The First of Many

The First of Many
Riding in the AmTrac was a miserable means; it was more comfortable at sea than on land. It was always more comfortable at sea than on land. In April of the year 1965, through a small fishing village near Chu Lai in the Quang Nam province of Vietnam, the amphibious tractor vehicle, one of a small convoy, rode on carrying a cargo of American soldiers. The AmTrac and the twelve Marines it held took Route 1 after landing on the beach three days earlier. The vehicle deployed in the South China Sea before landing ashore. Inside, the AmTrac felt like a fortress. The thick steel walls coated in green paint, the hard edges, straight lines, symmetry that boasted human ingenuity; it was a very well-built machine. Mick, for one, couldn't help but notice what a damn fine vehicle the AmTrac really was as he stood in the back, holding on to a rail overhead for stability. It was loud – but he didn't mind the noise. The other Marines made such a fuss about the noise. “Vickers!” the crew chief shouted to the driver, “up ahead, this road ought to curve north.” The crew chief was a hard-looking man. “Sir,” Vickers replied, “you’ll be the first to know when I know.” He jerked on the wobble stick in his pod, shifting the vehicle's contents of men from side-to-side. The hull was full of men and from the back of the vehicle Mick could see everyone: the gunner, the loader, the driver, all in their little pods and at their turrets, focusing intently on their tasks. He could see the crew chief and the Commander manning the turret in the right rear and the four Marines that sat clutching their gear on the deck as if any moment it might be torn from their grasp. It was Mick's first tour of duty in Vietnam. His Christian name was Michael but the boys all called him “Mick” because of his Irish heritage. Mick thought about launching the AmTrac into the South China Sea and how it felt hitting the ocean water. His company had not received any ammunition and were told they would rendezvous with a battalion on the beach that would arm them. When they arrived on the beach, Viet Cong were waiting for them and twelve American men died without having a single bullet to fire from their M-14 rifles. Mick thought about that.
It was the first time Mick saw a man die.
They were armed now, though. Oh, how they were armed. “North, Sir,” Vickers shouted back to the crew chief. “Well, that's just aces,” the crew chief shouted back, he winked at the men in the hull as he did. Some of the men laughed and shook their heads. “Aces?” chuckled one of the Marines in the hull; his uniform tag read, “Del Vecchio”. The AmTrac went bumping along a particularly narrow stretch of village road. The Marines clutched their gear more tightly. “Mick,” Del Vecchio shouted. “How's about giving your old pal 'Vech some more of that 'Twist?” He was referring to the cylindrical plugs of smokeless tobacco Mick carried; the brand was called, “Oliver Twist.” Mick took out the tin case from his left breast pocket and tossed one of the plugs to Del Vecchio. “Thanks, Pal. You're a real peach,” Del Vecchio said as he stuffed the pellet between his gums and right cheek, showing pieces of brown through his big, oafish grin. There was nothing particularly special about the chewing tobacco. It was no Redman or Cope, as most of the other Marines chewed. It was just a small tin given to Mick by his father before he shipped out. “Chief,” shouted the gunner from the front, right turret, “this recon, it ain't just for the zoomies, is it? I mean, got to be more needs be done out here than build that air-base, ain't that right, chief?” - “They've saved your ass and mine, haven't they? So what if it is?” one of the Marines in the hull answered for the hard-looking crew chief. “That's right,” the crew chief confirmed for the gunner, “they certainly have; and they'll be able to do it again and again as soon as we recon this area so command can get a base built out here. I don't make the orders, Bill.” - “I know that, chief,” Bill shouted over the noise of the AmTrac from his turret, “just seems to me there's a lot more to do. There ain't nothin' out here but a million V.C. in a million villages just like this.” Bill was incorrect. There were approximately five-hundred Viet Cong in the area harbored in the villages and hamlets nearby. Mick knew that. He paid attention in the briefings. “One thing at a time, Soldier,” was the crew chief's response. “You know the saying about Rome being built in a day.” Mick studied the crew chief's face as he spoke to the men about the reconnaissance mission. He had all of their attention. His weather-beaten face was golden brown and reminded Mick of his father. His father had also been a solider and a war man. He had been a tail-gunner on a fighter plane in World War II. In his mind, Mick was transported back to that place where he last saw his father before he shipped out. The crew chief, the Marines, and the AmTrac began to melt away...
