After I had finished packing the car, got Toddy comfortably settled in the passenger's seat, and mumbled some awkward assurances to my mother and sisters about how quickly we would be together again, I turned toward my fattier for our farewell. As we stood facing each other beneath the spreading boughs of a weeping willow tree in the backyard of my boyhood home, the alarming thought crossed my mind that I might never again see this suddenly fragile old man, not because I might die in Vietnam but because he might not survive my tour. He tried to tell me again and for the thousandth time the parable of the Spartan mother who, on sending her own son off to war, advised him to come back with his shield or on it, but he was unable to complete the quote. His final words trailed off, and his shoulders shook as he took me in his arms, and we both tried to take from each other the solace and the strength that had suddenly abandoned us. Finally and after what seemed an eternity, we broke our embrace, and my mother led him back into the house with tears streaming down both their cheeks. I mechanically got into the car, wiped the tears from my own face, and tried to ease the pain in my aching throat as we silently headed north toward Washington. It was the first time I had ever seen my father cry.

On the trip up Route 17 I began to have the distinct feeling that my psyche was unraveling. I had not seen my wife smile in days, could not stand even to be near those few people in my life to whom I had the most intense attachments, and my father's tears had completely unnerved me. Now, as we passed the open fields that took their sustenance from the river that paralleled our route, traveled past the clapboard houses that dotted the surrounding countryside, and negotiated curve after curve on the two-lane blacktop I had driven hundreds of times, I felt as if the moving panorama were being offered to my view for the last time. I resolved never again to take the view for granted should I be so fortunate as ever to pass this way again, a

prospect that, given my present mood and circumstances, appeared unlikely.

By the time we cleared Fredericksburg, traveled the more unfamiliar length of Route 1, and pulled into the Todds' driveway at Fort Belvoir, I was ready for something to revive my flagging spirits. Toddy and I had barely spoken for the entire trip, but at the start she had placed her hand firmly over mine on the gearshift as I tried to work my way through the emotions of departure. Now I grimly realized that there would be one more painful good-bye before I could get on with the war. Tonight would be our last together before she put me on the plane to San Francisco and Vietnam. Her parents had bought steaks for all of us and a bottle of my favorite scotch to help take the sting out of the evening. They had also invited their next-door neighbors over for drinks before dinner, and while I was flattered that my in-laws wanted to introduce me to their friends, I wasn't much in the mood for polite chitchat. As the scotch began to warm my stomach, however, I saw the wisdom of having company over to keep the conversation away from the more gloomy thoughts that, though unstated, were on all our minds. I found it curious that neither my father-in-law nor his neighbor, both professional soldiers near the end of their careers, had yet served in Vietnam, although Colonel Todd had volunteered to do so. After all, I reasoned through the scotch, a soldier's purpose was to serve his country in time of war, and when my host and his guest agreed between themselves that neither of them would want to assume the role for which I had volunteered, the thought entered my mind that either some Marine Corps officers took their calling more seriously than some army officers or that there was information about the war available to these two men to which I was not privy.

Later that night, after the neighbors had gone home and the steaks had been grilled and eaten, the four of us settled down in the den for a nightcap. Toddy and I were exhausted from the frantic pace of our vacation and the emotional roller coaster we had been riding for the last several days, but her parents wanted to assure us that she and the baby would be properly cared for while I was in Vietnam. They

also wanted me to know that their daughter and grandchild could continue to live with them if I should die in Vietnam, and although their last offer was made while Toddy was out of the room, the stiffness in our voices when she returned gave away the subject. More than once in the last month Toddy had complained to me that she felt she was constantly coming in on the tail end of conversations in which she had every right to be included, and this was obviously yet another example. It occurred to me that this vulnerable-looking female had hidden sources of strength that became fairly obvious when she got her dander up, and I felt suddenly grateful to her parents for the independence they had helped her achieve. I had developed a genuine affection for the Todds in the short time I had known them, and as we put away our brandy snifters and prepared for bed, there was a warmth in our embrace that was more than casual.

Our last night together was, up until that point in my life, one of the worst I had ever endured. After we retired to our bedroom and were finally alone for the last time, all the false bravado I had been using as a shield for much of the sunmier deserted me. There seemed to be nothing either of us could say to comfort the other, and although I had intended to make love to my wife in some sort of soldier-goes-to-war scenario, I could not bear even to touch her. When Shakespeare wrote that parting is such sweet sorrow, he had obviously never left a pregnant wife with whom he was deeply in love to go off and fight a war. After all efforts at conmiunication had been exhausted, we finally assumed postures of feigned sleep with our backs to each other and so passed the remainder of the night in resdess misery. The next morning at daybreak we both were up, bleary-eyed and exhausted but grateful to be able to escape a bed which that night had served neither of the two main purposes for which a bed was intended.

Toddy's mother fixed us a fine breakfast, which for some reason I approached as though I had not eaten for days, but my wife barely touched her plate. All the previous night's tossing and turning must have kindled my appetite, and I concentrated on the mounds of sausage and eggs placed before me while doing my best to avoid Toddy's

downcast eyes. It felt good to be back in uniform for the flight to San Francisco, and until it was time to leave for Dulles International Airport, I busied myself doing small errands and attending to last-minute details. My duffel bag and officer's valet pack were already packed, but we both managed to keep busy and stay out of each other's way. I decided to take my watch, which was a fairly expensive Hamilton I had won in a college poker game, but I did take off the family crest signet ring my father had given me for college graduation and left it with Toddy. I wanted to make sure our child would eventually get something personal of mine if I failed to return. Again there was no need to explain to Toddy the motivation that prompted my passing the ring to her, and she nodded silently and put it away for safekeeping.

As had my mother and father, the Todds walked us out to the car, wished me luck, and again assured me that my wife and child would be well cared for. Toddy drove to the airport while I hid behind my sunglasses, and although I would have preferred that she drop me off at the main entrance, she insisted on parking the car and seeing me to my departure gate. The terminal contained a smattering of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, who, like me, were either leaving for or returning from Southeast Asia, but for the most part the other passengers appeared to be civilians on business trips or sunmier vacationers.

I self-consciously eyed the rows of ribbons worn by the returning veterans and loathed the insouciance of the remaining travelers, but I was relieved that my flight was on time and that the agony of this last departure would soon be over. Toddy, only five feet tall to begin with and halfway through her pregnancy, had never looked smaller or more forlorn to me, and the brave front she tried to project served only to make her appear that much more vulnerable. I squeezed her as tightly as I dared and wondered how this spunky little woman, whom I had barely known a year, had completely taken over my life. As I turned to take my place on the boarding vehicle, I did my best to hide my tears from the enlisted men already on board and felt exactly as I

imagined a drowning man who has just lost his grip on a lifeline must feel.

As soon as my plane became airborne, I ordered two scotches on the rocks, which I finished in rapid succession. I actually felt relieved to be separated from Toddy and my family after so many gut-wrenching farewells. I knew that if I were going to function efficiently for, or indeed survive, the next year, I would have to clear my head of the emotional baggage I was now carrying and concentrate on being a marine. Toddy's absence would make that easier. The combination of the midday scotch and the previous night's lack of sleep soon had me nodding, and by the time the flight movie began I was well on my way to a much needed nap. As I drifted off, I noted that the title of the movie was In Enemy Country.

The airport in San Francisco, unlike the one I had left a few hours earlier, was awash with servicemen on their way into or out of Vietnam, and as I surveyed the bustling throng of green and khaki all around me, I could feel myself being drawn inexorably closer to the war. If Scott McKenzie's gentle people with flowers in their hair were truly typical of San Francisco, according to the words of the popular song, I remember thinking, they all must have been holed up in the Haight-Ashbury, because they certainly were not providing much business to the airlines. On the other hand, the government was providing plenty of business, and my pulse quickened as I contemplated the next few days.

There was a military shuttle bus service from the airport to the transit facility in the navy bachelor officers' quarters at nearby Treasure Island. With time on my hands I ordered a sandwich and several drinks at the club bar and listened to a few war stories from some of the old salts who appeared to be permanent fixtures there. I also called Toddy to let her know I had arrived safely and to speak with her one last time before going out of the country. As I hung up the phone, I was sorry I had called since she already sounded depressed and remote. Separated less than a day, we both had begun to detach ourselves emotionally from each other, and I was angry at myself for having made an unnecessary and painful call. I bought two beers to go at the

bar and drank them alone in my room before turning in for the evening. I would not need a wake-up since the unfamiliar setting and the absence of my wife assured me of another fitful night's sleep.

The next morning, as I prepared to check out of the BOQ and take the return shuttle to the airport, I noted be-musedly that the ensign in the room adjacent to mine had left a note on his door asking to be awakened at ten o'clock for his waterskiing lesson. Undoubtedly, the lesson would contribute in some very real measure to his development as a naval officer; but I was reminded of my coast guard acquaintance and his surfboard of a few days earlier, and I marveled anew at the differing levels of sacrifice demanded of those who pursue the military calling.

Back at the airport, I was delighted to find a Basic School classmate whose orders were similar enough to mine that we would be traveling on the same plane up to Seattle and then on to Camp Hanson, Okinawa. After that he would be going to the Third Marine Division and I to the First, my father's old outfit. For now I welcomed Joe as a long-lost friend. Ever the workhorse, he spent most of the flight reviewing notes he had taken in Basic School while I read a copy of Rosemary's Baby that I had picked up in the airport newsstand and studied my fellow passengers. All of us were marines, in uniform and on our way to war. We all were young and scared, but as green as we were, many affected a swagger to cover self-doubt. I also noted that the officers and enlisted men sat in different sections of the plane. I didn't notice any particular condescension on the part of the officers or deference on the part of the enlisted men, but it just seemed that our training dictated that we remain apart.

Seattle was the last home stop. For many on our manifest it would be their first trip away from American soil, and for some lesser number their last, and Joe and I decided to memorialize the occasion with a few beers while the plane was being readied. Besides, there would be no liquor served on the plane. For all of my self-doubt and insecurity, I was beginning to feel like John Wayne in a World War n movie, as I, a marine lieutenant in uniform and on his way to war, bellied up to the bar in the Seattle airport cocktail

lounge. When I nonchalantly took my wallet from my pants pocket and ordered the local favorite, the waitress completely destroyed the mood by loudly demanding proof of my age before she would serve me. I drank my beer in silence and humiliation as everyone within hearing range guffawed. I also left no tip as we headed back to our plane, and wondered what John Wayne would have done.

In Okinawa, after an interminable flight, Joe and I checked into another transient facility at Camp Hanson. There were many signs of the war's proximity. Most of the marines who were leaving the war zone, either temporarily or to return to the States, wore jungle utilities that were lightweight loose-fitting uniforms with deep pockets attached to the pants rather than inside them. They also wore marine green skivvies and T-shirts and floppy bush hats, and many had mustaches as well, which in 1968 were not permitted stateside. A fair number also wore purple ribbons over their left breast pockets. Most of the Purple Heart recipients bore no visible wounds, confirming my naive, stereotypical view of the Hollywood war wound that enters and exits human flesh with minimal damage. I quickly learned that the more seriously wounded had already been sent back to the States, while those I was meeting bore minor wounds and were rotating back into Vietnam after short periods of recuperation.

Many of the young single officers, immediately after arriving at Camp Hanson, headed straight for the bathhouses and massage parlors just outside the gate, which since our first days of Basic School we all had heard compared favorably with heaven. Inexpensive whores, I realized from reading Hemingway and Jones, were an inevitable accompaniment of war, but if Joe's account of his night on the town was to be believed, Okinawa had elevated prostitution to an art form. I decided to avoid the temptation downtown and spent most of my sp£ire time for the two days we were in Okinawa in the officers' club, where for twenty-five cents a female barber gave me a haircut and a neck and shoulder massage that in itself bordered on the erotic. There were also drinks for a dime each during happy hour, first-run movies twenty-four hours a day for free on a screen be-

side the bar, and, for those who wanted to spend money, an assortment of one-armed bandits, into which I pumped my last twenty dollars.

The next stop was Vietnam, and I knew I would have no use for money where I was headed. Finally the Marine Corps, as if to justify the existence of such a place, arranged a couple of mandatory briefings, designed to acquaint us with die big picture and overall strategy of the war. The young captain, who so efficiendy and with such certainty pointed out the exact locations of various North Vietnamese units in South Vietnam and the locations of the South Vietnamese and American units that were countering them, left me with the uneasy realization that I would soon be one of the pawns who provided the intelligence for their bloodless equations. It was difficult to look at pins on a map and at the same time envision them as a group of men who would shortiy be trying to end my life.

Joe and I parted company in Okinawa, and I made the last leg of my flight into Vietnam alone. It looked lush and tropical from the air with the foliage along the coastline forming a curve against the blue waters of the South China Sea. As our plane came to a halt on the runway in Da Nang and we descended onto the tarmac, I fully expected to be met by a hail of bullets. Instead I was slapped in the face by a steamy heat of such intensity that I felt as if I had stepped into a sauna. My uniform was instantly drenched with perspiration, and the fetid air was visible in all directions as it shimmered up from the ground and gave an eerie wavering appearance to everything it warmed.

Tk

Fee

"Welcome to Vietnam," the stewardess called after us as we left the plane and boarded trucks for the short trip to the main terminal. They were the last attractive round-eyed women I saw until my odyssey was completed and I was headed in the other direction. As we filed through the gate into the terminal, a group of marines and soldiers standing woodenly at the edge of the tarmac caught my eye. They were rail-thin combat veterans on their way home, some just a few days away from battle. Most wore several rows of ribbons on their chests. There appeared to be no interaction among the group of about two dozen, and the majority had expressionless faces with fixed, unfocused eyes set in hollow sockets. A chill danced its way up my sweat-soaked spine, and I felt fear for the first time since entering Vietnam.

