SIX SIX Two nights later, the group of Viet Cong returned and sniped at our position. Some of the men saw them clearly, and we returned a tremendous amount of fire. Peterson’s platoon fired flares more quickly this time. Interdiction rounds from our mortars flew over us and landed in the jungle well beyond the perimeter. The noise, the tracers, the fluorescent half-light from the flares were surreal, like Halloween.
Woolley was yelling on the radio, “What’s going on? What’s going on? Red Cap Twigs Alpha November Six?”
I hollered to the men to stop firing. In the rear we could hear fresh mortar rounds “whoof” as they left their tubes, whistled overhead, and exploded in the jungle in front of us. There was no other sound except low half-whispers from our men discussing the attack.
“We were probed again. It’s quiet. Nothing more. No casualties,” I reported to Woolley.
The next day we went out to the anthill on the other side of the concertina wire. There was no evidence that anyone had been there the night before. We could find no expended cartridges; the grass was not matted down. When I talked to Woolley later, I found myself defending my platoon’s actions. Why were we the only ones probed? Woolley asked. “Well, maybe,” I suggested, “because there’s that trail that comes near my part of the perimeter from the village. Maybe that’s it.”
Bratcher and I later decided to put some men in the jungle in front of the perimeter for a few nights in hopes of catching the probers. There was a point of honor here. Had we been firing at ghosts? Spencer and Beck were drafted to man the listening post. At mid-afternoon I took two squads for a small patrol out to the trail leading from the village. I carried my shotgun with the sawed-off barrel. Woolley knew about the gun. In fact, he had smuggled a shotgun himself to Vietnam—a Browning 12-gauge automatic.
On the way back to the perimeter, near the anthill, Spencer and Beck dropped into a thicket where they would spend the night in hopes of catching our visitors if they came calling. Spencer gave me a resigned look as he disappeared into the bamboo.
That night, I sat on top of my bunker and suddenly felt a breeze. I remembered Cottonpicker talking about spooking game when the wind was in his back. Creatures living in the woods can smell creatures that don’t. The wind was blowing away from the perimeter, taking Spencer and Beck’s scent into the jungle. How good are the Viet Cong? I wondered. Then it started to rain. Beck cursed the next time he called in. He was cold, wet, and sleepy. I told him to shut up and do his duty.
When the rain stopped, I went back out on the bunker. Clouds covered the moon. I squinted to make out images in front and listened closely. Focusing on the jungle, I strained to hear any footfalls of Viet Cong moving behind Beck and Spencer. Rain dripped off leaves and branches, and a slight breeze caused some of the foliage to sway. I could almost make out images of people along the wood line and hear footsteps. Once, I was sure I saw a man holding a gun across his body as he stood by a tree between us and my two soldiers. I asked the RTO if he saw anything. He looked for a long time but could not see anyone. When I looked again the image had changed into a tall bush.
Beck and Spencer were at the wire at first light. Patrick went out through the safe lane to escort them in.
Later that day we went out by the anthill and cleared away some bushes that I had imagined to be Viet Cong the night before. Bratcher hid two directional claymore mines behind the anthill and ran wires along the safe lane to the machine gun bunker. If someone climbed up behind that anthill and fired, we could just mash a button to detonate the claymores and the entire area behind the anthill would be a killing zone.
Bratcher was in the machine gun bunker that night. I instructed the men not to fire for any reason until the claymores went off. If the sniper came back and fired, Bratcher would take him out.
Showers continued on and off all night with the moon breaking out of the clouds periodically. Several times I thought I saw movement by the anthill. The more I watched, however, the clearer it was to me how the eye can be fooled.
There were no sniper attacks that night. The next day most of the men in the platoon worked to clear an area where we were going to build a tent city for the battalion. It would include an aid station, ammo dump, supply area, latrines, showers, and mess halls. After we staked out the streets the area began to resemble a Wild West frontier town.
