11 February 1968
Now I knew without a doubt that we were in deep shit. For a lingering, uncomfortable moment, I felt as though we had accidentally stumbled into the twilight zone. The view was radically different from any other that I had experienced in Vietnam. We had walked through an invisible curtain from an achingly green, vividly living world, into a black and white madness of destruction and death.
Having spent all my time in firebases, rural villages, and “the bush” (except for my fast passage in a jeep through Da Nang from the airport to the regimental firebase in Hoi An), this was the first time since arriving in country that I had spent any time in a business district. Two-story concrete structures commanded the view in all directions. We had stumbled into the Vietnamese version of the “mini-mall.”
Or rather what was left of it. . . .
A thick, dank pallor of smoke shrouded the entire disrupted scene. The air was heavy with the conflicting, gagging smells of battle and death. The lingering smoke from the battle had begun to thin out now, allowing us a view of ruined businesses and destroyed lives. The usually faithful breeze from the South China Sea was utterly still, seemingly reluctant to remove the stench of war, the odorous evidence of man’s stupidity. Movement, what little there was of it, was tentative and cautious. The few residents of south Hue who had ventured outdoors resembled zombie cattle immediately after a fierce summer storm. In a dazed stupor, they picked their way through the rubble that surrounded the intersection. They moved slowly, but there was a hysterical nervousness about them, as though they were about to burst into a panicked stampede, to get out of there, anywhere. I was convinced that if anyone made a sudden noise, the small handful of Vietnamese citizens picking through the rubble would quickly vanish and would never be seen here again.
As I walked further into the shattered intersection, the main focus of my now totally monochrome vision forced me to look at something my mind had a hard time dealing with. In the center of the intersection, an American M-48 tank was standing on its turret, upside down. It had obviously been blown up and turned over by a large, powerful explosion. The crew never had a chance. The tank’s hull was totally burned out. Its companion, another M-48 tank, sat close by, also out of action, with a small but obviously unauthorized hole in its turret and one damaged tread. The second tank appeared to be otherwise unharmed, but it was also abandoned, as though reluctant to leave its destroyed mate behind.
All the buildings that congregated at the intersection had been damaged, some reduced to burned-out hulks, shells of their former selves. Rubble covered the streets, making it difficult for me to walk without looking at the ground right in front of my feet. Watching your feet was not a good thing to do where the enemy might still be holed up. The intersection, then, had been the focal point of one of the many battles that 2/5 had fought during the past two weeks to clear south Hue. The unwelcome, unmistakable smell of death permeated both the air and my thoughts.
We didn’t stop; it would have been like crashing a funeral. L. Cpl. Ed Estes’s point man, a private first class named Robert Lattimer, continued through the obstacle course slowly, steadily, quietly, and cautiously, his M-16 rifle persistently scanning the area ahead of us. We kept moving, hoping to put these scenes behind us and out of our minds. It didn’t take much imagination to consider what it must have been like to have been in the middle of that firefight.
We could hear sporadic gunfire and a few muffled explosions in the distance, the noise coming from the northwest, where, we were told during the Phu Bai briefing, the Marines of 2/5 were still “mopping up.” The violent sounds of the distant battle, strangely enough, gave me some comfort. If there was fighting just a couple of clicks away, then the bulk of the enemy was most likely over there and not hiding here, watching us walk through the fruits of their labor, waiting for the right moment to strike again.
We kept putting one foot in front of the other, and eventually the scene was left behind. Like all good Marines throughout history, we had a mission to accomplish; to stop our inexorable forward progress for more than a moment would be like taunting history.
Proceeding north from the shattered intersection and out of the business district, Highway One made its way into some open land, in what appeared to be long-unused rice paddies. I knew from reading my map that this was the last vacant land until we reached the south shore of the Perfume River, where the MACV compound was located. The point element of Charlie One was about five hundred meters past the blown-up tanks when Scott Nelson, Charlie Six Actual, radioed us to hold up and “take five.” I think he had just reached the blown-up tanks and wanted to check everything out before we went much further.
