If I Die in a Combat Zone (6 page)

Erik and I were discussing these things on that September afternoon, sitting behind the barracks and separating ourselves from everyone and putting polish on our boots, when Blyton saw us alone. He screamed and told us to get our asses over to him pronto.

“A couple of college pussies,” he said when we got there. “Out behind them barracks hiding from everyone and making some love, huh?” He looked at Erik, “You’re a pussy, huh? You afraid to be in the war, a goddamn pussy, a goddamn lezzie? You know what we do with pussies, huh? We fuck ’em. In the army we just fuck ’em and straighten ’em out. You two college pussies out there hidin’ and sneakin’ a little pussy. Maybe I’ll just stick you two puss in the same bunk tonight, let you get plenty of pussy so tomorrow you can’t piss.” Blyton grinned and shook his head and said “shit” and called another drill sergeant over and told him he had a couple of pussies and wanted to know what to do. “They was out there behind the barracks suckin’ in some pussy. What the hell we do with puss in the army? We fuck ’em, don’t we? Huh? College puss almost ain’t good enough for good fuckin’.”

Erik said we were just polishing boots and cleaning our guns, and Blyton grabbed a rifle, stopped grinning, and had us chant, pointing at the rifle and at our bodies, “This is a rifle and this is a gun, this is for shooting and this is for fun.” Then he told us to report to him that night. “You two puss are gonna have a helluva time. You’re gonna get to pull guard together, all alone and in the dark, nobody watchin’. You two are gonna walk ’round and ’round the company area, holdin’ hands, and you can talk about politics and nooky all the goddamn night. Shit, I wish I had a goddamn camera.”

We reported to Blyton at 2100 hours, and he gave us a flashlight and black guard helmets and told us to get the hell out of his sight, he couldn’t stand to look at pussy.

Outside, we laughed. Erik said the bastard didn’t have the guts to order us to hold hands.

We put on the black helmets, snapped on the flashlight, and began making the rounds of the company area. It was a good, dry night. Things were peaceful. For more than two hours, we walked and enjoyed the night. No barracks quarrels, no noise. A sense of privacy and peace. We talked about whatever came to mind—our families, the coming war, hopes for the future, books, people, girls—and it was a good time. We felt … what? Free. In control. Pardoned. We walked and walked, not talking when there was no desire to talk, talking when the words came, walking, pretending it was the deep woods, a midnight hike, just walking and feeling good.

Much later, after perhaps fifty turns around the company area, we stumbled across a trainee making an unauthorized phone call. We debated about whether to turn the poor kid in. On the one hand, we sympathized; on the other hand, we were tired and it was late and our feet were hurting and we had a hunch that the kid’s punishment would be to relieve us for the night. We gave Blyton the man’s name. In twenty minutes the kid came out, asked for the flashlight, and told us to go to bed. We laughed. We congratulated ourselves. We felt smart. And later—much later—we wondered if maybe Blyton hadn’t won a big victory that night.

Basic training nearly ended, we marched finally to a processing station. We heard our numbers called off, our new names. Some to go to transportation school—Erik. Some to repeat basic training—Kline. Some to become mechanics. Some to become clerks. And some to attend advanced infantry training, to become foot soldiers—Harry and the squad leader and I. Then we marched to graduation ceremonies, and then we marched back, singing.

I wanna go to Vietnam
Just to kill ol’ Charlie Cong.
Am I right or wrong?
Am I goin’ strong?

Buses—olive drab, with white painted numbers and driven by bored-looking Spec 4s—came to take us away. Erik and I stood by a window in the barracks and watched Blyton talk with parents of the new soldiers. He was smiling.

“We’ll get the bastard,” Erik said. We could’ve picked off the man with one shot from an M-14, no problem. He’d taught us well. We laughed and shook our fists at the window. Too easy to shoot him.

“There’s not much I can say to you,” Erik said. “I had this awful suspicion they’d screw you, make you a grunt. Maybe you can break a leg during advanced training; pretend you’re insane.” Erik had decided at the beginning of basic to enlist for an extra year so as to escape infantry duty. I had gambled, thinking they would use me for more than a pair of legs, certain that someone would see the value of my ass behind a typewriter or a Xerox machine. We’d joked about the gamble for two months.

He had won, I had lost.

I shook Erik’s hand in the latrine and walked with him to his bus and shook his hand again.

Six
Escape

      I
n advanced infantry training, the soldier learns new ways to kill.

Claymore mines, booby traps, the M-60 machine gun, the M-70 grenade launcher, the .45-caliber pistol, the M-16 automatic rifle.

