Out of the Prison House

Out of the

Prison House

V. D. Carroll

AuthorHouse™

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

© 2012 by V. D. Carroll. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/28/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5021-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5020-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-5019-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012902069

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

Notes

For the brave Americans who have fought

to preserve our freedom through the decades:

wounded, killed, returning, or left behind,

and for their families. Thank you.

Thank you to those who have encouraged me in this project and in my writing, and to family and friends who have put up with me as I wrote, rewrote, revised, and formatted. Special thanks to Eugene Red McDaniel, CAPT, USN (Ret.), who was a prisoner in Vietnam for over six years and founder of the American Defense Institute in Alexandria, VA, to Gene Edward Veith, Provost and Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, and to Cindy Kuehl, whose father was a POW/MIA in Southeast Asia, one of the many who were presumed dead and left behind. Also, a special thanks to Alissa Carroll, photographer of three of the cover photos of Southeast Asia.

Out of the

Prison House

1

Ken Bentley watched the purple and white smoke ascend over the tree line to the east. He knew from the distant sound like thunder that the other squads had engaged the enemy there. He was too far west. He should call in the man on point, re-group, and veer to the right, sweeping the stray Viet Cong toward the ambush site.

Search-and-destroy, the orders had read, and his squad had the western position. Seal the VC and North Vietnam Army regulars in the area north of Con Thien and force them toward the waiting guns of Lima Company. They’d get the NVA for crossing the Ben Hai River, show them once and for all who controls this side of the DMZ.

Two more months in the bush gave him seniority over the others after Shoemaker and Smith were medevacked out last mission. With no real command training, this was one time he’d rather be just a grunt like the rest of the squad: hump the boonies with sixty to eighty pounds of gear and rations on your back, and follow someone else’s lead.

He rubbed his fingers over the beads in his flak jacket pocket. A souvenir from his first ambush, he’d cut them from a dead dink’s neck. He’d proved himself a shooter not a shaker that day, a man the seasoned veterans could depend on. He felt anything but dependable now as his stomach churned from fear that he had taken his squad so far left that they were isolated from command post.

With clammy hand, he wiped the sweat from his face. He studied the jungle for movement of rice stalks or vertical tree branches, the enemy’s favorite camouflage. Instinct told him that somewhere out there the VC were poised and ready. They would creep in close and then open fire. He had to get them moving toward the blocking force northeast.

A bird squawked above him. Charlie was definitely out there. Too late now to re-group. He wiped his sweaty palm on his pants and held his M-16 in a death grip. He drew a deep breath and tightened his sphincter muscle. His guts cramped as he tried to push the question aside: Will this be my day to die?

He heard no rifle shot but saw his point man fall forward, an arrow between his shoulder blades. Montagnards? But they’re friendlies, aren’t they?

He un-shouldered his pack, lunged toward a tree, and yelled, Lock and load! That was stupid—they already had.

His lungs filled with air, skin tingled, ears and eyes opened wide to receive clear sounds and sights that bombarded him before the first round cracked. He emptied a clip into the branches and reloaded.

Shots erupted from the tree tops. Snipers. His squad had walked right into the trap. Live targets. My fault. I should have veered to the right toward the artillery smoke.

He fired a six-round burst and saw a body fall. He heard bones snap as it caught and hung suspended from the thick branches by chains, like a side of beef in a slaughter house. The young kid appeared no older than his sister Janet—thirteen. He’d heard that the NVA chained children in trees with rifles if they wouldn’t join the VC army. They’d tell them the Americans were going to kill them and their families anyway, so they should kill as many U. S. soldiers as they could before they died.

Crack! He saw another kid fall and dangle upside down, the AK-47 tied to his lifeless, misshapen arms. From the corner of his eye he saw O’Riley’s chest explode. Stinking, rotten bastards. He heard Steadman curse his jammed rifle as he tossed it aside and reached for O’Riley’s M-16.

Rounds fired in rapid succession. Two more bodies dropped like pheasants when you get a good, clean head shot. Like a rock. But they snapped at the end of the chains, like a yo-yo out of control. Whack.

