“Rattail Six callin’ you, sir. Here ya go.” Dirtball handed him the receiver.
“Rattail Six, this is Two, over,” the Lieutenant said sleepily.
The receiver crackled with static, then cleared.
“Two, this is Six. Saltlick Six wants you in here this afternoon by 1600. Roger?”
“Saltlick Six? Come again?” the Lieutenant said groggily, raising himself to a sitting position. Dirtball was standing in the track with his head out the top hatch, spitting tobacco and scratching his balls. It was taking the Lieutenant a moment to orient himself. He rubbed his eyes and yawned and tried to pretend he wasn't where he knew he was, somewhere deep in Laos in the middle of a war.
“Saltlick Six is sending a chopper for you at 1530, roger?”
“Roger the chopper at 1530, Rattail Six. What's this all about, Six?”
“Couldn't tell you, Two. Just be ready at 1530. Rattail Six out.”
“Two out.”
The Lieutenant handed the receiver back to Dirtball.
“What's up, Eltee?”
“Halleck wants me back at Battalion at 1600. They're sending a bird out to pick me up at 1530.”
“Whatchew gonna dew, Eltee?”
“I'm going to be ready for them,” said the Lieutenant. He checked his watch. It was just past noon. He had three hours.
***
The Huey wound its rotor like a giant fan, picked itself up a couple of feet, tilted forward, and with a great shuddering and thwap-thwap-thwap-thwapping of its spinning wings, it rose into the air and over the wire and over the trees and it was gone.
The Lieutenant sat behind the pilot and copilot in the open door of the cargo bay. He hung his feet over the edge of the Huey's floor and braced them against the skid. He held his M-79 grenade launcher between his knees. Next to him, a spec-4 in a fatigue jumpsuit and flight helmet manned an M-60 door gun that dangled from the chopper's ceiling on a steel wire. He aimed the M-60 at the green blur below them, which the Lieutenant knew to be Laos. The ground rushed past so fast you couldn't focus on any distinguishing features of terrain; all you could do was sit there and brace yourself against the skid and buzz through the air like a fly.
For a person accustomed to knowing precisely where he was at any moment, the sensation of traveling by helicopter over ground that you had walked through was an eerie one. The Lieutenant knew that most officers serving in Vietnam would consider that to be above the ground at, say, two thousand feet was to be in control of all that was below you. Several times, the Lieutenant's platoon had been engaged with the enemy in a firefight when through the earpieces of his CVC helmet would come the voice of the brigade or even the division commander, directing his platoon's fire, ordering squad maneuvers, instructing him, the platoon leader on the ground under fire, where to call in and direct supporting fire from the Artillery, or air strikes from Air Force F-4s. This was the function of the helicopter in Vietnam: to control the action on the ground from the air. It was why they were called command-and-control ships. The Lieutenant understood where the terminology came from, but as far as he was concerned, they could take their C&C ships and ship ‘em up where the sun didn't shine.
To be in command, to be in proper control of your platoon, you had to be on the ground so you could identify fields of fire and places of concealment and cover, so you could gauge the strength of the enemy and the accuracy of his fire, so you could direct fire and maneuver on terrain that you yourself had walked over and under and around and through.
You could not know from the air how high was a hill, how tall a tree, how thick the underbrush, how deep a stream, how fast-flowing a river, how impossible the mud, how thick the dust, how acrid the smoke, how hot the sun, how fatigued the men, and how determined their enemies.
You had to be down there in it, you had to be down there so you could feel it, you had to be down there among them, you had to be down there and walk through it, you had to be down there in the heat and the dust and the smoke under enemy fire in order to command the men who were down there going through it anyway, who didn't have C&C ships they could hop into and fly over battles like the sky ride at Disneyland. If you wanted those men to do for you what they were capable of, you had to stand next to them and take the risks they took. Only on the ground could you make what little sense of combat that could be made.
