A Requiem for Crows: A Novel of Vietnam Page 11

  Some previous occupant had fashioned a series of hooks along one wall to hang gear and clothing. Other than the hooks and the bunk there was nothing in the room save a small field table with a large upturned metal ammo can pressed into a second life as a desk chair.

  Outside a chopper landed and more dust blew through the room adding to the layers already there. Pascoe was becoming accustomed to the constant sounds of choppers and nearby howitzers firing huge steel artillery rounds off in the direction of the border but not the dust. He opened one of his bags and began to look for places to put his things.

  “Major Pascoe in here?”

  Pascoe heard his name being called by an American. “Yo. In here,” he answered as he stepped over his bag to open the wobbly plywood door to the room.

  There, standing in the hallway was his new boss, Lieutenant Colonel Jasper Wills—a man clearly ten years older than Pascoe—a tall, lanky man more Adam’s apple and awkward limbs than career officer with an impressive command presence. His face was heavily tanned from the neck of his t-shirt to just above his eyebrows. The rest was pale and untouched by the sun due to the constant wear of hats and helmets.

  His jungle fatigues hung on him. Sized by height alone, the uniform had more bulk in the girth than Wills did and his arms seemed to dangle from the sleeves rolled above his elbows, as if they were pinned into the rolls.

  “Hot damn! Just what I need,” Wills said. He stuck out his hand to shake Pascoe’s. “Welcome to Veet Nam,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you to get here for about a month, Pascoe.”

  Pascoe stumbled over trying to render a customary salute first and then take Wills’ hand. “How are you, sir? It’s Eldon. Eldon Pascoe, sir.”

  “Got a minute?” Wills asked.

  “Sure. Sure. Come in,” Pascoe waved Wills into his small room. He nodded at the ammo can. “Please. Make yourself at home.”

  Wills shrugged off his combat harness holding his leather holstered pistol, canteens and his first aid, compass, ammunition and survival pouches. Dumping the added twenty pounds of gear on the scarred concrete floor he sat and arched his back as if he could stretch some of the tension from it. He pulled an olive drab handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat and grime from his neck. Then he took off his wire rimmed glasses and wiped the dust from them. “Whew! This is hotter than home. You can even sweat in the shower this time a year here ’bouts.”

  Pascoe sat on the corner of his bunk. “Where’s home?”

  “Nesmith, South Carolina. Sure do miss it. My people are all from Nesmith.” He looked at his watch then waved off in the direction of the border beyond the Sugar Mill’s perimeter. “Listen, I only got a minute to say hello and get back out with the general. It’s gonna be like this most times. That Viet general don’t fart without me nearby and if you see me at all it’ll be a rare thing in your duty day.

  “Listen, you gonna have to get tight with Colonel Minh and don’t let him talk you into shit you don’t think you or he oughta’ be doin. I’ll try to back ya’ up when I can, but get used to these little folks takin’ every chance they can to play poor mouth and complain they need things to win the war.” Wills leaned toward Pascoe and lowered his voice. “What they need most is to get their little asses out of their base camps and out there into Indian country.”

  Pascoe was surprised at Wills’ candor. “I appreciate all that, Colonel, but how do I do that and still gain Minh’s confidence?”

  “Throw the boy a bone now and then. He’ll be one step ahead of you though. Every Viet knows what has arrived at the docks in Saigon to support the advisory effort even before we do. So he’ll know what he’s asking you for is already available somewhere in the supply system. Don’t let him catch you tellin’ him something’s not available when he knows damn good and well it’s already in-country. You’ll catch on.”

  Pascoe shook his head. “I sure hope so. This seems a whole lot more complicated than I thought it was going to be when I got my orders.”

  “It’s new ground for all a’ us. If we tried to run our army the way they run theirs we’d all be a British colony or probably speaking German now.”

  Outside the chopper which had brought Wills in cranked back up to flight idle again. Wills checked his watch. “Look, I got to go. I’ll try to bring you up to speed in bits and pieces where and when I can find the time.”

