The Biggest Thing Since Custer

by William Eastlake

The chopper came in low over the remains of Clancy’s outfit. Everyone below seemed very dead. They were as quiet as lambs. Sometimes you could see what looked like smoke coming up from a fire, but it was only ground fog. Everyone with Clancy was dead. All of Alpha Company. It was the biggest thing since Custer.

Mike, the correspondent, had to watch himself. The correspondent tended to take the side of the Indians. You got to remember that this is not the Little Big Horn. This is Vietnam. Vietnam. Vietnam. They all died in Vietnam. A long way from home. What were the Americans doing here? The same thing they were doing in Indian Country. In Sioux Territory. They were protecting Americans. They were protecting Americans from the Red Hordes. God help Clancy. You could tell here from above how Clancy blundered. Clancy blundered by being in Vietnam. That’s a speech.

The chopper circled now low over the dead battle. Clancy had blundered by not holding the ridge. Clancy had blundered by being forced into a valley, a declivity in the hills. It was the classic American blunder in Vietnam of giving the Indians the cover. The enemy was fighting from the protection of the jungle. The first thing the Americans did in America was clear a forest and plant the cities.

Concentrate on the battle below. Do not always take the side of the Indians. You could see here clearly from above how Clancy blew it. In the part of the highlands of Vietnam near the Cambodian-Laos bunch-up, there is no true open country. Everything is in patches. You could see where Clancy’s point squad had made contact with the enemy. You could see, you could tell by all the shit of war, where Clancy had made, where Clancy had tried to make, his first stand on the ridge and then allowed his perimeter to be bent by the hostiles attacking down the ridge. Then Clancy’s final regrouping in the draw where all the bodies were.

Clancy should have held that ridge at all costs. If you must fight in the open, fight high. Then the only way the enemy can kill you is with arching fire. Mortar fire. You can dig in against mortar fire. When they force you in the valley, you are duck soup. They can hit you with everything from above. From the way the bodies lie Clancy had mounted three counterattacks to get the ridge back he had too early conceded. The attacks were not in concert. He did not hit them all at once. There should have been more American bodies on the ridge. Clancy should have paid any price to get back the ridge. The ridge was the only opportunity. The valley was death. Ah, but the valley is comfortable. The hill is tough, and the men are all give out and dragging ass, tired and leaking blood. See where they stumbled up and were shot down. See where they failed. See where they tried again and again and again. Where they were shot down. See the paths of bright they made with their blood. See Clancy pointing them on with his sword. War is kind. See Clancy pointing them on with his sword. The son of a bitch had one, like in an old movie. See Clancy pointing them on up the ridge. Once more into the breach. Once more, men, for God and Country and Alpha Company. I blew the ridge. Get it back. Get it back. Get it back for Clancy. Go Smith, go Donovitch, go Lewis, get that— back! I need it. Now Shaplen, now Marshall, now Irvine, get me the — back. I will lead this charge. Every man behind me. Where has every young man gone? Why is that native killing me? Why, Shaplen? Why, Marshall? Why, Irvine? All dead. The valley is beautiful, warm, and in this season of Vietnam, soft in the monsoon wet. Contemplative, withdrawn, silent, and now bepatched, bequilted with all of the dead. Alive with scarlet color. Gay with the dead.

The helicopter that carried the correspondent made one more big circle to see if it would pick up ground fire, then came in and hit down in the middle of Clancy’s dead with a smooth chonk noise.

The grave registration people got out first. They ejected in the manner of all soldiers from an alighting chopper, jumping out before it quite touched the ground, then running as fast as they could go to escape the giant wind. When they got to the perimeter of Alpha’s dead, they stopped abruptly as though they had come to a cliff, and then they came back slowly, picking their way among Alpha’s dead, embarrassed and wondering what to do about all this. The lieutenant got out and told the body people not to touch any of the bodies until the army photographers had shot all the positions in which they had fallen. This was important, he said, so Intelligence could tell how the battle was lost. Or won, he said. We are not here to draw conclusions right now. The lieutenant was very young and had red hair. The grave registration people just stood now quiet among the dead, holding their bags in which they would place the dead folded over their arms, like waiters.

