The Turtle Warrior (39 page)

SOME OF THE BEST MEN I’d ever known were in the Marines with me. Even some of the officers. But the grunts like me were automatically considered stupid if we didn’t have a college education. Some of the guys in Fifth Division didn’t even have their high school diplomas. But that didn’t mean they were stupid. They were poor. They came from poor families. More poor than I thought was possible. The Corps seemed like an island with pineapples and coconuts to those guys. Some like Cracker Jack had been facing jail time. He told me that he’d had his nickname since childhood because he craved boxes of Cracker Jacks and the small prizes that were in them. When he didn’t have the money to buy them, he began stealing them from the store, and as he got older, he stole bigger things. When he got caught stealing a car, he was given a choice: prison or the military. He said he picked the Marines to get his ass kicked and his head screwed on right.

I did have my high school diploma. My mother also drilled it into my head by dragging me to the bookmobile that reading was as necessary as breathing. She was right. I had no idea what kind of country Vietnam was. I was terrified, and the only way I knew how to get rid of some of my fear was to figure out just where I was going and who lived there. I always was a history buff. So I read everything I could about Vietnam in what little free time I had during basic. I spent one night screwing a prostitute and getting a case of clap that everybody laughed about. But the rest of the time I read. It helped in some ways. Made it worse in others.

Dienbienphu kept surfacing in the talk among the officers at Khe Sanh. I knew exactly what they were talking about although I never let on. It was like saying the Battle of Little Bighorn except it happened in Vietnam. Led by Giap, the Vietnamese slaughtered the French in 1954. I could read my CO’s thoughts. The French were nothing in comparison to what Giap wanted to do now. If Giap could mastermind that one, he could do it to us, and what a notch in his belt that would be. Slaughtering soldiers from the most powerful country in the world. The Khe Sanh base was just one big corral, and we were a lot of pigs. That’s what we were looking at: being gutted.

I learned a lot of good and bad things in the Corps. Those bad things contradicted nearly everything I had been taught that was any good before I joined up. One good thing stood out above the rest:
Don’t take what doesn’t belong to you.

It was close to Christmas when one night Marv asked me, “Do you know why we are here?”

It wasn’t a dumb question. He would never have asked such a question before we left the States. But once we landed in Nam and realized the big shittin’ lie we had been dropped in, it had to be asked. You had nothing to lose by asking. Especially if you were stuck at Khe Sanh.

“To fight Communism,” I said, giving the standard answer. I was reading
Huckleberry Finn
for the umpteenth time and drinking a beer we had pinched from a supply we had found in another bunker. I had my copy of
The Man Who Killed the Deer
with me too. Ernie had given me those books as well as many others. I had left the rest of them at home. My .45 was napping on my belly. I kept it available when I was relaxing because of rats. The biggest rats I’d ever seen, and they carried anything and everything you didn’t want to get, rabies and fleas that carried diseases like typhoid. Being bitten by a rat was a war wound just like getting shot or bombed. They lived and squealed in the sandbags, and some nights they even fell on us while we were sleeping. That was as bad as being shot in my book. What hell it was at night sometimes. I’d feel a thump and then that wild scratching on my face and chest as they scampered to get off. That squealing. I woke up like a three-alarm fire, hollering like hell. I swear the fuckin’ Viet Cong trained those rats. God, I hated ’em. I shot every fuckin’ rat I saw.

Marv persisted. “Yeah, I know that.
But they want it.
At least the Vietnamese do. I’m not sure about the Yards. I don’t know what the hell Communism really is,” he said again. “So, really, why are we here?”

Marv had been in college for one year when he got drafted. He was smart. He was just shell-shocked and not thinking. Ignorance
was
bliss in some situations and probably necessary. I had
Huck Finn
on the brain at that moment, so I broke it down into terms that I thought would get a laugh out of Marv.

“Beeecuz,” I wisecracked in a southern drawl, “a bunch of ol’ men have der hands in dis cookie ja. And we aw heah to make sho each one of dem gets a cookie.”

“What do we get?”

“Medals.”

“I’m suppose to get bombed for a medal?”

“ ’Fraid so,” I said.

When he didn’t answer, I looked at him. His mustache was ragged-looking, and it appeared as though the razor had skipped over his face rather than made a smooth run. Despite his beard growth, he looked as young as my brother. And as sad. It’s funny how you can love someone so much in such a short period of time. When you know you shouldn’t because he could die at any time. And that’s what we were there for. To kill and be killed. At least Marv didn’t have a choice. But I did it to myself. Like signing a contract with the devil. Rick had enlisted too. I was the stupid fucker that let the devil get him.