Staff Sergeant Mullan was bringing up the rear element of Charlie One, and I was in my normal position with Estes’s point squad, following behind the first fire team, the four men comprising one of the three fire teams of Charlie One Alpha. I had Benny call Sergeant Mullan to make sure that the Marines of Charlie One were spread out and had taken whatever cover the side of the road afforded. I then had him tell them to take five, but not to get comfortable. I could tell from their actions that my words were unnecessary; the blown-up tanks had gotten everyone’s attention. No one spoke, no one grab-assed. Everyone silently fanned out and took up temporary firing positions. Many of us automatically engaged in “Sawaya surveys,” a technique for visually surveying the surrounding terrain, which had been refined by, and named for, a Charlie One squad leader who had died in the Hoi An area of operations.
Behind us was an amazing scene of widespread destruction, and ahead of us apparently would be much more of the same. Seventy-five meters further north on Highway One, a large explosion had blown away the front of a formerly large and substantial two-story home. The house could have been built by dairy farmers in rural southwestern Oregon where I had grown up, or it could have been built by the owners of a French vineyard. A huge, gaping hole shattered both illusions.
Banners and South Vietnamese flags, once strung gaily across Highway One and other large city streets in celebration of the Tet New Year holidays, now hung askew, draped at crazy angles across the road. Concrete chunks and other litter were randomly spread across the street. My Sawaya survey stopped abruptly as my eyes reluctantly but inescapably focused on several bodies lying near the center of the blast site. There were at least four, perhaps five, bodies lying there. From my viewpoint, it looked as though a small family had died as a result of the rocket or artillery round, satchel charge, or whatever had devastated the front of their home. At least two bodies were obviously children.
Three Vietnamese men were slowly encouraging an old, worn-out water buffalo pulling an ancient wooden cart to get into position beside the dead family. With handkerchiefs tied around the lower part of their faces, they were a surreal imitation of the outlaws of the old American West.
As my insides played host to conflicting emotions, my body unconsciously shuddered in response to the carnage, and I forced myself to break the hold that the scene of death had established over my consciousness. Quite deliberately, I turned away and continued the Sawaya survey. Only now I took my time and focused on my platoon.
My men, the fifty-one Marines comprising the First Platoon of Charlie Company, were not acting normally, if there ever was such a thing as “normal behavior” for a Marine infantryman in the bush. Every man was quiet, crouching but ready in his assigned temporary firing position, watchful, thoughtful. They were obviously taking very seriously the blatant warning of the two destroyed M-48 tanks and the continuing gunfire off in the distance.
This was not at all like any of our previous experiences in the jungles and the villages, on patrols and in night ambushes, when you had to be quiet or quite possibly die a violent death. Here, today, upon entering the ravaged shell of south Hue, everyone just was quiet. It was broad daylight, a little before noon, the time of day when the inevitable grab-ass of a Marine unit was usually at its height. Now, everyone seemed to sense that we were on the edge, the “cusp,” of something that none of us wanted but toward which we were incessantly driven, as though we were all components of one large, ungainly Marine Corps—green organism. We were being drawn forward, toward Hue. The Citadel. I couldn’t see it yet, but I knew it was there. It had a palpable presence in my mind. Its image on my maps only served to cause further discomfort.
As I stood in the middle of the street, witnessing the vast destruction around us, I felt unable to fully comprehend and appreciate what the fighting had been like on this side of the Perfume River. I couldn’t help wondering what would it be like inside the Citadel, which was reportedly 90 percent under control of NVA forces. If we could get inside the Citadel in the first place . . .
