Chapter 11

 

Long Range Recon

 

Although Frank’s wounds were more than mere “scratches”, he still recovered in only two weeks, something of a record. By that stage, Operation Attleboro was over. When the VC and NVA had had enough of being pounded by the US, their regiments simply split up into small groups and melted away into the jungle. For suffering two moderately serious wounds in battle, Frank received his first medal, a Purple Heart. For decimating almost half a NVA platoon by themselves while they were wounded, both he and Georgie Hatfield were awarded the Bronze Star. These were handed out by the base commander, Colonel Watson. For his cool-headed performance out in the field, the Colonel promoted Frank to Private First Class.

Frank didn’t blame himself for Georgie’s death, but he did think that it wasn’t fair. If anyone deserved to live, it was Georgie. After learning to stand up for himself during basic training, and surviving this long in the zoo, he deserved to go home and show his white trash family that at least one of them had made something out of himself.

But the poor guy had had to die to become a hero.

When Frank was well enough, he re-joined his platoon, ready to dive back into the jungle and fight some more. Despite the wounds he’d received, he seemed to have developed quite a taste for combat, and couldn’t stop talking about all the dinks he’d shot. He spent several nights recording in his diary all he could remember about the battle.

Most grunts had things written on their steel pot helmets; “Make Love not War”, “Born to Kill”, “When I die bury me face down so Vietnam can kiss my ass”. One or two had recorded the twelve months of their tour, and were steadily ticking them off as their DEROS (Date Eligible to Return from Overseas) approached. On his steel pot, Frank started keeping a tally of how many dinks he’d shot.

 

During the two weeks he’d spent recovering from his wounds, Frank hadn’t received any letters from Meg. He continued to write to her, and was beginning to wonder if she had tumbled into the same mysterious black hole that had claimed his mother, when a slim envelope finally arrived, a return address in Houston on the back.

In a weak, shaking hand, so unlike her usual bold script, she told him that her father had died of a heart attack. She was now living with her aunt.

Old Tom O’Riley, the Guadalcanal hero, was dead. Frank should have been filled with remorse, because he had liked Meg’s father, but even his emotions concerning Tom were stunted, diluted by the horrors of Vietnam. He wrote back to Meg, expressing a sorrow he didn’t feel.

He wondered what the point was, surviving a terrible war and coming home a hero, only to live out the rest of your days as a forgotten cripple in a leaky old house, with your only child as your constant companion. The saying “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away”, certainly proved true for Tom O’Riley.

I’d rather die here, Frank thought.

 

One day while Frank was eating dinner in the mess tent with his buddies, he noticed five really rough-looking GIs sitting a few benches away, hoeing into their meals as though they were eating the best fare on the planet. They wore tiger suits, floppy-brimmed hats and bandanas, and were as black as niggers from the sun.

“Who are those guys?” Frank asked Newie in a whisper. “They look like they’ve been livin’ in the boonies for six months!”

“Lurps,” the Corporal answered with his mouth full.

“Pardon you, you pig. Even I don’t dare belch in here.”

“I didn’t belch, idiot. Those guys are Lurps. Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol soldiers, recently returned from a whole month roughing it out in the zoo. They’re trained to survive on their out there; find their own water, shoot their own game, bite the heads off live chickens, that sort of thing. Their job is to locate VC supply lines and find out where the dinks are hiding so the rest of us can move in and pound the fuck out of ‘em.”

Frank stared at the grunts in fascination. “Sounds interesting. How d’you get to be one of these long-range recon guys?”

“Basically you volunteer. The 1st Infantry has its own LRRP training program. But you need a really big, hairy pair of cojones to cut it out there, miles away from your camp, well out of range of the firebases.”

“Where do I sign up?”

Newie smacked his forehead. “You also have to be as crazy as a loon, so I suppose you qualify. Go see Hallam. He’ll knew what to do.”

 

After his excellent performance out in the field, Lieutenant Colonel Hallam recommended PFC Frank Cassidy for LRRP training. The base commander Colonel Watson agreed that Frank had the necessary guts for long-range recon work, if not the necessary survival training. Fortunately there were extensive training grounds surrounding the camp, and the Lurps could go out whenever they needed to train up new members.

