Breakfast in the Ruins

17 So Long Son Lon: 1968: Babies

— You're not slow, are you? says Karl's friend.—And to think I was worried. Now I think I'll get some sleep.

— Not yet, says Karl.

— Yes, now. I'm not feeling too well, as it happens.

— You are looking a bit grey. Karl inspects the black man's flesh. Compared with his own skin, it is quite pale.

Karl is twenty-two and it's his last few months in the Army. The past five months have been spent in Vietnam. Although he's seen only one VC in that time, he's tired and tense and fearful. He jokes a lot, like his buddies. There is heat, sticky sweat, jungle, mud, flies, poverty, death, but no Viet Cong. And this is a place reputedly thick with them.

— I'll be all right when I've rested, says Karl's friend. You've worn me out, that's all.

Karl reaches out the index finger of his right hand and traces his nail over his friend's lips.—You can't be that tired.

Twenty-two and weary. A diet of little more than cold C-rations for weeks at a stretch. No change of clothing. Crashing around in the jungle. For nothing, It wasn't like the John Wayne movies. Or maybe it was. The shit and the heat—and then the action coming fast and hard. The victory. The tough captain proving he was right to drive the men so hard, after all. The bowed heads as they honored dead buddies. Not many could stop the tears... But so jar all they had was the shit and the heat.

Karl's friend opens his lips. Karl hasn't noticed before that his friend's teeth are rather stained.

— Just let me rest a little.

KARL WAS TWENTY-TWO. His mother was forty-five. His father was forty-four. His father managed a hardware store in Phoenix, Arizona. His mother was a housewife.

Karl was on a big mission at last. He felt that if he survived the mission then it would all be over and he could look forward to going home, back to his job as his father's assistant. It was all he wanted.

He sat shoulder to shoulder with his buddies in the shivering chopper as it flew them to the combat area. He tried to read the tattered X-Men comic book he had brought along, but it was hard to concentrate. Nobody, among the other members of his platoon, was talking much.

Karl's hands were sweating and there was dark grease on them from the helicopter, from his rifle. The grease left his fingertips on the pages of the comic book. He tucked the book into his shirt and buttoned his shirt. He smoked a joint handed to him by Bill Leinster who, like two thirds of the platoon, was black. The joint didn't do anything for him. He shifted the extra belt of M16 ammo to a more comfortable position round his neck. He was overloaded with equipment. It would almost worth a battle to get rid of some of the weight of cartridges he was carrying.

He wondered what would be happening in Son Lon now. The hamlet had already been hit by the morning's artillery barrage and the gunships had gone in ahead. The first platoon must have arrived already. Karl was in the second platoon of four. Things would be warming up by the time he landed.

The note of the chopper's engine changed and Karl knew they were going down. He thought he heard gunfire. He wiped the grease off his hands onto the legs of his pants. He took a grip on his M16. Everyone else was beginning to straighten up, ready themselves. None of the faces showed much emotion and Karl hoped that his face looked the same.

"After what they did to Goldberg," said Bill Leinster in a masculine growl, "I'm going to get me a lot of ears."

Karl grinned at him.

The chopper's deck tilted a little as the machine settled. Sergeant Grossman got the door open. Now Karl could hear the firing quite clearly, but he could only see a few trees through the door. "Okay, let's go," said Sergeant Grossman grimly. He sprayed a few rounds into the nearby trees and jumped out. Karl was the fifth man to follow him. There were eight other helicopters on the ground, a patch of mud entirely surrounded by trees. Karl could see four big gunships firing at something ahead. Two more big black transports were landing. The noise of their rotors nearly drowned the noise of the guns. It seemed that the first platoon was still in the landing zone. Karl saw Sergeant Grossman run across to where Lieutenant Snider was standing with his men. They conferred for a few moments and then Grossman ran back. Snider's platoon moved off into the jungle. After waiting a moment or two Grossman ordered his men forward, entering the line of trees to the left and at an angle to where Snider's men had gone in, Karl assumed that the VC in this area had either been killed or had retreated back to the hamlet. There was no firing from the enemy as yet. But he kept himself alert. They could be anywhere in the jungle and they could attack in a dozen different ways. He suddenly got a craving for a Coors. Only a Coors in a giant-size schooner, the glass misted with frost. And a Kool, enjoyed in that downtown bar where his father's friends always drank on Saturday nights. That was what he'd have when he got home. The firing in front intensified. The first platoon must have met head on with the VC. Karl peered through the trees but could still see nothing. Sergeant Grossman waved at them to proceed with increased caution. The comic book was scratching his stomach. He regretted putting it in there. He glanced back at Bill Leinster. Leinster had the only grenade launcher in this team. Karl wondered if Leinster shouldn't be ahead of them, with the machine gunner and the sergeant. On the other hand, their rear might not be protected by the squad supposed to be flanking them and there was no cover on either side, as far as he knew, though technically there should have been. You could be hit from anywhere. He began to inspect the ground for mines, walking carefully in the footprints of the man in front of him. Sergeant Gross-man paused and for a second they halted. Karl could now see a flash of red brick through the trees. They had reached the hamlet of Son Lon. There was a lot of ground fire.

