Anson's Last Assignment

It should have been one of Anson's last operations. He was doing a book, for which he had received and spent an advance from an American publisher, and he figured he needed only three more stories to finish it. He wanted something on the Koreans, his section on the Special Forces wasn't complete, and he wanted to ride those new air-cushion boats, the PACVs, that they're using down in the Delta. Then he was going back to England; he'd even bought his plane ticket. He was hoping for some sort of part-time arrangement with Time-Life, but said he was going home whether it came through or not.

He asked me if I wanted to go along for the Koreans, and I said sure. Since he was shooting strictly for his book, we wouldn't be in competition, and I always liked traveling with him. He had planned to go out with the Capitol division, but I had already done that, and suggested we do the Marines. It didn't make any difference to him, so we booked ourselves. That was Tuesday morning.

We left Saigon on Wednesday, took flight 653 up to Danang, spent the evening in the Press Center bar drinking vodka collinses, and flew down to Chu Lai the next morning on a U. S. Marine C-47. Captain Kim, the Korean Marine public-information officer, met us there and drove us by jeep to brigade headquarters.

Headquarters was situated on a hill overlooking a small landing zone and was very sharp and permanent-looking. A neat row of saplings had been planted on each side of the main approach road, boardwalks connected the main buildings and sandbag and gravel paths bordered by 105mm shell casings went to the others. All the buildings were solidly constructed, with carefully fitted joints and camouflage paint jobs and screens that weren't torn or saggy. The brigadier's house had a hot-water heater, an air conditioner and a precisely clipped little lawn of Kentucky bluegrass out in front. There were many sentries, in faded starched fatigues, carrying M-2s, and they snapped salutes and shouted something at us in Korean every time we came within 50 feet. But beyond all the doors were deep sandbagged bunkers, reminders that this was still a war zone, even if a well-policed one. Kim told us the V. C. had mortared them twice. The Koreans had been shifted up from II Corps only a month before and had had three big fights the first week.

We dropped our gear in a barracks for transient VIPs and field-grade officers. The building was made of plywood and corrugated-tin roofing over a framework of three-by-fives, with lots of screen for ventilation. The cots had clean sheets on them, there were thong shower slippers beside every bed and each of us had an enlisted orderly. Besides Anson and myself, there were two Korean lieutenant colonels staying there. Carefully laundered extra uniforms--tiger camouflage suits and jungle fatigues--hung from the mosquito-netting wire above their cots.

The captain left us alone to wash up before lunch. Anson lay down on his cot and stretched, his arms behind his head.

"Rather splendid, this," he said.

"The comforts of home," I agreed.

One of the orderlies came up from the other end of the barracks and made a little bow. I bowed back.

"Latrine shower," he said. "I show, you come?"

We followed him outside. The latrine was a magnificent four-seater. They had it faced so that you could look out across a valley to a big landing zone, where every few minutes an H-34 or a Huey clattered in or out. In the washroom, the orderly filled plastic bowls for us and we sloshed water over our faces and combed our hair. The scars on Anson's face seemed rawer, redder, when they were wet.

By then it was 1300, so we went up to the senior officers' mess. Inside was a stained-wood bar and lounge with comfortable wicker chairs. Pictures of dress parades, portraits of officers and plaques hung on the walls. Everybody was there waiting for us--the general and the chief of staff and about 15 lieutenant colonels and majors. We were introduced to all of them, but the only two I really remember were the general and the colonel. The general had the kind of beard that always makes a man look as if he's been in the field overnight, two large black moles on his left cheek, a thick ridge of scar tissue over his eyebrows, and he did not talk so much as grunt. Except for the immaculate uniform, he reminded me of a Hollywood Chinese bandit chief. The colonel's face was well fleshed and sleek, and his hair was neatly combed and (Continued on page 131) Anson's Last Assignment (continued from page 97) glossy. He had very small, very black eyes that moved over us quickly but thoroughly. All of them were big-shouldered and hard-looking.

Lunch was a little strained. We sat at the head of the table, Anson on the general's right and I on the colonel's left. Anson told some funny stories; I thought most of them spoke enough English to understand, but I couldn't be sure. He told the one about the Chinese nymphomaniac in Singapore; and I was a little worried that, being Asians, they might not appreciate it; but the general laughed.

"You English, yes?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," Anson said.