The man whose responsibility it was to teach Frank was a Senior Specialist Rank 4 named Greg Barret; an experienced bushman who had been commanding LRRP missions since early 1965. He had undergone almost two years of special operations training beforehand; through basic and advanced infantry training, the NCO Academy, jump school and ranger training, before finishing up at the JFK Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg. He was a tall, rangy man without an ounce of fat on him, his skin dark and leathery from long exposure to the sun. He wore his dirty blonde hair in a short, regulation cut, and instead of the usual steel pot, he wore a floppy brimmed hat. He was a loner of few words, and he had absolutely no sense of humour, much to Frank’s disappointment. Still, Frank was determined not to let him down.

When ordinary grunts went out into the field, they were weighted down with steel helmets, flak jackets and the enormous, encumbering backpack known as the ALICE pack (All-Purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment). Coupled with canteens, a butt-pack, ammo pouches, field-dressing pack, spare bandoliers for the pig, grenades and knives, FNGs often collapsed from exhaustion after only a few hundred yards, especially when the temperature shot up to 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

Lurps had to move quickly and quietly through the jungle. The steel helmets and chicken-plates were left behind, as they were often more of a hindrance than a help. The soldiers went into battle more heavily armed, with their M16s, M26 grenades, Claymore anti-personnel mines, .45 pistols and long killing knives. They also carried coloured smoke grenades, for leading choppers to landing zones. They were scouts, infiltrators, information gatherers and assassins.

On Frank’s first training mission out into the boonies, he was the most junior member of the team. This small, six-man unit consisted of Frank, Snr Spec 4 Greg Barret, his assistant, a radio operator, a medic and two scouts. One of these scouts was a hill tribesman, who knew the local area like the back of his hand.

The Lurp team were flown to some “Indian Country” near the Cambodian border, perfect for breaking in new men, and with a near-certain potential for encountering enemy troops. The jungle was dense and virgin, unmarked by bomb-craters, dead zones caused by napalm drops, or the charred remains of Zippoed villages. The only sounds came from undisturbed nature and the small patrol team.

Barret worried that his inexperienced soldiers might make too much noise. He was especially concerned about PFC Frank Cassidy, six foot three of hulking muscle who’d done well during several combat missions, but seemed too big and clumsy for a long-range recon type. However, of the four green troops, Barret soon realised that Cassidy was actually the quietest. Despite his size he was very graceful, and nearly silent as the little party snuck through the long elephant grass. He seems to have the stamina and patience for the work – now let’s see if he has the guts, Barret thought.

First, the GIs set up an observation post where they could watch and wait. Their diligence was soon rewarded with a three-man VC scouting party. The men set up a hasty ambush, and waited all that day and part of the next, but the VC must have turned off, because they failed to pass through. On the third day Barret moved his little team down to a ridgeline on lower ground, and came to a well-used trail by a river.

Barret deployed his troops in classic ambush formation. They set up the deadly claymore mines and waited.

The wait paid off. This time they were rewarded with two women in green NVA uniforms, and a ten year old boy carrying a rifle, moving cautiously along the river trail. Barret signalled his men to let them go as they were only decoys, with more soldiers probably right behind them.

He was correct. Minutes later, nine men in distinctive green uniforms suddenly appeared out in the open. Barret’s assistant couldn’t believe his eyes, and detonated the claymores, killing three of the soldiers instantly. The others, including Cassidy, opened up on the rest with their M16s.

It was over in seconds. When the smoke cleared, seven bodies littered the trail, along with five AK47s and several backpacks. The other two communists had fled. The team returned to base with a rich haul of captured documents and weapons. Not bad for a training mission.

Back at Camp Forsythe, Barret commended Frank on his performance during the mission. He had kept his cool the whole time, never once complaining or making too much noise. With a little more training he would make an excellent Lurp.

Even though ninety nine percent of Frank’s first LRRP mission had consisted of watching and waiting in the intense heat, swatting at mosquitos and flies, followed by only a few seconds of actual fighting, he’d preferred it to the endless search and destroy patrols that invariably ended with grunts getting ambushed and wasted. In this mission, it was the Americans who ambushed the gooks and came away with weapons and documents instead of dead and wounded. Stalking those unsuspecting patrols had filled Frank with a strange, alien thrill.

