Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
About the Author
Dedicated to
Joe T. Stroud
who would fly anywhere, anytime—
to help a Ranger in harm’s way.
1993—THE PENTAGON
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General T. P. Terry stood at the window in his Pentagon office. Rain fell in sheets on the northern Virginia countryside.
“General, I’m just the wrong guy for this job.”
Terry turned and looked at Lieutenant General Grady Michaelson. “Guess it won’t be the first time you and the chain of command have differed on the best place to put you.”
Michaelson smiled at his old friend. “Seems like this calls for more of a political animal than I am. I have to be honest with you—I want to weasel my way out of this.”
“Grady, the Chairman personally picked you by name. He’ll be back from Belgium next week and you can take it up with him. Until then, you are our new man at the White House.”
Michaelson waved his arm toward the concentric rings of the five-sided building. “I’ve got to believe that there’s someone here far more qualified to do this than I am. Hell, you’ve known me for more than twenty years. I’m a field rat. A mud soldier. I’m liable to step on my crank and really piss someone off over there.”
“The Chairman’s attitude is that you know everything about what the man in the Oval Office knows absolutely nothing about—wars and warriors.”
“Doesn’t make me any happier to hear that.” Michaelson made a disapproving face. “Jesus, doesn’t this business ever get any easier?”
“Farther up the flagpole you climb the more your ass is in the breeze. You know that.”
“And I was just a ballpoint pen away from signing the papers to hang up my green suit after thirty-one years.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I got a call from the Chairman. He said he needed me for one more tough job. Hell, I figured after the jobs I’ve had—how tough could it be? But I didn’t figure on this.”
Terry took a more sober tone. “If soldierin’ was easy, everybody’d be doing it, Grady. He needs you to do this. Things are about as bad as they can get. You can’t even measure the distance between here and the Oval Office.”
“Okay. What’s the Chairman want me to do?”
“Get over there and see if you can tactfully guide the president and his amateur staff through anything that involves the Chairman’s and the DoD’s business.”
“Anyone over there have any idea what we do?”
“Not until you get there.”
Michaelson’s sedan pulled out of the rain to a stop at the covered north entrance to the White House. He tried to put the miles he had traveled as a Green Beret-Ranger infantryman in perspective as he looked out across Pennsylvania Avenue from inside the fence.
“Have a good meeting, sir,” the driver said as he held the door open for his three-star passenger.
“Thank you, son,” Michaelson said as he got out and pulled down on the skirt of his blouse to straighten it out.
A young stallion of a polished Marine stood by the doorway, ready to open it for the general. “Good morning, sir,” he said as he made opening the door look like something he was proud to do.
“Thank you, Corporal,” Michaelson said as he acknowledged the Marine’s ceremonial function.
But as he began to cross the threshold an attractive young woman staffer, arms loaded with a sheaf of papers, juggling an umbrella, flattened herself against the door frame as if to avoid any chance of touching Michaelson on her way out.
The umbrella caught in the jamb and she lost her grip on the paperwork, which spilled out onto the ground.
As fast as it happened, the general and the Marine stooped to pick up the papers before the wind caught them.
“Get away. Let them alone!” the woman spat out. “I don’t need any help from you people.”
Michaelson hadn’t heard her tone since the sixties.
She gathered the papers, stood quickly, and walked briskly down the driveway without so much as an appreciative nod for their efforts.
Michaelson watched her walk away, her disdain clear in her attitude. “So, that’s the way it is around here?”
“’Fraid so, sir. Semper Fi,” the corporal said.
THE WORN BEARING INSIDE the left hub on the wheelchair squeaked. At the top of each revolution, the chair crossed over a floor joist under the covered ramps connecting the hospital wards.
Hollister first became aware of the precise placement of the aged joists the night he was admitted to Letterman Army Hospital. They sent him there after six weeks in a hospital in Vietnam, five more in Guam, and a long medevac flight to San Francisco.
Each time they wheeled him from one ward to another—and to and from the operating room—he heard the hollows, then the joists, then the hollows again. That and the smells of disinfectant and hospital alcohol formed his mental picture of what the hospital looked like. He wondered if he would still notice the sounds when the bandages came off his eyes. Or if he would even care.
A medic pushed him through the swinging doors, into the conference room, spun his chair, and set the brakes.
“Thank you, young man,” a voice said to the medic. “We’ll call you when we’re finished. You can go now.”
Someone in the room reeked of Aqua Velva.
“Captain Hollister, I’m Colonel Nickerson.”
Hollister could only imagine what he looked like. He wouldn’t be surprised to find the man to be balding, thick around the middle, and void of even the slightest evidence of combat experience on his uniform.
“Yes, sir,” Hollister said.
“With me—here in the room—are Specialist Peterson, who will be recording our words, and Captain Sharpe from the Staff Judge Advocate’s office.”
Hollister didn’t respond. He just listened to the soft pressure of Peterson’s fingers against the plastic keys on the court recorder’s transcriber.
“I have been appointed as the Article 32b investigating officer in the matters and events surrounding the actions of Brigadier General Jarrold T. Valentine on or about 11 June, last.
“Before we begin it is my duty to inform you of your rights under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”
Hollister tried to listen as the uncomfortable colonel stumbled over the words from the red book that explained his rights before being questioned. But all Hollister could hear was the sound of the keys on the recorder’s machine.
