The Big Buddha Bicycle Race, page 15
The only way we could get on board was from the rear cargo ramp, lowered almost to the tarmac. While the copilot did a walk-around of the plane and Harley and his buddy, Pigpen Sachs, did a walk-around of the guns, I brought my equipment on board, shot a test burst with the camera and got ready for takeoff. Once everyone was on board, the cargo ramp was retracted to horizontal, and I joined the gunners and spotters on the rear-facing jump seats that pulled up from the floor. One by one the engines fired up, emitting a shriek that penetrated the thin skin of our stripped-down bird. We taxied slowly to the end of the runway, where the engines were revved up to full throttle, the brakes were released, and off we went, watching Ubon disappear behind us. It was almost pretty.
Shortly before we crossed the Mekong the navigator told us it was time to suit up, which meant closing up the jump seats and taking our battle stations. I felt a mixture of fear and adrenaline that was something like stage fright. Figuring I would be dividing my time in the cabin between filming off the ramp, shooting over the guns and recording a monitor hard-wired to the Night Observation Device, I set up on the right side of the plane beside the mysterious booth where I would occasionally film the monitors used by the Black Crow and infrared sensor operators who worked under the guidance of Major Horney, Strbik’s regular fire-control officer. I tried on the flak helmet and soon discovered my eyepiece fogged up as I feared it might when I looked through the camera, so it was back to headphones only. I followed the gunners’ lead and spread out my flak jacket under the camera cases, giving my butt part-time protection, anyway. I decided to put on the quilted flight jacket to provide some padding for the camera, and I figured from my experience with spring skiing in Vermont that the glove liners would suffice to keep my hands warm while still being able to operate the camera. The fireproof quality of the Nomex gloves never crossed my mind.
We had passed the last of the lowland rice paddies and had just started climbing over the jagged foothills when we turned sharply in a thirty-degree bank and went into orbit. “Holy shit!” I cried, my voice lost in a howling mix of wind and engine noise. I was confused. We had just crossed the Mekong and there was nothing visible below us except the intersection of two muddy roads. Suddenly I heard “Boresighting!” over the headsets, and the Big Turkey rattled from one end to the other as each gun was tested and aligned with what the scanners were seeing in the booth. Damn! I thought, watching the intersection turn into an Olympic-pool-sized crater. We hadn’t bothered to boresight on my previous missions because it wasn’t worth wasting the ammunition with no trucks on the road. In-tell must have picked up something that they passed on to Strbik. The Air Force had dropped electronic sensors along the Trail that sometimes picked up nothing more than the sounds of NVA soldiers pissing on them. The sensors were often dead on arrival, picking up nothing at all. But when they did pick up the rumblings of trucks, something was definitely happening. Harley came back to pay me a visit. “First time you heard us fire off the guns, isn’t it? That was to get Strbik’s testosterone flowing—get him back in kill mode after all that flying in the rain.”
“Definitely got my adrenaline flowing,” I shouted as my eyeballs returned to their sockets.
We flew deeper over what were now five-thousand-foot mountains and the indigo skies soon turned coal black. In the cabin where I would be working, the only illumination came from a few recessed light fixtures whose tiny bulbs produced a dim ruby glow. The gunners had permission in an emergency to use a penlight when they cleared a jam, but they prided themselves on being able to work by touch alone. Washington and Spitzer had trained me to be equally proficient loading and unloading my Arri. The nights we had flown without making contact had given me plenty of time to practice.
By the time we reached our target area forty-five minutes after crossing the Mekong, our eyes had adjusted to the darkness as well as they were going to. We began cruising over long stretches of dirt highway, but after prowling for what seemed like an hour there had been no sign of enemy activity. I sat down on my camera case, put the Arri in my lap, and tried to relax. Harley squatted down next to me and said, “Still pretty muddy down there. Probably won’t be many trucks out for a few more days.”
No sooner had he spoken than I started hearing a subdued, tense excitement in the crew’s voices on the intercom. The Black Crow had picked up truck ignition. The hunt was on. “I’d better get back,” said Harley.
