Army Blue

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “I'll be aroun’ if you need me, Eltee,” said Repatch as he backed out the door.

  “If I could get a word with you tomorrow . . . “Jannick said. Repatch grabbed his arm and they disappeared down the hall.

  The Lieutenant watched them go with a mixture of awe and superstition. He knew Repatch had been there tonight. He was certain of it. Still . . .

  He wasn't certain of anything.

  Cathy stirred and reached for him and he held her to his chest and spoke softly in her ear . . .

  “It's okay now. You're all right now. Just go to sleep.”

  She opened her eyes and saw her room and she moved her head and she saw him and she closed her eyes and clung to him and shuddered against his chest until she stopped and her breathing told him she was asleep.

  He rolled from the bed and found the bathroom and washed his face. He took a towel and cleaned the dry blood from his ankles and wrapped his hand with a washcloth. He wet another towel and removed her shoes and wiped the blood from her feet and her ankles and pulled a bedspread over her and sat on the edge of the bed and stared.

  She was just plain beautiful.

  He wiped her brow with the wet cloth and stroked her hair and tucked the bedspread around her shoulders. Then he went back in the bathroom and leaned on the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his cheekbones were stark and pronounced. A two-day stubble darkened a pasty, sallow complexion.

  He'd looked better.

  He turned off the bathroom light and felt his way into the bedroom. As he passed the bed, a hand reached out from the spread and grabbed his arm and pulled him down on the bed beside her.

  “I thought I heard Jannick,” she mumbled.

  “You did. He was here, but he's gone now.” He stood up to leave.

  “Stay. I need you,” she said, eyes closed, as her arm wrapped around his neck and eased his head onto the pillow next to hers. She lifted the bedspread for him, and as he slipped in next to her, he felt her bare, cold skin.

  She had undressed.

  Then he felt her hand unbuttoning his khaki shirt and tugging at his web belt. He worked his pants free and kicked them on the floor and sat up and he felt her removing his uniform shirt and he reached up and pulled his T-shirt over his head. She tugged at the waist of his drawers and he slid them over his knees and kicked them free. She wrapped around him like a child and whispered in his ear something about the morning and he closed his eyes and the sound of her and the smell of her rocked him to sleep.

  SIX

  * * *

  * * *

  When Colonels Go to War

  Firebase Zulu-Foxtrot Day Six

  * * *

  * * *

  Repatch was cleaning his weapon and Sergeant Davis was cooking a skinny creature over a campfire he'd built down in a hole and Whoopie Cushion Ridgely was standing alongside his foxhole baying at the moon which had just risen above the horizon and Mallick was tugging at Whoopie Cushion's pantlegs trying to get him to stop and the Lieutenant was sitting on a pile of sandbags in his track playing cards with Dirtball when the radio split the silence and crackled and screeeeeed.

  Dirtball grabbed the receiver.

  “Rattail Two,” he said, crooking the receiver against his shoulder and dealing another hand of stud.

  In a moment he put down his cards and handed the receiver to the Lieutenant.

  “You're gonna love this one, sir,” he said.

  “What's up, Dirtball?”

  “'Nother patrol, sir. They want ‘nother fuckin’ patrol from us, sir.”

  The Lieutenant took the receiver from Dirtball.

  “Rattail Two, over,” he said.

  “Two, this is Six,” said the company commander. “Saltlick Six wants another patrol tonight.”

  “Where do they want it this time, Six, over?” the Lieutenant asked.

  “Same general area, coupla kliks out and back. That's all. Over.”

  “Righto, Six,” said the Lieutenant.

  “Six here. Saltlick Six stated specifically in his order that you're to lead the patrol tonight, Two. Do you copy? Over.”

  “Roger on leading the patrol, Six,” said the Lieutenant. He waited a moment, then he said, “Six, Two. Did he give you any reason why I'm ordered to lead the patrol, over?”

  “This is Six. Negative. Over.”

  “Christ, over.”

