Sergeant Dickinson (7 page)

Roy: “I heard you were getting the bronze star for that thing at Plei Mrong.”

Doug: “It'll probably be downgraded to a commendation medal. Officers get the bronze star.”

I say, “I read in
Stars and Stripes
about some colonel who's getting the silver star for meritorious service because he solved the traffic problem in Saigon.”

Roy: “They don't give the silver star for meritorious service.”

Doug: “If anybody's solved the traffic problem in Saigon, they're sure as hell keeping it a secret.”

“
Stars and Stripes
said he was getting the silver star for meritorious service,” I say again.

Doug: “Fuck! Just fuck ‘em, that's all.”

Mitch: “Dixie's getting the bronze star for Plei Me.”

“I doubt it,” I say.

Mitch: “What's-his-face said he saw the paperwork.”

“I saw it,” I say. “The recommendation had me stringing antenna wire under intense sniper fire. That's what they called it: ‘intense sniper fire.' It was a fucking machine gun, is what it was. And they wouldn't have even seen me to shoot at if the fucking flare ship hadn't dropped a flare practically on top of me. I'd coordinated with them in advance so they wouldn't drop any while I was up the pole, and then they drop one on top of me. If I get killed in this war it'll be because someone who was supposed to be backing me up wasn't.”

Doug: “Amen.”

Mitch and Roy: “Amen.”

“Remember that short round at Plei Me?” I ask. “The Cav lobs one in, kills seventeen people, all women, children, or old men, the young men are out fighting the war. You know what the Cav says when we bitched? ‘In a war people get killed.' They could care fucking less. But we have to live with those people, we have to explain to them why the Americans are killing them.”

Roy: “It could be worse. You could be in the Cav.”

Mitch: “Or the Marines.”

Doug: “Those fuckers are crazy. You'd think they
like
dying. Not enough food, not enough medicine, not even
enough ammunition, and they still yell ‘Gung ho!' As though they're proud of getting everybody else's leavings. They haven't been issued jungle boots but you can buy them in the black market stalls in Saigon and Nha Trang.”

“Yeah. Well,” I say.

Roy: “You've worked with them?”

Doug: “I was up at Da Nang a couple of weeks ago helping them set up their civil affairs program. They have a different name for it.”

Mitch: “Think anything will come of it?”

Doug: “I don't know. Whatever happened to ours? What's going to happen with that maid, by the way? The one who was raped.”

Roy: “She's still around.”

Doug: “You guys pressing on with that thing?”

Roy: “Yeah.”

Doug: “I don't envy you.”

Roy: “I don't envy us either. I can't take a shit but I'd better have my rifle in my lap.”

Doug: “Well, I don't envy you. I'm glad I wasn't there.”

“They're saying we're racists because Spencer is black,” I say.

Doug: “Yeah, I heard that.”

Roy: “What are they saying about Mitch? Is he a racist too?”

Doug: “I don't know. I can't keep it all straight. I don't even try.”

Mitch: “What would you have done?”

Doug: “I don't know. I wasn't there. I don't have to wonder
about it. Look, why don't we go to Pleiku City. The government whorehouse is open. We can get drunk, get laid, have a good time.”

Mitch: “I'll pass. I'm on shift in an hour.”

Doug: “What about you, Dixie? You're off tonight.”

“I'll pass.”

Roy: “Come on, Dixie. It'll be a break. Have you had any since your Cambodian left?”

Doug: “Are you the one who was banging her? I always wanted to. How was she?”

“Interesting. It was slanted,” I say.

Doug: “No shit?”

“Yeah. And it had little nubby teeth. It was like getting blown and laid at the same time.”

Doug, laughing: “No shit. Brought you right off, huh?”

“Before I could say ‘Boo.'”

Roy: “Quicker ‘n a greased pig?”

Mitch: “Faster than a six-legged jackrabbit?”

“It made my head spin. Every time.”

Doug: “God. Slanted pussy and tiny teeth. Come on. Maybe we can find one of those at the government whorehouse. I'll sign out a jeep.”