India One, this is India Three, Zebra Squad. We need fire support and choppers. We have wounded, Jones radioed. India One, this is India Three. We need help at—

The sound of bullets hitting metal told Ken that the radio had been hit. He turned. They had got Jones, too, the top of his head gone, blood percolating out. Should have worn his helmet instead of the boonie hat.

Ken swore, stepped out into the open, aimed toward heaven, and emptied his clip into the treetops. Another child plummeted and snapped, dangling lifeless. Dirty pigs.

Just after he slammed another clip into place, a warm sting pierced his left thigh, and a hot punch hit his right arm, just off the flak jacket, and knocked the M-16 from his hands. A static squeezing pressure on his heart replaced the dynamic nausea he’d always experienced in firefights. His leg collapsed and he went down; he groped for his rifle. Without your rifle, you are useless! That’s what the Drill Instructor had always said. Your rifle is your best friend. Keep your hands on it at all times.

Face down, he felt for his sixteen. He could smell the Vietnam dirt—not soil—soil was on the Kansas farm—this was plain, stinking ’Nam dirt—musty stench clashing with the odor of his own blood.

Aware that the shooting had stopped, Ken heard enemy voices and inched his head to see. Ten soldiers in NVA uniforms emerged from the underbrush and stood fifteen meters away. The sound of his own pulse echoed in his ears. He still could not reach his weapon. Play dead. You can get out later.

He concentrated on slow, motionless breathing, and watched the blood trickle from his arm where the bullet had just grazed him. He felt the blood ooze from his leg and knew he needed to tie the wound, but he lay in an open space and couldn’t move without being seen.

He recalled his first ambush. With no idea what to expect, his own brutality had shocked him… he’d reached down with his Ka-Bar to cut off the symmetrically arranged colored beads—the enemy soldier’s ID. He remembered asking, How do I know I shot him? That was the hunter talking—you never wanted to take game your partner had shot.

The squad had laughed: Hey, man, does it matter? Just take the beads. It’s ritual. You proved yourself.

Staring in contempt at the VC’s glassy eyes, he’d cut off the beads, raised his rifle high, and brought it down hard on his head—two, three times. Sounded like when you squash over-ripe melons in the field. Then he’d vomited. BNG, they teased him. Brand New Guy. Now he could eat a ham and scrambled egg C-ration while sitting next to a dead Cong, and not feel a thing.

He heard movement in the brush behind him. Bentley? someone whispered. Two enemy soldiers surveyed the battle field less than three meters from him. He couldn’t answer.

Bentley? The voice spoke again. It was Steadman, a high school buddy he’d lost track of until ’Nam; arrived in Ken’s unit only a week ago, a BNG replacing a casualty. Ken wanted desperately to move or speak, to let him know he was alive, but he was frozen like the trigger when the bolt is jammed on a shot gun. The NVA were too close.

Eight of them spread out to search the jungle, while two laughed and started kicking bodies—hard kicks to the gut or groin area. Good way to see who is really dead before they shoot them in the head. In the commotion, Ken answered, Steadman, but he heard receding noises in the brush behind him, followed by silence. Steadman is outnumbered. Will he get out?

Ken’s mind reeled back to his first hunting trip. He was eight and had wounded a rabbit. He’d jumped up and down in triumph, I got him! I got him! when he saw the prey stumble as it ran.

Not quite yet, his dad had said. See, you just follow the tracks and drops of blood. By the way it’s bleeding, it won’t go far. You owe it to the animal to find it and finish it off, so it doesn’t suffer. Stretching wide, he’d struggled to step in his dad’s large boot prints. Under the heavy grey clouds, they tracked it to a naked gooseberry bush covered with snow, against which the blood was deep red. The little rabbit crouched, ears laid back, eyes filled with terror, panting rapidly through its moist nose, puffing clouds into the cold air.

Take a clean, close head shot, his dad had said. Harder than the initial shot while the rabbit was on the run, it was… like murder. The animal didn’t have a chance. But wounded, it didn’t have a chance anyway. He’d aimed, closed his eyes, and squeezed the trigger. Then his dad told him how to step on its head and yank up on the hind legs until the rabbit hung headless in his hand. Then you tie it to your belt and let it hang upside down to bleed out good while you finish hunting. He’d been only a little sick that day—after all, it was just a rabbit; now in the animal’s place, he froze—motionless, waiting.

