by Dennis Foley
Harrold told him they would be extracted as soon after first light as the morning ground fog would permit since they had to assume the canal would probably not have any activity on it for the next several days. He put the team on two-thirds alert for the rest of the night and rechecked the perimeter before settling back into his position.
Packed up and ready for the pickup, they squatted in the tree line, half facing forward toward the pickup zone, half facing to the rear to cover their backs.
Suddenly, Hollister, who was facing to the rear, spotted the small face of a child no more than seven years old standing nearly a hundred yards out into the rice paddy on the other side of the trees that concealed them. It was a small girl with big black eyes. She was bent at the waist, her little hands on her thighs, peering into the trees—as if she saw or heard something.
There had to be someone else, Hollister thought. The child was too young to be that far out in the rice fields at daybreak without an adult or some older children.
He shifted his position to see around a bush that blocked his view and spotted two adult women wearing laborers’ pajamas and traditional conical hats. They were carrying crude hoes and were pecking at a chunk of higher ground, pulling manioc roots from the earth.
Not sure what to do, Hollister remembered that the call was not his to make. He turned and pitched a small stick at Harrold, who was facing away, waiting for the choppers.
Harrold reacted by moving to Hollister’s side and looking out on the field behind them. He shook his head, mouthed the words “No sweat,” and went back to his position.
As he stopped and knelt down again, the sounds of approaching choppers grew louder than the morning sounds and the slight breeze that rustled the bushes around them. Hollister looked back at the little girl. He saw one of the women drop her hoe and ran out into the field to scoop up her child. The sounds of the choppers meant something completely different to the villagers than it did to the LRPs.
As he sat in the corner of Operations drinking a room-temperature Coke, Sergeant Kurzikowski ran down the debriefing checklist. Hollister read his notes and made some more in order to refresh his memory later. He was angry at how the patrol had turned out. Though he had found little to complain about in the team’s performance, his list of coordination and support problems was lengthy.
He was also very disturbed by the nature of his new area of operations. In his opinion it was not for LRPs, it was for larger, conventional units that could defend themselves if compromised by a little girl or by firing at a target of opportunity. With LRPs the minute they were discovered or gave their position away they needed to be yanked out—and fast. The chopper support gave Hollister no confidence in their future response. He knew his work was cut out for him. Tactical support and coordination were his main responsibility. And he would do it right—too many lives depended on it.
“They don’t care!” Major Sangean said, anger in his voice as he sat stiffly on the edge of a folding metal chair at the far end of the CP, his eyes fixed on the Patrol After-Action Report on the field table.
“They have to care. They can’t just screw around and send a pair of gunships out with no solid frequencies, no locations for the LRP team on the ground, and no air-ground coordination. That’s criminal! We’re just lucky we weren’t splattered all over the province by them—mistaking us for the VC,” Hollister said, his own level of frustration clear.
Sangean’s expression turned to a scowl. “Don’t lecture me, Hollister. You think you are the first one to realize how important support is?”
Hollister said nothing, knowing it would be useless to try to apologize for his feelings.
“This is a goddamn big operation—a whole Field Force that is up to its ass in units and commanders and targets, all competing for the same combat-support assets. Because of that, half the time Long Binh doesn’t even know where its gunships, artillery, and air support are. Half the time they have long and elaborate excuses as to why they were late, or in the wrong place, or carrying the wrong ordnance.”
“We could get our own.”
“Get our own?” Sangean asked.
“Yes, sir, why don’t we make a case for getting our own aircraft and our own organic support?”
Sangean laughed. “You will be a fuckin’ brigade commander full colonel before that’ll happen. I have been bitching for more of everything since I got here. You see what it’s got me—zip!”
Hollister noticed that as quickly as Sangean’s laugh overtook him it was gone and he was back to the rigid coldness he had first noticed about him.
