13th Valley

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Okay,” Thomaston had said. Whiteboy had risen, his giant body buried beneath an enormous rucksack. A sling ran from the M-60’s front sight over Whiteboy’s right shoulder then to the butt of the stock, the gun slung horizontal at Whiteboy’s hip, the barrel straight forward. A belt of one hundred cartridges came from the feed tray, hung toward the ground then looped back up over the gun barrel and hung down again. Diagonally across his chest Whiteboy had two additional belts of ammo and about his waist was snapped a third. Whiteboy had glanced back at Hill to make sure he was ready then had stepped forward, down, into the first layer of jungle. Hill followed at three meters then Frye, Andrews, Harley, Kirtley and Mullen. As the descent began the helicopter with the correspondent arrived, deposited its load and departed. When it left Thomaston sent word forward to wait zero two then move out again. Whiteboy stepped quietly down.

  At the step-off point Egan entered the jungle behind 3d Sqd. He was followed by Cherry and Doc McCarthy, 1st Plt’s medic. Thomaston stayed at the step-off metering out soldiers at equal intervals. 1st Sqd followed the platoon CP and then 2d Sqd. Thomaston turned his post over to Lt. De Barti of the 2d Plt who metered out his men behind 1st Plt descending into the jungle.

  Whiteboy set the pace for the entire column. Very slowly he moved. One pace every five or six seconds, ten paces a minute, less than 300 meters in an hour. Whiteboy picked his way downward, generally westward, turning up here, down there, as obstacles in the trail dictated. He stayed below the ridge keeping the crest always uphill to his left. He did not cut trail. He did not use a machete to straighten the path. He simply moved toward his objective along the path of least resistance as imperceptibly as possible.

  Justin Hill maintained visual contact with Whiteboy. As slackman Hill paid close attention to the pointman’s every motion. Hill followed Whiteboy without a sound, stepping over each root cluster, hunching beneath each low branch. Behind Hill Cookie Frye moved in slow spurts. He walked to within a meter of Hill then stopped and faced off the trail to the uphill. Frye waited there searching the jungle to the side until Andrew’s moved up and took his position. Then Frye moved again forward to within a meter of Hill, now stopping, looking downhill searching waiting for Andrews. Andrews moved forward when Harley assumed his position. Behind the point and slack, the squad moved forward like an inchworm on a stem, the front not moving until the rear had caught up and taken its place. Behind Mullen, the last man in 3d Sqd, Egan kept the chair unbroken and behind Egan Cherry copied the movement.

  As the trail descended it became steeper and the canopy higher and thicker. Beneath the canopy the air was thick, moist, clinging. The vegetation went from dry and dusty above to wet and thick below. Light barely penetrated to the earth. The trail became muddy. As more and more men passed over the trail the mud squished and became slippery. The squishing noise was dampened by the thick air and absorbed by the jungle.

  Cherry became disoriented 100 meters into the jungle. He could not hear Egan to his front. He had come up to Egan, assumed Egan’s position as Egan had moved down through a hole in the green leafy wall. Dave McCarthy, the medic, moved in behind Cherry and Cherry went to move forward toward Egan but he had lost the trail. Cherry paused. He listened. He could neither hear nor see Egan. He stepped forward and was met by palm fronds and vines. He could not even find the path. He paused and listened again and he searched for the way to go. He glanced behind him. McCarthy was two paces back, mostly obliterated from view by the vegetation. Behind McCarthy was Numbnuts of the 1st Sqd. Cherry could not see Numbnuts at all.

  “Sergeant Egan,” Cherry called in a very low voice. “Sergeant Egan,” he called a little louder, a bit panicky. Cherry shuffled his feet. “Sergeant Egan,” he raised his voice.

  McCarthy touched Cherry’s shoulder. Cherry turned. Without warning, totally unexpected, a hand smacked him across the mouth. It was Egan.

  “You cocksucker,” Egan snarled, the sound of his voice very low yet harsh and strong. “You mothafuckin cocksuck shit fuck. What the fuck you doin?”

  “I … ah …” Cherry was shocked, fearful.

