Duty and Dishonor: Author's Preferred Edition Read online

  Duty and Dishonor

  Author's Preferred Edition

  Dale A. Dye

  “A singular achievement...vivid, terse, exceptionally moving...the tension builds and never lets up.”

  —The New York Times

  “Dye fills this dialogue-driven thriller with plenty of action and lots of military detail—all of which (no surprise) rings completely true.”

  —Marc Leepson, VVA Books in Review

  “Dale Dye has a flair for telling stories and evoking images. His details about Marine life are accurate…Dye has the ability to draw the reader far enough into the story that the reader sees with the author's eyes and feels with his emotions…Dye's ability to tell a story the way it really happens is rare, and one sincerely hopes this book will not be his last….”

  —Orlando Sentinel

  “Here, in prose that positively crackles, he takes us along on what has been one great ride.”

  —Ed Ruggero: Veteran, Writer, Motivational Speaker

  Also by Dale Dye

  AZTEC FILE

  HAVANA FILE

  CONTRA FILE

  BEIRUT FILE

  CHOSIN FILE

  PELELIU FILE

  LAOS FILE

  RUN BETWEEN THE RAINDROPS

  PLATOON

  OUTRAGE

  CONDUCT UNBECOMING

  Duty and Dishonor

  Author's Preferred Edition

  Dale A. Dye

  WARRIORS PUBLISHING GROUP

  NORTH HILLS, CALIFORNIA

  DUTY AND DISHONOR: AUTHOR’S PREFERRED EDITION

  A Warriors Publishing Group book/published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Warriors Publishing Group edition/October 2017

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2017 by Dale A. Dye

  Cover art copyright © 2017 by Gerry Kissell (gerrykissell.com)

  This book may not be reproduced in whole

  or in part, by mimeograph or any other means,

  without permission. For information address:

  Warriors Publishing Group

  16129 Tupper Street

  North Hills, California 91343

  ISBN: 978-1-944353-15-5

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017915861

  The name "Warriors Publishing Group" and the logo

  are trademarks belonging to Warriors Publishing Group

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For

  Dale A. Dye and Della K. Dye

  who launched me downrange…

  Colonel Charles R. Stribling III,

  who called the shot and adjusted my fire, and for…

  Adrienne Kate Dye,

  who brought me home at last

  Life is a tour of guard duty; you must mount guard

  properly and be relieved without reproach.

  —Charlet (1650-1720)

  Foreword

  Were Salt & Pepper real? Or is the abiding story of two alleged American turncoats in Vietnam just another juicy piece of grunt gossip from that wild and weird war? I don’t know, and I suspect no one else does either. But never mind. Why let a little thing like fact interfere with good fiction? When you can take an enduring legend like Salt & Pepper and use it as a basis for a kick-ass war story, I say go for it. And that’s what I did back in 1992 when I first wrote the book you are about to read.

  The legend lives on in this story about the pursuit of two American soldiers who supposedly deserted their units and fought with VC or North Vietnamese forces during America’s long and inconclusive war in Vietnam. Ask most any Vietnam Veteran if he’s ever heard about renegade Americans running and gunning with the enemy, and you’ll likely get some version of the apocryphal story I’ve expanded and expounded here. Details vary, but the basic coda is that soldiers who were clearly not Vietnamese were seen irregularly in firefights with various American military units from about late 1967 right up until the end of U.S. involvement in 1975. The majority of the sighting reports were made by Army or Marine units operating in I Corps, a vast, hyperactive, and lethal area stretching from the DMZ in the north to south of Danang. And many of the sightings involved a white man and a black man, sometimes seen separately and often together.

  There was never any solid evidence—at least none that I could find in extensive research—that the stories were true, but they were convincing and regular enough at one point in mid-1968 to prompt the Military Assistance Command’s covert Studies and Observation Group (MACV-SOG) to lash together a secret deep reconnaissance team operating out of Command and Control North (CCN) with the sole mission of checking out any and all sighting reports concerning the pair who were code-named Salt & Pepper. If the SOG bush beasts ever determined anything substantial, there is no unclassified record of it. I did talk to an old SF trooper who was with the S&P stalkers, and he told me they spent a lot of time in the bush but never managed to spot their quarry. He also told me they were under strict orders to “snatch any round-eyes they discovered if possible. If not, be sure and return with the bodies.”

  I first heard about Salt & Pepper while running with some Marine Recon teams out of Phu Bai up near the DMZ. One of the teams claimed to have seen Salt & Pepper up close and personal at least twice while on a trail overwatch missions in the A Shau Valley close to the Laotian border. These guys were pros and not gossipy by nature, so I had no reason to think it was just some fanciful tale made up to juice their image. I began to ask around among other more conventional units. The heavy-hitters and brass-hats tried to pass it all off as bullshit, but I kept running into line Marines and soldiers who swore they had spotted the pair during any number of combat engagements. I didn’t have anything near the clout or clearance to conduct any kind of investigation, and there were more pressing matters at hand—like staying in one piece long enough to return to The World outside a bodybag—so I stuck the stories deep in a mental file and got on with my little part of the war. Maybe the pair was a couple of European advisors or volunteers helping communist allies. Maybe they were a couple of former French Foreign Legion volunteers who stayed behind in Indochina. I deemed none of those things likely, but there didn’t seem to be many more rational explanations. Unless, of course, it was a fact that two American GIs had defected to the enemy.