Once I was in Da Nang the seemingly haphazard process by which I was transferred down to my unit went fairly smoothly. At the terminal we were instructed to exchange what dollars we had remaining for military scrip, given a brief orientation, and sent to division for further briefings. I was assigned to the Second Battalion of the First Marine Regiment of the First Marine Division, and after I received my orders, I and a dozen other new lieutenants were given

a cursory welcome to Vietnam by the division commanding general in his office. As we stood at ease in front of his desk and dutifully nodded our agreement with a pep talk he had probably delivered to hundreds of green lieutenants, I was struck by the contrast between the air-conditioning in his office and the heat outside, to which I did not think I would ever grow accustomed. At the end of his speech he mentioned that he had served under my father early in his own career, making the color rise in my cheeks. The other lieutenants appeared not to notice the personal reference, and I knew in the back of my mind that in a day or two when I got my own command, the troops would be judging me on my own merits rather thjin on my lineage. At least in the war zone, I was going to get a chance to be my own man rather than Chesty Puller's son, and while the general's remark was complimentary, I was glad the other lieutenants did not pick up on it.

We were given another "big picture" briefing while at division, complete with wall-size maps and overlays, again pointing out the last-known positions of various enemy units. This time, however, the bad guys were practically at our back door, and I listened much more attentively. Finally we were given a copy of the rules of engagement and made to sign a statement saying we had read them and agreed to abide by them. The document was fairly voluminous and outlined various Geneva conventions for the conduct of war. I read it out of curiosity but realized that the clerk who handed us our copies was simply following regulations and did not expect us to take it seriously. It seemed odd to me that warring countries would expect their troops to kill each other in a gentlemanly and humane manner, and odder still that the Marine Corps would require its junior officers to undertake such an exercise in hypocrisy.

That night I found yet another transient facility, a Quonset hut with several bare cots, and I stored my valet pack and duffel bag beneath the nearest empty one. The building's only redeeming features were its proximity to a makeshift officers' club, actually another Quonset hut with a bar, and to a shower with hot, running water. The next morning I would be flying in a C-130 north to regional

headquarters at Phu Bai, but for now I was going to take advantage of the local amenities, sparse though they might be. I headed for the club, reminding myself at the door that if I wore my cover through the portal, in accord with military tradition, I would be required to buy a round of drinks for everyone inside. With cover firmly in hand I ordered a salty dog (vodka in a glass with a salted rim) at the bar and settled in to watch the activity at a nearby table where several rear-echelon overweight middle-aged officers were trying to entice a couple of world-weary bar girls to come back to their quarters for a party. On the stool next to me an older captain, up from the ranks, who worked in motor transport and had so far that night had far too much to drink, repeatedly asked me why any young man in his right mind with a college education would want to be an infantry officer in the Marine Corps. After several more salty dogs, I finally shut him up by telling him that I was Chesty Puller's son and took my leave to prepare for the big day ahead.

The next morning I flew to Phu Bai. The C-130 had none of the comforts of commercial jetliners; but a plane ride, however lacking in amenities, meant that I would reach my unit more quickly than if I proceeded by jeep, and I was getting anxious to get to my platoon. I found a canvas seat along the bulkhead and, in looking around, was amazed to see that most of the passengers were civilians. Included among them were Vietnamese locals, who seemed to be traveling with a cortege of barnyard animals, and an Australian rock band that I assumed was going to be doing a USO show. The plane struck me as hopelessly overloaded and seemed to struggle to become airborne. The crew members all sported pearl-handled revolvers that they wore slung low on the hips in fast-draw holsters, aviator sunglasses, and mustaches and affected an air of boredom with what for them was just another milk run, but they did keep order among the cackle of chickens and crying babies. I held tightly to my valet pack and duffel bag for most of the hop and prayed that I would not be bitten by a rabid dog or accidentally shot by one of the gunslinging sergeants.

Regimental headquarters at Phu Bai was a collection of makeshift plywood buildings, where I checked in with the

headquarters clerical staff. I was told that I would be reporting the next day to my battalion, which was located a few kilometers away at the mouth of the Cua Viet River. I was also given a place to store my gear and overnight accommodations and told to come back later that afternoon to meet the regimental commanding officer. In the meantime, it was suggested that I might want to start scrounging for gear since equipment was in short supply. After futilely trying to requisition field gear through Marine Corps channels, I finally found most of what I needed at a nearby army unit. The only boots the Marine Corps had available were size six and size eleven, and I smiled wryly as I slipped on the nine and a half I scrounged from the army. We had been taught at Basic School that if we obtained gear outside normal channels, the integrity of the supply process would be compromised, but when it came down to a choice between the system and my immediate needs, I had no hesitations. Decked out in jungle utilities and with proper boots and a sidearm, I finally began to feel as if I were no longer the greenest marine in Vietnam. I also ran into Ken Shelleman, the lieutenant from my Basic School class with the red convertible. Ken had gotten to the regiment a day ahead of me and had already scoped out the best available watering holes. As it turned out, we were going to be assigned to different companies in the same battalion, and we immediately agreed to get together for a drink that evening after we had been briefed by the regimental CO.

The briefing was the same basic pep talk I had received at division, including an allusion to my father's illustrious name. The colonel pointed out that my father had commanded the First Marine Division seventeen years earlier during the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir and that it was fitting that I now serve in the same division. I, of course, had already grasped the historical implication of my assignment although my father and I served in vastly different capacities. When he assumed command of the regiment, he had thirty-two years of service and four Navy Crosses. He had earned his fifth for the retreat from the frozen Chosin, a bittersweet culmination to a career that had included more than twenty-six years of foreign service. On

the other hand, I was a brand-new second Heutenant with a year of service, who had never commanded anything larger than a Boy Scout troop, and while I appreciated the personal reference, I did not feel up to any sort of comparison with my father. I wished desperately that I could simply assume command of my platoon without any more references to him, and I was grateful that the only other lieutenant within earshot of this conversation was Ken Shelleman, who knew my feelings.

The colonel went on to tell us that a week in the bush would serve as a far better snapping-in than anything he could say by way of an introductory briefing. He told us that he had arranged for a chopper to drop us off at battalion the next day, wished us luck, and suggested that we might want to have a few drinks that evening since it would be our last free night for as far ahead as we cared to project. Neither Ken nor I needed any convincing, and as we left the colonel's sandbagged command post, it occurred to me that as we proceeded down the chain of command, the livmg accommodations were becoming less and less hospitable. No one had shot at me yet, but I did not expect to see air-conditioning again for quite some time.

The next morning Ken and I, red-eyed from overindulging, reported to the colonel's helicopter pad. To my surprise, Bill Dabney, who had commanded a company at Khe Sanh, was waiting to see me off. He was at the tail end of his tour and had lost twenty pounds, but he appeared healthy and carried my gear to the waiting helicopter, whose whirling rotor blades all but ruled out conversation. We exchanged good-byes as best we could in the chopper's prop wash, and within minutes I was airborne and headed downriver to my battalion. It seemed to me a good sign that Bill did not have that expressionless stare I had seen on the faces of my first combat veterans, and I was pleased that he would be able to report to Toddy that he had left me in good health. The helicopter pilot put us down in the wrong location several kilometers past our unit, and we were fortunate to find a navy launch to carry us back upriver to the battalion site.

The Second Battalion of the First Marine Regiment of

the First Marine Division, when I joined it, was deployed in a large semicircle with the open part of the area backing up to the Cua Viet River. After Ken and I disembarked, we reported directly to battalion headquarters, temporarily located in a bombed-out Vietnamese temple. The battalion had just moved south from Khe Sanh, and to judge by the feeble repairs to the temple headquarters, nobody expected to stay long. Large flaps of canvas covered the holes in the walls and ceiling and were held in place by sandbags and rope, while empty mortar crates had been pieced together in a jigsaw fashion to cover the mud floor. We were met by the battalion executive officer. Major Wright, who gave us yet another briefing and told me that I would be joining Golf Company the next day and be given command of its third platoon. Major Wright was a no-nonsense professional whom I liked inamediately, although I wondered why he appeared to be running the show. As it turned out, the new battalion CO had just come on board and, like me, would need some time to learn the ropes and get snapped in before imparting his particular brand of leadership to his new command.

That aftemoon I walked the perimeter of the battalion base camp and tried to get a feel for the lay of the land, which was relatively flat and open with wide grassy expanses punctuated with tree hnes. The nearest city, Dong Ha, was only a short distance away, but the area around our base of operations was sparsely populated and used primarily for farming. Water and electricity were suppUed by a water point and portable generators, and with such primitive utiUties the river was a godsend for our laundry and bathing needs. Meals, when we were not in the field, would be cooked on gas stoves and served from an open mess tent. Sleeping accommodations were in makeshift hooches along the perimeter lines, which we would be manning when not out on patrol. All in all, I thought, as I completed the trace of our area, the amenities of my new surroundings would appear quite refined if viewed from the perspective of a caveman.

Ken Shelleman had been assigned to another company after our briefing by Major Wright, but our paths crossed again later that afternoon at battalion supply, where we were given field gear, compasses, maps, K-bar knives, and poncho liners and inflatable mattresses. The mattresses, affectionately known as rubber ladies, kept one a couple of inches off the ground and provided some insulation from the cold and wet but were far too bulky to carry out into the field. The poncho liners, on the other hand, weighed only a few ounces, could easily be rolled up and tied down on the top of a pack, and, more unportant, would dry out in a couple of hours in the sun.

I resolved to find a whetstone for sharpening the newly issued K-bar, whose edge barely left a scratch as I ran it over my thumbnail. I had brought with me from the States a knife that my father had used as a young officer; but it had no sheath, and I decided that the K-bar would suffice until I could have one made. Ken and I were given floppy bush hats and took turns posing for each other before we parted again. I was beginning to feel quite salty with my new gear, and I adjusted and readjusted the bush hat to affect a more menacing appearance. Now all I needed was a mustache, a ten-pound weight loss, and a couple of firefights, and I would be the meanest mother in the green machine.

Later that evening I sat in the battalion command post and listened as various units in the field called in situation reports. I was anxious to take conmiand of my own platoon but also apprehensive lest I display any sign of weakness that would compromise my ability to command. I also had some nagging doubts about my mastery of the technical aspects of small-unit leadership, and I prayed that I would have some time to learn my job before we made contact with the enemy. As I watched the intelligence units map the progress called in by the commanders in the field, I was grateful that the evening was uneventful.

My own unit. Golf Company, had been out for several days, so I did not really know what to expect, but I did pick up two pieces of disturbing information about the third platoon from the top sergeant. It was presently being led by a

staff sergeant, who had assumed command several months earlier, when the lieutenant in command had accidentally shot his radio operator in the back while cleaning his pistol. The radio operator was wearing a flak jacket, and the wound was superficial; but the young lieutenant was relieved of duty on the spot, according to the top sergeant who was filling me in.

I feared that the inept performance of the platoon's previous lieutenant would probably incline its members to prejudge me, another green lieutenant, whom they could manage quite well without. The situation also meant that I would be taking command from a combat veteran, albeit enlisted, who had a successful record with the platoon over the last several months and that for him my arrival meant a demotion. He would continue to be my platoon sergeant, and I knew that his experience would be invaluable to me; but I also knew that I would have to handle our relationship delicately and make it clear from the start that I did not intend to engage in a power struggle over leadership of the platoon.

The second piece of information was far more alarming. Three days earlier, in the course of a night patrol, the man walking point for the third platoon had been killed. As he led the platoon toward a checkpoint, a burst of automatic-weapons fire stitched a pattern on his torso, extending from his crotch to his forehead. The impact of the bullets, coming at point-blank range, propelled him backward across the space between him and the next man in line, and he was dead before he hit the ground. There were no other shots fired, no further contact, and the incident was over in a few minutes.

Staff Sergeant Phil Leslie had immediately pulled the platoon into a defensive configuration and called in artillery. For the rest of the night a steel curtain of harassing and interdicting fire surrounded his platoon and insulated it from an unknown and unseen enemy. At daylight a medevac chopper was called in to carry the body to graves registration, and a few spent shell casings from an AK-47 assault rifle were found; but there was no other evidence of the enemy's presence. The rest of the platoon was, of course, de-

moralized, badly shaken, and extremely pissed off. Leslie had reacted in a professional manner, but his men had been bested without any opportunity for retribution.

The next day Golf Company was resupplied in the field, and I caught a ride out to my unit in the vehicle that was hauling the water wagon. Fortunately we also brought out the mail since a surefire way to get the troops' attention was to hold a mail call. The company skipper. Captain Clyde Woods, came over and identified himself. He wore no insignia or other markings. When I saluted smartly, I was told in no uncertain terms that I could stow the formality and the salutes as he did not care to be pointed out to any VC snipers who might be looking for officer trophies. Woods was a big man, heavily muscled with broad shoulders and an easy smile, and I liked him from the start, although my cheeks were still burning about the salute.

He walked me over to the third platoon's area while the troops were filling their canteens and getting their mail and introduced me to Staff Sergeant Leslie, the acting platoon commander, who was cordial enough, considering that I was about to take over his platoon. We shook hands, and I decided to let him continue running the platoon until we got back to battalion the next day. Leslie was a former two-hundred-pounder who had lost fifty of that during his eight months in the bush, and his deliberately slow manner of speaking belied a shrewdness developed over seven years in the Marine Corps. I knew from the looks that he and Captain Woods exchanged when I told him to continue to march that my initial decision was correct, and I felt that professional jealousy was not going to be a factor in our relationship.

