ourselves The Fighting Ninth. Hadn’t really done all that much fighting. A few firefights, not big ones. But this was different, this was something not even the cowboys in our group, the guys who craved action — not even those guys wanted this. I figured Kiner, he was our sergeant, and maybe our lieutenant, maybe those guys had seen this kind of combat before. For the rest of us, this was a whole new ball game. We were scared, and we were fighting for our lives.”
He spoke slowly, his voice still barely more than a whisper. And it was flat, no emotion. Not like his eyes. His words were telling the story, but it seemed like his eyes were living it.
“I don’t know how many died in the first minutes. Fifteen, twenty, maybe more. We tried to fight back. Do what we were trained to do. Couldn’t see shit for the dust, the smoke, sure as hell couldn’t see Charlie. But he was out there, above us, on both sides of us. Maybe below us. We didn’t know.”
The old man stopped talking. Reached for the canteen, took another drink. Poured some over his face. He set the canteen down on the ground between us.
“The noise is the worst … what I hated most. One minute it’s so quiet you can hear the sweat running down your chest and the next minute you can’t think for the noise. That’s not some bullshit statement. You can not think. Guns, mortars. Guys on both sides yelling. Some screaming. The worst was ‘help me.’ Wounded guys yelled, ‘Medic,’ or ‘I’m hit.’ Dying guys yelled, or they whispered, ‘Help me.’
“I remember the lieutenant and a radio guy next to me, both of them yelling as loud as they could. Trying to be heard over the noise. Trying to get help. I remember some of it. Blue Water One … This is Blue Water Five … Blue Water One, this is Blue Water Five … Delta Company, Delta Company … Hill 453 south slope, alpha bravo, alpha bravo. Boo koo Bo Doi. Deep serious. Need close air support. Immediate. Repeat. Deep serious … deep shit. Need close air support and dustoff. Can’t give zulu. Need dustoff.
“But it didn’t matter how much shit we were in. The weather had closed in over us. Low cloud. Nothing that flew could even see the hill, let alone see us, or get our wounded men out. That’s called dustoff. Couldn’t even give a zulu … casualty report. Nobody knew who was dead and who was alive. All we knew was there was a lot fewer of us now than when we started.
“We got spread out … too far apart. Couldn’t communicate with each other. I saw a guy. Charlie. There were maybe a few hundred of them, and I finally saw one. Bet I fired forty rounds at the son of a bitch. No idea if I hit him.
“I was sure I was going to die that day. Right here where we are. This is where we dug in, tried to hold on. Still calling for help.
“I’d been in country for nine months. Lots of search and destroy patrols. That’s what they called it when you went looking for Charlie, so you could shoot his ass. Got wounded on one of those. I was point — the guy at the front.”
“Is that the scar on your neck?”
He nodded. “Trouble was the only time you found Charlie was when he wanted you to find him. When he was hidden and ready. Like he was that day. Here. I remember looking back down the hill, and the lieutenant and the radio guy, Cletis, they were both dead.”
He stopped talking again, took a couple of breaths, had a fit of coughing, then recovered.
I looked around again. All I could see was jungle. I tried to imagine what it must have been like that day. But I couldn’t, not really. All the movies I’d seen, it had to be like that, right?
But I knew that what the old man was talking about wasn’t like any movie I’d ever seen. I closed my eyes, but I still couldn’t see it. Scrunched my eyes tighter. And there was … something. So weird. I couldn’t see anything … but it was like I could hear it. Shooting, stuff exploding, people screaming. It scared me and I opened my eyes quick.
Silence.
“We’ll rest here.” The old man’s voice. “Let me see the rucksack.”
I pulled the backpack off my shoulders and passed it to him. He pulled a couple of oranges out of it and handed me one.
For a few minutes we didn’t say anything, just ate the oranges. When we’d finished, he pulled out a camera and took some pictures of the area around where we were sitting. He didn’t take any pictures of me and didn’t ask me to take any of him. This wasn’t a family holiday at the Grand Canyon.
He put the camera back in the backpack, pulled out a little folding shovel, and handed it to me.
“You’re sitting in a foxhole.”
“Foxhole, that’s what you dug and got down into, right?”
I looked down at the depression I was sitting in. I guessed it had filled in quite a bit since it was a foxhole for some soldier.
“Yeah. These ones weren’t very deep. We didn’t have much time. They were still shelling the shit out of us and giving it to us pretty good with AK-47’s at the same time. From over there was the worst.” He pointed to the right. The jungle was thickest there. Maybe it was back then too. “That’s where I saw that first guy I shot at.”
My butt was sore, and my back was getting stiff, so I shifted my weight. Tried to get more comfortable.
“Go ahead, dig right there, at the bottom of your foxhole.”
“What for?”
“Guys sometimes buried stuff there. Or just left it in the foxhole when they moved out. Or got killed.”
“I don’t know if I want to.”
“It’s okay,” he nodded. “Go ahead.”
I stood up and unfolded the shovel. “Where should I dig?”
“Anywhere. In the bottom of the hole.”
I dug. It wasn’t easy. There was grass and roots from the trees and other stuff growing around there. I didn’t really think I’d find anything. And at first I didn’t. But then there was something. I didn’t know what it was; it looked like part of a little tin can or something. There were words on the side, but I couldn’t make them out. I reached down, lifted it out of the hole … handed it to the old man.
He looked at it, then looked up at me, sort of smiling. “C rations. What we ate when we were in the field came in these little tins. This one was ham and lima beans, the worst shit they ever put in C rations. Every guy hated it. We called it ham and chokers. There were worse names too, but ham and chokers says it real well.”
He tossed the tin back to me. “Got yourself a souvenir.”
A souvenir. Something to make me remember a summer I wanted to forget. I handed the tin and the shovel back to him. He put them both in the backpack.
I sat back down in the foxhole. “Listen, I’m not pissed off or anything, but I’m still wondering why you brought me here.”
He did up the backpack, pulled it behind his head, lay back on it. “Sometimes the most important thing that happens in your life isn’t a good thing. This is the most important thing that ever happened to me. I wish I could say it was your mom. Or you. But it was this. I want you to know me. To know me you have to know this.”
“I
