Fields of Fire (40 page)

“I didn't push you into it. I just asked a question.”

“All right, all right.” The Captain seemed somewhat irritated with Goodrich. “I'll get you out of the company. It won't be that hard. We do it for our CIDs all the time.”

“Your CIDs?” The full impact was hitting Goodrich.

“Yeah. Criminal Investiga—”

“I know, I know. When can you do it?”

“A couple days. I'll get orders for you when Division approves the Article Thirty-two.” The Captain sighed.

“You may end up working for me, after all.”

33

Hodges met a classmate from his Basic School platoon in the mess hall when he went to eat his last hot meal before departing on the operation. It was lunch: B-ration freeze-dried hamburgers topped with brown gravy made from powder, a dirt-filled lettuce salad, and Kool-Aid. The classmate had only recently arrived in Vietnam, after finishing combat engineer's school. They had not been close in Basic School, yet Hodges greeted him as a long-lost friend, the man's enthusiastic awe a reminder of how it had begun for him five months before. Grasping the man's hand and staring into rested, curious eyes, Hodges sensed an innocence that was as far away as his own childhood. He thought of the advice of Major Otto, who had spoken so honestly to him the day he departed for the bush, and again lamented the fact that the Major was in Da Nang, on the Division staff. His friend's face convinced him that he and Otto now shared a jealous ethos, gained in fear and dirt and blood and hassle, that would have made it possible to talk, really talk, for the first time. This was me, mused Hodges, listening to his friend's questions. But it isn't any more.

The classmate had kept up with the doings of all the other Lieutenants who had graduated with them. He knew who had washed out of flight school. He knew who was up for medals. He knew who had died.

Hodges downed his meal without enthusiasm, listening absently while thinking of the operation he would embark on in only a few hours. There was a tickle in the back of his head that mildly resented this new arrival's knowledge. From the man's perch in engineer's school, in the calm of a Fort Belvoir building, he had kept score, as if it were a basketball game, while Hodges and the other grunts had slugged it out in isolation from each other.

But it was irrelevant, anyway, at least right then. Basic School, with all its earnestness and idealism, was an unreachable part of his life, blocked off from him by combat's warp of terror. Flight school was for other people. Medals were for heroes. Relevance was Snake and Cat Man and Cannonball. Importance was keeping them alive through another week.

Twenty dead, his friend was saying, giving the numbers with the careless abandon of one who had never experienced the quick death of a friend, then commenting in the same breath on the unbearable heat and dust of An Hoa. Seventy grunt lieutenants in our Basic Class, and twenty dead in five months.

The deaths reached Hodges, brought him from his moody contemplation of the coming operation. The twenty dead would not pass through his mind like the other chatter from his classmate. He chewed a piece of gritty lettuce, considering it a luxury, and remembered Basic School, only a half-year removed, yet like a dream from innocent childhood. The platoon runs, the feisty chants, the nights they would return to O’Bannon Hall after field problems and climb three flights of steps to the floor that held their rooms, leaving thick mud trails from their boots and camouflage smears along the handrails. Singing in loud unison:

“Fuck, fuck fuck this TBS shit,
Three more weeks and we'll be home.
Then it's off to Vietnam, lose a leg or lose an arm,
And be pensioned by the Corps forever more!”

But not believing it.

Twenty dead. His friend continued, giving all the details of how each man had died, seemingly more amazed that so many were capable of dying in such a dirty little war than with the fact that they had actually died. He knew all the details, and was able to transfer each death neatly into a lesson, a comment on the character of the man who had died. The family man died on the day his son was born. The super-hero assaulted a North Vietnamese bunker and caught a grenade in the stomach (it had never happened to John Wayne). The best athlete willed his own death after losing both legs to a mine. The salty ex-enlisted wiseass refused to listen to the advice of a Kit Carson Scout and walked his platoon into an ambush. The class jokester's helicopter had caught vicious fire going into a hot landing zone, and had crashed, then blew up, the ammunition inside the helicopter detonating and killing every man (a most ironic way to go, the jokester would have agreed).