Only on the ground could you pierce the madness and see the truth. To lead was to share highs and lows, risks and rewards, anger and love. To lead was to get dirty and dusty and muddy and wet, and you couldn't get dirty, dusty, muddy, or wet in a C&C chopper two thousand feet overhead.
The Huey's thwap-thwap-thwap-thwap fell off to a muted thwop-thwop-thwop-thwop, and they began their descent into the battalion logger. The Lieutenant was relieved to see it was as hot and dusty and nasty at Battalion as it was out with the weapons platoon. Maybe the heat and the dust and the relentless sun would bake some sense into them. Maybe if everyone was waist-deep in the same load of shit, a way could be seen.
Maybe.
In Vietnam, it was always fucking maybe.
Shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop the chopper shut down and the Lieutenant hit the ground and scuffled through the dust toward the battalion commander's bunker. It was an elaborate affair the size of a small house, dug into the ground maybe six feet, topped with logs and four layers of sandbags, with sloping sandbagged sides and a twisting entrance designed to absorb nearby artillery explosions and keep the interior of the bunker from being sprayed with shrapnel. It had been done by the book, and the Lieutenant estimated that it had taken twenty, maybe thirty men the better part of five hours to complete. One hundred to one hundred fifty man-hours’ worth of the kind of security money couldn't buy, security that came from trees felled, sandbags humped, holes dug.
The Lieutenant zigzagged through the bunker entrance and paused inside so his eyes could become accustomed to the darkness.
“Come on in, Lieutenant Blue,” said a voice the Lieutenant knew belonged to Lieutenant Colonel Halleck, the battalion CO.
“Yes, sir,” the Lieutenant said reflexively. He stepped forward gingerly. He still couldn't see anything. Then, in the far reaches of the dimness, he made out two human forms standing in the glow of a kerosene lamp.
“Lieutenant, you know Colonel Jim Testor, your brigade commander, don't you?” Halleck's voice had a tinge of sweetness the Lieutenant had never heard before.
He wanted something.
Of that much the Lieutenant was certain.
The Lieutenant groped his way forward. He ran into a folding metal chair, toppling it with a soft thud against the sandbagged walls of the bunker. Then his thighs hit the edge of a table and the Lieutenant stopped.
He unslung his M-79 and snapped a salute.
“Sir, Lieutenant Blue reports as ordered.”
In the dimness he made out the blur of an answering salute, and he dropped his hand to his side.
“Sit down, Lieutenant,” said Lieutenant Colonel Halleck.
The Lieutenant looked around. His eyes were finally growing accustomed to the darkness, and he saw the folding chair he had knocked over. He righted the chair and sat down, holding the M-79 across his lap. He faced Lieutenant Colonel Halleck and Colonel Testor across a folding camp table that was covered with maps and coffee mugs with the unit crest emblazoned on them.
The two commanders sat down on folding chairs that were padded with canvas cushions emblazoned with the battalion insignia. Halleck waved his hand at someone the Lieutenant couldn't see.
“More coffee!” he commanded.
The Lieutenant heard the shuffle of feet through dirt as someone went for coffee.
“You must wonder what you're doing here,” Halleck began, allowing a smile to cross his lips. It was supposed to be a joke.
The Lieutenant didn't say anything. He stiffened his back. He didn't know what was coming, but whatever it was, he didn't like it. You didn't get called into sandbagged battalion bunkers in the deep boonies by
not one but two colonels to listen to their jokes.
“We want to go over the after-action report you filed this morning, Lieutenant Blue. It's got some problems.”
The Lieutenant sat still. He said nothing.
“First, this patrol last night—it was a little out of the ordinary, wasn't it, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir. I do not believe it was.” The Lieutenant gave his answer in a measured tone, choosing his words carefully. He didn't feel nervous. He didn't feel frightened. He didn't feel. He just was.
