In every man who goes to war, there is another less obvious war. It is the war of nerves and images that fill the mind with lurid, dreamless sleep.
On the trail ahead, partially concealed by the darkness, an owl-eyed Captain made a slashing motion across his throat. The signal. With purposeful swiftness, thirty-eight men slipped into the covering blackness of the jungle, but the fetid and rotting vegetation moaned, ” I cannot hide you. “
On the narrow trail, the owl-eyed Captain stood perfectly erect and perfectly still. Waiting. Listening. Another man crouched low by his side, a field radio humped upon his back like an ancient burden.
From where Jimmy lay, he could see the Captain standing demon-like in the darkness, the Captain’s muscular frame facing into the suffocating Asian breeze. As the phantom sentinel turned, slowly surveying the blackness, Jimmy could clearly see the silhouette of a walking stick clenched in the man’s fist. Thirty-eight men strained to hear anything alien that moved, but nothing moved in this wasteland, only death rattled its ancient bones and the hot breath of the Asian night whispered, ” I know your sins.”
Timed as if by instinct, two scouts from the Sierra Fire Team trotted up the trail like curious pups and filed wordlessly past the Captain. The slap of boots against the soft ground faded off somewhere up the trail. When 10 minutes had gone by the captain raised up his walking stick. The signal to move on. Wordlessly, 38 men slipped from their hiding place and formed up a tight column. They marched off the narrow trail into the dense undergrowth to safer positions higher up the hillside, all the while, the thickly covered terrain cackled and snapped underfoot.
A temporary camp was chosen and as the men passed the owl-eyed captain, he silently counted their presence. As Corporal Jimmy Specialchild moved past the Captain, no owl-eyes averted their dead-on stare. With a rehearsed precision, fire teams Alpha and Hotel shuffled out twenty paces and took up defensive positions, forming an arch from three o’clock east to nine o’clock west. Fire teams Lima and Sierra formed the rear perimeter. Four sergeants moved within the perimeter adjusting the crouching man into a balanced wheel with imaginary spokes. A radiotelephone operator, the lieutenant, and the owl-eyed Captain formed the hub.
Jimmy rested the butt of his rifle in the dirt. There was a heaviness in his legs as he crouched down. He could feel the leech bite on his calf had reopened. Blood was trickling into the boot, although the pain had long ago been lost among the fibers of his brain. Here, there were more pressing needs now. A dull ache had begun in the pit of his stomach. With long thin fingers, Jimmy fished out of the recesses of his shirt pocket a single unleavened cracker and a canister of spongy cheese. He stuffed the cracker into his mouth, deciding to save the cheese. He was thirsty but there had been no water for a day. He wanted to smoke but could have none here.
In the darkness, his mother’s face came to him. How sad she had looked. She was holding a birthday cake. Happy birthday, Jimmy. He heard the other voices. Grandpa you came. I wouldn’t miss my Jimmy’s birthday. Let me look at you. My little peanut is all grown up. Dad. Happy birthday, son. How old are you now? Nineteen. My gosh, what a regular old man you’re getting to be.
Something moved beyond the perimeter. Boots. His grip on the rifle tightened. His eyes strained against the darkness. Thirty-eight men strained to hear any alien thing that moved, but nothing moved in this wasteland, only death rattled its ancient bones and the hot breath of the Asian nights whispered, ” I know your sins.”
There was a strong hand on his shoulder and the patient voice of his sergeant saying, “Relax son.” The sound of boots was now clear and unmistakable. Jimmy tried hard to swallow back down his pounding heart.
“Pick-axe,” a voice in the darkness called out
“Bo-nan-za” came to reply in an unmistakably Southern drawl. The throb and Jimmy’s throat eased as the thick-necked phantom emerged from the jungle followed by a much smaller man carrying a radio. He recognized them as the scouts from Sierra Fire Team.
Once inside the perimeter, the two men stood quietly talking to the Captain. One pointed to something in the distance, but Jimmy could see nothing on the blackened horizon. Having finished their debriefing, the two men took up positions in the perimeter and the eery silence spoke once again, “I will find you.”
Jimmy felt his legs going numb under him. He shifted his weight and tried to find some small vestige of comfort. He sought his mother’s image once more, but it would not come. They were leaving the bosom of the Asian night. Already the edge of first nautical twilight was moving westward over the hills of the Bien Duc Quadrangle. The platoon would be entering a free-kill zone. Anything that moved here would be considered hostile.
When the order came to collapse the perimeter, they saw that they were on a hillside overlooking a small hamlet. The thatched huts stood like a palette of brown in stark contrast to the green hues of the landscape. In the distance, thick craggy rain clouds began to form. After a three-day march, they had arrived, Jimmy thought. This is the place the scouts had been sent to find during the night.
There would be water there and a place for the pickup choppers to land if the rains did not come first. They would race down the hillside, pushed by the gathering storm. They would take this place and they would be safe.
Quietly. Deliberately. The column marched down the deeply sloping draw to a narrow ravine. At the hamlet’s edge, the owl-eyed Captain surveyed the open terrain with suspicion. He crouched down on one knee and began to throw chunks of rock and hardened clay in a pattern across the clearing. The point man from the Lima Fire Team, a sinuous black man named Lewis, followed the rock pattern across the open terrain. One by one, men followed his lead in rapid succession.
Fire Teams Alpha and Hotel took up defensive positions at opposite ends of the tiny hamlet. Sierra and Lima began emptying the huts of their sleepy occupants. Jimmy looked on as a withered old man was dragged from one hut. The old man squatted on his hams in the dirt.
