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!

The B52s

Keep off the path, 
beware of the gate, 
watch out for signs that say 'hidden driveways' 
—Private Idaho, The B-52's (1980)

In hundred-plus heat, a company of sweat-soaked grunts, a few officers and a couple of scouts, are humping—walking through the jungle single file, muscles tensed under ninety-pound packs, stopping occasionally for a ten-minute break. A nervous point man leads them. The CO (commanding officer) travels in the middle.

Charlie Company was a diverse bunch, with ten blacks and a dozen Hispanics. A lotta guys hailed from the rural U.S. and many were good trackers. There were no lifers in my squad, but my company had two—the 1st Sgt. and the CO.

Soldiers stick to their squad of eight and squads stick to their platoon of twenty-five, commanded by a lieutenant. The battalion commander flies around in his helicopter, maintaining radio contact with his COs so their units don't bump into each other. Think of a corporation following an objective.

We rarely pissed in the jungle heat because the human body conserves water, except what it discharges as sweat. The march doesn't stop to shit, either. Smoking on the move was the exception, not the rule. Lunch was over a ten-minute break. Many skipped breakfast.

The heat and the stench of the air
A sick feeling in your stomach, day after day
The smell of body odor 
and the chocking dust in your throat
Eyes that burn from sweat 
and are tired and painful from squinting
The ache in your back and neck 
while you stand waiting to move
A pause for a minute and a quick cigarette
That deserted second from reality
when your whole body reeks with tension
at an unknown sound or a shadow in the Bam-Boo 
—SP4 Bob Jackson (1970)

Our main opponents were NVA (North Vietnamese Army) conventional units of patient, patriotic men in for the duration, who liked to fight and endured ridiculous hardship.

My thoughts kept returning to where I had been and where I was going. Over and over I played the "what if we make contact?" game in the back of my mind. Do I drop to one knee or move out and seek cover or wait for directions? Think of a center fielder in a baseball game with the bases loaded and one out. He can’t wait for the coach. He's got to know what to do in case of a fly ball, a ball hit in front of him, over his head, in the gap. Anything.

Kit Carson

Thousands of Vietnamese in their late teens to early fifties joined the Kit Carson Scout Program. They wore the same uniform, back pack, and boots as the soldiers. They carried Colt M16s, traveled in the same milieu, mixed with the soldiers, and made the unit more effective. Our company always took the same two scouts; we never fired them. No effort was made to extract them after the war.

Lup, a fifty-two-year-old Papa San and former Yard (Montagnard mountain man), had built Punji pits for the VC before he defected.

A diabolical Bengal invention, Punji pits are lined with sharpened bamboo sticks and smeared with toxins or feces to infect the wound. The sticks are fixed to the sides of the pit and pointed downward so that a victim caught in the pit cannot be extricated without severe damage to his leg or the rest of his body.

The column had to stop for the painful extraction, lost valuable time and became highly vulnerable to attack until the victim was evacuated by helicopter. We never hit a Punji pit, thanks to the grunts and scouts.

We used to rib Lup about his habits of puffing on his pipe and eating anything he came across. He would smile and move on, eating alone, friendly enough. If he came across a turtle or a lizard, he would cut it up and cook it. "Chop, chop." One time, he acquired a baby monkey and asked Bob to build a fire, but Bob answered. "To hell with you, you're not gonna burn that monkey. No way!" His gourmet meal foiled, Lup let the monkey go.

A hard-core smoker, Lup would pick up the brand-new packs of unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes that nobody wanted and fieldstrip them for his pipe. No big deal, because discarded items were destroyed or buried to keep them from the enemy. And each time he rotated back home, he would come back on with an old, worn out pair of boots so he could get a free new pair. Nobody blamed him for that, either.

Ty, a seventeen-year-old scout from ARVN (South Vietnamese Army), held a grudge against the VC for shooting his father in the stomach after Ty refused to join them. He was always highly pissed and wore a magic talisman on a necklace, an evil eye against the VC. He even claimed that he could smell 'em and wanted to slaughter as many as he could. Bob and Ty were good friends.

Food and Fashion

Virtually everyone wore plain OD (olive drab) jungle fatigues without unit ID, patches, or rank. Why wear anything else? On log (resupply) day, a heap of large sizes would remain until the end or until the scouts claimed them. Baggy clothes were hazardous. Besides, the small ones fit everyone, even the big boys. Underwear caused chafing in the sticky heat, so we did without.

Some wore their OD green t-shirts all the time. Our steel helmets had a reversible camouflaged brown or green cover, wearer’s choice. No one sported camouflage makeup (or any type); it quickly bled down your face in the heat and humidity.

Stop the column! I gotta freshen up my makeup.

Everyone wore combat jungle boots, black and green bottoms with a fabric top to absorb moisture and dry quickly, with or without socks. Most looked like crap. Instead of laces, mine had heavy-duty zippers I picked up from a Vietnamese flea market. They went on and off easier and I never had to worry about tripping over the laces. While setting up for the evening, many soldiers changed into something more comfortable: sandals, boonie hats and t-shirts.

CBS

John Laurence won an Emmy for his coverage of us in the field, The World of Charlie Company (1970). He led a small CBS news crew attached to Sgt. Dunnuck's squad. The sound guy liked to set out alone and record the jungle; one day he didn't come back. We moved on.

Our foes wore Ho Chi Minh slicks (clever, well-constructed sandals made from tires and inner tubes), faded green fatigues, and carried AK-47 rifles.

We could travel light because every three days we dialed room service: a Huey chopper with combat-ready C rations (canned, pre-cooked rations) and LRPs (dehydrated Long Range Patrol meals), warm beer and soda, mail and sundries like shaving gear, candy, cigs, etc. New clothes every other time, new boots only if you had ordered them. Smokers grabbed cigarettes. To keep them from the enemy, leftovers were chopped up with a machete or buried.

