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Banking to the left, Vance’s helicopter briefly aligned with the Perfume River flowing through Hue, a city of mud walls and tin roofs held together only by the scented smoke of joss sticks. Completing its arc, the aircraft settled on a westward course over the living emerald jungle, slowly climbing to 2500 feet. The last stars faded in the dawn twilight.
Major Dinh Van Ngon of the 1st ARVN Division sat next to Vance in the back of the Command and Control chopper. Ngon was an ambitious, capable officer in General Vance Butterworth’s opinion. The young fighter’s prowess at finding and killing communists earned him the nickname Le Chasseur. The Hunter. The sobriquet tainted the man in the American general’s eyes. Professional soldiers didn’t have nicknames. Ball players did. Ball players and gangsters.
Vance and Ngon were going to observe the establishment of a new artillery base whose cannons would support the 3rd Brigade troopers operating in the A Shau Valley. The two wore earphones with boom mikes so they could monitor radio traffic and talk directly to each other over the intercom without shouting.
“You said in the briefing that you will not set down today, General. Wouldn’t it be better to see the spot for yourself?”
“The spot in question will belong to a captain, so a captain should be the one doing the decorating.”
“You trust your junior officers with great obligations. We should land and get out, to see what they see.”
“My job is to see it from up here. Down there, the only eyes that matter belong to the man in charge on the ground. I’m not that man, even if I got my boots dirty for a few minutes doing a cameo on the LZ.” Irritated, Vance adjusted his back, knees and feet into the chopper’s hammock seats. Once he settled, he knew that gremlins would tighten the screws down on every one of his joints, making it impossible to move without pain. The withered harvest of three wars and 184 static line jumps.
For a moment he closed his eyes and felt the stars fall on him. Caroline. The astral one who shined last in the morning sky. God, to have the purple night back again.
A voice over the command net blandly stated “Tomahawk.”
“That means the 2/17 Cav’s recon team is extracted, Major. We’re on plan.”
Ngon nodded. Vance knew the steps the younger man was taking. They led up the stairs of the warrior’s temple. He would master the profession of arms, and in time rise to the priesthood of sword, shot, and powder. Ngon would never have to step down from that altar. Hell, Le Chasseur would probably be his country’s president one day. Not so for Vance. It was 1968, and the US Army had more generals than it needed. Within a week his tour was over and there would be a flight back to Ft. Campbell, and retirement.
Ngon’s voice came back over the intercom. “The battery commander that you put in charge of this…”
“Captain Billings, you met him at the briefing.”
“Yes. He’s young. A great responsibility. He knows the jungle well?”
“These are the mornings where the young learn to be old, Major.”
Ngon extended his legs out over the edge of the helicopter’s deck and rotated his ankles in the breeze as he spoke, “The glory of young men is their strength, and the beauty of old men is their grey head.”
“What?”
“The Book of Proverbs, General.”
“You know this isn’t really a battle we are observing today, don’t you? I’m afraid that I’ve already seen my last battle, so if that’s what you’re looking for today…”
“Does a warrior choose which battle will be his last, General?”
Well, I did, Vance thought. And I’m not a warrior, I’m a professional soldier. Fascists, Nazis, communists – I’ve faced them toe to toe. My toes are at 2500 feet today, and small arms fire doesn’t reach this high.
“I do my job, just like you do yours and Captain Billings down there does his. If we all do our jobs well, then the mission’s a success and we do it all again tomorrow.”
Twenty minutes later they were on station over the targeted hilltop as the operation unfolded beneath them. A low, slow line of planes hung in the air, pitching out 10,000 pound bombs that floated down under parachutes.
From the air the explosions looked like drops of orange food coloring hitting a glass of water. Nothing at first, then blossoms of color in the green. The blasts levelled tons of teak and banyan, each leaving a dead spot one hundred feet across. Five minutes after the last bomb blast, a line of slicks brought in Billings and his team. Soon they were on the radio, giving the okay for the big loads to come in.
Vance stayed off the operational net. The last thing the men on the ground or in the cargo choppers needed was a VIP making comments or asking for updates. He had been in their boots. He remembered what it was to stand and face the cloud. Silence, then thunder. Dark, then blinding lightning. Battle was unwelcome rain that soaked to the bone, washing the ground out from under your feet at the same time it filled your mouth and lungs. Vance had worked under that flood in Sicily, Anzio, the Rhineland, and Pakchon, when men like Ngon were still in their mothers’ arms.
The C&C chopper pilot spoke over the intercom, “Hooks are on short final, sir. No contact reported on the ground.” Vance tapped the ARVN major on the shoulder and pointed to the cargo helicopters making their deliberate approach from the southwest. 105mm cannons, pallets of supplies, and Rome plow tractors swung from the bellies of the big ships. Within an hour the firebase was actively putting rounds downrange. Vance and his command team headed back to Camp Eagle.
His back spasms came almost every day now. He remembered seeing a general after the Hurtgen fight who had taken a bullet though his helmet. The man was dead as could be, staring up into the German sky, his hands up under the small of his back as though he’d been rubbing it when the shot came. Well, Vance thought, generals don’t take bullets on the banks of the Rhine anymore. Now we fly in C&C birds 2500 feet above the action, but we still get sore backs. And younger men still look down on our bodies, sure that they’ll do a better job when they get their chance.
Later that afternoon in his trailer Vance shaved and broke the starch of a clean jungle blouse. He re-read his mail. Jean Butterworth wrote to her husband about the kids. The girl was at Vassar now and the boy was captain of the high school speech team. They were all looking forward to seeing him and being together for Thanksgiving for the first time in two years.