The enemy jabbered as they neared him. His only thought was that he must not flinch when kicked. Must not flinch when kicked. Must not—

—umph. Blinding pain simultaneously shot around him, down his legs and up through his chest to his brain; bright lights burst like fireworks inside his eyes. Surely his heart had stopped beating.

Above the ringing in his ears, he heard them cheer, as if to exclaim, hooray. One of them kicked him in the stomach and boasted, Tu binh! Tu binh! Ken had heard that expression before. Prisoner of war. The female radio voice known to him as Hanoi Hannah often used the term in her NVA propaganda. She claimed that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam could keep the prisoners of war, whom it called war criminals, forever, if it wanted to. But why would it want to?—other than for bargaining, extortion, or just plain meanness.

They rummaged through the contents of his pack like kids with a sack of candy, ignoring the C-rations and mosquito repellant, which they don’t need, Ken thought. They stink too bad for the bugs to bother. They laughed as they tossed aside his fold-down spade and grabbed what ammo and plastic explosive he had left. They pocketed his knife and pistol. They opened his metal ammo box and threw his letters into the air. Word from home. Sneering, they tossed Linda’s picture to the ground. Ken reached for it. A soldier stomped his hand and then ground the photo into the mud, like a cigarette butt. Ken’s heart felt like it would turn inside out.

They took his rifle, his Claymore bag with one magazine left and two grenades, his empty bandolier, web gear, and his flak jacket. They emptied its pockets and found the necklace. In cold silence they looked at him, the beads, and each other. Perhaps they’d served with the VC he smashed.

After speaking to one another and pocketing the beads, they stuffed a cloth on the wound in his thigh and tied a piece of Jones’s shirt securely around it; they wrapped a rag around his arm. Why? Charlie never gives first aid. He would have preferred a good, clean head shot. Or a rifle butt smashing him into darkness.

One grabbed his arms and the other his ankles and they trotted off. Fear squeezed his heart, fear similar to that of his first firefight, a gnawing fear of the unknown, an apprehension that chews at your guts and makes you want to yell and run away to hide. What can they want with a Marine grunt? He shuddered as he recalled the reports of three RTOs found castrated and nailed through the shoulders to trees, just west of Gio Linh; a lance corporal gut shot with his own M-60; and two Army PFCs found skinned, crawling with ants and maggots. The inhuman VCs did it. At least these were NVA—carrying him north into the DMZ… but they reportedly always shot wounded in the head… The beads had to be their motivation… the key to his fate. Beads—ID—must keep his tags—his own ID . . . .

At boot camp the words were clear: Don’t ever remove your dog tags, ladies! Don’t give them to your favorite whore to remember you by. Keep them on you at all times. One on your neck, one in your boot. No matter which end gets shot off, we’ll know who you are. Your dog tags and your rifle are your identity. They define WHO YOU ARE—a United States Marine! That first week Ken thought the D.I. was crazy. One hour in the ’Nam proved he wasn’t. Oh, to be back there now, listening to those shouts instead of this foreign babbling.

Through the jungle the enemy hauled him, like a sack of potatoes, letting his buttocks drag in the underbrush; the canteens that hung from his belt clattered as he bounced along. To the south he heard the wacka-wacka-wacka of distant chopper blades. India One must have responded to Jones’s call. But he had seen eight NVA enter the jungle to search when these two found him. He strained to hear the familiar crack of AK-47s, wondering if the helo would make it. Would Steadman get out? Any others alive?

He felt that his heart would explode like O’Riley’s chest. If he’d been left back there on the ground, he could be on that chopper this very minute… headed for Dong Ha… safely awaiting a plane to the hospital at Quang Tri. Troop withdrawal was to begin by October, it was rumored—one month away. With a little luck, he could have been home with Linda and his parents for Thanksgiving… with real food—turkey, stuffing, mom’s pumpkin pie . . . .

The sound of the blades came closer and the two soldiers dropped him and opened fire. Stupid dinks: the helo was out of range. But let them shoot. Maybe they’d catch the pilot’s attention and he’d pull in close enough for the gunner to get them… then he’d be home free.