The third platoon was a surly bunch of teenage misfits who were mildly curious but completely unimpressed by my arrival. They were on a midday break from the heat of the August sun when I arrived with the water wagon and were lolling about in a loosely formed semicircle with every fourth or fifth man facing outward to avoid being caught by snipers. Many had taken off their flak jackets and their shirts to get some relief from the heat, and all had their

packs, rifles, and other gear neatly stacked and within easy reach.

At first glance they appeared nonchalant, but after making a rapid scan of some of the troops making up the perimeter, I could see that months of living in the bush had sharpened their reactions to a fine edge. There was very little wasted motion in their movements, and while all their faces appeared boyish, most had a cast that made them seem years older. I turned down Sergeant Leslie's offer to assemble the three squads making up the platoon for a formal introduction. I planned to hold a rifle inspection as soon as possible after we returned from the bush, and I knew that there was no rush to get to know my men.

In addition to three squads of eight or more men, each with a leader, there were a three-man machine-gun team and a mortar section of like number assigned to the third platoon. We were, in Sergeant Leslie's words, "loaded for bear." We also had two corpsmen and a platoon guide, who could stand in for Leslie if he became disabled. Finally, a radio operator filled out my complement of marines, so that at present strength there were about forty of us. The squads were under strength because of casualties whose replacements had not yet arrived, but the presence of the machine-gun team and the mortar section alerted me that this was a unit that, though used to traveling light, could turn out a heavy volume of firepower very quickly.

Leslie summoned our command group: Corporal Turner, the platoon guide; Corporal Watson, the radio operator; and Doc Ellis, the senior corpsman, to meet me while the rest of the platoon were reading their mail. Corporal Turner was a huge black man who rarely stopped talking and joking but was easily recognizable as a bom leader. He sported one gold earring, which was balanced by a marble-' size piece of shrapnel lodged just beneath the skin on the opposite side of his neck. He had chosen the earring for its power to make people focus on his face when he was speaking, he informed me, and although the shrapnel had chosen him in a firefight some months earlier, he had decided not to have it removed when he realized that it had the same ef-

feet as the gold earring. Watson was a laconic redhead from Bristol, Virginia, whose powerful shoulders made it apparent why he had been chosen as radioman. He was new at his job, having replaced the radio operator who was inadvertently shot by the lieutenant whose place I was taking, but Leslie thought he was going to make a good radioman. The corpsman, Doc Ellis, was a dedicated professional whose diminutive size made his black-rimmed glasses and mustache appear enormous, but he had already proved himself countless times in tending to the wounded under fire.

While Watson and Ellis pulled self-consciously on their cigarettes, Corporal Turner was not in the least intimidated by my rank and immediately caught me off guard by asking directly what it was like to be the son of the corps's most famous marine. When I responded that he should be more concerned over what it was going to be like to be commanded by one of the corps's greenest lieutenants, the others joined in the laughter, and the ice was broken. Most of them never mentioned my father again.

My decision to allow Sergeant Leslie to continue to lead the platoon was of little consequence that day since I was invited to travel with Captain Woods for the rest of the patrol. Woods obviously wanted to make a preliminary judgment of my abilities as a small-unit leader before entrusting me with one of his platoons. As short as he was on lieutenants, it probably would have taken a display of monumental incompetence on my part to have been denied a command. When the order came to saddle up, I was amazed at how quickly the entire company was on its feet and moving. One man in my platoon had found a human skull somewhere and was tossing it up and down like a baseball when Captain Woods first took me over to meet Leslie. The rest of the platoon seemed not to give any import to his little game or even to notice it, but I was riveted as the skull was tossed into the air and caught. As we began the order of march, I looked over my shoulder in time to see the young man shatter the skull against the base of a concrete post. Hate was written clearly across his face, I supposed from the unavenged loss of a comrade earlier in the week, but the first words that crossed my mind were "Alas! poor Yorick."

We moved out with the first platoon in the lead, followed by Captain Woods's command group, which now included me, and the remaining two platoons back and spread to either side so that the entire formation from the front resembled a reversed fork with the two tines facing the rear. The terrain was flat and open, and the sky was cloudless so that communication and unit integrity were not difficult to maintain. The chance of enemy contact had been forecast as remote, and Captain Woods spent a lot of time that afternoon checking my fundamental skills. He put me through the paces handling the radio and plotting resections from known landmarks to see that we were on course. As I gained familiarity with the map and saw to it that the company's checkpoints were called in to battalion headquarters, I could feel myself gaining confidence.

We stopped briefly just before dark and moved the entire company several hundred meters into a nighttime defensive perimeter atop a raised berm between two rice paddies. Captain Woods had an artillery spotter who plotted pre-positioned artillery targets around our location as insurance against enemy penetration, and after we had checked the company perimeter to make certain that we could not be infiltrated and that our claymore mines were properly placed, we settled in for the night. I had brought no rations to the field and in any event had been too busy to notice hunger until we stopped, but now with nothing to do until dawn I was ravenous. Most of the company had eaten just before our final move while it was still light, heating the contents of their C rations cans with heat tabs or small pieces of plastic explosive called C-4. Sergeant Leslie came over from the third platoon with a can of beans and franks for me that I readily accepted. I ate them cold greedily, shoveling the beans and pieces of meat into my mouth with a plastic spoon, as Leslie pointed out how much better they would taste if heated. Captain Woods joined in his good-natured chiding as I got my first lesson in field comfort. Food can be eaten hot only during daylight hours since the light from heat tabs and plastique can be spotted by the enemy. I would remember next time, but hungry as I was and as

newly acquainted to C rations, even cold, the grub tasted delicious.

We took turns standing two-hour radio watches for the rest of the night, and I marveled at how quickly and how easily those in our command post who were not on alert could get to sleep. I was not used to the uncomfortable ground or the soggy surroundings and was also not yet tired enough to drift off at any opportunity. It seemed strange to me on my first full day that I had not seen a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldier or a Vietcong guerrilla or indeed any sign of war. To be sure, with darkness the mosquitoes had come in swarms, but those were not the hostiles I had been trained to fight. When dawn came, I was red-eyed, covered with bites, and eagerly anticipating a remm to battalion, where I could get a hot meal and a shave.

When we returned from the field, Captain Woods officially gave me command of the third platoon, and Leslie and I, after getting cleaned up, walked over to the battalion mess area to get some chow and discuss how I was going to manage the platoon. Although it was not yet mealtime, the kitchen staff readily supplied us with the last meal's leftovers and all the milk we could drink. After we had eaten, I bummed a cigarette from a nearby marine and after the first few drags decided to requisition a carton of Pall Malls from the packets that were supplied free to troops in the field. I had stopped smoking a year earlier, when I was getting in shape for Officer Candidate School, but somehow it seemed silly now to worry about its long-range health implications with thirteen months in Nam ahead. I told Leslie that he was to stay close at my side for the immediate future and that as the platoon's operation became more familiar to me, I would be assuming more control, to which he readily nodded agreement. I also instructed him to have each squad assemble for a rifle inspection, and I had him stagger the times so that the process would not take on too much formality. I wanted to have a few words individually with each of the men, and I needed to see how much discipline they were imposing on themselves. A rifle inspection seemed the ideal way to form, a quick judgment.

The next time we went on patrol, it would be as my

lone platoon rather than in a company. But for the next twenty-four hours our responsibility was to stand lines in an assigned section of the battalion perimeter. Our section was bounded on the left by the river and on the right by another platoon and stretched about four hundred meters. The area before us was flat and unobstructed so that daytime surveillance was not difficult, but even a greenhorn like me could see that our lines could be easily breached at night, considering a gap of thirty or forty meters between men, even if half the platoon were standing watch. The men had dug fighting holes along the perimeter and pitched their tents just to the rear so that access back and forth was easy. The real problem was keeping tired marines who had just come back from patrol alert when it was quiet. I was quite uneasy about our vulnerability as the setup did not conform in any way to the field manuals' examples of defensive perimeters witili their interlocking fields of fire. My ^prehension was heightened by the lack of wire and sandbags fortifying our position. Sergeant Leslie did not seem too concerned, however, especially since there were no sizable enemy units reported in our area, and I took some comfort from his assessment.

Since my platoon was spread out along the perimeter by squads, it was an easy matter to conduct my rifle inspection and troop the line at the same time. I started with the first squad, which was positioned closest to the river, and worked my way back up to the makeshift hooch that Leslie, Watson, and I were occupying at the opposite end of the line. I was pleased that their weapons were clean and that each marine had been assigned a different field of fire. Sergeant Leslie had obviously been doing a good job of running the platoon.

All the men were young, about half with high school diplomas, in good health, and seemingly respectful of me or at least of the position I occupied. They probably also realized that if they got out of line, Leslie would take them to task. With a couple of exceptions they appeared pretty much as I had expected. The machine-gun team had a forty-year-old man who was completely bald and it seemed to me somewhat mentally deficient. His nickname was Pappy, and

as Leslie explained to me later, he had entered the Marine Corps through an ill-conceived program called Project 100,000, which was designed to give hard-core unemployed civilians a skill that they could use after their military service. The other members of his team took care of Pappy, and he could keep up with his much younger comrades; but I had a hard time figuring out how his skills with a machine gun were going to help him earn a living after the Marine Corps. The platoon was predominantly white with a handful of Hispanics and blacks, and if there was a common thread that united them, it was their lower-middle-class backgrounds. Many were from the South and from rural areas of the country, but there were a couple of city boys who good-naturedly teased the farmers about their lack of sophistication.

When I got back to my hooch after conducting the inspection, I complimented Sergeant Leslie on the condition of the platoon and made a couple of suggestions about moving the machine gun to a more commanding position, which he agreed to. I also directed him to have the men spend some time filling sandbags for their foxholes and asked him to talk to the battalion supply officer about getting us more concertina wire for the front of our positions. The hooch that he had put together for us was a pathetic structure comprised of two-by-fours, sandbags, tent flaps, and sheets of plastic that had once served as wrappings for artillery rounds. It worked well enough in dry weather, but as I discovered that night, it offered only minimal protection from rain. We spent a good part of the night rearranging the plastic sheets as the rain collected in pools on our makeshift ceiling and burst through. In the morning we both were soaked to the skin, and I felt as if we had been the only two unarmed men in an all-night water-balloon fight. I felt a lit-de better as the sun began to dry my clothes, but in my first letter home to Toddy, which I wrote that morning, I gave her the address of my unit and asked her to put a rain suit at the top of her list of items to send me in a care package.

That afternoon and for the next several days the third platoon conducted short-range patrols, and I assumed a more commanding role as the week wore on. Captain

Woods assigned routes that were fairly short and within several thousand meters, or klicks, of the battalion to give me a chance to get broken in, probably so that he could send help if necessary, but the week went by without any enemy contact. The weather, in contrast with our first night of standing watch, was beautiful, though hot, without a cloud in the sky, and I developed a bum on my neck and arms that eventually sloughed off like pieces of peanut brittle, leaving large pink patches. The biggest problem in leading patrols, other than making certain that we stayed on course and hit our checkpoints, was keeping the men properly spaced. They tended to bunch up when the terrain was rough or visibility was poor and to get too far apart when we were moving quickly or they were tired. If they were too close to each other, one booby trap or mortar round would cause multiple casualties, and if they were too spread out, they tended to lose contact and were difficult to maneuver. It was a constant challenge to get them properly synchronized, and I could hardly imagine what sort of havoc enemy artillery or small-arms fire would have on my efforts to maintain any semblance of control. Sergeant Leslie was, of course, a big help, and by the end of the week we had each begun to develop a feel for what the other was doing without any overt communication between us.

In that short time I had increased my cigarette consumption to several packs a day, betraying a tenseness that I hoped did not conununicate itself to my men in other ways. I began, too, to think that the patrols could not function properly unless I was in contact with whoever was walking point. That meant that I was never more than two or three men back from the front of the patrol and far more apt to be caught in the killing zone should we be ambushed or trigger a land mine. Leslie warned me repeatedly that I should rotate my position in the patrol route, but as long as we were not making contact, I thought that I could run things far more smoothly from the front, where I could see what was happening and could correct any deviations from our proper azimuths. In any event, Leslie became resigned to t^ng a position toward the back of the patrols as time wore on, and I felt more secure knowing that he was cov-

ering my rear. He had already been leading patrols for months before I arrived in country and there was no Marine Corps regulation that required that he press his luck.

One of our primary missions, as we patrolled in north-em I Corps, was to prevent the enemy from firing rockets and launching mortars into the vulnerable city of Dong Ha. The attempt to interdict those missiles at their launch sites required us to spend most of our time in the field. We patrolled as a platoon during the day, moved into a nighttime perimeter as darkness was descending, and then sent out squad-size patrols at night. It was demanding, uncomfortable work with the psychological pressures of imminent enemy contact ever on our minds. We ate and drank only what we carried, slept fitfully in quickly dug fighting holes, and tried not to remain stationary long enough for the enemy to find us. Our routine was broken periodically by a return to the womb of the battalion compound for resupply, but even then we had lines to stand so that there was never any real relief. I was pleased that no missiles had been fired into Dong Ha from my patrol area, but I also began to feel after a couple of weeks that the war had passed us by and the enemy was purposely ignoring us. The troops probably knew better, and the memory of their slain comrade smoldered in their minds. It also kept everyone on edge. That was desirable but tiring.

Late one afternoon toward the end of my second week, near where that last casualty had been incurred, we came across the badly decomposed corpse of an NVA soldier. He had no pack, weapon, or other gear but was readily identified by the rotting uniform that hung from his body. He was also lying in an open, exposed area as if he had simply dropped in his tracks or crawled as far as he could after being wounded. Leslie was elated at our grotesque find and wanted to claim the hapless soldier as a casualty of the fire mission he had called in the night the third platoon sustained its loss, but there was no way to validate his assumption. At any rate I could tell that my men felt somewhat vindicated by our grisly trophy, and some of them would have mutilated his body further but for the fact that there was so little of it left. As it was, I had to restrain one young

marine from urinating on the corpse. I was shocked by the vehemence of their hatred toward a now-inanimate object and their lack of respect for the dead. Sergeant LesHe told me after we had buried the corpse in a shallow grave that I would soon understand, but shaken by the experience, I did not want to lose that much of myself. I could not help thinking that somewhere that dead NVA soldier had a family who would never know what had happened to him, but I naturally kept my feelings to myself.