He liked being the hunter instead of the hunted. It made him feel like he was accomplishing something good for the country. And of course he’d enjoyed killing the gooks before they even realised he was there. Since he no longer used his steel pot, he started a new death-tally in his faithful diary.

 

After that Frank went out on long range missions regularly, sometimes staying out for weeks at a time. It didn’t take him long to master basic survival techniques. He learned how to find water in the jungle, kill his own game for dinner, camouflage himself and create a fire from scratch. He had a very keen eye and seemingly endless patience for the long, sometimes lonely work.

“You seem to have found a niche for yourself, Tex,” Barret informed Frank after another successful mission. The guys were lounging outside their GP tent in the cool of the evening. “You interested in becoming a career soldier?”

“I’ve always been interested,” Frank answered.

“I thought you were drafted into the army.”

“I was. But I would’ve joined anyway. The draft board just happened to get me first.”

“I see. Well, I think you’ve got the right stuff for long range recon. But it’ll take you several months to master all the skills.”

“I’m a fast learner. I only look dumb.”

Barret’s thin lips actually twitched upwards. Maybe the guy did have a sense of humour after all.

 

After delivering her bad news, Meg began to write less and less, sometimes not responding to Frank until he had sent two or three letters. Then she would respond with a brief note, supplying only a bare minimum about her new life in Houston. Back in Promise Falls, she had compiled entire compositions, five and six pages long. Now Frank was lucky if he received a single page. He detected a rising dissatisfaction in her tone, which used to be so cheerful and brimming with enthusiasm. She used to count the days until the end of Frank’s tour. Her enthusiasm was one of the few things that had made Frank look forward to his DEROS.

But now her excitement was gone. Did she hate her new life so much? Frank suspected the exact opposite was true. In these new, short letters, Meg mentioned that she’d made a number of new friends from the local colleges. From what he’d heard on the radio about the situation back home, he suspected these individuals were peace-loving long-hairs, the sort of hippies who mouthed off at protest-marches about the bloody violence of Vietnam, but had no idea what it was really like. Involved with these drug-fucked weirdos, Meg probably no longer had the time to write. It was only a matter of time before she tuned in, turned on and dropped out.

Frank should have been saddened by his conclusion, but once again his feelings were numbed, pale shadows of what they should have been. He wrote her another letter, telling her simply to be careful. As he had done drugs himself, he knew how dangerous they could be. More than one soldier had gotten himself fragged for freaking out in the jungle and endangering the whole unit.

Even though he’d become a regular smoker, and enjoyed the occasional joint – well away from the straight-laced Officer Greg Barret’s presence, of course – Frank wasn’t addicted to any hard drug. Although he had tried a few, he was careful not to give in to the hankering to try them while on active duty. Some men couldn’t get through a mission without their marijuana or heroin or LSD, but Frank made sure he was clean and sober when he set out. He considered the job far more important than his own personal pleasure.

 

About a month later, just before Christmas in fact, the letter that Frank had been dreading finally arrived. In a simple, almost curt note Meg informed him that she had fallen in love with a twenty-six year old psychology student, a conscientious objector who had shredded his draft-card in front of a cop. Frank wondered why she had revealed such a detail to him. Did she think he would be impressed? She obviously thought the guy was a hero.

As far as Frank was concerned, the real heroes were here in Vietnam. A true hero wasn’t the hard-ass sniper with a hundred confirmed enemy kills to his name, or the decorated air force pilot who dropped tons of explosives over North Vietnam. He was the average Joe who dragged a wounded comrade to safety while bullets seared the air around him, or the grunt who had sustained grievous wounds but still managed to hold the advancing Cong at bay with his M60 so the rest of his platoon could escape. He was someone who was prepared to risk his own life to save another’s.

How could those peaceniks back home understand this, while they lounged in their comfy pads, spending their days listening to Hendrix and smoking dope until it came out their ears? None of them had ever had to fight for anything.

Suddenly Frank experienced a flare of passion, of an intensity that he thought he’d forgotten. But before he could grasp it, it was gone. It seemed he still had feelings, deeply buried, almost inaccessible, but feelings nonetheless. Obviously if he felt strongly enough about something, his emotions would return.

