What really happened to Pendergast in Vietnam
by GreatAuntCornelia
URL: http://www.bluecatsgraphics.com/pean/fanfics/5/

The air was close and rank as the small cluster of soldiers crept across the steamy jungle. Under the black grease paint, their faces were grim. Earlier that evening, they had made the gristly discovery that the 6th infantry division, their compatriots and friends had been massacred as they ate. It was a sickening sight, bodies everywhere. Some of the men had already turned in for the night only to become trapped in an infinite slumber, others contorted in agony, mouths agape in a silent scream. The smell of blood mixed with the smell of dinner, still bubbling on the hearth, creating a macabre effect.

The seven young soldiers that had managed to escape the me^le'e returned from the surrounding foliage arms laden with firewood. They were the youngest members and therefore always received the “grunt work” chores. The solders pushed through the brush talking and laughing until they became aware of the eerie silence coming from the once lively encampment. The laughter froze on their slack jawed faces as they surveyed all that lay before them. Upon realizing the scene, their chore was immediately forgotten, twigs and branches dropped in sheer horror. Several of the men leaned over and retched at the sight that lay before them. In the vast ocean of bodies lay men old and young, friends, uncles and fathers. Suddenly the war became a shocking reality. One soldier, however, surveyed the scene with cool blue eyes.

Lieutenant Aloysius Pendergast was only sixteen years old, but had received special permission to join the Army. His father, General Pendergast had been an influential member of the Army during the First World War, and his son, Aloysius promised to follow that same path. Aloysius loved the thrill of the hunt, as a youth he had often accompanied his father to the farthest reaches of the earth for big game hunting. He was a marked shot, and rarely ever missed his targets. He had proved himself to the Commanding officers and was sent to Vietnam, leaving school to defend his country. It had all sounded so glamorous and heroic, and it was an opportunity to outshine his brother Diogenese who seemed always to be in the apple of his mother’s eye.

But now, as he stood surveying the scene, these memories seemed a distant and suddenly selfish thought. A change came over the precocious teenager. He felt his features harden, and the light inside him seemed to go out at once. The reality arrived immediately—he may never live to see his mother or father again. Although his stomach lurched, he suppressed the urge to vomit. His fellow officers also began to regain composure. They knew it fell to them to complete the mission their Infantry had been assigned.

They waded across the carnage before them, trying hard not to look at the hardened faces that had hours before been crinkled into reluctant smiles as Bill Rogers performed an old Abbot and Costello routine for an eager audience. Arriving at the general’s tent, an older boy, Peter Jenkins pulled back the flap and entered. The air inside was hot and already the flies were gathering over the General’s still body. Hardening his features, Peter grabbed the pile of maps from the table and returned to his waiting “battalion.”

He spoke in low, hesitant tones, “We are all that is left, and it is our duty to complete this mission. There are only seven of us, and that is both strength and weakness. Our small number is assiduous, because we avoid the clumsiness of a complete Infantry, but we face greater risk of being captured because there are so few of us. We travel single file. Aloysius?” At this, the young man started. He had been something of the “runt” around these other boys, nicknames Whitey because of his pallid complexion. In fact this was the first time in six moths he had been addressed by his first name. “Aloysius, you have completed training in intelligence have you not?” At this Pendergast nodded. Peter’s tone was growing clipped and emotionless, and, Aloysius thought, if they made it home alive, Peter would make a great general. “Then you will be in charge of discerning the maps. Marshall, Bellevue, Stout, and Landis, you will be our front and rear guard, two in front and two in back, weapons at the ready. Wilson, you are our scout. If you hear, see, or smell anything unusual, you must signal. Can you make the sound of a mourning dove?” Wilson nodded. “Good, Gentlemen tonight you may have to kill a man, and I hope for my sake and also yours that you will not let fear have the better of you.”

The mood was somber as they passed the grease paint. The black composite made the facial impressions hard to see, but every man could feel the thick air pressing in around them. They collected ammunition and spare munitions from the bodies of their compatriots. Some of the bodies already had bloated from the heat and the insects were hungrily at work. Pendergast and Jenkins stood aside from the men and plotted their course. After a few moments of deliberation it was time to go. A nod from Lt. Jenkins, and the battalion crept forward into the forbidding jungle.

