Читать книгу Bulleit Proof - Tom Bulleit - Страница 12

I CARRY WITH ME the naïve and romantic notion from books I’ve read and movies I’ve seen that I will join the military and become an officer and a gentleman. My college transcript quickly torpedoes the officer idea. A private I will be. Life, I’m learning, seems to consist of starts, stops, and, mostly, beginnings. Starting from scratch.

I’m not sure which branch of the military I should join, but the Navy seems promising, or at least the safest and least stressful. One day, in 1966, as senior year at the University of Kentucky comes to an end, I sit across from a stone-faced Navy recruiter who pores over pages of forms that he’s told me I will momentarily sign. He’s wearing a uniform and appears to be an officer, but based on his gruff demeanor, I don’t figure him for a gentleman. He grunts, does his own head shake—never a good sign—and then laughs, hard, jarring me. I realize then that he’s looking at my transcript. He shakes his head again and sifts through a few other forms.

“Looking to fit you into the right slot,” he says, after yet another head shake. “Your grades are—”

“Abysmal,” I say, helpfully.

It’s only a matter of time before I will learn the meaning of that word.

“Correct,” he says, scowling at the form. “You want to be an electrician?”

“I’m not good with wiring or that sort of thing. I majored in English.”

“We speak English. What about a boatswain’s mate? You want to be a boatswain’s mate?”

“Uh, okay, maybe, I’m not quite sure what that—”

“You do basically everything. Rigging, deck maintenance, really anything that’s required to run a ship.”

“I’ve never been on a ship,” I admit. “I’ve been on a boat. A small boat. Done some fishing. We have this little river—”

“How about a medic?”

“A medic—”

“Yeah. A corpsman. You work in the hospital.”

I perk up. “With nurses?”

“Yes. Nurses.”

I picture our frat parties on campus. Nurses, coeds, partying, the Navy. I’ve clearly chosen the right branch of the military.

“I’ll do that,” I say. “I’ll be a medic. That’s great.”

He pushes the forms over to me and I sign them with a flourish. Only after I attach my signature do I see at the top of one of the forms that I will be heading to basic training—in the Marines.

“Excuse me, I thought I was joining the Navy—”

“You are. Marines are part of the Navy.” He leans forward, his eyes cold and dark, and he snarls, “That would be—excuse me, sir.”

* * *

I complete boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Installation, a virtual city of more than 1,000 buildings spread over more than 1,000 acres north of Chicago. After that I head to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where I train to become a corpsman field medic (FMF), then complete my medical training at a military hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. Looking back, this timeframe flickers and then unnerves me. I feel as if I’m caught in a vortex of events whirling around me, out of my grasp, barely in my sightline, including one event that I hazily envision but appears off to the side, nearly eluding my memory altogether. Nothing that significant. Only my wedding.

In 1967, I marry Stephanie Patrick, a high-spirited Kentuckian who keeps me laughing and on my toes. Though Stephanie doesn’t attend UK, we meet at a fraternity party. One thing leads to another, we start dating, we get engaged, and one Sunday I see myself standing next to her at St. Francis of Rome Church in Louisville, murmuring marriage vows to each other before God, a clergyman, and a tiny cluster of family and friends.

I must believe that I never want the party better known as college to end and, by marrying Stephanie, I’ll simply keep it going. But early in our marriage, I receive sobering news. The Navy mails me my orders. I will be joining the First Marine Division in Vietnam.

Two nights before I leave for Vietnam, I say goodbye to my family. The family convenes in the kitchen for what feels like a last supper. We don’t talk much, the conversation sporadic and strained. Afterward, I spend some time with my sister, Mary Jo. We say an awkward goodbye and then she wraps her arms around me in a long, tearful hug. I go into the kitchen and find my mother drying some dishes, an absent look on her face. I’ve always felt close to her, comfortable talking with her, struck by her beauty, disarmed by her easy laugh, open to her sensible advice. We hug and she goes off to bed. A wave of emptiness shudders through me. I allow it to pass, take a deep breath, and seek out my father.

