The Man Who Walked Away From War, Part III

       After that night, Moreland and I got paired up when the platoon dug in. I don’t know why it happened. Before then, Hunter and Moreland shared a hole, but Hunter said he and Billy D would pair off, so Moreland and I were assigned to the same hole. Call it luck or fate or whatever, or maybe Hunter was tired of putting up with Moreland. When I thought about it later, I remembered, too, that Moreland and I always were one behind the other when walking the bush. Sometimes he was in front, sometimes I was. And when we went on line, he was always beside me. It gets to be that way; you stick close to your partner. Even if you don’t particularly like him, you stick close to him.

       All that nearness certainly didn’t make me like Moreland anymore, nor any less. He was always there, that’s all.

       It was about three weeks later when Moreland told me about the grunt who walked away from the war. The platoon was eighteen days in the bush, looking for gooks, but not finding any. In a way, that was okay. Nobody stepped on a mine or hit a tripwire. We didn’t take any sniper fire. On the other hand, eighteen days of wired nerves is not good for the system. We all were a bit edgy.

       The LT picked a place for our NDP (Night Defensive Position), near a clearing, as always, so the Hueys could land and drop off a hot meal, deliver mail, maybe even bring clean uniforms.

The night Moreland told his second true story, the platoon got to the NDP around 1600. By 1800, Moreland and I had our foxhole about finished, all the sandbags filled and limbs for overhead cover. I dropped the last sandbag on the limbs, then stretched the tired from my muscles.

       Moreland sat on the row of sandbags that made the front wall of the position. He lit a cigarette. “There was a grunt walked away from the war.”

       I bent over, taking kinks from my back. “Oh?”

       “Yeah,” Moreland said. “Just walked away.”

       “Wait a minute,” I said. “This isn't one of those First Cav, Hundred and First stories, is it?”

       Moreland glanced up. “No. Why?”

       “Because every weird story I’ve ever heard, and I mean really weird, happens up north, Central Highlands, where the Cav is or the Hundred and First.”

       “Naw, Man.” Moreland shook his head. “Naw, it ain’t about them. It happened down here. The guy was in the Michelin, maybe Hobo Woods.”

       I lit a cigarette and sat on the sandbags. “Okay. Another thing. This grunt can’t walk away. This is a helicopter war, remember? Maybe he flew away, but he didn't walk.”

       Moreland got a look on his face. “How he left don’t matter. Well, it did to him, but the thing is, the story loses ... loses validity if you say he flew away.” He shook his head again. “No. It has to be he walked away.”

       “Okay. So this grunt walked away from the war. How’d he do it?”

       “On the evening resupply chopper. He ...”

       “See? He flew away.”

       “Fuck, Man! Would you just listen?”

       “Okay. Sorry.”

       “It’s like ... What’s that book where this American is in Italy and it’s the first world war?”

       “A Farewell to Arms,” I said. “You read that book?”

       “I ain’t stupid, Robby.” He stripped his cigarette, scattering tobacco over the dirt and rolling the paper into a ball. He held the ball between his thumb and index finger a moment, then thumped the ball, and the paper made a high arch, like a baseball hit deep. “Wouldn’t you say that guy walked away from his war?”

       “Yeah, I guess so.”

       “He took a train and then rowed a boat across that lake, but he still walked away, didn’t he.”

       “Okay. I see your point.”

       “This grunt gets on the evening resupply chopper, tells the crew chief he’s going on R&R.” Moreland looked at me, probably to make sure I was listening. “He waited until the chopper was about to take off, and then he grabbed his ruck and ran for the chopper.”

       “Did he take his weapon?”

       “Of course. He’s a grunt.”

       “And the pilots didn’t ask any questions?”

       Moreland snorted. “You know pilots, Man. Those airedales, they don’t like sittin on the ground out here. They drop off stuff, they’re gone.”

       I nodded. “Okay. So this grunt takes the chopper back to base camp?”

       Moreland nodded. “Yep. They let him off at a helicopter landing pad, and he ... Well, for a minute or so he doesn’t know what to do. He hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

       What the grunt decides, Moreland said, is that he can’t go to his own company area. The first sergeant might see him, ask how come he’s at base camp and not in the bush.

       “Then,” Moreland continued, “he remembers a clerk he knows at battalion headquarters. A personnel clerk. They met on the plane coming over, and hit it off, you know? They talked about cars and girls and stuff on the plane. So, this guy walks to battalion headquarters hooches, finds this clerk, asks the clerk if he’d type up orders transferring him someplace else.”

       “And the clerk agrees.”

       “Yeah,” Moreland nodded. “See, not only did they have common interests, but they were from the same ... Both of them were from eastern Indiana, and they knew some of the same people, had even played basketball against each other in high school, if you can believe that.”

       “Strange things happen.”

       “They do,” Moreland said. “They weren’t starters, mostly sat on the bench, so they never met face-to-face ‘til the flight over. The clerk asks where does this guy want to go, but the guy doesn’t know. Not Saigon. That’s too close to where he was, and a place that big, people are always asking questions. The clerk says there’s a book at personnel, has the location of every American unit in Vietnam. So they go to personnel and look up units and cities and where the cities are. It has to be farther north, ‘cause this guy doesn’t want anyplace close by, and he damn sure doesn’t want the Delta.”

       “I hear that.”

       “So they find this place on the coast. A small town, maybe five thousand people. This guy’s from Indiana, remember, and he’s never seen the ocean.”

       “Okay.”

       Moreland lit another cigarette. “There’s a transportation company there, trucks. This grunt can drive anything that has wheels, so he says to the clerk, ‘What the fuck. I’ll go there.’ And the clerk cuts transfer orders.” Moreland dropped into the hole.

       “Wait a minute,” I protested. “What happened then?”

       Moreland shrugged as he opened his ruck. “The guy drove trucks. Came time for him to go home, he went.” He pulled out a piece of clear plastic folded around pieces of paper. “I got pictures of Charlotte and Charlene. Want to see em?” He climbed from the hole. “These are extras. They sent me two sets. I carry one set in my steel pot.”

       I opened the plastic carefully, one fold at a time. Somebody shows you a picture of his girl (or girls), he has the plastic just the way he wants it. You don’t want to tear the plastic, and when you fold it back up, you make sure there are no new creases. With the plastic unfolded, I looked at the first picture. Charlotte and Charlene, both blonde, smiled big smiles in the close-up. The second shot was from the waist up. The girls wore yellow pullover shirts, and they had an arm around each other’s shoulder, smiling those same smiles.

       Moreland pointed at the picture. “That’s Charlotte on the left.”

       “They could be twins,” I said. “And cheerleaders.”

       Moreland nodded. “For a fact.” He grinned. “They sure fill up those shirts, don’t they.”

       “Well,” I said, “I did sort of notice that.”

       “Yeah.” He punched my arm. “You could get lost between those, couldn’t you.”

       “For a fact.” I folded the plastic.

       “Keep ‘em,” Moreland said.

       “What?”

       He waved a hand. “I got a set.”

       “No, Man. They’re ... ”

       “It’s okay.” He glanced at the ground, then back at me. “You don’t have a girl back home, do you.”

       “There’s a couple ... No.”

       “Keep the pictures,” Moreland said. “They’ll give you an idea of what we’re fighting for. Or against. Maybe just a reason to ... ” He shrugged. “I’m going up to the CP. I got outgoing mail.”

       Moreland picked up his rifle and his ruck and walked off before I could say anything else about the pictures. I lit another cigarette and sat on the sandbags. Again unfolding the plastic, I studied the girls who weren’t twins or cheerleaders, but could have been both.