Suddenly Karl was ready. He knew he would do well on this mission. His whole body was alert.

They moved into the hamlet.

The first thing they saw were VC bodies in black silk pajamas and coolie hats. They were mostly middle-aged men and some women. There didn't seem to be too many weapons about. Maybe these had been collected up by the first platoon.

Two or three hootches were burning fitfully where they had been blasted by grenades and subsequently set on fire. A couple of the red brick houses bore evidence of having been in the battle. Outside one of them lay the bloody corpse of a kid of around eight or nine. That was the worst part, when they used kids to draw your fire, or even throw grenades at you. More firing came from the left, Karl turned, ducking and ready, his rifle raised, but no attack came. They proceeded warily into the village. Leinster, on command from Grossman, loaded his grenade launcher and started firing into the huts and houses as they passed, in case any VC should still be in there. It was menacingly safe, thought Karl, wondering what the VC were waiting for. Or maybe there hadn't been as many slopes in the hamlet as Captain Heffer had anticipated. Or maybe they were in the paddy-fields on the left and right of the village.

Karl really wanted to fire at something. Just one VC would do. It would justify everything else.

They entered the centre of the village, the plaza. Lieutenant Snider and his men were already there, rounding up civilians. There were a lot of bodies around the plaza, mainly women and children. Karl was used to seeing corpses, but he had never seen so many. He was filled with disgust for the Vietnamese. They really had no human feelings. They were just like the Japs had been, and the Chinese in Korea. What was the point of fighting for them?

One of the kids in the group which had been rounded up ran forward. He held a coke bottle in his hand, offering it to the nearest soldier. The soldier was Henry Tabori. Karl knew him.

Tabori backed away from the boy and fired his M16 from the hip. The M16 was an automatic. The boy got all of it, staggering backwards and falling into the gang of villagers. Some of the women and old men started to shout. Some fell to their knees, wringing their hands. Karl had seen pictures of them doing that. Lieutenant Snider turned away with a shrug. Tabori put a new magazine into his rifle. By this time the other five men were firing into the ranks of the civilians. They poured scores of rounds into them. Blood appeared on the jerking bodies. Bits of chipped bone flew.

Karl saw Sergeant Grossman watching the slaughter. Grossman's face was thoughtful. Then Grossman said: "Okay, Leinster. Give it to 'em." He indicated the huts which had so far not been blasted. Leinster loaded his grenade launcher and began sending grenades through every doorway he could see. People started to run out. Grossman shot them down as they came. His machine-gunner opened up. One by one the other boys started firing. Karl dropped to a kneeling position, tucked his rifle hard against his shoulder, set the gun to automatic, and sent seventeen rounds into an old man as he stumbled from his hootch, his hands raised in front of his face, his legs streaming with blood. He put a fresh magazine into the rifle. The next time he fired he got a woman. The woman, with a dying action, rolled over onto a baby. The baby wasn't much good without its mother. Karl stepped closer and fired half his magazine into the baby. All the huts and houses were smoking, but people kept running out. Karl killed some more of them. Their numbers seemed to be endless.

Grossman shouted for them to cease firing, then led them at a run out of the plaza and along a dirt road. "Get 'em out of the huts," Grossman told his men. "Round the bastards up."

Karl and a negro called Keller went into one of the huts and kicked the family until they moved out into the street. There were two old men, an old woman, two young girls, a boy and a woman with a baby. Karl and Keller waved their rifles and made the family join the others in the street. They did not wait for Grossman's orders to fire.

Some of the women and the older girls and boys tried to put themselves between the soldiers and the smaller children. The soldiers continued to fire until they were sure they were all dead. Leinster began to giggle. Soon they were all giggling. They left the pile of corpses behind them and some of them swaggered as they walked. "We sure have got a lot of VC today," said Keller, wiping his forehead with a rag.

Karl looked back. He saw a figure rising from the pile of corpses. It was a girl of about thirteen, dressed in a black smock and black pajamas. She looked bewildered. Her eyes met Karl's. Karl turned away. But he could still see her eyes. He whirled, dropped to one knee, took careful aim, and shot her head off. He thought: They've all got to die now. What have they got to live for, anyway? He was putting them out of their misery. He thought: If I don't shoot them, they'll see that it was me who shot the others. He reached up and pulled his helmet more firmly over his eyes. It was not his fault. They had told him he would be shooting VC. It was too late, now.

They left the hamlet and were on a road. They saw a whole lot of women and children in a ditch between the road and a paddy field. Karl was the first to fire at them. Leinster finished them off with his grenades. Only Karl and Leinster had bothered to fire that time. Nobody looked at anybody else for a moment. Then Grossman said: "It's a VC village. All we're doing is stopping them from growing up to be VC."