He thought of how many times he had read the same words to soldiers facing courts-martial and nonjudicial punishment. He didn’t need to hear them again.
“I know my rights. What is it you want to know, Colonel?”
The headlights of Hollister’s car splashed onto the curb stop next to the large Fort Benning cinder-block building that housed Charlie Company. The concrete stop had been hand-lettered in Fort Benning’s trademark blue paint. It read: COMMANDING OFFICER HONOR GUARD COMPANY.
“Sir—let me help you with that stuff,” said a soldier’s voice from the dark.
Hollister recognized Private First Class Lewis, his driver. “Mornin’, Lewis. No problem. I got it,” Hollister said. He hung the coat hangers through his upturned fingers and grabbed his boots with his free hand. He nudged his car door closed with his knee, and the two walked up the sidewalk to the yellow pool thrown by the bug-repelling fire light over the double doors.
“You takin’ a burial detail out, sir?” Lewis asked as they stepped onto the gleaming surface of the brown-speckled asphalt tile in the hallway outside Hollister’s office.
“Yeah, I think we’ve got one that needs a little mothering.”
In the orderly room, the first sergeant and the company clerk snapped to attention. They gave Hollister his customary first salute of the day.
“Good mornin’, Cap’n,” First Sergeant Perry Mann said. Not waiting for a returned salute, he followed Hollister into his office.
“Mornin’, Top. How bad is it today?”
Mann handed Hollister a list on a clipboard. “No better, no worse than yesterday or the day before. For my money—they’re all only a bit better than a sharp stick in the eye.”
Hollister hooked his uniform on the coatrack and set his parade boots on top of his desk. He took the list and scanned it. “I never thought there were shittier jobs in the States than in Vietnam, but this is no goddamn contest.”
The page contained the destinations of five burial details and the names of the NCOs and officers in charge.
“I’m happy to say that your ol’ first sergeant here has to go to a meeting with the brigade command sergeant major. I’m much happier facin’ that old bear then goin’ with you to bury another fine American boy.”
Hollister looked up from the page to see Mann walking back to his desk in the outer office. It struck Hollister that Mann, a black soldier with two wars under his belt and twenty-six years of service stripes on his sleeve, would use the word boy without it registering on him as a word offensive to the blacks demonstrating in the streets for greater civil rights.
Hollister pulled his chair away from his desk and became conscious of the pain in his head and his hip. He knew the throbbing in his head would go away before the morning was over, but the burning in his hip, from a wound he picked up in a chopper crash in Vietnam, would only get worse as the day went on. He pulled the center drawer of his desk open a few inches and let his fingers search for a small tin.
Inside it was a handful of aspirin. He threw three into his mouth and swallowed them, dry. “Well, First Sergeant, I’d rather be beaten with a pipe than do this one more time. I don’t know what ties my gut up tighter—getting shot at or trying to console a mother at another military funeral,” Hollister said to an unseen Mann in the outer office.
“You can heal from a bullet wound.”
Hollister nodded in agreement, unlaced his boots, and slipped out of them.
He took off his fatigues and hung them in his closet. He then pulled his service cap off the shelf and inspected the large officer’s eagle and the condition of the spit shine on the black leather visor. He blew on the visor to scatter any unseen dust.
Satisfied, he put the hat back and pulled his trousers out from under his blouse and stepped into the legs without creasing them.
He sat down with his fly open, allowing him to bend enough to put on his fresh set of boots without wrinkling his trousers.
The peach-colored glow on the horizon promised a clear day. Hollister put his coffee cup down and headed out of the mess hall to the adjacent parking lot.
“’Tench-hut!” a voice yelled in the poorly lit concrete apron, designed for trucks to unload foodstuffs.
“As you were,” Hollister replied, allowing the five fifteen-man burial details to finish last-minute preparations.
Lieutenant Sandy Garland slipped to a point in front of the assembled details and saluted. “Mornin’, sir.”
Hollister returned the salute. “We on time?”
“Yes, sir.” Garland fell in step with Hollister and followed him to the start of the first rank.
The NCO in charge of the first burial detail called his men to attention. “Sir, detail ready for inspection,” he said, looking straight ahead.
Hollister returned the sergeant’s salute and began his inspection at the soldier’s headgear.
The sergeant, a boy no more than twenty, wore his uniform proudly. He demonstrated how seriously he took his duties by the attention he’d paid to every little detail. His metal insignia gleamed. His blouse and trousers were perfectly pressed. Nowhere on his uniform was there so much as a loose thread or a worn item.
Hollister looked down. The soldier’s boots gleamed from hours of spit shining. “Outstanding, Sergeant Elliott. Follow me. Let’s see how your folks look.”
Elliott stepped into place to the left of Lieutenant Garland and followed the two officers.
It was Hollister’s policy that every funeral detail would be inspected as if it were the most important thing they would do all year. At first, the troops in C Company thought it was just chicken-shit, but they quickly realized it was Hollister’s way of showing respect to the soldiers they would bury. Every man in C Company knew the fastest way to get on the wrong side of James Hollister was to take one of the burials lightly.
Hollister moved down the line, found two ties that needed attention and one insignia with polishing cloth lint stuck to it.