Bratcher manned the detonators for the claymores that night and the men had instructions again not to fire until the mines went off. Near midnight a single round zipped over the perimeter. I was instantly wide awake and expected to hear the mines. After a few minutes I called out to Bratcher. He said he was waiting. He hadn’t seen where the shot had come from, and wasn’t sure it was from the anthill. Somebody down the line thought he saw a muzzle blast off to the right. The moon was out, and the anthill was clearly visible on the edge of the jungle.
Fire again, you son of a bitch, I thought. Fire.
There were no more rounds during the night. Ayers, Castro, Bratcher, and I went out to the anthill the next morning. Ayers stood guard near the jungle as Castro, Bratcher, and I looked around. At first we saw no signs of anyone having been there the night before.
“Lieutenant,” Castro suddenly said, “look at this.” He was standing by the area where we had hidden one of the claymores two days before. It had been moved, turned, and aimed back at our machine gun position at the end of the safe lane.
The other claymore was missing. The wire had been cut.
“Very cute,” Bratcher said, his neck tightening. “If I had detonated the mine we would have gotten splattered. As it is, the guy still got one of our mines.”
“Clever little bugger,” I said, although there was some gratification in knowing that there were VC operating outside our lines and we weren’t shooting at shadows.
That same day we received orders for a battalion-size patrol operation twenty kilometers to our north. My platoon led the battalion north, and at dusk four hundred infantrymen of the 1st of the 28th Infantry were in position along a VC supply trail.
Around three o’clock in the morning Lyons crawled over to the tree where I was sleeping. He shook me awake and said he thought some men were carrying things down the trail. I couldn’t fathom what was going on. Lyons didn’t see things that weren’t there, and it hadn’t been raining. If Viet Cong were walking down the trail, units on either side should have fired at them. The whole battalion was near the trail. I told him to go back to his position and if he saw anybody else walking down that trail, shoot him. Lyons crawled away and disappeared in the dark jungle. I had just decided to follow him and see these men on the trail for myself when he started firing his M-14 on full automatic.
The night was suddenly filled with tracers and the thunderous sound of automatic rifle fire. It finally died down and then stopped completely as the word circulated: “Hold your fire.”
In the quiet that followed we heard a man groaning. He called out in Vietnamese. Around him, from my platoon and down the line, men fired toward the sound. I yelled to stop the firing. There was quiet. Then I heard the man groan again. A long painful wail. Some men fired again. I yelled again to stop the firing.
Colonel Haldane and Captain Woolley crawled up with a Vietnamese interpreter. Out in front the man babbled Vietnamese. Haldane asked the interpreter what he was saying.
“He says he is shot and he says he hurts. He asks us to help.”
Woolley and Haldane exchanged looks without comment.
“I think … I think, maybe trap. Maybe other Viet Cong around. He has gun for sure,” the interpreter offered.
“Yeah, well what’s he saying?” asked Haldane.
“He says he hurts a lot,” the interpreter said after a pause.
“Continue talking to him. Try to find out if he is really alone,” Haldane ordered in a hushed voice.
In the jungle to our front, the groans had no accent; the tremor in the low wails were an international human expression of pain. But could that be faked? Were we being baited to come out of our perimeter?
The moaning continued for an hour or so, but became gradually weaker. It stopped before the sun came up.
At first light my platoon moved out toward the area where the sound had come from. The young Vietnamese man was dead. He had taken off his watch and tried to hide it in some bushes near his outstretched hand. A bag of rice lay some distance away. The man was unarmed. The first Viet Cong killed by the battalion was an unarmed porter. We had come halfway around the world to kill a laborer.
“Ain’t war fun,” Spencer said, standing near the dead man. Surprisingly, I did not feel much remorse, although I had listened to the man as he died. It had been frightening in the darkness, not knowing if other VC were around us, getting ready to attack. Plus I had been frustrated by our lack of catching the VC who had probed our part of the perimeter at the base camp. Last night, in the dark, we had reached out to get the enemy and had only gotten a porter, but it was a start. We had much to learn about jungle fighting.
