by Dennis Foley
He tried to remember what he had been taught about this moment. He heard words Sergeant Russell had told them all the day they went through the Infiltration Course, crawling under live machinegun rounds being fired over their heads: “Courage is not the absence of fear. It is doing your job in spite of your fear. Now, suck it up and move!”
Ranger training kicked in for Scotty. He looked at his compass to cross check his rough guess of where he thought they were and what direction he would have to move in to walk the three miles back to the Sugar Mill should the patrol be overrun and the need for escape and evasion arise.
“You ready?” Scotty felt Caruther’s hand touch his arm as he heard his words. “Sure, Sarge. Where do you want me?” Scotty replied.
“I’m fourth in order of march behind the captain and you are sixth, behind Sergeant Tran.”
“The medic?” Scotty whispered.
“Yessir. The very same witch doctor.”
It took the patrol almost twenty minutes to get on the move, get stretched out so they wouldn’t be clustered up into an easy target and put some distance between them and the few remaining shack houses along the roadway where they had off loaded the truck. Scotty watched as Captain Nguyen moved from man to man making sure he understood what was expected of him on the move.
Nguyen was a very small man not more than five feet tall. His uniform and equipment dwarfed him. He looked more like a school boy than the commander of the Reconnaissance Company.
Scotty had heard plenty about Nguyen. He was quiet, efficient, and unlike many other officers, had earned his job through merit and successes.
The story Scotty got from Caruthers was Nguyen had been an administrator at an orphanage in the coastal city of Phan Thiet. It was funded and run by American Quakers. When Scotty first heard the story he thought of Sister Bernadine and wondered what had become of her.
It was at the orphanage Nguyen learned some English. Caruthers told him Nguyen was pretty good at it, but unlike Colonel Minh, he rarely used it. Scotty thought it was strange for a man who spoke a language not to use it when the opportunity arose. Especially since Scotty had seen Nguyen reading American military training manuals. Once he even saw him with a copy of The Last of the Mohicans.
Nguyen had been drafted into the South Vietnamese Army when the country was split at the 17th Parallel at the end of the French-Indochinese War ten years earlier and rose through the ranks. Many of the Vietnamese troops didn’t want to serve with him because he was aggressive and looked for fights. But the same soldiers wanted to be with him if they got into one.
Scotty’s eyes had finally adjusted enough to the darkness to be able to make out the huge red cross in the white circle on Sergeant Tran’s helmet. Beyond Tran, he was unable to see Caruthers, Captain Nguyen or the two soldiers in front of Nguyen in the line stretching out over a hundred meters in a single file.
In Scotty’s mind plenty of things were already wrong with the patrol. But he was neither in a position of authority to say so, nor was he unaware picking at their failings would only result in loss of face and no correction. He had learned back at Benning the only recourse he had was to make note of the errors on operations and then incorporate improvements into future training. The only way to sidestep the loss of face was to put distance between the infraction and the correction. He made some metal notes.
His gear was far from broken in the way he wanted it and everything was riding wrong, painful or both. Scotty squirmed to shift his load of combat gear, ammunition and the two quarts of water in his canteens to relieve the discomfort with little success.
Soon the ground beneath his jungle boots began to lose its hardness. The night sounds filled with a harmony of tens of thousands of night insects and nocturnal birds. And that blending was periodically punctuated by the sounds of the labored breathing within the patrol and occasional distant rifle fire and Vietnamese artillery.
After an hour of walking, Tran raised his hand to pass back the signal. They were stopping for a break and a map check. Scotty repeated the hand signal and looked back. He was pleased to see each man in the patrol take a knee or squat in alternating left-right ready positions to provide some security in the event they made enemy contact on the break.
“How you doin’?” Caruthers asked in an almost inaudible tone.
“I want to take my map out and make sure we are headed the right way. But I’m guessing it would be bad form, huh?”
Caruthers gave Scotty a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Might as well send up a sky writin’ plane sayin,’ ‘We think you got no damn idea what you’re doin.’”
“That’s what I thought,” Scotty whispered.
“We’re on course, aw’right. This little guy they got up front with the map is ’bout as good as I’ve seen over here. Can’t get him to leave the whores alone in the village and his peter’s sneezin’ ’bout half the time with the clap, but the boy can read the shit out of a map.
“What you gotta’ do next time is memorize the route before we go, keep a good pace to tell how far we been moving and sneak a peek at your own compass now and then to keep ’em honest. Just don’t make a big deal out of it.”
An artillery parachute flare burst over the city of Cu Chi miles to their rear to turn the night into day for some other South Vietnamese outpost needing help. A sliver of its light bounced off Caruthers’ face. He looked old to Scotty. How many times had he done this in the wars he had been in? How many nights had he too worried if he would ever see daylight again?
Shortly after they started moving again, the ground gave way to abandoned rice paddies and then to marshland. Walking became more and more difficult as the mud came up to Scotty’s mid-calf and the water up to his waist. He wondered how far the sucking sounds of pulling their boots out of the dough-like mud could be heard across the flat ground.