The army photographers alighted now holding their cameras at high port like weapons, and began to shoot away at the dead it seemed at random, but they began at the concentric of the perimeter and worked outward in ever widening waves of shooting so that there was a method to their shots. The young lieutenant kept telling them not to touch. The photographers kept having trouble with the angle of repose in which many of the Alpha bodies lay. They had not fallen so that the army photographers could shoot them properly. It was important that they be shot so Intelligence could tell the direction they were pointing when they were hit, how many bodies had jammed guns, how many bodies ran out of ammo. What was the configuration of each body in relation to the configuration of the neighbor body, and then to the configuration of the immediate group of bodies in which the body rests? What relation does said group of bodies have to neighbor groups? To all groups? Bodies should be shot in such a way so that patterns of final action of dead are clear and manifest to establish Alpha’s response, if possible, to loss of ridge. Does bodies’ configuration show aggressive or regressive response to ridge objective? Where body position of men and commissioned officers? Does body position of noncommissioned officers manifest immediate body group leadership? Neighbor body group’s leadership? Photographer should manifest if possible commissioned officer’s response to command situation. Does command officer placement of body manifest command presence? Lack of same? Does placement of commissioned officer’s body manifest battle plan? Lack of same? Find Clancy. Photographers should shoot all mutilations. Does Captain Clancy’s body show normal kill? Planned mutilations? Do commissioned officers’ bodies show more mutilation than ear men? When battle situation became negative did ear men attempt to throw away ears? Hide ears? Display ears?

“Don’t touch,” the lieutenant said.

The correspondent was examining the bodies. He had never seen it so bad.

“Don’t touch,” the lieutenant said.

“What’s this about ears?” the correspondent said.

“Ears?” the lieutenant said.

“Yes.”

“You must mean years,” the lieutenant said.

“We have some five-year men, some ten-year men.”

“I see them,” the correspondent said.

“I wouldn’t write about it if I were you,” the lieutenant said.

“You’d pull my credentials?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll have a look-see,” the correspondent said.

“Don’t touch,” the lieutenant said.

The correspondent leaned over a soft-face boy whose M-16 had jammed. The boy body had never shaved. He was that young. The boy had something stuck in his mouth.

“Jesus,” the correspondent said.

The young lieutenant knelt down alongside the correspondent now.

“You see how bad the enemy can be.”

“Yes,” the correspondent said. “Why has it got a condom on it?'’

“Because Alpha was traveling through jungle swamp. There’s an organism that gets in the penis opening and travels up to the liver. The condom protects the penis.”

The correspondent made a move to remove it.

“Don’t touch,” the lieutenant said.

“Why don’t you bag him?”

“Intelligence wants pictures.”

“Bag all of them,” the correspondent said, “and let’s get out of here.”

“It won’t be long,” the lieutenant said.

“If I report this you’ll lift my credentials?”

“I don’t know what the brass will do,” the lieutenant said. “I do know the people at home can’t take it.”

“They might stop your war,” the correspondent said.

“They don’t understand guerrilla war,” the lieutenant said.

“You’re tough,” the correspondent said.

“Listen,” the lieutenant said, and touched the correspondent.

“Don’t touch,” the correspondent said.

“Listen,” the lieutenant said, “it makes me sick. I hope it always makes me sick.”

THE correspondent stood up. There was an odor in the jungle now from the bodies that the correspondent had not noticed when the chopper rotor was turning. Now the chopper was dead. It was very quiet in the jungle.

“How did Clancy get into this?”

“He asked for it,” the lieutenant said.

“I heard different.”

“You heard wrong,” the lieutenant said.

“I heard he was ordered out here.”

“He ordered himself out. Clancy’s an old ear collector. Alpha Company always had that reputation. Clancy’s an old ear collector.”

When the lieutenant became angry, his white skin that could not tolerate the sun became red like his hair. His red hair was clipped short under his green helmet, and when the young lieutenant became angry, his white skin matched the hair.

“Clancy wanted to provoke the VC, Victor Charlie. Clancy wanted to collect more ears.”

“I don’t believe that.”

The lieutenant kicked something with his boot.

