ANGELS IN THE ZONE

A war story that is not about physical war, but the inner conflicts we sometimes have.

ANGELS IN THE ZONE

A Short Story

1.

Though a truce had been announced between the United Nations forces and the Viet Cong for both the Christmas and Tet holidays Doc was not happy that he was pulling perimeter guard duty. He certainly understood that even during such a truce a minimum degree of security still needed to be maintained, but this did not help his frame of mind knowing the majority of the base’s military personnel were about to watch the Bob Hope USO Christmas show in person. It was not his missing seeing Hope and his troupe of comics retelling cliched jokes, but his not being able to watch the women performers, especially Joey and Ann.

To pass the time using the only viable option he seemed to have, Doc pulled several letters from home out of his fatigue shirt pocket, letters he had already read several times. When rereading a letter from his brother Brian, a fellow serviceman who was stationed in California, he heard the sound of a vehicle, likely on the dirt road that circumvented the base, and glancing Eastward he could see a jeep, maybe a hundred yards up the road, heading towards his old French build bunker guard post. Figuring it was the SAT patrol making it’s rounds to check up on the posted guards, Doc quickly folded his brother’s letter and put it and the other letters back into his shirt pocket.

As the gap between them shortened, perhaps forty yards away, he noticed both the driver and passenger were women, not just women but women Red Cross volunteers and he did his best not to appear to gawk as the vehicle came to a stop in front of his post.

"Good afternoon, Sargent," the driver said as she and her passenger stepped onto the road. "I’m Janet and this is my coworker Jo."

"I ... uh ... uh ..." Doc started to reply as Janet offered her hand for him to shake. "I’m sorry. I’m just a bit ... a bit surprised to encounter two visions of celestial beauty out here."

"Thanks for the flattering description, but we’re very real. She’s a country gal and I’m a city chick," Jo assured him as she shook his hand. "Nice phrase, though. You’ve got a poet’s soul."

"A wannabe poet at best. Still, I’m wondering why you ladies are out here?"

"Sargent, you must have known we’re on this base?" Janet gently quizzed him.

"Believe me, we all know the RC is here and I’ve noticed some of you around. Still, I figured you would all be at the USO show or spending time with the wounded."

"We had the option to attend the show, but we chose to spend time with you soldiers who couldn’t go."

"Six of us stayed at the infirmary. The other six of us paired up, loaded up our jeeps and headed out to do the Donut Dollies thing to visit you guys pulling duty," Jo added.

"Six women paired up means three jeeps and that means at least three of you can drive a stick shift. I’m impressed!"

"Not all of us need guys to do everything for us," Janet responded, then winked. "So now I want to ask why you’re pulling guard duty with those ranking stripes on your shoulder, Sargent?"

"Our C.O. put our names in a hat and it was my misfortune ... okay, not so much a misfortune now because you two showed up to brighten my day."

"Stop that or I’ll be blushing, you sweety! So, back to our job now, like offering you some refreshments. Care for coffee, baked cookies or some donuts?" Jo wondered.

"Pass on the food, but if you’ve got enough coffee to spare my canteen can hold a lot," Doc answered with a warm grin as he emptied it of the water it held. "And I hope I’m not offending you two ladies but I’m not to keen on the term Donut Dollies."

"Well, we do deliver donuts and the Red Cross has been doing so going back several wars," Janet confirmed. "And don’t tell anyone but Jo and I aren’t that fond of the term either."

"Misleading, really, because you do so much more. From what I understand you’ve been nurses, counselors at times, shoulders to lean on and friends. Sort of like a shrink but without their high income."

"Your flattery is pretty effective, you sweet talking man, you," Jo chuckled as she filled up his canteen. "You must have a lot of girls waiting for your return."

"Not really because I’m saving my virgin body for a woman back in the states I haven’t met yet," Doc whimsically reacted to her humor.

"But that doesn’t mean you can’t accept the gift we have for you, does it?"

"As long as it’s not a striptease because I’m saving myself for a true love I haven’t met yet."

Jo laughed robustly as Janet reached into the rear of the jeep and selected a shoe box sized wrapped present.

