Chapter Four
Four
Frankie excelled in Basic Training. Along with learning to march in formation (teamwork) and put on combat boots and a gas mask quickly (you never knew when you might be wakened at midnight for an emergency; you needed to move fast in a war zone), she’d learned how to apply a splint, debride a wound, carry a stretcher, and start an IV.
She could roll bandages faster than any other recruit.
By March, she was more than ready to put her new skills to the test. She had packed and checked her large Army-issued duffel bag, which she’d crammed full with her flak jacket, steel pot helmet, combat boots, GI kit, white nursing uniform, and field jacket.
Unlike the men, dressed in their comfortable olive-drab fatigues, neatly bloused inside black boots, Frankie was required to travel in her class A uniform: a green jacket, slim skirt, nylons, polished black pumps, and flat garrison hat.
And beneath all of that, a regulation panty girdle to keep her nylon stockings up.
It had been uncomfortable when she’d left Texas and boarded the plane bound for Vietnam.
Now, twenty-two hours later, it was downright painful.
It seemed ridiculous to her that in this day and age she couldn’t wear pantyhose.
She tucked her new soft-sided overnight travel bag into the overhead bin and took a seat next to the window. As she sat down, a garter on her panty girdle snapped and popped her thigh like a rubber band. She struggled to get it fixed sitting down.
Soldiers filed past her, laughing and talking, shoving each other. Many of them looked to be her age or even younger. Eighteen, nineteen years old, most of them.
A captain in stained, wrinkled fatigues paused at the end of her row. “Mind if I join you, Lieutenant?”
“Of course, Captain.”
He sat down in the aisle seat. Even in fatigues, she could see how thin he was. Heavy lines creased his cheeks. His clothes had the vague, unpleasant odor of mildew.
“Norm Bronson,” he said with a tired smile.
“Frankie. McGrath. Nurse.”
“Bless your heart, Frankie. We need nurses.”
The plane rolled forward, lifted off from the runway, and rose into the clouds.
“What’s it like?” she asked. “Vietnam, I mean.”
“Words won’t help, ma’am. I could talk all day about what it’s like and you still won’t be ready. But you’ll learn fast. Just keep your head down.” He leaned back and closed his eyes.
Frankie had never seen anyone fall asleep so quickly.
She reached into her black regulation handbag, pulled out her information packet, and reread it for the thousandth time.
Repetition and knowledge had always calmed her, and she was determined to be as exemplary a soldier as she’d been a student.
It was the only way to prove to her parents that she’d been smart to enlist, courageous even; success mattered to them.
She had memorized all of the military command and hospital locations, had underlined them in yellow on her map of Vietnam.
She had also taken the behavioral guidelines to heart.
Rules for personal conduct, for security on base, for what to wear and how to deal with firearms, for always taking pride in being a soldier.
Everything made sense to her in the Army.
Rules existed for a reason and you followed them to maintain order and help each other.
The system was designed to force soldiers—men and women—into conformity.
To build teams. It could save your life, apparently.
Fitting in, being part of something larger, knowing your job, and doing it without question. She was comfortable with all of it.
As she’d told her mother repeatedly, she was going off to war, but not really, not like the men on this plane.
She wouldn’t be on the front lines, wouldn’t get shot at.
She was going to Vietnam to save men’s lives, not to risk her own.
Military nurses worked in big bright buildings, like the huge Third Field Hospital in Saigon, which was protected by high fencing and was far from the fighting.
Frankie leaned back and closed her eyes, letting the rumble of the engines lull and calm her.
She heard the buzz of men talking, laughing, the snap-hiss of colas being opened, the smell of sandwiches being handed out.
She imagined Finley on the plane with her, holding her hand; for a split second, she forgot that he was gone and she smiled.
Coming to meet you, she thought, and then her smile faded.
As she drifted off to sleep, she thought she heard Captain Bronson mumble quietly, “Sending goddamn babies…”
When Frankie woke, the airplane cabin was quiet except for the hum of the jet engines. Most of the window shades were drawn. A few overhead lights cast a gloomy glow over the men packed into the jet.
The loud razzing, the laughter, the horseplay that had marked most of this flight from Honolulu to Saigon was gone.
The air seemed heavier, harder to draw into her lungs, harder to expel in an exhalation.
The new recruits—recognizable by their still-creased, green fatigues—were restless.
Unsettled. Frankie saw the way they looked at each other, their smiles bright and brittle.
