What Were They Thinking?
Part V: Sly Cortales’s Story
“Sometime I’m thankful we had only one,” Bea said. I could see her point. Just one. I sighed. “Oh, Sly, I’m sorry. That was heartless of me.”
“No, Bea. I’m thankful I have one and the girls Lily and I adopted,” I said. It had been a struggle to overcome the loss of Lexi. And then Lily. “The sadness I feel still is tempered by the love of my daughters and grandchildren. Even that scalawag, Brian Junior.”
“I must say, Samantha was surprised,” Brian said as he came into the room with cinnamon rolls and fresh coffee for all of us. He’d shown up a few minutes earlier as soon as the rolls were ready to frost. I’d probably have a sugar high after this if I didn’t get some protein.
“Well, I’ll be glad when they all get back from this filming in Canada. What is it your cónyuge is working on this time?” I asked.
“Nikki agreed to help Hannah write about her experiences as a teen if Hannah allowed her to write about them in one of her books. They haven’t come to blows yet, so I’m guessing it’s going okay.”
“What does Hannah’s life story have to do with Canada?” Dinita asked.
“That was one of the conditions. Nikki would help write it if it wasn’t set anywhere near Indiana. Tyax is about as far from Indiana as you can get.” We all laughed and Brian turned those deep blue eyes that captured my daughters on me. “What was it like, Papa Sly? You’ve shared so much with me. Have you told the other parents?” I shook my head and Brian left the room. Not another word was spoken as everyone turned their eyes toward me. Shit.
“It was like John said…”
26 You're in the Army Now
“DON SYLVESTER, my family and I wish to express our condolences for your loss. Don Baptista was a good man and respected by my father and all who knew him.”
“Thank you, Don Joseph. My mother and sisters will be pleased your family remembered them. And I thank you, Little Joe. I’m glad to have you as a friend.” I was Catalano and Little Joe was Italian but our words for formal greetings were the same in both Spanish and Italian. I knew that the formality of his statement meant it came from his father.
“Sly, we’ve known each other since grade school. I’ve got your back.”
I thought about our friendship. We weren’t real close, but all our early classes and class pictures showed us standing next to each other. Alphabetical order. Cortales then Cortelli. We played varsity football in high school and I took handoffs from him or protected him when he passed. I was easily five inches taller and outweighed him by fifty pounds. Part of what kept us in different worlds was nationality. Oh, we were both born in the US, but my parents immigrated from Spain—technically Catalonia. My father never let me forget that Franco’s suppression of Catalonia had been the reason he fled and took mother with him. I’d pieced together some bits that indicated he was a leader of the Republican resistance in the Civil War and Franco’s people targeted him for elimination.
On the other hand, Little Joe was from an old Italian family. The presence of his bodyguards all through school was something we’d all grown to accept. They were like peacekeepers in the school. At Joe’s direction, they had stepped in to stop a couple of thugs from giving me a good beating in junior high. I’d never been bothered again after he let it be known I was under his protection.
“My father wants me to enlist.”
“It’s going to be a shitstorm,” I said. “He trying to get rid of you?”
“He figures I’d be safer getting shot at by gooks than being here in Chicago. He figures the tensions are going to mount and there will be riots in all the major cities. He wants me out of town. What do you plan to do?”
I hadn’t given much thought to my future. The past year had been tough. Dad was sick and I had to take care of my sisters while Mother took care of Dad. Unlike Little Joe, we didn’t have a lot of money. And I didn’t have an army to back me up.
“Maybe I should join up, too. At least then I’d be able to send my paychecks home. The pay is better than minimum wage. I stick around here, I’ll just end up becoming an enforcer like my father.”
“This isn’t the best time to discuss it. Grieve for your family. But even if you don’t join up, you’ll probably be drafted. Before you decide, talk to me. My uncle served in Korea and said they have a buddy system. It would be nice to know someone had my back.”
I did have a lot on my mind. I was smart enough, I suppose, but not college material. When I went to the Selective Service Office and registered on my eighteenth birthday, I could see the writing on the wall. Literally. A chart showed the number of inductions since 1947, the last year there were none. During the Korean conflict, over half a million were inducted one year. The chart showed 82,000 in 1962 with the number rising to an expected 200,000 in 1965. Joe could avoid the draft because his father had power and pull in the government. I couldn’t.
I talked to Joe.
“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” The billboard outside Fort Knox has a picture of John F. Kennedy. It was June of 1965 and Little Joe and I had arrived for basic training.
