Place of duty

         Robert Kincaid came back to the war because of a woman. Kincaid told the story his fifth day with the platoon, the night of the day Hueys came to an LZ and took the platoon to Fire Base Angelique.

        The platoon had been more then a month in the bush, and all of us looked forward to down-time, even if comforts at Angelique consisted only of showers and a small PX tent. Water in the showers was warm if you got there in the afternoon, when the sun heated the steel containers that held water for the showers. If you got there too late, the water was new and cold.

        Fire Base Angelique covered four hundred acres of a large clearing northwest of Tay Ninh City. Jungle surrounded Angelique. The jungle was not as thick as in a Tarzan movie; large trees and underbrush mostly. A village once was in the clearing, and the cleared area had been rice paddies. The village was destroyed during the French war, almost fifteen years before. There were two wells where the village once was. Now, water purification trucks sat near the wells. The trucks were equipped with pumps and filters and chemicals to purify water pumped from the wells and into two large rubber-lined containers the size of swimming pools. The armored cav troops of Second Squadron and the artillery batteries each sent a water truck to the pools every day. Operators of the water purification detachment filled the trucks, and the trucks returned to the troop areas and battery areas and filled the shower containers and water trailers. In dry season, Chinook helicopters brought additional water in 500-gallon rubber blivets.

        Along with the cav troops and the rifle platoon, four artillery batteries occupied Angelique. The artillery batteries had 105-millimeter towed howitzers, 155-millimeter self-propelled howitzers, eight-inch howitzers and 175-millimeter long guns. The sixteen guns fired daily at pre-planned targets or on-call targets when units in contact with NVA or VC required support and at night fired harassment and interdiction (H&I) at places VC or NVA might use as assembly areas. The 175-millimeter guns sometimes fired on called targets in Cambodia.

        The afternoon of the first day the platoon was at Angelique, the troop supply truck made runs to the PX tent. Three large CONEX containers filled with cases of beer sat near the PX tent. The beer was Pabst Blue Ribbon, Hamm’s, Carling Black Label and Miller High Life. Two other CONEXes held cases of soda -- Fresca and Tab mostly -- and a few cases of Coke if you got there early enough. Every soldier had a ration card and could buy two cases of beer a week. That first day, Hunter and Wizard volunteered to buy beer. Billy D, Kincaid and I bought sausages, beef jerky, crackers and cookies. Next day, we would switch purchases.

        After settling in the squad tent and cleaning weapons and scraping mud from jungle fatigues, we waited for dark. Sergeant Reid and the LT wouldn’t let us drink during the day.

        After supper, Bull and Snooze went off to the NCO club, a large tent with a plywood floor and a bar, a dozen or so tables with chairs, and a stereo system. The other five of us in Second Squad went to the bunker beside the tent. Wizard went inside the bunker and passed up a poncho buttoned together and the neck hole and bottom string tied and filled with beer and ice. Kincaid and I had scrounged the ice from the mess tent. Outside the wire, there were beer stands, small businesses run by Vietnamese civilians. Those places sold ice in long blocks made at ice houses in the nearest big town and brought to the stands in Lambretta cycle buses or regular trucks. The blocks of ice the Vietnamese sold were packed in rice husks for insulation and always had bits of rice husk stuck to them, even though the Vietnamese washed off the ice before selling it. Nobody put ice bought at the stands in a canteen cup, but ice from mess halls was clean enough to use that way. That night, we didn’t intend to put ice in our cups, but it was good to have clean ice and not the Vietnamese kind made with water from who knew where.

        Billy D took the poncho from Wizard and lay it on top of the bunker. He untied the string at the bottom of the poncho and passed out cans of cold beer. Hunter always had the church key, and he passed it around. Everybody took that first sip of beer, the best sip, and lit cigarettes, except Kincaid. He didn’t smoke. “Bad for your health,” he said when somebody offered him a cigarette his first day with the company. Hunter laughed when Kincaid said cigarettes were bad for your health. “Sheeit,” Hunter said. “You see anything around here ain’t bad for your health?” Kincaid had smiled and said, “No sense pushing the odds.”

