13th Valley

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Cherry charges the trench from below, his eyes blazing. He has enemy soldiers in his sights. He fires killing one. The other is fleeing. Cherry leaps. He is on top of the enemy. The soldier falls. He is small, lean, hard, but no match for Cherry. Cherry is on him gouging his eyes. “Choui Hoi,” the enemy yells cries into Cherry’s madly punching fists. The man gashes at Cherry defensively. Cherry is infuriated. He digs his fingers into the enemy’s face. The soldier bites Cherry’s hand. Cherry bites his face, the nose crushes, Cherry bites, mad-dog, bites and rips the soldier’s neck simultaneously thrusting his bayonet into the enemy stomach. Blood explodes in Cherry’s mouth. He freezes. He feels Egan standing over him, staring at him.

  Firing erupts sporadically all over the valley. The firebase is being mortared, the C & C takes fire. The NVA’s coordinated plan is now being implemented. All four US perimeter companies are being attacked at once. It is costly to the NVA. They have at least thirty-six killed. American helicopters are strafing NVA concentrations. Red smoke is billowing from a dozen US marking grenades, marking US front lines or NVA positions.

  American units do not advance. They are too close to each other for artillery or tactical air support. The NVA are attempting to have them fire at each other. From the C & C bird the GreenMan sees their plan. He also suspects, as does Brooks on the ground, that the NVA plan does not include Alpha Company, that Alpha has indeed lost itself in the valley and the ruse of not resupplying has worked. Only a skeleton crew of enemy soldiers is protecting the headquarters complex.

  They are sweeping northwest through the brushforest. The sun is playing in the valley vegetation throwing dappled shadows against vegetation and ground and men. The shadows seem to dance in the stalks and leaves as the men sweep silently. They are in three rough lines, the front line men seven meters apart, too far, they think, yet that is how Brooks ordered it. The second line is three to four meters back, splitting the distance between the men in front, each second row man walking slack for two front row men. Behind, the third line are the reinforcers, the reactors, and the co-ordinators. The sweep has advanced 300 meters. They have halted, listening to 1st Plt’s fight, waiting to be directed to help.

  “Hey, L-T,” FO whispercalls. “Hey,” he gestures quickly at a camouflaged mound, a swell not eight inches higher than the valley floor around it. “Hey,” he whispershouts, “we’re on top of a bunker complex.”

  Brooks looks. He stares. It is not FO’s style to conjure up nonexistent bunkers yet Brooks does not see a bunker. The commander and the forward observer are fewer than two meters apart. They are kneeling behind the front two lines. Brooks stares. FO is covering the mound with his 16. He has risen and is advancing on the mound. The immediate area is silent. 1st Plt’s battle for the knoll is quieting. Brooks stares, he sees nothing. Then the form emerges from the camouflaging background. It is like an optical illusion which, once seen, one cannot easily reverse. Brooks scans the area. He sees what FO has seen. There are bunkers everywhere, before them and behind. The camouflage seems to melt away, and there is a field of bunkers, a field of low square mounds buried beneath growing layers of brush and vine and some bamboo and some low trees. A few of the bunkers are beneath what appears to be old Montagnard thatch hootches that have collapsed and rotted.

  It happens to Pop Randalph at the far left and to Nahele at the far right. Some still see nothing even as others point out mounds to them. Never have any of them seen such perfect camouflage. There seem to be no openings. A spooky feeling sweeps across the invaders. Where are they? Brooks thinks. Where are the little people? Why haven’t they hit us? He directs the unit to squeeze in at the flanks and bulge at the sides. “Have them form a perimeter,” he tells El Paso. “We’ll clear from inside out. Get Nahele up here. And McQueen. And Pop.”

  The boonierats react as if they were muscles in Brooks’ body. They operate silently as if they communicate by telepathy and not by voice. Fear keeps them silent. Nahele is the first underground. He dives into a bunker opening that FO has found, one of only three discovered in all the square mounds Alpha has now investigated. With a .45 and a flashlight Nahele dives in as an underwater demolition expert on patrol might dive into a harbor across from his target. He comes out in only seconds. “It’s empty,” he whispers. “It’s a vacant room. There’s three tunnels leading out a it.”

