The Return: A Novel of Vietnam

by Charles W. Sasser

  An Oriental man came to bus the table and bring fresh drinks. Mad Dog sprang from his chair so violently he sent it skittering across the floor to crash into another table.

  “Get this fuckin slopehead outa here!” he bellowed. “Get him out! Whatta you doin, bringin a gook around Vietnam vets? I’ll kill the motherfucker! I’ll kill him!”

  That was the first reunion I attended—and the last. Some vets could not get past the war. The rest of us simply blocked out the bad parts.

  Daylight still shone into the lobby of the Continental Hotel when I finished my chicken. Having already forgotten the well-dressed man who appeared to be studying me, I stepped outside for some air. Darkness was coming rapidly, leeching a little of the heat out of the tropical breeze. We used to say the nights belonged to the Viet Cong. I started to flee back inside where it was safe.

  I caught myself. How foolish. The war was over, had been over for years. I took a deep calming breath and forced myself to walk down the block to a newsstand that sold English-language newspapers. I bought a Washington Times to read up on the latest developments in the U.S. President’s various scandals. Draft-dodging, dope-smoking, dog-lying sonofabitch.

  The pace of my stroll back to the hotel increased the nearer I came to the door. Hairs on the back of my neck stiffened like they used to when I sensed the presence of enemy during patrols into Indian Country. I turned suddenly to take a look at my backtrail.

  I caught only a glimpse of a dark figure sliding down a side street. I was all but certain it was the well-dressed old man from the hotel restaurant.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Before leaving my room to go downstairs for dinner, I had taken Pete’s shrine portrait of Mhai from its shipping tube and propped it against a pillow, I sat there in the hiss of the rotating ceiling fan and looked at her. She was still there waiting, still with her questioning look, when I returned from dinner and my short walk and puzzling encounter with the well-dressed old Vietnamese. I had finally dismissed him as being from the government, keeping an eye on foreigners the way communists always had.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked Mhai in frustration.

  You can’t give up now, she seemed to reply.

  “I’m getting to be an old man.” Wasn’t talking to myself proof of it? “I’m tired.”

  It’s Vam Tho, isn’t it?

  “That’s my cross. It’s not Pete’s.”

  I rolled Mhai back into her shipping tube, out of sight. I couldn’t think clearly with her looking at me,

  Morning came and I remained undecided. I packed my bag and took it with me downstairs, ready to go either way. There was a bright sun. I stood outside after breakfast, waiting for Van. I looked right and left on busy To Do Street to keep my mind occupied and away from the decision I still hadn’t made. Far down toward the harbor, past Saigon’s Museum of The Revolution, rose the statue of the Trung Sisters. I stood there undecided in the morning sunshine until the red taxi pulled up.

  “What it be, boss?” Van greeted cheerfully.

  I tossed my bag inside the cab and climbed into the front seat. “What did you find out about the name I gave you?”

  He smiled broadly. “I told you it would not be difficult for Harvard man with proper connection. Doctor C. Cochran and wife operation medical clinic in large village not far from Ho Chi Minh City.”

  That seemed to be a sign. I drew a deep breath. I simply couldn’t leave Pete’s story with the last chapters missing if the possibility of closure was being provided so readily.

  You win, I mentally assured Mhai.

  “Where are they?” I asked Van.

  “We could have see yesterday if you wished. They most near Dong Tam.”

  “Where?” I asked suspiciously,

  “They have clinic in Vam Tho. Now you can see the war memorial—“

  It couldn’t be! It simply couldn’t be!

  Mhai, I cannot go through with it. You understand? That’s going too far!

  When I could finally speak again, I said, “Van, take me to the airport.”

  “But...?”

  “To the airport.”

  He jammed the taxi into gear and shot out in front of a tram loaded with bananas. He whipped in and out of traffic, scowling and concentrating on business. It seemed vehicles in Asia were equipped with only two controls—a gas feed and a horn.

  Running away? I heard Mhai accuse inside my head.

  It’s my business.

  You’re afraid.

  Yes.

  You have to face what happened sooner or later in order to make peace with it.

  You don’t understand.

  It will never be over until you go back. The scars have healed at Vam Tho. It is like any other village now. Let the scars heal inside you.