        We sat on the bunker in a kind of half circle, facing out, and Hunter sitting on the middle top of the bunker beside the poncho. The beer was good, and the cigarette I smoked didn’t have that funky taste of out in the bush when the day was too hot and I’d already smoked too many cigarettes. In the bush, the only good cigarette was the first one of the morning, when I drank C-ration instant coffee from my canteen cup, or coffee cooked at the mess tent and brought out in a mermite can with the rest of breakfast when we got a hot meal.

        Nobody said anything for a while. The heat of the day was mostly gone. Night wasn’t yet dark enough for people on the perimeter to get spooky and start firing at VC who weren’t there or pop hand-held flares to try and see the VC who weren’t there. The night was too early, too, for VC sappers to sneak through the wire. VC sappers were good at that, usually waiting until after midnight, when people in the perimeter bunkers were sleepy. Sappers got through wire maybe fifty percent of the time. The really serious sappers stripped naked and eased between concertina and underneath tanglefoot, dragging satchel charges. When past the bunkers, good sappers would throw satchel charges into command bunkers if they found any. Ammunition dumps made good targets, too. Anything behind the perimeter bunkers was a good target, even if what blew up was a squad tent full of sleeping soldiers. Sappers hadn’t tried the wire at Angelique for a month or so.

        After a while, Hunter said, “We need more people. We’re short three.”

        Billy D said, “Shoot, I heard in the armored cav, sometimes they go out, they only got three people on the tracks. Supposed to have four, but they go out with three and nobody on one of the machine guns.”

        “You need somebody on all your guns,” Wizard said. “I wouldn’t want to go out, not have somebody on a gun.”

        Hunter said to Kincaid, “You’re the first new guy we got in two months. Course, you’re not exactly a new guy.”

        “I guess not,” Kincaid said.

        None of us knew much about Kincaid. He’d done a tour with the Americal, farther north. He was from Virginia, and the five days he spent in the bush before we came in to Angelique, we could tell he knew what he was doing.

        Billy D asked, “How was it in the Americal?”

        Kincaid took a sip of beer. “Fucked up. We worked a lot of villages. There’re more villages up north, near the coast. You go in a village, everybody hates you. They don’t look at you. It’s like you don’t exist.”

        “Hearts and minds,” Hunter said, and Kincaid laughed.

        “Fuck,” Wizard said, and the disgust in the word was our disgust. He made a weird laugh. “Like folks say, you grab em by the balls, their hearts and minds got to follow.”

         Kincaid said, “Where there aren’t villages, you get mines. Lots of mines. Sometimes it seemed we lost a man a day, people not watching where they put their feet. Down here, there aren’t many villages. You see somebody in the bush, most likely he’s NVA.”

        Wizard laughed. “When he’s dead, he’s NVA.”

        “There is that,” Kincaid said.

        Hunter asked the question we all wanted to ask. Hunter was that way. There was nothing oblique in his approach to anything. “Why’d you come back?”

        There was irony in Kincaid’s laugh. “Well, you might say it was because of a woman.”

        We paid attention then. All of us. Nobody in the squad had seen a round-eye since two doughnut dollies came to Angelique two months past. The girls were kind of cute, and they had light brown hair and eyes that smiled. They laughed a lot, too, and it had been far too long since anybody heard a girl laugh.

        “Uh-hunh,” Hunter said. “This woman, she had a boyfriend, maybe a husband, hunh. That’s the only reason a man’d come back to this shit.”

        “She was divorced,” Kincaid said. “I don’t know if she had a boyfriend.”

        Billy D said, “She was a older woman.” He shook his head. “They say a older woman, she knows what she’s doin.”

