CHAPTER 1

CHELINI

From that day on they called him Cherry and from the night of that day and on he thought of himself as Cherry. It confused him yet it felt right. He was in a new world, a strange world. Cherry, he thought. It fits. It made little difference to him that they called every new man Cherry and that with the continual rotation of personnel there would soon be a soldier newer than he and he would call the new man Cherry. Cherry. He would repeat it to himself a hundred times before the day ended.

For James Vincent Chelini the transition began early on the morning of 12 August 1970. He was at the 101st Airborne Replacement Station at Phu Bai for the second time; there now to receive his final unit assignment for his year in Vietnam. The air in the building was already stifling. Chelini sweated as he waited anxiously for the clerk to dig through a stack of personnel files.

“No way, Man,” Chelini shook his head as he read the order.

“I don’t cut em, Breeze,” the clerk said. “I just pass em out.”

“Listen, Man,” Chelini protested. “I’m not an infantry type. I’m a wireman. That’s my MOS*. Somebody screwed up.”

“Breeze,” the clerk shrugged, “when you get this far up-country aint nobody here ee-ven kin figure what them numbers mean. We’s all Eleven Bravos. You know, you get that from Basic.”

Chelini cringed. It was one more snafu in a series of snafus that were propelling him faster and deeper into the war than he had ever anticipated. “Man,” he said, restrained, “I can’t be sent to an infantry company.”

“Next,” the clerk said lethargically.

“Hey. Dude.” A harsh voice erupted behind Chelini. “Just say fuck it, Dude. Don’t mean nothin.” A red-haired man in civilian clothes had entered the office without being noticed. He addressed the clerk. “Hey REMF,” he said in a voice of complete authority, “you seen Murphy?”

“Murphy’s gettin ice cream,” the clerk answered.

“You REMF fuckin candyasses sure got it dicked,” the red-haired man laughed harshly. The man gestured at Chelini, who flinched, then ordered the clerk, “Square that cherry away, Man. Ya don’t gotta fuck with everybody all the fuckin time.” The man glided out the door and was gone.

“Who’s that?” Chelini asked the clerk.

“Him? He’s a crazy fuckin grunt from the Oh-deuce. Fuckin asshole. He en Murphy use ta be in the same company till Murphy extended ta get out a the field en they put him here.”

“Oh-deuce?”

“Yeah, Man. Oh-deuce. Four-oh-deuce. That’s where you goin, cherry. That’s where you goin.”

Chelini had allowed himself to be drafted and he had allowed himself to be sent to Vietnam. He had had the means to resist but not the conviction or the will. Indeed, inside, he heard opposing voices. His father was a veteran of World War II. All the Chelini men—and the Chelinis were a large Italian-American family—had served in the armed forces. James observed that having served somehow set them apart from those who had not gone. On the other side were the people of his own generation, the protestors and students, who included his older brother Victor.

In 1968, in order to avoid the draft, Victor had skipped to Canada via the New Haven underground. James told himself that that had sealed his destiny. Victor was a disgrace to the family. Outwardly, Mr. Chelini defended his older son’s right to make his own decision, but inwardly, James felt sure, it tore at his father’s heart. James saw his draft order as an opportunity to reestablish the family’s honor.

Before basic training began Chelini signed up for a third year and a guarantee of communications school, in order, he justified it later, to avoid combat. In Basic Chelini was an enthusiastic trainee and he tried hard to learn good soldiering. In advanced training he became a telephone systems installer. This, he was certain, would guarantee his safety. No matter where he was stationed, he thought, he would work at a rear-base. He would support the war effort if needed, yet he would not really be a part. After AIT, when Chelini’s orders came through for Vietnam, he told himself he would experience the war zone, exactly as he had always planned, without exposing himself to combat. He told himself that he was totally naive, that he had everything to experience and to learn.

Chelini arrived at the giant army replacement station at Cam Ranh Bay near midnight 31 July. It was dark and raining as the plane descended steeply toward the airstrip. GIs on board were fidgeting. They had been en route from McCord Air Force Base via Anchorage and Yokota, Japan, for seventeen hours. Because of the jet-lag, the confusion of crossing the international dateline, his excitement and exhaustion, Chelini didn’t know if it was the thirtieth or thirty-first of July or the first of August. He had been up for twenty-five hours.

An MP welcomed the planeload of arrivals to the Republic, then said, “Go directly to the buses. In case of rocket attack on the base or ambush during convoy, remain in the buses and get on the floor.” Chelini could not tell if the MP was serious. Here? he thought. He tried to look at the MP’s face but was propelled with the mob toward the waiting vehicle.

