A/N Sorry this took so long to update. Thank you for your patience. To
everyone who has reviewed: Thank you, thank you, thank you! This chapter
gets kind of graphic with the war images and there is a racial slur used
throughout. Please remember that this is fiction and not my personal
opinion. As always: if they didn't appear in the book, I own them; if
they did, SE Hinton owns them. Read, enjoy, and review.
Chapter 4
Vietnam
I leaned against the porch railing trying to get control of my emotions. I searched my pockets for a cigarette and froze as I heard the leaves rustling in the tree beside me. Just then the back door opened and I turned in horror.
"Hey, man, are you ok?" Pony asked with a look of concern.
Before Nam I never noticed the leaves rustling in the breeze or the stars on a clear night; I never cared about a sunrise or a sunset but now, after being in Hell, every rustling leaf is a sniper moving into position, every shadow is a VC moving closer, every sunrise is just one more day to get through, every sunset is one more day survived.
I tried to explain this to Pony but I don't think he really understood. Sighing I said, "Toss me a smoke."
He flipped me one and said, "You can stop talking about it if you want. Start again tomorrow or something."
I took a drag on my cigarette and said, "No. If I stop now I probably won't start again."
He was quiet for a minute and then said, "Was it all bad over there?"
I thought about it for a minute and then said, "No, not all of it."
~FLASHBACK~
When Shadow and I stepped off the KC130 transport in Saigon the first thing I noticed was the heat and the humidity. The heat stung my face like a bee sting and I was immediately drenched in sweat. The second thing I noticed was the smell. It was horrible. It smelled like the whole country was an open-air toilet that needed cleaning.
We loaded our gear into a deuce and a half and were transported to the transit barracks where we would spend the next two days waiting for our flight to Da Nang. After we settled in we walked down streets filled with bicycles, motorbikes and people walking. We passed barefoot little girls begging, and street corner vendors selling coconuts and turtles and snake meat and eventually found ourselves in Ben Thanh Market. Vendors were selling everything from clothing to candies, fresh meat and fruit to books and household items.
I don't know how long we spent there just poking around looking at everything. Eventually we got hungry and headed back towards the barracks. Seeing a small restaurant we went in. We sat at a table and ordered a beer but the smell inside was almost as bad as it was outside and we left our beers unfinished and walked out. My first impression of Saigon was that it was a lot like downtown Tulsa with an oriental touch and a much worse smell. We went back to the barracks, bought some beer and stayed in our room.
The next day we went to an orientation of the country that all new comers have to go through; all the do's and don'ts of Vietnam, all the places that are off limits and we were warned about the hookers: half of the whores work for the VC and the rest have TB so you only fuck the ones that cough. After orientation we found out that NMCB 10 was stationed at a place called Khe Sanh and we would be flown up there in the morning. We went back to our room and packed and got ready to go; our flight left at 0530 and we needed to be there 1 hour before so we were getting up before the chickens. We were flown to Da Nang air base by plane and then helo'ed into Khe Sanh
Khe Sanh was a Marine Air base out in the middle of the jungle that was used for helo's to transport Marines into and out of combat and to medevac wounded. It was just south of the DMZ and North Vietnam. If I spit real hard I could hit an NVA. I was told the base was started by a C-130 dropping a Daisy cutter bomb, which is the biggest bomb in the U.S. arsenal that is non nuclear, and cleared out about a 40 yard landing zone for the Helo's. It must have been a big surprise to the commies; one day there's nothing but jungle the next day there's a busy base.
Khe Sanh Marine Base was ugly. Our bunkers were sandbag walls and pallet floors in a field of mud. We were always wet, either from sweat or rain and it rained constantly. Even worse than the rain was the rats. They were big and ugly. If you didn't cocoon yourself in your blanket at night you were likely to get bit. It was common for guys to wake up in the middle of the night with three or more rats running across them in their racks. You could hear them in the walls, fighting, screaming, and eating. But as horrible as the base was that's how beautiful the jungle appeared to be. The jungle was about 300 yards away from the base and it surrounded us. From camp it appeared to be just layers of green, full of tigers, elephants, mountains and streams. Later I would come to hate the jungle. The streams were everywhere and we battled leeches and foot rot constantly. All those layers of green were branches and bushes that were so thick they were almost impenetrable and grass so tall and coarse that it slashed and cut your hands as you fought your way through it; even worse than all that, every branch and bush was a potential hiding spots for VC.
