Another Caribou flew replacements from An Khe to Phuoc Vinh, which was where the 1st Cav was in the process of moving its headquarters. We remained overnight and flew in a Huey to Tay Ninh the next morning. A veteran pilot returning from an admin trip to Cav headquarters sprawled in the canvas next to me as the chopper prepared to take off. In Vietnam, anyone in-country over a month or six weeks was considered a “veteran.” I was tense and introspective as were the four other FNGs bound for the combat base camp. The veteran stuck out his hand.
“Name’s Norm Bilby,” he said. “Everybody calls me Snake Eye. Nobody uses first names around here. It’s either last names, aircraft numbers, nicknames, or ‘Red,’ ‘White,’ or ‘Blue’ if you’re a platoon leader. You just flying in?”
New fatigues, new jungle boots, new frozen look on the face. It should have been obvious. I introduced myself.
“Alexander?” he mused. “As in Alexander the Great?”
“More like Alexander the Small,” I muttered.
Bilby chuckled. “We all feel like that when we first get here,” he said.
I had little clue as to what the hell I was doing, where exactly I was going except to some place called Tay Ninh, or what to expect once I got there. As if all the probing, prodding, and herding around I had endured over the past couple of weeks weren’t enough to diminish my ego.
“What outfit are you assigned to, Lieutenant?” Snake Eye asked.
I told him. “You?” I asked.
“I’m with the Blue Max platoon down the road from you Apaches. We fly Cobras.” He hesitated, as though unsure if he should bring it up. He looked at me, sucked his teeth reflectively. He said, “The Apaches have taken a lot of losses.”
That certainly made me feel better.
The flight lasted about a half-hour, during which time Snake Eye kept up a running commentary on the terrain, the Cav, Vietnam, and how fucked up the world was in general. We flew over green jungle so thick you couldn’t see down through it. Once in a while I glimpsed a sun flash of reflection off a stream or pond hidden in the forest, but then it was gone. The terrain was as flat as a table with few wrinkles in the green that covered it. Here and there were a few scattered hooches, little grass-or tin-roofed shacks surrounded by rice paddies. There were few villages and almost no roads connecting them. Simply foot trails and bicycle paths. Snake Eye explained that civilians had been evacuating the area for years, abandoning it to the NVA and VC.
“That’s the Michelin rubber plantation over there to the northeast,” Snake Eye said, pointing out the Huey’s open door. “Gooks are always hiding in there. The rubber trees are so thick you can’t see down through the foliage.”
One readily identifiable feature jutted up out of all that flat land—a single mountain peak, like a gigantic anthill crusted with vegetation. It was about five miles north of the base and protruded to about three thousand feet in height. It appeared about a quarter-mile in diameter at its base.
“That’s Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain,” Snake Eye said. “That’s your principal checkpoint, because you can see it from anywhere in the AO. We have a radio relay station on top. We own the top and the bottom. Charlie owns everything in between. The whole damned mountain is hollowed out with VC tunnels. Charlie can sit over there and see the entire base at Tay Ninh to direct in mortar and rocket fire when he has a few rounds to spare. He must have a surplus lately because we’ve been taking a lot of incoming.”
“Why doesn’t someone go over there and run the enemy out?” I asked naively.
“You think that hasn’t already been tried? We lost a lot of men. Finally, I guess, we decided to let them keep their share of it if they want it that bad. Coexist.”
A small brown river ran between the large military base at Tay Ninh and the city of Tay Ninh. Most posts were named after the nearest burg. Other than size, I saw little difference between this base camp and the larger ones at An Khe and Phuoc Vinh.
The base was about a mile long and ran from north to south. Irregular in shape, the perimeter ranged from about a half-mile wide on the north end and narrowed to about one hundred yards in width on the south end. The small end pointed toward Tay Ninh the city and the river about five miles away. A long runway ran from north to south for the landing of conventional aircraft and warplanes. There were two shorter runways to one side and a number of helipads, aircraft parking ramps, and sandbagged revetments. C-130s, Caribous, and helicopters were secured here and there, while other choppers were taking off as we approached. Three flight control towers stuck up above a shack city of tin-roofed buildings with screened-in sides. Artillery emplacements, guard towers, and sandbagged fighting positions ringed the perimeter.
The base camp seemed as cluttered and as devoid of vegetation as Cam Ranh Bay. A depressed-looking ghetto of red and brown clay, brown or gray unpainted buildings, and drab OD green vehicles and aircraft.
The Huey landed near the center of the base, where a three-quarter-ton truck waited to transport the five newbies to our assignments. Coming down from cooler rarefied air at altitude, my jungle fatigues immediately soaked with sweat. As if the heat and humidity weren’t bad enough, a breeze blowing off the city smelled as bad as a stale anchovy-and-onion pizza left out too long in the sun.
“I’ll be seeing you around,” Snake Eye said. “Do you know how to spell my name?”
I looked at him, puzzled.
“It’s Bilby,” he said with a grin. “B-I-L-B-Y. I hope you remember that so you don’t forget me in your will.”