  Egan’s eyes bulged. “Mothafucker, I’m tellin you once en only once. If I ever hear a sound from you, if I ever hear your feet touch the ground or your ruck hit a bush, I’m goina kick yer ass forever. You start concentratin, Mister. You stupid shit fuck. We got the whole fuckin column halted.” Egan had hold of Cherry’s fatigue shirt collar and was shaking Cherry back and forth with terrifying, rapid jerks. Then Egan disappeared through a hole in the green wall less than a foot from Cherry. Cherry stared after him as if Egan had been a spirit. Cherry did not even see the brush move.

  Generally in the field boonierats established a buddy system, pairing off either by friendship or by necessity and at times by both. Whiteboy and Hill were a team. So were Pop and Garbageman, Jax and Silvers, Doc and Minh, and now Egan and Cherry.

  In the CP Brooks paired off with El Paso. Those two were very close. As commander Brooks was the brain of the company and as senior RTO, El Paso was the ears and mouth. El Paso carried a PRC-25 set on the internal frequency of the company for communicating between the CP and the platoons and/or squads. Bill Brown also carried a PRC-25, his radio being set on the command network to communicate with battalion HQs which was now established with a forward TOC on Firebase Barnett. Tim Cahalan carried the Monster, a PRC-77. This radio was similar to the 25 except it was also a kryptographer, automatically scrambling or descrambling voice transmissions. The Monster was used to communicate with the rear on vital or intelligence matters such as calling in a unit’s location to insure friendly artillery did not accidentally drop unfriendly explosives on them. All three radios were kept open to receive transmissions at all times. At all times the radios had to be monitored. Brown and Cahalan, along with FO, buddied-up.

  The company CP entered the jungle between the 1st and 2nd Plts and inch-wormed downward with the column.

  “L-T, Barnett’s gettin hit,” Bill Brown whispered to Brooks. Brooks did not stop nor did he acknowledge Brown’s remark but the RTO knew the commander had heard and was thinking.

  “They’re catchin beaucoup shit,” El Paso said a moment later. “Sounds like eighty-twos.”

  Then Brown said, “Recon’s callin for another medevac.”

  Alpha continued to descend in column. Whiteboy was 75 meters west and below the CP. The 2d Plt was strung out behind and above the CP an equal distance. 3d Plt had returned to the LZ from patrolling and was now eating lunch, making noise and maintaining a high degree of visibility.

  Along the creeping column rucksacks bore down into shoulders and backs. No matter how carefully a soldier packed his ruck, no matter how many times he tested it for comfort, when the move finally began the ruck dug in someplace. The weight from the rucks drove legs down into every fold and hole in the trail. Thigh muscles fatigued and twinged, shook from the weight and the slowness. Helmets, those being worn, felt hot and heavy and never seemed to sit just right so they strained neck muscles. Sweat from foreheads collected in eyebrows and trickled saline rivers into eyes. Weapons, always held pointing forward with both hands, the right thumb on the selector ready to flick from safe to automatic, stretched forearms and wrists and hands. Hands sweated on pistol grips and arm guards. Right hand index fingers tensed and tickled triggers.

  The column moved slowly, alert, searching, the earth became steeper and more slippery and the rucks seemed to gain weight on the unsure footing. The only sound most boonierats could hear was their own breath exhausting harshly from their lungs and hissing over their teeth. Occasionally the swish of tree branches or palm fronds brushing on their helmets or clothes caused them to move even more lightly under the heavy loads. The artillery batteries on Barnett began pumping out rounds. Now explosive rumbling from the big shells rolled across the column. In the enclosure of the valley the thunder echoed and ricocheted.

  At point Whiteboy slowed further. With each pace he looked twice from side to side for traces of
enemy. He searched up and down for booby trap trip wires. He examined the trail for fresh human footprints.

  The last of 2d Plt slipped into the overgrowth and disappeared into the jungle. The 3d Plt tightened the perimeter about the landing zone. On top of 848 the troops were still grab-assing. Rafe Ridgefield, the announcer from the Phoc Roc, was lounging back on a warm rock catching the sun’s rays with John McQueen, Terry Snell and Don Nahele. Snell and Nahele were buddies from Los Angeles who had entered the army together and who had stayed together from basic through advanced training and into the boonies. All four men were smoking and laughing.

  “Hey, Snell,” Nahele called, “you a crusher or a folder?”

  “I’m Lutheran,” Snell chuckled.

  “Man,” Nahele drew out the word, “I just took the healthiest shit I think I ever took in my whole life.”

  “What a coincidence,” Ridgefield laughed. “So did I.”

