War Baby (2 page)

‘What happened to you?’ O’Leary said.

‘Her husband came home,’ Ryan said. He noticed Webb for the first time, and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Sean Ryan,’ he said, holding out his hand.

‘Hugh Webb.’

‘You must be the fresh meat. Welcome to Saigon, mate. Land of wars, whores and PX stores.’

A trickle of blood made its way down Ryan’s cheek. ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

‘I’ll be okay. But let this be a lesson to you, mate. Never mess around with a bride of Christ. God keeps score.’

* * *

The Mini Moke belonged to Crosby. It had five bullet holes in the coachwork from the battle of Saigon two years before. Ryan commandeered it whenever Crosby was in-country, an arrangement that Crosby went along with on the understanding that he could use Ryan’s air-conditioned top-floor room whenever he was out of town.

Ryan turned off the Tran Hung Dao into the cluttered back streets of Cholon. The air smelled of ripe fruit, incense, sewage and diesel. He braked to avoid an old woman chasing a duck and a knot of high-school girls in white silk
ao dai
.

He maneuvered the Moke down a narrow alleyway and stopped outside a high wall topped with razor wire. He grabbed two large cardboard boxes from the back seat. There was a rotting mahogany door set in the wall. He hammered three times with his fist.

The young woman who opened the door was Eurasian. She wore a white habit and a silver crucifix. A rosary hung from her belt. She was exquisitely beautiful.

Ryan stared. It was the novice he had been chasing the day before. Here was a stroke of luck. But where was
Soeur Marie
, the old Vietnamese who usually attended the door?

‘
Oui, monsieur
?’ she said softly.

‘I brought some presents for the children.’

‘Entrez.’

He followed her across the courtyard, watching the sway of her hips beneath the
ao dai
. The Virgin watched frowning from an alcove in the orphanage wall.

He heard a piano playing from a shuttered loggia window and children’s voices singing: ‘Good King Wenceslas’.

Where a snow lay roun’ abou, dee’ and cris' and even . ..

She led him into a sitting room. It was dark inside, and cooler, and smelled of must. A broken fan laboured overhead.

He placed the two boxes on a low mahogany table.

‘
S’il vous plait
,’ she said, and indicated two threadbare armchairs. He sat down. She remained standing.

‘The name’s Sean.’

‘
Oui, je sais.
The ... canonesse … tell me of you.
Je m’appelle Soeur Odile
.’

There was an awkward silence. He realized she was waiting for him to open the boxes. He took the Swiss army knife from his belt and cut through the string. Odile reached in: Carnation milk, Colgate toothpaste, some tinned fruit, a single packet of Park Lane filtered cigarettes.

‘The smokes are for your boss,’ he said.

She looked shocked.

‘
La canonesse
?’

‘We all have our vices. As the bishop said to the ...’ His voice trailed off.

Soeur Odile
returned the cigarettes to the box and he tore open the second container.

‘Medicines in there. Stole them from the hospital at Long Binh.’

‘You steal?’

‘Borrowed.’

‘
Vous êtes un voleur?
It is … sin to steal. ’

‘The Americans have got plenty of everything and these kids don’t have much of anything.’

She picked up a tin of pears. ‘You steal …?’

‘No, that’s bought and paid for at the PX.’

‘
Soeur Marie
… she say you come . . . every week.
Vous êtes très gentil
.’

Ryan stood up. ‘Better shoot through, I suppose.’

‘You would like … some tea?’

He thought about Prescott and the three hundred dollars. ‘Yeah, all right. That’d be good.’

She smiled at him for the first time. In another place, from another kind of woman, he would have interpreted it differently. ‘Wait ... please.’

She went out. Ryan looked around. A pale lizard, the color of alabaster, watched him from the wall, then darted for cover into an alcove, behind another statue of the Virgin. Ryan felt uncomfortable. It reminded of his local church in Brisbane. He had been an altar boy then and he and a friend, Choko, had got drunk on the holy wine. The priest threw them out and he hadn’t been back in a church since.

