A few days later, when Captain Hartwell arrived for a routine visit, the opportunity I was so desperately seeking fell into my lap. As Hartwell and Cramer walked the perimeter to review our defenses, Cramer waved his M-16, using it as a pointer. As they approached a nearby position, a shot rang out. Everyone except Cramer hit the dirt.
“Lieutenant!” shouted the Captain. “Get down! We’re taking sniper fire!”
“Hey everybody,” Cramer sheepishly announced. “There is no sniper. Heh, heh, heh. That shot was mine. Heh heh. My weapon went off by mistake.”
Captain Hartwell could not believe what had just happened. “Lieutenant!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why wasn’t your weapon on safety?”
“Don’t worry about it Captain,” I chimed in before Cramer could respond. “His weapon goes off like that all the time, but we’re getting used to it.” I nodded softly to Cramer as if I was trying to support him in front of the Captain. Cramer almost jumped out of his skin at my comment.
Hartwell’s eyebrows arched up in disbelief as he waited a few seconds for Cramer to deny my remark. Cramer was speechless and his silence only infuriated the Captain all the more until he could hardly maintain his composure. Finally, he spoke slowly and deliberately.
“Lieutenant, have your RTO get me a chopper so I can get back to Camp Evans where it’s safe. Then I’m going to figure out a punishment that fits your level of ineptitude. You’ll be hearing from me real soon.” That was it. There was no other conversation.
Cramer’s jaw dropped and it looked as if someone had just kicked him in the stomach. He was in shock as he agonized over what Hartwell was going to do to him.
“Don’t worry, sir,” I said with false consolation, “the worst thing Hartwell could do is put you in charge of a mine-sweeping detail.”
“Why did you tell the Captain that my weapon goes off all the time?” moaned Cramer.
“I just wanted to ease the tension with a little humor. Did I do something wrong?” I asked, feigning surprise.
Cramer was too depressed to argue. Instead, he went back to the CP and stared into space. I was ecstatic. I could not have dreamed up a better scenario myself. However, Cramer had not survived all this time without someone covering for him, and that someone turned out to be our own Platoon Sergeant Wakefield.
Wakefield was a classic case of an Instant NCO gone bad. He started his tour as a seemingly regular GI, but during the last few months had been brainwashed by Cramer, who had recently promoted him to Staff Sergeant. Since they were always protecting each other’s ass, it was my job to torment Wakefield as well. The next day, while Cramer was still reeling from Captain Hartwell’s visit, I got the chance.
We were patrolling along a high ridge when Cramer was notified that a supply chopper was inbound and that we needed to locate a natural LZ in order for it to land. From our lofty position, a good LZ was spotted at the bottom of the ridge, so we headed for it on an old VC trail. However, our movement was slowed by thick brush that choked the path. We were not even halfway down when the chopper pilot, thinking we were in position, radioed us to mark the LZ with smoke. Rather than ask the pilot to return in an hour, Cramer yelled a ridiculous and dangerous command, “Everybody run! The first guy to the LZ can pop smoke!”
I thought that this could not be happening, but sure enough the lead squad disappeared, running down the trail while the guys in the back bunched up behind me because I stopped.
“Maintain your intervals!” I shouted at them. “Nobody runs! We’re going down this trail as if we are walking point!”
I took only a few steps before Sergeant Wakefield bellowed, “Wiknik! What the hell are you walking for? You heard the Lieutenant! Now step it out!”
“Come on Wakefield,” I said, appealing to his sense of judgment, “don’t you think it’s a little dumb to go blindly running down a trail? It’s too easy to set off a booby trap or get ambushed. Besides, look at the helicopter circling up there. They think we’re somewhere near the LZ. If they spot people running toward it, what’s to stop them from thinking we’re Gooks and start shooting at us? We can’t even call in our position because Cramer took off with the radio. So we’re walking.”
“Like hell you are. Everyone runs to catch up with the others.”
“Fuck it, man,” I said firmly. “My squad walks or we park our asses right here.” I glared directly at him, challenging his authority.
“What did you say?” Wakefield asked, implying he had not heard me right.