  Regardless, I never lost a fascination with the legend of Salt & Pepper. Stories continued to circulate among the Veterans I met after the war, and I did some superficial, usually frustrating research on the story to no solid avail. It remained one of those apocryphal tales that everyone believed and no one could prove or document. Years passed and I began to do some serious and cathartic writing about my own multiple tours in Vietnam which garnered some small acclaim. It was somewhere after the publication of my third war-themed novel that I decided to pick up on the Salt & Pepper story, project it through the lens of my own vivid imagination, and create backstories for the various characters involved with a hunt for the truth about Salt & Pepper. Along the way to letting the story unfold in the pages of a book, I had a unique opportunity to vent about a few things concerning the Shitty 70s in America when men returned from Vietnam to a society that had changed radically while they were away at war. As one of those returning veterans, I didn’t care much for those times or very many of those people on the home front, and I think that is obvious in the story as I wrote it.

  On the other hand, I did have some fun with locations, particularly Chicago and St. Louis, two cities I knew personally and intimately from my own life before the Marine Corps
and Vietnam changed it all. And I enjoyed giving form and substance to Willy Pud, the hero of the story. As far as I know, there is no Wilhelm Johannes Pudarski, but I based the character on a guy from Chicago that I knew well in the Marine Corps. Many of the stories he told me about living in a Polish neighborhood with his hard-working, hard-living Dad are reflected in this book.

  So here it is, an edited and improved version of what I believe is some of my best writing and storytelling. This effort tells the same story in a better fashion with much improved novelistic skill. I think that’s reason enough to republish for a new generation of readers. You paid your money, take the ride.

  OUR STORY

  HOOK

  In which legends become reality

  LINE

  In which the Snake Eater learns life ain’t nothing but a magazine

  SINKER

  In which sundry slugs and maggots learn Payback is a Medevac

  PART ONE:

  HOOK

  SA MOI, LAOS—1970

  At first blush, being dead seemed better than being alive. In fact, death had a lot going for it. Alive he'd been hurting: exhausted, tense, scared, cold, wet, and miserable. Now he was none of these uncomfortable things. Maybe a little scared still, but that was fading.

  There was no pain from the mine explosion or the long spill down the jungle mountainside through razor-sharp vines and tangled foliage. The old guy with the beard and the big logbook hadn't showed up to make him account for his earthly sins.

  Maybe he could slide right through from life to death without all the normal hassle of checking into a new unit.

  Staff Sergeant Wilhelm Johannes Pudarski, KIA, lay prone—at a modified position of attention—along a muddy loop of the Ho Chi Minh Trail somewhere in Laos, and awaited further orders from a heavenly honcho.

  That's when Salt and Pepper showed up and threw shit in the game.

  DANANG

  “Gentlemen, this debriefing is classified. Please clear the tent.”

  He rubbed watery eyes and wished the staff colonel from MACV would stop pacing. Shifting his eyes caused his brain to slosh around inside his skull. Concussion—and three straight days of Dexedrine insomnia—made it hard to concentrate on death and resurrection. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and tried to squelch the stereo white noise lancing into his eardrums.

  “Colonel, he’s really in no shape for this.” The Navy doctor, summoned hastily to the Command Post of the 1st Recon Battalion near Hill 327, looked up from packing his instruments. “He needs at least twenty-four hours under full sedation.”

  The colonel put a fatherly hand on Pudarski’s lacerated shoulder and rolled some steel into his gravelly voice. “He’ll get that and more, Doctor, as soon as we’ve concluded this preliminary debriefing.”

  “Sir, you must be aware that Staff Sergeant Pudarski is lucky to be alive...and he’s due in Washington at the end of the week.”

  Different voice. Pudarski opened his eyes and tried to smile as his commanding officer stepped out of the tent’s dark shadows. A loopy grin was all his trembling jaw muscles would allow. The Old Man’s kicking his own ass for letting me outside the wire so close to the Big Event. He stretched back on the canvas cot to take pressure off a shrapnel-riddled butt-cheek and waved a hand at the conscience-stricken officer. “No sweat, Skipper. Let’s do this thing, until the colonel gets what he needs—or I pass out, whichever comes first.”

  The colonel gave Pudarski’s shoulder a painful pat and moved to where he could speak privately with the Recon Company Commander. “I know what’s bothering you, Captain, but believe me I’d have made the same decision under the circumstances. We can’t shut down the war effort just because one of our men is scheduled to receive the Medal of Honor…”

  Pudarski’s CO shook his head and tugged thoughtfully at an earlobe. “Christ, Colonel, he’s the best we’ve got. That’s why I let him go. If he’d got blown away chasing spooks...and the week before the President’s supposed to hang that Medal around his neck...”

  “But he didn’t get killed. And I’m not here to harass your people. General Westmoreland sent me up from Saigon personally. That’s how concerned he is with this situation. Now take the good doctor and get some coffee. I’ll make it as quick and painless as possible for Pudarski.”