When we were on patrol we would sometimes come upon small villages. The houses were small, grass huts with woven roofs. I had always thought that I didn't have much at home in Tulsa but Shit compared to these people I had it all.
Some of the locals worked on base doing laundry or helping in he mess tent and the kids would fill sand bags and catch the rats. Those kids were the reason we couldn't poison the rats. They always packed off the ones they caught and eventually ate them. I guess when you're starving you'll eat almost anything. I felt bad for those kids. They were just like the kids back in Tulsa, doing what they had to in order to survive. Sometimes we gave them little things, maybe a candy bar or some crackers but never, ever did we give them peanut butter. Some of the guys who had been in country for a while told us that Charlie makes a beautiful booby trap out of it. They also told us that if you mix it with insect repellent it will burn for 10 minutes and you can heat a bunch of meals on it in that time. That came in handy out on patrol.
The water tasted horrible and we were always sending letters home asking for kool aid or anything else to mix in the water to make it taste better. Nothing helped much.
~END FLASHBACK~
"Why'd you stop, Steve?"
"I don't know if I'm making you see it. Are you at least getting an idea of what it looked like over there?"
"I think so."
I pushed myself away from the railing and said, "I'm going inside." I swung myself through the door and found Darry, Soda, and Two-Bit sitting at the kitchen table.
"You hungry?" Darry asked me.
"No, I could use a beer though," I said as I took one out of Two-Bit's hand. I dropped into a chair and downed the beer. I wasn't much of a drinker but I knew I was going to need a lot of help to finish talking about this.
~FLASHBACK~
When Shadow and I jumped off the helo, the first thing we heard was some one yellin', "Hey the Cherries are here." We went through the usual crap of getting settled in. Most of the guys wanted nothin' to do with us. We were Cherries, Newbies, FNG's (Fucking New Guys); we were a liability, green and inexperienced. The only people that were glad to see us were the ones we were replacing. At that point we had 361 days left to go.
One of the first people we met was a guy that everybody called Road Kill. He seemed to have been there for a while so I watched him to learn want to do. He was the one that told Shadow and me to lace one of our dog tags to our boots and to tape our magazines together so that when one ran out we could flip it over and reload quickly.
We had a corpsman of course only here they just called him Doc. I'm not sure if I ever knew anybody's real name. Wild Bill, Wrong Way, Pip, Bulldog, and, of course, Shadow. In boot camp he got that name because he followed me everywhere in the beginning so it was kind of a joke but out there it took on a tone of respect. Somehow that kid cold walk across the base in full daylight and never be seen. One minute you would be standing there by yourself and the next minute Shadow was standing right next to you. It was down right freaky.
We spent a lot of time repairing our bunkers, filling sand bags and walking the perimeter of the base looking for anything out of the ordinary. The worst part was that we knew Charlie was out there, he shot at us from time to time, but we never saw him. There were so many places to hide in the jungle and the VC had tunnels dug under ground that went on for miles. It was a nerve-racking time but most of us handled it ok. We tended to look out for each other and keep one another from falling apart.
We went out often to look for Charlie. Our job was to protect Khe Sanh and, according to the armchair leaders of this hellish disaster they call a war, that included recon patrols. One day in September our division was out on a recon patrol when we came upon a small village. There were some small huts and maybe five or six old people just watching us. "Something doesn't feel right," I thought. Everything was quiet; no monkeys chattered in the trees, no birds squawked overhead, it was just to quiet. Suddenly somebody started firing at us from behind one of the huts. We scrambled for cover and returned fire. It was over almost before it began. We had walked into a VC ambush and came out untouched. The old people we saw when we entered the village began to emerge from the edges of the jungle and return to their village. "Who shot at us?" we wondered. The lieutenant walked cautiously towards the hut where the shooting had come from. "Shit," he said and we looked at him. "There's a baby over here."
