13th Valley (8 page)

In the spring of 1970 with the help of the 326th Engineer Battalion of the 101st Mama-san and nine hundred other refugees resettled Ap Lai Thanh.

Mama-san had cried many times. She had seen many soldiers. Now she told Murphy in Vietnamese, she wished all the soldiers would go. “If they stay,” she said, “it will only be more hardship. I will cheer the peace when all soldiers are dead. Today our lives blossom; today we open ourselves to the sun. Tomorrow we will have no petals for the sun to warm.”

The soldiers sipped their drinks. A little boy was sitting on Egan's lap and holding the mourning dove. The bird flew from his hand to Egan's shoulder and then to the top of the boy's head. The bird perched briefly and returned to the boy's hand. All the kids laughed and Egan laughed and blushed and laughed again. Mama-san's oldest daughter returned with a package wrapped in brown paper.

Murphy did not know where Mama-san got the dew but he knew it would be good and the price was very fair. He purchased twenty decks of O-Js. The O-Js were thin, perfectly rolled marijuana cigarettes soaked in an opium solution. Fifty O-Js to a deck. Mama-san sold the twenty decks to Murphy for two hundred and fifty dollars greenback. She would then turn the American money into seven hundred dollars worth of piasters and Murphy would sell half the dope to more timid GIs for five hundred dollars MFC.

More children ran into the house. They had been waiting outside: sentries. “Your friends back,” an older boy said. “Must go. Em-peees at end of road. You go now.”

Egan had kept his attention on Mama-san while she and Murphy spoke and while he played with the children. The old woman now turned to him and said, “I wish you a thousand years.
Chuc ong may man.”
She turned to Murphy and in Vietnamese invited them to come back on Wednesday night to play cards.

Egan and Murphy got up and thanked Mama-san and the eldest daughter. They ran to the truck.
“Cam on ba, Mama-san,”
Murphy shouted. “Yes. Thanks again,” Egan added.

The little boy with the mourning dove ran with them to the truck. As Egan climbed up the bumper and began getting into the bed the boy grabbed his leg and cried, “Merry Christmas.”

They lay quietly on the sandbags on the floor of the three-quarter as the truck made its way back to the highway and past the MP patrol. Egan felt nauseous. Not nauseous but … It was that feeling again. Something had happened to him on R&R and he had not known it. He was getting short. His tour was almost over. He was down to twenty-six and a wake-up and he had gotten a new taste of civilized life. Maybe, he thought. Maybe it was the lady. She had reminded him of Stephanie. A chill ran through him. Not yet, Mick, he said to himself. Don't think of her yet.

“We're clear,” Murf shouted, laughed, after they passed through the first village. They sat up.

“You comin up Wednesday?” Egan shouted back.

“Not anymore, Bro. I'm too SHORT. This used ta be a good place though. Mama-san's been like a mother to me. I'm serious. I got to know her and the kids. No fuckin around. Really nice people. Baby-san plays a mean flamenco guitar. She's been teachin me. All the men are off fightin a fuckin war, I think. You'd know more about that shit, though.” He paused to chuckle. “Hey, can you stay for a coupla days? Aint nobody goina miss ya. I'll send word ta yer XO that yer plane crashed en you gotta row back from Australia. You can crash at my hootch.”

“Like to, Murf, but …”

“Aw, come on, Eg.”

“I'd really like to, Man, but …”

“But! But my fuckin ass. You still got that crazy fuckin sense of responsibility? Yer fuckin crazy. You know that? Yer gung-ho. What the fuck they goina do if yer a day late—send ya ta Nam?”

“Murf. The L-T might not even ask me to go back to the boonies. I'm pretty short and he knows I'm short. If they already went out …”

“Oh-deuce goin out in the mornin. I talked to El Paso yesterday. He said yer goin up north. They're goin after a headquarters complex or somethin.”

“Look,” Egan said firmly, “if the L-T says I don't have ta go, I'll be back for a set tonight.”