What he thought was the third and last leg of his journey turned out to be a middle step. “Move your body, Troop,” he was ordered, prodded, pushed. They boarded the buses by rank and service, army lower enlisted last.

“Okay, everybody,” the shout of a cadre cracked as they disembarked. “Form up on the hardstand.” Chelini trudged on with the others. He did not remember the bus ride. Strange, he thought. Strange to fall asleep after spending all that time getting here. Chelini stared at the installation about him, but nothing stood out. It appeared to be just another base.

Crackling static from an olive-drab loudspeaker stationed at the peak of a white clapboard building interrupted his thoughts. “ATTENTION! Attention in the company area. Those manifest for An Khe report to the orderly building. You are shipping.”

Cadre continued shouting. “Okay. Listen up. We’ve had a sapper attack an we didn’t get em all. We don’t know where they are. Sooo, stay away from the perimeter. Got that? I know you’ve heard Cam Ranh Bay is secure. In the past two months we’ve had more activity than in the past two years. Two nights ago we had a rocket attack.”

Chelini was too tired to talk. He looked at his feet. “Sand,” he mumbled to himself. “That’s what this place is.” The sand lifted with the slightest kick. It was so fine that little clouds formed around feet and rose to his ankles and then to his knees. It stuck to the sweat on his arms and face and neck. Soon itching tormented his entire body.

Processing began immediately. Chelini filled in form after form without paying attention to what they were. His money was changed for Military Payment Certificates (MPC), and he was assigned a bunk in the transient barracks. By 0300 Chelini, without having slept, was back on the hardstand with his duffel bag and a manila envelope of his records. Wearily he, and about five hundred others, waited for orders.

Helicopters had been in the air all night. Now they opened fire with miniguns, showering the bay in a red waterfall of tracers. The firing seemed to be concentrated about six hundred meters from the processing center. Some cadre spoke of AK-47 fire, but Chelini couldn’t distinguish the sounds. Most of the cadre paid no attention to the helicopters. Somehow it seemed far off. Chelini watched the firing and listened to the buzz of the mini-guns but he was very fatigued and apathetic. “They didn’t even have coffee for us,” he griped to a man near him. “Fuck the army, Man,” the soldier grumbled back.

0400. 0500. 0600. Finally, “… Ivor Carton to Bien Hoa. Timmy S. Cervantes to Quang Tri. James V. Chelini to Phu Bai …” Chelini smiled as the sound of his name came over the address system.

0615—the first light of his Vietnam tour. The area surrounding the post was exquisite, a bay of deep blue-green waters surrounded by mountains. The temperature was already rising and it was muggy. Chelini did not notice the beauty. He looked about him and was aware of only one thing—sand. It got into Chelini’s mouth and ground between his teeth.

New people continued to arrive. Some looked concerned about the sapper attack and the helicopters firing. Chelini assured them it was nothing.

Phu Bai, Chelini thought. He looked up the location on a large, crude map drawn on the side of a processing building. He traced the route with his finger. That’s about three hundred and fifty miles north of Saigon. Near Hue. The XXIV Corps is the division in that area. That’s good, he told himself. It’s just what I want. It’s farthest north, so it’s got to be cooler than here.

He was shuffled about like baggage. Line-ups, formations, order checks. The temperature kept climbing. He yawned. There was so much activity and noise, and he was so tired.

Chelini was the last passenger to board the C-130 transport going to Phu Bai via Da Nang. The noise of the uninsulated aircraft made it impossible to talk or to sleep. He felt like a zombie. The ride was rough, and he was becoming nauseous. The men sat on four rows of webbed benches that were suspended from the plane’s raw metal skeleton. “If Ah was a side of hangin beef,” someone shouted into his ear, “they’d a treat me bettah.” Chelini did not respond.

The C-130 approached Da Nang from the sea, descended and landed. Twenty soldiers deplaned. Though he was not scheduled to disembark, Chelini, who was at the very back of the ship, got off and pulled his gear down to the pavement to make it easier for the others to exit from the narrow bowels of the plane. The rear door closed with Chelini watching from outside. The plane taxied to the runway, paused, sped forth, lifted off and flew toward the sea.

Chelini was paralyzed with exhaustion. He shuffled off with the others who had left the aircraft and then found himself left behind by the side of a taxi way. He sat on his duffel bag. The envelope with his orders and records remained on the webbed seat in the plane. He sat by the runway for a long time. The Da Nang airfield was flat and clean and everywhere white concrete glistened in the noon sun. “Snafued,” he mumbled to himself.

Chelini had felt that something was not right the moment he left the aircraft, yet he was too self-conscious to yell, to make himself seen. He simply sat and thought of ways to justify what had happened. He was sure someone would take care of him.