The other four details were in about the same shape. While Hollister would consider them a shade below the standards he had mastered while going through the Seventh Army Noncommissioned Officers’ Academy in Bad Tolz, Germany, almost six years earlier—they were perfect by contemporary standards. Almost every man in his company had been to Vietnam and was serving out his remaining months of service at Fort Benning. Even the least motivated among them was better than most of the others at Fort Benning.
“They look good, Sandy,” Hollister said. “Have they eaten yet?”
“Yes, sir, those that wanted to.”
“All right, let ’em grab a smoke, and then let’s get ’em on the road.
“I’ll be going with Sergeant Elliott’s detail.”
“Where to, sir?”
“Calumet—on the road to Savannah.”
“I’m headed for Mobile.”
“Okay then, have the mess hall put some coffee on your bus. You got a long ride. And you’ll let me know if you run into trouble in Mobile?”
“Yes, sir. But how much trouble can I get into in Mobile?”
They both looked at each other, knowing almost anything could go badly on a funeral detail.
Back at his desk, Hollister unfastened the four large brass buttons on his blouse to avoid creasing it. First Sergeant Mann handed him more papers to sign, flipping the pages and pointing at the signature blocks for him to initial or sign. While speaking to Hollister, he still carried on the business of running the headquarters by firing off instructions to the company clerk who was relaying phone calls and trying to organize the sick call roster for three soldiers headed to the medics.
“What the fuck’s their problem?” Mann asked.
“Got one with swollen tonsils, one with a twisted ankle from PT this morning, and the other one says it’s personal,” the clerk typist said.
“Personal? Personal my fucking ass! Get that sick, lame, and lazy som’bitch in here. I’ll tell him what personal is.” He then turned his attention back to Hollister and changed his tone. “Ah, sir, that needs to be dated the day before yesterday—in your handwriting.”
Hollister knew they were late submitting the document and hated fudging dates, but he also knew it was absolutely impossible for an infantry company commander to accomplish all of the duties assigned to him, counsel all the soldiers he was required to counsel, read all he had to read, write all he had to write, and make all the suspense dates that were on his back. He wrinkled his brow and looked at Mann. “So, what was the date, the day before yesterday?”
“February thirteenth, sir,” Mann replied. “Far too late for you to do your Christmas shopping.”
Hollister looked back up at Mann. “You really know how to remind a guy when he is backed up, Top.”
Mann smiled broadly. “For us folks, every day’s a picnic. Hell, we get three squares a day, spiffy uniforms, and high-top corrective shoes. Yes, sir, Captain, every day’s a holiday, and every meal’s a banquet.”
A soldier appeared in the doorway in front of the first sergeant’s desk. “Private First Class Rameriz, reporting to the first sergeant.”
Mann looked up from the paperwork and hollered out into his office, “Stay right fucking there, you sorry excuse for an infantry fighting machine.” He then dropped his tone again. “’Scuse me a minute, sir, while I take care’a this boy.”
Mann straightened up and pushed his chest out before stepping back into his own office. Hollister raised his pen and watched Mann work.
“Boy! It is my understanding you have a problem that you want to take to the medics but you can’t share it with your own first sergeant. Is that right?”
The private looked nervously around the office and then back to the first sergeant. “Yes, Top. It’s sorta personal.”
Hollister watched the expression on Mann’s face turn from mock surprise to mock anger. He had spent so much of his life around soldiers like Mann. Soldiers who had it down pat, were solid, predictable, and reliable to a fault.
“Sorta personal?” Mann bellowed.
“Yes, First Sergeant. I don’t have to tell everyone, do I?”
Sergeant Mann leaned forward. “No, mister, you don’t have to tell everyone your problem. You just have to tell your kind, old first sergeant.”
“I don’t wanna be disrespectful. But how does it help things if you know, Top?”
“You think that I’m not concerned about your welfare, young soldier? Don’t you think it’s important for me to know if you have a problem that might affect the others?”
“Yes, First Sergeant, I’m sure you’re plenty concerned, but—”
“You got yourself a sneezin’ peter, don’t you now, boy?”
The soldier tried to absorb the question and reply, but Mann interrupted him again. “It’s much the same as if you had yourself leprosy or food poisonin’ or something. I’d have to make sure the other troops don’t get into the same mess. Now tell me, did you go on over to Phenix City and get yourself some of that rotten civilian poontang?”
“No, First Sergeant. I don’t have the clap or nothin’ like that.”
“Well, what the hell is your problem?”
“I got them hemorrhoids, Top.”
“Piles? You have piles?” Mann asked, his eyes bulging.
The soldier dropped his voice and mumbled, “Yes, First Sergeant.”
“Hell, boy. That’s an infantryman’s occupational hazard,” Mann said as he stepped closer to the soldier and patted him on the back. “Means that you are doin’ the hard work, lifting the big loads, making the morning PT runs, and soldiering through it all.
“Now you don’t need no sick call, and I don’t need to send you over to waste the time of some important doctor. You just get yourself up to your latrine and fill the mop sink with all the hot water you can stand. Then you drop your trousers and soak your ass.”
Mann looked at his GI wristwatch. “You got twenty minutes, boy. Now get to it.”
