14–15 February 1968
Just as the pitch-black gloom of night took hold, I returned to the Charlie Company command post area. As the Charlie Company weapons platoon commander, or sixty-mike-mike assistant, I had no frontline responsibilities that night. After a quick consultation with Scott Nelson, I joined up with a few of the Charlie Company CP group, including Doc Loudermilk, one of the Charlie Company radio operators, and a couple of Charlie Company mortarmen, and together we sought out shelter and sleeping quarters for the night.
We quickly discovered, to our amazement, that many civilian Vietnamese residents of the Citadel of Hue, whose homes were behind our lines, were still in residence. We hadn’t seen any of them, but they were still there. Our small group picked out a small house in the center of the block at random, and we pounded on the front door. Expecting a house this close to the fighting to be deserted, we were surprised when we were promptly and politely greeted at the front door by a middle-aged Vietnamese gentleman. Unfortunately the man spoke no English, and the Vietnamese that I had learned during my six-week “high-intensity” language school at Quantico proved to be totally inadequate for anything other than a barely understood greeting. Fortunately, Doc Loudermilk knew some French, which turned out to be the Vietnamese man’s second language, and we were finally able to communicate to some degree.
The man was of average height for a Vietnamese, standing about five foot six and, from his dress and manners, appeared to be from the affluent class of Vietnamese. He was probably a teacher in the nearby university. His western-style clothing was comprised of conservative dark slacks and a white shirt and was completed with a dark-colored French beret. He welcomed us into his home with no hesitation. Since he probably understood quite clearly just how close his home was to the fighting, he readily welcomed this small but well-armed group of Marines to share his home for the night.
Initially, we thought that he was alone, but as we entered the dimly lit house, he spoke a few soft, staccato words in Vietnamese, and the rest of his family slowly and hesitantly appeared from their hide-hole under the family bed at the back of the one-room structure. His wife was young, probably no more than thirty, and his three children looked to be between four and ten years old. We only saw their heads, and they didn’t linger outside the inadequate protection of the large bed; they just acknowledged our existence with a slightly hopeful aspect to their fearful expressions and disappeared under the bed once again.
Using Doc Loudermilk’s rusty French, we confirmed that the owner of this small house was welcoming us to spend the night. When we made obvious movements to bunk down on the floor in the corners of his cozy little home, he beckoned us to take full advantage of the large, communal family bed, indicating that he had no intention of allowing his family out from under the bed throughout the night, and that we were more than welcome to it.
Before retiring under the bed for the night, the head of the household smiled at us, excused himself for a moment, rummaged around in a dark corner closet, and came out with a large, colorful metal box of French cookies, the kind that were made with lots of butter and sugar, reminding me of the Lorna Doones that I had loved so much as a child. The five of us took one look at these exquisite pastries and started to gorge ourselves with cookies. A sort of temporary insanity overcame all of us, and before any semblance of reason came back to us, we realized that we had wiped out the entire box of cookies, an obviously hoarded delicacy that this poor man’s family undoubtedly carefully indulged in, probably one cookie at a time, on special occasions. We couldn’t help it; we had eaten nothing like it since having left the States, and our constant subsistence on C rations had created a dietary standard that was barely tolerable. The sight of those cookies had overwhelmed all five of us, and all judgment and manners had flown out the window. During our display of American gluttony, the Vietnamese gentleman said nothing; he just accepted his empty metal box back with an astonished look on his face. No jury of our peers would have convicted us of theft; our plea of temporary insanity would have stood the test of justice.