My heart racing, I climbed up into the booth to film the Black Crow and infrared monitors while the sensor operators tracked down the convoy to begin the kill sequence. They soon located several trucks, and it was time to leave Major Horney’s electronic nest, continuing forward to where Captain Rush was manning the NOD. Figuring Strbik would be using Rush’s sensor when he started firing on targets, I rechecked the magazine on my Arriflex and double-checked the connection between my battery belt and the back of the camera. My hands were shaking, but I couldn’t tell if it was caused by engine vibration, the cold breeze blowing through the open ports and doorways of the unpressurized cabin, or my own nerves. The Spectre gunship turned into a thirty-degree bank and began circling. Taking a deep breath, I surrendered to whatever fate was awaiting me. I didn’t have time to think about my hands when, as expected, Colonel Strbik switched from IR to the NOD to finish lining up the target, the rear spotter in illumination-operator mode dropped a few flares, and the crew started blasting down a thunderstorm of 20- and 40-millimeter shells. Horney, the fire-control officer, yelled ecstatically, “We got us a burner!”
“Shit hot!” called the copilot.
They burst hundreds of rounds into the wounded lead truck in just seconds, then noted there were four other trucks that had gotten trapped behind it. It was a little blurry filming the video tap from Rush’s NOD, but I could see clearly enough that the drivers of the first two trucks were jumping out and scrambling north to get away from the action. I caught myself rooting for the drivers to make it to safety, thinking they had already surrendered their trucks and the supplies they were carrying. The 20-mm guns obliterated the running blurs. “Night Owl Lead, Night Owl Lead, this is Spec One. Got four targets for you, north northwest of the burning truck, over.”
“This is Night Owl Lead. We read you, Spec One. Target is acquired. Ordnance up and armed. Night Owl Two, Night Owl Two, follow me in, over.”
“Roger that, Lead. This is Night Owl Two on your wing. Up and armed and following you in. Over.”
With the lead truck destroyed and burning, it seemed like a good time to head back to the ramp to get a wider-angle shot of the Night Owl F-4 Phantoms making their run. I stretched out on the tailgate next to the spotter and counted my mixed blessings when he reverted to his role as illumination operator and decided to help out my photography by lighting up the scene with a few extra flares. It made the photography easier but made it more difficult to stay alive by also lighting us up. No sooner had I filmed the trailing trucks aflame with napalm than the fun began. “Triple-A. Five rounds. Hold your course,” the IO reported coolly, back in spotter mode.
Colonel Strbik decided to circle one more time so that I could verify on film that all trucks were destroyed. I personally wished we’d get the hell out of orbit and head on down the road.
“Triple-A! Accurate! Break right!” The anti-aircraft site had opened fire on us for the second time from a place in Laos where the Defense Department assured us there was no triple-A. The IO/spotter, hanging out the open cargo ramp at the rear of the plane, didn’t waste a syllable on military formalities like “sir.” We pitched hard, forcing me to grab hold of the tailgate with one hand and the camera with the other, terrorized, barely able to keep myself on board, cursing myself for forgetting to hook on the safety harness.
And then I cursed Strbik for going back into his thirty-degree bank. Below me I could see the F-4 fighter-bombers alter their course to go after the anti-aircraft emplacement. The sky glowed with burning napalm before they leisurely peeled off to finish dealing with the doomed, immobile convoy. By the time they completed the next pass every truck was burning. “The Night Owl gang is Bingo and Winchester, over,” said the lead pilot—they were out of fuel and ammo and were heading home.
“We’re returning to base too,” Colonel Strbik informed his crew as we leveled off and headed south.
