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Under a beautiful, blue sky, I held a sandbag open for Bubba as he shoveled dirt into it. We were putting another layer of sandbags on the bunker roof. I looked out over the jungle valley, wondering where the enemy that had ambushed us was now. I wondered if we had killed any of them. Glock swore he shot four of them, but that was Glock. I hadn’t even seen one. I asked Bubba if he hit any.
He paused, his foot resting on the shovel. “I don’t rightly know, Carl. I saw something in the bushes, and I think I hit it, but I can’t say for sure. They were hid pretty darn good.”
“I know.”
Beobee and Ted approached. “Hi, fellas,” said Ted. He had a look of wonder on his face. “You guys gave a good account of yourselves last night. That’s what your lieutenant says.”
Bubba laughed. “Is that right?”
“Yeah,” said Ted. “They estimate it was a company-size force of enemy.”
“Wow,” I said. I’d thought there were a lot of them. It was hard to say how many though because they were so well hidden. Thinking about it bothered me though because we would have to go out there again. I tried to change the subject.
“What’s the latest on the R&R’s, Ted? Any possibility they’ll be unfrozen?”
Ted shook his head. “Nothing happening there, pal. Especially now that they’ve found out about the road. Nobody’s going anywhere till it’s taken out.”
“The road?” I said.
“I thought I heard somebody talking about a road,” Beobee chimed in. “Where in heaven’s name is it?”
Ted shrugged his shoulders. “Beats me. All I know is, the Green Berets interviewed a couple of Montagnards who claim they were blindfolded by the enemy and taken out to the middle of the jungle to work on a big road. It’s supposed to be big enough to bring in tanks and trucks.”
I looked out over that sea of dirty green and wondered where it could possibly be. Beneath that thick jungle it would be more a tunnel than a road.
I spent an hour alone in the bunker trying to nap but I couldn’t get to sleep. I went up to the top of the hill and there were a couple dozen guys hanging out in small groups. I saw my friend Willet and stood around with him while he smoked a cigarette. The captain came out of the CP and every head turned. Then people went back to their conversations, acting like they hadn’t seen him. Captain DeVoors looked around and laughed like he had just remembered a good joke. He started walking in our direction. As he came closer, I realized he was headed straight for us. DeVoors stopped in front of Willet and said, “I want to have a word with this soldier here.”
“Yes, sir,” Willet said, walking off.
The captain looked at me coldly. “There seems to be a problem with your paperwork at Battalion. Did you know that Melcher?”
“No, sir.” For a moment I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about.
His eyes bore into mine. “You don’t happen to have any peon clerks as friends back there in McGernity, do you?”
“No, sir,” I said. That’s when it dawned on me. My 201 file must be missing. It was probably still in the back of that jeep, covered with mud and muck. That was why they still had not processed my Article 15 for going AWOL. I couldn’t help smiling at my good luck.
DeVoors blushed angrily. “You better wipe that smile off your face, soldier. My men are tigers. They’re not allowed to smile. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
He scowled as he brushed past me. As soon as he was out of earshot people came up to me, asking me what had happened. “Nothing,” I said, not wanting to be the center of attention. I went back to the bunker.
I was out in the darkness of the trench on first guard when firing erupted just below the tree line. The pop, pop, popping quickly mushroomed in volume and then grenades began booming ominously, one after another. The rest of the squad ran out with their gear, Ron carrying the radio, as a report crackled over the command channel. The Second Platoon had been ambushed on their way back up the hill! It sounded like they were getting it worse than we had. Already they had eight casualties.
I aimed my weapon down into the darkness. The firing was sporadic, grenades booming dully. Surely the enemy would be coming up for us. If not tonight, then some other night. But soon. We seemed to be a threat to them now.
“Pop a flare,” Glock said suddenly. “I think I see something.”
Ron fired one aloft with a hiss. It popped and glared down cold, white light. We saw nothing.
“I swear I saw something,” said Glock.
The firing continued down below the tree line. From the little rise above us I could hear the mortar rounds thunking out of the tubes. They crashed down into the trees below. Radio reports indicated that the second platoon was pinned down so badly they couldn’t break away. They needed help bad, but to send men down into that would be horrible, with everybody shooting at everybody else. That’s what the enemy wanted us to do, of course. They were very clever.
It went on all night. I think everybody on the hill felt guilty about not being down there helping them; I knew I did.
We took turns guarding and sleeping in the trench. About an hour before sunup Ted came by and told us to get our gear together. A platoon-sized force would be sent down at first light. Just when we were ready to go, the enemy disengaged, and the Second Platoon and the rescue team began to straggle in.
