A Rumor of War Read online

  Such, anyway, was the case with the marines in One-Three. Their individual identities had become inextricably bound up with its identity; they were it, it was them, and in their view, it was the best battalion in the best branch of the service, an elite within an elite. Their clannish, cliquish attitude was almost palpable. I was aware of it from the beginning and was, therefore, painfully conscious of being a stranger. In the mess, I often felt like a guest in some exclusive men’s club—not unwelcome, but not a member either.

  My “parent unit” was regimental headquarters company, which had assigned me to One-Three for ninety days, the period I was required to serve in a command billet to qualify in my military occupational specialty, or MOS. This meant that I was merely attached to, rather than a part of, the battalion; and when the ninety days expired, I would probably be recalled to HqCo to work in some dull staff job. I was told, however, that this fate might be postponed, even avoided altogether, if the battalion accepted me as one of its own. That, in turn, depended on whether I demonstrated an acceptable degree of competence and won the respect of both my platoon and my fellow officers. Neither would be accomplished easily. The other platoon commanders in Charley Company—Glen Lemmon, Bruce Tester, and Murph McCloy—had anywhere from one to two years’ experience, while I had none at all. Compared to them, I seemed inept, an amateur ignorant of the most elementary facts. “Blue ink!” the first sergeant had said, embarrassing me in front of his enlisted clerks. “Don’t they teach you anything anymore?” I was alliteratively known as the “boot brown-bar,” slang for a raw second lieutenant.

  * * *

  There were rumors floating around camp about a possible deployment to Vietnam. They had begun earlier in the month, when Delta Company was sent to Danang to provide internal security for the American compound there. It was an unexciting mission and, according to the official word, a temporary one. But the unofficial word had it that the rest of One-Three would be on its way to Vietnam soon. Still, as the weeks went by and nothing happened, I began to despair of ever seeing action.

  In February, the company was sent up to the Northern Training Area, a jungled, mountainous region, for counter-guerrilla-warfare exercises. This was my first test in the field; anxious to pass, afraid of making the smallest mistake, I bungled it, at least at first. Hesitant and unsure of myself, I gave orders that were often misunderstood by the platoon. Leading patrols in the Okinawan jungles turned out to be far more difficult than it had been in Quantico’s forests, which seemed parklike by comparison. I nearly got lost several times, only proving the truth of the old service adage that the most dangerous thing in the world is a second lieutenant with a map and compass. The crowning indignity came during a tactical problem involving an “attack” on a simulated guerrilla base camp. While the platoon was waiting to move to the jump-off point, Campbell lit the smoking lamp, apparently because he felt like having a cigarette. Seeing him do so, I figured it was all right and lit up. But I had hardly finished the first drag when an enraged instructor emerged from a bamboo thicket.

  “What the hell is going on here?” he yelled. “The problem isn’t secured. Lamp is out till I say it’s lit! You do something like that in Vietnam, you’ll draw fire and get your men killed. And take that goddamn thing out of your mouth. You’re supposed to set the example.”

  Chewed out in front of the troops. As if that weren’t enough, Joe Feeley, the company executive officer, gave me a lecture later in the day. The instructor had reported the incident to Peterson, who, Feeley said, was willing to make certain allowances because I was green. But another mistake like the one today and the skipper would begin to doubt my competence. “As for your platoon sergeant, lieutenant, you had best teach that bullheaded son of a bitch who’s the honcho before he gets you in trouble again.” Having taken my verbal twenty lashes, I returned to the platoon, remembering the words of a character in a war novel I had read once: “By God, there’s nothing like command.” By God, there wasn’t, and I wondered if I would ever get the hang of it. I did eventually. Resolved to endure no further reprimands, I turned into a regular little martinet, and the platoon’s performance for the rest of the exercise, although far from brilliant, was at least respectable.

  Looking back, I think that much of my behavior later in Vietnam, good as well as bad, was determined by the rebukes I received that day. They instilled in me a lasting fear of criticism and, conversely, a hunger for praise. The last thing I wanted was to be thought of as inadequate, not quite up to the mark for membership in the tough, masculine world of a Marine rifle battalion. Had I been older or more seasoned, I would have taken Feeley’s remark for the unimportant thing it was; but I suffered from a youthful tendency to take things too seriously. That is how I appear in the comments various commanding officers made in their fitness reports on me. I still have copies of these mixed reviews, and they show an ardent, somewhat reckless officer who is trying too hard to live up to what is expected of him. “Lieutenant Caputo is fearless in the face of the enemy”; “an aggressive and eager young officer with a desire to succeed”; “a little too quick on the trigger”; “tends to rush impulsively into things”; “does not plan ahead”; “performed well in combat.” Napoleon once said that he could make men die for little pieces of ribbon. By the time the battalion left for Vietnam, I was ready to die for considerably less, for a few favorable remarks in a fitness report. Words.

