Equality: In the Year 2000

Chapter Six The Year 1968

The session with Harrison, Ley, and O’Callahan hadn’t left him feeling very balanced. On his return from the Cub Bar he had gone immediately to bed, only to have one of his worst nightmares ever.

Though all of the war dreams were bad, it was the worst. Certainly it was one of the longest. It invariably started at the same point and ended at the same point, and it always took long minutes to get over.

Captain Julian West returned to Fire Base 2224 in a slick (as the grunts called helicopters) that was large enough to hold six men. It was equipped with sliding doors on both sides. These were open so that the two gunners, who were strapped to either side, could lean out and fire their .30 caliber machine guns if required.

Julian had spent almost two weeks at the hospital in Truj Hoa and then pulled down another week of R R—rest and relaxation—in Bangkok. Actually, it had been only a minor wound but he was returning with a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and, of all things, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry; none of which he would bother to mention to his buddies, not particularly wanting to be laughed at.

The chopper swooped into the LZ, the helicopter landing zone for the fire base. The pilot didn’t bother to turn off the engine. Julian West took up his duffle bag, waved a brief good bye, and jumped to the ground. The usual cloud of whirling dust, pieces of paper, and dry sticks were being kicked up by the aircraft’s blades. He waded hurriedly through the dust as fine as a dark red talcum powder.

Three weeks hadn’t much changed Fire Base 2224, although they seemed to have thrown up more entrenchments and strung more wire. He wondered if Charlie was still giving them a hard time. The fire base was located on a hill in the jungle south of Cheo Reo and for the first month or so that the Americans had occupied it, the Viet Cong hadn’t been very active in the vicinity. The ambush in which he had been hit had come as a surprise.

There were twenty pieces of artillery and fifteen mortars, the latter of which looked like nothing so much as black stovepipes about three feet high. The artillery crews managed to keep the black guns spotless, in spite of the red dust, by endlessly wiping them with oil rags.

Julian made his way toward his billet. He didn’t know if the colonel would be on the hill or not, but he figured on leaving his bag and possibly cleaning up a little before reporting in. The bunkers were little more than big holes in the hillside, covered with logs and heaped high with sandbags. He assumed his billet which he shared with Lieutenant Chenowith, one of his subordinates, was still being retained for him.

He peered down. “Jesus Christ, it’s Jule,” Turk Chenowith exclaimed, “I thought you got yourself a nice deal back in Saigon. What’d you want to come back here humping around the jungle for?”

“Nice deal? That’ll be the day,” Julian said, tossing his duffle bag to one side. “I was shafted.”

“Here, have a can of beer,” lurk offered. He was a small man, the wonder of the company: somehow he managed to be a dandy, even in combat areas. Somehow his uniform was always impossibly neat; somehow he found water with which to shave and wash.

Now he took up a can of beer from an open carton, popped it open and handed it over.

Julian took it gratefully and sat down on one of the empty wooden boxes the bunker boasted in the way of furniture. “What’s been happening? Made any new contacts since I’ve been gone?”

Turk wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Pretty bad, but nothing for the last few days. In our company, Buck Dillard’s been wasted. Took a handful of rocket frags in his chest. Sergeant Karp and three of his men ran into a whole company of NVAs and had to be dusted off in a Medevac chopper. D Company’s had even more casualties than we have. They lost Captain Somerlot.”

“Waxed?” Julian asked, pulling at his beer.

The other shook his head. “No. He took three hits in his right leg. They got him back to the base hospital okay, but he was bleeding like a stuck pig from an artery hit up near the groin. He’ll never be back; he’ll lose the leg. Lucky bastard.”

Julian stared at him.

Turk opened another can for himself before he said, “What the hell, I’d trade a leg to get out of ’Nam.”

Julian finished his beer. “Is the colonel up at the command post?”

“Yeah. At least he was there half an hour ago. He’s sent out D Company to see if they can make contact.”

Julian came to his feet. “I better report in. Who’s been in charge of the company?”

“I have.”

“Any replacement for Buck Dillard yet?”