        “Who says that?” Wizard said. “Who’s this ‘they’ everybody talks about?” He turned in Billy D’s direction. Wizard and Billy D were always jawing at each other. “Somebody you know screwed a older woman, told you she knew what she was doin? Must’ve been somebody you know, cause I know you ain’t had no older woman.”

        Billy D couldn’t let the remark go by. “Hey, Man. You don’t know who I screwed, who I ain’t screwed. Maybe I screwed a older woman, that’s how come I know they know what they’re doin.”

        “You ain’t screwed a older woman, Billy D,” Wizard said. “I know you, Man. If you’d ever screwed a older woman, you woulda told us.”

        “Well, maybe I keep some shit to myself,” Billy D said. “Maybe I don’t tell you everythin.”

        “Sheeit,” Wizard said, but Hunter stopped the argument.

        “You two shut the fuck up,” Hunter said. “I asked Kincaid a simple question, you two butt in. I ain’t asked neither one of you shit, and you got to argue like what you think is important.”

        Wizard drew on his cigarette. Billy D sucked beer and then crumpled the can. “He started it. All’s I said ...”

        “I don’t care,” Hunter said. “Shut the fuck up and let Kincaid answer the question.”

        Kincaid smiled. “What was the question?” he said, and we all laughed, except Wizard and Billy D. Kincaid got another beer. Hunter passed the church key. “Thanks,” Kincaid said. He punched holes in the can, then handed the opener back to Hunter. “Like Billy D said, she was an older woman. About thirty-three, thirty-four. Somewhere in there.” He sipped at his beer and stared into the night.

        Wizard broke the silence. “What’d she look like?”

        “Tall,” Kincaid said. “Maybe five-foot eight. Slender. Red hair, green eyes.”

        “Man,” Billy D said. “A red-headed woman. They say ...”

        Hunter jumped in before Wizard could start the argument again. “Shut up, Billy D.” He turned toward Kincaid. “Tall woman, huh.”

        “Yeah,” Kincaid said. “She was a fine looking woman.” He sat on the edge of the bunker, his wrists hanging inside his knees. “I’ve always had a weakness for fine looking women.”

        Hunter laughed. “Who doesn’t?”

        “The thing is,” Kincaid said, “I just can’t turn down a fine looking woman.”

        “Well, shit,” Wizard said. “You Rudolph Fuckin Valentino or somethin? Women always crawlin all over you?” He looked up at me. “Tom, you ever turn down any? I mean, just because a girl ain’t some beauty queen or somethin?”

        I thought about the question a few seconds. “Nope. Don't remember ever telling a girl get lost cause she ain’t pretty enough.”

        Wizard laughed. “You took too much time thinkin, Tom. You been out with that many ugly girls?”

        “There ain’t no such thing, Wizard,” I said. “I mean, in my entire life of nineteen years, I’ve seen one ugly girl.”

        Wizard slapped a knee. “You ain’t been anywhere, then.”

        Hunter’s voice was quiet when he said, “Wizard.”

        “Yeah?”

        “Kincaid has the floor.”

        “Okay,” Wizard said. “Okay. Go ahead on, man. Tell us how fine women always throwin themselves at you, you got to beat em off with a stick.”

        Billy D didn't let that remark pass. “Ol Wizard knows all about beatin off.”

        “Billy D,” Hunter said, “I swear, between you and Wizard ... You just like my sister’s kids. Both of you. Don’t know when to shut up. If I have to say anything else, I’m really gonna be pissed off.”

        Billy D raised a hand. “Okay, Man. Okay.”

        Hunter looked at Wizard. Wizard raised both hands. “I ain’t sayin nothin.”

        “All right,” Hunter said. “I think you can tell us the rest, Kincaid.”

        “There’s not all that much to it,” Kincaid said. “After I left the Americal, I did my thirty days leave and reported to Fort Riley. In the middle of Kansas. It wasn’t where I expected to go, and it damned sure wasn’t what I put on my dream sheet. There’s Belvoir in Virginia, Camp Pickett and A.P. Hill. But I get sent to Kansas. After a while, I got tired of Stateside duty. Regular army shit, you know? A notice came down, the army needed people for escort duty. I put in for it, got accepted.”

