A Culpable Innocence: The American Dream Reprised

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Illustration 1.0: Partial Map of South Vietnam

Illustration 2.0: Tropo Hill Layout

Chapter 1

THE GUARD TOWER

A miasmic night encased Regis like a shroud, veiling the stars behind its thick mist and ensconcing his guard tower in a foreboding stillness. He felt outside the flow of time. A nearly undetectable breeze carried the heavy floating vapors under the guard tower’s underpinnings. It seemed to suspend him, perched above a cloud and absent any sense of solid ground beneath his feet. He squinted into the settling fog, but his vision was blurred by the reflected glare of the tower floodlight. It only served to highlight his silhouette and make him an easy target.

Is there anyone out there, Regis wondered?

This was only his third day in the Central Highlands and he had seen almost nothing of the country. Landing in a C-130 here was not the same as his arrival in an airliner a month ago in Saigon at the Tan Son Nut airbase. He had been anxious then when the pilot reported they would circle the airport until the mortaring had stopped. But when he exited the plane, he recognized all the same elements of a military base back home, except for a suffocating blanket of heat and humidity. It was reassuring in its familiarity.

His arrival at the Central Highlands’ airbase in Pleiku, on the other hand, was a totally different experience. Anxiety was eclipsed by fear. The pilot dropped the plane out of the sky like a lead stone. Later he found out that this was standard procedure when under attack: a more gradual descent would make the plane vulnerable to small arms fire from the valley below – one in the network of valleys that now hid from his view behind a heavy fog cover. Like all the other military installations in the area, the airbase was located on a hill, a plateau just long enough to land cargo planes. Falling out of the sky, the plane had creaked and groaned as if it were going to break into pieces at any moment. Then there were pinging sounds followed by sudden swishes of air, and he had held tight to the sling netting to prevent his body from bouncing off the ceiling. In the terror of the moment, time seemed to slow down; his senses had become extraordinarily keen. He remembered how his eyes had been fixed on the holes blasted into the fuselage by snipers while intensely aware of the other passenger’s wide-eyed stare and the busy crew on the periphery of his vision. Two crew members had been pulling at the straps that held their cargo in place. They seemed to go about their routine completely unaware of what Regis supposed might be their imminent death. Just a fraction of a second before the pilot pulled up the nose of the plane, they had sat down in unison with their backs supported firmly against the cargo. Regis could still feel how his stomach had traveled from his throat to his feet in one sudden jerk. Moments later the plane bounced off the runway with a jolt. As soon as its wheels found traction, the pilot braked forcefully like a cowboy reining in a wild stallion. Then, at the same instant the pilot eased his heavy braking, one of the crew had begun opening the rear tailgate. The plane was gliding sedately in safe harbor once again. As the pilot pulled the plane around into its assigned berth, Regis saw his new surroundings swirling into view for the first time. A kaleidoscope of colors had greeted him: penetratingly blue skies, pierced by mountains of varying shades of intense green. The cargo specialist beckoned the attention of his passengers with his regular greeting, Welcome to the fuckin’ highlands. Then he casually motioned them to release their harnesses and approach the now fully open tailgate. Regis had inhaled deeply, struggled to find his footing and shoulder his duffle bag, and then staggered toward the exit. He remembered feeling like he had entered an alternate reality.

Squinting into the fog, Regis tried unsuccessfully to place his new base within its surroundings. He could barely see One Tower, the guard tower closest to him. And Three Tower, off to his right and twice as distant, was completely invisible, as was Engineer Hill, the installation he had been told it faced. Before him were two larger hilltop installations, Artillery Hill and Camp Schmidt, also invisible. To orient himself, it was more fruitful to revisualize the picture that confronted him on his first day: a small plateau shaped like a squashed pentagon, a tower at each corner, deep valleys on three sides, and, bordering the valleys, these other military installations, now shrouded in the fog.

During the day, he recalled, the sun made their equipment flash. He had seen those flashes upon his initial arrival when his small caravan of military vehicles crested what he now knew was his hilltop station. It was called Tropo Hill—named for its large dish antennae—another flat-top hill, higher than the others, and commandeering a strategic view of the Central

Highlands and of its sister installations. The drive from the airbase, which was east of Tropo Hill, was only about a mile. His arrival as a new trooper had gone largely unnoticed, although the supplies that came with him were excitedly anticipated and very quickly unloaded from the deuce-and-a-half.

