ACCEPTABLE LOSSES Pages Selection 1 of Manuscript Robert Malone
Part I The Pledge
Arranged on the kitchen table, laid out in a row on the yellow Formica, the four rifles might have been mistaken for toys were it not for a persistent menace about them, a suggestion of latent carnage, that singularity of purpose contained more in the idea of them than in their design – so many designs capable of getting the job done but the idea always remaining the same – the simple idea of slaughter.
Three men sit at the table in silence regarding this idea, absorbing its magnitude. They had not handled such weapons in some twenty five years or more and, for the moment, the rifles, their heft, their certainty, their clean lethality, carry them down a river of dark memories.
As though waking from a trance, one of the men picks up an ammunition clip from the table. Reaching into a ceramic fruit bowl filled to the brim with shiny brass cartridges, he begins to load the clip, thumbing each cartridge into place until it sets with an ominous click. A second man joins the first in this task while the third stands up, lifts one of the rifles, turns it slowly in his hands, brings it close by his eye as though he were inspecting a rare jewel.
Picking up one of the full ammo clips, tapping it against his hip until he is satisfied the rounds are fully set, he inserts the clip into the belly of the rifle. He taps with the palm of his hand until he hears the clip snap into place and then works the bolt of the rifle with a swift flick of his wrist injecting a round into the chamber.
At the sound of a round being chambered, the two men at the table look up. “Locked and loaded,” the man, holding the rifle above his head, says with a grim smile. “We’re open for business, boys.”
* * * *
He was not surprised to see them. Since he mustered out of the Army back to the World a month ago, Thad had been expecting an arrival of some sort, a judgment, he supposed. As far back as the night patrol near Hao Mihn, he figured some form of retribution would soon be visited upon him. So, he did not know what these things might be hovering above his bed, three floating apparitions boiling up out of the midnight gloom of his childhood bedroom. They were vaguely human shapes formed by what looked to Thad to be loose wreaths of smoke rippling with a wind he could not feel in the room. But without hesitation he knew why they had appeared. He knew why they had come. These wraiths floating there above him, hot red eyes glowering down, had come to plague him until the end of his days. As had become his habit most nights since he had returned, Thad was stretched out awake and fully clothed on top of his bedcovers. He found himself once again in the boxy room he had occupied as a teenager. Even though that had been less than two years ago, all that had transpired since, the Army, the war, the slaughter, the anger , all of that made any evidence of his childhood days (a baseball glove on the dresser, his varsity letterman sweater in the closet, the Jethro Tull poster on the wall) seem like artifacts of the distant past.
He felt his youth had been lost in a fog of time. So, these days he lived like a stranger in his parents’ house and he slept fitfully if at all. At first, he sensed rather than saw the wraiths. He felt the presence of an accusation near him, one he knew had followed him all the way from the jungles of Vietnam. When he looked up and saw them suspended there above him, red eyes menacing him from the shadows, he did not feel fear. He was quite certain he could no longer experience fear of suffering or fear of dying. He had carried those fears too long, ignored them too many times, buried them way too deep. (There were other fears now: the expectations of others, the caring and concern of others, that pestered him every day, but not so these hovering demons). He only wondered at any significance to their number. Of all the banshees and ghosts roaming the world, he thought, why send this visitation, these three black puffs of smoke?
To be considered, too, Thad realized, was the possibility that his war addled brain had conjured up these demons. He had to accept that he might be tangled up in some sort of waking dream and these things might not be drifting along the bedroom ceiling at all. He conceded that his feverish mind sodden with guilt might be manifesting what he thought to be his deserved penance. Scrutinizing the three figures more closely, as they continued in their turn to stare down upon him, Thad perceived them as intense, calculating, he might say, patiently waiting. Then, with a jolt that sat him upright on the bed and sent the wraiths skittering to the corners of the room, Thad understood their meaning, why there were three.
Of course, in a deranged way, it made perfect sense, as visitations from the underworld in retribution for his crimes, as the manifestation of his own private torment, these were the soul creatures of the three soldiers come to reclaim the lives squandered by Thad in those godforsaken jungles.
