Better Times Than These (17 page)

They were inside a fenced-in compound, much like the one on Okinawa, except that this one was rimmed by barbed wire instead of chain-link fence.

Behind the low dunes, two cities existed which they had not been able to see from the ship.

One consisted of tents and tin-roofed buildings, also enclosed by barbed wire. It was laid out in a neat and orderly way, and the sand between the buildings and tents had been raked, and across the raked sand soldiers moved busily on duckboards from one tent or building to the next.

Beyond the barbed-wire perimeter was a second city consisting of shacks built from every imaginable material. It ringed the first city like some giant seething reptile, and its inhabitants were thousands of men, women and children dressed mostly in black, loose-fitting garments. It was impossible to tell what they were doing, because they appeared to be doing many things at once. An unpleasant stench that seemed to be a combination of decomposed food and human waste assailed the men on the beach, but they could not tell at this point which of the two cities it came from.

Lieutenant Brill was annoyed by the waiting.

If there was one thing he could not stand, that was it—and it seemed to be all he had done since he got into the Army. Waiting in line, waiting for orders, waiting for the transport to arrive, waiting now to get where they were going. Hurry up and wait.

On the other side of the barbed-wire barricade, a cluster of children in various stages of dress and undress had gathered, and Brill walked over to them. They were jabbering away at him and some of the other men, holding their hands out for food, cigarettes and whatever else they could talk people out of. Their jabbering was unintelligible, except for a few words like “Ahmercan”; “numba ten,” which, they learned later, was no compliment, since it represented the low point on a 1-10 rating scale; “You give me C ration?” and “You VC?” A small naked boy kept repeating over and over again, “Fuck you, fuck you.”

The sun was shining mercilessly on the men and they were drenched with sweat. No breakfast had been served aboard the transport, and the rations and ammunition still had not been off-loaded, and by now everyone was hungry.

Since there was no food to give the children, Bravo Company simply stared at them across the wire. Brill had not seen monkeys since he was ten years old, when his father had taken him to the Saint Louis zoo and let him feed them peanuts. But that was what they reminded Brill of, and he wondered what their parents must look like, to have produced offspring that looked like monkeys.

As Brill was meditating on this, Spudhead Miter walked past him toward the wire, with two Hershey Almonds in his hand. He peeled back the paper and broke the bars into small pieces and began tossing them gently underhand to the tiny monkey-men on the other side. The jabbering subsided as they scrambled for the tidbits, but when there was no more left, they broke into a wild, furious cacophony that annoyed Brill even more. If they had actually been monkeys, he might have understood it, but these people were supposed to be humans, no matter what they looked like. When he could stand it no longer, Brill walked to the fence himself and addressed them.

“Hey—that’s enough—see—all gone—no more—okay?” he said harshly.

“Okay, okay,” they repeated, saying it over and over again until Brill began to get the impression he was being mocked.

“All right—get out of here,” he scowled. “Go on—beat it!” He gestured down the rutted track toward the shack town.

“Okay, okay, okay—Ahmercan, numba ten,” they cried frantically, still holding out their hands, obviously with no intentions of leaving.

Brill stooped for a flat gray seashell at his feet and drew back with it in a threatening gesture. “GET OUT OF HERE, GODDAMN IT,” he roared.

The monkey-men shrank back and their jabbering ceased. They stared at Brill with the shell still cocked in his hand and slowly began to retreat from the barbed wire, some of the older ones smiling apprehensively and the littler ones cringing in fright. They stopped about twenty feet away, still silent, bunched close together, and looked at Brill.

Bravo Company had stopped talking also and was observing the scene with interest. None of them liked Brill particularly, but they were nervous on this hot Asian morning and the gibberish of the children made them more uncomfortable. The beach was bad, but they knew that what lay beyond it was probably going to be worse, and the general attitude was that they just wanted to be left alone.

Brill glared menacingly at the monkey-men, but they stood their ground across a sort of no-man’s-land between themselves and the barbed wire and the men on the inside. The stalemate continued until Brill began to feel foolish, as he realized this could go on and on.

He began to walk down the length of barbed wire, to get closer and force them to retreat even farther, and then the small naked one provided him an opportunity he secretly wanted. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” the tiny creature began again, and immediately Brill fired the seashell through the wire and began yelling and cursing them, hoping it would make them run.

It did not. Instead, several of the older boys picked up some small stones and shells from the sandy road and began heaving them back across the wire. Brill scooped up shell bits and retaliated, still cursing furiously. When some of the monkey-men’s missiles began to strike incidentally near men from Bravo Company, they leaped up ferociously and began also to curse the children. In a few seconds a full-fledged rock fight broke out, with men running up from other places on the beach picking up handfuls of things to throw. As the little band of monkey-men began to retire under the barrage, Trunk, followed closely by Kahn—who had been working on getting some water out to the beach for the men—ran up to see what the commotion was.

“All right, shitheads—knock it off!”
Trunk bellowed, and the throwing ceased almost immediately. Then Trunk saw Brill, who had been unrecognizable in the midst of the battle, and who had also stopped throwing when Trunk and Kahn arrived.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant Brill, but just what’s going on here?” Trunk said. He turned to the men. “Whatdaya shitheads think you’re doing—huh?”

“Never mind what they were doing, Sergeant Trunk—these men were helping me after those little bastards started rocking us.”

“Lieutenant Brill, let me see you over here for a minute,” Kahn said. “Sergeant Trunk, quiet these men down—and get them away from that wire.”

Trunk watched as Brill and Kahn walked down toward the beach; then he turned back on the men.

“Get your dumb asses back there to where those packs are and sit the hell down—MOVE IT,” he bellowed.