  Wills stood, picked up his field gear with one hand and half-slapped Pascoe on the shoulder with the other. “You’ll be okay. Just do what you think’s right, son. That’s the best I can tell ya.’”

  Pascoe opened the door for Wills. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, sir.”

  Wills stopped in the open doorway and lowered his voice. “Oh, you need to know no matter what you or I do, no matter how this war goes, Minh’s gonna be a general soon. He’s got big-time pals in Saigon. A brother-in-law who’s a general on the Premier’s staff. You just watch your back. You hear?”

  “Will do,” Pascoe said as he unconsciously straightened his posture.

  “Okay, I’ll prob’ly see you in the General’s Mess for chow later.”

  Pascoe watched Wills walk down the narrow hallway to the brilliant rectangle of light leading out into the compound. He sensed he just might be able to have a chance at redeeming himself with Wills as his supervisor.

  Chapter 8

  THE FEW DAYS PASCOE SPENT in Saigon at Camp Alpha didn’t prepare him for his first nights at the Sugar Mill. The heat was more stifling than Saigon’s, denying him any level of comfort allowing him to sleep. Not moving and not covered, Pascoe stretched out on his bunk under the draped mosquito net wearing only his GI boxers shorts. Sweat pooled in the hollow of his throat and ran down the sides of his face only to fall on the pillow he had fashioned out of two folded towels.

  The nearness of the great swamps and the Vam Co Dong River flowing just outside the compound made the humidity that much more oppressive. Occasional bursts of rifle fire and the teeth-rattling howitzers frequently interrupted the din already put up by insects in the farmlands surrounding the mill.

  He began to question the wisdom of volunteering for Vietnam. With the exception of Colonel Wills, he hadn’t met anyone he had any confidence in and wasn’t really sure what lay ahead. He had no idea if he’d be confined to the Sugar Mill working in the Operations Section or if he’d be allowed to go forward—to the troop units’ battle positions and patrol bases. He wouldn’t be able to make these decisions alone. He’d be expected to follow Colonel’s Minh’s lead and Minh would determine how he would spend his year. He hated the fact his degree of risk would be in the hands of someone else.

  The bunk was uncomfortable; mosquitoes buzzed around the netting and he yearned for sleep to overtake him. But it wouldn’t come. He thought of West Point and how many thousands of miles away it now seemed. He thought of Karen, who he had left with her family in Pennsylvania. Picturing her he felt an urge for her between his legs. He hadn’t even thought about a year without sex. A year without being able to touch her. He missed her naked body next to his, the weight of her breast against in his palm as he had become accustomed to sleeping with her. He loved to encircle her with his arms, snugging his hips against her tight bottom, taking in the smell of the skin in the crook of her neck.

  He became aware of the blood rushing to his groin and quickly felt a sense of panic at having no release for the sensation. How could he spend a year without the pleasure she gave him? No matter what small disagreements they might have had during their day Karen never let her mood determine her availability. She never denied him sex or withheld it to punish him. She always enjoyed sex and it seemed to him giving him the pleasure he craved was her responsibility.

  He remembered the ease she felt with sex and her lack of self-consciousness. She loved being naked and exciting him with her fingers and lips. She took pride in her breasts set off by her tiny waist. She loved to pin him to the bed while she sat up. She controlled the pace of their sex, straddling
him and encouraging him to caress her body while she carefully gauged her movements to tease him, never failing to bring him to a delicious climax before they slept.

  Frustrated at her distance and his discomfort, he pulled one of the towels from underneath his head and wiped the perspiration from his face, neck and chest. The radium dial of his watch heightened his anxiety. It was ten minutes to two and he was nowhere near sleep. There was nothing he could do. There was no kitchen for something to eat which might make him sleepy. He had been unable to exercise while in transit and waiting for his final assignment in Saigon. He felt thick and leaden. Since leaving the U.S. he had been denied the opportunity to run, an activity which not only kept his weight down but burned off many of his frustrations and cleared his head. Now, at the Sugar Mill, there would be no place to run and leaving the compound to run along the dangerous roadways was out of the question.

