Read Online Fields of Fire by James Webb - Free Book Online
Authors: James Webb
Tags: Fiction, General, Historical, Asia, History, Military, War & Military, War stories, Vietnam War, 1961-1975, Vietnamese Conflict, Southeast Asia, Literature & Fiction - General
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with sugar. “Teach me to write your name, Bobby. I show you mine in Japanese.” And in the daytime, he still drinking at the club and she ignoring him, lest she be marked as a participant in the festival of lust. “I love you, Mitsuko. No, really. Really, I do.” “Go back to sleep. Three days you go Vietnam.”
HE lay on his back in the large, stark room, his head against his seabag, smoking a cigarette. He had tried to sleep but the ceiling lights were brutally bright, and besides he was too keyed up. In an hour, at midnight, the room full of solemn, shaved-headed men would depart for Vietnam. An aviator Captain and a First Sergeant sat across from him, conversing easily. The Captain carried a new guitar. He was going back for the second time. He was telling the First Sergeant about how he got his Distinguished Flying Cross. He spoke of Vietnam with a studied familiarity that for some reason irritated Hodges. The First Sergeant was drunk. He was returning from emergency leave, after burying his wife. Foreign names rolled off his tongue like syrupy spit. Quang Tri Phu Bai Da Nang Hue … They both talked too loud and with too much certainty, as if they were competing for the admiration of the ninety-odd boots who sat miserably around them. Hodges thought about asking them to shut up, then tried to block them out.
He had spent three hours in her apartment, from the time she was off work until he had to leave to catch the bus for Kadena Air Force Base with the others. It had been their fourth night together.
Mit-sooo-ko. He had decided not to shower. It seemed like such a final act to wash her off him. He could smell her on his hands and in his hair. He loved smelling her and he knew that the odor would soon vanish in the muck of what awaited him. He wondered if he would ever see her again, if he would ever make it back to Okinawa. He hoped deeply that he would, and that somehow it would be soon.
But first there was Vietnam.
* From the song “Until It's Time For You to Go,” by Buffy Sainte-Marie, ©Copyright 1965, 1973 by Gypsy Boy Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
3
Hodges began processing in Da Nang. At Division headquarters, he and several other new Lieutenants were granted a quick audience with the Assistant Division Commander, then briefed by a string of Colonels regarding the Division's area of operations. One of the Colonels produced a detailed map, on which he had carefully placed a mass of dots, one for each enemy contact in a certain place. The map was loaded with dots. In some places they were speckles, like polka dots, and in others they gathered to make large red smears.
The red dots reminded Hodges of blood, and their collective presence was like a slap that awakened him to the reality of the bush. They were only dots, but each one, according to the Colonel, represented someone killed or wounded. The Twenty-Fifth Marines area of operations, where Hodges was headed, was a large red smear.
The first night he lay on a mildewed cot inside a tent at the Motor Transport battalion's compound, which housed Division transients. On a far ridge, all night long, a .50-caliber machine gun expended ammunition in deep burps. Shadows from distant flares lit one side of the wall, on and off, and Hodges felt vulnerable, naked in his ignorance. He didn't have the slightest idea why the .50-cal kept firing while the compound where he slept was not even on alert. It irritated him. He was finally in Vietnam, but he wasn't a part of it.
The following morning he and two others took a convoy from Da Nang to the combat base at An Hoa. It was a journey into darkness and primitivity, as little by little the comparatively lush surroundings of Da Nang fell by the wayside. Strings of American bases and well-kept villages gave way to wide, ruptured fields, saturated with little ponds, permanent bomb craters from the years of war. The multitude of gravestones and pagodas beginning just outside Da Nang bore
HE lay on his back in the large, stark room, his head against his seabag, smoking a cigarette. He had tried to sleep but the ceiling lights were brutally bright, and besides he was too keyed up. In an hour, at midnight, the room full of solemn, shaved-headed men would depart for Vietnam. An aviator Captain and a First Sergeant sat across from him, conversing easily. The Captain carried a new guitar. He was going back for the second time. He was telling the First Sergeant about how he got his Distinguished Flying Cross. He spoke of Vietnam with a studied familiarity that for some reason irritated Hodges. The First Sergeant was drunk. He was returning from emergency leave, after burying his wife. Foreign names rolled off his tongue like syrupy spit. Quang Tri Phu Bai Da Nang Hue … They both talked too loud and with too much certainty, as if they were competing for the admiration of the ninety-odd boots who sat miserably around them. Hodges thought about asking them to shut up, then tried to block them out.
He had spent three hours in her apartment, from the time she was off work until he had to leave to catch the bus for Kadena Air Force Base with the others. It had been their fourth night together.
Mit-sooo-ko. He had decided not to shower. It seemed like such a final act to wash her off him. He could smell her on his hands and in his hair. He loved smelling her and he knew that the odor would soon vanish in the muck of what awaited him. He wondered if he would ever see her again, if he would ever make it back to Okinawa. He hoped deeply that he would, and that somehow it would be soon.
But first there was Vietnam.
* From the song “Until It's Time For You to Go,” by Buffy Sainte-Marie, ©Copyright 1965, 1973 by Gypsy Boy Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
3
Hodges began processing in Da Nang. At Division headquarters, he and several other new Lieutenants were granted a quick audience with the Assistant Division Commander, then briefed by a string of Colonels regarding the Division's area of operations. One of the Colonels produced a detailed map, on which he had carefully placed a mass of dots, one for each enemy contact in a certain place. The map was loaded with dots. In some places they were speckles, like polka dots, and in others they gathered to make large red smears.
The red dots reminded Hodges of blood, and their collective presence was like a slap that awakened him to the reality of the bush. They were only dots, but each one, according to the Colonel, represented someone killed or wounded. The Twenty-Fifth Marines area of operations, where Hodges was headed, was a large red smear.
The first night he lay on a mildewed cot inside a tent at the Motor Transport battalion's compound, which housed Division transients. On a far ridge, all night long, a .50-caliber machine gun expended ammunition in deep burps. Shadows from distant flares lit one side of the wall, on and off, and Hodges felt vulnerable, naked in his ignorance. He didn't have the slightest idea why the .50-cal kept firing while the compound where he slept was not even on alert. It irritated him. He was finally in Vietnam, but he wasn't a part of it.
The following morning he and two others took a convoy from Da Nang to the combat base at An Hoa. It was a journey into darkness and primitivity, as little by little the comparatively lush surroundings of Da Nang fell by the wayside. Strings of American bases and well-kept villages gave way to wide, ruptured fields, saturated with little ponds, permanent bomb craters from the years of war. The multitude of gravestones and pagodas beginning just outside Da Nang bore
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