On the outside, AIT looks like basic training. Lots of push-ups, lots of shoe-shining and firing ranges and midnight marches. But AIT is not basic training. The difference is the certainty of going to war: pending doom that comes in with each day’s light and lingers all the day long.

The soldier who finds himself in AIT is a marked man, and he knows it and thinks about it. War, a real war. The drill sergeant said it when we formed up for our first inspection: Every swinging dick in the company was now a foot soldier, a grunt in the United States Army, the infantry, Queen of Battle. Not a cook in the lot, not a clerk or mechanic among us. And in eight weeks, he said, we were all getting on a plane bound for Nam.

“I don’t want you to mope around thinkin’ about Germany or London,” he told us. “Don’t even
think
about it, ’cause there just ain’t no way. You’re leg men now, and we don’t need no infantry in Piccadilly or Southampton. Besides, Vietnam ain’t all that bad. I been over there twice now, and I’m alive and still screwin’ everything in sight. You troops pay attention to the trainin’ you get here, and you’ll come back in one piece, believe me. Just pay attention, try to learn something. The Nam, it ain’t so bad, not if you got your shit together.”

One of the trainees asked him about rumors that we’d be shipped to Frankfort.

“Christ, you’ll hear that crap till it makes you puke. Forget it. You dudes are Nam-bound. Warsville, understand? Death City. Every last fat swingin’ dick.”

Someone raised a hand and asked when we’d get our first pass.

“Get your gear into the barracks, sweep the place down, and you’ll be out of here in an hour.”

I went to the library in Tacoma. I found the
Reader’s Guide
and looked up the section on the United States Army. Under the heading “AWOL and Desertion” I found the stuff I was looking for.

The librarian fetched out old copies of
Newsweek
and
Time
, and I went into a corner and made notes.

Most of the articles were nothing more than interviews with deserters, stories of their lives in Stockholm, where they lived openly, or in Paris, where they hid and used assumed names and grew beards. That was interesting reading—I was concerned with their psychology and with what compelled them to pack up and leave—but I needed something more concrete. I was after details, how-to-do-it stuff. I wanted to know the laws of the various nations, which countries would take deserters, and under what conditions. In one of the
Time
pieces I found a list of certain organizations in Sweden and Denmark and Holland that had been set up to give aid to American deserters. I wrote down the names and addresses.

Another article outlined the best routes into Canada, places where deserting GIs crossed. None of the NATO nations would accept U.S. military deserters; some sort of a mutual extradition pact was in force. I knew Canada harbored draft dodgers, but I couldn’t find anything on their policy toward deserters, and I doubted our northern neighbors went that far. Sweden, despite all the problems of adjustment and employment, seemed the best bet.

I smiled at the librarian when I returned the magazines; then I went into the library’s lobby and called the bus depot. To be sure, I disguised my voice—perhaps they had some sort of tape-recording system—and asked about rates and time schedules for Vancouver. From Seattle, Vancouver was only a two-hour drive, the fellow said, and the rates were low and buses ran frequently, even during the night.

Then I called the Seattle airport and checked on fares to Dublin, Ireland. Playing it carefully, professionally, I inquired first with one of the large American firms, telling them I was a student and wanted to do research overseas. Then I called Air Canada, gave them the same story, and mentioned that I might want to leave from Vancouver. Soon I had a list of airfares to more than a half-dozen European cities.

Having done all this, I went back to my corner in the library and, for the first time, persuaded myself that it was truly possible. No one would stop me at the Canadian border, not in a bus. A flight to Ireland would raise no suspicions. From Ireland it was only a day or two by boat to Sweden. There was no doubt it could be done.

I wrote a letter to my parents, and in the middle of it I asked them to send my passport and immunization card. I’d been to Europe in the summer of 1967, back when travel was fun and not flight. I told them I needed the passport for R & R when I got to Vietnam. I said the shot card was necessary for my army health records.

I itemized the expenses. Five hundred dollars would pull it off. I was two hundred dollars short, but I could find a job in Vancouver and have the balance in two weeks. Or, if I didn’t want to waste the time, there were college people and old friends to borrow from.

It was dark when I left the Tacoma library.

Fort Lewis in the winter is sloppy and dirty. It’s wet and very cold, and those things together make your gloves freeze on the firing ranges. On bivouac your sleeping bag stiffens. It’s no fun to smoke—too much trouble to get the pack out. Better to stand and wiggle your fingers. You ride around the base in open cattle trucks, everyone bunched together like the animals that are supposed to ride there, and you don’t say anything, just watch the trees, big lush pines in the snow. You start muttering to yourself. You wish you had a friend. You feel alone and sad and scared and desperate. You want to run.

