The Imposter at House 22

By Denis Chericone

Sergeant Sypher was a big man, a stout rectangle, and I was quick to see he used his size and imperious bearing to intimidate those he considered inconsequential. It was late February, and the days had grown ragged by the time he showed up. Upwards to two thousand rounds a day were keeping us low to the ground, and some of the guys were beginning to look over their shoulder more than they needed to. Sypher told us he had come up to take photos for the brass back in Da Nang. You know, hey, what’s going on up at Khe Sanh these days?

Sypher was a stark contrast to the rest of us. Clean, confident, and acting as if he were in command of the known galaxy, he soon disappeared into his assigned hole, not to be seen very much for the next few days. Pitbull didn’t know what to do with him. The guy was a photographer, for Chrissakes. He wasn’t Special Forces qualified, but he wore a beret anyway. Someone told me he was in tight with some I Corps colonel. The boss told the sergeant-major to leave him alone. We forgot about him.

When he eventually showed up in the med bunker, walking slowly and holding a limp, I thought he’d been hit. I asked him what happened, but he was slow to respond, instead rolling up his pantleg to show a slightly swollen knee. Avoiding me, he sought Bob’s attention. “It’s an old football injury, doc, gives me trouble from time to time. Think I have to get a specialist to look at it. What do you think?” Telling Sypher to sit on a stretcher, Bob pulled up an old ammo case and sat down in front of him. He was all serious business as he probed, asked questions, had the guy flex, bend, and rotate the leg, foot, ankle, and calf up, down, and all around.

Without breaking stride, he gently lowered Sypher’s leg to the ground and confirmed the guy’s earlier assumption, “Yeah, you better get that looked at before things get worse. Kid, fill out a casualty tag for this man. He can go out on the first available.” Smiling, Bob added, “You’ll be ready for the big game in no time.” I was stunned, but I suspected something else was going on. Bob told Sypher to get his shit together and get ready to get out of Dodge. As he headed for the stairs, I yelled, “Hey!” while waving the casualty tag back and forth. He grabbed it and, with a rubbery smirk, headed up the stairs.

Bob anticipated my question. “I don’t know; you want that guy around? I don’t. I heard about him. It’s best for all concerned to give him what he wants.” It was easy to agree with him. There was no need to take it further.

Later that evening

That night brought a vicious on-five-two attack, which squeezed its way between the mortar barrages and continued through the next day. It got bad. We hunkered in the med bunker until someone ran in, yelling about casualties. Bob was already up the steps as I grabbed my medkit off the wall. Whitey was right behind me. When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw Bob headed for our helipad. Delmer and Butch were lying inert on the now twisted-up aluminum grating as smoke swirled around them. When I reached them, Whitey and I helped Bob put Delmer over his shoulder, and then I hoisted Butch over Whitey’s. A blast knocked all of us to the ground, our casualties sprawling into the muck. Then Louie and Captain Crowman reached us and helped get us down into the bunker. Thank Christ, ‘cause we were floundering.

Working furiously to stabilize their injuries, we got Butch and Delmer squared away. The injured men had been blessed. The vital aspects of their injuries were easy to reach, but had to be constantly irrigated. The tumble into the mud was a mother and made things difficult. I flooded their wounds almost continually as Bob and Whitey worked, and thankfully, they hadn’t lost more blood than they could afford.

A SOG helo came in, and Bob told me to escort them down to Da Nang. He wanted to make sure someone kept a watchful eye on their bleeding. Multiple vessels had been tied off in both men, and the possibility of renewed hemorrhaging would have put them in critical danger. I grabbed my stuff, and we loaded them up.

As we flew in the chilly air over the mountains, I couldn’t stop marveling about still being alive. It happened every time you walked away—the wonder over what should have been. When the blast knocked us down, I thought that was it—the sudden stop, the dead end, the waiting wall—but it missed us and kept going, a gratifying fluke.

In Da Nang

I waited at the hospital until the docs told me both men were out of danger and would recover. They wouldn’t let me visit as they were on the critical list, and one of the docs said they wouldn’t be coming back any time soon. A win, finally. It was getting late by that time, and there was only one option left for me: House 22. I really wanted to get hammered.

As I made my way out of the hospital, I asked a nurse if there was someplace I could shower. She smiled, amused by my dirt. She pointed me in the right direction and said I could also get a clean pair of fatigues at the showers. Then, relieved, I smiled a big “thank you” and headed off. I knew I must have stunk the paint off the walls because whenever I stopped moving, even for a moment, people began staring. Yeah, guilty! I’m that smell. As I made my way down the corridor, I tried remembering how long it had been since I’d showered. I was greasy, stained, covered in dry blood, and seriously in need of a hose down, and when I finally reached the shower, I realized I’d been accumulating grit, grime, and gruesome for over five weeks. Get me to the water!

