What Others are Saying about Winter’s Coming, Winters Gone
“Outshines its genre as an all-American novel – New York Times
“Powerful… dynamic… we haven’t had anything so straightforwardly good on Vietnam as the first part.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Glick’s victory as a novelist is that he makes the reader feel what perhaps a soldier feels. He writes with a reporter’s eye and a poet’s heart.” – Dallas Morning News
“Winter's Coming, Winters Gone is an absolutely riveting story that gives the reader an opportunity to see part of the Vietnam War from the disparate points of view of a Vietnamese village and a Marine squad. It’s a rare and exciting contrast of attitudes that have been lacking in most novels about the war; a contrast that Allen Glick weaves among some of the most gripping battle scenes I’ve ever read. The author then follows two survivors of the squad as they attempt to resume life back home. This part is equally powerful, portraying their trials so clearly and humanely that the effect is nothing less than enlightening.
Allen Glick’s powerful writing style convincingly reveals a deep and hard-won understanding of the Vietnam veteran experience. This is a book you may never forget.” – Robert Mason, Chickenhawk
Winter’s Coming, Winters Gone
by Allen A Glick
Copyright 1984 AAGlick
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by AA Glick. Thank you for your support.
Part One
CHAPTER ONE
South of Tam Ky, Vietnam, 1966
In Vietnamese, the word kill is spoken giet, a swift and guileless sound, kin to the word chët which means to die. A man might know the meaning of these words yet only guess their substance.
David Schrader sat that night on the hillside, the rifle cold in his grasp, the heavy infra-green scope cradled in his lap. He had scanned the slope, testing, had seen through the scope the glowing of another marine’s head over in bunker six. Now, adjusting, and still peering through the infra-green scope, he refined the silhouette: broken nose, hard jawline, deep-socket eyes all glowing jade green from body heat. About sixty yards.
Then he sat there, goldbricking, and turned off the scope’s battery, his stomach fluttering as he tried to imagine his first ambush.
A breeze was wafting up the hill. It carried the smell of fecund earth, and Schrader savored it. He was a farmboy, a tall and towheaded Midwesterner, and he grinned secretively when the others complained the Orient smelled—well stank. The plain seemed to shimmer in the light of a moon that was dropping behind the mountains, with its paddies shining silver, and the dikes crisscrossing neatly, a vast jeweled chessboard.
The fields lay all around the hill, which was steep and draped with barbed wire and its top was bulldozed to barrenness, so that the red clay festered in the sun like a wound, and hemorrhaged into the paddies whenever it rained. A road was graded all around, a man’s height below the top, which was flat and featureless except for the tents and bunkers.
The sound of hurrying footsteps crunched on the road, yet even in the moonlight Schrader could see nothing against the backdrop of the hill. Turning on the scope again, and keying on the noise, he spotted what seemed to be a jade figurine coming down the road. He knew that movement, the easy crouching lope of their point man, Calderone. Time to hat.
Schrader stood and slung the battery in its case over his shoulder. He put on his helmet, hefted the heavy M-14, and stepped onto the road.
“Schrader?”
“Yo!”
“Let’s hit it, man.”
“I’m ready, Mingo. What’s the rush?”
“We’re pulling out early. The squad’s at the south gate.”
“South gate? The river ford is north of here.”
Calderone barked a hard, short laugh. “Figure it out, boot.”
“We circle around the hill. So what? We won’t fool anyone in this moonlight.” He felt a blunt finger poke his skull.
“Think harder, David.” Calderone was muscular and quick-handed. “The moon’s low. This hill throws a long shadow to the east. Maybe it will work for us.”
“Maybe. Who knows?”
“The shadow knows, boot. Don’t doubt it.” He began to quick step along the road and Schrader followed. The camp was blacked out, razor thin glints of light shooting from one tent or another, muffled laughter bursting from behind heavy canvas.
There were men milling about the gate, talking low, moonlight fracturing their paint-streaked faces. Now and again a rifle bolt would snicker as a round was chambered. Schrader loaded and locked, the smooth action comforting. Calderone punched him lightly. “Watch yourself”, he muttered, then slipped away and was wrapped in darkness.
“Over here, Schrader”. It was Corporal Haney, the squad leader.
“It checks out okay, Corporal.”
“No fuzzy images? The crosshairs are bright enough?” Haney was a few inches shorter than Schrader, lean as a post, a measured and deliberate man.
“Yeah. She’s a beauty.”
“And you’re firing only tracers, right?”
“Every round.”
“Time for you to break your cherry, Schrader. I’ve made a last minute change. I don’t want you on point with Mingo. They’ll be enough moonlight for awhile, and he’s got eyes like a cat anyway. I want you to bring up the rear. I’m as nervous about gooks slipping up behind us as I am gooks in front of us.”
Schrader caught his breath. “Sure. I can do that.” But he felt a frost in his chest.
“It will get pretty thick sometimes, but you can follow us with the scope. You’ll have to guard both directions. Anyone behind us gets powdered. Don’t hesitate. Blow the suckers away. You got that?”
“Yes sir.”
“When we clear the paddies and get into the trees, you drop back about thirty yards. Try to keep that distance. Don’t panic if you lose sight of us sometimes. There’s no telling how far body heat will penetrate the brush, but we’ll take just the one trail and there ain’t no cross trails to throw you off. I’ll come back to check on you after we clear the jungle.”
“Don’t worry, Corporal.”
Haney stepped close. “Look, you got the sauce for this or I wouldn’t trust you with the scope. So stop bracing like I was your DI. You call me sir one more time on patrol, some gook might shoot me for a shavetail.”
“Okay, Joe.”
“Burgess brought your gear from the tent. Remember. Thirty yards.” He turned on his heel and strode toward the gate. Two short whistles brought the fireteam leaders running to him.
Schrader followed, slower, angling off toward a familiar figure.
“This my shit, Calvin?”
“Yeah. There’s cold coffee in one of your canteens.”
“Ugh.”
“Hot java steams, man. The gooks can smell it.” Burgess was a black man, not tall, but thick and heavy-armed and his skin was very dark.
“What do you think our chances are tonight?”
“Chances for what?” Burgess scoffed. “For living?”
“I mean—hell, Calvin, you know what I mean.”
“Let me tell you, man. The chances look good we’ll lay on our fuckin’ bellies all night and feed the bugs. Anything else happens, then the chances look bad.”
