What am I doin' here?
Please Mr. Custer, I don't want to go.
—Larry Verne, Mr. Custer (1960)
Early February, 1970.
For hours, we hacked our way through thick bamboo over our heads. The higher-ups had us investigating some funny business that The Duck had spotted in the stomping grounds of the 9th NVA (North Vietnamese Army) Division.
All well and good, but the appalling 1968 Tet Offensive was on our mind. Back in the world, Jean Dixon, the gossip prophet, foresaw that our regiment (the 7th Calvary) would be wiped out again like at the Little Bighorn. This gal could knock 'em dead. She had predicted the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, the launch of Sputnik and the sinking of the Thresher.
Late in the afternoon, I almost crashed into Bob after the point man had stopped chopping. Something piqued his interest—a fresh path. Normally, we didn't touch a path, follow it, or cross it. Better to break bush than mix with heavy traffic and ignorant crowds.
Other leaders tossed lives around to make a name for themselves, but not Capt. Jackson, our CO. He felt the weight of each man on his shoulders, took no unnecessary chances and preached no sermons. It rubbed off. I never heard company members bitch at each other or their boss. We cared deeply for each other. No slackers or trolls—instead, results and boatloads of R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
After a pow-wow with his platoon leaders, Jackson picked a squad to reconnoiter. We held our breath and slipped safeties. The news came in. The path led straight to the front entrance of Hernando’s Hideaway—a bunker complex hidden behind a dense bamboo screen, odd as a load of furniture left in the jungle, and no booby traps!
The bunkers were not mere curiosities. Some were open trenches. Others were dug into the ground and domed like igloos, with slits for visibility and firing. Weaponized termite mounds, two feet high, hidden from eyes in the sky, scattered about and connected with tunnels. The ground around the bunkers had been freshly disturbed, but the ground atop the tunnels looked ordinary and harmless.
Captain always gave us plenty of time to set up for the night in a safe area, but with daylight slipping away, we circled our wagons in a place certain to be hot. We cleared only the necessary, filling sandbags the best we could, marking our territory with less than Roman-like thoroughness. Some bunkers were incorporated into our defensive perimeter, others stretched too far away. Captain adopted one behind us for his CP (command post). Our squad deployed smack dab on the three-foot wide approach, directly ahead of the CP, to face any unwelcome guests head on. Killer's rifle squad was on our right. I don't recall who was on our left.
For hours, we hacked our way through thick bamboo over our heads. The higher-ups had us investigating some funny business that The Duck had spotted in the stomping grounds of the 9th NVA (North Vietnamese Army) Division.
All well and good, but the appalling 1968 Tet Offensive was on our mind. Back in the world, Jean Dixon, the gossip prophet, foresaw that our regiment (the 7th Calvary) would be wiped out again like at the Little Bighorn. This gal could knock 'em dead. She had predicted the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, the launch of Sputnik and the sinking of the Thresher.
Late in the afternoon, I almost crashed into Bob after the point man had stopped chopping. Something piqued his interest—a fresh path. Normally, we didn't touch a path, follow it, or cross it. Better to break bush than mix with heavy traffic and ignorant crowds.
Other leaders tossed lives around to make a name for themselves, but not Capt. Jackson, our CO. He felt the weight of each man on his shoulders, took no unnecessary chances and preached no sermons. It rubbed off. I never heard company members bitch at each other or their boss. We cared deeply for each other. No slackers or trolls—instead, results and boatloads of R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
After a pow-wow with his platoon leaders, Jackson picked a squad to reconnoiter. We held our breath and slipped safeties. The news came in. The path led straight to the front entrance of Hernando’s Hideaway—a bunker complex hidden behind a dense bamboo screen, odd as a load of furniture left in the jungle, and no booby traps!
The bunkers were not mere curiosities. Some were open trenches. Others were dug into the ground and domed like igloos, with slits for visibility and firing. Weaponized termite mounds, two feet high, hidden from eyes in the sky, scattered about and connected with tunnels. The ground around the bunkers had been freshly disturbed, but the ground atop the tunnels looked ordinary and harmless.
Fucking clever.Bob and others inspected one of the larger bunkers, 10 x 10 and 5 feet deep. He pulled out three discarded film cartridges, likely for training or propaganda. Ho! We didn't expect Hollywood. The next bunker was twenty feet deep, but most were smaller hidey-holes, 7 x 7 or 8 x 8. Bob thought an entire regiment, five hundred men, had used it recently. The tunnels of Củ Chi? Too remote. Training or food and weapons depot? Not likely. Favorite haunt or deserted fortification? No way to tell, nothing incriminating had been left.