“I want to try. I can write up the justification and try and push it through Field Force. There’s no other way I can feel like I am doing my job if I don’t try to beg, borrow, or steal all the support I can get for this company, sir.”
“Do it. Don’t talk to me about it—just do it.”
“Okay, sir. I’m on it, but I have to tell you that I am also going to jump into the supply situation. We need much more equipment than we have. We need Starlights, cameras, and sniper rifles. We need to find out about silenced weapons. We need better—”
Sangean held up the palm of his hand to stop Hollister. “ACTIV. Go see them. They’re in Saigon.”
“ACTIV? I’m not sure I—”
“Army Concept Team in Vietnam. They’re the spooks of the supply business. I heard about them when I was running an A Team up-country. Seems they’ve been developing some interesting stuff and have been acquiring some off-the-shelf stuff for us to use. They made us some jungle boots that left bare footprints rather than boot tracks. If it can be had—they know where and how.”
“Roger that, sir,” Hollister replied.
Hollister rubbed his eyes. They burned from hours under the harsh light of the cheap Vietnamese fluorescent light that splashed across the papers he had spread out on top of the wooden footlocker.
“Here, this will keep you from going blind,” Major Sangean said as he pushed a mess-hall cup in front of Hollister.
“What is it?”
“George Dickel… sour mash whiskey. It will fix whatever ails you.”
The booze filled Hollister’s nostrils long before it wet his lips. The effect was immediate. He had not had a drink in a couple of days, and the back of his neck was knotted from the strain of trying to find the words to justify the additional resources he thought the company would need to operate.
Hollister turned to thank Sangean only to find that he had walked back to his end of the building and back to the map he had been studying for hours. It was obvious to Hollister that Sangean was in anything but a chatty mood. He decided not to press it.
Operations had no choppers scheduled for a routine trip from Cu Chi back to Long Binh. That meant Hollister would have to get a ride over to the division airfield to try to scrounge a ride with a chopper or fixed-wing aircraft heading to IIFFV or Bien Hoa. A makeshift orderly room had been set up in one of the broken-down barracks. Hollister entered and found Sergeant Dewey scratching a brittle rubber ink eraser against a form in his typewriter.
“Yessir? Can I do something for you?”
“You got a quarter ton around here that could run me over to the airstrip?”
Dewey brightened. “This must be your lucky day, sir. I have to leave in zero five to pick up the new first sergeant. He’s s’posed to be over there—in on the mail run.”
“It’s about time. We sure could use one around here. How long you been without a first shirt?”
Dewey screwed up his face and looked toward the ceiling. “Been at least a month and a half since the old first sergeant—don’t guess you ever met him—left. Too bad about his wife dying like that. He sure was a good man. You woulda liked him, sir.”
“Well, save me a seat in the jeep when you go to pick up his turtle. I’ve got to get to Long Binh today.”
“Can do, easy,” Dewey replied as he turned back to his typewriter.
Outside, Hollister walked over to the mess
hall to find a cup of coffee. His head hurt from the extra two doubles of George Dickel that Sangean had poured him the night before. He was sure the lightweight hangover was due to his lack of acclimatization and the lack of sleep since arriving at Cu Chi.
The coffee was hot, but it looked very strong. Hollister assumed it had been warming for a few hours and would probably taste stale and burned.
He couldn’t get Dewey’s words out of his mind. Can do, easy. It was a phrase taken from the pidgin English the Vietnamese bar girls spoke. But it reminded Hollister, painfully, of First Sergeant Horace P. Evan-Clark—known widely as “Easy.” Easy had risked his life on Hollister’s first tour in Vietnam to save his life. He ended up losing half a leg doing it. When Dewey talked about first sergeants, he could never have known of the dedication and loyalty of a soldier like Easy.
The coffee was as bad as Hollister had guessed. He put the cup back down and looked at the date on the paperwork in front of him on the table—January 29. A twinge of guilt and depression went through him. He knew that at the end of the month Easy was scheduled to be released from the Army Hospital in Denver to begin extended convalescence. He had told Hollister, in a letter, that after he had several months of limited duty a medical board would convene to evaluate him for disability and eventual medical discharge.
