Corpsmen run up the ramp at the rear of the vibrating machine and reappear immediately, carrying canvas stretchers. On the stretchers are bloody rags with men inside. Rafter Man and I run into the chopper. We lift a stretcher and run down the metal ramp. The chopper is already beginning to lift off.
We place the stretcher on the deck with the others, where the corpsmen are sorting the dead from the living, changing bandages, adjusting plasma bottles.
Rafter Man and I run into the prop wash, running sideways beneath the thumping blades into a tornado of hot wind and stinging gravel. We stop, hunched over, holding up our thumbs.
The chopper pilot is an invading Martian in an orange flame-retardant flight suit and an olive-drab space helmet. The pilot's face is a shadow behind a dark green visor. He gives us a thumbs-up. We run around to the cargo ramp and the door gunner gives us a hand up into the belly of the vibrating machine just as it lifts off.
The flight to Hue is north eight miles. Far below, Viet Nam is a patchwork quilt of greens and yellows. It's a beautiful country, especially when seen from the air. Viet Nam is like a page from a Marco Polo picture book. The deck is pockmarked with shell holes, and napalm air strikes have charred vast patches of earth, but the land is healing itself with beauty.
My ears pop. I pinch my nose and puff out my cheeks. Rafter Man imitates me. We sit on bales of green rubber-impregnated canvas body bags.
As we near Hue, the door gunner smokes marijuana and fires his M-60 machine gun at a farmer in the rice paddies below. The door gunner has long hair, a bushy moustache, and is naked except for an unbuttoned Hawaiian sport shirt. On the Hawaiian sport shirt are a hundred yellow hula dancers.
The hamlet beneath us is in free fire zone--anybody can shoot at it at any time and for any reason. We watch the farmer run in the shallow water. The farmer knows only that his family needs some rice to eat. The farmer knows only that the bullets are tearing him apart.
He falls, and the door gunner giggles.
The med-evac chopper sets down on a landing zone near Highway One, a mile south of Hue. The LZ is cluttered with walking wounded, stretcher cases, and body bags. Before Rafter Man and I are off the LZ our chopper has been loaded with wounded and is airborne again, flying back to Phu Bai.
We wait for a rough rider convoy in front of a bombed-out gas station. Hours pass. Noon. I take off my flak jacket. I pull my old, ragged Boy Scout shirt out of my NVA rucksack. I put on my Boy Scout shirt so that the sun won't roast the flesh from my bones. On the frayed collar, corporal's chevrons that are so salty that the black enamel has worn off and the brass shows through. Over the right breast pocket, a cloth rectangle which readsFirst Marine Division, CORRESPONDENT. And in Vietnamese: BAO CHI.
Sitting on a bullet-riddled yellow oyster that says SHELL OIL, we drink Cokes that cost five dollars a bottle. The mamasan who sells us the Cokes is wearing a conical white hat. She bows every time we speak. She squawks and chatters like an old black bird. She flashes her black teeth at us. She is very proud of her teeth. Only a lifetime of chewing betel nuts can make teeth as black as hers. We don't understand a word of her magpie chatter, but the hatred in the smile frozen on her face says clearly, "Oh well, Americans may be assholes but they are very rich."
There is a popular sea story which says that old Victor Charlie mamasans sell Cokes with ground-up glass in them. Drinking, we wonder if that's true.
Two Dusters, light tanks with twin 40mm guns, grind by. The men in the Dusters ignore our thumbs.
An hour later a Mighty Mite zooms by at eighty miles an hour, the maximum speed of the little jeep. No luck.
Then a convoy of six-bys appears, led by two M-48 Patton tanks. Thirty big trucks roar by at full speed. Two more Patton tanks are riding security at tail-end Charlie.
The first tank speeds up as it passes us.
The second tank slows down, bucks, jerks to a halt. In the turret is a blond tank commander who is not wearing a helmet or a shirt. He waves us on. We put on our flak jackets. We pick up our gear and swing it up onto the tank. Then Rafter Man and I climb up onto a block of hot, vibrating metal.
Down in a hatch by our feet is the driver. His head protrudes just enough for him to see; his hands are on the controls. The driver jerks the wobble stick and the tank lurches forward, bouncing, grinding, faster and faster and faster. The roar of an eight-hundred-horsepower diesel engine accelerates to a rhythmic rumble of mechanical power.
Rafter Man and I fall back against the hot turret. We are hanging onto the long ninety-millimeter gun like monkeys. The cool air of speed is delicious after hours in Viet Nam's one-hundred-and-twenty- degree yellow furnace. Our sweat-soaked shirts are cold. Flashing by: Vietnamese hootches, ponds with white ducks in them, circular graves with chipped and faded paint, and endless shimmering pieces of emerald water newly planted with rice.
It's a wonderful day. I'm so happy that I am alive, in one piece, and short. I'm in a world of shit, yes, but I am alive. And I am not afraid. Riding the tank gives me a thrilling sense of power and well-being. Who dares to shoot at the man who rides the tiger?
It's a beautiful tank. Painted on the long barreclass="underline" BLACK FLAG--We Exterminate Household Pests. Flying on a radio antenna, a ragged Confederate flag. Military vehicles are beautiful because they are built from functional designs which make them real, solid, without artifice. The tank possesses the beauty of its hard lines; it is fifty tons of rolling armor on tracks like steel watchbands. The tank is our protection, rolling on and on forever, clanking out the dark mechanical poetry of iron and guns.
Suddenly the tank shifts to the left. Rafter Man and I are thrown hard into the turret. Metal grinds metal. The tank hits a bump, shifting sharply to the right and jerking to a halt, throwing us forward. Rafter Man and I hang onto the gun and say, "Son-of-a-bitch..."
The blond tank commander climbs out of the turret hatch and jumps off the back of the tank.
The tank driver has run the tank off the road.
Fifty yards back a water buffalo is down on its back, legs out straight. The water bo bellows, tosses its curved horns. On the deck, in the center of the road, I see a tiny body, facedown.
Chattering Vietnamese civilians pour out of the roadside hootches, staring and pointing. The Vietnamese civilians crowd around to see how their American saviors have crushed the guts out of a child.
The blond tank commander speaks to the Vietnamese civilians in French. Then, walking back to the tanks, the blond tank commander is pursued by an ancient papasan. There are tears in the papasan's eyes. The withered old man shakes his bony little fists and throws Asian curses at the tank commander's back. The Vietnamese civilians grow silent. Another child is dead, and, although it is very sad and painful, they accept it.
The blond tank commander climbs up onto his tank and reinserts his legs into the turret hatch. "Iron Man, you fucking shitbird. You will drive this machine like it's a tank and not a goddamn sports car. You hit that little girl, you blind idiot. Hell, I could see her through the fucking vision blocks. She was standing on that water bo's back..."
The driver turns, his face hard. "I didn't see them, skipper. What do they think they're doing, crossing in front of me like that? Don't these zipperheads know that tanks got the right-of-way?" The driver's face is coated with a thin film of oil and sweat; iron has entered into his soul and he has become a component of the tank, sweating oil to lubricate its meshing gears.