Part 42 (1/2)

Gary stopped writing and listened when a long burst of what sounded like distant machine-gun fire broke the silence; but it went on and grew rapidly louder and he recognized then the rapid thump of helicopter engines. One of the other three Birmingham companies was obviously returning from an operation, and he listened absently until all the choppers had landed.

”I was going to say I hope your shoulder's mended,” he continued when the last helicopter engine had cut.

But I guess it must be okay if you felt well enough to ”walk up the aisle” at Caxton Hall. If you're embarking on a critique of our Vietnam policy in book form, as you say in your letter, you must be in fairly good shape, I guess - so I'll wish you luck with that too. A book of that kind from someone as knowledgeable as you on the subject must be a.s.sured of considerable sales no doubt the libraries at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon will be ordering advance copies to see what you say about their masters. As for myself, I feel I could contribute a few lines of ”critique” myself right now about the situation here. (This will obviously have to be mailed clandestinely through civilian channels to reach you intact now that I've gotten onto this subject.) We've just done three missions in a week, and we're going out again at the crack of dawn tomorrow. We're badly under strength and morale among the remaining men is very low. Whether we'll have any more luck this time is open to serious doubt and I'm afraid I'm feeling pretty down in the mouth about it all. I find myself torn now between a strong desire to resign my commission and get the h.e.l.l out, and a sense of duty that tells me that I ought to stay and do what I can to curb some of the worst things going on here. For instance, there's a rule that any Vietnamese who doesn't stop and identify himself in a village should be shot. Many run away out of sheer terror and then it's a question of ”shoot first and ask questions afterwards.” This, as you can imagine, leads to a lot of indiscriminate killing. Also you never know when you go into a village whether you're going to find just women and children, a few hidden snipers or a whole G.o.dd.a.m.ned battalion of VC. So we've taken to laying down a heavy barrage of rocket and artillery fire every time just its case. It's madness, really. Civilian casualties on a big scale are unavoidable and ”winning the hearts and minds of the people,” as we're supposed to be doing, is impossible under these circ.u.mstances Gary stopped writing and glanced at his watch again; only five minutes remained before the briefing began, and he reluctantly shuffled the pages of the letter together. ”I've got to dash now to yet another 'war council,' ” he added hurriedly at the foot of the page on which he'd just been writing. ”So I'll just add for now those immortal words beloved by magazine serial writers, 'to be continued.'

Without looking over what he'd written, he folded the pages together and slipped them into one of his breast pockets.

When he stepped out of the bunker, the darkness outside was moist and warm against his face and because of the heat he walked slowly towards base headquarters where the officers of the four companies were beginning to a.s.semble. To take his mind off the dismal prospect of the briefing, he let his thoughts stray back to his father's letter and he found himself wondering as he walked how his brother Mark would cope with the problems of readjustment to freedom after his terrible imprisonment. He tried to imagine too what kind of life his father was leading with his new English wife, and it occurred to him suddenly that the lives of his brother, his father and himself had all been marked deeply by Vietnam. As he mused on this, the image of the game animals shot in the jungles of Cochin-China and Annam by his grandfather an(l his dead uncle forty years before flashed unbidden into his mind; he remembered how his father had tried to explain his aversion to the tableau during their unhappy meeting in the museum and the halting words he'd used then came back to him. ”...Too often, Gary, we get carried away with the idea of wanting to win at all costs. . . We're all of us likely, G.o.d knows, to fall prey to the worst sides of our natures For some reason the memory brought hack the vague sense of foreboding he'd felt earlier on learning that he would have to go out again so soon with his exhausted draftees, and the feeling grew rapidly as he approached the briefing room. By the time he reported to Birmingham's colonel his mood had become deeply pessimistic.

