By
George Drosis Logothetis Jr.
They were gone. His mind whirled and his heart drummed faster. Blood pounding in his ears, he crouched in the undergrowth, gripping his M1 carbine. He scanned the trail, looking for trampled down grasses, a skirmish trench, any sign of them.
As the cicadas shrieked an infernal chorus, he wondered if he was on the right leg. If he’d miscalculated his position. He flipped the safety catch off and thrust the barrel out from the veil of leaves. He gazed down its length, surveying the scene. He’d fanned out as ordered, assessing the area for booby traps or mines, in hopes of reporting signs of enemy activity. But there was no one to report back to.
Against the canvas of dense green, he saw it: a blackened, crescent-shaped log jutting up from the valley floor, the only terrain cover near the small, overgrown clearing that served as their rally point. He felt a flourish of relief knowing that he hadn’t made a mistake, but it was quickly replaced by a more pressing concern. Like where his patrol was.
Beneath the helmet liner sweat beaded on his forehead. He considered his choices: head up the trail back to the main line of resistance or wait for them to return. He took a few deep breaths. This was definitely suboptimal, as Owens would have put it. But this whole “police action” was suboptimal.
He brought the M1 down to his hip, and inched forward, balancing on one leg, poking gently at the carpet of decaying leaves with his free foot. Only when he found a secure spot did he place his weight down. After a few more careful steps, the soft crackle of gunfire sounded in the distance. He stopped, cocking his ear, thinking he’d move towards it, but before he could take another step, the jungle erupted.
Zing, zing, zing! Brrrp, brrpp! A hellfire of lead rained down. He dove, flattening himself. The rattle of burp guns filled the air, shredding the overhanging leaves, sending squibs of muddy red earth exploding upwards. He was familiar with the roar of gunfire and being shot at, but never this up close. And never all alone, without a bunker or foxhole or fire support. There was nothing to do but pull his helmet on tighter, stay hidden and hope the enemy didn’t rake the entire area.
The zing zing zings came in bursts, striking tree trunks, rocks, puddles, landing inches away. He raised his weapon, wanting to fire back, but he had no idea of the enemy’s position. And the flash of the carbine would reveal his. He had no choice but to sit tight and ride it out.
The bullets kept zinging. Between the volleys, the jungle fell silent. Any second he’d hear the enemy charging through the bush. If that happened, who knew what they would do because rumor had it they viewed all Airborne troops as war criminals. Another stream of lead ripped by, then stopped. With his ears ringing, he sat there panting, marveling at his every breath, wondering why he was still alive.
Now he knew why his unit had disappeared. This was a hot zone. Like every square foot of this whole damn country.
The sun slid over the mountains in a pinkish smear. The faint whine of an L-5 observation plane sounded overhead, met by the gentle rustle of tin cans hung in the barbed wire. It was always quiet in the morning as the night patrols returned and the artillery men had yet to take their positions. He hadn’t slept much, getting ninety minutes of shut eye at best, what with the rats scurrying across his chest, a lumpy rucksack pillow and the dirt sifting down from the incoming shells and mortar explosions. Standard issue trench life, courtesy of Uncle Sam.
Breakfast had been a few bites of tinned ham, dry biscuit, and a yellow square of something vaguely resembling eggs. Plus several Luckies and a swig of brackish coffee. He was scrubbing his face in a helmet of cold water when the call to assemble came, issued by Staff Sergeant Owens, his platoon leader and dedicated Army Airborne regular.
Aerial observers had spotted three companies of enemy infantry moving through the Kumwa valley and it merited a look as several patrols had taken heavy casualties. The mission was a day op, a zone recon to observe the terrain, locate enemy positions and find targets of opportunity. The plan was to set up security at an objective rally point, conduct surveillance routes in overlapping, fan-shaped patterns, then return after acquiring the intelligence. Once the initial ORP was established, they’d set up a series of them and continue the recon with the same cloverleaf pattern, sweeping through the valley.
