13th Valley (9 page)

With Recon Brooks produced a fine combat record and gradually he went from being called L-T B to L-T Bro. Privately his men called him L-T Beautiful or Buddha. They said he had karma, they meant he was charmed. Brooks had an instructive, informative and quiet manner with his men. When time and circumstance allowed he would explain the situation to as many men as possible and he would ask and often act upon their opinions. He did his share of the shit jobs too and his men knew it. He chose the game, defined the rules and made sure every man below him understood. What they didn't know, he taught them. And he provided the spirit, the spirit to win. Brooks maneuvered his unit into and out of difficult enemy areas without sustaining casualties. His men CAed into the middle of firefights and no one was wounded. They were inserted onto hot LZs, red smoke, their birds would take fire and their LZs would be booby-trapped and they would come through unscathed. Other units would come in behind them and a sniper would blow one of them away or a pop-up mine would level a squad. He brought out the best in his men. He considered himself to be an intellectual but he made every man his equal. He believed there was no such thing as a stupid person: “Every man has the capacity for very complex thought,” he would say. “Sometimes you just have to make him use it.”

After four months with Recon Brooks was awarded the command of Company A. He was held in jealous esteem by other company commanders. During the spring offensive drive to the west of Hue, around Firebase Veghel, Brooks' Recon Platoon accounted for forty-four of the battalions' NVA body count of 147. During the late spring and early summer sweep-up operations along the Song Bo, from Three-Forks south to Highway 547 and west to Firebase Zon, Company A, under Brooks, accounted for twelve of the battalion's twenty-one NVA KIA. Again his unit sustained few casualties. Brooks was the only lieutenant in the battalion to command a company. Normally companies are commanded by captains and the other companies of the Oh-deuce were. The captains were superior competitive leaders. Their combat records were very important to them. Rufus Brooks said he didn't care. His instructive nature and his quiet self-confidence led to his men's belief that he had attained enlightenment. He was long overdue for promotion but his earlier ratings for insubordination had caused postponement.

By August of '70 Brooks had become a cool calculating commander yet he did not really like the army and he certainly didn't like being in Vietnam. He longed to return to his life in San Francisco, to the quiet of school and mostly to his wife. He hoped never again to wear anything green. Yet, for a reason he kept to himself, after he had been in-country eleven months, in January '70 Brooks had extended his Vietnam tour and requested continued combat duty. His overseas tour was due to end in late August. He was now contemplating extending again. His three-year active duty obligation would keep him in the army to June '71. With the American troop withdrawals and the reduction of overall military manpower, there was the possibility that if he extended until January, he might be discharged upon returning to the States. The prospect of spending a year in the army in the States, living in one world during the day and another at night, appalled him. Could he subject his high-strung wife to the demands of an officer's wife? Could he afford an additional six months' separation? Was there really a difference?

First Lieutenant Rufus Brooks glanced at the trench before him. He turned his head toward the basketball courts and then swept his vision across the theater seats and the stage and over to a group of men packing their rucksacks and cleaning their weapons. In the office behind him the first sergeant was cackling to the clerks.

The voice irritated him. He shook his head imperceptibly. It's been a long road, he said to himself. It's been a battle all the way and still there is a conflict in every aspect of my life. Would you like a shot at an enemy headquarters? Would you like to DEROS? Would you like to keep your wife?

C
HAPTER
4

The battered jeep from Alpha, 7th of the 402d, lurched over the ruts at the Phu Bai gate, jolted past the Vietnamese concession stands and the Korean souvenir shops and shuddered up the soft shoulder onto Highway One. Chelini grabbed the bottom of his seat with his right hand, hooked his feet beneath the seat before him and, with his left arm, managed to keep the baggage from careening out of the vehicle. He glared at the oblivious driver.

The driver was a blond boy, eighteen or nineteen, whose face could have been used on recruitment posters. He appeared cheerful and very absorbed in his driving. He may have been myopic. He did not speak.