Bourbon in one hand, cigarette in the other, he sits in his chair in the living room—every dad has a chair—and I sit on the couch next to him. The silence in the room presses into me. I hadn’t expected lively conversation with my father before I left for Vietnam, but I hadn’t been prepared for such—quiet. The quiet unnerves me. Maybe I expected words of wisdom from my warrior father, but I receive none. Time flicks by and I begin to fidget.

“Well,” I say, starting to stand.

“Write your mother,” my father says.

I sit back down at the edge of the couch. My father looks past me, his face obscured in a cloud of cigarette smoke. I wonder if he’s seeing something far away, something from his past, his war.

“Write your mother and tell her you are in no danger,” he says. And then he pulls something out of his shirt pocket.

“Take this.”

He hands me his St. Christopher medal and neck chain.

I stare at it, speechless.

My father takes a drag from his cigarette.

“It worked pretty good for me,” he says.

I murmur thanks. We don’t hug. We don’t have to.

Two days later, before dawn, I leave.

* * *

Who are you? Why are you here?

We land in Da Nang at night, a group of us, mixed up and mismatched, none of us in the same unit. We’ve come to replace those who have gone home, gotten hurt, or gotten killed. We have no assignment, yet. We await our orders, our destination, our destiny.

We fly commercial, served by merry flight attendants, until we begin our descent, when the flight attendants lie down on the floor and cover their heads. I blink at them, confused. Someone explains that the enemy typically lobs rockets and mortars at arriving airliners. We land then, the plane bouncing, thumping, grinding to a stop, and loud voices usher us off the aircraft. We step over and around the flight attendants on the floor.

Lugging my duffel, I walk onto the landing strip. I have no idea where I should go. A staff sergeant materializes and asks to see my papers. A few of us from the flight cluster around him and he nods at our paperwork, directing each of us with his thumb, like a hitchhiker, “You, go there. You, over there.”

He stares at my papers, murmurs, “Doc.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go to the hospital. You know where that is?”

“No, sir.”

He points vaguely toward a shadowy hut in the distance. “Up there. They’ll tell you what to do.”

I hustle over to the hut, find a M*A*S*H unit, busy, frantic, overwhelmed, chaotic. I stand aside, bide my time, wait for a break in the action. I walk to a gunnery sergeant, who sighs heavily as I approach.

“Excuse me, sir, staff sergeant told me to see you, sir.”

He grunts. He looks exhausted, his face grimy and lined. He wears the wizened expression of a much older man. He looks me over, then asks, “Are you coming or going, son?”

I wait to answer his question, which seems both philosophical and a golden opportunity. I don’t have the sense or presence of mind to tell him I’m leaving, on my way out, so I mutter the truth, “I just arrived, sir.”

The gunny grunts, gestures to another hut nearby. “Go over there, take a shower, grab some chow, come see me tomorrow.”

He turns away. I stand stuck to my spot, holding for 30 seconds before I can move. I trudge toward the second hut, seeing no one, not a soul. The landscape I’ve trod though is barren, dark, the air heavy and smoky. I feel as if I’m in a science fiction movie, the lone inhabitant of barren, unknown planet. Suddenly, I feel a kick of loneliness so sharp I lose my breath. I gather myself, walk into the building, slowly undress, shower, rustle up something to eat in the chow area, all by myself, so alone my shadow abandons me.

I spend the next three days in this way, alone, periodically asking the gunnery sergeant where I should go. At last, he tells me to report to headquarters, found in a vague location somewhere in the dark behind us, over a hill five miles away. I march to a road where after a few minutes, a supply truck rumbles to a stop, picks me up, and brings me to a cluster of buildings, my ultimate destination. At headquarters, the sergeant in charge studies me, shakes his head slowly, and asks, “Who are you? Why are you here?”

The Heart of Darkness, I want to say. And I’m not sure who I am anymore.

I quickly identify myself, at least for the next year. I am Doc Bulleit, corpsman. I’ll run sickbays and patrols and do the best I can.

As duties go, I can’t complain. Or I won’t.

