When War Becomes Personal: Soldiers' Accounts from the Civil War to Iraq

Notes from Ban Me Thuot

At 0910, I wandered into the operations section where Jess, Major Witherspoon , and assorted operations staff were silently listening through the static on the tactical radio. Over the buzz, a voice cracked, “Oscar six alpha, how many were on board, four or five? Hell, we’ve got enough parts here for six body bags, over.” The big Okie radio operator replied, “Romeo Zulu, according to our manifest there were only four, over.” Major Witherspoon spat on the dirt floor and wiped his sweaty face with a dusty rag. Sergeant Stevenson, a muscular redhead, whistled, “Damn, I just saw ole’ Captain Ray and the el tee at coffee.” Jess just stared at the radio hard, his blue eyes never blinked. Jess and I had been scheduled to make the flight north to the industrial site named Waite-Davis but gave up our seats on that morning’s aircraft to the group surgeon and our refrigerator repair man, a favor granted as casually as one of Colonel Buckton’s insults. With the colonel’s final threat that if the refrigerators were not up by noon, he would have Chief Lopes’s “spic ass,” the junior officers left the morning briefing and adjourned to the mess tent for coffee and a parody of the good colonel’s morning performance. The only West Pointer, other than Colonel Buckton himself, Jess had commanded a remote, land-clearing company for six months, during which his wounds earned him Purple Hearts and authenticity, estimable stock in a combat zone. Much to his chagrin, he was finishing his tour in the relatively safe Engineer Group Operations TOC (Tactical Operations Center). Jess was the longest in country, the biggest soldier on the compound , and our acknowledged and undisputed moral authority. If Jess thought something was wrong, we paused to reassess our position. Of course, Jess hardly ever questioned the most hare-brained scheme, thus his unchallenged supremacy in the unspoken hierarchy of the informal bureaucracy. : j o s e p h t . c o x Notes from Ban Me Thuot 9 8 | J O S E P H T . C O X In fact, about a month earlier, it was Jess’s idea to pitch rocks on the tin roof of the field grade bunker and scream, “Incoming!” In the dark mad scramble, the fat major broke his arm trying to get to the fighting position. Major Witherspoon, who hated the fat major as much as we did, had to use Jess’s West Point credential to argue the colonel out of pressing charges against us all. I looked to him to see me through this crisis, too. Jess would be able to make sense out of our very close call. His silence and distant stare unnerved me, and I felt a chill in the crowded heat of the TOC. In the dark of the sleeping bunker, I lay on my poncho, my mouth full of ashes, morning coffee acid boiling in the back of my throat, fumbling to pull the flip top on a warm Falstaff beer. Ray, Dan, Doc, and Mr. Lopes had tried to fly below the highland clouds but had slammed into a mountainside. “Romeo Zulu, according to our manifest there were only four, over.” Drinking the second warm beer, I stared through the dust particles that rose in the slivers of sunlight and listened to roaches scurry across sandbags, the buzz of a fly, the distant crackling refrain of a tactical radio , and the steady stroke of my heartbeat, louder and louder. Jess found me around noon and asked me to help him get the dead guys’ kits in order. We didn’t say a word as we inventoried the footlockers. I yearned for a wise-ass comment that would make small sense of second lives. I thought back to the morning coffee and how in his best Buckton voice Jess had lampooned the 0600 briefing, “Lopez, you better have that refrigerator perturbation under control by lunch, or I’ll find someone with half a brain who can do the job right.” Lopes stirred his coffee and muttered in his cup, “Can you believe dat asshole. I’ve only been working for the shithead for seven months, and he doesn’t even know my damn name.” Captain Gage, the Intelligence officer who was always sweating added, “I couldn’t believe how he reacted to that shit about the kid at Whiskey Mountain. The one who...