  Brooks and Pop and McQueen follow Nahele back in. Brooks follows a tunnel south. The tunnel is large enough for him to walk hunched. It curves right then left and opens into a second room larger than the first. There is another tunnel leaving it. The sides are stacked with cases and crates. Holy fucken Christ! Brooks thinks. Pop is behind him. Then Nahele. McQueen has stayed in the empty room to guard against enemy coming from the other tunnels. Brooks comes from the second room with a case of mortar rounds. He pushes it up, out, above ground where FO grabs it and pulls it aside and helps Brooks from the hole. Brooks moves quickly now. He grabs Cahalan, grabs the handset of his radio and calls the GreenMan. In the second-long pause before the battalion commander answers, Brooks directs El Paso to tell Lt. De Barti that he, Brooks, wants Baiez’ squad immediately. “Red Rover,” Brooks addresses the GreenMan, “we’ve found it. We’re in it.” He continues explaining. “The tip of a iceberg,” he says. He hears the GreenMan laughing joyously in his C & C bird circling three thousand feet over the valley. He hears the GreenMan laughing and saying, “This is it. Get it all out. I’ll get ya a back-up element for security. This is what I’ve been looking for.” Brooks hears, feels the GreenMan’s enthusiasm. It makes Brooks feel good.

  And up it comes. Cases, cartons, crates. Cases of 82mm mortar rounds, each individually wrapped in corrugated cardboard.

  Cartons of fuses. Boxes of paper-like explosive propellent discs that the NVA mortarmen used instead of the powder bags used by the US and ARVN forces. Baiez and Shaw are grabbing the supplies, stacking them, building piles. They are breathing hard, sweating. The day is becoming a scorcher.

  Below ground it is cool. Pop is investigating a third set of rooms. I bet they’re all connected, he thinks. I bet they’re connected to Whiteboy’s Mine up on the ridge. He and McQueen go into a fourth room. It is filled with radios and communication equipment. They take, one radio and drag it through the tunnel network to the entry room. Brooks orders four more men below ground. The air is filled with discovery. Never have any of Alpha’s boonierats seen such a cache, captured such quantities of equipment. They are smiling, laughing quietly, working eagerly. Brooks thinks, this is an NVA haven, a refuge for their battle weary soldiers. They could crawl into these bunkers and hide here for weeks. And it is their command and communication center. We have it. This is what it should be. Brooks is elated. This, he thinks, is the headquarters of the 7th NVA Front.

  Jenkins on the right flank discovers another opening. He and Spangler slip in and find an entry room with tunnels leading northeast and south. They investigate moving south. More equipment. The C & C bird is now circling at fifteen hundred feet. Escort Cobras circle above the C & C. The stack of equipment grows. Chi-com claymore mines fill one entire room. Cases of 37mm anti-aircraft rounds fill another. There are RPG rounds and cans of RPD machine gun ammunition and three thousand sachel charges. The GreenMan can see the stacks growing from one thousand feet.

  Suddenly fire erupts at the south perimeter. 2d Plt’s CP and 2d and 3d Sqds are receiving fire, returning fire. All hell has broken loose. Molino is at the center. He cannot tell what is happening. He has hit the dirt with the first burst. He hears someone screaming, “Bravo! Bravo!” Then he sees Doc Johnson running across the top of a bunker. Doc is breaking his way through brush and small trees. He carries his medical bag in his left hand and he is firing his .45 pistol with his right. Doc disappears from Molino’s vision. Molino cannot see the wounded because of the thick undergrowth. He sees Pop Randalph running. Pop has sprinted from Alpha’s center. He is running in the direction Doc ran. He is screaming in his hoarse high voice, yelling at the top of h
is lungs. He has a grenade in his left hand and grenades strapped to his web gear. He fires his 16 and yells. Molino cannot understand the words. Pop disappears into the foliage. The fighting is building. The noise is fogthick in the steaming air. Molino hears shrapnel slashing into the vegetation to his left. Someone is screaming. Molino looks leftright. He cannot let them go it alone. He hunches his back, brings his legs up under him, his hands are on the earth, his rifle is stuffed in the muck. He is sprinting. He throws a grenade. He did not even know he had prepared one, he did not know he knew the enemy location. He is firing. He is with Doc and Pop and Calhoun. Doc Hayes is wounded. Doc Johnson is applying battle dressings to his chest. A horrible sucking gurgle is coming from Hayes’ chest. Blood froths from Hayes’ mouth. It disgusts Molino. The NVA disengage, disappear, dissolve. Pop wants to charge them, pursue them. They have wounded his medic.