Ken noticed a break in the jungle to his left and straight ahead a stream of water. He had to get to that clearing—so the pilot would see him—couldn’t let the enemy take him across that river into their territory. He struggled to his feet and hopped, pulling the injured leg forward; he held his weight a split second and leaped ahead on his right leg, dragging the useless left—one, two, three, four, five spastic steps.

He heard his captors yell but he kept going, waving his arms at the helo and screaming, I’m here! Look here! Hey! Down Here! He tottered in the clearing when the blow hit him in the middle of his back and he collapsed to his knees. Still yelling, he struggled to get up again. Another blow hit the left side of his face and he toppled over in the mud. With two automatic rifle barrels pointed at his chest, he stopped yelling.

From his position in the stinking, sucking, soggy, clay-like mud he saw the chopper turn and heard the wacka-wacka-wacka grow fainter and fainter until it was gone. His heart felt like it had been sucked under and covered up, never to feel again. The enemy soldiers picked him up, bounced him the short distance to the stream, dropped him into a sampan, and paddled across the Ben Hai River. His throat tightened. Fear, more suffocating than the hot air, would surely strangle him.

His thoughts raced: he should have followed his instinct and veered right at the first sign of artillery smoke. He’d heard the rumble of mortar fire and should have changed course immediately. Instead, he let his squad get cut off and ambushed. It was his own fault he was entering North Vietnam.

As they docked the boat and dragged him into the brush, his thigh felt as though it had torn open and the muscles were ground like hamburger. The scent of his blood triggered a memory. Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman, his mother used to dramatically recite to him… chasing after him in play… a lifetime ago… he could see her in his mind, brown eyes twinkling, hair pulled back in a bun, skin radiant but leathery.

He remembered the last time he ran to her with a cut. Felt like that now… head spinning. He’d fallen from the barn roof where he had perched to watch the sunset and tease the pigs… mom had doctored him, but he’d needed stitches. He’d whined, Mom, stay with me, and later felt embarrassed—he was getting too old for that, becoming a man. You’re never too old to want someone to be there for you… but a man doesn’t need anyone . . . .

They jogged through the narrow strip of jungle to the edge where elephant grass waved thick and high. A path had already been beaten down for them to run on. Ken could hear birds screech and monkeys chatter in the dense tree tops to his left where there was too much shade. He was glad they were on the edge of the jungle in the warm sun, but he should be going the other way, beyond the river toward the rocks where the trees were only naked, black sticks, and American barbed wire surrounded the red clay ridges. When the path ended, the sharp elephant grass whipped against him and tore his clothes and skin, reminding him where he was—not south near a Marine firebase… but north of the river—on the enemy’s side of the Zone.

The bleeding from his thigh slowed again. Probably running out of blood . . . he would bleed to death, and these VC acted like they had a prize. No—they’re wearing uniforms, not black pajamas—they’re NVA. But why hadn’t they finished him off? he wondered. He wasn’t high enough rank to be worth much in bartering. He could provide no information, and a signed confession from him would mean nothing. But alive, at least a chance of escape or rescue remained.

He knew the bush rules for patrol or combat—don’t salute anyone. He remembered when the BNG that arrived with him saluted a lieutenant in the field. Simultaneous with the order to drop the salute came a sniper bullet into the officer’s chest. Medevacked out, he survived, but the platoon had lost a good commander. Officers wore the same tattered and rotting combat fatigues; and you never showed who was in charge—the enemy were always watching.

But this was different… captured now… low ranking men get executed… even lance corporals—fire-team leaders. High ranking get tortured for information. He’d better claim something in between… sergeant. Yes. Sergeant Kenneth Bentley, United States Marine Corps. After all, his promotion would have come through—squad leader: sergeant.

The humid heat descended like an invisible, heavy fog, bringing with it a horde of mosquitoes and swamp flies that swarmed around his face. He blew at them but they didn’t fly away. Hot and sweaty on the surface, deep inside he trembled with cold. Like when the rattler had bit him… just before he passed out and the anti-venom took effect. It took him a long time to get over that snake bite… a week, at least.

