The Reunion (8 page)

February 9, 1969
Near the Song Da Krong Valley, Vietnam

Fear.

In a word, fear was what John Lansing remembered most about that day. Not just that day but all the days back then, for months leading up to that day. He was afraid all the time. He didn’t know why he didn’t drop dead; the fear was so intense some days. If they’d stuck guys his present age in situations like that, you’d see men dropping dead every hour or so from a heart attack or stroke.

No, war is a young man’s game.

And John was young then, twenty-three years old. But at that age, he was older than most of the men in his platoon. Nineteen was average. They were all part of the 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines. A few weeks earlier, they’d been airlifted into the area to set up Fire Support Base Cunningham on a ridgeline overlooking the valley. A firebase was essential to any combat operation in Vietnam. It was a high, level place where the helicopters could land and drop off men, equipment, and supplies.

But even more important, a place Marines could set up their artillery guns, so when patrols in the jungles below got stuck in a firefight, radiomen could call in a fire mission. When they did, the artillery at Cunningham would rain a firestorm of shells down on the enemy. These artillery fire missions had saved John’s hide more times than he could count in the last few years.

Few years.

What an idiot he’d been to sign on for a second tour. He could have been home over a year ago. All the John Wayne, Green Beret crap he’d bought into was long gone. No fighting for God and country running through his veins anymore. John had just one thought in mind when he woke up every day, one thought when he went to sleep.

That morning, the thought was “thirty-six.”

He only had to survive thirty-six more days and he’d get sent home. Every soldier in country (what they called time in Vietnam) started their combat tour knowing they had to make it through thirteen months. No hope of it being shorter, unless you went out in a body bag or stretcher.

John thought about that as the loud, staccato thumping of a Huey helicopter faded in the distance. It had flown in at first light to medevac out two Marines wounded last night in a firefight by their listening post. The company set up three LPs every night, two-man teams just beyond the perimeter defenses, hoping to hear any enemy movement in time to warn the rest of the unit before an attack.

Sometime just after 3:00 a.m., John awoke to chaos as the night sky filled with gunfire. All around him men shouted and swore and grabbed their weapons, bracing for battle. But within minutes, it was over. The VC patrol who’d stumbled on this LP quickly disappeared back into the jungle. The only sound after were the agonizing screams of the two men who got jumped.

At dawn, John watched the Huey disappear over a hill on the opposite side of the valley. It was the first day in nine that the fog had lifted enough to see that far. Despite their injuries, he envied those two men. They still had arms and legs, and it didn’t look like their wounds were fatal. The perfect ticket out, he thought.

“Bet you wish that was you, Tex.” John looked over at Hammer, one of his two best friends in the platoon. John got the nickname Tex for obvious reasons. Hammer got his because he’d been a carpenter’s helper before the draft. His real name was Allan Summers.

Tex didn’t answer, just kept putting on his gear, getting ready for the patrol.

“I wish it was me,” Hammer said. “Those guys are outta here for good. But hey, you’re getting close, right? You only got, what, thirty days?”

“Thirty-six,” Tex said.

“I got more than double that left.” Hammer picked up his M-16, looked down, and kicked the dirt. “I don’t see myself making it home now, since they dropped us out here. I mean, look, right off the bat, we got VC probing our LPs at night. And now we’re getting sent out in the jungle to hunt ’em down. Who knows what we’re gonna run into.”

“You’ll be fine, Hammer. Redman and me will look after you.” Redman was John’s other friend. His real name was Paul Patterson. He made the mistake once of bragging he was one-fourth Cherokee Indian.

“Redman’s only got a week more than you. Wish I was a short-timer.”

Overhearing all this was an Italian guy from the Bronx named Sardelli. He was short but built like a tank. They hadn’t picked a name for him yet, since he’d only been in country two weeks. “You guys are talking like this thing’s gonna go on forever. Nixon just got sworn in back home. He said he’s gonna end this thing soon.”

Tex and Hammer looked at him. “You’re kidding, right?” Tex said.

“No, I’m not. The whole country’s against the war now, and Nixon said he was gonna find a way to end it . . . with honor.”

Tex bent down and opened an ammo box. Technically speaking, they weren’t allowed to say anything negative about their commander-in-chief. “I wouldn’t hold him to that campaign promise,” Tex said.

Hammer said something a little more colorful.

“I don’t know,” Sardelli said. “You guys are just messed up from being over here so long. We might get the VC cleaned out of this valley a few weeks from now. This could be the last big battle of the war.”

“How much time you got left, Sardelli?” Hammer said.

He thought a moment. “Three hundred and forty-two days. But—”

“Thought so.”

“Why?”

“That’s why you’re talking that way,” Hammer said. “If that helps you sleep better at night . . .”

“That’s not why I said it.”

Hammer didn’t reply.

After getting all the ammo clips he needed, Tex straightened up. “You better get something straight, Sardelli,” he said. “This ain’t like other wars we fought in, where guys like us win a few big battles, force the enemy to give up his ground, and then he surrenders.” This was one of the hardest lessons Tex had learned once he got here in ’66. “See, the battles we fight out here aren’t about beating the commies back to North Vietnam. Our commanders don’t even talk like that
might
happen someday. It’s all about how many VC we kill today versus how many of our guys they kill. We kill more of them, we won the battle.”

