She put her hand on my shoulder and said, “That was a very brave and noble thing.”
I ignored that and said, “The little bastard kept sending me pictures of himself in beer halls with fräuleins on his lap. And my mother, who is totally clueless, kept telling everyone that Benny got sent to Germany because he took a year of German in high school. And Paul took French, so they sent him to Vietnam, where she’d heard they spoke French. She thought Vietnam was near Paris.”
Susan was laughing.
“Ready to roll?”
“Yes.”
She put out her cigarette, and we got into the back seat of the RAV. Susan asked me, “Are your parents alive?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to meet them.”
“I’ll give you their address.”
“And Benny?”
“Still leading a charmed life. I also have another brother, Davey, who still lives in South Boston.”
“I’d like to meet all of them.”
I tried to picture the Webers of Lenox getting together for a few beers with the Brenners of South Boston, and I wasn’t getting a good image of that gathering.
Mr. Loc got behind the wheel and off we went.
We drove along the tree-shaded river road past a few hotels and restaurants, past the Cercle Sportif, and the Ho Chi Minh Museum, and within a few minutes, we were out of the small city and into the low rolling hills, heading south.
I could see the tombs of the emperors scattered around, walled compounds surrounded by huge trees in park-like settings. Susan took a picture from the moving vehicle.
Most tourists, I suspected, came out of the city to see the tombs and pagodas, but I was going elsewhere. I said to Susan, “You didn’t have to come with me. There are better things to see here than battlefields.”
She took my hand and said, “I saw most of the sights when I was here last time. This time I want to see what you saw.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what I saw.
The road continued south, through the necropolis, then swung west. Since it was the Tet holiday week, there was not much traffic on the road. Within the villages, I could see kids playing, and whole families gathered outside, talking and eating under trees.
I took the map from the passenger seat and looked at it. This was basically a road map, and not a very good one. The maps I’d used were detailed army terrain maps, partly taken from the French military maps. The army maps were covered with plasticine to survive the climate, and we used grease pencils to show the American firebases, airfields, base camps, and other installations. Army Intelligence would give us updates on the suspected locations of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army units, which we’d note on the map. I don’t know where they got this information, but most of our firefights were in places where the enemy wasn’t supposed to be.
I looked up ahead and saw we were approaching the Perfume River. There was no bridge, according to the map, and no bridge in reality, in case I was expecting a pleasant surprise.
Mr. Loc drove onto a barge that could accommodate two vehicles. We were the only car waiting, and the ferryman said something to us. Susan said to me, “We can pay for two vehicles, or we could be here all day. Two bucks.”
I gave the ferryman two bucks, and we got out of the RAV. Susan and I stood on the deck as the ferry made its way across the Perfume River. She took a picture from the boat.
I said to Susan, “Ask Mr. Loc if you can take his picture.”
She asked him, and he shook his head and replied in a sharp tone.
Susan said to me, “He does not want his picture taken.”
I looked across the river to the opposite shore and said to Susan, “The Army Corps of Engineers used to bridge these rivers with pontoon bridges. Chuck, however, didn’t like to see standing bridges, and he’d load up a bamboo raft with high explosives and wait for a convoy to cross. Then he’d float along with the other craft, trying to look like Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn, and at the last minute, he’d set a timer, abandon ship, and swim underwater with a breathing reed. Usually, though, we could see this coming, and we’d blow Chuck and his raft out of the water before he got to the bridge.”
Susan had no comment.
I added, “This was why we all liked bridge duty. It was one of the more interesting games we played.” I looked at Susan, who was processing this, and said, “I guess you had to be there.”
She asked, “Paul, now that you’re grown up and mature, when you look back on this, do you see it as… well, not within the normal range of behavior?”
“It seemed normal at the time. I mean, most of what we did, said, and thought was appropriate for the situation. Any other kind of behavior that you’d call normal would be considered abnormal here. Getting excited about sitting on a bridge all day, waiting to blow Charlie out of the water — instead of patrolling the jungle all day — is, I think, quite normal. Don’t you agree?”
“I guess. I can see that.”
“Good.” I admitted, however, “It does seem a little weird, now that I think about it.”
We reached the opposite bank, and we got back into the vehicle.
Mr. Loc drove off the barge onto the road, and we continued on, west toward the hills and mountains looming in the distance.
We were making only about fifty KPH, and it would take us over an hour to get to the A Shau Valley, if the road stayed this good.
The countryside was hilly, but the Viets had managed to extend their rice paddy cultivation through a series of dikes and waterwheels. The countryside looked prosperous and more inhabited than I remembered it.
We came to a small town called Binh Bien, which was the last town on this road. Beyond this was what we used to call Indian Territory.
The road rose, and before long, we were in the hills, which were covered with scrub brush and red shale.
I said to Susan, “We had to dig in every night, and we’d find a hill like that one over there with the steepest sides possible, and the best fields of fire. This is mostly shale, and it would take us hours with these little entrenching tools just to scratch out a shallow sleeping hole that would also become our firing hole, if we got hit during the night. The hole looked like a shallow grave, which it sometimes became. We’d set out trip flares and claymore mines around our perimeter. The claymore had a hand-squeeze generator attached to an electrical wire that put out enough juice to blow the detonator. The claymore mine fired hundreds of ball bearings downrange, like a giant shotgun blast, and anyone within about a hundred feet to the front of it would be mowed down. It was a very effective defense weapon, and if it weren’t for the trip flares and the claymores, most of us would not have slept for the entire year we were here.”
She nodded.
The road started to twist through a very narrow pass with steep slopes rising on either side, and the vegetation became thicker. A mountain stream ran along the road, and I could imagine that it flooded during the monsoon, making the road impassable.
I said to Susan, “This is the only way into the valley from Vietnam, but the Americans never went in overland because this pass was an ambush waiting to happen. We flew in by helicopter and brought everything we needed by air.”
The blacktop had mostly disappeared, and as we got higher, the clouds drifted across the slopes, a mist rose off the ground, and it was getting cold. Mr. Loc was not too bad a driver and took it easy. We hadn’t seen a vehicle or a human being in about twenty kilometers.