We searched the bodies, retrieved the weapons, and reported the contact to battalion. Then we continued on over the top of the mountain and down its other side, arriving back on the valley floor in midafternoon.
The mountain’s western slope produced no startling discoveries, just heavily traveled trails, indicating that our enemy was constantly moving across the mountain’s face, usually in a southerly direction.
Our disappointment was lessened somewhat when a loud explosion occurred to the northeast: two unwitting NVA soldiers had fallen victim to Three Six’s claymore ambush.
That afternoon, in yet another NDP, I wandered over to Two Six’s slice of the perimeter and congratulated MacCarty’s point man on his kills.
He was a big, black street tough named Wester and, as I would later learn while lying helpless in a rice paddy, a man of great personal courage. On this occasion he was noncommittal and rather reserved, merely thanking me.
Later that evening, after the log bird had departed and the company had messed, Lieutenant MacCarty dropped by my CP for a little after-dinner conversation.
“Well, what do you think of my man Wester, sir?” he asked.
“Hell of a good shot,” I responded.
“Yeah, best point man in the company, maybe the division. Cool under fire, like ice. Kind of guy you want around in a firefight.”
“Well, Mac, why is he still a Pfc? Sounds like NCO material to me.”
“Yes, sir, and his spec-four stripe should be coming down any day now.
Uh… sergeant may be a bit more difficult. See, fortunately, I have the best point man and the best platoon sergeant in the company.
Unfortunately, the two of them don’t always see eye to eye. Know what I mean?”
I don’t… No.”
“Well, Wester’s the new breed—here to do a job, great combat soldier, but not all that enthused ‘bout some of the other more… uh… subtle aspects of soldiering. Sergeant Naple, on the other hand, is the typical hard-core infantry platoon sergeant. You know—right way, wrong way, and the Army way. And, ‘course, the Army way is always the right way.”
“Okay, understand.”
“But they’re both super soldiers,” he continued, “and I think both realize the other is good at what he’s responsible for doing.”
“Well, in any event, Wester is deadly with that shotgun,” I remarked. “I mean, goddamn, it sounded like an automatic weapon.”
“You bet it did, sir! Hey, every time the platoon gets a cherry in, Wester bets him he can empty that pump action faster than the cherry can fire a twentyround magazine on full automatic. He hasn’t lost a bet yet!” He paused, smiling, and added, “See that bronze Cav patch he has embedded in the stock?”
I nodded. Changing the subject, I asked, “What about you, Mac? You’re ‘bout ready to leave us, aren’t you?”
“One more week, mon capitan! Seven more days and I start migrating toward my freedom bird, back to the land of the living.” Then, a bit despondently, almost angrily, he said, “I’ll miss the men. I won’t miss another fucking thing about this whole stinking, chaotic, fucked-up mess, but I’ll miss my men.”
“Sure you will, only natural. And they’ll miss you. Uh… what’s your plan, Mac? Staying in?”
“No! I’m not sure what I’m gonna do, but the Army won’t be a part of it. I figure I’ve paid my dues, and now it’s time to get on with my life. And quite frankly, sir, I don’t see the profession of arms as being part of that life. I mean, I’m not having that much fun right now, and if I stayed in, I’d be right back over here in, what? A year? Two years? Mean, shit, sir, you’re career, and this is your third trip, right?”
“Right on both counts,” I answered. “Yeah, you’d probably be back over here in a year or so. I mean, you’re infantry and, like our first sergeant says, till this thing’s over, you’re either gonna be in Vietnam, preparing to go to Vietnam, or recuperating from having been in Vietnam. Infantry officers can just forget about touring Europe for a while.”
Recalling the gist of an Infantry Branch orientation at Fort Benning shortly before my departure, I added, “In fact, Branch told us they’d assigned only two infantry captains to all of Seventh Army! Think about it, Mac. Our nation’s commitment to NATO and traditionally our largest field army, and only two infantry captains assigned! And get this, Mac, one of ’em is an amputee!”
Laughing, he replied, “Well, we heard that infantry lieutenants were getting a lot of company command time in Germany. Guess it’s true.”
After a moment’s silence, MacCarty continued in a more serious vein.
“But you see, sir, I really don’t care how many infantry captains we have in Seventh Army—you do. You do ‘cause you’re career, and it’s all part of this military profession you and others like you hold so dear. And please don’t misunderstand me, sir; I respect you all for it. But I’m not career, and I’m not part of it and don’t want to be.”
“I guess we’re just different in that respect. I’ve often wondered why.”
“You know what I think, sir?” he asked rhetorically. “And I’ve thought about this from time to time, watching and working with you and Byson and other careerists. I think it’s World War II. I think it’s the environment you all grew up in.”
“What?” I asked, wondering what the hell he was talking about.
“What I mean, sir… well how old are you?”
“I’m twenty-nine, no, thirty now, and tonight I feel it, but what the hell’s my age got to do with careers—yours or mine? Or the war? Or World War II? I mean I sure as hell wasn’t involved in that one! Shit, I was only three, four years old when we got into it.”
“Yeah, but I’ll bet you remember it, the war years and all. You know—the rationing, paper and scrap-metal drives, and so forth.”
“Well, yeah, I do,” I said, smiling as I recalled those long-ago “good war” years. “And I remember the milkweed pod drives.”
“What?” Mac asked. “Milkweed pods? What the hell did the Army need milkweed pods for?”
“Beats the shit out of me, Mac. But my second-grade class must’ve picked a ton of ’em. I think they used them in life vests on troopships or something.”
“Bet you remember the day it was all over, too, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Sure do. V-J day. Big parade down Main Street; everybody went a little crazy. My dad, just back from the Big Red One in Europe, set me up on a fire truck so as I could ring its bell. Big kick for a seven-or eight-year-old. But I still don’t see what you’re getting at, Mac. What’s any of this got to do with the price of rice in China?”
“Well, you see, sir, while you and Byson and the old man were doing those paper drives and ringing those fire-engine bells, the rest of us in the company here weren’t even lecherous gleams in our fathers’ eyes.
I mean, these were your formative years, and it was all good against evil, right against wrong, God’s on the side of the pure of heart, and so forth. And it was the country’s military that made the world ‘safe for democracy.” Hell, it’s only natural that you see the profession of arms as a higher calling. And, for the same reasons, it’s only natural you all can’t conceive of losing this, or for that matter, any other war.
“But you see, sir, the rest of us didn’t grow up in that environment. Hell, I can’t even remember Korea, and we really didn’t win that one.”
I didn’t like the direction our conversation was taking, and I still didn’t know what the fuck Mac was talking about. What the hell’s environment or the “goodness” of World War II got to do with the Nam?
Suddenly, suspecting I might know the genesis of his remarks, I asked,
“Hey, Mac, what was your major in college?”
“Philosophy, with a minor in international relations.”