“Nah. Once you've had nubby teeth you've had it all. There isn't another one like her.”

Roy: “He's afraid we'll corrupt him.”

Doug: “Corrupt him! How much more corrupt can you get than nubby teeth? Was she a virgin?”

“Yeah. She'd never married. She grew up in a convent.”

Doug: “Well, I'm glad somebody made her, even if it
wasn't me. I'd hate to think of it going to waste. Come on, maybe we'll get lucky and find one with two rows of teeth.”

Roy: “I heard her sister works there. She's a virgin too.”

“You're twisting my arm. Ow! That's enough, you've convinced me. But if I get corrupted I know who to blame,” I say.

Doug: “Corrupted. Jesus, that's what it's all about, asshole.”

As we leave, Roy says: “Remember that half-caste we had in Vientiane? You had sloppy seconds? Jesus, that was four, five years ago.”

“I had sloppy seconds? You had sloppy seconds!” I tell him.

General laughter.

He is a tall gentleman wearing an off-white bush jacket and off-white slacks. He has thick white hair, skin pallid to the point of anemic, nails polished to a white gleam.

He wears diplomat's tails and striped trousers and carries an opera hat. He begins to look like Uncle Sam when the commander tells us he is from the embassy.

The tall gentleman meets us in the commander's office. He says in a flat accentless voice: “Are you men racists?” He looks first at Roy, then at me. He does not look at Mitch. He says: “Are you men aware that you are creating an international incident?” He takes our depositions out of an enameled briefcase and hands them to us. We tear them up.

The mess hall. The sun diffuses through the mist, refracts in the glass of the window, heats our faces and arms. We push away our trays, linger over coffee and cigarettes.

I ask, “All of them?”

“That's what I heard.”

“Breckinridge, too?”

“Breckinridge, too.”

“Were they mutilated?”

“No. The Marines found them not too long after it happened. Maybe there wasn't time.”

“God.”

Roy says, “Stay out of the A Shau. That's all I can say.

“I'm getting myself assigned to Mike Force. I got to get out of this place.”

“I'm going up to Eye Corps. A Shau.”

“'Stay out of the A Shau.”'

“That's for pussies like you. John Waynes like me take it as a matter of course.”

“Okay, John Wayne.”

“Mitch is going to Okinawa. He's found himself a slot there.”

“Yeah, well. He's been here two years straight now.”

“He's had a few R-and-Rs.”

“That just makes it worse when you come back.”

“Not for us John Waynes.”

“You'll do okay.”

“I'm scared shitless.”

“You'll do okay,” I tell him.

“I'm not gonna be a fuckin'hero. Fuck Breckinridge.”

“And all of his men.”

“Yeah. And that fuckin' Spencer stays here, snug as a bug.”

“There isn't a camp that will take him.”

“Listen, what happened to that maid Spencer did the job on? I haven't seen her since that embassy guy was here.”

“I don't know. I haven't seen her around.”

“They disappeared her. And Mitch. And me. They'll disappear you, too. Everybody but Spencer.”

“The fuck-ups stay in place. When are you leaving for A Shau?”

“As soon as I can get a flight. Maybe tomorrow. You can have whatever I leave behind. You'll be working out of Pleiku anyway, if you go to Mike Force.”

“I don't want anything.”

“Then give the stuff away. If I have time I'll do it. Those crossbows, though. How about hanging on to those for me?”

“All right.”

“And the photographs. I don't want to take them.”

“Not the photographs. I don't like that kind of stuff.”

“Okay. I'll find some greenhorn to give them to. They
like that gory stuff.”

“Listen. Let's say good-bye now. So we don't have to do it later.”

“I'll go for that. We've both said good-bye to too many people.”

“Amen to that, brother.”

“Good-bye, Dixie.”

“Good-bye, Roy. You can leave the crossbows in my room. I'll leave it unlocked.”

The wind burned right through us, stiffening our hands and ankles, breaking the skin on our lips and on our hands where they were callused. Water on the ground had begun to freeze even before dark, and by midnight the puddles were solid with ice and the ground had cracked and we could hardly walk on the frost-slick grass. We did not have gloves or field jackets and we wore pajamas under our fatigues. We could not believe that it had gotten so cold.