On and on, as if they were textbook deaths. The lessons irritated Hodges. His friend had no right to package them so neatly, to make them sensible.

And how would he characterize mine, Hodges wondered again and again as the man issued his examples. He knows I came from Okinawa by my own free will. Oh, God. I'd be the gungy one. Hodges shrugged. Ah. What the hell does he know, anyway. And who the fuck cares.

Hodges drained his last bit of Kool-Aid. It was time to round up his platoon. He stood and shook his classmate's hand, feeling he had little in common with the man any more. “Remember how we all were afraid it would end before we got a chance to get a piece of it?”

The man clasped Hodges’ hand. It was the eyes, Hodges finally decided. Too—enthusiastic. “We can still win it, I think. Don't you?”

Hodges heard himself issue a surprised chuckle. “I don't know anything about it anymore.”

34

They poured in trickles from the tents until, in minutes, the road became a teeming teenage wasteland. They were fully burdened. Packs bulged on each back as if every man carried a fat, hidden papoose. Men were strapped with three and four bandoleers of ammunition, and counterstrapped with thin cylinders of LAAWs. One in four carried a heavy square bag containing a claymore mine. Machine-gun teams sported boxes upon boxes of ammo on long green straps. Mortarmen carried tubes and base plates and pack-boards laced with ominous, dull-green mortar rounds, looking like small, fin-tailed bombs.

They gathered on the dirt road as if at a convention on some hotel floor, chatting in small groups, filled with mixed moods, suppressing the electric anticipation that coursed through all of them. A few brooded alone at the edges of the mob, miserable with fear.

Staff Sergeant Sadler strutted through the platoon troop tent, fully burdened also. His helmet was low in front, down over his eyes. He urged the remainder of the platoon out onto the road. “Come on! Come on! Git it on the road! We got a war to fight!”

He jammed a letter into his flak jacket pocket as he walked along the center row of the tent. So, he thought, motioning to a man to go back and retrieve a C-ration meal on his cot, she doan’ like Philly. So Philly ain’ good enough for her. Shoulda left her in Noath Carolina, she says. Folks treat her better in Noath Carolina. So kids get used to white folks better in Noath Carolina, go to school with more white folks in Noath Carolina.

He snorted, shaking his huge round head. Well, if Noath Carolina so damn good, why the hell are there so many niggers in Philly? Oh, I doan’ know. You never can keep 'em happy. Shoulda left her in California. I know I coulda found some place in California. But it's the same. It's her. I keep tellin’ her. When she goan’ listen?

Rule Number One, thought Sadler, exiting the other side of the troop tent. People ain't never goan’ forget you're a nigger. People ain't never goan’ think niggers an’ honkies are the same. Only thing you can do is be so goddamn good that it doan’ matter. An’ if you ain’ any good, you can cry all you want an’ it won't make you good. But if you good, you doan’ need to cry.

Them mothafuckas an’ their “Black Shack” he thought. I work twelve years at bein’ good even if I'm a nigger an’ they want everybody to say they ain’ bad, no matter what kind o’ shit they put down, just because they're niggers. An’ the only thing they do is make everybody hate all o’ us 'cause they think we need a damn crutch. Well, the best damn NCOs in this here Marine Corps are black—the Major made a point o’ tellin’ me that when I left Camp Lejeune—an’ we doan’ need no punk imitatin’ Cleaver to do us in. I'da liked to kill them toads.

Now, where the hell is Snake-man?