Overhead, the sun glared in his face, painfully bright even with his eyes shut tight. His neck ached from trying to keep his head straight and not flop around as his captors carried him. His tongue felt swollen and dry inside his mouth, and when he licked his lips to moisten them, they remained parched.

When they finally stopped to rest, he studied the M-16 that the lead NVA soldier had laid down. His rifle. An extension of himself—that which made him a whole Marine. His bed partner while away from Linda.

In his mind he reached out, grasped it, shot them both, and dashed into the brush. Right arm stiff from the wound; left wouldn’t move. His muscles refused to respond. All strength was gone with the blood that had spotted the jungle path.

He knew they were laughing at him by the way they jabbered and kept looking at him. He swore at them under his breath and recalled Linda’s picture in the mud. But they couldn’t destroy the image of her face in his mind.

His heart pained. Linda. Married just before he was drafted. As a married student, he had a double deferment, but he enlisted to get the experience, the suffering… like Hemingway.

What a week-end that last one was with Linda before he shipped out. Three month’s ago she wrote that she was pregnant. He was going to be a father… had to survive, to get back… to see his kid… due in February, 1970… after troop withdrawal was supposed to start… .

Linda. She’d promised to be faithful no matter what. But capture? It wasn’t supposed to happen this way—wasn’t in his orders. S and D, not P.O.W. Capture didn’t fit his philosophy or plans, could not be happening, must be a dream. He pinched himself.

He felt it.

Fear—like razors—sliced his guts. If they weren’t going to kill him, then they were taking him to a P.O.W. camp. He’d heard stories of tortured of Americans at the infamous Hanoi Hilton—sweat boxes, forced confessions, the ropes. The continual threat: We can keep you here forever—just to prove they could.

News of it had spread. But those were mostly pilots—Air Force, Navy, officers—not grunts like him. They nailed GIs to trees—mutilated their bodies to show open contempt. Maybe they were going to kill him anyway. But why carry me north?

South of Dong Ha another Marine platoon had mimicked NVA cruelty to even the score with the Cong. How many bones did they break on that zip who pretended to be on their side—but led them into a trap? Lost nineteen men that day—but had won anyway, according to the Stars and Stripes. What did the guys in the rear know of body counts? Today his squad lost, and he was responsible. But he was no zip.

Sergeant Kenneth Bentley, United States Marine Corps, 0114279, he rehearsed in his mind. That’s all he had to say. Geneva Convention. Rules of war. Like a football game, war had rules. You had to follow them. Unless of course, you were in the jungle and there was no referee around to see you break them. Like getting away with holding because the refs were all watching a clipping action. What were the P.O.W. rules, besides Geneva? Your duty to attempt escape. And help others. The SERE Code: Survival. Evasion. Resistance. Escape.

Even under torture, give only name, rank, serial number. Knowing no strategic military information, he couldn’t give any. No sweat there. Don’t talk against the United States or the Corps. Don’t admit to wrong doing. Remember at all times that you are a United States Marine, a killing machine… without your rifle you are nothing—useless… Marines… brotherhood… kill the enemy and go home.

Home. An empty word. Far away and unreachable. Where is home, anyway? Halfway across the world—The World, they called it there—another life… a distant reality… a dream-like existence. His mind floated back… Where have all the flowers gone?¹ He was singing and playing his acoustic guitar by the fountain in the park… I like folk music, Linda had said, long, blonde hair, shining in the sun, flowing in the warm, summer breeze as she wrote poetry.

She sat by him as he practiced his music. The moment their eyes had connected, he knew he loved her… there was a bond between them—like kindred souls—as if they had been lovers in another life and were just picking up where they had left off. A serenade of folk songs. Her blue eyes sparkled… a gentle embrace, a soft and tender kiss… far away… long ago.

That was when Vietnam had been far away. Other guys went there. College kept you safe. But not him. Enlist. Suffer. Learn what life is all about in order to write the great American novel. I think, therefore I am; I think, therefore I am. Lately, he’d been too busy staying alive to spend time thinking. Survival had precedence. Now, he knew, thinking would be survival.

