World: A Half Step Toward Home

(2 of 3)

Parts of the base were taken over by ARVN troops, who brought their wives and several dozen crowing chickens. U.S. commanding officers, faced with Army paper work even in withdrawal, stayed up late attending to forms recommending promotion, awards and discipline. The division handed out more than 17,000 awards—better than one per man—during its withdrawal phase. The commander of the only remaining regiment in the field, Colonel Paul Braim, held a farewell party for his staff officers. The junior officers spent the evening spraying each other with beer and trying to recall the words to old war songs. The majors and lieutenant colonels chatted quietly about their new assignments as advisers to South Vietnamese units. On the last day in the field, Colonel Braim issued a final order to his battalion commanders: "You've got 18 hours left. Go out there and kill some Charley."

One battalion commander, without actually contradicting these orders, quietly passed the word that he wanted "everything to go at half step." In nearly 57 months of combat, the division had already lost 2,700 men dead, 17,600 wounded, and he did not want to add to that total. His men spent most of their last day cleaning armored personnel carriers and exploding huge piles of rusty ammunition and moldy grenades. "Sure, Charley's in the area," said a platoon leader. "But why should he snipe at us as we leave? If he waits another week, he has the Fifth ARVN all to himself."

That night, between turns at patrol duty, the men brewed cocoa from their C-ration packs, listened to rock and soul music on a Japanese cassette recorder, and played poker with a deck of pornographic cards. There was a certain amount of bitterness about not going home with the division. The angriest man was Sergeant Albert Barnett, 24, who had been assigned to the First Infantry from a unit withdrawn last year and was about to be transferred to his third division in less than twelve months. There was also apprehension about joining a strange outfit. Explained Sergeant Jack Hatcher, also reassigned: "When you're pinned down in a firefight, you've just got to know instinctively how the guy next to you reacts. Everyone here has been through that kind of hell once, and no one likes the idea of having to do it again."

Flashing V-Signs. The next morning, the ride back to base camp lasted five hours. As tanks, trucks and personnel carriers stretched out in a mile-long convoy, it seemed for a while as if the Yanks really were going home. G.I.s jubilantly squirted shaving-cream peace symbols around the white stars on their vehicles. South Vietnamese kids flashing V-signs lined the streets of villages along the way while helicopters flew overhead. Two miles from base camp, the convoy halted. Officers ordered the men to wipe off the peace symbols. Gunners turned their 50-cal. machine guns to the rear. Troopers removed the ammunition clips from their M-16 rifles. Private Crispan Guerra, one of the few men whose nearly complete tour of duty entitled him to accompany the division home, muttered tiredly: "This goddam war is over."