They’d been worked over really bad. Someone said there had been nine killed and seven wounded. I thought it was more than that. As the morning sun inched over the horizon, Bubba and I helped the medics carry the wounded up to the chopper pad. Later someone brought over a big jug of coffee and some Styrofoam cups. Bubba and I were sitting and sipping when Beobee came by.
“Howdy, Carl, Bubba,” he said. “Did you all hear about the parachute yet?”
“Huh?”
“What parachute?” Bubba asked.
Beobee put his hands on his hips. “Well, it seems the enemy dropped something, or somebody, into that valley over yonder by parachute last night.”
“You’re kidding,” Bubba said.
“I swear to God. Come on and I’ll show you the dang thing.”
We followed Beobee to the top of the hill and climbed onto a bunker. Sure enough, in the distance, a tiny spot of white lay upon the green canopy of jungle trees.
“Are you sure it’s a parachute?” Bubba asked.
“No,” Beobee said, “but what else in heaven’s name could it be?”
“Maybe it’s one of our parachutes,” I said, “from a flare.”
“Maybe,” Beobee said, “but the brass up in the CP don’t think so.”
The more I thought about it, though, the more it looked too big to be a flare parachute. I didn’t think you could see a flare parachute from this distance. As we looked out over the green valley one of the gasoline generators behind the bunker coughed and came to life with a muffled drone.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Beobee said solemnly, “there’s something big going on down there. Charley’s up to something and we’re gonna find out real soon what it is.”
I was coming back from the mess tent, carrying a drooping paper plate of hot chow, when I saw Ron and Beobee over at the next bunker. Beobee waved me over.
“They have proof there’s a road, Carl,” he said.
“What proof?”
“A spotter plane got shot down,” Ron said. “He spotted smoke and he flew through it, said it smelled like diesel fumes, and then they shot him down.”
“That’s right, Carl,” Beobee said. “Me and a bunch of artillery guys saw him go down.”
“Dig,” Ron said. “They sent a reconnaissance team in to get him and they confirmed there’s a road down there. We’re goin’ out to destroy it.”
Well, I guess it was bound to happen. I couldn’t expect to get through my whole tour in Vietnam without having to go out on something really dangerous. But that didn’t make me feel any better about it. I thought of Chantal and wished I could see her before I went. And boy, oh, boy, what I would have given to be able to talk to Papa or Gene. I went back to the bunker.
It was supposed to be a quick operation and we only packed a day’s worth of water and C’s. There were some combat engineers going with us, and in addition to our own gear, we had to help them carry the dynamite charges. There were two different kinds of charges. The shape charges resembled TV picture tubes and would be used to blow narrow holes in the ground. Then the cratering charges, big, green tubes about eight inches in diameter and four feet long, would be lowered in the holes. When they blew, they would make holes the size of houses, making the road impassable.
Each platoon had to carry one of the charges. Lieutenant Goodkin gave our squad one of the cratering charges, and Ron gave it to me. It looked like a big, fat, fifty-pound stick of TNT. As I tied it to my ruck I wondered if a rifle round could set it off. I asked an Engineer who was walking by.
He seemed surprised at the question. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, what about one of my M-79 grenade rounds? What if one of them went off?” I was carrying seventy HE, or high explosive grenade rounds in my vest and in my ruck.
He sighed. “Maybe, I don’t know.” He walked off. I sat down and pulled the ruck on. It was your typical army logic—if a rifle round wouldn’t explode the thing, and only another explosion would, why not give it to the guy carrying seventy little rounds of high explosive? It made perfect army sense.
I tried to put it all out of my head, but this image of the cartoon character, Wylie E. Coyote kept crowding in. He had a huge red rocket strapped to his back with a fuse dangling down. He lit a match to it and, of course, it immediately blew up.
We went through the wire and started down the steepest part of the trail. Soon I was worrying less about blowing up and more about keeping up. It was the heaviest load I’d ever carried, and the column was moving fast. I hoped nothing would happen until I got rid of it. Fortunately, we reached the valley floor without incident.
The pace picked up. The others were hiking super-light-weight rucks and were practically running! I felt like screaming at them to stop. All the weight I was carrying was killing me, and for the first time in my life I thought I might have to fall out. Fortunately, though, they called a halt and I flopped on the ground. My legs were like rubber and my arms and shoulders numb.
Lieutenant Goodkin walked over, swigging from a canteen. “How are you doing with that?”