It was at home in Texas where Mick's father gave him the green and white tin of Oliver Twist smokeless tobacco. He and his father, a hard-looking man himself, sat in a pair of wooden rocking chairs out on the porch of the farmhouse where he grew up; a wicker table with a glass top separated the two. On it sat his father's glass of iced lemonade, beaded with sweat from the hot summer air; the old man gave up drinking when Mick's mother passed years ago. He and his father sat silent listening to the locusts sing to the rhythmic creaking of the rocking chairs. It was a fine summer evening with a fine summer breeze, but he was having second thoughts about joining up. Many of his friends, most of them the same age, were drafted by the military. Mick decided he would join up and save Uncle Sam the effort of finding him. He was, however, having second thoughts. “Pop?” Mick beckoned. His father's gaze was drawn from the wheat and cotton growing across the way. “You never answered me before; last night, and I know you don't want to talk about it and all but seeing as I'm a man now and I'm going to make good on my promise and leave out tomorrow, I feel I got a right to know,” Mick said. “That so?” his father let out a long sigh. He thought before responding, “Yeah. That's so, Pop.” Mick's father leaned forward, the wooden rocking chair groaned under his weight as he reached for his glass of iced lemonade from the wicker table. His father built both the rocking chair and the wicker table himself. The white paint of the rocking chair which matched the color of the columns and porch-swing was chipped and faded. The smooth concrete of the porch was painted a light blue which was his mother's favorite color. As the old man leaned back in his rocking chair, lemonade in hand, he cast his gaze out again and surveyed the crop with eyes that judged helping to mask the fact he was gathering his thoughts. His father tried for so long to avoid this topic and he truly hoped he would never have to speak about it, especially to his only son; but his son was right, he was a man now and he deserved to know now more than ever considering where he was going.
“Son,” he said, “your grandfather fought in, ‘The War to End All Wars,’" he said, never breaking his gaze with the swaying fields of wheat and cotton, “but it didn't, son. It didn't end a thing. That's why I went. And that's why you'll go.” The old man turned to look at his son, seeing him now grown, and quickly looked back to the wheat. “When I was a young boy, I used to ask your grandfather the same thing,” he said. “You asked Papa?” Mick asked, surprised. “Sure,” he replied, “sure I did. And he never told me, neither, not until the summer of '40 when I joined up.”
“What did he tell you?” Mick asked, leaning forward in his rocking chair. The locusts sang loudly. The old man placed the glass of lemonade back on the wicker table, inspecting his craftsmanship. “I suppose he told me what I wanted to hear,” he replied, “told me what it was like.” “And?” He was impatient. His father knew it. “He said, "Son, to kill a man is to kill a part of yourself. The part that was good and wholesome. No good man ever killed anyone," the old man spoke in his father's voice. Mick struggled to understand. Seeing the confused look on his face, his father cleared his throat, “Michael, there is nothing glorious about killing men. Your grandfather came home from the war a different man than who'd left. I came home from the war a different man,” his father stood up from his rocking chair with great difficulty and walked over to his son who was still seated, “and you, Michael, if you make it home, it will be as a different man.” He placed his hand on his son's shoulder, “When you face death, you will kill men. The moment that you realize you have taken life against God's will, you will become physically ill with remorse. But, my son, it will pass with time as do all things.” He stroked the head of the man who sat before him, seeing in his eyes the little boy who had once stood only so high.
“Do you think Papa was a bad man?” Mick looked up into the old man's grey eyes as he asked.
“We're, none of us, saints,” he replied.
The pinging sound of a live round ricocheting off the steel outer-wall of the amphibious tractor vehicle brought Mick back from Texas to the small fishing village near Chu Lai. Vickers, in his driving pod, jerked on the wobble stick causing the AmTrac to halt. “Got a live one!” Bill screamed from his turret in the front right of the hull. “Nobody move!” the crew chief shouted, as hard-looking as ever. The Marines, Mick included, were all vying for a spot to see, sticking their heads out of the roof of the AmTrac, now a part of a small, halted convoy. They were quiet. Mick, sticking just enough of his head out of the roof to survey the surroundings, heard the loud crack of a single round fired from approximately four-hundred yards to the north. The delay was not seconds before he heard the round ping off the next vehicle ahead in the convoy.
Out there, somewhere in the small fishing village near Chu Lai, was a sniper. “Right! We keep moving! Everyone get your damn heads down unless you want your mothers' sent a medal!” the crew chief shouted over the noise of the idling AmTrac. The convoy started back up and continued north. Over the noise of the engines, you could barely make out the flat cracking sound of gunfire, but all could hear the ricochet of the rounds off of the steel of the vehicles. Every half-minute another round fired. It was a sniper. The nervous tension was felt by all, but more so by the front men in their pods and turrets. The driver, Vickers, in the left front part of the hull, along with Bill, the gunner in the right front turret were the most exposed. The crew chief now manned a front turret, too. The gunner and loader operating the rear turrets felt safe in the back. The crew chief did not care about being exposed; he was, after all, a hard-looking man.