“Egan,” Murphy shook his head in disgust, “you're a ridiculous person.”

At Phu Bai, when the three-quarter returned, Daniel Egan found a jeep from his battalion waiting for him. In the back of the jeep with duffel bag and gear was the young soldier who had been whining to the clerk. He looked miserable.

C
HAPTER
3

L-T B
ROOKS

Under the cap the lanky black man sat motionless, sat as if his entire self were his eyes and brain and thoughts and his body did not exist. Ovals of sun seared the long tops of his thighs and across his shoulders an ellipse of sun burned. The sun struck his chin and the heat radiated to his teeth. The skin of his neck and jaw glimmered with the sweat of a man acclimated to tropical heat, a film of perspiration, not dripping beads. His mouth and nose and eyes were indistinguishable in the dark shadow cast by the oversized bill of his baseball-style cap.

Lieutenant Rufus Brooks sat on the two-foot-high wooden retaining wall which deterred monsoon rains from eroding the footings of Company A's headquarters. He had been sitting on the wall, his arms relaxed and hanging, his large hands limp on the retained earth, motionless, for nearly two hours.

Would you like a shot at an enemy headquarters? The GreenMan's question resounded in his head. Would you like …? He concentrated on those words. He had been in his room at the rear of the company hootch thinking about war and about conflict, about his wife and Hawaii and about DEROSing or extending, when the GreenMan had come to him all smiles and beaming like a salesman. “Would you like a shot at an enemy headquarters, Rufus?” the GreenMan had asked, and without a thought, like a pre-programmed automaton, he had answered enthusiastically, “Yes Sir.” The GreenMan left as quickly as he'd come, left the lanky black lieutenant with no details, with only his own thoughts about war.

“Minh say First Brigade, she moving,” First Sergeant Laguana babbled, bursting into his room, bursting into his thoughts.

“Yup. I know,” he had replied. “That rumor's been around …”

“Yes, Sir.
Es verdad”
the first sergeant had nodded at him. “But thees one, Sir, Minh, he get …”

“Yeah. Yeah.” He had mimicked the first sergeant's nod. “Minh's always got a reliable source. Remember last time? He had us moving …”

“Ooooh, yeas, Sir. It almost come true. You know even our rumor control report it.”

“Stop.” He snarled at the smiling chicano. “Don't say another word about any rumors. If I hear …”

“Yes, Sir. That true. I don't say nothing. I tell Minh too. This time Minh, he say he hear it from Military Intelligence. He say they interrogate two NVA. He say they say First Brigade gwon to Da Nang. Hard Intelligence.
Es verdad.
We gwon be withdrawn.”

“Sergeant, that rumor started when the first boonierat assaulted in this country. Now you maintain silence. Is everything and everybody ready? Did we get enough rations for all the platoons? Did Supply send over a new barrel for Whiteboy's 60? Get that done, Sergeant. I don't want my men on that CA tomorrow with only half the equipment they need.” The lieutenant had jerked open the flimsy door of his tiny room, entered the orderly room, then marched out of the hootch and slammed the second door shut. He'd glanced left and right, walked to the retaining wall and sat.

There was activity everywhere in the battalion and company area. Fifty meters to his left there was a basketball game being played; slightly farther away and to his front a crowd of men sat on the shaded stage of the theater. Behind the theater one of his platoon sergeants had his entire platoon formed up for an equipment inspection. Sergeants and lieutenants, company executive officers and clerks and supply personnel distributed C-rations and ammunition and batteries. Operations officers studied maps and intelligence reports and conferred with company commanders about moves and counter-moves. Supply officers studied lists of articles and projected needs and resupply dates and thought up excuses for the unfilled requests for boots and clothes and firing pins and replacement barrels for the worn M-60s. He sat on the wall and watched the activity with disgust yet without concentrating.