“We’ll move down the draw over the ridge to the base of Hill 113,” Owens had said, as they gathered around a sector map. “See if there’s new wire or feeder trenches. Stay in the free lane away from trip flares. Keep an even pace. And leave no man behind.”
Owens had stressed that their intent was not to engage the enemy. The patrol was to avoid detection, moving no closer than necessary, and only return fire in the direst of circumstances. But chance meetings were common. Once again, the distinction between recon and combat patrols meant little. The sour-faced, always perfunctory Owens had positioned the outing as routine, briefing them on the topography of numbered hills and the network of serpentine trails and feeder trenches with a cool, detached efficiency, saying they’d be back at 1600 hours and to pack light and optimize speed and movement.
After a few minutes of getting things sorted in the chaos of the bunker, he turned his attention to the M1. The carbine’s stopping power was somewhere between a pistol and a larger battlefield rifle like a BAR or a Thompson, so it was underpowered. But at five pounds it was light and easy to hump. He fixed a bayonet onto its front barrel mount and loaded his cartridges into the fifteen-round magazine, then snapped it into the weapon’s housing. He filled his bandoleer with additional cartridges, put the clip into his .45, and grabbed two grenades. Some GIs carried three, but he only took two: one fragmentation and one white phosphorous. If two grenades didn’t get him out of whatever jam he was in, a third wouldn’t either.
He opened his combat pack and stuffed in his gear: poncho, extra wool socks, long john top, toilet paper, lighter, compass, mechanical pencils, note pad and a few packs of cigarettes. He’d considered taking a day and a half of C-rations, but this was a quick mission and the gruesome taste of a half-eaten breakfast still lingered. Cigarettes and water would be enough. He tied the pack shut and grabbed his rifle and pistol belt, adding jump knife, extra .45 magazines, M1 clips, grenade pouch, bayonet scabbard, and canteen. After tucking his worry beads deep into his front pocket, he slipped on his nylon armored vest, zipped the liner into his helmet, poked a few leafy twigs into the slits of its camo cover, stuck it on his head, and he was ready.
“Saddle up and move out,” Owens had yelled. After test-firing weapons, the twelve of them filed out of the trenches, scrambling down the forward slope, passing walls of sandbags, mortar pits, machine gun nests and swirl after swirl of concertina wire. As they passed a battery of 105 mm guns and stepped through a field of craters marked by spent shell casings and tangles of black comm wire, the main line of resistance spread out before them, a six-foot deep fortified trench hacked out of the steep ridgeline of rock and yellowish clay. It zigzagged across the mountains, scarring the earth for over a hundred miles before disappearing over the horizon.
Gunpowder lingered in the air as they stepped through a gate in the wire and spread out, accordion-style, so each man was a good seven yards apart. With silent efficiency, they crept over the ravaged earth, skirting the barren knob of Hill 102, passing trees with amputated limbs, abandoned rice paddies, livestock pens and the skeletons of mud and straw huts. Nearing the valley floor, the terrain had grown greener and lusher, with the shattered trees and pockmarked earth giving way to thicker and thicker jungle. And after they’d passed the first sentry and the two-man listening post beyond that, they were there, at the infamous strip of earth that was fought over daily and that no side could ever possess: No Man’s Land.
Hiding. They’d never mentioned that at Fort Benning, he thought, crouching in the foliage. Not even in basic had there been training about how to remain stationary for days on end, or any info about concealment beyond a brief mention of applying green and black face paint. They’d taught him how to keep his legs together when hitting the ground, how to assemble his weapon in seconds, how to speak to officers, how to make the bed. They’d even taught him how to brush his teeth—circular brush strokes, a 45-degree angle to the gums—but they didn’t offer instruction about how to hide from the enemy.
It was two days later, and he had not moved five feet. There had been too much activity, too close. He could not see the enemy, but he didn’t need to. The stirring of leaves, the occasional static hiss of a radio, and ever so faintly, snippets of their odd, sing song language were enough.