"You know Colonel Brinkley-Davis? Maybe now general."

"Brinkley-Davis? No, sir, I can't say that I do."

"In Korean War, I liaison to Gluck-shires."

"I say," Anson said politely.

"Every morning staff meeting in Colonel Brinkley-Davis tent. Drink tea, not coffee. With Americans always coffee."

"Barbaric beverage, coffee," Anson said. "But I've come to the point where I must have it to start the day. His influence." He nodded at me.

"Have you been in Vietnam long, Mr. Bender?" the colonel asked.

"About three months."

"And Mr. Anson?"

"Twenty-three months," Anson said. "I have been on fifty-seven operations."

He was very proud of that number-- also that he had been wounded three times, more than any other correspondent.

"For whom do you work?" The colonel spoke English formally and almost without accent.

"Free-lance, sir," Anson said. "We're both free-lancers, but I have Time-Life accreditation."

The general spoke to the colonel in Korean. "The general would like to know if there are any reporters in Vietnam for nudist magazine," the colonel said.

"Not that I know of," I said.

"Does the general like nudist magazine?" Anson asked.

"Number one," the general said. "Two years ago, I go to Pendleton, buy many nudist magazine. You know Pendleton?"

"Yes," I said. "A little."

"Very many nudist magazine," the general said.

After lunch, we followed the colonel to his office for a briefing. He walked with a major, and Anson and I were some way behind.

"The general's rather kinky, isn't he?" Anson said. "They're all rather kinky."

"They're fine," I said.

The briefing was smooth, well organized and well presented. The colonel was very good. He stood in front of the big map--his pants razor creased and bloused and just properly faded, his boots as gleamy as his hair--and drew graceful arcs and circles with the pointer, occasionally rapping it on the floor to emphasize something. He also used a quick chopping tae kwon do gesture. Kim sat in an office chair at the back of the room, a loose-leaf notebook across his lap; and whenever the colonel couldn't remember a statistic, the captain supplied it. They even gave out realistic figures for their own casualties, which surprised me. My last operation had been with a famous American regular infantry division, whose P.I. officers were habitual liars; and it was nice when people came clean.

We asked a few questions and left with Kim. He asked us what we wanted to do and we said we wanted some pictures of civic action--medical teams and rice harvesting, that sort of thing--and some of combat.

"Civic action too far drive today," Kim said. "Tomorrow we go."

"OK," I said.

"What about combat?"

"Contact very light."

"We don't need much," Anson said. "Just some pictures in the field."

"Can be arranged."

"Splendid," Anson said.

"Will there be any tae kwon do practice here?" I asked.

"Tae kwon do team practice 1730 hours. Will be honored if you observe."

He said he'd come by for us, and we thanked him. We went to our quarters. Neither of the lieutenant colonels was there. Anson unlaced his boots and lay down. I got a book out of my pack--Jones' The Thin Red Line--and stretched out myself and began to read.

After a while Anson started to snore, and I put the book down and looked at him. He seemed very young. He was actually 25, but he looked about 17. He wore his hair long and scruffy at the nape of his neck and over the ears, English-schoolboy style, and, except for the scars, his face was smooth and soft. The worst scar was in the cleft of his chin, and he had another bad one under his left ear. Both of those were from the time he was on the Coast Guard cutter that was accidentally strafed by a section of F-4s. They made nine passes, with rockets and 20mm cannon, and killed or wounded everybody on the ship. The captain had been up on the bridge trying to signal them away with an Aldis lamp when a five-inch rocket blew his head off. Anson's chin had been split by a fragment from a 20mm cannon shell, and if you looked at him closely head on, one side of his jaw was slightly higher than the other. Also, his chest had been badly burned. Without a shirt on, he looked as if he had been stuck in about 30 places with a glowing cigar tip. Sometimes he got the shakes in his sleep and trembled himself awake, but now he was peaceful.

The tae kwon do team worked out on the small landing zone below the operations building. The members wore loose white judo suits and all of them were black belts. We had our cameras and moved around, shooting busily. First they went through a series of warm-up exercises in perfect unison, whirling and thrusting and chopping and kicking and shouting exactly together; then they broke up into pairs and sparred, pulling the thrusts and kicks. The real spectacle, the breakage exhibition, came last. You've probably seen pictures of that, ours or someone else's. They lined up in one long row and each man broke a brick over his forehead; they chopped through piles of four bricks with the edges of their hands; and, as a grand finale, one man split six bricks. We took some portraits and were introduced to the six-brick man. The edge of his hand felt like a horse's hoof.