All fifteen of them stood, holding on to the overhead handrail in the small bus. No one in the honor guard sat down on the way to a funeral. To do so would guarantee a wrinkled uniform.
The rural Georgia countryside flew by the bus windows. Some on board talked about girls and cars. Hollister gazed out the windows, not really seeing anything—thinking about his wife, Susan.
“Kudzu,” Sergeant Elliott said.
“Huh?”
“Never seen anyplace that had as much of this stuff as Georgia. Look. Look there, sir,” Elliott said. “It’s eating up that telephone pole.”
It was completely covered with the native vine. Hollister chuckled. “I remember Ranger School. I’ve walked through, slept in, and untangled enough kudzu to cover two states.”
“Bet you don’t miss that.”
Hollister paused. “Actually, I kind of feel like I’m ghosting here in C Company. We pull so little field duty, we ought to be backing up to the pay table.”
“I’d say that’s lucky. At least we’re back from Vietnam. I haven’t even been back long enough to get completely unpacked. ’S gonna take me a while to get used to all the comforts of home.”
“You like being back, huh?”
“Like it? Sir, how long since you been back here?”
Hollister thought for a few seconds. “Goin’ on a year now.”
“It’s bad, sir. I don’t mean the combat V stuff. I mean the other shit …”
“Like?”
“Like them starting to pull the troops out.”
“That’s not good?”
“It’s good for them goin’ home. It’s real bad for them still there. Everybody’s spooked. Nobody wants to be the last American wasted over there. And the drugs and the race shit.”
A black soldier standing next to Hollister and Elliott, a combat veteran himself, heard the comment “I hear that shit, man. Nobody needs it—nobody.”
“What do you think we should do?” Hollister asked Elliott.
“We either got to do the job and get it done or pack up and get out in a New York minute. This drawdown and Vietnamization shit is bad news.”
Hollister let Elliott’s words sink in. He had always found the line soldier’s take on things to be somewhat exaggerated or oversimplified, but almost always solidly based in the reality that the soldiers felt. They never came up short of opinions when asked. “Well, maybe we can still come out of there having done some good.”
“Not as I can see, sir.”
Hollister flipped the pages in his small army-green notebook and refreshed his memory—the name of the deceased, next of kin, and the name of the church. He didn’t want anyone at the funeral or the cemetery seeing him checking his notes. He wanted them to think that he was almost as familiar with the key names at the funeral as the family was. But he knew better. He had been to almost seventy-five such funerals since he had assumed command of C Company, and every one tugged at his heart and his gut. He knew Sands, George A, E-5, 4th Infantry Division, Vietnam, wasn’t going to be any easier to bury than the others had been.
“We’re ’bout there,” the bus driver said.
The signs on the roadside signaled the approach to Calumet. One indicated the miles, another advertised the Rotary Club, and another sign read: POPULATION 488.
Every man on the bus groaned. Someone in the back offered, “Don’t be holdin’ yer breath waitin’ for no local lovelies to be comin’ by to see us. Be surprised if this town even has electricity.”
“Check this out,” another soldier said.
Suddenly the bus went silent. On a side of an abandoned outbuilding, a poster had been stapled up announcing a Ku Klux Klan meeting in Calumet for that very evening.
The silence was finally broken by a black soldier’s voice. “Hope we beat feet out here before dark, Cap’n.”
“Count on it,” Hollister said.
Hollister had dropped off the firing squad at the cemetery to find a good spot not too near the mourners, while he, Elliott, and the pallbearers went on to the church to wait for the hearse. Since a light rain had started to fall, Hollister had instructed Elliott to keep the pallbearers on the bus until they were needed.
He slipped into the church and found it filled with nearly a hundred local people and what looked like relatives who had come to town for the funeral.
An elderly man introduced himself. “I’m Fest, Mister Fest, with the funeral home.”
Hollister quickly slipped off his white cotton glove and took the old man’s frail hand. He wasn’t sure why the man would want to make a point out of being known as Mister Fest, but he went along with it. “Mister Fest, I’m Captain Jim Hollister. Are things on schedule?”
“Oh, yes. Things are exactly on time, Captain.” He lifted his watch from his vest pocket and held it in his palm. “The deceased will be here in six minutes. We’re always exactly on time.”
Hollister looked into the church. “Can you point out the family? I understand that Sergeant Sands wasn’t married.”
Fest pointed his long slender finger as discreetly as only an undertaker could. “The lady with the lavender hankie is Mrs. Sands, and the gentleman next to her is the deceased’s father.”
Hollister leaned a little closer to Mr. Fest. “I’ll be outside getting my people ready to bring the casket in.”
The rain continued to fall—a little heavier than before, but Hollister and the others didn’t put on the ugly brown raincoats that the army had issued them. Each man stood at a rigid position of attention—to the rear of the ten-year-old white hearse carrying Sergeant Sands’s remains.
Hollister opened the huge rear door, and the first two soldiers leaned in to grasp the casket and pull it out.
Hollister took up his position behind the casket and was about to give the command to move the pallbearers up the stairs when he noticed Mrs. Sands standing in the door of the church, her hand to her face, tears streaming down her cheeks. “No …” she said. “No, I won’t allow it. No sir.”
