I had my orders. They didn’t include chasing the VC past the canal. I summoned the squad leaders to a meeting under cover of the canal back where Doc Steinmeyer had covered Sgt. Holtzauer with a poncho liner and had an IV going. Wallace and the others looked at him curiously. He hardly knew they were there. He barely knew where he was by this time.
“It won’t be long on the med-evac,” I called out to the Doc.
He nodded. I squatted on my haunches with the squad leaders ringed to my front. I lighted a cigarette and drew on it. I noticed Sgt. Holtzauer’s blood on my hand, but it had dried and wouldn’t wipe off.
“Sgt. Tolliver, I’m going to leave your squad on the canal,” I said. “Disperse them along the entire front. Keep down and don’t exchange fire with Charlie unless he attacks or you have a clear target. I doubt they’ll do either. They’re going to be too busy elsewhere. Clear?”
“Clear, sir.”
“Lt. Kaz, if we went after them—“ the Dog protested.
They would never have questioned Sgt. Holtzauer.
“Listen up!” I snapped.
“Cut no slack, sir,” Wallace said.
“Cpl. Shirkey,” I resumed after giving them a hard look to make sure they understood who was in charge, “your squad will secure the north perimeter of the village.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sgt. Monroe, Fourth Squad takes the south side.”
“Nothin will get past us, Mother Kaz. Nothin we’d like more right now than to waste gooks.”
“Okay. Wallace, I want you to set up on the edge of the rice field in the old VC breast-works. But on the way, your squad will search the village for arms and other contraband and make sure we don’t have VC in the middle of us. Round up all the villagers and hold them somewhere. Put a guard on them. This doesn’t mean the village is a free-fire zone.”
Mad Dog grinned wickedly. The dark aftershave on his thick jaw gave him a particularly menacing appearance. “We never thought it was, LT.,” he said.
“Squads, move out!”
Bugs Wortham hugged the ground nearby, like he was trying to melt into the earth and not attract attention from either friend or foe. He may have been satisfied to remain there forever or at least until he ETS’d home had not Pineapple spotted him hiding in the grass as the squads spread out on their missions. The Hawaiian reached down for the kid’s harness and jerked him to his feet. Bugs looked like a skinny, terrified rat hanging from the end of the stocky Gl’s arm. He even squeaked when he protested.
“Sgt. Wallace, let me stay here with Sgt. Tolliver. I don’t want to go back in the village.”
“Pick up your rifle, Wortham,” Wallace said, turning away in disgust.
Pineapple gave him a shove. “Move along, shitbird. Mebbe Daniels is right and you’ll get your dick or somethin shot off.”
I took the radio mike from Bubba Lawmaster to alert med-evac. “Angel Blue, this is Dalton Recondo One, over...”
The radio emitted a rush of static, followed by screeches, whines and other outlandish tones.
“Sir, I’ve been tryin to tell you,” Lawmaster said, looking worried. “I’ve attempted to get a radio check from anybody on the net. Those crazy sounds are all that come through.”
“Did you try the other radio?”
“Same thing, sir.”
Frowning, he fumbled with the dials. I tried again, this time on Captain Bruton’s frequency: “Dalton Salton One, Dalton Salton One this is Dalton Recondo One Do you copy? Over...”
More yelps from the box.
“Sir, it almost sounds like we’re being jammed.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Nothing, it was sometimes observed in higher echelons, could be more dangerous than nineteen-year-old American kids who have learned to hate and kill. Sgt. Wallace took his squad through Vam Tho on an ill wind. Already frustrated and enraged, they dumped baskets of rice on the ground, ransacked huts, jabbed knives into floor coverings and boxes looking for arms and concealed tunnel entrances.
Frightened Vietnamese who remained in the village—mostly women, old men and small children—were dragged from hiding and thrown sprawling outside in the dust. The village erupted in shouting pandemonium. Soldiers drove the villagers like cattle and herded them into a pigpen Wallace designated a collection point. It was surrounded by rusted net wire and bamboo posts. The pigs were let out to chase through the town, squealing in their new-found freedom. Wallace assigned Pineapple and a tall grunt named Morris to guard the captives.
