Hearts and Minds

Outskirts of A Sau Valley, Vietnam, 1969

Hearts and minds. We're here to win hearts and minds. Seven words that bounce numbingly around my skull all day and then night when they wrap themselves around the screams and cries of the victims in my dreams.

They were firmly attached at the beginning of all this, the symbols, I mean. The signs of peace painted onto our helmets. Now they're faded and cracked and barely visible under the mud and blood splattered onto them.

None of that matters. We're here to win hearts and minds.

"Hickman, buddy. You good?" Hansen walks over to me across the dusty clearing with his shirt tied around his waist, his undershirt filthy and soaked with sweat, his dog-tag glinting in the setting sun. He sits down next to me and offers me his canteen. There is dirt and dried blood caked under his nails. I take the bottle off him and let the water rush over my dry tongue. After a few gulps I sigh and squint in the bright orange evening light.

"I was talking to the guys earlier right?", Hansen pipes up, "they overheard Carson talking to Powell, they think we'll get the chance to go to Saigon again in the next month or so. That's cool huh?" He's excited. He nudges my arm as his eyes light up with the possibility of having a moment to ourselves in the city. I try to return the excitement by casting him a half-assed smile. He sees right through me and says, "yeah I know what you're thinking. We have to at least live through the next month if we wanna go. But hey, we aren't far from the next base camp". This time he grabs my shoulder.

We sit in silence for a while basking in what's left of the afternoon sun with nothing but the distant sound of patrolling chopper blades and the guys around us muttering tired jokes to each other in sad attempts to brighten the mood. It's quiet, but I have to be on edge – we all do. The Vietcong could be anywhere, using our confusion and idiocy against us, because we can't tell who's who.

Their blood is on our hands and it just don't matter whose it is. Shoot what's standing in front of you and hope God figures out the rest. No one's said that yet but I can tell we're all thinking it.

"Incoming!" We hear from a distance followed by the sound of an approaching jet and then a BOOM. "Go time pansies! Kick up your heels let's go let's go!" General Carson barks at anyone who will listen, which of course we all are, because we're too shit-scared to listen to logic right now. Hansen and I jump to our feet and grab the closest weapons and helmets.

Mine of course, has a faded yellow peace symbol painted shakily onto the left. Grace, a nurse I met in Saigon at the very beginning did that for me. I remember her husky laugh and grey eyes. I remember the smile that spread across her family over a MARS radio.

She was shot the next day.

We're here to win hearts and minds.

We immediately rush to formation and prepare to stand off against the approaching enemy. Whoever that is.

There are bolts of sound that rupture my eardrums and send my jaw rattling as bullets fly past my face and as my skin and uniform becomes progressively wetter, I am left to wonder if it's the slow trickle of rain that's forming over our heads as we fight, sweat, blood, or a mixture of all three. "Hickman get down!" I hear an order from General Carson, so that's what I do, hands clenched to the sides of my helmets.

I feel the faded, crumbling yellow paint from my helmet peel off and settle beneath my already-filthy fingernails. In this instant, I remember a time before this shit-show, when Hansen and I met in '65.

I accidentally stood on his boots during a peace rally and instead of getting all pissy that I just scuffed his nice white leather shoes he just laughed and said, "Don't worry about it buddy we got bigger things to be concerned with." That was my first of many rallies I attended. I promised my sister I would never enlist, and to my credit I never did, I continued to fight for peace. Then they introduced conscription. That's when I met Hansen again, in Saigon when my cohort landed. "Never thought I'd see you here. Dan Hickman, by the way." I had said. "Well I guess I could say the same for you. But hey, hearts and minds and all that bullshit right?" Hansen had laughed, clapped me on the shoulder and shone his brilliant grin.

I am back up on my feet and back to back with Robinson, firing our weapons at a horrific rate. Vietcong are falling, and as they hit the ground, they either choke on their own fucking blood or pray that someone will save them from the "filthy Americans".

I feel a jolt of momentum from behind me, a stifled groan and a spray of red warmth splatters across my face. I turn to see Robinson motionless in the mud with a good chunk of his face missing.

Without thinking, I take his ammo strapped across his chest and drape it over my forearm as I step over the poor man and continue firing and screaming in all directions. I stop in a small ditch that provides limited cover. This is where Hansen is perched, sweat, rain and tears dripping off of his chin. He welcomes me into the space by grabbing at my shoulder. "Christ they're everywhere Hick. Shit what do we do?" I take in his tearful expression. "It's gonna be okay Hansen don't worry. Look, we just gotta get through today, yeah? We're in this for the long haul so we just gotta stick it out for Saigon, okay? Come on," He's nodding his head slowly as I grab the back of his helmet and jostle his head around to perk him up and to get him focused.

"Hearts and minds and all that bullshit?" Hansen lets out a laugh and looks into my eyes. "Saigon it is, Dan." I am taken aback. He never calls me Dan. It's always Hickman. He looks away from me and grabs his rifle before looking out over the field slowly to see if the coast is clear. I'm watching his back and turn to check on him when I hear, "Hickman-" and then nothing.

I am numb.

My eyeballs throb and itch from fatigue, I am still trying to blink mud out of them. My hands are shaking, and I've bitten into my bottom lip and it bleeds. I can see the flecks of yet more dried blood caked into my eyelashes and eyebrows.

We're walking along a gravel path and rain thunders down around us, washing the stench of death away and into little rivers flowing between my boots. We are quiet and alert, anticipating more. While I am aware of all this, one sound won't leave my head. The sickening noise the stray bullet made when it went in between Hansen's eyes. Only it wasn't a stray, it was a stealth shot from an unknown man I gunned down without batting an eye after he hurt my friend. After he killed my best friend.

I feel the sick coming up again now, so I stop where I am and fall to my knees and let everything inside me out. One minute he was there, by my side, and then gone in the blink of an eye, one minute the boy was there, gun trained on us, and then gone the next. There was a peace symbol painted onto his helmet too.

There was a moment, after Hansen was shot when he looked, I don't know, not shocked, not confused like all the movies say, no. He looked scared – like, shit-terrified.

I stumble slowly back to my feet and force myself to continue without thinking of him – thinking of how he lit up when he heard music and began dancing to make us guys all feel better, how smitten he sounded when someone brought up his girlfriend Rachel, how no matter how filthy and disgusting we all were at the end of a hard day, his green eyes pierced through all the crap on his face and more so, how much he cared about everyone. Not just the soldiers from home, no, but the others too - the Vietnamese. I always admired the way he was around them.

He gave them water from his own goddamn canteen and drew the kids peace signs on scraps of paper he tore out of his own fucking journal. Good God that kid didn't deserve what he got. The rain has soaked through my skin, it feels, stripping my bones layer by layer with its icy touch. This isn't peace, we aren't making peace, we've been lied to, our childhoods ripped from our grasps and a helmet slapped onto our skulls. This is war. We're here to win – no – hearts – no – and minds – NO.