On the way back to our quarters, Kim asked, "Was satisfactory?"

"Very," I said.

"It was superb," Anson said.

"Tae kwon do is a form of karate?" I asked.

"Yes, nearly same karate."

"Some judo also, isn't there?" Anson asked.

"Mostly same karate."

"How about the bricks?" I said. "Doesn't it give them a headache when they break bricks like that?"

"Head very hard," Kim said. "Many years' practice. No headache."

We washed and went to the mess and had a few beers before dinner. The general and the colonel came in together and we all stood up. The general was hungry, so we went straight into the dining room. Anson's and my seating cards had been reversed. I guess they thought I'd lose face if I had to sit by the colonel each time. Before they brought the food, the chaplain, a major, said a long prayer. It was in Korean, so of course I didn't understand any of it, but I heard the words "Viet Cong" about four times. Later Kim gave us a poop sheet on the general, which said he had gotten religion, Catholicism, just after landing at Inchon, and then wiped out a whole North Korean regiment with one company or something.

After dinner we went back to quarters with the lieutenant colonels. One of them produced an unopened bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, and we drank to the Korean Marines, the U. S. Marines (the Koreans always referred to our Marines as brothers), the Press Corps and killing V. C.

In the morning, Kim came by for us with his jeep. We got on the Quang Ngai road and drove for maybe ten kilometers. There was a lot of traffic, six-by-sixes filled with typically sloppy Vietnamese troops, who shouted at us and whistled and laughed, cyclos, three-wheeled Lambretta buses, peasants and bicyclists using the shoulders, and a U. S. Marine convoy. At the head of the convoy were an M-60 tank and an ONTOS, the antitank weapon with six 106mm recoilless rifles, and a couple of APCs--armored personnel carriers--then about a mile of trucks, bumper to bumper, with another ONTOS at the end. Some of the trucks had .50-caliber MGs mounted on the roofs of the cabs, and the men all wore battle dress, helmets and heavy flak jackets. The vehicles were filmed with a fine white dust, and the drivers and gunners were red-eyed and hot. The Koreans had strung double rolls of concertina on both sides of the road and, across the wire, the farmers were slogging through the muck of the paddies, harvesting. They looked small and tired and dirty, sullen and worn down, and their movements were hypnotically deliberate.

We went through two villages and turned into a yard in front of a house with a red cross over the door. A bench outside was lined with Vietnamese: pregnant women, a man whose right leg was a withered stump that ended below the knee and mothers and children. Inside, a Korean doctor and two medics were working. They wore white knee-length dusters and the doctor had a mirror reflector on his head. He was looking at an infected ear and the medics were swabbing with an awful-smelling purple goo the shaved head of a little girl who had ringworm. We took a roll apiece and talked to the doctor. He had graduated from Johns Hopkins and was very hip on sanitation. Sanitation was a worse problem than the V.C.; these people were filthy and didn't know any better. He wanted to know if either of us came from Baltimore and seemed disappointed when he learned that we didn't. He said that next to Seoul, Baltimore was his favorite city.

We got back into the jeep and drove on through another village. A few hundred yards beyond was the turnoff to the Second Battalion bivouac. The intersection was guarded by two sandbagged emplacements, one holding a .30-caliber machine gun and the other a BAR. Across the road was a long sweep of rice paddies, patched with bamboo thickets and bordered by a distant tree line. Working in the nearest paddy, side by side with the peasants, were six Koreans in skivvy shorts and canary-yellow undershirts with red borders and Rok across the chests.

"This is great," I said.

"A pity we don't have color," Anson said.

We slung our cameras around our necks and started toward the paddy. Kim stayed in the jeep, in the shade of the cloth top.

"I can see it now," I said. "The sword and the sickle. Two full pages in Life, domestic. Koreans kill Cong barehanded. Toil side by side with peasants. Also barehanded. Builds barehanded understanding."