  Later,

  Later? At your age, there is not that much later.

  Mhai and I warred inside my head like a swarm of bees. She was mistaken. Wrong. Vam Tho was not like any other village. I knew intuitively that time had stood still for Vam Tho. Nothing had changed there since the different day. In my mind I still saw the grassy banks of the canal with the banana trees on the other side and the little footbridge connecting. I heard the shooting, the screams. My hands trembled as I reached to swipe perspiration from my face.

  You can’t give Up now, Mhai said.

  I can. I can’t face it.

  For Peter, Mhai said. Do it for both Pete and you. Peter died without peace. Do you wish to die without peace yourself? Go back, face the demons, and put them to rest.

  Unbidden, I suddenly shouted aloud, “No! “

  It startled Van and he slammed on his brakes. Two Hondas and a Yamaha motorbike screamed by, laying on their horns. My heart pounded. I stared straight ahead. For a moment I was confused. I didn’t know if I meant: No, I can’t go back to Vam Tho. Or, no, I can’t leave Vietnam without finishing business. I came to Vietnam in search of Pete’s demons and ended up instead facing both his and mine. I should never have returned to Vietnam.

  I closed my eyes, but the image of the canal bank as it appeared back then returned in vivid detail. I opened them quickly and used the loose tail of my shirt to wipe sweat. Breath rattled in my throat like I had been running. Vam looked at me, puzzled and concerned.

  You can never go home again without knowing, Mhai said.

  No...! Yes. I have to follow it to the end. God give me courage.

  I took a deep breath. “Let’s go...” I said to Van, “Let’s go to Vam Tho.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Van seemed to understand that the demons and I were warring. In respectful silence he drove out of Saigon on Highway 4 as we had gone earlier and into the Mekong Delta. Past Widow Maker Lane and through Dong Tam the city, past Father Pierre’s mission, and out again into the countryside and on past the ghost ruins of the 9th Division base camp and so toward Vam Tho.

  All the old memories held prisoner by my subconscious were suddenly released like shots of adrenaline. It was all back, like it really existed now as it had existed then. ARVN checkpoints and U. S, Army engineers rebuilding blown bridges; 9th Div base camp at Dong Tam with all the barracks and buildings in dress-right-dress and bustling with the various activities of men at war, napalm strikes by Air Force fast movers; outfits geared up and psyched up for the TET fighting; the whumping Thump! Thump! of Huey blades lifting Bravo Company out of FSB Savage. Find ’em, fix ’em, and fuck ’em over. Get a body count for the Colonel.

  There was no braking my runaway memory this time; the brakes no longer worked. For the first time, I had no choice except to let my thoughts go past the choppers and past Bugs Wortham saying the day was different. For the first time since I had blocked the different day from conscious memory, the helicopters kept going and we were approaching Vam Tho for Third Herd’s second assault on it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “I told all’a ya’ll we be goin back to that mo’fucka Vam Tho,” Daniels had exclaimed after I received the
mission from Captain Bruton the Crouton and called the platoon together for its mission briefing. “I told all’a ya’all.”

  His voodoo eye worked overtime.

  “You’re a fuckin psychic, Daniels, okay?” Platoon Sergeant Holtzauer rumbled from his cavernous chest. The sharp ends of his handlebar mustache stuck straight out like steel spikes, giving him a menacing look. “Now keep your fuckin chittlin’ trap closed about it.”

  “Chitlin’s? What you know ‘bout chitlin’s in Texas, Sarge’?”

  Mad Dog Carter glared. “Whatta ya see this time, black boy?” he demanded.

  Daniels and the Dog were virtually inseparable, a fact strangers found unbelievable from the way they battered each other.

  “I see dead honkies. But don’t you fuckin sweat it, Dog. This nigger is’a gonna save yo white ass for somethin special when the race wars start back home.”

  The kerosene lamp on the table guttered and chased threatening shadows around the inside of the tent and exposed the drawn faces of the platoon members. I spread a military grid map of the Vam Tho area on the table next to the lamp and waited for the bitching to die down.

  “Can the shit, troops,” Sgt. Holtzauer snorted. “Listen up to Lt. Kaz while he gives the mission briefing and ops order. They’re all yours, sir.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” I joked to keep the mood light.

