Chapter Four
Vietnam Spring (part one)
The last thing Josh remembered was sweating in his bunk wondering how any place on earth could be this hot—and humid—at ten o'clock at night in what the calendar said was wintertime. True, it was March in Vietnam but spring was not yet official and every hygrometer in MMAF (Marble Mountain Air Facility) pointed to 100%. What would summer be like?
You would think, Josh thought, that someone who grew up in Florida would be used to humidity like this. But it was never like this in Florida in early March. Thank God for the fan. It sat on a box at the foot of the bunk blowing directly at him. The base PX couldn't keep fans in stock and this one had cost a fortune from a sidewalk vendor in downtown Da Nang but it was worth every black market dollar. It was a good, all-metal General Electric fan and it could oscillate, but why share air when the opposite bunk lay stripped and empty? Pointed straight at Josh's chest the fan, as good as it was, struggled to move a narrow tunnel of air in his direction.
For a while Josh felt like he would suffocate in the blackness. Then the fan must have made a difference because at some point he slipped into a dreamy sleep. He was twelve or thirteen again and he and cousin Nancy romped in the shallows along Green Key Beach, dancing among the fiddler crabs skittering on the sand. It must have been late spring or the beginning of summer, because a trace of coolness in the breeze filtered through the nearby mangroves and Nancy lifted her face to the warm sun.
Josh looked at the sunburn peel on the bridge of her nose. Her dark hair whipped around twin sprays of freckles on either side of an upturned nose. He took Nancy's hand and led her to the water's edge.
A sharp crack overhead woke him in his bunk. He blinked and called his cousin's name. "Nancy," he muttered, and then "Nancy!" louder, directed vaguely at the window of the hooch. Josh rubbed his eyes and lifted the curtain, peering out.
Crack! Blam! A growling thunder came from the west and then a concussion and Josh thought, son-of-a-bitch it's a goddamn rocket attack. I didn't think we were supposed to have this shit going on any more. Not here. This is supposed to be a secure facility.
Boom! The compound lighted up fluorescent, a white-hot flicker and trembling after-shock. Josh stumbled to the door, his dog tags rattling on the metal frame of the fan. Slam! Bang! Another concussion and Josh put one knee on the floor of the hooch and covered his head.
Then he heard a rumble that sounded distant yet familiar. It seemed to come from beyond the mountains, from west in the highlands and the sound rumbled low and lingered. That's no explosion and it's no gun, either.
Then the sky opened and the rain came, the heavy drops plunking against the tin roof and lightning flared again over the Marble Mountains. "Jeez," Josh said aloud, "it's nothing but a thunderstorm." It's just like home...hot inland air boiling up and rolling to the sea, a few rain clouds kicking up a little nighttime lightning on their way by.
Cool, damp air blew in through the screen door and Josh stood by it watching creases of lightning in the sky a kilometer or two south. The rain was beautiful and worked magic on the miserable heat, dust and sand outside.
"Field's submerged, captain," Al said into his mike.
Dixon paid no attention. "Don't know how deep it is, but we're gonna find out."
"No response from the Marines," said the copilot, Combs. "Maybe their radio's knocked out, captain."
"Shit!" Dixon said.
The chopper eased down to the water and the skids disappeared beneath the surface. Somehow Dixon controlled the Huey's delicate hover. He looked out at the bamboo structures with their flickering colors and said to Alexander, "What the fuck is this, Al? I thought these boys were supposed to be wounded. They look laid out and dead."
"Gotta get 'em anyway, sir. Dogwood sixes or eights, don't matter."
"All right. You and Bailey hop out and see how the wading goes. Keep me posted. Make use of those extra-long mike cords you got."
Josh and Al slipped out and splashed onto the field. The expected ankle-deep paddy somehow sucked them down to their thighs.
"Aw, Jesus," Josh said, sloshing forward to the wooden platforms trimmed in All-American hues. He and Al pulled themselves up and came eye level with a pair of sealed ponchos.
"They're dead," Al reported into his helmet.
"Roger," replied Combs.
"Hurry up then, damn it," Dixon said.
Over the soaked field twilight began to settle, the sun melting into the mountains westward. The red, white and blue ribbons and feathers fluttered crimson, primrose and violet. Josh grabbed the closest poncho and slid it toward him. Instead of heavy and blood-soaked the poncho felt light and brittle. Al felt his at the same time.