  “This is Six. I don't like this crap any more than you do, Two. But don't pull anything, Two. I don't know what's going on, but they're going to be watching you tonight.”

  “Roger on the watching, Six.”

  “Call in the patrol's grid coordinates once you're set up, Two.”

  “Rodge.”

  “Six out.”

  “Two out.”

  The Lieutenant put the receiver on top of the radio and stared at his hand of cards and tossed the hand on the sandbag and rubbed his face and blinked in the dim red light inside the track.

  “Same old shit, sir?” Dirtball asked.

  “SOS, Dirtball. You got it.”

  “You want me to get Sergeant Davis, sir?”

  “May as well.”

  Dirtball headed down the back ramp of the track. In the distance the Lieutenant could hear artillery booming softly in the night. The sound of artillery reminded him of something from his boyhood, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Then it came to him. Distant artillery sounded like somebody was beating on big cardboard boxes about a block away. He remembered how much fun a kid could have with something as simple as a box that had contained a washing machine or a refrigerator. You could turn it into a fort or you could beat on it like a drum or you could cut it up with your pocketknife and slide down a grassy hill on a big piece of cardboard, holding the front edge before you like a bobsled.

  Sergeant Davis appeared in the door of the track with something black and crusty on the end of his bayonet. He was chewing hard and he stopped at the back ramp and bent over and spat a bone into the dirt then he duck-walked into the track and sat down across from the Lieutenant on a sandbag and looked up with his sad eyes and he said:

  “What you got goin’, sir?” He finished a bite and spat another bone into the dirt.

  “They want another patrol tonight, Sarge. The word came down. I've got to lead this one, too.”

  “Roger that, sir. Me and the boys will watch the farm while you're out there. They try anything back here, we'll take it to ‘em for you.”

  “They want it same as last night. Two kliks northwest and set up an ambush. And they want the grid coordinates. I'll call ‘em to you when I get out there.”

  “Yes, sir. Sounds good to me.”

  “Get Repatch for me, will you?”

  “You got it, sir.”

  Sergeant Davis drifted into the dark and returned with Repatch a few minutes later. The two of them came up on the track so silently that they startled the Lieutenant when he looked up and saw their faces peering in the ramp door.

  “We lost Strosher last night,” said the Lieutenant. “I don't want any casualties tonight. It's fucking criminal to have lost a man on one of these bogus goddamned patrols. So ... Repatch, I want you to take us there again and set up tonight right where we were last night, and I want to be dug in so deep you could walk on top of us and never know we were there.”

  Repatch nodded, looking at something over the Lieutenant's shoulder.

  “That a picture of your girl, sir?” he asked, pointing to a photo pasted to the firewall of the track.

  “That's Dirtball's girl, Repatch.”

  “Mighta knowed. Fuckin’ Dirtball. How does he get ‘em, huh, sir?”

  “They home in on his smell,” said the Lieutenant.

  Everybody laughed, including Dirtball, who was dangling his feet over the top edge of the track and listening in.

  “Sergeant Davis, Repatch knows right where I'm talking about, and I've got the grid coordinates marked here, but I'll let you know on
the radio if there is any variation whatsoever from where we were last night.”

  “Rodge, sir.”

  “Okay, Davis. Round them up.”

  “You want the rest of this bird, sir? He's better tastin’ than he looks.”

  “I'm sure he is, Sarge, but no thanks.”

  “Okay, sir. I'll leave him right here for Dirtball.” Davis pulled the creature off the end of his bayonet and placed it carefully on top of a sandbag under the photograph of Dirtball's girlfriend.

  “Tell him it's with my compliments, sir.”

  “He's right up there on top, Sarge, tell him yourself,” said the Lieutenant, pointing to Dirtball's feet and legs.

  “Dirtball, the grilled bird is fo’ you,” said Sergeant Davis. “You goin’ tonight?”

  “Thanks, Sarge. Eltee told me to stay back here with you. Take care out there tonight now, you hear me, Eltee?”

  “Yes I will. You know I will Dirtball.”