It turned out we had killed that baby's parents but he was unharmed. We were relieved that the baby was fine. We had no regrets about killing his mother though. A woman VC will kill you just as fast and just as dead as a man. That baby was too young to do any harm though and we were glad that we hadn't hurt him. The lieutenant radioed for a medevac chopper and we started humping our way through the jungle to the landing zone.
We were trudging past a river when we noticed some VC coming toward us. "Why haven't we got the order to fire?" I wondered as the VC came closer. Suddenly all Hell broke loose. We were surrounded by Charlie and he was coming after us hard. We hit the ground and began to return fire. Wrong Way and Pip were using the machine guns while the rest of us threw grenades and used our M-16's. All around us we heard calls of "Medic" and "Doc!" The battle seemed to go on for hours but eventually it ended and we began to gather the wounded so we could get them to the landing zone. I had just finished wrapping a field dressing around Bulldog's thigh and thrown him over my shoulder when suddenly an ear splitting shriek split through the air. I turned and saw Wrong Way holding the baby. "DOC!" he screamed. "OH GOD DOC! GET OVER HERE!" Doc was by his side in seconds. He gently took the small, lifeless body out of Wrong Way's hands. That poor baby had been hit by shrapnel and never had a chance. There was not one dry eye among us as we buried the tiny body there in the jungle.
We lost three good Sea Bees in that ambush and several more were wounded. Of my buddies, only Bulldog was wounded and it was not a life threatening injury. Later that evening Shadow and I sat in our bunker carefully avoiding any mention of what had happened that day. Instead we listened to the rats fighting in the walls and talked about home. I told him about football games in the lot, the DX, my best friends, and Johnny and Dally. He told me about his parents, his brother and sisters, and how he wanted to be a teacher so that he could help kids. We talked a lot about nothing in particular and everything in general. Eventually the subject turned to girls. "Slick, you got a girl back home?" Shadow asked.
I smiled, "Yeah, her name's Evie."
"She pretty?"
"Blonde hair, blue eyes, a great set of knockers and a gorgeous ass."
Shadow blushed and stammered, "Uh, um, that was a little more detail than I needed."
I looked at him and suddenly it hit me, "You ain't ever done it have you?"
Shadow stared at his boots and mumbled, "No."
I punched his arm and said, "We'll fix that first chance we get. We'll get us a little R and R and we'll both get laid."
He looked up at me with a serious expression and a twinkle in his eye and said, "Don't forget, only fuck the ones that cough." We both started howling with laughter that soon turned to anguished sobs.
"Oh my God," I sobbed, "Oh my God I don't know if I can take this! Snake, Ace and Cujo are dead, Bulldog is hurt and could have been killed and some poor, defenseless baby that never hurt anybody is dead because of us."
Shadow grabbed my shoulder and said, "Don't you even think that! Those guys are dead and Bulldog is hurt because of this war not because of us. We followed orders, we didn't freeze, we fired our weapons and we took out some of those fucking gooks! That baby died because his parents were VC and fired on us. In a few more years he would have been a threat and you know it. You know that in some of the villages little kids are running into groups of Americans, pulling the pin on a grenade and blowing them all up. We tried to get him the Hell out of here and were attacked by his people. If you want to blame someone for all the shit that went down today, blame Charlie for the bloodshed or that lyin' son of a bitch Johnson for us being here in the first place." He swiped an arm angrily across his eyes and said "I mean it Slick, none of this shit is our fault. All we do is follow orders. It ain't our fault that this fucking war is being run by some desk jockeys so far from the front line that their biggest problem is a paper cut they got while putting themselves in for another goddamn medal. If they were out here where the war is maybe they'd make some decisions that at least appear to be intelligent."
I had to smile at that. "That's our Commander in Chief and senior officers you're talking about, show some respect."
He grinned, "When they do something halfway intelligent, or at least come out here and see what this war is really like, then maybe I will."
"Like they'll ever leave their nice, safe offices," I retorted with a grin as we both started laughing again. It probably wasn't as funny as we thought it was but when you're in the middle of Hell you do what it takes to survive and right then it was laugh or crack up.
Even in a war life must go on. Days passed by and soon became weeks, which eventually became months. We went on Recon patrols, stood guard, filled sand bags, ate lousy food, and waited for mail and supplies.