        “So,” Hunter prodded.

        “It was strange at home,” Kincaid said. “It wasn’t like I expected it to be. Everything was different. Everybody was different. It was like a place I’d been before, but it didn’t feel like home.” He took a long swig of beer.

        Billy D said, “You see any girls? Ones you’d been out with, I mean.”

        “Yeah,” Kincaid nodded. “I did. But they were different. I didn’t ask any of them out.”

        That was a thing we didn’t want to hear, the girls back home were different. What we wanted when we got home was for everything to be the same. Except maybe people would appreciate what we had done, look up to us a little. We didn’t want any of that war hero stuff like some of the people from World War II did when somebody mentioned a name and some guy would say, “Yeah, he was a hero in the war.” More than anything else, we wanted the girls to say, “Wow, you’re back,” when we got home.

        Nobody said anything for a while after Kincaid said the girls were different. I drank at my beer, lit another cigarette, then said, “What kind of escort duty did you do?”

        Kincaid looked at the dark ground. “Body escort,” he said. “Funeral detail.”

        “Shit,” Wizard quietly said.

        That was another thing we didn’t want to know about, didn’t even think about.

        Wizard quickly said, “I don't mean you were wrong to take that kind of duty, Man.”

        Kincaid nodded. “I know. It got me out of regular duty. Inspections, guard duty, field exercises.” He laughed. “The company I was in, half the guys had just got back, they’re waiting to get out, and the army had us pulling field exercises. I don’t know what war they were training for. It wasn’t this one.” He drained his beer, got another can and punched holes in the top. “It wasn’t bad duty. Usually, there were eleven of us. An OIC or NCOIC, seven for the firing squad, two flag folders and a bugler for Taps. Six from the firing squad were pallbearers.” He laughed. “Remember what the drill sergeants used to say in basic? Fuck em all but nine. Six pallbearers, two road guards and one to count cadence. Sometimes we didn't need eleven. Sometimes the local VFW or American Legion provided the firing squad. Sometimes men from the guy’s family or his friends were pallbearers. Sometimes they’d have a kid from the high school band play Taps.”

        Billy D said, “My uncle J.T., his funeral was like that. The VFW did all that stuff.”

        “Yeah,” Kincaid said. “In towns where there was a VFW or Legion post, we were always invited for drinks. They wouldn’t let us pay. There were always girls and women, too. At the viewing and at the funeral. See, the service member’s body is never allowed to be alone. There has to be a soldier in uniform with the body at all times. That’s what the regs say, and that’s what we did. At least one of us was always with the body, even during viewing. That’s when it was worst, though. You get relatives there, and you know they’re asking themselves why it had to be him and not you. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, they’re always nice to you, but you know they’re wondering. I mean, we’re there, in Class A uniform, ribbons and all the accouterments, some of us with CIB’s, all of us with combat patches. We made it, why didn’t he? Anyway, my last one, six weeks ago, we were in this little town in Nebraska. Spring Hill, or something like that. I had the midnight til oh-two-hundred shift at the funeral home. The funeral home owner gave Sergeant Miller a key so we could get in and out. All the family had gone home about ten. It was around twelve-thirty when I heard a knock on the back door. I wasn’t supposed to leave the room, but I figured maybe it was somebody who needed in the funeral home. I went to the back and opened the door. A woman stood on the step. She was all in black. Black dress, black shoes, a little black hat and a black purse. She said her name was Verna, and she was an aunt of whoever it was in the casket. She said she knew visitation was over, but she had just got to town and would it be all right if she just stepped in for a minute or two. I said, yes, ma’am, that will be all right. I locked the door when she was in. I led her to the room. She stood there, looking at the casket. She asked if I would open the top part. I said I couldn’t to that. It was one of those remains not for viewing things. I said it in a nicer way than that. She said she understood. She started talking then, about how when she was growing up she didn’t like the town. Right after she graduated from high school, she went to Omaha, attended business school there. She got a job, met a man and got married. She said it didn’t work out, so she filed for divorce. She hadn’t been back to Spring Hill since the divorce. Her sister, Jimmy’s mother, frowned on divorce, she said. We talked a little longer, and then she took off her little black hat. She pulled a pin from her hair, and all this red hair fell over her shoulders. She didn’t say anything, just took my hand and led me from that room and to another room, an empty room. There were chairs and a long couch in the empty room. One thing led to another, and pretty soon we both were naked and on the couch, going after it like we didn’t have a care in the world.” Kincaid drank at his beer.

