Chasbro and Perkins had about half an hour together on the ride back from MOI.

Steven took advantage of it. “General Perkins?”

“Alvin, dammit. You’re family.”

“Please do me a big favor.”

“Shoot.”

“Tell me what happened that day. My brother always said he owed his soul to you.”

“You mean that day in Hué, during Tet?”

“Yeah, Alvin. I really want to know.”

“Stevie, I will try to be brief. It breaks my heart what happened to Timmy. An over-dose.”

Chasbro decided not yet to tell the truth – it would only get the discussion off on a

tangent and he had waited thirty years for this opportunity, one he figured would never

come his way. He would not lose it now.

Perkins was deliberative, “Stevie, you have no idea what Hué was really like.

On the other side of the river, the main battle chewed up a lot of our own and

a lot more gooks – that’s what we used to call them, the Vietnamese: gooks.

Tim was the squad leader; had been for a while.

“Your brother was a good guy and great as a squad leader. Very unassuming

but not unassertive, you see. He cared us and never showed any favoritism

to his school chums. They had all gone to some rich-kids’ school. I guess

you went there, too…”

Chasbro nodded ‘yes’ but motioned Perkins to continue. “So, Steve, Timmy

was telling us to wait for a Huey [an AH-60 helicopter] to re-con the area,

basically a village, borderline friendly, but suspected of having an ammo

dump and comms center. He was trying to raise the tactical center but the

fighting was too fierce and the lieutenant just kept ordering him to take us

into the village. Since I manned the radio unit at the point, I heard it all. The

lieutenant, two years out of West Point, was yelling at Tim to sweep the

village: ‘Kill them – kill them all,’ he kept saying.”

Perkins hesitated and asked, “You sure you really want to hear all this, Stevie?”

“I really looked up to my brother and came home a cripple and we lost him; it really

stunted me, too, Sir. It killed my parents. So, yes, I wanna listen – I need to know why.”

Neither the Brigadier General nor the IRMite noticed Williamson on his nokia.

Alvin Perkins looked down and then said, “Fair enough, Stevie. We were a

pretty tight squad. For example, one guy, Fitz – short for Fitzhugh –

Delbertson, was this Southerner. Very white; funny, it took me longer to feel

at ease around him than him with me. You see, Steve, he wasn’t a cracker;

just a good guy. Tim would prod me to get along. He said my life depended

on it.

“Boy, he knew a shit-load more about the fight we were in than that

lieutenant. Well, we approach this village that day, across the river from the

meat-grinder, and start hearing this old gook-lady braying like a donkey,

pointing out into a rice paddy. We could faintly hear some screaming from

out there.

“This Delbertson fella – a real Southern gentleman – bolts out into the paddy

before Timmy can call him back. Scott Blair, one of your brother’s school

friends starts running along the embankment of a small wagon trail along the

side of the paddy. Screams back that he and Delbertson are looking for some

trapped kid. Where that kid was, nobody knew. Timmy kept telling them to

get back.

“Delbertson, a football letterman from some white-bread gentleman’s school

down South, soon fell, apparently impaled by sharpened bamboo shafts

hidden below the surface; went right through. When he tripped over an

obscured wire, with all the shit on his back, Fitz fell forward with great force.

So, I freak out, drop the comms pack and start wading into the water of the

paddy. About halfway to my Bama-bud, I hear this muffled explosion –

goddamit, Scotty had hit a land-mine.

“Blair was blown away into cannibal spinach in a split second. Now your

brother’s other classmate, Sam Bertolini races up the side road toward Blair

– perfectly natural reaction. Timmy started shooting in the air trying to get

our attention to order us back to where he was and huddle up with the others

about two hundred yards away until we got some back-up. I guess Bertolini

heard him but, like me, could not leave a buddy behind, even for a few hours.

By the time I got to Delbertson, I could see the water turning maroon with

lots of blood and silt swirling around. He was barely conscious and you know

his last words were?”