“Why not scalps?” the correspondent said.

“Because they’re too difficult to take. Did you ever try to take a scalp?”

“No.”

“It’s difficult,” the lieutenant said.

“What makes you think Alpha Company asked for this?”

“Because Clancy could have made it up the hill,” the lieutenant said pointing. “But he stayed down here on the narrow ridge hoping Charlie would hit him. You see,” the lieutenant said carefully. “Look. It’s only a hundred more meters up the ridge to the top of the hill. That makes a perfect defense up there, you can see that. And Clancy knew Charlie could see that too, and he wouldn’t hit. That’s why Clancy stayed down here. Clancy wanted Charlie to try to take him.”

“A full battalion?”

“Clancy didn’t know Charlie had a full battalion.”

“How do you know that?”

“We had contact with Appelfinger, his RTO man, before radio went dead. Clancy guessed the Unfriendlies as maybe an overstrength company.”

“Unfriendlies?”

“NVA. North Vietnamese Army. Clancy knew that. They are quite good.” The lieutenant almost mused now, looking over the dead, reflective and sad.

“We got a man alive here, Lieutenant,” someone called.

The jungle had been most quiet, and everyone had been moving through the bodies with caution, almost soundlessly, so that the announcement was abrupt, peremptory, and rude, almost uncalled for.

“Don’t touch,” the lieutenant said. The lieutenant raised his arm for a medic and moved toward the call, sinuously winding through the bodies with a snakelike silent grace. The man who had called, the man who made the discovery, was a body man, one of the grave registration people. He had been standing gently with his bag over one arm waiting patiently for the others to finish when he noticed a movement where there should have been none.

“Don’t touch,” the lieutenant said, standing over the alive. “See what you can do,” he said to the medic.

Each of the American dead had received a bullet through the head, carefully administered to each soldier by the enemy after they had overrun the position, to make absolutely certain that each was dead. The soldier who was alive had received his bullet too, but it had been deflected by the helmet, and you could see when the medic removed the helmet from the head of the young Mexican soldier that it had only torn through the very black, very thick hair and lodged in the head bone. The soldier was dying of natural causes of battle. You could see this when the medic removed the boy Mexican’s shirt, which he did skillfully now with a knife. The boy Mexican had been sprayed with hostile machine-gun fire, eight bullets entering the olive-colored body just above the pelvis. The boy Mexican with the olive body in the American olive-colored jungle uniform was cut in half. But he lived for now, taking in sudden gusts of air terrifically as though each were his last.

Mr. Eastlake, who has served as a correspondent in. Southeast Asia, is the author of several short stories and novels, of which the most recent isCASTLE KEEP.

“Nothing can be done,” the medic said without saying anything. The medic’s hands were just frozen over the body, not moving to succor, just antic and motionless like a stalled marionette’s.

“Water?” the lieutenant asked.

The medic shook his head no.

“If he’s going, it could make it easier,” the lieutenant said. “He seems to be looking at us for water.”

The medic shook his head OK. Nothing would make any difference.

When one of the photographers tried to give the boy Mexican water from his canteen, the water would not run in the mouth; it just poured down the Mexican’s chin and down his chest till it reached his belly and mixed with the blood that was there.

“I think the son of a bitch is dead,” one of the army photographers who was not pouring the water said.

“No,” one of the body men said. “Let me try it.”

“That’s enough,” the medic said, letting the body down. “I think he’s dead now.”

“How could the son of a bitch last so long when he was cut in half?”

“We have funny things like this all the time,” the medic said. “Another funny thing is I’ve seen guys dead without a mark on them.”

“Concussion? But there’s always a little blood from the ears or something, isn’t there?”

“No, I’ve seen them dead without any reason at all,” the medic said, wiping clean the face of the Mexican boy with the water the Mexican could not drink. “If you look good at the guys around here I bet you’ll find at least one that doesn’t have a mark on him that’s dead. It’s funny. Some guys will die without any reason at all, and some guys will live without any reason at all.” The medic looked perplexed. Then the medic allowed the boy’s head to rest on his smashed helmet. “You’ll find some guys with just that one bullet in the head given by the Unfriendlies after they overran Alpha.”

