“Avoid any display of emotion during Tet and do not discuss subjects with the Vietnamese which breed emotion, arguments or insults.”

—The MACV Observer, January 31, 1968¹

17

Gates of Hell

February 1, 1968

Outside the house visibility improved as the sun inched higher, but I didn’t like the view. Our vulnerability was quite apparent in the light of day. As Mendenhall and I scraped dirt with our helmets along with every one else, we grew more anxious as dawn broke over us. Darkness had afforded some protection, but under the rising sun we were completely exposed, visually uncovered and without protection. Digging was slow and tedious in the hard, dry ground without entrenching tools. Twenty-four hours had elapsed since we had last eaten and the imposed fast had weakened us. Worse, we were almost out of water and were sweating precious fluids from our bodies as we scrabbled at the hard surface.

Mendenhall and I wondered just how bad the overall situation really was. We knew it looked grim from where we were, and we had no promise of fire support, so we assumed that everyone must be engaged all over the country. When we took a breather from the hard work and worry, I remembered my small radio in my otherwise empty ammunition pouch. Real-time news might be the best ammunition we could have. I clicked the radio on and tuned to AFN, and we listened intently with the volume turned low. Slick asked me to turn it up so he could also hear the reports. No music was being played on the air, only battle reports from all over Vietnam. If we were not discouraged enough before, we were more depressed as we became aware how precarious the situation was throughout Vietnam.

We learned that a general offensive was underway all over the country. The enemy assaults were amplified by the large numbers of ARVN soldiers who had gone home for the holidays. While Saigon had virtually disarmed for the cease-fire, Hanoi had mobilized to attack with their greatest strength. Civilians also had traveled for the holidays, adding their numbers to the normal homeless, but exponentially increasing the numbers of refugees. With this bad news we felt more isolated than ever. Although we least understood the dearth of support, it seemed that our survival rested in our own hands.

We were a motley little band of soldiers, desperately short of supplies, outnumbered and outgunned for the first time. Eroding our numbers were at least twenty-five dead, in addition to the wounded. Our losses were partially offset by a few wandering ARVN soldiers who wandered into our perimeter, looking for any unit to join. They would have been killed outright if singly by the VC who occupied My Tho, so they’d picked up the rifles of the dead and joined our fight.

Although our situation was bleak, I believed that if we recovered some of our soldiers and received a resupply, we could still be effective. On the other hand, there was little we could do other than hang on until our situation improved.

By the middle of the afternoon the sun had baked us. I kept thinking of hamburgers on a grill. The house, transformed from an aid station into a morgue, was filled with the smell of death. I went inside once to see about the wounded, but the smell made me dry-heave from my empty stomach. The sight was as awful as the smell. If the wounded could walk or crawl, they returned to the perimeter on their own rather than remain in the impromptu crypt.

Late in the day, we were joined by forty of our own soldiers who had managed to return to Binh Duc, where they recovered their weapons and ammunition before leaving on foot to join us. Their arrival lifted our spirits, and their numbers made up for our losses thus far.

Sergeant Mendenhall confiscated a straw sleeping mat from the house. We gathered short sticks and propped the mat over our trench for some protection from the brutal sun. Our scraped-out hole was only two feet deep and not quite long enough for us both to lie flat in it side by side. It was more a two-man fighting trench than a foxhole. Usually we sat in the hole, with our feet stretched out and our heads up to look around us. By this time, our body odor was so pungent that neither of us relished huddling together in the confined space, but at least the straw mat provided some shade.

Nearby an ARVN soldier was digging a deep foxhole for a Vietnamese lieutenant, using a shovel that had been found. The lieutenant walked to the soldier and exhorted him loudly to make the hold deeper. Mendenhall and I watched the exchange, wishing we had a shovel and someone to dig for us, too.

The digger was in the hole up to his chest and the lieutenant stood at the edge, encouraging him to dig deeper. During their exchange, a sniper in the apartment building overlooking us took advantage of the easy targets. He fired a burst of eight rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle. We witnessed bullets strike the Vietnamese officer and soldier ten meters from where we lay. The soldier in the hole was struck once in the head, killing him instantly. The lieutenant standing above ground was not so lucky. Three rounds struck him in the crotch, at the same level with the soldier’s head. One round broke his hip, the second went through his intestines, and the third shot off his penis and testicles. The lieutenant fell to his knees, hesitated, and then toppled into the hole on top of the dead soldier.

After a brief pause to re-aim, the sniper’s next three bullets ripped through the straw mat covering our trench. They didn’t hit us, but Mendenhall hurled the mat aside with a single stroke, removing the beautiful target over our heads. Like turtles, we pulled our heads into the hole, but unfortunately the trench was not long enough, so both our feet were outside. Vietnamese riflemen directed a heavy volume of fire at the sniper, forcing him to duck into the building.

Mendenhall said, almost casually, “This is a hell of a predicament, sir.”

“Well, you got any bright ideas?” I asked.

“We could make a run for the house,” he suggested.

“No way! I’ve been there. There’s more death there than here. It’s sickening.”

“I guess we’ll just hang here and hope for the best.”

“If I get shot, I’d rather die quickly like the soldier, rather than like the lieutenant,” I offered.

“The lieutenant isn’t dead, sir. Listen.”

In the quiet, we heard moans wafting from the foxhole. They grew louder.

“Looks like we got two choices,” said Mendenhall. “Both involve staying here and listening to the lieutenant.”

“What are they?” I wanted to know.

“We can lie here with our feet exposed to the sniper, or drag our feet in and expose our heads.”

“Mendenhall, as bad as you smell, I’m not sticking my head out just now. If something has to go, my dancing days are over.”

“Me too … but if it gets worse, I might change my mind.”

When the firing ceased an appalling silence hung in the air. For ten minutes all we heard were the agonized screams of the lieutenant in the hole. Finally he crawled hand over hand out of the hole, groaning loudly as he did. He was a bloody mess from his stomach to his knees, and his hands were bloody from holding his wounds. A medic approached him, spoke with him a moment, took one look at his wounds, and walked away.

The medic reported in Vietnamese to Captain Xuan. A loud exchange ensued between Xuan and the lieutenant in Vietnamese I could not understand, but I knew it was an important conversation from the desperation in their voices. All the soldiers who heard the exchange wore looks of resignation on their faces, but no one uttered a sound. The screams of the butchered lieutenant gradually changed to quiet sobbing.

The dreaded silence hung over us for an eternal moment. Captain Xuan’s radio operator stood up with Xuan’s .45-caliber pistol in his hand. He walked deliberately but slowly to the hole where the lieutenant lay in his own blood and held out the pistol to him. The officer slowly took the pistol in both his blooded hands. The radio operator turned quietly around and returned to sit by his radio. The lieutenant slid back into the hole with his dead soldier. Again there was silence. Then we heard one shot from inside the foxhole. The radio operator slowly got up again, walked to the hole, which had been dug for protection and was now a grave. He reached in and recovered the .45. He wiped it off carefully with his shirttail and returned it to Xuan.

The rest of the afternoon was hauntingly quiet, except for continuous news on my small radio and the rifle and machine gun fire a few blocks away. There were no feelings left in us; all emotions had been extinguished. We had again witnessed war’s ugliest face. War was hell, and we had finally arrived at its gates. I didn’t think life could get any worse than this.

Maybe death would come as a blessing, after all.