We worked hard for 45 minutes. We took group shots from the dikes, then climbed down in the muck and took portraits and group shots with wide-angle lenses. We went around ahead of the harvesters, and for a while Anson was down on his knees so that he could shoot from the level of the sickles. We got them bundling the rice and carrying it over their shoulders along the dike and through a break in the barbed wire and across the road and up a small hill behind the emplacements, where several teams of Koreans and peasants were pumping a pair of foot-operated threshers. Our boots were soaked and covered with ooze, and Anson's pants were slimy wet to his thighs.

After a cigarette break, we shot the threshing. Symbolic shots of Korean and Vietnamese legs (the Korean legs were invariably about three times the diameter of the Vietnamese) driving the pedal up and down, pictures of men applying the heads of bundles of rice to the threshing wheel, and so on. We even got down on the ground in the grain to get the sweating faces over the spill of rice coming off the wheel. By the time we quit, I was oily with sweat and my hair was full of chaff and I itched everywhere. I took off my shirt and shook it out and tried to comb the chaff out.

Kim had his driver open some rations. I had a pack of blue heat pills, so we had warm lunch and heated some coffee afterward. Kim wanted to know if we'd like to go on to Quang Ngai and take some pictures of a tae kwon do expert teaching a class of Vietnamese high school girls.

"I say," Anson said. "High school girls. Do they break bricks?"

"Not yet. Many years' practice required break bricks."

"Pity that," Anson said. "Bricks make number-one photos."

"You do not wish to proceed?"

"Sure," I said. I had had a good day's work and would just as soon have gone back, but did not want to offend him. "It sounds very interesting."

Quang Ngai was about 12 kilometers farther on. It was the headquarters for the Second Division of the Vietnamese Army; so, as we went along, there were more ARVNs and fewer Koreans. In the villages were quite a few Popular Force troops, dressed in black pajamas or odd combinations of parts of uniforms. They carried carbines or M-ls, but the M-ls were too big for them, made them look like dirty and rather malicious children playing with cannons.

We got to the city about 1700, but found that tae kwon do wouldn't begin until 1800. Neither of us was happy about that, because it meant we'd have to drive back at dusk and in the dark, but Kim didn't seem worried.

"Area is secure," he said.

He had some people to see, so Anson and I went into a bar and had a few beers. We got to the high school just before 1800. The instructor looked like another six-brick man, but the girls were tiny, reed-armed and hidden in the multiple folds of their judo suits. They went through an abbreviated warm-up routine, and their shouts often came out as squeals and giggles. We shot a lot of film, but the lighting was poor and I wasn't hopeful of getting much.

I was nervous all the way back. While it was light, I kept scanning the tree lines and canebrakes and, after it was dark, I imagined every shape and shadow was a burp gunner. Anson had scrambled into the back, which meant he was worried about road mines. He was more afraid of mines than anything else, and had a theory that if you were in the rear seat, you might be blown free. Nothing happened, though, and we got back in time for a late meal.

Afterward we had a few drinks with the lieutenant colonels again, and Anson was very gay and funny, the way he always was after pressure. He told many stories: about the time he had been hit in the ass by a mortar burst and about the U. S. Marine landing at Chu Lai, where the troops came storming out of the amtracs and up the beach like John Wayne in The Sands of Iwo Jima, only to find 20 photographers on top of the first dune taking pictures of it all, and the time he was out with a Regional Force group in sampans and the bowman in his sampan fished during a fire fight and caught a five-foot snake right in the worst of it, and many others. Finally we turned in, but I did not sleep well. It was a windless night and hot and stuffy beneath the mosquito netting. My sheets became knotted and sweat-damp and my skin felt grimy and oily. Three or four times, the horizon glowed yellow from a flare. Twice I got up for a drink of water and both times there was a red nub of cigarette glow under Anson's netting.

Anson shook me just after dawn. Captain Kim was standing beside him. I pushed the netting back and sat up and groped with my feet for the thongs. My mouth was filled with a stale, dry taste.

"What gives?" I asked.

"I get pardon," Kim said. "But very big contact. Many many V. C."

"They tried to overrun a company," Anson said. "The colonel's going out to inspect the battlefield. They'll allow us along, too."

I washed quickly and got back into my jungle fatigues. They were the only clothes I'd brought with me from Danang, because I expected to be in the field, or at least in tents; and now, after two days, they were pretty high. We packed our backpacks and carried them and the camera bags up to the mess hall. The waiters brought out hot coffee. We were the only people there.

"Where's the colonel?" I asked.