  “Who you want me to give the radio to, sir?”

  “Give it to Cushion,” said the Lieutenant. “Maybe carrying that extra weight will keep him from dancing around.”

  “Got you,” Dirtball said, dropping into the track and picking up the radio and heading down the ramp.

  The Lieutenant followed him to the perimeter, where Sergeant Davis was shaping up the patrol. Watching Davis gave the Lieutenant the opportunity to study the process in a way that he couldn't when he was the one shaping them up. He stood in the dark and marveled.

  Who was it that had figured out the concept of a patrol? Caesar? One of those guys? Whoever invented the patrol came up with a beautiful thing, the Lieutenant thought.

  There they stood . . .

  Repatch, silent, face blackened, almost invisible against the dark treeline, shuffling his shuffle, breathing slowly, in and out, in and out. . .

  Whoopie Cushion, wearing the radio like a new suit of clothes, proud and erect, almost stately, staring at the moon . . .

  Mallick, crouched on one knee, resting his chin on the barrel of his M-79 grenade launcher, looking out past the wire like a dog ready to hunt. . .

  Moonface with his M-60 over his shoulder, twenty-five pounds of steel he carried like a baseball bat . . .

  Lucky Lemon, hair so yellow it looked like somebody spilled mustard on him, scratching at the dirt with the toe of his boot, humming “Orange Blossom Special” . . .

  Simpleton Sample, two sacks of Claymores over each shoulder, M-16 stuck between his knees like the third leg of a tripod holding him up . . .

  Woodley the medic, steady and reliable and well turned out in clean fatigues and neatly bloused trousers, always a man to pay attention to detail, always watching, ready to sprint. . .

  And back there at the end of the patrol . . . nobody ... a blank spot where Strosher would have been, the terminal teenager, jolly and giggly, always cracking jokes and enjoying being the brunt of more than his share, but now he was gone and nobody was there to take his place, so the night filled in Strosher's spot with silence and humid air and heat and doom . . .

  Sergeant Davis picked up the wire. The Lieutenant ushered them across the perimeter and through the cleared brush and into the woodline and they were gone, sponged up by the woods and the darkness like a stain on the night.

  They had been gone for an hour when the radio crackled and the Lieutenant called in the grid coordinates, the same as the night before: sector map 24-Lima, 72548869. Sergeant Davis cross-checked the coordinates with those the Lieutenant had given him from the night before and satisfied himself they were exactly the same.

  The Lieutenant told him to call in the patrol's grid coordinates to Rattail Six. He did.

  Sergeant Davis carefully folded the map and laid it out on top of the track's bench and mixed himself a cup of cold instant coffee and got ready to wait them out. That patrol would be inside the wire before he put his head down and racked out.

  Dirtball shuffled the deck of cards for a while, then got out his notebook and started writing a letter to his girlfriend. When Sergeant Davis had finished his coffee, he scooted down the ramp and took a walk around the perimeter, checking the men in their holes, prodding one or two awake, ordering others to relieve the ones on guard.

  It was a night like many others he had spent with the weapons platoon. Quiet. Strangely still. You could hear every noise made inside the wire and a virtual racket from the night birds and creepy-crawlies out in the woods. The danger on a night like this, he knew, was complacency. You could let the night noises lull you into a sense of security that wasn't yours for the taking, not in a platoon perimeter somewhere inside Laos, it wasn't.

  And then there was the patrol, out there somewhere in the dark, dug in, crouched down, breathing in quick shallow little gasps of air, waiting . . .

  Waiting . . .

  Waiting . . .

  Waiting . . .

  Waiting . . .

  The Lieutenant was out there waiting . . . cranky, jittery, spastic, humorless and ugly and nasty and mean, hunkered down in the dark.

  They waited another hour and the silence broke with the pop-pop-pop-pop sound of gunfire in the night.

  The Lieutenant was lying on his back in a slight depression in the ground, staring up at the stars, and when he heard the gunfire he sat up straight and listened and heard it again and he poked Cushion in the shoulder and grabbed the radio and whispered:

  “Dirtball. Dirtball. Give me Davis.”