Thad felt a surge of defiance when coming upon this revelation. He stared back at his tormentors. He would not cower if that was their aim. He waved at them to be gone. Lying back down, he rolled over turning his back to them, tugging the blanket up over his shoulders. “You won’t destroy me,” he said aloud to the empty room and then fell off to sleep.
* * * *
* * * November 22, 1967, Fire Support Base Delaware Hill 719 - some four klicks west northwest from the hamlet of Hao Minh……..
Private First Class Pauley Piazza was no fool. He was a savvy kid from the Brooklyn streets. He had grown up skinny and poor and done his share of rough hustling along Atlantic Avenue. He knew up from down and when the fix was in. “Hey, hotshot, cheer us up why don’t you for a change,” he said to his squad leader, who was returning to Third Squad after a ruckus with his lieutenant. “What’s the trouble with that gung ho Deveny anyway,” Piazza went on. “You talked some sense into him, right?” “
Get your gear together everybody,” young Corporal Thad Oliver addressed the squad, ignoring Piazza’s comments.
“Ah, Christ,” Piazza persisted. “He’s tossing us out there like live bait, squad leader. Only way we’ll ever find Charlie out there tonight is if he decides to surrender to us. Damn and good goddam. What the hell will the Brass find out that they don’t already know? That there are VC in the jungle? Go ahead, tell them I said so. I can tell them for certain sitting right here. There are VC in that jungle.”
Less than two hours until dark and still ninety degrees in the shade, the damn jungle sucked the air right out of you, made you feel flat as a punctured balloon. Thad knew the squad would squawk at being sent on a night patrol. Well, it had not been drawn up as a night patrol. And wandering around in the jungle in the dark was not his idea of brilliant either. As he gathered up his weapon and pack, he consoled himself with the thought that he had made his argument against a patrol tonight.
What the squad would not be told was that Lieutenant Arthur Deveny, a Georgetown law student before he foolishly got all patriotic and joined the Army, had informed Thad that the intelligence reports said that buku Charlie were reported in the area of Sector Tango near the hamlet of Hao Minh. There was concern that the VC were preparing for a major assault on the firebase. Third Squad had been ordered to check it out. Piazza’s comment about ‘live bait’ was not all that far from the truth.
The problem was that the patrol, originally planned to get them out and back by nightfall, was now going to run out of daylight. The transmission from Nah Trang had bounced around Command for over four hours. By the time Deveny got it all but a couple hours of daylight had evaporated.
“Come on, squad leader man, fer chrissakes, look, tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” Piazza pointed toward the chopper pads in the middle of the compound. Sitting there, contrary to all good sense and military training, were a half dozen bathtub size aluminum containers gleaming in the sun, six shiny silver boats floating in an olive drab world. These containers held enough holiday turkey dinners with all the trimmings to feed the entire company.
“Somebody should tarp those damn things,” Thad growled. “The VC will fly to those things like bugs to a flame.”
“Yeah, like they don’t already know we’re here.” This came from PFC Hank Pryor, star high school defensive end at Jefferson high school in Ponchatula, Louisiana who played a year at Grambling before dropping out right into the waiting arms of Uncle Sam. Hank was the man in the squad Thad relied upon the most. When Thad flicked him a ‘don’t you start’ look, Hank gave back one of his big Louisiana grins.
“All the same,” Thad said to no one in particular.
“Man, this is some military shuck and jive,” fumed Piazza. “Give it a breather, Zaz” cautioned Hank while holding up his big fist in Private Piazza’s general direction, still smiling.
The containers had been delivered from Nah Trang by chopper that morning creating much hubbub and commotion among the soldiers of Baker Company. Anything but the daily dog food rations would be plenty enough reason to celebrate. But here was real turkey with mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce and somebody on the chopper had said real garden peas, not last year’s rusty can peas. Such delicacies in this godawful jungle could almost convince a G.I. to appreciate the goddam Army.
“Besides I’m getting a call to my girl tomorrow, I think.” Piazza decided to add this one final complaint to his growing litany of objections, although the steam in him seemed to have cooled.