It took every ounce of mental fortitude to remain hidden. To measure each breath. Stay balanced. And not make a sound. That was the hardest. But he knew the importance of silence. It was why he used hand and arm signals, why his load bearing equipment was secured, and why his dog tags were tied at different lengths so they wouldn’t jangle around. He knew that if he remained silent no one would ever find him, not even if they were two feet away. The tangled creepers growing into his boots were proof enough of how he’d blended into the undergrowth.
His only moves were to alleviate cramping. Every few minutes, he bent his knees and elbows, arching his back, stretching his muscles. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, alternating from sitting to standing to lying prone and there was no position that was not suboptimal. He was so determined to not make a sound that it took a good minute to unscrew his canteen, gingerly turning the cap, praying the rusted threads wouldn’t squeak. His eyes ached from being locked in concentration, and he wanted to rest, but he knew that if he dozed off, he might cry out with a snore or grunt and reveal himself.
All he could do was sit, squat, or stand there, biding his time, waiting for the activity to die down. Now and then a branch fell. Or something scurried nearby. Every reflex of the jungle, no matter how slight, raised the hair on the back of his neck and made him press further into the earth. The smell of the ground was clammy from the moisture and humidity and there was nothing in his immediate view beyond the all-encompassing foliage, a microcosmic world of fronds, stems, and mossy fallout.
So much for being “airborne.” This was as earthly as one could get. A far cry from hurling himself out of a perfectly good C-46 and stepping into the clouds. He remembered his twenty-two jumps, the cries of “Stand and hook up,” and the sensation of his body plummeting for what seemed like an eternity but was only a few seconds and then the violent jerk back upwards followed by the silky chute blossoming out, inflating in gossamer petals. Grabbing the risers and steering through the sky, drifting ever downward, with the world rushing up at him and sticking the landing in a compact, five-point roll. And all for an extra fifty bucks a month of “jump pay.”
He watched the spindly body of a mosquito land and imbed itself into his forearm and draw blood, its abdomen growing larger and larger. More mosquitos attacked him wherever his skin was exposed. It was maddening to serve as their meal ticket, but he didn’t dare slap them away. He watched as dozens of them landed, filled up on him, and buzzed off, only to be replaced by more squadrons of the tiny invaders. There was nothing he could do but subdue the thought of getting malaria and endure the suffering.
And wait. He wondered where his patrol was and when they would return. Unless the PRC-6 fried a tube again, the commo man had radioed the command post and after regrouping, the unit was following the contingency plan, making their way towards him. Headcounts were standard procedure, so they had to know he was unaccounted for. Any minute now they would burst into the clearing, and he could already hear the roars of laughter as they made light of his temporary disappearance. “Where’d you go, Logo? MIA?” he could hear Trowbridge ask, grinning from ear to ear, “So much for you city boys bein’ pathfinders. What, you couldn’t find the crosstown bus out there?” At the CP, there’d be more good-natured ribbing, loud guffaws, and pats on the back, maybe even a few lukewarm beers as the unit celebrated his return. He stayed rigid, listening for them. But there was only the sound of the wind. And the eternal rhythms of the jungle.
With each passing second, as the unseen enemy swarmed all around, it felt like a vice tightening. The threat of the enemy was almost worse than encountering them. If he saw them face to face, his inner warrior would kick in and it would be a simple game of kill or be killed. Of doing what was necessary.
The torment had to end. His body was cramping up. If he didn’t make a move soon his muscles would stiffen further. He had to unearth his compass and find higher ground. And his cigarettes. A nice long drag off a Lucky was what he really craved. He squatted on the jungle floor, gripping the M1. There was no guarantee anyone would find him. If he wanted to find his way back, it was up to him. The sun was going down. His weapon was primed and ready. And he’d waited for his squad long enough.
A sprinkling of stars surrounded the moon. Blades of long, thin clouds slid across the sky. He cradled the carbine in his arms, keeping its muzzle off the ground, slithering through the undergrowth, moving one limb at a time, first his right elbow, then his left knee, snaking towards the crescent-shaped log, his only visual reference.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a glimmer of moon illuminate something. A thin, delicate strand running horizontally, a foot above the jungle floor. He froze. The high-pitched whine of a dragonfly filled his ears. He followed the line from the left to the right, where it angled off to the ground. It was a trip wire, connected to a stake. He considered creeping around it, but after remembering the map Owens had gestured to and the network of feeder trenches and alternate routes, he realized that even if he did find the trail beyond the log it would intersect with a maze of additional trails. All of which could be heavily mined. He decided to forget the rally point and find a more direct route back to the MLR—to the south.
