Kurt looked at the pills in his hands. “I’ve got three months left,” he said, looking up.
“You’ve got two weeks. Look,” Peterson said, folding his hands on top of his desk, “everyone’s got to decide the important things for themselves. I can’t tell you what to do; all I can do is point out a few things.”
“I know,” Kurt said.
“Do you?” Peterson said. “This war, if anything, is a war of limits and distribution. No one asks that anyone stay in Nam more than a year, no one demands that we bomb beyond a certain line, that we go more than a certain distance—that anyone stay to the end. It’s a war of shares, Kurt, and you’ve done yours. That’s all that’s asked of anyone or by anyone. I’m not saying whether it is right or wrong, but just how it is. I don’t want you killed. You’ve done enough, you’ve survived once. I’ll extend your profile two more weeks. That will put you over the time limit for a completed tour in Nam, and you can go back to the States. War’s over, job’s done, tour completed.”
Kurt shook his head. “You’re making it tough.”
“No, Kurt, you are. You’ve done enough.”
“There are a lot of guys still there.”
“Yeah, there are. And now it’s their turn. You’ll be leaving anyway in three months. You going to extend forever until it’s over?”
Kurt walked out without answering. Two days later he called the surgical unit and asked for Peterson.
“Telephone, Major,” the corpsman said. Peterson left the new evacs, and going over to the desk, picked up the phone.
“Yeah?” he said. For a moment, he had trouble recognizing who it was. “OK, I’ll see you in my office in about an hour.” He hung up and went back to the evacs. “Well, son,” he said, “what happened after the round spun you off the dike?”
Kurt was already in the office when Peterson walked in.
“No, no,” Peterson said, motioning for him to keep his seat.
Kurt crushed his half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray beside him and reached into his shirt pocket for another. He looked exhausted, and his hand shook as he lit up. He leaned forward wearily, elbows on knees, holding his head in his hands. “I can’t even sleep with the pills,” he said, staring down at the floor. “And I got the shits now, too—and nightmares. The whole damn thing.”
Peterson sat down behind his desk.
“It’s really gotten to me.”
Peterson studied him for a long moment. “Go home, Kurt,” he said quietly.
Without looking up, Kurt shook his head.
“I’ll call Cooper.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Kurt!” Peterson waited until he lifted his head. “You can always go back if you want. Let it set for a while. See the States, relax, and then if you want, go back. That’s all I’m saying.”
Kurt took a deep, weary breath.
“OK?”
“Yeah,” Kurt said, getting up from the chair. “If you say so.”
“I’ll tell you what Cooper says.”
Peterson picked up the phone and nodded good-bye as Kurt left the room. Cooper was in his office, and the sergeant put the call right through.
“Hi, Dave,” Peterson said. “Hear your wards are filling up.”
“Hear!” Peterson had to move the phone a bit away from his ear. “They sure are. Someone in Nam decided they’re not to have more than 3000 in-patients in country at any one time; might look bad or something like that, so for the next two or three weeks we’ll be getting thirty to forty medical evacuations a day. The problem is, where the hell we’re going to put them.”
“Want some surgery beds?”
“I’d be happy with a few mattresses,” Cooper said. “Anyway, what can I do for you?”
Peterson leaned back in his chair. “Robert Kurt is going back to Nam in a day or two,” he said, matter-of-factly. “We were talking, and I found out that he only has five days until his ten months, five days are up. It seems a bit unreasonable to send him back so short.”
“He’s already been discharged,” Cooper said flatly, “and profiled fit for duty.”
“I know,” Peterson said, “but five days isn’t very long. You could extend him just that long for observation.”
“That would be a lot of trouble.”
“So is three and a half months of getting shot at.”
“If you’ve talked to him,” Cooper said curtly, “then you know he’s a demolition expert and carries a critical MOS.”
“So what?” Peterson hesitated a moment. “What the hell have they been doing over there without him? Stopping the war till he got back?”
