by Dennis Foley
“Okay. I promise not to tell any ARVN that you told me. But what is it?”
“Woodcutters. This mo’ning. Woodcutters. They steal wood.”
“Okay. I don’t understand what that means. ‘They steal wood’?”
“Wood belong Colonel Minh. They much afraid Colonel Minh and ARVN soldier. Happen before, too.”
Hollister thought he understood what Lam was saying but wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding. “The wood they stole was owned by Colonel Minh? He owns the trees? He owns that land?”
“Yessir. He own.”
Hollister’s blood pressure spiked. He leaped to his feet and ran across the compound to the orderly room.
Inside, Hollister didn’t wait for Bernard or Easy to tell the CO that he wanted to see him. He just busted in.
Unflappable, Michaelson looked up from the map at Hollister’s outfit. “Is this an invitation to the beach or what?”
“The fucker’s using us as his own private army, sir!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, mister,” Michaelson said, holding his hands up to calm Hollister down. “Sit, I’ll get Bernard to get you something cold to drink and some more suntan lotion.”
Hollister looked down, realizing that he did look ridiculous in his shorts and shower shoes. “Sorry, sir. But I just found out that Colonel Minh owns that real estate that he cleared for us to fire up. He’s using us to keep the wood poachers out of his property!”
“What?”
“Lam, who doesn’t want to be quoted, told me.”
“Let me get this straight. Minh gave you and Captain Taylor free fire clearance knowing that there would be poachers there? On his own land?”
“Sure looks that way. Lam said that it’s happened before with ARVN troops.”
“And I’m sure that the fuckers counted the bodies as VC!”
“So, what do we do now? Blow the whistle on this guy?”
“Well, we don’t keep it to ourselves, but we don’t print it in the Stars and Stripes either. It’ll blow all out of proportion in the wrong direction. You haven’t worked with the South Viets enough yet. It’s a lot like oiling down snakes and then trying to braid them.”
“But how are we going to operate in there?”
“You let me take this up the chain of command. And you get over to Province and act dumb. Tell Colonel Minh that someone sighted friendlies in the AO, so we would like him to reevaluate his Rules of Engagement.”
Hollister made a face.
“Can’t be helped. He’ll adjust the Rules of Engagement to incorporate some requirement like confirming weapons or something, and we will go about our business with our own set of rules. Just don’t let on that you know about his property.”
CHAPTER 18
WORD MUST HAVE GOTTEN to Province Headquarters long before Hollister did. He was met by the colonel’s aspirant and told that Colonel Minh was away on an aerial reconnaissance. Hollister learned that the Rules of Engagement had been revised to account for disobedience of the Vietnamese civilians who appeared incapable of avoiding an area that had been put off limits because of the Viet Cong danger.
The aspirant also said that the LRPs and their supporting units could fire on any targets that they could identify as VC or on anyone carrying weapons or on any structures that were combat in nature—such as bunkers.
When Hollister left the Province Headquarters, he found that Colonel Minh must have left his command post without taking his gaudy jeep or his equally ornate helicopter; both were parked in the compound, and had been since Hollister’s arrival.
Hollister promised to himself never to trust another ARVN or Vietnamese official again. Not when it came to the lives of his people or innocent civilians—not again.
Hollister returned to the LRP compound, met with the detachment staff and passed on the new Rules of Engagement. In a meeting of all the officers and senior NCOs, Hollister noticed that Captain Michaelson was uncharacteristically abrupt.
“Okay, this is how it’s gonna be. You get fired upon—you return it. You eyeball bad guys—fire ’em up. If you’re in doubt and have the time—you do what you can to develop the situation and confirm the ID before you return fire. If you can’t—walk or fly away. Don’t fuck around—walk away! There’ll be other days.” Captain Michaelson raised his voice even higher and asked them, “Is that perfectly clear?”
“Clear, sir. Airborne!” all replied in unison as they got to their feet to leave.