Her words were not directed at anyone, but Hollister waited for a second to see if she would say something else that would help him understand. Under his breath he spoke to the pallbearers. “Steady. Hold what you’ve got.”
He stepped around them and moved toward Mrs. Sands. Mr. Sands and Mr. Fest tried to console Mrs. Sands, who was alternately sobbing and complaining.
“You can’t do this, young man,” she said.
“Can’t do what, ma’am?” Hollister asked.
“I’ll let ’em carry my boy’s body to the door, but those coloreds can’t come into my church. No sir, I will not allow those coloreds into this tabernacle of God. My boy had to serve with nigras over there, but he wouldn’t want them in his church.”
“Ma’am. I realize how much pain you’re in, and I’m sure you don’t mean what you’re saying. These are soldiers. They have come to pay the highest respect to your son. I’m sure you know how sorry they are for your loss.”
The woman snatched the balled-up handkerchief from her face. “Boy … I’m not gonna tell you again. That box with my son in it is coming into the church my family has prayed in for three generations, but those black faces will not be carrying it.”
Mourners had gathered behind Mrs. Sands, waiting for Hollister to respond. She put him in a no-win situation. The last thing he wanted to do was lash out at her on the day she was burying her son.
Hollister raised his finger to wipe the rain off the leather brim of his service cap. “Madam, this detail is here for you and your son. I will not weed out the black soldiers for you or anyone else. You must accept my burial detail as is or I’ll be forced to take them back to Fort Benning right now.”
Mrs. Sands became hysterical and told Hollister he’d regret that.
The bus ride back to Fort Benning was no easier for Hollister than it had been to Calumet. He knew he would be faced with criticism from the chain of command for not staying, for not finding another solution to the problem. Certainly someone would blame him for not separating the soldiers by color, or for just arguing with the next of kin.
It was dark again by the time he pulled into his parking space at the BOQ. He fumbled with his keys and finally got the sticking door to open. As if on autopilot, he flipped on the TV and the light switch, and dumped his hat and keys on the quartermaster-issue coffee table.
While the television warmed up, he poured himself a drink from the ever-present bottle that stood on the sideboard of the kitchenette.
He stood by the sink, drinking the warm bourbon, and only turned to watch the news. He knew that as soon as he sat down on the couch, he’d just have to get up to refill his glass.
He never missed the Vietnam casualty reports and the news pieces filed by only a handful of competent newsmen. He had little use for the crowd that spent most of its time at the Caravelle Hotel or the ones who rewrote the press releases handed out by the Joint Public Affairs Office in Saigon’s Rex Hotel. He only trusted the reporters whom he had personally seen in the field, collecting information to file themselves.
Sometime during the news he dozed off. The station signed off after midnight, and the hissing noise that replaced programming woke Hollister.
He looked at the clock on the nightstand next to his bed, where he had propped himself up to watch the small black-and-white TV and finish another drink. Next to the clock was a framed photograph of Susan.
Her smile tugged at his gut. He missed her. He hated living without her. And he didn’t know if he could ever get her back.
He lit a cigarette, turned off the television, and poured himself another drink.
Standing at the small kitchenette sink, he looked out the window at the circling C-130 aircraft loaded with paratroopers. They were lining up to drop pass after pass of student parachutists on their first night jump.
No soldier ever forgot his first night jump. Hollister was no different. Being an Airborne-Ranger was a life unlike any other. One that so often came between soldiers and the ones they loved.
She’d never come back as long as he was a soldier. He was sure of that. He poured himself another drink and lit another cigarette.
IN A TRAVEL MAGAZINE Yoon Dlei village would look interesting, filled with the textures of a people who fabricated all of their needs from the Vietnamese tropical rain forest.
But only at a distance was the village romantic and exotic. Up close, the rain leaked through the matted palm fronds, once tight and well sealed. It had been a long time since there had been enough men in the small Montagnard village to keep all the structures repaired and comfortable for their families.
Krong, the aging chief of the small band of Montagnards who had slash-and-burn farmed the hills in western Binh Long Province for hundreds of years, tried to patch the hole in the roof. He wouldn’t let himself remember when such tasks were never done by a man of authority in what was once a large tribe.
His granddaughter, Jrae, held her infant child to her breast and huddled in the corner of the longhouse. All she had to squat on was a pallet made of salvaged cardboard, swollen from being wet, then dry, then wet again over the months since it was pressed into service.
Jrae was fairer, less stocky, and taller than the other women in the tribe. It was a matter of no small embarrassment to her that she was not full Montagnard. Her mother had befriended and then was seduced by a French anthropologist who had studied their tribe after World War II. They lived as man and wife until the French-Indochina War heated up, and he was called back to Paris. He had promised to return, but never did. Jrae’s mother went back to her tribal village and lived in shame until her death from tuberculosis.
Jrae’s childhood had made her different from the other girls in the village. By the time she and her mother returned from the city of Da Lat, where they had lived with her father, she had been exposed to Vietnamese and French cultures, had learned their languages and even conversational English from the missionaries who ran the clinic in her neighborhood. But no matter what she had learned—she was still an outcast in the Vietnamese community. She was the daughter of a Montagnard—a spurned ethnic minority for centuries.
For Jrae the cardboard eased the discomfort of the skinny saplings that made up the flooring of the longhouse. The scrap of woven blanket she used to cover her half-naked body and that of her son flaked dried mud each time she moved it.