He stared at Meg’s letter for so long that his brooding attracted the attention of his old lieutenant, Andy Bacon.

Andy had been concerned about Frank ever since their first fight together. Even though the young private kept insisting that there was nothing wrong, Lt. Bacon could see how he’d changed. Frank had always been a quiet young man, but now he was even more withdrawn. He already had the thousand-yard stare, the look of someone who had faced off against Death one too many times. Young soldiers dealt with the loss of innocence on many ways; some flipped out completely, others shrugged their shoulders and continued on with the job, a few rejoiced in the blood and thunder of the battlefield, a couple withdrew into themselves.

However the lieutenant had only ever seen one man go numb like Frank had. When this individual returned to the World he discovered he couldn’t cope with the inanity of normal life, and eventually went berserk on a crowded city street, shooting sixteen people before the police could bring him down. He would have got the chair, but he managed to convince the court that he hadn’t been in his right mind – that he had thought he was back in Korea shooting communists.

Bacon hoped to Christ the same thing didn’t happen to Frank. As he walked up behind the private, the young man turned to stare up at him, his dark eyes empty of emotion. The Lieutenant almost baulked at the look. “What’s up?” he asked gently. “Bad news from home?”

Frank looked down at the letter in his hands. It was barely half a page of scrawl, the rough hand of someone who wanted to get a quick letter over and done with. “The girl I was gonna marry has run off with a fuckin’ peacenik.”

A cold hand closed around Andy’s heart. “I’m sorry, Frank.” He rubbed the private’s brawny shoulder. “I know exactly how you feel. I would have married a lovely young nurse on my return from Korea, but four months into my tour she informed me she was leaving me for some doctor.”

Frank continued to stare at the letter. “It’s a fuckin’ bitch, isn’t it? You fight for the good ol’ US of A to keep the Commie bastards from takin’ over, almost gettin’ your ass shot off in the process, and how do your girls at home repay you? They fuck off with some loser just because he’s there and you’re not! It really pisses me off.”

Andy squeezed Frank’s shoulder again. It was good to hear some emotion in the young man’s voice, even though it was negative. “Tell me about it. When I get her Dear John, I felt like killing myself. Took stupid risks out in the field, almost got myself and half my damn platoon wasted. It was then I realised how dumb I was being. It was all well and good to fuck up my own life, but I couldn’t fuck up everyone else’s as well.”

Frank looked up, his dark eyes solemn. “Don’t you worry about me, Lieutenant. I’m not gonna freak out in the field. I’m not that stupid.” He screwed up the letter and tossed it onto the dirt. “I’m runnin’ outta reasons to go home. First my Mom disappears off the face of the planet, now my girlfriend’s ditched me. Next thing I know, my best buddy from school is gonna stop writing to me.”

 

For Christmas, Frank and his fellow grunts received a special treat. Bob Hope came to Camp Forsythe and staged a show for the entire division. The men washed, shaved and dressed in their best uniforms for the occasion, and Frank even adorned a floppy-brimmed hat with rings from all the grenades he’d thrown. Some of the guys were no doubt hoping the round-eyed lovelies in the show would show an interest in them.

Frank remembered his mother telling him how she and her sister Mandy had gone to see Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis live in Hollywood. The two women had queued up for hours outside the nightclub, but the wait was well worth it. Nora and Mandy had loved the duo’s songs and antics, and thought they were hilarious. They laughed until they cried.

Of course the Rev had thought Martin and Lewis were appalling, and he especially hated “that skinny Jew with the irritating voice”.

Frank thoroughly enjoyed the Bob Hope Christmas show. For a while he forgot the emptiness inside him, and laughed as heartily as the rest of the guys. He wished that he was one of the guys up front so Bob could single him out for special attention. MPs stood guard around the stage, straining to remain impassive while Bob cracked jokes and girls in short skirts pranced around.

However, after the show was finished, and Christmas rolled around, Frank found himself alone and forgotten while his fellow GIs received numerous letters and presents from home. Frank received only one small card from Pinky. It seemed that with each passing month his link to The World was shrinking.

