Week One

It’s late in the day, but something is brewing. Everyone is expecting orders and no one thinks they’re going to be pleasant. A lieutenant arrives to let us know there will be no artillery support. Whatever we’re going to do, we’ll do it with nothing heavier than our own mortars. He spreads a ratty tourist map of Hue that he found in a local gas station. All the attractions where visitors can take memorable photos are marked with little green dragons.

“We’re headed across this next series of canals…” He draws a line east-west with a dirty fingernail. “Eighty-ones will prep ahead of us and then we move. Once we start, I don’t want anybody to stop unless the order is passed to hold. We clear all the way to this street here by the river. Right flank should sweep right by the MACV Compound. Skipper wants us there for noon chow. Any questions?”

Between Steve and I there’s about ten questions beginning with how we get out of this chickenshit deal, but this is not the time. There’s a rumble of snide remarks from the assembled squad leaders. A black Marine with a nickel-plated magnum revolver in a shoulder holster sums it up for everyone. “Another fucking dollar job on a dime budget. There it is.”

We snap a few photos of an engineer detachment working to bridge the wide, deep canals that we’ll have to cross to commence the assault. In about 20 minutes they’ve cobbled together a rickety-looking tinker-toy footbridge from two-by-fours nailed together and suspended at water level. An engineer is bouncing up and down on it to test durability. He is ankle deep in water but the bridge seems to bear his weight. The pistol-packing squad leader is dubious.

“Will that fucking thing hold?”

“What the fuck you want, the Golden Gate?” The bouncing engineer is in no mood for quibbles from a sidewalk superintendent. “You're lucky I don't set up a goddamn tollbooth.”

We cross the canal clinging to hand-lines rigged to steady the heavily loaded grunts. Remaining upright requires a peculiar sideways shuffle. When a man makes it to the other side, he turns to help the next man up onto the far side of the canal and then scrambles to disappear. It won’t take the gooks long to spot this encroachment, and there is no available cover nearby.

Steve goes before me on the shaky suspension system, looking like a circus performer doing a high-wire act. As I follow and reach for his hand up onto the opposite bank, there is a mad clatter of helicopter blades that catches everyone’s attention and freezes the parade. Two Huey choppers are roaring up the canal at extremely low altitude. They are only about 30 feet off the deck, snouts pointed down in a menacing posture. We can plainly see the marking on the nose, a yellow oval with a black cat in the center. These guys are from an outfit supporting Army units in I Corps. Some of the grunts are waving when the door gunners suddenly open up and concrete begins to shatter under the impact of incoming rounds. The stupid bastards are strafing us.

“Friendlies, you assholes! Friendlies down here!”

The lieutenant stands in plain sight on the far bank screaming at the choppers with close rounds smacking into the pavement at his feet. I weather the attack pressed flat against the far bank. A Marine behind me screams and grabs at my legs to lever himself up off the bridge as the second chopper makes its gun run and sends more rounds screaming off the concrete.

It’s over in minutes and trembling with close-call adrenaline, we watch the choppers soar out over the Perfume River to our left flank. They are jinking from side to side as the pilots walk on the rudder pedals and the door gunners lean out triumphantly like rodeo riders who just made it to the buzzer. Most of the grunts are aiming in on the helicopters when the Company Gunny passes the word to hold fire and get the fuck across the bridge. It isn’t that the Gunny doesn’t want to shoot the choppers right out of the air, but it’s hard to justify since nobody is killed by “them sorry-ass, ignorant doggie cocksuckers.” And there are more pressing matters at hand.

The chopper incident is our first hint that Hue is rapidly becoming a confusing sort of combat carnival with clowns on both sides declaring their own personal free-fire zones. These guys walk on but no one is going forget being strafed by friendly choppers. Code of the Grunt: Payback is a medevac. If Army Black Cat choppers show up again in the skies over Hue City they will most definitely be met with some intense antiaircraft fire. And the shooters won’t be gooks.

