Another Place Episode 14

Another Place Another Time

Book One

Jake and Whispers

Episode Fourteen

A week after our first patrol, Lands and I were at the kennel working with Ringo and Whispers when Riley found us. As soon as he saw us, he shouted, “Hey, the First Sergeant wants to see both of you.”

“I take it our vacation is about to end,” Lands said.

Riley laughed.

“If you call being at Camp Bearcat a vacation, you’re right. It’s about to end.”

“Good,” said Lands. “I’m getting tired of long days without a bunch of short brown men that I don’t know, trying to kill me.”

We secured the dogs in their runs and headed for the orderly room.

“Young Men, it’s time to go back to work,” the First Sergeant said as soon as we walked through the door.

“Lands, you have less than thirty days left so you get the milk run. It’s a four-day sweep and the Pathfinders are going to remain in the Landing Zone while the patrol is out. Lands, you and Ringo will stay with them. Jake, you and Whispers will go with the patrol.”

“When do we leave, First Sergeant?” I asked.

“You’ll leave the company area at 1700 hours. Riley will take you to the staging area. Meet him here, at the orderly room.”

*********

Back in our room we began gathering our gear for the mission. I had something on my mind, something that had been there for almost a year, and I had an idea that Lands could clear it up for me.

“Lands, can I ask you something?”

“Sure, Jake, fire away.”

“The First Sergeant said you were getting short. Are you really leaving Vietnam?”

“You better believe it, Jake. I’m so short; I can hear the big iron bird sitting on the runway winding up its engines. Yep, Curtis Lands has done his time and is about to be just another page in the history of Southeast Asia.”

Without looking at Lands, I asked, “What about Ringo?”

Lands didn’t answer. Instead, he stopped sorting the gear on his bunk, turned, and left the room. I heard him walk to the far end of the hallway. Then, I heard him turn and walk past our room before going all the way to the opposite end of the hall. In a few seconds, he was back.

He walked through the door with a sheepish grin on his face.

“Sorry about that, Jake. You just asked about the one piece of information that nobody around here talks about in public. So I wanted to make sure that we had the place to ourselves.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“No problem. You need to know, and I’m going to tell you. I just wanted to make sure that I’d be telling only you.”

He shuffled through some gear in silence for a while, before he began to talk again. “I’m sure you know that officially our dogs are U.S. Army equipment, and that means they cannot leave Vietnam with their handlers. Obviously, if we followed that ruling, there’d be a lot of extra dogs in the unit. You’re not stupid, Jake, and you’re not blind. I’m sure you’ve noticed that we only have one extra dog.”

Once again, he shuffled through his gear. Without looking up, he went on, “Eight handlers, all members of the advance party or men who didn’t have enough time for a full tour when the unit came over, have gone home. Every one of them is home now and every one of them has his dog with him.”

He looked up from his stack of gear, stared straight at me and said, “Jake, if I couldn’t get Ringo out of here I wouldn’t be leaving. I’d stay here with him until the war was over or one or both of us died.” He paused, looked in my eyes for a long moment then continued, “Jake, that’s not right, we’ve done our time, and we’re going home.”

He glanced toward the doorway before continuing. “Here’s how it works. When a handler and his dog leave, Riley will wait a while, I don’t know how long, and then he’ll make an entry in the Morning Report stating the dog died in action, or died of natural causes. That’s what it takes to get the dog off the unit’s property list. With the ‘property’ accounted for, that’s the end of it. Now, here’s the crazy part of the deal, Jake. Though it’s against regulations to take a scout dog out of Vietnam—in fact, it’s a court-martial offense—almost every handler does it, and everyone not directly involved is willing to do whatever they can to help pull it off.”

I considered what Lands had said.

“I have a good friend in the States,” I said, “Captain Richard Kennedy, who did a tour as a transportation officer with an infantry division. While he was here he got to know the dogs and handlers in a unit based near him, at Chu Chi. He told me there were ways to get a dog home, but he didn’t know any details.”

Lands laughed. “Well, so much for secrets. Seriously, Jake, there are several ways to get a dog home. When it’s your turn, remember, your primary objective is to get Whispers home, and your second is to do it as covertly as possible.”