“I need to see Hollister, Virgil, and Rogers,” the captain said.
The three lieutenants moved over to Michaelson and waited for him to speak.
“Sit,” Michaelson directed. “We are going to modify our insert schedule and go about this operation a little more deliberately. We have lots of new faces and we have this raw spot with Province that we don’t want to aggravate.
“I’ve decided that we’ll pull back on the saturation in the AO. I don’t want too many teams on the ground right now. So, we’ll only have two teams on the ground at any one time until we get the machine working a little bit better.
“Each platoon will insert the first team on its roster tomorrow morning—Captain Shaw has the details for you. We will only stay in the AO for four days per patrol unless a team makes contact or is compromised. They’ll come out and two more will be inserted in different locations on the same day.
“We’ll keep this up till we put some notches on our belts or until we confirm a dry hole.
“I’ll be alternating with Captain Shaw, briefing and inserting teams. So, while one of us is giving mission briefings, the other will be inserting teams. That will give us two fresh insert packages all the time if the chopper support can keep up.
“Lieutenant Hollister will be shadowing Shaw’s every move, and Sergeant Davis will be the acting platoon leader of the second platoon until Lieutenant Virgil gets his cherry good and broken. Sergeant Kilmerson will do the same thing with the first platoon until Rogers gets squared away.”
Michaelson looked at each of them, making solid eye contact. “Questions?”
No one spoke up.
“Okay,” Michaelson said as he looked over to the Operations section. “Captain Shaw? They’re all yours.”
Virgil and Rogers were with their teams, getting ready for their first patrols, so Hollister was alone in his hooch for the first time in days. As he was about to lick the flap on a flimsy envelope addressed to Susan there was a knock on the door frame.
“Lieutenant? Got a minute?” Easy asked.
“Yo, come on in, Top.”
Easy entered with a handful of paperwork.
Hollister looked at his watch. “Don’t you ever take an evening off, First Sergeant?”
“I had to get these signed by you before all hell breaks loose tomorrow. You know, Lieutenant, it’d be a lot easier to be the first shirt in this lash-up if we didn’t have to run patrols—then I could find all the junior officers when I needed them. And I could corner the dickhead troops that always seem to be out on a mission when I have to get them over to the aid station for their damn shots.”
Hollister took the papers, supply forms, and requisitions that he had to okay. Since the detachment was a provisional unit, without a complete staff, the officers had to double up with additional duties. Hollister was not only a platoon leader, he was also Supply officer, Vector Control officer, Reenlistment officer, Signal Security officer, and some others that he usually forgot until the first sergeant brought him some form that had to be signed or some regulation that he had to read.
He pointed to the bottle of scotch on his desk. “How ’bout a touch, Top?”
Easy made a theatrical gesture of denial, then softened. “Well, I’m not one to touch the spirits while there’s still work to be done, but I guess that I can make an exception this time. There is a chill in the air.”
Hollister played along. “Yeah, a serious cold front might be moving in from Nepal, Top. Better help yourself.”
Easy pou
red himself a hefty drink into a seemingly clean mess hall cup and took a sip.
Without looking up from the papers, Hollister asked, “What’s the story with the Old Man? He’s seems a little outa sorts, Top.”
“Oh, you can be happy that you ain’t him. He got his ass handed to him by that goddamn paper shufflin’ brigade XO today.”
Surprised, Hollister looked up at Easy. “What for?”
“Well, seems as though he went to the Brigade Commander about the province chief, and the General told Cap’n Michaelson that the XO would take care of it. When the XO got the mission, he chewed out the Old Man for going to the General with the problem and for lettin’ the pilots go nosin’ around out there in the first place.”
“What? Well, what did he say about the province chief?”
“Seems like the brigade XO got wrapped around the wrong axle and it’s now a big fuckin’ flap between him and Cap’n Michaelson.”