“This ain't chaplain services, Piazza,” Thad said addressing him directly now, biting off his words, feeling the heat on the back of his neck. “Spare us the heartbreak and get your ass moving.” Piazza had been up Thad’s butt ever since Bah Traq when Sergeant Raines took a couple rounds in the gut and Deveny told Thad to take over the squad.
John Constantine, the bulldog veteran on his second tour who had been in the squad longer than Thad and Ben Nobles, the newby, only two weeks in country, a young guy from Hoboken, New Jersey, just nineteen with baby fat cheeks that looked as though they might never need a razor, sat on the ammo crate glancing over at the silver containers and then turning back to give Thad a searching look. Steve Atherton and Reggie Doyle stood near the others, their gear on their shoulders. Atherton looked much more like a librarian than a soldier, thin with wire frame glasses, while Doyle must have been a furniture mover before he got himself drafted.
They all waited, watching him, good sturdy men asking silently for a reprieve. “Sooner we hit the gate, more of this we can do in daylight. Piazza you partner with Constantine. Nobles grab the medical satchel. Now goddam move it. I want all of you ready to move out in five minutes. If we quit dawdling, we can get out there and back in the light. So stop your damn groaning.”
This last, for emphasis, he said while looking straight at Piazza. Piazza looked ready to argue Thad’s point about there being enough remaining daylight but he busied himself instead with strapping on his pack. Earlier Thad had argued with the lieutenant. He knew about the company strength advance on Sectors Zebra and Tango that was in the works for the day after Thanksgiving. Until then Charlie was no particular threat. Let them wander around out there. In two days when three hundred men supported by artillery and gunships entered those sectors, the VC were going to scatter or take to their tunnels anyway. Thad saw no good sense in a night mission tonight.
‘We’ll hug the north edge of Sector Zebra," Lieutenant Deveny explained pointing with his finger at the contour map that he had dangled from a support post. “I’ll lead the squad tonight. We'll stay off the trails.” His finger followed a red dotted line on the map. “Hour out. Hour back. Three hours tops. What do you think?”
Thad did not need to look at the map. Clear to him where they were going. Just as clear to him that the lieutenant was not about to call HQ and be seen as someone trying to duck a patrol even though some whiz kid captain up at Command might actually see how little sense this patrol made now that everything was all screwed up, now that they were going to be searching for Charlie in the pitch black. His squad was going to be at risk because Deveny didn’t want to take crap in the Officer’s Lounge.
“Look, Lieutenant,” Thad argued, less than comforted by the lieutenant’s decision to tag along, “if HQ knows Charlie’s out there, why send out a patrol? This was meant to be a daylight patrol. Now we’ll run into darkness before we get half way back. Doesn’t that change things? What can we accomplish out there in the dark anyway?”
“We can confirm the intel,” Deveny responded. Sure, thought Thad without comment, the intelligence guys can just wait until they hear the fire fight to know they were right. “Orders is orders as they say,” Deveny wandered on. “Tell the men to mount up.”
Thad wanted to choke Lieutenant Deveny when he said things like ‘mount up’. “Third squad got the call and I can’t worry about their gripes or yours. This isn't up for a vote, corporal. This is a goddam war.”
Constantine had the point. Lieutenant Deveny knew the men were grumbling about the patrol, so Thad figured that was the reason he was up front with Constantine and Nobles, instead of back with the radio, exercising all that leader of men bull puckey he had learned at OCS. Thad had other concerns. With his flashlight, he looked at his watch and his compass. The squad was heading northeast so he was keeping a close eye on southwest, the way back to the firebase.
They had been out just about an hour and daylight had faded ten minutes ago. The dark had descended like a judgment. The patrol would turn back in about half a klick. They had encountered nothing so far. The jungle smelled more putrid in the dark, a dank swampy hot smell that felt as though it might suffocate you. Of course, what they knew might be out there seemed all the more dangerous now that they could no longer see. This always worked you over psychologically like bogeymen in the closet when you were a kid, every sound a threat.
Because Charlie was suspected to be in the area, the squad was staying off the known trails to avoid booby traps, which meant they made slow progress through the brush, eight men with full gear trying to move with stealth in the blackness. The only way to advance in the pitch black was by following the white reflective strip taped to the back of the helmet of the man in front of you. To the miserable foot soldier on night patrol, this reflecting strip could often appear as a floating maniacal grin enticing him ever deeper into the jungle.