  “Mother, mother, save us!” Pineapple cried in falsetto.

  “Your mother is a cheap three-P syphilitic-ridden Saigon whore,” Sgt. Wallace shot back.

  The Dog leered. “O-h-h-h. My kind of woman.”

  Sgt. Holtzauer was never long on patience. “Shut the fuck up and listen to the LT.”

  I abandoned further attempts at humor—I was never very good at it anyhow. I began the briefing, parroting from Captain Bruton. Since before the beginning of the TET offensive, I lectured, large regional force VC and NVA units had moved from their rest areas deep in the mangrove swamps of the Nam Can Forest toward the My Tho River. The clobbering they received at the hotel fight in Dong Tam caused only a temporary setback. Vowing revenge, they licked their wounds, re-outfitted and replaced their casualties. They were not about to sit idle. The North still urged a “final all-out war effort.” After all, the TET offensive was still going on. All indications pointed to the likelihood that AO Kudzu’s old troublemaker, the 514th VC Battalion under Commander Minh, had joined with other units in planning a major action.

  Colonel Hackman’s Hardcore Battalion was going to beat Minh to the punch by launching a preemptive strike of its own in coordination with Shit City Viet Frogmen under the leadership of U.S. Navy SEALS.

  “Them’a the bad, bad mo’fuckas from the hotel,” Daniels interjected.

  The basic plan called for 4th Battalion to strike three separate suspected enemy concentrations simultaneously. Battlin’ Bravo Company had drawn the Vam Tho area. Third Herd Platoon had been assigned Vam Tho itself, since we had already been there once and knew the lay of the land. I pointed to the map as I assigned duties and missions to my four squad leaders. We would airmobile onto an LZ east of the village, I explained, and assault across the same klick-wide rice paddy as on our last visit.

  “There are only two ways in or out of Vam Tho,” I pointed out. “By boats on the canal or by air. Everything around it is Indian Country. We know that from the reception they gave us on our last drop-in call.”

  The platoon now listened in sober-faced absorption. Those who hadn’t actually witnessed Mangrum lose his head had had it described in graphic detail to them by those who had.

  LRRPs have already been inserted to select and secure LZs for Bravo’s insertions,” I said. Obvious relief swept over the boonirats. “We shouldn’t have any hot LZs this time.”

  Neither were VC expected to stay and fight in the village—you couldn’t pin them down that easily. Third Platoon would drive them out of Vam Tho, across Canal Six, and through the banana groves on the other side beyond which the rest of Bravo’s platoons would have already landed to create a catch net. The Navy SEALs would also have boated their Frogmen up the My Tho River and up Canal Six to block enemy escape by that route. The plan was very similar to the failed first mission over which Mangrum lost his head.

  “We hit with surprise, do our job and get the hell out of there,” I concluded. “We’ll be deep in Charlie’s territory, with troop concentrations all around us. But we have the pud assignment. All we have to do is hold the village and make sure the Viet Cong don’t cross back over the canal while First, Second and Fourth Platoons wipe them out. For us, it’s a walk in the sun.

  “Okay, men. Dismissed. Get your equipment ready. Squad leaders, make sure you check their gear. Then everybody get some sleep. We pull out at zero-dark-thirty.”

  As the briefing broke up, some of the men left right away while others tarried to talk and seek emotional support. Daniels tongued his cud of Red Man from one cheek to the other and cast his voodoo one-eyed look at Bugs Wortham. Wortham was the most unpopular soldier in Third Herd, what with his whining and perpetual terror, even while in base camp. None of the squad leaders wanted him on their fire teams. I had to order Sgt. Wallace to accept him.

  Bubba Lawmaster the radioman shouldered his PRC-25--he took the radio wherever he went—and grinned at Bugs. Most of the men spoke through and around Bugs, as though he were invisible.

  “What about Wortham’s worthless stinkin ass?” Lawmaster said to Daniels. “Are we gonna lose him this time? What do your feelin’s tell you?”

  Daniels shrugged and turned away. His face was so black in the lamplight that it seemed to sheen off a dark light of its own.

  “I don’t do that stuff no mo,” he said. “I don’t predict no mo.”

  “Come on, Daniels. Make an exception this one time, I’ll take up a cigarette collection in the platoon.”