He slithered backwards for several yards, retreating from the wire. Worming through more tangled weeds and briars, he pressed up from the ground, slipped off his rucksack and unearthed his compass. He held it up in the feeble light, expecting to find magnetic north. But he couldn’t even find the needle—it was obscured by condensation. He stared at the compass, suspecting it was yet another piece of leftover World War II equipment. A few probes of his finger confirmed that its silicon rubber cap had worn away, allowing moisture to enter and fog up the glass.
South. That was his destination. He gazed up at the heavens, looking for the north star. There were times back home when he gazed up at the stars—during clear nights when the steel mills weren’t blanketing the sky with their sooty emissions—so after the clouds swept past he was able to locate the Big Dipper. He followed the line between the two outermost stars until he found the gleaming point of Polaris low on the horizon. He took a few moments to secure his gear and blacken his face and the back of his hands with clumps of muddy earth, slipping into the foliage.
As the blood coursed through his body, invigorating his stiff, worn muscles, he felt the two extremes of combat: being paralyzed with fear or utterly invincible. He’d learned how to quell his emotions, so most of the time he hovered between those two extremes, in a state of rote functionality. But still the fear returned, the dread of imagining how his life could end at any second, and it was a constant battle to push it away.
Death came when you least expected it, so he expected it all times. He fixed his gaze on the immediate, scanning ever-shifting shades of jungle, planning each step, but thoughts of hostile forces never left his mind. Every quiver of leaf or flurry of animal made him imagine their hordes assembling in the dark, ready to pounce.
The enemy did not have advanced weaponry, but they were crafty, and they knew the land and the fields of fire. When they blew their shrill brass bugles and demonic whistles, brandishing burp guns and bayonets as they charged, it was like a million-pointed spear, an infinite number of fighters coming in wave after wave, without end. They were either a massive force or a small unit lurking in the shadows, moving through the jungle like phantoms.
It didn’t matter. The enemy was always out there. Where he was going was a more critical matter. But as the squad’s FO, if anyone could find his way out it was him. He hadn’t asked to be the forward observer, but when Owens had chosen him, he wasn’t surprised, for he was one of only a half dozen squad members who were unmarried and married guys never put their asses on the line by walking point. The fact that he could draw was another reason why he’d been chosen as scout, for sector sketches of terrain, possible ambush sites, and enemy equipment were valuable intelligence assets.
He’d always thought a pathfinder had to be a hard charger, some crazy, gung-ho Audie Murphy wannabee who wanted a chest full of medals, but the more he grew into the role, the more he realized that discipline, rational thinking, and self-reliance were the qualities required—all traits he’d developed in the sweltering inferno of U.S. Steel, where he’d worked four to twelves in the blast furnace, another place where one slight misstep spelled disaster.
The land was lush and primeval, mythic in scale and proportion. It was August and the moist tropical air and lack of wind created a listless, trance-like atmosphere. Sometimes it felt like he was in a dream as he threaded through the jungle. Despite the otherworldly sensation, his every move was calculated. Before advancing, he searched for a defining feature of vegetation or terrain, and after locating it he planned the best route; one with cover and concealment. Then the process began anew as he moved point by point through the valley.
In the close quarters of the jungle, walking upright was impossible. He crept low to the ground, crouch-crawling, slipping through the vines, fallen trees and tangled undergrowth. There were times when he advanced on all fours or squirmed on his back, scrambling under logs, through crevices, or around moss-covered rocks and gnarled roots. The key was staying balanced, maintaining a low profile, and never sacrificing safety for progress.