Daniels and the Dog ran a group into the pen. “Waste the cocksuckers if’n they so much as fart at you,” the machine gunner counseled Pineapple, who was already trigger-happy. “All’a ’em ain’t nothin but commies.”
“Let the motherfuckers try something,” Pineapple threatened.
Sour laughter and rough banter hung darkly in the air over the village, like the smell of smoke. Boonirats cursed, screamed and kicked at the residents, prodding them with rifle muzzles. The keening of women and the crying of babies filled the air.
While the other boonirats were exploding from pent-up hostility, Bugs Wortham trembled all over from nerves and seemed to shrink in on himself. It wouldn’t have taken much more for him to simply vanish. Because none of the grunts wanted him, he scurried silently around in Sgt. Wallace’s shadow. His eyes bounced at odd angles like pool balls gone wild. He death-gripped his M16, turning his knuckles white. Flinching and starting at every sound, he whirled around and around with his rifle pointing from the waist and his finger on the trigger. Dangerous because he was scared, scared to death. Wallace kept cautioning him to ease up lest he kill some other GI by mistake.
“I’m goin inside to search this hooch,” Wallace said, talking to Bugs like he was a child. “I want you to stand right here in front of the door. Okay? Don’t let anybody jump me or nothin while I’m in there.”
Bugs nodded spastically. Kept nodding and nodding like it had worn a groove in his brain and he couldn’t stop. Wallace shook his head. With a last look at his jittery backup, he swept aside a curtain of hanging beads over the doorway and slipped into the hut.
Instantly, there was a piercing cry. Bugs jumped like he had been goosed in a graveyard. What happened after that was unavoidable, almost predictable, considering the state of Bugs’ nervous system.
To him, it must have seemed he was being attacked. His trigger finger jerked spasmodically as the beaded curtain flew outward. The rifle stammered on full auto, blowing smoke and death through the young girl’s lungs, double-drilling her between unripe young breasts. She collapsed instantly at Bugs’ feet, limbs twitching, but not before Bugs saw the look of astonishment, disbelief and pain that flickered across her dying features.
Nearby, Daniels and another platoon member who were collecting more candidates for the pigpen looked up in time to see Bugs standing over the dead girl, staring in horror. Maybe a second passed, certainly not enough time for any serious contemplation, before a scream of rage and pain launched a second figure out of the hooch. Wallace shouted a warning from inside, but it came too late. Bugs had no time to react. Frozen by the enormity of his first crime, it was doubtful if he could react.
This second woman, older and roundly pregnant, wielded a curved rice scythe as though she were attacking a snake on the trail. The wicked blade slashed through the air, powered in part by the high-pitched sustained shriek of its mistress. The point caught Bugs in the left side between his ribs and his web belt. It ripped through rough fatigue cloth and bit deep into skin and flesh, literally tearing open his belly and allowing his intestines to pop out like a tube through a blown-out tire.
Bugs dropped his rifle and grabbed his guts before they spilled out on his boots. The pregnant woman, still screaming, continued to hack at him.
Daniels’ M60 roared a long stitch of 7.56. The heavy bullets thumped into her with the resonance of shooting a ripe melon. They also busted her open like a melon, slamming her body backwards and sprawling her on top of
the dead girl. She died on top of her daughter while blood and intestines and the torn chunks of what was almost another daughter oozed from her ruptured torso.
Wallace dived out of the hut, executed a combat roll to one side, and came up rifle ready for action.
“Jesus!”
Bugs stood frozen spread-legged above the gore of the dead women. Dark clouds in the sky guttered above and behind him. Both hands clutched fistfuls of his own guts. They looked like coiled pink and blue snakes.
“Jesus!”
Blood streamed from one cheek where the blade nicked him. There was another gash that opened his shoulder down to bone. A few more undisturbed seconds, Mad Dog Carter was to comment later, and the pregnant bitch would have made it necessary to ship ol’ Bugs home in three or four different body bags.
Bugs slowly sank to one knee, his disbelieving eyes riveted on that part of him he held in his hands. He managed to rise again and stagger to the side of the hooch. He sat down slowly in the dirt and leaned back against the wall.
“The bitches were attackin Bugs,” Daniels said, awed. “I seen it. I had to do it.”
