He stopped talking. He had found a box of C rations that hadn’t been robbed of the coffee packet. He smiled like he was seeing an old friend. We were always short of coffee packets because we stole them from the boxes when we had to laager for any length of time. He looked at me. “So, do you understand now?”
“Yes, I can understand that.” I shook my head as Farris offered me a can of cookies. “What I can’t understand, though, is why we don’t plan ahead. Why is it always a surprise that we’re going to have to stay out overnight?” Farris listened while he levered the folding P-38 can opener supplied with each meal around the can of cookies. He pried up the olive drab can lid to expose three big shortening cookies, which he again offered to me. I waved them away.
“Well,” he answered. “That’s pretty complicated, why we don’t plan ahead.” He dumped the cookies out of the can, back into the C-ration case, and blew out the crumbs inside the tin. Then he bent down and scraped the can across the ground to collect some sand. When it was half full, he tapped the can on the cargo deck to level it. “Sometimes we know we’re going to stay overnight, and sometimes we don’t.” He bent down to the ground and stretched out his arm, can of sand in hand, underneath the belly of the Huey. For a few seconds all I could see of him was his legs as he pushed the can up to the fuel-drain valve. Soaking the sand with jet fuel, he pulled himself back up, carrying his fueled stove. “When we do know that we will be staying out like this before we leave for a mission, we plan for it.” He sat the stove on the ground. “When we don’t know we will be staying out like this, we don’t.” He reached back into the C-ration case and found another can of cookies. He opened the can with a few deft twists of the P-38. “This”—his brown eyes scanned the busy scene around him as if for the first time—“this is an example of one of those times we didn’t plan ahead.”
“Isn’t it true that we could get mortared out here and lose most of our aircraft?” I was determined to get a logical explanation.
He had punched some triangular holes just beneath the top edge of the tin-can stove. This would let the flame burn when he placed the can of water on top. When he judged that all was in order, he placed the stove and tin of water on the ground about ten feet from the Huey and lighted the fire. A dark-orange flame swirled out of the can, cooling to sooty smoke. He looked up from his hunkered-down position next to his creation and said, “Yes.” Grabbing the tin of water by the folded-back lid, he gently lowered it to the stove. He kept it slightly offset, to let the flame rush up one side of the tin. Small bubbles formed almost immediately on the side where the flame danced.
“So how can they possibly justify our sitting out here like this?” I asked. “If we lost the ships out here, it would set us back for weeks or months. Being a little late in the morning, if it came to that, seems a lot less risky.”
The water boiled. He picked the can off the flame, using a small piece of cardboard to protect his fingers from the hot lid. Placing the can carefully on the ground, he tore the top inch off the foil packet of instant coffee and dumped the granules into the water. The brown granules dissolved, and the smell wafted past my nose. “You’re right,” he said.
“So, why are we here?” I asked, perplexed.
Farris stirred in sugar and coffee creamer from their packets. Standing up, he held a piping-hot cup of coffee in his hands. He took a careful sip, breathing in sharply as he did. “I don’t know.” He smiled at me. Noticing the surprised look on my face, he said, “Here”—he held the coffee toward me—“Want a sip?”
The sun was setting behind the pass. I left Farris sipping his coffee and went looking for Resler.
I stopped back by my ship, where Leese was busy heating up his meal. Our case of C’s was nearly empty except for some single cans of scrambled eggs, utensil packs, two or three minipacks of cigarettes, and about fifteen P-38 can openers. No complete meals. Leese was hunkered down talking WWII next to the Huey with his buddy, the ex-Luftwaffe pilot, Gotler. I told him I’d see him later, and left.
Gary had a much better selection of food—half a case of unopened, individual meals—so I had dinner with him.
“Let’s see. We’ve got beef with noodles, beef stew, spaghetti with meatballs, boned chicken, or scrambled eggs,” Gary said as he sorted through the box on the cargo deck.
“Boned chicken,” I said.
“Right.”
We sat eating as the last glow of light faded behind the pass. Mosquitoes began to gather, and Gary and I rolled our sleeves down to protect our arms. It was hot and muggy in the valley and it looked like rain.
We talked of war. I told him about how Leese had got out of the LZ with twelve grunts on board. He told me about taking a round through his canopy. “One minute, I’m flying along okay, and then the next split second a hole appears in the Plexiglas, right in front of my face.” He stopped to point at his palm, as though it were the windshield. “No sound; it just suddenly appeared. For a second I didn’t know if this was the last thing I was seeing or what. I felt like an asshole, but I asked Nate to tell me if he saw any blood coming from my face or anything. When he said no, I knew I was still alive. I know one thing now, for sure: If I do get hit in the head, I’ll never know it. It’s very quick.”
Nate’s face suddenly flashed into existence as he lit his pipe. He had walked up to us from somewhere out of the darkness. He squatted beside us and puffed loudly on his pipe. It smelled good. I made another mental note to quit smoking cigarettes and take up pipes. Without realizing it, I was smoking three and four packs a day.
His pipe bowl hissed. His sharp, triangular face with its small, serious mouth glowed periodically as he puffed. When the glow died down, his features disappeared and only the top of his hat and shoulders showed in the cloudy moonlight.
He continued to puff, not speaking. His presence had quieted Gary and me. His greater experience as a helicopter pilot somewhat intimidated us. An original member of the old 11th Air Assault, he had been shot down once.
“Gary tell you about the round we took today?” he finally said.
“Yeah, that was close,” I said.
“Yes, it was. And they say things are going to get worse.”
“They” again. “How do they know that?” I asked.
“Wendall read it in a book. Street Without Joy.” Fucking Wendall again. “The guy who wrote it knows how the VC worked against the French. He says the Cav’ll get it good when we move farther north.” He puffed again, but the glow had burned down below the top crust of tobacco and there was only a hissing sound in the darkness.
“How does he say we’ll get it?” Gary asked. I could hear him crumpling the trash from the dinner he had just finished. He snapped each plastic utensil.
“He says that when we get farther north, the landing zones are only big enough for one or two ships at a time. The Cong dig a hole in the LZ and cover it with brush. Then they leave one or two men hiding there during our prestrikes. They stay concealed in the hole during the strikes and get us as we come, with machine-gun fire up through the cockpit,” Nate said calmly.
He seemed to have received special training somewhere that allowed him to live with such possibilities without a trace of fear. He even had a book to back his theories. He offered no solution to this trap, so I pushed for one.
“So, what can we do about it? How can we avoid the trap?”
“Nothing, except to keep your eyes out for a suspicious pile of brush in the LZ,” he said, as if it were just one more critical maneuver we rank amateurs had yet to learn, as though the old salts already watched for those suspicious piles of brush.