Shaking off those unwelcome thoughts, I continued my slow survey of Charlie One. Satisfied that there was nothing I could do about anything I was seeing, I forced myself to break the silence. “Benny, call Charlie Six and give him this position report: We’re on the street located at: From reference point Los Angeles, right two-point-two, down one-point-five.” Benny began to call in the position report immediately in his Tennessee twang. Charlie Six’s radio operator could pinpoint our location by going to the “cities” reference point that was marked and maintained on Scott Nelson’s command and control map and by traversing east (right) 2.2 clicks and then south (down) 1.5 clicks. Since the command map was a duplicate of the one that I was carrying, and since the reference points were changed, like any good code, on a frequent but irregular basis, we could radio our positions quickly and easily without worrying that the enemy was monitoring our radio traffic. Since they didn’t have the reference points, they had no way of pinpointing our location quickly using our own position reports.
The spot that I was indicating on the map was about a click south of the MACV compound, our next objective, which was situated approximately one hundred meters from the southern bank of the Perfume River. There was a large bridge on the map where Highway One went across on its way north, and just on the other side of the river was the huge, intimidating square that represented the Citadel on my map. According to the map, the damned thing was almost a mile and a half square, had walls thirty feet high, could only be entered through one of ten gates, and even had a water-filled moat all the way around it. It was like something out of medieval Europe, only grotesquely huge. From this point of view—from the outside looking in—taking the Citadel back from the NVA forces that had seized it the night that hell broke loose was going to be numbah fuckin’ ten!
As I shook off that thought, yet another in an unending series of increasingly uncomfortable ponderings since leaving the Lang Co Bridge, I forced myself to study my new 1:10,000 map of the Hue area, looking for whatever information I could glean, searching for something to be confident about. But scanning the new, still foreign map did nothing to instill confidence.
The map was another problem in itself. It really bothered me. I had never been issued any other map like it during my entire lifetime-long three-month tour in Vietnam. The maps we had used humping through the rice paddies and mountainous jungle terrain of I Corps had always been 1:50,000 terrain maps.
Peering closely at my new 1:10,000 map, I could clearly see the house just north of us, the one that had its front blown off, the one with the dead family. There it was on the map, that little dot. I wondered briefly if I should cross it off or try to erase it.
“Sheeit, Lootenant. Lookit the size of that damned thang. What the fuck is that, over?” As I already described, Benny Benware, standing just behind me and looking over my shoulder, was normally a man of few words except when on the radio. And when he did have a normal conversation, he often stayed within the radioman’s language, letting you know when he was done talking by saying, “Over,” or “Out.” Like me, he must have been startled to see so large a structure as the Citadel on a map of Vietnam, and that had started this unusual burst of conversation.
I glanced back at Benny and said, “It’s called ‘the Citadel,’ Benny. That’s where we’re headed. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be briefing all the squad leaders later on when we get to our objective for the day, and you can sit in. I’ll tell you everything that I know, but I’ve got the feeling that we’re all gonna’ learn a lot about the Citadel real soon. I hear it’s not too healthy in there right now.” Hoping I had covered the tremolo in my voice, unconsciously still striving for the “command presence” drilled into me during OCS and Basic School, I continued, “Call the squad leaders up for a brief powwow, Benny.”
Turning away from Benny, I began another survey of the situation in front of us. My attention was immediately drawn back toward the dead family. The scene had almost been played out. The three masked men had loaded up all the bodies except one. Only the father was still on the street, having not yet joined his family on the simple, two-wheeled cart. The water buffalo stood placidly waiting orders to proceed to the next death stop.
Two of the masked men quickly adjusted their handkerchief masks over their mouths and noses in a vain attempt to block the stench of death. They then reluctantly but stoically bent down on either side of the father and, grasping him by the arm and leg on their side, began to hoist him up onto the cart. I tried to turn away, to force myself to think about my men, our tactical situation, anything, but it was futile. Something inside of me had to see it all.
The father must have been killed by a direct hit of something large and metallic in his face, because he had no face; he only had a large, bloody cavity where a face and forehead should be. As the men picked him up, his brain fell out of his face and onto the street. Both of the workers lurched violently, managing to throw the father onto the cart, on top of his shattered, eternally waiting family, before they staggered away. Both of them fell to their knees right there in the middle of the street, tore off their masks, and began vomiting violently and convulsively.
