Jungle Rules (27 page)

“Leave me the fuck alone,” McKay slurred from behind his cubicle. Still wearing his skivvy shorts and T-shirt, he lay on his bunk, swigging a canteen filled with Wayne Ebberhardt’s old North Carolina family recipe.

“Oh, fuck, Tommy,” O’Connor said, seeing the lieutenant lying on his bed and stinking of the homemade booze. “I’m sorry, you guys, Lieutenant McKay isn’t quite ready. You want to wait outside until he gets dressed?”

“Sir, if you don’t mind,” Staff Sergeant Paul Rhodes told Terry O’Connor, and stepped past the captain, along with Sergeant Lionel McCoy and Hospital Corpsman First Class Ted Hamilton. The three quickly swarmed the drunk lieutenant, flung open his wall locker, and began rummaging for materials to make some hasty repairs on the officer.

“Captain,” Rhodes said, looking over his shoulder, “we’ll have him outside, squared away in ten minutes. You need to go let Colonel Blanchard know what we’re doing. He’s an old salt and has walked many a snake-infested trail. He’ll make sure we’re covered.”

Terry O’Connor shrugged, smiled, and then headed out the door to intercept Doc Blanchard, the Third Reconnaissance Battalion commanding officer, and pass the message that today’s recipient of the Bronze Star Medal with Combat V device for valor, had gotten himself drunk early: A full two hours ahead of the Hawaiian-style party and pig roast that Lieutenant Colonel Prunella had arranged to celebrate the occasion with the commanding general of Third Marine Amphibious Force.

With no witnesses now present, the wiry staff sergeant threw the 225-pound lieutenant across his shoulders and route-stepped to the showers.

“Sir,” Rhodes said as he walked with Doc Hamilton and Lionel McCoy, carrying soap and a towel, “I don’t know what got into you to get yourself all fucked up today, but you’ll not embarrass me and my entire platoon in front of my commanding officer, all of whom flew down here today from Dong Ha to see you get decorated.”

“Hey, Doc,” McCoy said half joking, looking at the corpsman, “you think the dispensary down the block might have some vitamin B-twelve or something you can inject in McKay’s ass that will straighten him out?”

“From what I’m told, that’s mostly a myth,” Doc Hamilton said, watching the staff sergeant strip off the lieutenant and push him under a shower of cold water. “Time and metabolism are mostly what remove the alcohol. I might have a pick-me-upper in my kit, though. Could help to perk him a little bit so that he at least stands still while he gets the medal.”

“We’ll douche him in cologne to hide the booze stink,” Rhodes said, now stripped off, too, neatly laying his solid green, jungle utility uniform on a dry bench. He helped the lieutenant soap off his body and then rinsed him, and pushed him into the arms of Hamilton and McCoy, who dried and dressed the officer.

“What the fuck got into you in the first place?” the staff sergeant said, putting on his clothes. “You having some kind of pity party because your buddy didn’t get out alive and you did? Shit, sir, I’ve seen a dozen pity parties just like yours. I know what I’m looking at. We’ve all had our turns.”

“You don’t understand, Staff Sergeant Rhodes,” Tommy McKay wept as he snugged his field scarf around the tight-fitting eighteen-inch collar on his khaki uniform shirt. “Jimmy Sanchez was my best friend. My college roommate. And he’s dead because I fucked up. I had to be the hero, and run across that open field, trying to save thirty minutes, and cost us three hours, because I dumped off the platoon doc and the radioman. He could have made it to Dong Ha had I not done that stunt.”

“The man died on his own, Lieutenant,” Rhodes said, buffing off his boots with McKay’s towel. “Nothing you did caused him to die.”

“Sir,” Doc Hamilton then interjected, “do you know anything about how damaged Lieutenant Sanchez’s lungs were? The bullets clipped through the tops of both organs, destroyed most of the branches of his bronchial tubes. He never had a chance.”

“Doc, he’d of had at least a shot at a chance if I had gotten him to the rally point with you and Sneed aboard,” McKay said. “I cannot accept a medal when I am responsible for my best friend dying. Responsible for your platoon commander, your friend, too, dying!”

“Fuck it, man,” Sergeant McCoy finally said, and looked at the lieutenant. “We love old Jimmy Sanchez like he’s one of our snuffies. Don’t you know that if any of us believed you had anything to do with him dying, we’d be someplace else than right here going to watch your lily ass get a medal.”

