Scene 1.16 - Buggin’ Out
EST: EXT. Jungle/Division Headquarters 04JUL1969 20:59G.
(The four men are just outside division headquarters. Troops are running to and fro like chickens with their heads cut-off -- all except the four guys with the chicken who still has his head. MARS has just finished photographing the last page of the stack of classified papers.)
COLONEL STONE
Mars, stand fast. Sergeant Major, round up the troops, we’re bugging-out. Ares, go put that rooster in a cage. We got a new mascot. I’ll be right back.
(COLONEL STONE knocks, waits, and then enters the general’s tent.)
COLONEL STONE (Cont’d)
(Salutes.) General, we've gotta go now! We’ve been sold a bill of goods!
GENERAL WOODS
This is a travesty! Nothing went as planned! What went wrong, Colonel?
COLONEL STONE
The drug was a set-up from the get-go! Half of my men got some cramp relief drug, half were given a placebo and all of Charlie got the real deal! It was a company set-up. They’re using us for their hypothetical, no-win wargame scenarios for a future conflict against the Chinese! Sir, you need to see this! It says this whole theatre is being used as a staging ground for a North Asian land invasion -- secretly funded by the Japanese and the Soviets and who knows how many others! It refers to us as “The Mercenaries!” We need to inform General Westmoreland and theatre command! This report is ... incomplete, but it explains how the company tried this in Korea once before! (The general’s eyebrows raise a little.) We need to disenfranchise ourselves from this operation, sir, this ain’t our fight anymore, I got proof of everything I’m saying right here. We've got to retreat, sir!
GENERAL WOODS
(He slowly sips his coffee. When he was younger, he might have felt as the colonel feels. He decides to meet him halfway, for the good of all of his men. Retreat from this battle, yes. Tell command about the spooks’ involvement, no.) Mercenaries... heh; we were called "combatants" last time. (Sip.) Has Charlie breached the division perimeter?
COLONEL STONE
And then some. General, they're bound to hit here soon. Their main forces are going after the Narvis-Segille factory. It’s the objective of their entire operation. It gives us about a twenty-minute head start South to make a run for it.
GENERAL WOODS
What about our mission? You're saying to just let them take the factory? (He dumps his coffee. He’s already sided with STONE, he just wants to hear how STONE’S gonna say it. He slowly refills his canteen cup from his antique coffee pot on an even-more antique iron woodstove. Both the pot and woodstove were brought over from the major general’s hometown of La Junta, Colorado, where he owns the family ranch. He plans to retire there after completing four years of duty as the commanding general at Fort Carson, only seven months away if all goes as planned... The woodstove was his father’s, and as a child -- with a foamy stein of warm buttermilk in hand, sitting cross-legged on the floor -- he used to camp next to it all winter long to hear the ranchers’ tales of the frontier. He learned true cowboy songs from the men who rode the trails and although there were several opportunities, he never rode in a gasoline-powered vehicle until he stepped into an Army Jeep at age 18, on his way to attend West Point, where he learned to drink coffee like a gentleman. Still, he never quite lost drinking his coffee the ranchers’ way: Unless he’s got fresh buttermilk, he drinks his coffee black as coal.) Let them get the formula and undermine all the-
COLONEL STONE
General, it is evident that the drug is no longer worth protecting. These documents prove that American spies fed our intelligence to Charlie and that Yellow Jacket was planned by Langley to test the drug -- at our expense. We’ve set timed explosives. In a few moments, there will be no factory.
GENERAL WOODS
(There’s some news.) Noted. (Takes papers, glances through the files. There’s much they’ve been keeping from him.) Stone, you’re right. We can lose this battle and still win the war. Like you say, we’ll disenfranchise. We'll regroup in the city and brief command. (Looks at a “head count” report hastily written by the division’s senior radio operator. Muttered under STONE’S “Yes sir” while thinking about his next conversation with his boss:) Our losses were still very minimal, despite-
COLONEL STONE
Yes sir.
GENERAL WOODS
Mark?
COLONEL STONE
Yes?
GENERAL WOODS
All our talk of Phallophene ends here. The drug is a complete failure, and it goes away with the factory. (Throws all of his papers into the woodstove. This wise old officer, who was hit with shrapnel as an infantry lieutenant in World War II and took a bullet while as a major filling-in as a battalion’s field S-2 for military intelligence in Korea always makes the best decisions because he bases them on the first and most important principle of combat arms: No matter how many of the enemy you kill, you cannot continue to fight if you cannot keep your men alive -- i.e.: No one wins in a war of attrition. I know it sounds like a big “no-[shitze]-Sherlock, but take a gander at human history. He’s pulling out of this hornet’s nest when those who seek valor and glory would be lured to venture deeper -- in a vain attempt to go for the enemy’s jugular and beat the odds and turn the tables. Understand, it is not cowardice: This man always makes the right decision because he knows what it is like to be in the trenches, fighting other lethal children while two madmen lead a charge against reason and each other, both rushing into blind slaughter for even more mad and incomprehensible reasons. For instance, a captain’s order to sack an “unmanned” armory that housed Panzer tanks and an elite German mortar company. Or a colonel’s order to mass-assault a hill to aquire a storage bin full of sophisticated enemy equipment and invaluable intelligence. The debacle of scaling the 500-foot mud-pile alone took two weeks and 17 lives who would forever be buried under tons of North Korean mud that annually washes downriver to the Pacific. The remaining five who nearly died and the thirty-six who were injured in the final assault were completely overjoyed to learn they took bullets, [and in WOODS' case, one in his low, left side, for he was lucky, then] -- and decimated sixty-seven Korean boys who were sharing twenty-six antique rifles solely for a pillbox full of rusted radio parts and broken vacuum tubes. Not to neglect to mention the two-year-old “top secret” documents with foreign, communist-sounding monikers like Life and The Saturday Evening Post. He pours STONE a cup of coffee. They’re gonna need some time to talk...) Keep us off of Langley’s radar. They don’t know we know. We're gonna tell command that we were simply facing overwhelming numbers and had to scuttle the factory and scrap our plans for an offense.
COLONEL STONE
That's not too far from the truth, sir.
FTB