Dancing with Baptists

Chapter 1

The Iron Triangle, South Vietnam

February 22, 1967

Chaplain (1st Lt.) Terrance L. "Chap" Bonner was Greg's second Black friend.

Chap held the bloody baby. Greg tied a clean shoestring around the baby's umbilical cord. He had an extra pair because the supply sergeant had gotten combat boot shoestrings in instead of the 3-0 silk sutures Greg had ordered.

Greg's experience cut the cord with the Metzenbaum scissors he wore on a chain next to his dog tags. After cutting the cord, Greg's attention switched back to the still squatting, still shivering fourteen-year-old in front of him. Greg dealt with the afterbirth. The mother of the moment finally laid back in the groundcover that surrounded them. She did not look at the baby in Chap's arms. The tiny infant's little fingers got tangled in the chain around Chap's neck. On the chain was a wooden cross that some of the village kids had carved as a gift for his birthday.

Now there was another birthday. Chap took the cross from around his neck with his left hand while he held the little guy in his right.

As the new mother lay on her post-opt bed of greenery, Greg bandaged the cut along her right temple. He marveled at how throughout the birth, like most Vietnamese mothers, she never made a sound. It was considered rude to make any noise in public.

Greg had not been on call that day. Chap had heard of a shrine he wanted to see and Greg wanted to be anywhere but the field operating tent. The last nineteen days had been pure hell. The people who made up the names called it Operation Cedar Falls. The intended objective was to drive Vietcong forces from the Iron Triangle, a sixty square mile area between the Saigon River and Route 13, a highway that stretched from Ho Chi Minh City to near the Cambodian border.

Nearly 16,000 American troops and 14,000 soldiers of the South Vietnamese Army had moved into the Iron Triangle. Vietcong were killed. It was easy for many to think, "Only seventy-two Americans," but five of those seventy-two had died on Greg's operating table.

Tens of tens had been saved but five boys died. Chap had prayed over the injured and the dead. Chap prayed while Greg and the surgeons reached deep into young abdomens invaded by bullets and shards of sharpened bamboo. After nineteen days of that, Greg and Chap needed the break.

The two walked and hitchhiked for hours and never found the shrine. It was Chap who had first spotted the young girl on the side of the road doubled over and bleeding from her forehead. Chap knelt and prayed for her. Greg helped her onto a wet patch of yellow Pintoi flowers that was partially hidden from the road. Moving the injured and pregnant girl off the dangerous shoulder happened just in time. A sputtering convoy kicked up shells, rocks, and dust and left tracks over the hula-hoop sized wet ground where the young mother's water had broken.

Chap took off his shirt and laid it on the ground next to the new mother. He bent over and placed the tiny one on it. The mother looked away. Many Vietnamese believed that if you show attention to a baby it alerts evil spirits and they will come to kill the baby.

as the last olive-dipped-in-mud truck roared by, the barrel of an assault rifle nudged through the leaves of a dark green bush. Next an RPK machine gun pushed through a neighboring bush. One was pointed at Greg and the other at Chap's chest where the cross had been moments earlier. The Chaplain and the young surgical tech froze as a missed-matched uniformed teenager and a head-bandaged preteen followed their weapons out of the bushes.

The teenager expertly swung his shoulder-strapped weapon around to his back and picked up the fatigue-wrapped newborn. Chap's cross dangled from the pocket of the jacket. Standing guard, the preteen's dark eyes revealed his internal vote to kill the roadside delivery team. Greg and Chap slowly backed away from the bloody four. Chap raised his right hand and prayed. "Lord Jesus, we pray for these young souls."

As Greg and Chap continued to back away, the teenager helped the young mother to her feet and within seconds they were gone. The only sign of new life and possible death was the placenta on the aluminum plants.

Three clicks down the road, both men paused and took a moment. The shirtless Chaplain and the bloody surgical tech spent the rest of the way back in collective silence.

Sometimes you have the numbers spelled, other times you use numerals. I think anything over 10 is numerals, under 10 is written.

Indent or not? Should be same throughout text? Not sure of style for fiction writing – but be consistent.

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