With mortars impacting a block to our front, the company crawls along a broad thoroughfare. Fireteams flow in and out of buildings and houses along the road like a snake winding its way through a maze. There’s no future in strolling up the center of this promenade so we join a squad tasked with clearing a two-story structure that must have been some sort of official city building. We recognize the Vietnam Cong Hoa seal that marks government facilities as we duck inside and follow Marines advancing cautiously up a central staircase. Somewhere up above, we can hear the distinctive rattle of an RPD machinegun.

It’s a classic gig from the films we’ve all seen about fighting in the towns and cities of Europe during World War II and, since none of us have had any training in this business, we model our actions on the movies. First man kicks open a door and sprays a burst of M-16 fire inside. Second man, hugging the other side of the door, arms a grenade and heaves it inside as hard as he can throw. The idea is to bounce the live grenade off the walls and make it tough for any gooks inside to chase it down and toss it out a window.

In between events, everyone is still bitching long and loud about the incident with the Army choppers. Steve wants me to imagine what a tour in The Nam would be like if gaggles of MIGs appeared south of the DMZ every day flying air cover for the NVA. I’d rather not imagine that, so I busy myself with cleaning concrete dust off my camera and trying to keep up with the grunts. One thing is for damn sure. No need to write up a story about the friendly fire incident at the canal crossing. That’s not the sort of vignette the MACV Information Office expects to see from Combat Correspondents in the field.

Deeper into the city now and we make a turn toward the big vehicular bridge that spans the Perfume River where Golf Company 2/5 is supposed to be making an attempt to cross over to the northside of Hue. Trucks and a couple of tanks rumble by headed in our direction. We’re just beginning to feel some of the ancillary injuries involved in street fighting. Uniforms are shredded and everyone is showing bloody knees, elbows, and hands. It’s a result of flinging our bodies down on hard concrete or the ripping action of rock shards that fly everywhere in a city firefight.

A halt is called and the acting Alpha Company Six tells us we’re to wait here while Golf Company tries to cross the bridge and rescue some ARVN trapped inside the Citadel across the river. So the walls didn’t work to keep the NVA at bay. If they got in, Golf Company can too—or so the thinking goes. I’m thinking they better get their collective asses in gear. If the gooks dig in over there on the other side of the bridge, we are in for a siege and that won’t be pretty.

Steve has his notebook out and is trying to question the CO over the squawk of radio transmissions. At this point, as far as the CO knows, Alpha 1/1 and Golf 2/5 are the only Marine units in Hue. He’s got no idea what the hell the ARVN are doing over on the other side of the river, but gooks are definitely inside the Citadel. There are reports of a big NVA flag flying over the walls. He’s been told by someone at the MACV Compound that Hotel and Foxtrot Companies from 2/5 are headed for the city on the double. Meanwhile, he’s supposed to clear one block left and right of our current position and be sure no gooks hit Golf Company in the back as they try the river crossing. And that is apparently being made under protest by Marine commanders who want to wait for reinforcements to arrive so they can get something more than a very tenuous toehold on the south side of the city.

Very suddenly, shit starts flying on two flanks and radios reveal that we are in a nasty bind. Golf Company is getting hammered by NVA dug in on the northside of the river. Apparently the lead squad only made it about halfway across before the gooks opened up and drove them back to the south end of the bridge. Meanwhile on our right flank, 2^nd Platoon of Alpha Company has hit major resistance to their clearing efforts and is screaming for support. We head off in that direction.

Alpha Two is busily clearing houses when they run into stiff resistance from NVA in a Buddhist temple. As we approach the sounds of the firefight become clear and instructive. It’s a grenade duel at this point with the ringing bark of American frags competing with the shallow pop of the Chicom equivalent. When we reach the platoon commander, he is sending a sitrep over the rattle of rifle fire from his advancing squads.

“Six, Two Alpha Actual, We're holding in a two story building on the left side of the street just across from that fucking temple. Request you send some more bodies over here to help dig ’em out, over.”

Two Corpsmen arrive to assist with casualties. The platoon suffered one Marine killed and two wounded in the fight. While the Corpsmen deal with the wounded and wrap the dead man for evacuation, Two Alpha is ordered to push on and clear the remainder of this block. Golf Company is pulling back toward the MACV Compound after the failed bridge crossing and the trucks will pass right through this area.

