The Return: A Novel of Vietnam

by Charles W. Sasser

  “I feel some deep kimshi be comin down, L.T.,” Daniels said. “Hear wot I be sayin, Lt, Kaz?”

  “I hear you, Daniels.”

  Corporal Daniels was my Third Platoon machine gunner. A tall, lanky black kid from South Carolina. His skin was so dark his face actually became part of the night. All that remained of him after the sun went down good were eyes so big and white and bugged out they made him look perpetually startled and inordinately wise at the same time. Other than 60-gunner, he served as platoon sage, seer and psychic. He had an uncanny way of predicting when “Third Herd” was about to step in some shit. Not exactly who would get it, only that we would get it.

  He saw somebody stumbling into a punji pit. Two days later, we lost Thompson when a shit-smeared bamboo punji stake skewered out one of his eyeballs. He predicted the day Third lost Iocco the Italian kid from the Bronx and Clauster from Oklahoma. “I feel an ambush,” he prophesied. Clauster had his arm amputated below the elbow and Iocco returned to New York in a silver-colored aluminum box,

  It was eerie the way Daniels saw the future. The other men looked at him with awe and fear. Even Sgt. Holtzauer, my crusty platoon sergeant from a ranch near Lubbock, Texas, believed in the gunner’s powers, although he tried not to show it. He complained how Daniels was bad for morale,

  “Just shut the fuck up, Daniels,” he grumbled.

  “Can I hep it if I be a fuckin psychic, Sarge?”

  “I’m gonna break your fuckin crystal ball, Daniels. I don’t give a goddamn if you see the end of the world comin tomorrow at reveille, don’t say nothin. It makes the troops nervous in the service.

  “It makes me nervous in the service, Sarge. Lt. Kaz, I be tellin you, sir. I feel somethin black in Third Herd’s future, sir.”

  “It’s your own fuckin lip, Daniels,” Holtzauer sneered.

  Vietnam was a mobile war, a helicopter war. Rotary-winged aircraft filled a multitude of roles. Helicopters were used for reconnaissance, often locating the enemy by intentionally drawing fire. They delivered ammo, food, water and troops. They functioned in battle as airborne observation and command posts. They rescued downed airmen and evacuated wounded soldiers. Armed with rockets, machine guns and mini-guns, they were awesome in close air support of ground troops. “Airmobile” was the military term for the air cavalry in Vietnam.

  The 4/39th under Colonel Hackman was the most airmobile of the airmobile. With support of the Black Hawk Squadron, Hardcore troopers jitterbugged all over AO Kudzu, trying to tag the enemy from the air in order to fix him and fuck him over. Tiny, mosquito-like Loach choppers buzzed around at treetop level trying to entice Charlie to give away his position. Lean, predatory Cobras with sharks teeth painted on their noses hovered and dashed here and there, seeking targets for their formidable armaments. Huey “hogs” worked over tree lines with machine guns. Recon by fire, attempting to flush out the gooks or get them to show themselves.

  Platoon ground pounders were jerked into the mixture if so much as a single peasant ran across a rice paddy. On the ground was the job of the grunts, the GIs, the boonirats. Jitterbugging in a series of random helicopter insertions until contact was made. Or “eagle-flighting” in helicopter raids directed at specific targets in Hackman’s determined but largely unsuccessful efforts to corner the enemy and make him fight on our terms.

  The enemy was shadow in the forest. He was ethereal like the fog. He was like the jungle birds who came and went as swiftly and as suddenly as they pleased. He was the black stinking mud. He was the heat and the crotch sores and the jungle rot that sloughed the skin off your feet. He was diarrhea and malaria and the stink of human excrement used as fertilizer. He was in the face of the mamasans who watched expressionless as GIs tromped through their village. He was in the eyes of the little kids selling souvenirs. He was fear and dread and, yes, anger.

  “Why don’t the fuckers come out and fight?” men complained bitterly.

  The enemy decimated us by degrees. It was a war of slow, steady attrition. It was heat, humidity, water, mud, checking one woodline after another. It was lost feet from toe popper booby traps. It was heat stroke. It was the sudden popping of gunfire and cries of “Medic! Medic!” It was emersion feet, the skin on soldiers’ feet paling and wrinkling and peeling off.