His eyes closed again, absorbed by memories. Caroline’s letters changed as he moved from Africa through Italy and nothing he wrote could stop her making the decisions that she made. The light went out. Vance learned to put his back to the plow and in time the Army, the marriage, and the family all prospered. But beyond the ploughed field there always stood the forest, unknown.
For one sharp second, he dreamed that he could have a crack at it again. Leaping from behind the plow and rushing into the trees after her. With pure heart, strong of limb, grabbing her by the wrist and laughing as he pulled her to him in triumph.
The past was the past. Jean was the truth. Caroline, too imprecise to be a lie, was just as true, but truly gone. Compromise and convention bathed everything in their cold light.
Vance dismissed his aide for dinner and met up with the Division chaplain, a comrade from past days in the 82nd. They drank Fresca from green glass bottles at the mess bar and talked about the general’s trip home. Major Ngon came in, clean but dressed for the field, and poured himself a cup of coffee. The three exchanged courtesies and moved to a small table.
“You look like you’re off to chase Princess Tiger Lily,” Vance said to Ngon, nodding at his striped fatigues and field gear.
“I’m flying out tonight to Firebase Bastogne, then to catch up with your 3rd Brigade tomorrow. I will be in the A Shau for at least three days. I am sorry to have to miss your farewell banquet, sir.”
“You won’t be missing much. Just another old man taking his grey head home. Proverbs, Major.”
“I didn’t get a chance to congratulate you on the operation today. Flawless, fascinating to observe. Everything done as predicted.”
“Another hilltop put to work for truth, justice, and the American way.” Vance frowned down at his Fresca.
“I’ll be on patrol with one of your rifle companies. We may be calling on those guns this time tomorrow. I will be grateful.”
“I would have liked to do more than just put some guns in the jungle,” the American replied, “I should be on that high ground with a brigade tonight, and never let it go.”
“Yet, as you said today, it is a captain’s spot,” Ngon paused but Vance said nothing. “Getting a firebase in position so quicky is a triumph of warcraft.”
“A triumph? You saw a triumph?” The general’s voice rose. “I looked down and saw an island barely above the water, Major Ngon. Another Fort Apache. The Alamo. In the C&C bird today, you seemed to think that I should be down there waving a sword in the air. Now you say you saw a triumph?”
The Vietnamese officer held his head steady, coolly facing Vance with an expression that flickered between deference and defiance.
“Chappy and I,” Vance reached his hand to the chaplain’s shoulder, “We’ve seen real triumph. The kind where the ref grabs your arm and holds your glove in the air. We didn’t win today. We didn’t even fight. We projected force, we followed the Decision Support Template, we managed the situation. We were holding the line, watching a kettle to make sure it didn’t boil over.”
“I think what the General means to say, Major…” the chaplain began.
“What I mean to say is that you saw an argument between some bombs and some trees. The bombs won. Triumph? You think we can’t do much more than that, but I say that I could. I could have.”
Major Ngon stood up and nodded to the two Americans. “It has been a privilege to serve with you, General Butterworth. I wish you a safe journey. Now, gentlemen, I must go.”
“All right, you go,” Vance said, “I’m going too. I’m going home.”
“Goodbye, General Butterworth.” Ngon left his coffee cup on the bar and walked away. Sunlight silhouetted his wiry frame as he left through the screen door. The tailored blouse fit tightly over his broad infantryman’s back, then tapered around his trim waist. The young major wore a bush hat cocked on his head, one side pinned up Aussie style.
“He’s a dead ringer for the Cisco Kid, strolling out the saloon door,” the chaplain quipped.
“Cisco Kid. I had toy soldiers when I was a kid. You remember the ones you could get at the dime-stores? They had orange leggings and silver helmets. The officers wore ties even though they were charging into battle. Remember?”
“Sure, Vance, I had them too.”
“Well, I wanted a silver helmet and a tie, and I wanted to stand up on a shiny green stand and do the job. I wanted to be on the team. I could still be on the team. God, to have it again.”
“The game’s changed, Vance. You really still want to be out there?”
“Damned right I do.”
“That’s not how the story goes, Van. We’re not there, we’re here. The mighty have to fall.”
“But I’m not falling like the mighty, am I?”
“Well, we don’t get the same opportunities to go down with our boots on that Achilles or Saul or Custer did. The war’s not about you, or me, or that young gunslinger, is it?”
Vance let the chaplain’s question simmer. His friend was on to something but the general was too tired to talk about the flaccid compromises of this new dark age. Compromises reached between the soldiers and the gardeners, the foreigners and the natives, between the grey, wise men and the glorious young. Compromises so carefully balanced that no one was right and no one was wrong. Balance allowed a man to bear a burden, but it was an impossible way for a soldier to win a war.
Three nights later Vance smoked his pipe in his trailer. It was a strange way to spend his last night in Vietnam but he wanted to be alone. The last generation of generals, the men he grew up under, became presidents, cabinet secretaries, ambassadors. Vance didn’t see that kind of destiny for himself or anyone else in his generation. Eisenhower, Truscott, and Gavin were different generals, dealt a different hand, blooded on different fields. Their last battles were their greatest, and that’s how their tales were told.
Vance quitted his last battlefield, yielding to Ngon and others like him. Now the forest paths were blocked, and any other melodies would remain unheard. Caroline hung in the heavens where she’d been these twenty five years. God, to have it again.
Through the thick plexiglass window of his trailer, the general could see the sun’s grandeur fade in the sky above the distant trees. Phone and power lines stretched from pole to pole across the huge camp, slowly blending into the darkening sky. Lazy fish eagles sat on the poles, waiting for darkness so they could pick over the trash piles for an easy meal.
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Charles Merwin served as an officer in the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in the 1990s. He has a BA in History from Ripon College. After twenty-five years in financial services he became a full-time writer of fiction. Originally from New Mexico, he now lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia.