pushed past the replacements and started up the column.
“Go on, you two,” Blackwell said. “Stay with the Chief and watch where you step. This country tends to jump up and bite you in the ass.”
Haber and DeLong hurried by, trying to watch the ground and keep an eye on the Chief at the same time.
Lieutenant Diehl unfolded his map and traced a line with his finger so the sergeant could see. “We’re moving along here. I want to stay close to the mountains so we can get into the foothills tonight. You stay with the 3rd and try to keep the new blood out of trouble.”
Dark clouds swept over the valley, visible from below as a change in the translucent quality of the light in the treetops. The air filled with the smell of the rain to come.
“Do you think we’re gonna get soggy?” the sergeant asked.
The lieutenant looked up at the darkening shadows in the trees. “Count on it.”
Two rows of barracks hooches faced each other across a wide, dusty space, interspersed with sandbag bunkers and twelve-man tents that held the rifle companies’ personal gear. Beyond the hooches, past the barrel latrines and piss tubes made from rocket pods, was the southern end of more than three thousand feet of runway. Just past the runway, perimeter bunkers overlooked strands of concertina wire meant to keep whoever was beyond it from getting in, or at least to slow them down. Strader walked between the two rows, looking into each building as he went. The sounds of Armed Forces Radio emanating from one of the barracks told everyone within earshot the sad story of Billy Joe McAllister and a bridge on the Tallahatchie. It was one of the few current popular recordings to get AFR approval. Many of the lifers acted as though the sand in their boots was from Tarawa and Iwo Jima, and they saw rock-and-roll as a subversive noise that rotted the brain and loosened the morals. Most of the music AFR played for the troops had either a 1950s country twang or the innocuous big orchestra drone popular on elevators. If the clueless brass couldn’t rock your world with Mantovani, they would try stirring your blood with John Phillip Sousa. Eventually the lower echelons learned to either do without or hum along with Pat Boone and Jim Nabors.
Strader pulled the screened door open. Two steps took him out of the sun and onto a plywood floor. No one was home except one of 3rd Platoon’s corpsmen, sitting on a corner cot reading. He looked over his glasses as Strader entered. “Hey, Reach,” he said.
Strader swung his pack to the floor. “Hi, Doc, any empty racks in here?”
The corpsman indicated the other end of the building with the paperback book in his hand. “There’s some down on the end. You finally decide to join a good platoon?”
Strader pulled his pack up by one shoulder strap. “Well, Doc. Did you ever hear a gook say that something good was number three? I don’t think so. First Platoon is number one. It’s a numerical fact, and numbers don’t lie.”
The corpsman laughed. “I thought you guys were out poking the Arizona with a stick. What are you doing here?”
The floor vibrated with Strader’s steps, booming as though he were walking on a drumhead. “I’m too short to be anywhere else,” he said.
Most of the cots were piled with helmets and flak jackets. Packs and web gear filled the spaces in between. Military-issue shower shoes mixed with Ho Chi Minh sandals purchased from the enterprising locals who set up stands on the road just outside the wire. The three end cots on the right were empty. Strader dropped his gear on the one closest to the door and leaned his rifle in the corner.
“Are Brede and Garver okay?” the doc said over the music.
“They were this morning when I left.” Strader sat on the cot and stripped away his jungle boots. His mottled green socks gave off a putrid odor like stagnant water. He peeled them off and tossed them under the cot. His own rank aroma mixed with the musty stink of the canvas cots and the essence of creosote and fuel oil that wafted through the screens on the hot breeze. He lay back on the bare cot and stared up at the rafters and the corrugated steel roof that was giving off heat like a convection oven. “Hey, Doc. I’m gonna catch some Zs. Don’t let me miss chow, okay?”
The corpsman waved and turned down the volume on the radio.
Before Bobbie Gentry could sing Billy Joe under the muddy water below the Tallahatchie Bridge, Strader was asleep.
In an attempt to raise morale, the Seabees had put together some sheets of painted plywood that served An Hoa as a movie screen. Occasionally the bulletin board would announce a movie—meaning that the projectionist was going to light up the night with that screen and try to get through a film without taking fire from the wild country west of the base. Attending was a calculated risk. The prospect of a blazing screen surrounded by an audience of Marines sitting on empty ammo cases was often too much for the VC to resist, and the distant thump and swish of incoming mortar rounds would send the movie into a prolonged intermission. The VC might just as well have saved their precious ammunition, because the same powers that filled radio broadcasts with Andy Williams and Percy Faith also chose movies they felt were appropriate for troops in a combat zone. This wasn’t a plus for attendance.
Strader was always on the lookout for little indicators that showed him how much the brass was in tune with the troops they commanded. He wanted to know that those making life-and-death decisions at least knew who their troops were. He was usually disappointed, and never more so than on his first trip to the base movie when the plywood came alive with the 1933 version of Little Women, adapted from the Louisa May Alcott novel. There, in glorious black and white, was indisputable proof that the brass at Special Services didn’t have a clue. Or maybe they had an ulterior motive. Maybe they thought that the sight of Katherine Hepburn and Spring Byington waltzing sedately through Civil War America would curb masturbation. If that was the case, they sorely underestimated the libido and imagination of the average Marine. Strader generously chose to think that command just saw a movie title with the word “women” in it and, lacking a background in literature, decided that it might be something young men would enjoy seeing. None of those scenarios, real or imagined, filled him with confidence. But of one thing he was certain; it was insane to sit in the dark in front of a beacon of light that attracted bullets the way a streetlight attracts insects just to watch a cinematic version of saltpeter.
The bank of threatening clouds covered the entire Ong Thu mountain range from south of the Song Vu Gia all the way north to the razorback below the Liberty Bridge. The rain started slowly, and the jungle’s triple canopy held it back like an umbrella until it strengthened and forced its way through to soak the jungle floor. From below, the water seemed to be originating from the branches themselves. And the trees would hold the water, dispensing it over hours, keeping the jungle alive with drips long after the storm passed.
The North Vietnamese kept moving until the relentless rain made the footing sloppy and the energy spent for distance traveled seemed a poor investment. They finally sought cover in the underbrush. Sentries slipped away from the group to prevent surprises while the rest covered their equipment with oilcloths and rubber-coated tarps. They huddled together, holding the covers over their heads as makeshift tents.
Nguyen squatted shoulder-to-shoulder with Pham watching their tarp shed water in sheets. Raindrops beat at the thick fabric like little pummeling fists.
“You