Temporary insanity or not, I couldn’t help but feel very guilty, so I looked at the other Marines with the sheepish looks on their crumb-covered faces and said, “Shit, guys, we’ve wiped this guy out of cookies. Any of you have anything worthwhile to give him in return?” Although I was one of the guilty gorging culprits, I had nothing in my pack but C rations, messy ones at that, to offer as reparations, and offering to compensate him with C rations would have been an insult of the highest magnitude. I knew that in spite of the many regulations forbidding it, the chances were excellent that at least one Marine had a bottle of liquor in his pack, preferably unopened, to offer as at least partial compensation. It turned out that there were three such bottles, and we decided upon an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels since its owner had a second, only partially consumed bottle of booze rat-holed away in his pack. Armed with the Jack Daniels, we offered the Vietnamese gentleman our apologies and the bottle of America’s finest sippin’ whiskey, in hopes that he would forgive our out-of-control appetites and our poor manners.
Our gesture was received very graciously, and our host’s eyes lighted up once again as he accepted our offer and then hid the bottle of Jack in the corner closet that the cookies had, until recently, been stashed in. Having secured the Jack Daniels, he walked to an ornate, open-front cabinet standing against the wall on the west side of the small house. Reaching up to one of the higher shelves, he very carefully lifted an ordinary American mason jar that was sealed with a metal screw-lid and contained a very strange and suspicious-looking substance. The quart jar was about 85 percent full of what looked like nuts, banana, coconut, and other fruits; the top 15 percent was a clear liquid.
Our host very carefully, almost reverently, set the jar down on the only table in the house, retrieved several small, dainty cups from the open cabinet, and with what can only be described as great pleasure, opened the jar and poured a small amount of the clear liquid off the top and into the cups. One of the mortarmen in our small group understood first, blurting out, “Shit, Lieutenant, this is homemade hooch. Booze. I’ll be goddamned!”
The young Marine, eager for any form of mental anesthetic available, started to hoist his cup with the obvious intention of chugging the hooch, but the Vietnamese gentleman, our host who had the most, stopped him just in time, preventing him from making a very bad mistake. Restraining the young Marine, he held up his own small cup and, through hand gestures and unmistakable body language, indicated that careful sipping would be in order here. We all accepted his advice, took our first sips, and were immediately very grateful for his warning. Whatever that stuff was, it was as near to two-hundred-proof alcohol as you could possibly get. It went down our gullets like liquid fire, although after the initial kick, it was very smooth and had a touch of sweetness I had never before experienced in drinking alcohol, probably because of the fruit used to ferment it. Looking around at the small group, I noticed that I was not the only one whose eyes had filled with involuntary tears caused by the liquid fire. It didn’t matter. It was the perfect ending to the second-worst day of my life.
The celebration lasted only a few moments, and then the reality of our situation came quickly back into focus and once again took control. Our host bade us farewell and good luck with hand gestures and a smattering of French and quietly joined his family under the bed. Setting up a rotating watch, we doused the lantern light and let sleep shut out the terror of the day.
Around midnight that night we were rudely awakened by a commotion at our front door. Several Marines were pounding on the door, looking for Doc Loudermilk.
One of the Marines, a Charlie Company mortarman, said, “Doc, we need your help. This Vietnamese lady a few houses down has just gone into labor, and she needs a hand. Get your shit together and get on down here, Doc.”
Doc Loudermilk didn’t hesitate for a moment; he had seen so much death during the past couple of days that any opportunity to help bring a life into the world was obviously welcome, regardless of the circumstances. And although he had never been involved with childbirth in his young life, he was a medical professional and was going to do his best to help out, no matter what.
Doc Loudermilk grabbed his corpsman’s medical kit and left with the other Marines, and the rest of us quickly returned to our dreamless sleep. Just before dawn the next morning, Doc Loudermilk returned with a slight grin on his face and woke us all up with the news of the arrival of a new baby boy. For just a few hours, Doc Loudermilk had been allowed the opportunity to forget all the death and destruction to focus on the most constructive of all of life’s events, the delivery of a new life.
Although there was about a half hour before full daylight and Doc could have caught a few minutes of much-needed sleep, he was much too wound up from his experience. The rest of us woke up easily to hear his story; it gave all of us a brief but much-needed respite from the stress and terror of the previous two days to hear Doc’s story and to watch the gentle smile on his face as he recounted the moment of birth.