After a while someone did come up to him. “Where you going, Soldier?” the man asked. Chelini told him Phu Bai. The man directed him to a helicopter pad that had stacks of bundles of “Stars and Stripes” newspapers at one side. A large helicopter landed. Chelini helped someone load the papers, then climbed aboard and sat amidst the bundles. His body seemed to be on auto-pilot.

The thought of having to explain where he had been without having a good explanation made Chelini tremble. Oh, God, I’m AWOL. They’ll court-martial me. What if something happens to me? Nobody’ll know. His body twitched. His eyes opened wide. He kicked some of the bundles as the helicopter banked to one side. He fixed his eyes on a man standing, peering out the left rear porthole. The man wore a dark olive-drab flight suit and an olive-drab fiberglass helmet with wires and a mouthpiece. The upper front of his helmet was covered with a dark, opaque sun visor and the sun glinted off the shield as the man looked out the porthole. In front of him was a machine gun.

Chelini did not know where the helicopter was going. He climbed out from the bundles and stood up. His thighs twitched as he attempted to stand in the moving aircraft. I’ll go ask the captain, he resolved. I’ll say it was a mistake. Anxiously he began the walk up the corridor of the ship’s belly. The helmeted man stopped him. Chelini screamed a question at the crew chief. The man pulled the side of his helmet away from his ear, but he couldn’t understand the words amidst the noise.

“Phu Bai,” Chelini yelled. He cupped his hands about his mouth. “Phu Bai.”

The crew chief nodded. He motioned for Chelini to sit down and look out the back of the Chinook.

Chelini had been in-country for fifteen hours. He had traveled over half the land, and yet he had seen nothing except distant mountains, sand and U.S. military installations. Below him was the city of Da Nang.

The Chinook stopped at various landing pads on the city’s outskirts. Newspapers were dropped at each location. Soldiers boarded and disembarked.

Chelini saw large portions of Da Nang from an altitude of three hundred to four hundred feet and a ground speed of thirty to forty knots. He saw the large parabolic bay sided by mountainous ridges and he saw the wide river which ran inland between the ridgelines. Straddling the river, the city seemed to be thriving.

At the edge of the bay, and running as far as Chelini could see way from Da Nang’s congestion, glistening white sand beaches were partitioned by concertina wire. From the air he could see a riverfront street and a market packed with food and wares and men and women bustling about. Rising above the market were three and four storey French Colonial buildings, which looked like Jackson Park in New Orleans. Small secondstorey wrought iron balconies extended over peasants carrying provisions—dried fish, live chickens, bread, cans of oil—in baskets suspended from the ends of bamboo sticks which they balanced across one shoulder. Chelini laughed, enthralled by the sight.

The aircraft banked back over the east side of the river, above a sampan village, then landed near a shipyard. Several wooden trawlers were in various stages of assemblage. To the north of the shipyard Chelini saw shanties built almost on top of each other from scavenged ammo-box wood and government-issued tin roofing.

The CH-47 flew away from the coast, to the sea and north. To Chelini, in his mixed state of fatigue and excitement, the trip became a fantasy, an exotic travelogue.

The helicopter banked left over the beaches and sand dunes. The dunes swelled and withered and were separated by waterways. Nestled here and there, small hamlets seemed isolated and random in a sea of sand, as if someone had thrown seeds from an earlier helicopter traveling over this area long ago and the seeds had fluttered down in a gentle breeze, scattering, some germinating and growing into hamlets, some germinating and withering in the sandy soil, some never germinating at all. As the land leveled, clumps of green and brown brush overwhelmed the mounds. Hundreds of tiny temples and tombs and small pagodas cluttered the piedmont. Between the monuments and sometimes coinciding with them, bomb and artillery craters pockmarked the land. Water filled the craters and they appeared blue or mudbrown. Chelini saw it all but he did not understand. He did not associate the sights with war.

At Phu Bai the crew chief directed Chelini to the 101st Airborne Replacement Station. Engulfed by the activity of the receiving area he walked hesitantly as men hustled briskly or jogged toward destinations. Everyone wore a division patch on his left shoulder, a black shield with the white head of an eagle with gold beak and red tongue. Over the shield in a black arch were the gold letters AIRBORNE.

On the morning of 2 August Chelini was transported in the back of an open topped trailer truck from Phu Bai 50 kilometers north on Highway One to Camp Evans for proficiency or P-Training at SERTS. He had slept yet a tiredness lingered in his muscles and mind. The highway passed through the suburbs south of Hue. The truck rolled north through Hong Thauy, Phu Long and Phu Loc. It crossed a temporary wood-beamed bridge spanning the Song Loi Nong. Downriver a new bridge of steel I-beams and reinforced concrete was under construction. Up-stream a steel-truss bridge lay bent, twisted, ripped from its concrete footings. Chelini shuddered in awe. It thrilled him to see this: it was the first evidence of war he understood.