“You don’t like any of this, do you?”
Burgess snorted. “Where you from, chuck?”
“Missouri.”
“It figures. You must not have anything better to do at night.”
Schrader grinned foolishly.
“Look there. Haney’s waving us up. You gonna carry that scope on point?”
Strapping on his cartridge belt, Schrader answered:
“No. Haney wants me to bring up the rear.”
“Better you than me, man. That’s some spooky shit.”
“Yeah”, Schrader said as he fitted the battery into its harness, then slipped the harness over his shoulders like a pack. “Yeah, I’ll bet. Some spooky shit.”
The night was vibrant with marsh noise, a dissonance that feathered down his spine. Once sound becomes a presence you can feel, silence seems like a withdrawn touch. Stepping along the narrow dike, craning his neck one way and then the other, Schrader winced when the tiny creatures down around his feet fell quiet. Then the stillness would spread outward, as would the ripples in a pool. The wider the pool, the more visible Schrader became.
He turned around slowly, listened as he had never in his life listened. He would silence his heart, muffle his breath, still the icy stream tumbling through his veins. One by one he heard a hundred tiny voices. You’re alone, they sang to him, you’re alone.
He could not see Casey, his fire team leader, the next man up the line. But Casey was a stick-carrying, slouching, iridescent ape viewed through the scope.
They had been twenty minutes on the narrow dikes, Mingo setting a cautious pace, and Schrader had stopped often to keep his distance. The moon sank lower, and the moon shadows cast by the dense tree line grew longer, until, one by one, the men began to disappear among the trees. Then Casey was the last, bits of emerald light splintering as he vanished. On their own, Schrader’s feet began to race for the trees, his knees weak with panic. Stop! a voice shouted in his mind. Wait, it said gentler. Schrader waited. Then he stepped to the edge of the dark, black jungle and, with a last glimpse at the open sky behind, plunged in. The air was heavy and as moist as a sticky tongue on his neck. Vision became a dozen shades of black. The path was blackest of all, an inky ribbon kept to as much by touch as by any other means. His face and hands were scratched by brush. A slither or flutter set him to thinking of snakes, and his bowels went cold. Through the scope, Casey was a comforting fragment of light. Yet in the time it takes to cut a throat, thirty paces might as well have been the distance to the moon, dropping lower now behind the mountains.
Progress was slow. He kept edging too close to the patrol. Then, abruptly, they passed from the smothering jungle into more open country, some fields, some orderly groves. It seemed much brighter, though the moon was only a glow over the horizon.
When the patrol halted, Schrader was within spitting distance of Casey before he saw him. Casey’s arm was a gray blur waving him to a crouch. Schrader was down in an instant, the rifle in his shoulder, his eyeball straining through the scope. He counted the squad—little fetal monkeys growing smaller and smaller—one of them hurrying down the line as though hunted: pausing, sniffing, feeling the night. Joe Haney. He was quickly beside Schrader, kneeling, patting him on the shoulder as an invitation to whisper. But Schrader had nothing to report.
Gently, Haney took the rifle from Schrader’s grasp and put it to his shoulder. The battery cable tugged. Haney squirmed closer and peered through the scope, then he gave the rifle back.
“Too slow,” he whispered tersely. “Can’t check on you again. At the site, Mingo will bring you in.” Then he was gone.
The pace was quicker after that. On the edge of a field they came to a steep-banked stream, cold from the recently-ended monsoon rains. Schrader gritted his teeth as the water rose to his crotch. The bank was slick and he slipped to his knees, holding the rifle high. Once up, he used the scope. When he began walking his boots squished water and he shook them out, then ran to catch up. It went on like that—stop-and-go, hurry-to-catch-up—for half an hour, until the lay of the land changed. They patrolled an area of waist-high grasses, marshy, the ground spongy as they neared the river.
The men began to disappear into another dark treeline. Schrader paused and used the scope, scanned the fields and strands of brush in every direction. He stepped along cautiously. Three men remained in the open, then two, then only Casey remained. Schrader watched him kneel by the trees, joined by Calderone, luminescent monkey heads briefly touching. Casey moved off, dissolved to jeweled drops through the eye of the scope, then disappeared. Calderone waited. Schrader moved along and came to the edge of the clearing. He could hear the river.
“Come on”, Mingo hissed, and they crept through the treeline. There was the river, a stone’s throw away, across an apron of white sand. The trees made a crescent of the clearing. The narrow trail came out near the center, where a big log was rotting, and Mingo pointed. Schrader scurried to position behind the log. Cocking his ear, he heard the faintest of rustlings as the men settled in. Then all was still, the squad invisible against a darkened skyline.
Wet and shivering, David eased the packboard from his back, setting it aside, trailing the power cable carefully. Using the scope he slowly scanned the far bank, perhaps two hundred feet away. It was a tangle of jungle that spilled to the very edge of the river.
Someone tugged on his leg and he reached for the twine handed him, looping it about his ankle. Whoever spotted the enemy first, gave three sharp tugs on the twine, passed along by each marine. Schrader squirmed loose from his cartridge belt, sipped stale coffee from his canteen. The sand flat was littered with brush—he counted seven clumps and fixed them in his mind. Now that he was still, mosquitoes swarmed him. There was repellent in his jungle jacket and he smeared himself with it, clothes and all, while keeping his eyes on the riverbank.
An hour passed. Two hours. Staring too hard would make the clumps of brush seem to move. He counted them over and over. Wriggling a few feet to the side, he scooped a hole with his knife, pissed, filled in the hole and wriggled back to position without yanking the cord that looped his ankle. Every few minutes he would scan their front, but after three hours it became routine and he expected to see nothing. When the scope flared suddenly with a show of body heat, Schrader’s heart skipped awry. He fumbled to tune the silhouette more distinctly, but it hung to the brush and all he saw was a disjointed mass of glowing meat. He thought to grab the twine, three hard tugs—but wait, it could be an animal, a Gibbons ape or a sun bear—a minute passed and Schrader’s eye burned into the scope. Goddamnit! What is it! When the creature moved back into the brush and vanished, he wanted to bellow his disgust.