Tropo Hill, he had soon found out, was home to two detachments of the Regional Communications Group or RCG: the Pleiku Detachment which manned and operated the communications equipment and the Long Lines Battalion North Headquarters Detachment which commanded all of the communications detachments in the I and II Corps1∗ areas of South Vietnam. Three huge dish antennae pointing north, east and south dominated the site. As the captain who gave him his assignment in Saigon had been quick to point out, Tropo Hill was the second largest microwave troposphere scatter site in the world. By bouncing microwave transmissions off the atmosphere’s troposphere, radio waves could circumnavigate the globe and maintain communications between Vietnam and Washington.

Earlier, when he had reported for guard duty, he was surprised that there were only seven others with him before the charge-of-quarters∗. Since there were two guards assigned to each tower, it was apparent to Regis that one of the five guard towers would be unattended. Considering the significance of this site, he found it odd that any guard tower would be left undefended. He had wanted to question the CQ about the vacant tower, but was put off by that man’s abrupt and impatient manner. Perhaps, he had thought, his partner in Two Tower might satisfy his curiosity during the overlap between shifts. That person would be Specialist Barry Larkin. They each would have to pull two three hour shifts.

Regis wondered what kind of defense he was expected to muster with no visibility and an M-60 machine gun he had never fired. Master Sergeant Robson, his new NCO∗, told him the site had never been attacked and, in his words, had as much appeal to Charlie∗ as a whore’s pimp to a GI. In spite of his assurances of safety, Robson had nevertheless told Regis to take his assigned M-14 rifle and at least four magazines with him. Did the sergeant anticipate that Regis would not know how to fire an M-60, or, Regis shuddered to think so, that he might need a weapon to walk safely to his guard position at night?

Until this moment Regis could not possibly have foreseen a time or place wherein he might have to use a weapon to kill another human being. He had avoided the course taken by Antwaan, the friend he made in boot camp. Antwaan had applied for Officer Training School at the urging of their company commander and was quickly accepted. His orders for Vietnam came just a month before Regis’ orders. The difference between their separate paths was that Antwaan graduated from OTS∗ a second lieutenant in the infantry, whereas Regis was a specialist four in the Signal Corps, a rear echelon trooper with the same rank as a corporal. He had refused the enticements of OTS so that he would not have to be a lieutenant on the front lines where the military loved to place college educated draftees. He gambled that the military would not waste a degree in electrical engineering and his background in circuit design at Holmes and Gatsby. At first, his gamble paid off. He was assigned to Fort Monmouth, one of the two Signal Corp training schools in the States. Once there, he was waived through the basic courses in electricity and allowed to test for competency on the REL2600 microwave troposcatter system after only two weeks of training. When his name was placed on the roster for classes in the line-of-sight AN/FRC109 microwave system, he was sure that he would eventually be assigned to Europe or stay stateside, perhaps as an instructor. AN/FRC-109 was fixed station equipment used to communicate in a direct line for short distances between stationary sites. It definitely was not the type of mobile equipment one would expect in a war zone. He had tasked himself to excel and within four weeks was rewarded with his PFC∗ stripe and with orders to stay on as an instructor at the base. After less than a month as an instructor, his command hierarchy managed to waive time-in-rank protocol and promote him to specialist four. Unfortunately, along with his promotion came orders for Vietnam. The base commander himself had delivered the orders, telling him we need people like you in Vietnam. Apparently, his success and gung-ho attitude had won him this unwanted recognition. And so he followed his boot camp buddy to Vietnam, although in quite different circumstances.

It was not until Sergeant Robson took him on a tour of Tropo Hill’s facilities yesterday that he came to understand the missing logic behind his assignment. The communications’ facility was a prefabricated metal building sitting on a cement foundation near the middle of the compound. When they entered the building, Regis was confronted with the unexpected. There, in the path of the Ho Chi Minh trail and surrounded by jungle and forest, was a working installation of AN/FRC-109. Besides the troposcatter equipment used for connection to STRATCOM, the worldwide strategic communications network, fixed station equipment was being used to interconnect all of the disbursed communications detachments located throughout South Vietnam. Here was the foundation for a basic public telephone system.