I walked away from the dead man without looking back, saying under my breath, “Don’t probe my perimeter anymore.”
The battalion swept the area from the trail down to the river and uncovered a large store of rice. Some of the bags had the sign of clasped hands across the ocean on them, which indicated that the rice was part of U.S. aid to the region.
While burning down a hootch near the rice cache, Patrick was standing by, lighting a cigarette, when suddenly he heard a shot. He dropped to the ground, brought his rifle to his shoulder, and looked around wildly for the enemy. The rest of the men in his squad did not react.
“The bamboo,” De Leon said. “It’s the bamboo burning. Sections popping. Get up. Nobody’s shooting at you, sweetheart.”
The bamboo continued to pop as Patrick got to his feet.
Later when we broke down into platoon patrols for the move back to the base camp, a grenade on Manuel’s web belt came unscrewed and fell to the ground. The firing pin was still on his belt.
“Grenade!” he yelled, as he dived away.
He lay there, his mouth wide open and his eyes shut tight, waiting for the explosion that would take his life. After a minute the men around him got to their feet. Bratcher walked up and saw the fuse, pin, and handle still on Manuel’s belt, who continued to lie on the ground with a confused look on his face.
“Good God almighty,” Bratcher said, “how can we be expected to fight in this war when we got dumbbells for soldiers? Get your fat ass up, Manuel. You ain’t going to die. Fix your frigging grenade and move out.”
Over the course of the next few days the platoon was assigned to work details to fix up the company area, erect tents, dig latrines, and string wire. Ernst, Duckett, Pete, and I moved into a tent next to company headquarters, near the mess hall. My platoon was in two similar-size tents down the company street. We changed our routine from having the whole platoon on the line each night to posting a small twenty-four-hour guard detail.
Periodically at night, the mortar platoons, including Pete’s in our company and the 4.2-inch mortars at battalion, shot harassment and interdiction (H&I) fire at randomly selected road junctions or trails. The purpose was to keep the Viet Cong, if there were any out there, on their toes and wary of mindless wandering near our position.
One night one of the battalion’s mortar platoons misfired an H&I round into a group of huts northwest of the friendly village of Phuoc Vinh. The local ARVN unit advised our battalion about the accident early the next morning. Company A was sent out to investigate.
The huts were separated from the main part of the village along a river, and the mortar round had landed directly on top of a hut in the center. A woman and two men had been killed and several other people wounded, including some children. The dead were lying in the shade by the side of a hut when we arrived, their bloodstained night clothing only partially covering the gaping holes in their bodies. The villagers were wailing and crying. Most of the wounded had been evacuated to a hospital in town, but a few of the lesser wounded were standing around, displaying fresh bandages. Through an interpreter, we took information about the time of the accident, the number of casualties, and the exact location of the huts.
The hit occurred at approximately the same time that an H&I round was fired by the battalion 4.2-mortar platoon at a road target near the huts. Our unit had killed the civilians. It was a mistake, and everyone was sorry.
“Things like these happen in wars,” Bratcher said, twitching his jaw. “We just got to hang in there and learn how to do it right. War ain’t never been easy. Or error-free.”
Two nights later to the west, near the huts we had accidentally hit with our mortar fire, several rockets were laid in wooden V wedges and ignited by a small group of people, probably Viet Cong. The rockets soared up and into our base camp and landed in Company B’s area. The west side of the perimeter was probed at about the same time.
Within ten minutes from the time of the first rocket explosion, everything became quiet. I reported to Woolley that there was no activity in my sector, but I continued to stand in the command bunker and scan the edge of the jungle line. There was no conversation on the radio. Finally the field telephone rang. My RTO said it was Lieutenant Peterson.
“Dunn’s wounded,” Pete said. “He’s at the aid tent.”
