I think I posted this here once before, but I'm kinda proud of this story, so here it is again. I saw some shit in the Nam, let me tell you. But the last month I was in country was something I’ll never forget. Not if I live another hundred years. We knew the gooks were out there somewhere. God knew they’d sent enough sniper fire and mortar rounds our way from the cover of the jungle outside the wire. But we couldn’t find them. The captain figured they had a bolt-hole out there in the bush, like the Cong always did. It was well hidden if it was there. We’d been sending search-and-destroy patrols out looking for them for weeks with no luck. No good luck, anyway. We’d lost some men out there. Booby traps, ambushes, snipers; you name it, the Cong had sprung it on us. Damn little slanty-eyed bastards. We just knew they were out there in their hidey-hole laughing at the stupid Americans, come umpteen-thousand miles just to die in the jungle. Die for nothing. I was thirty-eight days short when I drew guard duty with Wyrzbowski. Sitting in a foxhole right on the perimeter all night waiting for Charlie to come sneaking up on us was not my idea of safe duty, but at least I had Bowz to hide behind if the shit went down. He was big as a truck and almost as smart. Good man in a firefight but not the sharpest bayonet on the rifle, if you know what I mean. Bowz and I were taking turns sweeping our sector with the Starlight scope. It was dull, but with that tense emptiness you get when you know somebody might be watching you. The jungle could come alive with black pajamas at any second. We’d seen it happen before. There’d been no activity for a couple of days, which usually meant that Charlie was getting himself ready for some serious crap. Everybody was wired, waiting for the hammer to fall. Last thing we expected was for some VC kid to come tearing-ass out of the bush all by himself, screaming at the top of his lungs. Bowz almost popped him, but I could see through the Starlight that the kid was damn near naked and definitely empty-handed. I figured to take him prisoner. Maybe he wasn’t Cong. Maybe he was just another poor schmuck caught up in the shitstorm. Maybe he knew something useful. Maybe I was just tired of killing them. Nah. I never got tired of killing them. Anyway, this kid came screaming across the open ground around the firebase like the Devil himself was chasing after him. With the moon full like it was I could see his eyes even without the Starlight, they were open so wide. The gunny sergeant was on the squawk box wanting to know what the fuss was about. I gave him the sitrep and got his okay to take the gook alive. Didn’t look like a trick. Not one half-naked boy without even a knife on him. I hoped. I told Bowz to stay in the hole and keep me covered, just in case. I low-crawled across the ground, got a good spot in the kid's path, and when he came close enough I popped up and gave him a kiss with the butt of my rifle. Kid went down like a sack of potatoes. At least that shut him up. Damn screaming was getting on my nerves. The Gunny sent Shiro out to the hole to keep Bowz company while I got to haul the prisoner back to the command bunker. Lucky me. At least he was light. The captain was awake when I got there. Probably Gunny woke him up. He had our intel guy with him, too. Lieutenant Folger. Creepy little prick, Folger was. Just like you’d expect an intel guy to be. I plopped the VC down on the dirt floor of the bunker. The captain, Folger, and the Gunny all crowded around. Folger threw a cup of water in the kid’s face and his eyes popped open. And he started screaming again. He was squirming and trying to back his way through the sandbags, his eyes shooting all around the room, like he didn’t even see us. I was about to butt-stroke him again, calm him down a little, when he suddenly seemed to realize where he was. If he really was Cong, he was a good actor. He actually looked glad to see us. He started gabbing away in gook-talk, telling us his life story for all I knew. I looked at Folger. The intel guy was scribbling notes as fast as his little pencil could move. Guess he could savvy the lingo. Figured. Charlie was all hot and bothered about something, that was for sure. His voice was high-pitched and fast, and even a dumb grunt like me could tell he was scared spitless. The kid was babbling on and on, but suddenly Folger looked up from his notes real sharp-like and barked out a question in Vietnamese. The kid said “Yes! Yes!” in plain English and nodded like his head was gonna fall off. Folger looked pissed and questioned him some more, getting a little more insistent. Apparently the kid stuck with his story. Whatever it was. This went on for a good half-hour. I