"Eat already," Kim said. "Now briefing."

The waiter brought plates of scrambled eggs and bacon and a plastic wicker basket filled with hard rolls. I made myself eat half the eggs and bacon, but Anson did not touch anything. He smoked two cigarettes and sipped his coffee. He was obviously nervous and making no attempt to hide it. He was always like that before he went into the field, but you couldn't blame him, not after that cutter incident. I wasn't worried myself, because I didn't think a bird colonel, even this one, would be going anyplace very dangerous.

"How many dead?" I asked Kim.

"Ten Korean KIA. Thirty V. C. But that only within perimeter. Have not yet searched outside perimeter."

"Any prisoners?"

He shook his head. Anson excused himself and went outside.

"Mr. Anson is not well?" Kim asked.

"Nervous," I said. "He'll be all right." I mouthed another forkful of eggs.

"You are writer as well as photographer?" Kim asked.

"I write sometimes."

"Who is greatest English writer?"

"Christ, I don't know. Shakespeare, I guess."

"William Shakespeare," he said. "I have read many plays of Shakespeare. Othello, King Lear, Hamlet."

"Which one do you like best?"

"King Lear. Is very beautiful."

"Not Hamlet? Most people like Hamlet best."

"No," he said. "I find character of Hamlet is too very complex. Also I read the works of Erskine Caldwell."

Anson came back in and sat down. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

"The captain reads Shakespeare and Erskine Caldwell," I said.

"Fancy that," Anson said.

"Shakespeare is superior," Kim said.

A lieutenant came in and saluted Kim. They talked in Korean, then Kim said, "We must go to LZ."

Kim and the lieutenant insisted on carrying our gear. We walked to the landing zone where the tae kwon do team had practiced. An H-34 was there and the Koreans threw our stuff on board, shook hands with us and left. The ship looked old and rickety. There were a couple of patches on the skin just aft of midships. The area behind the exhausts was scorched black and the nose had oil smears. I did not like H-34s to start with: They shook and bucked and clattered much more than Hueys and reminded me of a car I'd owned when I was a kid, a $150 clunker that was always dropping its drive shaft.

Anson had flown with one of the pilots before and they stood off to one side chatting, while I talked to the door gunners. One was a tall, thin kid with bad acne and a ragged blond mustache. The other was equally tall and skinny, but a Negro. The colonel and his bodyguard, an enormously broad man who carried an M-2 with folding stock, two 45s and strangling gear, came out of the operations building and started down the hill to the LZ. The pilots and gunners came to attention and saluted, then the pilots and the colonel huddled over a map and he showed them where he wanted to go. We got in and the Negro started the auxiliary motor. The main motor coughed and caught and the rotor began to turn and I could feel the vibrations shaking up through my feet and legs and back.

We lifted off and flew for maybe 15 minutes before the pilot began circling. Through the door I saw the marker smoke, a blossom of yellow fog in the center of a clearing. We made another circle and dropped. As always, I felt my stomach clamp and something inside my chest tighten. It was like being in an elevator on the 40th floor when somebody cuts the cables. We banked steeply and the quiltwork of paddies and trees was like a checkerboard spun on a tabletop. The gunners were watching the trees, but I did not see any muzzle flashes. The colonel and the bodyguard were leaning forward to get a better view, while Anson sat rigidly, his eyes shut.

We leveled off and came in fast and low, the wheels scudding over the tree-tops, and let down in a Buddhist graveyard. Almost before Anson, the last man, was out, the pilot pulled pitch and lifted away.

The graveyard was perhaps a quarter of a mile square. The Koreans were dug in everywhere, between graves and behind tombstones. The C. O., a thickset captain, met us. A deep scar on his left cheek curved whitely through the heavy black stubble, his lips were chapped and cracked, and he still wore his helmet and flak jacket and carried an M-2 slung over his shoulder. The colonel shook his hand and pounded him on the back. They talked in Korean, very rapidly, and the captain shook his fist at a pile of V. C. dead.

Most of the troops were still in their foxholes. Some were dozing, but most had the vacant hollow expression and glazed eyes that you often see after battle. The ground was strewn with debris, empty cartridge casings and machine-gun-belt links, bandage wrappers, half-opened C-ration tins, ponchos, packs, metal ammunition boxes, intrenching tools. We began taking pictures, but none of the Koreans looked at us or even seemed to notice us. They just sat in the holes, clutching their weapons, and stared out beyond the perimeter. They were very different from Americans, who, no matter how tired or shell-shocked, always try to pose and usually to clown.