I took a flashlight and made my way to the aid tent near the center of the base camp. Haldane and Allee were just coming out through the blackout curtain. Haldane said Dunn was going to be all right. Inside the tent, three men were lying on stretchers on the floor. Dunn was on the operating/examination table. He was talking fast to the battalion surgeon, Dr. Isaac Goodrich, and the corpsmen attending him.
“Goddamn that hurts. Quit it. Goddammit. Quit it. Quit it.”
“Lieutenant,” said Goodrich, “if you don’t shut up, we are going to quit it and leave you alone to sew up your own mess.
Shut up.”
Dunn had shrapnel wounds on his chest, arms, stomach, and legs, but they did not appear to be life threatening. The corpsmen were probing in the open wounds to find the shrapnel, occasionally extracted bits of metal, and dropped them in a stainless steel pan on a nearby table.
“Owweeee,” Dunn moaned, though not very seriously. “Don’t you have some laughing gas or opium or something? Aren’t there supposed to be some female nurses around here? Owweeee.”
“Bob,” I said, “I just talked with some of your men. They did it. Threw grenades at you. Don’t like you. Tried to kill you. They’re standing around outside, some of them, taking bets on whether you live or die. Only no one wants to take bets that you live.”
“Owweeee, Jimmy. Ohhhhhh, Jimmy. I don’t like this. You gotta help me.”
I took out a .45-pistol round and put it in his mouth. “Bite on this,” I said. “It’s the way they do it in the movies.”
Dunn was flown out to the 93d Field Hospital in Bien Hoa the following day. The doctor opined that he would be back in the unit within weeks. He had lost some blood and had some nicks, but he was going to be all right.
Shortly after Dunn left the battalion received orders to provide protection to a truck convoy traveling between Phuoc Vinh and Bien Hoa. We were deployed along the road in advance of the convoy and spent several days in relaxed platoon-size positions as the trucks sped by. We received mixed reactions from the civilians in the area. Some of the older men and women ignored us and stayed out of our way. Others, especially the children, were fascinated and watched as we approached, smiling when we smiled. Rumors circulated that we should not buy drinks from the locals because glass and poison had been found in Cokes sold by children in other areas.
After the convoys passed we were trucked down to the edge of Bien Hoa, where we were to camp while the trucks were loaded. We expected to be in the bivouac area for several days. The day we arrived there, Pete, Duckett, and I borrowed a Jeep and went into Bien Hoa. I went to a furniture maker and placed an order for a bar for our tent at Phuoc Vinh. The furniture maker promised to have it finished by the next afternoon.
We wandered from the furniture maker’s shop down to a strip of bars and noticed that we were dirtier than most of the U.S. soldiers we passed, who we assumed worked at the Bien Hoa logistic command.
“It’s like the Wild West movies, you know,” Pete said. “These here are townies and we’re just in from the range, covered with trail dust.”
An Armed Forces Radio station was on in the bar we finally entered, reporting on an upcoming Bob Hope concert. We envied the way the local GIs seemed to know their way around the bar, playing darts and talking with the girls. One of the soldiers came up to Duckett and asked if he had any souvenirs for sale. “Beg your pardon?” Duckett said.
“Viet Cong stuff, flags, AK-47s, hats,” the soldier clarified. “Big price for it at Bien Hoa, though they make VC flags in some of the shops better than the real thing.”
“Nope, we ain’t got none of that,” Duckett said as McCoy came in the bar and joined us.
“I tell you what,” he said. “This is the way to do the war—inside work, light lifting, air conditioners, bars, girls, cold beer.”
“You’re going candy ass, George?” I said.
“Ah, the romance has gone out of being in the infantry,” George said. “A little logistic command assignment, two or three months down here—I could do that.”
We noticed a drunk soldier, with pressed fatigues and shined boots, groping at a bar girl.
“Well, I don’t know,” George said. “Maybe it is better out in the boonies. The beer tasted better when you could get it cold. You’re thirstier, you know what I mean? Didn’t have to worry about dressing up for any Bob Hope concert.”