As the American briefing got under way, fifteen miles to the north in the village of Quang To, two hundred guerrillas of the 42nd Light Force Battalion of the Liberation Army were settling clown for the night in thatched ”hootches” that all had concealed entrances leading into the network of subterranean pa.s.sages beneath the village. The tunnels, which were two or three kilometers long, led to outlets on the seash.o.r.e, and the guerrillas had many times rehea.r.s.ed rapid withdrawal through them to test the speed and thoroughness with which they could vacate the village. On these occasions wives and families invariably stayed behind, and as the senior commissar of the battalion went from hut to hut that night giving whispered orders to the fighting men to retreat to the beach, he also warned their families to remain where they were on pain of punishment; they were told that spies at Firebase Birmingham had learned that an American raid was expected at dawn and they were instructed not to cooperate with the imperialist troops in any way. Then their meal was finished the Viet Cong guerrillas took leave of their families without fuss and slipped down into the tunnels. By midnight only women, children and old men beyond military age remained in Quang To.

Next morning Gary flew in the lead helicopter when Task Force Birmingham took off at first light. Looking back, he could see the rest of the first wave of the force strung out behind, a dozen wasp-like silhouettes seesawing in Indian file against the orange flare of the rising sun. Ahead of them he could see brilliant flashes and smoke bursts spreading all across the half-dozen hamlets of the target village, and Cobra guns.h.i.+ps were plunging and rearing through the smoke, pouring rocket and machine- gun fire into the thatched huts. Although there was no sign of firing from the ground, the door gunners of all the troop- carrying helicopters opened up with their M-6os too, as they neared the selected landing zone in a paddy field two hundred yards to the south of Hamlet One. The two soldiers Gary had reprimanded the night before were flying with him in his lead helicopter alongside other members of their platoon; all of them were strained and tense, and they clutched their M-16s tightly in front of them, peering through the open door searching for signs of the 42nd Light Force which by reputation was a crack Viet Cong unit that hit hard and ruthlessly when it chose to engage.

”We're gonna get us a whole rack of yellow a.s.s today, man,” said the beefier of the Iwo Indiana steelworkers, slapping the stock of his rifle loudly with his hand. ”And it's about G.o.dd.a.m.ned time, too.”

His companion, who was dark and sparely built, nodded his agreement. ”That's for sure - if the Alpha boys can drive the gooks our way, we'll turn them all into strawberry jam.” He turned around and grinned at Gary. ”We'll do that for YOU, captain - and for all the Bravo guys who got burned already,”

Gary nodded curtly in acknowledgment, then turned his attention to the ground as they began dropping down into the landing zone. To get the task force's blood up, the colonel at the previous night's briefing had ordered his officers to stress the prospect of avenging dead friends. Gary had gone along reluctantly, unable to find any other way of repairing the shattered morale of his company, but he was still worrying at the problem, wondering if he had done right, as the ground rushed up to meet them. Then suddenly it no longer mattered, the men were pouring out through the open doors of the helicopter into the waist-high gra.s.s, racing frantically for cover, and the sole thought in everybody's mind was survival.

Bravo's first job was to secure the -landing zone, and Gary barked orders to his platoon lieutenants to spread the force in a wide circle. During the next fifteen minutes, helicopters roared in and out, ferrying in the a.s.sault companies, the thump of their rotors sending great waves racing through the tall gra.s.s whenever they landed and took off. Gary watched the troops of Alpha, Charlie and Delta swarming out of the choppers, as tense and jittery at the moment of landing as his own men had been; their pinched faces, too, bore telltale signs of fatigue, and they stared apprehensively at the ground ahead of them, watching for b.o.o.by traps as they moved onto the paths leading into Hamlet One. Then the helicopters' engines faded into the distance and the sounds of the soldiers moving deeper into the hamlet lessened too; something approaching quiet descended Over Quang To, and gradually the light of the rising sun changed from orange to a paler yellow glow.

Gary had begun moving his force in an arc to its blocking position in the southern quarter of the village when they heard the roar of an explosion and saw a fountain of black earth shoot up above the distant tree line. The detonation was followed by a lazy drift of smoke that climbed into view more slowly above the treetops. - ”Motherf.u.c.kin' b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,” whispered the dark-haired boy from Indiana, who was moving in a crouch at Gary's side. ”Another G.o.dd.a.m.ned mine!”