After just a very few moments of peaceful contemplation of the blessed event, the increasing daylight forced us from our reverie. We mounted up and said a brief good-bye and thank you to our host for his hospitality and left the small home behind, facing another day, not knowing what would happen to us, and not knowing at that moment just how lucky this small Vietnamese family was to be alive.
We had heard some rumors of atrocities at the hands of the occupying NVA in and around Hue during the past several days, but many weeks would go by before we knew the extent of the terror that the NVA had generated during the several weeks that they controlled Hue. Afteraction reports released by MACV indicated that as many as three thousand Vietnamese civilians were murdered and buried in mass graves by the Viet Cong and NVA during their occupation of Hue. Any Vietnamese civilian who was even suspected by the NVA or the agents of the National Liberation Front, the political control organization of the Viet Cong, of possessing sympathy for the South Vietnamese government or their American allies was executed on the spot. Their bodies were hastily buried in unmarked mass graves over a wide area in and around Hue. Those who survived had necessarily professed to being longtime supporters of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese goals.
Although it was often very difficult for American soldiers to empathize with the position of the average Vietnamese citizen, who was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, learning about the mass murders in Hue helped to create at least a small amount of understanding of their plight. Because of our experiences in the Hoi An area, the Marines of Charlie Company had developed an active hatred of the Vietnamese villagers who lived near where some Marines had been torn apart by command-detonated mines. This hatred was born from the Marines’ knowledge that the Vietnamese villagers must have known exactly who was responsible for these acts of terror. The villagers may have even been aware of the presence of the Viet Cong terrorists before the acts were perpetrated, but they always denied knowing anything. Despite the hatred that seemed to always be seething just below the surface of the young Marines, an understanding of the average Vietnamese civilian’s untenable position was brought to a focus, at least briefly, by the murders of the people of Hue. We began to understand that these people either had to help the enemy or at least look the other way, or they were dead.
On the other hand, our host during the previous evening could have been quite possibly a Viet Cong operative himself, incognito among his young family and chuckling to himself at the blindness of his enemy, at our utter inability to tell the difference between friend and foe. I prefer to think otherwise, and I remember him still as one of the lucky ones who somehow escaped the deadly attentions of the invaders. He was one of the few Vietnamese civilians we met who was openly hospitable or voluntarily friendly toward American grunts.
The Charlie Company mortarmen and Doc Loudermilk returned to their assigned duties, and I started opening sixty-millimeter mortar crates once again, having nothing else to do. The two Charlie Company sixty-mike-mikes, our only form of artillery at the moment, were by now well dug in and surrounded by sandbag berms in a small courtyard about a block and a half behind phase line green. Small-arms fire had started up again in the area of Alpha Company’s penetration of the enemy’s positions across phase line green, and the fighting increased steadily as the day progressed. At the moment, however, the sixty-mike-mikes were silent, as the Alpha Company Marines were just too close to the enemy and we were fearful of hurting our own people.
About an hour after first light, 2nd Lt. Travis Curd, Charlie Company’s artillery forward observer, and his corporal radio operator, both of whom were attached to us from the 11th Marine Regiment (the artillery regiment of the First Marine Division), joined The Gunny and me as we tried to eat a cold C ration breakfast. I had known Travis Curd for several weeks now. He had traveled with Charlie Company since we left Phu Loc 6 back in early January, and he had been stranded with us at the Lang Co Bridge. A basic comradeship, if not a friendship, had grown between us. He really had his act together as an FO, and he was a pretty nice guy besides. He had let his mustache grow well beyond Marine Corps regulations and had trained it into a Fu Manchu look, but since we were rarely in a rear area and most often quite distant from the scrutiny of any “spit and polish” types, he got away with it.