“No. And none for Sergeant Karp, either. He was the best grunt in my platoon. He was crazy to have stayed in after getting through Korea.”

Just as Julian got ready to leave the bunker, a grunt stuck his head down and yelled, “Incoming! We got incoming!”

“Any better place to be than here?” he asked Turk.

“Hell no. I’ve got enough sandbags on this bunker to stop a direct hit from a 122 millimeter rocket—which, by the way, the Chinese are evidently supplying the NVAs with in this vicinity.”

“Great,” Julian muttered. He raised his head from the bunker. He could hear the whistle of the rockets. You couldn’t see them but you sure could hear them. There was a bright blue flash not so far off and the ground heaved. He threw himself back and down. It had been a close one, all right: he could hear clods of earth that had been thrown high, falling back to the ground, and the smell of smoke was in the air.

There was a small PRC-25 radio in each bunker housing an officer or non-com. It squawked now, then, “Lieutenant Chenowith? Colonel Fry. I’m at the command post. Get over here on the double.”

“Yes sir. Colonel…?”

Julian could sense the impatience in the strained voice. “Yes?”

“Captain West has just returned. He’s here.”

“Oh? Well, send him over instead. You stay where you are. We’re short of officers. I don’t want to lose both of you.”

Julian eyed his lieutenant in disgust. “My pal,” he muttered. “Listen to all that stuff going off out there.”

Turk put his hand over his heart. “Better you than me, sir.”

Julian took up his steel pot and put it on his head. He grabbed up an M-16, and a bandolier of ammo which he slung over his shoulder. He worked a shell into the chamber from the eighteen-round magazine before leaving the shelter of the bunker. It was a light gun, a result of the stock and grip being made of fiberglass, of 5.63 millimeter caliber. It made quite a difference in combat; a man could carry double the ammunition that had been possible with the heavy Garand of the Second World War and Korea, with its .30 caliber.

Crouching under fire, he ran desperately for the command post some two hundred yards up the hill.

Company D had made contact with a thus far undetermined number of Charlie. Air support had been called in and even as Julian entered the jungle with Company B, he could see five jets flying over, going like a flash. In the distance, they peeled off and went in for the kill, firing their machine guns and two rockets each. Bombs as well, judging by the sound of the explosions. And at least one must have dropped a barrel of napalm, he figured as a burst of orange and black erupted over tree level.

The artillery on the fire post was also in action now, the deafening sound a welcome change from the detonations of the 122 millimeter Chinese rockets that had slammed into the base.

Company B marched into the jungle in the usual manner: three columns, right flank, center file, left flank. Julian West and Sergeant Carl Teichert led the center file. Usually they couldn’t see the men on the flanks because of the trees, vines, and underbrush. In fact, since the men were spaced approximately thirty feet from each other, they couldn’t see many in their own column.

Julian alternated with the sergeant as point man. He carried the M-16, his favorite weapon. Flick the selector on AUTO and press the trigger and you could empty the eighteen-round magazine in something like a second. Of course, that wasn’t the usual way you did it, particularly when firing at a definite target. The thing was to press the trigger lightly, a mere flick and then release it, which gave you a burst of three or four rounds.

Sergeant Teichert carried a CAR-15, his own favorite. Behind him Forry Jackson had an M-16 with an over-and-under grenade launcher attached to it. Next came another grunt rifleman and behind him a crew of three men with an M-60 belt-fed machine gun.

The center file was the safest if they ran into an ambush—and in this jungle a hidden Charlie could be as little as ten feet from you without being detected until he started firing. It would most likely be the right or left flank that got it first.

The sergeant, an old combat buddy, had protested Julian’s taking the lead, although he usually did.

“Fer Chrissakes, sir, you’re the captain. You give the orders. Send us grunts in. We lose you and we don’t have no officer.”

“I don’t like to send a man in where I’m afraid to go myself.”

“You just got out of the hospital for doing that, sir.”

“That’s enough, Sergeant. Let’s go. I’ll take the first hour of walking point, then you can take it.”

“Yes sir.”