Several days later Captain Woods assigned me a mechanized patrol using a tank and two amtracs. Checkpoints would be farther apart since we could cover more ground, but other than that and the fact that we would be riding rather than walking, the basic mission was the same. I think the skipper sensed that my men were becoming weary from so many foot patrols. I had never led a mechanized patrol before, even in Basic School, and I was apprehensive about having the responsibility for the cumbersome vehicles, but as I briefed the squad leaders on riding assignments, it was apparent that they considered our mission a sort of hohday excursion. Riding was better than walking, and any small enemy unit would be foolhardy to take us on with so much added firepower. Also, the patrol would probably be completed fairly quickly, giving the platoon some much-needed time off.

Everybody was still in a festive mood as we boarded our newfound locomotion, and headed out of the battahon compound. Almost immediately the first signs of trouble developed. The drivers, as it turned out, had gotten used to sitting in their vehicles inside the battalion perimeter and had absolutely no knowledge of the terrain beyond the wire. I realized it was going to be a bad day when the vehicles had trouble getting through wire that was no obstacle to a foot patrol. I rode with one squad and the machine-gun team in the lead amtrac, followed by the tank and other amtrac, which contained Sergeant Leslie and the rest of the platoon. I was disoriented when we finally succeeded in breaking out of the compound, since the patrol finally began where it was easiest to negotiate the wire, not where I thought we would exit. Then, to add to my distress, my compass needle began

to swing wildly because of the surrounding metal, making it almost impossible to find our first checkpoint. Luckily Sergeant Leslie could navigate the area from memory, but even with his guidance, we wound up hitting our checkpoints in the reverse of their assigned order.

Finally, just as I thought my mortification was complete, I succeeded in getting one of the amtracs firmly mired in a swamp, and we spent the next hour towing it free. As we limped back to the battalion compound, I was completely absorbed in how badly the patrol had gone when suddenly the entire platoon began firing from the moving convoy. Convinced that we had finally made enemy contact, I shouldered my rifle and turned toward the firing only to discover that a large pig was running alongside the amtrac. It was bleeding from a dozen bullet holes and collapsed beside us just as Leslie and I succeeded in restoring fire discipline. The animal had been scared from its resting place by the noise of the tank and, in its haste to flee, offered a perfect target as it ran alongside. Leslie was furious at this spontaneous shooting, and I realized for the first time how difficult it could be to impose order on a bunch of edgy teenage marines. We finished off the pig with a pistol round behind the ear and called in the incident to Captain Woods, who had heard the commotion from inside the wire. He downplayed the incident as well as the debacle that I had made of the patrol, but for weeks I chafed at the thought that my platoon's first live contact was with an unarmed pig. We left the animal where we had slaughtered it, and curiously no irate farmer ever showed up to demand reparations.

A few days after the episode with the pig, the composition of the platoon changed with the return of two men who had been wounded earlier and sent to the rear to recuperate. Cowboy was a rancher from Idaho and had been the platoon radio operator before he was wounded. Since we were breaking in Watson to be the new radioman and Cowboy had already humped the heavy radio for several months, Leslie and I decided to make him a squad leader. His new job was equally as important but involved less risk of injury, and he readily agreed to take the second squad, whose

leader was rotating home. Ski was a lanky city boy whose catlike grace and quick reflexes made him a natural for walking point, and although we tried to rotate positions as much as possible, his point experience was invaluable. Both men had incurred only minor wounds, and their return improved the unit's efficiency and did wonders for morale. Unfortunately the third platoon got an additional replacement when Cowboy and Ski returned.

Corporal Hitch was a forty-three-year-old former staff sergeant who had mouthed off to an officer and been busted. When he refused to back down and apologize, he was taken out of his soft billet as a supply sergeant and assigned to the field. He came to me with seventeen years in the Marine Corps, but as could be expected, he was completely out of shape and, unlike Pappy, unable to keep up on difficult patrols. I complained to Captain Woods that Hitch had no business being in the bush and could well endanger the rest of us but was told to hold my horses until a deal could be cut at battalion to cover the problem. I sent him down to the second squad, where Cowboy could keep an eye on him. Theoretically that should have been no problem since he was twice as old as anyone else in the squad and stood out like a sore thumb. With his time in the corps, some of the troops assumed that he knew what he was doing; that could not have been farther from the truth.

After the third platoon acquired Hitch, Cowboy, and Ski, one of our first assignments involved a two-day patrol by amtrac across the Cua Viet River to a friendly hamlet, actually, more of a goodwill mission than a patrol. We were to be dropped off in the ville by the amtracs, meet with the village chief to get an assessment of enemy activity in his province, and provide some rudimentary medical help to his people. We would spend the night there and be picked up by the amtracs the next morning for the remm trip back across tht river. I was given a Vietnamese interpreter, and the corpsmen loaded up with extra medical supplies to hand out to the local populace. I had not seen the far side of the river, and since the locals were supposed to be friendly, the platoon actually looked forward to our excursion. Fortunately the amtrac drivers had been there and this time knew where

we were going. One marine fell or got knocked off the vehicle as we crossed the river and with his flak jacket and full complement of gear probably would have drowned had we not succeeded in reeling him in, but otherwise the trip went smoothly.

The village chief and a small contingent of Popular Forces met us as we disembarked at the entrance to the hamlet. Headquarters was a small whitewashed structure that also served as a town hall and armory. Although the chief had fortified it with some sandbags and a few rolls of concertina wire spread around the perimeter, I feared it could not withstand much of an attack. His dozen or so troops were poorly armed with pistols and carbines and made a great show of appearing busy when we arrived, but my advice to them would have been to surrender immediately if attacked by any force larger than a squad. I surmised that the chief had all the muscle he needed, to live well off the sweat of his villagers, but his days were numbered if the VC or NVA decided that it did not want him around. He was pleased to have us hold sick call, which would improve his political standing, and he was hospitable throughout our stay.

After the usual amenities and a gift of a carton of Americjin cigarettes, I told him through my interpreter that we were going to proceed through his village and hold the sick call at the other end, returning in time to meet with him before dark. He insisted that he be allowed to arrange a banquet that evening for Sergeant Leslie and me and three or four others of my choosing, and though I fretted about leaving my platoon alone for even a short time, Leslie took me aside and told me that our host would lost face if we did not accept. When I did so, he smiled broadly and shuffled off to begin preparations for the meal, while Leslie and I licked our chops as we fantasized an Oriental banquet.

The village itself consisted of several hundred thatched-roof houses spread along either side of a narrow dirt lane in more or less a straight line. The villagers supported themselves by farming and river commerce, and they were open and friendly toward our goodwill mission. One young boy adopted me as soon as we began our journey to

the other end of the village and signified his claim to the other urchins who followed in our wake by holding on tightly to my hand. Chickens strutted about freely, and the village appeared to me to be quite prosperous with no sign of civil unrest. By the time the platoon had made its way to the outskirts of town, we had attracted a sizable crowd, mostly women, children, and old men, and I gave no particular thought to the absence of young men. The side of the river that we had come from had been so sparsely settled that it was almost eerie, and it was pleasant for a change to mix with the population whom we were supposed to be saving from communism.

As we exited the village, I had the platoon set up in a loose perimeter in an open field beyond the last hut, and the two corpsmen began treating the sick. At first the curious villagers were shy, but as one or two of the bolder children, coaxed by cigarettes and candy, came forward, they quickly lost their fear. Most of the ailments were of a minor nature, skin infections and stomach disorders caused by parasites. As the corpsmen began to work their magic, they were quickly swamped, and we had to force the crowd out of the perimeter and into a semblance of a waiting line. I became concerned that once inside the perimeter, some of the women and children would begin stealing our gear, and indeed, my marines soon found children attempting to carry off anything they could get their hands on. I finally announced that if we found one more child attempting to fleece us, I would have the corpsmen pack their medical kits. The threat seemed to work. Some of the more enterprising children now began to barter cookies and other homemade sweets for C rations and cigarettes, and by the end of the sick call some marines were paying exorbitant sums of money to these children for the same items they could have gotten earlier for next to nothing. The young lad who had adopted me took it upon himself to protect me from these young vendors, but he obviously also had his eye on my pack and rations. As we saddled up and prepared to hike back to the village compound, I gave him several tins of meat and fruit, but I stopped short of giving him my cig-

arettes. I was still new enough in country to find the sight of eight-year-old boys smoking cigarettes unsettUng.

When we got back to our starting point, the platoon set up for the night around the compound. As a rule, we moved just as darkness fell to avoid giving away our location; but there had been no sign of enemy activity, and I thought we should take advantage of what little protection the compound offered. After I had checked the perimeter, Leslie, the interpreter, and I went to meet with the village chief and his entourage. The room was sparsely furnished with a table, a couple of chairs, and several racks of rifles. The chief motioned me to sit in one chair while he took the other and our subordinates stood. The conversation was stilted and of little intelligence value, but a necessary formality. He insisted that there were no VC or VC sympathizers in the village, had never been any, and none would be permitted in the future, and with each assertion he excitedly clasped the butt of his sidearm. We smoked some of the cigarettes I had given him earlier and drank glasses of tepid tea, while he tried to elicit a promise from me to requisition some more concertina wire for the compound's defenses. He also seemed to think that he had done me a favor by allowing my corpsmen to treat his people. That perplexed me until I realized that his collaboration might be risky if the VC infrastructure in the area was strong. If that were the case, however, he had probably gotten permission from the enemy to allow our sick call and most of the medical supplies we left with Doc Ellis's patients would wind up in the hands of the VC.

After it became obvious that I was going to learn nothing more and that he was going to get no more concessions, we ended the meeting, and he sent a guide with me to gather up our group for the banquet. I decided to take Sergeant Leslie, Doc Ellis, the senior corpsman, since had had done most of the work that day, Watson, whom I would need to keep radio contact with the platoon, and the interpreter. Corporal Turner was unhappy about being left behind but understood that a responsible party had to be left in charge of the platoon, and he admonished us to eat carefully as our party of five left, following our guide to a nearby thatched hut.

The meal was served on a low table around which we tried to make ourselves comfortable sitting on the floor. Smiling women filled and refilled our plates with unidentifiable meats, vegetables, and rice and a pungent sauce that masked the taste of everything. I later found out that the principal component of the sauce was chicken blood, which explained its horrible taste, but there was no refusing our smiling hostesses, who, oblivious of our protestations, continued to glop food onto our plates. There were also tea and strong spirits, which we were successful in refusing because of our mission. After an hour and a half we begged off, explaining that my company commander would never condone a more prolonged absence from my bivouacked marines. As we rose to go, we were surprised to be presented with a bill, which was, in addition, completely out of proportion to the fare we had been served. We pooled our scrip and paid be-grudgingly, but everyone in the room knew we had been taken.

Corporal Turner was relieved to see us and had a good laugh at our expense when Sergeant Leslie told him how we had been burned over the cost of our meal. I was still fuming at the way the villagers had tried to take advantage of us at every opportunity and could just imagine the village chief smoking my cigarettes with his cronies and joking about how he had put one over on the Americans. To make matters worse, a light rain fell all night, and while my men and I were huddled beneath our poncho liners, I knew that our hosts were dry and warm. I stood a radio watch and then tried to get some sleep; but the dampness and cold made rest almost impossible, and I dozed fitfully. At least the amtracs would be there first thing in the morning to carry us back across the river, I thought, where we could concentrate on search and destroy rather than placate and pacify.

Sometime after midnight Sergeant Leslie shook me awake, and I could sense urgency in his voice. Corporal Hitch had detected movement in front of his squad's position and believed that the enemy was probing our lines. I knew that the village had been curfewed for tonight, so anything out there had to be unfriendly, and I had Leslie pass

the word for full alert. My heart raced at the prospect of catching a couple of guerrillas coming through the wire, but I prayed that they were not an advance party for a larger unit. Hitch was by now beside himself and convinced that a frontal assault was about to be launched directly at his position when I scurried over to join him. He animatedly pointed out what appeared to be three crouched figures just beyond the wire and told me that he had been watching them move closer for the last hour. I could not fathom why the three perfectly plain silhouettes were so still and so in open view. After observing them with Hitch for a few minutes, I decided to fire a few rounds at them to force their hand. I squeezed off several rounds at each target, but when my fusillade evoked no response, it finally dawned on me that Hitch's quarry existed only in our heads. We called in an illumination round from the artillery battery that was supporting us to be certain that Hitch was not mistaken, and as the round descended and briefly lit up the terrain the three figures turned out to be small shrubs. Within minutes most of the marines who were not on watch were again sound asleep, and any shreds of credibility Hitch might still have had were squandered.

When daybreak came, we dried our poncho liners in the sun, policed our area, and waited for the amtracs. The trip back was uneventful, and I was beginning to wonder after our latest caper if there were indeed any enemy soldiers in South Vietnam. I had been in command of the third platoon for about three weeks, and our only confirmed kills were a pig and three bushes. Although I dreaded the prospect of my first firefight, I knew that it was inevitable, and I wanted to get it over with. Back at battalion Sergeant Leslie and I briefed Captain Woods on our goodwill mission, and I expressed my frustration at the windmill tilting we had been doing up until now. He assured us that something much bigger on the drawing board would soon give us all the action we would want or could handle. Sergeant Leslie and I exchanged glances but did not press the matter, since we were already embarrassed for having called in a fire mission to illuminate some shrubbery. We also decided not to tell the platoon, which was already rife with rumors

over our anticipated move south. Leslie and I agreed that Woods's hint of action would only fuel the rumor mill, which already had us living in air-conditioned Quonset huts when we rotated into the Da Nang area.