We follow a squad into an alley running east and west, parallel to the Perfume River flowing somewhere to our left. Buildings on either side of this sinuous alley are reinforced with heavy doors and iron grillwork over the windows. There is no cover here beyond sprawling flat on the wet pavement and hoping for the best. A gate-mouthed grunt grins at the cameras slung around our necks. He poses with his M-16 perched on a hip and points at his buddy slamming a fresh magazine into his weapon.

“Me and Sandy nailed three of them fuckers just a while ago. Where was you dudes then?” Steve shoots the obligatory photo. “You know how it goes, man. War is hell.” What can you say when a grunt pauses in mid-fight to show his best side for the camera?

Buddy Sandy chambers the first round from a fresh magazine and then, realizing instinctively that it will make a better picture, he snaps a bayonet onto the muzzle of his rifle. “You got that right, my man. War is hell—but this here combat is a stone motherfucker.” We all chuckle at the familiar observation. There’s a very thin line between bravado and bull-goose lunacy that bends and twists under pressure.

We push on down that alley, inhaling pungent odors from camphor-wood smoke and fish sauce. As in most big city back alleys, many of the doors on our left and right lead directly to kitchens. So far no one is taking pot-shots at us, but we can hear other squads operating on our flanks and having a tougher time inside the buildings. These guys have learned to frag first, ask questions later, and every crack or crump sends us cringing or sprawling. No way of knowing which explosion is a friendly frag and which is a Chicom until the shrapnel hits.

Passing below an open ground-floor window, buddy Sandy is just ahead of me when his helmet is blown off by a detonation. He demonstrates his indignation by cranking half a magazine on full-auto through the window.

“Hold your fire, goddammit!” The people on the receiving end of Sandy’s ire are not happy with the response. “We got friendlies in here!”

Sandy doesn’t much give a shit. “You motherfuckers better start giving us a fire-in-the-hole before you pitch them frags or I'll blow your stupid fucking asses away.” House clearing is a tense, scratchy deal and we have yet to learn the rules. Up ahead, Gatemouth Dude is rearing back to pitch a grenade into a window. I’ve got him framed in my lens when the arm holding the frag suddenly detaches from his body. It tumbles end over end as if the arm is independently winding up for a pitch. The grenade detonates in mid-air and I’m so focused on that frame that I don’t duck. The RPG round that blew an arm from Gatemouth’s body roars close by as Steve knocks me down out of the shrapnel fan. A Corpsman splashes by heading for Gatemouth, but the man lies dead in a pool of gore with most of his chest missing. Gatemouth will never see The World and neither will the picture I took of him getting shredded by a rocket round in this shitty little alley.

At the open end of the alley, past where Gatemouth lies dead, there’s a street fight developing and everyone is rushing to either get in on it or get away from it. It’s hard to tell in the confusion, but we press forward which seems as good a direction as any at this point. NVA rocket gunners are sending rounds up both sides of the street at knee-level. A squad leader on the other side of the street is crouched behind a low stone wall signaling that he’s got one of the gook gunners spotted. He’s joined by a fireteam and they rush the position, covered by an M-60 gunner putting out long strings of covering fire. Code of the Grunt: Charge the fire. You may shock the trigger-man so badly he'll forget to reload and you'll certainly get yourself clear of the impact area.

It’s chaos out on that street but here at the end of the alley there’s time for professional introspection. Broad-backed Marine with a drooping mustache is covering his mouth and leaning against a wall laughing at another man crouched and peeking cautiously at the action on the street. He elbows Steve and points to his buddy. “Hey, man, did you see that motherfucker Albritton? That cracker shitheel pissed his pants when that rocket went over.”

Now he’s got everyone’s attention and a seriously evil look from the pants-pissing Albritton. “Did you dudes see fuckin' Albritton? Hey, Albritton, you a loose motherfucker, man.” Corpsman to our rear is hauling Gate-mouth Dude’s body back down the alley, but nobody’s looking in that direction. In the midst of a firefight, dead men are better out of sight so they can be kept out of mind.