was losing interest, hearing my bunk calling me. The kid finally stopped talking. Folger, the captain, and the Gunny huddled up and started whispering to each other, leaving me to stand by the kid and look menacing. After a bit, Folger and the captain went out, probably back to the “office” behind the next wall of sandbags. The Gunny came over to me and the prisoner. “Go get some sleep, Minelli,” he said to me. “Sun’ll be up in a couple hours and you’ve volunteered to take out a patrol.” I groaned. “Aw, c’mon Gunny!” I said, knowing it was pointless. “I only got a month left on this tour. I don’t need to be hangin’ my ass out in the bush!” Might as well argue with the wind and the rain. “Suck it up, Corporal!” He said. “You ain’t a civilian yet. Now go get some kip.” Then he turned to arrange a guard for the prisoner. Cursing under my breath, I headed for my hooch and what little sack time I could get before dawn.
My first surprise when the sun came up was that Folger was coming with us on the patrol. That little ferret never wandered out of his cage. Whatever that gook kid had told him must’ve been some really hot shit. My next surprise was that the prisoner was coming along too. His hands were tied, but in front of him. Slogging through the jungle is hard enough under the best circumstances. If the kid’s hands had been tied behind him we’d have been picking him up off the ground every three steps. I asked Folger what the deal was and he said that the prisoner was going to show us where the Cong had their hole. I got to pick the rest of my squad. Bowz was my first choice. He wasn’t happy about it, having been stuck on watch half the night, but if I had to suffer I was going to spread the joy around some. The other four guys I picked pretty much at random. Robinson, Gutterman, Folk, and Blauman all made my list. I could tell they were all thrilled. The Gunny gave us our mission brief, with Folger putting in a word here and there. The other guys perked up when they heard we had a prisoner who was going to show us where the assholes who’d been shooting at us for the last three weeks were hiding. It was probably a trap, but even so, the idea of visiting a little righteous wrath on the bad guys was appealing. If we could lure them out, there’d be a couple of A-4’s waiting to napalm their asses, or so we were told. In my experience, the Air Force showed up whenever the hell they felt like it and were as likely to drop their love notes on us as on Charlie. Then Folger sprang the morning’s third surprise on us. According to the prisoner, all his pals were already toast. Somebody had got into their tunnels when they weren’t looking and whacked the lot of them. Gutterman asked, not unreasonably, why we were going out if the VC were supposed to be taken care of already. It seems that the prisoner’s story had some questionable details. Something about two dozen battle-hardened Cong being taken out by one intruder. Folger hinted vaguely that he’d been instructed to be alert for stories like this by the higher-ups, so we were going to go investigate. I knew there’d been Special Ops troops in the area not too long ago, SEALs or something, but Folger denied that this had anything to do with them. Either way, we were going to go stick our noses into the dirt and sniff around. We went outside the wire about 0700. Usually a squad like ours would take only one radio along, but we had two. Blauman and Folk were both carrying one. The Gunny wanted to make sure we could call in the zoomies if we found a Cong nest. Bowz, as was his habit, was in charge of our M-60 Squad Automatic Weapon. He also had a pump shotgun over his shoulder, in case he had to get up close and personal with somebody. The rest of us had the usual M-16’s with M-209 40mm grenade launchers slung under the barrel, combat knives, and personal side arms. Folger had a beautiful .44 revolver in a shoulder rig. He said his Dad had given it to him when he got out of West Point. Of course, being an intel weenie, he’d never fired the thing except at the practice range, but damn, that was a sweet piece. Since we were expecting to go into VC tunnels, we were also each carrying a half-dozen white phosphorus grenades. Good ol’ willie-pete. Nothing like it for making bad guys sit down and be quiet. Since Folger wasn’t actually a combat soldier, we let him carry the three satchel charges we’d brought. He was good about it. Although as a Second Lieutenant he out-ranked all of the rest of us, he knew he wasn’t qualified to lead a squad of grunt infantry. That was my job. Get the prisoner and the intel guy to the hot zone, scope things out, then get ‘em back in one piece. Cake. Yeah, right. It might have been cake, but it had shit for