The next day I commandeered an empty deuce-and-a-half truck and, with Manuel driving, returned to the furniture maker. The bar was everything I had expected. Nicely curved on one end with adjustable shelves behind. A water-resistant top. We took it back to our bivouac area and put ponchos over it, more for protection against the possibility of rain than to hide it. When the convoy was assembled the following day, I located a driver who was taking supplies to our battalion, and he agreed to put the bar on top of his load. I assigned Manuel as the bar guard and told him to ride in the back and protect that bar with his life.
I was standing by Woolley as the convoy passed. Manuel was on the back of one of the first vehicles. The bar, obvious to me because of its shape, was under wraps. I waved to Manuel. Woolley put his head to one side as he looked at me, quizzically.
Manuel had the bar in our tent when we finally arrived three days later. Woolley came in and asked where it came from.
“Damned if I know, but it sure is pretty,” I said. “Something to come home to from those long camping trips we take around here.”
An hour later Colonel Haldane and Major William E. Panton, the battalion G-3 (operations officer), walked into the tent, looked at the bar, then at me, and walked out without comment.
I wrote to several liquor companies at the addresses on their bottles and asked for bar accessories, napkins, shot glasses, anything to give our bar a professional touch. Within weeks I began to get packages. Each liquor company responded and was generous with gifts. Our bar soon had all the machinery of a first-rate neighborhood gin mill.
Mail call was the most important part of the day to most of the soldiers. Late in the afternoon Bratcher picked up the platoon’s mail from the company clerk. He called the men into the company street and yelled out the names on the packages and letters. Ayers was always in the front, but he never seemed to get any mail. Bratcher said that it was painful for him, when he had to tell Ayers that he got no mail; the big lug always looked so hurt. It wasn’t that Ayers didn’t write to anyone. Every couple of days he gave the company clerk a painfully addressed letter to someone in the Midwest. As far as we knew, no one ever responded.
Ray Ernst also had a man in his platoon who didn’t receive mail and, like Ayers, stood in the front during each mail call. Ernst wrote to a preacher friend, who organized an Operation Alpha Company. Members of his congregation sent personal letters to men in the company, including Ayers. Bratcher was also careful to call out Ayers’s name for boxes addressed to “Anyone in Alpha Company, 1st/28th Infantry.” We were soon receiving care packages from other churches, civic organizations, and grammar school classes. We got a lot of Kool-Aid; some newspaperman somewhere must have written, “Those boys over there need Kool-Aid to win this war,” ’cause we got Kool-Aid packages by the hundred. No one ever used them.
Dunn returned from the field hospital within a month. We had a “welcome home” party for him at the bar.
We continued to widen our area of operations in November and December, sweeping farther and farther from our base camp. In late November we had returned from a battalion-size sweep when we were visited by a congressional delegation led by Sen. Jacob Javits. The officers and NCOs of the company were standing in a loose formation near the company headquarters when the senator arrived. As he came down the line, he asked me if I needed anything or if there was anything he could do for me back home. I told him that we had a bar in our tent, but we needed a picture of a nude behind it.
“I am trying to upgrade the ambience of the place,” I added.
“A nude?” the senator asked hesitantly, as though my request was slightly uncongressional.
“Yes sir,” I said.
I did not look at Woolley or Haldane, because I knew they were glaring. Second lieutenants should not be forward with congressional delegations. Certainly they shouldn’t ask for pictures of naked women. Javits smiled and wished me well.
In late November 1965 my platoon was on patrol south of the base camp. Private De Leon and Sergeant Rome were on point. As they broke out of a bamboo thicket De Leon dropped to one knee and Rome lifted his arm in the air, stopping the platoon. Rome turned, made eye contact with me, and called in a loud whisper, “Lieutenant!”
