Halberstam - One Very Hot Day

For Elzbieta

The seminary was outside of the little town. But the priests were all gone now, gone back to Europe. The Seminary now had massive fortifications, no enemy would storm it easily, miles and miles of barbed wire, mountains of sandbags, and on top a Vietnamese machine gunner, sometimes awake. By the gate there was a sentry and a huge sign which said: Welcome. Eighth Infantry Division U. S. Advisory Group. Best There Is. Under that was a caricature of an American officer with a huge grin, and then the initials W E T S U. There was no printed explanation for the initials but translated verbally to those who asked, civilians largely, they meant, We Eat This Shit Up.

Beaupre lay there asleep, a thin uncomfortable sleep, the sweat rolling off him, the giant fan above him no help, serving only to distribute equally the very hot air. He was so uncomfortable that when they sent someone to get him his nerves were already jarred, and he was instantly sure that they wanted him to go to war; that the night had passed, it was time for the operation. Volleyball, he heard dimly. Volleyball.

Hey Captain Beaupre. Volleyball? They had sent a young Captain for him. Beaupre did not even know his name.

No, he managed to say. Jesus no, volleyball.

They sent me to get you. We need a man. We've got nine. The others say you're supposed to.

Do I look like Im supposed to? It was a good question: he was thirty-eight, looked older, heavy, almost fat; he was sweating without playing; he breathed and he sweated. The U.S. government spent sixteen-hundred dollars to get me out here and it never said anything about volleyball.

We need a man, the Captain said doggedly; he was young and new at the Seminary and he had been preceded by impressive rumor-mongering. It was said he would make the early list for major.

You need a boy, Beaupre corrected.

Colonel says volleyball's the exercise. You need it. We all need it.

I don't need it, Beaupre said. I'm lazy. The rest of you get too much exercise.

Jesus, Beaupre thought, volleyball. Five o'clock in the afternoon and they were out there playing goddamn volleyball. They all played volleyball at the Seminary because there was nothing else to do. Grown men. Beaupre could hear them now in the background, shouting and grunting. It was the only thing to do and besides the Colonel liked it, and was good at it, the Colonel, small and wiry, saw himself as a feeder, very fast. The Colonel wasn't there, he was in Saigon, due back that night, the Colonel, lover and founder of the game; when they lacked a man, the Colonel would come into Beaupre's room and drag Beaupre out, making a small and almost pleasant spectacle of it, boasting; Look who wants to play, and Beaupre, dutifully requisitioned, would play, summoned only to even the sides, lunging gracelessly from the start, grunting loudly, in all a small and gentle humiliation.

He had come to hate volleyball and he had gained a kind of private vengeance against them all when they had played the Vietnamese officers. The Vietnamese liked volleyball too, and the Colonel heard of this, and always anxious to improve relations had suggested a game of Us-against-Them. The Vietnamese officers accepted the invitation, perhaps a bit too readily, and the Colonel was very pleased. The Americans, prepared to be good winners, had fixed a giant barbecue for later. The Viets had come and played, thin, often scrawny men, odd in their much too long shorts, ludicrous in their old-fashioned undershirts (they were more modest than the Americans and did not strip to the waist). Seeing the Vietnamese and the tall powerful Americans, Beaupre had felt rare sympathy for the Viets. The game began and the Americans took a quick lead. When the Viets finally made some points the Americans very carefully applauded; this applause stopped when the Viets, old undershirts and all, made quick work of the Americans. Five games were played and won, ever more handily; by the end there was clapping for American points. It had been an embarrassing day; the Vietnamese behaved well and were careful not to throw the last game; the barbecue had gone reasonably well, but there had never been any suggestion of a rematch. Indeed for a time it dampened volleyball fever, but after a week, the Colonel, resilient as ever, had bounced back and reinstituted the American game.

Beaupre listened to the game now; the briefing would be late that night after the Colonel returned. There would be a movie first. He had five hours before the briefing and yet if he slept, he would only feel worse later on. It was a tribute to how much he had come to dislike volleyball that despite the suffocating boredom of the Seminary he refused to watch them play; he tried to sleep a little more before the movie.

The volleyball game was over and they were still waiting for the Colonel. He was due back a little later, driving back on the country's one highway against the orders of Saigon which disliked and distrusted the highway and thought he should take a helicopter; it would be very embarrassing if a Bird Colonel were ambushed and killed within forty miles of the main city. But the Colonel did not like Saigon, and rarely if he could help it, listened to it; he did like what he called looking at the countryside, and trying to find out who was in the lead. So while they waited for him at the Seminary they decided to show the movie first. Usually the movies were of Elvis Presley in Hawaii, or Doris Day in bed with someone, her pajamas unwrinkled, and her hair all in place, and the main excitement would come with Doris in bed, her teeth already brushed, when a lizard would start crawling across the wall which served as a screen. Someone, usually Raulston, would shout out what the lizard was about to do, and there would be great encouragement for the lizard, go to it old buddy, and some disappointment if the lizard backed off, that lizard can't cut the mustard, and tell him where to go Beaupre (in honor of Beaupre who was acknowledged the resident swordsman). Sometimes there would be another lizard, probably female, and thus in the middle of a cowboy film, or a Doris Day in Bed film, the attention would shift to the two lizards doing theirballet on the screen, with cheers for the male lizard, though Raulston who claimed to have studied biology insisted that they were all wrong, the aggressor lizard was the lady, and they were cheering the wrong lizard. On this night while they waited for the Colonel, they did not have Elvis or Doris, and the lizards were in the off season, but they had The Guns of Navarone, which as someone said was still playing in New York, yes said someone else, Watertown, New York. But it was still first run by their standards, their standards being whatever the Army sent down, which was what the Saigon officers did not choose to take. It was a fine movie filled with action and handsome mountains and beautiful color and Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn on the same side, though not trusting each other. It went very well until someone discovered Peck's defection and shouted: He's a damn VC.

There was a slow sense of shock when he said it, and then slowly it dawned on everyone that it was true, that Peck was a Cong, and from then on the complexion of the picture changed sharply, and the loyalty to Peck ended abruptly, the hearts did not beat so fast when the Germans came near, and the beautiful girl, seemingly loyal to Peck, then step by step obviously betraying him, in the movie a fink, now a loyal government agent, drew occasional cheers. From then on they shouted encouragement to the German sentries, and when Peck and others repeatedly slipped by the sentries, Raulston ordered one of the sergeants out of the mess hall where the movie was being shown to check the perimeter and make sure that no Vietcong had slipped passed the sentries. When the Sergeant came back and said that one of the Vietnamese sentries had been asleep there was more laughter, which like the game they were now playing with the movie, eased the tension. On the screen the Germans, tipped off on the whereabouts of Peck and the others, were arresting them in the market. There was some cheering, but someone, sensing that it was too early in the movie for Peck to die or disappear, shouted: Don't take any prisoners. Peck did escape and continued bravely on, putting down the revolt among the civil libertarians in his own group. Steadily they passed obstacle after obstacle, finally entering the guerrilla-proof gun batteries and, miracle of miracles, silencing the guns.