The blessed Virgin was watching him.
‘What are you doing in here, Ryan?’

‘Just having a cup of tea, Mother.’

‘If you think you’re going to seduce one of my nuns, you can just forget it right now.’

‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

‘Pardon, monsieur?'

He looked around. She was standing in the doorway holding a tray with two china teacups and a silver teapot. ‘Just singing to myself,’ he said. ‘A hymn.’

She set the tray down on the table and knelt to prepare the tea. She poured it black, adding a slice of lemon, and handed it to him.

‘Thanks.’

She poured tea for herself and sat in the room’s only other armchair. A silverfish darted for cover between the cushions. ‘
Vous êtes Americain
?’

‘Christ, no! Australian.’

‘Australia,’ she repeated slowly, as if it were the name of an exotic fruit. ‘You are journalist?’

‘Photographer.’

There was a silence.

‘Your English is very good,’ he said.

‘My English is terrible. I am bad student.’

‘You’re not … Vietnamese?’

‘Ma mêre … my mother … is from Dalat. My father is French soldier. He is killed at Dien Bien Phu.’

‘I see.’

‘I do not see my family very long time. My mother …
tu comprends
… she cannot go back …’

He noted she had switched from ‘vous’ to ‘tu.’ Well, that was progress.

‘Where is your mother now?’ he asked her.

‘
Elle est mort
. Rocket.’

Ryan sipped his tea. He did not want to know whether the rocket was North Vietnamese or American.

‘What happen?’ she said, pointing at the plaster on his forehead and the grazes down his arm, now painted with mercurochrome. ‘Tu est blessé … taking photograph?’

Ryan nodded. ‘Viet Cong,’ he said. ‘My mate was wounded and I had to run out into the open to get him and drag him to safety.’ It had been a long time since he had felt nervous with a woman, not since he was fourteen. But then this wasn’t a woman, this was a nun. He had been schooled by nuns; all he remembered was rosaries and raps across the knuckles with a ruler.

None of the nuns had looked like this. If they had, perhaps he’d still go to church. Perhaps.

‘When your old mum died … is that why you became a nun?’

She blushed and looked away.

‘It’s just that... well ... you’re very beautiful.’

Soeur Odile put her teacup on the table. It rattled in its saucer.

Ryan felt the blesséd Virgin staring at him. Her expression was not pleasant.

‘You must not … say like this,
monsieur
.’

‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.’

She touched the crucifix at her breast, murmured something in French. A prayer perhaps.
Deliver us from evil.

‘I’d better go,’ he said. He put his teacup on the table and stood up.
Soeur Odile
sat quite still, staring at her hands. ‘Next time you better send
Souer Marie
to open the door,’ he said. ‘Then I can’t get into any trouble.’

He hesitated at the door. He wished he had his camera, to capture her then: the diaphanous shimmer of white, a chevron of light through the window, dust drifting, her almond eyes, the glint of silver on the crucifix, the soft parting of her lips, the Madonna in her alcove. He said goodbye and shut the door, and the moment was gone.

* * *

‘If you’re going to get hit, don’t get hit in the gut,’ Ryan was telling Webb. ‘I’ve seen guys with belly wounds and it’s not pretty.’

‘Second to belly wounds is chest wounds,’ Cochrane said. ‘Chest wounds suck.’

They all smiled at that, except Webb, who didn’t get it.

‘Remember,’ Crosby said, ‘you can never live as long as one day in Vietnam. A hundred years isn’t as long as one night in the boonies.’

The fear Webb had woken to that morning had now settled like cold fat in his stomach. He had tried to hide it from the others, but they knew. Cochrane was the first to remark on it. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said. ‘That’s the difference between us and a grunt. We can go home any time we want.’

‘What it comes down to, is being scared is better than being bored,’ Ryan said. ‘It can get addictive. Fear, I mean. It’s like smoking. You know it’s no good for you but once you’re hooked you can’t stop.’