I’d been invited to dinner one weekend and Big Joe sat the two of us down for a man-to-man talk. I didn’t think Big Joe was involved in any mob stuff, but sometimes labor organization and organized crime got lumped together, and Big Joe was a union boss. Everyone respected him.
“Sylvester, your father, Baptista, was a good man. Someone I could count on to keep workers organized and focused on what we could accomplish. Workers listened to him. I am very sad at his passing and have missed his presence ever since he first fell ill.” He raised his glass and we all saluted my father. He served some good wine, but I took my cue from Little Joe and only had a couple sips.
“Thank you, Don Joseph.”
“Now I want you boys to talk to my attorney and take your enlistment contracts to him before you sign. Johnson lied when he promised not to send troops to Asia. He’ll lie about your enlistment. Now he apologizes about sending the best of our youth to Vietnam. You need to stick together. People who fight alone, die alone.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the implication that if we fought together, we’d die together. But I was glad we took the contract to his lawyer. They’d already started phasing out the buddy system and the lawyer went back to the recruiter and demanded one of the older contracts for us. We had to sign up for four years active and four years reserve in order to get it. I think after that, we were kept together more because our names came in alphabetical order rather than because of our contracts.
But we survived basic with Expert rating on our marksmanship tests and went into Infantry training for our 11B MOS. Each training unit was eight weeks long but we spent six weeks between the two cleaning barracks and building a fake Vietnamese village at Fort Benning. We applied ourselves and protected each other. We were both brought up in proud families that held the support of our friends to be the noblest calling. Besides, knowing that Joe had my back and I had his made us want to do our best. The benefit of working our asses off and attending daily exercises on the firing range was that we entered infantry training as Privates E2, one step up from the bottom, or ‘E-buck-nothing’ as it was commonly called. Automatic promotions usually came right after or during MOS training, but we got a boost since we’d exceeded 90 days and already qualified as expert marksmen.
When we met Sergeant Stevens, he took us out to the new popup variable distance range and requalified everyone in the platoon on our marksmanship. Little Joe and I both aced it with 40 of 40 hits. We were promoted to Private First Class.
Then we shipped out for Vietnam.
At first, Vietnam didn’t seem that different from Georgia except the people outside looked different. On base, it looked just the same. We went through another two weeks of RVN training when we got there which was mostly jumping out of trucks and firing our rifles from ridiculous positions.
Then it all changed. Our platoon was a mess. We started out well-organized, or as well-organized as anything in the army was. We were at full strength with three squads of two fireteams each and a weapons squad with an M-60 machine gun. Each fire team had a Sergeant with three stripes in charge, a Spec4 with an automatic rifle (me), and three ordinary pukes with rifles. The squad leader, a Staff Sergeant, had four stripes. Our platoon leader was a 2nd Lieutenant with a radioman and a platoon sergeant, a Sergeant First Class with five stripes. Forty-six people. Forty-six soldiers who only had the vague notion of pointing their rifles at the brush and spraying it with fire. We were dropped off in the middle of nowhere and told to clear a path for a convoy.
When we returned to base, there were forty-two of us.
“I killed a man,” Little Joe said. He was upset. For as tough and hard as he was, he’d led a somewhat sheltered life. He had bodyguards and everyone knew not to mess with Big Joe’s son. I wondered if that was why Big Joe wanted him in the army. There was once a time when you could get all the blooding you needed on the streets of Chicago and not worry about repercussions. Times changed. As crooked as the cops were, they still frowned on gang wars and took murder seriously. He sent us to the army to learn to kill. It was more of a problem for Little Joe than for me.
“Good. Only 79,999,999 to go.” I was pretty sure I’d accounted for one or two out there. It was hard to tell. You hear a gunburst and six guys point their guns and spray a couple hundred rounds into the jungle. The gunfire goes quiet so somebody must have been killed. Who did it? Who knows? Little Joe had seen his target headed toward us with a grenade and squeezed off a round center mass. The grenade went off in the gook’s hand. Confirmed kill.
“Doesn’t it bother you that we’re out here killing people?”
“Not people. Targets. We’re just clearing the range of targets. See a target, put a bullet in it.”
“You're cold, Sly.”
“Little Joe, all you are to them is a target. Piece of green paper to shoot at. Nobody else even saw the gook you took out. If he’d thrown that grenade we’d be having this conversation as they zipped us into body bags.”