“Some guys will play dead,” the army photographer said, “hoping to pass for dead among the dead.”

“They don’t get away with it though too much,” the medic said. But the medic was not listening to himself. He was still perplexed that the Mexican boy could have lived so long when he was cut in half. “It’s funny, that’s all,” the medic said.

“You want them to die?”

“I don’t want them to suffer,” the medic said.

“There’s another live one over here,” someone called.

“Don’t touch,” the lieutenant said.

No one moved. There was a hiatus in the movement in the jungle, as though, the correspondent thought, no one here wanted to be deceived again, no one wanted to be taken in by another illusion. The problem was that Alpha was all dead. You could tell that with a glance. Anyone could see that they were ready to be photographed and placed in bags. It wasn’t planned for anyone to come back to life. It made all the dead seem too much like people. The dead should stay dead.

“Maybe this one’s real,” someone said.

That started a drift toward the caller.

“Don’t touch,” the lieutenant said.

The correspondent got there early. It was a Negro. It did not seem as though the boy were hit. He was lying in a bed of bamboo. He looked comfortable. The Negro boy had a beginning hallsmile on his face, but the smile was frozen. The eyes too were immobile. The Negro boy’s eyes looked up, past the correspondent and on up to the hole at the top of the jungle canopy. There were two elongated fronds that crossed way up there at the apex of the canopy. Maybe that’s what he was looking at. Maybe he was staring at nothing. The Negro boy said something, but nothing came out. His lips moved, and words seemed to be forming, but nothing came out. Maybe he was saying, the correspondent thought, that he had come a long way since he was dragged up with the rats in the ghetto. He had never been close to white people before, except relief workers. Now he had joined the club. In death do us join.

The young Negro stopped breathing. The white medic was on top of the Negro like a lover. In one sudden deft movement the white medic was down on the bed of bamboo with his white arms around the black boy, his white lips to the black lips, breathing in white life to black death. The Negro lover did not respond. It was too late. The white boy was late. The eyes were all shut. Then abruptly the young Negro’s chest began to heave. The eyes opened. But not to life, the correspondent thought, but to outrage, a kind of wild surmise and amaze at all this. As though he had gone to death, to some kind of mute acceptance of no life and now come back to this, the lover’s embrace, the lover lips of the white medic.

The white medic ceased now, withdrew his lips from the young Negro’s and tried to catch the erratic breathing of the Negro in his hand to give it a life rhythm. He was astraddle the boy now, up from the bamboo bed, and administering a regular beat with his hands to the young Negro’s chest.

“Ah,” the Negro said.

“Ah,” the white boy said.

“Ah ah ah,” they both said.

Now the medic allowed the boy beneath to breathe on his own.

“Ah,” the lieutenant said.

“Ah-h-h-h . . .” everyone said.

Now the jungle made sounds. The awful silence had given way to the noises that usually accompany an American motion picture. The cry of gaudy birds seemed fake. The complaints of small animals, distant, were remote like some sound track that had blurred, some other mix for a different cinema, so that you not only expected that the next reel would announce the mistake, that this war would have to start all over again, but that the whole damn thing would be thrown out with whoever was responsible for this disaster here at Dak To, this unacceptable nightmare, this horror, this unmentionable destruction of Clancy and all his men. But more, the correspondent thought, this is the finis, the end of man in this clearing, this opening in the jungle, the end of humankind itself and the planet earth on which it abides. And shit, the correspondent thought — and Ah — He found himself saying it too now, celebrating the rebirth, the resurrection of the black man and the rebirth and resurrection after the crucifixion of humankind itself. And shit, he reflected, they, Alpha Company, are the car hunters, and maybe not shit because all of Alpha were standing in for us, surrogate, and all of us are collectors of ears.

“Will he make it?” the young lieutenant said.

The medic looked perplexed. It was his favorite and especial expression. Then he went down in the bamboo bed in lover attitude to listen to the heart.

“No,” he said from the black heart. “No.”

“No?”

“Because,” the medic said from the black heart. “No. Because they were supposed to be all dead here, and we needed body room in the chopper, and there was no room for my shit.”

“Blood plasma?”

