“He took the hill,” I said.
William nodded, fighting back tears. “We put the dead in body bags . . . Victor. We sent them out in choppers. I wanted to go with Cruz, but the lieutenant wouldn’t allow it. He said he needed every man because we were spending the night atop that hill. I didn’t have a choice. I had to dig in. It was the longest night of my life. I didn’t sleep. I wished the NVA had come. I wished I could have killed them all, for Victor.”
He shook his head. “I remember the sun coming up. I remember the sun coming up and the lieutenant telling us to saddle up.”
“You left?” I asked, uncertain I understood him correctly. “I thought—”
“We packed up and humped down the hill. The South Vietnamese never came. I don’t know what happened to them. That’s the hardest part, that Cruz died for nothing.” He lowered his head. More tears. “I never wrote this in my journal. I couldn’t. I never wrote about what happened to Cruz.” William looked up at me, openly crying. “I never told anyone. I never told anyone that I let Victor go. That I wouldn’t go up the hill with him. I should have gone with him.”
I was about to tell William that he made the right choice, the difficult choice, but then I realized that William wasn’t just talking about going up the hill with Cruz. He was talking about dying with him, that he should have died with Corporal Victor Cruz, USMC, that day, that a part of him wished he had died, that it would have been better to have died that day than it had been to live with the guilt.
I did not know what to say, so I said nothing. William’s head fell forward, against my shoulder, and he sobbed.
PART VI
THE FINISH LINE IS SIX FEET UNDER
December 22, 1968
While I waited on the clerk’s job in the rear, Charlie moved toward the cities. In October, President Johnson ended Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing of North Vietnam, and the politicians have been pulling out marines to entice the Viet Cong to restart peace talks. We abandoned Firebase Phoenix and were redeployed to provide security in the cities, so the South Vietnamese army could better concentrate on fighting.
Not likely. Just more bullshit.
They said we’re leaving Vietnam. The FNGs told us the protests back home had intensified. I didn’t really care. I didn’t believe I was going to make it home. I spit in good luck’s face. I spit in God’s face. Payback will be a bitch.
We were in a city just northeast of Da Nang, going door to door, hunting Charlie. M-16s and AK-47s traded bullets. RPGs and rockets were flying and exploding all around me.
In this chaos a Jeep appeared, driving like hell. The driver slammed to a stop to talk to some marines. One marine pointed to where I was standing behind a truck. The driver looked in my direction, then floored the Jeep and popped up onto the grass.
“William Goodman?” he asked. He was terrified. His utilities were clean and he was clean shaven. He was rear support. He’d never been in the bush. Unlikely he’d been in any firefight.
“Yeah,” I shouted over the sound of an RPG exploding and the rattle of automatic gunfire. I was alternately firing my M-16 and taking shots with my Pentax.
The guy in the Jeep kept slumping lower in his seat. “You’re leaving. Get in. Chopper’s taking off.”
I shook my head. “You got it wrong. I got about three months.”
“I got orders from Captain Martinez to find you, take you to the chopper, and make sure you get your ass on it. He said to tell you that is an order. Chopper’s leaving. Get in.”
I was being sent to the rear, to the clerk’s job. More good luck? It would never happen. The God I no longer believed in wouldn’t let it happen. I was paralyzed by my confusion. A blow to my shoulder knocked me back to reality. This big Pole looked at me like I was crazy. We called him Cheesesteak because he was from Philadelphia.
Cheesesteak yelled at me, “Shutter, get in the fucking Jeep, man. Don’t be a hero.”
I got in, still unsure.
We drove through the war, machine gun fire and exploding RPGs, and I kept thinking I was going to get hit. I was going to die. I couldn’t outrace death. It was right behind, following me. I was not meant to leave the Nam. I was meant to die here, punishment for spitting in God’s face, for coming back. Punishment for Victor Cruz.
We reached the helicopter pad at a field base and I climbed on board. Just as we were about to take off, marines hurried to the chopper carrying a body bag. They slung it on board and I noticed there were two others.