Nguyen Ba Linh, the Vietnamese official he befriended during his brief stay in Saigon, had told him that America would leave behind some portion of the technology they invested in Vietnam. Linh’s comments now seemed quite appropriate to Regis as he looked over the fixed station communications equipment anchored on cement foundations. However, much that Linh told him made less sense since it did not correspond with what he had been told of Vietnam by his own government. Linh would ramble on about Vietnam’s centuries old fight for independence and, especially, about its distrust of the Chinese. And yet it was Russian and Chinese Communists who Regis was led to believe were the instigators of North Vietnam’s invasion of the South. Although Regis had only spent two days behind his new desk in Battalion’s S2/S3∗, they were sufficient to affirm the extensive presence of the North Vietnamese Army throughout the Central Highlands and of their Chinese association. The intel printed out on the secure teletype was more than persuasive. It regularly updated the body counts from recent sweeps by the 173rd Airborne who had assisted the local 4th Infantry in clearing the area of NVA. Nearly all the weaponry carried by these dead soldiers was of Chinese origin, including Russian AK¬47s made in China. The 173rd had apparently been successful in pushing back the insurgents to the Cambodian border by November—fortuitously, just before Regis arrival. Now they had moved north to the neighboring Kontum province where at least two divisions of NVA had infiltrated. So why, Regis asked himself, would a country with an alleged long history of fighting foreign invaders, especially the Chinese, align themselves with their long term enemies? And why do the North Vietnamese accept aid from communists while the South looks to the West for assistance?

Although these questions remained unanswered, Regis had begun to unravel a few of the contradictions presented to him by his tour of duty in a combat zone. From his very first step onto Vietnam’s soil, he had been assailed with stories and legends designed by his compatriots, he was sure, to feed the anxieties of the newcomer or FNG, the fucking new guy. He had been told to keep his head below the windows in the bus that transported him from the Tan Son Nhut airbase to downtown Saigon in order to avoid having it shot off. The screens on the bus’ windows, it had been explained, were there to protect its passengers from grenades hurled at them. But his driver had not shown any sign of personal anxiety as he steered through the heart of downtown Saigon. Later, while waiting for orders at the RCG Headquarters, he had been told he should not wander off into the city because he might be shot by snipers, poisoned by a street vendor’s local fare, or blown up by sappers∗ while sitting in a restaurant. Food hawkers of every sort were indeed plentiful throughout Saigon. And many of the larger restaurants were fronted by sandbags with overhanging netting designed to catch any explosive device thrown by a passerby and deposit it beyond the sandbags. Although these threats were probably real, in the month Regis had been in Saigon there were no incidents of shootings or restaurant bombings. Moreover, off-duty soldiers roamed the city at will, seemingly oblivious to any danger. All the same, soldiers were told not to frequent restaurants, always to travel in groups of two or more, and to wear their uniforms at all times. From Regis’ observations, none of these rules were obeyed. Moreover, wearing a uniform made little sense since it only helped distinguish American soldiers from non-Asian civilians, making them recognizable targets for any who might want to kill them. As far as the stories of poisoned food, Regis found that their only residual evidence was the ongoing diarrhea experienced by nearly all GIs. But that disorder was commonly attributed to the prescribed malaria pills. These little pink pills promised to assure loose bowels for the length of Regis’ tour of duty in the combat zone. He willingly took the malaria pills, but decided to keep his own council regarding the other restrictions. Vietnam, he had discovered, was a conundrum. Below its surface were currents that defied appearances.

If the questions and contradictions that plagued Regis’ initial month in Vietnam had seemed confusing, his present circumstance was no less problematic. Here he was a nicely displayed target in a potential shooting gallery. The light source above his head served better to disclose his location in the fog than to illuminate the enemy’s. Shivering in his field jacket, staring into the non-revealing glare, and listening to the night’s quiet voice threatened to reduce his mind to frightening imaginings or to unchecked streams of associations. The latter was most certainly a defense against the former. So Regis gave free reign to his wandering thoughts which roamed over his experiences that first month in Saigon and, inevitably, his friendship with Linh and his niece, Michelle.