Between September and January Bulldog returned to us with nothing more than a scar and a strong desire to "Get me some gooks and make them pay for what they done to me," and we lost Wrong Way, Road Kill, and Wild Bill.
We had gone out on Recon and were going through some pretty thick jungle on our way back to base camp when we heard someone yell "BOOBY TRAP!" It was followed by shouts of "GET DOWN!" and "OH SHIT!" Wrong Way had stepped on a trip wire. I saw him fall and heard "thump, swish WHACK!" In the time it took me to process the sounds, Wrong Way's feet dangled several feet off the ground and a bamboo spike protruded from his chest. That was one of Charlie's favorite traps; take a bamboo mat, fill it with bamboo spikes, bend a tree way over and use a vine to tie it to a stake in the ground and then stretch the vine ankle high and secure it. They then tie the mat in to the branches of the tree. When someone trips on the vine the knot comes loose and the tree springs up with enough force to slam the mat into the unsuspecting person below and lift him into the air. It's a gruesome thing for the guys left behind, especially those who have to get the body, but it's usually quick and painless for the victim.
On another Recon patrol Road Kill triggered a bouncing betty. We were humping our way through the jungle when we heard the sound of a muffled spring recoiling, almost a "thoing" sound. Before any of us knew what it was we heard Road Kill say, "Oh, fuck." There was a flash and an explosion and Road Kill was layin' on the ground with both of his legs gone. Me, Wild Bill, and Pip were the first ones to reach him and he kept trying to say something. "Take it easy," soothed Wild Bill but we could see the urgency in his eyes as he struggled to get the words out. "Don't forget me," he whispered. "Don't forget any of us." We all promised that he would not be forgotten and that seemed to bring him peace. He managed one last comment before he died; "I'm going home." I know it sounds awful but in that deep part of yourself where you keep your most private thoughts I think we were all a little envious of Road Kill. He was going home and we were still in Hell.
When Wild Bill died he did it with style. We were walking across the base talking about this officer who went fucking crazy and ordered his men to open fire on this village full of old women and little kids. They wiped out the entire village for no apparent reason. "Are you sure?" I asked.
"That's what I heard," he replied. "One of the new guys that just came in heard it on the way up."
"You heard this from a newbie? You know they don't know shit, Wild Bill. Pip told me that they were out roundin' up VC and the whole village was crawling with them. They had to wipe it out."
"Ah, Hell, Slick. Pip don't know his ass from a hole in the ground. Where the Hell did he hear that?"
"Damned if I know. I'd just rather believe that the whole village was VC then believe that an officer ordered an entire village wiped out."
"This place would drive any body crazy so why can't you believe an officer cracked up? They may think their shit don't stick but they ain't any different than you and me." He paused for a moment and then said, "Hey did you hear about.." The rest was drowned out by the crack of a rifle. I screamed as Wild Bill's brains and blood splattered against my face. Over the sound of gunfire I could hear someone yellin', "Get down Slick! For God's sake, get down!" Shadow came flying out of no where and knocked me to the ground. "Oh shit, the fucking gook got me," he gasped. I grabbed the collar of his flak vest and drug him into a bunker.
"Hold on Shadow, hold on," I said frantically. "Hold on, you're gonna be all right, hold on." I unzipped his flack vest and pressed my hand against his chest, trying to stop the blood pouring from his body."
"I'm dyin' Slick. The bastard got me good."
"You ain't dyin'. Do you hear me? You ain't dyin'!"
"Yeah, I am," he said, his voice getting softer, "write my parents ok? Tell them I love them."
"I will," I promised.
He gave a shaky smile and said, "Damn it, Slick, I never did get laid." He died in my arms moments later. I was covered in blood and bits of brain and none of it mattered. I sat in that bunker with rats fighting in the walls and gunfire exploding around me and bawled like a baby.
~END FLASHBACK~
"I killed him. If I hadn't froze, Shadow would still be alive."
Soda softly touched my shoulder, "No, Steve, that's not true," he said.
I pushed his hand away and yelled, "Don't give me that shit! I killed one of the best friends I had! Don't you understand that Shadow died savin' me? I should be the one who's dead." My voice softened to a whisper, "He should be home, goin' to college, being with his family. I should be the one who's dead not him."
