The Return: A Novel of Vietnam

by Charles W. Sasser

  Beyond, a terror-stricken mob of Biet Hai dependents and villagers bent on escape, screaming and wailing, surged toward the piers and the arriving boats, attempting to break through the thin line of River Rats trying to hold them back. Chief Callahan’s voice rose above the bedlam, shouting at his interpreter.

  “Tell ’em we’ll start shooting if they try to get on the boats! Tell ’em we’ll shoot.”

  Times looked desperate. Everything smelled of river and fish, darkness and dampness, with a strong underlying stench of cordite and fear. Chief Callahan broke from the screeching mob and trotted down to meet his commander and the other two Americans. Ensign Cochran gripped his rifle and looked wide-eyed and pale. Pete had his carbine slung on one shoulder and was studying the source of fire being delivered against the base.

  Callahan looked over the newcomers, silently disappointed in their small number. He carried an Ml6 with 30-round mags taped end to end for quick reloading. His lean face was stained nearly black from smoke and battle pollution. Greenish light from the flares ate deep into the lines of his features. Although he appeared composed, his voice sounded as stretched as a guitar string.

  “The natives are definitely hostile, sir,” he reported to Lump. “This is one tough bunch of VC gooks. Skipper, I’m sorry... I’ve been outgeneraled, outfought, and the little mothers would have been in through the wires by now if you hadn’t showed up. But we can’t hold out, not even with your reinforcements. We’re gonna need a ticket out of here.”

  He lifted a weary hand toward the chaos behind him. “You can see the situation for yourself, Skipper.”

  The enemy 50-cal still coughed, eating at the cantonment, seeking flesh, the thudding of its heavy bullets reverberating in the night. There was the squealing of pigs, the crying of children, an old woman’s keening wail, and the shrieking jabber of villagers threatening to break through.

  “Commander Minh?” Pete asked,

  “Has to be, sir,” Callahan acknowledged.

  VC in battalion strength, he said, had attacked shortly after good nightfall by first sabotaging the piers and torpedoing out swaths of defensive wire. His Viet counterpart was dead, shot through the lungs. Over half the defenders were casualties, including the only other American, Petty Officer McBride. McBride was dead. Callahan had wrapped his body in a poncho and stored it in one of the sandbagged bunkers where it wouldn’t be burned.

  “Skipper,” he said, “it was like the gooks knew everything about the junk base. It had to be somebody inside, one of our own men, who blew up the boats.”

  “A fucking chieu hoi,” Lump snarled.

  The Americans huddled for a quick parley. The river offered the only escape route. It was decided that since three PBRs were insufficient for an evacuation, Callahan, Ensign Cochran and some of the men would salvage whatever other boats they could find that might make it at least to the opposite river bank. Pete and Lump would organize and fight a delaying action to give them the time they needed.

  “If we can float a couple of the junks and another glass boat or so, we might have enough,” Lump concluded.

  “What about them?” Ensign Cochran demanded, indicating the horde of civilians held back by the guard. “We can’t get them all out.”

  A ragged kid broke through the line. A Viet soldier kicked him, knocking him to the ground. He grabbed the kid by the hair and flung him back at the mob. The volume of protest rose. The old woman kept up her shrill keening.

  “Fuck ’em,” Lump snapped. “The fighters go first. If there’s enough room, the others can go.

  “Charlie will kill them if we leave them,” Cochran protested.

  “Minh won’t,” Pete said with firm assurance. “It’s not the man’s style.”

  “Fuck style!” Lump shouted,

  “What’s got your ass in a knot?” Pete snapped back.

  Lump turned on him. “You got your buddy Minh’s girlfriend stashed like a doll on a shelf—and you wonder why I’m pissed? Mister Brauer, you don’t fuck the VC, you fuck ’em over.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It fucking means that cunt Mhai and other gooks like her are getting my men killed,” Lump raged.

  Callahan and Cochran jumped between the lieutenants.

  “We’ll talk this over later,” Pete barked.

  “At your convenience, Mister Brauer.”

