Abandoned: MIA in Vietnam (11 page)

“So, are we winning?” Byrnes asked. “It might end soon? One of my interrogators boasted the war would end on their terms within months of the offensive.”

“Do these North Vietnamese act defeated?” Rhodes asked. “It’s no longer a military question. Walter Cronkite pronounced the war lost. He’s the most respected man in America, and had believed President Johnson when LBJ said the war was almost over. Then Tet happened. Now, no one believes Johnson. Everyone believes Cronkite. The will to win is dying. No one wants his kid to die in a losing cause. It’s political now.”

Byrnes never again saw the man with half an ear who had bragged of imminent victory. Nor did the sailor from the sampan return. Over several months North Vietnamese infiltrated the south, taking the place of the annihilated local VC militia. The presence of the northerners led to bombing by the South Vietnamese Air Force and the Americans. Initially, propeller driven aircraft, A-1s like the Spads off
Oriskany
, loitered overhead, strafing and bombing the northern troops. When the aircraft were on the prowl, Byrnes found himself joined in the caves or tunnels by up to thirty men.

The continued bombing made it necessary for his captors to change locations to avoid further destruction. Byrnes lost count of the number of moves. He scratched the pole the enemy allowed him to use as a walking stick to keep track of his days as a prisoner. His only possessions other than the same pair of pants the sailor on the sampan had lent him, his T-shirt, and a pair of sandals fashioned from tire tread, were a metal cup with a short flat handle and a bedroll, consisting of straw mat and worn wool blanket. He had sharpened the edge of the cup handle on a rock in an effort to make a defensive weapon, but ended up using it only to scratch a daily line on his walking stick.

Soon the propeller aircraft disappeared, replaced by slow-moving straight-winged jet aircraft Byrnes didn’t recognize.

“Those were Tweety Birds, T-37s,” Rhodes told him. “Repurposed USAF trainers. I flew them in Texas. The South Vietnamese fly them now.”

When the American F-100s and B-52s appeared, they terrorized everyone, including Byrnes. The low flying F-100s fired cannon, and dropped bombs and napalm in support of ground troops and on targets of opportunity. They were not easy to avoid, but there was some measure of warning. Either a battle raged, or an obvious military target was nearby. The Vietnamese could minimize their effect by digging trenches and tunnels. Byrnes and the NVA spent days at a time underground, hidden from view, thankful for the safety provided by tunnels and caves.

“The Hun’s not immune to ground fire,” Rhodes said, “as I found out.”

“The what?”

“Hun,” Rhodes said, “as in F one
HUN
dred. Like Attila’s people, the Huns.”

B-52s were a completely different weapon system, a terror weapon. Only in North Vietnam did the enemy possess rockets capable of destroying a B-52. Too high in the sky to be seen, unless there was enough moisture in the air for them to leave long contrails, they frequently struck without warning. Each aircraft could carry up to a hundred 500-pound bombs. In flights of three or six, they laid a path of destruction unprecedented in war. The ground shook as if in an earthquake. A trail miles long and half a mile wide in which nothing survived – trees shattered and flattened, all wildlife shredded, and all military equipment obliterated – marked their passage. Entire brigades of North Vietnamese soldiers disappeared under such firepower.

One B-52 attack had taken place while Byrnes had been in a cave. Rubble closed the cave entrance, a fortunate thing as it kept shrapnel outside. All the men inside the cave, including Byrnes, lay on the ground praying to their respective gods or ancestors. The bombing was so terrifying that some men lost control of their bowels. Others went insane. After digging their way out of the cave, the soldiers found a corridor made up of bomb craters starting a kilometer from the camp, running through the center of the camp, and ending two kilometers away. They marched away that same night. Byrnes noted that most of the marches took them north and west.

“We’re about ten miles south of the DMZ, now,” Rhodes told him. He hobbled from the stream, naked. Using crutches fashioned from tree branches, he leaned over and picked up his cotton trousers, boxers, and T-shirt. No longer white, their dingy gray color reminded Byrnes of gray navy ships. Rhodes’s fractures had taken four months to heal. The pilot also had endured a month of fever with malaria. He guessed his weight hovered near 140 pounds, forty less than his fighting weight.