“I said ‘fuck it!’. We are not going anywhere until someone at the LZ pops a smoke and that helicopter goes in for a landing.”
Everyone’s attention was on Wakefield, who knew he had to keep the upper hand.
“Sergeant Wiknik,” he said, giving me one last chance, “hustle your men down that trail. And I mean now!”
“Sure, I said. You go first.”
Wakefield did not know what to do. No one had ever stood up to him like that. He nervously glanced at the men staring at him and then turned back to me. Before he could speak, I pointed to the LZ and casually announced, “Hey look, smoke is out. Let’s get moving, guys.”
As the men started down the trail, Wakefield stopped me when they were out of earshot. “Just what were you trying to pull back there, Wiknik? I don’t like being fucked with, especially by a malcontent like you. Don’t ever pull any shit like that with me again.”
I merely looked at him, shrugged, and walked off without replying. That only pissed him off all the more.
Three days later we were sent to Camp Evans, where Captain Hartwell began Lieutenant Cramer’s punishment by placing him in charge of the SERTS rifle range. The in-country replacement training school had recently moved from the relative safety of Bien Hoa to Camp Evans to put the new guys closer to the action. It was poetic justice to have Cramer responsible for teaching Cherries about the firing, maintenance, and safety aspects of personal weapons. Also in camp was one of our other battalion companies for a mandatory weapons and tactics refresher course. The Brass felt that the additional training would increase our confidence and make Grunts more effective in jungle warfare. Not too many old-timers wanted to practice what we had been doing for real, but we figured this exercise would help the new guys benefit from our experience as well.
The training was fairly basic: how to deploy the M-60 machine gun; how to make maximum use of a claymore mine; how to recognize terrain that offers a military advantage; and different ways to identify and avoid booby traps. We also practiced rappelling from a fifty-foot tower, climbing up and down a rope ladder hung from a hovering Chinook, and everyone’s least favorite—bunker line guard duty. Between training sessions I was summoned to battalion headquarters for a talk with Edgar Boyce, our First Sergeant,.
All First Sergeants liked to be called “Top.” The unofficial title was customarily given to senior enlisted men who had made a career out of the Army. Boyce had more than two decades of dedicated service to his country and was highly respected for his uncanny common sense and knowledge of the military. His present job was to keep a logistical and administrative watch over the battalion from the rear.
One thing Boyce hated was a bad officer, but he was on a first name basis with the good ones, Generals included. Another thing he hated was NCOs who argued among themselves, like Wakefield and I did. Just having to face him on this issue was scary. His square-jawed, imposing figure reminded me of a tough football coach.
“Well now, Sergeant Wiknik,” he began, glaring at me, “what’s this bullshit I hear about you telling Sergeant Wakefield to go fuck himself?”
“Me?” I asked innocently, trying to look like I had no idea what he was talking about. “I never told him to go fuck himself.”
“What exactly did you say?”
“Er, just…fuck it.”
“Hmm,” he said, rubbing his chin. “According to Wakefield, you said ‘fuck it’ to him three times. To me, ‘fuck it’ still means ‘fuck you.’”
“But Top, if you knew what he wanted us to do…”
“I don’t give a damn about the circumstances! I don’t care if you were one hundred percent right! You don’t challenge a superior—especially one of my Sergeants—in front of subordinates. That only makes you both look like assholes. Respect for the chain of command is essential if we expect to be successful. When you don’t agree with someone, you discuss it privately, otherwise the system breaks down. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“Yes, Top,” I answered weakly, feeling like my father had just chewed me out.
“Listen Wiknik, you only have a few months left to serve and I know you won’t be re-enlisting, so make it easy on yourself and play the game a little longer. If you can’t get with the program, then I’ll have you defusing booby traps until you go home. Is that what you want?”
“No, Top,” I said, trying to sound apologetic. God, that was the
last
gig I wanted during my final few months in this place. “I don’t know what came over me. Sometimes I get a little crazy from being out in the boonies too long. It won’t happen again.”
“It better not. Now get your ass down to the training area and help Lieutenant Cramer at the rifle range.”
“Lieutenant Cramer?” I protested. “Come on Top, that guy is bad news. Can’t I do something else while we’re in the rear?”
“Sorry kid. Cramer brought this shit on himself, and you just got pulled in with him.”
I dreaded this rifle range assignment because Cramer’s ideas for running a training exercise were as bizarre as his field tactics. He was so worried about doing a good job that he had spent the previous night creating a script for his class. As his assistants, Silig and I acted out the roles he invented. Cramer began each class with a brief history lesson on the evolution of the M-16 rifle. Speaking softly and using a range of hand gestures, his voice steadily rose until he yelled out: “TO KILL THE ENEMY!” That was the cue for Silig and me to menacingly charge out of a nearby bunker and fire several well-placed rounds into a pair of straw VC dummies that looked like scarecrows. Then we attached our bayonets, fired a few more shots, stabbed the dummies, and finished with a vertical butt stroke to knock their heads off. The class knew that our phony routine had nothing to do with what really took place in the boonies, but Cramer stuck to his script just the same.
Silig and I looked like idiots as we performed our act three times each day, so we decided to liven up things a bit. Before the next class, we loaded our rifles with tracer rounds and doused the dummies with lighter fluid. When Cramer yelled out his line, we charged out and shot into the dummies. Within seconds they were completely engulfed in fire. Unfortunately for Cramer, he had his back to us and did not know what was going on. While Silig and I admired the flames, the class erupted in laughter. Cramer turned around to see what was going on, spotted the fire, and began yelling hysterically, “Get some water! Get some water!” Then he knocked the dummies to the ground and stomped on them as if they were salvageable.
After the smoke cleared, Cramer looked even more foolish when he got on his hands and knees to push the charred remains into a pile. Rather than continue, he dismissed the class. The oddest thing was that when it was over, there was no punishment except we had to make new dummies.
At the end of each training day, Silig and I got together with Howard Siner to have a few beers and listen to some music. One afternoon, an aid station doctor noticed us hanging around and asked if we would be interested in providing security for a medical team going into Phong Dien village the next morning. Recognizing the opportunity to avoid the rifle range with Lieutenant Cramer, we agreed to go.
Medical teams visited villages throughout South Vietnam as part of the on-going pacification program designed to show the civilians that Americans are more compassionate than the Communists. Our team was comprised of one doctor and two medics who carried only basic examining equipment; antibiotics, rubbing alcohol, and first aid supplies. Since this would be a peaceful mission we left our grenades and bayonets behind and only took along minimal ammunition. If we looked too intimidating, the villagers might feel threatened and not be as eager to take the free medical care.
Early the next morning a truck drove us to what looked like the village square, which was nothing more than a water well and a cluster of banana trees surrounded by straw huts. Word spread fast announcing the doctor’s presence as the elderly and young mothers with children quickly formed a line. Conspicuously absent were the teenaged boys and able-bodied men who had been drafted into the military. When the examinations began, Silig, Siner, and I stood a short distance away and watched for trouble. There was none. Aside from the weapons we carried, the peaceful tranquility of the village nearly made us forget there was a war going on.
To get the children to cooperate, the medics promised each a candy bar, then teased and tickled them until they giggled. The long forgotten sound of children innocently laughing caught us by surprise and made us wish we were kids again and not part of this damn war. After the kids were examined, some wandered over to us, perhaps hoping for another treat. But as they gathered around, their interest was in something other than candy.
Siner never went anywhere without something to read, and on this day he carried the latest issue of
Life Magazine
. The kids were awestruck by the photographs. They pointed and gawked at the turn of each page. In their sheltered lives they had never seen, even in pictures, the skyscrapers of New York City, the beauty of Yellowstone Park, snow covered ground, or Caucasian girls with flowing blonde hair. An entirely different world was right in front of them. Curiously, the mothers kept their distance, but acknowledged us with approving smiles.
When the medics called for us to leave, Siner handed the magazine to a little girl, “Here, you’ll get more use from this than I will.” The kids howled with gratitude and scampered back to their mothers.
Siner and I walked toward the truck, but Silig did not move. He stood erect, staring sadly into the village where the children had disappeared.