  Chronic fatigue. Boonirats wearing down and wearing out. We crashed whenever and wherever we could, I had never endured such bone deep, physically and emotionally wrung out strung out, Zomboid fatigue. Empty guts growled, as we were lucky to have one full Charlie-rat meal a day. Our mouths tasted as if Ho Chi Minh had marched through the entire North Vietnamese Army.

  Tempers frayed and the men snapped at each other.

  “Keep yo white honky ass outa my way, man, or I be knockin yo scrawny butt in the dirt,” Daniels raged at Steinmeyer the medic. Daniels was almost always even-tempered and good-natured, understanding as he did through his psychic powers the fragility of life. But even he had his breaking point.

  It was frustrating business, chasing ghosts. We searched hamlets whose inhabitants abandoned them to hide out in the forest until activity settled back to normal chaos. We set up night observation with Starlight scopes on villages where we suspected enemy activity. We patrolled deep into Indian Territory, following trails along which commies had strung red, blue and yellow-starred communist North Vietnamese flags and placed signs reading “Tu Dia—Kill Zone.” Bravo united with other companies in broad sweeps, search-and-destroy missions and hammer-and-anvil ops.

  Because of its inaccessibility, the Mekong Delta had long been a VC sanctuary. Home turf, a safe haven. Regular infiltration routes bisecting the AO were dotted with way stations and permanent VC base camps. Hardcore Battalion penetrated deeper into enemy country than any other American outfit before us, with the exception of SEALs and Army Special Forces,

  “A place where no white man has gone before—and taken his niggers,” Daniels quipped.

  On nearly every mission we came upon old half-eroded fighting trenches left over from the French-Vietnamese war, occasional stone watchtowers and other debris from the historical past. It made you realize just how long the Viets had been fighting. The more things changed, the more they remained the same.

  We were supposed to be searching for signs of massive enemy troop buildups preceding the annual TET cease-fire. We found little other than old VC sign and empty bunkers.

  “One of these days, we gonna find ol’ Luke the gook. We gonna find Charlie in a big way,” Daniels predicted.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mission assignments always came down from above. Rarely did we grunts in the field have any idea how any particular operation fit into the overall Big Picture of the war. The private with the rifle generally knew as much about the Big Picture as the platoon leader, We followed orders, went out, did what we had to do, and hoped we all got back with the number of arms and legs we started with. Then we did it all over again the next day.

  Word came down. Bravo Company would conduct a deep penetration mission against a suspected enemy headquarters at a place called Vam Tho.

  “Lt. Kaz, where the fuck is Vam Tho?” asked Pfc. Donatelli, our RTO, radio-telephone operator.

  “How the fuck should I know, Donatelli?”

  ‘You’re an officer. You’re supposed to know, sir.”

  “It’s...it’s out there”.

  “Every-fuckin-thing is out there, L.T. Okay, everybody bend over. The ‘deep penetration’ is gonna be us gettin penetrated.”

  “F-U-C-K-E-D A-G-A-l-N!” the troops chanted to the tune of the old Mickey Mouse TV theme song. “Fucked again.”

  The platoons clustered just after dawn on the helicopter pickup zone at FSB Savage, the Fire Support Base, to wait for the slicks to eagle-flight us to Vam Tho. A soft-spoken little private named Mangrum from New Mexico caught me alone and sidled up. His helmet was so huge on his tiny head that he almost looked like a kid hiding under a bucket.

  “Lt. Kaz, sir?” he said. His Adam’s apple
bobbed up and down his skinny neck like an egg being swallowed and regurgitated by a snake. “Sir, I ain’t gonna make it today.”

  “Mangrum, we all get the jitters before an ops.”

  “Not like this, sir. Daniels says we’re gonna take casualties. It’s gonna be me, sir. I know it.”

  “Daniels doesn’t know!” I snapped.

  “I hope he don’t, sir. But just in case he does—“

  He fished out a letter, already sealed, and stared at it for a long minute as though he could already see its recipient crying over it. He handed it to me.

  “Would you see my wife gets this, Lt, Kaz? We’re expecting a baby in March, sir.”

  I stood and held the letter while he turned and slowly walked off. Like he was already marching to his own funeral dirge. I reached the letter toward his back.

  “Mangrum, I’ll give this back to you after the mission.”

