The Coward
Sergeant Gregory Jones sat on the dirt in the boiling sun, looking through the barbed wire at the jungle that bordered the far edge of the clearing, and at the mountains beyond. The heat was smothering, the air still and dead. No sound came from the jungle, and the silence was broken only by the scrape of metal as a young guerrilla took apart a U.S. Army automatic and put it back together again. Outside the barbed-wire fence, the communist guards watched their prisoners impassively.
Sergeant Jones glanced at his fellow prisoners. There were three of them, Captain Halloran, Private Vickio, and the burly civilian electronics specialist named Parker. Jones had been worried about the civilian ever since their Jeep was ambushed, but Parker had never winced. Now it was Vickio that Jones worried about.
The private was talking in a low voice to Captain Halloran, whose face was stonily cold and unresponsive.
“Honest, sir,” said Vickio. “I didn’t bug out.”
Halloran didn’t answer.
Jones looked at Vickio’s earnest face. The boy had shot out of the Jeep the instant they rounded the curve and saw the long barricade across the road. An instant later, the Viet Cong showed themselves, heavily-armed and numerous, and it was obvious that while they might kill a few of the Viet Cong, they would never get out alive if they did. Vickio had halted, looked around at them, glanced back at the captain, and thrown down his gun.
Stubbornly, he now said, “I didn’t. Honest, sir. I just thought we were sitting ducks in the Jeep, and I could do more good outside.”
The captain’s voice was cold. “What about the time Arnot got hit?”
Vickio lowered his head. “That was different.”
Halloran didn’t look at him.
Vickio looked up at the captain, then down at the ground, and swallowed.
Parker, the civilian electronics specialist, murmured, “Don’t pay him any special attention, Captain, but that guard closest to the fence understands English.”
The guard was studying Vickio with a faint look of triumph. Then he turned away, again stolid and impassive.
Vickio said tensely, “All I want is another chance.”
“You’ve had another chance,” said the captain.
Vickio got up and walked to the other end of the barbed-wire rectangle.
Parker said in a low voice, “Is it a good idea to fight amongst ourselves?”
Halloran said angrily, “No. But I’m not a good play-actor. If I can’t trust a man when I turn my back, I don’t want him around.”
Sergeant Jones said quietly, “Sir, he just could be telling the truth.”
Halloran sucked in his breath, and blew it out again slowly. When he spoke, his voice was low and controlled. “You’re new in the outfit, Jones. I know what you mean. But you don’t know him.” The captain got up, glanced at the brooding private, and said in a kindlier tone of voice than he’d used before “Vickio—”
The private looked around hopefully, “Sir?”
“We’re dying of boredom, here. Let’s have mail call.”
Vickio grinned. Then, with the sun beating down, and the communist guard watching blankly, Vickio used gestures and mimicry to create the illusion of a barracks full of men, a sack full of mail carried in amongst them, of eagerness, hope, disappointment, and finally the weary disgust of a homesick man reading a Dear John letter aloud to his friends.
Parker and Sergeant Jones were laughing at the end. Even the captain was smiling, and now Vickio did The New Lieutenant. Standing before a make-believe mirror, Vickio knotted his tie with elaborate care, fervently polished his bars, adjusted his cap, thrust out his chest and struck attitudes of authority so pompous and false that even the communist guards suddenly laughed, then glanced around, as if afraid to be overheard.
Parker, Jones, and Halloran clapped their hands. Vickio grinned, bowed, and turned away, then motioned to the nearest guard, who came closer, but shook his head as if he didn’t understand.
In a low voice, Captain Halloran said, “That boy is a born actor. They say the best actors believe their parts. I don’t know. But acting a part and living it over a long period of time are two different things. He can play the brave soldier just as easily as anything else. But it’s just play-acting. It’s not real. He’s not a soldier.” The captain looked first at Parker, then at Sergeant Jones. “I like the boy. I can’t help it. But I don’t trust him.” He kept his voice very low, and glanced around. “I don’t know just what we’re up against here, but I wish I could trust him.”
Jones said, “I wonder why they didn’t kill us outright?”
“For some reason, they want prisoners.”
Parker looked around. “There’s that rumor that the Viet Cong have invited a lot of observers from other Asian countries.”
“How does that fit in?”
Parker shrugged. “Maybe they want some beat-up prisoners to show that Americans aren’t so tough.”
Jones glanced up at the sun. There was no shade behind the wire, and they’d had no water since they’d been captured. If they were to be turned into dazed stupid specimens, all that was necessary was to just leave them here.
It was then that they heard the low swishing, murmuring sound, and looking across the clearing, saw the crowd that came to a halt there. Then they saw the Viet Cong soldiers who, with pick and shovel, began to dig halfway out across the clearing.
A thin man in olive uniform, apparently a communist Chinese, walked with several of the Viet Cong to the fence, and glanced at Captain Halloran. Speaking understandable English, he said, “It was a mistake for you foreigners to intrude in Asia.”
Halloran looked at him. “You’re as much a foreigner in this place as we are.”
“You cannot win. We will win.”
Halloran said angrily, “What’s your point?”
