Scope 2006 - SIU School of Medicine

espected whatever “ism” got a guy through this mess and back home. Tibiletti and his
boots were as good a device as any, I felt.
We were on our way back to the compound following duty one night, about
ten of us in all. Tibiletti was behind me about 20 paces, those boots of his snug on his
feet. Jack and Vince had the point. The others were screwing around further back,
throwing rocks. The mood was light.
If you can will your mind past the reality of the situation, it is easy to lose
yourself in the blackness of the Vietnam sky after dark. A conical canopy, it seems no
more than a couple of hundred yards overhead at its highest, all atwitter with stars
fighting for a view of the earth below. Darkness had the habit of sneaking onto
DaNang Airbase. Slipping over the mountains at the base’s southern perimeter, it
would smother the sun’s rays and then claim all but the defiant searchlights and road
markers that winking, pointed the way back to the compound. Breezes came too at
those times, but never as stealthily — rolling heavily over the base, they were pervasive.
It was in this kind of setting that we picked our way leisurely back to the barracks,
easing up to a run-off ditch along the right side of the road. My thoughts were
back on Lawrence Avenue — summer nights in the ’50s, wandering from yard to yard
playing games, the old folks sitting on the porches waving at the heat with newspapers,
smoke-pots choking off attacking mosquito hordes. In my mind I saw my mother. . .saw
my girl.
It was Vince’s voice that broke the mood.
“Sarge, look. Look!”
I had spotted the orange-red tails of the rockets before Vince could finish
shouting. They curved across the darkness in all directions.
“Incoming,” Vince shouted, “Incoming!”
Instinctively I turned to my right and dove for the ditch. As I landed I saw
Tibiletti and the others entering the same ditch a few feet back from my position.
Tibiletti had been the last one in, as usual, but he made it. We all burrowed our faces in
the mud as the base siren wailed. Engineers shut down generators giving DaNang back
to the night and we each found a private, muddy womb in which to ride out the attack.
The rockets fell without pattern or rhythm for nearly half-an-hour. The barrage
was heavy, but hit mostly in other areas of the base. Only a few had hit nearby. I
had actually felt the impact of one as I lay buried in the mud — a thudding, slightly
muffled sound — probably the result of the shell slamming into the moist earth.
Fifteen minutes of silence was enough to bring us from our muddy hideouts. I
spent another minute removing the goop from my eyes. Up on the road the guys were
scurrying around searching the shadows with their flashlights.
“What’s wrong,” I shouted.
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SCOPE 2006
“Tibiletti. Tibiletti’s missing,” a frantic voiced responded!
I ran towards them, thinking as I went, “I saw him go into the ditch. He
made it in time. Damn, I know he did. He’s just slow. He’s always slow.” I stopped
near the spot where I had seen Tibiletti dive in. The others were grouped behind me.
The eeriness of the situation chilled me, even in the warm DaNang air. Our flashlights
shown on the spot where Tibiletti had gone into the ditch. He was not there, but the
earth was splayed before us — black clumps in an irregular, oval pattern, with the odor
of sulphur.
He was not there. Instead, in his place, in the midst of the clumps of dirt,
smoldering in the half-light, twisted and torn, lay Tibiletti’s boots.
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