frosting. The prisoner was on point with Robinson right behind to keep him honest. Robinson had his bayonet fixed, just in case the kid needed some persuasion. Then Folk, then me and Folger, then Bowz, Blauman, and Gutterman bringing up the rear. We kept a standard three-meter spread, moving at a slow walk and making as little noise as seven guys loaded down with gear could. The prisoner was carrying only a couple of canteens, and we had rigged them so that they wouldn’t bang together. We humped through the jungle for about three hours. It rained twice during that time. It was hot, it was humid, the jungle had that ripe rotten smell that none of us would ever be able to forget, and the local bugs had us pegged as a movable feast. In other words, business as usual in the ‘Nam. All of us kept alert, looking around, listening for the whisper of tire-soled sneakers. I never told any of the guys, but I thought Vietnam was gorgeous country. Growing up in New York City, all I’d ever seen of nature was Central Park. The jungle here was like another planet. Everything was alive in this place. There wasn’t a square inch that didn’t have something growing on it. Too damn bad we were here fighting a war. I had decided that when I got back to the World, I was going to see some more places like this. The Everglades down in Florida, maybe Yosemite or Yellowstone, something like that. It’d be great to able to wander around the countryside without worrying about getting my head shot off.
Our game of Follow-the-Gook came to a sudden end about 1030. Our prisoner stopped in his tracks and started gabbing at Robinson, loud enough that we were afraid he was alerting his pals. Folger said something in Vietnamese and the kid shut up. We had all dropped to the ground, in whatever cover was handy, and we sat there for about ten minutes until we were reasonably sure that no-one was going to start shooting at us. Folger had squirmed up to where Robinson had hauled the prisoner down to the deck and was questioning the kid in tense whispers. It turned out that the entrance to the Cong tunnels was about twenty meters in front of us. The prisoner had told Folger that this was as close as he was willing to get, and if we didn’t like it we could shoot him. A couple of the boys were in favor, but Folger and I both figured we might still need the little bastard. We left Robinson and the kid where they were and spent another half-hour creeping up on the tunnel. The pucker factor was off the dial at this point. Nobody wanted to be the one to find out that it was a trick, so we were all being ridiculously careful. The camouflaged entrance to the tunnel was open when we got to it. I was getting a little creeped out by the situation. If this was a trick, the Cong were being downright diabolical about it. I looked things over for a couple of minutes, then made my decision. “Folk!” I hissed. He looked at me. “Drop the radio and take a look!” Folk was the smallest guy in the squad. He’d have the easiest time in the tunnels. He hated it, but that wasn’t my problem. He shucked off his radio pack, helmet, and other gear. He put his knife in his teeth, his .45 in one hand, and a willie-pete grenade in his other. A quick belly-crawl later, he was examining the tunnel entrance from about six inches away. We all knew the Cong loved to booby-trap these things, so he went over the entrance with a fine-tooth comb before trying to slide in. Then he turned to look at me, flashed a thumbs-up, and scooted into the hole. Minutes dragged by. We didn’t hear any shots or other noises coming from the tunnel. I figured that was good news. A glance at my watch told me that Folk had been inside for almost half an hour. I figured that that was bad news. Even if nobody was home, a tunnel recon shouldn’t take that long. Especially if no-one was home. I was about to order Blauman to go in after Folk when he came up out of the hole like a round out of a mortar. There was puke all down the front of him. The weapons he’d had with him were nowhere to be seen. He went down to his hands and knees, coughing and spitting. I signaled the rest of the boys to keep an eye on the jungle around us and huddled up with him. “Jesus Christ on toast, Minelli!!” Folk gasped when he could talk. “I ain’t never seen anything like that! There’s a bunch’a bodies in there, all in one little room, all torn to pieces! Couldn’t even tell how many!” He heaved up another wad of phlegm and spat. “The smell, man . . . enough to gag a maggot. There ain’t nobody alive in that hole, that’s for damn sure.” Never speak in absolutes in the ‘Nam. The gods are always listening, and they’re a vicious pack of bastards. No sooner had Folk made his pronouncement than somebody in the hole