Robert Mason - Chickenhawk

It’s our own fault, I thought. We spent so much time making this place look civilized that this guy thinks he’s back at Fort Benning.

“While I’m talking about keeping yourselves clean, I may as well announce a bit of good news.” He smiled. “Starting tomorrow, we will be digging our own company well so we can have our own showers.” He waited. I think he expected some cheers here. We were silent. “Captain Sherman will be the project leader, and I want you all to give him your fullest cooperation. Dismissed.”

“My aching fucking back,” said Connors back at the tent. “I was kind of getting used to cleaning up the way I do.”

“Shit. How do you think you clean up?” asked Banjo.

“Well, just like everybody else. I keep my uniform on until it becomes a second skin. Then, when I peel it off, it takes all the crud with it.”

“I would like to have a shower around here,” said Gary.

“Yeah, I would, too. I wonder how deep we have to dig?” I said.

“Maybe all the way to Cincinnati!” Gary said.

Farris walked in. “I have another announcement for you guys.” He waited until we gathered around him.

“We need volunteers to transfer to other aviation units to make room for the replacements.”

“Transfer out of the Cav?” Gary asked.

“That’s right.”

“When?” somebody asked.

“Sometime between now and the end of next month.”

This was my chance. Maybe I could get a cushy job at Qui Nhon, flying advisers or something. I raised my hand.

For the next few days I flew local routine missions or dug the new well. While I filled buckets and watched them being hauled up on a rope, I daydreamed about my new assignment. A friend of mine from flight school had written saying that he was assigned to a navy carrier with his own Huey. I knew there were better jobs than the Cav. Maybe a 9-to-5 courier pilot in Saigon. Imagine, no more mud, tents, or boonies.

At twenty-five feet we struck rock. Sherman called in some guys from the engineers who said we’d have to blast.

Gary and I flew over the Bob Hope show on our way to Happy Valley. While we flew ass-and-trash that afternoon, we listened to the most bizarre radio conversation I had ever heard.

“Raven Six, Delta One. We have a target in sight.” Delta One was a gunship.

“Roger, Delta One. Do you see anything on their backs?”

“Negative.”

“Well, there’s just no way to be sure. Go ahead and get them.”

“Roger.”

“What the heck are they talking about?” asked Gary. We had just picked up some empty food containers and were sailing down the side of a mountain.

“Got me,” I said.

“Raven Six, our guns just won’t stop them.”

“You tried to get them in the head?”

“Roger.”

“Use the rockets.”

“Roger.” Silence. Gary was setting up for an approach to the road patrol on our resupply route.

“Raven Six, Delta One. That did it. We got both of ‘em.”

“Glad to hear it, Delta One. I was beginning to wonder if anything we had could stop an elephant.” Elephant? We’re killing fucking elephants?

“Roger. Anything else?”

“Of course, Delta One. Go down and get the tusks.”

“I’m sick,” said Gary. “Killing elephants is like blasting your grandmother.”

Back at the company, there was general outrage at the news that the ivory was delivered to division HQ. It was okay to kill people in a war, but don’t touch innocent by standers like elephants.

“Any man who’d do that would come into your house and shoot your dog,” Decker said.

“Get your camera, Mason!” Sherman yelled.

“What’s up?”

“We’re going to blast the well. Get your camera.”

I stood back along the trail to the well and pointed my camera.

“Everybody clear?” Sherman yelled.

“Clear.”

Bonk. A small cloud of dust rose five feet above the site. I snapped the picture.

“Shit. I thought it woulda made more noise than that,” yelled Sherman.

“Yeah. Did it go off?”

“Is there water?” Everybody went over to the well.

“Hoo-fucking-ray,” said Connors. “We got more dirt under them rocks.”

“We’ll just keep digging,” announced Sherman.

Somebody had painted a five-by-ten-foot mural of LZ X-Ray on the wall of our new club. I had a bourbon and water in my hand as I walked around. The furniture, shipped in from the States, looked foreign. The chairs were stained bamboo with tropical-print cushions. The tables had bamboo legs and Formica tops.

The place was packed for the official opening. We all knew that the Colonel was going to bring nurses to the affair. The Colonel wasn’t around yet. The hundred or so guys passed the time drinking twenty-five-cent‘drinks in rapid succession.

Nearly everybody from our company was there. Nate and Kaiser talked seriously at the bar while Nate’s hand kept time with a song played on the new stereo system. Connors and Banjo laughed from a table nearby. Farris nursed a Seven-Up but smiled anyway. Hall sat in a corner staring at the mural. Disaster shadowed Crane and talked business. Wendall and Barber watched the tape recorder work. Resler grinned like a child on his second beer. Riker’s red face was bright as he drank more than he usually did. I stood by the bar wondering whether I got the clap in Vietnam or in Taipei.

“You’re not… sick,” I had said, pointing to her groin, “are you?”

“Me?” Her face showed pain. “Me? Don’t be silly. I no sick.”

“If there’s one thing I can’t do, that’s catch the clap,” I said.

“Well,” she huffed, “I’m almost a virgin.”

Just as I noticed the silence, Resler shoved me. “Bob,” he whispered, “the nurses are here.”

The Colonel had come unannounced, through the club’s back door, escorting his promised nurses. They, I’m sure, did not know that they were the inspiration that had built this club. They did have a look of extreme self-consciousness about them. The entire club stared intently and silently as four elderly, high-ranking females from the medical corps took seats at the Colonel’s table, cause enough for their nervousness.

The music played on. Two very plump lieutenants followed. I kept looking at the door to see the rest. That was it. After a long minute, that was clear to everyone. Talk began again.

“There must be some real nurses in this fucking division,” snarled Connors. Banjo was laughing so hard that he was in tears.

“Those are nurses,” said Resler.

“You know what I mean,” said Connors. “You know, nurses. Like with tits that come up here”—he gestured—“not down here. Shit, my grandmother is more appealing.”

The Colonel kept looking around while his aides talked to the nurses.

“Ladies.” A drunken warrant officer walked over and bowed politely to the nurses. ‘Gen’lmen…“ He nodded to the aides. ”Sir…“ He bowed again.

The Colonel glared at him. The nurses laughed. When he turned to leave, the Colonel relaxed. At a moment when the club was silent, and while every eye was glued to the scene, the drunk released a fart that stopped hearts.

The Colonel, his men, and the nurses flinched at the report. The Colonel grew red in the face and started to get out of his chair, perhaps to kill the drunk. Noise returned abruptly to the club and he hesitated. Everyone was laughing. It was as though everyone had delivered that fart, and the Colonel knew it. He sagged back in his chair helplessly. The nurses explained that they had to get back, right away.

Farris said, “I think you men should stop drinking and go home. We have a big mission tomorrow.”

It wasn’t a very big mission, just lengthy. Since I’d been back from R&R, the daily missions were in the mountains forty and fifty miles north of An Khe. We started each day at 0500, picked up grunts at the Golf Course or the refueling area, flew them out to the mountains, placed them at various LZs, and picked up wounded and dead from the patrols already out there.