365 Days (10 page)

Later that morning, the company began sweeping again. They moved out on line, humping through the gathering heat, chewing salt pills as they had the day before, looking out over the same shimmering landscape. A little after ten o’clock, they began moving through a hedgegrove. A trooper tripped a wire and detonated a claymore set up to blow behind him. It took down three others, killing two right off and leaving the third to die later. The survivors rested around the bodies till the Dust Offs came in and took out the casualties, then started up again.

Before noon, the platoon strung out along a dike had entered a tangled area of burned-over second growth. It wasn’t so big that they couldn’t have gone around, but the Old Man wanted to kill some gooks, so he sent them through it just in case. Disgusted, they moved into it, and for over two hours pushed their way through the steaming shadowy tangle. The thick overhead filtered out almost all the sunlight, making it difficult to see, while the matting of vines and bushes held onto the heat, magnifying it until the troopers felt they were moving through a breathless oven. The sweat poured off them as they moved cautiously through the suffocating half light. At places the growth was so thick that to get through they had to sling their weapons and pull the vines apart with their bare hands.

“Careful, there...hold it, man...don’t move.”

The vines and thorns caught onto their fatigues and equipment, and they had to stop to tear themselves loose.

“Watch it, Smithy...hold up, Hank; there, by your foot...”

“Fuck...I’m caught.”

“Watch your step, man...”

Scratched and bleeding, they pushed on through the tangle.

“Larry, don’t move your arm. Don’t move. I think I see a wire.”

“It’s OK, Frey. It’s just a vine.”

Suddenly, out on their right someone screamed.

“Don’t move!” Crayson yelled. “Just don’t move. I’m coming.”

“Jesus Christ, I’m on one.”

Pulling up short, the others froze.

Crayson and the other corporal stepped carefully through the bushes toward the trooper.

“Don’t lift your foot. Freeze, man, just don’t lift it.”

“EOD, EOD, forward! EOD forward!”

“That fucken bastard, that fucken bastard,” the trooper kept repeating, almost hysterically, “that fucken bastard,” as the EOD bent down to look at the mine.

“What is it? Jesus!” he said, rigid with fear.

“It’s OK,” the EOD said, straightening up, wiping the sweat from his eyes. “It’s pressure-release. Don’t worry, it’s not a bouncing betty. Just don’t move.”

“M-60 carriers, forward! Ammo carriers, forward!”

The EOD slipped off his rucksack, and laying down his weapon got down on his hands and knees, as the troopers came up with the boxes of M-60 ammunition.

“OK, now, just don’t move,” he said. “I’m gonna stack these ammunition cans on the detonator plate. When I tell you, move your foot a bit, but don’t lift it up. OK?” The EOD carefully wiped off the steel plate and placed one forty-pound can on the right side of the plate next to the trooper’s foot and another on the left side of the plate.

“OK, man,” the EOD said, looking up. “It’s OK. Just step off.”

Three-quarters of the way through the tangle, a trooper brushed against a two-inch vine, and a grenade slung at chest height went off, shattering the right side of his head and body. The medic, working down in the dim light, managed to stop the major bleeders, but could do nothing about the shattered arm and the partly destroyed skull. Nearby troopers took hold of the unconscious soldier and half carrying, half dragging him, pulled him the rest of the way through the tangle.

The platoon finally came out onto a small dirt road. Shielding their eyes from the sudden glare of sunlight, they dropped their rucksacks and sat down along the slight rise bordering the road, licking the salt off their lips as they waited for the chopper to come in and take out the body.

They were sitting there strung out along the road, when they spotted a small figure putt-putting toward them. They watched uninterestedly while the figure moved toward them, its progress marked by little puffs of grayish smoke, and became an old man driving a scooter. When the scooter was less than fifty meters away from them, the old man began to slow down.

The point, a blank-faced kid, picked up his weapon and got slowly to his feet. Holding up his hand, he walked wearily into the center of the road and stopped there, waiting. The old man slowed to a stop and stared at the trooper, waiting impatiently for him to move. He had a small steel container strapped to the back of his Honda. The point leveled his weapon at the little man’s stomach and, walking around him, motioned for him to open the container. The old man hesitated. The trooper calmly clicked his M-16 to automatic. Holding it with one hand, he carefully opened the container.