After cleaning up, which took a while, I headed for the door, and when I reached outside, I immediately became confused. Near dark, things were catching up to me. I saw a bench by the entrance and sat down hard. I was shaking. I kept seeing the open space between myself and the stricken men and suddenly remembered how I’d hesitated for a moment before I made the dash. I realized I always hesitated when explosions were in the way. Whitey had zoomed past, which startled me, and I kind of latched on to his wake. I still goggled over none of us getting wasted. Sitting there for a long moment, I saw two Special Forces men leave the hospital. I walked over, introduced myself, and they gave me a ride to House 22. I was grateful.

Da Nang was overwhelming as we drove through its noisy and crowded streets. A large city, the air held rough fragrances, almost edible—well, at least some of them. This big city was nearly as intimidating as the barrages. I began to feel uncomfortable, exposed, vulnerable. My ride asked the usual questions about Khe Sanh and confessed they knew nothing of the particulars. I was discovering that not many people did. For most, it was the battle best left unexplained and found only in nightmares. I didn’t add much. When they dropped me off, they both waved, one saying “Pleasure”, the other saying “Pain”. Then they laughed heartily and drove off. I stood there feeling slightly foolish as they were swallowed up by the city.

House 22

I used my super-duper secret agent card issued to all SOG guys to gain entrance. It was SOG’s rough-and-tumble palace of rapturous indulgences, and everybody knew anything goes. A large and very old French colonial mansion, it served decent Vietnamese food and had a surprisingly accommodating bar, card tables, a television, and bedrooms on the second floor for those needing companionship. I’d only been there once before and hadn’t had time to linger. But this time, ah, this time I wasn’t going anywhere, even if the Golden Chariot itself pulled up.

As I walked by the lounging area, I stopped and saw a bunch of guys watching a show on the TV. It looked pretty cool—an outer space show. One guy had funny ears. I laughed when one of the good guy’s rayguns made someone disappear. Somebody yelled, “Man, give us some of those!” It was starting to crowd up. I took a seat near the end of the bar, and when I was about to order, someone wrapped me up in a playful choke hold. I only jumped a little. “Hell, they let anybody in here.” I turned to see Wes, one of our Spike team guys from the FOB. We laughed. He’d been in Da Nang extending his tour and had just finished dealing with the paperwork. We ordered double bourbons, which we promptly sucked back. Wes was smiling. “Ahh, I see we have some serious work to do.”

I told him about Delmer and Butch, and he was relieved, very relieved that they had survived. He knew both men and told me some wild stories about them. Special Forces guys always had good tales, whether they were about work or play, although the ones about play were a lot more interesting. We toasted them and realized we were both hungry. Wes told me he’d be back in a minute and disappeared. I kept drinking. He was a good man, extremely reliable, and had helped the medics on more than one occasion carry wounded through the heat. Known as Knifeman around camp because he packed lots of them, he’d shown me his collection once when we’d been trapped in his hole by a huge barrage. Exotic, but deadly. He certainly knew what they were for, and he even had names for them.

The one he called Slim resided right behind his neck and hung between his shoulder blades. In one deceptively graceful motion, he had reached behind his neck and levered Slim into the opposite wall of the bunker. It had been a casual move, you know, like he was going to smooth down his hair or something. He also had three other knives lurking elsewhere on his body, all within striking distance. I was impressed. We became friends by trying to survive. He’d grown up a lonely kid, one parent a drunk, the other working all the time. He’d latched on to an uncle’s World War Two bayonet in grade school and began slicing through his boredom.

When he returned, holding two large bowls of steaming rice soup, I suddenly felt my hunger. Real-fucking-food, simple, but to the point. I hadn’t had a meal worthy of the name for as long as I hadn’t showered. As we slurped up the soup, we took turns smiling at the world. I laughed and told Wes I’d been in Nam for a couple of months, and this was the first time I’d had Vietnamese food. He froze for a moment, retrieving a memory, and said, “Make that two of us.” The place was getting noisier as I was dredging the lower depths of the bowl. Jeez, a friend, booze, and some grub. Both of us were feeling pretty good.

The Imposter

Then I heard a voice closer than an echo splashing out some bravado. It was holding forth about having to rescue guys up at Khe Sanh, rambling on about how the men there were in complete and total disorder and how he’d set them straight with some good old forceful determination. I nudged Wes and nodded in the direction of this voice. We both stopped eating. I leaned back from my stool and looked two stools down. It was my old comrade, Sergeant Sypher. He was thoroughly engrossed in telling his story, and his listener was almost as absorbed as he was.

