This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Chapter 102 (Wednesday, July 26 – Friday, July 28, 1967)

Before we'd left, I'd changed into civilian clothes. They were more comfortable, since they fit. Besides, I could wear Jules’ motorcycle jacket and not get hassled for being out of uniform. Not that the Warrant Officer pilots would have hassled me. But the lieutenant interrogator was still feeling hoodwinked, by the time we got airborne.

We were clipping right along, although the weather was wet, it wasn't bad enough to ground us. I was following our progress on Jules' map, which he'd loaned me, when an emergency rescue came through. We were the closest to Ea Drang, virtually right on top of it, and had the capacity to collect two wounded Army members, who had been involved in a road accident.

“We’ll let you off, here,” The WO2 AC told me over the intercom. “and be back to pick you up and have you in Dalat before lunch, after we take the guys to the clearing station.”

That sounded like a good arrangement, and I was glad that this wild-goose-chase, that had unnecessarily interrupted my leave, was about over. From the start, it had upset me. Captain Asshole's barging into Jules's house, acting as if everyone were beneath him, as if everyone owed him respect. All this military posturing was starting to get to me.

Even though I knew that I would miss Dave, I was anxious to get back to Gerry, Jules and Linh, particularly Gerry. Even though I'd only been gone a couple of days, my emotions had locked onto him enough to make our being apart for only a few hours an almost unbearable issue. And right now, I needed his closeness. I craved his smell of warm milk.

Luckily, this wasn’t a hot LZ, so the Aircraft Commander set us down in a wide clearing, near the road. We could clearly see the wreck, while we were landing. It didn't appear to be bad, but, of course, we weren’t close enough to see any of the details.

Over the radio, we'd been told to set down at the green smoke, which we were already doing, to meet up with the men being evacuated. We were possibly less than a hundred meters from the roadside. Since they were coming back to get me, I left my bag with dirty uniforms in the chopper. I sat down next to Dave in the open door frame, patted him on the lower back, even though I would liked to have kissed him. That being frowned upon, and thus, not an option, I just dropped to the ground and quickly moved out of the way of the men being carried on shelter halves.

I walked to the shoulder of the road, near a thick tree, and heard the whine of the turbine, lifting, what I now considered to be ‘my chopper', off the ground. I turned to wave; Dave waved back.

They’d been airborne for about three seconds, climbing fast, when the bright flash and heat wave of the fuel cells' exploding overcame me, as I turned away from the flash. My last glimpse had been of Dave, dangling from his harness cord, burning. Only seconds ago, I could not even have imagined the intensity of the emotional pain, that now shot through me, because I wasn't able to help him. I threw myself into the half-full drainage ditch at the side of the road and heard and felt the debris of destruction, as it passed directly over me.

The first thought, I had, was to get the Fuck out, before shit happened. As if this hadn’t been shit enough. There were no wounded to be treated. The eight guys, who’d carried the two injured on shelter halves, had died along with the rest, when the burning chopper fell on them.

The second thought was to get rid of my dog tags. If Charlie were here, they’d take me prisoner as a Frenchman. My military ID had gone up in flames in the left shirt pocket of my uniform. My passport, along with Gerry's, was in my, thankfully waterproof, leather wallet under my shirt.

My last real thought was of Dave’s thrashing about on that steel cord, burning; then, my mind tortured me more by showing me imaginary close-ups of his being crushed. My conscious mind shut down that thought. The only thing, I could concentrate on, was the title of a totally unrelated, 50s, Susan Hayward movie, I'll Cry Tomorrow, which I kept repeating to myself over and over again, as I slung my dog tags as far into the crash site, as I possibly could.

***

As whoever was frantically calling the radio in the jeep but getting no answer, I vaguely remembered the twins taking me by the hand, one on each side, down the road in the rain and into a dry, wooden, thatched longhouse, supported on log stilts, where a kindly older lady had taken my wet clothes, wrapped me in blankets and had given me a soothing, warm drink. When I awoke, the sun was shining through the glassless windows, protected from the weather under dripping thatched eaves; I had no idea what day it was, and I felt a mild sense of foreboding. Other than that, I felt great. My Timex, however, was trying to make me believe that it was the 29^th of July.