Soon after his arrival in Saigon, Regis had fallen into a regular routine. He was required to show up for roll call and then report for assignment. Since his orders were somehow never forthcoming, he was usually given some chore or other to perform, most often policing or cleaning up an area of the compound. He soon learned that nobody was much interested in policing him since he was about to be shipped out and was not anybody’s immediate concern. Usually the afternoons and evenings were his to spend as he pleased. Technically, excursions into the City required official leave which was routinely granted to soldiers stationed in Saigon. But he was unassigned to any formal command structure. Since Americans seemed to roam the streets at will, both in military and civilian garb, Regis rationalized that he would hardly be noticed if he did likewise. So he took advantage of the opportunity his situation provided: he explored the area around headquarters almost daily. What he found were streets packed with pedestrians, mopeds, carts, bicycles, a few cars and military vehicles—the latter often driven too fast and with horns blaring. Surprisingly the locals seemed to tolerate the military incursion into their road space, making way for the more aggressive American drivers, sometimes at a hair-raising last minute.

And then there were the ladies of Saigon: Asian dolls dressed in the traditional ao dai. They appeared as visions of exquisite elegance floating through the helter-skelter of hustling, crowded streets. The dust raised by the never ceasing traffic seemed to fall about them without soiling their immaculately white silk pants or the colorful ao dai outer garments. Regis had been told to stay away from the local women for fear of catching a mythically horrendous venereal decease. According to this legend, soldiers so infected had been removed to Japan for study and were never heard of again. Of course, Regis gave no credence to this myth, although he had no experience in the matter. He had met and befriended only Michelle who worked at the Saigon Post Exchange. She was most obviously not a woman of the streets. Their encounter was unusual and fortuitous. For Nguyen Ba Linh was her father’s younger brother, her uncle and guardian.

Though playing back these memories helped relieve tension, Regis never lessened his efforts to discern shapes or movement in the mist. The gentle flow of the fog, like a cloak drawn slowly, but unevenly, across the landscape, teasingly displayed and then quickly hid objects with an alarming abruptness. Suddenly his attention was arrested by something in his field of vision. Was Regis looking at the metal glitter of razor wire or the point of a gun barrel? Before his mind could name the passing image, it was swept away from view. Regis was then left with futile attempts to quiet his senses and to reason with his imaginings. Certainly, if there was a gun that close to him, he would already be dead, or so he assumed. Besides, there was no sound that he could attach to his momentary vision. The mind can play tricks when fear holds the body taut. But those brave soldiers of the 173rd had already cleared the area of NVA – or so he had been told. Regis tried to relax. By now, he mused, he must be in the final hour of his first watch.

Recalling his tentative attempt to gain a sense of Saigon brought to mind his initial encounter with Michelle in the local PX. It was only a short walk from headquarters. Michelle was a clerk in its book section. He had asked her whether she had any books by Erich Fromm on the shelves. There was a book his girlfriend had recommended, but he was mildly embarrassed to state its title. She looked puzzled at his question. He thought to himself, perhaps she doesn’t speak much English. But then she responded, Which of Fromm’s books you wish to read? He muttered, The one about love. He remembered the smile on her face when she explained that The Art of Loving was not on the GI reading list at the PX. Then, with a laugh, she added that he might find any number of the popular Harold Robbins’ books on the shelves. He smiled. After that, he went back every day.

Her name was Michelle Delacroix, an Eurasian, born of a French mother whose name she carried and a Vietnamese father. From what little history she shared with Regis, he surmised she was in her thirties, although in appearance she looked closer to his age. She was fluent in French, Chinese and Vietnamese. Her English, although not that of a native speaker, was quite good. Her mother was in the French Foreign Service and had spent some time in Vietnam where she met Michelle’s father and in England where Michelle was born. Educated mostly in Paris as a child, Michelle did not begin her study of Vietnamese and Chinese until her mid twenties when she came to Hanoi to seek out her father. Other than this one reference, she never spoke about her father – at least, until the day Regis left Saigon. Linh, however, had explained this gap in her story in an apparently innocent attempt to inform his young American friend. But the innocence of his intentions later became suspect in Regis’ assessment.