I nodded and he continued, “Getting out by freighter is the method of choice. It’s a bit pricey, but it is close to being failsafe. The enemy doesn’t receive any supplies by freighter, at least not a freighter that arrives in Saigon.” He laughed at his joke before going on, “That means there is no reason to check these ships, either as they arrive or leave. Our lovely winter cruise is costing me $1,200.00, which is almost two months pay. But to be honest, I’d pay a whole lot more to take Ringo home with me.”

“Can you tell me how it works?”

“I won’t bore you with the fine points but, it goes this way. I’ll come down on orders to leave country. In my case, I’m mustering out of the Army, so I’ll go to Oakland, at least my orders will say I’m going to Oakland. Riley has a friend in the Air Force who will check me off the boarding manifest for the flight home and another friend stateside who will check me in. I’ll leave here with all of my records, which will include a DD 214 that reads, ‘prepared in Oakland’. In fact, all of my records say I out-processed at Oakland. Also, in my file are my final discharge papers, financial records, and physical exam form. Copies of the files are forwarded to Army records in St. Louis, a clerk in Oakland will destroy any records that suggest I never showed up, and that’s it.”

“So you’ll leave Vietnam on a ship?”

“That’s right. You haven’t been to Saigon yet so you haven’t seen the port. It lines both sides of the Saigon River. It takes more equipment and supplies to support a half-million troops than you can imagine. All you can see in the port, for miles and miles, are hundreds of freighters, from all over the world, big ones, small ones, new ones and old ones. Ringo and I are leaving on a small, Thai-registered freighter that will be going to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, I’ll board a containership going to Vancouver. From Vancouver, we’ll make our way home to Davenport, Iowa.”

We worked in silence for a time, sorting and packing our gear. Then Lands said, “Jake, the only reason we have an extra dog at the kennel is a sniper killed his handler, Tom Stoner, three weeks ago. So, if you’ve been worrying about getting Whispers home, you can stop it right now.” He laughed, and then said, “Just start saving your money.”

*********

The LURP patrol was the same one we had been with a week earlier, except for Johnson. A new kid named Martin, another farm boy from the look of him, was in Johnson’s position.

I asked Staff Sergeant Rice how Johnson was doing. He laughed and said, “He’s great. There was no permanent damage, but he has to suffer three to six months of convalescence and therapy with the nurses at Brooke Army Hospital at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Then he’ll probably spend a week or two at home, before he gets himself back over here where he belongs. Johnson is a lucky trooper, that’s for sure.”

Lieutenant Barzuto shouted, “Jake, you and Whispers come over here for a minute.” We walked over and the Lieutenant introduced us to Corporal Johnny Isaacs, a skinny, black kid from Alabama.

After we shook hands, he reached down and let Whispers smell his hand, patted Whispers’s head, and gave him a quick rub behind both ears. Though Johnny was young, his eyes were old. The thousand-yard stare had already marked him. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, Vietnam had already marked me, as well.

Barzuto looked first at Isaacs, then at Whispers, and finally at me, and in total seriousness said, “Jake, you have a major disadvantage here, and I mean a major disadvantage.”

He stopped talking and waited for me to take the bait. I didn’t disappoint him.

I asked, “What’s my disadvantage Lieutenant?”

He said, “Jake, Corporal Isaacs and Whispers are both black. Think about it. They will be invisible at night. You, on the other hand, will stand out to snipers from about a mile away, no matter how much of that grease paint you put on your white face.”

We all laughed while Whispers wagged his tail and barked softly a couple of times. Even the dog enjoyed seeing me fall for a joke.

When the laughter died away, the Lieutenant continued, this time very seriously, “OK, here’s the deal. Isaacs is the point man for this patrol. Jake, you and Whispers stay a half step or so behind him, on his left side. Isaacs knows the direction to take, however, you are in charge of steering. If Whispers detects an ambush, you tell Isaacs and he’ll tell me. If Whispers senses booby traps or trip wires, you tell Isaacs the route that he needs to take to avoid them. When you give him a new direction, keep in mind the rest of us are behind you in a ‘V’ formation that will be about a hundred yards wide. Or think of it this way, the last man on each side will be fifty yards to your right or left, so account for that when you are avoiding the trap. That’s what I mean when I say that you were in charge of steering.”

*********

I post two episodes of Another Place Another Time every week

For info on receiving each episode directly on your Kindle click here
Or, if you don’t want to wait, click here to purchase the complete Kindle version of the book.

Currently I’m working on The Mystic Trilogy – the first volume – The Sages – it is posted weekly – click here to read the latest and all previous episodes.