Chasbro opened his eyes wide, bracing for something bad,

“’Alvin, come on, bud, you can save that kid.’ Now, I could hear the crying –

baby-bait. Out of the corner I saw a jerking motion – Bertolini, hit by a sniper.

He jerked spastically slapping a hand to his head and then fell limply with

half his head blown off and pink mist and other head-shit flyin’ around.

Fuckin’ gross, Stevie, fuckin’ gross. Now Timmy’s orders did not seem so

cold-hearted.”

Perkins shuddered at the recollection. He caught himself to return to a narrative

rarely retold.

“Anyways, I followed the trajectory indicated by Bertolini’s movements and

there was the fucker hiding in a patch of bamboo; took his chinky little head

off in one spray; felt good, too. Turning back to Delbertson, I see he was

dead – head underwater and no bubbles. I still couldn’t get him off the

bamboo. So I ran back in. Timmy was all alone, his eyes wide and red – like

he had been smoking some wicked-ass mary-jane. He was yelling at that old

bitch, now on her knees, pleading with him in her ping-pong dialect.

“I saw Timmy set his M-16 on automatic. He screamed at the terrified gook-

hag, ‘You are going to get your bony ass blown to Hell, rock and roll!’ And I

started screaming, ‘I can’t take this shit no more.’ But, Stevie, I had to act

fast, as I came out of that paddy. So, thanks to God and Jesus Christ, I got

my hand under left, bracing arm just in time to push Tim’s rifle up – the

rounds sailed over the lady and the thatched huts behind her.

“Timmy snapped out of it and started outta control crying. He hugged me,

screaming ‘Thank you, Perkins, thank God for you, Perkins.’ Soon enough

the jack-ass lieutenant was back on the line. I briefed him on the casualties

and he said, ‘Don’t just sit there, you stupid coon – take out the village.’ Tim

looked down to the other squad members and some regulars with them. He

took the phone, putting a hand over the receiver, so the lieutenant would not

hear him. ‘Everybody rounded up over there?’

“A squad from a company of the twenty-third infantry division were encircling

about twenty-five or thirty peasant families and they indicated that no one

was left in the village. He took the phone and said, ‘Yes, Sir. We have them

cornered in their shanties and we’re going to torch them – teach those

mother-fuckin’ gooks to fuck with us, Sir.’ The lieutenant laughed – that

callous bastard just laughed – and said, ‘Chasbro, I didn’t know you had it in

you! Take ‘em to Nirvana, rock-and-roll, big boy!’ Timmy faked a laugh, ‘Copy

that, Sir.’ And he hung up.”

(‘Rock and roll’ is shifting an M-16 to automatic and spaying the perimeter playing

the gun like an Elvis guitar.)

“So, Timmy and I checked the huts holding the gook-lady in tow. We find the

ammo in one and pull away a straw-rug in another to find a trap-door under

it. So, I open that door. Nicely dug, sturdy ladder. Must be the comms or

tactical center. So we push the old bitch to the entrance and poke her with

the gun butts until she said something.

“We hear some people – maybe two or three – running toward the hole. I

pulled the pin off the grenade…five seconds. Tim stood behind lady holding

her shoulders. We hear a gun shot and the round went through the roof.

Three seconds. Not much time left on the grenade. I dropped it in and we

hauled ass out of the hut. The old bitch was resisting and Tim basically threw

her out the door and hurt, maybe broke, her shoulder. Then we dive through

the fuckin’ door just in time and hit the deck.

“The shaft blew straight up, so we were okay; damn hard on the hearing

though. You could still hear screaming from that hut over the loud ringing

from the explosion. So we torch the shanty and the one with the ammo.

Waited by the hut with the comms center to pick off any gooks. Sure enough,

a couple came crawling out of the flames. Shit, uniforms of the NVA

regulars.”

North Vietnamese Army; People’s Army of the Republic of Viêt Nam.

“So, we took care of them. As the ordnance in the supply hut exploded,

throwing off a lot of smoke, we left the other shanties alone. Tim called over

to the regular Army unit for the villagers to be taken to a detention area and

the old bitch to go to the medical tent with any other injured. Then Timmy

calls down to the lieutenant from Charlie Company of the twenty-third infantry

to bring four grunts on the double. Turns out that the lieutenant from Charlie

Company is a cracker asshole.