Grimacing, wiping sweat and sand from his face, working the cramp from his neck, he locked his eye once again to the scope. Seconds later the creature returned with two others, and suddenly Schrader was very sure. He grabbed the twine and yanked it hard, three times left and right, unlooped the twine and then jammed his eye back to the aperture. They were there, joined by a fourth hovering back in the thickness. Oh fuck! he worried. What if it’s a reinforced company!
Haney slithered to his side and took the rifle, peering through the scope some seconds then setting it aside. They hunched down behind the log and touched heads, whispering with lips hard against cupped ears: How long?”
Three minutes. Are there more of them? Don’t know. It doesn’t matter, Haney told him. We’re committed—you know what to do. And he slithered away to prime the trap.
When Schrader looked again, there were still only four. He watched the scout slide into the water, heard no splash above the murmur of the river. His mind raced. When the gook came ashore to scout the treeline, Haney would kill him. Schrader was to cut loose on the others, his tracers burning red, marking a killing zone for the squad to raze by fire. As close as the other three huddled, Schrader knew they would get them all.
His heart thumped in his ears. He breathed finally, fogged the lens, tried to swallow but could not. His tongue tasted of the wood and steel he gripped and, teeth bringing blood to his lips, he slipped off the safety catch. His finger danced beside the trigger.
Come on gook!
The scout had wavered for some time in the middle of the river. The waist deep water furrowed about him. When he waved his comrades into the river, Schrader’s mouth turned to an ugly skull’s grin, smirking—so this is ass- kicking Viet Cong!
They trailed single file from the water, a few steps apart and in no seeming hurry, the scout bearing toward Schrader.
Not yet. Not yet. He centered the crosshairs on the enemy’s face, huge features aglow, a face that abruptly became human. With a shudder, he tipped the muzzle to the man’s chest and the recoil slammed into his shoulder. The stillness exploded as he watched an emerald silhouette suddenly become a man in one thrashing spasm—everyone firing then except Schrader, seeing the bodies fold and collapse, pieces of flesh trailing away, little chips of jade A hand flare whooshed above them, then another. The screen on the scope flashed uselessly as the landscape erupted in light. Haney was shouting “Cease fire! Cease fire!” and it was over, with a silence dropping so heavily that the ringing in Schrader’s ears pierced like a toothache.
Perhaps the ambush lasted eight seconds.
A hurried voice barked jubilantly into the radio: “Kilo one, kilo one this is hawk’s foot. We have contact. I say again, we have contact. Request immediate eight one illumination, over.”
The light came in seconds, white hot flares from mortars, and instantly it was almost day-bright: colors shifted, red tinted, harsh and glaring. Schrader looked at the bodies, saw the blood and scraps of flesh sprayed across the sand. Haney talked on the radio and listened to squawking replies. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke but the corporal.
As the flares fell more would burst above them. The parachuted canisters whistled as they plunged to the ground. They sizzled and crackled and cast dancing shadows as they tossed in the breeze.
“Calderone !” Haney called. “You and Schrader check out the bodies. S-2 wants to know what weapons.”
Schrader stood on rubber legs, feeling numb, and Mingo came up beside him.
“Let’s hurry it up, man. I don’t like standing in the open.”
The first one lay forty feet away, sprawled across a rifle. He was a boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen. When Schrader turned the body with his foot, to retrieve the weapon, he saw spinal cord and ribs and lung blown out a gaping hole in his back. He turned his head as he took the rifle. The next soldier was a teenage girl. Her jaw was blown off, her head hung by shreds of muscle to her shoulders, and there were pieces blown off her torso. She had no weapon, only a pack on her back.
“See what’s in it,” Calderone told him. “I’ll check the others.”
Schrader knelt slowly. He took his knife and cut the pack from her shoulders, got some blood on his hands and tried to wipe it off, but it only smeared. He opened the pack and lifted the contents. There were some rations, but mostly it held medical supplies: bandages, dressing, some liquid antiseptic—and a book of poems, its pages worn and soiled. In the book was a picture of a family: peasants, two adults and four children standing stiffly. Schrader’s hands shook. Bile rose to his throat. After a few seconds it passed, and he placed the picture back in the book. Then not knowing why, he tucked the book into his shirt.
Calderone walked back to him, carrying two rifles. They were antiquated models that neither of them knew.
“Madre de Dios!” Calderone muttered. “They’re only kids.”
Schrader couldn’t reply, and Delgado slapped him on the back. “You’ll get used to it, David.”
Haney hollered out: “What ya got?”
“Three rifles!” Calderone called.
“And a pack full of medical supplies.” Schrader mumbled.
“And a pack of med supplies!” Calderone echoed.
The radio was squawking. Finally, Haney shouted:
“Mingo, take your team and stack up the bodies. They’re sending a forty-six to us. We fly back.”
There were some ragged cheers. At least they wouldn’t carry the bodies back over their shoulders. Spurted conversation began:
“Not a bad night’s work!”
“Never seen ‘em so easy before!”
Then, voice like a rasp: “Somebody get an ear! Hey Schrader, lop off one of them ears!” It was Mathis, hulking and mean. Schrader didn’t like Mathis.
“No one’s takin’ ears!” Haney barked angrily. “And no goddamned chatter! Quiet down and listen!”
Someone touched Schrader on the shoulder. It was Burgess, come out to stack the bodies. His black skin shone like onyx in the flare-light. “Don’t listen to that jive about the ears.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Schrader muttered.
“It’s funny what a dude will do sometimes, thinkin’ it’s cool.”
Schrader stood dumbly as Burgess stooped to grab the heels of the girl. The rifle slipped from his shoulder, so he handed it to Schrader and dragged the body to where the others were already stacked. When Schrader took the rifle, he reached unthinkingly and grabbed it by the barrel. But his hand wasn’t burned. The barrel wasn’t even warm. Schrader put his nose to the breech and it smelled clean of oil. Calvin didn’t fire, he thought. But his mind was foggy and he made nothing of it.
When he glanced up, Burgess was in front of him, staring coldly. He jerked the rifle from Schrader’s hands, saying nothing, and trotted back to the trees.
Everything seemed far away to Schrader. Even Burgess’s reaction registered little on him. He looked around slowly and saw he was the only one still standing in the clearing. He thought it might be a good idea to get to cover, so he walked clumsily to his place and lay down on his belly.
Distantly, he heard the radio man tell company to cease the illumination. The helicopter would need a clear air zone.
