Fallen Angels (24 page)

“Damn!” Peewee.

I spun around and looked. Peewee was at the far end of the hut toward the wood line trying to get his sixteen to work. It had jammed. Me and Monaco went around the side of the hut and saw two Cong soldiers trying to pull an American into the bushes. Even when we started firing they kept pulling him.

We went after them. Monaco shot one of them and the other stood up and threw his arms into the air.

At his feet the soldier, still alive, was moaning in pain. I looked and saw that they had cut his finger off I looked up into the face of the Cong soldier. He was young, no more than a teenager. He looked scared and tired, the same as me. I squeezed the trigger of the sixteen and watched him hurtle backward.

Then I sat down on the ground to rest.

“Let’s go! Let’s go! Get the perimeter!” Lieutenant Gearhart.

“We need a medic,’’ Peewee said, pointing to the wounded soldier.

“Okay. The medevac’s on its way.”

Somehow I managed to get up. Gearhart went around trying to place guys on the perimeter. It was too much effort to talk. My lips were dry and I was getting cold. I looked over at Monaco. He was sweating.

We waited. It was 1342. I couldn’t believe that so little time had passed.

The ARVNs set up a perimeter, and we were told that we could rest. Gearhart said that Sergeant Don-gan had been hit. Me and Peewee went over to the medical tent. We found Dongan. They had laid his leg next to him. The other leg was barely attached. But it didn’t matter now. His mouth was slightly open and the lower jaw twisted.

“One of you guys got a poncho?” A black spec five asked.

I looked to see if I still had my poncho. I did and gave it to the spec five. He picked up the leg and put it on Sergeant Dongan’s chest, then wrapped him in the poncho.

Ten minutes later two gunships came in and cleared everything from around the village. Above them I could see the stack of medevac choppers.

It was 1400 hours.

The ARVNs were the first to start to move out. Word had come that a second North Vietnamese battalion was moving toward the area. We had to get out and get out quickly. We made as many litters as we could to carry out the wounded. The question came up as to what to do with the dead.

Somebody said we should bury them.

“They’ll just dig them up,” Gearhart said. “We got to strip them and bum them.”

Hell. Bodies still warm, limbs that fell as the bodies were moved. Some guys couldn’t do it. Some of us had to. We began stripping the Americans. We took their tags, their gear, and took them to a hut. How many were there? There were too many. Everybody took care of their own. We got Dongan and put him in the hut. Some of the bodies were wrapped in ponchos, some weren’t.

Guys from Charlie Company saw what we were doing and they got their people in. It was better than having the Congs get them, maybe mutilating the bodies.

“Make sure you get all the tags!’’ Gearhart was saying.

I was afraid of the dead guys. I saw them, arms limp, faces sometimes twisted in anguish, mostly calm, and I was afraid of them. They were me. We wore the same uniform, were the same height, had the same face. They were me, and they were dead. No one looked into the faces, into the often still-open eyes. We did what we had to do, and turned away.

The ARVNs who hadn’t already left watched us impassively. They didn’t want any part of what we were doing. They left their dead where they were. They stripped them, took the ammo, and the supplies. They closed their eyes.

“This guy is still alive, man.”

Monaco was looking at a guy in the middle of a pile. The poncho he had been wrapped in came away from his face. He was unconscious, but he was still breathing. Two guys from Charlie Company, who recognized him, ran over and started pushing the bodies off him. I watched as the limbs flew off the pile until they reached the guy who was still alive.

When they uncovered his body, I could see bubbles of blood coming from a gaping wound in his throat. The flies around the pile, crawling over the bodies, into and out of the wound, buzzed in delight.

“Somebody get a medic!”

“Jamal!”

Jamal was outside and Monaco got him. Jamal looked at the guy and shook his head. The front of the guy’s flak jacket was dark with either sweat or blood. When the sweat mixed with the mud it was hard to tell. Jamal opened it and saw another wound. The flesh was burned and puffed away from a wound big enough to put a fist into. I looked back at the throat wound, the bubble of blood still rose and fell rhythmically. How was he still alive?

“Do something for him!” The guy from Charlie Company’s voice was menacing.

“He your friend?” Jamal asked.

