Chapter Two
Vietnam Winter (part one)
Looking seaward at the beautiful water lighted by the early sun, you could take in the dazzling, diamond-cut wave pattern and its glinting lines etched over the deepest of the deep blue waters. At fifteen hundred feet the world below masqueraded bright and lighthearted, reflecting the promise of a calm, cool winter day.
A trio of bottlenose dolphins broke the surface pursuing a school of mackerel or goggle eye jack or perhaps they simply followed the sun.
Closer to the coast, the flexing diamond outline became frothy swells over lighter emerald shallows and sandy bottom that surrendered to a camouflage of lazy waves brushing the sand in dreamlike repetition.
What might have been a pleasure skiff or small mullet boat poled out of a tranquil lagoon and glided parallel to the shore for a morning of pleasant angling followed, in time, by a leisurely island picnic lunch.
The fanning palms leaned gracefully over the curving beach, a snapshot of tropical charm. At the height of tourist season, you would expect to see the brightly colored umbrellas and cushioned recliners of determined snowbirds sunburned and scattered over the beachscape.
Brown thatched huts nestled beachside, then trailed inland from the shadows of the green palms, prolonging the illusion. Under two canopies shaded from the morning sun you could imagine carefree travelers gathered on tall wooden barstools to taste another golden day in Eden.
In the distance it was the geometric precision of the omnipresent rice paddies which first dislodged the vision. The rice paddies slapped your senses into full awareness and you could never go back to the dream again.
Then, looking closely, you picked up the bobbing straw hats of the peasants working in the submerged fields and you knew precisely where you were and none of it mattered, not the beautiful ocean, not the curving shoreline with its smooth sand nor the delicate surf, nor the stately palms.
Hospitalman Third Class Joshua Allen Bailey crouched in the doorway of his metallic cocoon and looked down at what should have been paradise. The throbbing in his ears burned constant yet distant. The fixed sound became a pleasant, dull hammering. Once on the ground you instantly missed the vibration and noise. You could be alone and think in the air and not have to share your thinking. On the ground, when you found time alone, too many bad thoughts drowned the good. Then sooner or later, somebody would come around wanting to get inside your head.
Josh looked out and blinked at the sunlight on the waves. Alexander sat buckled across from him, the butt of the M60 machine gun tilted upright, loosely caressed in the palm of his left hand. Alexander looked too.
As he ever did Josh marveled at the aura of the shoreline, the grand, curving scope of it. It's always a reminder of home, he thought, in the way the ocean and land meet, the clean sweep of it, the colors, like a landscape of wet oils with the light of the sun coming in high even in the dead of winter.
It amazed him whenever he glanced at a world map and compared the curving peninsular of Vietnam with the gentle bend of the Florida coast. It was different, but then again, it was so damn similar. It certainly looks like home, Josh said to himself. The way home was meant to be.
Flight schedules for Alexander, Bailey and Dixon seemed to mesh about three-fourths of the time. The only situation that disrupted the harmony was the rotation of copilots into the port side of the cockpit. For some reason, the acting commander had adopted a policy of switching copilots every watch or every other watch, while keeping the rest of the crew intact.
This morning's second call for dustoff (the term used for picking up wounded via helicopter) came from a village southwest of Hoi An. The copilot, Barton, plotted the coordinates and gave them to Dixon. Behind the cockpit, Josh and Alexander looked through opposite hatches, back to back.
Almost a month ago, the day Josh arrived from Okinawa, the impact of the view around the air base in Da Nang was the same as today. From the air everything sparkled clean.
Looking down, circling the field and getting a repeat view of the coast, it was like a travel brochure with the gently curving beaches and swishing palms.
Then once you landed the mantle of heat rose from the ground and covered you and everything was hotter and dirtier than it appeared from the sky. The place felt dirty from the moment you hit the tarmac and the feeling never let up as long as you were on the ground. It didn't matter if you were in your hooch resting or walking down the beach or (even worse) down one of the filthy streets in town, the place felt dirty and you really didn't want to touch anything because you were afraid the dirt might stick.
