Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin, rose out of the jungle, as Farmer Farmer put it, like a huge pimple on a pig’s asshole. Beyond the mountain to the northeast hung a thick black column of smoke stretched between earth and sky, its silhouette etched dark and ominous against the blood red of the rising Vietnam sun. When I came out of the mess hall with Captain Blue and Farmer Farmer, Mighty Morris was standing on one of the berms which were supposed to protect our helicopters from mortar fire. He gazed reflectively at the rising smoke while he drank a cup of coffee and drew slowly on a cigarette. He looked at us, then looked back toward the smoke.
“What’s with him?” Blue said.
I pointed at the smoke.
“Damn!” the captain said.
The three of us climbed the berm revetment and stood with Mighty Morris. He squatted on his haunches like a Vietnamese and silently smoked his cigarette. His short-cropped yellow hair and his handlebar cavalry mustache glowed almost like gold in the morning light.
“They attacked an FSB last night,” Mighty Morris finally said.
“Looks like our poor ol’ boys really caught some of the Devil,” Farmer Farmer commented sympathetically.
“I was over at the TOC,” Mighty Morris said. “They told me Sabre Troop has been flying GI body bags and WIAs into Phuoc Vinh since before first light.”
I put a match to three cigarettes and gave one each to Blue and Farmer and kept the last for myself.
“Who was it that got hit?” I asked.
Mighty Morris stood up and stretched. “That must be the Eighth Cav over that way, isn’t it?”
“Looks about right,” Blue said. “Poor bastards.”
We all smoked and watched the smoke. Farmer said, “We’ve got the North Vietnamese outnumbered and outpowered. Wouldn’t you think these ol’ boys would finally see where the corn grows and yell uncle?”
“They’re never going to quit,” Captain Beatty said. “They’ve been fighting in this part of the world since Genghis Khan. I’ve run into Vietnamese who fought the Japanese in 1944 and the French at Dien Bien Phu in ‘54. Now they’re fighting us. Some of them will probably live to fight our grandchildren.”
“Not mine,” Mighty Morris said. “I’m sending them to Canada.”
We stood on the berm as the sun burned off the fog on the river that we saw glinting through the forest, talking of the war, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and watching the black smoke lift straight up from the FSB, then curl at the top from a slight breeze aloft. FSBs and LZs with romantic names like Grant and Jamie and Phyllis and Carolyn were attacked and fought savage battles—and those of us not involved stood and watched the smoke. For you personally, the war was only that part of it that you saw immediately around you.
We were like cops working our own precinct. We had more than enough to keep us busy. We fought our own skirmishes out there in our own AO and seldom knew what was happening in neighboring AOs, much less how the war in general was going. Seldom did anyone talk about winning anymore. The war had gone on far too long for that. In the same way that cops never won their war on crime, we didn’t expect to win ours. It would just keep going on, day after day, month after month into the foreseeable future.
Occasionally, one or two or three of us vanished from the ranks and showed up no more at volleyball or at the O Club. Like when the Loach exploded and the Cobra lost its rotor blades and cut the bird in half. Five guys gone all at once. Mighty Morris sang songs for them. Then they were just gone and we tried not to think about them anymore. Dwelling on your losses turned you morbid and made you start considering your own mortality. That was something you never wanted to consider in a war zone.
Seeing only what was around you, not knowing what was going on in the rest of the war or in the rest of the world, was a bit tough on morale. We saw smoke rising after a battle, but we only heard rumors about how it went. Like, thirteen grunts died in a firefight near Cu Chi, a helicopter went down and all eight aboard were killed, a pilot was lost and captured by the VC, who tortured him, cut off his genitals and left him strung heels up in a tree. . . W e had TV in the O Club, but programming came through the Armed Forces Network and was sanitized for our viewing so as not to affect morale. Care packages from home included newspapers with headlines about war protesters, draft dodgers, and dope-smoking campus hippies. How much of it was true and how much exaggeration, we had no way of knowing.
“Doesn’t it frost your balls,” Miles once complained, “that while we’re over here getting killed, one of these dope-smoking scumbags is dodging the draft and will grow up to be president of the United States or something?”
Thought of it frosted my balls.
Mighty Morris glanced at the column of smoke a last time, stamped out his cigarette, then climbed down from the berm and kept his back to the smoke as he strode away.
“I’m getting to be a short-timer,” Captain Blue said, sounding weary and relieved at the same time. “I’ll be out of here in less than six weeks.”
The war would never end. Only our tours of duty ended. One year in-country and then we left. Others took our places and the war continued. Forever and ever, amen.
Captain Beatty looked at me. “The platoon will soon be yours, Mini-Man. At least it’ll be yours until it’s your turn to go.” He shook his head and sighed. “Ain’t this a hell of a way to run a war?”