It was six thirty in the morning and they were eating breakfast -
croissants
,
café au lait
- at the Shelf, as residents referred to the terrace of the Continental Hotel in downtown Saigon. The Shelf was the place to see and be seen; it overlooked the main square, the former opera house - now the National Assembly - and the War Memorial, a grotesque cement statue that some cynics said looked like an American soldier pushing a South Vietnamese into battle. The terrace was separated from the footpath and the phalanx of bicycles and mopeds in the square by long cement flower boxes littered with cigarette butts.

There were four of them: Webb, Ryan, Cochrane and Crosby, all dressed in green combat fatigues, their flak jackets and steel helmets under their seats. They each coveted their personal style, but they didn’t take non-conformity into battle. If you looked different from the soldiers they went in-country with, Crosby said, you risked being targeted by the VC - or shot at by the Americans themselves.

They often went on assignments together, Ryan added, it was insurance: if something went wrong, you needed a buddy to make sure you got back again. Today he was going out on patrol in War Zone D with the 173rd Airborne. He invited Webb along ‘for the ride’. It would be Webb’s first time in the boonies.

He now had his press accreditation from the US Military Assistance Command Vietnam - MacVee. All that was required for that was letters from two organizations saying they would buy his dispatches. Webb had one a newspaper in Surrey where he had worked as a cadet, and O’Leary had arranged another from AP - the agency would give anyone a letter, along with a camera, film and a light meter and fifteen for any shot they used. Vietnam was a war anyone could join.

Ryan helped him buy his ‘Saigon jacket’ from the Indian tailors on Tu Do. It had a white label with his name, and
Bao Chi
- ‘journalist’ - sewn to the left breast. He also showed him how to paint the chrome on his M-3 Leica camera with green army paint so the metal would not reflect the sunlight and create a target for snipers. He took him to the American press briefings at the Rex Theatre at five o’clock each afternoon - the ‘Five O’clock Follies’, the
Jive at Five
. ‘An “enemy base camp in an inhabited area” - that’s a village. “Enemy troop concentration.” That’s two or more VC suspects running through a rice paddy. You’ll soon pick it up, son.’

Transport around the battlefields and even field rations were free, courtesy of the US Army, and if he was willing to gamble his legs or his life he could be famous, if not rich, overnight. Vietnam was the fast track, if you could stay alive.

If.

Webb was terrified, but he had gone too far to pull out now.

Cochrane finished his coffee. ‘Do you want your roll?’ he asked Webb.

‘I’m not that hungry.’

Cochrane snatched the croissant and started to butter it. ‘First we check the word on the street, make sure there’s nothing we want to miss, like another Tet or an army coup, something like that. Then we get a taxi out to Tan Son Nhut. Me and Dave are heading down the Delta - there’s been some action at Can Tho. From there we’ll leave you in the capable hands of Deathwish here.’

‘Deathwish?’ Webb said.

Ryan shrugged. ‘Everyone has to have a nickname.’

Crosby grinned and pointed to the MacVee ID tag around Webb’s neck. ‘Guard that well, boy,’ he said. ‘It’s your passport to hell.’

War Zone ‘D’

Webb was embarrassed about his boots.

Everyone else’s were caked with dirt and dried red mud. He felt like a fraud. His right leg was shaking and he could do nothing to stop it. He was aware of the rank stink of his own sweat.

The chopper went into a combat dive, a gut-sucking spiral towards the ground. He heard the crew chief’s gravel voice close to his ear. ‘You feel something furry in the back of your throat, boy, you swallow hard, man. It’s your ass.’

* * *

It was a strange war, Ryan said. You could eat freshly baked croissants for breakfast and two hours later you were in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by
punji
traps and bouncing mines.

The Huey left them at a staging post for a company of the 173rd Airborne. As it lifted back into the air it kicked up squalls of gritty ochre dust that stung the eyes and nose and clung to the throat like cement dust.