  He was breaking radio procedure, but he didn't care. He just sat there drumming his fingers on the side of the radio, waiting for Sergeant Davis.

  “Eltee, it's me,” came the sound of Davis's voice on the radio.

  “What's going on back there?”

  “I don't know. There's some shootin’ over to the east of us, but it ain't much. Sound like somebody blew a bush. We sittin’ tight, Eltee. Everything's cool.”

  “You let me know if the fighting picks up.”

  “Rodge, Eltee,” said Davis, whispering into the mike. “Will do.”

  The Lieutenant handed the receiver to Cushion and leaned back against the ground. He was completely soaked with sweat and his back felt clammy and soggy and sweat poured off his brow into his eyes, and his eyes ran and his nose ran and he sniffled and sneezed.

  He sat up and switched the radio to the company net.

  “Rattail Six, this is Rattail Two, over,” he whispered.

  He waited.

  “Rattail Six, this is Rattail Two, over.”

  He waited.

  “Two, this is Six, over,” the radio crackled.

  “Six, Two. What's going on, over?”

  “Two, this is Six. We're taking some fire from the south of us, over.”

  “Six, Two. We're standing by.”

  “Roger, Two. It's not much, so far. We'll let you know. Out.”

  “Two out.”

  “What's up, Eltee?” Repatch asked. He had appeared next to the Lieutenant out of the dark.

  “The Battalion's taking some fire. Captain says it's not much so far.”

  “You want me to get them ready to move out, Eltee?”

  “Yeah, Repatch. Do it.”

  Repatch crept along the ground to each man on the patrol, warning them to be ready to move out.

  There was no telling what the distant fire meant. The fighting could move toward them. It could move away. By the time Repatch got back to the Lieutenant, the distant gunfire had picked up. A fight was going on somewhere out there between the firebase and the battalion base camp, a distance of about three kilometers. The Lieutenant heard the distinctive pop of a 60mm mortar, the handheld weapon carried by the VC. He heard another pop, and another.

  Then he heard the skittish rattle of a VC machine gun and the answer of an M-60.

  The radio crackled.

  “Eltee.”

  It was Sergeant Davis on the platoon frequency.

  “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “There's some shit out there. They shootin’ 60s
and shit. They must be getting pretty close to you.”

  “We're keeping our heads down, roger?”

  “Roger that. Our heads is down, too. Way down.”

  “Is anything coming your way, over?”

  “Nothin’ so far.”

  “Stay by the radio, over.”

  “Rodge. Out.”

  The Lieutenant left his hole and made a quick inspection of the rest of the patrol. Everybody was tense. He could smell them sweating in the dark.

  He returned to his hole and squatted down and looked out through the jungle into the night. He could hear it but he couldn't see it. There was a war going on but he wasn't in it and he didn't want to be in it and he didn't want his men in it but he knew that soon it would come to him and he and the weapons platoon would be at war.

  The radio crackled and Cushion grabbed the receiver and whispered to the Lieutenant:

  “Battalion's callin’ for a fire mission, Eltee!”

  “Give it to me,” said the Lieutenant. He took the receiver. The radio was tuned in on the company net. He pressed the receiver to his ear and listened.

  On the radio, Dirtball took the fire mission coordinates from Captain Gardner and relayed them to Sergeant Davis. He would call them out to his fire direction control sergeant, who would compute the coordinates and call out the azimuth and elevation to the gun crews, who would dial them into the mortar sights. Then the mortars would fire.

  The Lieutenant switched the radio to the platoon frequency and whispered into the receiver.

  “Davis, hold it.” He said the words slowly, deliberately, to make sure Sergeant Davis received his message.

  “Rodge, sir,” said Sergeant Davis.

  The mortar crews were waiting for their settings. The fire direction control sergeant was waiting for his coordinates. Dirtball was sitting by the radio, ready to take adjustments of fire from company commander, who was the one calling in the fire mission.