“Listen,” I said, shutting my book and holding it out to him, “read
Huck Finn.
It will take your mind off of things. Reading is good for you.”

“But will it save my life?” Marv asked sarcastically.

“Well,” I answered somewhat seriously, “yes and no. Yes and no.”

A MONTH AFTER ERNIE HAD accompanied the Navy chaplain and the other officer to the Lucas farm, he told another lie. He told his wife that he was making a day trip to Madison to get some parts for their Farmall tractor that he couldn’t get anywhere else. To make sure that the trip would not be in vain, he called the reserve office and made an appointment with the officer who had not gotten out of the car to say good-bye.

“I can’t tell you without the family’s permission.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Ernie replied.

He leaned forward and put his elbows on Hildebrandt’s desk. “His father never gave a shit about him. I know you didn’t tell his mother everything. I’m not leaving until you tell me.”

“It’s not that easy—”

“I fought in the Philippines.”

Ernie stood up, unbuttoned his shirt, and peeled it off. He turned around so the officer could see his back.

“I was not in the Marines. I was in the Army. I won’t talk to any jarheads if that’s what you’re worried about. Does that help?”

Ernie put his shirt back on and turned around. He managed a small smile. “I assume that the Marines and the Army still don’t get along real well.”

Hildebrandt opened the file in front of him and unfolded a map. “These are just some notes from basic training and from the field. Private Lucas belonged to the Fifth Marine Division and was a member of India Company, Third Battalion, Twenty-sixth Marines.”

He pointed to a section. Quang Tri.

“He was at the Khe Sanh Combat Base. On January twentieth,” Hildebrandt said, moving his finger slightly, “the Fifth Division, Bravo Company, temporarily lost hold of Hill Eight-eighty-one North, and the Fifth Division, India Company, moved from Hill Eight-eighty-one South to Eight-eighty-one North to help gain Hill Eight-eighty-one North back. Private Lucas was apparently right behind Lieutenant Miller as they stormed up the western side of the hill. The report says it was foggy that day, and in the early afternoon the fog lifted. That’s when they discovered they were surrounded by the North Vietnamese Army. Lieutenant Miller was shot and killed. Private Marvin Martinson reported seeing Private Lucas running after Miller and then ahead of him. That’s when Martinson lost sight of him. An F-four dropped napalm, and it was so close that it singed Private Martinson’s mustache. Martinson said he heard an explosion too.”

Ernie stared down at the desk. “What else does it say?”

“His record states that Private Lucas excelled in basic training and was one of the best marksmen to pass through Camp Pendleton. A Captain Kendall noted that Private Lucas would have done well at Annapolis and that he was surprised that Private Lucas was not college-educated. He was a sniper in Vietnam. It appears he was extraordinarily good at it. He was very well liked.”

There was a long pause. Ernie could hear movement out in the hallway.

“Listen, I have to be straight with you. I think Private Lucas is dead,” Hildebrandt added, his voice wavering. “I think he took a direct hit of napalm. I pray to God that he was shot first.”

Bile crept up the back of Ernie’s throat, and he coughed to clear it. “Were you in Vietnam?”

“Yes. Ironically, I was at the Khe Sanh Combat Base in ’65 and ’66. The base sits on a plateau. But around the plateau are the highlands. If you didn’t know what was hidden in all that beauty, you would think that you landed in paradise. Since I left,” he said, “they’ve been fortifying the base camp with more and more Marines. Have you seen the papers?”

Ernie shook his head.

“Khe Sanh was only a preliminary target. The NVA was massing up toward Hue. All hell is breaking loose right now.”

Ernie stood up. “I appreciate your honesty. I’m sure you were very helpful to the men in your unit.”

Hildebrandt stood up as well. “I don’t know about that. I am a priest, and I was a makeshift medic. I was not supposed to engage in combat or carry a weapon. But I did carry a forty-five.”

Hildebrandt ran a hand over his bristly crew cut. “I thought being in Vietnam was bad. But these visits I have to make . . .”

“You must be close to being discharged. Can’t you find a parish somewhere?”

“Actually I could have been discharged a few months back. So it’s voluntary at this point. And I’ll be volunteering to get out very soon.”

Hildebrandt walked around the desk so that he could usher Ernie out.

“You cared a great deal about James Lucas.”

“I did.”

Ernie stopped just outside the chaplain’s office door. He turned and looked at the chaplain. “I’m the one who taught him how to shoot so well.”