A flurry of shots followed the explosion, and Gary ordered his men to freeze. The sound of shooting continued but it remained scattered and didn't develop into the heavy, sustained pattern of exchange lire that denoted two forces settling into an engagement, By the time Bravo Company was in position, the crackle of flames was audible and smoke from burning thatch began to blur the sky.

”They've found some G.o.dd.a.m.ned action at. last,” breathed the Indiana boy beside Gary. ”At last we're zapping yellow a.s.s, captain.”

The officer frowned; the radio of his RTO was crackling with messages, but no coherent picture of the sweep was emerging. ”You'd better go take a look and see what's happening - then get straight back here,” he told the youth sharply.

For a moment the young draftee looked dubious; then he loped off obediently into the trees. It was five minutes before he returned, and then Gary noticed immediately that the expression on his face was a mixture of elation and horror. ”Alpha Company's shooting up the whole f.u.c.kin' village, captain,” he said in an awed voice. ”They're just shooting every d.a.m.ned kind of gook and pus.h.i.+n' 'em into a ditch. They're burning the huts, and killin' the cattle. They're just wiping' the whole place out - kids, babies, women, old guys, the chickens, everythin'!”

Gary stared- at him in disbelief. ”Are you sure of what you're saying? Are there no VC?”

The boy shook his head rapidly from side, to side.

”Who's doing the shooting?”

”Everybody! Sergeants, a lieutenant, all of 'em! They're rapin' the women too.”

The young steelworker had been talking loudly and excitedly, and other men of the company, hearing what he was saying, came running over to listen. When Gary noticed this, he swung angrily on them. ”Get back to your G.o.dd.a.m.ned posts, all of you! This is a disciplined blocking force and we're staying here to do our job.” He beckoned one of his lieutenants to him. ”Take over here. I'm going into the village.” Motioning to the two Indiana draftees to follow, he led them at a run into the trees.

In the first hamlet he approached through the scrub, Gary saw two Americans firing into a cowering crowd of women and children herded together, near a ditch. One of the Americans was a lieutenant, the other a sergeant, and the screams of terror of the Vietnamese peasants died abruptly in their throats as bullets from a machine gun and an M-i6 smashed into them. The moment they crumpled to the ground, another GI began kicking and knocking the bleeding corpses over the lip of the ditch; a movement among them caught Gary's eye and, turning, he saw a small boy burrowing into a pile of bodies either in search of somebody already dead or to hide from the bullets. When the sergeant noticed this, he fired repeatedly at the boy until he too rolled over and lay still.

Dry-mouthed with horror, Gary unslung his Armalite from his shoulder and fired a long burst above the heads of the two Americans. ”Drop your weapons now -- or I'll kill you both!” he yelled and lunged out of the trees towards them. The sensation of flying in the air was the next thing he felt and only when his body stopped rising and began to topple head first into the geyser of black earth being thrown up all around him did he realize he had detonated a mine. By then the whole front of his chest had been laid open by the blast. When his body came to rest on the ground, the two GIs from Indiana stared down at it in horror. They could see all his organs ..- his heart, his liver, his lungs - pumping and pulsating inside his cloven chest and his blood was gus.h.i.+ng into the earth around their feet. It took five minutes for him to die, and they could only watch helplessly as he lay writhing and screaming on the ground. At last one of the steelworkers ran back to the lieutenant in charge of Bravo and all the men left their blocking positions to gather around the dead body of their company commander.

By the time the Bravo medic reached the scene and began trying to wrap Gary's shattered body in a poncho, many of his troops were sobbing openly. Others shrieked obscenities at the heavens like men insane, then gradually, one by one they moved off deeper into the village to join in the carnage. Many of them continued sobbing and screaming as they helped hunt down the rest of the Vietnamese villagers. They murdered them singly and in groups,, burned and pillaged their homes and stabbed their cattle and buffalo to death with bayonets; a few recoiled in horror from what was happening and either hid themselves or tried to save an isolated peasant girl or an old woman, but their efforts had little effect on the rest of the men in the two companies. The slaughter went on without letup for several hours, and at the end of it, the heaps of bodies in and around Quang To were numbered in hundreds.

18.

