13th Valley (2 page)

From the end of the war until 1982, I believed many of the media stereotypes, but I was certain those stories were about Marines or other U.S. Army units. My mission was to set the record straight about my own outfit, the famed 101
^st
that had a
Rendezvous With Destiny.
I was intent on telling a realistic story that would counter the falsehoods that were rapidly becoming accepted ‘truths.' We weren't like ‘them other guys.' Our war was cleaner, better. We were the
One Oh
One—airmobile if no longer airborne.

My education about Viet Nam and about Americans in the '60s and '70s took a significant leap forward after
The 13
^th
Valley
was first published. Over the next three years I received more than 3,000 letters—about half from veterans—that contained lines like this: “That's the way we operated. Were you with my unit?” “I think you were there later than I was. I thought all you guys did was sit around and smoke dope. Good to know someone learned the lessons we passed on.” And there were encouraging comments about my writing: “Your descriptions are the most accurate I've read. I have never been able to tell my wife what it was like. I gave her your book and told her this is who we were. This is what it was like for me.”

Some of those letters were from soldiers of the 101
^st
. That I expected. Most were from guys who fought with other units—even Marine … many, many Marines. That I did not expect. Their story had been distorted beyond recognition. The more I read, the more I researched, and the more veterans I interviewed, the more I realized how nearly universal were the values and positive behaviors Americans exhibited in Southeast Asia. It was becoming crystal clear in hindsight how closely those of us who fought in Viet Nam exemplified the altruistic ideals—bear any burden … defend freedom—that we carried into that war. Those ideals are still valid. Errors, corruption and national stupidity have not tarnished them. The blemishes lie with those who condone or perpetrate immoral or incompetent acts.

At this point, I have also come to realize how horribly Viet Nam veterans—American, allied and South Viet Namese—have been tarred with the broad brush of clichés and stereotypes. These media-generated canards are only a tiny part of the Viet Nam experience but they have come to define the fighting man in the world view. Politicians talk about “lessons of Viet Nam,” without a clue as to what actually transpired during the 10 years America was fighting in that country. With every ensuing conflict we “look back” to the clichés, and pledge not to repeat the same “mistakes.” How ridiculous and insulting! If you don't know what happened how can you look back to identify mistakes? More importantly, how can you recognize the service and sacrifice of America's admirable military legacy?

I hope to change America's image of Viet Nam veterans, and of the nature and meaning of the war itself. In depth study and analysis became the impetus for my other works on the war and its aftermath:
For The Sake of All Living Things
, a story of the Cambodian holocaust; and
Carry Me Home
, a story of American veterans from homecoming to 15 years after return.

It has become fashionable in America to say that war is terrible, that it is the most horrid of all human endeavors; that it must be avoided at all cost. We teach this to our children. It is a core tenet in school curricula. It permeates nearly all war literature of the past 30 years, and most films and television programs. War is horrible. Those of us who have fought in one understand that intimately. We also understand that war is a check on tyranny, and that tyranny unchecked has given the world its Hitlers, Stalins, Idi Amins and Pol Pots. In war there remains an element of hope. Under tyranny all hope is destroyed.

On Strategy:
The battle at Khe Ta Laou was the last major offensive action conducted by U.S. ground forces in the Viet Nam War. That makes
The 13th Valley
sort of a bookend story to Hal Moore's and Joe Galloway's
We Were Soldiers Once … And Young, about
the first battle of the Ia Drang. The strategic importance of the battle at Khe Ta Laou along with all the other battles fought in that expansive area of operation beginning in 1962—Ta Bat, A Shau, Lang Vei, Khe Sanh, Dong Ap Bai (Hamburger Hill), Ripcord, and so many others—lies in blocking and/or cutting the enemy's logistical lifeline to communist units fighting in South Vietnam. Americans who fought there understand, but politicians of the time had different views. In 1969 Senator Ted Kennedy (D, Mass) criticized battles in this region in a speech before Congress: “I feel it is both senseless and irresponsible to continue to send our young men to their deaths to capture hills and positions
that have no relation to ending this conflict
(my emphasis).”

Contrary to Kennedy's assessment, these battles had everything to do with potentially ending the conflict. Disrupting the flow of men and materiel through the Truong Son Corridor from North Viet Nam meant the enemy was harder pressed to threaten security and tranquility within South Viet Nam. With the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the corridor, and the ensuing withdrawal of U.S. economic support for the South Viet Namese Army, the NVA moved unchallenged and unobstructed into the South—extending gasoline and oil pipelines down from Lang Vei, through the A Shau Valley (past Khe Ta Laou and beneath Hamburger Hill), south through Kham Duc and Dak To, all the way to Loc Ninh. This gave them a super highway with no cops and no speed limits along the way.

Mobility along this western corridor [go to Google Earth and you'll find it labeled The Ho Chi Minh Highway] gave the PAVN the ability to mass forces against comparatively sparsely defended points. In late '74 and early '75 the northern army stormed southward down this road, using hundreds of Soviet-supplied tanks and artillery pieces, and 18,000 military trucks transporting arms, ammo and supplies for 400,000 troops. This represented a logistical operation larger than most Axis movements of World War II, and it paved the way for North Viet Nam's Final Offensive in 1975. Without that corridor a PAVN victory was impossible; with it, conquest was inevitable.