“Hey,” he said, lowering his weapon. “The dink’s got cokes.”

The rest of the platoon got to their feet. The point was reaching into the container when the old man grabbed his wrist. Startled, the trooper jumped back.

“Hey!” He pulled his hand away. “What the fuck?”

“Fifty cent,” the old man demanded, waving five fingers in the trooper’s face. “Fifty cent!”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“The little fucker steals ’em from us and then wants us to pay,” someone said angrily. The point reached in again, only to have the old man slap his hand away.

“Watch it, dink,” he said angrily. The Vietnamese, furious, reached for the container top and slammed it shut. From the side of the road there was the metallic click of a round being chambered. The old man turned on his scooter and kicked at the starter.

“Hold it,” the corporal said, moving into the road. Others followed him and gathered around in angry, sullen silence. The Vietnamese, head down, ignoring them all, kicked again at his starter.

“I want a coke,” one of the troopers said, and swinging his rifle, he knocked the top off the steel container. The Vietnamese spun around and spit at him. The trooper took a small step backward, brought the weapon smoothly up into the crook of his arm and emptied the magazine into him, cutting him off his scooter, then calmly reached into his webbing, took out another clip, and pushed it into his gun. When the chopper came they were standing there drinking the cokes. They sent their own dead home and left the old man sprawled in the middle of the road.

That night, a little after midnight, just as they were getting to sleep, the company was rocketed again. The first 122-mm rocket hit near their flank. The jarring whoosh of its explosion rolled over the camp, and a moment later someone was screaming for a medic.

In the morning, the patrol sweeping the area in front of the village found the partially destroyed cross pieces of a rocket launcher. When they brought it back, the CO examined it and asked permission to hit the village. It was denied. That afternoon, two platoons of the company were ordered out of the area to take part in a combined sweep of a nearby VC stronghold. Brigade sent them some slicks and they were CA’d in.

What was supposed to be a VC stronghold turned out to be an NVA regiment. The slicks on line brought the platoons in downwind of a little group of paddies. Even as the choppers drifted into a hover, they came under fire. While the door gunners swept the tree lines, loaches and cobras swung in and out over the LZ, shooting at anything that looked good.

The troopers, huddled in the doorways of their slicks, were being shot down before they had a chance to jump. The air crackled with passing rounds. One of the slicks was still thirty feet off the ground when a gunship, keeping pace with them, shuddered, wavered a bit, then dropped fifteen feet and exploded, sending great pieces of metal hurtling in all directions. The 1st Platoon’s six slicks brought them in closer to the tree line than the other units. Hovering three feet off the ground, the troopers jumped out into the swirling dust while the door gunners shot up the tree lines. Three troopers got hit right off, tumbling over even before they’d got their balance. Those running could hear the sledge hammer sounds of the RPD’s slamming into the choppers behind them.

The second platoon was landing off to their right, the chopper’s blades flattening down the bushes, while the troopers leaped out. A gunship came in low, right over the slicks, its gunner planted solidly in the door, feet braced against the struts, firing his 60 directly into the tree line. The pilot kept the chopper moving parallel to the troopers rushing the line, while the door gunner, pressing down on the trigger, kept his quad 60’s cracking out in one long continuous roar. A slick exploded as it pulled out.

A cobra swept in, running down the whole length of a nearby hedgegrove, cutting it apart with its mini guns. The company charging through the heat took the wood line. Stumbling through the bushes, they overran it, killing everyone they found. Panting, barely able to catch his breath, the platoon’s RTO found a wounded NVA, his shoulder and thighs smashed by the mini guns. Unable to move, he lay there, his AK broken beside him. The RTO shot him through the face.

It went on like that until the troopers had cleared the line. With the gunships moving out in front they found themselves on the edge of another paddy. Beyond was a thicker tree line. The platoon’s lieutenant, keeping low, moved out ahead.

“OK, OK,” he said; “come on, let’s go.”

No one moved. The med evacs were already coming in behind them.

“Lieutenant,” the Sergeant said, “they’re waiting.”

All along the grove, troopers were stretched out, looking grimly across the open paddy.