The rain plopped onto the floor. Children whimpered and coughed. And their mothers rocked and soothed them. One of the women walked to the fireplace, sculpted out of a large termite’s nest, and put some charcoal on the waning fire. She took a large scrap of aluminum that had once been a can and fanned the glowing embers to spread the fire to the new charcoal. Sparks leaped out of the fireplace and popped at the top of their arcs.
The woman pulled her head away but couldn’t avoid the smoke. There was no provision to let the smoke out of the longhouses, except letting it filter out through the roof. Smoke always filled the dwelling, burning everyone’s eyes.
An elder ran into the longhouse. “They come again.”
Krong looked at him, puzzled but worried by Toong’s tone. “Who?”
“Republicans.”
One of the children, old enough to understand, began crying and scurried to put her mother between her and the door to the open village.
Krong closed his eyes for a moment as if to endure some pain or brace for it. He remained silent, summoning up strength from a reservoir of his own making.
He put down the thatch he had been using to repair the roof, brushed back his platinum-threaded hair, and patted the chignon on the back of his head. “I will talk to them.”
He picked up his ratty wool blanket he had once traded a French soldier a hand ax for and wrapped it around his bare shoulders. At the door he turned and spoke to the women. “Stay inside. Do not show yourself.”
The two Montagnard men and two skinny dogs waited in the center of the circle of longhouses for the South Vietnamese soldiers to arrive. The old men stood proudly and defiantly, each trying to remember when they were stronger. When they were warriors, providers, and the defenders of their people.
The Vietnamese burst into the village. Six soldiers in various states of drunkenness stumbled across the rain-swept village. Their sergeant stepped up to Krong. “Rice wine—where is it?”
Krong didn’t answer.
The soldier grabbed the old man’s withered arm and shook him. “What is it that makes you moi act stupid?” he asked, using the term for the savages they believed the nomads to be. “We will make trouble. Act now. Be smart, old man.”
Krong wouldn’t look away from the Vietnamese soldier’s eyes. It was an insult to make direct eye contact with them, and he wanted to show his contempt. He yelled out to an unseen villager in one of the other longhouses. “Bring the wine.”
“Hurry!” the Vietnamese soldier added.
While they all waited for two old women who carried a large crock of fermented rice wine to the center of the village, the soldiers made insulting remarks about the Montagnards and laughed at the women as they carried the jug.
In the darkened doorway of the chief’s longhouse Jrae stood and listened—her baby half-asleep, clinging to her. She knew what the soldiers were saying. They wanted women. They urged their sergeant not to stop at demanding only wine. He should ask for all the women, too. They would then pick the ones they wanted from the group.
Krong heard the talk, too, but pretended not to.
The sergeant laughed at his comrades and agreed. “Your women are good for pleasuring us,” he said, lustfully rubbing the crotch of his wet uniform trousers.
“You have your wine. Now go. Leave us. We are only hill people. Leave us to suffer through this night. Go be with your own kind.”
“We spend these same nights at the outpost down near the river guarding your people. There is a real threat to our people. Still we protect your skinny old men and your stupid women because the puppets in Saigon say we must. Your women—they can warm us tonight. We want women.”
“No. Now go away and leave us,” Krong said, growing more angry with the soldiers.
The Vietnamese sergeant shoved him with the heels of his hands. “Shut up! Be grateful that we don’t just kill you and tell Saigon that the Communist VC did it.”
The sergeant spat out encouragement to the others, already dipping cups into the crock and slopping wine on themselves as they drank. He gave them permission to find the women they wanted and just take them.
Krong protested again, but the soldiers didn’t stop. They ran to the longhouses and looked for young girls.
One of them entered Jrae’s longhouse and looked at her standing in the doorway—her baby at one of her swollen breasts. He laughed at her fearful expression but didn’t resist the temptation to reach out to fondle her free breast. She recoiled from his grasp and threw herself off balance. She staggered and the soldier laughed at her clumsiness.
She screamed out for him to leave them. But the soldier walked to the far end of the longhouse and found another girl, Sraang—only thirteen. He grabbed her by the wrist, held her out so he could look at her body, and grunted in approval. She was tall and dark skinned. Her hair was jet black, long and straight to her waist. The soldier looked at her naked chest and yelled out to the others that he had found a young one who was not as disgusting as the rest of them. He laughed and then dragged her out into the night.
Sraang was Jrae’s sister. Her only sister—ten years her junior. She was born to her mother and her mother’s second husband—a Montagnard who was killed by the Viet Cong not long after Sraang was born.
Jrae’s younger brother, Pek, had been taken a year earlier. That time they came with a recruiting pitch—explaining to the Montagnards that the Republican puppets in Saigon would eventually kill them all. Their only hope was to join the Viet Cong to fight Saigon. When the recruiting plea failed, they just took Pek. That was the first of the roundups that eventually took all the men under forty from their village.
After the soldiers left, Jrae collapsed on the cardboard pallet and cried, remembering just such a night when other soldiers had dragged her off. She held the baby who was a memory of the soldiers who used her—drunken and insulting. They had taken turns with her and then left her on the pathway near her village for her tribe to find her. Just remembering the night brought back the pain and the embarrassment of the men handling her small body, sweating on her, grunting, pushing, and hurting her.