started moaning. We exchanged looks, with Folk’s translating into “What the hell?” and mine more like “Good work, dumb-ass.” There were still no signs of threat from the surrounding jungle. I could see Folger was looking anxious, so I made a decision. "Awright, listen up," I said like I knew what I was doing. “Folk, you and Robinson stay out here with the prisoner. Bowz, I want you just inside the hole covering them. Gutterman, Blauman, you’re coming in the tunnels with the LT and me. Let’s move like we got a purpose!” I went in first. Gutterman was behind me, with Folger after him and Blauman covering our rear. We all had our pistols and flashlights out, with a willie-pete somewhere convenient. It was fuckin’ dark in that tunnel, let me tell you. I could smell the earth around me, rich and musky. Not exactly unpleasant, either. Once we were in about five meters, the tunnel opened up enough to walk, though we had to stay bent over. There was light, too, from what looked like the local version of a hurricane lantern. They were sitting in little niches dug into the walls every so often. It wasn’t daylight, but it was enough so you wouldn’t bang your head or stub your toe. Made everything look red, though. I could still hear the moaning, so I followed the sound. I was careful to keep my finger off the trigger of my weapon, so I wouldn’t accidentally shoot somebody who might be useful. I glanced back and saw that Folger was now right behind me. He had that pretty revolver of his in his hand and for a wonder it looked like he might actually know how to use it. Officers were always full of surprises. My foot came down on something. I got my attention back to where it should have been and saw that I had found Folk’s knife. I picked it up and tucked it in my belt. He’d probably want it back. The moan came again. Sounded close this time. I poked my weapon around some crates that formed a corner to the tunnel and a second later I had eyes on the guy making the noise. I was stunned to see that it was an American. He was dressed in rags that might have been fatigues once upon a time. No boots. He was covered with dirt. Poor bastard. The Cong had probably been a little less nice to him than we’d been to the kid I had captured. I could see how Folk might have missed the guy if he hadn’t been moaning earlier, the way he was lying between the crates in a deep shadow. “Friendly!” I announced. I made sure that Gutterman and Blauman were keeping their eyes open, then Folger and I examined the guy. It was nobody either of us recognized, but he still had his dog tags on him, and they said his name was Voelker. A Sergeant, to boot. Poor guy was really out of it. He didn’t react when we shined our flashlights in his face, or when we got him sitting up. Just kept moaning and looking kinda punch-drunk. The gooks had probably been beating on him. They were like that. Folger picked that moment to start giving orders. I was sort of surprised it’d taken him this long, but I guess intel officers are a bit brighter than the usual kind. “Corporal, I want to leave Private Gutterman with this man while the rest of us finish checking out this hole. See to it.” It actually wasn’t a bad move, I had to admit. It would take two of us to get the Sarge back out to the entrance, and I didn’t like the idea of wandering around in here with just Folger for company. With Blauman along, I knew I’d have somebody I could trust covering our asses. A minute later, arrangements taken care of, the three of us were exploring again. Gutterman and the Sarge were in a fairly defensible spot, if anything went down. They had the tunnel wall at their backs and crates on two sides. They’d probably be okay until we got back. If we got back. Think positive, Minelli. When we got back.
It didn’t take us long to find the room Folk had seen. We smelled it before we saw it. I’d been close to dead bodies before, even some that’d been in the jungle for a while, but this was worse than anything in my experience. We shined our flashlights around in a sort of sick fascination, like when you drive past a car wreck. You don’t really want to look, but you can’t help yourself. Arms, legs, heads . . . I saw something that looked like a rib cage . . . half of a spine . . . a pelvis that’d been busted into a couple of big chunks . . . and bugs swarming over the whole thing. I’m not ashamed to say all three of us lost it. The rations we’d had for breakfast or on the trail came up and added to the smell and mess. “Christ on a crutch!” Blauman said. “I saw a 155 hit a foxhole once, but God-Damn . . . “ Nobody argued with him. Eventually there was nothing left in our bellies to come up. Folger covered his face with a bandanna and went in closer. He pushed