“This is a meeting of Asians, from Thailand, Singapore, Malaya, the Philippines, Indonesia. It is important that they see just how brave is their enemy, the Americans.”
“We aren’t their enemy.”
“Out there is a grave. You will pick one of you to die. And by the way he dies we will show all Americans are cowards.”
He walked away.
Out in the clearing, the Viet Cong enlarged the hole.
Halloran sucked in his breath, then said briskly, “This is my baby.”
Parker watched the communists out of sight, and swore in a low voice.
Jones looked at the pit. “Sir, you’ve got a wife and kids. I’m not married.”
Halloran’s voice grated. “I was in Korea, and they scared me. I was just a kid then. They’re never going to scare me again.”
Parker said, “Why play their game? When they come back, let me volunteer. They’ll open the gate, I’ll make a jump for a gun, and you rush them. At least, we’ll have some chance.”
Halloran looked around at the barbed wire, the jungle, and the guards. He shook his head.
“We’d all get killed. No. They want a propaganda victory. The only way to beat them is to take it away from them. They’ve got representatives from all over Asia, huh? I’ll give them something to think about.”
Out in the clearing, the soldiers threw dirt out of the hole.
The communist Chinese and the Viet Cong came back, and stopped outside the fence. “You have chosen?”
“Sir—” said the sergeant.
Halloran cut him off. Looking the Chinese flatly in the eye, he said, “I’m the one.”
The Chinese turned and spoke rapidly to the nearest guard, who nodded toward Vickio, where he stood uncertainly apart from the rest.
The communist Chinese spoke to the guard, who stepped in past Halloran and the others and seized Vickio.
“Wait!” shouted Halloran. “I’m the one!”
The Chinese said, “America is a race of cowards. We will prove it.”
Dazedly, Jones saw how they had been tricked. The Chinese communist first got them to argue amongst themselves as to who would be willing to give up his life. Meanwhile, the English-speaking guard listened, and picked out the one least willing. Then the Chinese selected this one as most likely to break down.
Without warning, Parker slammed through the guards, wrenched Vickio away from them, and spun him to the ground. For an instant, the guards looked on blankly as the two Americans thrashed on the ground, Parker’s face close to Vickio’s ear. Then the guards yanked them apart, slammed Parker back into the dirt, and jerked Vickio to his feet.
Parker was silent as they took Vickio out into the clearing. Then, keeping his voice too low for the guard to overhear, he said, “I told Vickio this is a standard Chinese trick, and they’d only fire blanks and anesthetic pellets.”
Halloran was watching in horror as the private, chest out and shoulders back, walked with his captors toward the edge of the open pit.
“My God,” said Halloran. “Did he believe you?”
“Look at him.”
Vickio stood straight and unconcerned as the Chinese, repeating his argument in several languages, harangued the assemblage, and turned to point again and again to where Vickio stood before a line of soldiers armed with rifles. Vickio smiled in contempt.
Jones looked at the barbed wire. His voice cracked. “We’ve got to do something!”
The nearest guard pointed his submachine gun. “You shut up.”
“Look,” said Parker.
Across the clearing, they blindfolded Vickio, and leaving his hands and legs free, turned him to face the pit, so that he would be shot in the back. Then they stepped away.
For a moment, Jones saw the clearing waver as his eyes blurred. His voice rough, he said, “When they fire that shot, I’m going over this fence and get one of them.”
Halloran said, “You couldn’t get over the wire. You’d never touch them.”
“My God,” said Parker.
Vickio had turned to face the firing squad. The blindfold fluttered in his outstretched hand, and fell to the ground.
There was a distinct low indrawing of breath from the watching crowd.
Halloran murmured wonderingly, “He still believes it.”
Parker said, “He’s making that communist Chinese look like a fool.”
The guard, scowling, silenced Parker with a wave of his submachine gun, then stared at Vickio, who stood unwavering before the firing squad.
Jones looked around at the barbed wire, opened and shut his hands, then he looked up at the sky and strained his ears, praying for the sound of helicopters.
From across the clearing, came a sharp crack.
Parker sucked in his breath.
Jones wiped his forearm across his blurred eyes, and looked across the clearing. Then he swallowed hard.
Vickio, blood streaming from his left arm and shoulder, had turned, his features pale and contorted, to face the prisoners’ barbed-wire cage. His right arm was raised in salute.
Halloran came stiffly erect, his eyes glittering with unshed tears as he snapped his arm up to return the salute.
For a seemingly endless moment, they faced each other.
There was a scream from the communist Chinese, and a second volley of shots.
Vickio was down.
Parker said dazedly, “He knew. All the time, he knew.”
The crowd in the clearing was breaking up, to mill aimlessly. The communist Chinese came hurrying across the clearing, followed by blank-faced Viet Cong. For a moment, he halted, staring at the remaining prisoners.
Halloran brought his arm down sharply, to end his lingering salute to Vickio. Side-by-side, the three prisoners looked flatly at the Chinese communist. He stood for a moment staring at them, then glanced around, and hurried on.
Halloran looked across the clearing, his jaw working, but unable to speak.
Jones said, “Sir, listen.”
The prisoners stood tensely quiet.
In the distance, they could hear the gathering throb of helicopters.