“We’re going to be moving again, soon,” Byrnes said.

“Where to?” Rhodes asked while dressing.

“Always north. I heard Hanoi mentioned, but I don’t know if that’s our destination.”

“Maybe we’ll see Ho Chi Minh’s grave,” Rhodes said.

“Uncle Ho’s dead?”

“Since September, this year. War’s still on, though,” Rhodes said, laughing.

CHAPTER 15

Lining the edge of the flight deck, the sailors stood at parade rest, dressed in their white uniforms. Wolfe and Byrnes stood on the edge of elevator #3 and looked out over the harbor in Sasebo, Japan, seventy-five feet below. Salt water, oil, and fuel smell, along with rainbows on oily patches of water, reminded them of every other waterfront they had seen. “Do you have a girlfriend?” Byrnes asked.

Wolfe shook his head. He said, “I thought I had one when I left home. No mail in three months. I may no longer have one. You?”

“The last girl I had an interest in, I danced with at the USO dance in San Diego. V-3 Division was there for fire-fighting school in April.”

“How did that turn out?” Wolfe asked.

“We had a great time, I thought. She danced every dance with me. She was a good-looking blonde college student. She even laughed at my jokes. Most Californians don’t look down on half-breeds like me.”

“Is she writing to you?”

“Nope. When I asked her to go to the movies with me, she said her father wouldn’t let her date sailors. He only allowed her to dance with them at the USO parties,” Byrnes said. “Her father wasn’t racist, unless sailors are a race.”

Wolfe laughed. “Swabbies
are
a breed apart,” he said.

“Do you drink?” Byrnes said while they watched the carrier slide into its final position in the crowded harbor. The ceremony was a decoration for the Japanese on shore. As far as Wolfe could tell, though, the only Japanese who paid attention to the display were the operators of the tugs that guided
Oriskany
to her mooring.

“Nah,” Wolfe said. “I never developed a taste for that or smoking. I played football and ran track in high school. Thought it would give me an edge over the guys who did drink and smoke.”

“Did it?” Byrnes asked.

“Don’t know. Made the teams. Played first string some times. The guys I knew who drank and smoked still played, too.” Wolfe said and shrugged.

“Well, I’m going on liberty with you,” Byrnes announced when the formation broke up. “If I have something to do and someone to do it with, I won’t be tempted to go to a bar.”

“I hadn’t planned on doing much,” Wolfe said. “Thought I’d get some patches sewn on my work jacket. Maybe hit the theater. Also, I need some replacement contact lenses. Thought I’d look for those, too.”

“Sounds good,” Byrnes said. “Just keep me away from the bar district.”

“Why?”

“I shouldn’t drink,” Byrnes said.

“Okay. Probably no one should drink. Why shouldn’t you? Are you an alcoholic?”

Continuing their conversation, they climbed down the ladders from the flight deck to the hangar deck and walked forward to the boarding ladder. There they waited in line to ask permission to go on shore leave, show their liberty passes, salute the ensign, and climb down a long ladder to a flat barge tied to the side of the ship. Once on the barge, they crossed over a gangway to a huge flat-bottomed landing craft and joined two hundred of their closest friends on the twenty-minute boat trip to the Sasebo pier.

“No. I’d die before I became addicted to alcohol. I inherited a condition from my mother. A third of Orientals can’t tolerate alcohol. I’m one. It tastes good, but we get quickly intoxicated and nauseated. Our faces blush and our hearts skip beats. I was born with my father’s love of beer and this reaction from my mom. They don’t go well together.”

Wolfe found an optometrist by scanning billboards in downtown Sasebo. He spoke no English. Wolfe spoke no Japanese, but Byrnes knew quite a bit. “He wants you to sit in the chair facing the chart. He’s going to try lenses on your eyes to see which fit best.”

“He can’t just measure the old scratched pair?” Wolfe asked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a contact lenses case, handing it to Byrnes.

Byrnes translated, listened to the response, and said, “I think he says he wants to do a fitting. He’s not sure how well your lenses fit after not being worn for a while.”