On this particular morning, Travis’s Fu Manchu looked more droopy than usual, and his eyes were dark with fatigue. He didn’t say a word as he pulled up a sixty-mike-mike crate, sat down heavily, and tossed his pack onto the damp ground with a look of disgust.
“Hell, Lieutenant, that Fu Manchu looks like shit. Hell, you look like shit. What the hell have you been up to?” The Gunny was never one to mince his words with anyone, even those who were theoretically above him in the chain of command.
Travis shot The Gunny a look of pained disgust and said, “Hell, Gunny, I feel like a big pile of waterboo shit. That goddamned company commander of yours damn near got us killed last night. We’re lucky to be alive right now. Shit, I didn’t sign up to be a goddamned grunt! I’m supposed to be an FO, and just because battalion won’t let me do my goddamned job, doesn’t mean that I should have to be turned into a goddamned grunt!” Travis’s haunted eyes emphasized the harrowing experiences that he and his radio operator had obviously just survived.
Travis went on to explain to us that Scott Nelson had given him the job of setting up a listening post on Charlie Company’s right flank the previous night. Now, Travis was not opposed to taking command of a small group of well-armed Marines to man this listening post, and he understood that our right flank was totally exposed and that the listening post was absolutely necessary to ensure the integrity of the company’s right flank. He had assumed, however, that when Nelson gave him the assignment, he would send a squad of Charlie Three’s Marines with him, or at least a fire team.
Travis shot us a look of abject disgust and said, “Shit, Nelson said that he couldn’t afford to send any of the Charlie Three Marines with us, ’cuz they’re needed on phase line green in case of a counterattack, that he wants me and my radio operator, all by ourselves, to take over the second floor of that house out on the right flank and stay there and let him know if we hear anything. Shit, there was nothing between us and the fucking Imperial Palace walls, nothing but a few trees, so the gooks would have to cross all that open ground to get around us, but Jesus Christ was it dark! An entire battalion of NVA, armed to the teeth and dragging 82-mike-mike mortars along for good measure could have walked right by us and we would have never known about it. I reminded Nelson that neither Corporal Talbot nor I had any weapons except our .45s, but he didn’t blink an eye, and the next thing we know, we’re both holding M-16s and several bandoleers of ammo, and The Gunny here is handing us several M-26 grenades apiece. Shit, it looks like we’re both grunts now.”
“So, it looks like you survived the night. Did you hear anything?” I couldn’t help but grin a little at Travis’s tale of woe and to give him just a little shit about his experiences of the previous night, and I noticed that The Gunny had just an inkling of a grin on his otherwise impassive face. I added, “Hell, maybe we have a whole battalion of gooks behind us right now. . . .”
“Hell, no, we didn’t hear a thing, didn’t see a thing, and didn’t either one of us sleep a wink. Christ, we were out there totally on our own, you think we could sleep for even a minute?” asked Travis, and then he answered his own question, “Hell, no. Shit, my eye sockets are sore from being stretched, my eyes were so wide open all night. I was afraid to blink, for Christ’s sake. I gotta tell you the truth, Charlie One, I’ve never been so scared in my entire life!”
The story of Lieutenant Curd’s and Corporal Talbot’s harrowing night rapidly spread via the rumor mill throughout Charlie Company. It became an oft-recounted part of Charlie Company’s lore and was hereafter referred to as “The Night of the Lost Outpost” by the Marines of Charlie Company. In those rare moments of relaxation during and after the battle that raged inside the Citadel of Hue, many Marines who survived ultimately heard that story, and they were afforded at least a small amount of comic relief by its telling. It really was funny, but only because nothing bad had happened that night.
