War Year Read online

  “Sorry; I…”

  “Don’t be—get sorry over strangers dying and you’ll spend the rest of your life being sorry.” He relit his pipe and stood up. “Well, better go check on Smitty. Take it easy, Tex. Hope you have half the luck I did.”

  “Have a good trip home.” Kind of a dumb thing to say.

  “No such thing as a bad trip home.” He gave me a peace sign and walked out the door.

  Going home in a box, I had to think, would be a bad trip home.

  I stuck a beer under my shirt—you aren’t supposed to take them out of the club—and walked out into the cool night. I swear the temperature here must drop fifty degrees when the sun goes down. You can wake up cold and be frying by nine.

  They were fighting a few miles south of Cam Ranh Bay. Something was going on there every night since I landed. They told us not to worry about it. Guess I was in a worrying mood, though.

  I sat down on the sand behind our billet and watched the fireworks on the horizon. There were a couple of planes, propeller jobs, and a helicopter shooting up the landscape with machine guns and rockets. Looked impressive, red and orange flames, but you couldn’t hear anything. I guess it’d even look pretty if you didn’t know what was going on. I watched for maybe half an hour, until I finished the beer, then went back to my billet and sacked out.

  Only got a couple of hours’ sleep. The buck-sergeant came stomping in, turned on all the lights, and started hollering the most godawful language I’d ever heard—and I’ve heard some fine stuff. Then he started tipping over bunks when people didn’t get up. I squirmed out just in time to keep from getting dumped. The buck-sergeant wasn’t happy at being up at three in the morning, and he wanted everybody to know it.

  He calmed down a little bit after everybody was up and getting their gear ready. “All right, you fuckers, there’s a bus outside the door. Hand me one copy of your orders before you get on. The last ten fuckers gotta stand all the way to the airport, so get a move on.”

  I was the second one on the bus, but it turned out nobody had to stand. Never trust a sergeant. It was only a ten-minute ride, anyhow.

  The airport was a big metal hut filled with bored soldiers, and not much else. It had a refreshment stand and a Stars and Stripes bookstore, but they wouldn’t open until 0900. I sat on my duffel bag and started writing letters.

  Wrote a long one to my girl and one to Mom. I was halfway through writing my brother when the buck-sergeant made us line up to go out to the plane. He took a roll call, opened the door, and we trotted onto the field. There was a big old C-130, a “flying boxcar,” and we got on in no particular order. No seats—we just flopped our bags on the metal floor and sat on them. We couldn’t get everybody on at first, but they juggled us around and packed us in tight as sardines, and managed to fit everyone in.

  An Air Force guy with captain’s bars and a tough-looking .45 in a shoulder holster poked his head in from the front of the plane. “I’m your pilot, Captain Platt. I hope none of you guys get airsick too easy—this is gonna be a rough ride.

  “This airplane is older than some of you. It’ll probably outlive some of you, too. If you got anything to say to your neighbor, you better say it now. ’Cause once I start these engines, you won’t be able to even hear yourself think until you get to Pleiku. It’s about one hour’s flight. If we land any sooner than that, you better start praying. You can smoke as soon as the light goes on.” Then he yelled something out a window and the engines started. The noise was incredible, so loud it made my teeth hurt.

  I’d flown lots of times before; my Dad had a license. We’d go out on weekends, out by Turner Field, and rent a plane for a few hours. But we’d always get the little Pipers or Cessnas, nothing that made a tenth as much noise as this did.

  We stood still for about five minutes before the plane started to move.

  After we rolled down the runway a while, the noise doubled and we were in the air. Without windows you could only tell by the upward tilt of the plane and the fact that the air was less bumpy than the ground. Still, the airplane sounded like it was going to shake itself apart.

  After a boring hour—nothing to do but look at the other guys turning green—the plane started to come down. I could feel the pressure in my ears, and there was a loud bump when the landing gear came down. We bounced several times before the plane started rolling on the ground.

  The rear door fell open before the plane stopped taxiing. You couldn’t see much, except that everything was covered with red clay. All over everything was a thick white fog, bright in the morning sunlight.

