The following is a chapter from Larry Gwin's excellent book - Baptism - Ivy Books - 1999
He
would have a good weekend. He would
make love to a beautiful woman and throw a football with his son and pound down
a cold Genessee and see the leaves – everything he’d dreamed of in Vietnam.
He was alive, and to forget that, to live as if this world were something
other than a paradise, would be to dishonor the memory of his friends.
--
Stewart O’Nan -- The
Names of the Dead
When
I think of Rick Rescorla, I think of the twinkle in his eye – half joyful,
half crazed, like a wild Cornish hawk.
He was, after all, a Brit.
When he was working, though, or out in the bush, that crazed irreverent
twinkle disappeared – snuffed out like a candle in a strong wind and replaced
by a cold steely glint that could sear right through you like the icy stare of
death. When
Rick looked that way, he was ready for a kill.
I’d first seen that glint at LZ Albany.
He had just jumped ten feet from a hovering helicopter, killed three
enemy soldiers on the ground, and maneuvered with his men into our last-ditch
perimeter. The
next time I saw that glint was during that long painful trek over the mountains
west of the Crow’s Foot, and it had scared the hell out of me.
But
the way I want to remember Rick is that night in the O-club, when he showed us
how to beer walk – an exercise in absurdity that captured the hearts and minds
of the battalion’s younger officers and made for untold hours of chaos,
oblivion, and joy.
It was mid-February, I think, after Bong Son – after Captain Cherry had
joined us.
The
O-club was up.
We’d built it ourselves: poured-concrete floor, wood-slat walls,
screened windows, corrugated roof.
It had a makeshift bar in one corner, a few pieces of bamboo furniture
we’d scrounged up in An Khe, a generator-powered refrigerator, and lights!
The place was safe, too.
It rested in a defilade.
All hell could break loose on the Green Line, and we could still sip our
beers in peace.
All we needed was a stereo and some women.
I
remember that night quite distinctly.
Eight or nine of us were there – lieutenants mostly, platoon leaders,
artillery FOs, rifle company XOs – guys who humped the bush.
It was late, too – long after chow.
We must have been on a stand-down.
We had one every now and then – a night off to shower, or drink, or
sleep, or catch up on all those unstarted projects.
I’d been in the club a while, drinking beer and horsing around, as we
all were, when in walked Rick Rescorla.
“Ahah!”
he chortled, that twinkle in his eye, seeing a bunch of us sitting there, ripe
for a challenge.
I’d never appreciated the man’s subtle joy for sport.
I knew his reputation, that he’d served in the British army, that
he’d signed up with ours “because it was the only one that had a war on,”
that he’d been wounded lightly once and already recommended for two Silver
Stars – one for the Ia Drang and one for Happy Valley.
I also knew that he was, with a few of us anyway, delightful company.
His favorite expression, an accusation, really, was that some of our
field-grade officers (colonels and majors) “saw things through the rosey red
hue.” He
was, without question, one of the best officers in the battalion, and the
toughest, bar none.
He was older, too.
From our youthful vantage point, he’d reached the ancient age of
twenty-eight.
After
the usual banter, for he was good at that (and a raconteur of sorts, if I
remember correctly), he sensed a lull in the evening’s revelry and issued his
challenge.
“All
right! All right!” he said, standing up, fortified now with a beer. “Let’s
see how coordinated you chaps really are.
Let’s see if the strength you profess matches the bullshit I’m sure
you’re full of.”
He
said this loud enough for everyone to hear it, and his jaw jutted out with such
mock ferocity that he simultaneously captured the attention and piqued the
competitive ire of everyone present.
That was when I saw the first inkling of the greatest twinkle in any
man’s eye I’ve ever seen.
“I’ll
need two beers,” he said.
“Untapped.”
He made a tentative move toward the bar, then stopped, knowing
intuitively that a younger man, a contender, perhaps, would get the beers for
him. Sure
enough, a muscle-bound second lieutenant named Morrow, a new guy from Brooklyn,
responded, and Rick found himself with two fresh cans in his hands – a Schlitz
and a Carlings Black Label.
He looked them over disdainfully, inspecting them, really, then held them
up for everyone to see.
Like a barker at a fair, he’d bagged us.
He
turned and strode briskly to the far wall.
Swinging back to face us, he backed up against the wooden siding, banging
the Corfam heels of his jungle boots against the framework.
We clustered around him.
“Give
me some room!” he barked, waving his arms in front of him in a breaststroking
motion, and we backed off a bit.
I
saw Joel Sugdinis coming through the O-club door then.
He saw us, stopped, and smiled.
He didn’t go for a drink.
He just stood there, watching.
“Now,”
Rick said. “You
place your heels against the wall, like this” – tapped them one at a time
against the wall – “and you hold your beers like this” – he raised his
arms and held them straight out, one beer in each hand, the tops of the cans
pressed flat against his palms, the bottoms pointing outward so that each can
was simply an extension of his hand and arm.