“THE Plan,” the Colonel had advised the company's officers at a meeting in the Regimental Command Center the day before, “is to run a large-scale sweep-and-block to begin our operation. We know there is a full regiment, and another main-force battalion, operating in the central Arizona, getting ready to make a major assault, probably on An Hoa. We haven't been able to pin them down in a major battle yet” (bait dangling, alas, had failed), “so we're going after the whole kit-and-kaboodle in one shot. We have the Second Battalion of our own Twenty-Fifth Marines in the western Arizona, roughly here” (the pointer slapping expertly on the map) “and here. We're going to insert four more companies at night, into a block in the eastern Arizona. We're pulling two down from the Fourteenth Marines that will set up here” (the pointer slapping) “and here. Alpha of our First Battalion will move in here. Your company will move along the southeast edge of the Arizona, and set up in a block on the northern part of the Football Island, completing the block. There's a wide paddy, a good half-mile across, that will be to your front. It should give you excellent fields of fire when the day's festivities begin” (wry smile: a touch of humor always helps rapport).

“You'll take the afternoon convoy from An Hoa to Liberty Bridge. That will conceal your movement.” The Colonel smiled winsomely. “And frankly, we don't have any helicopters available to move you, anyway. Then you'll cross from the Bridge into the Arizona sometime after midnight. We'll give you the word.

“Just before dawn, Second Battalion will sweep across the Phu Phong paddies, through the central Arizona treelines. We should roust something big out. It will probably run right into you and the other blocking companies. Be ready.” He grinned one last, hopeful time. “You might not believe this, but I really wish I was going with you. Now, let's count some meat, all right?”

Hodges had grinned resignedly, remembering Bagger's usual retort: Some days you count the meat. Some days the meat counts you.

THE trucks were packed like crowded subway cars. Some men sat tightly on the two boards that ran the length of the truck bed. Others lay on the sandbagged bed itself, between the seats. The trucks followed one another closely, winding along the red earth.

Clouds began to form, first turning the sky entirely white in their distance, as if they had enveloped the earth and were now descending like a tightening grip, gradually graying, finally developing deep streaks but never pausing long enough to be cumulus or nimbus or cumulo-nimbus, merely racing toward the earth until at last they reached it in the form of steady, persistent, windless rain. A few pulled on ponchos when the rain began. Most accepted the wetness rather than expend the energy to undo packs and roll out ponchos and repack.

Hodges sat on one of the long boards, accepting the drenching rain, peering out at landmarks along the convoy road. They emerged as the truck ground toward the Bridge, allowed inspection, then disappeared behind him, as if becoming a part of his past. The old brick factory that the French had built an empire ago, lying fallow under blankets of red dust that were rapidly becoming an ooze of clay. The German hospital, sitting yellow and sedate, haven for hurt children, still missing three fräuleins that the VC had hauled off to the mountains several weeks before. The children from the hospital gathered along the road, even in the rain. There were the ambulatory ones who were still receiving treatment. There were the recently released, who had found new homes in the nearby Mau Chanhs rather than returning to Arizona or La Thap or Go Noi to die.

They made a haunting crowd. They were pocked, eyeless. They were burned, one-armed, one-legged. One hobbled painfully, his toes spaced from the end of his foot to the top of his ankle, five grotesque toy soldiers, melted by napalm into rigid attention. The children waved merrily to the convoy and received cigarettes and gum for their effort. The Marines in the convoy did not mangle them. Buddha merely turned his head. Some days it rains rain, Hodges thought, thinking of Dan's acquiescent philosophy. Some days it rains other things.

The road opened up and Hodges watched the bald red circles of earth spaced on both sides, surrounded by C-ration cans and weeds, where small groups of men now huddled under makeshift hootches in an attempt to stay dry. Road outposts. He had stood them with his platoon. They, too, seemed a somehow tranquil part of his past.

The convoy passed through the Phu Nhuans. He peered through the gloomy rows of trees and ridges, remembering past patrols. Over there, somewhere, soaking with the rain into the earth, were a hundred pieces of Big Mac, and the bones of Phony's arm. And an invisible, rain-soaked bloodstain from himself. Far into one paddy a helicopter hovered in the rain, soaking a rice seedbed with aviation fuel that had been rigged to shower down in the rotorwash. In a few days the seedbed would be dead. The helicopter, remembered Hodges, was a part of Operation Rice Denial. If We Kill Off All The Rice, the logic ran, There Won't Be Any To Give To The Enemy. If The Enemy Doesn't Have Rice, It Will Have To Quit Fighting.