Provided that no one had fiddled with my watch, I’d been out for three days. I had a vague memory of the twins' having played with it, but, then again, who knew? I had no way, right at the moment, of distinguishing between what had been hallucination and what had been reality. I checked to see if my and Gerry's passports were still in the wallet, which had been stacked on my money wallet, neatly, next to my head. To my surprise, everything, passports, travelers' checks, resident permits, money, were all there. Nothing had been touched or, at least, taken.

Slowly, my senses were returning. First, I heard chickens, pigs, and what must have been elephants. Then my sense of smell switched back on with all the smells of a small farm, like the ones I'd known in France.

As soon as I sat up, keeping the blankets drawn closely around me, two angelic, beaming, almond-bronze faces appeared in the doorway, followed by a light complected Catholic priest. They approached, rather the priest approached, the twins were already all over me, hugging and cuddling.

“Are you American?” The priest's English was cautious with a discernible French accent.

“Non, j'suis français.” And I knew that this would be a relief to the priest, but, to my own astonishment, the twins started babbling, both at once, in almost unaccented French, asking me where I was from, what my name was, how old I was. But one question, in the jumble of it all, hit me like a ton of bricks: “The Blessed Virgin must have sent you to be our new father.”

***

Of course the priest was suspicious, when I told him that I’d arrived with the crashed American helicopter, because I freelanced with the Americans as a Chinese, French, English interpreter, and because of an emergency transport had come up, I’d had to get off, so the wounded could be taken for treatment. Hoping to underscore my story, I produced my passport and residence/work permit.

He looked at my passport first, and smiled his approval. “A doctorate, from which university?” When I told him the Sorbonne, he seemed impressed. Then when he inspected the work permit and noted that I was employed by a tobacconist, he wondered if there was still that much import and export, due to the war.

“American officers love Cuban cigars.” I explained, and he nodded as I spoke. But I had to go into detail about American avid anti-Communism and their attitudes toward Cuba. “And I negotiate with the distributers in Hong Kong.” Even as I spoke, I felt the bad karma of this necessary but nonetheless insufferable lying, taking its toll.

I realized that I would never get the chance to set things straight with Dave and tell him the truth, And out of the blue, a wave of grief was all over me, similar to the explosion of the fuel cells. Without warning, I broke down, crying. The twins hugged me until it stopped. Then, the dominant one, insightful beyond his eight years, smiled, hugged me tighter and said quietly: “C'est la guerre, tu sais.” He was telling me that war was the cause of my grief. That was an insight that no eight-year-old boy should ever have.

***

On the way to Ban Ma Thuot, the priest told me about the family, who was looking after me. The twins father had been a member of the Foreign Legion from Lebanon, who'd stayed some years after having been demobilized in ‘54. Since the E De people, sometimes known as the Rade, only marry outside of their group, having someone from Lebanon was somewhat spectacular.

Other than that, their family traditions had been the worst possible for a good marriage. He was a Muslim, and the E De society is a matriarchy. The husband had virtually no say in anything. All real property, livestock, and other inheritable things were owned by the eldest woman and passed down to her daughters, not to her sons, and certainly not to her son-in-law. The gentleman had succumbed to philandering, and as far as anyone up here knew, he’d returned to Saigon, where he’d earned a meager existence in pimping. That is, until he'd overdosed on heroin.

The priest took a deep breath and paused in length, while negotiating the narrow, downhill road from Ea Drang to Ban Me Thuot, the provincial capital, where I could phone Dalat, the priest assured me.

And before the priest could continue, the dominant twin, named Bu, asked him to tell me about their mother. The atmosphere inside the little Renault Dauphine, turned the sticky quality of pitch under a black atmosphere of emotional sulfur. Pére Martin was fighting the demons of hatred against the American occupation. “She was walking home from the rice field, when the door gunner of an American helicopter, stationed at the base at Ban Me Thuot, used her for target practice, or so the explanation went.” The priest was fighting back tears. “At his court-martial, when the prosecution asked for an explanation, he told the court that he didn’t see anything wrong with what he’d done. 'She was only a Gook.'."