The other soldiers, those weary-looking men in their worn fatigues, men like Captain Bronson, sat almost too still.
Beside Frankie, the captain opened his eyes; it was the only change in him from sleeping to awake, just an opening of his eyes.
Suddenly the plane lurched, or bucked, seemed to turn onto its side. Frankie smacked her head on the tray on the back of the seat in front of her as the plane nose-dived. The overhead bins opened; dozens of bags fell out into the aisle, including Frankie’s.
Captain Bronson put his rough, gnarled hand on hers as she clutched the armrest. “It’ll be okay, Lieutenant.”
The plane stalled, steadied, lurched upward into a steep climb. Frankie heard a pop and something cracked beside her.
“Is someone shooting at us?” Frankie said. “Oh my God .”
Captain Bronson chuckled. “Yeah. They love to do that. Don’t worry. We’ll just circle around for a while and try again.”
“Here? Shouldn’t we go somewhere else to land?”
“In this big bird? Nope. It’s Tan Son Nhut for us, ma’am. They’ll be waiting on the FNGs we got on board.”
“FNGs?”
“Fucking new guys.” He smiled. “And one beautiful young nurse. Our boys’ll clear the airport in no time. Not to fret.”
The plane circled until Frankie’s fingers ached from the pain of her grip on the armrests. Outside, she saw orange and red explosions and streaks of red across the dark sky.
Finally, the plane evened out, and the pilot came on the loudspeaker to say, “Okay, sports fans, let’s try this shit again. Buckle up.”
As if Frankie had ever unbuckled her seat belt.
The jet descended. Frankie’s ears popped, and the next thing she knew, they were thumping onto the runway and powering down, rolling to a stop.
“Senior officers and women disembark first,” sounded over the loudspeaker.
The officers waited for Frankie to exit first. She wished they hadn’t. She didn’t want to be first. Still, she grabbed her travel bag from the aisle and slung it—and her purse—over her left shoulder, leaving her right hand free to salute.
When she exited the aircraft, heat enveloped her.
And the smell . Good Lord, what was it? Jet fuel…
smoke… fish… and honestly there was a stench of something like excrement.
A headache started to pulse behind her eyes.
She made her way down the stairs, where a lone soldier stood in the darkness, backlit by ambient light from a distant building. She could barely make out his face.
Off to the distant left, something exploded in orange flames.
“Lieutenant McGrath?”
She could only nod. Sweat crawled down her back. Were they bombing over there?
The soldier said, “Follow me,” and led her across the bumpy, pockmarked runway, past the terminal, and to a school bus that had been painted black, even the windows, which were covered in some kind of chicken-wire mesh.
“You’re the only nurse arriving today. Take a seat and wait. Don’t exit the bus, ma’am.”
The heat in the bus was sauna-like, and that smell—shit and fish—made her gag. She took a seat in the middle row of seats, by a black-painted window. It felt like being entombed.
Moments later, a Black soldier in fatigues, carrying an M16, climbed into the driver’s seat. The doors whooshed shut and the headlights came on, carving a golden wedge out of the darkness ahead.
“Not too close to the window, ma’am,” he said, and hit the gas. “Grenades.”
Grenades?
Frankie inched sideways on the bench seat. In the fetid dark, she sat perfectly upright, was bounced up and down in her seat until she thought she might vomit.
At last the bus slowed; in the headlights’ glare, she saw a set of gates manned by American MPs. One of the guards spoke to the driver, then backed away. The gates opened and they drove through.
Not much later, the bus stopped again. “Here you go, ma’am.”
Frankie was sweating so profusely she had to wipe her eyes. “Huh?”
“You get out here, ma’am.”
“What? Oh.”
She realized suddenly that she hadn’t gone to baggage claim, hadn’t retrieved her duffel. “My bag—”
“It will be delivered, ma’am.”
Frankie gathered up her purse and travel bag and went to the door.
A nurse stood in the mud, dressed in a white uniform, cap to shoes, waiting for her. How on earth could that uniform be kept clean? Behind her was the entrance to a huge hospital.
“You need to exit the bus, ma’am,” the driver said.
“Oh yes.” Frankie stepped down into the thick mud and started to salute.
The nurse grabbed her wrist, stopped the salute. “Not here. Charlie loves to kill officers.” She pointed to a waiting jeep. “He’ll take you to your temporary quarters. Report to admin for in-processing tomorrow at oh-seven-hundred.”