“I can spot them just fine. It’s shooting them I have trouble with.”
“Then point them out and I’ll pull the trigger.”
That started us working as a real team. Joe still used his rifle and took out enemy targets when we engaged. But more and more he used his sharp eyes to find the enemy and called out the range and position to me. I pulled the trigger. The guys started calling me Fox because I was Sly. They called Joe my Hound.
“Fox!” Sarge barked at me. “Third Squad is pinned down at the bend in the river. Charlie’s shooting from the other side and they can’t climb up the bank. They’ve got two wounded. LT wants me to take the rest of the platoon down to rescue them.”
“Dumbass,” I muttered. “Somebody needs to…”
“Don’t say it. There’d just be another one worse.” We had all heard the advice of vets. Don’t talk back to your LT. Go to Vietnam and frag him. With rotation policy, this was already our second LT. They moved every six months. “I’m moving around to the south making a lot of noise. There’s a high spot above the squad over here. Take your Hound and spot where the sonabitch is and eliminate him.”
“We’re moving.” Joe and I shouldered our gear and started crawling in the direction of the high spot.
You see war movies and think the battle was fought, the enemy was killed, and the guys stopped for a beer. All in fifteen minutes. Truth was it lasted all day and most of the night. Every time someone moved there’d be a burst of fire, sometimes returned. Then quiet until movement again. Sarge was keeping the sniper focused downstream. We moved quietly. We found out later that it took about 80,000 bullets to kill one enemy in Vietnam. Spray and pray. On the other hand, Mister Charlie was no better off. It took Little Joe and me six hours to move into position where we could see the opposite bank and stay covered. It was late afternoon when Joe spotted the smoke from the short bursts Charlie fired periodically to keep our guys pinned down.
“Top of the tree with the broken limb hanging in the water,” he said. “Range about 150 yards.” I looked where he said and when another burst was fired I could see the faint wisp of smoke. Sort of. Charlie was hidden in the foliage. I’d have to go to full automatic and try to cut him down. “Oh shit. He’s got backup coming in a hundred yards upstream. Moving slow. Don’t take the shot until we can get them, too.”
“How many?” I stayed focused on the treebird.
“Five. No. Six. Fuckers have an RPG.”
“That’s why he’s just been keeping them pinned down. If Sarge opens up over there, he’ll be a sitting duck. You’ll have to take the rocket man while I take the treebird. If he gets a shot off at us, we’re toast.” Joe brought his M14 to bear. The squad was setting up under the tree.
“Target acquired.”
“Squeeze easy. Mark.”
Our rifles barked out at the same time. The sniper was pitching forward from the tree as I shifted to the gooks below. The rocket man was still hanging onto his launcher with his one remaining arm. I targeted the bastard moving in to help him just as it lit up the area. There was a sudden fusillade from our side of the river as our platoon’s weapons opened fire on the flash. The rocket hit the bank immediately below us and we were blind.
“Let’s boogie.”
Joe and I pulled back as quickly as we could and another rocket hit where we’d been. We kept scooting.
“How many were there?” Sarge demanded.
“Six on the ground and one in the tree,” Joe answered.
“Damn! Scout only counted four bodies and no rocket launcher. Good job. That means there’s only three left to hunt down. Not that we’ll ever see them.”
“After the first launch we were effectively blind. We had to move to get away from the next launch. When we managed to find a new position, it was all over.”
“Fuck. Get some sleep.”
I half expected us to get busted for not killing their whole squad. After all, it was LT that ordered Sarge to go get ’em and he was an asshole. It was a surprise when Captain Lee came by and gave us promotions. Turns out our Sergeant was being promoted and they made Joe a Sergeant and told him to lead the fireteam. We both got bumped to E5. I’d been dreading that day since joining up. I figured it would mean Joe and I would have to split. But Captain Lee had some kind of info about looking for possible sniper teams and they were keeping me as a rifleman.
We were reorganized and two greenies were added to our fireteam. But Joe and I continued to be Fox and Hound. We had four months of hell left on this tour.
Most of that hell was trying to keep our raw team members from getting themselves killed.
We had two weeks leave when we returned home in April of 1967. I slept the first week. Why the fuck we contracted for four years of active instead of three… That was the price the recruiter extracted for giving us the buddy contract. You couldn’t get them any longer. Army figured you should make your friends in the army. But if you were on the ground, your team kept getting shuffled around too much to keep contact with the same guys. We’d had three lieutenants and two platoon sergeants on that twelve-month tour.