Leinster snorted. "Yeah."

"It's true," said Sergeant Grossman. He looked around him at the paddy-fields as if addressing the hundreds of hidden VC he thought must be there. "Its true. We've got to waste them all this tune."

Another group of men emerged on the other side of the paddy-field. They had two grenade launchers which they were firing at random into the ground and making the mud and plants gout up.

Karl looked at the corpses in the ditch. They were really mangled.

They went back into the village. They found a hut with three old women in it. They wasted the hut and its occupants. They found a two-year-old kid, screaming. They wasted him. They found a fifteen-year-old girl. After Leinster and another man called Aitken had torn her clothes off and raped her, they wasted her. Karl didn't fuck her because he couldn't get a hard-on, but he was the one who shot her tits to ribbons.

"Jesus Christ!" grinned Karl as he and Leinster paused for a moment. "What a day!"

They both laughed. They wasted two water-buffalo and a cow. Leinster blew a hole in the cow with his launcher. "That's a messy cow,!" said Karl.

Karl and Leinster went hunting. They were looking for anything which moved. Karl was haunted by the faces of the living. These, and not the dead, were the ghosts that had to be exorcised. He would not be accused by them. He kicked aside the corpses of women to get at their babies. He bayoneted the babies. He and Leinster went into the jungle and found some wounded kids. They wasted the kids as they tried to stumble away.

They went back to the village and found Lieutenant Snider talking to Captain Heffer. They were laughing, too. Captain Heffer's pants were covered in mud to the thigh. He had evidently been in one of the paddies.

The gunships and communications choppers were still thundering away overhead. Every two or three minutes you heard gunfire from somewhere. Karl couldn't see any more gooks. For a moment he had an impulse to shoot Lieutenant Snider and Captain Heffer. If they had turned and seen him, he might have done so. But Leinster tapped him on the shoulder, as if he guessed what he was thinking, and jerked his thumb to indicate they should try the outlying hootches. Karl went with him part of the way, but he had begun to feel tired. He was hoping the battle would be over soon. He saw an unshattered coke bottle lying on the ground. He reached out to pick it up before it occurred to him that it might be booby-trapped. He looked at it for a long tune, struggling with his desire for a drink and his caution.

He trudged along the alley between the ruined huts, the sprawled and shattered corpses. Why hadn't the VC appeared? It was their fault. He had been geared to fight, he sound of gunfire went on and on and on.

Karl found that he had left the village. He thought he had better try to rejoin his squad. They ought to retain military discipline. It was the only way to make sense of this. He tried to go back, but he couldn't. He dropped his rifle. He leant down to pick it up. On either side of him the rice paddies gleamed in the sun. He reached out for the rifle, but his boot caught it by accident and it fell into a ditch. He climbed into the ditch to get the rifle. He found it. I was covered in slime. He knew it would take him an age to clean it. He realized that he had begun to cry. He sat in the ditch and he shook with weeping.

A little later Grossman found him.

Grossman kneeled at the side of the ditch and patted Karl's shoulder. "What's the matter, boy?"

Karl couldn't answer.

"Come on, son," said Grossman kindly. He picked Karl's slimy rifle out of the ditch and slung it over his own shoulder. "There ain't much left to do here." He helped Karl to his feet. Karl drew a deep, shuddering breath.

"Don't worry, kid," said Grossman. "Please..."

He seemed to be begging Karl, as if Karl were reminding him of something he didn't want to remember.

"Now, you stop all that, you hear? It ain't manly." He spoke gruffly and kept patting Karl's shoulder, but there was an edge to his voice, too.

"Sorry," said Karl at last as they moved back to the village.

"Nobody's blaming you," said the sergeant. "Nobody's blaming nobody. It's what happens, that's all."

"I'm sorry," said Karl again.

— But we have got to blame somebody sooner or later, says Karl.—We need victims. Somebody's got to suffer. "Now, lieutenant, will you kindly tell the Court just what you had to do with the Human Condition? We are waiting, lieutenant? Why are we not as happy as we might be, lieutenant? Give your answer briefly and dearly."

— What the hell are you talking about? says his friend, waking up and yawning.

— I didn't say anything, says Karl.—You must have been dreaming. Do you feel better?

— I'm not sure.

— You don't look it.

You have been traveling in the desert.

There has been an accident. Your car has overturned and the friend with whom you were traveling has been badly hurt. He is almost certain to die.

Would you remain with him and hope that rescue would come soon?

Would you leave him what water you have, making him as comfortable as possible and setting off to find help, knowing he will probably he dead by the time you return?

Would you decide that, since he was as good as dead, you might as well take the water and food with you, as it will give you a better chance?

Would you remain in the shade of the wreck, knowing that this would be the wisest thing to do, but deciding not to waste your water on your dying friend?