  * * *

  The exercises lasted two weeks; two weeks of incessant rain during which we gained some familiarity with the miseries peculiar to jungle warfare—leeches, mosquitoes, constant dampness, the claustral effect created by dense forests that dimmed the brightest noon and turned midnight into the absolute blackness known by the blind. I cannot say we learned much else that proved useful. We practiced tactics perfected by the British during the Malayan uprising in the 1950s, a conflict that bore only a facile resemblance to the one in Indochina. Nevertheless, it was the only successful counterinsurgency waged by a Western power in Asia, and you could not argue with success. So, as always seems to be the case in the service, we were trained for the wrong war; we learned all there was to know about fighting guerrillas in Malaya.

  Some attempts were made to instill in us those antisocial attributes without which a soldier fighting in the jungle cannot long survive. He has to be stealthy, aggressive, and ruthless, a combination burglar, bank robber, and Mafia assassin. One of our instructors in these lessons was a beefy sergeant whose thick neck blended smoothly into shoulders that looked as wide as an M-14 rifle is long. He was always stressing the need to annihilate every enemy soldier who entered the killing zone of an ambush. The first burst of fire, delivered at waist level, was to be followed by a second at ankle level, the object being to finish off whoever had survived the initial volley. To whip us into the vicious mood required for cold-blooded slaughter, the sergeant began his first lesson like this:

  He came into the classroom, let out a spine-chilling war cry, and buried a hatchet in one of the wooden walls. Without saying a word, he wrote something on a small blackboard, concealing it with his V-shaped back. He stepped aside, pointing to the writing with one hand and to a marine with the other. “You, what does that say?” he asked.

  Marine: “It says ‘ambushes are murder,’ sergeant.”

  Sergeant: “Right.” Shouts, “AMBUSHES ARE MURDER,” then returns to the blackboard, writes something else, and again asks, “What does that say?”

  Marine: “And murder is fun.”

  Sergeant: “Right again.” Removes hatchet from wall and brandishes it at the class. “Now, everybody say it. AMBUSHES ARE MURDER AND MURDER IS FUN.”

  Class, hesitantly, with some nervous laughter: “Ambushes are murder and murder is fun.”

  Sergeant: “I can’t hear you, marines.”

  Class, this time in unison: “AMBUSHES ARE MURDER AND MURDER IS FUN.”

  * * *

  Unshaven and filthy, the company returned to Camp Schwab in time to learn that
while it had been murdering fictitious guerrillas, real ones had caused mayhem in Vietnam. The Viet Cong had attacked the American air base at Pleiku, inflicting what was then considered heavy casualties: about seventy airmen had been killed or wounded. A few days later, the first U.S. planes began to empty their explosive bowels over the North. The sustained bombing campaign that came to be known as Operation Rolling Thunder had begun.

  The battalion had fallen back into its domestic rut, but the news of these two events—the Pleiku raid and the retaliatory bombing—rekindled the rumors about “going South” and changed the atmosphere in camp from boredom to expectancy. The rumors were denied on February 15, when we got word that One-Three was going afloat in a week, its destination Hong Kong or the Philippines. They were then confirmed on the 17th, when we were alerted to mount out for Danang on the 24th.

  Thus began three confusing weeks of alarms and counter-alarms, stand-tos and stand-downs. Charley Company was sent back into the bush for another two days of exercises, presumably as a rehearsal for the live-ammunition drama in which we would be playing by month’s end. The weather, bright and warm while we were in garrison, turned sodden, giving us additional practice at being miserable. The platoon was nonetheless enthusiastic, all but Sergeant Campbell.

  “Seventeen cotton-pickin’ years I been doin’ this,” he said as we sloshed in the rain across a silty, salmon-colored stream. “Too old for this boy-scout bullshit, lieutenant. I’d like to get back to Parris Island, get my twenty in and get the fuck out. Spend some time with my old lady and my kids for a change.”

  “Hell, this ain’t nothing but red clay, Sergeant Campbell,” said Bradley, who was behind us. “Me and old Deane here usta walk through stuff like this just coming home from school.”

