by Barry Judson Lohnes

If you are in the service long enough, you will realize that weird people gather in the ranks. Conscription in 1965 added to the peculiarity of our soldiers, widening the cross section, so to speak. Some have strange talents. Nobody had a nose like the Stinkman, birth named Henry Amos Romansky. The only other man with talent that approached the Stinkman’s was a black kid from Philly who could see a chopper coming in over the highlands twenty seconds before any of the other soldiers. We thought he was throwing the bull, just to show off. But sure as hell, a speck appeared out of the blue, moments before we heard the thumping of the blades. The Stinkman was just as good, if not better, except he had the nose, not the eyes. A soft, big boned kid from Maine--Romansky told us that his father worked as a sawyer, someone who sawed logs. The kid could smell like no man could.

It wasn’t long before the Gunny discovered Romansky’s talent--soldiers know how news travels in the army, with a bit of exaggeration added on. Romansky was no good at soldiering and the Gunny knew it. The big kid made a lot of noise with his size fourteen boots pointing out like sickles, uprooting vines and trip wires wherever he walked. Even though Romansky claimed to have hunted rabbits and partridges in Maine, he couldn’t hit the ocean with his M-14. Gunny was only too pleased, no doubt, to volunteer the Stinkman for duty with Graves Registration. You see, our detachment was deployed to find our soldiers for their mothers and then find the enemy boys for our intelligence officers.

I was chosen for Graves Registration for different reasons. The Gunny knew I had a weakness for alcohol and looked the other way once in a while. He would wink at me, letting me know that he knew. More importantly, he knew that dead people didn’t bother me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I feel sorry for them. But what’s the sense of going ballistic--we all have to buy it someday. To this day I don’t know why Christians are afraid of dying so much, especially if they believe in heaven. Me, I’m New Jersey Jewish and I know there isn’t a heaven. I was four years old when I found Itchy Davidson dead from a heart attack when he tried to carry groceries up Gimpel’s Hill. His glassy eyes appeared to be bigger than checkers, seeing right through me. I remember the packages that fell out of the bag: Sensible Pipe Tobacco, Friend’s Baked Beans and Good Luck Margarine. A green bottle of Squirt soda had broken on the hot concrete sidewalk, the sugary liquid thick with flies. I shuffled home to tell my mother, who called the ambulance. She squeezed me real hard and then sat me down for a bowl of Amazo chocolate pudding. I didn’t know whether I did something right or not. At any rate, I don’t remember having nightmares about Itchy Davidson, with the saucer eyes that searched for eternity.

Last week there had been an awful battle up in the Ia Drang Valley. My company had stood by in Pleiku, providing support, unloading dead and wounded from the choppers. It was a lot easier removing the dead in body bags than it was taking those wounded air mobile boys out of those Hueys. The decks were awash with blood and plasma from broken I.V.’s. Half of them had soiled themselves. When the pain is so agonizing that soldiers scratched off fingernails on the corrugated deck of a chopper, you can’t blame them for losing control of their functions. The smells on those choppers haunt me to this day.

Sure enough, the Gunny came looking for the Stinkman and me, two days after the battle ended. I was put in charge of a detachment, ordered to find twenty three troopers unaccounted for. Of course, most will not be found, no matter how hard we try. If you get hit with a howitzer shell, there’s not anything left to record; bam, there’s a red mist, then nothing. Also, I hold to the theory that some boys, when they take a hit, just think that they can hide from death by crawling into weird places, including animal holes. Maybe they are trying to crawl back inside their mothers, or maybe they feel that they will heal if they are left alone to lick their wounds. If they are not found alive, they are dead, simple at that--Charlie takes few prisoners, unless they are officers. Today, looking backward from my bunk at the V.A., I know all of the rumors about MIA’s being alive in Indochina are pure horsefeathers. All are dead, and those men that survived the ground fighting in the Nam know it to be true, down deep. Now, the supply and support guys--their opinions don’t count in my book. All that they did was take the good cigarettes, razor blades, and toothpaste, and then send the crap to the line companies--the further out you were, the less you got. Nope, they don’t know nothing but claim they know it all. In fact, since the war ended most of the writing about the Nam war has been done by rear echelon-support types. Maybe if the actual fighting men tried to write about the real Nam, they would break down mentally, in a big way. No way have I seen much writing about Nam that’s worth a tinker’s damn.

