Chapter Four

Vietnam Spring (part two)

Suddenly Josh woke in his bed to the sound of incoming rockets, and for a moment, the edges of dream and reality knotted in his consciousness. The rain had stopped and the misty air layered over the Marble Mountains reflected the flash of 122mm explosions. Whish—blam—— one rocket. Whish—blam—FLASH! Another rocket nearer.

"These rockets are real," Josh said to the empty bunk across from him. The VC must have set up shop south of here near one of those caves, or close to the river. The next explosion flattened a hooch less than a hundred meters away and brought total alertness. Sirens wailed. From the sound of it, the helicopter revetments and flight line were getting hammered but you could hear artillery beginning to return the fire.

Cobra gun ships roared overhead as Josh raced to the closest bunker, shirtless, barefoot and helmet strap flapping. Sandbags, stacked high and covering the entire base were stacked even higher around the opening of the bunker. Josh crawled down into the dank hole and a low-wattage bulb reflected weakly the faces of a dozen or so sleepy soldiers. A pair of blonde eyebrows and blue eyes belonged to Skip Alexander.

"Hey, Chief," Josh said. Big Al nodded and frowned. Josh moved over to crouch next to his crew mate. "I just had the weirdest dream, Al. About a rice paddy dustoff."

"Yeah?"

"There were these bamboo platforms sitting in the middle of a field, decorated in red, white and blue." Josh saw the blonde eyebrows elevate a notch. Another rocket exploded in the distance.

"Course you did, mate."

"But the body bags we picked up didn't have bodies, they had skeletons."

"Had one of those in anatomy class myself. Named Shadrack."

"Yeah, and just as we loaded them on the chopper, the rockets came."

Overhead the whistle of an incoming round preceded an earth-plowing detonation. Dust seeped between the sandbags, filling the damp bunker.

Al lowered his head and covered his ears. "Makes sense you having the rockets in the dream."

"I wish this was a fucking dream," Josh said.

"Amen to that."

Another whistle and another concussion and you could hear the delicate sounds of debris sprinkling over the barracks.

"Must have hit something, that," Al said.

"Hope it wasn't your hooch or my hooch," Josh said. He looked at Al's face in the dim light and detected an Aristotle-like expression. Generally, Al didn't talk a lot but every once in a while he would take a philosophical turn. "Wish we could think like politicians and learn how to dance and dodge these slings and arrows."

"Shit, Al, if we thought like politicians we wouldn't be here to begin with." Two more Cobra choppers thundered over the top of the bunker and Josh ducked instinctively. Another explosion and the light over their heads dimmed and went dark. "So right," Al said. "Speaking of dreams and politicians, I'd like to get old Richard M. and Spiro T. down in this bunker and give them a taste of reality."

"Yeah, Tricky Dick and his phony false-teeth smile. And Kissinger too." "That's right, mate. See if Henry can keep the whole fucking thing figured out neatly down here in this stink hole." A double explosion sounded close to the runway, but the main sounds now were American artillery answering in a steady and reassuring BOOM...BOOM...BOOM.

"How about the ambassador?" Josh said. "Let's invite old Ellsworth Bunker down in the bunker and see if he can sew up a diplomatic solution. If not, we'll throw his ass outside and let the rockets rip."

Al laughed. "I love it, Josh."

Crew chief and corpsman, Alexander and Bailey owned political views that meshed just like their senses of humor. They joked and laughed, fighting the nervous tension until a lighter blue, the first hint of morning, invaded the bunker. The explosions lessened and the artillery stopped.

Combs was one of the few copilots who liked flying with Dixon, a black pilot who outranked him. Combs told Josh that if one had enough military scrip in one's pocket to exchange for dollars, one could obtain a wealth of hard-to-find luxuries at a shop on Tran Phu Street.

The luxury Josh wanted was a bicycle. An old foot-brake bike in good shape with a sturdy frame and fat tires. He figured it would be a smart way to get back and forth to the beach. Not China Beach where they put on USO shows with semi-celebrities and Marines took R&R. The problem with China Beach wasn't the beach. It was wide and clean with a lolling surf like Dunedin Beach back home. The trouble was, you had to share China Beach with waves of Marines celebrating "hump day," the halfway mark of their thirteen-month tour in Vietnam.

For Josh, hanging around healthy, whole soldiers could be, in many ways, a welcome break. But claiming a free day, like today, the number one reason he wanted a bicycle was to pedal it away from all things military as fast and far as possible.

"Need bike, Joe?"

The boy took him to the back of the shop. The place looked like a combination flea market/pawn shop.

"You pick, Joe. All good."

In the front of the shop, the disinterested owner picked his teeth. The boy, twelve or thirteen, lean and almond-eyed, showed him a lineup of old American, English and French bikes in assorted conditions from wrecked to just plain rusty.

"Nice wheels, Joe. Numbah one."

"Bailey. The name's Bailey."

"You pick, Barry. Best in town."

Between a hopeless Peugeot and a spokeless Raleigh, Josh discovered a worn out Schwinn that looked salvageable.

"This one looks ready to be rescued."

"You know it, Barry. Numbah one."

Josh ran his fingers over the frame, felt the rust, checked the springs under the seat and counted the number of bent and 178 broken spokes. It was just like the Schwinn he rode to school as a twelve-year-old in Sarasota. Except the white sidewall tires were flat with decomposed tubes peeking out by the rims.