“I told you there was a million V.C. around these villages, didn't I say it?” Bill shouted nervously from the front as he checked his helmet for fit, all the time scanning feverishly, the horizon. Bill was incorrect. There were not as many. Mick knew it. “Yeah, yeah...a million V.C. and only one Del Vecchio! The odds are in our favor!” Del Vecchio chortled and laughed. A few of the harder Marines laughed. “It ain't so funny!” Bill faced Del Vecchio, turning away from his turret and towards the hull. “It won't be so funny when you're on this recon for weeks on end and we get to turn around and go...--”
Bill was interrupted by a bullet which came through the turret's view port and penetrated his neck as he spoke. He fell from the turret onto his back in the center of the hull, clutching at his neck where the sniper's bullet entered it. His eyes were as wide as any man's Mick had ever seen. Wide, terrified eyes. Del Vecchio's face was painted with blood; red like a Native American's war paint Mick saw in an issue of the National Geographic he read on the way to basic training. One of the Marines screamed, “Chief!” The hull of the AmTrac became a nightmare. Chaos and panic. All except for the crew chief who had commandeered an extra handset from the R.T.O. Mick watched as the wounded soldier floundered on the deck like a fish out of water. The other Marines immediately scrambled to his side, kneeling over him, attempting to keep pressure on the neck wound that was bleeding profusely through the tangle of compressed cloth and hands. Bill's hands reached upward, fumbling around and clutching at the camouflage sleeves of the Marines' uniforms, staining them with bloody red hand prints. As Mick watched, he heard the chief shouting coordinates into the handset of the R.T.O; he advised the Medevac of a “Red L.Z.” which meant they could expect to take fire. All the time gurgling noises ran up from the hull floor. A Marine medic, on his knees next to Bill, struggling to keep his balance, broke the safety seal of a morphine syrette and injected it into Bill's thigh. Del Vecchio and the other Marines looked at the medic; he shook his head. Another syrette was broken and administered.
It was the second time Mick watched a man die.
“Kelly!” the crew chief shouted to the back of the hull. The rest of the Marines looked around confused as to who was being shouted at. It was chaotic and had been a time of much shouting.
The Marines in the hull still knelt around the dead solider. Their gaze was drawn upward when Mick answered, “Sir?” Michael “Mick” Kelly had done quite the job of keeping his brothers in the dark. They had never noticed...
“Head off the back and flank this son of a bitch,” the crew chief barked, “he can't be but three hundred yards north,” he held the handset against his cheek only long enough to give the order. Before Mick could respond, the crew chief was back to barking coordinates into the piece of green plastic. The Marines studied Mick as he looked down at his M-14, he checked it was loaded. They continued to study him as he systematically conducted an inspection of all of his gear. He looked down at the Department of Defense stamp of acceptance on the birch stock of the M-14 rifle. He inspected it closely and fingered the arc of three stars which sat atop the emblem of an eagle, wings spread, etched into the hard wood. Mick looked up at the hole in the roof of the AmTrac without so much as glancing at the men in the hull. He slung his rifle over his shoulder, climbed to the top near the roof and jumped out of the back without saying a word. The men in the hull sat silent. Mick landed in soft field grass next to the narrow road. He briefly surveyed the area but he was not concerned about the sniper, the convoy of amphibious tractor vehicles ran between Mick and the sniper, blocking him from view. The crew chief was right; it couldn't be more than three or four hundred yards north of his position. Mick turned around and began to follow closely behind the AmTrac as it strode bumpily along the narrow road. Off the right of the road was a dense canopy fraught with overgrown bush and the road there was very muddy from a previous rain that had fallen the night before and the jungle was very humid and very wet. It would be nightfall soon and he thought it best to enter the bush now. In the distance the long loud wailing of the great thick-nees began to sound as he crossed the threshold into the jungle. Mick hunted with his father many times as a young man. Quail, dove, duck. He knew how to hunt them. A foraging thick-nee with his powerful yellow and black beak spotted Mick and took flight as he walked east into the dense jungle. He removed a medium sized machete from the gear on his back and began to swat at hanging vines and branches which impeded his path. Further east, he moved; he wanted to get as far east as he could before turning back to the north to flank the sniper. He could still hear the AmTrac bumping along the narrow road, a live round intermittently pinging off of the outer steel of the vehicles in the convoy. He wondered if the sniper knew he'd killed Bill, the