After the rising sun evaporated the mist, he found a break in the canopy where the light cascaded down, and he could assess the shadows. He checked his compass, but the condensation remained. He considered tossing it aside, but with his luck if he made it back and reported it missing, the Army might charge him for it. After all, these were the same rear echelon bean counters who had demanded that the whole platoon “police the battlefield” and pick up spent shell casings for salvage, an order so asinine it didn’t ever register a response when Owens had issued it.
He slogged up and down various grades, using the stock of the M1 to prop himself over rocks and fallen branches, the ever-present cloud of mosquitos following along. Sometimes they dove into his ear and once he was bitten on his left eyelid, which began to swell and grow inflamed whenever he rubbed it to relieve the itch. He crossed a few streams and decided to follow one of the larger ones, padding along its sandy bank. Driftwood washed clean of its bark and faded by the sun marked the shore, interwoven among the rocks, clutching them in giant, bony fingers. Near the shards of a blown apart jon boat, he paused to refill his canteen. Water was plentiful even if it had parasites and increased his odds of getting malaria. If he didn’t have it already.
Food was an afterthought. It didn’t matter, because after four days of being on his own, the sensation of hunger had vanished. He knew that the body could function for weeks, living on adrenaline, hydration, and reserves of bodily fat, not that he had any at a wiry 145 pounds. And besides, he was no stranger to hunger. He’d grown up with hunger, for after his father died from a heart attack when he was only eight years old and his family went on public assistance during the Great Depression, the meals came sparingly.
After winding around a bend, the stream plunged into rapids. The sandy shoreline turned rockier as the forested bank became a short but steep cliff. Heading downstream from the opposite side would be a better bet. He picked his way over the shingly rocks, inching into the current. As he reached the midway point the sky opened up, revealing a gorge, flanked by two towering crags looming upstream. Dread plummeted into his stomach. He was wide open, completely exposed. He had to find cover ASAP.
Before he pushed the fear away, he heard the crack of gunfire. Bullets whistled past. Zing zing zing, brrrp, brrpp!! He sprinted, lifting his legs out of the water, gunfire ricocheting off logs and jagged river rocks. Splashes of water filled his eyes, but he charged ahead.
Everything was a blur. Bullets rained down. Something hot and sharp tore into his left arm. He spun to his left, falling behind a boulder. The zing zing zings continued, interspersed with shorter, heavier bursts. He tried to count the rounds, to tell whether they were burp guns, the crash of rifles or the chatter of machine guns. From the sheer volume he concluded it was all three.
Blood from his wounded arm rolled down to his fingers. As the current tore past, he clung to the boulder, trying to spot the enemy. They were either concealed in the jungle or perched high above on the cliff. Or they were pointing their bayonets right at him. When the salvo ended, he shot out from behind the rock. But when he bolted forward, he felt a tightening sensation around his left shoulder before it went slack as the rucksack’s frayed straps broke. He saw the pack bobbing in the water and lunged after it, but his fingers could only graze it before it was swept away.
He’d also lost his helmet. But he still had his weapon. He braced the carbine against his hip and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle exploded in a starburst of fire as he unleashed a sustained volley. Each burst sent shockwaves of white-hot pain into his arm. He fired again, scrambling through the water. More bullets zinged past. He kept his finger on the trigger and only when he reached the opposite shore did the carbine settle down, coughing and shuddering as its magazine emptied itself.
He winced, gazing at his left arm. A flap of ragged skin hung off his triceps, carving out a three-inch divot between shoulder and elbow. Blood pulsed in a slow but steady stream. Grimacing, he tore off a strip of his pant leg and dabbed the wound, applying direct pressure. He kept his mind blank as he wrapped the impromptu bandage around the gash. When the wound was covered, he flexed his arm, testing its range of movement, and was relieved to find that he could still maneuver it. The wound was messy and ached like hell, but it was superficial. Still, without disinfectant, sulfa powder or first aid, infection was a grave threat.
But the wound was the least of his worries. It had been six days since he’d been separated from his unit. His ears throbbed from the fire fight, and he felt lightheaded, as if he were underwater. His fingers twitched and he could not stop trembling. He knew about men who were “shaken,” men who’d seen so much action that they could only gaze ahead with dead, soulless eyes and thousand-mile stares, and he wondered if he would suffer the same fate.