  Lump, still angry and as formidable as a force of nature, led his contingent of fresh Biet Hai into the compound and to the left flank while Pete and his Nguoi Nhai veered to the right to reinforce defenses. Reluctant to go ashore, the Viets now seemed ready to fight while the locals were showing signs of panic. If that happened and they deserted their posts and broke for the boats en masse, Minh’s troops would swarm onto the base and the massacre would commence.

  There were indications that the VC were regrouping and consolidating to launch another attack. The junk base could never withstand it. The defensive line was thin, too damned thin, and getting thinner. Heavy incoming mortar fire pounded the base in firecracker strings of fractured light. B-40 rockets roared like freight trains, leaving contrails of smoke. The heavy 50-cal mowed into the triangle with devastating effect. Torn bodies lay scattered about like heaps of empty flesh. A couple of local-contingent Biet Hai stood and giggled over a fallen comrade whose intestines oozed out of his split belly like a pale blue-and-white snake. Nervous giggling was how they often reacted to disaster. Pete grabbed them and threw them into a thin section of the zigzagging trench line that connected the smaller fighting bunkers to the strongpoint corner bunkers and their machine guns.

  Ahead of them gaped a ragged opening in the wire. Out in the field, not fifty yards away, illuminated by the little suns the base’s lone surviving 81mm mortar kept spiked in the night sky in between delivering high explosives, rose a group of black-clad figures. They ran firing through the wire. Bullets snapped in the air. Pete opened up on them with his carbine as an example to the frightened Biet Hai.

  Suddenly, the crescendo of battle heightened throughout the fortress. The attack was on. Illuminated enemy soldiers began closing in for the kill across the surrounding grasslands. The ground trembled from the violence committed against it. Everything seemed prepared for the last act.

  Pete scurried up and down the line and all over, directing and concentrating fire. Piss Hole hovered protectively, always within a few feet of him. Lack of leadership and communications had left defenders in lonely and isolated pockets. They fought on because with their backs to the river they had no other choice. Pete was gratified to see that, after their initial reluctance, his Frogs were giving a good accounting of themselves.

  Lt. Lump Adkins and his men fought with similar fury on the opposite leg of the triangle. Bloody foot by foot, however, both forces were being driven back from the wire and compressed toward the waterfront. Regular camp defenders began abandoning their posts to help their families transfer kids, ducks, pigs, chickens and whatever else they could carry to the piers. Refugees howled, pleading at the tops of their collective voices for salvation. Cochran and Callahan with their guard element fought them off with sticks and rifle butts to prevent their piling onto Shit City’s three PBRs and an additional four boats they managed to salvage and sinking the lot of them.

  It became obvious that both the fight and Base 35 was lost. Minh’s fighters advanced from either flank, resembling swarms of cockroaches in their black pajamas and cone hats. The walls were breached in several places, allowing enemy troops into the trenches. One of Lump’s Biet Hai fell with a hole through his chest—a thin wraith of smoke issued from the wound.

  Lump hosed a stream of tracers at the VC squad responsible. He and three of his warriors scooted down one of the fighting trenches that led toward the waterfront. A hooch blazed brightly to his right, illuminating figures flitting in all directions. Foe and friendly mixed together in chaos, and in the confusion Lump became separated from his troops. He vaulted out of the trench after shooting
a black-clad soldier and realizing that Charlie had taken over the defensive positions. Running low, he made it to the sandbagged commo command post and used it as cover to stop another squad from advancing down the middle of the camp. He dropped one of the attackers and sent the others diving for cover. He dueled it out with them. All over camp, similar shootouts were taking place between Minh’s fighters and isolated defenders still holding out.

  It was said you never saw the round that got you. The sudden blow to Lump’s chest slammed him to the ground and knocked the breath from him. He must have gone momentarily unconscious, for the next thing he recalled was tasting dirt and realizing he lay face down against the earth. He felt no pain, only a numbness. His eyes blurred and he started to drift.

  The cocksuckers have killed me!

  It would have been so easy to let go. Instead, he willed himself to come back. He moaned, slowly realizing that he could still move. He lifted his head and located by flickering firelight the Stoner where it had been knocked from his hands. It took all his strength to crawl to it.

