I pushed myself away from the stack of hot merchandise. He looked at us and smiled warmly. His eyes did not so much as glance at the stack. He pinned his look on Connors.
“No, sir,” said Connors. “I sure haven’t seen anything like that. I’d sure like to have one of those mattresses, too.”
“I’m sure you would, son,” said the colonel, nodding kindly. “Anybody else know anything about this missing gear from the Croatan?” the colonel said as he walked toward the GP tent. Nate, standing next to the canvas doorway, said, “No, sir. Haven’t seen anything like you’re talking about around here.” A huge pile of ropes lay nearby.
“Not a thing, sir,” said Riker, leaning against a stack of lumber.
“Nothing, sir,” said Kaiser.
Twenty pairs of eyes sincerely, innocently denied that all this stuff lying in full view existed.
“Well, thank you, men, for your time and your cooperation.” The colonel smiled and turned to Fields, who walked him back to his Jeep.
While the sun dried our gear, Fields called us together for a briefing. The map tripod was set up in front of the operations tent. Fields was wearing a set of the new jungle fatigues and boots that the advance party had picked up for him. The rest of us were waiting for them to be issued. Jungle fatigues fitted loosely. The top wasn’t tucked in; it was more like a safari jacket. The boots were canvas-topped and vented to keep your feet dry.
“Okay, men, now that you are all here, this is what’s happening.” Fields held his folding pointer collapsed in front of him. “All that activity you saw out on the Golf Course yesterday was the 227th”—our sister assault-helicopter battalion—“going out to help the 101st.” He unfolded the pointer and then snapped it shut again. “They got the Airborne out of a bind and lost some ships and people doing it. I don’t have accurate figures yet.” (Four ships shot down, one crew lost, it turned out.) He opened his pointer and turned to the tripod. “The reason for this briefing is to give you the lay of the camp and what we’re going to be doing for the next couple of weeks.” He pointed to a drawing of the camp on the first page of the big pad. “Our four companies are grouped here, below the southeast corner of the Golf Course.” He described the camp layout and then stopped and tore off the page, revealing another drawing. “This is a plan for Bravo Company’s area.” He pointed. “Now, notice that this road here on the map is not on the ground over there.” He pointed toward the medical tent that marked the division between us and Charlie Company, nicknamed the Snakes. “Nor is this ditch, or this bunker, nor any of these tents. Putting these things in place on the ground will be our job. The only flying will be admin flights and courier missions. We must finish setting up camp before we start work. Everyone will work. That means all officers and warrant officers as well as NCOs and enlisted. There will be police call every morning and plenty of work details every day. Furthermore, some of you will have to go out on the Golf Course and chop out the stumps.” Fields paused as some of us turned around to look at the 275-acre heliport and the thousands of stumps.
“You mean, the engineers aren’t going to push them things out?” said Decker.
“That’s right.” We turned around as Fields spoke. “The engineers aren’t being used, because we don’t want to expose the dirt. When we get into the dry season, the dust will be fierce around here.” We looked back around to the muddy trails and ravines. It didn’t look as though it could be much worse than it was.
“What do we do with the stumps after we dig them out?” Decker was very interested in the stump operation.
“When we get enough of them loose, the plan is to haul them away with the Hueys. That’s down the road. In the meantime, I need a detail to fill sandbags for the bunkers, a detail to cut the road, a detail to dig the ditches, and a detail to put in phone lines.”
Somehow the glamour of being an army aviator eluded me. I dug ditches along the company road. Resler, Banjo, Connors, Nate, Riker, and Kaiser dug, too.
We were worrying out a small stump in the middle of the road when a little green snake wriggled out of the roots.
“Hey! A snake,” yelled Banjo.
“Hey yeah,” said Connors, “let’s catch it.”
The snake was trying to get back into the protection of the roots. Armed with a variety of sticks, shovels, axes, and other probing instruments, we rolled the stump away and surrounded the snake.
“Is it poisonous?” asked Nate.
“Naw,” said Connors. “It’s a green snake. I’ve seen them a hundred times back home.” Connors jumped abruptly as the snake, which he was trying to pin with his stick, struck fiercely. “Damn. I’ve never seen them do that before.”
“Shit, Connors. You going to let a green snake scare you?” laughed Banjo. He squatted down with a stick to try his luck.
Captain Farris came to see what the commotion was all about. “Hey, don’t touch that snake,” he yelled. “That’s a bamboo viper. Deadly poisonous!”
The circle of snake hunters widened quickly.
“Poisonous?” Banjo turned and glared at Connors. “Shit, Connors, I was just about to grab that little fucker. Green snake, my ass!”
“It’s green, ain’t it?” yelled Connors.
“Yeah,” said Farris. “It’s a green bamboo viper.” Farris took a shovel from Resler and quickly pushed the blade through the snake and firmly into the ground. The two halves twitched and wriggled in the dirt. Its mouth yawned wide in its death throes.
“Just remember,” said Farris, “of the thirty-three kinds of snakes over here, thirty-one are poisonous.”
“How do we tell them apart?” asked Resler.
“I think that with those ratios, you could afford to come to a prejudicial, sweeping generalization—like, kill them all.” Farris turned and left.
The dirt from the ditches was shoveled into sandbags. Our squad was divided. Five of us filled the bags while the other half carried the sixty-pound sacks a hundred feet to the site of our first bunker.
We laid a foundation of sandbags measuring fifteen feet square with one opening for the door, deciding after much debate that the walls only needed to be one bag thick. Once the foundation was laid, more guys from the platoon joined us to speed up the work. By late afternoon we had the walls six feet high.
Another work detail had been given the task of getting large trees to serve as the rafters for the roof. These were smoothed and trimmed to size with axes. Just before evening chow, we had them set in place across the top of the sandbags.
“Look at the shit in this dip water.” Captain Morris, the mess officer, scowled at the garbage can of steaming water. Kerosene immersion heaters were supposed to keep the water boiling to sterilize our mess gear. As the first few men walked past and dipped their gear, the water began to cool and collect a thin film of grease and assorted debris. Morris stomped angrily into the mess tent, presumably to confront the mess sergeant.
Decker eyed the water disdainfully. “This damn water is rank enough to bury,” he said loudly.
“Yeah,” said Connors from behind me in the chow line, “they should bury it in the same pit they throw whatever else died in there.” He nodded toward the mess tent.
“That’s our chow you smell,” said Banjo.
“I’m gonna puke.” Connors made a face and grabbed his stomach. “What is that shit? Why can’t we eat C rations?”