In overcast weather we left in a convoy for the Ia Drang from our highland base at Plieku. The hot weather left us soaking wet as soon as we started. We were safe enough to travel in daylight with a minimal force. Darkness was a different story--whether old man Westmoreland admitted it or not, at night the roads belonged to the enemy, and we couldn’t do anything about it. That day the only hostility we encountered were the cold, dark stares from the hamlet farm people when we motored through, scattering rice husks, urine-smelling dust, and squawking fowl.

At high noon we arrived in a secure rear area southwest of the valley, which had served as a conduit for NVA infiltration to the Central Highlands. Our Air Cavs and paratroopers had kept the enemy from splitting the country south of our base at Plieku. We mustered in a mangrove clearing, near an abandoned cassava farm. We could smell the burnt residue from the napalm and heavy artillery that had turned the tide of battle to our side. We were given body bags and identification tags, along with plastic satchels for any intelligence documents we might find. A South Vietnamese scout stood by to accompany us; he studied a map intently, smoking heavily on Lucky Strikes, lighting a fresh one with the stump of the previous one. The scout had been assigned to interpret papers found on the enemy corpses; none of us Yanks could read the language. I looked toward the North, across miles of elephant grass, some of which had been burned or blown away. Helicopter gunships maneuvered toward the far northern horizon, probing like anteaters for the fleeing North Vietnamese.

I was senior non com, being a Spec 5, so I ordered the squad of Air Cav grunts into the back of the truck, and moved us out. I rode in the cab with the ARVN scout and the driver. The scout never said a word, acting like he didn’t want to be with us at all. Our Air Cav boys stared out of the truck, M-14’s pointing outward, as they had been taught. The rear of the rig was encased in grenade wire. We had heard stories of old women and young kids reaching in and placing live grenades in the crotches of soldiers drinking cokes at the sidewalk cafes at Ben Hoa. Those troops in the Nam that survived did so by keeping alert. In the heat of the days and the inky black of the night, staying poised was exhausting--it accounted in part, for the haggard, ancient look of our young boys.

We drove slowly for a half hour, through a path flanked by high grass and stunted trees. Occasionally we moved aside for vehicles occupied by civilians, probably reporters. Then the scout put up a nicotine stained hand, signaling us to stop. We got unloaded amidst the clanking sounds of canteens and helmets and the bellyaching that soldiers are known for. The scout checked his map, and then pointed to the north. We followed him. He scowled at me when I told him to put out his smoke, obeying reluctantly. I told the corporal to have the men fan out and keep all eyes wide open, even though the area had been declared secure; I didn’t trust nobody--that was one reason that I was still alive during my third tour in the dung hole of Vietnam. The Air Cav boys looked eager to move because the insects had lighted on us. Only the Stinkman was oblivious to flies. They gathered on his face and neck, falling off when they sucked their fill.

We followed the scout east toward the edge of a trampled area when the Stinkman stopped and sniffed noisily. We halted to smell in all directions--there was no odor except for the musky smell of decayed vegetation, and the acrid scent of military fly dope that green troops lathered themselves with. “Jesus Christ, Romansky,” I asked. “What the hell is it?” He pointed toward a clump of hardwoods standing like an oasis in the parched grass. “Gook,” he said, confidently, walking toward the trees. We followed, trampling the sharp bladed grass, on the watch for kraits, slick green vipers that didn’t like to be stepped on. Birds chirped in the distance and a monkey chattered from the grove, amazing me that any bird or animal could survive such a hellish battle. We were soaked with sweat. The Air Cav guys wore flak jackets only, above the waist. The black soldier carrying the M-60 wore only crossed bandoleers. I guess he figured that if a round hit the ammo, a flak jacket wouldn’t matter much.

We noticed the fetid, nitrogen smell as we grew closer. The scout and I wrapped bandannas around out faces, soaked in Mennen Skin Bracer--it was the only stuff that seemed to work. The Stinkman never covered his nose. The Air Cav soldiers didn’t cover themselves either--they thought that they were tough enough to endure. We followed the hungry cawing of magpies to the tree grove. In this sargasso sea of grass, cover for fighting men had been at a premium. Against a shrapnel hacked tree we found the North Vietnamese soldier, muddied tan fatigues soaked with blood from a chest wound, sitting amidst AK-47 bullets. From the jagged hole in his chest, frenzied maggots fed. The scout and I turned him carefully, checking for papers. We found an ID card and a pouch of marijuana. We found nothing else, no photographs, no food, and no boobytraps. Before we left the corpse to the scavengers, two of the Air Cav boys had turned aside, puking their guts out.

