believe this book is such a testament, and hope these words are such a light.
May 1, 2015, Trang Bang, Vietnam
With love and gratitude to
Hoang Thu Trang, Le Hoang Linh,
and the many generous Vietnamese
friends who made this book complete,
r.g. cantalupo
To Mariela,
With love, thanks, and gratitude
through the long years.
In Shadow Before Light
I never heard the mortar call my name.
No one did.
Oh, maybe you heard the round shooting out the tube a thousand meters away, the muffled poomf! and then a buddy yelling “Incoming!”, but once it was in the air, you never heard a sound.
If they were going to miss you, arc high over your head or to the left or right beyond you, then you might hear them spinning, a soft whistle like wind through bamboo as they spiraled past you through the sky.
If they were close though--close enough to wound or kill you, so close they were going to hit the ground only a few feet or a few inches from where you stood--you didn’t hear a thing, you only saw the orange and red burst of the explosion, and felt the burning shrapnel tearing through your flesh.
But on this night, I heard nothing--neither the firing, nor the explosion.
We’d just returned from three weeks of ‘search and destroy’ in the Ho Bo Woods, and Firebase Pershing, the battalion headquarters, was a welcome sight, the place where hot showers, clean socks, warm meals, and letters from The World were waiting, where no L-shaped ambushes or hot LZ’s lay around a bend in the trail or on the shadowy side of a tree line.
No, with two rings of concertina wire around the perimeter, four batteries of artillery, and the battalion command post dug in under three layers of sandbags, the firebase was relatively safe.
Only the occasional sniper from nearby rubber trees gave us the rush of terror now and then.
Or the sound of incoming mortars.
I awoke in the silent dark, not even the geckos cackling their favorite “fuck-you, fuck you, fuck you”; not even the crickets strumming their broken-stringed guitars.
I awoke and I did not know whether someone put a palm on my shoulder and nudged me, or whether some larger mystery roused me in the dark.
I awoke and the night was silent and I was inside a bunker, inside the belly of a beast whose rippled, olive-drab sandbag skin and steel ribs conjured up the belly of a gecko in my daze.
I doused my face with musty canteen water, tied my boot laces and stepped halfway into the doorway trying to find my bearings in the dark—
To the west nothing, not even a line where the horizon ended—
To the east, a few distant flares from a firefight too far to hear.
I turned toward the north, faced the perimeter our bunker guarded, and looked out into the night.
A red ember caught my eye.
One of the new guys on guard, smoking?
Dumb. Dumb. Really dumb. Sniper-bait.
You don’t smoke out in the open at night. Not if you want to survive. Not if you want to keep your head. You have to hide it, shield it, cup the red ember wholly in your hands.
I step out of the doorway to tell him.
One step. Two. Three.
Time compressed into a rapid heartbeat and the rush of adrenaline--toward the burning ember, deeper into the mouth of night.
From the moment I stepped through the dark doorway and into the open sky, I knew something was wrong.
Call it a premonition, a sixth sense, combat hyper-awareness, but as I stepped through the dark doorway into the naked sky, the hairs on the back of my neck spiked.
I felt like I was walking into the firing zone of an ambush just before the trip-wire snaps and the bombs explode.
I couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, but I felt it.
It was too quiet maybe.
Or it was the careless red glow of the FNG’s cigarette pinpointing our position.
Or it was the ominous black of the new-mooned night.
Call it what you want, but for the few seconds while the mortar was spinning toward me through the dark, I could feel death’s breath on my neck.
One step. Two. Three.
Midway into the fourth, the ember burst into a thousand sparks.
I am blown into the night sky, thrown like a rag doll, a hundred burning fires shooting into my body as I hurl.
When I hit the ground, I hear someone screaming, “Medic!!! Medic!!!”—realize the voice is mine.
After that, all I remember is the heat, the red-hot metal, the jagged fragments piercing my arms, legs, chest, and head.
I remember the warm liquid oozing over my body, the jungle fatigues soaking and sticking to my skin, the dull throbbing, the fear flailing like a caged bird in the locked chambers of my heart.
Still, I do not remember how I got there.
Not then, and not now.
I don’t remember whether I walked out of the bunker because someone roused me for guard duty, or if I’d simply wandered outside because I’d heard someone call my name.
Blood pours out my head, neck, chest, left arm and legs, drenching my jungle fatigues with a sticky wetness like warm pee.
I lay on my back, numb, the pain of my wounds not yet breaking through the shock of the explosion.
“Move!” I say to my body, “Crawl for cover!” but my body will not answer, my arms and legs beyond my words.
Blood seeps into the dry clay beneath me, forms a puddle like monsoon rain.
I am dissolving into the earth, sinking down in a warm pool.
Then a hand, hands start to pull me out, up. I see faces, flashlights with red lenses, red flames igniting my eyes.
I bounce up and down.
I am a huge insect with eight legs running toward a bunker.
I look up at the faces lit by red light.
I see fear, fear of death, fear of bad karma and bad luck, fear that whoever called to me may soon call to them.
And now I too am afraid, afraid of what they see, afraid of the bloody face reflected in their eyes.
“Hang in there, Radio!” Mike, our platoon leader, screams. “You’re alright!”
His order will not rouse me. I can no longer hear his commands.
“How’s the FNG?” someone asks.
“Gone. Mortar must’ve hit right where he was standing.”
“You find a body for his tags?”
“Uhhh…no. Not much there, you know.”
“Keep looking. Find something to tag. Alpha one, this is Bravo-two-twelve. Request medevac. Affirmative. One. Yes, just one. Serious. How you doin’, Ace?”
“I can’t breathe.”
“Medic!!! Where the fuck is that medic? Just relax, Radio, we’ll have you out of here in ten minutes. You see the flash?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”