He licked his upper lip and felt his skin cool quickly on the right side of his mouth, telling him they were downwind from the ambush site and anyone near there would be unlikely to hear the noise the members of the patrol were making on the move.
The wind got progressively colder, stronger and damper as they moved. Scotty looked up at the black night sky and could see no stars. It meant cloud cover. A chance of rain. Another thing he didn’t want that night.
It was nearly one a.m. when Captain Nguyen finally held up the patrol. As planned, he, Caruthers and one of the Vietnamese soldiers went forward to recon the ambush site.
Scotty waited with the others, silently rechecking all of his equipment with his fingers as if on autopilot. He took advantage of the stop to adjust some of his gear rubbing him and causing discomfort over his right hip bone. He pulled his canteen from its carrier, unscrewed the plastic cap, careful not to let its chain clink against the aluminum body of the canteen, and raised it to his lips. The smell of Halazone water purification tablets filled his nostrils while he let the lukewarm water flow over his tongue and fill his throat. He took several large swallows, surprising himself at just how thirsty he was. The thirst and the sense of chill he felt from the mild breeze made him aware how wet his fatigues were from perspiring on the patrol and wading through the paddy water.
It aggravated him to think even after a few weeks in country he still had not become fully acclimatized to the constant heat and equally oppressive humidity.
He heard some rustling and turned to find Tran had gotten to his feet and was signaling Scotty they were moving out again. If they were on plan, they would slowly move into their ambush position with a minimum amount of noise and motion which might give them away to any Viet Cong who might be in the area.
Slowly, they moved no more than a hundred and fifty meters and came up on the southern bank of an east-west canal. As Scotty got closer to the actual canal he could see the reflection of the night sky on the surface of the quietly running water. From what he could tell, the canal was absolutely straight for as far as he could see east and west. It appeared to be no wider than a two-lane road an
d had raised pathway on the far bank.
On Scotty’s side of the canal the bank was hard ground which simply held the running water in its course. The bank was every bit as effective as concrete having been wet and sun-baked every day for decades.
Captain Nguyen moved back from his position in the file to Scotty and grabbed him by the sleeve to get his attention. He then silently pointed at a spot on the bank where he wanted Scotty to position himself for the ambush. No talking was necessary. Nguyen had made it clear in the briefing he would personally place each man in the patrol to avoid confusion and unnecessary talking at a very critical time.
Scotty gingerly dropped to one knee, then rolled forward on the opposite elbow raising his rifle to a prone firing position, not taking his eyes off the flowing water and the far side of the canal bank.
Nguyen, who had positioned the two other soldiers in the end of the file behind Scotty came back to place himself in the center—now to Scotty’s right.
If everyone was in his position, Scotty knew but couldn’t see, they faced the water—two Vietnamese soldiers were to Scotty’s left, Nguyen to his right, Caruthers to Nguyen’s right and two soldiers on the far end of the ambush.
Tran, the medic, had been placed to the rear of the line of ambushers facing in the opposite direction to provide early warning and security in the event someone wanted to sneak up on the ambush’s blind side.
Scotty lowered his face as close as he could get it to the ground in order to see the outline of the man to his left and right silhouetted against the only slightly lighter glow of the night sky. Both Nguyen and the soldier on his left were also in place, ready, aiming their weapons on the water in front of them.
An hour went buy, then another. Scotty recognized no matter how wet, sore and fatigued he was, his mind was still moving at a high rate of speed. Training prompted him to think about a thousand things which would never occur to a civilian laying in wait for someone in the Asian night. He tested his memory by recalling the radio call signs and assigned frequencies in the event Caruthers were to be killed or wounded and he would have to take over as senior advisor.
He pulled out his compass and watched the radium dial spin, slow and settle on true north reassuring himself he knew the exact direction of the rally point Nguyen had designated two hundred meters back. It would be the spot where they would all reassemble if they were attacked and had to run to safety.
His elbows began to hurt after still another hour of propping himself up into a ready firing position. While the days seemed to sap his strength with the heat and humidity the ground at the ambush site continued to draw heat out of Scotty’s body. And the dampness of his sweat and swamp water soaked uniform combined with the steady breeze causing him to shiver. He fought back against his growing awareness of just how many places on him were stiff or uncomfortable. And he was more conscious than ever of the a tightening in his chest and a shortness in his breathing. Though he was motionless, his body was pumping adrenaline and his instinct was telling him to brace for trouble.
Scotty knew with each passing hour their chances increased for being able to pull off a successful ambush, his first real ambush. He kept forcing himself to rethink his actions, remember the details of the ambush plan and challenge himself about his readiness. Then something struck Scotty on the shoulder. A small rock or pebble. He turned to find Captain Nguyen alternately waving toward him and pointing at something upstream.
Scotty squinted then shielded his eyes from the only slightly brighter skyline to better see the layers of black in front of him. His heart began to pound as he saw something floating in the water—coming toward the ambush position. Whatever it was, it was too far away for Scotty to make out, but it was larger than a man. And it didn’t seem to have any sharp or severe dimensions to it, like a boat or a raft.
