The Ville by Eric Helm

Author:Eric Helm [Helm, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Vietnam War; 1961-1975, Men's Adventure, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780373627097
Publisher: Worldwide
Published: 1987-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

116 The Belle

“I took her in because no other man would have her. Filth her crippled arm, she cannot carry a full load or do her share of the work. No other warrior wants her.”

At first Bromhead was going to refuse. Then he remembered that the customs of the Meo were different. To refuse might be seen as a lack of feeling for the locals. He was pushed into a corner, having to accept the gift, even if the gift was a human being.

Bromhead nodded. “Then she must go to my hootch and wait for me there.”

Ben grinned again and said something in rapid-fire Meo. The woman glanced at Bromhead but said nothing. She turned, ducked her way out of the hootch and disappeared.

When she was gone, the meal resumed with the number two wife serving alone. The atmosphere of hostility vanished when the crippled woman left.

After lunch Bromhead returned to the weapons hootch. The woman was inside, kneeling near Bromhead’s gear, waiting for him. He told her to relax because he had nothing for her to do. Then he left for the south side of the village where his men had assembled for rifle practice.

Using boards ripped from the ammo crates and a marker pen, Bromhead created a number of bull’s-eye targets and set them up about a hundred and fifty yards from his makeshift firing line. He explained what he had in mind, told the ten men on the Bring line to shoot only at the target in front of him and to only fire five shots. They would inspect the targets afterward.

The afternoon was spent putting each group through the procedure, ten men at a time. Again Bromhead was surprised. Most of the men were good shots, many of them excellent. None of them had the habit of closing their eyes or firing high, which was the trouble with men who had never fired a rifle before. He selected the best of the shots as squad

The Hlle117

leaders and platoon sergeants. Beu choose two lieutenants as platoon leaders and Bromhead made Gilman the company commander.

By dusk he had his first-strike company, trained and ready for action. As they left the rifle range for the evening, the company dispersing into the village to join their families, Bromhead wondered just how good the training was. He hadn’t trained them and hadn’t expected to be this far along for weeks. He was relying on someone else’s work, and although that work had been done well, Bromhead was a little worried about it. After all, he had only seen five or six of the men in combat, if the brief firelight in the jungle could be called combat. They had reacted well, had been disciplined, but that was a small group with everything breaking their way. A pitched battle against an equal force of NVA or VC could be a disaster.

He walked into the weapons hootch, set his carbine down and then sat on one of the unopened crates. The woman came to him and touched his arm.

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