Bugs slowly looked up at Daniels. Tears ran down his boyish cheeks.
“I-I told you it was a different day,” he gasped. Incongruously, he tried to laugh, but it sounded more like weeping. “Daniels, she missed my dick.”
That broke the spell. The other Vietnamese who had witnessed it all suddenly began howling their anger, like vicious dogs kept in check by strong leaders. They, in turn, set off Bugs, whose screams of unfathomable fear rivaled those of the wounded sow before the Dog put her out of her misery.
Wallace’s dark face went pale. “Get them the fuck outa here,” he ordered, indicating the enraged villagers.
Daniels nudged the fresh corpses with his boot. “What about these?”
“Leave ’em lyin,” Wallace said. ‘Get them other slopes to the pigpen before we have to shoot them too.”
Mad Dog and several other boonirats arrived in time to help break up the standoff. He delivered a vicious butt stroke with his rifle to the solar plexus of the nearest old man. He kicked him in the ribs as he dropped to his knees. Then he turned on the others with such ferocity that they shrank back, although they continued their rabid caterwauling.
“Di-di!” the Dog yelled. “Di-di mau, you slant-eyed cocksuckers!”
With much shouting and smashing of rifle butts, GIs drove the furious villagers at a shambling, dust-kicking trot down the street toward the pigpen. A few huge drops of rain fell plopping from the lowering sky, making little craters in the dust, but the rain held off.
Wallace was back on top of things. He opened a four-inch wound dressing and dropped down next to Bugs and began first aid. Bugs’ screaming had temporarily subsided to whimpering and snuffling.
As the squad leader worked, he said, “Daniels, run up to the canal and tell the L. T. what happened and bring back Doc Steinmeyer. Then I want you to round up Moran, Craig and Schlefstein mosh-skosh. Haul ass and establish a defensive perimeter at the rice paddy like Mother Kaz wanted. The rest of the squad’ll guard the pig pen and finish searching the village.”
“Burn it,” Daniels suggested. He seemed in no particular hurry as he cradled his M60 in his elbow and stuffed fresh Red Man underneath his bottom lip. “When I was a little soul bro’ in South Carolina,” he went on, “we usta set fire to old haystacks an shoot the rats when they run out. This here whole town ain’t nothin but one big haystack, Sarge, full’a rats.”
“I’m dyin’,” Bugs sobbed.
“Move it, Daniels,” Wallace said. “We got a job to do.”
“How much longer we gonna take shit from these gooks without doin something about it, Sergeant?” the machine gunner demanded. “The Colonel wants a body count, we outa give him one.”
He gestured toward the pigpen. “We already got us some bodies,” he added coldly, shutting one eye to let his voodoo eye take over, “so I say we start countin...”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Doc Steinmeyer was still busy trying to stabilize Sgt. Holtzauer, so Wallace recruited the Dog to help him stretcher Bugs to the Doc’s makeshift treatment center below the protective berm of the canal. Wallace had applied a bandage to Bugs’ shoulder, but didn’t know what to do about the gut wound. I watched as the medic pulled the wounded man’s trousers down away from his waist to his knees. He smeared the exposed intestine with Vaseline to keep it from drying out, then wrapped OD-gauze around and around Bugs’ torso to hold the gut where it was.
I rubbed my face with both hands. I now had two serious WlAs—and still no body count. You couldn’t exactly consider a pubescent girl and a pregnant woman as enemy dead.
Morphine didn’t seem to do Bugs much good. He kept scream squealing at the top of his lungs all the time he was being treated.
“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”
Sgt. Holtzauer, drifting along in a drug-induced haze, a half-smile intermittently touching his lips enough to make his mustache curl, roused himself enough to grumble, “Bugs, you worthless piece of garbage. Get your ass on that helicopter before I personally kick it up between your shoulder blades.”
“I don’t want to die!
Even the VC got into the act. From the banana grove across the canal came mocking imitations of Bugs’ high-pitched shrieking. I don’t want to die! Then laughter from somewhere else in the trees. One of Sgt. Tolliver’s men fired a couple of shots that went unanswered except for another jeering catcall. “Crybaby!”