Be ready, be ready kept flying through Scotty’s mind. He first reached out to confirm the position of the three hand grenades he had laid out in front of him on the ground—each with the safety pins straightened out for easy pulling should he need to throw them. Satisfied, Scotty raised the sights of his small carbine rifle to his eye line to place aim on the floating object and flipped the rifle off of safe.
As the floating object continued to get closer to the ambush site Scotty was finally able to see more definition. It appeared to be a large bush or shrub floating along the canal, slowly closing on them. But as he watched and waited it also became apparent to him it was not just an uprooted bush. It was not spinning or randomly floating at the same slow speed the water was moving down the canal. Instead, it maintained its orientation in midstream and seemed unaffected by the turbulence of the water or speed of the flow. It was clear to Scotty someone was controlling the direction of the floating vegetation and keeping it in the center of the flow.
Thinking ahead, Scotty checked his watch and then took a quick look at the horizon before returning to the rear site of his rifle. It was almost dawn and the horizon was beginning to show some signs of pink with the promise of sunrise still over an hour off.
Scotty looked over toward the two South Vietnamese soldiers on his left and was pleased to find them at the ready also looking at the floating bush. But he was equally unhappy he could see them clearly. If he could see them, then anyone who might be floating in and under the bush in the water could see the ambushers too. They were only hidden by the night and once that was gone so was any concealment the darkness afforded them.
The floating bush crossed a point just in front of the upstream end of the ambush patrol and out of the corner of his eye Scotty could see Captain Nguyen holding his palm in the air signaling the patrol to hold their fire.
The bush got even closer, passing in front of the ambushers. Suddenly the night filled with the sounds of Captain Nguyen’s rifle spitting automatic fire into the bush and the water around it.
As fast as Nguyen’s rifle began to hurl red tracers into the water the others opened fire; someone to Scotty’s right pitched a grenade into the water. His ears were assaulted by the ferocity of the sounds of all the weapons firing and spent cartridges ejected from each rifle making tinny chime-like sounds as they hit the others already on the ground next to each shooter.
Scotty found himself already following Nguyen’s lead. He became aware of the repeated kick of his rifle butt in the hollow of his shoulder as bullets left his rifle, passed through the bush and slapped into the into the muddy far bank below the water line with a deep smack-thunk sound.
From somewhere inside the floating brush a burst of flashes angrily leaped out—several rifle rounds and two brilliant green tracers. Scotty watched as the tracers first appeared to be headed directly at him but zipped over his head with the deafening crack of a bull whip.
Suddenly, the surface of the canal erupted into a plume of muddy water as the first grenade exploded under and slightly upstream from the floating bush taking small branches and tufts of vegetation with it and ending the short bursts of returned fire.
Scotty, reached forward, dropped the empty thirty round magazine from his rifle, picked up a full one from the stack of three just below it and prepared himself to continue firing when the water falling back to the canal and surrounding banks stopped splashing around him.
He tried to force himself to exhale to regain some pattern of normal breathing recognizing he’d been holding his breath during the short brutal fusillade of small arms fire. He then coached himself to fight the tendency to get tunnel vision and only see what was within arm’s length. He had to relax, keep an eye out for what else was going on around them and make sure to look upstream. Whoever was in the floating brush could be the advanced party for a larger group.
Scotty looked back over the barrel of his rifle to find something of substance to aim at while he surveyed the area and he caught the two soldiers to his left leaping to their feet, throwing off their gear and dropping their weapons to the ground. First one, then the second, jumped from the bank into the water the same time,
He heard Caruthers screaming, “Cease fire! Cease fire! Hold your fire!”
As the two half swam and half waded into the center of the canal first one and then another object surfaced apart from the floating brush. Scotty raised himself up on the heels of his hands and saw two slick black shirts on the backs of two bodies floating face down in the water.
The ambushers in the water talked excitedly while one of them fired a pistol into both bodies as some form of insurance. They then grabbed the floating bodies and tugged them to the near bank almost twenty meters downstream from Scotty’s position. There they searched the bodies, pulled some equipment off of them and then climbed back up the slimy bank gleefully proclaiming in Vietnamese they had one enemy AK-47 rifle and web gear containing some grenades.
During the entire plunge and search Scotty tried to watch the two Vietnamese soldiers while listening to Captain Nguyen who spoke excitedly and non-stop in somewhat broken English and Vietnamese. He wanted them all to stay alert, to keep an eye upstream in case there were more and to reload their rifles in case they needed to defend themselves from some yet unseen attackers.
Breathing excitedly, Scotty finally took his eyes off the two wet ambushers and watched the bodies of the two Viet Cong bob in the canal as the slowly turned in the current and floated away downstream. They were the first two dead men he had ever seen. What surprised him most was how easily death had come to what was a quiet dawn.
It was at that point he realized how light it was—he could see a few hundred meters without difficulty. This meant he could be seen too. He slowly scanned the flat, swampy horizon for any sign of a threat to the patrol.
It was only a few minutes past dawn and already he felt the promise of another hot, wet and sticky day.