  We rolled to a stop and the unloading ramp clanked down. Everybody scrambled out of that plane as fast as they could.

  Sure enough, there was another buck-sergeant there on the runway. He herded us into a line and marched us over to a bus. As we got on the bus, he checked our names off a list.

  The bus had metal screens, like thick chicken wire, over the windows. One of the windows had a bullet hole in it. The bus had a name painted over the fender. It was called “Last Chance.”

  Two guards, armed with machine guns, got on the bus. One of them spoke up: “All right, listen up! If there’s any shootin’, just get down under the seat and make like a turtle. We’ll take care of everything—right, Killer?” The other guy laughed in a dumb kind of way. “We’re goin’ through Pleiku City. There’s lots of VC there who’d just love to knock off a bus fulla green troops. No sweat, though. We ain’t lost a bus all week.”

  Guess we were supposed to be impressed. But I’d been in the army too long—less than a year at that—and seen too many phony tough guys.

  Have to admit I was getting a little scared when we went through the town of Pleiku. It took a long time to get through, too; seemed as big as Tulsa. Half the buildings were demolished. Bullet holes and shell craters everywhere. But there wasn’t any fighting going on, just lots of skinny little Orientals who stared at the bus as we went by. None of them smiled.

  There were fewer and fewer buildings and after a while we were out in the country. Nothing but red dust and a few scraggly looking bushes on both sides of the road—looked like the worst part of Oklahoma in the middle of the summer. And this was January.

  After a while we got to Camp Enari. A sign said “Welcome to the Fourth Division,” but I didn’t feel too welcome. It seemed more of a prison camp than an army camp—barbed wire everywhere, sentries with machine guns in towers all around the edge of the camp. A couple of privates rolled aside a big barbed-wire gate, and we drove through.

  TWO

  “I’d like to welcome all of you to Camp Enari.” The major was pacing up and down, looking at the floor. We were lined up all around the walls of the big plywood building. A private was passing out clipboards and a thick wad of forms to each person.

  “…and I’d like to be able to say that you’re going to enjoy your stay here. Unfortunately, you won’t enjoy it—nobody ever has. And you might as well start getting used to the fact that there’s a war going on, on the other side of that barbed wire. Nobody’s ever gotten killed inside Camp Enari, though we’ve been attacked a few times. But most of you aren’t staying in Enari.

  “I’ll give you the facts right now. You’re going to spend a year—most of you—someplace here in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Some of you are going home early. About one man in twenty goes home dead. There are about forty men in this building, so figure it out. Maybe the guy standing next to you, maybe the guys on both sides of you…maybe you.

  “Now I’m not saying this just to scare you—but if you’re scared, you’re smart. You’ve got a much better chance to get home in one piece if you’re scared—careful scared, healthy scared—every day of the next three hundred and fifty-some. The guy who gets cocky, the careless one, he’s the one who doesn’t watch where he puts his foot and steps on a mine. He’s the one who lights up a cigarette at night and gets a sniper’s bullet through his brain. Or doesn’t keep his weapon clean and has it jam up when
it could save his life.

  “That’s your first warning. You’ll get lots more in the next week. There’ll be training every day from 0600 in the morning—pay attention to every word these men tell you. They’re all combat veterans, and they’ll be trying to teach you how to stay alive for a year.

  “Now I’m going to turn you over to Sergeant Ford, who’ll help you fill out the forms. Good luck.”

  A short blond sergeant, with a face like a monkey, who had been sitting on the floor, walked to the center of the room. “Okay, troops, listen up!” A sergeant knows nobody ever listens to him, so he has to say “listen up” before he says anything important.

  “The pink slip of paper on top there is what they call a release. The army’s going to send a telegram to your old lady if you get killed or hurt really bad. If you can read, you’ll see that this pink form asks whether you want a telegram sent if you’re ‘lightly wounded.’ Just check ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and sign it. If you’re smart, you’ll check ‘no.’ You don’t want your old lady to freak out just because you got a little hole in your head. Right?”

  That made sense, even if I didn’t care for the way he said it. I checked “no” and signed it.