As he hid in the undergrowth, he couldn’t help thinking of how this madness began, of the afternoons he spent as a boy in the Roosevelt Theatre watching grainy newsreel footage of paratroopers landing at Omaha Beach, Arnhem and Corregidor and how fascinated he’d been by the sight of men with hundred-pound packs and shiny black Thompson submachine guns leaping out of planes, drifting down from the heavens, bringing death from above. It was the most majestic thing he had ever seen; a triumph of engineering, Davinci’s parachute sketch brought to life in the 20th century. And now here he was, two years after enlisting, face deep in the mud of some forgotten valley.
He remembered that fateful day in the mill, too. The day he’d asked his foreman if there was another job he could have besides being a laborer. “You know where your shovel is,” his foreman had said. After faking his birth certificate at age 14 to work eight-hour shifts until midnight, five days a week, on top of school. After earning four years of seniority before he was eighteen, and that was the reaction? He’d quit on the spot. A month later, he joined the Army, to see the world, earn cash to send home to his mother, and bring his childhood fascination with paratroopers to life.
“Mission accomplished,” he thought, creeping out of a stand of ferns. As he bent his frame upwards, he noticed that his fatigues were starting to droop and were little more than filthy, sweat-stained rags. He found another area where the canopy thinned and once again discerned where south was, pausing to drink from his canteen. But right as he raised it to his lips, he heard something. A stirring. He froze, straining his ears. His throat grew tighter, and the sweat quickened on his brow.
It was the enemy. He could hear their lilting, staccato language. The rustling grew louder, followed by footsteps. He detected a strong smell of garlic or sour cabbage. He pressed himself against a tree, crouching behind a cluster of dangling vines.
He held his breath, gripping the M1 with his trigger hand while searching for his grenades with the other. He heard bantering before spotting the profiles of two enemy troops through a sliver of open foliage. They were slight in build and wore baggy, mustard-colored uniforms and cloth caps emblazoned with a red star. They were gesturing, pointing to the left and right. From the short barrels and drum magazines of their weapons, he knew they carried burp guns. He hoped they hadn’t spotted his trail of blood.
He shielded himself behind the tree. More of the enemy tramped up. They were all around now. He thought of surrendering, of begging for mercy and becoming a POW, but the odds were that once they saw the faded but still legible “187th Regimental Combat Team” insignia stitched onto his vest, they would know he was Airborne and execute him on the spot.
All of a sudden his mind spun in a kaleidoscope of memories: his mother hovering over the Quality stove in the apartment on Filmore Street, preparing an Easter dinner of roasted lamb and spanakopita, the clack of billiard balls on a green felt table as he and his brother Spiro played nine-ball, the awards he’d won for the isometric drawings he made in drafting class, the smoke-filled games of poker with Armenta and Katchitoroff and Romanski, the various faces from his school years, the coaches and teachers and girlfriends and neighborhood chums and it made him want to cry because he wanted to see all of it again. He wanted to live. He wanted to go home. He wanted to sleep on a feather bed instead of the cold hard ground; he wanted to eat digestible food and get his own car and see a drive-in movie and go to college and get married and have kids and one day maybe even travel to Greece.
He reached into his pocket and caressed his worry beads. They were a gift from his father, and he’d always thought they were kind of old world corny, on the same level as cheap costume jewelry, but they’d gotten him this far.
They enemy was steps away. He could hear them breathing. He closed his eyes, readying for the bullet or bayonet. And then, the small group of them filed past, not even bothering to look over at him.
The rain drummed down. For the past seven days, he’d been fortunate to avoid them, but even this late, in August, the monsoons flared up. Without his poncho he was soaked to the bone. He pressed on, his arm throbbing and nearly immobile and his left eyelid crusting over from the insect bite.