"Needs some work, son. New spokes, new tubes, new paint and a basket."

"No good, Joe?"

"No good now. Needs work. How much?"

The boy pointed to the front of the shop. The owner turned and displayed a yellow smile. "Find bike, Joe?"

Josh hesitated only a moment over the obscene price. So what if the dilapidated bike cost five times in 1970 what it sold for new in 1962. It would make a great beach cruiser with its balloon tires and springy saddle. Best of all, with a basket under the handlebars, he could take books and a picnic anywhere he wanted to go.

The hard part after the purchase was communicating with the boy and arranging to have the bike put in working order the way he wanted it. Josh never questioned the boy's ability to make repairs and paint. He knew if he offered enough money, the job would get done.

"What's your name?" Josh remembered his phrase book. Ten ong la gi?"

"Dac. Dac Hoa. You name Barry, right Joe?" "No. My name is Bailey, with an ÔL'. Josh Bai-ley."

Dac Hoa extended his slender arm. "Nice meet you, Josh Barry."

Josh shook his hand and smiled. "It's a pleasure, Dac."

"Yes, pressure. Big pressure. Got money now, Josh?"

"I got money. You fix bike, I pay. Half now, half later."

"Half? Okay, Josh."

Josh stuffed a five dollar bill in the boy's wrinkled shirt pocket. "You fix, Dac. Get half now, get five more when you're done." He showed him the spokes and where he wanted the basket and he told him about the paint. "You sand good. Get rust, then paint. Red paint. How you say...color it Do. A nice, cheerful Do. Deal?"

"Fix good, Josh. Bring fi dawah. You see."

Dac Hoa had bright eyes, a quick mind and lots of energy, but something was missing. Like the other Vietnamese kids Josh had seen since his arrival in Da Nang, Dac Hoa had lost his smile. If he had one hidden deep within, even weeks later after they had ridden bikes and gone fishing together, nothing Josh thought to say could bring it to the surface.

GO FORWARD TO Vietnam Spring
(part three)

GO BACK TO Vietnam Spring
(part one)

Soon the all-clear sounded and the two returned to their separate quarters for an hour's rest before an 0700 briefing with Dixon and the copilot du jour in the ready room.

That morning they flew three missions down the coast near Tam Ky. Each time Dixon and the crew brought home Marines with multiple frag wounds garnered from an ill-advised encounter with an NVA minefield. Each time the medevac chopper took small arms fire but supporting Cobra gun ships let their rockets loose on the hidden enemy below. No tracers from the jungle canopy found their mark.

Around noon dark clouds angled north from the South China Sea and a steamy rain set in. Dixon carved a sure path along the coastline, rotors slashing through a steady shower. Inside, Al helped Josh apply bandages, tie tourniquets and dispense morphine. The bloody fragment wounds ranged from partially severed lower legs to ripped abdomens to fractured skulls. But none of the soldiers arrested inflight and most of them would survive after being wheeled into the Naval Support Activity Hospital in Da Nang.

Always, the good news about the bad weather is that it grounded the crew for the rest of the day. Even better, by some quirk in the schedule, Alexander, Bailey and Dixon didn't have to go airborne for the next two days.

Josh Bailey, Clarence Dixon and the copilot sloshed through puddles leaving the Huey at the revetment, leaving Skip Alexander to his burden of mechanical checks, which as he put it, "come rain or shine, mate."

Josh fell exhausted onto the mattress in his muggy quarters and after little sleep the night before, tried to erase the pictures of splintered Marines from his mind and capture a few hours of hard-earned rest. He got up briefly to take off his boots, turn on the fan and slip out of his bloody flight suit, then lay down again positioning himself in the center of the fan's airflow. The sheet he lay on was yellow and dirty. The splotches of blood rubbed here and there didn't seem to matter.

The rain beat harder on the tin roof. Josh tried to rest, drifting in and out, too tired and jittery to find certain sleep. An F4 screamed above and reminded him again of last night's rocket attack.

Above all, the helpless feeling during the rocket attack unnerved him and made him angry. He had tried to talk to Dixon about it. Dixon laughed and said, "Why do you think they call Da Nang "Rocket City," man?"

It was bad enough getting shot at in the air, flying fast. But stuck on the ground, a clueless, random targetÑthat's a crock of shit. That's why I volunteered for medevac duty in the first place. I never wanted to be a grunt on the ground skirting craters in a compound. Or splattering body parts all over the jungleÑthe enemy's or mine. I never wanted to walk through a field of elephant grass knowing the next step could trip a mine.

But for now, if I could just rest for a few hours, maybe this black ass mood would stand a chance of improving.

Josh woke to the sound of a truck horn, lifted the blackout 176 curtain and saw seagulls gliding in a blue sky. He had slept through afternoon and night and the early morning sun shone on the Marble Mountains to the south and China Beach to the east. Outside the air smelled of the ocean with a cool tang to it. What a day. The best I've seen, easy.

After a quick spit-bath and shave in the closest dirty sink Josh sat civilized over a decent breakfast in the mess hall. For a change he took his time, lingered over the non-powdered scrambled eggs and read The Stars & Stripes. Then he hitched a ride on a truck headed for Da Nang.

Lieutenant Combs, a good-natured medevac copilot who knew his way around, had told Josh about a special shop in town where one could locate certain items.