The Trail

For the times they are a-changin'—Bob Dylan 

The seasoned vets of Charlie Company were mighty unsure of the future under Capt Rice. Neither were Keith Kay, James Clevenger and John Laurence of CBS, embedded in Sgt. Dunnuck’s squad. 

The bare statistics of twenty-four-year-old Al Rice were these: a southerner, a gungho ranger and a martinet. After lavishing praise on Capt. Jackson just two days before, Rice had taken over Charlie Company and been acting odd—not stopping soon enough to set up an adequate NDP (night defensive position) and making map reading mistakes.

Friendly artillery might rain down on us any minute!

Circling overhead in his Cobra, Battalion CO Lt. Col. Trobaugh had scheduled us to be plucked out of the thick jungle today, but first we had to find a suitable LZ (landing zone) for the lift ships (helicopters). 

Bob took point; when he crossed an old, overgrown APC (armored personnel carrier) track and emerged onto a single-lane dirt road lined by thick foliage on either side, footprints in the dirt seemed to jump up and hit him between the eyes. 

Fresh NVA (North Vietnamese Army) slicks (sandals)!

Battalion had steered us smack onto the Ho Chi Minh Trail! Why hadn’t Rice told us last night and why hadn’t we been told how close we were to the trail? 

We were used to Capt. Jackson’s wise old ways—no trails, never! He had learned his tricks from a crafty South Vietnamese colonel: how the enemy thinks, how to keep your people safe, how to fight the enemy on your terms. Scrupulous, time-tested methods which had served us so well during the last five months. 

Bob stopped. The squad stopped. Our whole platoon stopped. Bob brought our squad back into the safety of the bush. 

Kay and Clevenger ceased to be lookers-on and rolled film as Dunnuck moved up to observe the road for himself. Dunnuck wholeheartedly agreed with our squad. 

Any number of men could be lurking behind the thick foliage and trees. The road is only six or seven feet wide, too tight for birds [helicopters] but plenty wide for NVA tracks, everywhere, plain as daylight. 

Our platoon leader, 2nd Lt. Eggleston, radioed to Rice back of us. Rice copied Trobaugh straight from the bird, 

Go to the left and walk the company down the road 3/4 of a mile to a possible LZ. 

This time Dunnuck went ballistic.

A fuckin' road!! Any NVA would be invisible five feet from the road, on either side. We'd never know it. Wipe us all out. Booby traps. We don't take trails, let alone a fuck’n road. It's suicide. Not gonna walk down it. No! That's it.

Dunnuck took his misgivings back into the bush.

Trobaugh, Rice and Eggleston—the entire battalion chain of command—were rookies; the company was a walking poison pill. 

  

Capt. Jackson wasn't here anymore, but his spirit was. 

We're not gonna be killed by a bunch of FNGs (fucking new guys). 

Roll more tape. While Kay and Clevenger went up and down the column with their camera, the battalion clock was ticking—counting down fifteen minutes. Rice came up for a look and confabulated with his platoon leaders. Everyone opposed the road, but Rice squeezed, 

We're gonna move out on the road. Or I'm gonna take point if I have to. We've got a job to do and we're gonna do it. It's not half dangerous as some of the crap we've done in the boonies a while ago. At least we can see what we're doin'.

Ridiculous. We had Rice for only two stinkin’ days. 

Rice kept picking from a buffet of futility,   

Either move out or I'll move out and they can sit on their butt right here. It's that simple. All right. Let's move out. Make up their mind. Or I'll send some people back for 'em, which won't go over big. What we have here is extremely safe. 

He had yet to absorb the lessons that Capt. Jackson tried to teach him and he wasn't about to listen to us, either. Eggleston made a last-ditch attempt to talk sense into him, but Rice would have none of it; he summoned the dog team and the RTO (radiotelephone operator).

Dog team

The dog refused to move!

And that is how it came to pass that only a poor RTO—wondering if this was the last day of his life—accompanied Rice down the road. 

Was Rice the Lone Ranger or Don Quixote? 

Neither. He returned after only a few yards,   

The longer we sit here, the worse it gets. 