Rome moved off to one side behind a tree and I joined him there. We looked through the jungle toward a small Vietnamese village in front of us. Off to the side of the village near an open field, several women wearing straw cone hats were sifting rice, separating it from the chaff. Several old men and a few children were moving around among the huts. Smoke from two cooking fires drifted up.
“No men,” De Leon observed. “Don’t look right.”
A chicken crowed from inside the village and then, closer to us, some pigs snorted.
I leaned against the back side of the tree, wiped my brow, and pulled a map from my side pocket. Sergeant Bratcher walked up. When he took in the scene and saw me studying the map, he turned and motioned for the platoon behind us in the thicket to get down and rest.
The village was clearly marked on my map, as was the nearby rice field where the women were working. The map indicated that a path ran from the village across our front to a road five kilometers distant to the west. On the other side of the village from us was another rice field.
We had been in Vietnam now for seven weeks. Although my men had killed the VC rice porter—and had been probed at our base camp—the platoon had not been fully engaged by the enemy. We were coming together as a unit, however, and becoming comfortable in the jungle, more sure of ourselves, as we gradually extended our patrols farther away from other friendly units. We looked jungle tough. Because we carried our weapons with us every minute we were in the field, they became extensions of our bodies. Our field uniforms and web gear were becoming faded; the coverings to our steel pots were personalized with identifying marks—girlfriend names, personal mottoes, and so on. Most of us carried our C rations in extra socks hanging off the back of our packs. Although we looked like pack mules with all of our gear, we did not clank when we walked. On patrol, every day, we moved more silently as we learned to traverse jungle obstacles, but we were tired of trudging endlessly through the jungles. We wanted to engage the Viet Cong, and we felt that we were getting closer. Newsome, my radio operator, in fact, had remarked during our last break that he felt we were being watched.
It was mid-afternoon but still hot. We heard no sounds from the women, old men, and children in the village, only the distant steady thumping of threshing rice and the whirring of nearby insects.
I reached for the handset to the PRC-25 radio. “Red Cap Twigs Alpha Six, this is Red Cap Twigs Alpha November Six, over,” I said, calling Captain Woolley in a soft voice.
There was a short pause. Then, “Yeah, November Six, this is Alpha Six, what’s your location, over?”
After giving a coordinate from the map, I turned to look at the Vietnamese people working to my front and said, “We’re near this village, and there ain’t no men that we can see. Maybe twenty women, children, old people. I think they know we’re here, but they ain’t looking this way. Just going on about their business. Don’t like it. What you want me to do, over?”
During a long pause, I stared at the back of an old man in black pajamas who was sitting in the shade of a hut, stiffly staring away from us. I sensed he was listening intently. He probably had heard the distinctive sound of the radio-breaking squelch.
“Alpha November Six, this is Alpha Six. Go on around the village; don’t go mixing it up with civilians. You’re out there looking for VC. Go on, you got another few klicks to go anyway to tie up with Alpha Mike Six before sundown. Circle the village and continue on. You copy, over?”
I acknowledged the order and handed the handset back to the RTO as I pushed myself away from the tree. Sergeant Rome had also heard the company commander’s order. He rose from his squatting position and turned to me. I motioned with my head to stay well within the jungle and pass the village to the left. As Rome and then De Leon started moving, a dog in the village began barking. I stood by the tree and watched the village as my platoon slowly filed by. The dog continued to bark loudly. The old man sitting in the shade did not move.
Falling in near the end of the patrol, I walked alongside PFC Joaquin S. Cipriano for several minutes, although my attention was still on the village we were passing. Cipriano had not been feeling well lately. “I’m sick,” he said. “Stomach, plus I’m hacking up some crud. Feel like I got bugs or worms or something. Really, I ain’t making this up.”
I heard him, but my focus was to our right. Finally I looked in his direction and we made eye contact.
Cipriano smiled. “Back home, feeling the way I do, my momma would make me some soup.”