“Okay,” Wolfe said. He spent the next hour allowing the optometrist to put lenses in his eyes, check his vision on the chart, check the fit, and then try another set. By the time the man finished, Wolfe’s eyes burned like fire and shone almost as red.

The optometrist bowed first to Wolfe and then to Byrnes. He spoke to Byrnes. Silently he stood and waited for Byrnes to translate. “He says he is sorry, but none of the lenses he has will fit an American’s eyes.”

Tears had run down Wolfe’s cheeks as he suffered in silence for the previous hour. But he never refused to allow the optometrist to try another pair of lenses. “Really?”

“He says he has tried them all. He’s afraid he will damage your eyes if he attempts any more. He suggests you go to an American eye doctor,” Byrnes said and waited for Wolfe’s response.

“Well, shit,” Wolfe said. “Don’t tell him that. Tell him thanks for trying. I’ll see if I can get my dad to talk with my ophthalmologist. Maybe he would send me a pair, even though I can’t make it to an appointment.”

“Okay,” Byrnes said. He relayed Wolfe’s message and the two sailors left the office. Wolfe turned to look at the optometrist as they departed the building. The man bowed one more time and then waved cheerily.

“Did you suppose that was legitimate?” Wolfe asked Byrnes. “Or do you suppose he likes to torture Americans?”

“He was horrified, disgraced. Humiliated, even. I thought he was contemplating hari-kari.” Byrnes said, laughing.

Wolfe laughed, too, despite the pain in his eyes.

Many shops displayed patches in their windows. Wolfe found three he liked. Dropping his work jacket in one of the shops, he arranged to pick it up later in the day. He chose a dancing Snoopy for his left shoulder. He asked the seamstress to modify the patch by embroidering
Happiness is May 16th
underneath Snoopy, his discharge date years in the future. He asked her to sew a large yellow patch on the back of the jacket, a copy of the South Vietnamese flag with a junk sailing in the foreground. The title read: Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club. For his right shoulder, he picked a round white patch with a baby red devil holding a trident, and wearing a white diaper.
Hot Stuff
had his own comic book in the States.

“Sure you don’t want
Hot Stuff
as a tattoo?” Byrnes asked, pointing to the little devil in the shop window when they left. “I’ve seen guys in the showers with small versions of that on their asses or shoulders.”

“I can always take the patch off the jacket if I like something better later,” Wolfe said. “Tough to do with a tattoo.”

They turned the corner, not having their next destination in mind and realized they had entered an area crowded with bars. Wolfe did an immediate about face followed by Byrnes.

Three sailors had followed them into the courtyard. Wolfe almost ran into them. “Sorry,” he said, stepping around one of the men.

Two meaty hands grabbed Wolfe by the front of his uniform and spun him around until he faced a short, heavyset, drunk sailor. The man wore the stripes of a second-class petty officer. “Look what we got here,” the man said to two first-class petty officers. He nodded toward the two green stripes on Wolfe’s sleeve, “A boot.” The other men, taller and thinner, supported the staggering drunk. They appeared to be inebriated, also.

“Excuse me,” Wolfe said, trying to disengage from the drunk and avoid his booze-laden breath.

“Whoa, where you going, Boot?” the petty officer asked.

“Shopping,” Wolfe said, placing his hands on the other man’s in an attempt to disengage them from his uniform.

“You can’t go shopping,” the man said, laughing. “We’re going to have a fight.”

Wolfe shook his head, knowing the drunk could hardly stand much less fight. He laughed, trying to calm the drunk. “I can’t fight you,” he said, “You’re a petty officer. I’d get in a lot of trouble.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” the drunk said, “I’m going to hit you first.”

Unable to pull free from the man, Wolfe shrugged. He turned his face toward Byrnes and handed him his sailor’s cap. “Here, Jimmy, hold this for – ” He never finished the sentence. The drunk hit him in his left jaw, leaving him with a three-inch gash inside his left lower lip and cheek, and dazed with a concussion. Not completely aware of his reaction, Wolfe balled up his right fist and swung at the drunk, rotating his body with his hips, legs, and shoulders. His fist connected solidly with the sailor’s left jaw, breaking it. The drunk staggered backward and sat on the asphalt, semiconscious, his buddies unable to hold up his dead weight.