In the morning the ground turned to a quagmire of sticky red mud that clung to his boots. Now and then he stopped to scrape it away, but ten feet later the mud would build up again. The only good thing about the soft ground was that it silenced his movements. He still had a canteen full of water from the streams but drank from it only when his thirst was too powerful to ignore. A full canteen would not slosh around. And besides, the last time he’d taken a sip, he’d remembered the story Trowbridge told him about the GI who’d filled his canteen in a mountain brook to satisfy his thirst, only to discover a pile of bloated bodies floating fifty feet upstream.
The rain would make the rivers and creeks rise so fast that bridges would disappear, bunkers would be flooded and all vehicular activity on the muddy, one lane roads would slow to a crawl. He imagined the mortar pits back at the MLR, whose sandbagged walls could do nothing to impede the entry of water and how his platoon was probably bailing them out with spent ammo cannisters in a futile effort to stay dry. It was never easy to stay warm or dry and he shivered from the dampness. His thin wool socks had rotted away, causing his boots to chafe against his ankles and feet, forming blisters on blisters. As night fell, he heard his teeth chattering and worried about hypothermia. It was his seventh day without food, but he didn’t feel the faintest stab of hunger.
When the downpour ceased, the marshy swale led to blasted tree trunks, exploded sandbags and remnants of fortifications. He skirted a stagnant canal, using the carbine as a crutch, dodging the claws of naked tree limbs, passing a paddy dike where a lone, emaciated cow stood buried up to midleg in a ruined rice field. He hobbled up the latest hill, noticing a few morphine syrettes and dried plasma tubes amid the spent shell casings and still-smoking craters.
The drizzle returned, a fine mist veiling the hillside. Atop the scorched knoll, he crept past the shell holes, making note of the nearest crater in case a barrage happened and he had to leap into one. After scrambling across a gully, he scrounged around the tangles of comm wire and shattered grenade boxes and there, among the weeds and scattered rocks, he saw it—a four-foot wide opening carved into the earth.
If allied forces had dug the foxhole, there might be something buried. Gear, ammo or supplies that a patrol didn’t want to hump back to the MLR. He fell to his knees and began scraping the rocky red soil away. The hardened ground assaulted his chafed and bleeding knuckles, but with his one good arm he dug and dug and right when he thought about giving up, his fingers struck something.
In the dank murkiness of the hole, he struggled to detect what it was. A few more scrapes revealed a metal canister. It was too small to be a mine so he pulled it out of the dirt to see that it was a can of C-rations. He kept digging and uncovered another one, and a third one. He brushed the three cans together and crooked his elbow around them and slid his body out of the foxhole, reverse crawling until he was back on the hillside.
It was then that he heard footsteps. He dropped the C-rations, grabbed his carbine and spun around. Draped in raingear, a patrol slowly materialized, emerging from the mist. He thought he was imagining it; before realizing they were GIs. He could see their dome-shaped helmets as they rounded the crest of the hill. He thought about rushing towards them, but any sudden move and they might shoot him.
And besides, he was beyond movement. With his one good eye, he squinted up, before hearing his cracked lips whisper the first words he’d spoken in eight days.
“Help. Please. I’m alive. Alive!”
Through a mixture of sweat and tears, he saw two bewildered soldiers peer down and yell something, before a bespectacled medic ran up, pulled a cotton compress out of his pack, and knelt to lay a finger on his neck.
With their ponchos flaring in the wind like the wings of predatory birds, the patrol had returned from a night op and were astonished to find him, having no clue who he was or what he was doing there, wounded and alone, clawing around an abandoned foxhole near the summit of hill 119. But after their radio man called the CP and learned that he was the missing Airborne paratrooper from the 187th Regimental Combat Team, they’d sprang into action, administering first aid and fluids before transporting him back to the MLR.
From there, he was tagged as wounded in combat and loaded into the back of an empty deuce-and-a-half ammo truck whose route passed the battalion aid station. As the truck rumbled by the paddies and terraced fields, streams of refugees heading south lined both sides of the rutted mountain road. Women clutched babies and older men lugged A-frames loaded with their meager possessions, dodging columns of troops and jeeps hauling Howitzers rumbling by in the opposite direction.