An NCO once told Hollister that being a commander is like being a tent peg for every asshole in the chain of command to pound into the ground. In leadership classes they called it risk of command—meaning that a commander was responsible for everything his unit did or failed to do.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Lieutenant. The Old Man isn’t going to let that jerk of a colonel get to him. He’ll sort this thing out one way or the other. You know Cap’n M.”
Michaelson had taught Hollister a lot about moral courage. For him it had been all theory in leadership classes back at Benning. But Michaelson had made Hollister understand it by always fighting for what was right, even if it meant personal risk or professional loss.
Hollister knew that he could count on the Old Man.
Theodore banged on Hollister’s door frame. “Sir, it’s 0430. You wanted me to come get you up.”
With some difficulty, Hollister came out of a black void. He rubbed his eyes, threw his poncho liner back, and swung his legs over to the floor. The smothering pressure of sleep tried to keep him in the black, but he knew that he had to get up.
“Sir … did you hear me?” Theodore yelled.
“Yeah … I heard you. Go over to the Ops tent and find out where we are. You know? Choppers, weather—the whole nine yards.”
“Yessir. Where will you be when I get it?” Theodore asked.
“Somewhere in Vietnam—I think you’ll be able to find me.”
As Theodore ran off, Hollister opened his eyes for the first time. The only light he could see was coming from the mess hall. He found his cigarettes on the top of his footlocker and lit one. The smoke cut into his lungs while satisfying some urge that was greater than the discomfort. Exhaling, he reached over and turned on the light in the hooch.
He realized that Virgil and Rogers were already up and gone. He smiled to himself—he remembered his first cherry patrol with the detachment. He didn’t sleep a wink the night before either.
There were lots of indignities in Vietnam, but the shitters were way up on the top of the list. Even having to take a crap in the field was more pleasant than having to use a two-holer.
Cautiously, Hollister sat down on the rough plywood box that covered the half drums used to burn off the human waste they collected. It occurred to him that he had never sat on any shitter in Vietnam where his feet actually touched the floor or the ground.
The door swung open with a squeak. “Mornin’, Lieutenant,” Easy said as he dropped his trousers and took the hole next to Hollister.
Hollister grunted in acknowledgment without looking at Easy. He just looked out of the screened-in upper half of the GI outhouse at the figures moving silently in the darkness. “They’re awful quiet.”
“I been in outfits like this my whole life in the army. An’ I found out one thing about volunteers in dangerous jobs,” Easy said.
“What’s that, Top?”
“If they could leave and go back to a safer job—and no one would know that they’d quit—they’d all up and disappear.
“Ya see, after they get in an outfit like this and find out how fuckin’ terrible it is, they stay because they don’t want to be called quitters and they don’t want to let each other down. I may give ’em hell because they sometimes play crazy. But they are ’bout the best soldiers I’ve ever served with.”
Hollister thought Easy might be right. It was funny. He wasn’t sure why he stayed. He was just sure about some reasons why he didn’t leave.
“Lieutenant? You in there?” Theodore yelled, rushing up to the shitter.
“Yes, Theodore. What is it?”
“I got that info you wanted, sir.”
“Can it wait a few minutes till the first sergeant and I finish our little meeting in here?”
Hollister had rerigged his web gear for the command-and-control chopper. He might need some items to survive if the chopper went down, but he certainly didn’t need all the combat gear that he normally took on a patrol.
The extra frag grenades were replaced by smoke grenades. And an ammo pouch holding an URC-10 replaced a canteen. The pouches and the pockets in his uniform held survival gear and eleven magazines of M-16 ammo—all tracers. The tracers would allow him to mark targets from the chopper.
The magazines only held seventeen rounds each. It was a safety measure that came from stories of soldiers who had filled their magazines with twenty rounds only to find that the compression caused the spring to lose its ability to push a round into the receiver of the rifle to be chambered by the bolt—resulting in a stoppage. That could mean disaster. Hollister had never actually seen it happen, but didn’t want to take the chance.