After he had visited the bookstore for five straight days, Michelle cautiously invited Regis to her home. He readily accepted the invitation, recognizing in her manner that her interest in him was altruistic. She saw his loneliness and the embarrassment he tried to hide when he showed her Sharon’s picture. Other than Antwaan, she had been the only person to whom he opened this door into his soul. Like Antwaan, no reaction escaped from her features. She just stated the obvious, pretty girl. Regis respected her natural acceptance of his Negro girlfriend and knew instantly that he had found a friend in this exotic and foreign land.

Meeting her uncle, Nguyen Ba Linh, was an unexpected benefit. While Michelle was interested in everything American, Linh seemed totally engaged in Vietnam—its heritage, its history, its future. The two men were immediately drawn to each other’s company, the older man taking on the role of mentor. He was a walking almanac of his people’s past and an active participant in its present. Linh, Regis soon discovered, was a judge in South Vietnam’s judicial system. He lived like a Chinese mandarin, surrounded by gardens and servants. His education far surpassed Regis’ and, like Michelle, included several languages. In his youth, he had spent time in the U.S. where he graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in philosophy. Later, he earned the thi boi ∗ at the Imperial Academy in Hue and a graduate degree in international law at the French Sorbonne. Their conversations over many dinners often began with some intellectual premise – the human quest for freedom or the definition of social compassion – but always ended with political overtones. It was difficult for Regis to keep up with Linh, especially when he discussed the differences between capitalism and communism. He would always describe the pros and cons analytically with no hint of his own preferences. Then he would throw the faux debate back to Regis, usually with a question: what do you think? Regis felt his answers were embarrassingly less erudite. But he tried to be honest about the many things he had never fully thought through. His opinions about socialism or social welfare, about workers’ rights or labor unions, about peasant revolution or civil rights, about international justice or national interest were mainly unformed and equally uninformed. Nevertheless, he appreciated the intellectual challenge that Linh provided and the limitless patience and politeness of his host. To Regis he seemed more invested in introducing Regis to the world that he inhabited than influencing his independent thinking. For his part, Regis found Linh’s many digressions into Vietnam’s history fascinating. He would trace its heritage back to the first century of the Christian era when the Trung sisters led an insurrection against the Chinese and first established an independent state. Although falling in and out of Chinese control throughout their history, the Vietnamese, he insisted, always maintained their identity. Even when they adopted the Confucian system of self management and social governance from the Chinese, they harbored the seeds of their own independence. In the tenth century, Emperor Dinh Bo Linh renamed their state Dai Co Viet, giving recognition to the unique character of the Vietnamese and distinguishing them forever from their Asian counterparts to the North.

Regis remembered the sadness that crept into Linh’s voice when he spoke of the Catholic purge instigated by Emperor Tu Duc after the French attacks at Tourane in the nineteenth century. It was during Linh’s account of Tu Duc that he confessed his family’s Catholicism. After the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, many Catholics fled what they believed would be a second purge. Linh was amongst those who came to the South. The only family member who stayed behind was his older brother, Michelle’s father, who was Vietminh∗. Although he was reticent about his brother, he did reveal more about Michelle’s background than she had volunteered. She had arrived in Hanoi in 1961. Later that year, she came to Linh’s residence in Saigon. Her father had arranged to smuggle her out of Hanoi. Regis surmised that her father could not protect her from the threat of another Catholic purge. However, Regis also knew that as the daughter of a Vietminh she could be made to feel just as unwelcome in South Vietnam. Perhaps for that reason, she wanted to be known by the Catholic given name with which she had been raised. Nevertheless, she was a Nguyen, and Linh considered himself her guardian.

