365 Days (4 page)

“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

M
AYFIELD 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, though; 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.

Only twice in the last four months had they surprised the gooks. The first time was on a sweep near Quang Tri; they were crossing some high ground. It was early in the morning, and they caught them sitting behind a hedge-grove, eating. They even had their weapons stacked. The Captain had waited until the whole company was on line, and then they had killed them all. Forty-seven, just like that.

The second time was a month later. Mayfield’s platoon had tracked a VC squad for three days, keeping after them until they caught them in the middle of a paddy. Such things were good for morale, but they didn’t happen often.

This morning they were inserted by chopper. The slicks moved them inland, keeping above 1500 feet. Two kilometers from the LZ, they dipped down and came in right over the paddies. The pilot and the door gunners cleared their weapons, and two of the accompanying cobras moved out ahead and a little to the side. It was 100 degrees when they hit the LZ.