The 13th Valley

CHAPTER 5-1

CHAPTER 5

Chelini waited outside the orderly room shack for the first sergeant to call him. He felt completely lost. This was not a training unit where everyone was new or a replacement station where everyone was transient. This was the infantry, a permanent assignment and he was an outsider. The men were busy in closed groups or loafing in closed groups.

The battalion to which Chelini had been assigned was on the last day of a five-day refitting and training stand-down. Before stand-down the men of the Oh-deuce had spent 105 days in the boonies, up the Sông Bo and Rao Trang rivers, on the hills by Firebases Veghel, Ripcord and Maureen, and in the swamps west of Quang Tri City. They were the division reaction force. It was not uncommon for them to be extracted from one jungle only to be inserted into another.

Chelini went to the screen door of the hootch and tried to see inside. He could see nothing. He turned and scrutinized the battalion area. Before him was a quadrangle surrounded on three sides by buildings. On the far side a steep hill rose to a helicopter resupply point.

At the center of the quad there was a boxing ring and a PSP basketball court. By the court the old white soldier was still chewing out the same lethargic black boonierat. From where Chelini stood the words were unintelligible. The black soldier had very dark skin. He was shuffling his feet in the red dust, casting upward scowls from a down-hanging head, bouncing and jiving with his knuckles on his hips. The old white soldier was shorter than the black man and much heavier. His head was round and bald on top with the sparse hair at the side shaved. The skin was very red, as if blood was trying to escape.

Very near Company A’s office was a narrow moldy structure with a boat on the roof. Five white enlisted men with deeply tanned arms, faces and necks and pallid torsos carried olive drab towels and shaving gear into the shower house. They joked and fooled and slapped each other with the towels and stepped gingerly over the muck patch which flowed past the four-holer EM latrine toward the drainage ditch. They did not even look in Chelini’s direction.

Close to the screen door of the office where Chelini stood two men converged, stopped and commenced a strangely ritualistic clapping and shaking of hands and forearms and slapping of each other’s shoulders and tapping of each other’s fists. One of the men was black, dark brown, not as dark as the soldier at the quad’s center; the other was light brown, the color of wheatbread. The ritualized greeting went on for what seemed a long time.

Chelini turned. A clerk opened the screen door. The first sergeant called him in by methodically curling one index finger. Chelini gulped. The first sergeant fumbled with a stack of papers and forms. His desk was clear of everything except essentials. He dusted the land-line telephone with his hand and directed the clerk to empty the trash containers. Then he handed Chelini the forms and a pencil. “Complete thees,” he said and turned away. Chelini nodded. Holy Christ, he thought. I’m lost. I’m stuck. I gotta get out of this unit. Chelini glanced at the forms briefly and began filling in his name on a weapons card. He looked up, out the door. The dark black soldier from the center of the quad had joined the black soldier and brown soldier at the front of the office. The greeting rite of raps and slaps and shakes began again.

“Troop,” the first sergeant said. Chelini jumped. “Can’t you write any faster? You scared of that pencil?”

“No, I just …”

“Troop, you a college graduate, aint you?” Oh, s**t, Chelini thought. Two strikes against me already. “You let pencil run you. T’row that pencil down.”

“T’row it down?”

“Yeas. That what I said. T’row it down.” Chelini dropped the pencil. “Chee!” the first sergeant shouted. “What it do? It don’t jump up and bite you, do it? It’s daid, Scholdier. Now pick it up and run it.”

Chelini began signing the forms. Oh s**t, he thought. How’d I get stuck in an infantry unit? They put all the dumb kids in here. Of all the places to be assigned. I wonder what happened to Kaltern from basic. He had a good head. Or Baez from AIT or Ralston. They were some okay people and now I gotta get stuck with a bunch of high school dropouts.

“Troop,” First Sergeant Laguana said, “you getting some very expensive equipment. You getting the best weapon in the world. You know that? When you get here at Eagle no magazine in weapon, hokay?” The first sergeant picked up Chelini’s weapons card and brought it close to his face. “When you on berm guard you lock en load. You lock en load on helicopter for CA, hokay? On CA you keep the chafety on. If you on the first chopper you go in on automatic, hokay? I don want none my troops schot.” Chelini nodded and nodded. This guy’s an i***t, he told himself.

The three men who’d been in front of the office came in. The first sergeant ignored them and they ignored him. Chelini looked up. The nearest one nodded and winked. Chelini nodded back. The dark black soldier saluted Chelini with a clenched fist. Chelini startled, stared. He nodded agreement. He was frightened not to. He knew he’d been assigned to a unit of crazy racist psychopaths. The first sergeant picked up the remainder of the forms and scrutinized each. “You getting the best radio in the world,” Laguana said. “You know that? You getting seven hun’red channel. You know that?”

“Hey, Babe, we got us a new RTO,” the dark black man said snapping his fingers. “Oh Babe, that fucka gowin kick yo ass.” He gave Chelini a second power salute. Chelini smiled dumbly and nodded and made a half-hearted attempt to emulate the gesture and the black man laughed.

“Hey, Top,” the brown man laughed. To Chelini the laugh seemed bitter. Oh Man, he thought. These guys would slit your throat for a cigarette. “You got a new wristwatch.” The brown man grabbed for the first sergeant’s arm but the NCO pulled it back. s**t, Chelini thought. Even the first sergeant’s scared of them.

“What choos want?” Laguana snapped. “Jackson. Out,” he said to the dark black. “Doc. Out,” he added. To the brown man he said, “El Paso. You stay.”

The two black men departed after chiding and jiving the first sergeant. The light brown soldier stayed.