A day or two later Captain Woods summoned the company's lieutenants and platoon sergeants, and it was obvious from the way he set his jaw that his earlier words had been in earnest. The battalion was indeed about to move south, he said, but before we moved, we were going to be helilifted up into the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in a surprise airborne assault. As he described the mission, the pencils and pads came out, and we began mentally formulating the regulation five-paragraph orders we would give our platoons. In theory the mission appeared simple. The platoon would board a helicopter at a specified landing zone at daybreak the next morning, disembark at preplanned grid coordinates in the DMZ, follow a route of march through several objectives to another landing zone, and be picked up by helicopter for the return trip.

I was the newest and the greenest lieutenant in the company, but none of us had ever been up into the no-man's-land of the DMZ, so in a sense we all were starting even. The commander of the second platoon. Lieutenant John Zier, had been in country six or seven months, and he and I had already struck up a rapport since both our wives were waiting for us in the Washington area. Even he with his experience was somber at the prospect of our undertaking. He was a large man, six feet three and 230 pounds before the heat of Vietnam had whittled 30 pounds from his muscular frame, and I had taken delight on previous occasions from his buU-in-the-china-shop approach to life. If John Zier was worried, I knew that I should be also, but a part of me was looking forward to the next day.

Late that afternoon, after I had briefed the platoon and given them the order of march for our maneuver, B-52 bombers began to prep the area of our operation. For the next several hours an air strike was in operation, and plane after plane jettisoned its payload of two-thousand-pound bombs into the DMZ wilderness. From our position on the ground outside Dong Ha we could not see or hear the

planes, but each time one of the bombs detonated, the ground around us reverberated as if an iron fist had been pounded into a steel carpet. The sound resembled thunder, and I could not fathom how any creature could live through such a devastating barrage. "Get some," my marines would yell as the pilots went about their deadly business, and there was not a man in the battalion who did not pray that the air strikes would crush the life from every living organism in the area into which we would be flown at dawn.

The next morning at daybreak the three platoons boarded helicopters and headed north. We traveled fairly low to the ground in tight configurations of three choppers to a company. My men were packed like sardines along the sides of the lead chopper, and from my position near the door gunner I could watch the vegetation below. As we neared our destination, we passed over several camouflaged North Vietnamese antiaircraft emplacements. I could see the guns swivel and hear the steady pop of .50-caliber rounds, and I suddenly realized that we were under fire. Several rounds passed through the fuselage of our chopper. One went through the canteen on the web belt of the marine sitting next to me without giving him anything more than a wet lap and a bad scare. He passed his ruined canteen up to the crew chief and crossed himself as we moved out of range of the enemy gunner, but we both realized that the round could have cut him in half if it had been six inches farther to the right.

Ten minutes later our chopper banked steeply to the left, and the ground, which had been below us, seemed to have turned sideways. The vegetation of the landing zone, flattened by the rotating blades, met us, and with a thump we were on the ground and being pushed out of the back and down the tail ramp by an agitated crew chief. I had been taught at Basic School to ask the crew chief for the direction in which the nose of the chopper was pointing for orientation, but amid the noise and confusion of disembarking marines, he could not hear me.

Within seconds the chopper was again airborne and headed back to Dong Ha, while my platoon and I were left alone in the soggy vegetation. The noise of the helicopter

blades was replaced by the steady cackle of Watson's radio as adjacent units tried to come up on the same frequency and make contact, and my men fanned out in a broad circle to secure our area and await word from the skipper to move out. After we had regained some semblance of organization and I had determined our bearings, it had just occurred to me that the landing had been quiet when suddenly the first squad began firing its weapons. I could not see its target, but as the volume of fire peaked and then died out, I realized that we had made contact. A breathless marine then made his way over to me to report that his squad had killed two NVA soldiers as they fled our perimeter.

Both the dead soldiers were unarmed except for Chinese hand grenades in their packs, and as I surveyed their bullet-riddled bodies, it seemed strange to me that they had survived the two-thousand-pound bombs the day before only to be done in by rifle rounds. One of the soldiers was wearing gold-rimmed John Lennon-style glasses, and I wondered if he had known that his glasses were a part of the uniform of the peace movement back home and if he had ever listened to the music of the Beatles. The other dead soldier had a picture of a woman among his possessions. The third platoon now had its first legitimate kills since my arrival, and, in accordance with battalion policy, the marines who actually got the credit would receive in-country R & R.

When the word came over the radio from Captain Woods to move out, we covered the faces of the dead soldiers with their uniform shirts and, having neither the time nor the inclination to bury them, left them where they had fallen. Our first objective was the crest of a steep, heavily wooded hill directly to our south. The skipper wanted to get a better vantage point from which to view the surrounding countryside, and the hilltop facing us seemed ideal until we started to climb. I moved my platoon out in the standard one-squad-up, two-back formation, but the foliage was so dense and the incline so steep that we were hardly able to progress.

As we hacked our way up the hill, visual contact between squads also worsened until we were forced to resort to single file. Almost immediately Corporal Hitch collapsed

from the heat, which had become unbearable after the morning cloud cover had lifted. A combat photographer who had been assigned to us at the last minute also became a heat casualty, even though he had only a camera to carry. Both Hitch and the photographer had to be carried back to our original landing zone to await a medevac chopper, and we waited in place for an hour while the bird made its way to them. I never saw Hitch again, but he (and the photographer) had compromised our mission by the delay. His collapse proved I had been correct in asking Captain Woods to have him removed from my command and from the bush.

We finally reached our first objective with the rest of the company strung out behind us like an unraveled spool of communications wire, every man out of breath and drenched with sweat. The squad leaders were kept busy trying to keep their charges from going to their canteens at every opportunity. Doc Ellis estimated the heat to be 110 degrees. Men simply sank to their knees whenever the platoon paused. I had never been so consumed with thirst in my life. Watson reported to the skipper that we had crested the hill, and several minutes later a huffing and puffing Captain Woods emerged with his radioman from the underbrush behind us to eye the terrain.

Half a dozen bomb craters pockmarked the slope of the hill and the valley between our position and the next hill, and the smell of fresh dirt and cordite from the giant holes filled and irritated our nostrils. The crater nearest us was about twenty feet in diameter and nearly as deep, and as Captain Woods and I peered into its sharply sloping sides, we could see a single NVA boot sitting at the bottom with a severed leg protruding from it. Nausea seized me briefly, but there was not enough liquid remaining in my body to bring anything up.

The skipper called in a situation report over the battalion net and summoned the other two platoon leaders for a quick conference. Even Zier, with his athletic build and incredible stamina, moved as though he were walking through molasses. The other lieutenant made no effort to hide his fatigue. Neither of their platoons had made enemy contact, but we all were too exhausted to waste energy discussing

my kills as we tried to concentrate on Captain Woods's plan of action.

I was instructed to flank the valley below us with my platoon and cut across the ridgeline of the next hill. When my objective was secured, Captain Woods and the remaining two platoons would come on line, cross the valley fron-tally, and join us as they had at our first objective. My assignment, of course, meant that the third platoon would have twice as far to walk as the other two platoons and that if the next hill was occupied, we could easily be decimated, but I knew Woods was banking on no enemy unit's having remained intact after the B-52s.

"His bank, my ass," I thought as I acknowledged my orders and prepared to get the platoon up and moving. As always, the men grumbled but obeyed. Our flanking maneuver took well over an hour, but the first part of it was downhill, and since the second hill was not nearly as steep or as thick with underbrush, we did not have to work nearly as hard to cover the ground. There was no sign of life, and the surroundings took on an otherworldly aura without so much as a bird chirp coming from the abundant wilderness.

From the ridgeline of the second hill, I could see down into another valley and up a third hill to the south, and I could also see the rest of the company on the hill we had just vacated. The terrain seemed to consist of nothing but hills and valleys, and I knew that an entire North Vietnamese army could be lying in wait beyond any one of them; but I was at least relieved to be able to call Captain Woods and tell him that we had secured our objective without incident.

Our platoon used the half hour it took the rest of the company to cross the valley to take a breather and eat some chow. I wolfed down a can of cling peaches that tasted bet-,ter than anything I had eaten in my entire life. As I tilted my head back to drain the last drop of liquid into my mouth, Ellis warned me to slow down, but undaunted, I then licked the inside of the can. We had not eaten since coming into this godawful inferno, and the troops were dehydrated and near exhaustion. I had less than a canteen of water left, and many of the men were even lower than I despite their

wearing from three to five canteens each. We were going to start taking casuaUies in droves if we did not get some relief, and for once I prayed for rain in Vietnam.

As Captain Woods arrived, I could tell that he was ready to throw in the towel as he vainly searched for clouds to block out the midaftemoon sun, which had become our worst enemy. When he announced to the command group that we were going to clear a landing zone in the valley below and call in the helicopters, our relief was palpable. As I passed the word to my platoon, they seemed rejuvenated by knowing the end of the mission was at hand. A scouting party of volunteers was hastily assembled and sent directly across our prepared landing zone to climb the last hill they would ever have to hump in the DMZ. When they signaled that it was secure, the rest of us descended into the valley, staked out a landing zone, and began clearing it of trees and shrubbery.

There were only a couple of hours of daylight left, and the men worked like dervishes, despite their exhaustion, when they realized that if we could not get the choppers in soon, we would have to spend the night. A dozen men hacked away with machetes, felling the small trees and bushes that others stepped in to carry off to the side. There was only enough flatland for one chopper to land at a time, and no one wanted to be the last to board; but Captain Woods placed my platoon first since we had been on point all day.

As the sun weakened and a usable landing zone began to take shape, several of my men discovered a tunnel hidden by underbrush in the side of the hill. I was surprised at the number of men who volunteered to serve as tunnel rats since there was no way of knowing what was inside, but the element of the unknown seemed to spark the enthusiasm of some of the men. After a volunteer was selected, we tossed a couple of grenades into the shaft. The volunteer's quick foray produced nothing but some sacks of rice and medical supplies from an American pharmaceutical company. Apparently the shaft was used only for storage, which was a relief to me but a disappointment to the tunnel rat, who was looking for the in-country R&R that a kill would bring him.

I was also disillusioned that NVA soldiers would have access to American medical supplies, but Captain Woods credited our find to the machinations of the black market or to wholesale purchases through a neutral country.

We sealed off the tunnel entrance with a plastic explosive charge and settled in to wait for the choppers. I gave the squads the order in which they were to board for the ride home, and anxious marines spent the next hour looking and listening for signs of our deliverance. We had no idea how the other companies of the battalion were faring and at that point cared even less, since the paramount thought on everyone's mind was to get the hell out of the DMZ before the enemy figured out where we were and came sweeping in from the surrounding hills or, worse yet, targeted our position and began lobbing in mortar rounds. The longer we remained in place, the more vulnerable we became, and I also knew that the last chopper out was the one in most danger since the first pickups would give away our position.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the faint clacking of helicopter blades became audible in the distance and intensified into a roar as the choppers appeared on the horizon and came sweeping toward us. Within seconds of the lead chopper's swoop into the landing zone, my men and I had scrambled aboard and were airborne, and I watched with admiration as a second chopper that had been hovering above us repeated the process for the second platoon. When the third bird had picked up the last of the company, the three of them came on line and swung south toward Dong Ha and more hospitable surroundings.

It was almost dark, and we all were too exhausted to try to make our voices heard above the whirling blades and rushing air; but Sergeant Leslie gave me the thumbs-up, and more than one tired marine gave thanks to God that he had almost made it through another day in Vietnam. I leaned wearily against the bulkhead behind me and watched the young marine opposite me absentmindedly clean his fingernails with his bush knife. Suddenly I realized that it was August 18, my twenty-third birthday.

When we disembarked near Dong Ha, there seemed to have been no provisions made for our return, and the com-

pany fell out on the side of the landing zone and awaited further orders. A water wagon was driven up and the platoons lined up to refill their canteens and slosh water on one another. Somebody spotted a pallet of C rations, which was quickly cannibalized, and within minutes the glow of heat tabs dotted our formation as hungry marines, their thirst slaked by the water resupply, now filled their bellies with the stolen food. A rear-echelon supply sergeant considered raising a squawk when he realized that we had pirated his rations but then thought better of interfering with marines who had just returned from a combat mission. Many of the men fell asleep as soon as they had eaten, but I continued to gulp cup after cup of water, feeling as if my parched throat could never get enough.

Later that evening we were loaded onto a navy barge and transported back down the Cua Viet River to Mai Xa Thi, our original location. It was cool in the open boat beneath a cloudless sky, and though we were packed in tight, my marines found ways to be comfortable. Many used their helmets or packs as pillows and sprawled lazily on the crowded deck, making small talk or gazing at the stars. The coolness and tranquility of the evening were a pleasant contrast to the heat and confusion of our mission, as the boat plowed quietly through the black water. Like all infantrymen we were content to be traveling by any mode of transportation other than shank's mare.

I smoked quietly and thought with mixed feelings about the enemy soldiers my platoon had killed. I was proud that we had gotten two kills since that reflected favorably on the platoon and was good for morale, but I was ashamed that we had basically shot unarmed men as they fled from us. We had been trained to kill anything that moved in the unfriendly environs of the DMZ, and it was far better to be safe than sorry; but I still wished that the two soldiers had been armed to the teeth and charging our position when we wasted them.