“Look,” Cooper said into the phone. “That’s not the point.”
“That is the point,” Peterson interrupted.
“Major,” Cooper said coldly, “just in case you don’t remember, and you obviously don’t, the mission of the Army Medical Corps is to support the fighting strength, not to deplete it. Right now, there are units running around Nam at three-quarters strength. That makes every man over there that much less protected and that much more vulnerable. We’re in war, whether you or me or anyone likes it or not.”
“Then you won’t extend him?”
“No!”
Peterson angrily slammed down the phone. Going out into the clinic he told the corpsman to get Kurt.
“When are you supposed to leave?” he asked when Kurt came in.
“I’m manifested for tomorrow morning.”
“Listen. I think the best thing to do would be to admit you to my surgical service.”
Kurt looked surprised.
“Why? I mean, I thought Colonel Cooper would...”
Peterson shook his head. “You’ve already been discharged from the medical services, and Cooper feels it would look a bit foolish readmitting you or changing your profile even to a temporary one after you’ve already been cleared, so I’ll admit you to my service for an ulcer or something like that.”
Kurt looked ill at ease. “You sure there isn’t anything wrong?” he asked anxiously.
“No, nothing. We do things like this all the time. Medicine helps us out, and we help medicine out.”
“When do you want to see me?”
“I’m admitting you this evening.”
Peterson had the ward master tell the hospital registrar to notify the Far East personnel center that Kurt had been admitted and would not be able to make his flight.
The next morning, Cooper called Peterson and told him to come into his office. He stood waiting behind his desk.
“We’ll make this short,” he said sharply. “Why is Kurt back in the hospital?”
“He may have an ulcer.”
“I want that man out of this hospital today.”
“He’s having gastric distress, relieved by food, and there is a history of possible bloody stools.”
“I want him out, I said.”
Peterson looked at him calmly, unruffled. “I don’t think it would be in the best interests of the Army to send a possible bleeding ulcer back to Nam. It wouldn’t look good for this hospital, or any of us, Colonel, to have him sent back here bleeding, especially when he left here with an impression of possible bleeding ulcer on his chart...”
“Has anyone else seen him?” Cooper fumed.
“No, but I don’t remember anything in the Army regulations that states a physician has to get an opinion from another physician before admitting a patient to his service, do you? Of course, I could be wrong...”
Five days later, tests completed, Kurt went home. Peterson took him to Yokota. It was a dark, wet Japanese night. The heavy air hung like a dirty blanket over the plains. They parked their car across from the runway and walked into the terminal, past the unloading gates. There were two med evac C-141’s on the runway, unloading their wounded. A thin, cotton-wool mist hung over the field. In the dim, hazy light, you could barely make out the figures moving across the runway. Overhead, unseen, more C-141’s were circling.
One
of the patients still out on the runway groaned. Kurt turned anxiously toward Peterson.
“For Christ’s sake,” Peterson said wearily, “go home, Kurt, will you just go home.”
“They’re tough. In the Delta we killed
NVA who had walked six months just to
get there, and every day of that trip they
had to take gunships, air strikes, and
B-52 raids. Every day, man, every
fucken day.”
Trooper, 9th Division, Riverine Force
Burn Unit
U.S. Army Hospital, Kishine, Japan
2
Mayfield
MAYFIELD LAY IN THE water, listening. He was tired. Not exhausted, just tired out. A single round cracked out from the tree line, but nobody bothered to fire back. Closing his eyes, he tried to relax.
“They’re coming, Sarge.”
“I know,” he said wearily. A few moments later, the gunships swept in over the shore line.
“OK, Otsun. Get ’em ready, we’re going home.”
They waited, looking over their sights, while the gunships chewed up the tree line. Then, moving out, they began the long walk back to the boats. Mayfield waited until all his men were moving, and giving the smoking tree line one last look, he shouldered his weapon and followed his troopers. Someone else could count the bodies; today he was just too tired, and he wasn’t about to lose any more men. The last gunship, cutting playfully low over the paddies, rose suddenly just as it passed over them in some kind of adolescent salute. Shaking his head, Mayfield watched it go.