* * *

I’m surprised, at first, by the fog, by the heavy, sauna-like heat that crushes my skin like a weight, and by the thick squadrons of mosquitoes that swarm every night and into the morning. I’m also surprised by the country’s beauty, green hills rising out of the mist and rice paddies dotted several hundred feet below, the South China Sea glimmering blue in the distance. Mostly, I’m surprised by the camaraderie, the familiar, comfortable feeling of guys hanging out together, almost as if we’ve relocated Phi Delta frat house to the northern perimeter of Da Nang. I’m lonely sometimes, confused often, bored some, but mainly happy—yes, happy—to be in this company of good men. We laugh more than I would have thought and more than I would have imagined, and when we watch the Viet Cong launch rockets at us from the other side of the mountain and see them splash harmlessly into the rice paddies, we not only laugh, we sing “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and “Light My Fire” by The Doors, and we dance.

Then things change.

* * *

Guided by moonlight, we move. I march, then crouch in our company of Marines, hugging both sides of the road, edging toward the Haiphong Pass. Our assignment: take back the bunker at the top of the pass previously held by us, recently overrun and seized by the Viet Cong. In a nighttime ambush, the Viet Cong slaughtered seven Marines.

As we approach the bunker, rocket fire explodes, blazing blue. The distant thunder of big guns blast, rocking the ground, then the clack, clack, clack, clack of AK47s screeches overhead, behind us, on both sides of us. Voices ring out in the dark. Cries. Grunts. Hollers. Four men in front of me, a soldier topples. I drop down next to him, identify a clean entry and exit wound in his forearm. I apply battle dressing, tag his hand, turn him around, send him back, alive, prayerful. He hasn’t dodged a bullet. But he has dodged the bullet. The mortal bullet.

We arrive at the base of Haiphong Pass. Three Marines lie on the ground. The first one I come to is dead. The next one groans, bloodied, his body ripped by shrapnel. He will survive, I think, unless the shrapnel has severed an artery. Then I can’t save him. Above my pay grade. Above everyone’s pay grade, except God’s. Two Marines attend the third man down. They’ve cut his pants leg to his thigh and wrapped a tourniquet above his knee. I launch myself between them, search for excessive bleeding, administer morphine. He’ll live, I believe. He’ll live, I pray.

The sergeant’s order, a subdued shout, pierces the air like a gunshot, “Up the hill, men. Squads two and four left, three and five right, squad one in the center. Doc, you’re with two. Go!”

We begin the climb and a hail of grenades arches toward us. We duck, we tumble, we zigzag away from the fiery explosions, dirty smoke, kicked-up dirt, the dull light. Then—screaming, shouting, and I find three men from squad three heaped in a crevice on the hill. Two lift each other up, stand unsteadily, their backs swaying, their bodies weaving, and descend the hill. I grab the third Marine, squat, sling him over my back, and carry him down, following the others. At the bottom of the hill, I hand him off to an awaiting circle of Marines, then turn and crabwalk back uphill, clinging to a low wall of spiked brush, pulling myself upward. Above me, mortar rounds and tracers light up the night. Battered moonlight, I think, and then I see shadows dancing, darting, flailing, or … wait … I believe I see them. I don’t know. But then I come to more men on the ground, wounded, some able to walk, others I fear may never walk again. The walking wounded help their fallen brothers. I sift through bodies. I come to the dead. I leave them. I have to. I have no other choice.

The smoke from gunfire and mortar fire rolls in, thick as fog. Machine gun fire cracks all around me, a brutal drumbeat, a blistering soundtrack. I help another wounded man down the hill, panting as I go, my body aching, my back straining. I turn to make the climb again, catch two wounded soldiers hobbling from the dark side of the hill.

“It’s easier up the backside, Doc,” one says, pointing in that direction.

I go that way, and do find the climb easier. At the top, I see a crowd, a melee, slithery figures running, tripping, falling, taking cover, firing. Then something whizzes by my ear. A bullet. Then another bullet screams, and another, then the air rains bullets, storms of dust and sand ripping around me, biting my legs, my side, my hands. I bend to peer into the distance and decide I may be caught in a crossfire, Company C firing into the bunker, at the Viet Cong, with us in the way. I turn from the front side, roll back, rise, and head back down to the bottom of the hill. Moving slowly, I drip sweat and smell blood, not my own, I determine. Then—pulsating flashes of light, of fire, of swirling black smoke, and then, unmistakably, the smell of death. Behind me, squads two and three lob grenades into the bunker, blasting out the Viet Cong. I keep inching downhill, tasting gunpowder, the odor of death seeping through my clothes.