  He was dying alone. He simply accepted it. With a calmness based on futility, realizing he was wounded too seriously to escape, the River Rat commander prepared for his last stand, He dragged himself against the protection of the sandbagged wall. He stuck the Stoner’s barrel around the corner and let go a few rounds, just to let Charlie know he wasn’t done for yet. He would give a good accounting of himself before they got him. They would know they had been in a fight,

  Unexpectedly above the din and fog of battle came a familiar voice, shouting, “Lump Adkins? Lump, you hard-headed sonofabitch?”

  It required all Lumps’ remaining strength to respond, “Here! Over... here!

  Pete Brauer, stocky, terrible with his carbine blasting, the scar on his lip somehow sprung into distorted relief in the light of fire and flares, appeared running with Piss Hole in his wake. Piss Hole dropped to one knee and pinged at targets, holding them back. Pete bent and scooped Lump onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Piss Hole fired cover and delay as Pete ran with his wounded, semi-conscious buddy toward the piers. Fleeing like curs driven off spoiled meat.

  Somehow Pete had made the time to locate cans of gasoline which he instructed his Nguoi Nhai to empty against the standing hooches left at this end of the base. After first depositing Lump in his command PBR, he remained ashore with Piss Hole, Callahan and Corporal Truang while other desperate defenders and panic-stricken refugees surged aboard the seven rescue boats until the gunnels remained mere inches above the waterline. Ensign Cochran stood spread-legged on the cabin of Lump’s patrol boat, rifle at the ready, attempting through shouts and gestures to infuse some order into the rout.

  With a final act of defiance, the last three defenders ashore hurled white phosphorous grenades at the gasoline-soaked huts before they ran down the river bank and leaped spread-eagled into the humanity compacted into the last boat out of town. The blazing inferno the junk base became lit up the dark wide chocolate of the river and the pitiful flotilla of survivors fleeing for their lives. It lit up Minh’s VC moving in from both sides, walking slowly upright now, no longer firing.

  Minh had won.

  “Pete?” Lump groaned.

  The press of humanity on the PBR’s dock prevented his falling over.

  “Pete?”

  Unconsciousness claimed him. It felt like a river of darkness sucking him under.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lump Adkins sitting in his easy chair with his back to the window and its view of San Diego Bay had had to finish. He was finished now after the telling of his wounding at Junk Base 35. Tension drained visibly from the square body that had once been as solid and sturdy as a chunk of Colorado granite. Stone now chipped and broken and wearing. His eyes closed slowly. I thought he had fallen asleep until he started talking again with his eyes shut.

  “Pete was right,” he said, his graveled voice softer now. “Several villagers were left behind in our hurry to evacuate the junk base. Most VC would have executed them. Minh relocated them at Vam Tho instead, where I guess they became VC.

  “I was out cold for three days, in a coma from loss of blood. When I came to, I was in a military hospital at Bien Hoa awaiting evacuation to Japan and then stateside. They told me a tough-looking sailor with a scar dragged me out of the bush, and then commandeered an army chopper to get me to the hospital. Pete saved my sorry ass. He and Piss Hole came back for me when I didn’t show up at the piers. VC were swarming all around like lice—but Pete came back. He saved my life.”

  His eyelids squeezed even tighter, as though holding back something the old man dared not let out, mute testimony to emotion long contained. Our generation of men did not cry openly.

  “That night was the last time I saw Pete,” he droned on, as though drained of spirit, “I’ve talked to the hard-assed old bastard on the telephone, but... but things were never the same after what I said to him about Mhai that night. I suppose I didn’t really hate Mhai. I didn’t know her. It was just that I never believed she had chie hoi’d. She was Commander Minh’s punch, for God’s sake, Pete wouldn’t listen though. He had a blind spot when it came to that cunt. I kept telling him she was a spy, she was using him. She was using him.”

  This time Lump remained quiet for a long time, consumed by old memories. I let him while I recalled how, once again, Lt. Pete Brauer’s trail and mine had crossed without our actually meeting. It was my platoon, the Third Herd that had eagle-flighted to the river base at dawn to police up the battlefield. We were too late to encounter the enemy, of course. Minh’s VC had already scavaged the destruction, pillaged what they could use, then pulled out to scatter and blend into the population. There was no holding of terrain in this kind of war.