We stood at a small fire in a copse of pine off a French logging road. The stars pulsed in blue-white clarity.

“Tell me this isn't the tropics,” Percival says. “Tell me a flying saucer picked us up when we were asleep and set us down in Montana.”

“Have some coffee.” I pass my thermos cup to him.

“Thank you, Sergeant. You're a good man, despite what they say about you. Well, how do you think this exercise is going?”

We were running a Rhadé company through a training exercise. It consisted of a short patrol up a narrow, brush-heavy drainage followed by a raid in which live ammunition was fired against cardboard silhouettes staked into the ground against a berm. In conjunction with this, a security
element was to ambush an “enemy” reinforcing column on the logging road. The reinforcing column consisted of one jeep. Each of the company's three platoons went through the raid and ambush in turn.

“They look pretty good. It would have been better if that jeep had shown up, though,” I say.

“Well, you can't have everything. It probably got too cold for them and they went home. That's why I'm glad I don't have to work with Americans.”

The drivers were American.

I put some pine cones on the fire. We heard the machine guns start up on the hill. They were firing short bursts.

“I haven't heard your booby trap go off yet.”

“I know. I've been thinking about it. Why don't I go up with the last group as their evaluator? If they don't trip it I'll blow it myself on the way. We can't leave it up there.”

“I know. I wish we could. I hate fooling around with those things. Do you want me to come along?”

“No. I'll just trip it. I won't try to take it apart.”

“You shouldn't have any problem.”

“No,” I agree.

The last platoon to go through the exercise entered the wash from the road. The sergeant had put his machine guns toward the front and rear of the column. That was good. The radio man stayed right on the sergeant's heels. That was good, too. The troops did not bunch up when the column halted but kept their intervals. That, too, was as it should be.

Of course, it was too short a patrol to tell their real caliber.
You needed at least two hours before they would begin to get sloppy. It was the way they handled their propensities toward carelessness that told you how disciplined they were. But, all things considered, they looked pretty good.

Now the sergeant had to decide whether to march his troops up the draw or to walk one of the slopes. The sergeant had reconned the terrain earlier in the day. To walk the low ground was foolishness; should they be ambushed they would have to run uphill either to assault the ambush positions or to get away. The sergeant knew that there were no aggressors on this problem, but he was expected to play the game.

The target was ultimately to the left of the draw. If they walked the slope on the left they would not have to cross the draw later, keeping movement in proximity of the target minimal. But the rise of the slope was shallow, with a flat, treeless area farther on. The moon would throw their shadows ahead of them. Were someone watching, they would likely be seen.

The right-hand side was fairly steep, but there was plenty of concealment. Farther up, beyond where the bare patch was on the left, the drainage rose suddenly and steeply until it was almost level with its sides. They could cross to the left there and still have concealment, for where the brush thinned and became sparse the increased density of trees compensated. The right-hand side was the correct way to do it. The proper way.

The sergeant marched his troops to the left.

Sergeant Huk was a lazy man; I would remember that
and mention it at the critique after the exercise was over. Sergeant Huk had also presented me with the necessity to do something about the booby trap. I had strung the trip wire down the right-hand slope and across the wash. Had Sergeant Huk led his men in the correct way, the proper way, one of them probably would have set it off. Now I would have to do it on the way back.

As the patrol passed the clearing a man in the rear stepped out into the moonlight. He followed his perfect shadow back into the trees. Another thing to bring up at the critique.

They set up the machine guns on an open flat to the left above the draw. If this were for real it would be a tactical disaster, but here I was willing to forego tactical expertise. I wanted everybody in clear view on that flat; I did not want any trainees killed while I was around.

Sergeant Huk came up and Mr. Hoang, the interpreter, moved up beside me. Sergeant Huk spoke. Mr. Hoang turned to me. “He say he not want to do fire and maneuver. He say people get hurt. He want everybody fire machine gun.”