The anchorman of Panorama, Britain's most prestigious television current affairs program, held the newly published book aslant in his lap so that one of the studio cameras could switch its focus to a tight dose-up of the picture on its dust jacket. As the screens of television sets in homes all over the country filled with the image of an agonized American Marine wounded in the Battle of Hue, the anchorman began to read an extract from the book's preface that rolled slowly across a teleprompt machine beneath the camera facing him.

”At the opening of the const.i.tutional convention of the United States of America in 1787, George Was.h.i.+ngton said, 'Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair.' Since then most American leaders have aspired to govern our country in accordance with those simple principles but the standard that we're fighting under in Vietnam today has been raised and held aloft by successive American presidents over the last decade largely for reasons connected with their own personal vanity and a misplaced sense of pride. That same standard today flutters over the heads of more than half a million American troops in the field in Vietnam - but it's becoming clearer every day that honesty and wisdom have played little or no part in the decision- making process which led us into the war and keeps us fighting there although there's obviously no prospect now of ever winning any creditable victory. Instead of honesty and wisdom, shame and disgust are now widespread in the United States and elsewhere in the Western world because of what we're doing in Southeast Asia. The time has come, I believe, for all 'wise' and 'honest' men inside and outside the government to call a halt. We should terminate immediately our calamitous military involvement in Vietnam and stop the terrible hemorrhage of American lives and treasure that otherwise will continue indefinitely without any benefit whatsoever to the United States and the West.

The face of the anchorman, stern, square-jawed and caked with flattering makeup, came back on camera, and he paused for a moment to let the dramatic import of the words sink in. ”Those are the views of Joseph Sherman, author of this new book on the Vietnam war, ent.i.tled The American Betrayal, which is fast becoming the bible of the antiwar movement at present convulsing America. Mr. Sherman, a foreign correspondent in Asia in the 1950s and later a professor of Asian studies at Cornell University, resigned from his post as a special government adviser in Saigon just over a year ago to write this book, which is published here in London this week. On publication in America recently it sparked off enormous controversy, attracting bitter criticism from supporters of the United States role and winning high praise for its courage from the war's opponents .

The camera pulled back from the anchorman to reveal Joseph seated beside him; he sat awkwardly in the studio chair, the shoulder wounded fourteen months before in Hue hunched unnaturally in a position which caused him the least discomfort. As the introductory statement continued, the director of the program, seated before a bank of monitors in the control gallery, switched the transmission picture to Joseph alone, and keeping pace with the grave and sonorous tones of the anchorman, the camera moved steadily into a very close shot that finally framed only his features from jaw to hairline; still noticeably gaunt from the pain and stress of his wound, Joseph's face was set in a grim, tight-lipped expression.

”Mr. Sherman recently married the British television journalist Naomi Boyce-Lewis and came to live here in England - but he's no detached armchair critic of America's Vietnam war. He was himself wounded in the shoulder during last year's Tet Offensive in Hue, and in fact his family's involvement in the conflict has been perhaps as tragic as that of any family in America.” The anchorman paused, knowing what he was about to say could cause distress to the American sitting beside him. ”Mr. Sherman's elder son, an infantry captain, died last year in a jungle ambush, and his younger son, an air force pilot, was until recent release held prisoner for three years in Hanoi: In addition, a brother working for the State Department was killed by Viet Cong guerrillas during their Tet raid on the U.S. emba.s.sy - so Mr. Sherman is perhaps uniquely qualified to comment on the agony Vietnam is causing America The searching close-up shot of Joseph's face detected a c1uick movement of his jaw muscles and a narrowing of his eyes; millions of viewers saw him swallow hard under the bright glare of the studio lights, then his face became composed again.

”But perhaps nothing is more indicative of the way the Vietnam war is dividing the American nation,” the anchorman continued, ”than the fact that the author's own father has become one of the book's most prominent critics. And the dispute takes on more than usual significance because his father is none other than Nathaniel Sherman, Democratic senator from Virginia for the past forty-nine years, the senior member of the Upper House and one of America's most colorful and widely renowned political figures . . . Senator Sherman is at present in our Was.h.i.+ngton studio waiting to join us by satellite transmission, and he has kindly agreed to partic.i.p.ate in our discussion .