Nobody said anything. What could they say? Nothing was going to change the fact that four of the closest friends I had in Vietnam were dead. Why was I still alive?
Chapter 4
Vietnam
I leaned against the porch railing trying to get control of my emotions. I searched my pockets for a cigarette and froze as I heard the leaves rustling in the tree beside me. Just then the back door opened and I turned in horror.
"Hey, man, are you ok?" Pony asked with a look of concern.
Before Nam I never noticed the leaves rustling in the breeze or the stars on a clear night; I never cared about a sunrise or a sunset but now, after being in Hell, every rustling leaf is a sniper moving into position, every shadow is a VC moving closer, every sunrise is just one more day to get through, every sunset is one more day survived.
I tried to explain this to Pony but I don't think he really understood. Sighing I said, "Toss me a smoke."
He flipped me one and said, "You can stop talking about it if you want. Start again tomorrow or something."
I took a drag on my cigarette and said, "No. If I stop now I probably won't start again."
He was quiet for a minute and then said, "Was it all bad over there?"
I thought about it for a minute and then said, "No, not all of it."
~FLASHBACK~
When Shadow and I stepped off the KC130 transport in Saigon the first thing I noticed was the heat and the humidity. The heat stung my face like a bee sting and I was immediately drenched in sweat. The second thing I noticed was the smell. It was horrible. It smelled like the whole country was an open-air toilet that needed cleaning.
We loaded our gear into a deuce and a half and were transported to the transit barracks where we would spend the next two days waiting for our flight to Da Nang. After we settled in we walked down streets filled with bicycles, motorbikes and people walking. We passed barefoot little girls begging, and street corner vendors selling coconuts and turtles and snake meat and eventually found ourselves in Ben Thanh Market. Vendors were selling everything from clothing to candies, fresh meat and fruit to books and household items.
I don't know how long we spent there just poking around looking at everything. Eventually we got hungry and headed back towards the barracks. Seeing a small restaurant we went in. We sat at a table and ordered a beer but the smell inside was almost as bad as it was outside and we left our beers unfinished and walked out. My first impression of Saigon was that it was a lot like downtown Tulsa with an oriental touch and a much worse smell. We went back to the barracks, bought some beer and stayed in our room.
The next day we went to an orientation of the country that all new comers have to go through; all the do's and don'ts of Vietnam, all the places that are off limits and we were warned about the hookers: half of the whores work for the VC and the rest have TB so you only fuck the ones that cough. After orientation we found out that NMCB 10 was stationed at a place called Khe Sanh and we would be flown up there in the morning. We went back to our room and packed and got ready to go; our flight left at 0530 and we needed to be there 1 hour before so we were getting up before the chickens. We were flown to Da Nang air base by plane and then helo'ed into Khe Sanh
Khe Sanh was a Marine Air base out in the middle of the jungle that was used for helo's to transport Marines into and out of combat and to medevac wounded. It was just south of the DMZ and North Vietnam. If I spit real hard I could hit an NVA. I was told the base was started by a C-130 dropping a Daisy cutter bomb, which is the biggest bomb in the U.S. arsenal that is non nuclear, and cleared out about a 40 yard landing zone for the Helo's. It must have been a big surprise to the commies; one day there's nothing but jungle the next day there's a busy base.
Khe Sanh Marine Base was ugly. Our bunkers were sandbag walls and pallet floors in a field of mud. We were always wet, either from sweat or rain and it rained constantly. Even worse than the rain was the rats. They were big and ugly. If you didn't cocoon yourself in your blanket at night you were likely to get bit. It was common for guys to wake up in the middle of the night with three or more rats running across them in their racks. You could hear them in the walls, fighting, screaming, and eating. But as horrible as the base was that's how beautiful the jungle appeared to be. The jungle was about 300 yards away from the base and it surrounded us. From camp it appeared to be just layers of green, full of tigers, elephants, mountains and streams. Later I would come to hate the jungle. The streams were everywhere and we battled leeches and foot rot constantly. All those layers of green were branches and bushes that were so thick they were almost impenetrable and grass so tall and coarse that it slashed and cut your hands as you fought your way through it; even worse than all that, every branch and bush was a potential hiding spots for VC.