The trailer truck jolted at the end of the bridge and descended into a major marketplace. In the market Chelini could see hundreds of small women squatting beside piles of raw fish or rolls of bread. His eyes were shining with excitement. The world was new and fascinating. The truck rolled on skirting the scarred and shattered walls of the Citadel of the old Imperial City at Hue. There really was a war here, he said to himself. Inside the Citadel’s gates he could see ancient cannons.

North of the city the truck passed fields with peasant farmers working knee deep in water or plowing behind water buffalo. They passed villages with thousands of children and hundreds of peasant hootches—some colorful, some dingy—and peasant shops which were busy selling everything from soda and soup to motorscooters.

In one village the elders came to the roadside and smiled and waved and Chelini waved back. He imagined himself as a part of the liberating armies coming into France or Belgium in an old World War II movie. At the next village the truck paused. Beside the road was a mud brick shack. To one side was a hedge, to the other, a barbed wire fence. The front of the shack was a tattered piece of canvas which opened as an awning to expose the interior. Inside, several middle-aged women stood chattering while they washed old brown bottles. Four children—a girl about six holding an infant, and two smaller boys—came shyly from behind the fence and approached the truck. The littlest boy removed a frayed baseball cap and held it out toward the truck. The boy was gazing directly at Chelini and smiling. His older brother waved and held up his right hand in a peace sign. Chelini smiled back and returned the hand gesture. The little girl with the infant approached the truck. She lifted the infant’s arm and waved his hand to the soldiers. Chelini stared at her. He did not know if other GIs on the truck were watching him and the children. He imagined the children calling him “Papa” because he had brought them peace, prosperity and the knowledge of ways to ease their existence. A soldier threw two cigarettes toward the children. The boys dove for them. The soldiers on the truck laughed and began throwing gum and more cigarettes. Chelini had a sudden urge to cry.

Camp Evans was named for a Marine killed in an ambush along the Street Without Joy in 1966. At that time the base was a sparse crude outpost of tents and foxholes. In 1969 the Marines withdrew and turned the base over to the 3d Brigade of the 101st, who since their arrival had not ceased building.

SERTS training at Camp Evans intensified Chelini’s fantasies of war though it was still only an exercise to him.

Chelini was assigned to a hootch and bunk and was issued an M-16. The bunk next to him had been issued to a rotund in-country transferee named Will Ralston who would become Chelini’s closest friend for the next seven days. Ralston had been stationed just outside Saigon with a supply unit. “Dude, I had one gettin-over job,” Ralston said by way of introduction. “We were attached to this other unit that controlled this small complex, see? But they didn’t have direct authority over us, so we didn’t pull guard or have any details. Then they decided to close the place up cause of the withdrawals and they sent us up here to this godforsaken hole. Fuck withdrawals, Man.”

Will Ralston had arrived at Evans the day before Chelini was trucked in. He had spent the night on guard duty along the camp’s east perimeter. “Dude, you aint gonna believe this place,” Ralston cracked. “Down around Saigon they’d give us a 16 and three rounds just before guard. This place looks like they expectin to fight a war. You aint gonna believe the shit they got on the berm. They must be expectin deep shit, Man.”

“You know how to operate that thang?” asked the Black Hat, a staff sergeant member of SERTS’ cadre.

Chelini grabbed the M-60 pulled the bolt to the rear lifted the cover and put the belt into the feed tray. “Yeah,” he said. “One of the sergeants came over and showed me.”

“All right,” the man said. “You know the rules of engagement?”

“Yeah,” Ralston said.

“I think so,” Chelini agreed.

“You put out your claymores?”

“Seven of em.”

“Okay. You ought to have fifteen frags, twenty-one magazines each for your 16’s. You got 1500 rounds for the 60 and 50 rounds for the 79. If you have to use that 60 one of you feed while the other fires. Only if yer name’s Wayne or Murphy can you fire it by yourself. Do you have any questions?”

“Can we get some bug repellent?” Ralston asked.

“There’ll be a track around pretty soon with repellent and coffee,” the Black Hat said. He walked off heading to the next foxhole. Every forty meters around the perimeter at Camp Evans there was a guard-duty station, a foxhole. The foxholes were designated into sectors of the perimeter and each sector had a tower for the captain of the guard and every foxhole was connected with its command tower by ground-line communication. Guards were instructed to use the phone system only in emergency or in response to the guard captain calling for a situation report. Of the next ten nights Chelini and Ralston pulled guard on six.