And then it happened again. It had happened before a couple of times, but never as distinctly and as forcefully as now. I felt time stopping, with my normal self and everyone else around me instantly freezing, unable to move, not caring if I ever moved again. And then another part of me, that being with whom I would become very well acquainted in the next few weeks and months, the personality that I eventually came to know as “the observer,” stepped out of my body and moved several feet away from me. The observer was able to tear his eyes away from the bloody mess in the street, and with a distinct note of humor tinged with disgust, he said, “Don’t worry about it, guy. This is not real. It doesn’t hurt, does it? What’s the problem, anyway? Those aren’t real people anymore, right? This is just like in the movies, so don’t worry about it.” The observer was loose and relaxed, chuckling with the obvious humor of the moment. “The lieutenant,” that scared-stiff automaton, the other personality inside of me, the one that’s supposed to know what to do, could not move a muscle or make a sound. If I had moved at that moment I would have joined the two now-recovering Vietnamese vomiting in the middle of the street.
If it hadn’t been for Estes, I would probably still be frozen in time, standing in the middle of the damned street, still contemplating that moment’s horror and trying to understand it. But Estes, Sawaya’s replacement as squad leader of Charlie One Alpha, had walked up behind me quietly, as was his way. He had either not noticed my frozen discomfort or had not cared. In his quiet South Texas voice, Estes reunited the observer and the lieutenant abruptly, allowing my eyes to break away and finally focus on something not full of horror.
“You okay, Lieutenant?” asked Estes. “You look a little pale. Shouldn’t bother you at all, just some more dead gooks. The sooner they all die, the sooner we go back to the World.” Anyone who by chance met Ed Estes at this point in his young life and heard him make a cold-blooded statement like that would have thought that he had always been an all-out, no-holds-barred ultra-bigot toward Asians, especially the Vietnamese, because he no longer spoke with any distinction between friendly or enemy Vietnamese. To Estes now, they were all just gooks. But, that’s not at all what Ed Estes had been like just three months ago, when I met him for the first time.
L. Cpl. Ed Estes was a typical Marine enlisted man, just nineteen or twenty years old, but he was the exception to the rule because he was very mature for such a young age. Although my memories of Ed Estes have faded over two and a half decades, I remember that he was married, and if my memory serves me at all, he had a child, or perhaps even two young children, when he left home to serve his country in South Vietnam.
Although, to my discredit, I never got to know Ed personally very well, I remember him as having lived in South Texas, perhaps in a rural area. On the surface, he was a quiet, nice, likable young man. A typical Marine, he was about five foot seven, wiry and strong, but not aggressively so. His light brown, wispy hair was kept reasonably well trimmed, but not “gung-ho” short, and he was currently sporting an attempt at a mustache. Smart and very professional, he had been promoted to E-3, lance corporal, after only fifteen months in the Corps and had been one of Sawaya’s fire team leaders. Yes, Ed Estes had been a very likable young man. Until the night Sawaya and three other Marines of Charlie One were blown away by a command-detonated mine only a few feet outside of a “friendly” Vietnamese village just outside Charlie Company’s combat base at Hoi An.
Up until that explosive and deadly moment, Estes was not at all bigoted and had always reserved the title of “gook” to describe obvious enemies, Viet Cong and NVA soldiers. He had been respectful of the local peasants and had not gone out of his way to trouble them.
But the night Sawaya and the others were killed had changed all that. Estes never forgave the local villagers for not warning us. He blamed them for the fact that two squads of Charlie One were ripped apart and shredded by a “daisy chain” of two 105-mm artillery rounds, command-detonated by the local VC cadre, who, of course, immediately disappeared, melting into the shattered night. Estes had been there, on point. His fire team had walked right over the top of the booby-trapped artillery shells. The VC didn’t detonate their little surprise until the center of the night ambush patrol was directly over the killing ground. Three men died instantly, and Sawaya, the fourth, died on the medevac chopper. It had been amazing that Sawaya had not died instantly, as he had been standing right over the top of one of the shells, and the initial explosion had caused several of the five dozen M-79 shells that Sawaya always carried on patrol to explode as well. Most of Sawaya’s lower body was in shreds, and in spite of the constantly worn flak jacket, huge holes had been gouged into his back by the force of the secondary M-79 round explosions.