He grabbed the person nearest to him, who happened to be Madman Muntz, by the scruff of the neck and spun him around. “Can
you
tell me what the hell went on here?” Trunk said threateningly.

“Them little gooks was throwing stones at us so we started to throw them back,” Muntz said weakly. “They started to throw them at Lieutenant Brill, anyway, and they was hitting us too,” he said.

“Well let me tell you something, soldier,” Trunk said. “You don’t throw no stones at kids—ever; do you hear that?—
ever.
The United States Army don’t throw rocks at children.”

“Aw, Sarge, they was probably VC kids anyway,” Muntz said defensively. “They coulda had grenades or something.” The others agreed. “Yeah, Sarge, you heard about the kids throwing grenades over here, haven’t you? Spate’s brother got killed by a kid throwing a grenade—didn’t he, Spate?”

“Shut your ass up,” Trunk said. He scowled at the men, who began to drift off slowly toward the beach. A few of them glanced over their shoulders at the now distant band of monkey-men, who were moving down the road toward another area of the compound. Others broke up into small groups and spent the rest of the hour convincing themselves that they had come very close to being grenaded.

For nearly an hour, Holden and Major Dalkey, the senior general’s aide, had been trying to reach Brigade base camp to find out what they were supposed to do. Their instructions had been simply to go down and bring the convoy back, on the assumption they would get started early enough to arrive at Monkey Mountain before dark. But it was well into afternoon, and if they left now, nightfall would catch them somewhere along the road. Patch had removed his dark glasses and was pacing up and down the little Communications tent while Major Dalkey outlined the alternatives for him: they could either wait to leave until tomorrow—leave now and convoy straight through—or leave now and get as far as they could, then set up for the night somewhere along the way and continue at sunup.

“You see, Colonel,” Dalkey said drily, “the country sort of changes hands after dark.”

In a way, Patch wanted to make the decision himself. He was in charge of these men—all of them—until he turned them over to General Butterworth, and he felt a certain obligation to make choices such as this.

“If we push straight through,” Dalkey said, “we’ll lose our air cover at dark. Those gunships can’t do us any good at night. If we hole up somewhere along the way, we ought to be all right, but if there’s a squad of VC around we’d be sitting ducks for a mortar attack.

“On the other hand, there aren’t any facilities for the men here on the beach, and the Old Man is expecting us sometime today—he’s got an orientation schedule all set up for tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

“Try to get through again,” Patch said, looking at his watch.

Holden picked up the canvas-covered field phone and cranked furiously, then waited.

“Torch,” he said loudly, “this is Typhoon; get me Wicked Blast. Over.”

Something incoherent was muttered from the other end of the line. Moments later, a faint voice identified itself as Wicked Blast.

“Wicked Blast, this is Typhoon; get me Smokey-One. Over,” Holden said.

There was a pause.

“No, no—Typhoon—this is TYPHOON,” he said.

Another pause.

“TYPHOON—tango-yankee-papa-hotel-oscar-oscar-niner. Over.”

“What’s he say?” Patch asked.

“He thinks I’m saying ‘Baboon,’ ” Holden said.

“Give me that thing,” Patch said impatiently. He snatched the handset and spoke directly into it.

“This is Typhoon-One; give me Smokey-One,” he said.

“No, no, TYPHOON—TYPHOON! Over,” Patch shouted.

There was a long pause.

“LISTEN, FORGET WHO I AM—JUST GET ME SMOKEY-ONE—UNDERSTAND?” Patch bellowed.

“Sir, I believe you’ll be more successful if you hold it a little bit away from your mouth,” Dalkey offered.

“Shut up, Major, I’m handling this,” Patch said, grinding out his cigar in an ashtray.

After a while there was a squeaking, scratching sound at the other end of the line.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Patch said, sounding pleased.

“Smokey, this is Typhoon-One; get me Smokey-One. Over,” Patch said.

Again a scratching, growling noise.

“NO,
TYPHOON
; I SAY—GET ME SMOKEY-ONE! YOU HEAR?”

Another pause. Patch turned to Dalkey. “Who the hell is this ‘Baboon’ everybody’s talking about? What kind of call sign is that?”

“I think it’s something to do with the Navy, sir,” the major said.

Patch returned to the phone.

“LISTEN, THIS IS COLONEL PATCH, YOU HEAR—I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE GENERAL,” he roared.

More scratching sounds. Patch’s eyes suddenly became wild.

“I KNOW COLONEL PATCH ISN’T THERE, YOU IDIOT—THIS
IS
COLONEL PATCH. GIVE ME THE GENERAL!” he bellowed.

Another pause, and then a thin voice came onto the line.

“Ah,” Patch said, “finally.”

“General,” he said. “We are here at Cam Ranh Bay. We are ready to move out. The situation is this: If we leave now we will be traveling at night, and Dalkey informs me the roads are not secure. We can wait till tomorrow, or we can leave now and push on through and arrive your location by about twenty-three hundred, or we can leave now and set up somewhere and arrive your location approximately ten hundred tomorrow. It is up to you, sir, what do you say? Over,” Patch said, breathing a sigh of relief.

“What’s that you say, sir?” Patch said, leaning into the phone. “Say that again!” he demanded.

The person on the other end repeated the message.

“WHO
IS
THIS?” Patch screamed. His face contorted as though he had just stuck his finger into an electric socket.

“JEEP DRIVER! I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO ANY GODDAMNED JEEP DRIVER—I WANT GENERAL BUTTERWORTH, DO YOU HEAR ME?”

The line went dead and Patch slumped down in a chair, the handset dangling limply in his hand.

“It’s impossible,” he said dejectedly. “We are on our own.”

15