When we were on patrol we would sometimes come upon small villages. The houses were small, grass huts with woven roofs. I had always thought that I didn't have much at home in Tulsa but Shit compared to these people I had it all.
Some of the locals worked on base doing laundry or helping in he mess tent and the kids would fill sand bags and catch the rats. Those kids were the reason we couldn't poison the rats. They always packed off the ones they caught and eventually ate them. I guess when you're starving you'll eat almost anything. I felt bad for those kids. They were just like the kids back in Tulsa, doing what they had to in order to survive. Sometimes we gave them little things, maybe a candy bar or some crackers but never, ever did we give them peanut butter. Some of the guys who had been in country for a while told us that Charlie makes a beautiful booby trap out of it. They also told us that if you mix it with insect repellent it will burn for 10 minutes and you can heat a bunch of meals on it in that time. That came in handy out on patrol.
The water tasted horrible and we were always sending letters home asking for kool aid or anything else to mix in the water to make it taste better. Nothing helped much.
~END FLASHBACK~
"Why'd you stop, Steve?"
"I don't know if I'm making you see it. Are you at least getting an idea of what it looked like over there?"
"I think so."
I pushed myself away from the railing and said, "I'm going inside." I swung myself through the door and found Darry, Soda, and Two-Bit sitting at the kitchen table.
"You hungry?" Darry asked me.
"No, I could use a beer though," I said as I took one out of Two-Bit's hand. I dropped into a chair and downed the beer. I wasn't much of a drinker but I knew I was going to need a lot of help to finish talking about this.
~FLASHBACK~
When Shadow and I jumped off the helo, the first thing we heard was some one yellin', "Hey the Cherries are here." We went through the usual crap of getting settled in. Most of the guys wanted nothin' to do with us. We were Cherries, Newbies, FNG's (Fucking New Guys); we were a liability, green and inexperienced. The only people that were glad to see us were the ones we were replacing. At that point we had 361 days left to go.
One of the first people we met was a guy that everybody called Road Kill. He seemed to have been there for a while so I watched him to learn want to do. He was the one that told Shadow and me to lace one of our dog tags to our boots and to tape our magazines together so that when one ran out we could flip it over and reload quickly.
We had a corpsman of course only here they just called him Doc. I'm not sure if I ever knew anybody's real name. Wild Bill, Wrong Way, Pip, Bulldog, and, of course, Shadow. In boot camp he got that name because he followed me everywhere in the beginning so it was kind of a joke but out there it took on a tone of respect. Somehow that kid cold walk across the base in full daylight and never be seen. One minute you would be standing there by yourself and the next minute Shadow was standing right next to you. It was down right freaky.
We spent a lot of time repairing our bunkers, filling sand bags and walking the perimeter of the base looking for anything out of the ordinary. The worst part was that we knew Charlie was out there, he shot at us from time to time, but we never saw him. There were so many places to hide in the jungle and the VC had tunnels dug under ground that went on for miles. It was a nerve-racking time but most of us handled it ok. We tended to look out for each other and keep one another from falling apart.
We went out often to look for Charlie. Our job was to protect Khe Sanh and, according to the armchair leaders of this hellish disaster they call a war, that included recon patrols. One day in September our division was out on a recon patrol when we came upon a small village. There were some small huts and maybe five or six old people just watching us. "Something doesn't feel right," I thought. Everything was quiet; no monkeys chattered in the trees, no birds squawked overhead, it was just to quiet. Suddenly somebody started firing at us from behind one of the huts. We scrambled for cover and returned fire. It was over almost before it began. We had walked into a VC ambush and came out untouched. The old people we saw when we entered the village began to emerge from the edges of the jungle and return to their village. "Who shot at us?" we wondered. The lieutenant walked cautiously towards the hut where the shooting had come from. "Shit," he said and we looked at him. "There's a baby over here."
It turned out we had killed that baby's parents but he was unharmed. We were relieved that the baby was fine. We had no regrets about killing his mother though. A woman VC will kill you just as fast and just as dead as a man. That baby was too young to do any harm though and we were glad that we hadn't hurt him. The lieutenant radioed for a medevac chopper and we started humping our way through the jungle to the landing zone.