“So Timmy looks at him and says, ‘Lieutenant, you and two men go with

Sergeant Perkins here and let him take the lead,’ pointing to me. This red-

neck starts getting pissy. Tim shuts him down, saying, ‘Shut-up, lieutenant,

it’s obvious you guys are green as shit. Listen to Perkins and listen hard and

you’ll get out of this alive. Now get those two,’ pointing over to what was left

of Scotty and Sam, ‘and get ‘em into body-bags, now!’

“Tim then turns to the other two and orders them firmly, pointing to one, ‘You,

come with me to pull Corporal Delbertson off the bamboo spears and stay

behind me since I can pick out the traps.’ The private was okay with that.

Tim then turned his attention to the other private, ‘Cover us so some sniper

doesn’t pick us off.’

“The lieutenant spits on the ground and we start over to the path on the berm.

We spoke on the way. Timmy was right: These Charlie Company guys were

new to the country on their way to some place called Pinkville, hundred miles

or so South of Hué. They had been diverted for a few days to help us clean

out the rat-hole before going on a search and destroy sweep down there.

“Once back, Tim and the private were just hauling in Fitz’s body in from the

paddy and the two grunts bagged him. Timmy looked at me coolly and asked

me, ‘Alvin, call that 2-L-T [second lieutenant] and tell him we’re smokin’ the

whole village – that we didn’t find the ammo dump. Should be enough smoke

for the dumb prick.’ The Charlie Company lieutenant looks at the untorched

hootches and complains. Timmy goes ballistic, ‘Soldier, you do your fuckin’

job and I’ll do mine.’ Shuts the cracker up fast. Timmy and I now head back

into the rice swamp to get the bitchin’ brat

Good, no other snipers. We take our time, again looking for traps or trip-

wires after we pass the spot where Fitz had died. It takes a while with the

baby-bait. Rigged up to some explosives and we finally get an adorable little

girl the shit out of there. We got back and I hauled the braying brat over to

other villagers. A young mother runs up crying kissing the baby. Piece of

ass, too. Man your brother was a smart and good man, Stevie. Tim Chasbro

made me the man I am today. Anyways, we call in for medevacs to pick up

hurt villagers and the body bags and double back with the other squad

members.”

Perkins was choking up. It was obvious he missed Delbertson, Blair and Bertolini. But

he was still freshly grieving the loss of his squad leader, Timothy Chasbro, thirty-six

years later. Steven asked quietly, “How did Timmy do that?”

“Do what, Stevie?”

“I mean make you the man you are today – you seem to be---“

“Oh yeah, that. Remember, Stevie, I was only eighteen back then and the

Tet Offensive was awful. We bailed each other out. After that day, I was

ready to frag this idiot second lieutenant. He had killed three of my buddies

and the fucker had it coming. Never thought I’d feel that way about a whitey

descended from slave-owners like Delbertson, but I did. Shit, life teaches

you the strangest things. So, I plotted out how I’d do it without getting busted.

Tim found out about it and didn’t make a big fuss or try to get me court-

martialed or anything. As an uneducated and mouthy black kid, I would have

lost that one for sure. Instead, we talked for hours. Missed most of that

night’s sleep. You know what your brother did? Timmy went to every other

member of the squad; never mentioned my name…”

“Why would he do that? He didn’t trust you.”

“Oh Timmy trusted me all right. He figured that, if I felt like that, others did,

too. Most fieldies would have flown into a rage, justifiable perhaps, and would

have disciplined the living shit out of me, just to please the bad brass

assholes. Not Tim Chasbro. He got up, brushed himself off and calmly

walked into the Company commander’s tent and presented his findings. That

lieutenant became a real sweet-heart all of a sudden – but he hated Timmy

and really took it out on me. So don’t fault Timmy. He had lost three men out

of twelve in his squad because of that blood-thirsty yellow asshole.”