by Dennis Foley
Deciding not to argue with Thanh, Bui got to his feet and gingerly fell into the stretched-out single file that would be their movement formation.
A small flicker of light was visible on the far side of the last rice paddy they had to cross. Someone stood in the palm grove with a small oil lamp to guide Thanh’s men into the clear lane, void of booby traps and mines, that protected the tunnel entrance.
Bui’s arms shook from weakness as he tried to lower his legs and body into the opening the guide revealed. Even though it was hidden in a pigsty, it stayed dry and tight under the wash of mud and slop the pigs wallowed in.
Once inside, Bui had to maneuver through the cramped passageway, scarcely an inch wider than his shoulders. And no matter how much he had denied the effects of his wound, he couldn’t conceal his loss of strength. He was glad to be at the tunnels finally, even though he would be forced to endure the unpleasantness that came with the security they offered.
After passing through several yards of horizontal corridor only twenty inches high and fifteen wide, Bui followed the man in front of him through an open wooden shaft that took them down several feet into a tube of water that served as an air seal. Once under the water, they each had to feel their way down, then forward, then up to another layer. The water served much like the trap in a sink. It prevented air from getting deeper into the tunnels should the enemy try to force gas or smoke into the complex in an attempt to flush them out.
Bui’s head broke the water on the far side of the water trap at the same time he ran out of air. He gasped for a fresh breath and found only stale, smoky air that had been in the tunnel for months without any significant freshening. Still, it was air. It was breathable, and it was what Bui needed after holding his breath long enough to get through the trap.
He pulled himself up onto the mud-greased level above the water. Thanh reached out and slapped Bui on the kidneys. “Move! There are others! Move away!”
Bui tried to stop coughing as he gasped for air. His back arched, his face near the tunnel’s muddy floor and spittle stringing from his mouth. “Yes. I am … moving. Yes …” he said, not really moving, hoping to have a moment to get just one more gulp of air.
Stopping quickly dropped his body temperature. And this, coupled with the fact that he was still wet from the trap, caused Bui to shiver uncontrollably. His skin tightened into goose bumps, and his lower lip trembled as he listened to Thanh speak out loud for the first time in many days.
“First order is to turn in the equipment we have brought back from the attack on the compound. Then we clean our weapons and equipment so that we may fight again on a moment’s notice should we be discovered here or have to come to the aid of our comrades aboveground. Next we will eat. But I want it to be quick. We have a meeting scheduled before we sleep, and I have many things to cover. Questions?”
No one spoke. They were all eager to get on with the tasks before them and knew that nothing ever got done when they were talking. Bui tried to control his shivering, but found that the wall of the tunnel behind and underneath him was cold and damp and gave no relief. To make it worse, he felt nauseous and his leg wound pounded with hot pain, which had progressed to shooting pains that flashed up his thigh to a point near his groin. He knew his wound was much worse, and he just wanted to get on with healing and eating and sleeping.
He was unable to stifle the urge to vomit and felt a moment of panic as he realized he had lost control and there was not an inch of open floor space on which to vomit. With no other option available to him, Bui grabbed the bottom of his pajama top, pulled it out and away from his waist, and vomited the rice and fish he had eaten earlier into the pocket formed by his shirt.
“Bui! What is wrong with you? Are you so undisciplined that you can’t control yourself? You are a disgrace!” Thanh screamed as Bui rapidly emptied the contents of his stomach and resorted to dry heaving uncontrollably.
There was no way to tell what time of day it was in the tunnel. It was always night down there. Bui awoke in a cutout shelf that had been carved into the side of a passageway near the complex’s tiny hospital. He couldn’t see much near him, but he could tell from the light at the end of the tunnel that there was a much larger one than the one he had crawled through getting into the tunnel complex beyond the light.
“You have a very high fever, Comrade,” a female voice said.
“What?” Bui asked, unsure if he’d really heard a woman’s voice or if it was a dream in his delirium.
A spark turned to a flame, and the woman touched the flame to the wick on a small oil lamp. Bui squinted against the lamp flame and the woman behind it. Only her face was visible in the dim light, her black hair and black clothing sucking up the light and reflecting none.
“I am told that your wound is very much infected. We must cut it open and clean it out or you surely will die, Comrade,” she said.
“Okay, yes … but who are you?” Bui asked, so pleased to see a woman and hear a gentle voice.
“I am Comrade Nguyen Te Tich.”
Rolling his shoulders in order to be able to look at her face without straining his neck, Bui saw it behind the straight line of black soot that flowed off the top of the tiny flame and mushroomed against the tunnel ceiling, only a scant inch above her hair.
To Bui she was beautiful. Her small round face was a classic Chinese form, painted with strong black eyebrows and very long eyelashes. Her nose was large for an Asian, as were her lips. They were full and had their own red-brown hue, which almost looked like the lipstick Europeans wore.
“Comrade?”
Her voice was so sweet it made Bui giggle as he answered her. “Yes, Comrade Tich …”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes … are you a doctor, Comrade?”