Relaxing for the first time since we had engaged the convoy, I made my way forward to stow my camera and look for Harley. I thought I could hear him not too far away shoveling up shell casings, a chore the gunners performed to keep the scrap from reaching the North Vietnamese, who reputedly could repack the shells and fire them back at us. Before I could set my camera down, though, I sensed in the dimness that something was wrong with the plane and wondered if it was somehow connected to the near miss with the anti-aircraft and the harsh maneuver we took to avoid it. Working my way in the direction of the flight deck, my nostrils picked up an acrid scent of smoke and my tired heart started racing again. The crew may have called the AC-130 a big turkey, but in the blackness it seemed like I was groping my way through the belly of a whale—and the scent kept getting stronger. Blinded by darkness, I ran forward in a panic, sliding over loose shell casings, fighting my way past two Miniguns and nearly dumping my camera when I bumped into something padded but big in the shadows near the Night Observation Device. It was Captain Rush, the NOD operator, inhaling a bowlful of grass from a hand-carved ivory opium pipe. He grinned euphorically, illuminated by the glow of the bowl. “Have a hit, cameraman. The old man’s cool, as long as we wait till we’re heading back to Ubon.”
Before I could answer, though, we got word that our plans had changed, and Rush had to put out his pipe, wasting some of his finest stash. The hunting was so good over in Steel Tiger East that we were requested to go have a look. And like a cat hunting mice, we took out eight more trucks on that fateful night that I flew my first true combat mission. The last eight mice were defenseless, however. Maybe I’d seen too many cartoons growing up, but I couldn’t help feeling bad for them. At the same time I worried like hell about my own crew and my own butt. The triple-A we encountered earlier that night fit the pattern I’d been watching for months—the sites were moving steadily south and the return fire was getting heavier. We touched down a little after ten, and as I rode the crew bus in to operations, I reflected back on the evening as best I could. There was no ambiguity at night on the Ho Chi Minh Trail—those were definitely Bad Guys, not rice farmers, livestock or unarmed women and children. And that was definitely triple-A they were firing back at us.
Back at the equipment room, I cornered Harley. “You’ve been to Survival School. What the hell do we do if we’re actually shot down over Laos?”
Pigpen Sachs brought us each a cold bottle of Singha beer. The Spectre door gunner rented one of the bungalows down at Harley’s compound and, other than the night I saw him passed out at the NCO Club, was a tall, imposing ex-Hells Angel. His muscular arms were covered with tattoos, mostly about his mom and a small United Nations of ex-girlfriends mixed in with a few skulls and crossbones, but his face was kind, with a jaded glint in his eyes and a faint smile behind his bushy mustache. “Don’t get him started on that,” said Pigpen.
Harley started in anyway. “Some efficiency expert decided to combine Survival School with the Escape and Evasion course—POW School—up at Fairchild in Washington State. So we prepared for Southeast Asia in fuckin’ snowshoes. Gave us five days to cover fifty miles with nothing but a friggin’ onion and a pemmican bar while we’re ass deep in snow, being chased through mountain forests by pretend Bad Guys who capture us and put us through the POW segment. Lesson there? You’ll be hungry if you ever get shot down, but at least you won’t be wearing snowshoes.”
Pigpen joined in. “Seriously, don’t know more than you need to know and you won’t have to worry about being a hero if you’re ever tortured.”
I didn’t like the thought of being tortured, I hadn’t signed up to be tortured, and so I made up my mind to follow Pigpen’s advice and remain in a high state of ignorance.
Harley remembered something important. “Three days later we were in Snake School in the Philippines. And there we did learn one cold, hard truth: any path or creek or back road you’d really like to be traveling on is exactly where you’ll find the Bad Guys, moving twice as fast as you because it’s their fuckin’ terrain and you’re a surprise visitor.”
“Here’s to your first real combat mission,” said Sachs. We clinked our bottles together, chugged down the ice-cold beer, and headed home.