The sergeant was a good man. Like Sergeant Karp, he was a veteran of Korea, as well as two hitches here in ’Nam.

Now Julian said to Siu Priu, one of the three Vietnamese assigned to the company as interpreters, “You three stick to the center of the column. You’re not expendable. I don’t know why in the hell Saigon doesn’t set up some schools to teach more of you Vietnamese English. We could cooperate better.”

“Yis, sor,” Siu Priu said.

“That’s English?” Sergeant Teichert demanded. “Some interpreter.” He didn’t like gooks, not even those on the American side, and didn’t go to the bother of disguising the fact.

Marking your way through the jungle was slow work, particularly when you knew that Charlie was in the vicinity. They had a nasty habit of sinking Bouncing Bettys into the ground. You stepped on one and the initial charge bounced it up about four or five feet, and then it blew frags in all directions. The irony of it was that they were American-made mines, either captured from the Americans, or bought by the Viet Cong from South Vietnamese who would sometimes sell a part, or all, of their equipment when in need of a wad of Military Payment Certificates, the money of the ’Nam war.

They plowed on through, Julian alternating with the sergeant as point, watching the ground immediately before their feet, darting looks into the trees and brush to either side.

Suddenly, just as they had started up a low hill, the jungle erupted into a G ötterdammerung of sounds. Tracers reached out at them—green tracers, Charlie’s tracers. To the right, a RPG rocket-propelled grenade went off. Julian didn’t know if it was the enemy’s or their own. He was down on one knee, behind a tree. He fired and fired into the jungle.

Teichert went down suddenly some twenty meters ahead, yelling, “Medic! Oh Christ, Medic!”

Julian looked back over his shoulder. There was a lot of firing going on but the only man he could spot was Forry Jackson, calmly launching grenade after grenade in the direction of Charlie.

He dropped his gun and rucksack and, crouching low, ran for his wounded sergeant. Lead and steel were flicking through the leaves of the trees like bees, thudding when they struck the trunks.

He got to Teichert, and dropped down on his knees.

“Get me out of here, Captain,” the other wheezed, his face ghost-pale. “I’m hit bad.”

Julian couid see that he had taken three hits in the stomach. Where the hell was a medic? Teichert was bleeding all over the place. He fumbled for his first aid kit and pressure bandages.

And that was when he took his own hits. It must have been a grenade, although he hadn’t heard it.

He stared down at his upper leg, at a purple spot welling larger and larger. He could feel the wound pulsing. An artery: he could bleed to death in minutes.

He started hobbling down the trail, holding his hand over the wound.

Behind him, Sergeant Teichert called weakly, “Don’t leave me…”

He came to the tree where he had left his gun and rucksack, and sank down, afraid to go further for fear that movement would increase the bleeding.

Not far down the trail he could hear the M-60 chattering. The men had got it set up in short order.

“Medic!” he screamed. “Goddammit, Medic!”

One came hurrying up. He slapped a pressure bandage and a tourniquet on Julian’s leg and said, “You’re all right.”

“Teichert’s up the trail. Belly wounds. Hurry, for shit’s sake!”

The medic ran. When he came back, he said, “He’s dead. If I got to him just a minute sooner…”

It was there the dream ended and Julian woke up, sweat-drenched as usual, the memory flooding through him: Teichert bleeding to death while his own comparatively minor wounds occupied the medic’s time; deserting his combat buddy, alone on the trail, to save his own skin…

When he had recovered, they gave him a promotion and awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross. The citation read that he had gallantly led his men into combat against serious odds; that when one of his men fell he had gone into enemy fire to rescue him.

That’s what the citation said, but he knew better, and he told the psychiatrist so.

The doctor looked at him speculatively. It was their third session. He said, “You did what you could.”

“No I didn’t.”

“If you had remained, you might both have died.”

Julian just shook his head.

“How many times have you been seriously wounded?”

“Three.”

The psychiatrist looked down at the papers on his desk. He took a deep breath and reached for his pen.

“Major, I am recommending that you be discharged and returned to the States.”