‘If you can’t see Charlie, he can’t see you,’ Thad had whispered to Hank as they left the firebase.
Hank had shrugged his shoulders. ‘Hope you’re as right about that as I want you to be,’ he had replied as they passed through the wire and walked single file into the jungle.
Thad would never forget the first words out of his mouth when the muzzle flashes erupted out of the darkness. "Deveny, you son of a bitch," he yelled as he dove forward, rolled, and fired off a full clip into the jungle. As he jammed home a second clip, he could feel as much as hear the crazy mad rounds, the insect whine of them as they ripped through the trees above him, a thousand taut piano wires snapping all around him at once, each with the whisper of death in it. He was moving, keeping low. He made his way along the line of men who were firing back at the muzzle flashes. He put a hand on each one. “Fall back,’ he shouted above the roar of rifle fire. “Fire and move back. Two hundred yards back and to the right.’
In anticipation of a firefight, Piazza and Hank had both prepared hot packs, three hand grenades taped together to be thrown like bolos. Piazza and Hank rose up and flung their hot packs in the direction of the invisible enemy then fell back prone in the bush. Next, the jungle lit up in hellish flames.
“Now, back,’ Thad shouted.
First, Steve took off, running low and crablike through the brush. Hank stood and sprayed a clip into the jungle then moved out. Thad got to Doyle and saw that he was hit, his fatigues wet with blood. Piazza appeared next to him. Thad helped load the bigger man onto Piazza’s shoulders, then he fired a full clip to keep Charlie’s head down while the two labored off through the bush. Charlie was out there a hundred yards to their left flank in unknown numbers, maybe as many as twenty, maybe more.
Alone, Thad scrambled forward in his attempt to find Deveny, Constantine and Nobles. He had gone only a few yards when he grabbed for the musty ground again as more rounds tore through the jungle above him. Then eerily, as he crawled along, the firing stopped. Even though Thad had not been conscious of hearing the rifle fire, he nonetheless now experienced a pall of silence that seemed deafening. But he had little time to concern himself with where the enemy might be or what he might be doing. Thad found Ben Nobles. Ben Nobles was dead.
Listening for some sounds from up forward, some indication that Deveny or Constantine might still be alive, Thad heard nothing. He looked down at Nobles who had taken several rounds in his chest. As quietly as he could manage, he rolled Nobles’ body into the thick bush and covered him up. ‘Dust to dust,’ he found himself saying.
They would not be carrying out their dead tonight or none of them would make it. He moved forward another hundred feet or so, crouched and listened, strained to hear above the suffocating silence. After a dripping long wait, he returned through the dark to locate what remained of his squad. Despite the black of the jungle, he found his men, Piazza tending to Doyle who was barely conscious, Hank and Steve keeping watch for any movement in the jungle. A sense among them that the slightest sound would bring Charlie down on them like locust made their movements deliberate, mime like.
Thad made a motion to them of zipping his lips then took an ace bandage from the medic satchel. He made a sign for Piazza to cover Doyle’s mouth with the bandage. Even in the darkness, he could feel the men watching him. If they broke off now and returned to the firebase, they might save Doyle. He was already bleeding through his bandages. With the flat of his hand, Thad directed Steve and Piazza to stay put with Doyle. Tugging Hank by the shoulder, he pulled him along for a few feet until he got the message and followed. The two men made their way back through the jungle. After about one hundred yards, they crouched and listened. The blackness was absolute. They were blind men.
The jungle at night produces a distinct sound, a seething exhale, sinister and immediate. But Thad was listening for human sounds, a knife blade thumping on a rifle stock or the clink of a canteen, even moaning, anything that might convince him further search was worth the risk to his men, anything that might convince him that Deveny and Constantine were alive. He crouched with Hank in the hot stinking jungle and waited, listened. He gripped his rifle. He wanted Charlie to come along right now. More than that, he wanted to rush into the jungle and kill them all, shoot them all. His arms and legs felt as though they were electrified and everything inside him ached to charge forward to find the others.