Romanski found three more NVA regulars before he solemnly said, “G.I.” and led us to a scorched hillock, jeweled with shell casings. We found the remains of a young airborne soldier who had been blown away, probably by a mortar round. His legs were missing. None of the green Air Cav boys had the stomach to look for them. We combed off the maggots, shooed the flies, and then placed his wallet and Zippo in a small plastic bag. We tagged him and slid his remains into a body bag. I dispatched two soldiers to carry the dead American to the rear area where the morticians were working. We had them carry five captured AK-47’s on the stretcher to be turned in to the military police. After the Stinkman identified three more enemy soldiers by the smell, the Cavs stood in awe of the Stinkman; they believed him to have magical powers. Who could deny it? 

For three hours we canvassed the area, with the point man carrying a long stick, parting the grass, alert for scorpions, snakes, and unexploded ordnance. To the northwest, artillery pounded the blue highland ridges, chasing the remnants of four NVA regiments to Cambodia. We found live ammunition, blood spores, a burned out barrel of an M-60, but nothing worth turning into headquarters. Just as we were about to head back to the truck, the Stinkman stopped the column by raising his right arm. By this time, he had lost all resemblance to a soldier. His helmet was off, probably lost, and his salt stained shirt was untucked. His boot laces dragged under his big feet. The Stinkman wasn’t much for hygiene; he sprayed you when he talked--his breath smelled like an old tuna fish can. But, like I’ve described, he had a nose like no other.

“Both,” he exclaimed, pointing to a thicket of bamboo near a murky swamp, probably filled with leeches, the type that thrived in the shell craters. At this point in the afternoon, I wasn’t about to deal with leeches. The scout and I soaked our bandannas in after shave and followed the Stinkman, looking out for trip wires and whatever might lurk in the spongy undergrowth. The Air Cavs lagged behind, not quite as brazen as before.

“Both my ass, Romansky,” I said. “Make up your mind.” I was hot, tired, and thirsty for strong drink. The swarming mosquitoes didn’t help sweeten my mood; I held on by anticipating my first stout tumbler of Southern Comfort, when the work day had ended.

We got to the grove without incident, except for one of the soldiers killing an innocent turtle with his rifle butt. Among the bamboo shoots I saw a sight that made me want to go home to Hackensack and quit the army for good. There in a shell hole was one of our air mobile boys, gut shot and bled near white, holding hands with a NVA noncom, who was breathing deep, gurgling gasps. Anyone could tell that he had not long to live, what blood he had left foamed from a hole in his chest. By appearances, the two no longer gave a damn for this rotten war, and neither felt like dying alone. I pried their hands apart, being careful not to break fingers. Then I gave the enemy soldier enough morphine to send him to Palookaville; he took a rasping breath and died shortly after I searched him. I closed his eyelids, using two fingers. Then we zipped our soldier into a body bag. We had been ordered to leave the enemy soldiers unburied to prove what vicious fighters we were. This one I rolled in the shell hole and covered him with the dead paratroopers’ poncho. Then I scooped some handfuls of dirt on him so he was covered. I looked around and felt the sympathy of the men around me, save maybe the ARVN scout. He looked off in the distance, picking at his teeth with a fingernail. Lyndon Baines Johnson and Maxwell Taylor could kiss my ass in front of the Washington Monument, any day of the week. They had no business sending us to this meat grinder of a war.

Sad for me, I stepped on a mine looking for corpses in the Parrot’s Beak, northwest of Saigon. In all honesty, I was hung over hard, and not as careful as I should have been. Now I live at the V.A. with not much left that works below my waist. I heard from a reliable source that the Stinkman got gut shot by a sniper near Nha Trang while searching for bodies. Like me, at least he got sent home alive. I keep resolving each year to go to Maine and look him up. Next summer, as God is my witness, I’m going to do it. We only go around once, as all true combat veterans know.

 

First published in The Larcom Review: A Journal of the Arts and Literature of New England

Barry Judson Lohnes Born in Lewiston, Maine, USA, the third of six children of French Canadian/German and Native American parents, I have worked as an educator for most of my adult life. A Marine Corps infantry veteran of the 1960’s, I reside in Topsham, Maine, where I escape to the outdoors whenever possible.

Previously, I have published work in the Mariner’s Mirror (London), the Maine Historical Society’s Quarterly, The Larcom Review, the Northwoods Anthology, and the New England Writers’ Network magazine.  I have authored numerous book reviews. Indeed, writing has proved to be therapeutic for me, and it has provided me with a longer life.