He flexed his wrists up and down so all could see.
“You
then reach down, extending your arms as you go, and walk on your hands, using
the beer cans to keep you from touching the floor.
You walk out as far as you can go, leaving one of the cans on the floor
– as far away from the wall as you can leave it.
Then, using the other as a crutch, you work yourself back to a standing
position without any part of your body touching the floor.”
He
then demonstrated, bending over quickly, keeping his knees stiff and walking
several steps comfortably on his beer-can-extended hands.
He stretched himself out with three or four more quick “steps” until
he was in a push-up position, reached out effortlessly, and placed the can of
Carlings an arm’s length to his front.
He then placed his free hand back on the hand holding the Schlitz, and
with a series of quick, short backward thrusts, righted himself again without
any part of his body touching the floor.
When he’d straightened up, he raised his arms triumphantly and said,
“Voila!”
The
twinkle in his eyes was starting to glow.
“Who
wants to try it?” he said.
Morrow,
the guy from Brooklyn, was quick to accept the challenge, but to our surprise,
he couldn’t right himself after depositing his can several inches beyond
Rick’s Black Label beer can.
Gordy Grove tried it next and failed as well, landing hard on his
shoulder in dismay.
Dick Hogarth tried it, too, losing his balance while teetering on his
steel-encased pedestal.
(In those days of yesteryear, beer cans were made of steel.) Jim
Kelly then took up the challenge, and being six-feet-four-inches tall, and built
like coiled steel, managed to surpass all the previously disqualified attempts,
stretching out and pushing his red-white-and-blue can of Pabst Blue Ribbon a
good ten inches past Rescorla’s mark.
“Yeah!”
someone growled.
“Right,
Jim!” another cheered.
“Atta
go, Lurch!” I heard myself say.
But
Jim wasn’t finished yet.
We all waited, holding our breaths, while he assumed his two-handed
recovery position and balanced for a tension-packed moment on his single
remaining can.
He concentrated.
His jaw set.
He grimaced. And with one prodigious effort he thrust himself backward
six inches, the bottom of his beer can scraping loudly against the cement as he
did so. He
steadied himself, grimaced again, and repeated his backward thrust, gaining
another foot or so.
Then, with growing confidence, he thrust himself backward two or three
more times and stood up with a look of surprise on his face, surprise at how
difficult that apparently simple task had really been.
The
place went crazy for a while.
Cheers, guffaws, and laughter filled the air as people pounded his back
and swamped him with congratulations.
Then everyone quieted down.
Matching Lurch’s effort appeared totally out of the question for Rick.
He was, after all, only six feet tall, and it looked as if he’d
extended himself as far as he could on his demonstration run.
But
Rescorla was ready.
He picked his own beers this time: Budweisers.
He stepped back to the starting line and calmly surveyed the crowd.
We were hungry for the cocky Brit’s humiliation, and the room went
deathly still.
Rick was smiling, though – not at us, but to himself – as if humming
some inner mantra and concentrating on an extension of himself beyond the limits
of human endeavor.
Then he dropped again, took five quick steps on his beer-can hands to the
point where his body was virtually parallel to the floor, slipped his Budweiser
six inches past Kelly’s can of Pabst and, after a single tension-packed moment
teetering on his precarious, steel-encased pedestal, pushed himself back to a
standing position to the utter amazement of everyone in the room.
After
a few seconds of stunned silence, the place went absolutely berserk, with people
jumping up and down, screaming and yelling, cheering and laughing, pounding Rick
on the back, and clambering all over themselves to get at the beer supply.
For a few happy moments, the O-club turned into bedlam.
All of its members but me.
For I had seen the look in Rick’s eyes when he’d risen from the
challenge just met.
It showed such sublime pleasure, such pure delight, such unabashed joy,
such glee, such incredible inner discipline, that it all began to make sense
when later, after most of us had tried, and failed, and tried again to match his
mark, he quietly retired from the contest and became a spectator.
I
never saw him try it again.
He’d had his fun.
He’d shared his game.
And he’d conned us one and all.
“Beer
walking,” as we later called it, became the battalion’s junior officers’
favorite pastime, with Jim “Lurch” Kelly ultimately attaining the
much-coveted “Battalion Beer Walking championship” and holding on to it
tenaciously, challenge after challenge.
The hours we spent after that memorable night, watching grown men
teetering precariously on beer cans, straining to return to standing positions,
bellowing in rage when they slipped, or collapsed, or a knee touched the floor,
or a beer can crumpled beneath them, cursing at themselves in disgust, or
glaring at the blisters rising from their already calloused and sometimes
bleeding palms, all those mindless hours of chaos helped us forget where we
were, why we were
there, what we were doing, and being asked to do.
They were wonderful, crazy, carefree hours, and they helped us purge our
pain.
Rick
Rescorla gave us that, and for that, I want to thank him.
Thanks, Rick.