Webb looked around. A knot of black Marines read their tags, their eyes sullen with resentment. ‘Well, bull-sheet. Co-respondents! We in for some good shit today. These motherfuckers like their meat raw.’

‘Hey, hand-job,’ one of them called to Webb, pointing to the patch on the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘What’s a
Bao Chi
?’

‘It’s gook for motherfucker,’ his partner said.

Ryan did not seem disturbed by the abuse. He took out a packet of Marlboro and offered them around.

‘Motherfuckers!’ one of them said, taking a cigarette. ‘You come slumming, man?’

‘Don’t you want people back home to know what you’re going through out here?’ Ryan said.

‘Some white boy in Cape Cod going to give a hot damn that I’m gittin’ my ass shot off here?’

‘These guys don’t have to be here, cocksuck,’ another one said.

‘You shittin’ me? They
ask
to come here?’

‘Wish I could get me some of that. I’d be home day before I get here, man.’

Webb stared at their helmets. In other armies the helmet was just another part of a soldier’s uniform but out here every one was different. Red packets of Winston and silver cigarette lighters and plastic bottles of rifle cleaning fluid were tucked inside hatbands and scrawled graffiti identified their new friends as Born to Kill, Love Child, High on War and Why Me?

Ryan took the lens off his camera. He asked them if he could take a photograph. Webb thought Born to Kill and Love Child looked as if they would rather stitch a line across Ryan’s chest with their M-16s.

‘You make good bread with these pictures?’ Love Child asked him.

‘Let it be, shitkick,’ High on War said. ‘Somebody got to tell the people back in the world the shit going down over here.’

Ryan raised his camera and fired off three quick frames; the four black Marines on the sandbags, their M-16s across their chest, one with Black Power scrawled in stencil across his flak jacket; High on War with the Ace of Spades tucked into his helmet band; Love Child cradling his M-16 as if it were a baseball bat.

Another Huey dropped onto the LZ and two corpsmen loaded the body of a soldier who had died earlier that morning. There was a fleeting image of a body bag, a pair of jungle boots, a cloud of green iridescent flies.

‘Hey, freshmeat,’ one of the soldiers shouted at him, ‘they going to be mailin’ you home to Mamma in a glad bag too.’

Ryan clapped him on the shoulder and steered him away. ‘They don’t mean anything by it,’ he said. ‘They’re just scared.’

Webb nodded and said nothing. It was going to be a long day’s haul.

* * *

They set off, single file, into what the Americans called ‘Indian country’, foot-slogging all morning through rice paddies and fields, the flat landscape broken only by occasional bamboo thickets or the simple hooches of the farmers. Wooden guard towers loomed over the fields.

What am I doing here? Webb thought. I’m twenty-two years old, I have a couple of years’ experience as a cadet photographer with a provincial English newspaper, and now I’m alongside some of the best combat journalists in the business, pretending I’m one of them. I’m going to make a fool of myself, and I could get crippled or killed doing it.

The point of the column entered the jungle line. The sun was directly overhead, squeezing the juice out of them. The only sounds were the jangle of webbing and the slop of water in belt canteens.

There was a shout from the tree line, and the soldiers in front of Webb crouched, ready to drop. They waited there, in the sun, for what seemed like hours; Webb felt his thigh muscles starting to cramp. Sweat ran into his eyes.

Ryan shouldered past him, heading for the front of the line in a low, crouching run. What the hell? Webb thought, and followed.

Three officers were gathered around a tunnel, an ARVN Ranger with them. They were discussing options. Finally one of the lieutenants produced a hand grenade, removed the pin, and threw it down the hole. There was a muffled explosion and a cloud of choking dust.