  It went on like that for a couple of hours, while we filled out the rest of the forms. Some of them could scare you if you stopped to think about what they meant, like that first one, and the one that took care of where to send your body… but most of them were just regular army stuff, about your pay and where you were born and how old your mother is and all that stuff.

  I must have written my address a hundred times. When we finally got up to leave, my hand was ready to fall off from writing so much.

  We left that place and walked through the scorching sun to Supply, another big shack like all the others. We just walked through in a line and they piled stuff in our arms—some clothes, first-aid packet, a canteen and mess gear so we could eat and drink, a steel helmet—steel “pot,” they call it—to keep our brains inside in case there was an attack, and for sleeping, a couple of sheets, a mosquito net, and a blanket—must be 130 degrees out there, and they give us a blanket! We each got two boxes of malaria pills and a little bottle of pills for purifying water.

  Then they led us to our billet and showed us how to tie the mosquito nets over our bunks, to keep from being eaten alive during the night. I hadn’t noticed any mosquitoes around, but they said they really get thick after sundown.

  By the time I got my bed made and the net strung up, almost everybody else had left for lunch. I took my mess kit—just a metal bowl with knife, fork, and spoon attached—and went out to find the chow hall.

  Turns out I walked right by it, on the wrong side. I waded through the thick dust for a couple of blocks—the dust was fine as talcum powder, dark red, and piled up in drifts above your ankles. Finally I stopped a guy and asked directions. He sent me back to the mess hall, and this time I passed the right side. There was a long line, not moving, and I went to the end of it.

  Just then a siren started to blow. I nearly jumped out of my skin and started looking for a bunker to run to.

  The guy in front of me turned around and smiled. “Man, don’t sweat it…that’s just the noontime whistle. Don’t mean anything unless it blows some other time—then you wanta jump.”

  “Thanks—guess I’m a little jumpy.” I stuck out my hand. “Name’s John Farmer.”

  “Wally Lewis.” He was short and stocky. “Guess you’re new around this place—been assigned yet?”

  “No, just got here today. They say we’ve got to go to a bunch of classes before we get assigned.”

  “Right… you get to play soldier for a few days. Just hope you don’t have to be one, though. A lot of guys get assigned here in base camp. Never have to shoot a gun again, after that first week.”

  “That’d suit me fine. I never asked to be part of this war.”

  Wally laughed. “Man, who ever did?”

  We talked for about twenty minutes, while the line moved up. Wally was a clerk for one of the infantry companies. Wasn’t always a clerk, though—he started out as a rifleman. After six weeks in the boonies he got shot in the arm. He showed me the scar, bright pink against his brown skin. When he got out of the hospital, the clerk job was open and he grabbed it. He’d been behind a desk ever since.

  Like the major, Wally said nobody had ever gotten killed inside the base camp, Camp Enari. But it still paid to be careful. People had been hurt in three rocket and mortar attacks, and it was just luck that nobody had died.

  There was a rumor, Wally said, that Enari would get another attack around midnight. But that rumor came around at least twice a week. He said it wasn’t worth worrying about.

  Wally was only in this part of camp—Fourth Admin—to round up some new men who had been assigned to his outfit. After chow he went off to find them and I went back to my billet.

  Some guys were sitting in little groups talking, and a bunch of old sergeants were sitting in the back playing cards and passing around a bottle of whiskey. I flopped down on my bunk and tried to get some sleep. It was too noisy and too hot.

  After a while a sergeant came in and rounded us up. We walked out to a black metal shed in back of our billet.

  “This here is called a tock,” the sergeant said. “There’s enough M-16’s in here to give you each one and have some left over. Now who’s the highest ranking man here?”

  One of the sergeants who’d been drinking whiskey, almost bald with a little fringe of white hair, stepped up. “That’d be me, I guess. Master Sergeant Jack O’Donnell.”

  He opened the tock and gave the key to O’Donnell. “Sarge, you’re in charge of givin’ these weapons out. Two different times you give ’em out.”

  He walked inside the dark tock and came out with a clipboard. “When you give ’em out for training, have somebody write down everybody’s name and the serial number on the weapon he gets. Use this clipboard and have him put it back in the tock when he’s through.

