Remembrance of wars past: H. Lee Barnes' new Vietnam memoir

An excerpt from H. Lee Barnes’ “When We Walked Above the Clouds”

     I was selected. I don’t know who made the decision, the captain or Brownie. No matter, someone decided I needed a little cross-training in first aid, and not just first aid, but treating the ill. And Norwood was picked to train me to help on sick call.

 We stood under the canopy of an open tent. As a line of malingerers waited in the sun, he showed me first how to start a drip line, which he said I wouldn’t be doing that day, but should know how to do nonetheless. He picked up a syringe from a tray and demonstrated injecting sterile water through the rubber diaphragm into a bottle of powder. He shook the mixture and drew it out with the same syringe. I took a turn at it, aspirated properly, flicked the syringe, and pressed the air out with the plunger as he had. He seemed satisfied.

He told me to pay attention to where he wiped the alcohol swab and warned me about the sciatic nerve. I watched as he gave the first man in line a shot in the buttocks. For what, I didn’t know. The next sick man was mine. He stepped up. Norwood watched, as step by step, I administered the shot. Perfect. He didn’t feel a thing. I withdrew the needle and wiped the injection site with a swab. Norwood seemed proud, perhaps of my small accomplishment, but more likely of his success at teaching someone as thickheaded as I was.

 One at a time, Norwood examined them, listened to ailments rendered through the interpreter. I stood by, a syringe at the ready. Between the two of us, we treated three more patients and gave two shots. I gained confidence. Bring ’em on, I thought, your tired, your weary, your sick. Dr. Barnes at your service, the best medical help in all of ’Nam a step away. What’s troubling you? Too much boom boom? A little gonorrhea? Yes, we have a quick fix for that. Next patient please. Don’t be shy. We’re all professionals here. Top-grade.

Norwood sent the next striker my way with instructions to give him antibiotics for his clap. I prepped as instructed. The man dropped his trousers.

“Too much fucky?” I smiled.

I swabbed the injection site and jabbed him in the buttocks. Bull’s-eye, a perfect hit. But then his eyes promptly rolled up in their sockets, and he tilted forward, passed out. As he and I lifted the patient to a stretcher, Norwood, a bit testy, reminded me about the sciatic nerve. I shrugged. It wasn’t as if we’d get sued for malpractice.

The sound of mortars exploding boomed up the valley, accompanied by machine gun and small arms fire. In the dull middle ground between sleep and consciousness, I heard the sounds. Then blaked

Whitten shouted into the bunker for me to man my post. Since arriving I had rehearsed the drill in my mind over and over. I swung my feet onto the floor and slipped on my boots and buttoned my fatigue shirt, then grabbed my M-16, and entered the trench. It was raining and I’d forgotten my poncho and steel pot. I went back for them.

Jacobsen, in T-shirt and trousers, was setting the bipod on the mortar. An outgoing mortar round exploded near the river. Strikers throughout the camp fired their weapons, scoring the sky with tracers. Unperturbed by the weather and other events, Jake said was going to instill some fire discipline in them. Then he said, “Let’s put a little light on the subject.”

Unhurried, the captain, occupied in thought, walked past the pit without speaking. I grabbed an illumination round out of the magazine. He cut increments by guess and set the delay. I pulled out another round and waited. He said one was hanging and dropped it in the tube. Seconds later a blazing light burned a hole in the black sky. I handed him the next round and climbed atop the parapet to see the flare hanging over the swollen river, too far out. I told him and he adjusted the angle. I glanced the east at the PF outpost at the very instant a mortar round exploded inside the post. Fox slogged by and shouted for us not to waste any flares. JV followed him. I hopped back into the pit.

With nothing for us to do but wait, Jake started shivering. He said he’d be right back. A few minutes passed before he returned wearing a poncho and stood above on the parapet. I climbed up beside him. Though a deadly ordeal at the other end, as seen through the misty night sky the battle was vague and dreamlike. Tracers from small-arms and automatic fire crisscrossed the sky. Trip flares lit up the perimeter as sappers probed the defenses to see how much fight the defenders had in them. Mortar rounds exploded inside the defenses, first the flash, then a delayed bang, like the sound and image out of sync on a movie screen. By then sappers had penetrated the outer wire. A flare flashed, then another. A recoilless rifle barked its unmistakable sound.

On his hurried way to the team house Cam slowed long enough to say we would get no air support. The whole of I-Corps was boxed in. Something too obvious to be said.

Then the far hillside went black and silent. Norwood shook his head and walked away. Jake and I returned to the pit and hunkered down while inside the team house the captain, Lt. Quang, Lt. Bussy, Fox and JV were deciding how our team and the Vietnamese would react.

Over the next hour the gruesome aftermath was telegraphed up the valley, executions announced a single shot at a time, followed by a pause, then a shot, and so on, leaders first, then others who didn’t accept the chance to convert. Join or die, the politics of a gun to the head.

Mr. Whitten called out that he was coming into the pit. “Bloody wet,” he said. “The cheek of these Viet Cong.” He lit a cigarette, concealed it under his poncho, and blew smoke skyward. “Shame this happened the day of the captain’s party.” He took another drag off his cigarette. “I’m relievin’ you, Barnes. Your good captain wants you to be ready for the morning.”

Past midnight, now the day after Tet, I scrabbled about in the dark. Down the valley they’d killed unarmed men, their reason — because they could. It was a piece of Vietnam to take to bed and think about. I shed my poncho, hung my .45 in its holster on the frame of the mosquito net, then dried my rifle, slipped out of my boots and flopped down for a brief restless rest.   

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