Authors: Johnnie Clark
“I move that we ignore the order as usual.”
“You guys are really crazy! Aren’t you scared?” I didn’t recognize the high-pitched voice, but whoever it belonged to was serious. Chan looked as surprised as I felt. We rolled over onto our sides and looked behind us to see the totally distraught face of a thin young Marine boot. I didn’t know his name yet. He had joined us two days before. He shook like a cold, wet puppy. He flattened out on his stomach like he was under fire.
“Who are you?”
“My n-n-name is Arvis. Arvis Hendry.” I wasn’t sure if he stuttered or if he was just that nervous.
“Calm down, Arvis,” I said.
“What are you doing here?” Chan asked.
“Corporal Swift Eagle told me to bring the two crazy gunners an E-tool.” He felt behind him without lifting his head from the ground until he found the E-tool. “Here.” He handed it to us, jumped to a crouching posture, and ran back to his position.
The scene in front of us looked like a Salem cigarette commercial. Chirping birds overwhelmed the distant thunder of artillery, for a pleasant change. A rare, wood-scented breeze sifted between the mountains to our front, rustling the leaves like a fall day. It cooled my sweaty body down to an almost human level. War was out of place here. I wanted to take off my rotting boots and go barefoot in the softly flowing stream below. I couldn’t help thinking the only thing missing from the tranquil setting was two lovers on a picnic.
Something moved through the vegetation below. A big bird lifted off into the blue sky squawking. Suddenly an
NVA soldier emerged from the cover of the trees. He wore the usual green pith helmet. It looked greener than most. Brand new, I guessed. Fresh troops from the North. My heart started pounding. He paused at the stream and looked both ways like a kid crossing a busy street. He carried his AK47 with both hands. Something was missing. No pack!
Finally he crossed the stream. Two more pith helmets appeared. My heart joined my Adam’s apple. Chan tensed up. I tightened my grip on the gun. I put the lead man in my gun sight. Someone started digging into the rocky earth behind me. The man in my sight turned. He stared straight into my eyes.
I heard my teeth grinding. The noise didn’t matter. It was too late. I squeezed. The first orange tracers seemed to go right through the lead man, like he was made of papier-mâché. The first burst blew him back, arms flailing like a mannequin thrown into the air. I kept firing and firing.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Chan was shaking my shoulder. I felt like he was waking me from a hazy dream. My lip hurt. Blood. A generous piece of my lip was wedged between my teeth.
“Guns up! Let’s get a body count!”
“Got some ammo?” I asked Chan.
“We’re ready.”
I stumbled down the hill, following Corporal James’s squad, plus a couple of extra men for support. We reached the stream. One man lay half in and half out of the water. His right arm and part of his shoulder had been torn from his corpse and were lying on the legs of another body three feet away. Crimson, pulsing blood colored the crystal water of the stream.
“Good shootin’, John. He looks like Swiss cheese,” Sam said.
I tried to ignore Sam. The bloody scene reminded me of the movie I saw on my last date back in the world,
Bonnie and Clyde
. The second NVA lay face down, still breathing. A bloody trail led into the brush, revealing where the third had somehow managed to crawl away. Hot, dank air had replaced the earlier breeze. It was as though the tranquility had been killed too. An eerie impression came over me that it might never return.
Corporal James nudged Striker with his M16 and pointed at the trail of blood.
“See how far he got, and be careful. It gets pretty dark in there. Take Jones with you.”
A painful groan brought our attention to the NVA still alive. He lay on his stomach. Then he shuddered in pain. Corporal James cautiously rolled him over with his foot while pointing an M16 at his head. No weapon. Everything looked safe. James knelt on one knee and removed the pith helmet. Long shimmering black hair tumbled across the face of an exceptionally beautiful Vietnamese woman. It stunned me. The last thing in the world I expected to see was a beautiful woman.
“Wow! How old do you think she is?” somebody said.
“Twenty at the most,” said Corporal James.
“I bet she’s half French.”
“Yeah. She’s too fine to be all gook.”
Chan and I were speechless; we appeared to be the only ones who were. All I could do was stare. A flawless complexion matched her beautiful features. Her striking eyes, more rounded than the usual, gave hint of a Eurasian background. She wore the same khaki uniform that most NVA did, and the same Ho Chi Minh sandals, made from American tire tread. I wanted to throw up. I knew I’d probably just killed one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen.
