Overhead I heard the roar of incoming Phantoms before I saw them. I crawled back, quickly, toward my ditch. If our radioman’s coordinates were off by even the slightest degree, the air-to-ground missiles would obliterate us. The tree line exploded in rolling balls of yellow-and-black flames. I felt the ground shake and the heat. After the Phantoms came the Cobra helicopters. They raked the hillsides with rockets, 20 mm bullets from the miniguns, and RPGs.
Within minutes, the shooting stopped. The NVA regiment, what was left of it, had pulled back into the bush. But how far and for how long?
Cruz came through the grass checking each marine. He grabbed my shoulder. “Shutter, you good?” He shook my shoulder. “You good, Shutter? Shutter?”
It took me a moment to come back from where I’d gone. I said, “I’m good,” and I sat up. My muscles felt like I’d just run a twenty-six-mile sprint and I was still on the high from the adrenaline rush.
Cruz smiled and shouted. “Get out your camera, Shutter. Do your job. The New York Times is waiting.”
My job? I didn’t even know what that was anymore, nor did I care. But I found my pack in the ditch into which I’d first dropped. The ditch that likely saved my life. I got out my camera, about to turn away, then stopped and looked down at that little culvert like it was a friend, and I snapped a picture to remember.
Marines were down. I don’t know how many photographs I snapped of the dead and wounded. Too many. I looked through the lens of my camera and tried to convince myself I was making a movie one shot at a time, but I couldn’t pretend anymore. It’s like Cruz said. Vietnam is real.
There were too many dead and wounded to be medevacked out. They sent in an APC to break through the jungle. When it arrived, I helped load the wounded and the body bags, so many that the APC had to make multiple trips. The dead and the wounded retrieved, no marine left behind, I climbed on board, snapping pictures as we left the bush, back to where a perimeter had been established, where we could get medevac choppers in to fly out the dead and the wounded, and where we who had not died would remain through the night.
I put my name on the rolls of film, slipped them into a bag, and put my lab buddy’s name on it, then I handed the bag to a machine gunner on one of the transports and asked him to take the film to the lab at Da Nang. He assured me it would get there.
I worried all night that the NVA would return and overrun us, but Charlie didn’t come. In the morning, Cruz told me we’d lost forty-two marines, with another fifty-eight wounded. Our battalion now consists of half of Alpha Company and half of Charlie Company. Bravo Company is no longer an effective fighting unit.
No time to mourn. We were told to saddle up and move out.
FNGs will be flown in.
Charlie’s on the move again.
Chapter 17
July 20, 1979
Friday night I drove Billy and Cap to South San Francisco, picked up Mif, and stopped at Colombo’s liquor store, where Scotty was now a manager. We bought a case of beer to take to a party. I had significantly reduced the amount I drank over the course of the summer. It wasn’t any one incident but an accumulation of incidents: crushing rock with a hangover, standing in the puddle of water while holding the Skilsaw and the rebar with a hangover, and misstepping on a plank of the scaffolding and falling to the ground, also with a hangover. I had escaped injury, but like the puddle incident, my missteps had one thing in common.
Alcohol.
No, I hadn’t been drunk, but I’d had too much to drink the night before.
I went into Colombo’s to buy snacks, a bag of Cheetos, a bag of Doritos, and an assortment of munchies. On my way out the door, a guy, who appeared our age and about my size, walked in with a girl. I stepped out of their way, allowing the girl to pass, even holding the door for them. I didn’t give him or the girl a second look or a second thought. At first blush he looked like a typical South City kid, a pseudotough guy in Converse tennis shoes, brown cords, and a blue letterman’s jacket indicating he played football at El Camino High School. He gave me the stink eye but I ignored him.
We got in the Pinto and I drove away. Within a few miles, headlights appeared close behind me. The car pulled up to my bumper. I looked down at the speedometer. I was driving faster than the speed limit. “What’s his problem?” I said, looking into the rearview mirror.
Heads turned, looking out the back window. The car was so close, it was clearly intended to send a message. I thought of William sending a message to the woman in the BMW, but I had not flipped anybody off. With parked cars on one side of the street and oncoming traffic on the other side, I couldn’t pull over to let the guy pass. After several blocks, when traffic eased in the opposite direction, I figured the driver would pass me. He didn’t.