An hour later they reached the shore and he stopped on a slight rise overlooking the bay. All around, the paddies in crazy checkerboard patterns of green and brown ran right down to the edge of the river. His men, spread out in front of him, were moving slowly through the mud and water, walking cautiously, like hunters moving through a corn field. He didn’t know half of them. A first sergeant, and he couldn’t keep up with the replacements. Five times in the last week he’d had to bend over the wounded and ask their names. Two had been hit in the head and had lost their tags; nobody even knew who they were, not even the troopers who carried them in. He couldn’t keep a second lieutenant; they ran through his fingers like the mud they worked in. He’d lost three that month alone, one right after the other. Finally he’d had to take over the 1st Platoon himself while Clay, the company Commander, took over the 3rd; that way, at least they’d be on opposite sides of a fire fight; if one got hit, the other might be able to hold the unit together. And they were getting hit. Whereas before they’d been running into VC squads, they were running into platoons now and NVA cadre. It was getting tougher all the time.
The tango boats were waiting, motors running, their gun crews nervously looking over their 50’s, watching the water line. Thirty meters offshore a hydrofoil, twisted and broken, lay on its side. The troopers, without even bothering to look at it, climbed into the boats. A few, still standing in the water, were already lighting up some grass. Nearby, a Navy helmet was sloshing back and forth in the shallow water. Mayfield, waiting for everyone to get in, stared at it.
“Everybody pays,” he thought. “There ain’t no place that’s safe.”
Twenty meters down the shore, Clay, shielding his eyes from the sun, waved at him and climbed into his boat.
At least in Korea, he could walk off his hill and relax, Mayfield thought. Disgusted, he threw his M-16 to his RTO and climbed into the platoon’s command boat. A few moments later, they were running down the center of the river.
No one talked. They had been out four days and they hadn’t been dry once. They had taken twenty casualties in the same area, whereas just two weeks before they had taken fifteen. Stretching out, Mayfield took a cigarette out of his helmet band and looked at it. Forty-three years old, he thought, and I’m back living on cigarettes and water. His troops lay sprawled around him; two or three were already cleaning their weapons. Mayfield watched them, realizing without the least satisfaction that if they had to they’d go again and again. It wasn’t because they wanted to or even believed in what they were doing, but because they were there and someone told them to do it.
Strange war. Going for something they didn’t believe in or for that matter didn’t care about, just to make it 365 days and be done with it. They’d go, though; even freaked out, they’d go. They’d do whatever he told them. Three mornings in a row after lying in the mud all night, they got up and pushed the gooks back so the choppers could get the wounded out. They charged, every time, just got up and went, right over the RPD’s and the AK’s. No flags, no noise, no abuse. They just got up and blew themselves to shit because it had to be done. The same with ambushes. They’d do it, and if led right, they’d do it well. But they always let him know somehow that they would rather be left alone; it would be OK if they caught the gooks, but if they didn’t, that would be fine too. At first it had been disconcerting—troopers who didn’t care but who’d fight anyway, sloppy soldiers smoking grass whenever they could, but would do whatever was asked. Skeptical kids who made no friends outside their own company and sometimes only in their own squads, who’d go out and tear themselves apart to help another unit and then leave when it was over without asking a name or taking a thanks, if any were offered.
It had taken Mayfield a while to get used to it, but after a month in Nam he began to realize and then to understand that his troops weren’t acting strangely at all, that, if anything, they were amazingly professional. They did what they were supposed to do, and it was enough. They had no illusions about why they were here. There was no need for propaganda, for flag waving. Even if there were, these kids wouldn’t have bought it. Killing toughens you, and these kids were there to kill, and they knew it. They took their cues from the top, and all that mattered from USARV to the Battalion Commanders was body counts.