She was ashamed. Though none of the elders in the village accused her of any wrongdoing, she felt as though she had betrayed her tribe by having sex with Vietnamese soldiers. But the ultimate pain came when she found that she was pregnant. Every day since the birth of her son, she had been reminded of that night.
By dawn there was still no sign of Sraang.
Jrae alternated between the unavoidable duties of her day and moments of fear when her mind wandered to the things that could be happening to her sister.
She hoped that Sraang would return before the small tribe moved.
Two weeks earlier, the South Vietnamese sent a province officer into the village to tell them that they could be relocated to a resettlement camp near Tay Ninh. They would have to give up their nomadic lifestyle and move to a government resettlement camp if they wanted to survive.
The older men knew whatever fading authority they held in their small group would disappear the moment they arrived at a resettlement camp. Younger men and stronger men at the camp would insist that they be given the power to make decisions for Krong’s people.
HOLLISTER SAT QUIETLY AT the bar in the basement of the main officers club. The Infantry Bar was filled with the after-work crowd. He sat alone and made circles on the bar top with the water on the bottom of his beer mug. At the corner of the bar, the evening news was on TV. Cronkite mixed reading the news from Saigon with lecturing his viewers about America’s inability to extract itself from the Vietnam War.
Angered, but not sure why Cronkite angered him, Hollister signaled the bartender for a refill.
A loud Transportation Corps captain was telling some story on the stool next to Hollister, waving his arms all around as he talked to his friend on the third stool over. Hollister was slightly bothered by the loudmouth but decided just to let it pass. All he wanted was just a quiet drink and some time to think.
“Hey, you fuckin’ sorry-ass Ranger!”
Hollister looked up into the bar mirror and saw the smiling face of Major Jack Stanton, his old helicopter gunship platoon leader from Hollister’s second tour in Vietnam.
“Shit,” Hollister said without turning around. “Isn’t there anywhere on post where a guy can go to get a drink without the place filling up with assholes?”
“This place filled up with assholes when you walked in,” Stanton said playfully.
Stanton pulled up a stool next to Hollister and mounted it like a horse. “You buyin’?”
“Me?” Hollister shook his head. “Seems to me that I’ve been buyin’ since the day I met you.”
“You drinkin’ solo, pardner?”
The animated captain next to Hollister made a wide gesture with his hand while telling his story and slammed his fist on the bar. Hollister watched his glass jump, almost spilling its contents. He waved for the bartender to bring Stanton a drink.
“Oh, I get it. The wife?”
“Don’t know what to do about her, Jack.”
“She still home? In New Jersey?”
“New York.”
“She comin’ back?”
“We been at this a couple a years now. She wants me out of the army, out of Benning, and God knows what else.”
“So?”
“So what am I gonna do? Can you see me on some campus with a bunch of long-hair hippies?”
They both laughed at the picture of Airborne-Ranger Hollister without his close-cropped haircut.
“I’d pay real money to see that,” Stanton said.
“Well, wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.”
“That what you told her?”
“In so many words.”
“So she walked?”
“She knew I was a soldier when she met me and when we got married.”
“She’s tired of it, Jim.”
“We’re all tired of it.”
“You oughta be gettin’ short, huh?”
The aggravating captain next to Hollister laughed loudly at something his friend had said. Hollister looked at the captain and then back to Stanton.
“I’m real ripe for reassignment. If I don’t put in my papers to get out, and I get alerted for movement to Vietnam—I’m stuck.”
“Yeah,” Stanton said. “I know. They’ll send your request back and tell you to reapply after you return.”
Hollister gently tapped his glass on the counter and got the bartender’s attention. “Wanna do it again?”
“Susan know how ripe you are?”
“Nope. What are you gonna do, Jack?”
“Hey. Sam’s got me. I’m in for the long haul. Five more years, and it’s rockin’ chair time. I just can’t walk away from fifteen years,” Stanton said.
“I can’t walk away either, and I don’t know how to explain it to Susan.”
“You better figure it out, man. She’s really gonna be pissed if she gets a letter saying, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m going back to Vietnam for my third tour.’”
Before Hollister could reply, the bellowing captain next to him stepped off his stool, tripped on the footrail, and bounced off Hollister. With whiplike speed, Hollister reached out and grabbed the captain by the throat, his fingers on either side of his windpipe, and pulled his face close. “You’re not only a pain in the ass, but you’re a clumsy pain in the ass. Now get a grip on yourself or I’ll help you to the fuckin’ door. You got me?”
The captain’s eyes bugged out—he was surprised at Hollister’s hostility. He nodded and tried to straighten up to avoid the pain Hollister’s grip was causing.
“Hey, Jim. Lighten up,” Stanton said.
Hollister let go of the captain but reinforced his words with a cold stare.
The captain grabbed his change off the bar and headed for the door—encouraged to leave by his buddy.
Neither Hollister nor Stanton said anything for quite a long time.
“Shit,” Hollister said. “I just don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’m short fused—”
“And a real joy to be around,” Stanton said.
“I’m sorry, man. I’m just tired.”
“How long I been knowin’ you?”
“Couple a years now.”