"A Care Package from home because a lot of people care," Janet stated with pride as she handed him the package. "These are normally put together and given to POWs but the Vietcong have, for some reason, shut down allowing them to be given to their prisoners."

For a moment Doc stared at the package as if it were the greatest gift he had ever received.

"Where is the standard Christmas package hint teasing, ladies?" he finally asked while returning to form.

"If you can’t make it as a serious writer you’ll be a hit writing comedy," Jo suggested light heartedly.

"Some day I might just become the writer you think I am."

"Hope so."

"Anyway, we’re really not sure what these packages always hold. Watching many of them being opened I’ve seen combinations of socks, combs, toothpaste, tooth brushes, paper back books, even hard candy and packs of cigarettes and even packs of playing cards and poker chips, sometimes beef jerky or bubble gum" Janet informed him. "And one time we watched when a PFC opened his package and he was actually embarrassed when we noticed him pull out and open a folded nude pinup model poster."

"Oh, admit it, Janet! You were happy that soldier didn’t recognize you with your clothes on," Jo gaily taunted her pardner.

"Ms. Jo, you’re the one who should be writing comedy," Doc responded to her retort.

"So, anyway," Janet continued after giving them both a shy grin, "private citizens back home make the donations, our team back home put the packages together and sends them to us. All we really do is wrap them when they get here and deliver them."

"The intent is important," Doc mentioned sincerely. "Care means caring."

"You’re so sweet, Mr. Saving Yourself," Janet said as she gave him a peck on the cheek and her and Jo climbed back into the jeep. "But we really need to be going because we’ve got six more posts to visit."

"The next guard post down the road? His name is Will and don’t be flirting with him because he’s the type who’ll take it seriously. And expect both of your fannies to be padded or pinched."

"I’m pretty sure we can handle him okay," Janet laughed as she started the engine.

"By the way, that you’re here in the zone doing what you do certainly makes you angels in my book," Doc praised them, then saluted the women as if they were RN commissioned officers.

"You sweety, you," Jo exclaimed, then blew him a kiss, as they drove away.

2.

　

After the USO show was over and Doc had been relieved by the late shift Security Police unit, he sat on his cot in his Quonset Hut staring at the unopened package. As tempting was it was to instantly open it the hesitation was the result of the conversation he had with Jo. Though the conversation had been short it triggered his not so distant memories of his pre-military life through high school, in part because of her intuitive assumption he was a writer or should be one.

He actually had, by the time he was sixteen, though about becoming a serious writer and the several poems he had written in high school that were published in the school newspaper flamed the desire. Thinking back on that time Doc didn’t consider his poor grades, grades barely enough to allow him to graduate, a handicap because he had read the biographies of some famous writers to learn that some of them barely finished high school and being honest with himself he didn’t blame the school system because he spent too much time studying what he wanted to study, including the reading of non-classroom assigned books he wanted to read..

The two things Doc instinctively seemed to know was an expanded vocabulary was essential and he needed to experience life beyond the small, conservative suburb he grow up in. Knowing he didn’t have the grades to attend college, to him the easiest second choice for instant experiences appeared to be to enlist. And in reflection, considering he had not yet been killed by mortar rounds or sniper fire, it was a wise choice, one that let him travel by plane and train for the first time, travel out of state for the first time, let him go through boot camp in San Antonia, then to a surveillance equipment maintenance tech school in Mississippi and to his first duty assignment at the White Sands Testing Grounds in New Mexico.

His reflective train of thought was suddenly derailed when Chuck, his best friend and fellow SAT member, tapped him on the shoulder.

"Just open the damn thing, Doc, so I can see what you’ve got I can swap you for," Chuck chided his as friends often do.

"So, how was the show?"

"Same old s**t but, man, Raquel is one hot chick."

"Raquel Welch?’

"Yeah, that Raquel Welch."

"All I know about her is for that movie poster where she is wearing a fur bikini. And what did James think? Did he take a lot of photos?" Doc inquired of the third member of their SAT, noted for always carrying around his 35 mm camera. 

                

"That putz didn’t even go because he said he wanted to take as many photos of our base while he could because in two weeks he's on the bird home."

"Sounds like Jimmy because he's doing a photo diary, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, but open your damn package, dude!"

"What have you got worth my attention?"