  “Jesus,” Snell groaned, “I haven’t shit in four days.”

  “I took one two nights ago that squirted out all over the place,” Ridgefield said. “The anal joy was great at first but then my ass began to burn.”

  “That’s that red pepper yer always puttin on everything,” Nahele said.

  “You guys don’t even know what shittin’s even all about,” McQueen called over. “Did I ever tell you guys about Latrine F-27 down in the Delta? F-27. Defecation Sector for the 25th. Down there we used ta say, ‘the larger the turd, the more efficient the shitting.’”

  “Hey, Queenie,” Snell called back. “When does piss become somethin separate from the body? When it’s waste in the blood stream it’s still part of ya, don’t ya think?”

  “Maybe it’s when it enters the bladder,” Ridgefield injected. His eyes were darting unfocused back and forth. A radio program was building quickly in his mind.

  Nahele sensed Ridgefield’s mind churning and he began egging him on. “Maybe it’s still part a you till you piss it out,” Nahele said.

  “Maybe til it hits the ground,” Snell added.

  Ridgefield wheeled about, jumped up and announced, “I mean it. I’m goina run for Congress. I got all the problems of the world figured out. It’s really very simple. I am now in possession of the solution.”

  “Halleelujah!” Nahele cried out. He bummed a cigarette from Snell. “Ol Rafe’s goina give everybody a gallon a bourbon, a deck a Js and a piece a ass and let em drink en smoke en fuck ’emselves to death.”

  “Don’t be crude,” Rafe Ridgefield chastised. “That don’t work. My opponents have been proposing exactly that for years and look just how far the Great Society has got. Nope,” he said, a twinkle in his eye, “it is first and foremost a matter of the bladder. It’s all obvious from there.”

  “Oh God,” Snell snickered. “Get your entrenching tools, the shit is starting to flow.”

  Ridgefield stood up on the rock he had been lying on, cleared his throat, thought twice about standing on his soapbox on the LZ and crouched. “It is obviously a sign of weakness,” Ridgefield addressed Snell, Nahele and McQueen and fictitious throngs in his best congressional voice, “if one urinates too often. I mean, if one urinates every time the urge presents itself, well, he’d be pissing ten to twenty times a day. He would literally be pissing his life away. And each time he urinated it would be for what, six, eight seconds. Isn’t that right? I SAY THIS IS RIDICULOUS!”

  “So do I,” Nahele laughed.

  “I’d say any urination lasting less than half a minute is a total, inexcusable waste of time. It should be illegal. Or at any rate, taxable.” As Ridgefield spoke McQueen, Leahmann and several others from his squad edged over to listen. “Now, Gentlemen, the actual act of urinating and the length of time it actually takes for the fluids to be expelled are not of primary importance. However, the time it takes, the time it wastes, to find a suitable location to urinate plus the time it takes, it wastes, to get there and back and of course the time wasted zipping and unzipping, Dear Lord, if a person goes only eight times each day, he, or she, as the case may be, will spend one third of his, or her, productive time doing nothing better than peeing … ah … excuse me, relieving his, or her, bladder.”

  “Rafe,” Snell said, “I aint had a pair of pants with a zipper in ten months.”

  “Now then, this is my plan,” Ridgefield summoned his most articulate and deep voice. “This plan will have profound personality alterations for those upon whom it is imposed. Everyone will piss at ten o’clock in the morning. At that time they will be allowed to rid themselves of the built-up urine from the night before plus liquids from their morning coffee. The next allowable urination will be at four in the afternoon. This urination will be only for hardship cases and will require the permission of a ten-person review board. The four o’clock will enable weak individuals to relieve themselves of morning coffee break liquids, of whatever they might have consumed during lunch and of anything which might have reached the bladder since the afternoon break. Everyone will be allowed to urinate just prior to retiring for the night. This, of course, is necessitated by the need for one to get an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

  “Now the profound effects I anticipate this action, this legislation, to have will include a hardening of the character of the people of our beloved country, a hardening of our soft national character. It will be the first major step in disciplining the masses. Once the major population centers are pacified we will be able to advance and blanket the entire nation. No riots, no strikes, no wars. The entire world shall follow suit.

  “Now then, Gentlemen,” Ridgefield was virtually blasting his voice across the valley, “with the people so disciplined from holding back the urge …”

  “What are you goina do when all the sewers explode at ten-oh-five every morning?” Snell teased.