“I’m all right.” As soon as I said it, I hated myself for lying. Fortunately, the lieutenant didn’t believe me. He asked Glock to carry it the rest of the way.
They gave our squad the point and I was behind Chico. The triple canopy of trees blotted out all direct sunlight and the foliage on the ground was sparse, mostly ferns, and small waist high bushes. We hiked another hour or so, warily scanning the jungle floor. Chico stopped abruptly and pointed. There, among the brown of earth and the green and gray of leaves and vines, ran a thin, bright, yellow, land phone line across the ground—a yellow wire! It crossed our path, stretching away in either direction.
Lieutenant Goodkin came forward with Bubba, who was packing the radio. They knelt to inspect it. I followed the wire to where it disappeared and imagined it leading to some enemy captain in a pith helmet. He was squatting down on his haunches, talking into a field phone.
The lieutenant finished his whispered conversation and turned to us. “Who has a pocketknife?”
Bubba took out his Barlow, opened it and handed it to him.
They were going to cut it! “No, don’t!” I said in a harsh whisper, not really meaning to.
Everybody looked at me like I was crazy as the lieutenant cut the wire.
“Sorry,” I said. I felt like a fool, but I thought it would’ve been smarter not to let them know we were here. I had a sudden sick feeling, as if everything had suddenly gone wrong and every bit of my luck had just run out. I looked at the cut wire and imagined the enemy captain staring into his handset, wondering why it had gone dead. Realization formed on his face.
Hunkered down, with our weapons pointed out, we waited while Lieutenant Goodkin studied his map. Then we moved out.
We went another kilometer and came to one of those bombed-out, defoliated areas. It was a relief to see the sky. The open ground was covered with a lot of tan-colored, crackly deadfall.
Lieutenant Goodkin got word over the radio that the Second Platoon was to take the point from here on. We waited on the side of the trail as most of the company filed by and across the open space. Then it was our turn and we crossed quickly, making an awful racket in the dry brush.
We re-entered the jungle and moved along quick and quiet, nervously scanning the dark shadows on either side of the trail. Nothing happened for a while and I began to feel a little better, except for the heat. The jungle canopy kept it in like an oven and it drew the energy out of you. I’d emptied three of the four canteens I was carrying, and some guys were already bumming water, guys that had either been too stupid or too lazy to pack enough. Fortunately, though, we didn’t encounter any enemy and we finally found the road.
When they reached the road, the file just stopped. We stood around for about ten minutes while the captain and his people inspected it. Then they brought up the rest of us. We pushed through some thick bushes and vines and then we kind of stumbled out into it. It was like we entered something, like a room. As big as a two-lane country road, and made of packed earth, it was covered by the roof-like, thick canopy of jungle.
Small groups of guys stood around on the tamped red earth, talking softly, while others climbed up into the jungle on either side and poked around. Everyone was walking stiffly and awkwardly, not wanting to put their feet down too noisily or too hard, or in the wrong place.
I saw Ron and the others and went over. Glock had the cratering charge sitting on the road beside him. Lieutenant Goodkin and an engineer carried a shape charge. The other guys had disappeared around the curve of the road to plant their charges.
The Engineer looked at Glock. “Take that thing back up there about thirty feet for now, will you?” Glock and Goodkin carried off the cratering charge. The Engineer turned to me. “Give me a hand.”
The two of us quickly dug a small hole about a foot deep. We laid the shape charge in and he wired it up to a blasting cap.
“Go over there,” he said, indicating where the lieutenant and the others were. He started tamping the dirt down around the charge.
I joined Glock and Ron in the bushes as one of the shape charges went off around the corner, shaking the ground slightly. Another one boomed. The Engineer climbed up onto the bank of the road, uncoiling some thick white wire from a spool as he went. We heard small arms fire from around the bend. Goodkin got on the radio. A drop of sweat dangled from the tip of his pointy nose. The engineer blew our charge and a small cloud of black smoke drifted down the road. A moment later the firing stopped. We looked out into the brush, watching for movement.
“Everybody,” Lieutenant Goodkin said, “come here.”
“What’s up, Lieutenant?” Glock asked as we crowded around.
“Fourth Platoon got caught out on the road. They have some dead and wounded. They estimate there’s a company-sized force of enemy around, with more on the way. So, be real careful from here on out, okay?”