We’re out of the alley now, following Albritton and his damp crotch up the street in the direction of those rocket gunners. Wherever the bastards are in the buildings at the end of this street, they’ve laid in an ample supply of B-40 rounds. It seems like one of them roars over our heads or just past our knees every few seconds. And the gook riflemen firing cover for them are having a field day sweeping us with wicked plunging fire from high positions on the left and right sides of the avenue. There’s nothing for it but to keep moving, ducking in and out of doorways, sucking everything into the tightest possible package, trying to imagine you are invisible.

Somewhere to the rear, back where the rockets are detonating, there’s the snort and roar of a small gasoline engine. From around a bend in the street we see a 106mm recoilless rifle mounted on a Mule, a small, four-wheeled platform designed to move infantry equipment over rough terrain. The crew is clinging to the speeding vehicle trying to scrunch up and disappear beneath their helmets. Apparently, this is what passes for fire support while the people in the rear argue about the potential for collateral damage that might be done by anything heavier.

The driver is wearing goggles and chewing maliciously on the filter of an unlit cigarette. He looks like a lunatic teenager going for broke in a soapbox derby as he wheels his mount into the mouth of an alley and signals frantically for the crew to begin breaking rounds out of their cardboard containers. The grunts are happy to be cheerleaders.

“Hey, 106s! Nail them motherfuckers! Get some, dudes!” It’s the all-purpose mantra that works on all types of fire support. Get Some!

As the 106 crew maneuvers to get their weapon into firing position, grunts all along the street begin banging away to provide distraction while the crew loads and aims the big tube. A platoon sergeant shouts something about marking targets and reloads his rifle with a magazine of tracer rounds. The 106 gunner shows him thumbs-up. Steve is shooting pictures, but I’ve got other things on what’s left of my mind. Somewhere back in that alley behind us, is the pack I dropped when all this started and there’s some stuff in there I’m not prepared to lose to the vicious back-blast from a recoilless rifle.

Back in that alley, there’s no sign of the NVA pack that’s so much more roomy and comfortable than the one they issue to Marines, but there’s little time to search. The 106 is about to fire and the back blast can be deadly.

“Clear the back-blast area!” Up near the entrance to the alley an assistant gunner is waving at me to get the hell out of the way. They are about to fire and I am about to suffer the consequences of losing my pack somewhere to the rear of their weapon. There’s radio squawk and shouting from an outhouse shack on my left, so I duck in to catch my breath and save my dignity.

Three or four radio operators are grouped near a window where the Acting Six is busily trading handsets and trying to comprehend the action out on the street. One of the radiomen notices me squatting near the door and moves in my direction with his long whip-antenna scraping loudly on the corrugated tin roof of the shanty that has become a temporary CP. He grins and points at my NVA pack sitting in a corner. My poncho—wadded up and hastily jammed beneath the straps when we moved out this morning—is now neatly folded and tied on for easy access.

“Never hurts to curry the favor of the press.” The radioman grins and actually blushes when I ask him for a name and hometown. He watches dutifully over my shoulder and corrects my spelling as I jot the info in my notebook. Somehow, when there’s time to actually write the little stories about this fight, I’ll work this guy into it and make him look heroic—or at least stoic. He saved my gear and it’s the least I can do to return the favor. That pack contains all I own.

Radioman is monitoring the battalion net. He’s got an informed idea of what’s happening to our right and left. He’s filling me in as I ponder how many times and in how much accurate detail we get the meat of our little action stories from these low-level communicators who always seem to have the big picture when everyone else is semi-to-three-quarters clueless. Apparently the NVA moved a detail of serious B-40 rocket gunners in to the east of the 2^nd Platoon, and that’s what halted their advance. First platoon was ordered in to reinforce and the 106s were called up to deal with any strong-points encountered. Meanwhile, the Golf Company bridge-crossing deal is cancelled for lack of interest on the part of a very pissed-off battalion commander, and two more 5^th Marines rifle companies are now entering the city.

Back out on the street, I find Steve interviewing a wounded grunt who’s being tended and mended by a Navy Hospital Corpsman. They are screaming at each other over the bang and clang of the nearby 106. The gunner is searching for targets, using the .50 caliber spotting-rifle mounted on top of the 106 tube. There are two or three sharp cracks and then the solid boom of the big gun. These things were made for anti-tank fighting and the armor-piercing rounds being pumped over the heads of cringing grunts are tearing huge holes into the buildings where the NVA rocket crews are no longer returning fire.