McKay stood still for a few seconds, still feeling the glow of the moonshine, and then put his hands out to the black sergeant, who gave him a strong hug.

“Sir,” McCoy said, holding on to the officer as Doc Hamilton shot a syringe filled with a yellow liquid into the man’s arm, “you don’t know it, but you saved at least three lives with what you did that night, running across that minefield like you done.”

“That’s right,” Paul Rhodes said, pulling a pipe from his pocket and putting it in his mouth, and then finding a paper towel and wiping the fog off his black-framed glasses, still fixed with the green tape over the bridge of the nose. “You have to take the word of our experience. You, Doc Hamilton here, and Bobby Sneed, who’s waiting outside with the rest of Lieutenant Sanchez’s platoon, all made it out alive because you drew the enemy’s focus.

“Think about that night. The lieutenant got shot, waving at the NVA like a schoolkid on the playground. He slacked off for only a second, but that’s all it takes. Like I said, shit happens when you go slack. He did, and he got shot for it. I don’t blame him for getting killed. I miss the shit out of him. He was about the best I ever saw. But he went slack at the wrong time.

“Those NVA that you took down, they fucked up, too. They’re dead because they didn’t watch where they were going.

“The gunfire, shit, sir, that drew every Communist soldier within a five-click arc. They focused on that site and came barreling down your throats. We saw more than fifty alone when they hit RP Tango, remember?

“These particular North Vietnamese on our asses out there, they had commando training. A lot like our reconnaissance scouts. They know the woods. They’re sharp.

“When they gave chase to you, right when the lieutenant got shot, you have to believe that they came full bore, throttle down. They wanted to kill whoever got in the firefight with their team. They were hot on your ass when you hit that clearing. What was it, thirty seconds or so after you jumped into the open that they started shooting?”

McKay sat on the end of his bunk, listening, and nodded. “Yes, I cleared the open area in less than a minute, and they started firing at me when I still had a hundred yards to cover,” the lieutenant agreed.

“Now let’s do a little supposing, shall we?” Rhodes said.

“Okay,” McKay nodded.

“Let’s suppose that you did what Lieutenant Sanchez instructed you to do. You stuck with Doc and Baby Huey, and made the circle around that minefield.

“Shit, the NVA weren’t about to tramp across their own minefield in the dark. They circled, too. Even with you running across the clearing, they went around it. Whether or not they saw you running across that open ground, they had already begun pursuit of you. They would have caught up with you at about the point that they ran over the top of Baby Huey and Doc.

“One important thing to consider, though, when you would have gone into hiding with the enemy walking on top of you: What do you suppose Lieutenant Sanchez would have been doing? Holding his wind, too?

“Hell, man, the lieutenant was gasping for every breath. His wheezing carried half a mile that night. The air still as it was. You laying in the bush with Doc and Baby Huey, with the lieutenant hacking like a foghorn, the NVA would have been down on you like stink on shit.

“Now, don’t you suppose that when they caught you they would have had blood in their eyes?”

“It would have been the shits,” McKay agreed, giving himself a look in the full-length mirror fastened to the wall as the three Marines escorted him toward the front door.

“Those pissed-off NVA would have shot your young ass dead,” Rhodes said, pulling open the screen door for the officer. “They would have killed you, Baby Huey, and Doc here.

“Sir, you did not cost Lieutenant Sanchez his life. His bad luck and a brain fart cost him. The fact is, sir, you saved Doc’s life, and Baby Huey’s life for sure, and probably saved my life, too, and every man in this platoon.

“We got out of the shit with every man intact. Not one man wounded. Nobody killed except the lieutenant. That’s damned good, considering where we started.

“My opinion, sir, you getting a Bronze Star with V is a cheap medal for what you did for us. Lieutenant Sanchez is proud of you, sir. So am I.”

Thirty minutes later, the bright midday sunlight blinded Tommy McKay as he stepped from the ranks of his fellow officers when the Headquarters Squadron commanding officer bellowed, “Persons to be decorated, front and center!”

When T. D. McKay stepped forward, and marched toward the empty space between guide-on flags where Lieutenant General Robert E. Cushman Jr. stood waiting, Terry O’ Connor and Jon Kirkwood walked in step with him. When they reached the front-and-center point, they stood at McKay’s left. His award was senior to theirs.

From the public address system an announcer read the Bronze Star citation that included the phrase “for conspicuous gallantry.” In three brief paragraphs it told the story of Tommy McKay’s heroism.