“Then the next day, we start all over again,” Hammer added. “It’s a numbers game. It’s all about body counts. Last year the whole battalion fought over a week to take this one hill and the jungle around it. We lost thirty-eight guys, but hey, we killed over four hundred Viet Cong. So, we won big-time, right? We owned that hill. But did we stay on it, make sure it stayed out of enemy hands? No, they took us off the very next day. Headed out to take some other nameless hill.”

Sardelli just stared at them, a deflated look on his face.
But hey
, Tex thought,
the guy’s gotta be told
. Just then, Redman walked toward them. He’d been talking with their CO, Lt. Mann, this whole time.

“Guys,” he said. “I gotta be on point for the patrol this morning.” His face was white as a sheet.

“What?” Tex said. “But last night Cracker said he’d do it again.”

“I know,” Redman said. “But the lieutenant said no. Cracker’s been volunteering to take point too much, and he’s putting a stop to it. Cracker was standing right there next to him. The lieutenant looked at me and said, ‘Redman, you know it’s your turn. Now get ready. We’re moving out in ten minutes.’” Fear was all over Redman’s face. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

Everyone knew, the point man was the first to get it on patrol. Most of the time, anyway. First to get shot in an ambush. First to cross a trip wire and set off a mine. First to step in a punji trap—sharpened bamboo stakes that stuck straight up from a hidden hole.

Something was wrong with Cracker. For some reason, he’d been volunteering to take other guys’ places as point on patrols. Maybe he was fearless. Or maybe he had some kind of death wish. Tex wondered if that was it.

“Well, don’t worry, Redman. Hammer and I got your back. I bet ol’ Sardelli here will stay close, right, Sardelli?”

Sardelli looked away.

“Forget him,” Hammer said. “We’ll get through this. You’ll see.”

Tex saw Cracker walk toward them.

“Sorry, Redman, you know I tried.”

Redman just nodded back. Cracker turned and walked away. He was mostly a loner, did what he was supposed to do, but didn’t talk much. A lot of the guys made fun of him. Sometimes he, Redman, and Hammer joined in. He’d heard Cracker was from some no-name town in Florida, talked with a strong Southern accent. That’s how he got the name.

His real name was Aaron Miller.

A
s the sun rose over the Song Da Krong Valley, it made everyone in the platoon forget this was supposed to be a winter month. It wasn’t nearly as stifling or muggy as the monsoon season, maybe up around seventy degrees. But with all their gear on, it felt twenty degrees hotter. The men descended the hill into the shade offered by the thick canopy of trees running down the eastern half of the valley. The heat eased up a little, but there was almost no wind coming through.

Tex wished the weather was all they had to worry about. He made his way to the front of the line to join Hammer and Redman, who was now on point. Every few steps, Redman looked back. “We’re here,” Tex said. He tried to sound reassuring, but there was no truth in it. With each step farther into the jungle, Tex’s own fears went up another notch. What he wanted to say was, “You’re on your own,” and slip to the back of the patrol.

They called these missions “Search and Destroy,” the idea being they went out searching for VC and, once found, destroyed them. They should’ve been called “Search and Get Ambushed” patrols, because that’s what really happened. Everything about these missions played to the enemy’s hand. They were in his backyard. He knew these jungles, and he was out there hiding, waiting for them to come his way. No matter how quiet they tried to be, he could always hear them coming.

It was steep going down the hillside, at times hard to find a foothold. A thought flashed into Tex’s mind: maybe he should just let himself fall the next time he slipped. Take his chances. He’d probably get cut up real bad, maybe even break a bone or two. But he’d be alive. Sarge would lay into him when they found him down the hill, hurl every four-lettered insult he knew. But then he’d send some guys to drag him back to Cunningham. If he was hurt bad enough, they’d medevac him back to Vandergrift.

“Watch it, Tex.” It was Hammer.

A large fern whipped around and slapped Tex across the face.

“Sorry, you gotta stay closer, man.”

Tex didn’t want to stay closer. The others looked to him as if he was tougher than they were, so he played along with it. He was the one who’d signed on for a second tour, got the Silver Star. He was from Texas. He’d even thought he was tough . . . a few years ago. Or was it a few months ago?

All he knew was, something clicked inside when counting down his days and he got to the number thirty-nine.
Thirty-nine.
Wasn’t too far from a month. In just over a month, he’d have all his days in, then he’d hightail it out of here on that big Freedom Bird back to the States.

But only if he stayed alive.

For the last eleven months, he’d spent his days and nights doing every awful, hateful thing he’d been asked to do. Killing VC a dozen different ways, zipping friends up in body bags, sleeping in muck and swamps with artillery fire pounding in his brain, eating cold rations and living in the rain for days on end, picking off leeches, swatting mosquitoes, dodging bullets and booby traps. So many close calls. More than he could count. He was sure he’d never make it to the end. He’d almost stopped hoping he’d survive. But here he was, just over a month away.