  His diet had only added to his discomfort. Airline food then mess hall food—he’d not been able to find food which either satisfied him or calmed the knotty feeling in his gut.

  After another hour of restlessness, sweating and lack of sleep Pascoe got up and searched for the dry towel hanging over the foot of his bed. He didn’t bother to turn on the light as he left the room to follow the hallway out to the makeshift shower setup next to the building.

  Each day in Vietnam was a reminder of what every American left behind. His old quarters at West Point, his B.O.Q. rooms while he was in schools in transit to Vietnam, all were marvels of engineering, comfort and sanitation when compared to the toilet and shower facilities throughout the war zone.

  Pascoe slowed his pace as he approached the showers. Water pooled on the hard-packed compound—evidence of the poor design of what was not much more than a scaffolding of four-by-four posts holding up large garbage can sized water barrels. Each of the four barrels was a shower. There was neither a pretense of privacy, a thought given to removing the run-off, nor any effort to provide those small things necessary to shower. There was no place to put a towel, rest a bar of soap or even shave in or near the shower itself. Pascoe had discovered he would have to either shave blind in the shower or in his room using a small plastic bucket he had found in the Team House. Even then, the bucket was of such poor construction he would have to walk very gingerly to keep the walls of the bucket from buckling and spilling the water he need to shave.

  Worse than the shower’s poor design was its placement. Pascoe’s nose was assaulted by the smell of human waste, urine, gas and diesel fuel. The GI outhouse was a four-holer. A large plywood box with four uncovered ovals cut into its top served as the only toilets in the compound. The latrine was enclosed only by screened walls and topped with a corrugated tin roof—again offering no privacy. The odors came from the empty oil drums placed under the holes in the wooden box. Waste would collect in the drums until someone dispatched a Vietnamese soldier to pull them out, pour in a mixture of gasoline and diesel and set them aflame. Allowing them to fill the air with dense, black smoke put a distinctive smell in the compound, all the offices and even Pascoe’s room. The ceremony was known throughout Vietnam as burning the shitters.

  It wasn’t much as offices go, but Pascoe would make it work and try not to complain. It was very small, had a single shuttered window, a desk, chair and a Japanese electric fan emitting a hum. He ran his fingers across the desktop and felt the dust and grime which settled on it in the few hours since a soldier had wiped it down. Through the small window he could see the brown stripe of the Vam Co Dong River as it hugged the outside wall of the Sugar Mill on its way to the South China Sea. He wiped the sweat from his neck and longed for his air conditioned office at West Point overlooking the steely blue Hudson River and Flirtation Walk where cadets had taken their dates for two centuries to steal some private moments together.

  “Sir?”

  Pascoe turned to find a lanky American sergeant standing in the doorway to the office, his cap in his hand. “Yes?”

  “Sir, I’m Sergeant Caruthers. I’m your Ops NCO.”

  Pascoe smiled, leaned across the small desk and stuck out his hand. “Well, I’m glad to see another American face around here. Seems like we are outnumbered.” He pointed to a stool on Caruthers’s side of the desk. “Sit. Tell me what you do around here.”

  As Caruthers maneuvered the small stool to a spot where he could sit on it and face Pascoe without being out in the hallway, Pascoe quickly sized up the soldier. He read his military resume off his fatigue shirt. His embroidered Combat Infantryman’s badge had two stars atop it—meaning he was a World War II and a Korean War veteran. It was a plus for Pascoe. Pascoe also recognized Caruthers was a master parachutist, which had always been a problem for Pascoe, who when offered the chance to go to the Airborne School passed up on it. Ever since paratroopers had made him feel like he was not a real Infantry soldier.

  “So, Sergeant Caruthers, tell me, what do you to earn your pay?”

  Caruthers pulled a package of Redman chewing tobacco out of the cargo pocket on his trouser leg and held it up for Pascoe. “You mind, sir?”