Captain always gave us plenty of time to set up for the night in a safe area, but with daylight slipping away, we circled our wagons in a place certain to be hot. We cleared only the necessary, filling sandbags the best we could, marking our territory with less than Roman-like thoroughness. Some bunkers were incorporated into our defensive perimeter, others stretched too far away. Captain adopted one behind us for his CP (command post). Our squad deployed smack dab on the three-foot wide approach, directly ahead of the CP, to face any unwelcome guests head on. Killer's rifle squad was on our right. I don't recall who was on our left.
Well I don't know why I came here tonight.
I got the feeling that something ain't right.
Clowns to the left of me.
Jokers to the right.
Here I am—Stuck in the middle with you.
Capt. Jackson had never put us at greater risk, but we were armed, dangerous and prepared to inflict pain:
M60 machine guns
A hundred ammo belts for the M60s
Grenade launchers
A hundred M16s
Two hundred M16 ammo bandoliers
A Winchester Model 12 trench gun (shotgun)
A Thompson submachine gun, carried Chicago-style by a vet on temporary duty
Claymores
Frags
Smoke grenades
At four hundred rounds per man, we pulled twice as much ammo, mano a mano, than the NVA.
As the gorgeous blood-red sun disappeared behind the bamboo, Walt's twenty-three-pound M60 machine gun sat perched on its bipod, worth its weight in gold, parked at the front door, aimed squarely down the path—the same weapon Rambo used to blow down a town in First Blood.
We rested our black rifles against sandbags, barrels pointed outwards, and settled into our guest house like rabbits in a pea patch.
The Romans used “Hour of the Wolf” to refer to morning twilight—a half-lit world where magic held sway, dreams came true and most people were born and died. So it was in this peculiar light of the predawn sun that one of our visitors made a fatal mistake to reach out and touch someone; he tripped a flare in the perimeter belonging to our squad. A scream rang out across the jungle. Sam squeezed the M57 clacker, blowing our Claymores, killing the guy and any of his buddies nearby.
This was no time to brush my teeth. We were already in fighting position, hugging the ground in shallow bunkers behind our massive firepower.
All hell broke loose from the heavy metal pouring in and our resounding roar. Enemy bullets busted above my head. When you hear the whistle, you know they’re close.
Despite the chaos, I could tell the guns apart; ours were faster, louder, more violent; our bullets were smaller and lighter. They say you can hear a popping sound when a bullet hits a body; well, I never heard it then or ever.
Whole bamboo trees toppled like dominoes, pulverized by the incredible fire. By some strange miracle, the incoming flew above our heads and no friendly fire came from the squads at our back; they were hugging the ground in their bunkers, clueless. The only outgoing came from us and the two squads flanking us, especially the blazing fury from Killer's men, who lacked a machine gun.
We had the same thought as our enemies,
Walt's hell-gun fired sustained barrages up to 600 rounds per minute, low ricocheting bullets all over the path, a huge morale booster and perhaps why the incoming fire was aimed over our heads.
In my bunker, a few steps to the right of Walt, I laid Thumper aside, my single-shot M79 grenade launcher. The smallish, 40 mm grenades could ricochet off overhanging trees and be back on top of us before we knew it. Behind thick bamboo, we had zero visibility; anything other than bullets was a bad idea (we rolled regular frags down the path). Hey—legend has it that a soldier fired his M79 point-blank at an enemy and the grenade got stuck in the guy's gut without exploding!
I snatched bandoliers, took magazines out of ammo pouches, and fed them as fast as I could to the guys with 16s. Nobody ever filled their magazines completely. The quirky, zigzag way the bullets fit into the twenty-round magazines made the last two bullets unusually tight fitting. Over time, dust, dirt, moisture and metal fatigue would make the spring fail, jamming the gun. Even then, a spent cartridge case could fail to eject from the firing chamber. The new round would bump into the old casing and cause a different kind of jam, a failure to extract:
Thirty minutes of fire had almost drained our ammo when Capt. Jackson changed the balance of power—he called for Shake, Rattle and Roll, a tactical air-strike from Bien Hoa's huge runways. Because the enemy could throw matching smoke, Killer only identified our camp with lefty lemon (yellow) when Jackson was still talking to the overhead forward air controller.
In the blink of an eye, a pair of swept-wing F-4 Phantoms—the leading distributors of MiG parts—came screaming out of the sky like fiery Bellonas,1 skimming trees, dropping high-drag 500-lb shakes and dashing out, trailing black smoke from their twin GE turbojets.
As soon as the music stopped, we evacuated our bunkers beat it to the nearest tree for an umbrella against the dirt balls raining down. Lt. Ashmore, our platoon leader, had gone poof! What the hell? He had remained in his bunker and been hit by a dirt ball a foot in diameter. It knocked him ten feet through the air, breaking his thigh bone.
