A Long Way Back Read online

  Turner, whose father used to call him Sammy Davis Jr. because of his looks and stature, had listened carefully to Captain Ramsey. Was it the way he talked—a slow, somber speech unlike the kind he’d heard other troops receive before they went to the bush? Or was it the way the captain never looked any of them in the eye? Maybe it was merely the voice in Turner’s head saying unh-uh.

  The last time Turner heard that voice, Farley Williams wanted to take him to a party in Akron. Farley had been invited by a girl he’d met at Dearing’s restaurant. Turner didn’t feel good about the situation and begged off, warning his friends to decline, too.

  “Why, Turner?” Farley had asked.

  Turner shrugged.

  Farley had laughed, slapping Turner playfully on his back. “Catch you on the rebound, then.”

  The next day Turner was told Farley had been shot and wounded. Ralph and Frank were severely beaten. The girl who’d invited Farley wanted to make an ex-boyfriend jealous. It worked. The ex and his boys took it out on the three from Cleveland, who barely made it home.

  The ex, however, had made a serious mistake. Farley Williams was a member of the Williams family, a feared and respected family in the Cleveland Glenville area. It only took Cread Williams, a cousin, to send three of the assailants to the hospital. The ex, to Turner’s knowledge, was still being treated a year later.

  But there was no choice this time. Turner couldn’t say no. They were already in trouble because of the so-called riot. Disobeying an order now would put him back in the stockade.

  He sighed as they entered the jungle. Turner knew many of the guys because they were Clevelanders, but they were mostly clerks, cooks, and drivers—support personnel. That scared him. None of them, as far as he could determine, except Sergeant Stinson and maybe Casper and Fletcher, had placed one foot in the bush their entire time in country. What he’d heard of the rest gave him no comfort, no comfort at all.

  Sergeant Willie Stinson had hung his head when the captain had called his name to lead the squad. He had hoped there was at least one person in the group who outranked him. Sixty-two days and he would be a civilian. He should be sitting in the NCO club, sipping a Bud with the other short-timers, but instead, he was out here with these doofus-assed, sons-a-bitches.

  He wouldn’t even have been involved in the fight if the odds had been better, but the black soldiers were outnumbered three to one. At first he tried to break up the fighting, but then one of the white soldiers swung on him. Stinson had worked on his temper since he was a teen, but the tipping point was never far away.

  The punch transformed him from a peacekeeper to a combatant, sucking him into a maelstrom of bodies, fists, and clubs, provoking him to throw blows so hard and so often, some of the other fighters stopped to watch in awe.

  The clash lasted about ten minutes before the MPs arrived, shooting into the air, rushing in to break up the small skirmishes, and arresting those they thought had resisted. Stinson was one of those arrested.

  Of all the evil he’d done in his life, he was being punished for trying to do something right?

  Stinson gathered the soldiers in an area surrounded by chest-high brush and fifty foot trees with exposed roots as tall as the men. “Listen up,” he shouted as the throbbing whir of their helicopter faded into the distance. “This is simple,” he said, as he looked at the map under the plastic overlay. “We head north, following this ridge line until we cross this stream…”

  “Man, somethin’ ain’t right,” Specialist 4 Fletcher interrupted. “All we got are these M-16s and grenades. Where’s our heavy weapons? We should at least have a sixty. And what about a medic?”

  At six-feet-two inches even, Fletcher was taller than Stinson, but not as bulked. The scar across his forehead, half covered by a tightly wound black rag, gave him the appearance of a Barbary pirate, which was appropriate given his background.

  Born in the Carver Housing Projects of Cleveland and raised by his aunt with four of her own children, Fletcher grew up angry—angry at being abandoned, angry at being poor, and angry at being hungry. The anger, partly assuaged by his membership in the Skulls, a small but vicious Cleveland gang, was only submerged completely in combat where he was given the name Rabid.

  Fletcher had gained his reputation four months ago, after his company had entered a village suspected of sympathizing with the VC. He and four other GIs entered the village first, shooting indiscriminately, killing an elderly couple before their Sergeant Manor yelled cease fire.

  “You are lucky if I don’t court-martial your asses. Who told you to fire?”

  “Shit, Sergeant Manor,” Fletcher had replied. “They all gooks. What’s the problem?”

  In a movie, Stinson would have been Fletcher’s counterpart with a constant scowl and dark, piercing eyes surrounded by an ebony-toned broad face. Where Fletcher could have been a guard for a basketball team, Stinson would have been a fullback for a football team.

  “This is a recon mission, Fletcher,” Stinson responded. “Didn’t you hear the captain? We are not to engage.”

  Sergeant Stinson raised his hands as he looked at Fletcher. “We ain’t got much choice about this thing, do we?” he said, looking around. “Our best bet is to follow orders and complete this mission as quickly as possible.”

  Stinson had doubts too. The instructions were sketchy, his men were untrained, the terrain was unknown, and the enemy? With all those variables, making it there and back could be a problem.

  Chapter 26

  S

  elf-doubt didn’t visit Willie Stinson often, even though he was an orphan who had moved around more times than a desert nomad. It never bothered him because he thought it was the plight of all strays.