 

New Year’s Eve, 1966, passed relatively quietly. That is, relatively quietly for ordinary guys who were used to drunken celebrations each and every year. Until the Rev’s death, Frank’s experience of end of year celebrations consisted of a gruff “Go to bed, and if I hear one peep out you, you’ll feel the back of my hand.” After the Rev’s death, Nora had let him stay up until midnight, but sitting in a large, lonely house with his mother and maid, listening to drunken revellers whoop it up outside, hadn’t been very exciting. Only at the end of 1965 had he celebrated with his friends. But that silly little teenage gathering had nothing on the drunken debauchery that gripped Camp Forsythe from around six pm onwards. Of course there were those who had to remain clean and sober because they were on duty, but others managed to drink themselves paralytic. Everyone hoped that 1967 would bring an end to this interminable war.

It didn’t.

On 1 January 1967, the 9th Infantry Division arrived in Vietnam, bringing troop numbers up to a staggering 380 000 men. The Combined Campaign Plan drawn up by the US and South Vietnamese commanders meant that from now on the US forces would take on the principal role in all offensive campaigns, leaving the ARVN troops free to lead the bulk of the pacification campaign. America was growing impatient to bring this war to a close, and authorisation was given for artillery fire and defoliation missions into the DMZ. In the south, several large scale multi-divisional operations, in the guise of smaller search and destroy missions, were launched to tackle the communists in their secret lairs.

 

Frank continued to excel out in the field, taking part in two of these massive operations; Cedar Falls and Junction City.

Operation Cedar Falls began at 0800 on 8 January 1967, with 420 soldiers from the 1st Infantry occupying Ben Suc, a large village some 40 miles from Saigon. The history of this village stretched back to the 18th Century, but it was to end on that day.

Vietnamese peasants were forced to assemble in the village square. While gunships blasted the surrounding forests with rockets, and jets carrying deadly napalm loads screamed overhead, interrogations began in the school house. Within two hours, ARVN interpreters had screened some 6000 villages from Ben Suc and its surrounding hamlets, finding 28 possible VC suspects. Then the evacuation began.

Able-bodied men between the ages of 15 and 45 were transported by Chinook helicopter to the provincial police headquarters for further questioning, and induction into the South Vietnamese Army. Women, children and old men were bundled into trucks, tracked vehicles and transport choppers, and ferried to a hastily erected refugee camp at Phu Loi. In a camp that lacked proper wood, water or toilets, the villages were allocated an area of 10 square feet per family. As the stunned villagers shuffled towards the rows of makeshift red canopies, they noticed a sign above the camp’s entrance. It read, “Welcome to the reception centre for refugees fleeing communism.”

Most of these villages would never see their homes again. As soon as the last person had been moved out, every last house, shop, and restaurant was doused with petrol. Out came the Zippos, and the soldiers set fire to the thatched roofs. The charred remains were razed to the ground by M48 “tank-dozers”. To complete the job, a massive trench was dug at the centre of town, filled with 10 000lbs of explosives and 1000 gallons of napalm, and ignited with a chemical fuse. Away from the village bulldozer “Jungle-eaters” set about levelling the surrounding terrain. Writing up their reports, the military commanders concluded that the first phase of Operation Cedar Falls had been an unqualified success.

The area known as the Iron Triangle was bordered roughly by the Saigon River in the west, the Thi Tinh River to the east, and to the north by an imaginary line running from Ben Cat to Ben Suc. The Triangle covered an area of 40 square miles, and appeared to be pointing at Saigon. This major communist stronghold was so secure the mere mention of its name was enough to instil fear. Ben Suc, at the western tip of the Triangle, was seen as the key to VC control of the entire area; it was no secret the villagers had paid taxes to the VC, harboured food and supplies for them, and been themselves enlisted to fight.

Attempts to penetrate the Iron Triangle had been made before. In late 1965, the 173rd Airborne Brigade had tried and failed to sweep through the area, and all through 1966, B52 bombers had rained more than a million pounds of explosives on its rice paddies, marshes and forests in a vain attempt to quell VC activity. Neither strategy had any noticeable effect on the VC presence, and by the end of 1966, General Westmoreland was growing impatient. To drive the communists out, he needed to instigate the biggest operation of the war so far – an assault so devastating it would uproot the very trees that sheltered the VC from American bombers. So ruthless that it would deny them even the civilian populace upon which their infrastructure was built. Once Cedar Falls was complete, the Triangle would be made a “secure strike zone” – anything that moved would be bombed at will.

