He laid on a dirty old cot - it was the last one they had. It had seen many nights of terror and glory for the soldiers in its confines. There were flies buzzing around the tight old lamp. It was night and that was the only thing that gave out the illumination in the tattered and dilapidated cotton walls. Out in the distance, the old man thought he heard fireflies, but he was the only person who heard them. There was a mumbling refrained coming out of his lips, and the young nurse did not know what to do with the words except to treat them as the ravings of a lunatic amidst the choppers landing down.
Though in the early hours of the twilight, she was replaced by someone more seasoned both in years and experience. The old thin nurse with blonding hair missed the white looked up and down at the man and knew instantly that the wound which covered his abdomen was going to be fatal though it would take its own time. There was nothing to do out here in the wilderness. Except wait.
She sat. She turned he eyes to his face. She spoke. “There, there. You only have a very short time before you see the holy gates and will rest.” The older nurse was being blunt because she could see that he was trying to slip away and have that peace. The peace of a final grave that smells of home. But not the home of his child but the grown man’s home where he became an adult.
There came a moment of clarity and his head shot up an inch or so and his gray hair tilted as he addressed the old nurse.
“I had a pain in my left lower on entrails, but it does not hurt anymore. Take someone else, my girl.” And then he lapsed into unconsciousness.
The old nurse with glasses dangled down her neck merely shook and held his hand. “It is going to be all right soon. I promise.” Then she looked at his medical records and saw O’Rourke as his name.
-
There was smoke in the jungle and lots of it. The exhaust from the truck had filled the compound against the tree-festoon compound as the truck drove down the bumpy road. The older men said that it was that line that separated “us” from “them.” They missed the looming palm trees underneath the helicopter swathes that ran here with the quick and the dead from the latest offensive when it was winding down.
And it is within the trees that usaid corad half-military half-spy master William O’Rourke watched to the north looking and listening for the enemy. He was lazily seated on a hard bench. He was called “Destang” after his mother’s maiden name, it had begun as an insult because of her different colored flesh but it had stuck, and he now bore it with sentimental half-pride next with the underlying shame. His father would not approve.
Then his eyes stopped on a particular Cay kim tien - a money tree with broad branches and sweat covering its leaves from this morning’s reign. Ya bish? He thought he sensed someone looking back at him and he stood up. But his shirt was grabbed from the other side by a young lieutenant. One whose voice was higher in pitch than most and for all the world sounded to Destang like a fly in the grill.
“Sir, I think you want to look at this.” And pointed to a paper whose smell was of Linotype fresh from the “press.” It was just for them and Destang knew it was something about troop movements and enemy infiltration. It was the same old same old.
But his hand took the paper and glanced at its serifed letters just to read what it said. They already knew what it said that there was infiltration from the north by Vietcong irregulars. Tell me something I don’t know.
“Lieutenant, I don’t want to point but can you see the money tree over to the right?”
“What’s a money tree? I still have not gotten all of the species down here.”
Of course, you have not. Six months down and six months off. Do you barely know that your shift smells different on Army rations? Ia Drang the Lieutenant wasn’t.
“It is the broad-leaf tree. I think we are being observed. I think that tonight we will have some unwelcome company. Tell all the boys to be ready.” Destang did not even look at the lieutenant because even the starched sheen of his shirt was abhorrent to the older man. But that is the difference that year and a few months make. It is the difference between a boy and a seasoned veteran. A few short months.
There was a moment where the Lieutenant was going to talk back to Destang but then realized there was an ocean of experience towards the older man and the Lieutenant wisely decided to listen. He backed away and started to make the rounds to tell the grunts the news from the wire.
Destang laid down and rested the rest of the day getting up when the night had decided that it was time for it to reign. He looked down at his papers in a box. He saw a red door and he wanted it to turn black. He called it the fog of war.
He got up from the cot and put on his army boots. This was a small compound and did not have the resources to run the electricity at night. He scanned the landscape and saw only two men dressed in helmets and fatigues checking the perimeter. He waited for the kaboom. Should he tell the commander? Would he even be listened to? Of course not. Then why bother?
Then there was shooting from beyond the perimeter. Soon there was shooting back. There were also moans from the wounded. And then the rustle of the medics trying to find the bodies. They had then stung but not too badly. That meant that the target was somebody else someplace else. The rain started up again.
Of course, he began to look to the ground to see any of the hits. He went out into the compound and soon saw the Lieutenant gasping for breath from a lower vitals wound. Immediately he placed his hands to stem the bleeding and called out for a medic.
“It’s all right, it is only some blood and not too much of it. You were just grazed.” He lied at the severity because he told the truth that the lieutenant would live and that was the only true point.
But then he lifted his gaze and saw the enemy in the form of a single human figure. It was short but the reflex was to unholster his revolver and take a ranged shot. There was a crack and another spalt from within the trees. It probably was an illusion but he distinctly remember the face of a Vietnamese girl going down in the silence.
The warm blood told him that he had been hit. It was in the right leg. He tried to call for a medic, but no rasp came out of his lips. The next few hours were in the fog of war but he vaguely remembered getting lifted in a chopper and the noise of a medical suture engaged its full attention on him. There was the voice of a nurse calming him until the mask took away any form of consciousness.
-
Then in an instant many years had chugged along and the scene is not of Vietnam.
“He died at 4:21 AST.” Bagdad Time.
The head nurse looked at her older companion. “Anything I should know?”
“At the end, he kept saying ‘the girl, the girl.’ I don’t know what that meant. He was now a journalist, but I think he had time in the jungle of Vietnam as some form of military attaché.”
“You cannot you some men from the fight.”
“A chilling characteristic of men is that they’re not in it for the money.” The old nurse said.
“Even on a dirty old cost they still want the terror and the glory.”