  “I was talkin’ to the lieutenant, turdbird.”

  “Yes, sir, Sergeant Campbell.”

  “Like I was sayin’, lieutenant, get my twenty in and get out. You know, there’s eighty acres I bought in South Carolina and I figure to retire on that.”

  I laughed, “Wild Bill Campbell, the gentleman farmer.”

  “Well, sir, go ahead and laugh. But I’m gonna get on the State Troopers when I get out and with that and my retirement, I figure old Wild Bill’s gonna have it number fuckin’ one while the rest of these turdbirds’ll still be walkin’ in this shit.”

  “Shee-hit,” someone said. “I ain’t gonna be walkin’ in this any longer’n I have to. I ain’t no friggin’ lifer.”

  “That’s because you ain’t good enough, you silly little shit.”

  Finishing the exercises with a ten-mile forced march, we swung through the main gate looking and feeling warlike. But on the 24th, the battalion found itself still on the Rock. For over a week, orders were cut, then countermanded. We heard that the Danang operation had been called off. We were going to Hong Kong after all. Then word came that One-Three was to stage for a landing on the Danang airfield. It was scheduled for March 1. On the 1st, it was postponed to the 3d, and on the 3d to the 5th, when it was canceled altogether. According to the Word, that anonymous source of truths, half-truths, and falsehoods in the service, the battalion would remain on Okinawa until April 8, when it would sail for the Philippines.

  I don’t know if this series of countermanded orders was a planned deception or simply an example of the confusion that precedes most major military operations. If it was the former, it did not succeed in deceiving anyone but us. The bargirls in Heneko, always founts of accurate intelligence, spoke disconsolately of our impending departure. “You from One-Three Battalion, go Vietnam skoshi-skoshi. I tell you true. Maybe sayonara all Third Marine. Number ten [the worst], no money Heneko no GI here.” Another omen appeared in the island’s English-language newspaper, which reported that sixty prostitutes had migrated from Saigon to Danang “in anticipation of a rumored landing of U.S. Marines.” There were other, more serious indications that the South Vietnamese Army, the ARVN, was nearing collapse. The news in the Pacific Stars and Stripes and on the armed forces radio network was a litany of defeats: outposts overrun, relief columns ambushed, airfields raided and shelled.

  Despite these signs, we no longer expected our future to be a violent one. Concluding that the past alarms had been drills to test the battalion’s “combat readiness,” we settled down for a prolonged confinement on the Rock. Boredom reigned again and was combatted in the usual ways. On Sunday, March 7, at least half of One-Three’s thousand officers and men were enjoying a weekend of I-and-I—intercourse and intoxication—in Kin and Kadena, Ishakawa and Naha, city of the Teahouse of the August Moon.

  One who remained on base was Glen Lemmon, the battalion duty officer for that day. Early in the afternoon, a message arrived at HQ, where Lemmon sat, yawning and making entries in the OD’s logbook. He read it and, quickly snapping out of his lethargy, picked up the phone to call the CO, Lieutenant Colonel Bain.

  Three

  Messenger: Prepare you, generals.

  The enemy comes on in gallant show;

  Their bloody sign of battle is hung out,

  And something to be done immediately.

  —Shakespeare

  Julius Caesar

  About the time Lemmon picked up that phone, Murph McCloy and I were on the terrace of the Officers’ Club, drinking beer and admiring the view. The club stood atop a high hill, and the scene below was straight out of South Pacific, lacking only a lovesick Ezio Pinza singing to Mary Martin. A turquoise lagoon shimmered in the sun, mahogany-skinned fishermen paddled skiffs across its still surface, and beyond the barrier reef the bright expanse of the East China Sea stretched to the horizon. Content, we lay back in our deck chairs, the sun warm on our faces and the beer icy-cold in our hands.

  “P.J., this sure is gracious living,” McCloy said. The telephone rang, and Sammy, the club’s Okinawan manager, popped out onto the terrace. “Any offasuh from the One-Three Battalion,” he paged, “call your OD right now!” McCloy volunteered. I figured it was nothing more serious than another fistfight at the Enlisted Men’s Club, but when Murph returned, his face was flushed, as if he had a high fever. In a way, he did.

  “P.J., that was Lemmon. He’s OD today and he just got the word. We’re going South.”

  “What?”

  “We’re going to war!” he said, as if it were the most wonderful thing that could happen to a man. Then he left the club at a run.