Then, “They were a mess up there. Christ, if it hadn’t been for me, they’d still be flopping in the mud. I even had to smack a couple of guys around to get them off their asses.” Wes was now looking over my shoulder, and as I turned back to my bowl and drink, I realized both of us were beginning to find the fog. I may have been heading for the slush, but I could still place bullshit when I heard it. Wes was now staring hard at Sypher, who was oblivious to all but his listener and the stream of sewage gurgling out of his pipe.

Wes turned to me, “Is that asshole serious? Wasn’t he up at the FOB a couple of days ago?” he asked, trying to put things together. I nodded, took a drink, leaned over to Sypher’s friend, and bilged out, “Every word out of this dipshit’s mouth is bullshit. When he was at Khe Sanh for a few days, he played a lot of Rabbit in the Hole.”

When I resumed attending to my drink, I noticed Wes eyes suddenly go wide. They blinked once when I was yanked from my stool and thrown to the floor. Sypher was quickly standing over me. Things stopped. Silence moved in. Looking up, I started laughing as Sypher picked me up. I let out an “Oooh, you’re so strong!”

As I said, he was a big guy, and I knew he could crack me like a nut, but I thought I was having fun. I started singing, “Oh, you’re so full of shit you should wipe your butt a bit.” He had me by the lapels and was swinging me around. I went limp and began flailing about like a ragdoll with a very stupid look on its mug. Guys started laughing, which made Sypher even more pissed off.

As we were in our third or fourth pirouette, he let go, and I sailed into a card table full of players. Cards, chips, drinks, and money filled the air. Guys backed away. Staggering to my feet, I tried to reorient myself.

Then Sypher grabbed me again and threw me to the floor hard. He followed with a kick to my stomach. I puked on his boot, then mumbled, “Three points!,” and when I chucked again, he released me from his grip.

Sypher meets Slim

Then he moved backwards very slowly, his eyes locking down on his neck. When I followed his gaze, I saw the tip of Slim the dagger pressed to his carotid artery. A pregnant hush now owned the room. I could barely see Wes behind Sypher when I whispered, “Uh-oh.” Then I heard Wes say, rather softly considering the circumstances, “Mom’s waiting. You better skippy on home.” And with that, he gave Sypher a shove with his boot toward the door. No one moved until Sypher was headed for the street. He didn’t look back.

The noise returned. People moved. Wes helped me to my feet and then sat me in an easy chair, where I fell fast asleep. I awoke the next morning with Wes tugging me awake. “Kid, c’mon, we got a ride to the FOB.” My head felt as if it had been in the path of an avalanche of cinder blocks. I fell back into the chair. Wes helped me up. I searched my pockets and found my little bottle of wake-up tablets. By the time we were over the mountains, the combination of frosty air and med magic had me almost good as new. Wes sat on the helo’s seat netting honing Slim. We smiled at each other. The pain from being tossed around and kicked was talking to me, “Are we having fun yet?” I groaned, but it wasn’t that bad, simply a dull, throbbing reminder of someone else’s bullshit. I never saw or heard about Sypher again, and whenever Wes was handling his knives, we always laughed.

Twenty-two hundred rounds were waiting for us when we got back. There wasn’t much to do on days like that, so we hunkered in our holes, waiting for the sun to pull us out. We’d begun working on the road to survival. We were learning. There had been plenty of obstacles. We chased solutions. The one thing I can say about SF guys is they adapt quickly. At Khe Sanh, you had to.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR — From Denis Chericone’s LinkedIn biography: “While in the military I was posted to a remote and very isolated US Army Special Forces A camp, An Loc. While there I was in charge of a twelve bed jungle hospital where I treated everything from amputations to leprosy. I lived amongst the people of the area, the Gerai and Rhade Montagnards. This was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. They were Vietnam’s equivalent to the First Nations people of the Americas. Sociologically light years more sophisticated than the people of the industrialized west, the Montagnards exposed me to me a deeper understanding of the qualities that comprise the essence of being human.”

Denis is a writer, both of poetry and prose. You can hear Denis reading his poetry at the Oregon Poets Satyricon Poetry Series.

Denis is also a talented pianist. In 2021 he placed first in the music division of the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival (NVCAF), which resulted in an invitation to perform at the 41st NVCAF in 2022. You can hear Denis’ winning performance of the selections he submitted in 2021 on YouTube, which included one original composition. One other original, Fukushima #5, is included in the list of links below:

“Summertime”
“Daybreak” — an original piece
“My Favorite Things”
“Ruby My Dear”
“When Johnny Comes Marching Home”
“Fukushima #5” — an original piece