His joints pulled as they picked him up again, and pain shot up and down his body and settled in his guts—where a knife of fear and apprehension twisted. He remembered being carried on a stretcher from the football field his last game as a senior. Dislocated shoulder. More pain then. More fear now. He knew that the current wounds were numbed by severity.

This was a different game—not football—not even war. He must learn new rules, new boundaries. Prisoner of war. ‘Tu binh.’ Less than soldier. Other than Marine. Prisoner. The sound of the thought echoed in his mind. Prisoner. Almost criminal. His own screw up put him here, strung out between these two enemy soldiers, bleeding to death, prisoner of war.

Clouds gathered overhead, silencing with a grey shroud the squawking birds and screeching monkeys. Time for the afternoon rain. Why didn’t these morons dash into the jungle for cover from the large, warm droplets that suddenly fell in a torrent?

He was jostled as they tried to trot. Choking, he turned his head sideways so the rain would not fill his nose and mouth. Large puddles had formed already and splashed into his face as the front soldier ran. Ken coughed and struggled for air. Stupid dinks were going to drown him. Idiots.

Then the rainfall seemed softer, and he realized he was under a tree. He stared at the rough, deep furrows of its brown bark; its twisted trunk seemed like undulating bodies in a swirl of strobe lights on a dance floor when you’ve had too much beer… keep awake . . . be alert—you’re in a jungle . . . must outsmart them and escape . . . .

Gentle rain dripped from shiny leaves into thick, sucking mud; foreign sounds surrounded him in the jungle with two men in NVA uniforms… rifles… they have mine . . . no longer mine . . . theirs now. I’m a prisoner.

He felt himself being carried again through the grass that swished and cut like wet whips. Fear of captivity outweighed that of dying. To die would be to just go to sleep. To live in captivity would be—he had no clue. Nothing he’d ever imagined prepared him for this. He was like a yearling the first time you put a saddle on him—paralyzed by the fear of the unknown: fear of a people who had proven themselves to be vicious enemies.

But as long as he was alive, there was hope for escape or rescue, to embrace Linda again… to see his son—yes, it must be a son—to hunt with his dad, to enjoy mom’s cooking… he must concentrate on survival and escape… survival, escape.

Survival and escape the tortuous grass whispered. Survival and escape, swishing like Linda’s bell-bottoms when she walked… or like the rye when it’s four feet high and you hide in it on a hot, breezy day, and it’s so cool low to the ground in the rye, and the rye whispers you to sleep… It doesn’t break the rye to lie in it… just bends the stalk a bit when… doesn’t break it completely and kill it… just bends in the wind… whispering a hushed song of sleep… .

He heard birds screech and caw. Crows? No, not Kansas black crows—brown desert buzzards… black vultures with white breasts… circling without effort… waiting beyond the swishing rye that bends and springs back, not broken, just bruised stalks of… no, not rye—elephant grass… not home in the field . . . in a foreign and hostile jungle . . . survival and escape . . . survival and escape . . . swish . . . whish . . . sh-h-h-h . . . .

Like smelling salts, the pungent aroma of wood burning and strange food cooking jerked Ken to consciousness—they were close to a village. Jabbering Viet voices and shocked gasps of women and children echoed in his ears as bodies crowded around him like kids at a carnival freak show. He rolled his head from left to right and strained to see where he was. Bamboo and grass huts dotted the clearing in the jungle. He had camped in bigger tents than these. Cane poles held a large pot on an open fire, where twilight shadows danced with the flames. He imagined Shakespeare’s three witches chanting: Double, double, toil and trouble… ²

The soldiers carried him into a little hut and dropped him on a cot. Two women stood over him, one with prune face and dry gray hair, the other much younger and shapely, with beautiful face and long, flowing black hair—like the whore in Quang Tri… his turn, the guys had said, but then the shelling started, and he saved his ten dollars. But they all look alike . . . .

He ached for Linda.

They removed his muddy, blood-soaked shirt and pants, and wiped his wounds with rags they dipped into a bowl of murky water.

GI hurt bad, the younger woman said, and touched his thigh. Bullet must come out.

Ken flinched. She speaks English? A prostitute acting like a nurse? Another wave of pain and fear swept over him.