The days are the same. You wear a uniform, you march, you shoot a rifle, but you aren’t a soldier. Not really. You don’t
belong
here. Some ghastly mistake.

Just before Thanksgiving I received the passport and immunization card from my parents, and on the same day I asked to see the battalion commander.

The first sergeant arranged it, grudgingly—because some regulation said he had no choice. But he ordered me to see the chaplain first.

“The chaplain weeds out the pussies from men with real problems,” he said. “Seems this last year we been using too much shit on the crop. It’s all coming up pussies, and the poor chaplain over there in his little church is busy as hell, just trying to weed out all you pussies. Good Lord ought to take pity on the chaplain, ought to stop manufacturing so damn many pussies up there.”

The chaplain was named Edwards. He had thick red hair, a firm handshake, a disciplined but friendly mouth and a plump belly. Edwards was a man designed to soothe trainees, custom-made.

“What’s the problem, mess hall not dishing out the bennies?” Edwards was trying to soften me up, trying to make me like him, trying to turn the problem into something not really worth pressing, trying to make all problems buckle under the weight of a friendly, God-fearing, red-headed officer. How often does an officer joke with you, man-to-man?

Smiling and saying no sir, my real problem is one of conscience and philosophy and intellect and emotion and fear and physical hurt and a desire to live chastened by a desire to be good, and also, underneath, a desire to prove myself a hero, I explained, in the broadest terms, what troubled me. Edwards listened and nodded. He took notes, and smiled whenever I smiled, and with his encouragement I gained steam and made my case. Which was: Chaplain, I believe human life is very valuable. I believe, and this has no final truth to it, that human life is valuable because, unlike the other species, we know good from bad; because men are aware they should pursue the good and not the bad; and because, often, people do in fact try to pursue the good, even if the pursuit brings painful personal consequences. I believe, therefore, that a man is most a man when he tries to recognize and understand what is good—when he tries to ask in a reasonable way about things: Is it good? And I believe, finally, that a man cannot be fully a man until he
acts
in the pursuit of goodness.

Chaplain, I think the war is wrong. I should not fight in it.

Now, we can debate the reasons for my beliefs, of course, and I’ll be willing to do that, but, remember, sir, time is short, very short now. I go to Nam in two months.

Anyway, I’d prefer not to talk about these beliefs, because, I’m sorry to say this, I don’t think you’ll change my mind. I mean, maybe you will, of course. And I can’t turn down a discussion of the war, not if you want it, not if you think that’s the only thing you can do. But I fear we’ll find ourselves arguing. And I can’t argue with an officer, even a chaplain, so I’d rather just avoid talking about the rationale itself.

Instead, consider what advice you can offer about action, good-doing. Specifically? Specifically, I’m here to ask you if you see any flaw in a philosophy which says: The way to Emerald City, the way to God, the way to kill the wicked witch is to obey our reasoned judgments. Is there an alternative?

“Faith,” he said. He nodded gravely, and, standing up, he said it again: “Faith, that does it.”

“Faith? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“Well,” he said, “I’m a chaplain, but, like you say, I’m also an officer. A captain in the U.S. Army. And I think you’re not only wrong but, frankly, I think you’re very disturbed, very disturbed. Not mental, you understand—I don’t mean that. See … you’ve read too many books, the wrong ones, I think there’s no doubt, the wrong ones. But goddamn it—pardon me—but goddamn it, you’re a soldier now, and you’ll sure as hell act like one! Some faith, some discipline. You know, this country is a good country. It’s built on armies, just like the Romans and the Greeks and every other country. They’re all built on armies. Or navies. They do what the country says. That’s where faith comes in, you see? If you accept, as I do, that America is one helluva great country, well, then, you follow what she tells you. She says fight, then you go out and do your damnedest. You try to win.” Edwards smiled with each of the mild expletives, toning them down, showing that he wasn’t too distant, that he was in contact with the real world, and no prissy preacher. “Do you follow? It’s a simple principle. Faith. When you get down to it, faith is an ancient Christian principle. I think it originated with Christ himself. Anyway, it was certainly faith that moved the crusaders way back when. Faith kept them going, God knows. Anyone who’s read Norah Lofts and Thomas Costain knows that. Or history. You’ve been to college. Don’t they read about Peter the Hermit anymore? Well, Peter the Hermit raised an army, led the men himself, and they marched a thousand miles to win back the holy city. Hell, do you think he sat in his monastery and thought it all out? He believed.”