“Oh, Man,” Ralston said, “look at this dump.” It was Chelini’s first night on guard and the foxhole had six inches of muddy red water in the bottom and one end was caving in. Ralston was jumpy. He attached the firing devices to the claymore mine wires and arranged them in order across the front of the hole and grumbled, “If I see anything out there—if any crazy gook thinks he’s goina sneak up close—I’m goina blow his shit away.”

“Calm down, Man. There aint going to be anybody out there,” Chelini said. “What time do you got?”

“It’s about ten after nine.”

“You want to sleep first or stand watch?”

“You sleep. I’ll stay up.” Ralston laid a bandoleer of magazines for his M-16 in front of his position just behind the clacker firing devices for the claymore mines. He picked up his weapon, put a magazine in the well, pulled the bolt back and chambered a round. “Goddamn rain. Goddamn sand. This whole country aint nothin but Goddamn sand.”

“Hey,” Chelini said. “You wake me if you think you see something.” Chelini lay down on his poncho on the sand behind the foxhole. “And if you get sleepy,” he added, “get me up early.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Don’t worry about it. I’m not goina sleep with Charlie out there.”

Chelini lay back using his helmet as a pillow. The sky was black with gray patches where the clouds reflected a dim half moon. It was raining lightly. A warm breeze came up from the moist fields below, outside the base. It smelled of dung. Chelini closed his eyes. He felt silly lying on the hard ground with his lead in his helmet, his chest crossed by bandoleers, his thighs crossed by his rifle. He smiled. A single warm drop of water rolled off his lip and into his mouth. It tasted salty. He sat up. This must look really stupid, he thought. Like playing soldier. It was getting darker and he could feel the mist condensing on his face. The breeze was just beginning to turn cool. I’d like to have picture of me, he thought. A picture of me like this.

The quiet rolling sound of a small truck broke in upon his thoughts. He opened his eyes. Approaching through the darkness from a fighting position farther up the perimeter was a three-quarter-ton truck. The truck’s silhouette was barely visible against the night sky. The only light from the vehicle was a tiny subdued red glow at one fender. The truck stopped. “You guys want some coffee?” the driver asked quietly.

“Na,” Ralston said. “You got any bug repellent?”

The driver threw them an olive drab aerosol can.

“These damn mosquitoes,” Ralston whispered as he sprayed his ears. “They like to get right inside yer fuckin head and drive you fuckin nuts.”

“Pass it this way, Man,” Chelini said. “Hey, where you from?”

“You mean in the World? Here,” he threw Chelini the can. “California, what about yerself?”

“Connecticut,” Chelini said. He sprayed the back of his shirt then down the front. “What time’s it getting to be?”

“Nine-thirty. You better pick up some Zs. You got it eleven to one.”

“Um,” Chelini groaned. He lay back down and shut his eyes.

“Hey, Man. Get up. It’s ten-past.” Chelini woke to Ralston shaking his boot. “Come on, Man. It’s yer turn.”

“Okay. Okay.” He shook the sleep from his face and sat up. “Everything quiet?”

“Shit. It’s so dark out there Mister Charlie could come slip right up here, tap you on the shoulder, give you an engraved invitation to your own funeral and you still wouldn’t ee-ven know where he was.”

Chelini slid to the foxhole and checked the box of fragmentation grenades, the M-60 machine gun, the claymore wires and the firing clackers. He checked it all by feel. He put his face very close to the 60, trying to make sure the belt was in right, but he could see nothing. “Okay, Man,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

It was very dark now. There was no way to distinguish the ground from the sky. In the field before him several spots seemed darker than the surrounding blackness. Chelini picked up his M-16 and aimed it on one of the spots. It did not move. Will Ralston had lain down and was already snoring lightly when Chelini turned around and looked at him. He was a spot only a little darker than the ground. Chelini turned and looked back at the dark spot which now seemed to be in the perimeter concertina wire. The spot changed shape. Very slowly Chelini moved forward. Noiselessly he picked up his rifle and clicked the safety lever from safe to semi-automatic to automatic. He shouldered the weapon again, sighted in on one dense spot and froze on it for what seemed like an hour. Then he switched his aim to another spot. The darkness crept slowly in an amoebic flow. There was no way to distinguish a target. Chelini could feel his pulse beating heavily in his neck and wrists. What the hell am I supposed to do? he asked, frustrated, frightened, furious that the army had not lighted the perimeter. Somebody could come up here and drop a frag right here in this stinkin hole with me and I’d never know it. Maybe I ought to check with the tower. Goddamn. I hope there’s nobody out there. Blow a claymore first. No. Throw a frag first or pump out a round from the M-79. No, throw a frag. That won’t give away my position. He stood waist-deep in the hole, the protective earth surrounding him. His hands searched the ground before him for a fragmentation grenade. He found one and lifted it, hefted it to get the feel of its weight. He fondled it to find the pin. Then he just held it and stared into the darkness slowly sweeping his gaze back and forth in a 180° arc like he’d been taught in basic training, sweeping from right to left and then farther out from left to right and still farther out and back again. Then he started the sweep again, not aiming his weapon but his eyes and ears and always fondling the grenade and feeling the butt of the M-60 against his shirt front though he did not touch it with his hands and feeling the butt of his M-16 against his side as it lay pointing forward and ready.