Were Constantine or Deveny out there wounded, hiding in the bush? He was confounded by the dark. He knew he could not risk any more men to find out. Tapping Hank on the shoulder, he motioned him back and the two moved silently back to where Piazza and Steve waited with Doyle. When Thad signaled that they were returning to the firebase, Piazza gripped his arm. Thad could see those eyes, demanding, furious. “Move out now, Piazza. No bullshit,” Thad growled in a raw whisper.
When they got back to the firebase, the sentries passed them through and Thad wondered if they even noticed that men were missing. Two corpsmen carried Doyle away on a stretcher. He was alive but barely breathing. Thad and the others stood silent and watched as he was carted off. No one had said so much as a word during the two klick trek back to the firebase.
Deveny would normally have gone off to debrief command but Thad did not see the sense in that. What was he going to tell them? ‘Captain, there are VC in the jungle.’ Fucking idiots. Instead, he went with the others to the cisterns, large hanging canvas sacks of tepid drinking water located opposite the chopper pads.
As Thad poured a helmet full of water over his neck and shoulders, Piazza started in. "What kinda squad leader leaves his men in the field," Piazza wanted to know from someone, anyone. Thad did not respond. He did not want to talk about it. "Those guys could still be alive out there, squad leader," Piazza charged on
"They're not alive," Thad said without turning to face his accuser, saying this instead to the water stained mesh of a musty cistern. He wished he was as certain as he sounded.
"You can't possibly know that." Piazza enraged, screamed directly at Thad, lurching forward a step in his fury.
Thad felt a spray of spittle from the man’s hollering, turned to face him. Hank and Steve stood aside. "If they were alive, they would have tried to rejoin us. We heard nothing. Nothing out there, Piazza," Thad half pleaded, looking to Hank for confirmation. Hank nodded in agreement but this was lost on Piazza. "If they're alive, Thad continued, “they'll have to stay alive until morning. I'm not getting us all killed rumbling around blind in the jungle looking for men who make no noise."
He felt good about articulating his decision. It sounded right to him when spoken out loud. Then just as quickly it sounded cowardly and selfish. Maybe the right thing was to get chewed up by Charlie trying to recover your guys. Maybe, like all other silly ass situations in this war, you were supposed to die retrieving your dead.
"The gooks are still out there," Piazza persisted. "The 'gooks' are gone, man. They got to deal with the same dark we do." Thad disliked the term 'gooks'. The word irritated him. Not in any righteous sense, he would admit, but he just thought there was no sense trying to dismiss the fighting qualities of your enemy with demon words. Gooks or not, Charlie had kicked their butts tonight, although lecturing Piazza on the true nature of the enemy, at any time but especially in this circumstance, was equally senseless.
He struggled to understand that the men were agitated. They had lost buddies tonight. But Piazza's clamoring was beginning to congeal Thad's fear and fatigue into raw anger.
"Three men still out there," Piazza hollered and jabbed a long arm in the direction of the invisible jungle, despair and misery etched on his face. “You left them out there,” he said, not shouting now but clipping off his words while staring directly at Thad. Thad walked inside Piazza's outstretched arm, so close he could smell the man’s sweat and something more pungent, the sickly sweet smell of Doyle's blood Thad realized through his haze of fury. He was so tired and pissed off he feared to touch Piazza because he knew it would take a regiment to drag him off the man.
"Stand down, soldier," Thad hissed in Piazza's face, "or I will stomp your skinny ass."
Hank reached an arm in between the two men causing each of them to take a cautious step backward. Hank could probably bench press a Jeep and both Thad and Piazza knew it.
"Let's all stand down," Hank said, his voice strained by fatigue but his Cajun grin still beaming. "Piazza you go sit your ass on that ammo box." Piazza did not move but he looked away from Thad's furious eyes. "Piazza, damn it", Hank said again. "Steve." Hank gestured to Steve. Piazza, who seemed almost in a delirium, was led away to sit on the ammo box.
Hank leaned over to collect Thad's stare. "Is there some chapter in that leadership manual of yours, squad leader, talks about stomping the ass of a subordinate," Hank asked.
