved blond head, staring eyes, the black tube flopping from his throat. Magically, his hands stopped shaking while he took the shot.

  He wondered if McCague would still like a copy, wherever he was now.

  Chapter 4

  Bien Hoa Air Base

  The Huey dropped into a deep landing spiral, billowing oily black smoke. ‘Hold on to your assholes, ladies and gentlemen,’ the crew chief shouted. The machine bounced as it hit the LZ.

  A knot of nurses, technicians and doctors raced towards the landing pad dragging gurneys between them. The pilot shut down the engines. Flames were licking back along the fuel lines towards the tanks. ‘Get everyone out and get clear,’ he screamed at the crew chief.

  A chaos of panicked shouts and black smoke. Webb helped one of the doctors load Ryan onto a gurney and they dragged it back across the runway towards the hospital.

  ‘She’s going to blow!’ he heard someone shout.

  He looked back. The crew chief was beside him, still in the heavy crash helmet, his fatigues soaked with sweat. Webb read his name, Jensen, stenciled on his left breast.

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Jensen said.

  ‘What is it?’ one of the nurses shouted.

  ‘Where’s the head wound?’