Mini-Man, Blue Platoon’s “Captain Blue,” was feeling blue as the Christmas season approached. The mess cooks had prevailed upon the boonirats to bring back from the field a little evergreen-looking tree, like a cypress, which they decorated with lights and tinsel in the chow hall. One of the FNGs—to me, everybody in the troop was now an FNG with the exception of Farmer Farmer and Swede—decorated our bunk hooch with a wreath his mom sent him from Indiana. This was all intended to bring a little of home to us, but what it did instead was emphasize how pitiful were our attempts at alleviating homesickness.
I had always been a gregarious guy, a “party mouse” as Sandy put it, but lately as my DEROS approached I found myself pulling a Bird Dog or a Mighty Morris and sticking more and more to myself. If Mighty Morris had bequeathed me his guitar when he left, and if I could have played it, I would have been singing sad songs in the O Club at nights and drinking beer.
About all the “old guys” were gone. Most of them had DEROS’d stateside after their normal tours of duty expired. Others, like Ryberg, Jamison, Bleeker, a number of aircrew and even more of our boonirats, had gone home in body bags. You tried not to think about them because it underlined your own mortality. You almost forgot their names until you became a short-timer yourself. Then you started to think about what had happened and what could happen.
If Charlie had his way, there would be many more of us going home in body bags and silver coffins over Tet, the Vietnamese New Year’s season. A lot of rumors, sometimes disguised as “intel,” floated around about how the enemy planned a Christmas and New Year’s present for us. Everybody in our AO expected massive attacks along the line of the 1968 Tet. Something was definitely happening out there. All through December we encountered more enemy traffic than during any month since the summer. Bicycles, motorbikes, those little goofy French-looking trucks that could almost travel on footpaths, and people. Trails were beaten down. We found more rice caches. It appeared Charlie was forwarding supplies so he could make another deep surge toward Saigon.
If I weren’t platoon leader with the responsibilities that entailed, I might have let down and looked forward to my thirty days of ass-and-trash beginning in January. As it was, however, I continued to take on many of the most hazardous missions myself. I couldn’t let my men get killed while I watched from the sidelines.
In November, Major Powdrill had summoned me to headquarters to introduce me to a stocky lieutenant FNG with a rusty crewcut and deep lines around his mouth. He looked to be about twenty-five, a little older than many new pilots, but still fresh and innocent-looking and scared and naked with his bare upper lip.
“Captain Alexander, this is Lieutenant Joe Douglas,” the major said. “I’m assigning him to your platoon. Take care of him.”
Other than me, Douglas was the only commissioned officer in the platoon. All the other pilots were warrants. That meant one thing: this guy was my replacement, provided he proved himself capable. I took him under my wing like, in the homespun argot of Farmer Farmer, a fat duck on a pond with a new duckling. Like Captain Beatty had done for me.
“I’m not asking you not to let me down, Douglas,” I said. “I’m ordering you not to let me down. And, Douglas, you’re in the cavalry now. Grow a mustache.”
Lieutenant Douglas was coming along. Major Powdrill took me aside for some one-on-one counseling.
“Ease off on yourself, Captain Alexander,” he advised. “You’ve done more shit than most. You’ve got medals you can’t even carry home. Don’t you think it’s about time you abandoned the Mini-Man character?”
I had been in-country ten months. Mini-Man still hadn’t been hit. He had served me well. If I survived two more months, I was out of here and going home. That was when Mini-Man retired.