Hodges shook his head, watching the helicopter. Not a totally bad rationale. But, meanwhile, the villagers will starve. Ah, he remembered ironically. But they can always move to the resettlement villages if they really care. Ri-i-ight. Underneath the hovering monster a mamasan stood, squarely in the middle of her seedbed. She peered through the gasoline rain, reaching both hands toward the inanimate machine that soaked her and her life source. Hodges watched her chest heave. She was either crying or screaming. The helicopter did not hear her. Nor did it see.

Finally the convoy reached the Bridge Compound. It paused only long enough to excrete its cargo, dropping the company in clusters along the mud-soaked road where it passed through the wire. They stood, drenched already, splattered with red mud from the grinding, departing truck wheels.

Snake slung his rifle over his shoulder, upside down to keep the rain out of the barrel, and hunted down Hodges. Both wore soaked utility shirts underneath their flak jackets. Neither wore a poncho.

“Where to, Lieutenant?”

Hodges looked at his watch. Four-thirty. Eight hours to kill before the company would leave the compound. They still stood in huge knots along the road. The compound was so small, and so tightly structured, that there appeared to be no place for the company to pass the time. Hodges looked around for Captain Crazy, and could not see him. The platoon stared patiently, waiting in the mud.

There was a small clearing in front of the Battalion COC bunker, not quite the size of a basketball court. Hodges pointed to it. “Get with Sergeant Sadler and put 'em over there. I'll go check inside the COC and see where they want us.”

Inside the bunker it was warm and dry and fluorescently bright. Hodges stood in the room, surrounded by maps and squawking radios, remembering the gruesome terror of the night the Bridge had been overrun, contemplating his and Snake's earlier confrontation with Kersey. Nothing in the bunker had changed. Old Kersey's probably praying every night the Bridge'll get overrun again, so he can cop another Silver Star, mused Hodges.

He looked around for his company commander, who still was not apparent. But speak of the devil, mused Hodges. A wide back leaning over a chart straightened, then turned to face him. He caught the jowls as the head turned. The narrow eyes inspected him haughtily. Kersey. Hodges feigned casualness.

“Hey. We got a company out in the rain, you know, just sitting there in front of your bunker. And we got eight hours to kill before we make our bird. Got any place we can hole up?”

Kersey grimaced at Hodges’ greeting. “No, I don't. This isn't a hotel, it's a combat base.” He folded his arms, his head tilted back. “What the hell you complaining about, anyway? If you were in the bush you'd be wet. You're gonna cross the river and get wet.”

“Something called leadership, Kersey. Taking care of your people. You wouldn't know a thing about that. Ahh, forget it.” Hodges turned to leave, but could not resist a dig after Kersey's arrogance.

“Hey. You and the Colonel get your Silver Stars yet?”

The radiomen in the bunker exchanged knowing smirks. Kersey stood erect. “Colonel rotated. I'd guess he got his. I got mine a few days ago.”

“That General from the World.”

“That's right.”

“I figured that.” Hodges smiled blandly. “He gave the Sergeant Major a Commendation just for having the good sense to leave before somebody did him a total job.” Kersey stared threateningly at Hodges. Hodges was enjoying the amusement of the radiomen. “Oh. But I forgot. That's how you got your Purple Heart.”

The bunker broke out into muffled guffaws. Hodges turned to leave. “Yeah. I hope your legs are O.K. You know, where those—gooks shot you?”

Kersey challenged him with a curse, but Hodges was already out the door.

It was a Pyrrhic victory. For eight hours the company sat packed in the dirt yard, under sheets of intermittent rain, huddled inside leaking ponchos. They sat mournfully in the black as the rain beat at them, nibbling from tins of C-rations, smoking wet cigarettes. The rain soaked their clothes and equipment. It crinkled their skin. It deadened every ember of what used to be their spirits.