A few minutes past one he woke Ralston for the one-to-three shift. He climbed out of the hole and sat on the poncho behind it and then lay back with his M-16 across his legs. He thought it would be impossible to sleep. His body was taut with tension and his mind was very alert and awake and his eyes were open, staring up now into the misty blackness seeing no more than if they were shut.

The night passed without incident.

On 5 August a marathon of classes began with emphasis on airmobile tactics, basic weaponry, the official view of the war effort, the tactical situation and Vietnamese culture. Despite grunts and groans and whispered “bullshits” by many students Chelini would come away convinced of the sincerity and competency of the instructors.

The first training period was the round robin. Chelini had never fired any of the round-robin weapons and the power of each enthralled him, changed him, made him desire to fire them again. He volunteered for every demonstration; he constantly asked questions. First he fired an M-67 ninety-millimeter recoilless rifle. He lay beside the weapon and sighted in on a fifty-five gallon drum across a ravine in the firing range. His assistant gunner loaded an HE, high-explosive, rocket into the tube. “Gentle-men,” the instructor said in metered syllables. “This pro-jec-tile is ca-pa-ble of pier-cing seven-teen inches of the tough-est steel known to man-kind or three feet of re-in-forced con-crete or six thick-ness-es of sand-bags. Gen-tle-men, you do not want to be on the ra-ceiv-ing end of this in-stru-ment.” Chelini wriggled in closer to the weapons. He laid his head on the sighting pad and re-aimed. He squeezed the trigger device. The rocket exploded. Flames shot back ten feet. The noise stung his ears. He clamped his eyes shut. The projectile sailed wide of target and blew a crater into the soft dirt of the opposing hill. Chelini’s heart pounded.

The second round-robin weapon was a LAW, a light anti-tank weapon. Somehow, Chelini thought, the army managed to issue every one of its instructors the same voice. “Gen-tle-men,” they all start out, “da-dot da-dot da-dot da-da”.” They all keep cadence with their speech. Chelini volunteered again.

“This wea-pon, Gen-tle-men,” the second in-structor was saying, “is ca-pa-ble of pier-cing e-lev-en inches of the toughest steel known to man. Gen-tlemen, you do not …” The M-79 grenade launcher or thumper was next. It looked like a sawed-off shotgun with an inch-and-a-half bore. It fired forty-millimeter shells either directly at a target or lobbed in an arc like an artillery piece. Chelini stepped forward. “What’s your MOS?” the instructor asked.

“I’m a wireman,” Chelini answered.

“Let some of the infantry guys fire this,” the instructor said and motioned him back. “You can fire the next one.”

The last round-robin weapon was the M-60 machine gun. “Gen-tle-men … this fires seven-point-six-two mil-li-me-ter bul-lets at a rate of five-five-oh …” Chelini slid to the front of the line at the last moment and behind one of the practice weapons. To him this was the most ferocious weapon of all. He came away beaming, imagining himself holding a hill alone, a hero.

Next, Chelini’s group was marched to a rifle range for M-16 battle-site zeroing, then to the Cobra show.

The Cobra is a narrow assault helicopter which carries its pilot and gunner in tandem. The class began with the instructor radioing in a fictitious request for close-in tactical support.

“Holy Christ,” Chelini screeched when the helicopter dove from above the group and unleashed rockets, grenades and mini-gunfire against simulated targets. “Holy Christ,” he repeated. The class exploded in applause as the helicopter raked the target range.

“Gen-tle-men,” the instructor shouted. “Gen-tle-men.” He yelled again as the bird pulled from its dive and circled above them. “In the 101st, Cobras come in two basic configurations: ARA and Gunship. The Aerial Rocket Artillery Cobra carries seventy-six 2.75-inch rockets …” The instructor catalogued the aircrafts weaponry, each syllable of his speech in cadence. “Gen-tle-men, you use ARA against bunkers. You use gunships against enemy soldiers and mixed targets. This bird,” the instructor pointed up without taking his eyes from the class, “is a gunship. You treat it with respect. You activate it as follows.” The instructor brought a radio handset up before his face. He depressed the transmit bar. “Tomahawk Six Six, this is Trainer Five, fire mission. Over.”