Remembering Linh and Michelle gave Regis some respite from his lonely vigil. Tension and boredom combined to weave time into an endless tapestry where the free associations of the mind could run rampant in every direction, backward or forward. Here he was perched above a misty abyss, without any apparent passage of time. Even his wrist watch had stopped: its face was clouded with water droplets. The temperature drop at night, he mused, must have caused the condensation. In Saigon he had become accustomed to constant heat and humidity. The Central Highlands in contrast was just emerging from its winter season, a time of unremitting monsoon rains. Although the temperature was probably not below seventy degrees, it felt chilly and clammy to Regis. This first watch seemed interminable, but he was sure he was nearing his time to be relieved. Gradually his initial anxieties about guard duty were dissipating, replaced by the boredom that had crept over him. He wished for a companion, somebody with whom he could talk and relieve himself of this tediousness. While he waited for Specialist Larkin, he decided to task himself with a problem or puzzle that seemed to invite solution. Instead of wild ramblings, he would focus his attention on just one part of his recent experience.

Once again, his mind returned to Saigon, specifically to his last days at the Regional Communications Groupn Headquarters. Just after receiving his orders, he hurried uninvited to Linh’s house in order to inform his new friends that he would be leaving Saigon on the morrow. One of Linh’s servants greeted him at the door and motioned him to wait in the courtyard. The servant disappeared behind the front door which he left slightly ajar. Through the partially opened door, Regis saw his friend in the room adjoining the entrance where he was animatedly talking with another Vietnamese in their native language. There were two things about their conversation that intrigued Regis. First, the man conversing with Linh seemed to address him as an equal, although his dress was that of a typical peasant—black pajamas with open sandals. In his hand he carried the ubiquitous cone hat, unmasking an ugly diagonal scar above his left eye. Secondly, he unmistakably addressed Linh as Dan Viet. When Linh caught Regis’ inquiring eyes, he quickly excused his companion and came to the door to welcome his American friend. Thinking back over their conversation, Regis regretted that he had violated military protocol and told Linh about his assignment to Pleiku. At the time he just wanted Linh to know that he would not be in the middle of combat, but in a Signal Corps outpost that was probably removed from harm’s way. Also, he wanted to explain the urgency of his unannounced appearance at Linh’s door. But there was uneasiness in Linh’s manner. Maybe the awkwardness of this last meeting was created by Regis’ presumptive action of showing up uninvited. The Vietnamese, he had learned, are invariably polite and gracious. Perhaps he should have left a message at the PX for Michelle, suggesting one final visit before his departure from Saigon. Still, he could not escape the feeling that he had witnessed something Linh did not want him to see. In any case, Regis was not sure how to explain this apprehension.

After dinner that evening, Regis remembered being left alone with Michelle. He thought it was Linh’s way of allowing the two of them to take leave of each other without his interference. There were more than a few times when Linh deferred in this manner to their privacy. Regis had not determined whether Linh believed there was a special relationship between them or whether he wished one might develop. Certainly Michelle never intimated any romantic interest. In fact, she often created opportunities for Regis to talk about the girl whose picture he buried in his wallet. He never did. On this last time together, she surprised him with a gift. Apparently, she had scoured the local bookstores until she found a copy of Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving. She told him that it was her gift to him and that she hoped it would settle his mind on the matter of his special interest. In addition, she gave him one of her own books, The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis. I think maybe you find answer to question of love in Lewis’ book, she said. He had never read the author before, but knew of him as a Catholic apologist. When he told her that Linh had shared with him the family’s adherence to Catholicism and the reason for leaving her father in Hanoi, she seemed startled. You know of father? she asked. Regis nodded affirmatively. Then she told him what he did not know. If you know father is Nguyen Chi Thanh, then you already know Michelle Delacroix is not birth name. It is Nguyen Thi Thanh. Regis immediately recognized that this was information he probably did not want to know and that it was a confidence he must never share with anyone. He had already been told that she was the daughter of a Vietminh persona. The fact that she used her mother’s maiden name was sufficient reason for Regis to keep her secret. But he sensed in her manner that there might be more behind her desire to conceal her real name. It was not unusual for South Vietnamese to have relatives on the other side. Was she merely hiding her embarrassment? Or did the truth of her identity pose some other kind of danger to her? This was another conundrum he would like to penetrate. But it was really of no significance to him now, except as a distraction from the tediousness of guard duty.