It came out cly baby. Sgt. Tolliver laughed.
The Dog squatted on his haunches, gook-style, rifle resting across his thighs, watching Bugs.
“This is embarrassing,” he said. “Can’t you give the motherfucker another shot, Doc? Fu-uck.”
Doc glanced up at me. His sleeves were rolled up. Blood stained his arms up to his elbows. “He needs a med-evac, L.T. STAT. Now! They both do.”
I slowly turned my head toward where Bubba Lawmaster sat on the grass with both platoon radios between his legs, desperately attempting to coax some response from either one. Whatever electronics the gooks were using, they had our radios jammed as tightly as compressed coiled springs. The enemy had us cut off, commo-wise.
With commo, you could call in fast movers for air strikes, summon the lethal shark-like Cobras to work the enemy over, or direct a 155 Howitzer fire mission. With commo, you were part of the link to America’s overwhelming firepower. If nothing else, commo provided moral support. It let you know you were not alone.
A cold feeling, like globs of frozen grease, settled in the pit of my stomach. Pegged without communications in the middle of Indian Country with only twenty-eight men, two of whom were already out of commission, offered little prospect for a long and healthy life. I was trying to keep our situation under wraps to prevent unnecessary anxiety, but word was already spreading throughout the platoon that our commo link with company and battalion had been disrupted. I could almost taste the uneasiness in the thick air as word circulated from fireteam to fireteam.
Mad Dog’s dark hooded eyes brooded into mine.
“The gooks are cuttin us off, ain’t they, Lt. Kaz?” he said.
I dropped my eyes to Bugs. He looked directly at me.
“I told you!” he screeched in a voice so strained he was about to lose it. “Daniels was right. We’re all gonna die.”
“Shut him up, willya, Doc?” I implored and moved off toward Lawmaster.
Mad Dog and Sgt. Wallace followed. We squatted around Lawmaster. The RTO chanted into the mikes, first one, then the other. “Dalton Salton One... ? Dalton Salton One... ? “ His voice rose as he continued to switch freqs and fiddle with the squelch.
He paused. “Sir, it’s like there’s nobody out there,” he said.
“They’re out there all right,” Mad Dog said in his deep voice that seemed to rumble thunder out of the monsoon clouds bunching ominously above his head. “They are all around us. Ain’t that
right, LT.?”
A raindrop as big as my thumb landed on the Dog’s helmet with an audible thud. It turned into a red ball of mud from all the dust and rolled off. Wallace gazed into the distance, as though plagued by the thought of never leaving Vam Tho. I let the silence hang.
I was thinking about Elizabeth and wondering what she was doing back home. She might be out with a girlfriend having lunch. There was this little hoagie place we used to go to together. But... No. It wasn’t lunchtime back home. It was the middle of the night. What if I died in the middle of her night?
“I want to get pregnant before you leave,” she had said as soon as I received orders to go to Vietnam. “I want to have something left of you in case...”
My Elizabeth could not get pregnant; we would never have children. Maybe the army would send her my dog tags.
“The fuckin villagers are in on it,” Mad Dog asserted bitterly, glaring in the direction of the pigpen which emitted a general angry uproar of protest.
“Lt. Kaz?” Wallace said.
I started and shook my head to clear it of extraneous thought. I had to focus.
“We’re in an excellent defensive position,” I assessed. “They’re not going to come across the canal at us, nor across the open rice paddy at our rear—“
“Why not?” Dog interrupted. “We came across it.”
“They won’t,” I said with more conviction than I felt. The troops would never have questioned Sgt. Holtzauer.
Sgt. Wallace nodded reflectively. He was a swarthy-faced man with thick lips that barely moved when he spoke. “Sir, it seems to me they’re tryin to fix us in place. They want to make sure we stay right where we are.”
“That’s what we’re gonna do. Our orders were to hold what we got until the rest of Bravo links up with us.
“Just sit here?” Mad Dog looked incredulous. “Sit here and let ’em pick us off one at a time? L. T., all we’ve been doin is sittin and lettin ’em pick us off. We got VC all around us—and we got a whole passel of ’em right in the middle of us.”
The Return: A Novel of Vietnam Page 24