“Hey, L-T. We got any more frags?” someone asked. The lieutenant canted his head toward his headquarters hootch and said nothing. The man left. “L-T, Supply won't issue me a pair of boots.” He did not move. This man also departed. “L-T, my ruck's busted. Can I DX it?” The man looked at the lieutenant and waited to be acknowledged and waited and finally walked away.

“What's the matter with the L-T?” someone said from behind him. “I don't know,” someone else whispered.

Word spread: leave the L-T alone.

Before him there was a newly excavated eighteen inch-wide by forty-inch-deep trench. It had been dug mechanically by a trencher a week earlier. If the battalion received in-coming rockets during their refitting stand-down the men could wait out the barrage in the depths of the trench. The L-T's eyes fixed on the trench. They never do it right, he thought. They never go all the way. This trench is so straight … he saw an image … it should zig-zag … an image of a rocket exploding, erupting at one end of the trench, dominoing the soldiers within, falling in order to the other end. “No one ever thinks,” he mumbled quietly. His eyes followed the trench to the end, the thought sped on seemingly unconnected to his utterance. Hawaii sped into his thoughts. He chased it away. I always look objectively at others, he thought. They come to me for advice. They always have. Why can't I get a handle on my own situation? He chased that thought away too and for a time nothing replaced it. The lieutenant sat motionless in the sun.

Brooks' army training began with ROTC elementary classes in Military Science. He spent six weeks in basic training after his sophomore year, Advance Course after his junior and upon graduation, along with a degree in English, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the US Army. The next year Brooks entered a Masters program in Philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. He did well but academia antagonized him. So many things seemed to be pulling at him. Active military duty was postponed by graduate work but the weight of it in the future, the financial strain, a new wife and the political tension on campus made him decide to leave school. In January of 1968 he took a leave of absence.

By June he had entered the army and in February of 1969 Brooks arrived in Vietnam. He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) as an aide to the Division Chief of Staff. At the time of his arrival there were no black officers on the primary staff at division headquarters. The highest ranking black man in the tight group known as the Decision-Makers was an old master sergeant whom Rufus called “Uncle Tom,” and who chided Rufus back: “Uncle Tom, Sir.” The senior NCOs and some of the general officers privately referred to Brooks as Tango November, their token nigger. In response to that atmosphere Rufus tended to verbalize his criticisms. He felt threatened. He believed he was more intelligent than the commanders. He was certain that he was better educated.

“Excuse me, Sir,” he would say to a deputy commander, “but Sir, would you explain to me, Sir, so I may explain to the young black troops, Sir, why we use most of our blacks in line units and very few as clerks … Oh, I see, Sir. I see. I'll tell them that, Sir, and I'm sure they'll understand. It's just a matter that there are not enough blacks qualified to do the job of a clerk, according to Army Qualification Examinations … thank you, Sir … No, Sir … I assure you, I'm one fine ambassador from division headquarters to the troops, Sir.”

For five months, long enough for it to be proper to transfer him and for that headquarters to receive a black major and another black lieutenant, the chief of staff withstood Brooks' insinuations and critical panache. In late July of '69 Brooks received orders for the 7th of the 402d. First he served as an undistinguished platoon leader with Bravo Company where he was under the field command of a watchful, non-delegating captain. The commander allowed no independent platoon decisions. Still, field duty and the jungle thrust Brooks into a position of constant responsibility and decision making and he made his share of mistakes. He softened and amongst the combat camaraderie and jungle existence he reverted to his previous quiet manner.

Just prior to Thanksgiving Rufus was assigned a rear job with battalion operations where the stricter military bearing was tedious and again he fell to chastising his senior associates. Within six weeks and after the death of the reconnaissance platoon leader from Echo Company, Rufus was back in the field commanding that same independent combat unit. “You gettin kinda short for that stuff, Ruf,” one of the other young officers cautioned him. “You don't have to do that, you know. You spent enough time out there. Hell, you owe it to yourself to stay out of the boonies.”