The operation was planned as a classic “Hammer and Anvil” campaign. On 5 January, the 2^nd Brigade and 196^th Light Infantry Brigade, reinforced by ARVN units, were positioned along the Saigon River leg of the Triangle. They were to form the anvil of the campaign – blocking the escape of the enemy forces. The hammer blow was to be provided by units of the 1^st Infantry Division crashing down from the east. After the 2^nd Brigade dealt with the sacking of Ben Suc on 8 January, at dawn on the following day the 3^rd Brigade began a massive airmobile assault through the Than Dien forest to the east. Meanwhile, the 173^rd Airborne and 11^th Armoured Cavalry swept west from Ben Cat. Blocking positions on the southeast leg of the Triangle were covered by the 1^st Battalion, 503^rd Infantry, and the 35^th Ranger Battalion. Once the hammer started smashing its way from the northeast of the Triangle, air assaults and jungle clearing operations would see to it that there was nowhere left for the VC to hide.

Unfortunately, even though the operation was planned in the utmost secrecy, word still leaked out to the VC. For Americans expecting to encounter heavy resistance, the eerie and frustrating experience of so many search and destroy missions was now repeated on a massive scale. No matter how hard they looked, the enemy was nowhere to be found.

For troops of the 173^rd Airborne and 11^th Armoured Cavalry, sweeping across the Triangle and flattening jungle and scrubland in their wake, it was a dispiriting experience. Occasionally small VC squads would be discovered harvesting or protecting food supplies, but they rarely stayed to fight, instead melting back into the darkness of the forest. Evidence of recent VC presence was always easy to find, but for all the military muscle of this operation, not one major battle was fought for the entire 19 days of its duration. Apart from a few small skirmishes, the VC had effectively evaded the hammer’s blow.

What successes there were came from beneath the jungle floor – in the complex of tunnels that criss-crossed the Triangle like a subway network. One of the virtues of jungle clearance was that it laid tunnel entrances bare, exposing hidden VC and leading Americans to their supplies. The 1^st Engineer Battalion, responsible for bulldozing the area around Ben Suc, were able to pick up VC soldiers as they popped out of the ground.

The job of securing the tunnels themselves fell to the 1^st Infantry’s 242^nd Chemical Detachment – the fearless Tunnel Rats. Armed only with pistols, torches and tear gas, the rats crawled through almost 12 miles of tunnels during the operation, helping to unearth 7500 uniforms, 60 000 rounds of ammunition, and 7300 tons of rice – enough to feed 13 000 VC for a year.

The biggest haul of the operation was discovered on 18 January, when men of the 1/5^th Infantry uncovered a key tunnel complex west of Saigon. It yielded a veritable treasure-trove of secret VC documents, which revealed plans for future terrorist assaults, lists of sympathisers and finely detailed maps of Saigon and the Tan Son Nhut Airbase. By a stroke of luck, the Tunnel Rats had discovered the VC’s underground headquarters for the Cu Chi district. After clearing it out, they filled it with CS gas, packed it with explosives, and blew it to kingdom come.

Operation Cedar Falls officially terminated on 26 January. Over 2700 acres of jungle had been cleared, 500 tunnels and 1100 bunkers lay destroyed, and 750 “confirmed enemy” dead were reported. The Iron Triangle had become “a military desert”. To prevent any rebuilding, anything that moved was to be considered fair game for American bombers. At the cost of 72 American lives, Lieutenant General Bernard Rogers, the author of the US Army report on Operation Cedar Falls, could conclude that “a strategic enemy enclave had been decisively engaged and destroyed.”

However, because the Americans simply didn’t have enough troops to permanently occupy the area, the communists soon snuck back. Only two days after the termination of Cedar Falls, Lt. General Rogers himself was checking out the Iron Triangle by helicopter, and saw many people who appeared to be VC, riding bicycles and wandering around on foot. In the face of the massive military operation, the VC had staged a temporary tactical withdrawal, coming back only when the Americans were gone. They returned to the 1700 metres of tunnels left intact under the town of Ben Suc, and resumed their old lives.