  “Negative that,” Brooks is adamant. It has been his most successful move ever. He does not want it ruined, he does not want it to end. “Pop smoke in front of your position,” he radios 2d Plt. Calhoun takes over from there. Red smoke is billowing up from a smoke grenade before them. Calhoun is in radio contact with the Cobras. “Dinks at two one zero degrees,” he radios and first one Cobra and then a second roll from the sky diving across Alpha unleashing their mini-guns into and south of the smoke, running cutting a swath on the 210° course. The electric Galling guns fire so quickly they sound like buzz saws. The pilots report no kills. They do not see the enemy.

  Woods comes from the bunker opening. He is livid. He wants to go back in. “There’s a map room in there, L-T,” he says. “I just know there’s goina be a full fledged TOC down there.” As he speaks firing erupts behind him where Lt. Caldwell and 3d Plt CP are manning the perimeter. Woods drops flat, scrambles to his ruck and slips in. He grabs his rifle and crawls toward the fight. Again the boonierats pop smoke and again the Cobras dive in but Lt. Caldwell has retreated, has ordered his men back and the NVA have followed. The enemy is on Caldwell’s side of the smoke. Kinderly is hit in the head by shrapnel from a B-40 rocket. The skin is torn to pieces, the skull is splintered. He is running, retreating. El Paso, Brown, L-T and FO run into the fight. They overtake Woods. They sweep past Caldwell who is still giving ground. They are firing madly. A shot grazes Brooks biting a skin chunk off his left wrist. He fires. He sees the man firing at him as he fires. The NVA skull bursts, explodes.

  He is sweating, crawling, calling in air support. A Cobra pilot sees movement toward the bunkers from the east. He dives his ship firing rockets and mini-gun. Other gunships are diving to the west and the south, then rolling, circling above Alpha and diving again. The NVA are pulling back from hitting Bravo, Charlie and Recon. They are falling back to cover their headquarters complex. Brooks looks up and sees the C & C bird at twenty-five hundred feet. Rockets and Cobras and LOHs are everywhere. There is fire spewing from the sky over Alpha in every direction. The sky is darkening with smoke.

  At the complex center Nahele is with the stacked munitions and equipment. He rigs two blocks of C-4 explosive to the radios and inserts a blasting cap. He works quickly, forcing his mind to concentrate, forcing his fingers to operate. Alpha is pulling back. Nahele sees Doc Johnson carrying Doc Hayes on his back. Nahele attaches his claymore wire to the blasting cap wire and quickly unrolls.

  “Fuck that,” Caldwell screams at him. “They can blow it with ARA. Dinks are poppin up all over.” Caldwell is running, running for the knoll. Nahele checks his claymore firing device, looks once more at the bunker orifice. It is dark, black in the light of the day. The blackness explodes, Nahele’s chest explodes with pain. He falls, is thrown backward. His body racks in spasms. He can hear the crunched bones. The pain ends quickly which surprises him. He can no longer feel it. He hears the impact of rounds slamming into his legs, abdomen, chest, but he does not feel it at all.

  Brooks and FO, shouting orders that go unheard, try to organize the boonierats. Alpha retreats to the knoll behind a screen of ARA.

  CHAPTER 31

  There is pandemonium on the knoll but there is no firing. There is firing in the valley. NVA soldiers seem to be everywhere, firing from unseen everywheres. The four squeeze companies are again all being hit. It is as if Alpha has ripped the top off an anthill. 1st Plt is in a line at the knoll’s south crest. 2d and 3d and the CP are coming in, collapsing.

  Cherry is sitting beside Egan whom he has cared for since Egan passed out in the trench. Cherry had carried the platoon sergeant to the knoll’s crest, had put him down and had helped set up the perimeter around him. Then he had stripped Egan’s back and legs exposing a dozen holes seeping blood. He had cleaned them one by one as best he could until Doc Mc-Carthy came and bandaged the wounds. Egan had moaned, had come to and passed out again. Then he had come to and his body had contorted, his back arching and twisting involuntarily from the pain. Egan had moaned horribly yet quietly, so inscribed is his mind with the need for silence. He tries to speak. His jaw draws back with each breath, the skin of his gaunt face stretches tighter. “Give him somethin,” Egan hears Cherry saying to Doc McCarthy. “Yeah,” Doc answers glumly. Egan moans. He can’t remember how to talk, how to operate his jaw. He wants to speak but his lungs and mouth won’t cooperate to produce the sounds. He tries again. He moans again. He thinks he is speaking. He thinks he is saying, Don’t, Doc. Cherry, don’t let Doc give me anything. No morphine. No pain killers. Godfuckendamn, he thinks the words are clear and is frustrated that McCarthy and Cherry do not seem to understand, that Mc-Carthy is preparing to inject him. Goddamn, he thinks. If I’m going to have my shit scattered in the wind, I want to know it. “What’s that, Man?” Cherry asks him. “You’re goina be okay.” Promise me Bro, Egan thinks he is saying. It aint goina help. Don’t help. Like Hughes. Didn’t help that fucker. He felt his fucken ribs go, en then you fuckers shot him up with dope. Then he died. Mothafucker didn’t even know he died. I gotta know. I gotta know. McCarthy injects a syringe of morphine into Egan’s thigh. Egan passes out again.

