Better Times Than These (26 page)

A few yards in, the growth became triple canopy. The bottom layer was an almost impenetrable wad of underbrush and deadfall, as tall as a man or taller. Out of this grew a second canopy of trees, perhaps thirty or forty feet high. Above everything else, a third layer of trees—a hundred feet or more in height—sealed out the sky and the rest of the world.

They had been at it for more than five hours, and had advanced less than six or seven hundred yards. Ahead they could occasionally hear the cursing voices of Alpha Company and the drone of a chain saw. One thing was for certain: their arrival in the jungle would be a surprise to no one.

Each man had been told to carry only four canteens of water and two socks stuffed with as many C rations as they would hold, but no packs. A few men did bring packs, but quickly discarded them when the going got rough. The heat was staggering, even without the direct sun. It was as though they had entered a gigantic steam bath where every breath sucked moisture into their lungs. Dampness was everywhere, and the ground, where it was not covered with deadfall, was an oily mush. Beads of water lay on every piece of vegetation, and this was absorbed by clothing along with the sweat until many of the men felt they would never dry out again. Here and there a man would collapse from the heat or from exhaustion and be marked by his companions until the medics either revived him or dragged him back to the aid station that had been set up at the edge of the jungle.

For Kahn, the situation was impossible to control. Since he couldn’t see more than a few yards in either direction, he had constantly to get word by radio for the platoons to try to stay on some kind of line. The needle of the compass seemed to lead them maliciously into walls of stuff a snake couldn’t wriggle through, and the line kept tipping one way and then the other. Finally, his mouth dry as cotton, Kahn gave up except for an occasional radio check, clinging to the hope that at least they seemed to be going in the right direction. If it could have been seen from the air, the advance of Four/Seven would have appeared now as a large anvil instead of an arrowhead, but with a little knot in the middle where the point of Alpha Company was poking its way through with the aid of the chain saws.

The firing began on the right and forward, on Charlie Company’s flank. It grew to be a steady din, punctuated occasionally by a muffled explosion. Without being told, every man in Bravo Company stopped dead in his tracks for an instant, then just as quickly crouched down and began to look around in the jungle as far as he could see, which was not very far at all.

Kahn had the radio operator, Bateson, switch to the Command net so that he could hear what was going on. He recognized the voice of Tolson, commander of Charlie Company, who was calmly informing someone that one of his platoons was receiving heavy fire.

“Whipcrack Three, this is Backlash. Over,” Patch’s voice crackled over the radio.

“This is Whipcrack Three; go ahead,” Tolson said serenely.

“Can you estimate the strength of your contact?” Patch asked.

“Negative at this time,” Tolson said. “All I know is it’s raining on us pretty hard.”

“Ask the platoon leader,” Patch said sternly.

“I am not in contact with him,” Tolson said almost dreamily.

“What do you mean you’re not in contact with him?” Patch demanded incredulously. “Haven’t you got radio contact with him?”

“Negative at this time,” Tolson said. “He isn’t answering the phone.”

“Have you tried your Two-B element?” Patch said, referring to Tolson’s second platoon. “Do they have contact?”

“With who?” Tolson said. “Over.”

“With the goddamn enemy,” Patch roared, “who else?”

“I thought you meant contact with the One-B,” Tolson said. He sounded as if he were falling asleep.

Kahn felt himself getting mad at Tolson. Dumb Arkansas bastard—why doesn’t he even seem upset? What in hell is going on over there?

“I want you to get ready to send up green smoke,” Patch said. “Put it as far in front of you as you can and send someone to find out what the hell is going on with your One-B element. We are going to bring in some air on this, you read? Over.”

“Roger,” Tolson said. “Green smoke forward. What do you want us to do, pull back?”

“I want you to sit tight,” Patch said gruffly. “Just sit tight and get support to that platoon. Throw the smoke when I say so.” He sounded very unhappy.

The firing from Tolson’s direction seemed to become more intense, and there were more explosions. Bravo Company waited, trembling and frightened, hoping none of this would involve them, but their hopes were quickly dashed as Patch ordered Kahn to saddle up and begin a wide sweep toward the fighting so as to put some pressure on the enemy flank.

The first burst of machine-gun fire should have killed Lieutenant Donovan outright, but he lingered on for a few more minutes. It caught him in the chest with two loud “whacks” that reminded Spudhead—idiotically, he thought later—of someone whacking his fist into a baseball glove, and propelled Donovan backward several steps into a huge tangle of deadfall covered with the leaves of some creeping green vine. He was only five yards or so from where Spudhead and Donovan’s radio operator, Spain, had crouched when the first burst went off. Spudhead stared mindlessly at Donovan, because he was the closest human to him and also because he didn’t want to look ahead.

The machine gun was still laughing hideously and spraying little showers of mulched leaves and twigs gently to the ground around them.

Donovan’s rifle lay a few feet in front of him where he had dropped it when he was hit. His head rested peacefully in the creeping vine. There was an astonished look on his face, but wary too, as though he had heard a strange sound in the dark and was trying to adjust his eyes to see its source. Both hands were at his chest, and blood, in a bright, fine spray from his mouth, had stained his chin and nose.

“Oh, oh Christ—I’m hit,” the big ex-tackle said, almost matter-of-factly, but he did not look at Spudhead or Spain or anything else. His head was tilted upward a little bit, and his breath came in sucking, whistling gasps as though he was suffering from a severe chest ailment—which, in an odd sort of way, he was. Then his eyes closed and he settled down to a low, humming moan.

As Spudhead watched in helpless terror, the machine gun barked again and continued to rain down its little residue, and Donovan quietly died.

