Of Rice and Men: A Novel of Vietnam

* IN TRANSIT *

Crash Landing

The men thought they were dying in a fiery plane crash, but it was only a perfect landing at Tan Son Nhut.

"Jesus Christ!" Guy Lopaca swore.

"Jesus Christ," Arthur Grissom prayed.

It felt as if their pilot had jettisoned the airliner's wings. The plane suddenly pointed its nose straight down, took on maniacal speed, and headed dartlike toward Asia.

A moment before, as the intercom casually told them to get ready for landing in Vietnam, Guy Lopaca had experienced a moderate chill, and thought:

I might actually die in this war. . . .

Now, as the plane abruptly rotated and the earth down below became the earth directly in front, and rushing closer, Lopaca began thinking:

I might actually die in this seat. . . .

The young men expected an erratic flight path, to minimize the hazard of enemy ground fire. But right now, to the frenzied soldiers hurtling down an insanely perpendicular flight path, a few casualties from ground fire seemed to be a reasonable price to pay if it meant coming in with some survivors. Most of the frantic GIs held their breath, some closed their eyes, and one tried to vomit but, because of the awful speed, nothing came out.

At the last possible instant, the pilot pulled the nose up, and the plane crashed--Screech! Whomp!--safely onto its landing gear. The terrified young men had arrived in the war zone. They were not dead yet. As the troops shivered, thanked their gods, and wondered what horrible feeling the war would inflict on them next, their twenty-one-year-old stewardess pixie with hips to die for shimmied down the aisle and told them to keep their seat belts carefully fastened for just a little bit longer, y'all.

At that moment, she was everything the young men desperately wanted, and would have to do without. She was the girl some men had sought all their lives; the girl some men had left behind; and the girl some men would die without ever knowing. Arthur Grissom wanted to reach out and touch her. Guy Lopaca wanted to go home, meet her at the door, and tell her once more that he loved her. She left a froth of terrible longing in her wake.

Even before the airplane came to a stop, the young men felt as if they had been in Vietnam, dazed and lonely, for a hundred years.

Guy Takes His Turn at War

Inside the terminal, the young men were mashed into muttering clumps, then herded outdoors to a corral near their ground transportation, at which they would gaze in frustration for hours before boarding. But Guy Lopaca was culled from the crowd.

As soon as he entered the terminal, Lopaca noticed a slender GI waving a big sign:

Welcome Guy Lopaca Nice Test Scores!

"Are you looking for me?" Guy asked the stranger. The young man smiled back, and kept bobbing his sign up and down.

"Hell no," he said, "I'm looking for one of those other Guy Lopacas they got on the plane. You know, one with some common sense."

Guy blushed. "I'm Guy Lopaca," he said. "I don't think there are any others."

"Well, let's take a chance on that," the young man said. "Follow me."

The GI led Guy out of the terminal and walked him to a small prop jet whose engines were idling.

"This here's a Guy Lopaca they had on that plane," the GI said to the prop jet's crewman. "He swears there ain't any others. So I guess you can get along now."

"Nice to see you," the crewman said, helping stow Guy's duffel bag. "Strap yourself in and we'll be on our way."

"Where are we going?" Guy asked.

"Well," the crewman said as the engines lit up, "I'm planning on going to heaven, the pilot's going to hell for sure, and you're going to Hue, eventually."

"Hue's pretty far north, isn't it?" Guy asked.

"Way up north," the crewman said as the plane started to move. "Real far north. They say when Ho Chi Minh takes his dog for a walk, it shits on Hue."

As the plane thrust upward, Guy put his head back and tried to visualize Hue on the map of South Vietnam. But all he could see, when he closed his eyes, was a grainy old newsreel film of the landing at Normandy, on D-Day, 1944. The puffy gray shape of an overloaded GI staggered up the beach a few steps and then, as a German bullet hit him, collapsed into a nameless, faceless lump on the sand. Guy Lopaca had been witnessing that soul-searing sacrifice over and over since he was ten years old.

Guy owed so much to that unlucky young soldier. That young man had given everything he had, just to be there on the beach with other young men who needed to be there with him. Guy hoped he could live up to the standard that brave stranger had set.

It's my turn now, Guy thought sadly. He joined hands over the decades with his brother soldier on the Normandy beach. It's my turn now, as it was your turn then, Guy promised him.