“Are you in the habit of taking ambush patrols outside the wire yourself, Lieutenant?” It was Colonel James Franklin Testor, the brigade CO. He was built like a bulldog. He had no neck, and a crewcut that made Yul Brynner look hirsute. He stood five feet ten, maybe five-eleven in jungle boots. Each time the Lieutenant had seen him, he had an unlit cigar jutting out of his mouth. He chewed the cigar and shifted it from one side of his jaw to the other in a manner that made him look like he'd made a study of tough generals on “The Late Movie.” He wasn't a cliche, exactly, but he was right on the edge.
“Sir, I lead ambush patrols when I feel that it is necessary. Last night I made a determination that it was necessary. I led the patrol. I have led perhaps twenty-five such patrols since I've had the weapons platoon. There was nothing out of the ordinary about taking command of the patrol myself.”
“That's not the way I see it, Lieutenant,” said Colonel Testor.
No one said anything for a moment.
The Lieutenant sat there stonily. He had picked out a stain on one of the sandbags against the back wall of the bunker, and he stared at the stain whenever he wasn't addressing one of the colonels. It was a trick he had learned at West Point, a variation on something his father had taught him.
Don't speak unless spoken to, his father had always said.
Okay, Dad. And I don't look at them unless spoken to, then I look them right in the eye.
“Whatever possessed you to take that ambush patrol out yourself, Lieutenant?” Colonel Testor asked.
“Sir, I made a determination early yesterday afternoon that the movement of the battalion sweep had taken us off the map. Off the map sector mentioned in the ops order, 22-Lima, I mean, sir. My platoon's position is on another map. For that reason, when the ambush patrol was ordered, I was concerned that the patrol be able to report its exact location once in position. I didn't want my patrol running into any other battalion patrols, sir, walking into any other friendly ambushes. I knew I could pinpoint exactly the patrol's ambush location, so I took the patrol out myself, sir. That was my reason, sir. I knew we were off the ops order sector map. I didn't want my men getting lost.”
“You don't have anyone else in that platoon who can read a map?”
Testor had removed the cigar from his mouth and was studying its well-chewed tip with some satisfaction. He spit an imaginary bit of tobacco on the dirt next to his chair and reinserted the cigar. The Lieutenant noted that he looked better with it, somehow. More like a brigade commander, less like an instructor in the Physical Education Department at West Point, which, as the Lieutenant recalled reading in a brigade newsletter, Testor had been when he was a captain.
“Yes, sir. There are several men in the platoon who are good map readers,” said the Lieutenant.
“Then why didn't you send out the patrol with one of those men in command, Lieutenant?”
Testor had taken over the questioning completely now, and he drilled the Lieutenant with a stare the Lieutenant knew he should feel was intimidating. He wondered if he would ever respond in an appropriate manner to such a stare from a man as high-ranking as a colonel. Remembering the number of times his grandfather, the General, and his father, the Colonel, had fixed him with their huge eyes and pasted him up against a wall in silence, he decided not. The simple truth was, he was not properly prepared for the glares and stares of men like Colonel Testor, and this was a problem for him as a Lieutenant. You were certainly supposed to be frightened by colonels, and he was not.
“Because I was concerned about the fact that we were out of the AO designated in yesterday's ops order. I wasn't sure it should get around that we were operating about twenty kliks inside Laos, sir. I didn't feel it was in the interest of the battalion operation for that knowledge to get spread around indiscriminately, as I knew it would if I sent out one of my sergeants with a map indicating our true position inside Laos. Sir.”
The Lieutenant tacked on the “sir” not as an afterthought but as a punctuation mark. He wanted it clear to the Battalion and brigade commanders that he knew precisely where the Battalion was located, even if they didn't.
“What made you think you were in Laos, Lieutenant?” Testor pulled the cigar butt from one corner of his mouth to the other, making a sucking noise as he chewed it across.
“I put the grid coordinates of the incident in my casualty report, sir. They are accurate.”
“Oh, they are, Lieutenant? Are you telling this colonel that he can't read a map?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what are you telling him, Lieutenant?”
“I'm telling you, sir, that the casualty report I filed is accurate. My platoon position is accurate. The position of my ambush patrol is accurate. We are in Laos, sir. All of us. We were in Laos last night, and we are in Laos today, sir. Nothing has changed since I filed the report with Captain Gardner this morning.”