The army would do all it could to rehabilitate Easy and would let him go with twenty-eight years of service. Hollister knew that if he hadn’t pulled a stupid move and ended up on the ground in a hot extraction when he shouldn’t have, Easy might still have the leg. A lump came to his throat, and he found it hard to swallow. He missed Easy—he missed him a lot.
He had taken his mind off Easy by scratching out a short letter to Susan while he waited for Dewey to drive over to the airstrip.
The ride was the first time he had seen an American Infantry Division base camp since he had been at the 1st Cav’s base in An Khe on his first tour. He remembered that as being big and dirty and loaded with men, machines, and endless fields and buildings filled with all kinds of support gear.
The 25th Division’s base was almost as big and dirty, but it also had some other things that caught Hollister’s eye. The most noticeable was the troops. They weren’t the proud, cocky, competent troops he remembered from the Cav. They were sloppy. They slouched around, displaying very little military bearing or military courtesy, and they clustered by color.
Driving along the road, he would see pairs, bunches, and groups of soldiers—walking, standing around, waiting in lines, or playing ball together. But in almost every case they were segregated by color.
The equipment in the base camp needed a lot of repair and attention. Things were piled haphazardly. The grounds were littered with garbage, pieces of blowing papers, and trash piles. Latrines and mess areas looked dirty from the roadway. Weeds were everywhere, and the buildings needed lots of repairs to keep out mosquitoes and rain.
He didn’t like what he saw, but sat back in the jeep and patted himself on the back for being in a unit that had more self-respect and dignity than to live in such shabby conditions. To Hollister it meant a failure in morale—a leadership problem. The symptoms were as clear to Hollister as a child with measles.
“Yessir?” the cocky, mustached Specialist 4 behind the desk asked.
“You got something going to Long Binh?”
The soldier got up from the ammo box he was sitting on and walked two steps to a clipboard that hung from a nail on the wall of the small control shack that had been built off to the side of the taxi strip. He started at the top of the page and ran his stubby finger down the list, then stopped on an entry near the bottom. As if to reward himself, he tapped the entry proudly and announced, “Yessir. We got courier flight—a chopper, headed out of here in about forty minutes. If you’ll stand by here, I’ll let you know if they can take you.”
“How does it look?”
“They hardly ever have a full load, less’n they have some guys going home on emergency leave or something. I think we can do it. You’re not goin’ AWOL or nothin’, are ya’, Captain?” he asked, breaking into a big grin that revealed the missing bicuspid on the left side of his mouth.
“No. I just got here. Got almost a whole year left,” Hollister said.
“Choi oi!” the soldier said in mock surprise, using the Vietnamese exclamation stolen from the bar girls. “You’ll be sorry!”
Hollister laughed and filled in his name on the manifest the soldier handed him.
“I’ll holler, Cap’n. You can wait here if you like.”
Next to the airstrip were a few primitive roadside Vietnamese concessions. The owners of the stands were allowed to sell their services and wares on the large base camp, but had to be gone by early evening.
Hollister rubbed his hand up the back side of his neck and looked down at his boots. His hair was beginning to feel a little prickly. His boots were not much better.
Under a large oak tree two Vietnamese barbers had set up shop with nothing more than a comb, a plastic drape, a folding chair, and a pair of hand clippers.
Their misspelled sign leaned up against the tree trunk and read: HIAR CUT CHEAP 10 PIASTER. Hollister quickly glanced at his watch and figured there was not much chance the chopper would be early and it would only take a few minutes to get his hair cut and his boots shined.
“Listen, I’m going to try to squeeze in a haircut before my ride gets here.”
Sergeant Dewey, lighting a cigarette, raised his hand to let him know that he heard him. His cigarette lit, Dewey yelled after Hollister, “Don’t let ’em fuck with your ears or pop yer neck, sir.”