  “No, go ahead.” Pascoe watched as Caruthers opened the pouch, rolled up a ball of chew half the size of a golf ball and pushed it into the space between his teeth and his cheek. He then moved the ball of tobacco around a bit making the wad smaller. A hint of the dark brown tobacco juice appeared at the corner of his mouth and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

  “So?” Pascoe reminded him there was still a question.

  “Oh, Yessir. Well, dependin’ on what it is you want me to do I pretty much do what you want.”

  The answer didn’t tell Pascoe much. “Well, let me put it this way, what have you been doing up to now?”

  “Major Smith, you know, the advisor you replaced, had me sticking close to him and keepin’ an eye on these V’namese. They can be some kinda’ slippery, y’know. And if you don’t boot ’em in the ass they sit on theirs all the time. But then Major Smith went home early ’cuz his wife was sick and we had two months with nobody in y’er job. I pretty much ran errands for Colonel Minh and tried to say out of sight.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, ever’ time Minh sees me he wants something. So I figure if he don’t see me he can’t be busting my ass about stuff he wants me to scrounge up. He’s always tryin’ to get me to buy stuff for him at the P.X. in Saigon or the Class VI Store.”

  Pascoe could only imagine what Caruthers was referring to since he had neither been to the Post Exchange in Saigon nor the Class VI Store, the Army’s version of a liquor store. Not wanting to endorse the sergeant’s actions Pascoe simply said, “I see.”

  “But now you’re here I don’t think I need to be hidin’ as much because he’ll be after you like he was after Major Smith.”

  “So how do we help Colonel Minh plan and execute combat operations around here?”

  Caruthers leaned forward and lowered his voice a little. “Major, can I be honest with you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Caruthers tapped his Infantryman’s badge on his shirt. “Sir, I’m a grunt. I been a soldier now, man and boy, goin’ on thirty years. One time or another I been a rifleman, squad leader or a platoon sergeant and this here’s my third war. I been rode hard and put up wet. But I got to tell you, sir, I’m just plain uncomfortable with all this headquarters stuff.”

  “Politics?”

  “Yessir, whatever you want to call it. I’m a ground pounder. I belong with young soldiers, not these V’namese pussies. They is damn near worthless.”

  “All of them?”

  Caruthers moved the chaw in his mouth to the other side and looked up at the ceiling. “Well, no sir. I’m thinkin’ there’s a few I’d be callin’ pretty good soldiers. But most a them are just lazy little bastards.”

  “I see. Well, I’m going to need your help getting used to how things work around here and I’ll be interested in hearing who you feel is reliable and who isn’t.”

  Caruth
ers straightened his back a little, pushing out his chest. “Yes sir. Be happy to do it for you.”

  “How much longer you here?”

  Caruthers rolled his eyes. “Lemme see. The way I figure it I got ninety-seven days and a wake up left in country. I’ve already got alert orders to report to my terminal assignment.” Caruthers leaned back and smiled. “I asked to be stationed somewhere near home so they’re sendin’ me to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.”

  “Where’s home?”

  Caruthers smiled showing the brown staining on his teeth. “Right outside the front gate—Waynesville.”

  “And you are going to retire there?”

  “Yes sir! I’m willin’ to hump these boonies with these little people while I’m here, but this is it. I’m getting closer to fifty than forty and I still got some real good fishin’ years in me. I want to spend ’em at my end of a rod on my bass boat.”

  Pascoe didn’t know why he had expected Minh to send someone to tell him before Minh fired up the chopper. But he hadn’t bothered. He had hoped to be there to help Minh preflight the aircraft before their first real orientation flight. He wanted to feel better about flying in the aging chopper. At least an inspection might let him know what to worry about.

  Racing from his office to the idling chopper, he knew there had not been enough time for Minh to properly inspect the chopper in the few minutes since he had seen Minh pass by his doorway.

  He saw but tried not to see, the excessive buildup of greasy black soot on the huge exhaust port of the powerful turbine engine. Any aviator knew this meant either improperly burning fuel or a chopper that simply hadn’t been adequately cleaned in quite some time. Either way, it was not a good sign.