***

“So, your name is Bu and yours is Hao?” I couldn’t believe that someone had pulled such a prank on two, spectacularly well-behaved, loveable boys. We had just been to a very nice chocolaterie next to the PTT, and I’d told the twins and Père Martin that they could choose anything, they wished. It was my treat. The priest chose, as did I, several assorted pieces of delicious Belgian chocolate. Each of the twins bought a small cellophane bag of candied ginger, since it helped their grandmother’s digestion. It hadn’t occurred to either of them to get something for themselves. “So, do you know what Bu and Hao mean in Chinese?” I offered them to take something from my bag.

Both nodded vigorously and giggled, nibbling at the corner of the piece of confectionary. “Hao means good.” Bu pointed to his brother.

“And Bu means not.” Hao popped his piece of chocolate into his brother’s mouth and kissed him on the cheek to soften the insult. And Bu returned the gesture with his chocolate and hugged him back. It was clear that they were used to watching out for one another.

“Sister Marie-George,” Père Martin made the sign of the cross. “their teacher, who passed away in February, was from China, and called them that, since Bu kept answering for Hao in class." He chuckled and ruffled Bu's curly hair. "To make a long story short, when she asked Hao something and Bu tried to answer, she would raise an index finger and say, 'Bu!' and put her finger to her lips to shush him. Then when Hao gave her the right answer, she would say, 'Hao’. And the names stuck.”

‘No matter how cruel that may have been.' I thought to myself, as I climbed the three concrete steps to the Post, Telephone and Telegraph.

***

Jules answered on the third ring. “Hello, it’s Ben. I’m glad you’re still there.”

“Why shouldn’t we be? You knew that we’ll be here till Sunday morning, and it's only Friday.” He cleared his throat. I glanced at the twins from inside the booth, wondering how I was going to explain them. “Where are you?”

“In Ban Me Thuot. And I’m officially dead. But I’m guessing that the Army hasn't notified Gerry, yet.”

“Not that I know of, but I'll put him on.”

“Hello?” Gerry's voice, even through the bad connection, almost made me faint. But it did make me break down.

“Ich liebe dich, mein Schatz.“ I managed through the tears, and I sobbed wildly until I heard the door to the booth creak open and felt the twins hugging me around the waist and their heads on my back. I took several deep breaths. “When the Army gets hold of you, you haven't heard from me, okay?”

“What happened?” Gerry’s voice was now on the verge of panic.

“It’s a long, sordid story. Captain Shit-Hook and his cousin were trafficking drugs from Laos. I shot his cousin in the head at point-blank range. Captain Self-Important is probably in LBJ, pre-trial confinement by now, and the chopper, that gave me a lift, crashed in Ea Drang, killing everybody and eight on the ground. But I’m okay.”

Obviously, Army-absurdity overload, had Gerry in its grip. He started laughing, sure that I was making this shit up. “When will you be here?”

“Probably sometime during the weekend.” I tried to calculate our maximum off-road speed. “Possibly Monday.”

“And how are you getting here?” Gerry was still chuckling.

“On an elephant.” I said dryly.

Gerry started his contagious laugh, and we built off each other, as we went. I had to steady myself on the wooden wall of the phone booth. The laughter proved to be more contagious than usual. The twins were laughing. Even Père Martin and the operator, behind the counter, started in.

Gerry must have heard the twins. “Who’s there with you?”

“Our two sons.” I was still laughing.

“What the Fuck have you been smoking? Black Afghan?” Gerry was going limp from laughing; I could tell from his breathing. Just like he’d done on Fire Island, when he’d made a crack about our being comfortable when we would have to go live in Albania. "But whatever it is, bring some back with you."

Speaking of which, I had to get a couple of packs of Park Lane and Cotab, just to get me back to Dalat. War was so much more bearable, when high.