She spoke strange words to the mamasan, who shuffled through some utensils on a mat on the floor and turned back around with a knife that looked much too large for the job. Ken struggled to sit up, but the younger, smaller woman easily held him down while the mamasan tied his hands to the cot. Then the young woman stuffed a cloth into his mouth and pushed his chin shut.

Linda, I need you, his heart cried. He felt his teeth clench together through the cloth just before the air turned black.

2

Both wounds throbbed under bandages when Ken woke up in a bamboo cage outside the hut. Dressed in pajama-like peasant garb, he had been propped in one corner, and his bare feet touched the poles in the opposite corner, the ID from his boot gone. Instinctively, he reached for the tag around his neck and closed his left hand around the ID. Still there. Good. He was still himself.

But he’d lost his rifle. Half his identity had vanished. He clutched the neck chain. Was this all that remained of him?—a tag on a wounded body in a bamboo cage not much bigger than a pine box?

When he grabbed the top poles with his left hand, he noticed that his wedding band was missing. Rotten gooks. First they took her picture and letters, and now the ring. The vultures had stripped everything important away from him. He swore and shook the top poles. Then he noticed they’d taken his watch, too.

The young woman from the night before approached, holding a bowl in front of her in an obvious attempt not to spill it. Take soup, she said. It make GI strong again.

Ken stared through her, took the bowl and sipped. His refusal to communicate with the enemy outweighed his curiosity of how and where she had learned English. He sipped again. Looked like weak chicken soup with little green flakes floating on top; tasted and smelled like weak chicken soup with tuna fish oil in it. He drank it all, and handed the bowl back to the woman, whom he decided to call his nurse.

The sun shone from a forty-five degree angle in the east. Mid-morning. The next day? In spite of the broth, his mouth felt hot and dry, like after a long patrol with no water. Incredible thirst chapped his throat.

Little children and women gathered around the cage and mocked him. There were no boys his sister’s size. In his mind he could see them hanging from the trees by bloody chains. And he saw Jones, O’Riley, and the point man. My fault, he told himself. He stared past the crowd toward the jungle beyond the village huts. The nurse jabbered something to the villagers and shooed them away with her hands. They didn’t go.

Water? Ken asked her. The crowd giggled. Yes, the freak talks, he said aloud and spit between the bamboo bars.

The woman spoke to them again with angry authority. The giggling ceased, but they continued to stare. Dirty little urchins. Don’t they ever bathe? he wondered.

He stared into the cup of water she brought him. Though he knew it hadn’t been purified with iodine tablets or boiling, his thirst convinced him that it didn’t matter. He gulped it and asked for more.

She brought a second cup and apologized, No more, as he guzzled it.

He should be polite and thank her, he thought. But why? Probably get sick. Instead, he nodded and looked away. He didn’t want to know her, to see her as a person, a woman; he wanted only to remember that these creatures were the enemy. Though he was Corporal Kenneth Bentley, United States Marine Corps, 0114279, he’d claim to be Sergeant—one rank above and more official sounding, he thought. But that was all he had to say. Rules of war. Geneva Convention.

He shifted his weight and tried to stand. His audience giggled as he fell back. The cage was too small to stand up in anyway. He must conserve his energy. Why they hadn’t killed him he didn’t know—or really care. He was alive—and that meant rescue or escape—after his wounds healed. He tested the bamboo bars, the kind the Cong used for punji sticks, deadly spikes that sliver into sharp splinters. Breaking out of here would require careful planning.

I will see my son, he whispered to himself. I will hold Linda… I will make love to her again… The onlookers giggled.

Hee-yah! he shouted, flailing his arms like you do at cattle when you’re bringing them in. Get! you grimy brats! Get!

They scattered as though they thought he could harm them. Stupid pigs, he muttered.

He noticed women busy around their own huts and children playing at the far edge of the village. He saw no men—military or civilian. What an insult! Wounded, captured, held prisoner in a village of women and children, in a cage not unlike the box traps he once built to catch garden-raiding rabbits in the summer time.