"Some kind of weird shit," he said. "It's bones. Nothin' but a bag of bones."
"What?" Dixon said into the mike.
Standing wedged on the roped cross bars of the closest bamboo framework, Josh opened the poncho and looked inside. "The bags hold skeletons," he said.
"Bones or bodies, just bring 'em," Dixon ordered. "But goddamn hurry." The blades of the Huey whipped the air. Josh and Al tossed the rattling ponchos over their shoulders and waded back to the helicopter. "Thought I'd seen and heard near everything," Dixon said to the copilot. "What the hell kind of platforms are those with the Uncle Sam colors? Where's the pissass platoon who called this shit in?"
"Trying to hail them, sir," said Combs.
Dixon studied the gauges, noted all needles in green, grabbed the collective and shouted into his helmet. "Come on, boys!"
Al and Josh slogged ahead. None of them heard the first rocket come in over the engine and blade noise. The rocket landed long, over the Huey and near the treeline, about fifty meters starboard. Kawhooosh! A great geyser plumed upward spraying a funnel cloud of mud. Two more landed short while Josh and his crew chief deposited their skeleton bags and hopped aboard just as Dixon tilted the Huey's tail under maximum rpm.
They banked hard to the east and the treeline and two more rockets exploded, one obliterating the strange bamboo structures and the last blasting a hole precisely in Dixon's hover spot.
GO
FORWARD TO Vietnam Spring
(part two)
Yeah, the rain's beautiful when it starts and it quiets everything and settles the dust and it lets you breathe the fine, moist air from over the mountains. The problem is, sometimes it starts and goes for a week at a time and then everything turns to slime and sticks to you and the rain is anything but beautiful.
The cool air came through the screen and Josh lay back down, felt for his pack of Raleighs, lit one and listened to the thunder. He started to crumple the empty cigarette pack but remembered the coupon inside the cellophane. He took the coupon out and put it in the cigar box with the others. He had two Hav-A-Tampa cigar boxes on a shelf, one with Raleigh coupons and the other with letters from home.
Josh could have spread his personal belongings around the hooch but he felt like the minute he did so, he would get assigned a new roommate and have to move the stuff back again. So he left it. From the day Josh landed in Da Nang, his corpsman roomie had been in the Philippines doing some kind of survival training. Shortly afterward, in the jungles south of Manila, the guy contracted malaria and was currently surviving there in a hospital at the Navy base.
You couldn't get much luckier than that. Go out-of-country on a lark, so to speak, and end up getting an extension. I'd suffer with the fever and take the chloroquine shots and do whatever the nurses told me for that kind of tradeoff. Just a couple of days ago someone had come in and packed up Carlson's belongings. The lucky son-of-a-bitch.
Having no roommate was a rare blessing and except for the usual roars from the runway it made for blessedly quiet nights. Of course when you wake up and think you're under a rocket attack it wouldn't be so bad to have a little company in a nearby bunk.
Outside the thunder rumbled farther out to sea and a solid curtain of rain hushed even the noises on the flight line. Josh closed his eyes and before long another dream opened up, the worst type of dream, worse than a kid's nightmare, a Vietnam-based dream.
Alexander, Bailey and Dixon flew over low-lying country, river-delta land speckled with bobbing peasants and water buffalo. The Huey flew low, less than two hundred feet and Josh wanted to tell Dixon not to descend until they were ready to land for the dustoff. For some reason the medevac helicopter crew had been ordered to pick up a pair of wounded Marines in the middle of an open rice paddy. Josh wanted to tell Dixon to fly higher but when he opened his mouth, no words would come out.
Dixon flew lower still, brushing the treetops and looking for the correct field. Josh turned to Alexander. He wanted to say, "This is stupid, man. We're flying low, without cover in exposed country, vulnerable to everything from VC rockets to spears and sling shots. What are we doing?" But no words would come and Al embraced the M60 with his back to him.
In the dream, Dixon said, "We're goin' in," just like always, but the going in consisted only of a fifty foot vertical drop into a flooded rice paddy. Just ahead, two motionless Marines lay on platforms in the middle of the field. Each of the Marines rested on a surgical gurney, wheels lashed to the framework. The platforms under the gurneys were supported above the water by wooden posts. Tied to the top of the posts were streaming ribbons and feathers in red, white & blue. With the ribbons and feathers, the Marines looked something like American Indians laid out over a ceremonial burial ground.