Water came in various containers, most notably in elephant rubbers (rubber tubes 8-10 inches in diameter and 5 ft. long). When pitched out of the helicopter, they would bounce crazy across the ground. Water sometimes came in artillery canisters tainted with gun powder. Yuck! It also came in anything and everything and believe it or not, even in regular containers.

Time permitting, cooks came along, set up a field kitchen and tables for the food canisters, and we all got a good hot meal. Mucho grassy ass—we roared! (inside) The Hueys didn't hang around. They got the hell out before attracting too much enemy attention.

A lot of our stuff had multiple functions. For example, we didn't take showers but kept ourselves reasonably clean by drying our sweat off with a towel. Afterward, the towel could cushion the frame that stabilized your heavy backpack. Mine had the older lightweight aluminum frame.

NDP

On the march in enemy territory, the Roman army sent out advance scouts to select an advantageous resting site. The legion would arrive at the designated location in mid-afternoon. For the passage of one night, they dug a ditch around a square, circle or triangle as required. The turves that they cut out of the ground would be raised into a rampart and topped with stakes or wooden spars, enabling the soldiers to rest securely in their tents without fear of ambush.¹

Like the Romans, each night we constructed a fortified NDP (night defensive position) in the bush. That way we could hide in the jungle and not expose ourselves to rocket and heavy weapon attack. Setting up camp took about two hours.

The battalion commander, the CO and his platoon leaders put their heads together and selected a spot on the go. Inadequate cover, security, proximity to trails, odds of a better area or anything else, would send the troop onward.

Charlie Company had been humping the jungle all day when the column halted mid-afternoon. The word came down the line—we would setup here for the night.

Since each soldier carried his own food, water, and supplies, we needed only provide cover. Platoons and squads were assigned sectors within a circular perimeter. The twelve squads were spaced 20-25 feet apart around and within the perimeter.

The CO, 1st Sgt., and the RTO (radio telephone operator) would set up smack dab in the middle of all this, in the secure CP (command post) hole.

We went to work like Romans. We dropped our packs, helmets, ammo belts, and five to seven quarts of water. Weapons were propped up against our packs. Shirts came off. Boonie hats went on. Everyone took part setting camp or guarding the forward and rear areas, regardless of rank.

Some guys shoveled dirt into sandbags, piling them three or four high to make a rectangular rampart for their squad. Once the makeshift bunker was built, weapons and ammo were stacked inside and together.

Others strung trip wires, hooked up flares, and set antipersonnel Claymore mines around the perimeter, about 30 yards out from our defensive rectangle.

Claymore mine.

We placed Claymores on the ground atop their tripods, into interlocking fields of fire, facing outward toward any potential enemy. Each mine or group of mines could be blown individually with a "clacker" (detonator). Each squad controlled their own sector of flares and mines within the 360-degree company perimeter. Every angle and square inch was covered. A bug couldn't get by unnoticed.

If a flare was tripped in his sector, the guard blew the mines in his sector, sending a lethal barrage of steel balls, .00 buckshot, screaming bloody murder through the bush. We scored a fair number of kills this way.

Next, each man used a machete to clear an area next to the rampart where he could sleep. The sleeping areas were close together, defended with squirts of bug juice; we avoided red ants at all costs. Air mattresses were inflated with a heroic effort, the camouflage poncho liner set on top for a blanket. If needed, an OD poncho was tied to the surrounding trees to provide shelter from the rain or mist.

Finally, we could rest and recuperate. The guys got casual with sandals and t-shirts. If you had to take a shit you put on your helmet, grabbed a shovel, and went outside the perimeter. No Pentagon toilet seats here. Some guys borrowed my .45.

Everyone was his own chef for the big meal; the secret ingredient in his kitchen was a bottle of Tabasco sent from home. C rations were opened with the awesome all-purpose P-38 John Wayne can opener, the greatest invention since the fork. It doubled as a screwdriver or a knife; we kept it on our key chains.

Spaghetti, crackers and cheese, and candy bars were OK. Tuna, eggs, and ham, not so much. In a highly unauthorized, but universal practice, C-4 plastic explosives dug out from a Claymore mine instantly heated a can of C rations or a canteen cup full of water for coffee, hot chocolate, or LRPs (Long Range Patrol rations).

LRPs weighed much less than C rations and were a welcome change, except for one small detail—they required water, a precious commodity in the field! So, I only ate them occasionally. Most of us stored our C-4 supply in an empty LRP bag to keep it dry.

The canteen cup could be washed with relatively clean ditch or bomb crater water. Some even used it for their LRPs. I never did. It was famous for parasites and bacteria.

Fed and watered, we could now kick back and reflect. We commenced smoking with cupped hands over the tip, listening to transistor radios with earplugs, reading and writing letters.

War Is Beautiful

The sun setting turning the sky a blood-red
The stars at night hold you like a satin blanket.
While a fuck-you lizard does his thing
Each night laying there staring at the stars
Gazing at all God's beauty and goodness.
Knowing that these same stars umbrella over everyone
and everything you love
Nights that seem eternal and ominous
—SP4 Bob Jackson (1970)

All was quiet as the stars took their places. Lying on my air mattress, arms folded behind my head, I awaited guard duty. Gazing up at the incredible night sky, a brilliant star moving across the heavens caught my attention.

I whispered to Bob, my closest squad member,

What is that?

A B-52. Operation Arc Light.

B-52 Heavy Bomber

Suddenly, the heavens blazed orange and the ground shook—a multitude of thousand-pound bombs had dropped from the sky.

My beautiful Star of Bethlehem was a Death Star. 

1 compiled from Vegetius' de re militari, Book III