at the body parts with his knife, moving them around, all in all being a lot more curious than Blauman or I thought the situation called for. Officers. “Notice anything, Corporal Minelli?” Folger asked. I toyed with the idea of saying I’d noticed that Intel guys seemed to have some unhealthy interests, but decided that it wouldn’t be a career-enhancing observation. “Other than a gook jigsaw puzzle? No, sir,” I replied. “No organs,” Folger said. “No guts. No hearts. No lungs. And no brains. Like they’ve been butchered, and this is the leftovers.” “Mother Mary on toast,” Blauman muttered. I almost laughed. Almost. “What do you figure that means?” I asked instead. “Fucked if I know, Corporal,” Folger replied. “Either way, this is some bad juju.” He stood there for a bit, hands on his hips, looking at the remains. I could almost hear the little cogs and pinwheels spinning in his head. “Well, let’s move out,” he said at last. “Recon the rest of this nest and get the hell outta here.” “Fuckin’ A,” Blauman and I said at the same time. There wasn’t a lot left to see, but Folger was thorough. We poked into every corner. We found some papers, which Folger tucked into his rucksack, and some radios, which we smashed and left. Then back to where we’d left Gutterman and Sergeant Voelker. Gutterman had found a cot somewhere and had the Sarge on it. It looked sturdy enough to use as a litter, so I had the two privates lift and carry. Rank is a good thing sometimes. We humped back through the tunnels, with me in the lead, Folger in the rear, and the other three between us. The Sarge was delirious, mumbling continuously about running through the jungle and being surrounded. Poor bastard. It seemed to take a lot longer to get back than it had to get in, but finally we came to the low part near the entrance. The chances of manhandling the Sarge through here looked pretty poor, so I figured we could leave him here, crawl out, then send one of the guys back in to get a line around his shoulders so that we could pull him out. We’d left a coil of rope outside with our other gear, and it was more than long enough to reach the five meters from the entrance. One by one, we crawled back out into the daylight. I saw right away that night was coming on. We’d been in the hole longer than I’d wanted, and we’d have a choice between humping back to base in the dark or spending the night where we were. Out-fucking-standing. I picked Folk to go back in with the line. He was less than thrilled, but perked up a bit when I gave him back his knife. I watched his feet disappear back into the hole, then turned to get the squad organized to pull the Sarge out when Folk gave us the signal. There was a sound; a sort of soft, wet splat. Blauman’s head was gone, or at least a good chunk of it. ”Fuck!” I screamed. “Gooks! Gooks! Take cover and bust caps!” Rounds were coming in from at least three directions. Bowz opened up with the M-60, not aiming at anything in particular but just putting out some suppressing fire. The rest of the squad was busy trying not to get killed. To my surprise, Folger was down close to me in a fairly good cover position and putting short bursts from his M-16 into various clumps of foliage in an impressively calm and methodical manner. Damn guy was full of surprises. I did a quick survey of the squad. Blauman was pretty well dead, what with most of his brains decorating the ground. Bowz was back in the mouth of the hole, putting out some good fire with the M-60. The odd scream from the jungle told me that his little 7.62 messages were finding bad guys often enough to be worth the effort. Folk, of course, was in the tunnels, blocked in by Bowz. Good for him, I supposed, but another weapon going bang-bang-bang would have been a lot more comforting. Gutterman and Robinson were both hugging the dirt and popping off at anything that looked remotely slant-eyed. And, like I said, Folger was next to me and doing a creditable job of playing soldier. Fuck, I thought, the prisoner! Where the flyin’ frag was that little gook bastard? In between trigger pulls I looked around. It was pretty well dark now, but enough of a full moon was poking through the jungle canopy that I could see the kid. He was up against a tree trunk, standing up, but paying absolutely no attention to the hot lead zinging around. He was staring at the moon. At the fucking moon. Well, of course that didn’t last long. The kid started screaming something, never taking his eyes away from the sky. Then he made a break for it. Robinson, nominally still in charge of the prisoner, saw him and swung his rifle around. Before Robinson could get off a shot, Bowz let out a scream like no kinda sound that should come out of a grown man and went