“I know, I know,” he said, “but the gunships shook them up, and the Major wants us to go. The quicker we get at ’em the better. Don’t want them to dig in.”

“Shit,” one of the troopers mumbled.

A machine gun opened up on their left flank.

“They’ve been dug in for twenty years,” someone else volunteered disgustedly. “Why don’t we soften the fucken thing up first.”

“Let’s go,” the Lieutenant said flatly. “That’s an order.”

Bitterly they got up, and the NVA let them get halfway across the field before they hit them. They had to pull back. A gunship coming in to help was hit by an RPD, scattering itself over 200 meters of Nam. Air strikes were finally called in and then, with gunships anchoring their flanks and artillery in rolling barrages, destroying the grove and cutting off any retreat, they moved out again. Another battalion was committed and then another. In the heat of it all, more choppers, flying close support, were shot down. Finally, on the second day, what was left of the 35th NVA regiment left whatever it was they had been fighting for and simply disappeared.

That afternoon the Americans, slinging their weapons, began counting bodies. The brass flew in, and to show how pleased they were, OK’d a policy of claiming a kill for every weapon found, even without a body. The exhausted troops, eighteen- and nineteen-year old kids, ignored the congratulations and simply went on stacking the bodies, throwing them into countable piles. It was the chopper pilots, though, flying in and out of it, right through the center of an NVA regiment and losing nine choppers, who summed up the bitterness of what had happened. At dusk of that last day of fighting, they flew in a CH-47 flying crane and slung a great cargo net below it. After the counting, they helped the troopers throw the NVA bodies into the net.

They filled the net quickly, and when it was filled, the crane, blowing up great clouds of dust, rose off the flat, pock-marked paddy. When the net had cleared the ground, the crane spun slowly around its center and, carrying its dripping cargo, moved off to drop the bodies on the path of the retreating NVA.

The next morning the two platoons were flown back to the rest of their company. That first night back they were hit again—two mortar rounds. The next day on patrol near the village, the slack stepped on a buried 50-caliber bullet, driving it down on a nail and blowing off the front part of his foot. When the medic rushed to help, he tripped a pull-release bouncing betty, blowing the explosive charge up into the air. It went off behind him, the explosion and shrapnel pitching him forward onto his face. Some of the white hot metal, blowing backwards, caught the trooper coming up behind him.

The men asked to take the village, and that afternoon the company commander, fed up himself, asked Brigade for portable strobe lights so they could cordon off the village and search it at night. Brigade told him there weren’t any available, so the Captain sent a squad to sweep the village before it got dark. The troopers, bitter and angry, found the village equally hostile and antagonistic. The villagers watched sullenly as the troopers, fingers on the triggers of their weapons, walked by their huts. No words were exchanged, nor any sign of recognition; the hate was palpable. Through it all the villagers had enough sense not to move; even the children stood rigidly still. Behind one of the huts, a squad found a rotting NVA medical kit. Without asking for approval they burned down the hut and waited there threateningly till it burned itself to the ground.

Half a kilometer past the village, the patrol was moving along the edge of one of the villager’s paddies, trying to shield their eyes from the low-slung sun, when their point was cut down by a burst of automatic fire. Throwing themselves down, they waited for the mortars or machine-gun fire. There wasn’t any, and a trooper, looking up, saw something moving away from behind the nearest hedgegrove.

“Fuck it,” he screamed, the last of his adolescent control gone. In a sudden fury he ripped off his webb gear. Even before it hit the ground he was up and running. He hit the hedgegrove on a dead Iowa run, barely keeping his balance as he burst through it. The rest of the squad was running after him. Carrying their M-16’s and M-79’s, they raced through the line and out onto the flat behind it. For Nam it was an incredibly abandoned affair. Helmet-less, webb gear and flack vests thrown away, these bareheaded Negro and freckle-faced kids, heads down, arms pumping, their boots barely touching the ground, ran on through the shimmering heat, stumbling over the uneven ground. Just past the next grove they caught them—a girl and two men. They caught them out in the open and killed them, shooting them down as they ran. Afterwards, they stood around the sprawled bodies, chests heaving, staring in bewilderment at each other. Then they stripped the girl, cut off her nose and ears, and left her there with the other two for the villagers.