Better Times Than These (37 page)

Patch had been around long enough to know that such things were pretty commonplace, but the version related to him was that the men were protesting because they had been served nothing but potatoes for over a week, which news was brought to him by his aide, Captain Kennemer, who had been struck in the face by a flying potato as he walked past the chow tent. Patch mulled it over for a while and decided perhaps he might not be paying enough attention to the welfare of the men and he ought to go down there and find out just what the hell
was
going on.

The fact of it was that while potatoes were the immediate complaint, the incident was the culmination of deep-seated frustrations endured by the Company following the appearance of an article in a national newsmagazine which had been circulating around the Brigade for about a week.

Operation Western Movie was over, and everyone involved in it, down to the last cook and jeep driver, swaggered around the Monkey Mountain camp in a tough, veteranlike way, basking in the admiration of replacement troops, the terror of the fighting having slipped off to a separate place in their minds. The duty Bravo Company drew that first week was ideal. After a few days’ rest they were assigned Palace Guard, which consisted of setting up around the perimeter to stave off the enemy in the unlikely case he should choose to attack the camp itself. It got them out of the crud-ball jobs they would have been assigned if they had stayed in the billets and also provided opportunities to trade with the Vietnamese through the wire for a variety of otherwise unobtainable items such as live fowl and the services of prostitutes.

A few days after their return, the official military newspaper,
Stars and Stripes,
had described Operation Western Movie as the “turning point” of the war. In front-page stories and photographs it depicted determined soldiers slaughtering North Vietnamese, smiling commanders and happy infantrymen being fed or catching up on sleep during the action. Individual acts of bravery were cited, and many soldiers singled out by name and hometown. The account was taken as gospel by everyone, including Bravo Company, and the stories were embellished every day.

A week before Thanksgiving, the magazine arrived. On its cover was a stark photograph of men in combat. A medic hovered over a badly wounded man while several others cringed against a blistered mountain slope. A headline slashed across the cover asked:
THE WAR: IS AMERICA REALLY WINNING?
The question itself seemed treasonous.

The story inside detailed the action, but the emphasis was on
American,
not North Vietnamese, casualties.
“Heavy losses,”
it said, were suffered by all four battalions involved,
“raising a possibility that the U.S. Command may have to rethink its strategy of ‘Search and Destroy.’ ”
According to the story, the operation was called off not when the North Vietnamese had been annihilated, but
“when it became apparent that the elusive enemy can fight a protracted battle in the jungle and then retire to sanctuaries across the Cambodian border.

“Even though the enemy may have lost the 1,500 dead claimed in Saigon press releases,”
the story went on,
“informed sources concede that the price in American blood was far too high if the United States must look forward to similar battles in the future.”
The story also contained the remarks of a high-ranking general attached to the Saigon Command who described the battle in grand and glowing terms and stated flatly that it was
“more satisfactory than anticipated.”
However, the writer of the article downgraded that opinion with the observation that generals have been known to
“put a good face on bad situations.”

There was a second story and photograph, margined in red next to the main one, and it was the object of Bravo Company’s interest.

The photographer had captured the moment precisely; the faces told the story. Beneath the helmets were gaunt, strained, bewildered, terrorized faces, afraid faces, vacant faces—they recognized themselves: DiGeorgio, Crump, Spudhead, Muntz and all the others—facing the tall, upright back of Colonel Patch. In instantaneous little flashes it began to come back; it had really never gone away. The headline was
THE COMPANY THAT WOULDN’T FIGHT.

It was difficult to tell if the story was on their side or not. It described their attempts to negotiate the fifth knoll and also mentioned the fighting in the ravine earlier. It described their enemy as “determined.” A small photo inset showed the head of Colonel Patch, and the caption beneath it quoted him as saying,
“They’re all good boys.”

The third paragraph was subheadlined
Quelling a Mutiny
. It concluded with the observation that Patch,
“a respected and hard-nosed West Pointer,”
had
“in a fusillade of persuasive rhetoric, skillfully provided the dissidents not only with a carrot, but a donkey as well.”

