I had mixed feelings. The job kept me behind in the safety of the camp, but being left behind for any reason was hard to bear. What a stupid emotion! I’d rather do a mountain of paperwork than be out flying. So why did I feel so rotten? What am I? A lemming? Relax and take it easy while you’ve got the chance.
“Aircraft commander says he did not realize that the LZ was filled with hidden stumps,” the report read. “Aircraft was pinned to a large sharpened stump, causing the aircraft to be abandoned.” Who cares? Why do we have to document every accident in this goddamn war? How can a pilot be expected to know everything? What do they expect, X-ray vision?
“Can I sit here, sir?” Sergeant Riles sauntered to my table.
“Sure.”
He pushed a file folder aside and put his canteen cup on the spot. “Got to take a break from the fuckin’ supply tent,” announced Riles.
“Yeah. Gets tough in there.” I hated myself for being cynical with one of the stay-behinds. And this one was the company’s genuine loser. Riles kept himself drunk by stealing whiskey from the crews’ stashes while they were out. He had been a master sergeant once, but because of his drinking he was now a pfc. We called him “Sergeant” because he grew very depressed with the word “Private.”
“Well, not that tough.” He laughed.
If Riles is a stay-behind and a loser, what does that make me? A feeling of revulsion came over me.
“Like to talk, Sergeant, but I got all this shit to do.”
“Right. Don’t mind me. Gotta get back anyway. Got this order today that we got to get ready for an IG inspection.”
“Uh-huh.” I barely glanced over a form.
“Hate that shit. Ever do an IG?”
“Never. Never will, either.”
Riles stood up and waited for me to say something. The silence spoke and he finally slumped off. I wanted to call him back and apologize for my thoughts. But I didn’t.
While the convoy crawled along Route 19, I thought about the British marching resolutely into American ambushes. The cook had lent me his M-16, which now lay across my lap as I sat in the Jeep. I thought of my rank insignia as the equivalent to the British Redcoat, and turned my collar under. By virtue of my being grounded, I was the officer in charge of our first road convoy to Pleiku.
“Group Mobile 100 ran from An Khe to Pleiku once,” said Wendall.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“They were French equivalent to the First Cav,” said Wendall. “They ran around these same roads in long caravans trying to beat the Vietminh. Group 100 was wiped out near the Mang Yang pass.”
“Thanks, Wendall. Great news.”
“Well, it’s history. You can learn from history, you know.”
“How’s that supposed to help me now?”
“Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t go to sleep on the trip. Have fun.”
The big difference, of course, was that we had patrols along the entire route. Knowing this did not suppress my fears. I had become very skeptical of secure LZs, roads, bridges, and camps. During the entire fifty-mile drive I watched the elephant grass along the road, braced for explosions at every narrow pass, and sat lightly on the seat when we crossed each bridge. When we drove into the Turkey Farm, I immediately found the flight surgeon and asked to get back on flight status.
“Sorry, you’re totally blocked up. If I let you fly, it’ll only get worse. Check back in a couple of days.”
In a damp mist a hundred men pulled the bulky GPs from the trucks and began setting them up while the ships were out on a mission. In less than an hour, the flat, grassy field outside Camp Holloway was transformed into a tent city. Water bags, called “lister bags,” were set up on tripods; the mess tent was put together; and while the men stacked C-ration boxes around the sides, the cooks started the evening meal.
While all this was going on, I wandered around and made sure that the baggage for our company got put in the appropriate tents. Then I had nothing to do but deal with my thoughts. I sat on my cot alone in the dank GP and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. I was tortured by conflicting feelings. The Bobbsey Creeps were the only other pilots on the ground, reinforcing my misery.
At the first sound of the returning ships, I went outside and watched. The Hueys snaked out of the mist and with increasing noise gathered on the field west of the camp. Huey after Huey hovered to a landing. The field became a complicated, dance of whirling rotor blades, swinging fuselages, and swirling mist. The roaring rush of the turbines died, and the rotors swung lazily as the ships shut down. The crew wandered up to the camp. They all had come back.
I felt like an abandoned child seeing his family again. Soon the tent was filled with the usual sounds.
“Hey, Nate, the next time you cut me out like that, I‘ll—”
“Fuck you, Connors. If you’d been watching what you were doing, you’d have kept your distance.
“Jesus Christ! I don’t know who’s worse, you or the Cong.”
It was nice to hear.
My ten days on the ground seemed interminable. Our battalion spent two more days at the Turkey Farm before packing up to go north to Kontum. Again I rode in the convoy.
We found an old French barracks that the Vietnamese had been using as stables and chicken coops. After a lot of cleaning up, this became our Kontum camp. I saw the flight surgeon each morning, and each morning he continued my treatment of drugs and no flying.
Finally, after two days at Kontum, I was put back on flight status. Riker and I were assigned to fly together. As I walked out to the flight line, I felt weightless with joy. My work had become my home, and I was glad to be back.
The ships were shadows in the early-morning mist. We took off singly to join up out of the fog. Climbing over vague trees, we saw the earth disappear. Riker, who knew where we were going, told me to turn left. Just as I did we saw the phantom of a Huey cross immediately in front of us. I lurched back on the controls, but that was not what saved us from a midair collision. Luck had been with us.
The mission was to resupply the searching patrols. We followed three other ships thirty miles up to Dak To, separated, and flew west to one of our patrols.
We shut down while the grunts dragged out insulated cases of hot food. A sergeant came over and invited us to join them for breakfast. We did. Hot reconstituted scrambled eggs, bacon, white toast, and coffee. We sat on the Huey’s deck and ate silently. The mist was beginning to burn off, and the dark shadows around us grew taller, revealing themselves as mountains.
The platoon leader, a skinny second lieutenant, came over and shot the shit for a while.
“Find anything?” Riker asked.
“Just some old campsites.” The lieutenant patted his blouse for cigarettes. I offered him a Pall Mall. “Thanks.”
“We hear that the VC don’t want to fight the Cav.”
“Can’t blame them, can you?” said the lieutenant. “Every time they do, we clobber the shit out of them.”
Yeah, as long as we have helicopters, Phantoms, and B-52 bombers, I thought. I said, “Maybe the war is almost over.”
“Maybe. They keep talking about peace negotiations all the time. Johnson’s got ‘em in a bind up north, and we’re putting the squeeze on ’em down here. They might just see that it’s impossible to win.”
“Yeah,” said Riker. “I don’t see how the little fucks can go on much longer. McNamara says we’re due out of here in less than a year. Some people say that we might not even serve a complete tour, could end that quick.”