In a couple minutes, the last flare sizzled to earth and burned out. The landscape went black and they were awhile getting their night vision. They heard the chopper: whop, whop, whop—some green flares were tossed onto the sand as the pilots’ chatter came over the radio. The double-rotored machine drifted in deafeningly, throwing debris and dust everywhere.
They were no time loading the bodies, and the last of them dashed up the ramp. As the helicopter lifted, it tumbled the sand violently, leaving little trace to tell the story.
Burgess was fidgeting. The sun was bright and warm on the hillside and he watched the farmers in the paddies below, saw a child herd some ducks along the barbed wire at the base of the hill.
Calderone handed him a cigarette. “What’s the matter with you, man? You’re steppin’ round like an alley cat.”
“That was a slaughter last night, you know that?” Burgess replied. “That was like pushin’ meat through a grinder.”
“Might’ve been us”, Mingo shrugged. “I don’t like zappin’ kids but they got rifles, you know. They can shoot the suckers, too.” Mingo Calderone, lance corporal and fireteam leader, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, was only nineteen himself.
“What do you think of that dude, Schrader?” Burgess asked. “I can’t make him out.”
“He’s okay, Calvin. He showed some stuff last night.”
“Yeah, but he’s so damned straight. Duty, the Marine Corps, all that crap. I’m not sure I trust him.”
“He ain’t no lifer,” Mingo said. “The kid’s goin’ back to the farm. Besides, he didn’t like that shit last night, either.”
“I didn’t fire my rifle,” Burgess suddenly confessed, looking Calderone straight in the eyes.
“You dumbass!” Mingo said coldly. “What’s gettin’ in your head? Man, I seen this comin’ for months, you gettin’ all worked up about this bein’ the Man’s war, not yours”
“Well, it ain’t mine!”
“So what?” Calderone said. “You’ll get killed in it just the same if you start foolin’ around!”
“Wasn’t any point joining in last night, Mingo. I knew we’d shoot those poor bastards to pieces.”
“Hmph! And what if we really need you next time, man?”
“You know you could count on me.”
“Sure, Calvin. Now or tomorrow. But if you get any crazier, I don’t know—” Mingo lit another cigarette and scuffed a rock down the hill. “I hope you get your head on straight, brother. You’re makin’ me nervous.”
“Schrader knows,” Burgess said.
“Oh yeah? I wonder what he thinks of it.”
“That sucker better not say anything.”
“Naw. He won’t say nothin’. I’m tellin’ you Calvin, the kid is okay. He wouldn’t fink on you.”
“He bothers me,” Burgess replied. “He’s too damned friendly. Makes me suspicious when a chuck gets that friendly.”
Mingo laughed. “He’s a farmer. They’re all that way. Not everyone grows up in Chicago or San Antonio, you know.”
“Ohhh, Chicago”, Burgess said slowly. “It’s changin’ every day and I ain’t there to see it.”
“If you don’t smarten up, you ain’t never goin’ to see it”, Mingo scoffed. “Just keep your head on for eight more months, and no more of this layin’ off the trigger crap. You comin’ to chow?”
“What are they having?”
“Who cares,” Calderone replied. “Just hold your nose and swallow.”
“You go on, Mingo. I ain’t too hungry.”
Burgess stayed there in the warm sun and watched the valley. Off in the distance at the edge of the fields, nestled in the green jungle, the thatched huts of a hamlet shined yellow-gold. It seemed such a neat and ordered little world. Burgess wanted to go there unhindered: without a weapon, in no uniform and under no flag and shout Hey! I’m your brother! Look at me! But it would never work, he told himself. I’m something I don’t want to be, something they got no use for, another grunt with a gun and they couldn’t see me any other way. God in Heaven, I don’t like killing these people. But I can’t let them kill me, either. Mingo is right. I gotta' stand with my own.
The sun made him drowsy and he was lost in his thoughts, and he did not hear the other man approach. Burgess started when the shadow fell across him. “What you mean, sneakin’ up!”
“Sorry Calvin”, Schrader apologized. “I wasn’t sneaking.”
“What do you want, man?”
The farmboy shrugged and looked embarrassed. “Just wanted to talk with you a minute. Didn’t mean to break in on your privacy.”
Burgess looked at him hard. “You gonna tell Haney ‘bout last night?”
“I don’t know what you mean?” Schrader looked puzzled.
“Come off it! You know I held my fire.”
“Oh, that. I didn’t think much of it, Calvin. Figured your rifle jammed. To tell you the truth, I was too sick to my stomach to think much of anything I’ll leave you be. Maybe we can talk later.” Schrader turned to go.
“Wait a minute, man,” Burgess said. “That ambush made me touchy. I don’t mean to jump on you.”
“Yeah, it affected me, too. I was expecting some grizzled old jungle fighters, armed to the teeth. But that girl was about my sister’s age.”
“I thought you farmboys were used to a lot of blood.”
“I guess so,” Schrader replied. “Hog and steer blood, butchered chickens, that sort of thing. Not human blood. Hell, the smell is even different.”
“You want a smoke?”
“No thanks. I did something dumb last night.”
“What’s that?” Calvin blew smoke out his nose.
Schrader looked doubtful a second. “I kept something that should have been turned over to S-2.” And he reached under his shirt and removed the book of poems.
Burgess looked it over, stared long and quietly at the picture of the peasant family, the children all smiling stiffly. “You found it on the girl?”
Schrader nodded.
“There’s notes all through the margins. Could be code, David. The intelligence people will want this.”
“I know,” Schrader replied. The Marine Corps had sent him to language school. “But I looked up a lot of those words. I can make some sense of it.”
“And you think they’re just school girl notes?”
“That’s what I think.”
“What are you going to do?” Burgess asked.
Schrader swallowed. “Try and get the book back to her parents, the ones in the picture. That’s what my folks would want if—if it was my little sister who got shot.”
Burgess began to think of the white boy differently. He whistled low. “You can make a lot of trouble for yourself, man. They might call it collaboration with the enemy.”
“I don’t see why,” Schrader protested. “It’s just a little book of poems.”
“My man”, Burgess admonished, shaking his head. “Nothing is nothing over here till the Marine Corps tells you. If they wanna’ call that little book the master plan for the siege of Danang, they will. And you’ll be bustin’ rocks and none of your good intentions will mean shit.”