  Willie’s forte in life was his physical ability. He was fast, strong for his age, and good at whatever sport he played. At the age of ten, Willie threw a football sixty yards. He could almost dunk at fifteen although not quite six feet tall, and Willie was faster than anyone at any school he attended, including guys on the track team.

  Willie grasped early on that being good at the physical wasn’t enough, however. He’d competed against bigger guys all his life. He wasn’t always the strongest, but his will was.

  After three fights established his reputation at Patrick Henry Jr. High School, Willie only needed to fight sparingly until he moved to another family, and then it would start again. And every time he moved, his reputation grew.

  In fights or competition, Willie became like a race car shifting to whatever gear he needed to drive to victory. He never thought much about it, but occasionally there would be a fleeting notion, a wave of consciousness that for brief moments allowed him some self-analysis. Willie knew he was different because people treated him differently. He knew he was good because he always won. But the drive, that need, the burning desire to win? He figured everybody had it, except his was more intense.

  But he never took it for granted.

  To be the best at anything, Willie understood he had to be a student first. So during most of his waking hours, he sought ways to be better. That meant practicing, getting stronger, and watching the older boys who excelled.

  He studied Melvin Johnson, who weighed 150 pounds at most, but could shoot a basketball from half-court with little or no effort by bringing it as far behind his head as possible before releasing it like a slingshot.

  He even snuck into a ballet studio on Euclid Avenue to try to understand the importance of balance because he’d overheard one of the basketball coaches telling his team about the agility of ballerinas. And most importantly, he learned to recognize an opponent’s weakness and how to exploit it.

  “You too intense, man. You need to lighten up. It’s just a game,” Leroy, one of his teammates, told Willie once when they were playing basketball at Pattison Park.

  Willie scowled at Leroy. “If you ain’t playing to win, then why are you playing at all?”

  But as he grew older, Willie attributed at least part of his drive to h
is past. Abandoned at five by a father he’d seen but never knew and a mother who died the same year, Willie’s life was in the control of strangers. By the age of eight, Willie had been with two different families. In each case, he guessed he’d done something wrong. If the family didn’t want him, why should anybody else? All he had was himself. Nobody wanted a castaway.

  It wasn’t as if he acted up, at least no more than he heard other kids did. He never talked back and did whatever chores his foster parents asked, but for different reasons it was necessary to move on. Nobody ever told him why.

  At first he thought this was the natural order of things, each house a way station until he grew old enough to take care of himself. Because he made few friends and never connected with his foster parents, moving around didn’t seem strange to him until he moved to Thornewood Avenue in the Glenville area with the Stinsons at the age of fourteen. The house was the best he’d lived in, and the street was the quietest he’d lived on. He even made a friend—kind of.

  That’s when he met Raymond Williams, and that’s when his world changed because Raymond was Willie’s equal in those things Willie valued most. Raymond was as fast, could throw as far, could play baseball and basketball as well, and Raymond could fight.

  Willie discovered the latter when they fought over a foul in a basketball game. When Willie cried, frustrated he wasn’t winning, it was the most embarrassing moment of his life. That was the first time self-doubt crept into his mind.

  Chapter 27

  F

  or Sergeant Willie Stinson, uncertainty raised its ugly head again in the jungle. But it took Fletcher to ratchet it up even more as the men gathered around Stinson.

  “How in the hell are we supposed to follow this piece of paper? Where are the coordinates, the landmarks, names of nearby villages, rivers, roads? What do we accomplish with this?” Fletcher asked, poking at the plastic-encased map. Four mountains, two ridges, a valley, two streams, a lot of trees and a north arrow. Are you kidding me? It looks like some five-year-old drew this up.”

  Even though he and Fletcher had similar backgrounds, Fletcher was no Raymond. There were no doubts about Fletcher, just the mission, so Stinson felt no need to compete. He had seen guys like Fletcher before. They self-destructed if they didn’t see the light, and he doubted Fletcher ever would.

  “To get from here to here,” Stinson asserted, stabbing at two places on the map.

  Although Stinson understood Fletcher’s concerns, Stinson cared less about the mission than the fact he’d been put in charge. He hadn’t joined the army to lead. And he was more surprised than anyone when he’d received a battlefield promotion on LZ Abbey for “bravery.” But in reality, he fought so fiercely at the landing zone because he had no option. Charlie had penetrated their line. Stinson had run from one breach to another, firing and killing enough of them for his company to regroup.

  “Chaos births heroes,” Captain Alexander had proclaimed when HQ notified Stinson of his promotion.

  They also told Stinson he might be recommended for the Silver Star, but after the clash between the black and white soldiers, he’d be lucky to keep his stripes.

  Before the fight, he had been a rebel like Fletcher. The army still meant nothing to him, though. So his mission was simple. Get his ass back to base, in one piece, as quickly as possible.

  Stinson scratched his chest as he looked at the map again. It was skimpy on info, but his greatest problem would be the men. If they did encounter the enemy, he and these men would be toast. To protect himself, Stinson would have to perform field training on the move to ready them for combat.

