Sayonara to flying steaks and grits to generals in safe rear areas. After the initial shock of having my orders changed wore off, however, I experienced an awakening sense of curiosity about war accompanied by a faint stirring of excitement and expectation. Deep inside all young men lurked a thirst for adventure. Just because I was married and had two daughters didn’t change that. I was only twenty-three years old. Of course, I would rather have gone to Vung Tau, but now that I wasn’t it surprised me to find that I wasn’t nearly as pissed off as I should have been. I couldn’t figure it, what with all the energy I had invested in attempting to avoid Vietnam combat. It must be something genetic in males.
I boarded a Caribou airplane along with a bunch of other FNGs, both officers and enlisted, and flew from Cam Ranh Bay to 1st Cav division headquarters at An Khe for a week of in-processing and orientation. There I was issued jungle fatigues, boots, socks, poncho liners, and mosquito netting. Immunization records were updated, physicals given, malaria pill regimes started (I would take the big pills for the rest of the time I was in Vietnam), and we were all indoctrinated into the organization and work of the 1st Cavalry as well as in how sneaky, underhanded, cunning, and vicious “Charlie” could be.
“Charlie?” I asked.
“Charlie,” it was explained, was short for “Victor Charles,” the phonetic alphabet pronunciation for VC, Viet Cong. “Charlie” and “Mister Charles” were common terms applied to the enemy, along with other more disparaging labels such as “dink,” “gook,” “slope,” and “shithead.” The Vietnamese called us “big nose” or “cat eyes.” I was sure they also used their own less-complimentary terms for us as we did for them.
General George Forsythe was now commanding officer of the division. I learned that the 1st Cavalry Division, with approximately fifteen thousand men, consisted of three major subordinate units—the 1st, 2d, and 3d Brigades—along with Division Artillery, a Support Command, and an Aviation Group. Within this structure were nine battalions of infantry, five battalions of artillery, three assault helicopter battalions, four support-type battalions, an aerial reconnaissance squadron, one engineer battalion, one signal battalion, and a number of independent specialized companies and detachments.
The outfit I was joining, the aerial reconnaissance squadron in the Aviation Group, was a division asset employed wherever it was needed. The 1st Squadron of the 9th Cavalry, the 1/9, consisted of fewer than one thousand men and some one hundred helicopters divided into three troops, “A” through “C.” Each troop in turn, such as Apache Troop, was organized into an aero scout “White” platoon, which now flew OH6A LOHs (light observation helicopters) called “Loaches”; an aero weapons “Red” gunship platoon, whose Huey “hogs” had been exchanged for deadly AH-1G Cobra attack helicopters; and an aero rifle “Blue” platoon made up of UH-1H Huey “slicks” and squads of “Sky Soldier” infantry.
The U.S. military had divided South Vietnam into four separate Areas of Operations called “corps,” beginning with I Corps located in the northernmost area along the DMZ and ending with IV Corps in the southern Mekong Delta. Apache Troop was now located at Tay Ninh base camp in War Zone C, III Corps. Tay Ninh lay about fifty miles northwest of Saigon in a dog head’s protrusion of Vietnam into Cambodia. Cambodia wrapped around the Dog’s Head both to the north, the so-called Fishhook, and to the south, the Parrot’s Beak. The base camp was about ten miles from the Cambodian border.
The area had been a hot spot since at least 1965, leading to the reputation of Apache Troop of the 1/9 being the most dangerous outfit in Vietnam in which to serve. NVA and VC units filtering across the Cambodian border had tried repeatedly to reach the South Vietnam capital at Saigon and capture it. Northeast of Tay Ninh lay the Iron Triangle, in which a number of ops had been waged against enemy entrenched in an amazing miles-long series of underground tunnels, the so-called Tunnels of Cu Chi. It was being assumed from activity along the Cambodian border that the enemy had not given up on Saigon. It was a constant expectation that when a new offensive was launched, it would originate in War Zone C.
Apache Troop’s mission was to locate the enemy through aerial reconnaissance and sweeping patrols along the border. “White” Loaches sniffed around at treetop level looking for trails, bunkers, base camps, and other signs of activity; “Red” Cobra gunships provided fire support and air cover; “Blue” slicks, to which I was being assigned as a pilot, picked up and inserted troops as required. Blues also rescued downed aviators and extracted infantry under pressure.
Horror stories about enemy atrocities circulated among the FNGs, relayed to us by the “old timers.” One soldier had been chopped up into little pieces and stuffed into a water urn; a VC woman tied up American prisoners, put baskets over their heads and filled the baskets with rats; captured soldiers were sometimes tortured at night within sound of a U.S. unit so that the GIs had to listen to their screaming.
The moral of the stories: Don’t get caught. Some of the guys, it was said, always saved their last bullet for themselves. I shuddered at the thought of getting shot down out there in the middle of such uncivilized people. Damn! Maybe I should have tried to retrieve my orders to Vung Tau.
About thirty chopper jocks were undergoing the in-country indoctrination. I half-expected some of my flight school classmates to be there, but apparently they had preceded me, would come later, or had been assigned elsewhere. It was during an outdoors bleacher session that we encountered our first “enemy.”
A major was explaining more about what we should expect. Like diarrhea, until we got used to things; about how Charlie dipped his punji stakes in his own feces in order to increase infection in whoever stepped on them. We should expect mortar and rocket attacks against whichever post we were assigned, along with occasional sapper penetrations. Sappers were particularly devious and skillful. They were shadows, ghosts who slipped through defensive wire carrying satchels filled with explosives.
As he talked, the major paced slowly back and forth between his audience in the bleachers and a berm of mounded earth. Beyond the berm stretched rows of concertina and barbed wire, part of the perimeter at An Khe. He was nearing the end of his spiel when a scrawny little Asian wearing only khaki shorts popped up from behind the berm. He yelled something and at the same time hurled a heavy canvas bag at the bleachers. All eyes fastened horrified on its slow-motion progress as it arced high into the air.
The major screamed a warning. “Satchel charge!”
We damn near killed ourselves diving, leaping, scrambling, stampeding and falling off the bleachers. I ended up on the ground with my face buried in the dirt. I couldn’t get any lower, my buttons were in the way. I could have crawled underneath a pebble. I braced myself against the expected explosion.
After a few moments when nothing happened, I heard a nervous titter and cautiously opened one eye. The major stood at parade rest displaying a shit-eating grin. The Asian “sapper” stood soberly at his side. The guy next to me got up off the ground wearing a sheepish look and dusted himself off. I got up and looked around. The “explosives” still lay in the bleachers, undetonated.
As the class slowly and suspiciously reassembled, the major asked, “Gentlemen, do you understand? Did anyone here see Minh slip through the wire right in front of your eyes and get close enough to wipe us all out?”
No one had.
“Remember what happened here today when you reach your assignments,” he cautioned in a funereal voice. “Minh is a chieu hoi, a former VC who has come over to our side and serves as a Kit Carson scout. Lack of vigilance is exactly what will get you killed. This is a war in which you never know where the enemy is, how he will appear, or even who he is. Trust nobody except your own.”
I looked Minh over closely. So this skinny little fella, no taller than I, was what the bad guys looked like?
“I’ll sleep in a flak jacket,” I murmured.