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The Crush of War: Dogpatch

 Excerpt from Fire in the Hole: A Mortarman in Vietnam,
J. Michael Orange, Writers Club Press New York, NY, 2001.

The piercing scream of the police whistle cut through the thick soup of dust and heat. Scores of people scurried to dodge the monstrous machines of war. The traffic cop was trying to bring order to the chaos at this intersection of Highway 1—Vietnam’s coastal roadway—and a cross street near the city of Da Nang. 

His starched and pressed light green uniform, white arm band, gleaming white helmet, and, most surprisingly, spotless white gloves set him apart from the heat and filth of Vietnam and war. This was the distinguished uniform of South Vietnam’s U.S.-supported National Police, disdainfully dismissed as the “White Mice.” 

He blew his whistle again. Were this a real city and not “Dogpatch,” an artificial suburb created by the U.S. military on the outskirts of the true Da Nang City, people might have obeyed the whistle and halted. Were the people familiar with the rules of a city and not simple peasants driven by the War from their farms, they might have known what to do. The drivers of the numerous military trucks, pedicabs, bicycles, and “cyclos” might have remembered there were rules other than the one cardinal rule of war: survive. 

Book cover. Image is off soldiers ducking for cover amid a sandbag bunker.

"The Crush of War: Dogpatch" is from Fire in the Hole: A Mortarman in Vietnam.

Across the street from where I stood, an old woman, dressed in a tattered, dull white ao dai, threw up her arms and emitted a scream so shrill it replaced the impotent shriek of the police whistle. Her voice rose in cacophony with the nerve-jarring grate of metal being twisted and crushed. 

A Marine deuce-and-a-half truck that had been turning left directly toward me jerked to a stop before the upturned hands of the traffic cop. The truck’s hood was higher than the cop’s head. The truck’s right side was somewhat higher than the left. 

A conical hat rolled on an arcing escape route toward me in the dust. Its wake led back to the gray head of an old man in black pajamas who lay on his right side still astride a downed bicycle that pointed toward the screaming woman on the far side of the street. 

I took a step forward to gain a clear view and saw that the massive right front tire of the truck had rolled up on to the middle of the bike and the old man’s spindly legs. The massive weight of the truck bore down, mixing bicycle parts with human leg parts. 

Next the traffic cop frantically motioned the driver forward. The driver complied, let off the brake and the truck completed the journey over metal and limb. A sound like the breaking of brittle chicken bones mixed with the taste of the dust. Instead of crying out or crawling away, the old papa san eased down flat on his back in the street. His gray head and beard lolled in the slight breeze.

I remember saying under my breath: “What an idiot! Didi mau! Move you dinky dao gook! Three feet and you’ll be out of the truck’s way.” He did not move. 

The traffic cop waved his hands authoritatively for the driver to stop again so the old man could escape or someone could help him. Instead, the truck kept coming; a leviathan that could be slowed but not stopped. 

I sensed a hole where my values once were. It felt like the early stages of a disease that made the abnormal seem normal. War had infected me with a counterfeit conscience.

A mournful groan wheezed from the old man’s scrunched up mouth when the tandem tires on the second truck axle began their torturous climb up onto the rear wheel of the bicycle no doubt firing new shards of pain through the old man’s broken legs.

I saw his head turn to the left and stare at the giant tires on their course toward his bicycle seat and tiny midsection. He seemed to skip right by terror and slide into despair. 

“Too late,” I thought. “You’re going to die, old fool. You should have gotten out of the way when you had the chance, dink.”  

For a second time, bike and bones lifted the truck. His head twisted back to the right and out spewed an agonized cry of pain that ended, all breath expended, in a gurgling sound from somewhere deep in his throat.

The obstinate driver heeded the now frantic arm waving and whistle blowing of the traffic cop, and he jerked the truck to a stop in unison with a breathy groan that squeezed out of the old man. 

Two people materialized and grabbed the feeble, broken body and whisked him and the mangled bike back into the dust cloud on the other side of the street. They vanished in seconds. 

The sound of the police whistle restarted normal time.

The truck completed its turn through the intersection and the driver gunned the engine as he pulled past and enveloped me in a plume of diesel exhaust.

The episode had slowed him down by less than a minute. 

With a blithe indifference, I felt nothing except impatience for the old man. Then it hit me. 

Standing at that busy intersection, I sensed a hole where my values once were. I sensed a desiccated residue, like when a snake sheds its skin and leaves a dry husk of itself. It felt like the early stages of a disease that made the abnormal seem normal. 

War had infected me with a counterfeit conscience. I feared that later the disease and I would become one. 

Biographical Details

Primary Location During Vietnam: Da Nang, Vietnam Vietnam location marker

Story Subject: Military Service

Military Branch: U.S. Marine Corps

Dates of Service: 1968 - 1970

Veteran Organization: Veterans for Peace

Unit: 1st Marine Division, 1st Battalion, H & S Company

Specialty: 0341 mortars

Story Themes: 1968, 1969, 1970, 1st Marines, Books, Da Nange, Death and Loss, Dissent, Dogpatch, Humanity, Marines, Michael Harvey, Michael Orange, Read, Reflection, Veterans for Peace, West Saint Paul, West St Paul

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