The NVA rounded up their dead and went đi đi mau ("go quickly"). They had a prior appointment.
We had taken no casualties except for the lucky Lt. with the million-dollar wound. He would likely get to go home after the medevac flew him out. But there was no joy in Mudville. We were in shock. Shit happens, your survival instincts and training take over and you react to the chaos around you.
The molten sun was up now. A squad went down the path to take stock. I only saw one dead enemy, dumped into a bomb crater for later retrieval. Vietnamese believe that the souls of the dead will be in turmoil forevermore, if not buried on family soil—a custom that obfuscated our body counts.
Bob took off with the patrol and came back with a bag of meat, blood and bone meal to add to the pile of remains.
Oops. The NVA had miscalculated, but Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap threw cold water on Gen. Westmoreland's strategy to break Hanoi by attrition:
The platoon leaders added the number of enemy bodies on the ground to those hauled away by the enemy and gave the inflated count to the CO. The exploits of Charlie Co. accrued to the balance sheets of the officers, lifers and those above; they were punching their career tickets with our kill ratios and body counts, like Edward III after the battle of Crécy. Therein lay the rub—why we grunts were resentful and suspicious of the higher-ups.
Victory had been brought and we remained the victors, but to go in and get out was Capt. Jackson's motto. We skipped breakfast, pressed play and gave back the won territory; air-strikes would obliterate our shallow entrenchments and what they had built.
After a wild one-night-stand, we rode out essentially as we rode in until an intemperate endnote arose. We crossed an open field and halted in front of a wood to rest our asses in the elephant grasses. Sam looked over his shoulder and saw two figures following us a hundred yards distant. NVA tracking, coming up before we were into the tree line? Curiosity seekers? We were still in Tet.
Sam, our John Wayne, stood up and spoke in his slow Texas drawl,
Jean Dixon had misfired, but we hadn’t. We had dodged a bullet—several, in fact.
Ha! I never believed in horoscopes.
As the gorgeous blood-red sun disappeared behind the bamboo, Walt's twenty-three-pound M60 machine gun sat perched on its bipod, worth its weight in gold, parked at the front door, aimed squarely down the path—the same weapon Rambo used to blow down a town in First Blood.
We rested our black rifles against sandbags, barrels pointed outwards, and settled into our guest house like rabbits in a pea patch.
The guards better stay awake.Shortly after midnight, our guard saw flashes of light darting to and fro in the darkness behind the clumps of heavy bamboo. The interlopers were taking our measure, searching for tripwires, deciphering our layout. We didn't know what they were but they didn't know what we were, either. Two or two thousand? The fog of war.
The tide turns quickly in Vietnam.Fear can strip you to your naked self. To counter the butterflies in my gut, I popped in earplugs, listened to the Rolling Stones on the American Forces Vietnam Network, and held on for Judgment Day.
The Romans used “Hour of the Wolf” to refer to morning twilight—a half-lit world where magic held sway, dreams came true and most people were born and died. So it was in this peculiar light of the predawn sun that one of our visitors made a fatal mistake to reach out and touch someone; he tripped a flare in the perimeter belonging to our squad. A scream rang out across the jungle. Sam squeezed the M57 clacker, blowing our Claymores, killing the guy and any of his buddies nearby.
This was no time to brush my teeth. We were already in fighting position, hugging the ground in shallow bunkers behind our massive firepower.
All hell broke loose from the heavy metal pouring in and our resounding roar. Enemy bullets busted above my head. When you hear the whistle, you know they’re close.
Despite the chaos, I could tell the guns apart; ours were faster, louder, more violent; our bullets were smaller and lighter. They say you can hear a popping sound when a bullet hits a body; well, I never heard it then or ever.
Whole bamboo trees toppled like dominoes, pulverized by the incredible fire. By some strange miracle, the incoming flew above our heads and no friendly fire came from the squads at our back; they were hugging the ground in their bunkers, clueless. The only outgoing came from us and the two squads flanking us, especially the blazing fury from Killer's men, who lacked a machine gun.
We had the same thought as our enemies,
Kill the bastards.Walt lay on the ground without protection, directly behind his M60, ripping fire down the path. Bobby Parris fed him 100-shot ammo belts hooked together into an endless lead salad. Belts were plentiful, since each man in the company carried one. Bobby blasted away with his 12-gauge when he could. They were alone together; who wants a shower of red-hot shell casings?
Walt's hell-gun fired sustained barrages up to 600 rounds per minute, low ricocheting bullets all over the path, a huge morale booster and perhaps why the incoming fire was aimed over our heads.