We were both assigned back to Fort Benning. I was assigned as a rifle instructor and Joe went to school. The rapid buildup of the army to meet the needs of the Nam meatgrinder had left confusion among the ranks and a vacuum in leadership. Both Joe and I faced promotion again. We bunked together because of our names, not because we were buddies. It made no difference. When we went back for our second trip to the jungle, we’d have exactly the same responsibilities as when we left. We’d just get paid more.
We had another surprise coming. The army is full of them. In January of 1968, we were called to be test rabbits for the new sniper training program. We’d been there and worked together as a team. Half a dozen others with experience worked with a Korea vet to determine what was needed in the training program.
“The standard is too high,” some fat ass Colonel complained. “The guys who designed it couldn’t pass it.”
That was a challenge none of us could pass up. Drill sergeants were lined up to teach and swore they’d wash half of us out. In order to “be fair”, they brought in eight more expert marksmen who had seen action and eight sharpshooters who had finished 11B training at the top of their class. The twenty-four of us started sniper training April 22, 1968. Eleven of us finished two weeks later. The sergeants achieved their goal. But of the thirteen who washed out, seven were from the new recruits. Five were from the vets who had seen action. One of our original eight broke his leg on the eighth day and couldn’t finish the course.
They decided to limit training to those who had seen action and distinguished themselves. And they’d start training in Vietnam to move assets directly to and from the front. We deployed in June. Three of our original eight and three of the vets joined the training team. The recruit was held back until he’d seen action. The remaining six of us—three teams of two—were sent on assignments. We had new M14A1 rifles that had been retuned to strip out the bayonet mounts and add scopes.
We were nominally part of a platoon but the two of us were considered an independent fireteam. We reported to the Platoon Sergeant but our orders came from HQ. Most of the time we were separate from our platoon. We were sent out on more specific missions.
“U Than is using his clothing store to pass arms and explosives along to Charlie. Eliminate him.” We’d get dropped off somewhere within a couple of miles of the target and hiked out when we finished the mission.
“Charlie is harrying our supply route in an untypical organized fashion. Someone is giving them direction. Locate and take out the leader. And as many others as you can.” We got the target and escaped with Charlie still trying to figure out where the shot came from.
“An anti-air unit is moving in and out along Route E and have picked off a fighter. Eliminate the gunners and call an airstrike on the position to destroy the equipment.” Fuck. Two weeks of crawling on our bellies to find the bastards and a week back.
“Don’t run,” Joe reminded me. “You’ll only die tired.”
The army wasn’t all a bitch, just most of it. We had a driver, Denny, during that second tour. He was supposed to deliver us to Mile Post 38 where we’d hike into the jungle and disappear. Our mission was to end some fucker’s life so he stopped making problems for us. I don’t remember which fucker anymore.
About five miles from our drop, there was a sudden rattle of machine gun fire and Denny went ballistic. He hit a crater in the middle of the road, lost control, and put the jeep headfirst into a tree. By the time Denny was back to his senses, Joe and I had slipped off into the jungle and disappeared. We weren’t there to save his ass. We had a mission.
Three weeks later we made it back to our base. We stretched out on our bunks for some well-deserved rest when Denny walked by. Before he could say anything to us, one of the guys started singing that Green Beret song that had come out about the time we got out of basic. Only he changed up the words.
Put silver wheels on Denny’s chest
Make him one of the Army’s best.
Give him a jeep, he’ll drive it well
And then he’ll smash it all to hell.
We eliminated 47 targets that year. Probably not as high a number as we’d done during our first tour, but I lost track back then. Since our targets were selected at HQ and handed to us, they kept track of our confirmed kills. Joe spotted, gave me range and wind conditions, and I pulled the trigger. We moved slowly and deliberately. There were times when it took two days to get within range without being spotted. While I focused on the target, sometimes more than a thousand yards away, Joe kept his rifle trained on the collateral—anyone who might shoot back. He probably killed more than I did, but we only confirmed the targets.
And in June 1969, we boarded a transport for Germany and then home to Fort Benning. I made Sergeant while we were deployed but Joe stayed a rank ahead of me. We were offered a nice bonus to stay on as trainers at Fort Benning but we both felt we had fulfilled our terms of service and didn’t want to tempt fate. After debriefing, we were processed out and began our time in the reserves.
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