I felt vaguely unclean in an unidentifiable way, and I was also bothered by the fact that our first two kills had absolutely no say in the manner and timing of their deaths. Had we landed one klick farther over or proceeded in a dif-

ferent direction, they would probably be sleeping now or marking time, I thought, until they were rotated back to Hanoi. I wondered if it was a soldier's lot always to fall victim to circumstances beyond his control.

When we unloaded at Mai Xa Thi, we were given the rest of the evening and the following day off. Our lines were located near the rear-echelon cooks and motor pool maggots, and it was simple justice that they spell us for a few hours. The men unloaded their packs and weapons, and after being warned by Sergeant Leslie not to get too far out of line, they shuffled off in groups of twos and threes to look for mischief.

Leslie and I went over to battalion headquarters to see how the rest of the companies had made out, but intelligence was still very poor. At least one platoon had missed its dustoff and was going to be camping out in the DMZ, and the other companies were still en route from Dong Ha. Apparently there had been sporadic contact like ours, but no one had gotten into trouble with a large enemy unit. The gunny gave Leslie and me cold beers that we shared with Captain Woods when he came in. He congratulated us on the kills and on being on point all day, but from his tone it was obvious he was disappointed not to have made more contact. Our time at Mai Xa Thi was almost over, and Captain Woods had wanted to leave "Victor Charles'* and "Luke the Gook" something to remember us by; but as I savored the coldness of my beer, I felt that my day had been full enough.

The next day, with the battalion all present and accounted for, the rumor mill resumed full operation. The straight scoop, as relayed to us by Captain Woods, was that we were to proceed south by truck within the next few days to relieve a battalion outside Da Nang. The troops were unwilling to beheve the truth, however, and one story even had us parachuting into Hanoi.

I went for a swim and washed my clothes in the Chua Viet. That was accomplished most efficientiy by wading into the

river, fully clad, with a bar of soap, scrubbing down, and then stripping. Water had never felt so good, and Sergeant Leslie and I allowed ourselves some extra time to soak off the black dirt of the DMZ before emerging and wringing out our utilities.

We spent the remainder of the day luxuriating beneath the same sun that had almost killed us a day earlier, cleaning our weapons and drinking beer, and by midaftemoon my morale had vastly improved. I wrote my wife and my father, telling them of our anticipated move south but omitting any references to danger or discomfort. That evening the company feasted on a sumptuous meal of minute steaks, fried eggs, and Kool-Aid. This was our last night at Mai Xa Thi, and after dinner Lieutenant Zier, our platoon sergeants, and I smoked cigarettes in the darkness outside the mess area, conjecturing about living conditions at Camp 413 in the Da Nang tactical area of responsibility (TAOR). An advance party had already been sent south to start the transition, and I was looking forward to the trip and to seeing something of the countryside between Dong Ha and Da Nang.

Breaking camp is an easy matter for an infantry platoon. When the word came that we were moving out, we quickly refilled our packs and duffel bags and loaded onto a convoy of six-bys for the truck ride south. I felt oddly naked as I looked back at our empty area of operations and unmanned lines, but of course, my reaction was irrational since there was now nothing to protect.

The route to Da Nang was along narrow, unpaved roads heavily traveled by Vietnamese civilians, who grudgingly gave way to the advancing trucks. Ancient black sedans, filled to capacity and going north, passed us occasionally, as did all manner of open trucks and buses loaded down with chickens, pigs, and wicker baskets. There were also men and women on bicycles and the ubiquitous travelers who bobbed along, balancing baskets on each end of poles slung across their shoulders. Rice paddies and open fields filled the landscape between the little hamlets. Passing through these, we were forced to slow down, and I watched farmers and young children work the water buffaloes that, though docile with the peasants, would not allow

marines near them. The rest of the platoon sat sandwiched together on the benches that Hned the rear of the truck, and at each stopping point they were besieged by youngsters with their hands outstretched, begging for food and cigarettes.

We also passed through the outskirts of Hue, the ancient and hauntingly beautiful town that had been the focus of the Tet offensive only months earlier, and the havoc there was a graphic reminder of the obscenity of war. Everywhere we looked, the rubble of bombed-out crumbling buildings contrasted starkly with the still-beautiful tree-lined boulevards and picturesque gardens. It was not difficult to imagine the bloody carnage that had taken place so recently, but it was still possible to be moved by the timeless tranquility the ancient citadel somehow inspired.

By contrast. Da Nang, at least the area to which we were trucked, was an armed camp of hastily constructed plywood and canvas buildings laid out to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding military presence with no regard for aesthetics. We were deposited in a transient area of tin-roofed shacks with an outdoor shower facility and an adjacent mess hall, and as the platoon disembarked and the men began stretching their cramped legs, I could see them eye the showers approvingly through the dust and grime left on their faces by the day's ride. Captain Woods scheduled a morning formation and then gave the men liberty for the rest of the day and evening. It was evident from the murmur that went up that most of the troops had not had liberty in a rear area in months.

Leslie gave the platoon his standard warning about staying out of trouble, and then he, Lieutenant Zier, and I stashed our gear in the officers' shack and began the all-important search for food and drink. We first showered with the troops and then gorged ourselves on cheeseburgers with real lettuce and tomato. Leslie and I stopped eating after two burgers each and watched in amazement as the huge Zier consumed two more. It was comforting to know that this carnivore would be with us for the balance of the evening if anyone should challenge our right to be drunk and in Da Nang.

The NCO club where we eventually settled in was small and dingy, but it had an ample supply of cold beer and enough old salts that the odds favored the same sea stories with variations being oft repeated over drinks. The walls were covered with nude pinup giris, and my loins quickly reminded me of how long my sex life had been on hold. As in the case of most military clubs, the regulars were typically rear-echelon types who were nearing the end of dieir careers and whom in this instance the fickle finger had dealt one last tour in Vietnam. Some of them had cut their teeth in Korea, and when they realized that I was Chesty Puller's son, the bullshit factor took a dramatic upturn. I was embarrassed at first that Leslie, Zier, and I were given free beer in honor of my father, but as we got into our cups, I rationalized that given the type of work we were doing and the inft-equency of our visits to any club, we deserved free beer.

Toward midnight I autographed cocktail napkins for every marine in the bar who was plastered enough to think my signature was of any value, and Leslie, Zier, and I, oblivious of all rank differences, staggered off arm in arm to our quarters. We were met at the entrance by a huge black enlisted marine who, though very drunk and disoriented, still managed to convey the impression that he was not going to allow us into our own quarters. His hulk filled the entire doorframe. While Sergeant Leslie and I argued over whether we should shoot him or have him court-martialed, Lieutenant Zier, in a voice suddenly gone hard, told the intruder that he owed it to himself to disappear. Zier's clenched fists and bulging biceps were persuasive, and as the man stepped down from his perch and vanished, I suddenly sobered up. It was also obvious that Zier had not spent a good portion of his life lifting weights just to look good at the beach.

At daybreak a badly hung-over third platoon fell out to complete the last leg of our trip. We boarded the trucks and headed down the main service road to Camp 413. There we were choppered to the Third Battalion, Twenty-seventh Marine Regiment, to succeed it in the Da Nang TAOR. Camp 413 was a triangular enclosure bounded by manmade berms

and containing the standard assortment of plywood buildings and tin Quonset huts.

Our mission was to conduct offensive operations within the Da Nang TAOR, to "locate and destroy enemy bases and logistic installations and to deploy our forces to provide defense of the Da Nang Vital Area and military complex with emphasis on routes of approach to probable rocket/mortar launch positions." To put it simply, my platoon was to conduct patrols and set ambushes so that the enemy would have a more difficult time using Da Nang for target practice. The enemy, on the other hand, had as its primary mission setting booby traps and ambushes for my patrols, so that they could more easily lob ordnance into Da Nang and its incredibly busy airfield.

When we arrived at Camp 413, the lieutenants were assigned a hardback where we could store our gear and rest when in from patrol, and each of the platoons was also assigned a hardback. Third Battalion, Twenty-seventh Marines stayed in place for the first four days after our arrival to teach us its method of operation. It was crowded in the rear, but during those four days my platoon participated in joint night patrols with a platoon from the Twenty-seventh Marines, getting a feel for the lay of the land before striking out on our own.

The patrolling here was considerably different from that at Dong Ha, as our unit found out the first time we went on a joint night patrol with the platoon from the Twenty-seventh. My counterpart was a staff sergeant rather than a lieutenant, a bad sign right off since it indicated officer attrition, and we all sensed that the Da Nang TAOR was a bad-news sector.

Even more ominous, the point man, the platoon leader, and many of the other men carried probe sticks, long, slender poles, with which they tentatively poked the ground ahead of them. This indicated not only the threat of numerous booby traps and land mines but also the fact that we were operating in an area that belonged to the enemy most of the time. Although our first patrol went smoothly, when we returned to our base camp in the morning, the other platoon's point man took Sergeant Leslie and me aside and told

us that if we learned nothing else from our time out with him, we would be well served always to remember the probe sticks. He had been assigned to his platoon for nine months, most of it in the Da Nang area, and in that time he had seen all but a handful of his comrades killed or wounded by small arms and booby traps. Farther north, at Dong Ha, the possibility of encountering a large-scale NVA force that could decimate an entire platoon in one action had created enormous psychological pressure, but it was beginning to appear that farther south around Da Nang the same pressure was going to be maintained by an unseen enemy that would try to pick us off one or two men at a time witfi booby traps, snipers, and small-scale hit-and-run ambushes. Both approaches were equally lethal, but the frustration in the Da Nang area would be greater because of the near impossibility of retaliation.

After the Twenty-seventh Marines had departed. Golf Company quickly settled into a routine. The company had a central command post group that floated, sometimes in the field but more often in the Camp 413 compound, Jind the three platoons of the company rotated around it. Every two days my platoon was supposed to be shifted to one of the positions of the other platoons; that involved hiking back to Camp 413 from the field, getting resupplied, and hiking back out to where the next platoon was located.

The most desirable rotation site was a small compound where the main service road from Camp 413 met the Tu Cau River. A solid wooden bridge carried heavy civilian and military commerce across the river, and the platoon that occupied the compound was responsible for ensuring that the bridge remained intact. A large wooden tower that afforded a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside, as well as a means of monitoring enemy movement within our TAOR, had been built within the compound. The bridge had sandbagged emplacements at either end manned by a squad of marines, and floodlights, to spot enemy demolition teams, had been installed along its sides and understructure. The troops considered bridge duty an easy assignment because there were no long-range patrols and they could bathe in the river.

The men pitched lean-tos around the barbed-wire perimeter, and aside from having to be alert to the possibility of attack, they had ample time to spend sandbagging their positions. Sergeant Leslie and I did not view bridge duty in quite the same way that the troops saw it, although we were grateful to be able to remain stationary for a couple of days at a time. We knew that the bridge was considered a choice target by the Vietcong, and while duty was pleasant enough as long as the enemy chose to suffer our presence, the VC knew exactly where we were and could pick its own time to mass for an attack. Furthermore, the troops tended to get lax as their comfort level rose, and it was difficult to keep them at a fighting edge when they were not getting daily reminders that there was a war going on.

Of the other two locations within our TAOR, one was viewed with dread by all but the insane among us. Both areas involved constant patrolling among a populace that seemed overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Communists, but the area known as the Riviera was the worst and gave the third platoon its rudest introduction to the Da Nang area. The Riviera was a narrow strip of sand and hedgerows along the coast of the South China Sea just east of Camp 413.

Access to the area was obtained through either a couple of enemy-held villages or a huge rice paddy in which the water was often waist-high after rains. The paddy was lower than the surrounding area and gave enemy snipers vantage points from which to shoot at G Company platoons as they entered or exited the Riviera. There was also the very real possibility that a seriously wounded marine would drown where he fell if his comrades were pinned down by a heavy volume of fire, and in any event, casualties had to be carried through the paddy before a helicopter could be called in for a medevac. Access through the villes was not much better since an intricate network of thick tree lines and dense foliage punctuated by small clearings gave the enemy excellent ambush sites. We were always vulnerable getting in or out of the Riviera because the Vietcong knew exactly where we were. We either telegraphed our routes as

we made our way through the rice paddy or alerted hostile villagers as we passed their thatched huts and garden plots.

I had learned secondhand of the dangers of the Riviera from our predecessors. No doubt our host patrol unit had not wanted to press its luck at the end of its tour by giving us a firsthand introduction. We were therefore on our own the first time we left the battalion compound and crossed the big paddy just before sunup. The men were skittish, and I could read the apprehension on their faces as they waded through the rain-clogged rice paddy, their rifles held aloft. I followed in the sudsy wake of the man walking point. When we had cleared the paddy, I breathed more easily and had the men check themselves for leeches. Doc Ellis used the tip of his cigarette to unfasten several of the repulsive creatures from various legs and arms.

After we had regained the high ground, the arid expanse of the landscape before us did not seem nearly so formidable as it had only an hour earlier in the predawn shadows. On the far side of the paddy some of the men joked about the nervous Nellies in the platoon from the Twenty-seventh Msuines, but most reserved judgment. Captain Woods had purposely given us a lot of ground to cover on our first venture into the area so that we could quickly familiarize ourselves with a wide territory; but he had included only a few checkpoints, and I had a freer hand than usual in picking the routes to our objectives.

I had decided to follow the high ground toward the northern perimeter of our area of operations, cross over the sandy open area toward the South China Sea, and come back down the shoreline, using a wooded area along the beach for maximum protection. The first leg of the mission went smoothly, and we made our way up the sandy high ground without encountering any resistance. We could see small villes below us to our west with farmers working their crops, but the villagers, except for an occasional small child who stared curiously, seemed to ignore us. As the sun grew higher, the clear blue surface of the South China Sea shimmered brilliantly to our east, and my men and I perspired freely as we worked to negotiate the sandy hills.