Then General Cushman pinned the medal on his shirt, and stepped down to Terry O’ Connor. The announcer then read the citation for his Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V device for gallantry under fire. In three brief paragraphs it told of that night at Fire Support Base Ross, and his running under fire, pulling a machine gun from a destroyed bunker, and employing it against the enemy, repelling them.

After General Cushman pinned the medal on O’Connor’s shirt he stepped in front of Jon Kirkwood, who also received the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V device for valor. His citation told of his undaunted leadership and tenacity, holding the line with an M14 while his partner retrieved the machine gun, and how together the lawyers demonstrated uncommon valor and dedication.

As they saluted, and then returned to their places in the ranks, they saw Major Jack Hembee smiling and clapping in the grandstand, standing next to Goose, King Rat, and Elvis.

 
POTTED PALM TREES and Hawaiian music set the tone for the afternoon all-hands reception, luau, and pig roast on the lawn behind the Da Nang Air Base Officers’ Club. A deck of several dozen freshly cut pineapples, shipped the day before from Okinawa and grown on one of the plantations on the northern end of the island, rested in layers atop a shelf of ice.

For the Marines who spent most of their time sleeping in holes at Con Thien or Fire Support Base Ross, the sight of the ice seemed amazing. Many of them, used to drinking hot beer, when they could get beer at all, did not realize that the precious cold stuff even existed in Vietnam. Nearly to a man, the entire platoon from Third Reconnaissance Battalion systematically slipped past the pineapple-covered counter time and again, and rather than gobbling cold slices of the sweet tropical fruit, they crammed their mouths with ice. Several of the men even got plastic cocktail cups, and rather than filling the multicolored sixteen-ounce containers with free booze, they stuffed them with chipped ice.

Tommy McKay smiled happily, watching his recon blood brothers delighting themselves with the ice and the cold pineapples, which they soon began to devour by the plateful. Just having them here, knowing they held no grudges, and even applauded him for what he did in combat, made him feel as though half the weight of the world had suddenly lifted from his chest.

Still, the other half of the world, occupied by Jimmy Sanchez’s mother, sisters, and brothers, remained pressing on his conscience. But now it seemed less troubling to him than it had before Paul Rhodes had talked to him. September still loomed dark for him, though. Time to pack up and go back to Texas, and face his family, and talk to his best pal’s mom about how her son died.

Watching the recon Marines celebrate the existence of ice in Vietnam, however, made the stocky first lieutenant feel good overall, for the first time in four months. His emotions had gone so low that even during the heavy rocket attacks of January 29 and 30, kicking off the Tet Offensive, he didn’t get excited or at all afraid. When everyone at Marine Aircraft Group Eleven went underground from the massive barrages of 122-millimeter rockets the North Vietnamese launched against them, T. D. McKay remained outside and watched the chaos.

He even went flying with Lobo when they got news that Hue City had momentarily fallen to the NVA, and the enemy had taken prisoner the Marine lieutenant who commanded the American Forces Vietnam Radio station there in the ancient capital. Stocked with hand grenades and an M60 machine gun, T. D. McKay and Lobo went flying over Hai Van Pass, determined to wreak havoc on the enemy. They got grounded for two days at Phu Bai.

Thinking of his and Archie Gunn’s stupidity, Tommy McKay chuckled out loud. Paul Rhodes, puffing intellectually on his English briar calabash pipe, enjoying the taste and smell of a fresh pouch of Borkum Riff black cavendish tobacco he had bought that morning at the Da Nang Air Base PX, just after they had landed, stood next to the lieutenant, watching his platoon, and laughed, too.

“Lieutenant McKay, congratulations. Good show, chum,” a voice from behind spoke.

“Oh, thanks,” Tommy McKay said as he turned to see Captain Charlie Heyster with Stanley and Manley Tufts close at his side.

“Have you met my brother?” Stanley said, introducing Manley to the lieutenant.

“I saw him at the First Marine Division command post a couple of weeks ago, I think,” McKay said, putting out his hand. “Good to meet you face-to-face, though.”

“Hell of a party, stud,” Manley Tufts said, shaking hands with the lieutenant and then reaching up to take a close look at the Bronze Star Medal hanging on McKay’s pocket. “I spent three months with a grunt platoon before joining division legal, living in the shit, and I never got more than a letter of commendation from the battalion commander. Then you wingers go out for a day, just tagging along with some grunts, and you get all kinds of decorations.”