An artillery act followed the air show. The students watched the receiving end of a barrage against the same scarred hillside. They called-in adjustments to the fire direction control center (FDC), raising and lowering the impactions, moving them left and right simply by speaking into a radio handset.

Still more weaponry classes followed. M-16 practice on a quick-fire reaction course was followed by a class on the M-33 fragmentation grenade and finally a class on claymore mines. At night they had a night-fire exercise under the illumination of artillery flares. Exhausted, Chelini and Ralston and the others marched back to their hootches. Temperatures during the day reached 109 degrees and the humidity hovered at 85 percent. On the morning march to the first range Chelini’s hands swelled, his arms turned white and his joints became stiff. He had been sure the heat would make him collapse. “We got a saying up here, Duke,” one cadre sneered when he protested moving. “Take two salt tablets and drive on.”

The second and third days classes dealt with the history and culture of Vietnam. The culture lecture was given by a chicano sergeant. “Gen’lemen. The priorities of Mister Nguyen are: one, family and food—that mama-san an tacos; two, village an hamlet—es su casa; tree, district an province. Country don count. Gen’le-men, Nguyen don care too much for ’is country. Papa-san, he like tree things; ’is Buddha, ’is rice and ’is water buff’lo. He give you mama-san and he give you baby-san daughter, but don you go fuck ’is water buff’lo and stay off ’is fuckin dikes. You gotta walk in the paddies then walk in the paddies. You gonna do that for two reason, Gen’le-men. One, you walk on the dikes an you break the dikes and papa-san get screaming pissed if you break ’is dikes; and two, if somebody gonna put a booby trap in your AO it gonna be on papa-san’s fuckin dikes cause everybody know that GI don like ta get ’is feet wet and he gonna walk on the dikes no matter what.”

Ralston elbowed Chelini and mumbled, “You oughta write home about this. The Americanization of Gookland.”

“Gentlemen,” another instructor informed them later that day, “due to the push into Cambodia and the strict controls inside the Republic, the NVA soldier is hurting for food. The rice-denial program has received wide support from all the villages in our AO, and the troops from the North have very little rice. The unofficial word is to expect a massive NVA drive into the coastal areas for food. Also, Gentlemen, the South Vietnamese are having a national election at the end of this month. We can expect the NVA to attempt to disrupt the peace of the populated areas.”

“This aint the army,” Ralston cracked to Chelini. “This is all yer dream and I wish to hell you’d wake up and let me out.”

“Sssh, Man,” Chelini hissed. “This is important.”

“Oh, Man, don’t give me that shit,” Ralston said. “Don’t let em get hold of your mind.”

On the fourth day of SERTS there was a class on rappelling. It was during this class that Chelini’s feelings about himself as a soldier in Vietnam finally solidified. The school had erected a fifty-foot tower with a simulated cliff face on one side and a helicopter skid hanging over the air at the top of the other. “Rappelling in the field, Gentlemen,” the instructor for this block of classes said, “is accomplished from helicopters and is used to insert troops where the jungle is too dense for a landing. This tactic has been borrowed from mountaineers and by the end of this class, Gentlemen, you will be qualified to jump out of a helicopter with nothing between you and the ground but the tail end of the rope you will be sliding down.…”

First you believe it, Chelini thought, then you don’t. Then you do again. First you think we should be here and then you think this is crazy and we’re ruining the country and then you think about the kids you’ve seen and how we keep the NVA out of the lowlands. He shook his head, cleared his mind, approached the tower and climbed the ladder to the small platform at the top. Ralston snapped more cynical comments but Chelini did not respond. As he stood on the helicopter skid fifty feet above the sandpit his heart pounded. The rappelling rope went through a Dring at his waist, around his side and over his shoulder. For one long second Chelini paused. Then slowly he leaned backward, feeling the rope take more and more of his weight, trying not to think of the long drop. As his body reached a 45° angle he closed his eyes and leaped backward, releasing twenty feet of line. He snapped the rope taut about him; the jute burned his gloved hands. His weight stretched the line but the system worked. He stopped ten feet off the ground, allowed more slack and descended.

“You snap the line on a bird like that, Troop,” the instructor cautioned him, “and you’ll flip the bird on top of you. You gotta be gentle.” His voice was tempered with approval.

“Wow, Dude,” Ralston quipped. “You gettin ta be a real gung-ho airborne-all-the-way-Sir soldier.” Chelini said nothing but smiled and turned from Ralston to take a second turn on the tower. “Dude,” Ralston called. “They gonna make a screaming bird out a you yet—a screaming yellow buzzard.”