At our first checkpoint, around midday, I called in our

position to battalion, and the men spread out in a wide circle to get some relief from the sun and eat C rations. With the panoramic view afforded by our high position, I thought it unlikely that we could be ambushed, and I had Leslie pass the word that we would stay until the heat of the day subsided. The squads assigned sentries to monitor possible avenues of approach, and many of the men who were not on watch rigged sunscreens with their poncho liners and quickly fell asleep. Sergeant Leslie and I studied maps and the terrain for any clues to what we might encounter on the next leg of the patrol.

After a couple of hours I gave the word to saddle up, and the squad that had been walking point changed places with another squad as we prepared to come down from the high ground and move east toward the coast. The second leg was shorter than the first, but off the high ground we were much more vulnerable. In descent we moved more quickly, trying to stay in the open as short a time as possible.

Within an hour we had reached a tiny fishing village of about two dozen huts. I called in our second checkpoint while the platoon reconnoitered the ville for any signs of enemy activity and posted sentries. There was one rickety old boat in which I would not have felt safe in a swimming pool, much less the open waters of the South China Sea, but displayed at the entrance, it was obviously the pride of the ville. Several old men were busy with machetes, chopping up firewood to be bundled for the market, and they continued at their chores seemingly oblivious of my men's searching.

After the troops had found nothing suspicious, both groups seemed to become more relaxed, and as usual the children made the first friendly overtures. My men gave the villagers candy and cigarettes, and the corpsmen treated minor ailments for some of the townspeople who were not too timid to come forward. We had arrived as the village was preparing its evening meal, and when some of the men passed out cans of C rations, several families invited us to share their meals. It was the first time I had seen birds' heads and rice served together, but I hid my revulsion and was grateful that we were being accorded such a friendly re-

ception. We had completed the better part of a day in a supposedly hostile area, had encountered no enemy resistance, and the first civilians with whom we had come in contact had shown every sign of being cooperative. As dark began to settle, I thanked our guests as best I could and got the men on their feet and in patrol formation to move out of the village and into a nighttime defensive perimeter. As we filed out of the village, I had rotated the order of march, with the third squad of the day now assuming the lead, and since we were going to be traveling only a few hundred meters, Leslie and I were trying a new man, Lance Corporal George Barton, on point. We had used Barton on point only a few times before and knew that he had quick reflexes and good instincts, but because he lacked experience and was nervous, I had shortened the interval between his place in the patrol and mine, and I concentrated on his movements and the area ahead of us. Sergeant Leslie was traveling with the rearmost squad. When we had cleared the village by about a hundred meters, the rear of the patrol suddenly came under small-arms fire from the village we had just left. Leslie and the lag squad quickly returned fire in the direction of the muzzle flashes, which were clearly visible in the descending dark, and whoever had been firing at us broke contact.

We incurred no casualties; but the bullets were hitting just behind the men in the rear, and they quickened their pace to get out of range. The men in the front had stopped advancing to try to determine what was happening, and another fifteen minutes had passed by the time we got unbunched. I disappointed some angry marines by not allowing them to return to the village for retaliation, but I knew that I should not break mission discipline. It was hard to believe that the same villagers who had just shared their meal with us would now allow us to be used for target practice, but under the circumstances there was no way we could return and still keep our patrol schedule.

I had learned a valuable lesson about concentrating on the rear as well as the front, but the problem of harassing fire as we exited supposedly friendly villes continued to vex us whenever we patrolled tfie Riviera. It also reinforced the

attitude among the troops that all Vietnamese were enemies, even though we realized that there was probably no way unarmed civilians could prevent the Vietcong from sweeping in behind us and taking potshots.

When we got under way again, it was dark, and the terrain abruptly changed from the sandy open area we had been negotiating all day to a series of checkerboard rice paddies with one- or two-foot-high berms enclosing each square. As we advanced along our route, I was absorbed in thinking about our brief skirmish. We had gotten our first introduction to the methods of the local Vietcong cadre. As I mechanically slogged along in Barton's footsteps, I wondered when we would be hit again.

About ten meters from the intersection of a paddy dike our path was paralleling with another that ran perpendicular to it, I saw Barton's back stiffen, and the air was suddenly filled with the sound of automatic-weapons fire. Barton had heard the click of an AK-47 safety being turned off only meters away, and as he and the enemy soldier facing him opened fire at each other simultaneously and at point-blank range, I realized that we had walked head-on into a Vietcong ambush.

As I dropped to my knees, a string of bright red tracer rounds, like a length of neon tubing, passed waist-high down the berm beside me. It was obvious that if I had been on the berm instead of in the paddy beside it, I would have been eviscerated. Within seconds the rest of the ambush team somewhere off to our left directed its fire across the path of the tracer rounds and into our flank, but Barton and I were shielded from the lethal barrage by the paddy dike we had dropped behind. The fire from our left subsided, but a ball of flame suddenly burst in the paddy between me and the marine behind me, and I thought momentarily that we were under attack from the right flank as well. When I realized that the explosion had been a grenade lobbed into our position by the enemy soldiers to our left who could not hit us with direct fire, I pulled a grenade from my belt, yanked out the pin, and heaved it from my knees with a hook-shot motion in the direction of the enemy. After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, during which I thought

I had thrown a dud, the grenade finally detonated and was followed by silence.

For the first time I heard moaning from the marine behind me and realized that he had been hit. My cries of "Corpsman up, corpsman up!" were answered almost immediately by Doc Ellis, who ran in a crouching position, medical kit in hand, to administer first aid to the wounded marine. The man had been hit in the head by grenade shrapnel, and as Ellis bandaged his head, he told me that the fragments had struck a glancing blow and that the wounds appeared superficial.

Probably not five minutes had elapsed between the time of the first shots' being fired and the enemy's breaking contact in response to my grenade toss, but it had seemed like an eternity. Sergeant Leslie had by now worked his way up to my position, and as I regained my wits, I had him pull all three squads into a tight perimeter facing outward and using the natural protection of the paddy dikes as insulation from whoever might still be lurking in the dark. After the wounded man and Doc Ellis assured me that a medevac was unnecessary, I called in a situation report to Captain Woods, who gave us permission to sit tight until first light. The squads placed claymore mines in front of their positions, and we passed a sleepless and soggy night; but the Vietcong had apparently had enough and did not attack our perimeter.

We had been in the Riviera one day, the platoon had been hit fore and aft, and I was not at all certain that I was going to be able to take this kind of action on a regular basis. At some point during the night I became aware of how close I had come to being killed, and I made my way over to a badly shaken Barton, who was also wide-awake, and thanked him for having saved my life.

In the morning we found the shell casings from the tracer rounds and some beaten-down foliage but no other signs of an enemy presence. It seemed remarkable to me that Barton and the enemy soldier had opened up on each other with automatic-weapons fire at almost point-blank range yet neither had been hit. The Vietcong ambush team had prepared its lethal trap with the idea that we would be walldng along the top of the paddy dike, and the first burst

of fire had been presighted along that path. As a result, Barton and the unseen soldier probably missed firing into each other's chests by about a foot, and the paddy dike on which we were to have died had been instead a life-saving buffer. I had hoped that Barton's quick reaction or my grenade would have inflicted some damage on the enemy; but we found no blood trails, and we were extremely fortunate to have gotten through the encounter with only one minor casualty, considering that the VC had initiated the contact and caught us off guard.

Four or five of the men volunteered to walk our casualty back to the battalion aid station, and I let them do so. We still had another half day's work to do, and it would have been foolish to take any chances with a head wound. I wondered why the men, aside from being concerned about their comrade, would volunteer to break loose from the safety of the platoon, but I smiled to myself as I realized that they would be getting out of the bush three or four hours ahead of the rest of the platoon by taking a direct route back. I was beginning to realize that while my marines were capable of incredible acts of bravery, they would incur almost any risk to gain a few hours of slack time in the rear. That was why the battalion policy of in-country R&R for enemy kills worked so well, and that was why they had to be rewarded when they performed well and admonished when they failed to do what was expected of them. I was worried that five men were now going to risk being overrun by a larger unit, but since they were doing the unexpected in splitting off from the platoon, any encounter would probably be by chance rather than by design. I sent a radioman with them so that they could report back when they reached the battalion area and so that we could come to their assistance if they got into trouble.

As we proceeded south along the coast, just before turning inland for the trek back to Camp 413, we passed a leper colony that we had heard described as a haven of Viet-cong sympathizers. We had been instructed not to enter it under any circumstances; that was fine with the platoon since most of us held the usual misconceptions about the contagion of the disease. The colony housed several hun-

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Lewis B. Puller, Jr. 123

dred men and women who went about their business in total disregard of my men when we stopped at the edge of their camp to fill our canteens. I was morbidly curious about the inmates but from the periphery most of them appeared perfectly normal. Nevertheless, it was rumored that since marines were banned from entering the colony, the Vietcong used it as a staging area and supply point, and we had been told that we could expect trouble.

Fortunately there were no more surprises for the third platoon that afternoon, and I breathed more easily when our volunteer party radioed to report that it had made it safely back to camp and that our casualty was not seriously wounded. Thus we completed our first Riviera patrol, returning via the village of Viem Dong, instead of recrossing the big rice paddy. I waited at the compound entrance to make certain that all the patrol made it safely inside and that its weapons were unloaded, and then Sergeant Leslie and I went in search of a cold beer. We both expressed the wish that the next two days at the Tu Cau bridge would be less exciting than the last two had been.

F

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The Tu Cau bridge was a good hour's march from Camp 413, but the company gunny had managed to scrounge trucks from the motor pool to transport us to the river the following morning. The platoon was feeling good as we disembarked, both because we were going to be in one place for the rest of the day and because we had one-upped the green machine by arriving at our new destination by truck rather than on foot. I had my squads assume the positions of the men we were relieving, and after their commander gave us a brief orientation, his platoon boarded the six-bys we had arrived in and headed back to Camp 413. I had been told that we could cut some slack at the bridge and rest up for the final rotation in the area northwest of Camp 413, which, though dangerous, did not have the reputation of the Riviera.

After I had walked the perimeter of the compound and ^ checked the guard posts at either end of the bridge. Sergeant Leslie and I stored our gear in the command bunker, which we shared with a young engineer corporal who seemed to be permanently assigned to the Tu Cau bridge. His only responsibility seemed to be to turn the floodlights on at night and off in the morning and keep the generators operational, and since he knew he had found an easy job, he at least

tried to do it well so that he would not be sent off to an infantry unit. We all envied him his soft duty, but I was grateful to have someone with us who already knew the eccentricities of the bridge. I therefore let him remain in the bunker, but I moved him off to one comer so that Leslie and I could flop in the best location and so that he would realize that his time at the bridge did not accord him any favored status. Sergeant Leslie chided me good-naturedly for throwing my weight around at the expense of an enlisted man, but he too realized that after what we had just gone through, our engineer's comfort was not a priority.

Because the bridge was on a major artery, we had more contact with civilians than we had had at any time since my arrival. Within hours of our settling in, local vendors were swarming among us, and the troops, much to my disapproval, were willing buyers. I tried to limit commerce to the open area along the road outside the compound, and I was adamant in not allowing anyone to loiter once he or she was on the bridge, but the merchants were ingenious and persistent. Invariably the food salesmen would begin their pitch by offering me free samples, and they had a staggering array of American black-market products, including all kinds of canned goods, sodas, and snack foods, for which they demanded exorbitant prices. I rejected all offers of goods as bribes, and tried to be as uncooperative as possible, but Sergeant Leslie patiently explained to me that the Vietnamese way of doing business was meant to honor me and not to demonstrate that I could be bought. I finally weakened and accepted a free haircut from an itinerant barber, whom I also allowed into the compound to perform a much-needed service on my shaggy charges, some of whom had not had haircuts in weeks. He beamed broadly as he shaved our heads and pocketed our military scrip, but when he offered to return that evening with a full complement of party girls, he quickly found himself outside the compound.

There was a Korean whose ginmiick was English Bibles at sixty dollars a crack, which he would then mail to loved ones in the States. He had a letter signed by a general that authorized him to move more freely among the troops. I figured that his chances of success were minimal since

sixty dollars was the equivalent of several weeks' pay for most of the troops, but in the hour before Leslie and I decided to disregard the letter and consign him to the fate of the barber, he actually completed five sales. Leslie and I agreed that Christianity had been good for our Korean friend, and we wondered what sort of arrangement he had made farther up the line to have gotten the cooperation of the brass.

Our two days at the bridge were a welcome respite, and I used some of my free time to catch up on correspondence. I had been writing to Toddy every chance I got since getting into Vietnam, often between patrols and in pencil so that the wetness would not smear my penmanship, but I now had some time to write my father and a couple of old fraternity brothers, whom I shamelessly begged to send scotch in well-sealed plastic bottles.

I had probably not written my father half a dozen letters in my previous four years of college, but now that I had embarked on a rite of passage that was not only fraught with peril but also similar to the one he had undertaken as a fledgling lieutenant fifty years earlier in the jungles of Haiti and Nicaragua, I felt an urgent need to share some of my experiences with him. Oddly enough, after having been under fire and forced to react in several life-or-death situations, I now felt much closer to my father, though geographically I had never been farther from him. It was almost as if a door had been opened to a world that I had often heard discussed but had never experienced, and the experience of combat now freed me to pour my soul out to the one man I most wanted to emulate.

While at the bridge I received my first mail from Toddy, a packet of nine letters that, though sent under separate cover over the last month, all managed to arrive at the same time. She also sent the rain suit I had requested in an earlier letter and a jar of pistachio nuts. The rain suit did not keep out the rain, but it was useful in keeping the water that was already next to my skin warm. Sergeant Leslie and I shared the pistachios as well as the news of my wife's burgeoning pregnancy, and we both had a good laugh over one of her complaints that television viewing had been mediocre

since my departure. Leslie volunteered that he would be satisfied just watching commercials, which I reported to Toddy.