In the front passenger seat was a captain who said he was from First Brigade S-5, Civil Affairs. He was returning from his third R&R, this one to Bangkok. “Hope I didn't keep you boys waiting,” the captain said. “One of the clerks there said there'd be a vehicle from the four-oh-second and that you'd have room for me. I appreciate that. I don't like to wait. They're sending over a vehicle from brigade but it won't be here for another twenty minutes. Hope I didn't keep you too long.”

In the rear seat beside Chelini was the man in civilian clothing who had come into the personnel office while Chelini argued with the clerk about his assignment. Below his red hair and beneath his sunburned skin the man snarled. He had not looked at Chelini when he'd thrown his suitcase on top of Chelini's duffel bag. He hadn't spoken while they waited for the captain. Chelini was cramped in the small back seat with luggage piled about him. The red-haired man lay sprawled across most of the seat, his left foot out the side of the vehicle and his right reaching to the shift lever between the front seats. The sun glimmered off his scowl. His eyes appeared closed.

The vehicle's suspension clattered and the drive train whined as they drove north past the first cluster of bustling street-side shops and shanties.

The roadway was crowded with men in military uniforms or western dress or loose black trousers with loose fitting long shirts and with women in the traditional sheath dresses and silk trousers, all riding on Hondas or Vespas or Lambrettas. Old black Citroen sedans, long, low-slung, with high fenders and wide running boards, seemed filled with dozens of Vietnamese. There were colorful three-wheeled lorries and at one point a small, very ornate panel truck passed, going the opposite way. The truck was red. Its painted headlights were huge pupils in white and green eyes, the fenders yellow and black dragon legs. A dragon body rippled yellow and blue and green down the side. The roof of the truck was a pagoda roof with swirling corners and peaks surrounded by blue sky with white fluff clouds.

“Wow!” Chelini said. “You see that?”

“Hearse,” the red-haired man snapped.

“Where you boys from?” the captain turned and asked.

“Connecticut, Sir,” Chelini answered.

“And you?”

“Oh-deuce,” came the curt reply. The captain returned forward and looked at the driver who seemed oblivious to the question and said nothing.

Amongst the civilian traffic US and ARVN military machines rumbled, carrying supplies and personnel. The trucks were heavy, squarish, made of thick steel plates. Here and there were the amphibious podshaped vehicles with huge black rubber balloon tires of the military police.

The driver nodded and flashed a peace sign to every American driver who passed in the opposite direction. “Right on, Bro,” one yelled.
“¿Que pasa?”
shouted another. “There it is, Babe,” screamed a third. The captain shuffled about in the front seat and stared at the passing villages.

“See that village, boys?” the captain said. “That was one of my first. We resettled the people there. They'd been driven out during the '68 TET Offensive. VC burned the place to the ground but I had them back in and resettled by the end of September last year. Now it's one of the boomingest places south of Hue. I got the three-two-six engineers to come in with their bulldozers and build up foundation pads for the houses and then I had them help the people put in a culvert system. You know, that village flooded sixteen of the last twenty years. Amazes me these people put up with it. You'd think they'd have figured out ways to stop the flooding a long time ago but they seem to think it's inevitable or something. Damn people won't get up to help themselves half the time.

“Anyway,” the captain continued without looking to see if anyone in the jeep was listening, “I had nine thousand refugees from north of Hue in camps along this section last year. Nine thousand right in here. I can hardly remember how they all fit. There's only four hundred left. All the others have settled back to their original villages. Except the Montagnards. They're mostly still here but we've got a new village site picked out for them that their chief just okayed. Out on 546. By Lang Minh Mang. “You boys know where that is?” The driver remained oblivious. The red-haired man said nothing. Chelini waited. He was about to say, “No Sir, where is it?” but without the others replying he hesitated, then decided not to reply. The captain fell silent. The driver continued to nod to the passing military vehicles.