Three more Marines had been severely wounded and medevacced. Although he had been knocked down by the force of the explosion, Estes had been otherwise physically unharmed. But he had never been the same after that night.
Now, to Ed Estes, all Vietnamese were just gooks, regardless of their-walk of life. After Estes took over Sawaya’s squad on the strong recommendation of Sergeant Mullan, Charlie One Alpha had patrolled the next day under Estes’s leadership for the first time. Their daytime patrol route took them into the same area where the command-detonated explosion had occurred. For several days, I had been blissfully ignorant of what had happened. Later, after hearing some muttered rumors from another platoon commander, I confronted Sergeant Mullan, who reluctantly filled me in. Charlie One Alpha, with Ed Estes in command, had conducted its own “search and destroy” that afternoon. Although no one had been killed, it was only because the villagers were not stupid, having lived and survived in a battle zone for most or all of their lives; they all took off, and they stayed as far away from the Marine patrol as possible.
Most hooches that Charlie One Alpha went through that afternoon mysteriously went up in smoke. Charlie One Alpha had turned into a group of “Zippo warriors” on that sad afternoon.
Since none of the villagers had been hurt or killed, since there had been no repercussions or complaints from those who undoubtedly had known that the VC were planning something explosive in their neighborhood before Sawaya and his men were slaughtered, and since Estes seamlessly assumed command of Charlie One Alpha and had, except for that one event, done an outstanding job as a squad leader ever since, I never spoke with him about it. It was very difficult to look Estes square in the eyes these days.
Now, as I forced myself to stop looking at the lumpy reddish gray spot on the ground where the father’s head had been, I finally reacted to Estes’s quiet commentary. “Sure, Estes. I’m just fine. No problem. Where are the other squad leaders?” Unfortunately, my question needed no answer, because the other two squad leaders and Sergeant Mullan were all standing just behind Estes. Seeing the looks on all their faces, I was without a doubt that they had witnessed the tail end of the body-dumping episode as well.
I mentally shook the tragic picture from my mind and addressed the squad leaders. “Okay, listen up. I want you squad leaders to talk to your people and remind them that this area was no-man’s land just a couple of days ago. All they have to do is look around to know that this is a whole new deal. The shit could hit the fan at any time. No grab-assing. No horseplay. No nothing, except be alert and keep your heads down. We should be moving out any minute now, when Charlie Six gets done sifting through the rubble back there. Any questions?”
Usually, at least one of the squad leaders had some kind of a question or a comment, if for no other reason than to converse or to be a smart-ass. This time, no one had anything to say. Estes and the other two squad leaders turned away without a further thought or glance in my direction and walked back toward their troops, leaving me with Benny Benware, Sergeant Mullan, and my thoughts.
It was then that I noticed that I was sweating profusely and that my back under my pack, my hair, and my brow were soaking wet. The armpits of my utility blouse, the name given by the Marine Corps for the shirt part of the combat uniform, looked like I had been lounging in a sauna all morning. That could be understandable given the weight of my pack and the normal heat and humidity of Vietnam most of the year. But it was February, and it was overcast and downright cool. Although it was decidedly humid, the temperature couldn’t have been more than sixty degrees. And I was soaked with sweat.
I decided not to look over in the direction of the now-departing cart. In the still morning calm I could hear the rusty old wheels groan and creak in protest as the water buffalo trudged away and the Vietnamese men carried their countrymen away.
Benny’s nasal twang interrupted my perverse reverie and broke into my consciousness once again, “Lootenant, Charlie Six says to move out, and to let him know when we reach the MACV compound.”
Glad to have something else to do, another direction to focus on, and happy to get out of this area and its haunting spots on the pavement, I gave the command. “Move out. Keep your eyes peeled, and don’t bunch up.”