        “Well,” Hunter said, “I ain’t sayin I agree with where you did it, but, hey, when you get a chance to get some, take it.”

        Kincaid nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He laughed. “Hell, when she took that pin from her hair and her hair just kind of spilled all over her shoulders, I wasn’t thinking at all. I knew what she wanted to do, and I wasn’t about to argue with her. Anyway, when it was all done and we lay there, breathing hard, I heard a voice from across the room. It was Sergeant Miller. I don’t know when he came in. Verna and I weren’t exactly paying attention to anything except each other. Sergeant Miller stood in the door, and he said, ‘You about done there?’ I didn't say anything, I just got up and started putting my uniform back on. Sergeant Miller said, ‘Who’s this? Some hide you picked up?’ Verna said, ‘I’m Jimmy’s aunt.’ She lay there on the couch, not all embarrassed. Sergeant Miller was, though. He said, ‘Oh. Well, ma’am, I suggest you get dressed and allow Specialist Kincaid to return to duty.’ He walked out of the room. When I was dressed, I went back to the room where the coffin was. I guess Verna got dressed and left. Sergeant Miller was in the room with the casket. He didn’t chew my ass or anything. He just said, ‘You left your place of duty.’ I said, ‘Yes, Sergeant.’ He said he wasn’t going to mention any of what happened to anybody. There was no need to embarrass the family, he said. Then he said, ‘But when we get back on post, you will immediately apply for transfer. Somewhere, anywhere.’ He said the post personnel NCO was a friend of his, and the transfer would be expedited with unusual speed.”

        “Well,” Hunter said, “the Man don’t like it when you fuck up. And you did fuck up.”

        “I did that,” Kincaid said.

        Billy D said, “Ol Jimmy didn’t care. I mean, if he’d been in your position and you’d been in his, you think he’d of passed it up?”

        Wizard laughed. “Billy D, for once I got to agree with you. There ain’t a one of us wouldn’t have done what Kincaid did.”

        Kincaid said, “That’s not the weirdest funeral I was at. I mean, yeah, I screwed up, and I’m paying for it.”

        “What,” Wizard said. “You had a funeral and two women threw themselves at you?”

        “It wasn’t like that at all,” Kincaid said. “Two weeks before, we’d done a funeral at some little town in Missouri. We attended the services at the church, and when we were at the cemetery, the deceased’s mother came up to Sergeant Miller. I was standing nearby, and I heard her say there was a problem. Sergeant Miller asked what the problem was, and this woman said ... she said, ‘One of those soldiers is colored. We can’t have a colored soldier at my boy’s funeral.’”

        “No shit?” Hunter said.

        Kincaid nodded. “That’s what she said. I wanted to walk over and ask her what she thought her son might have to say about a colored soldier at his funeral. I mean, the dead guy was a grunt, you know? But, that wouldn’t have been the proper thing to do.”

        Hunter asked, “What happened?”

        “Well,” Kincaid said, “Sergeant Miller talked to the soldier in question, Specialist Sam Parsons. Parsons was from Georgia. I don’t know what Parsons really thought, but he told Sergeant Miller that if it would make the mother happy, he wouldn’t participate in the service.” Kincaid drank at his beer. “Like I said, things are different back home.”

From When I Went to Vietnam, an unpublished manuscript.