The Man Who Walked Away From War, Part VI

Wizard and Billy D returned as Thompson walked away. Wizard sat heavily on the pile of sandbags.

       “Man,” he said, “it is one hot motherfucker out here.”

       Billy D motioned at Thompson. “Who’s that?”

       I shrugged. “Some REMF clerk wanted to know if he could buy war souvenirs. Like we got nothing better to do than look for gook shit to sell.”

       Wizard laughed. “This war sure got some crazy motherfuckers.”

       “Yep,” I said. “That it does.”

       Billy D noticed the envelope in my hand. “We get mail call?”

       “Hmm? Nah. A letter went to battalion by mistake.”

       Wizard lay back on the sandbags. He closed his eyes. “Fuckin mail clerks.”

       I stood, saying, “Gonna check my eyelids, see if they got any holes. Wake me up when Hunter gets back. He’ll damn sure make us finish the sandbags.” Walking toward the tent, I called over my shoulder, “I’m springing for beer tonight.”

       Inside the hooch, I sat on my cot, staring at the envelope, wondering if I really wanted to read what Moreland had to say. After a time, I ripped open the envelope and took out the single sheet of paper.

       “Robby,” Moreland wrote. “I guess Howard has told you what we did. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this. I owe you an explanation. You were the only one in the squad who ever treated me decently.”

       I lay the letter on my cot and lit a cigarette. Treated him decently? Did Moreland really think that, or was it another of his bullshit ideas? Deciding it didn’t matter now, I picked up the letter.

       “I got tired, Robby. Tired of humping the bush, tired of the heat, tired of the fear. Yeah, I know. Everybody gets afraid now and then, even if we don’t admit it. Even when somebody starts a story, ‘Man, you remember we were up by Tay Ninh City and the gooks mortared us? I was scared shitless ... ’ Even then we don't really mean we were any more afraid than anybody else.

       “The thing is, Robby, I found a way out and I took it. Initiative. Isn’t that what they tell us separates American soldiers from soldiers in any other army? That we take the initiative? You read A Farewell to Arms.”

       (Moreland underlined the title, just like he was taught to do back in high school.)

       “That guy took the initiative and left the war. He wasn’t any more afraid than any other soldier, maybe less than most. But he got tired of the war, and he left it. He walked away. That’s what I did. I’m not asking forgiveness or even that you understand. I owe you an explanation, that’s all. I got tired of it.

       “Phu Bat is a nice little town, and the guys in the company are OK. They don’t know anything about the bush, and that’s fine with me, because I don’t have to listen to bullshit stories about how bad things were before I got here and how the new guys don’t know how screwed up things are. All I know is that twice a week I drive a 3/4-ton truck in convoy down the coast to Nha Trang and pick up stuff and bring it back to Phu Bat. The other four days, I pull maintenance on trucks, maybe drive around town, taking stuff from here to there. Nobody does any work on Sundays, unless there’s a serious maintenance problem.

       “There’s a beach here. It’s a small beach, but it’s OK. The gooks don’t mortar us or pull any shit like that.”

       And then I read the kicker in Moreland’s attempt at drawing me further into his conspiracy.

       “I hope you don’t mind, but I gave your address to Charlene. I told her you don’t have a girl back home, and said maybe she would write to you. I sort of lied about Charlotte and Charlene. I never did both of them. Charlotte and I have been doing it since we were seventeen, two years now, but I never did Charlene. The stuff about the Friddles was true, though. I wouldn’t lie about anything like that.

       “If you get the chance, write and tell me how everybody’s getting along.”

       He closed the letter with,

       “Your friend,

       “Keith Moreland.”

       I mashed out my cigarette in a cutoff soda can that served as an ash tray. Smoke curled in the hot air. Shit, I thought. Moreland ... Moreland, you dufus. I was angry then, angry at Moreland for thinking he could just walk away from it all, angry because he had walked away from it, and all it took was the right connections. To walk away from it, all you had to do was know the right man in the right place, a dufus personnel clerk who knew how to use the system. Jesus. And I remembered what I had told Thompson. We hump the bush. We do it because The Man tells us to, because we have to. Thompson would never understand humping the bush, could not possibly comprehend the day to day drudgery of heat and heavy rucks, would never understand the fear that came with doing the job. Right then I wanted Thompson in front of me, standing in that hot tent, sweat pouring off his face, so I could tell him a simple fact. It’s the job, Man. It’s the job, and that’s what we do. But even if I told him, he wouldn’t understand.

       Right then, too, I wasn’t certain of which one to be angrier at -- Moreland who left, or Thompson who printed phony orders and forged an officer’s signature. Or maybe I should have been angry with myself. When Moreland didn’t come back to our position, I knew what he had done, but I did nothing, I told no one. I was just as guilty as Moreland and Thompson.

       And yet, I asked myself, what good would it have done? If I had told Sergeant Reid of my suspicions, if the LT had radioed back to the CO, if Moreland had been caught at base camp preparing to leave ... What good would it have done? We were so short of men that the battalion commander would have done no more than slap Moreland’s wrist. Moreland would be back in the squad, and we would be stuck with him and his disinclination to do the job. No, I convinced myself, we were better off with Moreland gone. And, he certainly was better off in Phu Bat, where there was a beach and a truck to drive.

       That all happened five months ago. I didn’t get another letter from Moreland. Thompson and I saw each other a couple of times at base camp, when the platoon was in from the bush. We said nothing to each other.