a noisy truce that first night. What about us now, sir? What you got in store for Charlie Company?”
“Nothing for the next couple of hours or so. Got other inserts going in, so air assets are a bit scarce right now. Besides, you all could probably use a little rest, right? If nothing else comes up, I’ll probably be moving you back to your old stomping grounds later this afternoon—say, 1500 hours. And that’ll be a four, plus two, plus two, by the way. Any questions?”
“None here,” I responded.
“No questions,” Sullivan said, “but, sir, how about seeing what you can do ‘bout getting us in for a shower? Troops ain’t had access to a fucking shower head… uh… bath unit since we left the bridge.”
“Good point, Top,” I commented. “They need it, and I should’ve thought of it myself.”
“You all need it,” Byson said in jest. “That’s why I’m standing upwind from you. Seriously, everybody’s in the same boat right now, but soon as things return to the norm, I’ll get you in for a hot one, promise.”
We gave him a snappy Fifth Cav “Ready” salute, and he departed.
After the helicopter had lifted off, the Bull turned to me and said,
“Gee, sir, I hope they didn’t hurt the golf course.”
We spent most of the second day of the Year of the Monkey in a “combat recoup.” The log bird had dropped off clean sets of jungle fatigues and socks and our (usually) weekly issue of sundries. These so-called comfort packs contained cigarettes, toiletries, pens and station ery, porgy bait (candy and gum)—in short, the little necessities and luxuries our soldiers would have spent their money on in a PX if they had had access to one. So we cleaned our weapons, did what we could to clean ourselves, napped, and talked of those things that soldiers talk about when they are far from home. And we wrote letters.
“Hey, Short Round,” one of our less than highly literate soldiers, sitting under a palm, his back against its trunk, yelled. “How you spell caress?”
“Crest?” Short Round replied. “What are you doing, asking your old lady for a tube of toothpaste?”
“No, man, goddamn it! Caress, caress! You know, I’m trying to tell her, in a nice way, what I’m gonna do to her as soon as I get back to the world.”
“Oh! Well, in that case, you spell caress f-u-c-k.”
“Fuck you, Short Round!”
“And your mother, Knife.”
Short Round, Knife, Lean Man, Boom Boom. Where do they get these names for each other? Hell, they all have given names like Tom, Dick, Bill, and Joe. Why don’t they use them?
Sweet Willie Dubray, meanwhile, was telling us of his recent R&R exploits in Bangkok. “Yeah, you can pick one out right at the airport when you land. Or, if you’re wanting to, you can wait till you get to the hotel, then do it. And for fifty U.S. dollars she’s yours to boomboom the whole fucking week—do anything you want, I mean around the world and back again, turn you every which way but loose. But that ain’t all. She’ll help you shopping too, show you where’s the best buys. You know, gold, jewelry, clothes—shit, you can save fifty bucks right there. And if you’re wanting to, she’ll even take you ‘round and show you the sights, you know, temples and stuff like that. ‘Course, I never bothered with none of that shit.”
“You are a cretin, Dubray, you know that?” Blair remarked. “You had an opportunity to learn something about one of the world’s oldest and richest cultures, and you forfeited it merely to satisfy your repulsive, insatiable, putrid appetite.”
Dubray looked at Blair inquisitively a moment and then said, “You talking ‘bout food? Let me tell you ‘bout that! See, three or four of us, we went to this here special restaurant we heard about for lunch.
Lunch! You fucking believe it! They sit you down at this big round table what has on it a long tablecloth, and after they bring you your chow, they stick a girl under the table. And the first one what smiles—well, he gotta pay for lunch!”
“A dullard. You’re an absolute, completely immoral dullard, Willie,”
Blair said, smiling in resignation.
The afternoon of the last day in January 1968 wore on, and around two-thirty Byson informed us our pickup had been slipped to 1600 hours. Fine, an extra hour of downtime won’t hurt any of us. Besides, they can put us down anywhere near Daisy and we’ll find a good NDP in a matter of minutes.