‘These, Hemingway," Chuck announced as he tossed two paper back books on the cot. "Some short story collection by Agatha Christie and that ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ book."

"Hell, I’ve read that novel so many times already I could act out the parts."

"You’d make a great Scout, huh? So you don’t want what I’ve got to offer," Chuck teased him as he started to pick the books back up.

"Of course I do. I’ll trade you everything in my package for them, except a book if there’s one."

"Deal." Chuck agreed as he sat on the cot and waited for his friend to open his Care Package.

As Janet had suggested might happen the package contained a tooth brush, a bottle of shampoo, a deck of cards, two pairs of socks, two packs of cigarettes, a tin of hard candy, some combs, even a knife, fork and spoon set and a book to read, a book titled ‘V." by a writer Doc had never heard of and he gave everything except the novel to Chuck.

"Did Jimmy get anything interesting to trade?" Doc asked hopefully. .

"How the hell would I know? That gooney bird swapped everything in his package he didn’t even open to some guy in another unit for maybe a half-dozen rolls of film."

"Sounds like Jimbo."

"Filtered cigarettes?" Guess I can cut off the filters or trade these for some real cigarettes. And it's kinda nice having my own private set of utensils that didn’t have to be stolen from the mess hall, but what the hell kind of runt of a soldier wears size eight pairs of socks?" Chuck smirked as he held up the socks that came in the trade.

"Maybe a draftee because the Army isn’t all that picky, but you could always give them to one of the nurses on the base," Doc suggested.

"Give? No, but I might just trade them for something she’s got I want."

"I’ll give your ego an ‘A’ for effort and, who knows, it might just work for you?" Doc chuckled as Chuck gathered up his bounty.

3.

When Chuck had gone back to his own cot Doc paged through ‘V’, the first novel by a writer named Thomas Pynchon, lingering enough to read the very intriguing and quirky chapter titles, then several pages from each chapter and concluded it was going to be a complex, challenging and fun novel to read, one that would require his full attention while reading it. After grabbing a soda from the SAT’s shared refrigerator, Doc fluffed his pillow, leaned it against the wall, and started reading. Before he had even read one third of the book he began to realize this novel was leading him into a world of literature he had never been exposed to, one certainly beyond the more popular books he had read during his younger life.

Though he had always been known for his natural wit, much of it spontaneous, and his standing as a popular class clown, by the time he was a sophomore he was overweight and had a bad case of acne and the clown act became a deflection tactic to cover his low self-esteem about his physical appearance, an acknowledgment he was unwilling to admit at the time. Through the grace of luck or fate his enlistment brought about an unexpected improvement to his life. Boot camp caused him to lose, actually sweat out, the excess weight and the bland, but healthy military diet let his complestion clear up and after his finished his tech school training, proving to himself he could handle advanced courses when he made the effort, the low self-image had dissipated, along with the need for the deflective clown act.

When he came to accept that he felt himself ready to start writing seriously, humor was not going to be the defining intent of the story, and if there was humor if would reflect a specific character. The subjects he would chose to cover, some based on personal experience, would reflect real life, life beyond imagined ideal situations, injecting topical issues into the stories, like the Civil Rights Movement and equal pay for equal work, and encouraging  the readers’ contemplation about doing what was morally right, hopefully learning to do so subtly enough to not sound like he was preaching from a soap-box.

And despite their disclaimer that one of them was just an country gal and the other a city chick, Jo and Janet were angels to him because their gift was the opening of another door in his life, a passage allowing him to read a book that altered his perception of where serious writing could take him, a revelation that raised the motivation bar someone like him needed to push his desires forward.

Reviews

[Lydia Shutter]

Fascinating story! I have a feeling this is based on truth because the dialog is so honest. It is always interesting to see why writers started writing. I believe a lot of them were not stars in high school so they turned to their words for comfort. People can inspire us along the way. This is my favorite line, ""Some day I might just become the writer you think I am."" If someone believes in you, you can go far. I liked the mention of Raquel Welch. I remember when she did USO shows with Bob Hope. Wonderful story. Lydi**

[Willys Watson]

Thank you. And this story, as well as Incoming Luck, are based on my personal experiences in Vietnam. Incoming Luck took place several months later than this story.