Without turning back, Hollister waved. “I’ve been here before, remember?” He knew the Vietnamese thought everyone was fond of having his earwax cleaned out with bamboo brushes and his neck cracked. It only took a soldier one time in a barber’s chair to lose any confidence in the cleanliness of the barber’s tools or to question the wisdom of having someone grab his head and spin it until the vertebrae popped like large knuckles.
The outdoor setup had no electricity, no running water, and no mirrors. Still, it worked for the barbers and soldiers like Hollister. The two barbers were older Vietnamese, who must have found the sudden influx of American customers a godsend.
Hollister was the first customer of the day, so the old men leaped from their barber chairs and offered Hollister his choice of chairs.
The nearest barber flared the plastic drape for Hollister and flashed a steel-capped grin as if he were a matador luring a bull.
Hollister took off his shirt, hung it over a branch of the large shade tree, and picked a chair. The barber threw the dirty cloth over him and started sizing up his semiarmy crew cut. There was very little a barber could do with it. Either it needed to be cut shorter or left alone completely. There was no doubt what Hollister wanted. The barber reached for the hand clippers that were laid out on a small wooden table in the shade of the tree with the rest of his equipment.
Hollister leaned back and let the barber do his job. The rhythmic clipping was relaxing. Hollister closed his eye and wondered what the day would hold for him at Field Force Headquarters.
A truck stopped along the road, and two soldiers jumped out of the back and walked toward the airfield control office. Then, before the truck pulled away, a Vietnamese boy jumped out and waved thanks to the unseen driver. He straightened up and adjusted the string over his shoulder.
The string was attached to a shoeshine box dangling next to his waist. Like the boy, the box was not very big. It only carried one can of black shoe polish, a brush, and a tattered rag. He might have been all of eight years old, but it was hard to tell from his size. American kids were a lot bigger.
In spite of his size, he showed a lot of self-confidence as he walked toward the hair-cutting tree and sized up the business prospects. Since Hollister was the only one getting a haircut, he was it
The two barbers and Hollister watched the boy as he walked up to Hollister�
��s chair and looked down at Hollister’s jungle boots. They had seen enough time in the field since they last saw shoe polish that parts of the blackened surface appeared to be almost white from the abrasive rice paddies, scuffing in and out of choppers, and general wear.
The boy took his time, studied Hollister’s boots, then shook his head as if passing judgment on the size ten and a half combat veterans.
“Hey, kid,” Hollister said, “you shine my boots?”
“Can do, easy, GI,” he replied as he swung the shoeshine box off his shoulder and maneuvered it next to Hollister’s right boot.
“How much?’ Hollister opened the customary Vietnamese bargaining ritual.
“For you … ten P,” the boy said.
Hollister was not worried about spending the ten piasters, which was the equivalent of about a dime in U.S. currency. It was the principle of the haggling that drove the conversation. “Ten P?!” he replied in mock outrage.
“Okay, what you pay, Dai Uy?” the boy responded, showing Hollister that he was fully aware of his rank of captain and his pay rate.
Hollister was impressed by the enterprise that caused the boy to check out his shirt hung over the tree limb for signs of rank. “Two piasters” was Hollister’s response.
Calmly, the boy lifted his shoeshine box and started to walk away. “You a cheap Charlie,” he said over his shoulder.
“Hold it,” Hollister yelled. “How about three P?”
The boy stopped, turned back to Hollister, and studied him for the longest time. Slowly, he walked back, replaced the box, squatted down, and started to shine his right boot. “Okay, GI. Three P number ten. But I do ’cause I like you, GI,” the boy said.
Hollister felt as if he had made some minor triumph over the inscrutable Oriental mind—even though that mind was in an eight-year-old head.
Smiling to himself, Hollister sat back smugly as the barber finished his trimming with the ancient hand clippers.