We were trudging past a river when we noticed some VC coming toward us. "Why haven't we got the order to fire?" I wondered as the VC came closer. Suddenly all Hell broke loose. We were surrounded by Charlie and he was coming after us hard. We hit the ground and began to return fire. Wrong Way and Pip were using the machine guns while the rest of us threw grenades and used our M-16's. All around us we heard calls of "Medic" and "Doc!" The battle seemed to go on for hours but eventually it ended and we began to gather the wounded so we could get them to the landing zone. I had just finished wrapping a field dressing around Bulldog's thigh and thrown him over my shoulder when suddenly an ear splitting shriek split through the air. I turned and saw Wrong Way holding the baby. "DOC!" he screamed. "OH GOD DOC! GET OVER HERE!" Doc was by his side in seconds. He gently took the small, lifeless body out of Wrong Way's hands. That poor baby had been hit by shrapnel and never had a chance. There was not one dry eye among us as we buried the tiny body there in the jungle.
We lost three good Sea Bees in that ambush and several more were wounded. Of my buddies, only Bulldog was wounded and it was not a life threatening injury. Later that evening Shadow and I sat in our bunker carefully avoiding any mention of what had happened that day. Instead we listened to the rats fighting in the walls and talked about home. I told him about football games in the lot, the DX, my best friends, and Johnny and Dally. He told me about his parents, his brother and sisters, and how he wanted to be a teacher so that he could help kids. We talked a lot about nothing in particular and everything in general. Eventually the subject turned to girls. "Slick, you got a girl back home?" Shadow asked.
I smiled, "Yeah, her name's Evie."
"She pretty?"
"Blonde hair, blue eyes, a great set of knockers and a gorgeous ass."
Shadow blushed and stammered, "Uh, um, that was a little more detail than I needed."
I looked at him and suddenly it hit me, "You ain't ever done it have you?"
Shadow stared at his boots and mumbled, "No."
I punched his arm and said, "We'll fix that first chance we get. We'll get us a little R and R and we'll both get laid."
He looked up at me with a serious expression and a twinkle in his eye and said, "Don't forget, only fuck the ones that cough." We both started howling with laughter that soon turned to anguished sobs.
"Oh my God," I sobbed, "Oh my God I don't know if I can take this! Snake, Ace and Cujo are dead, Bulldog is hurt and could have been killed and some poor, defenseless baby that never hurt anybody is dead because of us."
Shadow grabbed my shoulder and said, "Don't you even think that! Those guys are dead and Bulldog is hurt because of this war not because of us. We followed orders, we didn't freeze, we fired our weapons and we took out some of those fucking gooks! That baby died because his parents were VC and fired on us. In a few more years he would have been a threat and you know it. You know that in some of the villages little kids are running into groups of Americans, pulling the pin on a grenade and blowing them all up. We tried to get him the Hell out of here and were attacked by his people. If you want to blame someone for all the shit that went down today, blame Charlie for the bloodshed or that lyin' son of a bitch Johnson for us being here in the first place." He swiped an arm angrily across his eyes and said "I mean it Slick, none of this shit is our fault. All we do is follow orders. It ain't our fault that this fucking war is being run by some desk jockeys so far from the front line that their biggest problem is a paper cut they got while putting themselves in for another goddamn medal. If they were out here where the war is maybe they'd make some decisions that at least appear to be intelligent."
I had to smile at that. "That's our Commander in Chief and senior officers you're talking about, show some respect."
He grinned, "When they do something halfway intelligent, or at least come out here and see what this war is really like, then maybe I will."
"Like they'll ever leave their nice, safe offices," I retorted with a grin as we both started laughing again. It probably wasn't as funny as we thought it was but when you're in the middle of Hell you do what it takes to survive and right then it was laugh or crack up.
Even in a war life must go on. Days passed by and soon became weeks, which eventually became months. We went on Recon patrols, stood guard, filled sand bags, ate lousy food, and waited for mail and supplies.
Between September and January Bulldog returned to us with nothing more than a scar and a strong desire to "Get me some gooks and make them pay for what they done to me," and we lost Wrong Way, Road Kill, and Wild Bill.