Was he throwing in the towel? 

Not really—his elongated southern vowels weren't working. 

Then a miracle. Battalion changed their mind, 

Go a hundred mikes (meters) to the right to a notch on the side of the road. Cut an LZ. Get out ASAP. 

Nobody on the ground, including Rice, knew that a massive B-52 Arc Light mission had been scheduled that day, three hundred mikes from our LZ. Fifteen hundred mikes is the smallest margin of error for Operation Arc Light munitions. Not a time for duck and cover. 

Laurence to Dunnuck,   

What do you think of this operation?

It's crazy. It's senseless, walkin' down the road?

What's the problem? 

I don't wanna walk down the road. This is one of the things I told ya about when we were wondering what a new CO was going to be like. This is one of those things you don't want him to be like. Ducks in a shooting gallery. Tracks all up and down this morning. Bad. We'll have to go in and see what happens. 

Charlie Company single-file down the trail

The interview was over. Charlie Company spread out and edged down the road toward the new objective. At last, the men found the notch on the side of the road and set about hacking an LZ out of the small trees and brush. 

A single chopper squeezed into the roadside clearing as soon as it was wide enough. It would take the first six GIs. At that rate, it would take over an hour to evacuate the company to Firebase Wood. 

Through the magic of radio, Battalion kept in continuous touch with Charlie Company and Arc Light. With two minutes until the bombay doors opened, only forty-two troops had been lifted out to safety. 

Battalion to Division,   

Abort Arc Light!

Did you say abort?

Roger.

Mission aborted. 

That’s how on April 6, 1970, Capt. Rice had become infamous at the Ho Chi Minh trail, the same day, one hundred eight years earlier, that Gen. Grant was becoming famous at the Battle of Shiloh. 

News travels fast, too fast for poor Lt. Tuck at the battalion information desk. He waited until the next morning to brief brigade. That kicked off a sloppy weekend for the army. 

The army brass panicked. Brigade CO Col. Ochs summoned CBS for a noon meeting in the air-conditioned VIP lounge at Tan Sun Nhut AFB (Air Force Base), Saigon. CBS was outnumbered five to three. Ochs wouldn't let it alone, he forced Laurence to read the script of the rebellion aloud. Every word. He pleaded with Laurence not to release the tape. He twisted arms and words, spun and threatened. 

Maj. J. D. Coleman, Battalion PIO (Public Information Officer) warned Laurence, 

You better keep your heads down. 

Laurence was unbowed—he had a goldmine. Besides, the story was already on its way to New York. CBS brass were ecstatic. Walter Cronkite ran the six-minute-and-forty-second bombshell on Monday's April 9 edition of The CBS Evening News. The April 20 Asian edition of Newsweek carried the headline,  

JUST DOWNRIGHT REFUSAL 

The last straw. 

Trobaugh cleaned house in a classic Gambino-style roll-up. Tuck was banished to a rifle platoon in the field; Rice requested reassignment; Eggleston was driving a water truck; Dunnuck never got the supply job he coveted. 

Within a month, Ochs was relieved of command, a death warrant for his career. Capt. Jackson? Doing fine at his desk in Phuoc Vinh as CO of brigade headquarters company. 

As its reward, CBS was expelled from Charlie Company and reassigned elsewhere within the battalion. They were only allowed back in the field bugged and accompanied by minders. After their movements had been made difficult, if not impossible, they got the hint and relocated to Cambodia. 

When Laurence was scooping the invasion of Cambodia by U.S. forces on May Day, he ran into us again. A month later, he was out and back at Tan Son Nhut, hospitalized for fever, dehydration and exhaustion. But at the end of June, he was home in Manhattan, nonstop editing a one-hour documentary, The World of Charlie Company, which ran on July 14 opposite the NBC All-Star game. 

The infamous incident ended with no KIA or WIA. The collective knowledge of the vets—real people solving real problems in real ways—had kept us safe. 

Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few—Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) 

Charlie Company had spit the bit. The old army of lifers and compliant conscripts was dead. 

Long live Charlie Company!