No one took their eyes off her. The closest thing to a female any of us had seen in months were two women who had popped out of a hut on a search-and-destroy mission. Village women looked haggard or hawk-faced.
Most were toothless and weather-beaten from years in the paddies. This woman was a flower in the desert.
We gathered around her in a semicircle. Her khaki shirt, which was quickly sopping up her dark red blood, had two holes just above the belt line. The semicircle of Marines moved a step closer. The moment felt dark, primitive. We stared hypnotically. She clutched her stomach in pain, looked up at us, and said something in Vietnamese. She repeated it again, her eyes squeezed shut. Then she said it again, this time with her eyes opened, steaming with defiance. I recognized only one word: Marines.
Corporal James broke the trance. “Chan, what’s she saying?”
“She says Marines are murderers and animals.”
Sam dropped his blooper gun. His eyes bulged. His coarse, dirty, furrowed skin matched his strange personality perfectly. He suddenly looked very old. In an instant, before anyone could stop him, he fell to his knees and ripped the woman’s trousers down her thighs in one violent motion. I was stunned. No one moved. By the time we reacted, Sam had ripped her bloody shirt up over her head. I lunged forward with two others, grabbed Sam by the shoulders, and threw him onto his back. He gasped, out of breath and panting.
The woman started cursing us. Large glittering tears trickled down her face. Chan yelled, “Corpsman up!” then knelt beside her. He quickly tore her shirt in half and tried to stop the bleeding by tying the two pieces around her waist.
“How bad is it, Chan?” I asked.
“Looks like three hits by the gun.”
“Can she make it?”
“I don’t know. Looks like one round went through her back and out her side. It’s the most serious.”
The huge hole in her side gushed blood each time she cursed us. Sam jumped to his feet.
“Why don’t we all get her before she bleeds to death!” Sam shouted.
“Yeah, why not?” someone added.
“That would be a mistake,” Chan snapped at Sam, then stared at him, almost daring him to respond.
For a helpless moment it looked like a fight. I knew Sam was just crazy enough to grab his weapon. I took two steps back and put the M60 on my hip. Sam paid no attention to Chan or me. He kept a fixed stare on the naked girl. I could hear my teeth grinding.
“This guy in Delta told me they ambushed a chick up near the rock pile.” Sam’s speech had become slow and deliberate. “They took her clothes off and stuffed flares up her to keep it warm while his whole squad …” Sam’s coarse laugh overwhelmed him until he couldn’t finish his sick story.
Striker and Jones appeared from the brush. They stared at the woman without speaking.
“Well, where’s the gook?” James barked.
“Couldn’t find him,” Striker replied, eyes glued on the naked girl. “He’s in bad shape, though. There’s blood everywhere. Hey! What’s this? We gonna gang bang her?”
“Keep it cool. She’s probably dying,” James said.
“Oh, well,” Striker grumbled. “Ain’t enough of her anyway.” Striker looked at Chan, then down, as if he was embarrassed or maybe just regretting his choice of words.
Still, no one took their eyes off the girl for more than a moment. Sweat dripped off my eyebrows. Corporal James lit up a cigarette. He carefully placed the precious matches back in his helmet. One boot rested comfortably on the shoulderless corpse. He exhaled a long, disconsolate stream of smoke. His rifle resting on his hip, held by one hand on the stock, reminded me of a hunter posing over a fallen deer.
“How ’bout it, Chan?” the corporal said. “Is she gonna live?”
“She might if we get her medevaced real soon.”
“I don’t know, Chan. She looks like she’s lost a lot of blood.”
“She has, but it doesn’t look like anything vital was hit.”
“I’ll go see what the lieutenant says.” Corporal James dropped his cigarette into the stream and started back up the hill.
“Don’t bother with the Lieutenant,” Sam said. “Just ask Swift Eagle.”
A half hour later a medevac chopper appeared overhead and lowered a basket for the wounded woman. Chan and the corpsman had managed to slow the bleeding considerably by that time. They delicately strapped her into the swinging basket and gave the chopper gunner a thumbs up. The hovering helicopter swung left, as if blown by a powerful gust of wind. The whirling rotors smacked against the tallest treetops, then the chopper swung right, seemingly out of control. For one horrible instant it looked like the heroic effort into Laos would end in disaster. Finally under control, the medevac gained altitude and disappeared over the mountaintops.