It’s like watching a well-oiled NASCAR pit crew at work. Complicated things just seem to happen with focused efficiency and there’s rarely a wasted word or motion. Ammo humpers drag projectiles from their protective containers, and pass the heavy rounds to an assistant gunner who slaps them into the rear of the weapon and closes the breech-block with an oily snick. The gunner seated on the left of the tube hears that the weapon is up and focuses on his sight, elevating and traversing before pulling on the firing switch to trigger the spotting-rifle. When a .50 caliber tracer tells him he’s on target, he depresses that switch and the 106 fires, belching smoke and exhaust gases to the rear. It’s mesmerizing until a sudden flurry of action on our front sends the gunner twirling furiously on his directional controls.

“Got ’em in the open! Gimme a beehive!”

No doubt we’d wind up writing a little vignette about this 106 crew doing such valuable damage to the NVA formerly lying impervious behind concrete walls in this little section of Hue City, but there would be no mention of using the beehive rounds that contained hundreds of small steel darts called flechettes. Those bad-ass anti-personnel rounds cut huge bloody gouges out of enemy troops in the open, but they are officially not part of the humane American arsenal which—according to our MACV Office of Information guidance—kills people in an open, honest, and forthright manner but does not maim them.

Despite that abiding, official guidance from on-high, the scurrying NVA at the other end of this street are being ground into bloody chuck by the 106 crew. With each beehive round fired there is a strange, whirring, buzzing noise like hundreds of pissed off hornets headed for a source of agitation. Assistant Gunner grabs Gunner by the shoulder, screams something at him and points up the street toward their impact area. All eyes locked on a North Vietnamese soldier squirming against a tree at the head of the street with a B-40 rocket launcher dangling from his hands.

Through a zoom lens, I focus on a strange tableau. The gook's feet are about six inches off the pavement as he kicks and jerks in a death spasm. His squirming body is riddled with holes which show through his dark green uniform as bloody splotches. Gunner caught him running from a building and fired. The resulting swarm of flechettes from the beehive round pinned him to a nearby tree like a paper target in a shooting gallery. As I watch, trying to decide whether or not it was a picture worth shooting, the dangling NVA’s face suddenly explodes as if he’d bitten down on a blasting cap. To my right, a grinning grunt lowers his rifle and turns to gesture at his buddies who are just beginning to move back into the street. Get some? Got some—and let’s go get some more.

Alpha Company is moving now, and to the rear of us there’s another outfit bailing out of idling six-by trucks. Hard to tell in the scramble, but there might be a few familiar faces. Radio Operator trots by me with a nod and a smile. He’ll know. “Who’s that back there?”

“Hotel 2/5. Just got here. Gooks shot the shit out of ’em on the way into the city.” Radio Operator pauses briefly to pluck a toothbrush out of his helmet band and scrub concrete dust off his handset. “You leavin’ us?”

“Might have to, man. Fifth Marines is my regular outfit.”

“Them fuckin’ boots ain’t seen shit yet. Hey, I can fix it for you to interview the Lieutenant.”

“Cool. I’ll catch up with you.” The arrival of more 5^th Marines means I’ll likely have to split from Steve before long. In our Combat Correspondent scheme of things, each of us runs with an assigned outfit unless there’s an emergency like this all hands on deck, balls to the wall rush into Hue City. When the tempo is what passes for normal in northern I Corps, Steve runs with 1^st Marines and I’ve got a home with 5^th Marines. Hotel has always been one of my favorite second battalion units. The Company Gunny loves publicity and takes good care of a guy who can provide it.

Hotel is trying to get organized and get their wounded evacuated. Apparently, they ran a vicious gauntlet of plunging fire as they convoyed into the city. Company Commander tells me he’s headed for a position near the MACV Compound where he’ll get further orders from his battalion commander who is already there. Hotel Gunny grins around his soggy cigar, jacks a fresh round into the 12-gauge shotgun he always carries, and says he’ll draw chow for me at the compound. I’ve got a home with Hotel.