While the anchorman was speaking, a big screen above him came to life, revealing the head and shoulders of Nathanial Sherman seated in the BBC studio in Was.h.i.+ngton and listening carefully to the introduction. Although in his eighties, he was still of impressive appearance; his craggy features were florid but alert and his snowy-white hair and bushy eyebrows gave him a stern, patriarchal air. Dressed in an elegant suit of white linen, he clearly relished the role of venerable elder statesman, and the fact that he had lost his left arm was no longer noticeable since he had taken to wearing an artificial limb.

”Good evening, senator,” said the anchorman, turning towards the screen. ”Thank you for consenting to join us.”

”The pleasure is wholly mine, sir. I'm delighted to have the opportunity of talking to you and your English viewers.” The senator smiled and inclined his head a fraction in an aristocratic gesture of acknowledgment and as Joseph glanced up at the magnified image on the studio screen he realized that his father, ever the showman, was instinctively exaggerating his southern drawl for the benefit of the British audience.

”We'll be asking for your comments shortly, senator,” said the anchorman respectfully, ”but first I'd like to begin by putting a question to your son here in London.” He turned to Joseph, glancing down at his clipboard list of prepared questions as he did so. ”First, Mr. Sherman, I'd like to ask you to spell out in detail why you believe so ardently that America should get out of Vietnam. And perhaps you could also tell us whether this conclusion is based solely on a detailed a.n.a.lysis of the situation on the ground - or has it been influenced in any way by the personal suffering Vietnam has caused you?”

Joseph didn't reply immediately, and the anchorman, fearing suddenly that his first question might have been too blunt and unfeeling, glanced up anxiously at his American guest. To his surprise he found Joseph was still staring distractedly at the satellite picture of his father, but after a moment he seemed to gather himself and he turned to face him. ”To lose one son blown up by a b.o.o.by trap and have the other subjected to torture and degradation for three long years certainly helps focus the mind,” said Joseph in a tight voice. ”But the conclusion in my book that withdrawal is our only sensible option and the reasons that led me to it are based on knowledge and insights I've gained over many years of a.s.sociation with Vietnam. It's now painfully obvious that we, the people of the United States, let our country drift into our present nightmare because we didn't keep a close enough eye on our political and military leaders and their motives. None of us has been vigilant enough - but since I've known Vietnam intimately for most of my life, I came to feel my own negligence very keenly after the Tet Offensive. And because I've suffered a great deal of personal grief too, I felt an extra compulsion to try to redress the balance with this book.”

Above Joseph's head the enlarged face of his father had been darkening in evident disagreement as he spoke, and as soon as he'd finished, the senator cut in smoothly without waiting to be invited. ”If I may be allowed to offer a comment on that, sir,” he said, addressing the anchorman in a voice that was at once both sorrowful and elaborately polite, ”I'd like to make my standpoint clear from the very outset. I'm against all forms of 'bugging out,' whether they're advocated by the so-called doves in the United States Congress here in Was.h.i.+ngton - or by my own son sitting beside you there in England.”

”I understand, senator, that you're very anxious to give your side of the argument,” replied the anchorman quickly in an apologetic tone, ”and we're equally anxious to hear it, but if you'll be kind enough to bear with us, I'd like to put one or two more questions to your son first. I'll come back to you in a moment.” He swung in his swivel chair to face Joseph again. ”It's very honest of you, Mr. Sherman, to admit that you Can't entirely separate your emotional involvement from your objective arguments about Vietnam - but isn't there a danger that your belief that the war can't he won might have grown directly out of the double bereavement you've suffered - and the anxiety of having to stand by helplessly while your younger son languished as a prisoner of war in Hanoi?”