At 1545 hours the company was in stick order, awaiting its liftoff birds. But they didn’t arrive at 1600, or 1610, or 1620. Becoming concerned at not hearing anything from Major Byson, I gave the S-3 a call, only to be told, “Stand by. Out.” Minutes later, Byson was on the air.
“Comanche Six, this is Arizona Three. Change of mission. Say again, change of mission. Inbound with twelve, that’s one two, plus zero, plus two in one five. Arclight has opened up enemy bunker complex on hilltop to your southwest. It’s another needlepoint one-bird LZ. How copy? Over.”
“Roger, good copy. Standing by for pickup.”
“One-ship LZ!” the Bull said. “Now, where the fuck are they putting us down, atop the Washington monument?”
“Naw,” Dubray chimed. “Ain’t you heared, Top? Old Ho Chi Minh, ‘cause he’s getting his ass kicked so bad like on this here ‘tack of his, up and died last night with a hard-on, and we gonna set down atop his…”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said. “Let’s saddle up and get ready to move.”
How does Dubray come up with these stories? If he lives through this, he ought to publish a book. Wouldn’t be “socially redeeming,” but it sure would be spicy reading!
Waiting for our liftoff, I found myself reflecting back on Dubray’s somewhat precarious initial tenure with the company. I recalled that first time I had heard his name mentioned, back on the bridge the morning after I’d arrived in the company.
“Sir, got papers here on one of my men,” Lieutenant MacCarty said.
“Chapter case… uh… unsuitability. Name’s Dubray, Private E-2 ‘Sweet’ Willie Dubray. Outgoing Six was gonna sign them, but now that you’re in command, guess it’s up to you.”
“What’s his problem?” I asked. “Pee in bed or something?”
“No, sir, nothing like that. He’s just a screw-up, and I don’t think intentionally so. I mean he’s just not too smart, you know, comes from somewhere in the backwash of Arkansas’s swamps and can’t seem to do anything right.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” I said, “I’m not tracking. What specifically is the young soldier’s problem?”
“Okay. Well, he was assigned initially to Three Six, but that didn’t work out, so the old man put him in Four Six. But he couldn’t even figure out how to cut charges, and no one in the company wants someone on our tubes who cuts the wrong charge. So I took him, blit shit, he was tripping over his own trip flares and spooking the hell out of my people. So…”
“Right. I get the picture, Lieutenant MacCarty. What about Dubray? Does he want to be chaptered?”
“Well, honestly, sir—no. But I really feel… we really feel that it’s best for the company, and in the end, for the soldier concerned, to proceed with an administrative discharge.”
“Okay. I’ll read this over tonight and talk to the young man first thing in the morning.”
And I did.
“Private Dubray, do you know what this is?” I asked the following morning, gesturing at the administrative packet atop the army field desk.
“Yes, sir,” Sweet Willie Dubray responded, rather bleakly. “It’s a chapter discharge. Means you all gonna throw me out of the Army.”
“Not throwing you out, Dubray, processing you out on the grounds of unsuitability. Which is not something to be ashamed of. It merely means you don’t adapt suitably to those tasks commonly required of an infantry soldier. It’s a discharge that’s normally granted without prejudice, in other words, under honorable conditions.”
“Yes, sir, I understand that,” he replied, meekly, his head lowered.
“Fine. Now if I sign this, it’s only a recommendation that you be processed for such a discharge. However, I want to be level with you. Although anyone in the chain of command above me can reject my recommendation, they usually go along with the individual’s—that’s you, Dubray—commander’s recommendation. So, what’ll it be? If I sign it, we can have it out to battalion on the evening log bird, and you could be on your way back to the States in a week or so. Want me to sign it?”
For a brief moment he looked at me uncomprehendingly, and then, suddenly aware that our meeting was more than a mere formality, and that his fate was not necessarily foreordained, he said, “Don’t you sign it, sir! Sir,