“No, I am a soldier. But I work here in the infirmary until I too am well and strong.” She dropped her head as if guilty. “I have been ill with tuberculosis. But my strength will come, and I will be able to work to help fighters again.”
He heard her words, but he didn’t believe a word of them. She was spouting acceptable rhetoric, common with Viet Cong who didn’t know each other and were cautious about being candid. He decided not to push her for her real feelings for fear that she would suspect him of being an agent who could cause her much trouble. He decided to go along with her, try to find some reason to keep her near him on the grounds of medical business, and enjoy her company without being too obvious.
“Your wound is not large, Comrade—”
“Bui. My name is Bui.”
“—but your wound is very serious—Bui,” she said informally, without attaching “Comrade” to it.
He tried to be strong and not show her how much pain he was in while she removed the dressings and tried to soak up some of the thickening fluid that was coming from the wound. He could tell that she was trying not to recoil from the smell. He wasn’t nearly as close to it as she was, and it still made him sick to smell it. Knowing it would become more painful as she continued to administer to his needs, Bui tried to distract himself from his wound’s repulsive look and smell.
He watched her in the flickering light of the oil lamp she had placed on the tunnel floor near her. Her outline against the flame was exciting to Bui, even though he was in considerable pain.
“I must get some ointment to put on this. It is infected, and if we don’t do something to heal it we—you—might be in for a very long battle,” she said.
“Yes, do what you must.”
She picked up the lamp and walked upright down the passageway.
At the moment she turned, Bui reflexively reached out and touched the hem of her fitted blouse. He didn’t know what made him do it. Maybe it was because he wanted to make sure she was there and it was not some kind of evil trick his mind was playing on him. It had been so long since he had been able to talk to a young woman so privately. The few other occasions had been strictly business, at political meetings and at field messes.
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Once she had moved out of his reach, Bui didn’t pass up the chance to watch her walk. The light she carried in front of her outlined her tiny body. He could tell by the little he could see that she had unusually wide shoulders in contrast to her narrow hips. Her arms were slender, graceful, and strong—but feminine. At the turn in the tunnel, she disappeared from sight. Bui closed his eyes to hold the image in his mind for a few seconds before it decayed. He liked it—very much.
The strain of holding his body up to be able to speak to her had drained Bui. He slumped back in the carved-out shelf and tried to muster some strength for her return.
He couldn’t gauge how long she had been gone, but she quickly reentered the passageway carrying the lamp and bandages. This time the light played the length of her body and gave Bui a clearer picture of his underground angel of mercy. Her pajama bottoms stuck to her legs from the tunnel’s dampness. Her thighs were long and firm, her stomach flat, and her waist narrow. Bui thought of how long it had been since he had even touched a woman.
He tried not to flinch at the pain she was causing while she tried to pluck the bits of rag and dirt from his wound. The smell of the wound grew more powerful. It embarrassed him, even though she showed no sign of being repulsed by it.
“This is very dirty, Comrade. You must have someone more skilled to look after it.”
Tich pulled away and stood up, a blood- and pus-soaked rag in hand.
Bui reached out quickly to stop her from leaving. He grabbed her free hand. It was an unforgettable moment for him. The back of her hand was warm and soft. Her palm was rough, but not objectionable.
“Can’t you take care of me?”
“I am not a doctor. I told you, I am only here because I, too, have been sick and they need help down here. Soon I will be sent to work somewhere. Some say it could be back on the great trail, but I don’t know where.”
“Maybe you can speak with someone. Maybe you are not well enough to go back up,” Bui said as he looked up in the direction of the outside world. “Maybe they will find you are better here than laboring to keep the trail open in Cambodia. Can’t you ask?”
She was quiet for a long moment, not moving to resist his touch. “I don’t know. I have never asked. Maybe they will think I am trying to shirk my duty.”
“What did you do before you fell sick?” he asked her.
“I was hauling dirt from the tunnels near here. The earth taken from them had to be carried to the river and dumped there so that the republicans could not discover our digging.”
“But it makes your beautiful hands hard, like a man’s.”
Tich reacted by pulling her hand away from his, as if embarrassed by the intimacy. “It is not my job to question my role.”
“But wouldn’t it be better to help a soldier return to the battle than to carry dirt?”
She thought over his question and coyly replied, “I must think about that. Now, prepare yourself. I am sure this will hurt.”
She was right. The greasy salve that she squeezed from a tube with French markings on it burned as it came in contact with the raw flesh of his inflamed wound.
Chapter 3
DRIVING TO THE TEAM room before work, Hollister wondered what they could tell him in Washington when he called. He was a little anxious about calling. To call Infantry Officers Assignments Branch at the Department of the Army was fraught with risk. Every infantry officer knew that he would rapidly get a reputation as a whiner if he called OPO every time he wanted an assignment or wanted out of an assignment.
Hollister knew well that a good infantryman would take what the army had for him and operate under the assumption that they were putting him where they needed him and that they were looking out for his career development at the same time. Calling OPO could be considered akin to buttering up the teacher. And no one in the army liked a kiss-ass.