The battle for the Khe Ta Laou river valley in 1970 delayed the PAVN's control of the corridor for a period, but keeping it closed to NVA traffic was expensive in both materiel and manpower. Soldiers knew the eventual cost of a lack of vigilance in this crucial area. They knew what ceding this area to the enemy would cost. Politicians at home refused to recognize this reality.

Much of the story you are about to read actually occurred. For clarification: the operation at Khe Ta Laou lasted 18, not 13 days; the tree and spider and associated incidents were located in the vicinity of Firebase Maureen, 22 kilometers southeast of Firebase Barnett; and the night conversations on the causes of war took place over a period of many months and various operations. In retrospect, brigade, battalion, company and platoon leaders from the 101
^st
were the best leaders I have ever known. Good leadership is visionary. Many of our military leaders foresaw what could be, and what would be if we withdrew too quickly. Many of our political leaders foresaw only what would keep them in office. Various young officers from the 2/502 went on to lead major units in later conflicts, most particularly Desert Storm.

On Race:
In Chapter 14, the character Jax (William Andrew Jackson), a black infantryman from the Old South, while on silent patrol in deep jungle, fantasizes:

…
if his child would be a boy or a girl. Girls is so pretty, he told himself, but boys is so much mo fun. William Andrew Jackson, Junior, an announcer said within Jackson's thoughts, the son of the Viet Nam War hero, the great-great-great grandson of a slave, today was inaugurated as the first black the New United States of America
.

In 1970 Jax' thoughts were admittedly fantasy. To deny that or obfuscate it would be to lie about the racial situation in American society during that time. There were racial tensions in military units in Viet Nam and some modern readers may find the racial tension in this novel overwhelming. Race has been the single biggest social issue in America for the post-WWII generation. It progressed from 1950s sit-ins and forced integration, through the '60s Civil Rights movement, to the riots and near urban warfare of the late '60s and early '70s. And it showed up in military units fighting in Viet Nam.

It was in this historical context that
The 13
^th
Valley
was written. On rereading the novel in preparation for the release of this anniversary edition, I was taken aback by some of the scenes, some of the dialogue and jargon—accurate for the time, but so removed from the way we think and talk today. We've come a long way, Baby, and that's a good thing. Neither color nor creed was the defining measure of relations between boonierat brothers at the time. Today there's more to guard against lest we believe the race issue is as remote from our society as is the war in Viet Nam.

My mentor on race issues, General Harry Brooks, noted in 1971 that it was not a problem if black or white soldiers chose to congregate socially with those of similar skin tone, but it was a problem if a black wanted to associate with a white, or a white with a black, and was ostracized by his peers and prevented from doing so. Over the last four decades, in much of our nation, that problem has substantially dissipated. Today interracial marriages compose between five and ten percent of all domestic unions.

We should recognize and celebrate this transformation, and we should condemn anyone, including national political, entertainment or business figure, who accentuates race or promotes racial division for their own political or economic gain. I think this attitude is common today, and I believe its roots are in the American military experience in Viet Nam.

The world today
is a very different place than it was 40 years ago, and yet is very much the same. Against a backdrop of amazing social, scientific and technological advances, the problems ripping us apart today are mostly mutations of the problems which were ripping us apart 40 years ago. To this aging curmudgeon, these problems are exasperated by a national media so self-centeredly desperate for survival that it has become not only a shaper of false realities but also a source of disinformation and an instigator of greater societal problems.

The story we tell ourselves of ourselves, individually or culturally, creates our self-image. Behavior, individually and culturally, is consistent with self-image. Story determines behavior. When story is badly recorded and misreported the effects on our national self-image and on our behavior is an aberration of reality.
The 13
^th
Valley
was, and remains, an attempt to set the record straight.

P
ROLOGUE

Long before the soldiers arrived the life forms of the valley had established a stable symbiotic balance.

At the most central point of the valley, in a dark and dank cavern created by the gnarled roots of an immense teak tree, a spider reconstructs its damaged labyrinth of silken corridors and chambers. Upon the outermost threads dew glistens from a single ray of sunlight seeping through the valley mist, creeping through the shadowing jungle.

The spider—its body blood-red translucent large—stills, then jerks. The web twitches violently. The creature seems to leap forward on an arc of jointed webbed legs. A pointed claw grabs a mosquito caught in the web. Around the spider vestiges of tunnels and prey traps encapsulate dried crusted exoskeletons. The spider perceives its home through simple clear red eyes and through a sensory bristle of exceedingly fine red hairs. At one time the home was good, food was plentiful. The spider had never needed to extend its world beyond the limits of the cavern.

The teak tree shades the spider and all the life below. From the hillock upon which it is perched, the tree reaches up for over two hundred feet, straight, massive and durable. The teak is wide at its base and gradually becomes slender as its huge branchless torso protrudes skyward, finally bursting in an imposing umbrella of boughs and leaves. For countless monsoon seasons, when the sky has broken angrily and lashed the earth, the tree has shielded plants and animals, and, for a time, the spider from the beating rain. The teak's root system has preserved the knoll into which it sinks, of which it has become a part, from the ravenous river crashing endlessly against the knoll's east side. The tree is the oldest life in the valley—older, even, than the flood-plain valley floor which has washed down the river from the mountains and which is alive with mosquitos and leeches.

The knoll, tenacious, solid, reinforced with the unseen strength of the teak, forces the river to swirl and bend back upon itself. It is long and high, with steep embankments circling the crown, and it is strong: strong enough to hold the tree and the spider aloof from the affairs of the valley floor, strong enough to alter the course of the mountain river.