  He didn’t nod, he didn’t look back. These were my men, goddamnit, and one by one they were getting maimed and killed. There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t save them all. Their lives hung in Fate’s hands, not mine.

  All around on the tarmac, small groups of voiceless, restless men yawned, coughed, farted, shuffled feet, adjusted gear, checked equipment, counted grenades and magazines. Some of them looked up at the sky, as in supplication, when we heard the choppers’ stuttering noise beating toward us. The slicks rushed in out of dawn’s crack like bumblebees in a panic, darting down at us.

  I waved my platoon aboard the first five helicopters. Each aircraft held six soldiers and their equipment. Side doors had been removed to make the Hueys lighter. Third Herd’s strength had reached an all-time high of twenty-eight men,

  I sprinted forward with Donatelli and his radio and Steinmeyer the medic, part of the platoon command element, and clambered onto the bare metal floor of the lead bird. Mangrum and Bias jumped on with us. Platoon Sergeant Holtzauer, 60-gunner Daniels and his AG ‘Mad Dog” Carter, the other half of the command element, took a second bird. No use giving the gooks a chance to destroy the entire command with one lucky shot,

  The Black Hawk door gunner hung over his slung M60 with bloodshot eyes, clenched teeth and shaky hands. The back of his flight jacket displayed Vietnam’s most popular slogan: If I Die On A Combat Zone, Bury Me Face Down So Vietnam Can Kiss my Ass. He braced himself as the slicks jerked Third Platoon into the sky with a pulse of rotor blades and rushed through the cool dawn air with us.

  A second wave of bumblebees darted down in our slipstream to yank aloft Second Platoon, followed by a third, fourth and fifth wave to pick up First and Fourth Platoons and Captain Bruton, Bravo Company commander. I sat on my chicken plate armor vest as protection against a stray shot taking off my balls. The essence of a chopper was the mixed odors of hot oil, grease, gasoline, sweat, mildew and stale cigarette smoke. I gazed out the open door at the emerald green countryside below, still wraithed in night fog. The sun rose blood red. It sheened its hues across the flats, setting rice paddies and other sheets of water aflame. I fished out a cigarette and lighted it inside cupped hands. When I looked up, Mangrum was watching me with hollowed eyes. I offered him the cigarette pack. He shook his head.

  I glanced away.

  What did he expect from me?

  From the corner of my eye I saw Donatelli slap him on his oversized helmet. “Snap out of it, Mangrum. It’s a piece of cake.”

  As many slicks as possible would land together on an LZ in order to deploy a maximum number of troops in the fastest possible time and to prevent the enemy from concentrating on a single ship if the LZ turned out to be hot. Gunships and shark-toothed Cobras preceded the airmada. I watched them hovering in the air over the LZ, slowly pivoting on invisible lines as they maintained three-sixty surveillance. Waiting for the first sign of enemy presence. Prepared to dart down and sting with their rockets and bullets.

  I snubbed out my cigarette butt on the Huey’s floor, scrambled to a squatting position and pulled on my chicken plate. I held up my palm in the sign for Get ready! Sweat soured from helmet ran down Mangrum’s bony face.

  The formation rapidly bled altitude in approaching the LZ, jinking right and left to avoid possible ground fire. So far, so good. The sound of the rotor pitch changed and the noise deepened as the slicks lost airspeed. The whine of the engine hurt inside my head. Our lives hung on fragile rotor blades beating overhead as the flight in unison settled on final approach.

  I gave the signal an instant before the skids touched down. I stumbled and fell as I vaulted out into grass nearly up to my waist. Boonicats poured from the choppers, yelling and shouting to pump up their courage and spirit, like a winning football team taking to the field.

  Then I heard it. Even above the noise the choppers made. A faint, distant whisper that expanded rapidly into a nerve-shattering scream that came closer and closer until the expectation of its landing made me think I would explode before it did.

  “Mortars! Incomming-g-g-g!”

  Warnings echoed all across the clearing.

  “Incoming-g-g-g-g-g-g!”