We moved off into the bush. We passed a little clearing and I saw Grimaldi and his people inspecting the still-smoking hole their shape charge had made. It looked like it had been dug with a post hole digger. Ahead, Captain DeVoors, the top sergeant, Ted, and some of the CP guys, huddled together, talking softly. On the ground around them lay a half dozen guys. One was obviously dead, with a towel draped over his face. A medic was working on another guy. Three others lay on makeshift litters and another sat against the dirt bank with a white bandage wrapped tightly around his head, covering his eyes. About a dozen other guys lined both sides of the road, facing out into the jungle in a loose perimeter.
Captain DeVoors looked up when he saw Lieutenant Goodkin. “I’m taking you with us,” he said. “I’m leaving two squads with the Engineers to help them finish up. But you and I will make sure the wounded are medevac’d.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Goodkin said. He looked over at the guys laying on the makeshift litters.
The captain poked Lieutenant Goodkin in the chest. “I want your platoon out front; your people are in better shape than anybody else’s, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said. “Do you want to start now?”
The captain shook his head. “They’re bringing up some more wounded now. When they get here, we go.”
“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Goodkin moved off a bit. He waved us over and looked at Glock. “You take the point.”
Glock nodded.
The lieutenant looked at Ron. “I want you right behind him.”
Ron smiled in reply.
I heard something and turned to see the other guys arriving. One of them had his arm in a sling. The lieutenant tapped me on the back. I turned and quickly followed him and Ron and Glock.
We were evidently taking a different route back; I didn’t recognize anything. After a half hour, we came to an area dotted with mogul-sized, palm-fern-covered hills. We went over and around them. The light was weak, the way it would be in a house at midday with all the shades down. I was one of the few people who still had a canteen of water left and I shared it with Ron, Bubba, Glock, and Chico. We were walking between two small hills when small arms firing erupted somewhere behind us in the middle of the column. Again, the enemy had evidently let most of our column pass before they hit us.
We flattened ourselves against the ground and listened to the firing. Every now and then I would hear angry hornets whizzing through the brush and then I realized with shock that they were stray rounds. I wondered when they were going to blow the cratering charges. Why were they taking so long, I wondered? Every time someone got wounded or killed, I felt as if my turn was coming closer.
Somebody tapped me on my leg. It was Ron. I followed him over to where the lieutenant knelt, talking into the radio.
The lieutenant put the handset down and turned to us. “The middle of the file is pinned down. I want you two to work your way up this ridge and drop some M-79 rounds in on the enemy position, okay?”
I nodded. My mouth was so dry I would’ve croaked if I tried to say anything.
Ron pursed his lips as he looked over the lieutenant’s shoulder at the map. The lieutenant tapped his finger emphatically at a smudge of ridge lines. “The captain figures they’re here. He thinks he’s pinpointed them.”
Ron stared at the map and said nothing. Lieutenant Goodkin handed it to him. “Take this with you and help direct Carl’s fire.”
Ron nodded.
We started up the ridge and I felt strange. I thought of my theory and how everything that had happened so far could have been faked. I suddenly felt like I was a boy again, playing war games. I noticed the cartoonish, turtle-ish way Ron looked and moved. He pulled his head into his collar and hunched over under the big shell-like curve of the ruck. Under the green helmet he looked like a turtle. I saw him swallow a couple of times the way a turtle does, his Adam’s apple moving up and down slowly, and I laughed. He looked at me like I was crazy.
We reached an opening in the brush and Ron stopped. Below us, the firing continued. Crouching down, I waited while Ron peered at the terrain below. He ducked back down and studied the map. Finally, he pointed to a spot where the bushes seemed a slightly lighter shade of green.
“Try there,” he said. “Put a couple rounds in there.”
It appeared to be about fifty meters distant and I flipped the sight up and adjusted it accordingly. The first round went high, and I moved the slide on the sight down a little. The next one was right in there.
“Good,” he said. He looked behind us nervously. “Put some more in there now.”
I started popping the rounds down there as fast as I could reload, maybe one every five seconds or so. Crash, crash, crash! I could see the wispy puffs of black smoke rising up. I laughed and a round went wild.
Ron grabbed my shoulder and his angry face looked into mine. “Be cool,” he hissed, “be cool.”
I laughed again, I don’t know why, and Ron’s face twisted in disbelief. I put another half dozen rounds into the light green area.
When we came back down, they were all sitting or crouching, looking out. Lieutenant Goodkin slapped Ron on the back and reached out and patted me on the shoulder. “They managed to disengage,” he said. “You did it!”
Ron and I looked disbelievingly at each other.
“Take five,” the lieutenant said, “and eat something. The captain wants us to hold here for a while.”
Ron and I sat down. I took a swig of water and wondered when the next flare-up would come.