That was one of the strangest aspects of the battle for the Citadel, the fact that nothing much ever happened after dark. With one very significant exception, when the sun went down, the shooting stopped. It was as though, by mutual understanding, both the NVA and the Marines decided that the terrible house-to-house fighting would be just too terrorizing after dark. The fighters would undoubtedly die from terror if the element of darkness was added to the equation of fighting a well-armed enemy at close quarters. We were always fearful of an enemy counterattack at night, and we never reduced our alert level below 50 percent at the point of contact, but the NVA stayed in their positions. They very seldom even fired small arms as harassment and only occasionally fired a rocket or a mortar round after darkness fell. I didn’t question this much while it was happening; I just took advantage of it and got at least five hours of sleep every night, except one. But thinking back on it, I am absolutely certain that if the NVA had counterattacked just once in the middle of the night, they would have successfully penetrated our front lines. The resulting chaos from a nighttime counterattack would have been terrible and may have even forced the battalion to withdraw back to the First ARVN Division compound to regroup. And then we would have had to do it all over again. . . . It was too terrible to consider for even a moment, and thankfully, it never happened.
As usual, the dark humor of Travis’s telling of “The Story of the Lost Outpost” was not allowed to linger for long, and our razzing of Travis was rudely interrupted by Scott Nelson, who joined our motley crew. Nelson addressed The Gunny and me and gave us our next orders.
Nelson squatted down next to us and said, “We’re finally getting some fixed wing support, although it’s going to be limited to the tower. Delta is getting the shit shot out of them by the NVA in the tower, and Alpha isn’t going to be able to make much more progress until Delta can take and hold the tower. So, battalion has finally come to the realization that heavy support is needed. A flight of Phantoms will be arriving from Da Nang in a few minutes, and they’re loaded with snake-eyes and napalm. Gunny, your mortar crews are too exposed, we’re just too damned close to the tower, and one of your guys might get hit by stray shrapnel. When the F-4s start dropping their ordnance, I want you to make damned sure that these guys have their heads down behind the sandbag walls. Charlie One, take all the spare men from the company CP group, including your hangdog hero buddies here.” Nelson was obviously referring to Travis and Corporal Talbot, but his expression was nothing but playful and sympathetic. “And go back a few hundred meters to the rear and take cover. The Phantoms are gonna drop a shitload of napalm and both 250-pound and 500-pound bombs on that damned tower, and I don’t want anyone getting hurt because they’re watching the show from a front-row seat. Got it?”
I didn’t have to be told twice. I had been a front-row spectator at enough air strikes to understand the danger. The Marines on phase line green were safe enough inside the houses, but those of us who were out in the open were exposed to stray shrapnel, which was wicked as hell and could be thrown a long way from its impact point.
So, along with about a dozen men who were, at least for the moment, considered expendable from the fighting, I retreated two blocks toward the First ARVN Division compound. We took seats on a low brick wall to wait for the show.
One of the most amazing forms of entertainment during the Vietnam War (at least for anyone not at or near the target of this particular form of entertainment) were the close air support strikes provided by Marine, Navy, and Air Force pilots flying a wide range of attack aircraft. Any air strike directed at enemy forces was very satisfying to any bush Marine regardless of the type of aircraft being featured as the main attraction, and they all beat the hell out of any fireworks show I had ever seen. But the shows provided by the F-4s—the Phantoms—were, without a doubt, the absolute best.
There was just something nasty-looking about Phantoms. They were mean-looking, with swept-back gull wings similar to their World War II predecessor, the F4U-1A Corsair, the aircraft made famous by Pappy Boyington and his Black Sheep squadron. An F-4 Phantom’s wings were gull-like, although much shorter and sharper than the prop-driven Corsairs, but that’s where the similarity between these aircraft stopped, abruptly. The Corsair was a single-engine prop plane, and the F-4 was powered by two immensely powerful jet engines. When those suckers kicked into afterburners, the power they emanated was awesome.