  The first shell landed, blasting a hole in the universe. I was looking back over my shoulder toward the chopper I had just unassed when a violent explosion of smoke cored by a brilliant flash of light underneath the Huey’s chin bubble threw it into the air like a child’s toy in a tantrum. It landed on its side. Rotor blades dug into the earth, whipping the fuselage in a vicious circle and chewing up a storm of grass and mud and water that tornado’d fifty feet into the air. Its death throes slung equipment, parts and human beings. Smoke and electrical sparks erupted from it.

  Mangrum had been the last man out of the bird. I glimpsed him running toward me through the weeds, eyes wide and white and round with terror. Fleeing for his life. Shrapnel buzzed and hissed and turned the air deadly. I thought of the letter.

  Then he was still running toward me. Except without his head. The big helmet with his head still in it simply disappeared in a rosy pink mist. Blood spewed in a geyser from the center of his shoulders. Headless, he ran three more steps under his own momentum before he dropped out of sight in the tall grass. The grass trembled and shook until the body stopped kicking.

  “Jesus God!”

  Donatelli fell to his knees and retched up breakfast.

  Mortar explosions walked across the LZ, hammering it, digging up earth in plumes. The Hueys dumped their passengers, dipped their noses and hauled ass. On the field we embraced the trembling earth as gunships began flying a racetrack loop around the LZ, chewing up the surrounding terrain with their rockets and machine guns. Cobras scouted wide to look for the enemy mortar positions.

  I clutched the tall grass at its roots, hanging on as though the shaking earth might turn upside down and toss me off it. I couldn’t clear from my head the incredible image of Mangrum continuing to run even after his head disappeared. I gingerly felt for his letter I had slipped into a utility pocket; it was still there. I would have to mail it now, along with another of my own. I always wrote letters to my dead men’s survivors. It was part of the responsibilities of being platoon commander.

  Damn Daniels. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut?

  Mortaring ceased as abruptly as it began. The gooks had learned to empty their tubes and then get the fuck out of Dodge before the gunships pinpointed them. Men called out to each other in the grass. Someone was screaming, his voice keening and shrill above the amplified ripping and tearing of gunship machine guns still working over the surrounding terrain. Mother Earth felt safe and comfortable. I could have laid there until ol’ Gabriel’s trumpet sounded.

  “Lieutenant? Lt. Kaz?”

  Jesus, leave me alone! I struggled to my hands and knees and lifted my head above the grass. The smoldering helicopter lay dead on its side. Flames licked at the air above it.

  “L.T.? Somebody find Mother Kaz!”

  “Yo! Quit your goddamn hollering.”

  “Lt. Kaz, Herbie-boy is down. He took one through t
he knee. Doc Steinmeyer says he needs med-evac”

  I stood up and yelled for Donatelli to bring the radio. The RTO was so pale through his Mediterranean complexion that his thin mustache stood out on his lip like a caterpillar. His eyes bugged in the direction where Mangrum had gone down.

  “JesusJesusJesusJesus...” he chanted in a nervous stutter. JesusJesusJesus, L.T. Did you see Mangrum? They blew his head clean off”

  “Give me the mike, Donatelli.”

  “No head, Lt. Kaz!” His voice rose hysterically. “I’m tellin you, he didn’t have no head. But he just kept on runnin.”

  “The fucking mike, Donatelli.” I grabbed his load bearing harness. “Shut up, Donatelli. Just shut up.”

  I got on the radio links with a sitrep to the company commander and called for a med-evac ship for Herbie-Boy Schaller.

  “Holtzauer? Sgt. Holtzauer?”

  He was already up and about in the grass, checking on the men and growling at them to get their minds back on business.

  “Sgt. Holtzauer, get a head count.”

  “Bad choice of words, L.T.,” he yelled back with dark humor.

  “Lets get ’em mustered and out of this goddamned field. The company commander wants us to be moving.”

  “Daniels was right, Lieutenant,” Donatelli gabbled. “He said one of us would get it, Daniels is always right.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It took us awhile to find Mangrum’s head in the grass to send back in the med-evac with the rest of him. Pineapple the Hawaiian who finally found it wouldn’t touch it. Daniels ventured over slowly and his eyes bugged more than ever. He carefully took out his Red Man pouch and cradled his machine gun in the crook of one arm while he loaded his mouth with chewing tobacco. Most of Mangrum’s head remained in the helmet but it was a gory mess of blood, bone and flesh, out of which stared wide-open terrified eyes.