“Yeah, he’s my friend!” the guy from Charlie Company said.

“Then you do it,” Jamal said. He stood and walked away.

A couple of us stood and walked out behind Jamal. A moment later we heard the shot. We went back in and piled the bodies back up on the guy.

They got a flame thrower and we moved away from the hut. The smell of burning flesh came quickly. I knew the smell wouldn’t leave me quickly. Maybe it never would.

We started off. I didn’t want to look back. I did. The hut was burning furiously.

“Who’s got the tags?” Gearhart asked Walowick.

Walowick turned and looked at him. His lips were swollen, one side of his face was puffed. There was blood in the corner of his mouth. He didn’t answer Gearhart.

A guy from Charlie Company pointed to another guy from Charlie Company who was supposed to have the tags, and Gearhart went over to him. Then he came back.

“He forgot the tags,” Gearhart said. “He left them in the hut.”

“How they gonna let their folks know they dead?” Peewee said.

Gearhart didn’t answer.

What would they do for a body? Would they send home an empty coffin? Would they scrounge pieces from Graves Registration? What would they say to their parents? Their wives? We lost your son, ma’am. Somewhere in the forests he lies, perhaps behind some rock, some tree?

We burned his body, ma’am. In a rite hurried by fear and panic, we burned what was left of him and ran for our own lives.

Yes, and we re sorry.

Perhaps they would tell them nothing. Not having a body in hand, not having the lifeless form to send with the flag, they would not acknowledge that there was a death at all.

Yes, and we re sorry.

The ARVNs were up ahead of us, pushing through the woods. They were moving quickly. I looked for Peewee and found him. He was behind Gearhart. Gearhart had his head up, his flak jacket was open. We went quickly, stumbling, but somehow in control of ourselves. We were looking out for each other, checking each other out. I stayed with Jamal mostly. I asked how he was doing.

“I don’t believe I’m not dead,” he said. “You know I’m not made for this kind of life.”

The ARVNs were headed for the same pickup zone we were. They cut down along the edge of the paddies, and we took a longer route through the wood line.

The branches ripped at us, vines caught at our feet. It was like a nightmare. The forest itself was our enemy, trying to catch us, trying to hold us in its grip.

Small-arms fire. The ARVNs were under fire. We dove for cover.

“Get up! Get up! Keep moving!”

The voice came from behind us. I saw Captain Stewart look back to see who was talking. I turned. It was Johnson.

“Stay down!” Captain Stewart barked out his order. “Look for the sniper.”

“Let’s move it!” Johnson started forward.

“I said stay down, damn it!” Stewart yelled.

I was on my feet. Monaco was up. We were moving again, following Johnson. The hell with Stewart. We broke through the underbrush. We kept moving.

I looked around. Stewart was coming, too.

Suddenly I wasn’t there. It was as if I were out of my body and looking down at us. And then I was back. What the hell was going on? I shook my head. Everything seemed okay again.

We kept moving. I hoped like hell that somebody knew where we were going.

Monaco was up ahead. He held his hand up, and we dropped where we were. I could feel my heart beating in my temples. I was gasping for air, sucking in tiny fleets of flying bugs. Spitting them out. Sucking in another fleet.

Movement to my right. We were moving again.

Peewee was trying to get Jamal up. I went over to them.

“He hit?”

“No,” Peewee said.

Jamal was shaking, tears were running down his face. He was ugly. God, a man could be ugly when he cried. Peewee punched him in the face and started pulling him up. I got his other arm and started pulling him.

Gearhart was over. He jerked Jamal by the collar.

“Move it, soldier!” he spat the words in Jamal’s face.

Jamal was moving again. He was okay. He was one of us again.

Suddenly I wasn’t there. There was somebody running in my boots, but it wasn’t me. The legs moved mechanically, the weapon stayed in front of the body. I could almost see myself running. I could feel myself running, but it wasn’t me running. What the hell was going on? I stopped.

“Move it, Perry!” Gearhart’s voice.

The ground was passing me faster, but it wasn’t me running. It was someone else, perhaps even some thing else. It was a body moving through a nightmare, a nightmare in which everything knew everything, where the ground pushed your feet away and the vines clutched at your legs while the trees chortled and shook with silent laughter.