Again Joseph didn't reply immediately; his father's silky tones and the feigned regret in his voice as he spoke had not disguised the implacable hostility of what he said. When agreeing to take part in the program with him, Joseph had harbored a vague hope that perhaps the private grief they shared might help to personalize for outsiders the agony that Vietnam was causing in their country. At the same time, he realized suddenly, he had hoped that perhaps a public discussion of the issues which had such painful personal significance for them 1)0th might somehow draw them closer together, might lead them at this late stage in their lives to some kind of better understanding. But the tenor of the Senator's intervention and the labored reference to his own presence in England made him suspect that his father had already planned and prepared his remarks with the same care that he gave to his calculated speeches in the Senate. These thoughts chased one another through his mind as he prepared to answer his interviewer's question, and when he finally spoke, his tone was more coldly dispa.s.sionate than it might otherwise have been.

”There's no danger at all that I've confused the deep sadness I feel at the deaths in our family with the glaring political miscalculations that have brought them about,” said Joseph quietly. ”We've created and we support a government in Saigon that's supposedly democratic but which in fact is brutal and detested by the people it governs. The men who run it are natural successors to the hated mandarins who ruled under the French, and they wouldn't survive five minutes without American financial support. In comparison the austere, self-sacrificing methods practiced by the Viet Cong in the areas they administer seem highly attractive to the peasants of South Vietnam - so it's a fraud to pretend we're defending a democratic government. It's too late to try to change it now - that's why the war can't be won.”

Joseph deliberately kept his eyes averted from the screen on which his father's face was visible and sat back warily in his chair, waiting for the next question. The anchorman, however, glanced up to check the senator's reaction and, seeing the look of impatience growing on his face, decided the moment had come when he might draw him into the discussion with maximum impact.

”Perhaps you'd like to tell us now, senator,” he said crisply, ”why it is you don't share your son's views about the impossibility of victory in Vietnam.”

”I would indeed, sir.” The older man leaned forward belligerently in his seat and cleared his throat in a theatrical fas.h.i.+on. ”Things like death in the family affect different people in different ways. With some it knocks the stuffing out of them, makes them want to give up. With others it stiffens their will and makes them more determined than ever to fight on to final victory.” He paused dramatically, and his head jutted forward on his wrinkled neck. ”During nearly five decades of public service I've been proud to serve on the Armed Services Committee of the United States Senate, and I'd like to remind your viewers that today we've got the greatest army, the greatest navy and the greatest air force in the whole world! But despite this fact we're still bogged down in Vietnam, suffering two thousand casualties every week because we're strangling our war effort with self-imposed restrictions. If we were to kick off our shackles and release the full strength of our air and sea power, Ho Chi Minh would very quickly be forced to halt his war of aggression. The word 'victory' doesn't frighten me like it does some folks - but to achieve it we need to exert our national will to its fullest extent. just because we've suffered a setback or two, there's no reason to abandon in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, the principles of greatness, freedom and courage that have marked this country since its birth As his father continued to elaborate his views with ringing phrases, Joseph was seized with a sudden urge to rise from his seat and excuse himself from the rest of the interview. Because he had flown directly to London to see Naomi after his discharge from the hospital in Saigon and stayed until they married, he and his father had not met for well over a year, and the discovery on the air that the senator's views and att.i.tudes had not been modified in the least by the deaths of Guy and Gary shocked and saddened him. He found himself wondering illogically whether the senator remained resolutely deaf to the growing body of antiwar opinion out of real conviction or because he couldn't bear to concede that the son with whom he'd been at loggerheads all his life might this time have right on his side. As the resonant drawl of his father's voice continued, Joseph began to fear too that the three-way interview might in the end reveal more about the lifelong differences between them than about his advocacy of disengagement in Vietnam, and as he turned his attention back to what was being said from Was.h.i.+ngton, he realized to his horror that the senator's reply had already become acutely personal.

Perhaps I should make it clear that my son Joseph and I haven't always seen eye to eye,” he was saying, still smiling engagingly to take the sting from his words. ”Vietnam isn't the first topic we've fallen out on. Temperamentally Joseph has always been more inclined to compromise than I have, so the line he's taken in this book doesn't really come as that much of a surprise - although I'm sorry to find a son of mine advocating that we should cut and run from a war in a way that will bring humiliation down on our country.”

The anchorman, sensing the tension that had been growing in Joseph during his father's response, decided to interject no question. Instead he merely raised an eyebrow and turned arm open palm in his direction, indicating that he was free to reply.