And yet the country was so goddamn beautiful from the air.
The people? Well, they were dirty too. But Josh couldn't say if it was their fault or not.
After the long flight, Josh figured his disgust about the heat and the dirt would go away as soon as he got some rest. The trip over the Pacific had taken forever, a slow flight to Honolulu and then a two- day layover in Okinawa. There they watched special filmed messages from General Abrams and President Nixon. The president lifted his arms, parted his jowls with a smile, then talked about Vietnamization and peace with honor and 1970 being a bright new year and a bright new decade.
All day Josh wandered from station to station being injected, filling out forms and acquiring a shitpile of supplies. After dark the whores came out of their fuck shacks counting on easy money from the fuzz-faced "grunts" straight from the States. The whores, at least for a few minutes, helped you forget about where you were going and how long you had to be there.
One way or the other, counting time in Okinawa and time spent in the air from the California coast to the last leg over the South China Sea, there were a lot of hours and long minutes to sit and reflect about your destination.
In-country, Josh had more time to reflect waiting in lines for a day and a half getting processed and shuffling through more supply stations. The corporal at Marble Mountain Air Facility (MMAF) assigned Josh to a two-man hooch for navy corpsmen. The tin roof shack shimmered in the heat, empty and dust-coated, the opposite bunk unoccupied. The corporal said Josh's roommate was on a temporary training assignment in the Philippines. "Where do I sign up for that?" Josh had asked. Unblinking the clerk-corporal stared at him. Tired yet loud, he ordered, "Next!"
GO
FORWARD TO Vietnam Winter
(part two)
Dixon angled the Huey out over the deeper blue in a wide turn, swooping briefly down and pulling the panoramic view of the South China Sea full into the doorway of the helicopter. For a second, Josh felt as if someone had taken a Cinemascope screen and planted it a few feet from his face. The intensity of the sun over blue came again, blinding, a quick flash in the back of the skull. More than a reflected screen, it was like looking directly into the lens of the movie projector.
Just before the flash, Josh caught a glimpse of Barrier Island southeast of Da Nang. Then the Huey pitched shoreward and the electric blue shifted violently to deep jade green and the spreading jungle canopy. To the south, a break in the treeline marked the ancient town of Hoi An and to the southwest, twin rivers that converged near the railway.
Dixon pointed the chopper toward the apex of the rivers and the railway. Dixon spoke for the first time. "Nice day. Clear. Not so goddamn hot, anyway."
Josh felt the crackle of the voice inside his helmet. "Yeah. Pretty bright, too."
"Not much wind," Dixon said. "We'll see if we can get this mother in and out in a hurry."
"Right."
Josh glanced at Alexander in the starboard hatch opposite. If anything, his crew chief/gunner was more taken with the vista than Josh. With his bony fingers draped casually over the butt of the machine gun, Alexander stared and said nothing.
It was the peasant hats, Josh decided. More than any other image of Vietnam, the cone-like bonnets of its people would stick in his brain forever. You could never escape the round, pointed shapes, wherever you went. For a moment Josh thought about Leonard standing behind the bar in the Little Skipper, standing by the kegs looking into space. Had Leonard been thinking about Korea? Did the peasants of Kaesong still have a power over him? After so many years and across the miles could they reach out and freeze his hand over the beer tap?
Josh shuddered. Like the rice paddies, the hats were everywhere, forever bobbing. The faces under the hats rarely smiled genuine smiles, even the children, but sometimes the children smiled imitation smiles that made you sad.
Only from the air, the weird thing was, the hats had no shape. They were simply round and straw-colored and bobbing.
Josh looked out and admired the easy, elegant symmetry of the terraced land. Shifting his position, leaning against the rack of empty litters next to him, Josh thought about the effortless routine the Huey crew had developed in a relatively short time. It had been only three weeks and the three of them felt a comfort and trust with each other that seemed years old. In the air they anticipated each other's movements like the workings of a clock. Sometimes, before landing, and after taking off, it was as if they anticipated each other's thoughts too.
But once on the ground, outside the circle of the medevac crew, it was not so easy.