The brilliant colors fade out and then—nothing. A gray pallor. Silence. In a heartbeat, the horror movie I’ve wandered into ends. I head toward camp, feeling dazed, tripping over shadows, the taste of gunpowder still caked in my mouth, the stench of death oozing out of my skin.

I come to bodies. I stop at each one, praying the dead I see are not dead. I check for a pulse, an eye blink, a whisper of breath. I pore over the dead, searching for the living.

Kneeling by a body, I reach for a pulse and my fingers sink to the bone, the Marine’s hand attached by only a frayed ligament. I search for further wounds and find a tiny, bloodless hole in his abdomen. I fall back, sit on the road, squint up at the sky. Lifeless. I close my eyes and picture the word, the letters—Life. Less. Less than life? What does that mean? What the hell does that mean?

We’re all dead, I think. Us. Them. All of us. The odor of death burning my nostrils, I look back at the dead Marine before me and I think, why?

What brings men to this?

* * *

Sometime later, the weeks melding into months, I corner my gunnery sergeant.

“Gunny,” I say, “I’m requesting a day off.”

He glares at me. Apparently, no one has ever before asked him for a day off.

“What?” he says.

“I need to go to Da Nang.”

“What for?”

“I want to take the LSAT.”

“The LS-what?”

“The LSAT. The exam to get into law school.”

“What the hell.”

“I know,” I say. I consider telling him about the promise I made to my father, look at his scowling face, think better of it.

“They give this test in Da Nang?” he says.

“Takes pretty much all day,” I say, then I laugh. “Law school, right?”

“What the hell,” Gunny says again, meaning no, moving away from me.

I wait him out. A few weeks later, I approach him after he’s downed several beers with his buddies at the NCO club.

“Sorry, to bother you, Gunny, but I was wondering about taking the LSAT? In Da Nang? Remember I told you about it—”

“The LSA Tee for law school,” Gunny says. “I remember.”

He starts to teeter, catches himself. He stares at me. He shows no recognition. He scrutinizes my face, trying to place me.

“Da Nang, right?” he says finally.

“Yes, sir. It’s actually in a few days—”

Gunny grunts. Calling over his shoulder, “What the hell,” this time meaning yes.

Gunny arranges for a Jeep and a driver who’s either a professional racecar driver or insane. He roars down dirt roads, accelerates onto the one asphalt road, a coastal highway, Highway 1, the Jeep fishtailing, swerving, at one point barely missing a farmer leading a yoked water buffalo. Riding shotgun, I cling to my door, occasionally glancing over my shoulder at the other member of our party, a machine gunner standing in the back of the Jeep, manning a M60 that protrudes from the back like a steel snout. Eventually, in a cloud of dust, we arrive at Da Nang, a resort town—soldiers, sailors, civilians clustered around stalls selling food, clothing, cookware, and beauty supplies. The driver parks the Jeep and I go in search of the testing site. After several failed tries, I find it, a tent not far from a string of bars. I walk in and the test administrator greets me with a knowing nod. He seems to be expecting me. He brings me to my assigned spot, a small card table. I unholster my .45 pistol, place it on the table, sit down, and begin taking the test. After completing the first page of questions, I know I will pass. I’ve studied the LSAT Guide some, preferring to lose myself in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but I feel in control of these questions and answers. I’m doing well, I think as I fly through the test. It’s as though I can see my future, my destiny, my promise to my dad. It turns out I will always know how I will do on law school exams, a function not of clairvoyance, but of excessive preparation. The lesson here, is simply—be prepared, the Boy Scouts’ wise and timeless motto.

I hand the administrator my finished test, grab my pistol, duck out of the tent, and get back in the Jeep. Weeks later, I receive the results. As I expected, I’ve aced the LSAT.

I now humbly offer this advice to anyone deciding to take the LSAT. Study, sleep the night before, and bring a pistol. Worked for me.