Schrader set his jaw and looked stubborn. “I’ll have to figure a way to do it without being caught. Maybe I can just leave the book in that hamlet over there, the next time we patrol. Put a note in it and explain about the girl. Then the local VC will sort of parcel post it for me.”
“Mmm hmmm. And if the hamlet guards find it instead?” Burgess asked. “And if they hand it right back to us with your note inside? They’ll parcel post your ass straight to Leavenworth.”
“Maybe there’s another way”, Schrader persisted.
“I don’t think so,” Burgess replied. “We’re a half-step out of place here, man. Maybe you ain’t noticed that yet. But we can’t go anywhere or do anything without bein’ seen and suspected of something.”
“I’ll think of a way,” Schrader replied.
“Best thing to do is burn that book,” Burgess told him. Schrader just shook his head and tucked the poems into his shirt. “Thanks for talking to me about it, Calvin.”
“What’s Missouri famous for?” Burgess laughed. “Mules?”
“Yeah. Mules and Jesse James.”
Burgess saw someone approach down the road. “Quiet now. Here comes Haney.”
“Crap,” Schrader said. “It’s working parties for sure.” The corporal stepped close and smiled tightly. “You fellas had chow?”
“Not me,” Burgess said.
“Better grab a bite. The Skipper gave us a firebase security job, up to Tam Ky.”
“How many days?”
“Three. We’ll be with the cannon-cockers.”
“Hot damn!” Burgess said. “Three days off this fuckin’ hill!”
“You’d better go eat. We’re pulling out in an hour. Field marching pack. Me and Schrader will bring the ammo around.”
Schrader followed the corporal across the crown of the hill and through the neat rows of bleak squad tents. The ordnance bunker was heavily sand-bagged and it was dark and cool inside.
“You did okay last night, David,” Haney told him, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness of the bunker. “I didn’t expect the gooks to fall into it like that, and then I wasn’t sure how long you could hold off the trigger. But you cut loose at just the right time.”
Schrader saw the bodies tumbling again. “I didn’t expect them to be kids.”
Haney barked a short, harsh laugh, ringing with the things Schrader knew of him: second combat tour, Silver Star and Purple Hearts, busted from sergeant.
“How old are you, David?”
“Nineteen”.
“Hell, I’m only twenty-four. We’re both still kids—don’t waste pity on these gooks just ‘cause they’re a few years younger. They’ll kill you dead. War grows these kids up fast.”
Schrader thought about the children in the hamlet. “I’ve heard that before. I don’t know if I believe it.”
“You damned well better believe it. You get soft on these people you’ll end up in graves registration, wrapped in a canvas bag. You’ll be a memory and a Purple Heart stashed in your mother’s dresser.”
“Do you hate them, Joe?”
“The gooks?” Haney looked at him for long seconds. “No, I don’t hate them anymore. They do what they have to do, just like us We better hustle now, get this ammo to the tent. We’ll each take two cans, and send Mingo’s team back for more. Think about what I’m saying, kid. You want to go home to that nice farm, don’t get soft on the gooks.”
Schrader hefted the heavy ammo cans and did not reply. He was getting ideas of his own.
CHAPTER TWO
They tried not to think of mines, or of being exposed. They were just out in the light of day and having a good time with the wind rushing in their ears and escaping the basecamp, the officers, and the drudgery of the bulldozed hilltop. It could be such a bore when the war slowed, nowhere to go and nothing to do but a work detail.
They were all standing as they rode in the bed of the truck, a five-ton the cannon-cockers dispatched for them, big-wheeled, heavy-girded, but a big mine could throw it like a toy.
The road to Tam Ky ran due north and was alternately paved or tarred, hard to mine except in the chuckholes. The land was flat coastal plain, stretches of jungle broken by ordered paddies and grasslands, the jungle sometimes growing right to the road and then quickly retreating beneath the flashing knives of the farmers. Occasionally, they would rumble through a village, thatched huts next to old French two-stories, the whitewash fading and vines creeping up the walls and the peasants would look up and wave or maybe frown but the truck wasn’t slowing and the scene would disappear behind them.
Schrader watched the farmers. They were plowing fields with hulking water buffalo they somehow tamed like puppies. Schrader’s father had once used a team of mules, but it had been awhile. Some of the peasants were knee-deep in the paddy mud, planting rice shoots, stooped and patient and seemingly ancient. The monsoons had only just ended. Schrader had joined the squad when it was ass-deep in mud and in two weeks it had disappeared everywhere but in the paddies. As the land dried up, the war would shift gears again and they all knew it. Haney better than any.
They were bouncing along pleasantly and Schrader was leaning on the rail of the truck bed, his rifle slung over his shoulder. Duffy, Schrader’s fire team leader, was beside him. The short, stocky redhead was watching the peasants too.
“Ain’t like farming in the States, eh Schrader?” Duffy was a rodeo rider from Oklahoma.
“You’re from wheat country”, Schrader had to shout over the rush of wind. “We still see horse and mule teams at home. Hard way to farm, though.”
“You said it, man. But there ain’t no easy way”, Duffy shouted back. “My daddy gave up when I was six. We moved to town.”
“Doesn’t rain much out there,” Schrader replied, shaking his head. “I always feel bad when a farmer goes under.”
“Daddy felt bad a long time. Now he never goes past the old place anymore. Funny how a piece of land gets under your skin. How much land does your daddy farm?”
“Half a section. Good land, Duffy. River bottom and gentle slopes. Dad’s trying to lease some more, wants to expand when I get home.”
“Soybeans?”
“That’s the coming thing,” Schrader replied.
Duffy nodded with a tight smile and looked away. Schrader knew how fortunate he was that his father had managed well and had luck and was making it.
Traffic was light on the highway. There were cyclists and motorbikes, and occasionally a French bus bursting with passengers—even on top and hanging off the sides—the little bus swaying and tipping under its load. Most of the traffic was military: drab green trucks and jeeps contrasted with the gaily colored buses and the bicycles with pretty girls in their flowing white gowns.
They came to a cluster of huts and shops at a crossroads, enclosed on three sides with a woven bamboo fence, the tiny village looking fragile as a paper fortress. There were fields behind the village and then the jungle. Schrader caught a faint salt sea smell on the wind, as it blew from the east. To the west toward the mountains, the open fields stretched a mile without a sign of a tree. The truck slowed and stopped and was quickly besieged by the worldly-wise urchins that seemed to be everywhere in this country.