His thigh and arm throbbed. Infected? This whole place was a stinking, bug-infested germ farm, but he knew he was okay as long as the pus didn’t turn bluish-green. He brushed dirt over large black ants scurrying toward him, and shoved the whole pile out of the cage. Those were the ants that burned you when you touched them, he recalled. Only Vietnamese are stupid enough to live in this place.

Why were they holding him here in this little village instead of in a prison camp? And where was this little village? he asked himself. No welcome signs stating the hamlet’s population and elevation. Not in Kansas, anymore, Toto, he sighed. Toto. That’s what the squad had called him that first week—before he proved himself on the recon mission. After he took the beads, they had dropped the nick-name.

Toto: a little pet canine. Not even a ferocious watch-dog. This time he’d failed to sniff out the ambush, had led them into a trap. Should have kept the name. Should have died with the others.

But alive means escape.

He listened to high-pitched whistles and screeches of jungle birds, angry squeals of pigs tied by huts, laughing and crying of children at play, and incessant buzzing of mosquitoes and flying ants that tried to nest in his ears and eyes and to feast on the open sores on his arms. He swatted the insects as the sun beat directly down on him through the open bamboo bars. This was like waiting in Okinawa for unit assignments—the steady, dull nausea of the unknown, expecting the worst, hoping for the impossible—in this case, liberty.

A Soviet-made jeep sent dust swirling as it screeched to a stop by the cage. Women and children surrounded the three soldiers who hopped out over the doors. The man in the center wore the uniform of an NVA major. The villagers fled when he shouted and waved his arms furiously.

The two with him looked like those who had carried him here—but who knows?—they all look alike anyway, Ken thought. They jabbered, pointed, and raised the beads taken from Ken’s pocket. As they approached, the major’s olive yellow face flamed red with anger, his black eyes ablaze with hatred. He pointed at Ken and yelled in Vietnamese, holding the beads in his left hand and shaking his right fist. His thin mustache twitched when he spoke.

He must have known the wearer of those beads. Ken wondered if he’d seen the crushed skull and smashed face. His mind drifted back again—he was there… cutting the necklace, raising the rifle, bringing it down hard… remembering his brutality made him wince. Then he clenched his teeth: the dink was enemy—he deserved it.

Ken faced the man. The major looked too young for it to have been his son; nor could it have been his father. Brother. Yes, it must have been his brother. Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. Life for a life. Ken braced himself, expecting to be shot. The ordeal would end soon. He would not see his parents or wife again—never see his son—die here. No pine box. No burial. But he would die neat, like a Marine; he tucked the uneven shirt tail into the baggy, short-legged pants.

The major yelled and motioned for him to pull out the shirt-tail. Tu binh something, something, Ken heard him rattle. Why didn’t the major shoot him and get it over with, instead of standing there, glaring at him in triumph? No mercy; no desire to put him out of his suffering; not a hunter; no, an NVA major whose brother he had killed. Just shoot me! he yelled. Shoot me! He refused to pull out the shirt tail—his last act of defiance.

The major glared at Ken and spoke with calculated gestures and controlled anger in short Vietnamese phrases. He pointed at himself and at Ken, clenched the beads in his left hand and slowly placed them to his chest. He pointed to Ken with his index finger, then struck his right palm with his fist and ground it slowly. He made a cutting motion with his right hand—flattened and stiff—by his throat, while he nodded his head. He pointed at Ken again and raised the corner of his right eye. Then he sneered and twice repeated five syllables, which Ken tried to memorize. No use. The language was too strange—gibberish.

The major spoke with carefully-worded phrases, reminding Ken of his poetry writing teacher, who, at private parties, embarked on a wise discourse about the meaning of life—or so it had seemed then, as he sat cross-legged and strained to hear each word while recorded electric guitars screeched in the background. Iron Butterfly. He should have listened to Wiley… Go to Canada, he had encouraged. Or keep your deferment, but don’t let them draft you, and don’t enlist. Don’t go to ’Nam.

But I want to widen my horizons—suffer, like Hemingway, Ken had argued.

Suffer in Canada, Wiley had said.

But running away from his patriotic duty hadn’t seemed right. His dad had fought in WWII. You just go when you’re needed. That’s the way it is. Should have taken Wiley’s advice. Wouldn’t be here now, struggling over this major’s