"It's got to be in there somewhere," replied Thad with a shrug. His exhaustion was sweeping him away from this place. He could not focus on it anymore.
Hank turned to address them all. "Squad leader made the call tonight. Might be the only reason we're all walking around hollering at each other right now. Like he says, we'll go out at daybreak and get them. If they’re alive, they'll know how to keep out of sight."
Piazza groaned to indicate he was not pacified and stared up at Thad trying to recover some of his lost bravado. Thad ignored him and sat down heavily on the sand, splashed the water in his helmet over his head, then stood again to refill it. "Nobles is dead for sure," he offered to the squad for the first time. "I found him out there. Hid his body in the bush."
"God damn fucking army," offered Piazza. "Fuck"
"Get some rest," Thad said to them as he stood up and walked away. "I'm going to fill in Command."
When he returned half an hour later, no one had moved from the area by the water cisterns. The three soldiers of Third Squad sat in various poses of contemplation, silent as wax figures. He had walked out on the captain’s obligatory ass chewing, too tired to listen. He was told he would join Lieutenant Weller and his squad for an early morning patrol to recover the bodies of the men.
Thad said nothing as he walked up. No one seemed curious or so much as acknowledged his arrival. When he sat down, Hank passed him over a canteen filled with waxy tasting water, gave him a questioning look to which Thad gave back only a shrug. The four men sat without talking, each wrapped up in his thoughts, each man pondering the number of days he had left in country, a private tabulation of his odds.
They sat on the hard sand and stared into the night thinking about Nobles, Constantine and that son of a bitch, Deveny, who was not all that much of a son of a bitch really when you thought about it. They shivered in the heat as they thought about being dead and alone in the dark unforgiving jungle. They considered Doyle, a big grinning kid from somewhere just outside Philadelphia, who had been in country fewer than thirty days. They wondered if he would ever make it back home.
They were sitting quiet, filled with disturbing unquiet thoughts, when they heard the first hollow ‘whump’ from somewhere not too far outside the perimeter. Quickly after the first, they heard a second concussive ‘whump’ as though someone were shooting off Roman candles on the Fourth of July. All of them recognized the sound, realized that in about fifteen seconds two mortar shells were going to land somewhere inside the perimeter. Before their tired minds could grasp the significance of that, the machine gun at the corner of the compound opened up on the jungle and the silence shattered like glass.
Thad knew that he should sprint for cover, knew that he should hustle off somewhere, but he also understood that it was just as easy for a man to run directly into a mortar shell's ugly embrace as to escape from it. Besides, in his current depleted state, it was all he could manage just to stand. Hank, Piazza, and Steve had the same reaction. Almost reluctantly, the four weary men rose to their feet and looked skyward, as though they might actually spot the falling projectiles.
For some reason none of them would ever fathom, some premonition in the ponderous seconds that followed the sound of the two chilling ‘whumps’, the men looked across to the chopper pad at the four aluminum containers that held the company’s Thanksgiving dinners. They gleamed like alien eggs in the electric light.
The incoming mortar rounds slammed directly into the containers erupting in a fiery explosion that chased the four men behind a nearby sandbagged ammo bunker and splattered Baker Company’s holiday meals all across the compound. Dark decimated turkey meat and the unnerving red of what Thad assumed had once been cranberry sauce sprayed fifty feet into the air.
“Christ on a biscuit,” exclaimed Piazza, “they’ve blown up our fucking Thanksgiving dinners.”
The four men peered around the side of the bunker in time to see the lid of one of the canisters skid across the chopper pad. Through his aching exhaustion, Thad watched as soldiers scrambling from everywhere attempted to reclaim the slimy meat. The machine gun, which had gone quiet, opened up again with a new fury. Thad slid down the sandbagged wall of the ammo bunker and pulled his cap down over his face. He found himself too tired to laugh.
“One last indignity before our day is done,” he said as though reciting a psalm.
Above the chatter of the machine gun, Thad listened to Piazza bellyache. “Tell me right now this very goddam minute,” Piazza demanded of his buddies, “can you by god imagine anything more evil than that?”