They felt somehow gypped by the story. Their reasons had not been fully told. The innuendo was that their motives derived solely out of fear or sloth and not futility and that Patch, with his little pep talk, had managed to herd them back up there like so many cattle. Nowhere was it mentioned that they had
forced
him to bombard the hill with artillery and air strikes. Only at the bottom of the story was the Big Heat even mentioned, and it did not seem to relate to the men at all. In fact, it gave the impression the Big Heat was Patch’s idea, not theirs, and even then as some patronizing hand job, and not because they demanded it. From their perspective, it was a pretty sorry account of the matter.

In the days that followed, Bravo Company received a merciless ration of grief from other outfits. The swaggers faded, and perhaps by coincidence, they were relieved of the Palace Guard and sent back to the billets to pull regular duty—menial work details under the supervision of sadistic and slave-driving sergeants. Suspicion, enmity and other strong feelings took hold. They were convinced they were being punished for what they had done on The Fake, though Patch had promised they wouldn’t be. They became the butt of jokes, and as their mood grew blacker, fistfights broke out with men from other outfits and they began to keep to themselves in their own Company area. They did not see themselves as mutineers; rather, they had simply worked out a very sticky problem with the man in charge, and in the end they
had
gone back up and taken the hill, with no one’s help, and with fewer casualties than there would have been otherwise. If other outfits didn’t see it that way, fuck them! They could take care of themselves.

All of it had finally erupted with the potato-throwing melee in the chow tent.

Practically everyone was involved. It had, in fact, started over potatoes, which continued to constitute the largest portion of the meals—powdery, dry-packaged mashed potatoes, frozen-hard French-fried potatoes, soggy overcooked baked potatoes—until people began hoarding C rations and eating them after chow, because the Army had not yet figured a way to include potatoes in them.

It began with chanting and beating on the tables that night, but then a man from Charlie Company had shouted across the tent that perhaps Bravo Company could lead a strike for better food. Madman Muntz immediately rewarded the man with a potato in the face, and all hell broke loose. No one kept score, but it was the consensus of Bravo Company afterward that they had kicked the bejesus out of at least one and a half other companies and also some Engineers men and mechanics and assorted other troops who happened to be eating supper there at the time.

At the height of the action, Trunk had arrived, summoned from his own meal, but when he saw what was going on he stood back and let them continue, and it was left to the MPs to finally put an end to it. There was a grand sense of redemption and relief following the incident, but all of them had been in the Army long enough to realize that such catharsis has a price, and they were preparing to pay it now, beginning with the inspection.

Everyone looked useful when the inspection party entered the tent. Patch paced in silence for a while, studying the faces of the men.

“Put them back to work,” he said finally. “I’m just going to have a look around.”

He poked at the edges of the tent; he tested the strength of the wood floor; he peered at equipment. His interest in human beings seemed to have waned.

“There isn’t a tent flap on this side.”

“No, sir, there isn’t,” Kahn said.

“Why not?”

“It wasn’t there when we got here—I suppose they forgot it.”

“What if it rains?” Patch asked.

“Sir, it hasn’t rained in five months, but I suppose they’d get wet.”

“Exactly. Have you put in for a flap?”

“I believe the First Sergeant did, sir.” Kahn turned to Trunk. “Did you put in for a new flap on this tent?”

“Yessir, the first week we was here. They keep saying it’s coming, but it ain’t here yet.”

Patch frowned. “Sergeant, you go back to Supply today and tell them I said find you one.” He prodded and poked in a few other places and looked for an instant as if he were ready to leave. Then he stopped in front of a bunk occupied by Madman Muntz, who was cleaning his boots furiously.

“What’s your name, soldier?” Patch said hoarsely.

“Muntz, sir.” He leaped to attention.

“Muntz, what did you have for supper last night?” Patch was studying a large fresh cut on Muntz’s nose.

“Potatoes, sir.”

“Do you like potatoes?”

“Oh, yessir, I like them,” Muntz said cheerfully.

“Do you like them all the time?”

“Yessir, I do,” Muntz replied.

Patch seemed perplexed by the answer. “What I mean, Muntz, is Do you like potatoes for every meal?”