flying, literally flying, into the air. That was enough of a surprise that even the gooks stopped shooting for a second. In the silence that crashed down in that moment, we all heard something that none of us ever want to hear again. From the mouth of the tunnel came a howl. Long, loud, and the worst goddamn sound any of us had ever heard before or ever would again. All the little hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up, and I swear to God that my balls tried to crawl up into my guts. I turned to look that way. Something came out of the hole. Something that moved so unnaturally fast that all any of us saw was a gray streak in the moonlight. Our prisoner must have seen it, too, ‘cuz the poor kid let out a shriek that could peel paint. What happened after that is sort of fuzzy, and I thank God for that. Some things just aren’t meant to be remembered clearly. Your brain kind of smudges things, takes the edges off. So that you can live with it. Bits of the prisoner were all over the jungle in an instant. I had a quick impression of his body shaking, sort of like a rag in a dog’s mouth. Then he came apart. How much blood is there in a human body? Five, six quarts? I saw all of it. Sweet Jesus, I saw every drop. The VC who’d ambushed us were confused, not quite sure what was going on. None of us were shooting at this point. I don’t think we even remembered we were holding weapons. Then . . . . then it started raining body parts. Arms, legs, heads . . . flying out of the bushes to the sound of screaming. Horrible, high-pitched screaming. The sound a man makes when he’s being ripped apart and knows what’s happening. God, all these years later I can still hear those poor doomed sons of bitches screaming. When it stopped, my squad and I all just sort of sat there. I think we were in shock. I remember lots of wide eyes, lots of hard breathing. I don’t know how long we all sat there, not moving, holding our weapons and staring at each other. It was Folger who broke the spell. He started mumbling something under his breath. I turned his way. “Sir?” I asked. “True,” he said, though not exactly to me. “Fuckin’ true, the whole fuckin’ story, Jesus God every fuckin’ word was true. Jesus, Jesus, it was all true . . . “ I was about to ask him what the hell he was talking about when it came out of the jungle. It walked on two legs, like a man. It was wearing some rags that might have been fatigues once upon a time. But it was no man that stood there staring at us for that long moment. Men don’t have snouts full of teeth that gleam like bayonets in the light of the full moon. Men don’t walk around with a severed arm in one hand; a hand tipped with ragged black claws. And men don’t howl like this thing howled. God in heaven, men don’t howl like that.
We made it back to the firebase eventually. Blauman was dead, our prisoner . . . well, the less said about that poor bastard the better. We had some evidence from the VC company that had ambushed us. A few pieces of kit, the odd finger or ear. Which was about all that was left of them. Sergeant Voelker never turned up again. He wasn’t in the hole when we finally collected ourselves enough to look. Folk was in there, passed out cold. Funny thing, his hair went white real fast after that mission. Folk was a young man, no more than twenty-three, twenty-four. But a few months after that night in the jungle, his hair was as white as his grandfather’s. He never told us what he saw in the tunnel, and we never asked. Probably better that way. I was sure that the debrief was going to be a cast-iron bitch, but Folger went first and did all the talking. Some HQ types showed up at the base the next day and took surprisingly brief statements from the squad. Nothing more was made of it. It sort of just went away. When the HQ guys left, they took Folger with them. I had the chance to talk to him as he was walking out to the chopper. “What was that, Lieutenant?” I asked him. “What the fuck tore those VC up like that? And why didn’t it do the same to us?” Folger looked at me for a long time without saying anything. The chopper was starting up, the blades turning, before he finally answered. “Corporal,” he said, “Just be glad Sergeant Voelker remembered which side he was on.” And that was the last thing he ever said to me. The last time I ever saw him. I shipped out of the Nam on schedule about a month after that. I still keep in touch with some of my buddies from those days. Except one. See, Bowz went flying into the air that night because something threw him. But before that, it bit him. It bit him. Sometimes, usually when I’ve been hitting the bottle particularly hard, I think about Bowz. I wonder if he howls. I hope to God I never find out.
