“since Christ was a corporal” and merely enjoyed being in near-constant verbal discord. I was also told that if Cooper appeared to be winning one of their frequent altercations, Russell delighted in taking that opportunity to remind him, regardless of what they might have been arguing about, that first lieutenants out rank sergeant majors which is something I couldn’t conceive any lieutenant suggesting to any sergeant major! However, still later that evening, after the conversation had turned from the exploits of Romeo to the prerogatives of rank, and cocktailing had gone from social grace to competitive sport, I witnessed Lieutenant Russell do just that.
“Now don’t get me wrong, Top,” he said in a somewhat slurred yet subtly antagonizing voice. “Mean, you’ve done pretty good for yourself. Hell, battalion sergeant major’s a pretty weighty position, pretty weighty indeed. Still, you ain’t no officer and never will be, and ‘course that means every officer in the battalion—whole fucking Army, matter of fact—outranks you. But… uh… you being a professional NCO and all, I’m sure you understand that.”
The sergeant major, sitting across the table from Russell, was steaming.
First of all, he obviously didn’t like being referred to as “Top,” a pseudonym normally reserved for a company’s first sergeant, not the battalion’s command sergeant major—and of course Russell knew that.
Secondly, he wasn’t too excited about the gist of Russell’s comments concerning the Army’s rank structure.
“Listen, asshole.”
“That’s Lieutenant Asshole, sir, to you, Top,” Russell interjected, smiling antagonistically, drunkenly.
“As you wish, Lieutenant Asshole, sir!” Cooper defiantly replied while getting, a bit uncertainly, to his feet. “I know goddamn well you’re playing with my mind, sir, but the simple fucking truth is you couldn’t make eight!” (Russell had been a sergeant first class E-7 before being commissioned. If he had remained in the ranks, his next promotion would have been to the grade of E-8.) “Couldn’t hack it as a first sergeant of a line company, so you decided to play candidate at Benning’s school for boys and by some miracle or administrative error got a ‘butter bar’ out of it.”
“And butter bars also outrank sergeant majors, Top,” Russell said, trying with little success to stand so as to be on an even keel with Cooper.
“Well, Lieutenant, sir! I’ll let you in on a little secret. I could’ve done the same thing; any NCO worth his goddamn salt could’ve. But you see, we prefer soldiering for a living! We like to think our next promotion is gonna be based on our ability to soldier, not how long and how brown our fucking noses are! Still, if I had wanted to, I could’ve been twice the officer you’ll ever be!”
“Oh, yeah! Well, let me just challenge you then, Top. If you really think you’d make twice the officer I am, well, why don’t you just put yourself in for a direct commission… hummmm?” Lieutenant Russell pushed himself from the sergeant major’s table, at which he and several of us were sitting, in a final valiant attempt to get to his feet. He failed and fell backwards in his chair, his head striking the hutch’s concrete floor with a dull thud.
Somewhat unsteadily but still firmly on his feet, Cooper worked his way around the table, looked down at Russell—who had apparently decided the floor was as good a place as any to spend the rest of the night—and said, “Well, Russ, I may do just that. Yes, sir, I may just do that very thing.”
And he did.
It was not so very long after the sergeant major’s cocktail party, while Bravo Company was on perimeter security at LZ English, that First Lieutenant Russell got a message ordering him to report to Captain Cooper at battalion headquarters forthwith. Allegedly, Russell’s only comment was, “Oh, shit. And I’m gonna have to salute him, too.”
Captain Cooper, of course, did not long remain with the Fifth Cavalry.
For reasons I’ve never been quite able to discern, the Army takes a dim view of its former NCO’s serving as officers in the same unit from which they were commissioned. Soon after becoming a captain, ex-Sergeant Major Cooper was transferred to the division’s only mechanized battalion, there to assume command of a mechanized rifle company.
And one bright and sunny day shortly thereafter, while Captain Cooper was standing in the turret atop his M-113 armored personnel carrier, a north Vietnamese sniper got lucky and put an AK-47 round right through the center of our ex-sergeant major’s chest.
The battalion rotated back to the boonies, relieved of its Camp Radcliff security mission by the unit next in line for a stand down. I remained behind at An Khe.
S-1 is the unit’s adjutant. He is responsible for those administrative functions associated with promotions and reductions, pay, awards and decorations, law, discipline and order, troop morale (in Vietnam, one of the more demanding of his duties), and troop safety (another somewhat taxing aspect of his responsibilities in combat). In short, his duties are many and varied—and boring. I was not terribly excited about my new job.
Fortunately, my PSNCO (personnel services NCO, the S-1’s principal enlisted assistant) liked his job, did it well, and knew more about my job than I could ever hope to learn. Hence, we soon developed a great working relationship; I stayed out of his way, spending much of my time forward with our troops, while he minded the store.
During these staff visits with the battalion’s line companies, I listened to our soldiers’ various S-1-related problems, trying to resolve them.
Rarely, however, did these complaints revolve around traditional military personnel issues such as pay, awards, or similar administrative shortcomings. More often, they centered on their mail. Mail, mail, mail! It was precious, and if it was not received regularly, snuffie was convinced the Army’s postal services were at fault. Regrettably, this was seldom the case; it was usually the fault of the sender.
To understand something of the infantryman’s war in Vietnam, one must first know of his extraordinary desire, his unparalleled need, for letters from home—letters that were, in many respects, his only tangible link with the sanity of his existence on this planet.
Frequently kept in the top of his helmet liner, they were read and reread until memorized, folded and refolded until Vietnam’s harsh climate reduced them to little more than confetti.
Of course mail from home has been important to all soldiers in all wars, but I believe it never before meant quite so much as it did to the American infantryman in Vietnam. The reason is that seldom before has an American soldier been asked to make such a profound change in his life—a condemned man’s transition from freedom to incarceration pales in comparison.
Snuffy usually arrived in his unit via an early morning or late evening helicopter sortie as an eighteen-or nineteen-year-old replacement. At this juncture he probably realized his chances of dying in the Nam were, statistically, greater than those of any other man in the unit he had just joined because he would remain in harm’s way longest—the others were all “shorter” and would rotate home before he would. From this point on, with the possible exception of a seven-day rest-andrecuperation (R&R) leave (probably spent somewhere else in Asia), he would live each day of the next year in the surreal, virtually indescribable existence of the “boonie rat.”
He would dig a hole each night and, if he were lucky and things remained quiet, sleep half a night in it; he might dig three hundred or more such holes before completing his tour. He would stand to before dawn each morning because, centuries before his birth, great tacticians had concluded that this was the time he’s most vulnerable to attack.
With no attack forthcoming, he would eat his cold C rations; shave and wash out of his helmet, when water was available; and then clean his weapon—a daily ritual he could, and often did, perform in total darkness. Then he would walk the mountains, the jungles, the plains, and the paddies of Vietnam seeking Charlie. At night, after swallowing his nauseating daily malaria pill and digging a new hole in a different location, he would mark another day off his “short-timer’s” calendar.
He would rarely bathe because bathing facilities were rarely available, would wear no underwear because underwear rotted, would reek of the unwashed but would be unaware of it because everyone around him smelled the same. When it rained, he would get chillingly soaked and pray for the drying rays of the sun, and when the sun appeared, he would sweat mightily and pray for the cooling comfort of a tropical shower.
During his twelve-month tour as a boonie rat, there would be no movies, no television, no radio, and no Bob Hope—these were reserved for those serving in rear-echelon assignments. He would read the Stars and Stripes when those of the rear echelon remembered to send it out on the evening log bird, on those evenings the log bird flew.