Suddenly, Lieutenant Virgil ran into the hooch to lock a packet of letters into his footlocker. Their eyes met. Virgil took a deep breath. “I don’t mind tellin’ you that you couldn’t drive a greased hat pin up my ass with a sledgehammer.”
Hollister smiled. “Let me tell you something—every minute you spend with NCOs like Davis and Camacho is like life insurance. They’re the best. You just try not to make noise, follow their lead, and soak up everything they do. You’ll be okay.”
“I hope you’re right. Well, guess I better get out there.”
Virgil started for the door.
“Hey, Virgil,” Hollister said. “Don’t worry. When we put you in today—we’ll be gentle.”
The coffee was sour in Hollister’s stomach as he strapped into the left-hand seat on the nylon bench in the cargo compartment of the C&C helicopter. He picked that seat because it would give him the best vantage point for what was happening on the ground, while allowing him to talk face-to-face with Captain Shaw, who sat in the jump seat that was installed just behind the aircraft commander. Unlike the bench seat, the jump seat faced perpendicular to the direction of flight.
Shaw pressed the transmit button that was part of the cable running from his helmet-mounted mike to the avionics system of the chopper. “How do you hear me, folks?” The noise of the chopper vibration and the swishing sounds of the blades spooling up could be heard over the helmet mikes when any crew member keyed his mike.
“I got you wide, loud, and ugly,” Shelton said.
“Thanks,” Shaw replied with a faint hint of playful sarcasm. He looked over at Hollister and raised a questioning thumb in order not to tie up the intercom while other cross talk was going on between crew members.
Hollister gave a thumbs-up.
Shaw reached up to the recessed box that held a bank of miniswitches. He tripped all the other switches off, turned the operations frequency on and called Operations radio. “Quarterback, this is Three. How do you hear this station?” Hollister could hear both sides of the conversation.
The RTO’s voice was strong and clear—transmitting over a tall antenna that was erected just behind Operations. “This is Quarterback Base, I hear you five by five. Over.”
Shaw thanked the RTO for the commo check and spun around as much as he could with his seat belt fastened to look over his shoulder. He looked out the right door at the insert ship
that had Team 2-3 in it, led by Sergeant Davis.
Vinson raised his radio handset to signal that he had heard the commo check, and keyed the handset twice to let Shaw and Hollister hear that his radio was transmitting.
Shaw gave Vinson a thumbs-up.
Virgil thought that it was meant as a good luck gesture and returned the thumbs-up.
Hollister had been in and out of the hills west of An Hoa so many times that he could almost tell the time of day by the cloud cover or absence of it. That morning, wispy white thready clouds rose from the dark green trees that covered the foothills.
The clouds were typical. Hollister always hated the cloud cover when he was on the ground. It kept the cold damp morning air close to the ground and kept the sunrise from warming him up quickly. And sometimes it was so thick and so low that it prevented the gunships and the Forward Air Controllers from doing their jobs—because they wouldn’t fire into areas where they couldn’t clearly identify the friendly positions and enemy targets.
Cloud cover was one of the reasons that they put teams in early and then extracted teams later. Inserting didn’t present much of an identification problem. Until the team was on the ground, the pilots were not so skittish—anyone shooting at them from the ground was fair game.
If supporting fires were needed after a team was inserted, their location was rarely in question since the air crews had just put them in and had seen the terrain from skid level.
They had just finished a false insert on the first LZ and were going to insert Team 2-3 on the second LZ. The level of tension in the slicks, C&C and the gunships hung over every message. The closer they got to the LZ, the less laughing and joking there seemed to be on the radios and intercoms. Each man was privately making deals with his own God to just let him through that insert without the worst happening. Plenty of sacrifices were promised—going to church, quitting bad habits—the list was endless.
Hollister watched Shaw closely. Too soon, Hollister knew, Captain Michaelson would expect him to take over putting teams in and taking them out. That would put him in the jump seat calling the shots. He would be responsible for the teams and the air crews and the choppers. The thought made his sour stomach tighten in anticipation.