“Hokay, now I get a rucksack.” Sergeant Laguana reached beneath his desk and with a theatrical flip of the wrist produced an aluminum frame with a nylon bag attached. “Thees,” he said, “is rucksack. Thees rucksack weigh one pound. By the time I schow you, we get you a P-R-C twen’yfive, chow, ammo and canteen …”

“That motha’s goina weigh a hundred pounds,” El Paso inserted.

Chelini shifted toward the brown soldier and a bit out of the way. El Paso was older than Chelini had thought when he’d first seen him standing in front of the office.

“Troop,” Laguana addressed Chelini trying to ignore El Paso again, “you gon carry everyt’ing you need right here. Here, you try it on.” Chelini reluctantly reached for the rucksack.

Laguana scowled and walked into the back storeroom and returned with a PRC-25 radio. Then he left again and returned with a case of C-rations. He dropped that on the floor by the growing pack and disappeared into the back room singing to himself. El Paso fitted and secured the radio inside the ruck’s main pocket. He fastened it in such a manner that it could be easily removed and carried separately.

“Hey,” El Paso said. “Ask Top to give you two extra pair of bootlaces. He’ll be okay to you now cause you’re new. You won’t be able to get them later.”

“Thanks,” Chelini said. He wanted to ask the brown soldier questions but he was wary.

Top returned with four one-quart canteens, an empty steel ammo can, an M-16, eighteen empty magazines and eighteen boxes of cartridges, four fragmentation grenades and two smoke grenades. He dropped the equipment on the pile and whistled his way back to the storeroom.

“Hey,” El Paso yelled at him, “get him some more canteens. This aint enough.”

“Thas enough,” Laguana yelled back.

“Guy’s a fuckin shithead,” El Paso said. “I won’t tell you, though. You can’t tell one man about another.” El Paso set to work filling the rucksack, carefully ordering items with the attention he would give to his own gear. Chelini watched him. “s**t,” the brown man said. “Ham and lima beans. Taste like s**t. Worst Charlie Rat there is. You oughta throw it out. Aint worth humpin. These, canned fruit and pound cake, they’re worth their weight in gold.”

The first sergeant returned with four radio batteries, a machete, an entrenching tool, a claymore with wire and firing device, a poncho and poncho liner, one olive drab towel, a web belt, ammo pouches, helmet with liner and cover, a long and short antenna for the radio, and small bottles of LSA and bug repellent. El Paso continued sorting through the food asking Chelini what he liked and throwing what he himself didn’t like to one side. From the heavy cardboard of the C-ration case El Paso cut a broad section and fitted it on the inner side of the ruck so it would lie between the lumpy cans and batteries inside and Chelini’s back.

“Look at this s**t,” El Paso said. “Take the batteries but see that you get somebody else to carry one of em. f**k the E-T and the claymore. When you hump a Prick-25 you can’t carry all that s**t. Machete’s optional. Top’ll have you humpin two hundred pounds if you let him. Make sure he gets you more canteens.” El Paso tied the empty ammo can, a small steel box with a watertight seal, to the base of the ruck. “That’s where you keep all your personal stuff,” El Paso said. “Toothbrush, writing paper, extra socks. Everything that’s you and not the army.” Then he said, “Dump your duffel bag out.” Chelini emptied his duffel bag onto the floor. “You can’t carry any of that stuff,” El Paso said. “You can maybe take a book and you gotta take your razor. Top’ll lock away any personal s**t you got. The uniforms go into the company clothes fund. You might want to keep out an extra T-shirt but that’s all.”

First Sergeant Laguana returned again and handed Chelini an extra pair of bootlaces. “Don let nobody see thees,” he smiled. “They always try an take them from me. I gotta keep thees locked up.”

“Top,” El Paso looked up angrily. “You’re an ass.”

“Jus go trim that mustache,” Laguana shouted.

“Don’t harass me. I’ll get the Human Relations Office to slap the back of your head. This place is f****d up.”

Laguana bent down to check and adjust the straps on Chelini’s rucksack. “He Company Senior RTO,” Laguana said proudly trying to mollify the young brown soldier.

El Paso pushed Laguana away. He grabbed the ruck. “Don’t f**k with my RTOs,” he said. He turned to Chelini. “Try it on.”

“He schow you how to put the ruck together pretty good, eh?” Laguana smiled. “Oooo, you gon cuss me. Now I got somet’ing to do. You go cut that mustache. Now get out.”

“Hey, Top?”

“Out.”

“If you don’t listen to me I’ll tell the IG.”

“What you want?” The first sergeant feigned exhaustion.

“About my R&R request. I’d like to change it from Bangkok to Sydney. Like Egan’s.”

“Can’t.”

“Why?”

“Out.”

“I want to talk to the L-T.”

“He aint in.”

“You aren’t going to let me see him.”

“Get out of here you chon-of-a-b***h,” the first sergeant erupted, jumping out from behind the desk, his eyes bulging and his fists clenched.

El Paso ran out of the hootch. He called back through the screen, “I’m only teasing you, Top. Cut yourself some slack.” He walked away mumbling, “That stupid asshole. He doesn’t have any right to tell me to trim my mustache. Son-of-a-b***h. Gives us Chicanos a bad name. Can’t even speak English.”

Chelini staggered out of the office hunched under the weight of the ruck. He plodded down to the boonierat shacks behind the theater. The weight of the rucksack was immediately oppressive, the shoulder straps cutting. Surrounding the hootches were the shacks the boonierats occupied when in from the bush. There were only half a dozen of these and when the entire battalion was in on stand-down these shanties were supplemented with twelve-man tents. Now, the tents, with their sides rolled up, filled the gaps between the hootches behind the theater. Chelini entered the hootch the first sergeant had told him was for the second squad and command post of the first platoon.