Classes on the last day were concerned with NVA tactics and the Chieu Hoi or open arms program. For Chelini the very last class of SERTS was scary and sobering.

“The Hoi Chanhs, Gen-tle-men,” a senior instructor said, “are trained as scouts and interpreters. They work with platoons operating in areas from which they defected. In these areas they know the trails and cache sites. They know the booby-trap markers. They know the ambush sites. Gen-tle-men, a platoon with a Hoi Chanh or Kit Carson Scout is less vulnerable than it would be if it were out there on its own.

“We have with us today,” the instructor raised his voice and announced, “the Senior Kit Carson Scout of the 101st Airborne Division, Colonel Phan Trinh. Gen-tle-men, for twelve years prior to becoming a Hoi Chanh, Colonel Phan commanded a successful NVA sapper company.”

“Jesus!” Ralston snapped. “Look at that. A defective dink.”

Chelini listened intently as the instructor told Colonel Phan’s story. Phan Trinh’s father, who lived in a small village near Hanoi, was actively opposed to the war in the South. Allegedly he was incarcerated and then shot. The colonel’s sister and a brother were also killed, for according to tradition they came from corrupted blood and thus were or would be infected with the same thoughts as their father. Phan Trinh was warned by a close friend in a staff position that he was to be recalled to North Vietnam to be interrogated—to see if his blood contained the obsessions of his father. Instead of facing charges of being the son of a radical, Colonel Phan, with a heavy heart, knowing he would never again see his homeland, defected to the south by simply slipping through the wires at Camp Eagle at night and walking up to the Division Tactical Operations Center. There he waited for daylight then defected to the Assistant Division Commander.

For this class the students were instructed in the stringing of barbed wire and the installation of claymore mines, trip flares and rattles. The class was asked to construct a simulated perimeter defense. Chelini was one of six men chosen to build the position and he took extra care to make the wires taut and to keep the strands close to each other. In the wires they implanted trip flares and stone-can rattles. Behind the first set of tanglefoot and under a coil of concertina Chelini hid a claymore in a clump of grass. “That’ll get em,” he chuckled to the other volunteers.

After the perimeter was completed Chelini and the class watched quietly. Phan approached the exterior of the newly laid position. He was clothed only in a loincloth. With him he carried a small pair of wire cutters, a dozen sachel charges, a blade of grass in his mouth and on a string around his neck a small flat piece of wood. He lay very still in the grass before the wire. Slowly he moved his left arm forward then his right leg, his right arm, then left leg. As he inched forward like a lizard Chelini watched in awe. If Ralston was talking Chelini did not hear. They could come in like that anytime, he thought.

Phan reached the first wire which was about two inches off the ground; he removed the blade of grass from his lips. Slowly, cautiously he stroked the area before the wire, then above the wire and finally as far past the wire as he could reach. He was satisfied there were no trip wires for flares. Again, very slowly he slithered over the wire, one arm, one leg at a time. He slithered into the heart of the entanglement. Phan went over the lowest wires and under the rest, never seeming to touch any, always keeping his body suspended only minutely off the earth by his fingers and toes. He was incredibly agile—almost liquid. As he flowed through the defensive concertina strands his sinuous muscles rippled. Between each movement he placed the flat piece of wood on the earth, placed an ear to it and listened for the movement of the defenders. When he found a trip wire with the blade of grass he moved his cutters—first checking the wire for tension to insure that some alert GI had not spring-loaded the trigger mechanism—and snipped the wire in two.

He proceeded through the emplacement until he came face-to-face with Chelini’s claymore mine. The sapper removed the electrical blasting cap from the mine, turned the mine around and aimed it at the audience. Once inside the perimeter he crawled to the instructor and placed his sachel charges carefully about and between the instructor’s feet. Finally like a serpent Phan slid back through the wire, re-arming the claymore on his way out. Once out of range he threw several stones into the perimeter.

“GENTLEMEN!” The instructor screamed. Chelini jumped. “MOVEMENT IN THE WIRE! BLOW YOUR CLAYMORES!… You will eliminate your own life-support systems by aerating your lungs and heart group with six hundred tiny holes. Gentlemen, a hand for the master.” There was a long round of applause.

Most men received their unit orders the last day of the SERTS training course and reported directly to their units of assignment. Will Ralston was sent to division headquarters as a supply clerk. On 12 August Chelini was returned to Phu Bai to obtain his unit assignment which had been intercepted and audited because of the earlier loss and delay of his records. The new mimeographed orders—DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, Headquarters 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile), APO San Francisco 96383—assigned James Vincent Chelini to Company A, 7th Battalion, 402d Infantry.

* A glossary of military acronyms and terms appears on page 571.