“We didn’t bring any,” the medic said.

“Can he talk?”

“Yes.” The medic passed a white hand in front of the black face. The black eyes did not follow it.

“Ask him what happened to Clancy’s body. Clancy is missing.”

The medic made a gentle movement with his hands along the throat of the Negro and whispered to him with lover closeness, “What happened to the captain?”

“He dead.”

“Where is the body?”

“The RTO man,” the Negro pronounced slowly.

“Appelfinger carried him off,” the medic said to the lieutenant.

“Can you give the boy some morphine?” the lieutenant said to the medic.

“I don’t like his heart.”

“Risky?”

“Yes.”

“Can he talk more?”

“I don’t think it would be good,” the medic said.

“All right, keep him quiet,” the lieutenant said.

“They was so nice,” the Negro said.

“Keep him quiet,” the lieutenant said.

“They gave us each one shot,” the Negro said. “They was so nice.”

“Keep him quiet.”

“They was so nice — ”

“I said keep him quiet,” the lieutenant said. And the lieutenant thought, war is so nice. Looking over all the dead, he thought ROTC was never like this, and he thought in this war everything is permitted so that there is nothing to be forgiven. And he thought about the ears that Clancy took, and he thought a man can read and read and read and think and think and still be a villain, and he thought there are no villains, there are only wars. And he said, “If the photographers are finished, put the men in the bags.”

AND then there was that goddamn jungle silence again, this awful and stern admonition and threat of the retribution of Asia to white trespassers. But that is metaphysical, the lieutenant thought, and it is only the VC you have to fear. More, it is only yourself you have to fear. It is only Clancy you have to fear. Clancy is dead.

“When you find pieces of body,” the lieutenant said, “try to match them and put the matched pieces into one separate bag. Remember a man has only two arms and two legs and one head each. I don’t want to find two heads in one bag.”

And the lieutenant thought, Clancy is dead but the crimes that Clancy did live after him. Custer too. Custer liked to destroy the villages and shoot up the natives too. Listen to this, the lieutenant told Captain Clancy silently. I did not spend all my time in the ROIC. I spent some of the time in the library. What you did in the villages is not new. Collecting ears is not new. Listen, Clancy, to Lieutenant James D. Connors after the massacre of the Indians at Sand Creek, “The next day I did not see a body of a man, woman or Indian child that was not scalped by us, and in many instances the bodies were mutilated in the most horrible manner. Men’s, women’s and children’s private parts cut out. I saw one of our men who had cut out a woman’s private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick. Some of our men had cut out the private parts of females and wore them in their hats.” I don’t think you can top that, Clancy. I don’t think war has come very far since then. I don’t think your ears can top that, Clancy.

“What’s happening, Lieutenant?” the correspondent said.

“Happening?” the lieutenant said. “I was thinking.”

“This man is dead,” the medic said, pointing to the Negro.

“Bag him,” the lieutenant said.

“What were you thinking?” the correspondent said.

“That this makes me sick. Awful sick.”

“Have you ever seen it this bad?”

“No, I have never seen it this bad,” the lieutenant said, spacing his words as though the correspondent were taking each separate word down. “No, I have never seen it this bad in my whole short life. I have never seen it this bad. No, I have never seen it this bad. Is that what you want me to say?”

“Take it easy,” the correspondent said.

“OK,” the lieutenant said. “I’m sorry.” And then the lieutenant heard something. It was the sound of a mortar shell dropping into a mortar tube in the jungle. It was the sound the lieutenant had heard too many times before, then the poof, as the enemy mortar came out of the tube, then the whine as it traveled to their company. The symphony. The music of Vietnam. Incoming! The lieutenant hollered as loud as he could make it. “Incoming!”

Incoming? Where? Who? Why? The shell hit their helicopter, and it all exploded in a towering orange hot pillar of fire in the jungle.

“Pull the bodies around you, men, and try to dig in. Use the bodies as a perimeter!” the lieutenant hollered. Then the lieutenant said quietly to the correspondent, “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

“You didn’t,” the correspondent said.

“I’ll try to get Search and Rescue on the radio.”

“You do that,” the correspondent said.