The last place he needed to be today was up here near the point with Redman and Hammer.

“Here it is,” Hammer said. “Here’s where the fight went down last night.” They had reached the LP.

Tex looked around at the scarred and broken tree limbs and branches. The twisted vines and palm fronds blackened by grenade explosions. He saw blood splatters in the grass and leaves in two places.
Those two guys were sitting right there
, Tex thought.
Right there.
Could have been him and Hammer. Or Hammer and Redman sitting there, not making a sound.

Pitch black. Listening for crackling leaves, a breaking twig. He remembered the last time he was at an LP. Got to where he could hear his own heartbeat.

“Okay, guys, look sharp. We’re in no-man’s-land now. Hand signals only from here.” It was Sarge, maybe ten yards back.

Hammer turned and whispered to Tex, “Sarge said there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance we won’t see any booby traps out here. From what he heard, this whole operation is about those trucks the North Vietnamese been driving on that highway south of here, you know, coming in from Laos. He doesn’t think the VC have been out here long enough to set any traps.”

Tex nodded and kept following Hammer deeper into the brush. It was damp, and the whole area smelled like a cellar. He wasn’t buying the news about the traps. For two reasons. First, Tex had been a sergeant last year, until he got busted down to private for insubordination. He’d routinely said hopeful things to his guys that he didn’t believe. And second, it didn’t take long to set some of those traps, especially those punji spikes and trip wires they hooked up to mines.

“Redman,” he said in a loud whisper. “You hear me?” The jungle was so thick here, he couldn’t even see him, though he was only a few feet past Hammer.

“I hear you, Tex.”

“You still keep an eye out for those traps.”

“Oh . . . I am. But . . . can’t hardly see a thing.” Tex heard a tremble in his voice. The three of them were close enough that if Redman did blow up, both he and Hammer would get some of it too. They weren’t supposed to bunch up like this. They were taught to keep a certain distance between them, to minimize casualties should the point man walk into an ambush or set off a trap. But they always stuck close together. Hammer had said they were like the Three Musketeers. One for all and all for one.

It’s a bunch of crap is what it is.
For something as stupid as that, Tex was up here with Redman and Hammer, about to get maimed or killed. He could feel it coming.

He looked behind him, saw Cracker, no expression on his face at all. Sardelli was close behind him. None of the guys stayed the right distance apart in jungle this thick. They were all as afraid as he was. In a place like this, there was plenty to fear. Forget the Viet Cong waiting to kill you. Deadly snakes and spiders were all over the place, lurking about. Disease-carrying insects. And the darkness. It wasn’t even nine-thirty in the morning, and it was dark enough to be well after sundown. And it wasn’t like they were treading along some nature trail marked out with signs. You lost sight of the guy in front of you, even for a minute, the jungle could swallow you whole.

They continued their downward descent for the next twenty minutes in silence. Finally, they reached a place where every now and then there’d be a slight break in the trees. Tex looked up and saw parts of the valley, far off in the distance, lit up by the morning sun. It was almost scenic. A few minutes later, he heard the sound of trickling water.

A few minutes after that, Redman stopped dead in his tracks. So did everyone else.

He put his finger to his mouth then pointed to the ground. They had just reached the base of the hill. Before them, a narrow creek flowed through a winding path of rocks and fallen limbs. Tex looked down to where Redman pointed.

Footprints in the mud along the creek bank. Dozens of them.

He looked around for any sign of their owners. So did Hammer and Redman. The men behind them waited to see what came next. The other side of the creek was lined with tall bamboo and elephant grass. Anything could be hiding in there, Tex thought.

Redman looked at him. Tex could see in his eyes: Redman was asking him what he should do. He didn’t want to take another step.

But he had to. You couldn’t stop when you were on point. Tex nodded for him to keep going, slowly. More fake bravado. Everything inside him wanted to turn and run back the way they came.

But Redman obeyed. Short, quiet steps. Hammer followed after, stepped gently onto the muddy bank. Then Tex. Within a few minutes, the entire patrol walked along the bank. No one said a word. Here, the creek was about the width of a wide hallway. They had to duck in spots to clear the brush overhead, which created a tunnel effect.

About fifty yards farther, the creek opened wide to a section about forty feet across, littered with fallen trees and rocks. The water branched out and swirled in little pools behind the bigger boulders until it escaped on either side. Except for the tropical vegetation, it reminded Tex of creeks he’d visited as a boy at his grandparents’ property in the Carolinas.

Redman looked back. Tex nodded for him to stay to the right. They continued walking until they reached the halfway point in this open area. Tex didn’t hear Cracker behind him anymore, so he turned. Cracker had stopped. He was squatting about thirty feet back in the water behind a dead tree. Tex had moved past that same spot moments ago. Cracker didn’t have a look of fear on his face. It was something else. His eyes scanned the creek beds on either side, then downstream. His eyes peered into the bamboo and tall grass.

Cracker’s face suddenly changed, a different look.

The whole area exploded with machine-gun fire.