  Nearly a month of hearing the boy cry wolf had made me cautious, so I went inside to call Lemmon myself. He assured me that this was no flap. Had the message right in front of him: One-Three was going South by air. We were to mount out from Kadena Air Force Base sometime tonight and land at Danang the next morning. Danang tomorrow morning! The words yanked me out of the sluggishness induced by the hot weather and six beers. I felt an adrenal surge, a tingling in my hands and an empty sensation in my stomach, as if I were in an elevator that was descending too fast.

  What was I supposed to do? I had never been to a war before. “Well, neither have I,” Lemmon said. “Main thing is to get yourself squared away first.” He read me a list of instructions: make up a field transport pack, stow extra gear in a seabag, et cetera. When that was done, hayako down to the company area. Don’t worry about the troopers, the NCOs would take care of them. That was all he could tell me. Meanwhile, he had to round up the rest of the officers. “What a day the nummies picked for a mount-out,” he said, laughing his strange laugh, which was more a cackle, as dry and harsh as the west Texas plains where he was born. Heh-heh-heh, the nummies picked a Sunday; everybody was scattered all over the island, getting drunk or getting laid, and when he reached them in their brothels and bars, they were too stoned to understand what he was telling them.

  “I called down at the Kadena O-Club, figuring the boys’d be down there guzzling those French-seventy-fives. Williamson picked up the phone. I told him to hayako his ass back to Schwab because we were going South. He says, ‘Oh, bullshit.’ I told him, ‘No bullshit, Williamson, we’re
mounting out today, goddamnit.’ He tells me, ‘Lemmon, I am too shitfaced to go to Vietnam. Send somebody else,’ and hangs up. I called him back and got the same crap. Well, little while later, Major Lyons comes in here and I tell him about my problem with Williamson. So Lyons phones Kadena, gets him on the hook and says, ‘Mister Williamson, this is the battalion executive officer. If you’re not here, sober, in an hour, I’ll hang your young ass.’ Heh-heh-heh. Phil, it’s really somethin’ else, all fucked up.…”

  Lemmon hung up, leaving me to guess the point of that story, if it had one.

  I sprinted back to the BOQ, crashing through the door with a bang loud enough to startle my unflappable roommate, Jim Cooney.

  “Christ, what lit the fire under your tail?” He was a few numbers my junior and had just arrived on the Rock, so I composed myself and tried to sound coolly professional.

  “Oh, we just got the word to mount out.”

  “Where to?”

  “Vietnam,” I said offhandedly, as if I commuted there once a month.

  “Yeah?” Cooney replied, unimpressed. He would lose half of his platoon in August, at the Battle of Chu Lai. “Vietnam, huh? No shit.”

  In spite of the past alarms, I was unprepared for anything more serious than a field exercise. My 782 gear, or field equipment, was strewn about the room and my utility uniforms were being washed by one of the naissons who did laundry at the BOQ, a girl named Miko. Well, there would be no need for starched uniforms in the bush. I dashed into the laundry room, stuffed a few dollars in Miko’s hand, gathered up my bundle, and ran out, with Miko crying in pursuit, “Caputosan, must finish, must finish.” I called back that I was leaving for Vietnam. “Ah, Vietnam,” she said. “Numbah ten. Too bad.”

  Back in the room, I worked swiftly to make up a field-transport pack. This burden consisted of a haversack, knapsack, blanket, shelter half, poncho, tent pegs, ridgepole, guy line, an extra pair of boots, changes of socks and underwear, a spare uniform, mess kit, shaving kit, and entrenching tool. Adding a steel helmet, two canteens, side arm, flak jacket, field glasses, compass, knife, and rations, my kit came to sixty-five pounds. The pack felt like a Wells Fargo safe when I tried it on to adjust the shoulder straps. Would we be expected to make long marches through steaming jungles with all that on our backs? I slipped it off and it hit the floor with a thud. Following Lemmon’s instructions, I stowed extra combat gear in my seabag and packed my service “A” uniforms, most of my civilian clothes, and, regrettably, my books into a footlocker. I would have liked to bring the books along, but there wasn’t enough room in the seabag. I was also sure there would not be enough time to read in Vietnam. I didn’t know then that nine-tenths of war is waiting around for the remaining one-tenth to happen. The packing done, I stenciled CAPUTO, P.J. 2LT. 089046 C-1-3 on the footlocker and tagged it for shipment to the division warehouse at Camp Courtney. It would be stored there until I returned to claim it. The possibility that I might not return did not occur to me. I was twenty-three years old, in superb condition, and quite certain that I would live forever.