As Duffy arched and stretched with the rifle over his shoulder clunking, flak jacket clinking, helmet clanking, canteens ringing, bullets rattling he sounded like a medieval knight.
“Tighten up over there!” his buddy LaRosa shouted from the rear.
“I’ll tighten your head about two turns, guinea!”
“You limp wrist!” LaRosa laughed. “We’ll arm wrestle for the beer.”
Duffy turned and winked at Schrader. “This’ll be a snap, boot.”
They clambered out of the truck, thirteen young men with enough ordnance to destroy a small town, and the urchins clustered around, touching them, their begging and laughing blending musically. Duffy handed out chewing gum, LaRosa gave away his chocolate rations. Burgess dug into his pack for the tins of fruit he’d been hoarding.
The motor pool corporal who’d been driving the truck walked around to the rear. “I’m havin’ a couple beers,” he told them.
Haney took him by the arm. “How much further?” he asked.
“We gotta’ go through the city yet,” the man said, pulling his arm free. “About ten miles, then north of there we turn west and that’s where the guns are.”
“Another hour?” Haney asked. The squad was bunched all around the motor pool corporal.
“That’s right.”
“Don’t take too long,” Haney told him.
“Wait a minute! You don’t outrank me.”
Haney put his face close to the other man’s. “The afternoon’s getting on. When we get to the battery park, our work’s just beginning. So you do what I say, buster. You’re going home to a nice billet tonight.”
The truck driver looked around at the lean faces. “Okay, man. Don’t get a hard-on.” And he hurried off to have his beer.
“We’ll stay with the truck,” Haney told the squad. “Two beers apiece, no more. Nobody’s punking' out when the work starts.”
Duffy took off his helmet and handed it around. His short red hair shining in the sun.
“C’mon gents, a hundred dong each."
“Beers are only thirty-five dong!” Mathis growled.
“A little something for the kids, Mathis.”
“Screw the little gooks,” Mathis said. He’d been with them a month, transferred from another company, and he had his collection of ears. He counted out seventy dong very carefully and dropped it in the helmet. The thing was full of tattered, sweat-stained bills.
The urchins smelled a deal brewing and clamored even closer, maybe twenty of them, and Duffy knelt and motioned, “C’mere kid”, and a quick-footed rascal of six or seven barely three feet tall came scampering up.
“What you want fella? Me get,” the boy said.
“You got some buddies with you?” Duffy asked. The urchin signaled and three others stepped up, two boys and a girl, ragged, dirty-kneed but pretty and bright-eyed. “We want twenty-six beers,” Duffy told them. “Cold beers. You know how much twenty-six is?”
“Hai muoi sau”, Schrader prompted, leaning close.
The urchin nodded. “Sure. Me know.”
“Make sure they’re cold.” Duffy told him, handing the helmet to the boy and he plucked out the bills and handed it back.
“Lành! Em hieü, khong?” Schrader repeated.
“Da phai,” the boy replied. He understood. Cold beer. Those Nquoi My and their passion for ice! The four of them scurried to a shop nearby, the interior looked cool and there were a few young whores, and souvenirs hung from the ceiling. Outside the other urchins were not dismayed and stayed close, little groups hanging around one marine or another, but Mathis leaned against the truck and glowered at them so they left him alone.
Duffy stepped over to LaRosa. They were both sturdy, one fair, the other dark.
“You ready, guinea?”
LaRosa grinned. “You dumb Okie, this time I’ll have your ass.”
“Come on”, Duffy chuckled, laying on his belly. “Muscle talks, bullshit walks.”
They lay flat and squirmed around for position and put out their arms. LaRosa tried to get the jump but the cowboy was ready and it was a puffing, red-faced contest in no time. The urchins got around in a circle and cheered them on and a couple of the merchants and some of the young whores came out and laughed and shouted and everyone picked a favorite. One little whore who was dressed in pink and about seventeen, jumped and squealed and pointed excitedly to LaRosa. LaRosa held his own for awhile, looking like he might get the edge, but Duffy was holding back and when he turned it on LaRosa’s arm slowly began to go down, the man grunting and straining and thump! The back of his hand hit the dirt.
The small whore in pink made a face and poked LaRosa with her toe, and said something disdainful. She promptly walked back to the shop.
“What’d she say?” LaRosa asked Schrader.
“Couldn’t follow it,” Schrader replied.
“She said you got no cojones”, Calderone laughed, standing over them. “Some Latino! Lettin’ an Okie whip you.”
“I’ll get his ass next time.”
They got to their feet and dusted off, and the urchins came back with bottles of beer in baskets and were delighted when no one asked them for change. The marines sat around the truck drinking the ice-cold beer, local beer, Ba Muoi Ba, which was the number thirty-three. They called it tiger piss but it was good. When the truck driver returned they climbed aboard and were off again, the tiny village disappearing behind them and the countryside rolling by. But the traffic was heavier as they neared Tam Ky and the going was slower.
Haney was impatient. He stood with his rifle propped on the cab of the truck, the wind in his face, his eyes forever flicking and searching. He was never comfortable on the roads. He felt too exposed. The squad was in a skylarking mood and Haney knew that later he would have to sit on them. They were fine infantrymen but their attention would wander and Haney could not tolerate carelessness. He was remembering what green-assed boots they were, when he first took them over. Five months now he’d had them, pulled most of them through but he remembered the ones they had lost: Harper, Michaels, Lippman and Ferris. Haney didn’t want to lose anyone else, but deep inside he knew that he would. The monsoon was over. There would be trouble soon enough.
They drew to the edge of the city and the thatched huts of the country became tin and cardboard shanties jumbled together on the roadside, long stretches of wretched slums, the people dreary and listless as they stared at the passing marines. There was a faint odor of foulness, and Schrader was uneasy at the sight of such misery. He glanced down the length of the truckbed at Burgess, who shook his head sadly.
