Walter Myers - Fallen Angels

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A coming-of-age tale for young adults set in the trenches of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, this is the story of Perry, a Harlem teenager who volunteers for the service when his dream of attending college falls through. Sent to the front lines, Perry and his platoon come face-to-face with the Vietcong and the real horror of warfare. But violence and death aren't the only hardships. As Perry struggles to find virtue in himself and his comrades, he questions why black troops are given the most dangerous assignments, and why the U.S. is even there at all.

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“Look, Perry, we re going out on a sector patrol. What we want to do is to establish a presence. We re not looking to get into a firefight. We see anything, we call in artillery. You have any questions, you ask me, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If we do get into anything, make sure you report any body count. One last thing, you stay close to Scotty over there. Scotty’s our machine gunner. You can feed for him.”

Lieutenant Doyle was short, nervous. He cupped a cigarette in his hand the way I thought Humphrey Bogart would have. Charlie Company was going out in two sectors. The first platoon went out first, the third and the fourth platoon — the one I was assigned to — were going next, and the second platoon was going to be the backup in case anybody got into trouble.

Scotty was about six-five, with a face that was mostly ashy white. But the eyes were what set him apart. They were dark, and darting. I had seen the look on ballplayers before. They were the kind of eyes that wanted to win.

I was nervous being with these new guys. Scotty must have sensed it, because he came over and told me everything was going to be cool.

“Where you from?”

“New York,” I said. “Harlem.”

“You a long way from home, man.”

“Where you from?”

“Tacoma, Washington,” he said. “Doyle tell you about the stand down?”

“No.”

“Charlie Company is going to be the first company that stands down,” Scotty said. “We’ll be standing down for two weeks, maybe even get down to Saigon.”

“The whole battalion standing down?”

“From what I hear,” Scotty said. “And this boy needs a little vacation. Far as I’m concerned we can stand down till this thing is over.”

“I heard it could be over before Christmas.” “Can’t be too soon for this boy,” Scotty said.

Some guys were getting ready to move out, and Scotty got up and shouldered the .6o-caliber machine gun. I crisscrossed two bandoliers of ammunition over my chest and grabbed a boxful. It was heavy as hell.

We went to the pads and then sat down waiting for the choppers.

I liked the idea of standing down. A few weeks away from the combat zone would do me good. If we got to Saigon, maybe we could see what the cities were like before the war was over.

Two black guys came over and asked me if I was new. I said no, that I was on loan from Alpha Company. Then they asked me if I knew a guy named Gifford in Alpha. I didn’t.

Scotty introduced me to a couple of other guys, but I forgot their names as soon as I heard them. Lieutenant Doyle was yelling into the radio that the choppers were late. He was asking if the guy on the other end of the phone wanted us to go to the backup position. The best I could figure out, the answer was no.

“You play ball?” Scotty asked.

“Basketball,” I said. “Played some baseball but nothing to brag about.”

“I played football in high school but couldn’t get into a college. You know the only thing I’m good at?”

“What?”

“M-60 machine gun. You know anybody out in the World need a good machine gunner?”

I smiled. My mind shot ahead. What would I do when I got out? I had read some stuff in Stars and Stripes about Congress expanding the GI Bill. The paper said it didn’t look too hopeful.

The chopper finally came, almost an hour after they were supposed to. We got in and took off.

The LZ was supposed to be secure, but I could see a few muzzle blasts coming from the thick green carpet below me as we came down. I flinched every time I saw one. Scotty and another guy — his name tag read Palumbis — kidded me about the flinching.

“If you see the muzzle blast, it means that the bullet missed.”

He had a lot to learn about physics, but we were already landing.

The struts were supposed to take the jolt out of the landing, but I wanted to be out before they hit. Scotty went just as I was thinking of going, and in a moment I was out and running behind him. The ammo box banged against my legs. I felt as if I were carrying a ton of equipment.

We moved out quickly from the LZ and went into some tall grass. The grass cut-my hands up so fast I thought I had walked into a booby trap. I couldn’t believe it. It was like a thousand paper cuts all over me.

We had to cross a road, and Doyle was telling everybody to look out for mines.

“I don’t know why he tells us that,” Scotty said. “They don’t put the damn mines so you can see them, and we ain’t got no detectors.”

A picture of Jenkins flashed through my mind. I didn’t even look down. I just watched Scotty’s back as we crossed the road. We found the area we were supposed to be in and dug in. Scotty had empty sandbags in his rucksack, and we filled them with dirt and made ourselves a little nest.

Doyle was twenty meters away. The radio guy was with him, and by the time Scotty and I had finished our nest, Doyle and the radio guy were playing cards.

“We just going to stay here?” I asked.

“Doyle don’t go too far,” Scotty said. “He don’t think this is his war anyway. He’s got him a Sunoco service station back in New Jersey.”

“He got drafted?”

“He got drafted four years ago, but he changed his name and stayed low,” Scotty said. “Then the FBI caught up with him and brought him in. He got big connections and got into Officers Candidate School.”

Two jets streaked across the sky. Beautiful. Dark birds in a sweeping arc across a silver sky.

“You join up?” Scotty asked.

“Yeah. Nothing to do in the World.”

“Me, either.”

“That’s why they give these dances,” Scotty said.

We sat for a half hour, then Doyle told us we would be moving out in fifteen minutes. Scotty and I had just started to unload the sandbags when the shooting started.

“Four-fifty! Four-fifty!” The shout went down the line. Someone had spotted where the firing was coming from and estimated it to be four hundred and fifty meters in front of us. Scotty was leveling the legs of the tripod, and I jerked open the metal ammo case.

“Get that’ thing going!” Doyle was yelling at us. I looked up and saw that he was on the radio. The radio man was firing at a line of small trees.

I wasn’t scared. For the first time I wasn’t scared. I didn’t see anybody, no muzzle flashes. I was going to be okay.

Scotty started firing the 60. There were tracers in the belt, and I could see the rounds spit across the distance. Leaves and small branches in front of us seemed to jump into the air. I kept feeding, but I didn’t see anything. Doyle let the firing continue for a long time before calling out for us to cease fire.

I watched him. He peered above the dirt mound he was behind.

“You want a squad out?” Scotty called to Doyle.

“I’m calling for Willy Peter!” Doyle called back.

“That’s Doyle for you, man,” Scotty said. “Whoever started the shooting probably didn’t even see anything, but he’s still going to call for a couple of rounds of Willy Peter, just in case.”

We waited for another minute before a lone round of white phosphorus landed in the distant trees.

“We re too close to be calling in artillery,” Scotty said.

One of our machine guns started chattering on our right, and Scotty opened up again. A moment later some more white phosphorus started coming in. The Willy Peter sent streamers of fire into the air. The smell of it was terrible. Terrible and scary. Just the idea of being hit by a white phosphorus barrage sent a chill through me. The barrage lasted for fifteen seconds, then stopped abruptly.

Scotty nudged me and pointed toward Doyle. Doyle had his helmet off and was screaming into the radio. He was gesturing wildly and then he stood up and looked toward the target area. The radio man stood and looked, too.

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