  When the tent was clear, the MACV colonel uncoiled the microphone of a battery-operated tape recorder and perched on a camp stool near Pudarski’s cot. He smiled as he examined the man’s chiseled, deeply tanned features.

  Handsome guy despite his beat-up condition. He’d look great on recruiting posters. And that’s right where he’ll be after he gets that Medal next week. Why did the Marines always get the ones who looked like they were carved out of ancient granite?

  “Pudarski’s quite a mouthful. They call you something else, don’t they?”

  He watched as the colonel clinically examined the fistfight nicks on his face and the emaciated body parts that showed through his torn and bloody camouflage utility uniform. Scope it out good, Colonel. Can’t have been many Chi Town Polacks at West Point.

  “Willy Pud, sir. Everybody’s got a nickname in the Corps. If they don’t hang it on you at Parris Island or Dago, you pick it up soon as the first sergeant sees your name on a duty roster.”

  “Well, Willy Pud, I regret having to put you through this right now but I’m sure you understand the importance of…”

  Waving the apology off with an upraised hand, Willy Pud leaned forward and froze the colonel with all the ice he could project through swollen, bloodshot eyes. “Sir, I been in the Nam almost three years now. Line grunt before I come to Recon, and I seen my share of bad shit. What I ain’t never seen—what I can’t even stand to fuckin’ think about—is two goddamn traitors out there killing American troops...”

  The intensity of Willy Pud’s words caused the MACV colonel to lean backward on his rickety stool. He fiddled with the tape recorder for a moment and then shrugged.

  “When we first heard about Salt and Pepper, no one at MACV gave the stories much credence. But the reports kept coming in and...well, we all had this feeling of genuine outrage. I know how you feel.”

  Willy Pud tuned the rest of it out. Can the crap, Colonel. You don’t know how I feel. This ain’t a scuff on your spit-shine just before inspection. This ain’t some war protestor who just irritates your ass. This is fuckin’ treachery down on the gut level, out in the bush where people get killed.

  “Believe me, if I had command of a unit capable of running these two down...”

  No need to apologize. Your days down in the mud and the blood and the bullshit are over. Some people can’t help being REMFs just like other people can’t help being bohunks or splibs or beaners—or gooks for that matter.

  “There was some thought at first that Salt and Pepper might be a couple of mercenaries, maybe a Russian or an East German plus maybe an African or Cuban.”

  “No way, sir. Salt and Pepper are—or were—Americans. I can guaran-goddamn-tee you on that score.”

  The MACV colonel started the tape recorder and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Let’s take it from the top.”

  Willy Pud picked up a canteen cup of cold c-ration coffee and drank deeply. The Dexedrine buzz began to recede.

  “Well, sir, last week sometime…I forget the exact date...I’m hangin’ around the COC bunker keeping an eye on a unit of the Third Marines in contact up in the northwest comer of the A Shau Valley. Gooks in that area like to break contact as soon as we call arty or air and di-di across the border into Laos.

  “Sometimes we launch a Recon team to keep tabs on ʼem. My team was next up on the rotation, so I passed the word to stand by. About that time we hear from some platoon commander up there that he’s taking fire from two guys that definitely ain’t gooks. A white guy and a black guy...”

  The MACV colonel gave Willy Pud a quick hold signal and spoke into the microphone. “Following is backgr
ound on subject’s prior knowledge of Salt and Pepper. Had you heard of such a thing prior to this instance, Sergeant Pudarski?”

  Willy Pud didn’t seem to notice the break in cadence as he sipped again from the canteen cup. “Yessir. Damn near every grunt in I Corps has heard about Salt and Pepper. Sighting reports been coming in for six months or more. Black guy and a white guy—supposedly American turncoats—fighting with the gooks. I always filed it in the bullshit locker. Figured it was some propaganda crap sent over here by the assholes back in the World, and it just got out of hand. Grunts like to gossip.”

  “But reconnaissance units have checked out these reports in the past?”

  “Yessir. First thing I was told when I came to Recon was to be on the lookout for non-Orientals operating with the gooks. We went out to look lots of times but nothing ever come of it.”

  “Then what made you so anxious to chase the sighting up in the A Shau Valley?”

  “This was an ongoing contact, sir. All the other times, the units that claimed they saw these guys didn’t mention it until they got back in from the field. The trail was always a couple days to a week or more old. I figured this was a chance to either prove there’s something to the story or put it to rest once and for all.”

  “OK. We’ve already covered your request to launch an immediate Recon team insert. Permission was granted—reluctantly—by your commanding officer. What happened then?”

  “Well, I know this gungy dude up in Division ISO...”

  “ISO?”

  “Yessir. Informational Services Office—Marine Corps Combat Correspondents. They run with the grunts, take pictures, write stories, shit like that. Anyway, Sergeant Benjamin is good with a camera and he’s good in the bush. So I talk him into goin’ along with a big telephoto lens. By the time everybody is set, they got a helicopter bouncin’ down on the hot-pad and we launch. It’s raining like a horse pissing on a big flat rock.”