After several miles, the devastated landscape of the front turned to red dirt country and green, forested hills. The thunder of artillery faded, replaced by pine-scented breezes and a surreal chattering of birds. When the deuce-and-a-half groaned to a halt near a group of neat looking corrugated huts, he was stunned to see a PX flanked by several long refrigeration trucks and pallets of beer. After the staff checked his dog tags and confirmed his I.D., he was admitted to the field hospital, to be administered antibiotics, have his wounds cleaned and sterilized, as well as be treated for heat prostration, exposure, and exhaustion.
The first few days were spent sleeping, since he’d been given Nembutal and other sedatives. Besides, the ward, crammed with soldiers who’d been burned, blinded, or horribly maimed, wasn’t an atmosphere he was eager to experience. The unearthly moans and smell of blood, urine, and pus were enough stimulation. About the only thing he did want to experience beyond water and the constant drip of an IV was nicotine, an urge that was satisfied after begging one of the nurses to let him have a few puffs of a Chesterfield one morning.
On his third day in the ward, he felt alert enough to ponder what had happened, and the thought that kept invading his mind was the Army maxim of “No man left behind.” In a cadence of memories, he remembered the men whom he’d never left behind, the squad members who’d screamed for their mothers as their blood spilled into the mud. How he’d comforted them as they took their last breaths, helping the corpsmen drag them onto the stretchers. Even when troops were KIA they went back for the remains. He remembered the GI who’d been killed at Chosin and how his unit had gone back for the body, only to find it frozen into the ice so solidly they had to blast him out with two charges and haul him back in sections.
One morning, he awoke to find a tight-mouthed, doughy-looking NCO standing at the foot of his bed, holding a clipboard. “Wayner,” it said, stenciled on his pressed fatigues. Three stripes with one rocker beneath indicated that he was a staff sergeant. As the sergeant’s soft pale hands and plump fingers rustled through sheets of onion skin paperwork, his face was resolute and without expression.
“On behalf of the Secretary of the Army, I extend my heartfelt gratitude,” he stated. A few cots away, a gut-shot Marine issued a wet, gurgling cry. The sergeant waited for the outburst to fade before continuing. “A telegram that you were missing was sent to your mother over a week ago, but you’ll be relieved to know that a second message detailing your return will be sent tomorrow.”
“So,” he said. “What happened.”
“What do you mean exactly?”
“At the ORP.”
“A patrol must maintain squad and fire team integrity.”
“Integrity.”
“Combat is always suboptimal. What can go wrong does.”
“That’s an understatement.”
The sergeant looked at him, issuing a thin smile. “But you will be happy to learn that as a result of being wounded in action by forces that opposed the United States, you are eligible for the Purple Heart.”
Hearing the word “happy” amused him. He stared back, searching for a response. “Well,” he said, “that’s something.”
“Indeed it is,” the NCO said, jotting something down on his clipboard, before tearing off a sheet of paper and dropping it into his lap.
“What’s this?”
“DA form 638-F. Show it to Staff Sergeant Simpson when you get to HQ in Munsan-ni. He’s there on Tuesdays, between 1100 and 1400 hours.”
“Munsan-ni?”
“It’s a ten-miler,” Sergeant Wayner said. “But convoys travel there twice daily, so you should be able to hitch a ride.”
He eyed the form for a long moment. Across the ward, an eighteen-year-old kid from Kansas City woke up to see that his legs were missing. When the kid began screaming, the gut-shot Marine joined in and for a good minute their cries echoed off the corrugated metal walls before the nurses silenced them with morphine.
He listened to their syrupy grunts, before flexing upwards and using his one good arm to sweep DA form 638-F into his clutches. He crumbled it in his fist and hurled it onto the floor.
“There’s your Purple Heart.”
As he issued the words, he was surprised at how unemotional he sounded. At how he had maintained his composure.
He had learned many things here. How to subdue fear and remain calm. How to fight and survive. But most of all, he’d learned to never rely on anyone but himself.
Anything less would be suboptimal.
-Published in Line Of Advance literary journal, 2022.
END