We stopped. The sweat was cold against my body. Up ahead Monaco was sitting with his back to a tree. His chest was heaving. He gave hand signals. Gearhart moved up. Johnson moved up. Where did they get the strength? I looked at Peewee. Peewee, my main man. Peewee’s face was dark, there were shadows where his eyes should have been.

The shadows moved, Peewee moved. He was getting up. I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to sit there forever. Where the hell was the popcorn machine? Couldn’t I just watch the rest of this damned war? Couldn’t I just be out of it for a few hours, a few minutes?

We moved up. There were voices, Vietnamese. We moved up. The soft pop-pops of the grenade launchers went off. There was screaming, high-pitched whines that died slowly as the life drained from the body. We pushed up. There was a clearing and nearly a platoon of NVAs. We had them in the open. I couldn’t believe it.

We fired as they started scrambling away.

Suddenly I wasn’t there. There was a sight in front of me, and I stared at bodies trying to move across an open field. There was the sensation of vibration in my hands, against my face, and the distant sound of an M-16 firing. I felt a shoulder moving, perhaps mine, reversing clips I had taped together. There were soldiers trying to move away from the forward sights of a sixteen. They weren’t moving nearly fast enough.

“Get the perimeter!” Captain Stewart again. “You two men get to the other side of this clearing, the sixty will cover you.”

“Never happen!” Peewee dug in.

“Soldier!” Captain Stewart swung a forty-five on Peewee.

I didn’t see the sixty move. I heard the impact of the bullets in the ground in front of Captain Stewart’s feet, I saw him leap backward. I saw him dive for cover. The forty-five went back into its case. I looked over my shoulder. Johnson was on his knees, a menacing silhouette.

The sixty swung toward the clearing and raked the far side. Suddenly a figure popped out of the underbrush carrying a tube.

“Get him! Get him!”

The sixty barked. The figure started at first to collapse, and then to expand. It was as if it drew in on itself, gathered the momentum it needed, and then began to grow. The arms flung apart. But it had already fired the RPG.

Down. Sweet Jesus. Please.

Dirt all over me. There was more firing. I looked up. There was something near me. It was flesh. I pushed it away, I wanted to get away from it. I stood and started to run from it.

The ARVNs were on the left. I saw them. I fired in their direction. I don’t know why. I stopped and tried to pull myself together.

The charlies were still ahead of us. They had backed themselves into a tight knot in the middle of the field. There must have been sixty, maybe seventy of them. We fired at them, and fired at them, and fired at them. Bodies once alive, then lifeless, seemed to live again as the bullets tore into the dead flesh and made it dance in the afternoon sun. I breathed in some bugs without bothering to spit them out.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Gearhart.

The other side of the clearing was burning. The sudden darkness of a jet surprised me. Surprised all of us. One guy opened up. The jet roared and dropped a bomb just over the clearing. Napalm.

It burst into the trees, rolling, rushing, a gale of fire through the trees.

Couldn’t breathe. I went down. Guys were dropping around me as the heat from the napalm sucked up the air. The trees above us caught fire. My skin was full of tiny pin pricks. The napalm was too close. We started moving into the clearing.

A Cong, maybe the one who had fired the RPG, was lying on top of a pile of bodies. His chest and stomach were open. There were tubes and organs and the redness of working parts that no longer worked.

“Perry!” It was Peewee.

“Wha?”

He pointed. I looked. It was a soldier. He had been white, round-faced. Now the bottom of one leg was off. Most of the flesh from the thigh was off, too. The white, twisted bone angled out oddly from the hip. His eyes were open, his mouth was open as wide as it would go, the teeth bared.

“Look at his hands, man.”

The hands were around the neck of a NVA soldier. There were no other wounds on the NVA. The GI had killed him from the other side of death.

I walked away. People were not supposed to be made like that. People were not supposed to be twisted bone and tubes that popped out at crazy kid’s-toys angles. People were supposed to be sitting and talking and doing. Yes, doing.

When the ARVN troops first reached us we didn’t notice anything unusual. Then we heard one of their officers yelling and motioning for us to move back toward the hamlet.