Regis had been shifting from knee to knee as he crouched behind the guard tower’s wall. The pain he felt in each knee was at the moment about uniform. The night’s dampness had seeped into his bones. If somebody was eyeing him through a scope, all he would see is a helmet and two eyes peering over the tower wall. When he completed his knee shifting maneuver, the barren silence of the night did not return as he expected. First his ears were alerted to a rustling sound. Then he felt a vibration in the tower. Immediately, he called out, FNG. After a pause, he heard a good natured chuckle before the second part of the password was uttered, asshole. Soon Larken’s head emerged at the top of the ladder. He was wearing a poncho, but no helmet. His M-14 was slung over his shoulder.

He flashed a light at Regis and laughed. O’Brien loves games. ‘FNG asshole’ was his idea of a joke. Funny, I guess, but at someone else’s expense—so typical of a fuckin’ grunt. You know he was reassigned here after some kind of blow-up at a base camp. He’s a short timer – I think, ten or eleven days now.

Regis was glad to see a friendly face, to talk to anybody really. Yea, I know about the ‘FNG’ thing. I was in Saigon for a month before my assignment.

This your first guard duty?

Yea, and I never fired one of these before either. I guess I’m not much good here.

Look, it’s easy. The damn thing is already mounted. First, let’s rearrange these canisters so we have something to sit on. Here, just to the left. If you ever have to fire this thing, you can wheel around to the back – like this. Larkin then took Regis through the sequence of aiming and firing an M-60. Really, not much to it. Steady it like so. Just don’t touch it here: the barrel gets hot real quick. The kickback is muted when it’s mounted like this. Larkin sat down on his haunches, close to the entrance. Look, just sit quiet for a moment. I’m a bit early. I want to surprise our fuckin’ charge of quarters.

What do you mean to do, Larkin?

Call me Larko. Everybody else does. Shhh! don’t say the challenge. I think I hear him. Larko had placed some brush sprigs before the approach to the ladder. They were now providing him the forewarning he desired.

Soon there was a slight vibration in the tower as O’Brien made his stealthy ascent. Regis saw Larko quietly place the tip of his rifle’s barrel near the top of the ladder. Just as Sergeant O’Brien’s head appeared in the entrance, the click of Larko’s trigger sounded within inches of the buck sergeant’s temple. Simultaneously, Larko flashed his light. This time the light illumined the face of terror – skin stretched taut, eyes bulging, mouth slightly open.

Sorry, O’Brien, I thought you were fuckin’ Charlie sneakin’ up on one of us poor ‘rear echelon mother fuckers.’

You sorry son-of-a-bitch, I should waste both of you REMF’ers. Larkin’s flashlight was now off, but the force of O’Brien’s anger could be felt even though his facial expression could not be seen. What the hell are you doing with that flashlight? And I didn’t hear any goddamn password challenge. Fallguy here called out ‘FNG.’ I heard him. Maybe he was a bit under voiced, it being his first night on guard duty and all. You know how it is your first time, don’t you? You see and hear Charlie everywhere – or you think you do. I bet you shitted in your pants the first time.

Larko, I’m writin’ you up for this. You’ll pull guard duty for the rest of the week. And you, Specialist Four Regis Fallen, you better not be smirking or I’ll make you a ‘fall guy’ for real. When O’Brien spelled out his rank, Regis could almost feel the spit in his sarcasm.

Larko was quick to respond, What are you going to write up? I was just doing my fuckin’ job. You’re lucky I hadn’t chambered a bullet in my rifle yet. And my flashlight? Fuck! You should be kissing my ass, you’re so goddamn lucky. If I hadn’t flicked it on, how would I’ve known you from Charlie? Maybe I would have made a second attempt to shoot some goddamn sneaky sapper. Now wouldn’t that be a sorry story: a buck five mother fuckin’ grunt hotshit shot dead because he forgot the fuckin’ password he made up himself.

O’Brien did not respond. His anger was beyond words. He just scurried down the ladder and disappeared into the night.

Larko chuckled. Bizarre, man! Ain’t Vietnam fuckin’ bizarre? Regis did not know what to say in reply. The tenseness of his first watch was forgotten. The muscles in his face relaxed, allowing the corners of his mouth to turn up in a smile. He wanted to pat Larko on the back. Look, Fallguy, you probably ought not to go to sleep tonight between watches. When our fuckin’ CQ comes around to roust you for the second watch, he might just drop kick you out of the sack.