  “If there’s an attack, just open it up and pass out the guns as fast as you can. I’ll come by with ammunition if Charlie gets inside the camp.

  “If you leave the area at night, to go to the NCO club or somethin’, give the key to someone who’ll stay around ’til you get back. Charlie doesn’t usually attack before midnight—try to be back by then.

  “Now this goes for everybody. Any time you go out after dark, take your steel pot, canteen, and first-aid packet. If there’s an attack, get in the nearest trench or bunker. Try to get back here. This is the only place you’re goin’ to get a gun. Be back here by midnight ev’ry night.

  “That’s about all for today. You can do whatever you want as long as you’re back by midnight. The PX closes in an hour and a half. You probably won’t get there for another couple of days, so better go now if you need cigarettes or shavin’ stuff. The clubs open at six—that’s 1800 for you hard-core types. There’ll be a movie outside here soon as it gets dark. Dismissed.”

  I really wanted something to drink after breathing that dust all day. Since we had a couple of hours before the Enlisted Men’s club opened, I followed a bunch of guys down to the PX. I thought maybe I could get a Coke there.

  The PX was huge, the size of a big supermarket, and it had just about everything. Everything but Cokes, that is. I picked up some comic books and a little can of pineapple juice. The little Oriental checkout girl opened the can for me.

  The juice was good but it just made me thirstier. I went back to the Admin company area and emptied my canteen down my throat. Then I went up to the mess hall to beat the line for dinner. I should have known better.

  I was sitting in the shade in front of the mess hall with two other guys, reading about the Fantastic Four. The mess sergeant grabbed the three of us and put us on “serving detail.” So I got to eat early, but spent the next hour spooning out mashed potatoes to guys who were smart enough to come late.

  After he finally let us go, I was dead tired. I stumbled
back to the billet and flopped in my bunk. It had been a rough day, but it was still so hot and noisy that I just couldn’t sleep.

  A bunch of guys came in wearing just towels and boots. They were actually clean. I looked at myself—red dirt ground into every bit of skin—and asked one of them who told me where the shower was. So I stripped down—looked like a cartoon Indian; the dust goes right through your clothes—locked up my wallet and watch, and went to find the shower.

  It was a pretty crude arrangement, but it worked. Just a wooden floor with plywood walls, and water dripping down from a discarded jet fuel tank overhead, the kind that goes on the wing-tip. I wondered what had happened to the rest of the jet. There were twelve or thirteen guys standing shoulder-to-shoulder under the tank, scrubbing like mad. When one of them popped out I squeezed into his place. Then I found out why everyone was in such a hurry—the water was freezing! I lathered up, rinsed off, and jumped out, my teeth chattering. While I was drying myself, one of the guys waiting in line for the shower spoke up.

  “Seems pretty cold, doesn’t it?”

  “Like ice water!”

  “Man, it’s not that cold. Just that your blood’s gettin’ thin. It’s livin’ in the tropics that does it. I’ve been here a week, and if I wasn’t so fuckin’ cruddy you couldn’t pay me to get under that thing.”

  “That’s great. That’s really great.”

  “Well, they’re supposed to heat it—see that little oil burner underneath the tank? Whoever’s in charge of it’s been slackin’ off—we got hot water one time this week. And it didn’t last long.”

  I got dry and walked back to the billet, walking carefully so as not to stir up dust onto my clean skin. The sun was setting, and I had to admit it looked real pretty. We had good sunsets in Oklahoma, too, but nothing like this; bright splashes of crimson and purple just glowing in the dark sky. Must have been all the dust in the air.

  Back in Basic, somebody had told me that Vietnam used to be a vacation spot for rich Europeans. I guess it would look pretty nice if you got rid of all the barbed wire and guns and mickey-mouse army shacks. While I was getting dressed I tried to picture what Cam Ranh Bay would look like with the army gone… suntanned dolls in bikinis, fat old rich men sitting under beach umbrellas with frosty tropical drinks, speedboats pulling water skiers through the bay…weird.