In a couple of miles they came to a nicer part of the city. The road broadened to an avenue and the shops were stucco and brick with open fronts, with the merchants all in western dress. The pedestrians and cyclists were not the poor of the slums, but well-paid workers and the middle class. The willowy school girls in their white ao-dai were startlingly pretty and they looked at the marines shyly and the marines gawked back. The traffic was slowing them down. It took ten minutes to go a few blocks, and then there was a traffic circle bordered by Mediterranean-style buildings in pastels and a militiaman whistled the truck through and that was Schrader’s blurred view of the center of town. And then the traffic was faster and they were moving again out of the city, past the respectable quarters and fine homes and through a new set of slums. They were north of the city and it was rice paddies and fields and jungle again, and after the city slums these country peasants did not look so poor.
At another crossroads, the truck turned west towards the foothills. The road was macadamized a way, but soon it was clay and the jungle seemed to sweep down upon them from nowhere and close them in. The skylarking ceased without Haney saying a word. The cameras were quietly put away and they all had their rifles ready and stood at the rails, the truck bouncing and jarring in the potholes, the jungle sliding past them on both sides so close they could reach out and swat the leaves.
They drove about three miles through the thick of it, the sky sometimes blotted by the trees, when the truck suddenly emerged into a large open plain. The deep grass rolled like a green sea in the breeze, dotted here and there with thickets of bamboo and brush. Schrader was good at figuring acreage. He thought the plain was at least a section, a square mile, though it wasn’t square at all and the jungle was a thick green line all around. The foothills were so much nearer, the plain seemed almost hard against them. It was rough country. In the middle of the plain squatted the artillery battery, six big pieces of 155-millimeters, a typical high explosive round weighing ninety pounds. The big guns could easily shoot them seven or eight miles.
Haney called to the squad: “Listen up fellas, these cannon-cockers are easy to get along with. If we do a good job, maybe we’ll get an afternoon off on the way back to basecamp, maybe get a look at Tam Ky, seeing as how you all brought your cameras” The truck was bouncing along and they were almost at the battery park. “We’ll be patrolling new country,” Haney continued”, best to pay attention and keep the wreath off momma’s door.”
“Amen, brother”, Willie White said.
“Hallelujah,” Duffy echoed.
They passed into a hastily made encampment, rolls of concertina were like accordion reels around it, the big howitzers parked in an arc perhaps ten yards apart, snouts pointed threateningly at the foothills and the grass trampled down all around the trucks. Men were busy everywhere, stringing more barbed wire about the camp and building bunkers from sandbags.
The big truck squealed to a stop and the squad climbed out and began to stack their gear and ordnance. The battery commander hurried over to them, a tall skinny captain with graying hair. Haney saluted.
“Glad you boys got here,” the captain drawled. “Hope you’re ready to go to work.”
“Yes sir,” Haney told him. “We’ve been sitting on our butts.”
“How many machine guns did you bring?” the captain asked.
“Two, sir. And five thousand rounds. Just tell us where you want them.”
“My boys have got two of our own. We’re putting them in those bunkers we’re building—I’ll tell you what,” the captain said, turning, “you build me a bunker there, about ten yards left of the gate, and one over there. That will give us fields of fire all around the camp. Get your boys started on that and then come and see me. I’ll show you the area maps.”
“We’ll get right on it, captain.”
“See that pile of sandbags over there?” the officer pointed. “Those are yours. We gotta’ hustle, Corporal. There will be fire missions any time now.”
“Who’s out in the hills, sir?” Haney asked. “Our boys?”
“Shit no!” the captain hawked and spat. “It’s a South Vietnamese operation. Those fuckin’ Arvin are out there tripping over each other’s feet.” The officer turned on his heel abruptly and strode away, mumbling and shaking his head.
Haney got them to work and they were at it for three hours, getting the bunkers built and setting up the machine guns. Then they strung barbed wire until the sun went down, and Haney posted guards and they settled down for the night. There were only a few fire missions, the cannon thundering in unison, the gunners moving like well-drilled machines and the projectiles slicing the air and trailing away with a sound like a fast train moving off. Except for the exploding howitzers, it was a quiet night.
Early the next day there was a patrol.
They had the reconnaissance maps, and Haney worked out the route with the captain. The officer was sorry, but he could not send the battery’s only corpsman with them. But they sent one of their radiomen, and by seven o’clock the patrol was pulling out.
Mingo took the point, his fireteam spaced behind him, and they trailed out the encampment through the makeshift gate. Duffy’s team was next in line with Schrader, Cezeski and Willie White. LaRosa’s team brought up the rear: Naylor, Mathis, Perry Jackson. There should have been a fourteenth infantryman, a grenadier to carry the short-snouted grenade launcher, but they had been short that man for a month, and Haney carried the launcher with his other gear.
Up and down the line of patrol there were vendors dangling wares in their hands, haggling with the marines in pidgin. They were from a nearby hamlet and they appeared at the crack of dawn, risking the nervous fingers of the machine gunners. A few of them trailed after the patrol and Haney brandished his rifle and chased them away. A few of the boys were taking pictures, and Haney barked at them to put the cameras up. If they want to clown around, he thought, I’ll make their tongues drag.
Haney was in the center of the line with the radioman, the squad strung out a hundred and fifty yards in column. The corporal flashed Calderone the hand sign to speed it up. Ahead lay the jungle. They would sidle the trees until they found a certain trail that was marked on the map. It was almost a mile in the open, moving fast, and Haney knew it would sweat the clowning out of them, though they were traveling light—only thirty-five or forty pounds of gear.
After half a mile he heard Cezeski bitch: “Haney’s got a hard-on!” and the corporal grinned meanly to himself.
They halted when Mingo found the trail leading into the jungle.
“What’s the hurry, Joe?” someone called out.
“Yeah. What’s the rush?” They were all sweating.
Haney glanced around wide-eyed. “What rush? We’re just shaking out the ants.”
They all knew what he meant. “They’re shook out already!” LaRosa said.
Haney gave them five minutes before they pushed on, taking the strange, spongy trail into the tangled matte. The trail was wide and well-traveled and mostly open to the sun. There was the sweet musty odor of blooming flowers, and the air seemed tinged a faint green. They could not see three feet into the thickness on the left and right. Except for the buzzing of insects and the twittering and rustling of tiny birds, the jungle was very still. Haney drew the squad closer, six or seven yards between men, and they stepped along quietly, peering into the thickness.
In the distance, the howitzers resounded, shaking the ground, the rounds shrieking overhead. The guns fired three booming salvoes and then were silent, the jungle falling hushed as a tomb a few seconds before the little noises started again.