13 October 1971 (2300)
Perfect Lady
I was bone-tired when I got back to the hootch, my legs still rubbery from pulling G’s at an altitude where we could have used some oxygen. In the dim glow of the street light that leaked in from outside, I peeled off my uniform and pulled my lanky body into the upper bunk I learned to prefer after banging my head a few too many times in the berth below. Even with a row of lockers separating me from Leo Guttchock, I could hear him talking to his invisible wife. “Yes, dear, the boys’ll all be home for Christmas, the President says so…. Yes, that’s right. Nevers and Spinelli are back flying. You just can’t keep some guys down on the ground…. Same here, honey. Can’t wait to see you. I’ll be coming in on the midnight train….”
Leo was about thirty, pale and paunchy, and with thinning, tangerine-yellow hair looked at least forty. I remembered how when I shipped out for Ubon, everyone who knew I had been dreaming of going to film school at USC had told me Leo was a guy I was going to love hanging out with. He had gotten his bachelor’s degree there in cinema production before he headed off to Air Force Officer Training School. He ended up as an enlisted cameraman when he was thrown out of OTS for refusing to run or do pushups, although he insisted it was Self-Initiated Elimination. “I like the Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola look,” he had grown famous for saying, “and no one ever made them do pushups or run in combat boots.” He was also famous for having played a dead body in a student gangster film that actually won some obscure prize at Cannes. I suspected Leo had spent a few days too many out in the California desert locked in the trunk of the gangster’s black Cadillac, because now he was spending way too much of his spare time peeling labels off Singha bottles. Just the same, I couldn’t help being a little jealous of Leo, because even though he was slowly going nuts, he was still receiving real letters from a real wife.
Thanks Leo, I thought as I lay there listening to his babbling, tired as hell but unable to sleep. Week after week I had tried to be a good boy, preserving my moral purity for Danielle and for the review board that would be considering my application for discharge as a conscientious objector. Now that the board had turned me down, however, my deeply held but nontraditional moral grounds deemed insufficient, I felt myself sinking into a moral and spiritual limbo. I hadn’t lived in a cloister. I’d been performing with the Band of Brothers and been downtown plenty to visit Tom and his buddies, but even when I started dabbling in Thai and Laotian weed and paid my occasional visits to the rooftop restaurant at the Ubon Hotel, I came home every night to my modest bunk. My alcohol consumption was not noticeably high for a GI, a little below average for a Leary. But even when I was still a photo interpreter of sorts, staring eight hours a day at raw combat footage, I often lay in my bunk at night, mentally drained but not able to fall asleep, wondering how many civilians were getting killed by mistake. I agonized over my doubts about the war and ached to my depths with attacks of loneliness I couldn’t control or understand. I was disgusted with myself for feeling alone when I had a girl waiting for me back in the States, but I had heard enough gut-wrenching stories about Dear John letters to not completely trust that Danielle would stick this out.
I felt crappy knowing that Danielle’s late husband had spent his final nights humping the boonies a hundred and fifty miles away in I Corps with only the here and now to worry about and that my kind of inner whining could have gotten somebody killed. Grunts like Danielle’s husband were too busy filling sandbags and digging foxholes (their salvation and their own shallow graves) to have time for whining at the end of each day’s march to nowhere. They were too exhausted from boredom and gushing adrenaline, from unrelenting heat and humidity so heavy it seemed to push them into the spongy ground, from hour upon hour of breaking trail through jungle that was not meant to be penetrated by man, from day upon day of walking across moonscapes where life as we knew it had ended, from thoughts forever unspoken of death that had burst upon them like a thunderstorm and would explode again. With a hundred incarnations of Death as their companion, ground pounders never had a chance to be lonely, especially in the hot and spicy nighttime when they were caressed by their desperate mistress, Fear.
Fear and death for the infantryman. Loneliness and self-destruction for Air Force flyboys and their support troops. It was embarrassing. But for fate, we airmen could have been battling hard-core North Vietnamese regulars crashing through our perimeter, coming at us with fixed bayonets the way they once came at the French at Dien Bien Phu. Instead, we killed ourselves slowly with cheap BX booze and cigarettes, with opium-laced grass and amphetamines smuggled from the infirmary, and if the rumors were true, with pure Laotian heroin.