In my bunker, a few steps to the right of Walt, I laid Thumper aside, my single-shot M79 grenade launcher. The smallish, 40 mm grenades could ricochet off overhanging trees and be back on top of us before we knew it. Behind thick bamboo, we had zero visibility; anything other than bullets was a bad idea (we rolled regular frags down the path). Hey—legend has it that a soldier fired his M79 point-blank at an enemy and the grenade got stuck in the guy's gut without exploding!
I snatched bandoliers, took magazines out of ammo pouches, and fed them as fast as I could to the guys with 16s. Nobody ever filled their magazines completely. The quirky, zigzag way the bullets fit into the twenty-round magazines made the last two bullets unusually tight fitting. Over time, dust, dirt, moisture and metal fatigue would make the spring fail, jamming the gun. Even then, a spent cartridge case could fail to eject from the firing chamber. The new round would bump into the old casing and cause a different kind of jam, a failure to extract:
Can I get a whistle? My gun's broke!Our 16s had been bored-out, eliminating the problem.
Thirty minutes of fire had almost drained our ammo when Capt. Jackson changed the balance of power—he called for Shake, Rattle and Roll, a tactical air-strike from Bien Hoa's huge runways. Because the enemy could throw matching smoke, Killer only identified our camp with lefty lemon (yellow) when Jackson was still talking to the overhead forward air controller.
 |
I hate noise!Concussions from the ill-natured bombs pounded our chests, kicked tons of dirt and dust into the sky and scared the living shit out of us—and we were expecting! It couldn't have been any better for the other side—imagine the looks on their faces.
As soon as the music stopped, we evacuated our bunkers beat it to the nearest tree for an umbrella against the dirt balls raining down. Lt. Ashmore, our platoon leader, had gone poof! What the hell? He had remained in his bunker and been hit by a dirt ball a foot in diameter. It knocked him ten feet through the air, breaking his thigh bone.
The NVA rounded up their dead and went đi đi mau ("go quickly"). They had a prior appointment.
We had taken no casualties except for the lucky Lt. with the million-dollar wound. He would likely get to go home after the medevac flew him out. But there was no joy in Mudville. We were in shock. Shit happens, your survival instincts and training take over and you react to the chaos around you.
The molten sun was up now. A squad went down the path to take stock. I only saw one dead enemy, dumped into a bomb crater for later retrieval. Vietnamese believe that the souls of the dead will be in turmoil forevermore, if not buried on family soil—a custom that obfuscated our body counts.
Bob took off with the patrol and came back with a bag of meat, blood and bone meal to add to the pile of remains.
You fuckers figure it out!He estimated 200 coonskins on the wall.
Oops. The NVA had miscalculated, but Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap threw cold water on Gen. Westmoreland's strategy to break Hanoi by attrition:
Every minute, hundreds of thousands of people die on this Earth. The life or death of a hundred, a thousand, tens of thousands of human beings, even our compatriots, means little.We would out-kill; they would outlast. If they didn't lose the war, they might win it; if we didn't win the war, we must lose it.
The platoon leaders added the number of enemy bodies on the ground to those hauled away by the enemy and gave the inflated count to the CO. The exploits of Charlie Co. accrued to the balance sheets of the officers, lifers and those above; they were punching their career tickets with our kill ratios and body counts, like Edward III after the battle of Crécy. Therein lay the rub—why we grunts were resentful and suspicious of the higher-ups.
Victory had been brought and we remained the victors, but to go in and get out was Capt. Jackson's motto. We skipped breakfast, pressed play and gave back the won territory; air-strikes would obliterate our shallow entrenchments and what they had built.
After a wild one-night-stand, we rode out essentially as we rode in until an intemperate endnote arose. We crossed an open field and halted in front of a wood to rest our asses in the elephant grasses. Sam looked over his shoulder and saw two figures following us a hundred yards distant. NVA tracking, coming up before we were into the tree line? Curiosity seekers? We were still in Tet.
Sam, our John Wayne, stood up and spoke in his slow Texas drawl,
Well, gentlemen, the party's over.He opened up with his 16 and several more of us let fly. I lobbed a few grenades on target with my 79, but our after-action patrol found only one body.
Jean Dixon had misfired, but we hadn’t. We had dodged a bullet—several, in fact.
Ha! I never believed in horoscopes.
1 Roman war goddess. As the twin
sister of Mars, she loved to spill foreign blood and wield a spear,
sword, shield and fiery torch while bellowing orders and war-cries
over the roar of battle. She's said to bring good luck. The Roman
Senate met in her temple when business was foreign war.
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