When Wolfe came to, he was holding one of the first-class petty officers around the neck and beating his head against a brick wall outside a bar. At the time he was thinking,
This is one hell of an interesting dream.
Byrnes had apparently dispatched the third drunk. That first-class petty officer lay in the courtyard face down near the seated man with the broken jaw. Two shore patrolmen pulled Wolfe from his opponent. “That’s enough, sailor. That’s enough,” one said as they pinned his arms behind him. The inebriated sailor dropped to his knees, bloody hands clasp over his broken nose and lacerated scalp. Blood streamed down his face.

Dazed, Wolfe surveyed the crowd. Apparently the three bars that shared the courtyard had emptied to watch the fight. They formed a ring of white-suited sailors surrounding the combatants. Several witnesses consulted with more shore patrol. Wolfe searched the courtyard for Byrnes. He did not see his friend. As Wolfe became more and more aware of his surroundings, some of his memory returned. He pointed to the man sitting in front of him and the man face down. “He started it. And he helped him,” he told the shore patrol.

“Got it,” said the shore patrolman, sliding his nightstick into the loop on his belt. He motioned to other sailors. “Put them in the paddy wagon,” he said. To Wolfe, he said, “You all right, sailor?”

“Sure,” Wolfe said. “Can I go?”

“No. We have to investigate the fight. You’ll have to ride with us to headquarters.”

“Okay,” Wolfe said placidly, wondering if he still dreamed. He went to climb into the cab of the truck. The shore patrolman walked him to the back of the van and helped him climb in, next to the three drunks.

When the paddy wagon arrived at the small navy building that held the brig for drunks, waiting sailors pulled them roughly from the van and placed them all in the same ten by ten-foot barred cage. Wolfe sat on a bench on one side of the cell. The three others sat opposite him. Wolfe’s first thoughts were,
Where am I? Who are those guys? Why am I locked up?

Over the next four hours, Wolfe’s amnesia diminished. About the time the drunks started to sober, recover, and yell insults at him, he had remembered the pre-fight argument. The fact that he was off the
Oriskany
on liberty in Sasebo, Japan, creeped slowly into his consciousness. He remembered the shore patrol breaking up the fight. He never recalled hitting the heavyset drunk. The only part of the fight he remembered was bashing his opponent’s head into the wall and being certain he was dreaming.

When one of the first-class petty officers stood and threatened to start the brawl all over, two hands reached through the bars of the cell, grabbed him from behind by the shoulders, and sat him down. “If you say one more word, or stand up again, I’ll have your stripes,” a shore patrolman said. He looked in Wolfe’s direction. “You Wolfe?” he asked, as he unlocked the door to the cage. Wolfe nodded. “Come with me.”

The sailor ushered Wolfe into a large room. It reminded him of a courtroom. Sitting at a court-like bench in front of him, a first-class petty officer wearing a shore patrol armband looked down at Wolfe. “You been drinking?” he asked.

“I don’t drink,” Wolfe said.

“You hit a second-class petty officer and at least one first-class petty officer,” the man said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Wolfe stared at the man for a minute. “I can’t remember everything, but the second-class petty officer grabbed me. He said he wanted to have a fight and he was going to hit me first.”

“That fits with the witnesses’ accounts,” the man at the desk said. “You can go back to your ship.”

“Is my buddy here?” Wolfe looked around the room and did not see Byrnes. “I need to find him and take him back to the ship. And get my work jacket. Someone’s putting patches on it.”

“Better clean up your face first,” the petty officer said. He turned to his left and spoke to another sailor. “Johnson, get this man into the head and get him cleaned up.” Turning to Wolfe, he added, “Son, as soon as you get your work jacket, you go back to
Oriskany
. You are out of uniform without your hat.”

Wolfe didn’t recognize the sailor in the mirror. Blood covered his entire face, and most of his whites to his waist. Johnson brought him paper towels. After washing off all the blood he could remove, Wolfe started to leave the head. “What about those other guys?” he asked.