gunner. Bill bled to death very quickly. Mick trudged along through the foliage, ever deeper into the heart of the Vietnamese jungle. It was not unlike dense foliage in which he and his father hunted when he was a young man. Maybe it was more wet but other than that, no, not quite different at all, really. As he cut and slashed his way deeper into the greens of the jungle, he thought about the conversation he and his father had that night on the porch before he left for basic training. He wondered if he would feel remorse as his father had guaranteed him should he kill men. He wondered if he was a bad man and if all men were equally bad who killed men in war. He wondered if the Viet Cong sniper was a bad man. Mick imagined that the sniper was not such a very bad man at all; and that, in fact, he had been a fisherman in the small village near Chu Lai. He imagined the sniper carrying his daily catch home to the village to feed his family and his children. Mick imagined that the man was a fine hunter, too, just like he and his father. He would have hunted pheasant, no doubt, and honed his skills for shooting that he would later use in the war. He didn't seem like such a bad man, Mick thought. By now, Mick had cut north and was making his way closer toward the sound of the sniper's gunfire, though it had grown less frequent. The convoy moved slowly along the narrow road and he did not fear losing them. The time was drawing near to quiet down. He was getting close. He sat still for a long time scanning a clearing up ahead, probably one hundred yards, just inside the jungle from the path of the narrow road. It was a fine spot for a sniper, Mick thought. And, certainly, it was. The AmTrac that held eleven Marines, ten of which were alive, was the last in the convoy and Mick could barely see it through the tangle of trees, leaves and vines to his west. Northwest of him was a clearing most fit for a Viet Cong sniper and to his east was jungle most thick and littered with insects and wildlife. The wailing song of the thick-nees grew louder as the sun set. The sniper had not fired a round from his weapon in quite some time and Mick began to wonder if he had been seen. No, he thought. He had not been seen. If he had been seen, he would be as dead as Bill the gunner, who bled to death in the hull. That was a much more difficult shot, Mick thought. With no sign of the sniper, and darkness closing in, he began to move northwest again, he marked a spot in his mind where he believed the sniper had been the last time a round was fired. It was a long time ago but Mick couldn't decide how long ago it was. He inched closer to the clearing and slung his M-14 rifle quietly over his shoulder as he did so. He shifted his weight evenly over the twigs and brush on the ground as his father had taught him when in pursuit of fine game, careful not to snap any thick pieces of wood under his feet. The machete which had been his companion on this long trek through the jungle was now sheathed and offered no more assistance by way of clearing. It was now he and his rifle. Just as the fisherman-turned-sniper was alone with his rifle. “We're the same,” he thought; and, truly, they were. A loud, flat, cracking sound of the sniper's rifle being fired echoed into the far reaches of the jungle from close by. Mick instinctively lowered himself to the ground in a prone position and realized he had seen no muzzle flash. He was hoping to see a muzzle flash, it would have been the easiest way. He began to look in the trees above the clearing, realizing how close he was and unsure of exactly from where the sound had come; at this proximity it would be difficult to tell. There was no pinging sound of the round striking the outer steel of any of the vehicles on the convoy, he noticed. It meant to him that the sniper either missed, or that the round entered one of the vehicles. Mick did not think the sniper missed. He began to slowly lift himself from the ground, crawling. Close now to the clearing, fifty yards. He scanned the area intently with every inch of his movement, relying on sight and sound to guide him toward his enemy. The crew chief was counting on him, the Marines in the hull of the AmTrac were counting on him. His father's words echoed audibly in his memory, "We're, none of us, saints." - "We're, none of us, saints." The sniper was no saint. Mick was no saint and he knew it. He did not need to kill a man to know that. He moved closer to the clearing, nearing the edge now of what was its dense foliage perimeter; twenty yards. Crawling, he sat up to one knee and in doing so snapped a large branch under his foot. The quick, piercing, heavy cracking sound of the branch giving way to Mick's weight was the loudest sound he'd heard in his life, louder still than the echo of the sniper's recent bullet being fired from his weapon. He froze with his head still, looking at the ground ahead. He was a statue built of the days of Greeks and Romans. He was a trunk of the nearest tree, solid, heavy as oak and twice as still in prayer that he'd not given away his position.
The barrel of the sniper's rifle spit fire.