He was bewildered the first time he heard a company commander arguing with the S-2 that the four AK’s they’d brought in, even though they hadn’t found any bodies, meant four kills or at least three. “You can’t shoot without a rifle, can you?” he said. “Now, can you?” The killing thing seeped down to every rifleman. Some units were given a quota for the week, and if they didn’t get it, they were just sent out again. He’d heard about units of the 101st burying their kills on the way out and digging them up again to be recounted on the way in. Just killing made it all very simple, and the simplicity made it very professional. Everyone knew the job—even the dumbest kid. The time thing of 365 days just nailed it down; no matter what these kids did or how they acted, they knew they had only 365 days of it and not a second more. To the kids lying around him, Nam simply didn’t count for anything in itself. It was something they did between this and that, and they did what they had to do to get through it—no more.
Mayfield took off his helmet and let it drop into his lap. Twenty-six years, and he was out fighting again; he should have been in a division operations, not running a leg company. Somebody had really fucked up. He consoled himself with the thought that only three first sergeants had been killed in Nam.
“Something wrong, Sarge?”
“Nothing,” Mayfield said. “Just wondering what it would be like having a desk job in Saigon.”
“Dry,” someone commented from the front of the boat.
The tango boats moved in a straight line formation down the river. Turning his head, Mayfield looked out through the metal gun slits. The jungle, thick and green, ran right up to the water’s edge. After four years of fighting in the Delta it was still all VC. Never again, he thought; not like this, not here. Even if he had to retire. Never again. That much he promised himself.
Their harbor was a number of APB’s, APL’s, and World War II LST’s anchored out in the center of the Miaon River. It was the brigade’s base camp. They lived on these boats and deployed from them. If the S-2 found the gooks far from the coast, the choppers took them in. If close, the tangos were used for insertion. It really didn’t matter, thoug
h; any place in the Delta was wet.
The boat suddenly slowed, and with the engines easing into a heavy rumbling, the men began picking up their gear. A moment later, the boat bumped gently against the hulls of the harbor and, sliding along their sides, came to a stop. Hunched over, the men started moving for the hatches. It was a bright, hot Delta day; the sky, a crystal blue, was almost as difficult to look at as the sun itself. The men climbed out, walked over the metal roofing of the tango boats and up the ladders to the LST’s and “apples.”
There was no joking; indeed, there was little noise. On deck the company broke up into little groups of no more than four or five. Mayfield walked over to the railing, sat down, and began taking off his boots. While he was untying them, the adjutant came up and told him they’d gotten eleven replacements and he could have them all.
“Any lieutenants?” Mayfield asked, pulling off his soaking boots.
“No, just medics and grunts.”
Mayfield began peeling off his socks. “Any ever been here before?”
“No, all cherries.”
“OK,” Mayfield said, carefully checking his feet. “Get ’em together.” He would have liked replacements to get used to the Delta first, but they were short.
The new boys were in little groups toward the bow of the ship. Mayfield introduced himself and asked the married kids to raise their hands, then split them up so they wouldn’t be in the same platoon; he didn’t want all the married ones killed at once. After dismissing them, he went down to his bunk.
Usually, they were out three days and rested one. That was a grueling enough schedule. Now, with the pick-up in activity, Brigade was cutting that down. It was getting to be three and a half days out and half a day back.
Early the next morning, with only eight hours of rest, they were ordered to move out again. No one complained; as they got ready, a few of the troopers looked suspiciously at their peeling feet, but that was all. Mayfield wrote a quick letter home. He stuffed his usual six packs of cigarettes into his helmet and checked his ammunition clips. They took the things that would matter in a fire fight, nothing else. Nobody bothered with malaria pills; if it hit you malaria was good for six weeks out of the fighting. Nobody darkened his rifle barrel or carried charcoal to blacken his face. The land belonged to the VC. You couldn’t kill them unless you found them, which for the most part meant they had to find you.
365 Days Page 3