I found one boy, a machine gunner, in a hole beside a stack of Korean bodies. A belt of 30-caliber ammo was slung around his neck, the chin strap of his helmet was undone, and he was crying soundlessly, the tears squeezing out and down his cheeks one by one. On the lip of the hole was the machine gun, still loaded and pointed out toward the canebrake, with hundreds of empties littered about the feet of the tripod. The bodies had been wrapped in ponchos, but here and there arms and feet protruded, and beside one was a leg that had been severed at the thigh. The pants had been blown or ripped away, but the foot was still booted. I knelt and snapped the gunner, with the leg and the poncho-wrapped bodies in the foreground. The kid heard the camera clicking and looked over at me, but did not stop crying or in any way change expression.

I began to feel terrible and turned away from him. Sooner or later, on any story where there was a bad fight, I felt this way for a while. The good pictures and stories were always of the dead or the wounded or the grieving, and we were like vultures, we flourished on accident and catastrophe. Whenever you went out with people, no matter how much you liked them, you knew that to get good stuff, some of them would have to be killed or hurt. The other way to look at it was that whatever happened happened, whether you were there or not; and if you didn't report it, somebody else would. But sometimes I could not make myself see it that way.

I moved over to where Anson was shooting a pile of V. C. dead. With him were two American ANGLICO Marines--air naval gunfire liaison men--a pair of whom was assigned to each Korean company. Most of the V. C. had been stripped and they lay at odd angles, with legs and necks twisted into unnatural positions. They had died by all manner of means. Some had been stitched across the chest by automatic fire, others mangled by grenades, one had his jaw shot away, another had been decapitated and a third had only a small, neat hole precisely between the eyes. Several had crushed skulls, as if they had been clubbed or stomped, and two or three had erections. Anson was prodding one, who was lying face down, with his foot.

"Have a look at this bugger," he said. "Not a mark on him."

Anson got a boot under his shoulder and flipped him over.

"Fucking blast got him," one of the Americans said.

"I think it was tae kwon do," Anson said. "See how his neck's broken?"

"Maybe," the Marine said.

I introduced myself to the Marines, whose names were Carson and MacCauley. They both had blue eyes and stubbly blond beards. I asked them what happened.

"The motherfuckers tried to ding us," Carson said. "That's what happened."

We laughed.

"They come in three waves," MacCauley said. He used his hands a great deal as he talked and Anson began shooting. "The first bunch had grenades. They hit us there." He pointed toward the high end of the graveyard, which merged with thick underbrush. "We had to pull in some, but then we got 'em out. The second was small stuff and more grenades, and the last one had a lot of automatic crap."

"Did they penetrate the perimeter?" Anson asked.

"No," Carson said. "They just moved us back some. But they sure scared the shit out of us."

"What time did it start?" I asked.

"Zero four hundred."

"When did they break it off?"

"Zero six hundred. Maybe a little later."

The colonel came up and said that he wanted us to photograph the captured weapons. We followed him to another, larger pile of V. C. bodies. Beside them were rows of neatly arranged weapons. I counted two very dirty BARs, 12 carbines, an old French MG with a funnel-shaped flash suppressor on the muzzle and Chinese characters scratched into the receiver, two Chinese copies of Russian AK assault rifles with short barrels and long, curved clips, and over a hundred stick grenades.

Anson photographed the colonel and the captain among the V. C. dead and conferring over a map, and I moved off with the Americans. They had been waiting for a MEDEVAC chopper for the Korean dead--the wounded had been lifted out just before we arrived--and now both the MEDEVAC and our ship were circling overhead. The pilots were arguing over who had landing priority.

"My instructions were to return for VIPs in one five minutes," one pilot said.

Carson was on the radio. "Screw VIPs," he said. "We got bods down here. Over."

MacCauley gave a smoke grenade to a Korean, who pulled the pin and threw it into a clear place. It burst green. The MEDEVAC chopper came in and the Korean captain tried to round up a crew to load the bodies. Nobody wanted to do it. The troops pretended they didn't hear or that the captain was shouting at someone else. Finally the captain and the colonel walked to several holes and pointed to the men in them, who got up slowly and, with obvious distaste, manhandled the bodies into the chopper. The captain picked up the leg I had photographed and stuffed it into the nearest poncho.