Wilson led the march, followed at a slight distance by Pendergast as he led the rest of the men. He had always had an affinity for reading maps, and his cat-like senses enabled him to detect the course they should travel to arrive at the intended destination. He heard Jenkins’s sure steps behind him, and could see the front and rear guard on each corner of the makeshift troop, crouched and ready for action. He felt his own weapon, and was reassured. He observed the unusual Flora and Fauna, beautiful, and so different from the foliage in his native Louisiana. Suddenly a strange, yet familiar sound reached his ears. What was a mourning dove doing in the jungles of Vietnam? As realization hit, his eyes widened, and then suddenly his world plunged deep into an abyss as thick and black as the pot of grease paint carelessly left behind in the brush.

As the blazing sun tore across his inert brow, Aloysius Pendergast began to regain consciousness. Keeping his eyes closed he gathered his thoughts and began to draw deep breaths of the acrid air into his lungs. Regaining composure, he allowed his eyes to open and survey the scene. Bodies were everywhere covered in their own filth; men, women, and children wore squalid bits of cloth over scarred and infected flesh. Momentarily overwhelmed by the image he closed his eyes again, realizing that he had arrived on the “Devil’s Doorstep;” a Cambodian Death Camp renowned for its brutal treatment of American soldiers. Until now, however, Aloysius had believed it to be only a fabrication developed by older members of Army to scare the younger members.

It was a harsh reality. His head throbbed, and he opened his eyes once more. This time he saw a small Cambodian girl standing in front of him. Her eyes traveled up and down his body, and she reached forward to touch his face, still painted with grease. Her hand, however, never reached his cheek. A bullet ripped from above, and she fell at Pendergast’s feet. A member of the Cambodian army stepped out of the crowd and approached Pendergast, who was struggling to suppress the urge to vomit, cry, and scream. He kicked the body of the girl aside, and in broken English he turned and addressed Pendergast, “So you are American soldier?” Aloysius looked away in disgust. He suddenly wanted nothing to do with the Army. He wanted to be in the Savannah hunting Lions with his father, or reading with his mother, not here, where the value of human life was so viciously disregarded. At this moment he vowed that if he returned to America, he would not let senseless killing prevail.

The Cambodian guard spat. “Look at me!” He commanded, “I am ‘boss-man’ now American pig. We already kill your friends, what make you think we not kill you with your white flesh?” He sneered and spat again. Pendergast looked for the rest of the makeshift battalion, and then his eyes met the grisly reality of the death camp. The Cambodian guard followed his gaze and laughed as he saw Pendergast vomit in the dust. Impaled on stakes and displayed like idols in a shrine were the six other bodies. Now the sole member of the 6th infantry, he vowed to survive at all costs. His eyes glazed and his features grew taut and emotionless. He let his thoughts leave his mind, he erased years of memory from his youth, the rest he stored in the deep recesses of his mind. If he was going to survive, then he could not be addled with memories. Aloysius knew that his focus must on only the here and now. If he remembered the good times it would make the situation so much worse. Aloysius let the acrid air consume him, he ran his fingers through the dry sand, and as he inhaled an exhaled he repeated “this is my home now” in his now vacant mind.

When he heard the Helicopters overhead something stirred in the recesses of the soldier’s mind. He was now 18, malnourished and peaky, his pale skin burned and peeling from the harsh sun. His body was riddled with scars from the various tortures inflicted on him. Suddenly, his vacant mind exploded with long forgotten memories. The night in the Jungle, the capture, his friends and fellow soldiers, the little girl that had died at his feet. Aloysius Pendergast stood in the darkened hut he was locked inside. Listening at the door he heard fighting in the “courtyard.” He pulled out of his sock a ladies hair pin he had found buried in the sand, and he began to pick at the lock on the door. He strained to hear the click over the screams from outside, and finally he heard the blessed sound. He waited. The chaos died down, and he emerged. American nurses and doctors scurried around treating the wounded, Cambodian soldiers lay dead, scattered across the vast camp. Hearing English, the long forgotten tongue of his people, he collapsed from joy and malnutrition.

When he awoke he was amidst the clouds in an air force hospital plane. Moaning came from every direction, and in the distance he heard a baby crying. Suddenly a mellifluous voice permeated the sounds of suffering. “Hello, my name is Helen, Aloysius. We are on our way back to America now. You’re going home.” His eyes drank in her features, her deep eyes—limpid pools of azure, flushed cheeks, and rosy red lips. Her hair was honey blonde, and it hung loose over her shoulders. He tried to sit up and strained to speak, to thank her, but she put her finger to his lips and lowered him back onto his pillow. “Shhh,” she murmured, “I’m here and everything is going to be fine.”