The rain suit came in particularly handy the second day of our Tu Cau assignment when a typhoon almost destroyed the bridge. The first day had been clear and hot, and I allowed the platoon to go down to the river in shifts for needed baths and to launder their clothes. Much to the amusement of the local populace, many of the men used the occasion to try to bronze their birthday suits. It began raining that night, however, and by morning heavy winds and a torrential downpour had all but obliterated our view of the river. The rain also made lookout duty on the bridge meaningless since it was not possible to see the approach of any potential saboteurs, and we finally resorted to tossing grenades into the water every half hour to discourage anyone who might have wished to take advantage of the situation. The bridge had naturally been built at a narrow point, and at the height of the storm the water was rising nearly a foot an hour. For a while we thought we were going to lose the bridge to nature rather than the enemy; but when the river crested later that afternoon, to within a couple of feet of the road, the structure held, and by evening our fears and the angry waters were subsiding.

We left the Tu Cau bridge the next morning convinced that its defense was far preferable to the Riviera. We returned to Camp 413 just long enough to resupply before returning to the field in the area northwest of the compound. We were once again in a geographically unfamiliar area, and with conflicting reports on enemy activity, we again felt our way cautiously. The topography of the area was similar to the Riviera's, with large, open areas of sandy, brush-covered hills broken up by hedgerows, tree lines, and occasional hamlets surrounded by rice paddies and other cultivated plots. The rain from the storm had slackened but still beat uncomfortably against our faces when the wind gusted. Visibility was poor, causing the men to bunch together to maintain contact.

For the first part of the afternoon we patrolled without any signs of the enemy, but as we were moving into our

nighttime position at dark, the by now famihar crack of AK-47s and their accompanying muzzle flashes provided a rude welcome. We were under fire by several snipers from a tree line in the distance, and their rounds were widely scattered and off target in the rain and approaching dark; but I hurried the platoon into our perimeter as several dozen nearly spent rounds pockmarked the sand behind us. Our position for the night was a V-shaped draw, which provided good protection against assaults from the flanks once the platoon had dug in along the high sides of the two hills that formed the V. During the night I sent out short patrols, primarily to discourage the Vietcong from probing our position. Sergeant Leslie and I commiserated in the dark that it was beginning to look as if we were going to take hostile fire every time we left the battalion compound to patrol.

The foUov/ing dawn, as we prepared to break camp, one of the men discovered a booby trap at the vertex of the draw, where the two hills came together. The device consisted of a C ration can holding a grenade with its pin removed so that the grenade's spoon was held in place by the side of the can. The can was rigged about knee high and located just to the side of the trail with a trip wire crossing the trail to an anchor on the other side. It was the first booby trap I had seen since coming in country, and though rigged crudely, it was fully as lethal as a more sophisticated device. If we had proceeded through the draw in the previous day's twilight rather than stopped to make camp, my point man and perhaps several others would probably have been maimed or killed. I reminded myself that the platoon had to become more disciplined at using probe sticks and staying off trails. I had our demolition man rig a time charge to blow the booby trap in place as we exited the draw.

As the last squad cleared our bivouac area and the platoon spread out across the terrain in patrol formation, the booby trap detonated harmlessly. Almost simultaneously we began taking fire again from a tree line adjacent to the area we had just left. Once more most of the rounds were short, but the volume was heavier than it had been the night before and included automatic-weapons fire. Obviously whoever had been shooting at us yesterday had gone for

reinforcements during the night and had lain in wait for us, having figured out our probable route of march for the next day.

I picked up the pace as the rounds nipped at our heels, and the lag squad returned fire; but the enemy firing did not stop until one of the men in the squad fired a rocket into the tree line, which burst in an orange ball of flame and ended the contact from that quarter. By now those of us at the front of the patrol were almost running to get out of range of the marksmen in the tree line. As we approached another hedgerow that paralleled the main road back to Camp 413, I was panting and out of breath but relieved that our adversaries had miscalculated the range. Just as we slowed the pace to allow the rest of the unit to catch up, another explosion just in front of me rent the air, and my point man and the marine behind him collapsed into the sand.

In our haste to get away, we had tripped another booby trap, and I watched helplessly and in horror for a moment as the two wounded marines writhed in agony on the ground before me. The man who had triggered the booby trap was the worse wounded, and he bled from half a dozen shrapnel wounds, including a mean-looking gash in his neck. The second man was stunned by the explosion and had several minor nicks and cuts, but for the most part he had been shielded from the grenade fragments by the body of the man in front of him.

Within minutes the corpsmen were busy stanching the flow of blood, administering morphine shots, and applying battle dressings. As they worked over the wounded men, Doc Ellis advised me that although the wounds were not mortal, the men could not be moved and that we would need a dustoff. I had the platoon clear a landing zone and called for a medevac chopper as the squads took up positions on the zone's perimeter, which we had marked with red cloth panels we had made from an old mail sack and carried for such a situation.

Since the condition of the casualties was relatively stable, the call for the medevac was priority rather than emergency, and it seemed to take forever for the choppers to arrive. We tried to joke with the wounded men about their

free lift out of the bush and the clean sheets they would be sleeping on later, and they struggled to appear brave and manly. Someone produced two cigars, and our wounded charges tried to smoke them between teeth clenched far more tightly than was necessary to hold the stogies, as I studied the sky for signs of the dustoff. Finally, after a couple of hours and several calls to Captain Woods, the faint clack of rotor blades became audible, and the choppers appeared as tiny specks on the horizon. When they drew closer, the noise became a roar, and the now rising sun glistened brightly on their green underbellies. I came up on the medevac frequency and, after establishing radio contact with the pilot, talked him into the landing zone while the escort gunship circled above, with the door gunner at the ready. I popped a green smoke grenade to mark the center of the zone, and thirty seconds later three of my men and I were racing through the swirling smoke to shovel our two casualties into the door of the ever so briefly grounded bird.

As the pilot lifted off, the crew chief and I exchanged thumbs-ups, and the two choppers angled off toward Da Nang, with only the beaten-down foliage from the prop wash and a few wisps of green smoke as evidence of their mission of mercy. It was eerily quiet as the choppers disappeared into the distance, and I wished for a moment that I had been on board one of them. Sergeant Leslie prodded me to get the platoon up and moving since every enemy unit in the area must now know exactly where we were. I had called in the medevac exactly as I had learned to do at Basic School, and technically the procedure had been accomplished flawlessly. The only problem was that real men, my men, had spilled real blood, and I was impotent to do anything other than curse the Vietcong and the Marine Corps for bringing me to this godawful wasteland.

When we returned to Camp 413 later that afternoon, the men were tired and angry. I could sense their mounting frustration as I performed the usual routine check of their weapons, but I didn't have a clue to how I could resolve the situation. We had been prepared for the Riviera, but not for the loss of two men in an area considered somewhat pacified.

To make matters worse, the word came down after our return that a marine from another platoon in the company had just been killed while crossing the big rice paddy into the Riviera. A big, likable blond in his late teens, whom I had chided on occasion about the easy life of an artilleryman, he had been the platoon's forward observer. Now he was dead before having reached twenty. He had taken a sniper round through the head while waiting for the lead element of his platoon to clear the paddy, and the scuttlebutt was that his lieutenant had gotten rattled and been unable to identify the enemy position for the artillery. At any rate, the marine had either died of his wounds or drowned in the same rice paddy through which we were going to have to make our way the next day, and some of the men saw it as an omen. Sergeant Leslie and I decided that as a precaution we would cross into the area under the cover of darkness, as we had on our last foray, but no one was looking forward to it.

Before dawn the next morning we were once more wading through the waist-deep muddy waters of the paddy, our rifles held high and our senses receptive to the slightest movement on the far bank. I had worked out a route of march with Captain Woods that more or less reversed the course we had taken on our first Riviera patrol, but for now I concentrated on getting across the paddy, praying that my platoon would not be fired at by snipers.

After we had cleared the paddy without incident and checked ourselves for the ever-present leeches, I began to feel pretty good about having crossed over twice without taking sniper fire. For a moment I thought that the predawn crossings were going to be the key, but Sergeant Leslie quickly deflated me by suggesting that it was just a question of time until the enemy countered our pattern with an equally deadly ploy. I knew he was right and, in an attempt to cover my baseless optimism, informed him we would be returning to Camp 413 the next day through one of the villes to the south of the paddy. Leslie nodded his agreement, but having just pointed out to me the folly of repeating the same march pattern, he did not need to voice the

thought that we were going to be coming out of the Riviera the same way we had previously.

In the Riviera our route called for skirting Viem Dong, the little village at the south end of our TAOR, traveling directly east toward the South China Sea, and then coming up the coast so that the leper colony would be to our west. A klick past the leper colony we would turn inland and cross the open area to the high ground that we had come down in the opposite direction on our earlier patrol. We would then make camp for the night and the next day proceed along the eastern spine of the hills back to Viem Dong for the crossing to Camp 413. It looked like a good route to me, and as Sergeant Leslie and I studied our maps while the day's first light dissipated the shadows before us, we each felt more confident now that we were somewhat familiar with the territory.

As we proceeded toward the coast, the reassuring sights and sounds of a rural area rousing itself from sleep belied the treachery of our journey, and I watched several farmers in the distance making their way into open fields while a solitary rooster crowed his regards to the rising sun. By the time we completed the first leg the temperature had risen a good twenty or thirty degrees, and although it was only midmoming, the men were already drinking freely from their canteens. There was a slight coastal breeze that kept the flies from lighting on our sweat-soaked bodies but did little to relieve the heat, and most of the m.en had removed their utility shirts and bundled them into their packs.

I had decided to use the wooded area adjacent to the beach for the next leg of our patrol for both shade and cover, although the going was more tedious. We stopped at noon to refill our canteens and sit out the midday heat, and many of the men used the break to catch up on the sleep we had lost by starting so early. Later in the afternoon, as we emerged from the woods, my point man spotted two pajama-clad men with rifles busy working at something atop a distant hill.

They had to be a Vietcong cadre, no doubt arming a booby trap several hundred meters from us. Since we could not get any closer to them without alerting them, I sum-

moned the platoon's best marksman, who could hardly contain himself at the prospect of a potential kill. Considering the wind and the distance, it was unlikely that he would hit one of the men, much less score a kill, but we encouraged him to concentrate on getting off just one shot. We all held our breath as he lined up his sights on the black pajama top of the man who afforded the fullest view. His shot was off the mark, and the two figures disappeared over the crest of the hill as the errant volley echoed back at us, but the rest of the platoon was elated that we had at least taken the offensive for a change. My marksman was chagrined that he had blown his opportunity, and while we all teased him with the usual cliches about not being able to hit the broad side of bams or bull's asses with bass fiddles, we knew that his chances had been slim. Unfortunately we had also given away our position to anyone within earshot, and we now had to cross an expanse of open area to get to the hills farther inland.

The leper colony had been quiet when we passed it in the woods, and it was possible that no one inside had seen us; but I now realized, as we turned out backs to the coast and to the colony, that word of our presence would spread quickly. I therefore hurried the platoon through the sand and shrubbery that stretched before us, hoping that we could reach the high ground before our adversaries had time to react. When we arrived an hour later, soaked with perspiration but intact, the platoon formed a perimeter around the crest of the highest vantage point, shed its gear, and began preparing the evening meal. There were only a couple of hours of daylight left and as soon as it began to darken, we were going to take up positions on the next hill over for the night. I called in a situation report on the battalion frequency while Sergeant Leslie opened beans and franks and heated them for the two of us.

We both felt pretty good as we spooned the bubbly mess from its green containers, but rather than be relaxed, I was vaguely uneasy that we had been in the Riviera for most of a day without having been sniped at or stumbling onto a booby trap. After we finished our meal, I buried the cans and cardboard containers in which the rations had been

packaged, and Leslie checked the squads to make certain that the men had done likewise. We knew that the Vietcong could make booby traps out of our refuse, and there was no point in making their job easier for them. When Leslie returned, we smoked together and waited for the sun to move farther down on the horizon before breaking camp. Finally the blistering heat of the day had begun to subside, and when I breathed in the evening air and surveyed the landscape, the area seemed almost tranquil.

As I ground out my last cigarette of the day and gave the order to saddle up, the men began getting to their feet and donning their packs and flak jackets. Almost simultaneously the sickening whoosh of mortar rounds interrupted my mechanical direction, and suddenly our hilltop was the center of a fire storm. The first four or five rounds were long and impacted harmlessly on the reverse slope of the hill behind us, but as we dropped to our hands and knees, I sensed that the enemy mortarmen would quickly adjust their fire to compensate for their miscalculation. The firing seemed to be coming from a tree line near the leper colony and directly across the valley from us, and as I pondered our predicament, machine-gun fire began to sweep the downslope in front of our position.

We were pinned down on the flat area atop a hill, but the angle was such that the automatic-weapons fire could not reach the men unless they rose from the prone position that by now most of the platoon had assumed. One young marine, who had joined the platoon just prior to our operation in the DMZ, suddenly stood up and began firing his rifle John Wayne fashion from the hip. Before I could pull him down beside me, a well-aimed round from the tree line leveled him and made further effort on my part unnecessary. Within seconds Doc Ellis was beside the wounded marine, medical kit in hand, and he quickly affixed a battle dressing to what turned out to be a minor head wound.

As I refocused my attention on the activity in the tree line, I realized that while the enemy machine gun was ineffective in reaching us, it would keep us from counterattacking. I also knew that the mortar fire was going to decimate us if we stayed put and allowed the enemy soldiers