A wave of pride swept through me. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Marines risk their own lives to save a wounded enemy, but this time I felt wonderful. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she was young and beautiful. Maybe because she thought Marines were animals. Or maybe because I was the Marine who shot her. Whatever the reason, I felt proud of being an American.
We saddled up right away. We all knew every gook in Laos knew exactly where we were after the medevac. I was glad to be leaving Laos. By the time we reached the valley, only the glow of the sun was still visible on the horizon. Our pace quickened as we crossed the first rice
paddy. Huge black clouds rolled across the darkening sky, bringing a light drizzle and poor visibility.
By the time we reached hard ground on the other side of the paddy, the light drizzle had turned into a deluge. The column halted. My back ached. My legs begged for rest. I felt physically and emotionally drained. The gun weighed a ton, and my pack straps felt like they were nearing bone. I closed my eyes.… Sometime later I found myself being led by Chan to our position for the night. It looked like a perimeter, but I wasn’t sure.
I didn’t like our field of fire but felt too tired to complain. It looked like bushes in front of us, or was the rain just getting heavier? “Who cares?”
“What?” Chan asked.
“I was talking to myself,” I whispered.
“If you are able to communicate with yourself, then you should take the first watch. I can’t stay awake.”
“I’ll try, but my eyelids feel like lead.”
Chan didn’t answer or bother removing his pack; he fell into an instant coma. I took off my helmet, hoping the cold rain might wake me up. It didn’t. I put it back on. I felt my eyes closing again. I tried to think of home, but I felt too miserable to think of anything pleasant. More rain. God, I hated this country. At least the rain kept the mosquitoes off me for a night.
Man, I thought, I’m getting awful skinny. I’ll probably make it through the bloody war and die of some disease. I don’t want to get old anyway. Drinking legal might have been nice. My friends will think I died a hero. I’ll probably die of jungle rot. Probably have to be a closed casket. I’ll never get to wear those darn dress blues. Chan says I’m making eleven cents an hour with combat pay and overseas pay. Who the crap can afford dress blues?
An hour passed. The rain lightened from a downpour to a pour. Something sizzled bright colors, like a sparkler moving in circles. Stay awake, I thought. I have to stay
awake. The sparkler exploded into the mud on my right. “Incoming!”
Another B-40 rocket sizzled overhead, exploding twenty meters behind us.
“Guns up!”
I opened up with the M60.
“There’s a flash!” Chan was shouting and pointing. “Ten meters left!”
My tracers zeroed in on the last flash.
“Cease fire!” Chan said.
“Do you see anything?”
“No.”
“Ow! Chan! Something just hit me in the helmet! Felt like a brick!”
A numbing explosion blasted me forward. A frag had hit my helmet and bounced to the ground nearby. The flash stayed on my eyes. “I’m hit! God, I’m really hit this time! My back’s burning!” I rolled left. “It’s the barrel! Chan!”
“Johnnie! Are you okay?”
“God, I’m glad to hear you! Yeah. No. I don’t know. There’s a lot of warm stuff running down my leg, and it ain’t rain.” Another rocket exploded to our right, throwing mud around us. “Can you see?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you hit too?”
“Yes,” Chan said. “Listen.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Neither do I.”
“Think we should call for Doc?”
“Can you see yet?” Chan asked.
“No.”
“They might be on top of us.”
“Have you got your rifle?”
“Yes.”
“I think I’m bleeding from the groin, too!”
“Bad?”
“No. I don’t think so. Chan, feel my legs. Are they okay?” Chan moved closer. He hit my boot. I felt it. “God. Thank you.”
“They’re bleeding but still there.”
“See if you can get the gun ready, I’ll call the doc.”
I oriented myself and pulled the M60 to me. She felt like solid mud, but nothing was out of place. I still saw spots. Memories of being timed taking the gun apart and putting it back together blindfolded came back to me. The only sound around us was the pounding rain.
“The gun’s ready. I don’t know what good it’ll do. I can’t see or hear.”
“Corpsman!” Chan’s call scared me. A moment later the call was echoed by the position on our left.
I tensed. I tried to straighten my left leg. It hurt. A sense of total helplessness swept over me. Then panic. “I’ll never run again!” I blurted.