“Hey, Captain Farris, not us!” Kaiser looked sincere. “It was an inside job.”
“Inside job?”
“That’s right, sir. Those little guys will do anything to discredit us Americans. You should have heard the stupid things they said about us last night. ‘Hairy apes. Greasy meat. Stupid.’ No, sir, it doesn’t surprise me a bit, knowing how they really feel about us.”
“Right.” Farris sighed. “Well, Mr. Kaiser, from now on, whenever you get a chance to party it up in town, I’ll be keeping you company.”
“Captain?” Kaiser looked at Farris, distressed.
“What if you guys had been stopped at the gate? Two warrant officers. You need a captain along to keep you out of trouble. Besides, I don’t want to ride around in a deuce-and-a-half when I know you guys can get a Jeep.”
Normally, the Cav carried only its own troopers, but we hauled ARVNs one day. I had heard stories about their unwillingness to fight.
“When you land at the LZ, make sure your door gunners cover the departing ARVNs,” Williams said at the briefing. “There have been several incidents of so-called ARVNs turning around and firing into the helicopter that just dropped them off. Also, you may have a few on your ship that don’t want to get out. If this happens, have one gunner force them out. The other gunner should be covering him. If your gunner has to shoot, make sure he knows to stop shooting when he gets the one who made the wrong move. A wrong move is turning around with a rifle pointed at you. We’re flying this one lift today as a favor. We won’t be doing it again.” Williams gave his flock a paternal look. “Keep your eyes open.”
I was amazed. This was the first time I had heard the rumors verified. In the months to come, I would hear as much about being wary with the ARVNs as I did about the Cong. If neither was to be trusted, who were our allies ? Whose war was this, anyway? The people who had the most at stake wouldn’t get out of the choppers to fight?
But we lifted the South Vietnamese without incident this time. We flew them to a big LZ from which they were supposed to patrol the newly liberated Ia Drang valley and maintain the status quo of allied dominance. Within twenty-four hours they were pinned down by the VC. In two months we would return to retake the valley.
While we waited for a couple of hours to load the ARVNs, I saw a body lying in the field when we landed at the pickup zone next to Holloway. A piece of rope still cinched his neck.
I walked back and asked Resler, “What’s the story on that guy?”
“He’s a Chinese adviser,” Gary said. “The same one we gave to the ARVNs yesterday for questioning.” He looked toward the body. “You see him up close yet?”
“No.”
“Well, he must have answered one of their questions wrong, because they took a chunk out of the side of his head as big as your fist.” He grimaced. “His brains are leaking out. Want to go see him?”
“No. I’ve seen enough brains to last me.”
“Hey, look at those guys.” Gary pointed toward the body, about two hundred feet away. Two soldiers from the adviser compound were setting up a pose for a photograph. One man knelt on one knee behind the body while his friend moved around looking for the best angle for a snapshot. He took a few shots, but apparently the pose wasn’t lively enough for him. He had his friend grab the dead man by the hair and raise the gory head off the ground, brains dripping. He posed like a man holding a dead gazelle.
With the ARVN in place, the Cav’s mission was done. We only killed people; we did not take land. Such was the war of attrition.
By November 26, America had won its first large-scale encounter with the North Vietnamese army. The Cav and the B-52s killed 1800 Communists. The NVA killed more than 300 GIs. The Ia Drang valley campaign was one of the few battles in which I saw clearings filled with NVA bodies. In all, I might have seen a thousand of their corpses sprawled in the sun, rotting. We left them there.
The Cav waited a few days before looking for its missing. That gave the bodies time to get ripe enough for the patrols we lifted out to find them. It was the only way a dead man could be found in the tall elephant grass.
They did not growl now. Stacked on the cargo deck, they still fought, frozen inside their rubber bags, arms and legs stiffly askew. The smell of death seeped out of the zippered pouches and made the living retch. No matter how fast I flew, the smell would not blow away.
“We cut the enemy’s throat instead of just jabbing away at his stomach. This is just the beginning,” said one of our generals in Life magazine.
During the few days we hung around Pleiku before returning to An Khe, I spent most of my time with a couple of kids. I met them on one of my first visits to Pleiku. They were part of the mob who begged for candy and advertised their sisters to the GIs. What stood out about the older of the two brothers was his maturity at the age of nine. When the other kids became very aggressive, I would see Lang off to the side with a disapproving look on his face. He seemed to think that the others were too rowdy, too greedy.
Eventually, when the candy was gone and all the sisters were sold, the others would leave. I would be alone or with Resler, and Lang would come forward, smiling. He liked to hunker down and talk. We squatted in the street and talked of our two worlds in pidgin English and with gestures. He wore a black cotton shirt, tan shorts, and no shoes. He was missing two front teeth, and his hair was cut short in a burr.
Somehow Lang always knew when I would be coming to town. He said he knew, and pointed to his head. I think he spent most of his time waiting, if not for me, then for someone. He always ran to greet me as I walked up the street.
One night when Lang introduced me to a dejected-looking child, younger than he, whom he called brother, I couldn’t stand it anymore and I took them both to a small store and bought them new shoes and shirts. The people in the shop were impressed. Their faces warmed with expressions of approval.
The next stop was a restaurant where I bought them each a steak dinner. Lang sipped some of my beer and leaned back in his chair, looking proud, as if he owned the place. His brother was very shy, and I never knew him as well.
I spent my last two days with them. By our talks and my asking other people I met, I determined that they were orphans. Where they slept no one knew. With gestures, guesses, and nods we politely discussed how their parents would be back to get them (from where they did not know) and would surely thank me for having befriended and provided for their children. Then we toured the city. As they were always hungry, our first trip was to the restaurant, then a long walk past scores of new shops to the public square, where the loudspeakers blared with news from the government.
The night before my return to An Khe, they knew about it without my saying anything. They knew it was ending, and they cried. My last look at them was from the back of a truck as I pulled away. They stood under a streetlight and waved and cried miserably. The light grew distant as we bounced back to the Turkey Farm. The darkness hid my tears, but no one watched anyway.
II. SWAVE AND DEBONER
A soaking wet Connors pushed open the flap and slogged inside. The rain beat furiously outside. He looked at the mud floor. “I am a swave and deboner army aviator,” he said.
“The word is suave,” I said.
“Not over here it ain’t.”
6. The Holidays
Vietnam is like the Alamo.
December 1965