  “Maybe his old man’s a plumber,” Nahele said.

  “Gentlemen,” Ridgefield waved his arms for silence, “such trivialities. Here I squat before you …”

  “With your dong in yer ear, Man,” Nahele completed Rafe’s sentence. “Hey, we gotta get goin, don’t we?”

  “Gentlemen, this session of the legislature shall not be adjourned until we adopt this measure now lying before us.”

  “Fuck it,” Snell laughed. “Hey, Rafe,” he said standing, “I gotta piss. You wanta time it?”

  “Be careful,” Nahele warned. “He may wanta hold it.

  Jesus H. Who’s at point? Those fuckin guys sure are takin their sweetass time.”

  Ridgefield picked up his M-60 and he and Snell and the others slipped into their rucks and prepared to slide off the LZ and into the jungle. Ridgefield glanced quickly over the hilltop then began climbing down through the first brush and onto the now well established trail. “Sssshh,” he suddenly hissed. “What’s … oh fuck.”

  Whiteboy and Hill and Egan heard it too. Once, twice, phaffft. phaffft. Three, four. Now almost everyone in the column, heard it. phaffft. It was an odd sound. Later Cherry would remember thinking that it sounded like a car door being closed halfway down the block on a very warm muggy summer night. It was not actually a sound. It was more a feeling at the ears as if the door closing compressed air in a sedan and the compression traveled as a shock wave. It was the sound of a mortar round leaving its firing tube somewhere in the surrounding jungle. phaffft. phaffft. Seven. Eight. Whiteboy had leaped off the trail before the second round was launched. Hill leaped when he saw Whiteboy go. Egan was on the ground, prone, beneath his rucksack, scrambling to bury himself in an indentation of earth. Up and down the line veterans were crawling, clawing for cover. Instinctively Cherry was down too. He pulled his helmet down over his ears, pulled his neck down until the helmet seemed to merge with his shoulders. PHAFFFT. PHAFFFT. No one said a word.

  karrumphh. karRUMph. KARRUMP.

  The first shell exploded on the ridge at the draw, the second on the ridge 20 meters up and the third 20 meters higher. The NVA were walking the mortar rounds up the ridgeline.

  Whitebo
y cringed with each explosion. KARRUMP. But he did not remain down. He caressed his 60. “Okay Lit’le Boy,” he whispered to it. “If they gonna folla this up, we gonna be ready. God A’mighty Sweet Jesus, stop them fuckin thins.”

  KARRUMP. It was now very quick. Cracking echolessly. Shrapnel stones and dirt zinged from the explosions and fired into the vegetation knocking branches and leaves and vines down. KARRUMP. Another mortar shell exploded, again higher, higher than Whiteboy’s location. Whiteboy raised up, pulled back, yelled to Hill, “Form a point.”

  KARRUMP. Mortar rounds exploded one per second, each 20 meters higher than the preceding one.

  Brooks screamed to Brown, “Get ARA ASAP.”

  Cherry pulled his helmet down tighter. He pulled his knees to his chest, to his ears and he huddled in a tight frightened ball below his rucksack. KARRUMP. The explosions moved higher. Cherry could feel his back muscles trying to reach the earth through his chest. The hairs on his chest seemed implanted in the moist soil. As each round exploded his body experienced jolting physical fear. His eyes stared down, bulged in tight drawn skin, focused on tiny bamboo shoots and tiny bugs and then went out of focus. Beads of sweat burst from his temples. He inhaled mud, his face—mouth, nose and eyes—pressed into the trail.

  Then it was silent.

  “Everybody stay down,” Egan’s whisper yelled. “Get down and get to the right of the trail.”

  Whiteboy had backed up to Cherry’s position and Cherry now found himself at the center of a defensive ring set up by 3d Sqd. Egan was by his side and he had the handset from Cherry’s radio. Egan twitched, jerked, whisked the handset down his left arm cursing, “Fuckin spiders.” Everyone except Cherry had shed his rucksack and all were now still, hiding in the vegetation in a rounded point. Cherry wriggled from his pack.

  “Quiet Rover Four, this is Rover Two. Over,” Egan called El Paso.

  “Two, Four,” the reply was instantaneous. “Any W-I-A your location? Over.”