Mick clutched his weapon, still frozen, his eyes jammed tightly shut, afraid to open them and see the afterlife. When he at last had the courage, he opened his eyes and viewed the jungle. Alive. Twenty yards ahead, his gaze still adhered to the ground, brown leaves and green vines rose from the earth. Bulging up from the floor of the jungle, a mesh of foliage raised; the barrel of a long, wooden rifle exposed and pointed towards the convoy. He watched as the long, slender, black barrel slid back into the hole in the earth as a viper among the grass, the mesh door of leaves and twisted vine lowered slowly and became flat and undetectable. Mick looked down at his M-14 rifle. On the receiver, just above the trigger, he thumbed at the fire mode selector switch and enabled the weapon's automatic feature. It took him a second to gather himself before he began to move. When he did, he crept to the east of the spider-hole, the opposite side of where he'd seen the sniper's barrel protrude; ten yards now. Mick had never been so quiet. The thick-nees watched in silence, the canopy of the jungle ceased to sway several feet above the ground floor. The world had never been so quiet. In all his days of hunting with his father, his heart never raced quite so belligerently, it attempted to leap out of his chest as he moved closer; five yards.
As he approached the base of the spider-hole it was quiet, he could see the fine weave of leaves and vines that the sniper had so intricately put together. It was a fine job, really, one to be proud of and that only a local man, perhaps a fisherman, would have the experience to craft. He continued to admire the work of the mesh as he stood before slipping the cold, steel barrel of his M-14 rifle gently underneath the thin sheet of fine craftsmanship. Mick pulled down on the trigger hard. Twenty rounds of molten, spraying metal blasted automatically into the spider-hole in seconds. The sound was one of a zipper which would burst your ear drums. Some of the dry leaves of the finely crafted mesh roof caught on fire momentarily before dying out in the wind which had once again picked up. Smoke billowed from the hole in the ground and smelled of gunpowder and death as it swirled thinly away in the wind; the mesh roof was still closed and it was quiet. Another swirl carried smoke and leaves in circles which danced high into the air as the rest of the jungle stood still in the moment. The sound of the entire convoy coming to a halt a hundred yards away preceded shouts of Marines jumping out onto the narrow road. They were headed this way. Mick leaned over and slowly lifted up the mesh of vines and leaves which lay on top of the hole, dug five feet into the ground, and tossed it aside. He stood at the mouth of the hole and looked down into it. In it, the small body of a Vietnamese man was very badly chewed and there was no movement from it. Mick turned around and walked two feet away where a very bare, exposed trunk of a tree had fallen probably in a heavy storm. He sat on the trunk and thought it a good place to be ill; after all, it is what was told to expect. He opened his left breast pocket and removed the tin of Oliver Twist smokeless tobacco. He thought about his father as he put the pellet of 'Twist in his mouth, he thought about what his father had told him. He could hear the Marines getting closer, working their way through the bush to the clearing as he sat, thinking, on the felled tree. This was the moment when he would become ill with remorse and when he would realize that he'd taken the life of another, a fisherman who lived in a small village near Chu Lai. He prepared himself. He anticipated this moment for a long time and he knew what would happen now. He waited very patiently...
...But he did not feel so very ill. It was curious, he observed that he did not feel so very ill, at all, really. “Remorse,” Mick said aloud, confused, as he sat on the tree trunk. It was the first he heard his own voice in some time, it sounded odd to say it aloud. He looked up to see Del Vecchio appear from the small bit of jungle that separated the narrow road from the clearing, two Marines behind him. “You get him?!” Del Vecchio demanded excitedly. “You get that son of a bitch?! We heard you go auto,” he said with a tone of impatience as he noticed the smoking spider-hole and ran to it. The other Marines were in tow, just as excited. Mick remained motionless on the trunk of the tree as the three Marines gathered around the hole and gazed into it at the dead body of a small Vietnamese man. The crew chief appeared through the clearing and was greeted with the whooping and hollering of the Marines led by Del Vecchio. “He got 'em, chief!” one of the Marines shouted, “he sure got that bastard.” - “Got 'em for Bill,” Del Vecchio declared. Mick did not get him for Bill. “He sure did,” the chief replied as he looked down into the spider-hole. “Well, let's get him out of there.” The four Marines leaned into the spider-hole and, grasping at limp limbs, pulled the chewed up body of the Vietnamese ex-fisherman and laid him on the ground before them. Mick looked at the body of the man he killed, he stood and joined the other Marines in studying it. “Well,” Del Vecchio inquired of Mick, “Ain’t you gonna say anything?” The Marines stared at him in anticipation. Mick removed a small 35mm camera from a pouch on his belt, he carried it ever since he left the United States. He looked through the view port and pointed the lens downward until he could see the body of the Vietnamese man, he seemed very badly chewed in the view port. A small clicking noise. Mick placed the camera back in his pouch, spat his tobacco juice upon the earth, and pushed through the foliage perimeter of the clearing to the narrow road. The Marines in the clearing looked at each other, blankly.
It was the third time Mick saw a man die.