The MEDEVAC ship lifted off and Carson called our bird back in. Anson didn't want to leave.

"We've got the dead," he said. "Now we need some action."

"All right," I said. I was sure the Koreans had decimated a V. C. battalion. I knew we would find more dead V. C. outside the perimeter and thought that if they ran true to form, the live ones would be long gone. But they might leave a sniper or two behind, in which case we could get some action without much danger to ourselves. We told the colonel and he said we could come out on the resupply chopper that night. He shook hands with us and climbed into the ship. The door gunner with acne gave us a thumbs up as they lifted off.

The captain showed us where we were on his map. We had to move through brush and jungle and across some paddies to a road, then down the road for a mile to hook up with some other companies. He sent a point platoon out, and in about five minutes the rest of us started. The troops were still grim but had lost the glazed look, and they moved well in the brush--quietly but carefully.

There were many more V. C. bodies. I counted at least 40 myself. Some had been hit by rifle or machine-gun fire, but most had been shredded by artillery. All during the fight, of course, artillery had been coming in steadily up to within 40 meters of the perimeter. Little bits of clothing and flesh were stuck to tree trunks and bushes, and once I saw an arm hooked around a limb 20 feet overhead.

Anson was in good spirits. He began telling the ANGLICOs about a mythical French girl in Saigon, and they listened hungrily.

"How you get them French birds?" Carson asked. "All I ever seen there is gooks."

"You must speak French," said Anson, who could barely manage a parlez-vous. "Then it's simple. They fall all over you."

We worked out of the trees and through a canebrake to the edge of a paddy. The point platoon was 200 yards ahead of us, moving toward a tree line and using a dike as cover. According to the map, the road we wanted ran along the tree line. The captain signaled a rest break and we sat on top of a dike and took our packs off and lay back against them. I passed cigarettes around.

"How come you guys come out here?" MacCauley asked. "You don't have to, do you?"

"No," I said.

"It pays pretty good, I bet," Carson said.

"Fair," I said. "We're not getting rich."

"You been out long?"

"Not too long," I said. "Three months. He has, though. He's short."

"I shall do only two more operations after this one," Anson said.

"Hey," Carson said. "Ain't you the guy who got zapped on that cutter? I read where some English guy got zapped."

"That was him," I said.

Anson pointed to the scar on his chin.

"Shit, buddy," Carson said. "If I was you, I wouldn't go out no more, no matter what they give me."

"You been in the service?" MacCauley asked.

"No," Anson said. "England doesn't have conscription anymore."

"And you?"

"No," I said.

"Wouldn't that be a piss. You do your time out here and they fucking draft you and send you back," Carson said.

I stubbed out the cigarette and shut my eyes. White spots danced and slithered on the backs of the lids. The Marines stopped talking and I felt a gentle warm breeze. I sat up and rubbed my face. The Marines were lying there with their helmets off and their eyes closed; Anson was wiping a camera with a chamois. The captain was with his radioman behind the next dike, studying his map. Anson glanced up and smiled at me.

"About ready to push on, are they?" he said.

"I guess."

That was when it started. I heard a cracking sound, like a string of fire crackers lit somewhere in the next block, and saw a line of spouts of water two paddies ahead of us, and the tree line was winking with muzzle flashes. I threw myself forward and there was a short silence and then the cloth-tearing sound of incomings and the whines of ricochets. The earth was soft and damp against my face, and I began to count the number of stems in a clump of grass in front of my nose.

The Koreans reacted very quickly; they returned the fire almost instantly. I could distinguish at least two BARs working in steady regulation three-shot bursts amid the quick clattering of the carbines on full auto and the solid cracks of the M-ls. Somewhere to the left a machine gun opened up and I wondered if it was the kid I'd photographed earlier. I felt around behind me for my camera bag and pulled it to me. Three red ants were climbing the strap. I watched them for a moment, then crushed them between my thumb and forefinger, and raised my head.