“I’ve watched you get froggy. When we get this in aviation units, we put guys behind a desk to take some of the weight off of them. Maybe getting out and heading for some campus somewhere will help.”
Hollister looked up at Stanton. “You think I’m that fucked up, huh?”
“Nope. But I think that you’ve carried your share of the war.” He jerked his thumb toward the doorway. “Give someone else like that clown a chance to prove something. Ease off.”
Stanton left the bar around nine. Hollister stayed and had more to drink. He looked at the clock on the dash of his MG roadster. It was after eleven.
The military policeman’s flashing red lights hardly reflected off Hollister’s rearview mirror before he checked his speedometer and started to pull over to the side of the road.
There were few things less forgivable than getting a DUI on an army post. Hollister ran through a list of possible excuses he might be able to use on the MP. None of them seemed worthwhile, so he resigned himself to getting out his wallet and registration.
A tall black soldier approached his car. In the backlight of the MP sedan’s headlights, all that Hollister could make out in his mirror was the sergeant’s bright sleeve chevrons.
“Evenin’, sir,” the sergeant said.
“Good evening,” Hollister said, trying to sound as sober as he could.
“It’d be a damn shame to have to write a DUI on an old platoon leader of mine,” the sergeant said.
Hollister, not sure what he was talking about, scooted down in his seat to look out and up under the low-cut canvas top on his roadster. It was then that he saw the smiling face of former Private First Class Tyrone T. Thibideaux, an MP turned long-range-patrol member in the Airborne brigade in Vietnam. “Damn you, Three-T, I thought I recognized that voice,” Hollister said, happy to see his friendly face.
“You think you’d recognize it better if I whispered?” he said, referring to the way they normally talked in the field.
They both laughed. Hollister remembered Thibideaux as a good soldier who went on several patrols with Hollister’s platoon until he was injured in a freak accident and evacuated to the States. “What are you doing back in an MP suit?”
“When I screwed up my back and got bounced from the infantry, they let me fall back on my MP time.”
“And a staff sergeant in just four years?” Hollister asked, only a little surprised.
“Sometimes you get lucky, sir.”
“It’s good to see you.”
“Speaking of getting lucky, Captain, you know why I pulled you over, don’t you?”
Hollister nodded affirmatively.
“Well, you ’bout the luckiest captain on Fort Benning tonight ’cause the post chief of staff is on our ass to be on folk’s asses about DUIs. Now, if you just head on over to your BOQ, I’m going to follow you. You know, in case you need any help. And we’ll just call it a wash. What d’ya think, Cap’n?”
“I think that’s a lot more slack than I got coming to me. Thank you, Sergeant T.”
“My pleasure, Cap’n.”
Hollister pulled into his parking space in front of the BOQ. Thibideaux turned on the interior lights in his sedan and gave Hollister another abbreviated salute before he drove off.
Hollister sat in his car, his head still spinning from all the booze. He let it sink in—how close he had come to very real trouble. It was almost impossible to keep a DUI from ruining any career aspirations an officer might have. Once the delinquency report was submitted, wheels began to roll that ended up with at least a negative comment about drinking on an officer’s efficiency report. That alone was enough to miss the next promotion list. Miss two lists and an officer was invited to leave the service. A chill went through him as he thought of how close he had come to having his future decided for him.
“I’ve got an appointment with the chief of staff,” Hollister said.
“Mornin’, Captain,” the post command sergeant major said from behind his polished oak desk. “Let me see if Colonel Valentine’s free.”
The sergeant major put his large cigar in the ashtray and stood to step across the headquarters reception area to the colonel’s office.
The new post chief of staff had only been in the job for five weeks. Hollister had not yet met him—not face-to-face.
Hollister’s name had first come to Valentine’s attention when the grieving mother in Calumet had called her senator. It was less than an hour later when the phone lines burned all the way down to Hollister’s level. Valentine had made it clear how unhappy he was to have received a call from the Senate Office Building on his first week in his new job. He especially didn’t like having to call his boss, the commanding general, with the news of the incident.
Hollister stepped smartly to a point in front of Colonel Jarrold T. Valentine’s desk, stopped, and saluted. “Sir, Captain Hollister reports.”
Colonel Valentine returned Hollister’s salute. “Pull up a chair, Hollister. We have some talking to do.”
Hollister had heard nothing good about Valentine. His reputation was that of a hard-ass who was widely known throughout the infantry for handing out punishment like candy for the most minor infractions of military discipline. He had an especially dark reputation for being hell on company-grade officers.
“You don’t know much about drugs, do you, Hollister?”
The question took Hollister by surprise. “Pardon me, sir?”
“I’ve looked at your personnel file. Doesn’t look to me that you’ve been around the kind of units that have drug problems.”
“Well, sir. I know about them. I was an enlisted man in Germany when marijuana was getting to be a problem. I’ve seen my share of soldiers nuked by drugs.
“And I’ve served on courts-martial. I’ve been a trial counsel on a couple of possession cases. But as far as being in units with drug problems? No, sir. I can’t say I have.”
“Well, I’ve got a very big problem. I’ve got soldiers with serious drug problems.”
“Sorry to hear that. I don’t see much of it in my company—”
Valentine interrupted. “I know that, but your brigade has the most drug cases of any unit on post.”
“Why’s that, sir?”