They dragged three Viet Cong bodies from the tunnel. So this was their dreaded enemy, Webb thought. They looked like rag dolls, an untidy tangle of limbs in dusty and sweat-stained black pajamas. Other grunts gathered around, and Webb heard a flashbulb pop. They’re taking pictures for their souvenir albums, he thought with disgust. And then he remembered that was what he was here to do; take photographs. Half a dozen soldiers had magically produced Instamatics from their packs, but Webb, with two expensive Leicas slung around his neck, held back.

He looked around and saw Ryan. He wasn’t taking photographs either; he seemed to be waiting for something. Then he realized what it was; one of the Viet Cong was still breathing.

The captain had noticed now, and he called for the corpsman, but the Vietnamese Ranger shook his head and knelt down next to the injured VC.

He was no more than fifteen or sixteen years old. His black pajamas had been shredded by grenade fragments, and there were gaping wounds in his stomach. The Ranger took out his knife and very deliberately pushed it into one of the holes and twisted the blade.

‘Jesus Christ,’ one of the soldiers said, and turned away. A lieutenant stepped forward to intervene but the captain grabbed him and pulled him away.

Webb wanted to vomit. The boy - suddenly Webb could not think of him as an enemy - was kicking feebly and screaming.

The Ranger was shouting questions at him, probing deeper into the wound. Webb saw the blood on the boy’s ears. It was pointless, the concussion of the explosion had blown out his eardrums.

‘Captain,’ Webb said.

The officer hesitated. He looked grey. He saw Ryan pick up his cameras and that made up his mind. ‘That’s enough,’ he said.

‘But he’s VC!’ the Ranger protested.

‘We’ll call in a dust-off.’

The Ranger spat in the boy’s face and wiped the knife blade on his pajamas. But instead of backing off he took out his revolver and held it against the boy’s head. ‘We just kill him now.’

The captain looked back at Ryan, who had moved to within ten feet. ‘Let it be. That’s an order.’ The boy was still writhing, clutching at his stomach. ‘Get the corpsman here,’ he said, and walked away.

* * *

The night was so black Webb had to touch his eyelids with his own fingertips to satisfy himself that they were open. Just on sunset Ryan had laid down next to him, his helmet down, his lucky green towel carefully arranged over his face to leave just enough room to breathe. He had tucked his hands under his arms to protect them from the hordes of mosquitoes.

‘What do you think happened to that kid?’ Webb whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ Ryan said. His voice was muffled by the helmet and towel.

‘You think he’s dead?’

‘Probably.’

Webb listened to the maddening whine of mosquitoes inches from his face.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Ryan said. ‘But the war’s not going to stop because a couple of blokes with cameras don’t like what they see.’

‘I didn’t do anything. Ryan. I just watched.’

‘Didn’t you take any snaps?’

Snaps?
‘I couldn’t.’

‘Good-oh. That means I’ve got an exclusive.’

A long silence.

‘That was barbaric,’ Webb murmured.

‘It’s a bloody war. What did you think it was going to be like?’

After a while, Webb said: ‘I should have done something.’

‘We did do something. We stopped that prick shooting him this afternoon. It won’t do any good. They’ll take him to Long Binh, and if he lives the Vietnamese will get hold of him and they’ll torture him again. And then they’ll shoot him.’

‘That was wrong.’

‘Look, I’ve got news for you, sport. This war is not about your conscience. What happened out there was no concern of mine or yours. We’re just doing a job. There is absolutely no situation where we should stop working because it’s what we show the rest of the world that’s going to stop this bloody madness.’ Webb heard him shuffle around, settling himself under the towel and helmet once more. ‘Now go to sleep. We’ve got another long hike through the boonies tomorrow.’

* * *

He heard gongs banging somewhere in the jungle, smelled shit and incense. A fecund jungle inhabited only by women, children and old men. They walked all through the morning, the heat crushing them. Already Webb had almost emptied one canteen of water. They stopped to rest in a rice paddy, squatting down with their backs against the embankment of an irrigation channel.

One of the Marines, a raw nineteen-year-old from Kentucky, grinned at Webb as he fumbled with his cameras. ‘Except for them dead gooks I guess you ain’t had much to snap at,’ he said. The tag on his fatigues read
McCague
.