The captain was on the radio, talking to the point or calling artillery, and Anson was taking pictures of a 60mm-mortar crew. He worked quickly, ducking from side to side for different angles, and, as always, I admired his coolness. He dodged down the dike and snapped a few of a BAR man, who did not notice he was there, then started across the paddy for the captain. The water was knee deep and the gumbo sucked at his boots and the grain stalks grabbed at his legs, but he ran hard, his body low and thrust forward and the camera bag swinging wildly from his shoulder. I got my camera up and centered him in the finder and he tripped, caught himself, straightened up, and I took the picture just as he was hit. His legs went out from under him, almost as if someone had clipped him in a football game, and he went sprawling sideways and forward. The camera bag flew open and equipment spewed out ahead of him and there was a quick mirror flash as a lens caught the sun. He flopped twice and was still.

I crawled toward him, wallowing in the muck and half drowning in paddy water, but I think he was dead by the time I got there. I'm not sure. He was on his face, but I did not want to turn him over. All I could think of was to get him morphine. We always carried Syrettes of morphine with us, in our packs, and I crawled away for one. When I got back, a Korean medic was there. I showed him the Syrette--I was clutching it in my hand along with some mud and rice roots--and pointed at Anson's leg, but he shook his head.

After that I lost my sense of time. The rest of the action could have covered five minutes or half a day. I dragged Anson to a dike and spread a poncho over him and found his cap, an Australian bush hat. I started to lift the poncho and put the hat with the body, but then thought that he wouldn't need it anymore, some door gunner or embalmer would get it, and stuffed it in my pocket. At one point an air strike was called. Four camouflaged Phantoms came in and dropped 750-pound bombs on the tree line, strafed it and napalmed it. A spotter plane circled slowly, but I couldn't hear the buzz of its motor over the firing. I took some pictures of the captain, the medic and the FACs, but they were out of focus when I had them developed. Finally the firing died down--I found out later that the other Korean companies had hit the V. C. from the flank and killed four--and the MEDEVAC ship came overhead. Carson was on the radio again. The pilot wanted to know how many he had to pick up.

"Two Korean WIA," Carson said. "One American KIA."

"One American?"

"Roger," Carson said. "They dinged this reporter."

"He was English," I said.

"What's the diff?" MacCauley said. "They dinged him."

The chopper came down and I helped load the poncho. Then the Koreans were put in. One had been shot through the wrist and the other in the gut. The first man had his arm in a sling and insisted on climbing aboard without help. He was grinning. The second man was on a stretcher and his face was drawn and his eyes were closed.

A few minutes later, MacCauley said they were sending a chopper for me.

"Fine," I said.

I was sitting on the dike the captain and the radioman had used during the fight.

"You OK?"

"Sure," I said.

He offered me a cigarette and lighter.

"Thanks," I said.

When the H-34 landed, he helped me gather the gear, both packs and both camera bags, and load it. As I was climbing in, he slapped me on the shoulder and Carson gave me thumbs up. We took off and rose quickly. The gunners were watching the tree line and did not pay any attention to me. For the first time, I noticed that Anson's camera bag had been hit. There was a neat line of perforations across the front, four in all. I had put all the equipment I'd found back in, but had not noticed the hits. I thought I ought to send it to his family, but I did not know his parents' address. In fact, I didn't know if he had parents. I just knew that he came from London and wanted to go back there--although we always kidded him and told him that he'd be back in South-east Asia in three months, that he couldn't bear the thought of a war without him there to photograph it. I also knew that he was an insomniac, that once or twice a week a piece of shrapnel worked its way out of his ass, that he became dangerous after a certain point in his drinking and had been known to pull a loaded gun on friends, that his jaw ached when it rained, that he was proud of the scars on his face and chest, that he wore his hair long because it was unmilitary and annoyed American officers, but that he kept in his desk a box containing the insignia of every outfit he'd ever gone into the field with, that he was in love with a Eurasian girl in Singapore, and that he idolized Capa and David Douglas Duncan. I had known him very well, I thought, but had not really known much about him.

The H-34 clattered on. We were high enough so that the gunners relaxed and I tapped one on the shoulder and asked where we were going. He yelled brigade, and I nodded and settled back against the ship's side. The vibrations rattled me like an electric massage machine gone wild. I was marrow-tired and wanted more than anything to be some-place that was absolutely still, that did not batter me with noise. For no particular reason, I remembered the Korean machine gunner, the tears and the leg and the bandoleer, and then I wondered how I would look if somebody should take a picture of me.