I had seen many Phantoms from a distance while going through training stateside, and I had always been fascinated by them. But I didn’t really develop a distinct appreciation for their raw power until shortly after landing in Da Nang at the beginning of my tour in Vietnam. Stateside pilots must have had to fly with major restrictions near their airfields, because I had never seen a Phantom in an afterburner mode until that unforgettable afternoon in Da Nang. The pilots in country were under no such restrictions. They routinely kicked in their afterburners during takeoff, cranking up as much speed as possible to leave the earth with their heavy loads of destructive power and to make it as difficult as possible for the neighborhood VC to hit them with ground fire, if they were so inclined to try such a foolhardy thing. I remember being nearly hypnotized that day as I watched flight after flight of F-4s tear down the runway in Da Nang with their afterburners kicked in, and I was deafened by the roaring chaos of their powerful engines throwing them skyward. I remember thinking to myself that no one in his right mind would knowingly resist their awesome firepower. But I knew by now that our enemy did resist them, every day and every night, and I knew by now that our enemy was clearly not in his right mind.
And now the F-4s were coming to Hue, finally, to try to blow the NVA out of the tower. Sitting on that wall, waiting for the show, I knew with an absolute certainty that the NVA in the tower were doomed, and that we would have control of this critical piece of high ground very soon, or that it would no longer be high ground.
I was wrong on both counts.
Oh, the F-4s came, and the F-4s dropped stick after stick of napalm, 250-pound snake-eye bombs, and 500-pound high-drag, high-explosive bombs on the tower. And nearly every bomb dropped was a perfectly placed direct hit. The awesome firestorms from the detonating napalm canisters engulfed the tower, burning every square inch of the tower’s surface; the high-explosive bombs pounded the tower and eventually reduced its height by at least ten feet. But the NVA did not run away; few of them died; and every single bombing run made in the F-4 pilots’ valiant attempts to destroy our enemy entrenched in the tower was greeted by a high volume of small-arms fire from the enemy.
The NVAAK-47s and .30-caliber machine guns ripped upward, directing their light green and white tracer rounds at the invading Phantoms. The enemy’s constant and defiant small-arms fire was only momentarily interrupted exactly when the napalm burst into a whooshing roar of flame and smoke and exactly when the high explosives burst their gut-wrenching concussive power on the tower. Immediately after, the NVA gunners stuck their crazy heads back up and started shooting again at the flame-spewing dual exhausts of the departing Phantom’s jets. The Phantoms made pass after disciplined pass, dropping no more than two bombs at a time, but the determined NVA gunners survived all of them and always had the last word in the deadly duel. One Phantom even took a couple of hits up one of his tailpipes and had to limp back to Da Nang without dropping all his ordnance on the tower.
The NVA in the tower were absolutely crazy! It turned out that Delta Company would need two more days, several attacks, and the heroics of some even crazier Delta Company Marines to finally take the tower the first time. Shortly after that, the NVA counterattacked, and Delta had to withdraw in a hurry, dragging their wounded back with them. Delta would attack and take the tower four separate times, only to have the NVA take it back again. Finally, on the fifth day of the fighting, Delta would finally seize and hold the tower, after having taken terrible losses. Obviously, the NVA understood that this tower was the high ground in this battle and that whoever held the tower could easily keep their enemy pinned down. The NVA were not going to give up the tower just because of the annoying Phantoms!
While we were sitting on the wall watching this surreal duel between the NVA Davids and the Phantom Goliaths from what we thought was a safe distance, a battalion mule driver pulled up on his mechanical mule (a small but rugged vehicle that looked like nothing more than a platform with four tires and a steering wheel). He stopped about thirty feet away from us, letting his engine idle for a few minutes and taking advantage of our vantage point to watch the show. The cargo platform of the mule was empty, so the driver had probably just dropped off some more ammo or other supplies at the Charlie Company CP and was heading back to the First ARVN Division compound where the Air America choppers and the occasional Marine helicopter were starting to bring in supplies. He had seen our group perched on the low brick wall and had stopped to take a short break and watch the show. Fishing out a cigarette, he lit up with his Zippo and sat back in his seat while his mule, the four-wheeled pack animal of the Marine Corps, idled with a low-popping rumble.