  “Lack of preparedness breeds surprise, and surprise breeds panic.” Stinson marveled at how much he remembered from Sergeant Appling, who had adopted him after LZ Abbey.

  As he glanced around, Stinson recalled signing up one and a half years ago. At the age of twenty-four, he was already older than the eighteen-and nineteen-year-olds who joined with him.

  These kids were no different from most. They had probably never even heard a weapon go off before joining. While most of them were living at home being fed by their mommas, making few decisions and having even fewer responsibilities, he had already been shot at.

  Two besides Stinson had been in battle, and one was already questioning their task. He needed everybody to be on the same page if they were going to return walking instead of being tagged and transported back in a black body bag.

  After stripping most of them of unneeded items, like a majority of the pots and pans whose clanking could be heard ten miles away, checking their ammo supply, adjusting their rucksacks, and having them tape their dog tags together, Stinson called his two veterans, both Specialist 4s, aside. “Fletcher, Casper. “Look. I will need your help on this if we are going to complete this assignment like soldiers. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah, Sarge,” Casper said immediately.

  Fletcher shrugged.

  Chapter 28

  T

  o Stinson, the jungle was like some large, multicolored creature. In spite of the exquisite green, red, yellow, and purple plants and flowers, the stately trees with their exposed and winding roots, and the cheerful sounds of birds and small animals, there was a menacing darkness that seemed to lurk behind its mask of innocence and tranquility.

  It was the stench of decay that had impacted Stinson on his first patrol. Living things had died there. And the winding vines that draped from tree to tree appeared like the tentacles of some alien life form. But it was the inhabitants not seen and the sounds not heard that were the most chilling: the slithering reptiles, the deadly diseases, and the two- and four-legged predators that lay in wait for their next victim, adding to the stink only the perished could create.

  The rain started as soon as the men began negotiating the vines and brush. It began as a few light drops; then the sky unloaded. Sheets of water fell, drenching everyone in seconds. The temperature was so hot, a steam-like mist rose from the muddying dirt. Stinson could only grimace as he slapped at hordes of mosquitoes and killed leeches and red ants falling like raindrops. The heat, the rain—nothing was right about this.

  “W–we need to rest,” Holland said as the rain subsided.

  “We’ve just been humping for two hours,” Stinson responded. “This ain’t no picnic, Holland; we rest when we get to—”

  The splat of bullet meeting flesh was followed a millisecond later by the crack of a rifle. One of the men’s eyes widened before he stumbled and then fell.

  “Take cover!” Stinson yelled as Warfield dragged the soldier’s body behind a tree.

  Instead of dropping and facing the attack, two of the men ran. “Get back here!” Stinson yelled as Casper took off, too. “Damn,” Stinson swore as he positioned the remaining men while trying to determine the direction of the shot. “Where’d he get hit?” Stinson whispered, peering from behind the thick trunk of a palm tree.

  “The chest,” Warfield answered.

  “You know how to seal the wound?”

  “I’ll do it,” Fletcher offered.

  “Do it, then,” Stinson said as he motioned the men farther into the jungle to wait and watch.

  Stinson bit his bottom lip and took a deep breath. Two months earlier, ten of his company had died in an attack that began like this in Trang Bang. The first bullet had missed his head by inches, killing the medic behind him before all hell broke loose.

  He leaned against a tree for a second, gathering himself, hoping desperately this would not be a full-scale battle because they were nowhere near ready for it. And neither was he.

  Chapter 29

  I

  t was Ly Trung Trac who first spotted the Americans. She was grateful Colonel Han had chosen her and her men to help protect a twenty-kilometer stretch covering the supply trails from the north. She was also thankful for the opportunity to be in charge of a combat unit. Trung had known war since she was twelve, when the Viet Minh defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

 
; At five feet, four inches, she was slightly taller than the average Vietnamese girl, with hair that flowed to her waist, and the thin, willowy body desired by Vietnamese men. At fourteen, she was courted by men in three villages, but her father rejected them because they weren’t worthy in his eyes. But Trung, in turn, rejected her father’s wishes, and chose to become a Phu Nu Cong Hoa, a woman warrior, and fight the Americans instead of assuming the role of a subservient housewife, who, like her mother and aunties, worked the rice paddies, cooked, cleaned, and gave their husbands many babies.

  She had started as a courier and a guide for the guerillas but rose quickly through the ranks after she grabbed a fallen weapon and shot two ARVN soldiers when her cadre was ambushed. Now she had risen to a command position, a rare honor. Trung vowed not to dishonor the opportunity or her name, which had also been given to a famous and historic female Vietnamese fighter.

  At least thirty-eight of Trung’s comrades had been killed within the past three months, primarily from ambushes and claymore mines set along the trails by American soldiers. Trung vowed to make sure not one other comrade would die under her watch. But before they had settled in, she was commanded to move north to attack a group of American soldiers who had just landed when Trung stumbled upon the men three hundred yards away.

  Her forty-three men included ten veterans. The rest were fourteen- to eighteen-year-old boys with minimal training. Some were motivated by idealism, driven to join by the exhortations of their leaders, and others by the urgings of their families. With her training and guidance, though, all would be hardened soldiers within six months.