Smiling at him, I made no comment and moved up the patrol line to fall in near Newsome with the radio. Ahead, De Leon and Rome cautiously came to the path leading across our front to the village. De Leon stuck his head out into the pathway, looked both ways, and took three quick steps to the other side. Rome followed and then a few more soldiers. I crossed the path, and one by one, the rest of the platoon began to cross. Up ahead, De Leon was approaching the second rice field, and I strained to see if there was anyone working in the field.
With fearful suddenness, a sharp sound cracked through the air. For a second, an enormously loud blast consumed us. Shrapnel shredded the foliage around us, and everyone hit the ground.
“Owweeee,” someone in great pain yelled immediately. De Leon began firing his M-14 on full automatic. I fell to my knees behind an anthill, but couldn’t see anyone between us and the rice field.
“What the hell’s happening, De Leon?” I yelled.
Behind me, near the path, I heard again, “Iiioooooowwwwweeeeee,” and then, “Oh Mother of Mercy, oh God, oh God, oh God, I’m dying. Iiiiooooooowwwweeee.”
“Nothing just yet, but I ain’t letting no one come up on me,” De Leon answered. Behind at the path, more screaming. “Medic, medic, medic! God, where’s the medic?”
Quickly moving back, I saw Cipriano lying facedown at the side of the path. He had a large, bloody wound in his back, above his pack, near his neck. He kept yelling for the medic. Nearby on the path was a hole surrounded by fresh dirt blown away by a mine. Two wires sticking out of the hole led back toward the village. Someone had touched off the mine as Cipriano passed. A patrol member applied a bandage to the wound. I told Cipriano to be still and it would be all right.
Crazed with fear and pain, he kept looking around as he said, “I’m dying, Doc. I can’t feel nothing. I can’t feel my legs or my arms or nothing, Doc. And goddamn it hurts. Don’t let me die. Please don’t let me die.”
Newsome had followed me back to the path. He had called in a medevac helicopter, and I took the radio to report to the company commander. As I finished, the air ambulance chopper was arriving; it must have been very close by. I sent men to surround a nearby clearing and throw purple smoke into the field. Within minutes, possibly less than fifteen after the mine had exploded, Cipriano was on the chopper heading for a hospital. He was still conscious, but he had bled a great deal and bloody bandages covered his back. Lying on his stomach in the back of the helicopter, he looked in our direction with eyes glazed in pain. As the helicopter rose out of the field, the corpsman on board was clearing Cipriano’s weapon. Helicopter gunships buzzed the tree lines on either side.
Then it was quiet again, and we went into the village.
I sent some of the men to the far side, and they herded the women from their rice chores back into the center of the village while the rest of the platoon searched the huts. Shortly, all the villagers were collected near me in front of one of the cooking fires. There were no young men—just women, old people, and children standing in a huddle as they fearfully looked around at us. But I knew that one of them had set off the mine that had wounded my man, or perhaps killed him or maimed him for life. Or, if one of them had not set off the mine, they were hiding the person who did.
Rome, Bratcher, De Leon, and the others had stopped their noisy search of the small village and gathered around to look at the Vietnamese. The loud dog, beaten off by one of my soldiers, continued to bark at the side of a hut.
To let the Vietnamese go free would certainly mean that they would shield attacks on other Americans patrolling their countryside, looking for their Viet Cong brothers, fathers, and sons. Allowing them to go without punishment would not further our ends or vindicate the attack on Cipriano. They were the enemy—directly or indirectly. I felt something needed to be done.
None of us in the platoon spoke their language. We could not threaten or interrogate them or make them understand why we were here. What could we do?
De Leon walked up with a VC flag he had found in a tree on the edge of the village.
Beck picked up the old man who had sat silently in the shade of the hut and shook him. The old man did not show fear, and I told Beck to release him.
A few moments later I ordered the men to move out, and we left the villagers alone, unhurt. It is not pleasant to be the conventional force in a guerrilla war—maintaining high moral standards of conduct when the enemy is engaged in total war. It is a hard war to win.