Paralleling the roadway were two sets of rails. As the jeep approached the turnoff for Camp Eagle, a combination freight-passenger train, the daily from Quang Tri and Hue over the Hai Van Pass to Da Nang, chugged slowly south. The engine appeared to have been made around the turn of the century. Its big black cylindrical boiler lay atop a flat platform sided by large spoked wheels. A small boxy cabin was welded to the back. The engine pushed seven empty, ancient and dilapidated cars: two flatbeds, two wooden boxcars and three gondolas. Behind the engine was a caboose and following that, twenty-eight vintage wooden passenger cars and boxcars packed with people and goods. Atop each car behind the engine sat a Vietnamese soldier armed with an M-14 rifle.

“That looks kind a stupid,” Chelini said.

“Better ta blow away the empties up front, Cherry,” the red-haired man growled.

Chelini looked at him. His eyes were closed, his jaw slack and his mouth open. He had to be asleep. How could he know there was a train there?

The jeep entered the dirt road after the train cleared the intersection. At the corner two American MPs were playing with half a dozen children in front of a ramshackle, weather-beaten bunker. Chelini waved to the children and two waved back. He smiled. He looked at the bunker. It was high above the ground, circular, made of layers of sandbags stacked atop rusting, dirt-filled fifty-five-gallon drums. The sandbags had rotted and frayed. Dirt spilled badly from one side causing the entire tower to list. It stood alone and Chelini could not determine its original function. Behind the bunker he could see a junkyard or salvage yard for the squashed carcasses of corroding military vehicles.

Further down the road were garbage dumps. Scavenging amongst the clutter, old Vietnamese women, darker-skinned than those along the highway, Montagnards, collected bottles and cans and pieces of wood. At the finding of a belt by one digger all the ladies gathered around her and shrieked and cackled. It gave Chelini a creepy feeling yet he enjoyed watching the scavengers. Beyond the dumps the jeep passed a vacant firing range where children were searching the clay for expended cartridges.

As they traveled the road became progressively drier and they rode into thicker and thicker lingering clouds of dust from passing vehicles.

“Why do you do that?” the captain demanded of the driver.

“Do what, Sir?” the driver asked.

“Nod like that. To everybody. Do you know every one of those drivers?”

“No Sir.”

“Do you think this is some country road? Are you some kind of hick or something?”

“No,” the driver answered.

“Then why do you do that?” the officer demanded again.

“I'm an enlisted man, Sir,” the driver said, “and so are they.”

Chelini chuckled inwardly. He wanted to flash the finger at the captain's back but he didn't dare. The red-haired man opened his eyes for a second and gave the finger to the officer. Then he nodded to Chelini and closed his eyes again.

The terrain changed subtly from the greener piedmont at Phu Bai and along Highway One to the dry red-brown of the foothills. Strings of barbed wire, stretched and looped concertina and pegged tanglefoot, extended from bunkers to a tiny guard-house with a small sign announcing, “CAMP EAGLE—GIA LAI GATE.” A lethargic MP glanced up from a paperback and nodded them through. With his left hand out the side of the jeep, below the captain's view, Chelini saw the driver flash an inverted peace sign.

The jeep jostled down the rutted dirt road away from the perimeter line and through an area of open nothingness. Rooster tails of dust rose from the wheels. Old Marine Corps Quonset huts appeared to the right in a shallow draw. In front of one half-cylindrical building was a red and black sign shaped like a bulldozer, “Home of the 326th Engineer Battalion (Airmobile).” A little further on to the left a line of trucks were awaiting gasoline at the 426th S & S fuel point. Beside this was headquarters for Company A, 5th Transportation Battalion (Airmobile). Chelini glanced back. Behind him dust formed an opaque wall. As each new unit appeared he squirmed in the seat and squinted through the dust searching for the headquarters that would house his assignment. Next unit down the road was the 801st Maintenance Battalion looking like a giant bunker complex. All these support units were airmobile and Chelini began to understand what the SERTS instructors had meant when they said everything in the division could be picked up by helicopter and moved.