In the manicured yard of a well-appointed house just off a major intersection at the other end of the disputed street, the Lieutenant now commanding Alpha Company is taking a break with his radio operators. They are all clustered around a marble fountain that is still burbling water into a little pool of lily pads. Radio Operator signals it’s a good time for a few questions.

It’s Steve’s deal, but he’s nowhere in sight so I’ll fill in for him but the Acting Six doesn’t look like he’s in any shape to provide much quotable. He’s taken a big swan dive into that deep valley on the other side of Adrenaline Peak. While I’m fumbling for a notebook, he nods into a doze and his helmet falls into his lap. Red-rimmed eyes jerk open and he glances around at his radioman to see if he’s missed anything. He notices me and nods. Time for the embarrassing, dumb-ass questions that always make me feel like an amateur ghoul.

It’s perfunctory. He’s knows it and so do I as I jot down his responses. Mainly, I’m searching for something deeper inside a man who took over when his boss was blasted into a medevac on the first day of a fight nobody expected on a concrete battlefield that’s more vicious than anything they could imagine. If he survives, this guy will be a hard act for any officer to follow. Leading a lashed-up outfit of part grunts and part shoe-clerks through a day of hard fighting, he remained calm and collected, tracking scattered elements in almost constant contact with the NVA. His part in most of it was jumping from one radio operator to the next in an effort to give sensible orders and provide some direction for Marines out of his sight and personal influence. And sometime tonight when everyone else is trying to sleep or stay awake, he’ll find time to think about the ones who didn’t make it through the first day in Hue City.

We’re finished. He can’t add anything and I can’t ask him to try. There’s a nod of understanding between two survivors and then I stand to go find Hotel Company. He grabs at my knee and jabs a grimy finger at my notebook. “Get the story straight. I did a lot of talking on the radio, but those grunts out there bought this real estate.”

Noble sentiments and just what you’d expect to hear—back at Quantico. But this is Hue City and if there’s anything noble about the fight here I have yet to see it. For some reason it pisses me off. Come on, Lieutenant; give us all a break. Off the record and all, but few enough people in this goddamn war can do what you did with any competence and the grunts know that. They’ve got a fully functional bullshit filter and it’s always dialed up to plus four. It’s a nasty place to be up on the pointy end of the bayonet. There it is. And if you wanted it another way, you could have applied for graduate school.

Getting dark now and long, looming shadows are creeping across the streets of Hue. It’s no time to be wandering around looking for Hotel Company. Steve is parked in the portico of a house that’s been recently holed by the 106 crew that saved the day. He offers the last cigarette in the C-ration four-pack and I suck smoke into lungs already clogged with concrete dust. The cigarette is stale as usual, probably from rations packed for grunts in Korea. There’s just enough light for him to look over my interview notes. He asks a few probing questions of his own as if I’d missed something in talking to the Lieutenant and that doesn’t improve my mood. Take the fucking notes, write the story when we get back to the rear, and make the guy a hometown hero. It is what it is.

“You’re beginning to see it, aren’t you?”

“See what?”

“You'll know. When you see it, you’ll know.” And then he rolls up in his poncho. I’ve got the first watch tonight and in the morning we might split. Whatever he wants me to see better show up soon. One or both of us might be dead before this time tomorrow.

Mostly to keep from nodding off, I wander out into a garden area where Alpha Company grunts are setting up the night watch in the last glimmers of grey light. There is just time for a final smoke before the glowing ash will make me a sniper target. It starts to drizzle again and the grunts meet the weather change with a barrage of bitching. Seeking shelter under a large banyan tree, I squat next to a grunt on watch with his M-79 blooper in hand and a string of extra rounds close by. We’ve never seen each other before, but that doesn’t stop us from falling into a whispered conversation.

Grenadier wants to talk. He hasn’t been in the Marine Corps long, just a little over a year with four months of that in Vietnam. There is nothing much in common between us, but it doesn’t keep him from chatting like he expects me to be interested. He’s anxious to tell me about his family and girlfriend somewhere in Iowa. It’s too dark to see his face and oddly out of character for me, but I find myself actually wanting to know this guy as we whisper into the night. I’ve never even been to Iowa and can’t imagine anything that would take me there, but Grenadier has me convinced I should pay him a visit when we get back to The World.