“I'm of the opinion you're trying to put one over on us with that casualty report, Lieutenant.”
The Lieutenant said nothing. He stared at his sandbag stain, sitting straight in his chair, as close to attention as the chair allowed.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have a response?”
“My response is this, sir: My report is accurate.”
“Well, Lieutenant, let me try this on you: I think you took that patrol out last night, and I think you diddled around out there, and I think you made contact with an enemy unit probably no larger than your own, and I think you took that KIA, and I think you got no enemy body count, and I think to cover up your little patrol, you created this incident, this so-called casualty due to friendly fire. That's what I think, Lieutenant. I think you screwed up, and now you're covering up.”
The Lieutenant said nothing. There was a long pause, then Colonel Testor took the cigar out of his mouth and leaned to his right so his face came into the Lieutenant's view, which was fixed dead ahead on the sandbag stain behind Halleck.
“What have you got to say for yourself, Lieutenant?”
“My casualty report is accurate, sir. What I reported this morning happened last night, exactly as I reported it. Sir.”
“You expect us to believe you took fire from fifteen American civilians who were loading a DC-3 in the middle of the jungle in the middle of the night? You expect us to believe they were carrying Kalashnikovs, and that's how your man got killed? A bunch of blue-jeans-wearing civilians shot him? You expect us to accept this utterly fantastic nonsense as fact?”
“Sir, my report stands. It is accurate. I have nothing to add to it. Whether you accept the report or not is your business, sir, not mine.”
“I think you're lying, Lieutenant.” Testor glowered at the Lieutenant and pulled at the cigar in his teeth with a smacking noise, like a kid working on a candy sucker.
The Lieutenant said nothing.
“I want you to change your casualty report, Lieutenant.”
The Lieutenant stared straight ahead, saying nothing.
“Did you hear me, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to change this report so it says you got hit by a VC ambush and took one KIA, this, uh, Corporal Strosher. You got me?” Colonel Testor shoved the Lieutenant's casualty report across the table. It was lying on top of the inter-unit routing envelope, just as he had typed it that morning.
“
That's not the way it happened, sir.”
“I don't give a good goddamn if it happened that way or not, Lieutenant. I want that report changed to read the way I said it should read. Am I making myself understood, or is there something wrong with your hearing?”
The Lieutenant looked Testor in the eye and held his gaze for an instant before he spoke.
“There is nothing wrong with my hearing. Sir. But what you say didn't happen. Sir.”
“Listen to me, Lieutenant. If I tell you down is up and up is down, that's the way it's going to be, sport, you got me?”
“No, sir.”
“What did you say to me, sport?”
“I said, ‘No, sir.’ “
Testor glared at him, rolling the cigar back and forth across his mouth, rolling, rolling, chewing, glaring. Then he took the cigar out of his mouth and looked down at the table for an instant. When he looked up, the glare was gone, and so was the cigar. He was going to take another tack. The Lieutenant could smell it.
“You've got a lot to lose here, son. You know that?”
“I already lost one man, Corporal Strosher, to friendly fire, sir. I don't want to lose another, sir.”
“I'm not talking about your corporal, son.”
The Lieutenant waited, saying nothing.
“I'm talking about your career. You understand what I'm saying?”
“Yes, sir. I think I do.”
“This is a very serious situation you've created here. You've got to pick the fights you fight carefully, son. That's the way life is. You've got to examine the situation and estimate whether you're going to win or lose, and you've got to pick your fights on that basis. You're going to lose this one, son. Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All you've got to do right now is do what I say, and this will all go away and be forgotten. Lieutenant Colonel Halleck and I here will just forget we ever saw this report, and we'll forward your new one up the chain of command and everybody will be happy, and you'll go on to have a great career in the Army just like your grandfather, and you'll probably be a general by the time you're my age. It's all right there for the taking, son. All you've got to do is change this report. You get me?”
Army Blue Page 24