The American hammer and anvil had failed to blunt the poisoned dagger pointed at the heart of Saigon.

Operation Junction City was designed to penetrate War Zone C, engage the VC 9^th Division, and destroy the elusive Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN), the coordinating headquarters for communist military and political activities in the South.

General Westmorland was determined that during Junction City the VC would not be allowed to slip away. The Americans were tiring of this hit-and-run, counter insurgency war, and wanted to fight a more conventional battle – the sort they could be sure of winning. This time the hammer that would crush the VC would not be infantry, but armour.

Phase one of Junction City began on 22 February with 845 paratroopers from the 503^rd Airborne Brigade forming a blocking horseshoe position with the 25^th Infantry Division around Lo Go in the west, and two brigades from the 1^st Infantry Division around Binh Long in the east. The 2^nd Brigade, 25^th Infantry, and the 11^th Armoured Cavalry drove into the horseshoe from the south on the next day.

Phase two began on 18 March with a shift eastwards by the 1^st Infantry Division variously supported by the 11^th Armoured Cavalry, the 173^rd Airborne and the 1^st Brigade, 9th Infantry Division. An unplanned phase three followed on 16 April when units under 25^th Division control continued the search until the operation ended on 14 May.

Compared to 282 US dead and 1576 wounded, an estimated 2728 VC were killed and 34 captured while 139 defected. Materials taken included 810 tons of rice, 600 weapons and 500 000 pages of documents. But although hit hard, the VC 9th Division was not destroyed, and COSVN was never found. The 366 000 artillery rounds and 3235 tons of bombs exploded during Junction City worked out at several tons of ordinance for each VC killed.

It proved impossible to keep US units other than Special Forces permanently in the area as intended, and an airfield constructed at Katum was simply left unsecured. The VC soon returned to the area.

 

For his performance in both operations, Frank earned commendations for bravery above and beyond the call of duty. He was shot in the arm, and then he caught some shrapnel in his chest from an exploding grenade. Both times he recovered quickly, and was back in the field in less than three weeks.

Even when his time was short, he continued going on long and dangerous recon missions. Just because his tour was almost finished didn’t mean he could slacken off. He had acquired many valuable skills and wanted to use them right up to the end.

Barret asked him if he wanted to extend his tour. Frank thought deeply, but eventually he answered in the negative. He really wanted to go home and find out what had happened to his mother. He also wanted to see if he could resume his relationship with Pinky, but of course he didn’t tell Barret this.

Barret nodded, but Frank could tell he was disappointed. For this soldier the army was his life, and he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to leave it for mundane reality. However he couldn’t stop one of the best damn long-range recon patrol soldiers he’d ever seen from returning to the World.

You’ll be back, Cassidy, he thought. You’ve developed a taste for the work, and no matter what you do back home, it won’t compare to this. You need the excitement, just like me.

 

About a month before his tour was up, Frank received a letter from his best buddy, informing him that he’d relocated from California to New York City, more specifically, Greenwich Village, Manhattan Island. Pinky had abandoned his plans to study law at Berkeley, deciding instead to study music at Columbia University, and working nights at some weirdo club called “The Merry Derriere”. Frank waited for him to meet someone and stop writing, but Pinky’s letters kept coming, as verbose and detailed as they’d always been. He was only vague about a couple of details; the exact nature of the club in which he worked to make ends meet, and the sort of people he shared his loft with.

Pinky did reveal that most of his friends were peaceniks against the war, but he continued to praise Frank for his efforts. He hoped that Frank had finally realised his childhood dream.

In his next letter to Pinky, Frank was about to tell him that as soon as he returned he would visit him in New York, but decided against it. I’ll surprise him, he thought.

He leaned back, folding his arms behind his head and closing his eyes. My mother might be gone, Meg might have run off with a peacenik, but Pinky is still there for me. He allowed himself to fantasise about bending the slender young man over the couch in the War Room.

Damnit. Now he had a hardon the size of the Empire State Building!

 

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