  Little remained of the base except charred rubble still smoldering and the corpses of more than thirty defenders scattered in the wreckage, including that of the American navy petty officer, McBride. He was still wrapped in a poncho inside the bunker where he had been left. All dressed up and left behind, was how Sgt. Holtzauer put it.

  Awed and subdued, the platoon walked through the ruins. Pvt. Bugs Wortham had joined the platoon as a replacement after Mangrum got his head blown off on the hot LZ, He gagged at the stench of charred human flesh. He ran out onto the grass flats, fell to his hands and knees and vomited. Daniels the, future-prophesying machine gunner laughed at him for being a pussy and predicted that he would always be a pussy.

  There was a red sun rising when we carried McBride’s body to one of the choppers and dumped it inside. The other KlAs were left where they fell. Let the Vietnamese come back and take care of their own dead. Out on the grass flats we discovered blood sign and blood trails, but no enemy corpses for a body count. VC dragged off their casualties if they could. To the Third Platoon, the enemy remained elusive ghosts, even in death.

  “Mhai. Is she dead?” I asked Lump, and the old man wearily opened his eyes.

  “I’ve heard she is, but I’ve also heard she’s working for the fucking commies in Saigon, which is now called Ho Chi Minh City. Jane Fonda must love that. The priest in Dong Tam might know Father Pierre. If he survived the war.”

  “How about Cochran? Ensign Cochran?”

  “I don’t attend many Vietnam reunions, so I haven’t always kept up with who’s had heart attacks and cancer and who’s committed suicide. I think Cochran might have been a POW though. At least that’s what I heard. He was a pre-med student before he took a commission in the navy. I heard he went back to Duke when he got out of the prison camp and finished medical school. He was a lot younger than Pete and me. What I understand was that he went back to Vietnam, married a gook and started practicing medicine in the villages. Sort of a MEDCAP program post-war.”

  He stopped and sighed deeply. “That’s about all I can tell you, Colonel. Now, I want to go to bed, It’ll soon be dawn.”

  It required effort for him to rise from his easy chair. I stood up, a bit stiffly myself, and waited fo
r him, I dared not offend his pride by offering him a hand. He stood a minute facing me, regaining his equilibrium and seemingly in sad thought. After a moment, his watery eyes sought mine.

  “My wife, Sharon... She wasn’t really that ugly. You really do miss them when they’re gone.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All your friends die as you get older,” he said. “I miss her, my wife.”

  “I miss Elizabeth too,” I said.

  “Maybe Pete was the lucky bastard,” Lump said. “He never had to watch a woman he loved die.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Lump Adkins apparently told me everything he knew about my old friend and neighbor Pete Brauer and about Mhai. I returned to Florida, to the empty house next door to Pete’s empty house. I tried to leave Vietnam and get back to normal. All that had been such a long time ago. It had no impact on my life now. But I knew I was deceiving myself. Vietnam was the most significant single event for those of my generation who had gone and fought there and returned with scars visible or hidden.

  I even left Mhai’s portrait rolled inside her shipping carton. Forget about her. Forget about Pete. They were dead now. But the house was so damned empty, so lonely. I finally put her back on the wall and felt better for the company, even though her dark tormented eyes followed me, asking me what I was going to do about clearing up the mystery. I stood before the young her and looked at her.

  “I’m going to join the Senior Citizens Center,” I scolded. “I’m going to go out for lunch every day. Maybe I’ll even learn how to golf.”

  I wished Elizabeth and I could have had children.

  Mhai’s eyes followed me from the portrait. Pete died with it clutched in his hands, desperately attempting to reach back in time to find her. I had hoped to go to California, talk to Lump Adkins, learn everything I needed to know, then come back home and get on with my life, what there was left of it. Instead, the trip had left me burning with greater curiosity than before. Lump knew enough merely to whet my appetite for more. The question remained: What was it about Mhai that made Pete think God would never forgive him?