It was tough returning to Vietnam after two weeks lying on the beach during the day and lying in bed with Sandy at night. It was almost like heaven in Hawaii. No H&I every evening or the Crump! Crump! impacting of VC mortar rounds. Sandy dropped a pot in the kitchenette one evening while I was sleeping and I scared her half to death by springing out of bed and making a rush for the door and the culvert bunkers.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, kid,” I said to her in a light tone as I caught the big bird back to the war.
I stood for a long time at the R&R Center before leaving, simply looking at her lovely, tear-stained face. I might never see her again, might never bounce my daughters on my knees. The second time going back, after you knew what it was like and the possibilities that existed for your personal disaster, was much harder than the first time, when you didn’t know what to expect. This “charmed” stuff and the curse I now considered as part of it was beginning to affect my entire attitude. I thought fate might be playing some kind of cruel joke, letting me think I was skating through while waiting until the last minute to slam the lid on me. It might have been better were I getting regular bullet holes like all the other guys.
I grinned at Sandy to hide what I was really thinking, to keep her from seeing my own tears and fears. Lieutenants in the By-God U.S, Army 1st Cavalry Division never cried. I watched her from the airliner’s porthole until the plane taxied away and I couldn’t see her any longer.
Change of command for a platoon leader wasn’t much of a ceremony. The platoon fell in for formation and Major Calhoun came out and announced that Lieutenant Mini-Man Alexander was now assuming Captain William Cody Beatty’s position. I was the new “Blue.” Captain Beatty had already been “hail’d and farewell’d.” He left Tay Ninh that very day for Ton Son Nhut to catch the Freedom Bird back to “The World.” Major Calhoun wouldn’t be far behind.
Mighty Morris slapped me on the back. “You owe us all a round tonight at the O Club,” he said, and that was all there was to it.
With command came an increased feeling of responsibility. I felt it heavy on my shoulders, along with a certain aloneness. It wasn’t, I realized, only because of my promotion and being set apart from the rest of the guys as their leader; it was also because I was fast becoming among the last of the flyers of the first batch that were here when I arrived in February. Mississippi and Taylor were both leaving the same month. Miles was about to be transferred stateside to instruct new helicopter pilots. Mighty Morris’s DEROS came up before Christmas. Only Farmer Farmer was thinking about extending his tour of duty past my own departure. He would be the last of the “old guys.”
Yet, while I dreaded the rotation of the “old guys,” another part of me was relieved whenever they made it out in one piece. If I had to make life-and-death decisions affecting my men, it was easier on me that they all be FNGs like Stockton and Rouse and the others with whom the platoon was gradually filling up. You didn’t get buddy-buddy with the FNGs. You felt the responsibility for them but not the personal attachments. You knew what could happen to them out there and you didn’t want to be emotionally connected when and if it did happen.
“That’s Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain,” I narrated to Rouse as I conducted his platoon leader’s orientation flight out over the AO. “It’s a landmark you can see from about anywhere in War Zone C. You’re not lost as long as you can see it. . . .”
“Where you from, sir?” Rouse asked through the intercom.
“Maryland and Oklahoma.”
“I’m from New Mexico. I got a wife and a kid . . .”
And off he went attempting to establish a personal link between us. I remembered having attempted the same thing with Captain Blue Beatty. And I remembered Captain Blue having interrupted me, as I now interrupted Rouse. Stick to business. Don’t let it become personal. What if he went down out there in a month or so? B-I-L-B-Y.
“I expect you to memorize every fuse box in the aircraft,” I said, cutting him off. “Sooner or later, something will happen—a malfunction, a bullet through the electrical system or the hydraulics—and there won’t be time to get your head out of your ass.”
Responsibility for these guys was enough. They didn’t have to like me, and I didn’t have to like them. I watched the same kind of transaction occurring between my crew chief Shaky and the enlisted FNGs who sometimes flew their breaking-in period with him and me. Shaky was not only the best crew chief in the platoon and in Apache Troop but also the best hand with an M60 machine gun. I liked him to show our enlisted cherries the ropes. The better they were, the better the entire platoon and the better prepared we all were to survive.
There were a number of abandoned hooches north of the Michelin plantation that Shaky used as target practice for FNGs whenever we were in the area. I flew over them at about three hundred feet. I heard Shaky’s Texas drawl over the intercom explaining to a new crew chief/gunner, a Cuban from Miami named Autberto Palma, how things worked.
“When you’re shooting into the hooches,” he said, “you want to keep the little fuckers in there. Every fifth round you fire is a tracer incendiary round. So you get a rhythm going and keep the little fuckers in their hooches, set the hooches afire with the tracers, and make crispy critters of them. Like this . . . ”
The gun began clapping as Shaky chanted. “One in the door, two in the window, three in the roof. . . One in the door, two in the window, three in the roof. . . ”
“Jesús, mi madre y—”
Shaky locked a belt of nothing but tracers into the M60 and began firing to make his point that the rounds were going where he said they were going. He poured a broken stream of red into the hooch. “One in the door, two in the window, three in the roof. . .”
“That is incredible, Sergeant Shaky. How did you learn to do this? You will teach me and we will be friends and—”
Shaky blocked him. “The last friend I had was shot out of his helicopter. Don’t make friends, Palma. It ain’t a smart thing to do while you’re over here.”
Friendly, yes. Friendship, no. After I became platoon leader, I found myself increasingly taking many of the most hazardous missions myself. It wasn’t out of friendships or because I figured I was charmed and had the best chance of getting back. It was because I felt responsible for the lives of my men. I understood now why Captain Beatty personally flew and led so many missions.
“A leader cannot lead from the back of the pack,” he always said.