  “I don’t smoke, mo’fucka.”

  “We’ll buy you a case of Red Man.”

  Wortham’s Adam’s apple seemed to be sticking in his throat and choking him. Daniels spat a brown stream on the dirt floor. His dark eyes lighted and sought out the scared GI, studying him so intensely that the impression he gave was that poor ol’ Bugs’ future was too horrible to reveal.

  “Wha—What do you see?” Bugs managed, stuttering, licking his lips and swallowing a few times.

  Daniels looked away. “Nothin. I don’t see nothin.”

  “You seen somethin. I seen you seen somethin.”

  “I don’t do that shit no mo.”

  Which refusal contributed immeasurably to Bugs’ anxiety.

  “They’re waitin for us out there, ain’t they, Daniels?”

  “Get the fuck out’a my face, Wortham.”

  Bugs began to screech, his thin voice rising to a shrill squeak. “I’m goin to die, ain’t that right? Tell me. Ain’t that what you seen? I ain’t comin back.”

  “Fu-uck,” the Dog muttered. “You limp-dicked pussy. We’re all goin to die sooner or later.”

  “I’m goin to die!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The Bravo clans gathered on the chopper pickup apron at dawn. Each platoon stood in its own area, waiting, coughing sneezing, farting, smoking, re-checking equipment. Faces serious now, drawn, taut, predatory. Blooper gunners fingered M-79 grenade rounds in pouches cinched around their waists. Boonirats with LBE harness straps over their shoulders made sure rubber bands that held grenade handles to their bases were secure so the frags wouldn’t drop off their harness rings. Plastic jungle canteens were shook to make sure they were full. Bubba Lawmaster gave radio checks over and over to the TOC to keep himself busy. Daniels carried so much ammunition I wondered how he could even move. He had two full belts of M60 ammo draped around his shoulders like necklaces of shark’s teeth. I smoked a cigarette, checked with Sgt. Holtzauer to make sure he had checked the men, then smoked another cigarette. “Mother” Kaz.

  Bugs Wortham seemed even more tightly wound than he had last night. He looked l
ike he he hadn’t slept at all. I almost felt sorry for the little weak-chinned bastard with his sharp, pale face and watery eyes so darkly-ringed he could have passed for a Grade B movie ghoul. His hands trembled uncontrollably, sloshing water when he tried to drink from his canteen.

  “Snap out of it, Wortham,” Sgt. Holtzauer barked.

  “I got this bad feelin, Sergeant.”

  “You got your shorts on too tight.”

  “I’m tellin you. I don’t wanna do it.”

  “You worthless piece of garbage. Do your fuckin tour and quit your whinin.”

  “Them gooks are out there waitin for us, Sergeant.”

  Talk like that made everybody jittery. All the Third Herd boonirats were feeling the strain of forever chasing Charlie and never really finding him. It was wearing on them, on us, tearing us down.

  “Put a stopper in it, Wortham,” I said. “It’s a walk in the sun.”

  “You keep sayin that,” Sgt. Wallace said. He glanced at the sky. “Way it looks, it’s gonna be more like a walk in the rain.”

  Choppers from the Black Hawk Squadron picked up the platoons in order, falling out of the sky with talon-clawed black hawks painted on their noses, snatching up the men like cornered prey, and buzzing off again. Third Platoon, having the shortest distance to go, would be picked up last.

  “Get a body count for God,” Mad Dog sang out as the first helicopter lifted off.

  Soon, Third clustered by itself on the apron. Captain Bruton the Crouton, pudgy little man, had given me thumbs up and a tight grin as his command element piled into one of the last birds. Four final Hueys came whumping in and touched down on their skids while a pair of gun hogs hovered above.

  I ground out my cigarette butt beneath my boot hell. “Sgt. Holtzauer, get ’em loaded.”

  “You heard Lt. Kaz. Drop your cocks and suck up your assholes. Mother Kazmarek’s boys are goin to war.”

  Suddenly, Wortham’s nerves went to shit. First, he started screaming. Then he threw his rifle down and fell to the ground where he assumed a fetal position, bellowing and blubbering like a terrified spoiled child. Sgt. Holtzauer ran over to loom threateningly above him. He nudged him hard with his toe.