Doin' the Village

They sent me back into the Camobdian village the next day, about two thousand meters into Cambodia, into a battalion perimeter. It felt like I was returning to the scene of a crime.

The village, which had stood for maybe a thousand years, didn't know I was coming back that day. If they had, they would've run. I was the eye of my team’s rage. And through me, a self-proclaimed captain Ahab, I would set things right again. That day my team loved me.

I came into the village yelling "Mao! Mao!" and shooting my M-16 into the air, firing mostly warning shots. The villagers began to flee, but some didn't flee fast enough and got hit by machine gun bursts. I don’t like violence; I’m a businessman, and blood is a big expense. But sometimes people die in this business, and this is the life I chose. At any rate, after I had fired a few hundred rounds into the village, it had become completely deserted except for a few wild dogs, a chicken, two pigs, and a midget.

I waded back into the choppy river and received congratulatory remarks from my team-mates. My team-mates instructed me to wait in the river for an airlift, and then sped off in their sandpan. The mighty river became even choppier and I soon found myself struggling just to stay afloat, and unable to reach dry land.

I didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you can tell that when you're in the water? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. Very first light, the sharks come cruising. So I start pounding and hollering and screaming and sometimes the sharks would go away. Sometimes they wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at you, doesn't seem to be living. Until he bites you and those black eyes roll over white. And then you hear that terrible high-pitch screaming and the ocean turns red and they all come in and rip you to pieces.

But a Lockheed Ventura saw me, he swung in low and he saw me. He was a young pilot, a lot younger than Sorvatz, anyway he saw me and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down to pick me up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waiting to get on. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. Anyway we delivered a napalm strike on the village and I ended up back in Saigon, mission accomplished.

I think now, looking back, we did not fight the Cambodian villagers, we fought ourselves. The enemy was in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days. As I'm sure Sorvatz will be, fighting with Petros for what Dr. James Beckett called "possession of my soul." There are times since, I've felt like a child, born of those two fathers. But be that as it may, those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again. To teach to others what we know, and to try with what's left of our lives to find a goodness and a meaning to this life.