We had gone out on Recon and were going through some pretty thick jungle on our way back to base camp when we heard someone yell "BOOBY TRAP!" It was followed by shouts of "GET DOWN!" and "OH SHIT!" Wrong Way had stepped on a trip wire. I saw him fall and heard "thump, swish WHACK!" In the time it took me to process the sounds, Wrong Way's feet dangled several feet off the ground and a bamboo spike protruded from his chest. That was one of Charlie's favorite traps; take a bamboo mat, fill it with bamboo spikes, bend a tree way over and use a vine to tie it to a stake in the ground and then stretch the vine ankle high and secure it. They then tie the mat in to the branches of the tree. When someone trips on the vine the knot comes loose and the tree springs up with enough force to slam the mat into the unsuspecting person below and lift him into the air. It's a gruesome thing for the guys left behind, especially those who have to get the body, but it's usually quick and painless for the victim.
On another Recon patrol Road Kill triggered a bouncing betty. We were humping our way through the jungle when we heard the sound of a muffled spring recoiling, almost a "thoing" sound. Before any of us knew what it was we heard Road Kill say, "Oh, fuck." There was a flash and an explosion and Road Kill was layin' on the ground with both of his legs gone. Me, Wild Bill, and Pip were the first ones to reach him and he kept trying to say something. "Take it easy," soothed Wild Bill but we could see the urgency in his eyes as he struggled to get the words out. "Don't forget me," he whispered. "Don't forget any of us." We all promised that he would not be forgotten and that seemed to bring him peace. He managed one last comment before he died; "I'm going home." I know it sounds awful but in that deep part of yourself where you keep your most private thoughts I think we were all a little envious of Road Kill. He was going home and we were still in Hell.
When Wild Bill died he did it with style. We were walking across the base talking about this officer who went fucking crazy and ordered his men to open fire on this village full of old women and little kids. They wiped out the entire village for no apparent reason. "Are you sure?" I asked.
"That's what I heard," he replied. "One of the new guys that just came in heard it on the way up."
"You heard this from a newbie? You know they don't know shit, Wild Bill. Pip told me that they were out roundin' up VC and the whole village was crawling with them. They had to wipe it out."
"Ah, Hell, Slick. Pip don't know his ass from a hole in the ground. Where the Hell did he hear that?"
"Damned if I know. I'd just rather believe that the whole village was VC then believe that an officer ordered an entire village wiped out."
"This place would drive any body crazy so why can't you believe an officer cracked up? They may think their shit don't stick but they ain't any different than you and me." He paused for a moment and then said, "Hey did you hear about.." The rest was drowned out by the crack of a rifle. I screamed as Wild Bill's brains and blood splattered against my face. Over the sound of gunfire I could hear someone yellin', "Get down Slick! For God's sake, get down!" Shadow came flying out of no where and knocked me to the ground. "Oh shit, the fucking gook got me," he gasped. I grabbed the collar of his flak vest and drug him into a bunker.
"Hold on Shadow, hold on," I said frantically. "Hold on, you're gonna be all right, hold on." I unzipped his flack vest and pressed my hand against his chest, trying to stop the blood pouring from his body."
"I'm dyin' Slick. The bastard got me good."
"You ain't dyin'. Do you hear me? You ain't dyin'!"
"Yeah, I am," he said, his voice getting softer, "write my parents ok? Tell them I love them."
"I will," I promised.
He gave a shaky smile and said, "Damn it, Slick, I never did get laid." He died in my arms moments later. I was covered in blood and bits of brain and none of it mattered. I sat in that bunker with rats fighting in the walls and gunfire exploding around me and bawled like a baby.
~END FLASHBACK~
"I killed him. If I hadn't froze, Shadow would still be alive."
Soda softly touched my shoulder, "No, Steve, that's not true," he said.
I pushed his hand away and yelled, "Don't give me that shit! I killed one of the best friends I had! Don't you understand that Shadow died savin' me? I should be the one who's dead." My voice softened to a whisper, "He should be home, goin' to college, being with his family. I should be the one who's dead not him."
Nobody said anything. What could they say? Nothing was going to change the fact that four of the closest friends I had in Vietnam were dead. Why was I still alive?