Regis’s smile evaporated. What if I just stay here? We could alternate look out. I can sleep after the second watch. Sergeant Robson said I don’t have to report for duty until after lunch.

Yea? That old codger is OK. But then you’re his boy. You should have seen his face when he saw your personnel file. ‘That’s him,’ he says, ‘that’s m’boy.’

Why me, I wonder?

How’d you get that spec four rank with only one month in country?

Actually I was promoted before I came here. I was an instructor at Ft. Monmouth.

I know, I read your file. You also have the highest IQ in the battalion, and you were a circuit designer in civilian life. That still doesn’t explain how you got to spec four with less than a year in service. I mean, the fuckin’ Army has procedures, man. I know, ‘cause I work in good ole’ S1, you know, Personnel. You have to have pull somewhere to jump grades like you did.

I really don’t know. Technically, Regis did not know, but he suspected that somehow his girlfriend had pulled some strings. Whether that was the case or not, he was definitely not prepared to open this avenue of conversation. How about you, when did you get your promotion? "They handed it to me just last week. I’ve been in country six months.

You’re looking at a short timer. Piko – the guy who gave you the nickname – well, he and I were just sitting in the barracks, smokin’ a joint when Weaselnuts comes by with the orders. No fanfare, no fuckin’ protocol, just ‘congrats, Larkin, your promotion came through.’ Bizarre, man."

Who is Weaselnuts?

Adjutant fuckin’ General of the battalion, he reports to the lieutenant colonel. He thinks we should eat his shit and like it. Man, Piko and I are going to get him good before we DEROS. Larkin saw the questioning look on Regis’ face. You know, the ‘date eligible to return from overseas,’ fuckin’ DEROS, man. That’s my job. Piko processes the FNG in country, and I process the short timers back home. We’re the kingpins in S1. No NCO, at least, not yet. We were assigned to LLBN S1 while it was still in Saigon. Two months ago the lieutenant colonel went all gung-ho and decided to move headquarters closer to our area of operations—fuckin’ monsoon and rat infested shit hole Pleiku—nothing but rain and mud for two fuckin’ months, man. The triad – that’s what we are, Marko, Piko and me – became just mud faced pollywogs, totally understaffed and seriously messed up, man. Sometimes it amazes me that we get anything right. But that’s the thing. You see, we got brass here that pretend to care, but really could give a shit. As long as we put on the show of doin’ our jobs – people get their assignments, their R&R∗, their DEROS, and all that good shit – then they don’t fuck with us. Best part about not being in Saigon: nobody cares about anything ‘cept counting their days short. It’s just one goddam show – you know, like a play with no plot that just ends when everybody leaves the stage. Fuckin’ bizarre!

For Regis, sharing a watch with Larko was time well spent since Larko was fun and could satisfy his curiosity about Long Lines Battalion North—or LLBN, as Larko and apparently everybody else called it. The communications network under the Regional Communications Group had been steadily growing during the past two years, first in the south and then in the north. It was only recently that the decision was made to split administration between northern and southern battalions. Shortly after a new commander had been assigned to Long Lines Battalion North, the planning to relocate it to a more northerly base had been put in motion. Since staffing was still behind the physical plant installations, battalion Personnel was stretched fairly thin. As soon as experienced cadre in Personnel—Larko’s triad—could be dedicated to Long Lines Battalion North, the decision to move headquarters to the largest and most established northern site was made. S1 now had eight clerks, including the original triad. Regis was the first addition to Sergeant Robson’s Operations staff in the new location. The Regional Communications Group’s Operations had been providing intelligence information and operational guidance to its northern battalion until it could staff itself. According to Larko, this staffing issue had been a major issue with the battalion’s lieutenant colonel. He felt dependent upon the southern battalion for his own operations. As a result, he pressured his own Operations, in Larko’s words, to get their fuckin’ act together. Apparently, the old sergeant had held out as long as he could until he found just the person he wanted for an assistant. From Larko’s vantage