The next Phantom emerged from the low cloud cover and dropped two snake-eye bombs, the 250-pound high-explosive bombs that had earned their names from the four distinctive fins that popped out after they were released and that stabilized their final flight. When you looked at them from close to the impact point, the fins looked similar to a snake’s eyes. Also, if you were close enough to see the view that reminded you of a snake’s eyes, you had just rolled “snake-eyes.” Craps. You’re out of luck. You’re probably dead.
Snake-eye bombs sort of wobble during their descent and always looked like they were out of control. But they were actually very accurate, and both of these two hit dead on their target. The crazy NVA in the tower started shooting at the Phantom again. Since I was paying close attention to the deadly duel, I didn’t really hear the whooping sound of the huge chunk of shrapnel that took out the mule driver until a couple of seconds later. I mean I heard it, but I didn’t register it. It was just a strange, not very loud sound, so until it hit the mule driver, drove him through the back of his “L”-shaped seat, knocked it flat, and drove him right off the back of the ten-foot-long mule and flat onto the street on his back, I didn’t pay attention to the noise. The whump of the twelve-inch-long, two-inch-thick chunk of shrapnel hitting the mule driver and the loud grunt that the driver made as his breath was violently forced from his body did get our attention. We jumped off the wall and ran over to see if there was anything we could do.
As we approached him, we realized that the poor mule driver was probably dead, but it didn’t matter, we had to do what we could to help him. Doc Loudermilk, whose life-saving instincts had torn his attention away from the Phantom/NVA duel before any of the rest of us, got there first. The mule driver was out cold, but incredibly, there was no blood or obvious wound. This Marine had taken the battle for Hue seriously; he had zipped and buttoned his flak jacket completely. The chunk of shrapnel apparently had struck the mule driver at the exact moment when it had rotated into a flat position in relationship to his body.
I saw the huge chunk of shrapnel sitting innocently on the street a few feet away from the mule driver and went to fetch it. Grabbing it without thinking, I got several superficially burned fingers for my trouble. Five hundred meters of cold air hadn’t cooled this giant piece of death in the couple of seconds it had taken to fly from the detonation point on the tower to the unfortunate mule driver’s relaxed position.
Amazingly, the mule driver quickly regained consciousness and started breathing again, but although he was alive, he was not a happy camper. When he saw the chunk of shrapnel sitting there, he slowly realized that if the piece of shrapnel had hit him straight on, rather than flat, it would have done a hell of a lot more damage and could have gone right through his body, flak jacket or no flak jacket. He realized that he was really lucky to be alive, but he was having a hard time taking a normal, let alone deep, breath.
I assigned another wall-sitting Marine to take the mule driver and his flat-seated mule back to the First ARVN Division compound, and we climbed back up on our bleacher-seat wall and watched the rest of the show. After what we had all just witnessed, we probably should have gotten down behind the wall, but I think we all realized that this had been a fluke, and the odds of it happening again were very low. But I know that every one of us had registered in the front of our brains that whooping sound that the wicked chunk of shrapnel had made, as we had all previously registered the sound of an enemy 82-mm mortar round hitting its tube, and we would have all dived, unashamedly, behind the wall if we heard anything that remotely resembled that sound again.
About a half hour later, the Marine who drove the mule back to the ARVN compound returned on foot with terrible news. The mule driver had died before a chopper could pick him up. He had started convulsing just as they pulled into the ARVN compound, and he had been declared dead a few minutes later. The unlucky mule driver had obviously sustained major internal injuries and hadn’t been the lucky guy we had all thought he was after all. For some strange reason, that ended the entertainment aspect of the Phantom strikes on the tower. We sat there for a while longer, watching the crazy NVA idiots getting shot at and shit on, watching them shoot at the Phantoms, but somehow it just wasn’t any fun anymore.