Still, Hollister had to make the call to try to find out more about the army’s plans for him and to be able to make some decisions about his own future. Earlier, when he was single, he hadn’t been so concerned about unaccompanied short tours. But that was before Susan and before Vietnam. Now if he received an alert notification to go overseas, it most likely meant a year without her in a hostile-fire zone. While he took the risk, she bore the harder strain.
He was not completely against another tour in Vietnam. Somewhere in the back of his head he thought that staying in the army a little longer would let him and Susan get some money saved up so that he could go to college once he did get out. The expenses of getting married and setting up housekeeping had just about wiped out their small nest egg.
But if he was going to stay in for a while longer, it surely meant another tour in Vietnam. And he was sure that he didn’t want to spend the year with the Vietnamese Army. His limited and unpleasant experiences with it on his first tour in Vietnam had convinced him that he wanted no part of any advisory job. And the only chance he had of avoiding one was to call OPO and try to strike some sort of deal to avoid it.
Hollister wasn’t sure if anyone would be in at OPO at that time of the morning. But calling from his team room at six-thirty would give him the privacy to get through the call without being overheard by the others.
He pulled the scrap of paper on which he had scribbled Lieutenant Colonel Adkins’s AUTOVON phone number out of his pocket. He unfolded the paper and reached for the phone. And then he hesitated. Everything about the call was so important, his approach, manner, and tone. He was fully aware of the strongly held belief among the junior officers that notes were taken on the conversations with the assignments officers and kept in a special file that was only seen by other assignments officers. The reason given was that if you were a whiner or a real pain in the ass assignments officers wouldn’t spend much time on your request and wouldn’t bust their butts for you.
Feeling the anxiety, Hollister got to his feet and went over to the percolator. He filled it with water from the nearby mop sink and scooped coffee grounds from the Maxwell House can into the basket.
Placing the top back on the pot, he plugged it in, looked up at the army-issue clock on the wall, and took a deep breath. He was out of things to do, and the others would be getting in soon. If he was going to call Colonel Adkins, he had better get to it.
The phone rang, hollow and distant. The AUTOVON military communications system was far from perfect and often didn’t work. Hollister drummed his fingers on the desktop and tried to run through the things that he wanted to be sure to discuss with Colonel Adkins.
“Officer Assignments Branch, Mrs. Calloway speaking.”
The sound of a woman’s voice caught Hollister somewhat off guard. He had been so deep in thought about Colonel Adkins that Mrs. Calloway was a surprise.
“Hello? Mrs. Calloway … is there anyone there?”
“Ah, yes, ma’am. This is Lieutenant Hollister calling from Fort Benning, ma’am. May I speak with Colonel Adkins?”
“Just a minute,” she said as she quickly consulted an alphabetical roster of lieutenants. “Is that Allan, Barton, or James Hollister, sir?”
“James, ma’am. James A.”
“Your serial number, Lieutenant?”
“05325085.”
“All right. Colonel Adkins will be right with you. Please hold, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you,” Hollister replied, knowing that she was quickly taking a copy of his Form 66 from her office to Colonel Adkins along with the private notes that might have already been made on him. He knew that Colonel Adkins would take a quick pass at his three efficiency reports, his assignments, and the notes that any other assignments officer had made on him.
A booming voice filled the earpiece on Hollister’s phone. “Good mornin’, young Ranger! This is Colonel Adkins. What can I do for you?”
Trying to control the sound of his voice and unsure if the words he had rehearsed in his head were going to work, Hollister just jumped in and started talking. “Sir, I’m down here at Benning in
the Ranger Department, and I wanted to call and see if I could get some idea about my availability for reassignment and—”
Adkins cut him off and finished the sentence for him. “And you’ve heard that we are sending young studs like you back to Vietnam even before you’ve gotten your laundry back at Benning. That right?”
“Ah, well, yessir. I am trying to make some decisions and I—”
“Youngster, let me tell you where it stands. I know enough about you from looking at your file here to tell you that if you haven’t signed any serious leases or somethin’—I wouldn’t recommend you do so. Ya followin’ me?”
“Yessir. So I’m short?”
“Son, you’re shorter than short. You’re almost next. Here’s the deal. We’re turning around company-grade infantry officers, chopper pilots, and a few other specialties so fast that some of them are just getting a year back in CONUS. You got a good-lookin’ file, and you’re ready to go, partner,” the colonel explained.
There was a pause while Hollister let it sink in. Everything that Adkins had said confirmed the rumors that he had heard at Benning since he had been back from his first tour in Vietnam. “So I should pack?”
“I wouldn’t make any long-term plans,” Adkins said, laughing to try to take the sting out of it.
Showing any reluctance to accept an assignment—however unpleasant—was one of those things that all officers assumed would merit a negative remark in the secret notes. That in mind, Hollister tried to sound enthusiastic without sounding like an idiot. “Can I ask what you think I might be slated for, sir?”
“Since you have one tour with U.S. troops under your belt and you are about to make captain, you’re real ripe for an advisory assignment.”
The words were not a surprise to Hollister, but they didn’t sit well, either. “Is there any way I can lobby for a second troop assignment?” he asked.
Colonel Adkins laughed. “Got your fill of the ARVNs?”