Muntz looked confused for a moment. He knew he didn’t have much time to think about it, because keeping the colonel waiting was something he knew not to do. But his mind was not working fast enough to figure out the reply Patch might like to hear, so he said what he thought was a prudent thing to say.

“Right, sir.” The words were already out when he saw Kahn glaring at him.

Patch frowned. “I see,” he said, and turned to the next man in the bunk row, Crump, and repeated the question.

Crump, on his feet and at attention, had heard Muntz’s answer and from the corner of his eye had seen Kahn’s glare, but was uncertain what it meant. Like Muntz, Crump remembered it was impolitic to complain to high-ranking officers.

Patch’s eyes had fallen to dark swollen marks on Crump’s right hand. “Well, soldier, do you or don’t you?”

“I do, sir,” Crump said.

“You do.”

“Yessir.”

“At every meal?”

“Ah, yessir,” Crump said falteringly. Instantaneously it came to him that this was
not
the answer the colonel wished to hear.

But it was too late to change it.

“Then what was all that about in the chow tent last night—that brawling?” Patch said. “Were you in on that?”

Everyone waited for the answer. It was the moment they feared. Tomorrow would begin a spell of latrine digging, or something equally bad.

“Yessir, I was,” Crump said sheepishly.

“And was it about potatoes?”

“Well, sir . . . it was . . . uh . . . some people was banging on the tables with their knives and forks, and then somebody started throwing potatoes, and then all hell broke loose . . . sir.”

“Then it
was
about potatoes,” Patch said, very detectivelike.

“Yessir, I guess it was,” Crump said, as lightly as he could.

Patch spun around to Kahn and was about to say something when his mouth dropped open in astonishment.

On a duffel bag near the tent fly sat the banana-cat, tied to a rope, calmly watching the proceedings and scratching itself. Earlier, Crump had secured it to one of the tent pilings and shooed it under the floor outside, where it liked to stay in the heat of the day anyway. Evidently it had heard Crump’s voice and decided to come up for a look.

“What in hell is that?” Patch bawled. “Is it some kind of monkey?”

“It is a banana-cat, sir,” Crump said helpfully—and before Kahn could say anything.

“Where did you get it? In the jungle?” Patch’s eyes were large—quizzical.

“No, sir,” Crump said. “I bought it.”

“Bought it,” Patch repeated. “From whom? What for?”

“Sir,” Kahn injected, “the men sometimes buy things from the Vietnamese—chickens and ducks; they use them to supplement their meals.”

Patch’s whole face seemed to swell like an overripe tomato. He turned on Kahn furiously. “Do you mean to tell me this man is going to eat that goddamned thing? The chow is that bad?”

“No, sir,” Kahn stammered. “I mean . . . I don’t know if he plans to eat it or not, but what I’m saying is that that is probably where he got it—from where they buy the ducks and chickens in the local market. The Vietnamese sell them through the barbed wire . . .”

“I won’t have it!” Patch roared. “The United States Army is committed to provide every soldier with decent, edible food. I will not have them purchasing monkeys or ducks or any other goddamn thing instead of it.” He was waving his arms wildly. His mouth seemed to open enormously. “If the chow is that bad, I want to know about it!”

“Yessir,” Kahn said.

“Well,” Patch said, regaining some of his composure. “I am personally going to eat my lunch in the enlisted mess today, and if they can’t serve proper food, then by God they’ll all go out to the boondocks and I’ll bring in some people who can.” He looked around the room at the men staring blankly at him. The Sergeant Major was looking at Crump and shaking his head sadly.

“And get that thing out of here,” Patch said crossly. “It belongs in a zoo.” He stormed out of the tent, and as they watched him go down toward the chow hall they could catch an occasional loud expletive and see him shaking his fist at the Sergeant Major.

The letters came the same week—the one from Julie and the one from Spudhead’s father—and they had a profound effect on Spudhead’s morale, which up until now had been no better, or worse, than anyone else’s.

Hers came first. He squirreled it away in a pocket and took it back to the billet to read on his bunk while everyone else was at lunch. He opened it carefully so as to save the envelope, and removed the thin airmail sheets.