The Captain was a tall muscular American. The Interpreter was a tiny excitable Asian. Together they interrogated the old man. They would get their answers before the rains came. The old man prayed for rain.
Already the morning sun retreated behind heavy clouds. Who was he? “Mayor,” came the answer. Where were the men of the village? “Gone” Gone where? No answer this time. There was a growing anger in the Captain’s voice; a new excitability in the Interpreter. The Asian struck out at the man, cuffed him on the cheekbone above the jawline. The old man fell back, a spittle of blood between his lips. He made no effort to wipe it. He huddled into the earth, bracing for the blows that followed in quick succession.
The sky began to cry in angry tones. Soon the rains would come. Jimmy and the others donned ponchos. The young children cried for warmth and nestled in fear against their frightened mothers. Quietly and without heat, the old man died, his prayers answered.
The sky spoke again as the soft rain mixed with the old man’s blood draining into the musty-brown earth. The old man lay crumpled on the ground in a tiny lifeless mass. The muscular Captain and the tiny Asian Interpreter hovered above the man they had just killed and scowled at the sky in their frustration. The sky thundered back, “Stalemate.”
The angry American defied the sky. In his fury, he ordered his men to pull down the rain-matted huts. The meager possessions were thrown into a pile and set afire. The pleading women and their babies clinging were herded into a ravine. The sounds were mechanical. The Devil dancing on the head of a steel drum. Rifle bolts slamming. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Then the empty silence.
And when it was done, all who stood there were frozen in their fascination. Bleak silhouettes in a vast wasteland. Unmoving. The rains were stopping, the dark sobering clouds were retreating. The stalemate was unbroken.
The radio-telephone operators began their strange communications with the unseen Heavens.
“This is Queen’s Head One, how do you read me? Looking for a spy in the sky and choppers for evac. Over.”
“Copy that Queen’s Head One. We read you five-by-five. What are your coordinates? Repeat. What are your coordinates? Over.”
“CapCom, pick up at Sierra Zulu 1 – 8 – 1 – 9er, cross ref Jumbo Hotel 1-9er 1-7. Do you copy that?”
“Copy that Queen’s Head One. Sit tight. ETA 10 minutes.”
“Queen’s Head One, this is Lieutenant Darby, your Spy in the Sky. Charlie imminent. Repeat. Charlie imminent. Platoon strength may be more. Can you confirm? Over.”
This is Queen’s Heads One to the Spy in the Sky. Nothing moving here. Over.”
A small single-engine plane buzzed the village. A voice from the clouds repeated his warning. And the angry land cried, “There will be no escape.”
The sky filled with the sound of advancing helicopters. In the distance, a Huey gunship had gone into battle, dancing wildly, rocking back and forth in the sky. The men on the ground could hear the sound of a missile exploding up a distant hillside. Then, there were cheers as the first birds appeared over the crest of the hill. They counted them. There were six birds in all.
One helicopter hovered over a distant ridge, hawk-like, watching from the distance. A second moved in, racing to the ground. Ten men were scooped up, the gunfire no longer distant. Jimmy watched from his hiding place. Lima would be the next squad out. The bird was away. A third bird scooped in low. The men from Lima raced the open ground, jumping the last few feet into the open door. Jimmy heard it, then. The radio crackled to life, screaming “Red dog, red dog.”
The Huey kept backing up, until now it was almost overhead. They all crouched low, kissing dirt as it hovered just a few feet in the air. They could hear its door gunner screaming. He filled the air with curses, as he meticulously filled the hillside with a deadly spray from the 50 caliber gun. But the damn was breaking and the gunner knew it.
Then, the third bird was gone.
Jimmy lay with his belly to the musty Asian mud, a steady trickle of urine down his leg soaking him to his waist. Jimmy knew his squad would be the next one out. They could see it there over the ridge, but the bird hesitated. Time see measured in heartbeats. The crouching men cursed time and the bird in the sky.
Finally, as if summoning up its courage, it raced to the ground hovering just a few feet away. There was a dull rattle against its metallic side like rocks being thrown at a tin can. Bullets pierced its thin metal skin, but the pilot held it steady, and it refused to die. The sergeant screamed and the first man leaped to his feet and ran. He fell in the soft mud, a bullet in his thigh. Two more men followed and pulled the man into the helicopter. The others began to race time and closed a few feet of distance.
Jimmy saw the open ground before him, his legs straining so that he thought they might break. He jumped. Inside the bird, arms grabbed at him to pull him in. Jimmy turned around instinctively to help the last man in the doorway. Something rocked the bird, and he almost lost his grip. Steamy blood splattered his face and the man and his grip went limp. Other men stronger than he pulled the dead sergeant inside. But Jimmy’s hands were not his own. They refused to let go of the dead man. A roar filled their ears and the chopper whipped at the Asian sky. The bird began to whine, ” Salvation.”
Jimmy fell back, the dead man lying on him like a strange lover. Blood gurgled somewhere inside the corpse forming a hot undamned puddle on the metal floor at Jimmy’s feet. The sound of gunfire was distant now. Somewhere on the ground below, desperate men fought a pitched battle. This angry land would consume them. But Jimmy could only see the dirt and the blood and the dead. Nineteen years old and the weariness that filled him was savage. He closed his eyes, thankful only to God that he had not been chosen to die here in this bitter land.
This war, his war, was over now. This would be his last patrol before rotation to the States and home, but somehow, he knew that in those dark places between the dusk and the dawn that a very private hell would find him.