The machine gun chattered madly again, and Spudhead slowly became aware of people dashing around in a wild panic, yelling and cursing and shouting. All of them, except Spain, seemed to be going somewhere, popping up and down, moving around, and this had been going on while he had been gaping at the last breathing seconds of Lieutenant Donovan, which actually was not a long time at all, but in Spudhead’s mind it seemed to have consumed a large, if not a major, portion of his life.

Spain was crouched about ten yards away, his face frozen in terror, his eyeballs white. His rifle was lying beside him, and the radio on his back was grumbling frantically with a voice Spudhead recognized as Lieutenant Kahn’s. Spain made no move to pick it up.

“Spain,
Spain!”
Spudhead’s words came out in a deep, hoarse whisper, but Spain continued to crouch like a terrified rat. Bullets whistled overhead.

This is insane, Spudhead thought.
I’ve got to get out of here!
The radio crackled again, and without thinking about it, Spudhead was at Spain’s side, tearing the handset from its holder, desperately squeezing the transmit bar and yelling into it.

“Lieutenant Kahn, sir, Lieutenant Kahn! Lieutenant Donovan’s been shot and they’re shooting all over the place—what do you want us to do?” Again, he thought,
This is crazy. I’ve got to get out of here!

At the other end of the line, Kahn heard Spudhead’s message. He knew it must have been Donovan’s platoon catching it, and now that it was confirmed he had to make a decision—the decision Spudhead asked about. What in hell
did
he want them to do? It dawned on him that he really hadn’t the slightest notion, because he didn’t know what was going on over there. While one portion of his mind worked on that problem, he felt compelled to say something immediately in reply. Reflexively he said the first thing that came into his head, which was
“Soldier, I don’t ever want to hear you using my name over the radio again. You do, and I’ll . . . I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll do something . . .”
Before he finished the sentence, Kahn knew it was a foolish thing to say.

When he received this message, Spudhead took the handset away from his ear and stared into it quizzically. This is all very strange, he thought. Maybe it is just a dream. He felt an urge to stand up and laugh until his sides split. His brain began to shift around crazily, as though it were changing gears from reality to unreality. Momentarily, he felt a rush of terror that he was losing control of his mind.

Through the brush a large figure, half crawling, half crouching, sprang toward him, landed noisily by his side in a spray of dirt and twigs, and hastily looked around, surveying the body of Lieutenant Donovan and the lie of the land and Spudhead himself. Spudhead found himself looking into the scowling black face of Sergeant Dreyfuss, who had come out to the beach at Okinawa that day with Kahn and Sergeant Trunk. Dreyfuss snatched away the handset and punched the transmit bar and spoke firmly into it. In the seconds it took for a reply, he seized Spudhead by the shoulder and shook him.

“Where’s your gunner? Get that ammo to him! Get your ass going! Return fire, goddamn it—
return fire!”
Dreyfuss spat through clenched teeth.

Grateful in a way that someone had finally told him what to do, Spudhead exchanged a last frightened look with Dreyfuss and leaped out into the brush to his right where he figured Madman Muntz would be. On his hands and knees he fought his way over a large tangle of deadfall, oblivious to what might be living beneath it, his hands and feet punching through. He cried out through the gloom for Muntz, and above the racket Muntz’s hoarse voice came back.

“Over here!”

Muntz was huddled in a nest of underbrush his body had formed when he had hit ground. Hixon, the other ammo carrier, was beside him, flattened out fearfully.

“Cain’t see nuthin’ through this stuff,” Muntz said grimly.

“Can’t see over there either,” Spudhead panted. “But they’re just into those trees.”

“What trees?” Muntz demanded. The shooting in front of them had stopped, but the battle continued to their left.

Spudhead pointed upward where the tops of several second-canopy trees loomed above the brush. “I think Lieutenant Donovan’s dead,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

“Fuck this,” Muntz growled. “What the hell do they want us to do?”

Two single, well-spaced shots cracked out on their left.

“Dreyfuss says return fire,” Spudhead said.

“How the goddamn fuck are we gonna do it? You can’t even . . .” His words were lost in two terrific explosions somewhere far to the right where the shooting had first started. The air seemed to rush out of the jungle toward the sound of the explosions with a deep sucking noise and then just as quickly rush back in with the fierce, warm breath of an ocean breaker in a heat wave.

“Napalm—they’re napalming the bastards!” Muntz cried.

As if to confirm his declaration, they could just see through the cracks in the topmost trees an orange fireball and black smoke and faintly hear the screaming of a jet fighter somewhere above. Suddenly a vigorous firing poured into the jungle in the direction of the enemy positions. Above it, someone’s voice screamed loud and clear, “Return fire! Return fire!”

Muntz grabbed the machine gun and leaped up, his knees bent, and propped himself against the trunk of a tree.
“Keep me fed,”
he bawled, and let loose a burst in the direction of the trees ahead, holding the weapon as tightly as he could against the tree trunk. Spudhead and Hixon crouched beside him holding more ammunition. Muntz’s jaw was set like that of a man being kicked in the shins as the gun jumped spasmodically in his hands, spraying the line of trees Spudhead had pointed out before. Ahead, there was a flash of bright light followed by a black explosion. Two more explosions followed, and when Muntz crouched back down, all firing but their own seemed to have ceased.

A voice swelled out of the jungle ahead and from their right: “Machine gun, move up.” The voice died into an echo that reverberated all around them in the thin light. Muntz wilted into the ground.

“Come on, Muntz. We better get up there,” Spudhead said.

Through the brush they glimpsed an occasional helmet or the backs of other Bravo Company men, and the three of them warily set out toward the source of the enemy fire. Far off, there was still sporadic shooting and the sound of distant explosions. So far, they had yet to see their first live North Vietnamese soldier.

High above the Boo Hoo Forest, Colonel Patch and several of his staff aides were cruising in a helicopter. Seated near the right door, Patch was listening intently to what his commanders below had to say.