“You’ll have to come out sometime, Major.”
“You’re crazy! You can’t pull a gun on a superior officer and hold him captive in his own quarters. You’re going to be in serious trouble if you don’t put that gun away. Right now!”
“You killed Collins, Major. Now it’s your turn.” Hall raised his pistol to aim.
“Help!” Disaster screamed when he saw Williams come near the mess tent. Williams looked up and saw Hall in the darkening twilight. Disaster peered hopefully out, then yelled again, “Help! Major Williams, get this madman away from me!” Williams nodded and rinsed his mess kit before he walked into the mess tent.
Nobody came to Disaster’s aid. Once in a while we heard him yell. No one paid the slightest attention. Later that night Hall gave up the vigil. I heard him singing drunkenly on the path outside my tent. The next morning he was still so drunk that he could not be allowed to fly.
That incident seemed to precipitate a series of conflicts among us as tension took its toll. Hall beat up Daisy one night, splitting his lip. He continued to harass Disaster by throwing Montagnard spears at him as he walked around the camp. Soon after Captain Fontaine was carried screaming back to his hooch; Riker told Shaker, very plainly, to shove it, when Shaker told him to go work on the club. Connors and Nate pushed each other around over where the laundry should be hung. Nate and Kaiser scuffled over a territorial dispute.
The farewell party for Williams was very quiet. The major, an excellent air leader, was being transferred to brigade staff in Saigon—a move up. The party was restrained because Williams had never been close to us, like Fields had been.
The next day, after an award ceremony to pass out air medals among us, our new CO, Major Crane, made his introduction speech.
“I think that everything around here is just fine except for personal neatness,” said Crane. “This company has an impressive list of accomplishments in the Cav. I’m sure you’ve been so busy that you just let things slide.” He wore crisp fatigues and spit-shined boots. Even Williams, Mr. Hardass himself, didn’t worry about that kind of bullshit. Williams concentrated on our missions. Crane was already talking about the busywork.
“You may not think that wearing a shirt in the company area is very important—and, by the way, the shirt must be tucked in—but I do. Sure, it’s tough here. This is combat. But if we let just one aspect of our professional demeanor fall to the wayside, our overall performance will suffer.” He paused, smiled. Just a regular guy doing his job. “So from now on, we will conform to standard army dress codes at all times. That means tucked-in shirts outside the tents, bloused boots, and clean uniforms.”
It’s our own fault, I thought. We spent so much time making this place look civilized that this guy thinks he’s back at Fort Benning.
“While I’m talking about keeping yourselves clean, I may as well announce a bit of good news.” He smiled. “Starting tomorrow, we will be digging our own company well so we can have our own showers.” He waited. I think he expected some cheers here. We were silent. “Captain Sherman will be the project leader, and I want you all to give him your fullest cooperation. Dismissed.”
“My aching fucking back,” said Connors back at the tent. “I was kind of getting used to cleaning up the way I do.”
“Shit. How do you think you clean up?” asked Banjo.
“Well, just like everybody else. I keep my uniform on until it becomes a second skin. Then, when I peel it off, it takes all the crud with it.”
“I would like to have a shower around here,” said Gary.
“Yeah, I would, too. I wonder how deep we have to dig?” I said.
“Maybe all the way to Cincinnati!” Gary said.
Farris walked in. “I have another announcement for you guys.” He waited until we gathered around him.
“We need volunteers to transfer to other aviation units to make room for the replacements.”
“Transfer out of the Cav?” Gary asked.
“That’s right.”
“When?” somebody asked.
“Sometime between now and the end of next month.”
This was my chance. Maybe I could get a cushy job at Qui Nhon, flying advisers or something. I raised my hand.
For the next few days I flew local routine missions or dug the new well. While I filled buckets and watched them being hauled up on a rope, I daydreamed about my new assignment. A friend of mine from flight school had written saying that he was assigned to a navy carrier with his own Huey. I knew there were better jobs than the Cav. Maybe a 9-to-5 courier pilot in Saigon. Imagine, no more mud, tents, or boonies.
At twenty-five feet we struck rock. Sherman called in some guys from the engineers who said we’d have to blast.
Gary and I flew over the Bob Hope show on our way to Happy Valley. While we flew ass-and-trash that afternoon, we listened to the most bizarre radio conversation I had ever heard.
“Raven Six, Delta One. We have a target in sight.” Delta One was a gunship.
“Roger, Delta One. Do you see anything on their backs?”
“Negative.”
“Well, there’s just no way to be sure. Go ahead and get them.”
“Roger.”
“What the heck are they talking about?” asked Gary. We had just picked up some empty food containers and were sailing down the side of a mountain.
“Got me,” I said.
“Raven Six, our guns just won’t stop them.”
“You tried to get them in the head?”
“Roger.”
“Use the rockets.”
“Roger.” Silence. Gary was setting up for an approach to the road patrol on our resupply route.
“Raven Six, Delta One. That did it. We got both of ‘em.”
“Glad to hear it, Delta One. I was beginning to wonder if anything we had could stop an elephant.” Elephant? We’re killing fucking elephants?
“Roger. Anything else?”
“Of course, Delta One. Go down and get the tusks.”
“I’m sick,” said Gary. “Killing elephants is like blasting your grandmother.”
Back at the company, there was general outrage at the news that the ivory was delivered to division HQ. It was okay to kill people in a war, but don’t touch innocent by standers like elephants.
“Any man who’d do that would come into your house and shoot your dog,” Decker said.
“Get your camera, Mason!” Sherman yelled.
“What’s up?”
“We’re going to blast the well. Get your camera.”
I stood back along the trail to the well and pointed my camera.
“Everybody clear?” Sherman yelled.
“Clear.”
Bonk. A small cloud of dust rose five feet above the site. I snapped the picture.
“Shit. I thought it woulda made more noise than that,” yelled Sherman.
“Yeah. Did it go off?”
“Is there water?” Everybody went over to the well.
“Hoo-fucking-ray,” said Connors. “We got more dirt under them rocks.”
“We’ll just keep digging,” announced Sherman.
Somebody had painted a five-by-ten-foot mural of LZ X-Ray on the wall of our new club. I had a bourbon and water in my hand as I walked around. The furniture, shipped in from the States, looked foreign. The chairs were stained bamboo with tropical-print cushions. The tables had bamboo legs and Formica tops.
The place was packed for the official opening. We all knew that the Colonel was going to bring nurses to the affair. The Colonel wasn’t around yet. The hundred or so guys passed the time drinking twenty-five-cent‘drinks in rapid succession.
Nearly everybody from our company was there. Nate and Kaiser talked seriously at the bar while Nate’s hand kept time with a song played on the new stereo system. Connors and Banjo laughed from a table nearby. Farris nursed a Seven-Up but smiled anyway. Hall sat in a corner staring at the mural. Disaster shadowed Crane and talked business. Wendall and Barber watched the tape recorder work. Resler grinned like a child on his second beer. Riker’s red face was bright as he drank more than he usually did. I stood by the bar wondering whether I got the clap in Vietnam or in Taipei.