Webb shook his head.

‘Can’t say I’d mind a contact right now, just for a chance to lie down for a while.’

‘We’re sitting ducks out here.’

‘Shoot, we sitting ducks wherever we are. That’s the whole point, mister. Only way we ever get to find gooks is when they ambush us.’ McCague sucked some water from his canteen. ‘Want to get yourself a picture?’

‘Sure,’ Webb said, without thinking.

‘You send me a copy?’

‘What have you got in mind?’

‘I was figuring to put a few rounds into that tree line over there. Be just like the real thing. Who’s gonna know, right?’

Webb thought about it. He had missed two golden opportunities for film the previous day and now it looked as if he might go home empty-handed. He needed something to
sell
.

McCague did not wait for his decision. He was on one knee, aiming his M-16 at an imaginary enemy on the other side of the rice paddy. The rest of his rifle squad were watching him, laughing.

‘You crazy motherfucker, McCague,’ one of them said.

If McCague had been home in Kentucky he would be spinning the wheels of his hotrod in the main street, Webb thought. Now someone’s let him loose with an Armalite in the boonies, and life’s still a big joke.

‘Ready there, mister?’ McCague said.

Webb fumbled for his Leica. Without waiting for a reply, McCague fired a rapid burst into the tree line two hundred yards away. Almost at once there was a sound like angry bees in the air around them. McCague sat down suddenly, staring in dull surprise at the three small holes in the front of his utilities.

‘Jesus, shit, someone’s busting caps at us!’

‘Christ, man, get down!’

‘Corpsman up!’

McCague was lying on his back now, his spine arched, his chest heaving, trying to suck in air. His mouth was gaping open like a beached fish.

Webb was paralyzed with shock and disbelief.

Something hit him hard in the side and he fell. He heard Ryan’s voice close to his ear. ‘Get your head down, you silly bastard.’

‘Where are they?’

‘There!’

‘Where?’

‘There!’

‘Corpsman up, goddamn it!’

‘Where are they?’

‘There!’

‘Where, for Christ’s sake,
where?
’

Webb listened to the bedlam around him. Now he understood what it was that Crosby and Prescott had been laughing at that first afternoon in the Hashish Hilton. Perhaps if he ever made it back to Saigon he would share the joke.

The corpsman had reached McCague, was crouched over him, blowing air into his lungs. McCague was making gurgling noises, like a kid blowing bubbles in his bath. The medic pulled a scalpel from his kit and ripped open McCague’s shirt. There was a spurt of blood as he made two incisions in the boy’s neck, then he pushed a black tube into the trachea. McCague had stopped moving. The corpsman blew into the tube, watching for the rise and fall of the boy’s chest, feeling for the pulse at his neck.

There was another shout from along the line, and another.

‘I’m hit.’

‘Medic up, medic up!’

The corpsman grimaced; frustration, despair. He crawled away, elbows and knees, leaving McCague staring at the blue sky, the black tube flopping from the wound in his neck. Webb followed McCague’s stare, as if there were really something up there.

Just blue sky, alive with death, pulsing with it. Webb hugged the earth, sucked it, embraced it. His camera was gone, dropped somewhere in the dirt. He looked around for Ryan. He had gone too.

Madness. If I live through this I’m getting out of Saigon, out of Vietnam and I’m never coming back.

* * *

The Dakota dived low, with a sound like a foghorn. These things piss blood, Crosby had told him, and now he knew what he meant. It had three mounted machine guns, each with six barrels, firing eighteen thousand rounds a minute, every fifth round a tracer; it looked like a solid stream of red, death the color of carmine. How could anything live through that?

It was followed in by a Phantom, its fuselage camouflaged in green and grey. Steel-ribbed cans tumbled down the sky, exploding in orange fireballs that broiled into choking black clouds. Webb opened his mouth in a silent scream, the concussion like hot needles in his ears.