  Cobra gunships are diving at the bunker complex, firing rockets. They are aiming for the huge pile of equipment and munitions stacked so neatly by Baiez and Shaw.

  2d and 3d Plts have only just arrived at the knoll top. They are sweaty, filthy, blood-splattered and out of breath. McQueen drops Nahele’s body in a clump of brush by Egan and collapses next to it. Doc Johnson lowers Doc Hayes next to him. Hayes is moaning, coughing blood and sputum. There are two more seriously wounded and half a dozen not so serious including Brooks. Around the entire perimeter exhausted frightened boonierats are regaining strength and courage and organization. Thomaston is directing the incoming platoons like a traffic cop. 1st Plt is set up across much of the south slope. It is the knoll’s only real surface access. The knoll is a peninsula in the river surrounded on three sides by cliffs and water. From the valley floor and from the ridges the knoll had appeared small yet now the bulbous end with the titanic tree and the cliffs seems too large for one company to defend. The south side is a 100-meter wide ramp with tangled brush and small trees. The two paths that Egan, Cherry and McQueen had discovered on their recon have disappeared. Now 1st Plt squeezes down to cover sixty or seventy percent of the ramp. 2d Plt is directed to cover the east, 3d Plt the west. A few soldiers are scattered across the north overlooking the cliff and river. The defensive perimeter is an open end U-shape facing south. Everywhere the perimeter guards are checking their ammunition and weapons and clearing fields of fire. 1st Plt boonierats set up claymore mines across clearly visible approaches. The boonierats dig in. Marko and Jax erect a hasty position by rolling a thick log onto a tiny rise. They are staring down the peninsula. A thought hits them simultaneously. They shed their rucksacks and scavenge through looking for more ammunition. They are almost out.

  Brooks is shouting orders now. He has caught his breath from the racing retreat to the knoll. He takes over from Thomaston. Doc Johnson tries to inspect the L-T’s wrist. Brooks looks at him then at his own
wrist. There is a three-inch long gouge. He had forgotten about it. It is no longer bleeding though there are dried blood streaks across the back of his hand. “It’s, ah …” Brooks tries moving his wrist. He winces. “It’s a little stiff. Nothing.” Doc snorts disgusted. He grabs Brooks’ arm but Brooks jerks it back. “Later,” he says. “See to the others. Get the wounded up to the tree. Make it a collection point.”

  “Mista, L-T …”

  “Get the CP up there too,” Brooks snaps. He breathes deeply. Suddenly he feels out of steam, run-down, not out of breath but out of fuel as if the adrenaline in his system has burnt up all the energy sources and there is nothing left to power his body. He does not shout now. He reverts to his characteristic soft voice. “Have the CP set up beyond the tree,” he says. “Have De Barti furnish a squad to clear this place of booby traps, then have them get to work clearing the LZ. We sure as hell aren’t walking out of here.” Brooks walks up the knoll toward the tree. He stops, turns, looks at his perimeter and at the valley below. His presence and calm pervade Alpha’s troops. They take strength from him. He turns again and looks at the tree. It is the first time he has been aware of it since he saw its shape from across the river six hours earlier. The sun is directly overhead yet he is comfortably shaded. Brooks looks up the straight smooth torso. It rises like a gigantic dark marble column from the knoll, branchless for, he estimates, 175 feet. Then the top mushrooms out huge branches, branches as large as trees, branches extending straight out then drooping. Looking at the tree makes Brooks feel peaceful. It is lovely, he thinks. And there aint no way in hell anybody’s been climbing up that thing.