They had just passed through a small clearing, edged by bamboo and colored with a hundred blossoms, when Calderone held them up. Haney trotted to the point. They had come to a side trail not shown on the map, one that was a good bit narrower than the one they were on. With the jungle hanging heavily over, this new trail seemed like a long green tunnel.
Haney glanced at his map. “If it doesn’t peter out, it should exit somewhere around here.” He pointed on the map for Mingo. “Maybe we can work along the jungle till we come to where the main trail breaks out—what do you think?”
Calderone shrugged. “Might as well look and see. Nothing going on here.”
“You and Duggan nose it out,” Haney said. “Check it out a couple hundred yards.”
Mingo nodded and gave a sign to Duggan, who was farther down the line behind Burgess. They plunged down the trail and were quickly gone from sight. Haney whittled a stick of wood until they returned.
Mingo was puffing. “Looks okay,” he said.
Haney nodded and walked back down the line to the radioman.
“Get your skipper on the hook,” he told the man.
The operator talked into the handset and in a few moments handed it to Haney. The corporal gave a precise explanation, giving their map coordinates and a promise to call again when they were clear of the jungle. The captain gave them the go-ahead, and Haney waved up the line to Calderone. The patrol began to snake along the crosstrail. The air was sticky and still. Here and there a patch of light would glimmer through the canopy, but there was no other sign of sky.
A green viper, coiled lazily around a limb, watched them pass, flicking its tongue to discover what they were. The small and colorful birds still flittered about, but Schrader saw nothing exotic: not parrots or macaws or anything like that. He’d seen monkeys and mongoose and black scorpions that would cover a man’s hand. But no tigers or elephants or pythons. It occurred to him that the war was driving the animals inland, where the mountains gave them more protection. Schrader had heard of the standing orders to kill elephants on sight, because the Communists used them for transport.
They were half an hour on the trail before it led them out of the jungle, and they winced at the bright morning light. There was a wind and it was cooler. Haney talked on the radio. When their position was cleared, they moved on, skirting the dark line of trees.
Initially, the patrol had headed due west toward the hills, and under the artillery fire. They had worked their way in an arc and were then two miles south of the guns. By midday they would trail back to camp, and after chow they would patrol the northern half of the route.
Haney thought it was time to break clear of the jungle. The tree line continued south beyond their sector, and they had to cross the plain of waist-high grasses. Calderone led them cautiously along a path, searching hard for trip wires or even a length of grass lying out of place. The Viet Cong had a thousand ways to do you in. Mingo had seen a lot of them.
The wind was tossing the grasses and they rippled from light to dark green, sometimes flashing with sunlight. The grasses were thick on both sides of the path, though the growth was still young and later would double its height.
The plain was dotted with strands of trees and bamboo, like islands in a bay. The squad was spread out again, fifteen yards between men.
They were approaching a fortress-like strand of bamboo, about half a mile into the plain, when the artillery began to crack and thunder. It was the noise that stirred up the warthog.
The animal had heard and smelled the patrol for some time, lying low in the bamboo, beady-eyed and aggravated by the pounding of the cannon. It was a big tusker, fierce and scarred and not easily driven from its range. When the cannon cracking started again the hog burst from its cover toward the marines, snorting and squealing, and trampling the grasses in its wake. Schrader knew the sound and his rifle was up as the hog rushed onto the trail taking White by surprise, Willie hot-footing it, the hog then charging down the line, swiping at Cezeski who was high-stepping toward Duffy, who was backpedaling and shooting from the hip. Crack! Crack! Schrader shot it through the head. The beast shuddered and squealed before it died.
“Oooooeee!” Duffy hollered.
“Look at that ugly bastard!”
The men began to duster around the hog.
“How big you think it is?”
Schrader eyed it judiciously. “Maybe two-hundred eighty pounds—three on the outside.”
“Man, I didn’t know what the fuck it was!” Willie White said, shaking his chocolate brown head. “Look at them teeth!”
Schrader stopped and grabbed one of the tusks. It was six inches long and its tip was sharp. “It would have sliced you to the bone, Willie.”
Duffy was taking pictures. So was Burgess.
Haney laughed at them. “Mom will be glad to know the war is over.”
“C’mon Joe! Just a couple pictures.”
The patrol was bunching up. Haney signaled down the trail for LaRosa to hold his team in place. Calderone and Duggan had remained at the point.
“What we gonna’ do with it?” Burgess asked.
“Let’s dress it out and take it back to camp,” Schrader suggested.
“Yeah!” Duffy added. “Maybe the captain’s up for a pig roast. Nothin’ much happening.”
Haney scratched his jaw and looked at the beast. “The captain must be sick of rations, too,” he replied. “But I want to get out of the open like this.” He took his cane- knife and tossed it to White. “Cut a big piece of bamboo. We’ll carry it to those trees up ahead.”
Willie White trotted to the cluster of bamboo and brought back a length six inches in diameter, and they trussed the hog safari-style. Schrader and Cezeski hoisted it up, and the patrol got underway. It was a quarter mile to the trees where they gathered under some hard woods. Haney tossed parachute chords over a limb and they spread-eagled the animal in the air.
Somebody asked if it was a razorback. “Naw!” Cezeski spat. “A razorback is just a barnyard hog that goes wild.”
Schrader grinned. “I didn’t think anyone knew about hogs in New Jersey.”
“Are you kidding me?” Cezeski laughed, his gray eyes going wide. “My neighborhood is Pollack and Guinea. We eat pig from end to end. You krauts think you have a monopoly on sausage.”
Schrader stepped to the hog and sliced the throat deeply and the blood that had swelled its insides began to spill out. Then the farm boy made a cut just below its anus. Placing the blade between two fingers, he lifted the hide from the bowels and sliced neatly to the hog’s sternum. The hide was thick and tough, even tougher than the Hampshire they raised on the farm.
“When I cut around the asshole,” he said to Cezeski, “you start pulling the guts out, and I’ll cut the tissue as you pull.” In seconds the bowels were dangling out. Duffy’s bullet had gone through the lungs, and it was pretty messy. Schrader’s hands were bloody almost to his elbows, but soon the heart and lungs were loosened with a sucking, slurping sound and whole mass of innards was lying on the ground, and in moments, covered with flies.