Walter Myers - Fallen Angels

An intelligence report said that our village was going to be hit by the VC at 1800 hours the next day. Eighteen hundred hours was a hell of a time. It would still be daylight, and if they showed up in the daylight, they would be demonstrating that they weren’t afraid of us, that we couldn’t protect the village.

Captain Stewart sent all of Alpha Company to the village. We were supposed to link up with a company from the 173rd Airborne. They had the 173rd hopping all over the place, and they were really doing a job, from what we heard. They were supposed to go in first and secure the village and then we were to protect it overnight or until it was decided that the VC in the area weren’t a threat.

“This mess sounds good,” Sergeant Simpson said. “We sit in the village until the truce and maybe we be sitting out the rest of the damn war.”

Gearhart was quiet. Sergeant Simpson, who had been bumped up to top sergeant, was more or less leading the whole platoon.

As soon as I heard the sound of the chopper engines I had to pee. I found a tree and peed and then went toward our chopper. Walowick was already in the door of the Huey and gave me a hand up. My stomach was tight as I found a spot to squat..

“Get them weapons on safe!” Simpson called out.

Gearhart was checking gear. He had Peewee carrying a shotgun for the first time.

Peewee, Walowick, Sergeant Simpson, and Brunner were opposite me. Brew, Monaco, Johnson, Lobel, and Gearhart were on my side. We started off with the other choppers. I was scared again. Wasn’t there ever going to be a time when I wasn’t scared?

Monaco was reading the letter from his girl.

“You know,” he said. “It takes balls for a chick to propose to a guy.”

“Yeah.”

I wondered if anybody else had the feeling of being scared. I looked over at Peewee. He was looking at a manual that had been on the floor of the Huey.

The artillery fire was more frightening now. Puffs of smoke around us meant that they were shooting at the chopper. If they hit us while we were in the air, we didn’t have a chance.

Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name … I thought the words. Would God think I was a hypocrite, praying every time I was scared?

A guy from the chopper crew turned, looked at us, and asked who Gearhart was. Gearhart raised his hand, and the chopper guy handed him the headset.

We all watched Gearhart, trying to figure out what was being said, trying to read his face, his gestures.

He nodded once, again. He handed back the headset.

“We’re securing the village instead of the 173rd,” he said.

“Where the hell’s the 173rd?” Simpson asked.

Gearhart shrugged. Sergeant Simpson wiped his palm on his pants leg. I had heard him say to Peewee that Stewart had asked him to extend. He had less than two weeks left in Nam.

The chopper stopped in midair, then made a violent maneuver. I thought we were hit. I looked up at the chopper crew; they were calm. We picked up speed. There was a whine above the other sounds. Were we hit?

The chopper stopped again. The crew opened the door. The machine gunner started firing even before he looked out. The killers had arrived.

We jumped from the chopper. It was faster now. One foot on the ski, then down. Move. Move. The other squads in our company had landed at the same time. We moved toward the village. We could see fires up ahead.

“Spread left! Spread left! Keep your distances!” Sergeant Simpson barked orders.

We moved straight ahead until we came within forty meters of the village. Several of the huts were on fire; there were people milling about. Even from where we were we could hear the wailing.

“Let s move!” Gearhart went first.

We followed. The VC had already struck. There were bodies all around. Some twisted awkwardly, others looking as if they were just resting, their legs bent for comfort. We started checking out the huts. Empty except for the villagers. Some were hurt bad.

“Two platoon, on perimeter!” I turned and saw Captain Stewart. He must have been in one of the other choppers.

The village looked like the one they had constructed for practice at Fort Devens. Only here there were real people. An old woman stumbled into the open space in front of her hut. Her face was covered with blood. She fell. I went over to her, looked at her, and saw the bones in her face where the flesh had been cut away. Turn away.

There was a sense of panic in the air. We had our weapons ready. Sergeant Simpson was telling us not to kill the civilians. I didn’t consciously want to kill anybody, anything. But I felt strange. The sight of all the bodies lying around, the smell of blood and puke and urine, made my head spin, pushed me to a different place. I wanted to fire my weapon, to destroy the nightmare around me. I didn’t want it to be real, this much death, this much dying, this waste of human life. I didn’t want it. I looked around until I found Monaco. There were tears in his eyes, but his mouth was twisted in hate and anguish and confusion. I turned away from Monaco’s pain. It wasn’t the time for comforting each other.

The heat from the burning huts was intense; the shimmering air creating phantom figures all around us.

There was a burst of fire behind me. I turned. Walowick was firing toward a steel drum that lay on its side. I reached for a grenade just as Simpson ran past me. He grabbed Walowick and threw both arms around him.

“Easy, man! Easy!”

I stood with the grenade in my hand. My hand on the pin, ready to pull it out and arm it. I watched Simpson holding Walowick. Around us, the other guys went on with their searching.

I looked back at Walowick. He had freaked out. He was breathing hard, and Sergeant Simpson was still holding him. Walowick was a rock, a fucking rock, and he had freaked out. I turned away. I was going to be cool, I had to be.

We went from hut to hut. They were all empty. Some guys formed a bucket brigade and started trying to put the fire out of the huts that were still burning.

The company was calming down. We bandaged some of the wounds. Captain Stewart called in some medevacs to take out the wounded Vietnamese.

We began coming down, but it wasn’t easy: stepping around the bodies, turning away from the stench, from the reality of the death around us. I stopped for a moment to look at the bodies of two old men, their arms around each other in death. I saw them even after I turned away.

We could have killed as easily as we mourned. We could have burned as easily as we put out the fires. We were scared, on the very edge of control, at once trying to think of what was right to do and hating the scene about us.

I think, if Simpson hadn’t been there, it would have been worse. Much worse. He calmed us down, brought us back to ourselves. He let us be human again; in all the inhumanity about us, he let us be human again.

“They messed up at least one person from each hut,” Peewee said.

“They cut a baby’s head off.” Monaco spoke slowly. His face was dark, his mouth quivered between words. “How the hell do you kill a friggin’ baby?”

“Like the major say,” Peewee said. “They showin’ the people we can’t protect them so they might as well be on charlie’s side. You know what this is like?”

“Like a trip to friggin’ hell,” Monaco said.

“No, man, this is like the projects in Chicago,” Peewee said. “The police can’t protect your ass from the muggers and shit, and the muggers don’t protect your ass from the police.”

“This ain’t like Chicago,” Monaco said. “They don’t kill babies in no Chicago.”

Stewart told us to go to each hut and pick out the wounded who looked most like they were going to live and get them ready for evacuation.