A Requiem for Crows: A Novel of Vietnam

by Dennis Foley

  Nguyen tapped Scotty and then Khoi to get their attention. He put his hands prayer-like up against the side of his face and closed his eyes to tell them he wanted them to get some sleep.

  Scotty’s nervous system was on full alert for any sound, smell or noise promising danger. He found it hard to sleep with most of his body in water two inches deep on top of a bed of rushes and mud the consistency of cake frosting. He found himself fighting his body’s competing demands for rest and alertness. He felt himself drift in and out of full consciousness. Wanting not to miss a radio call, he cradled the radio handset in the crook of his neck.

  Every hour he heard Caruthers report the situation was negative back to the Division Operations Center at the Sugar Mill. They had arranged for Caruthers to make the reports and if he heard nothing from Scotty and Nguyen he’d simply pass on they were seeing and hearing nothing by submitting a negative SITREP.

  Just before dawn Scotty began to think about what they needed to do to get back to the hamlet before the skies became too light to conceal their movement.

  He heard the handset crackle and looked at his watch. It was not on the hour—the specified reporting time for Caruthers to call Division. The transmission was weak and broken, but he recognized the voice. It was Pascoe back at the Sugar Mill. He told Caruthers to pass on to Nguyen and Scotty General Minh wanted them to stay out on their reconnaissance one more night.

  Though the transmission was weak and intermittent on Pascoe’s end Scotty heard Caruthers argue with Pascoe. He told him they’d been out in the water long enough and would be in a terribly exposed position during the day if they waited it out to stay another night. His words did nothing to persuade Pascoe. Finished arguing with Pascoe, Caruthers finally conceded. He then called Scotty only to find out through a fluke in the atmospheric conditions most of the transmission from the Sugar Mill had bounced out enough to allow Scotty to monitor the conversation with Pascoe.

  The change in plans meant Scotty, Nguyen, Tran and Khoi would have to spend the day on their back or bellies to keep from being seen by anyone. There was nothing tall enough near them to conceal them should they sit up or stand.

  Scotty resigned himself to the mission change and welcomed the warming sunrise. Still, he was conscious of the fact daylight would bring a greater risk of being detected only a stone’s throw from the Viet Cong staging area on the others side of the invisible border.

  By noon Scotty’s skin was white with wrinkles from the water and he, along with the other three, were trying to shield their faces from the sun baking them between the rain squalls passing in a hurry to get somewhere else. He felt the pain of wet fatigues sticking to his ankles inside his boots—the folds making creases in his skin. His waist burned from the rubbing of his belted trousers and pistol belt cutting into his now more fragile skin with every small move.

  His body was a bundle of distracting sensations, aches and pains. While his face and neck were burning in the sun his butt was cold and sore from sitting in the wet marsh. The water constantly running from the ground beneath him to the nearby stream pulled heat from the core of his body.

  His stomach grumbled. The thought of eating was at once appealing and unappetizing. All the members of the Advisory Team had accepted Pascoe’s policy of eating what their Vietnamese counterparts ate. This meant not carrying American C-Rations. Instead, Scotty had a single meal in his shirt pocket, a meal of cold rice and fish. He knew he had to eat and remembered he hadn’t eaten for almost twenty-four hours.

  Scotty looked over at Nguyen and Khoi who were finishing their meals and decided he could start. At least two of them needed to be ready to return fire at any time. They couldn’t all be eating in case they were suddenly attacked.

  He opened the wrapper containing his meal. The rice was gooey and clumped inside the banana palm wrapper. Some of it was even soggy from water that seeped in through the plastic bag he had tried to protect it with.

  He ate with is fingers, at first avoiding the four anchovy sized fish laid in parallel fashion across the rectangular loaf of cold rice. They looked up at him, head, scales, eyes and all. He girded himself for the worst and popped the first one into his mouth knowing it would be the only source of protein he would have all day. The small patrol would not eat again until they returned to the hamlet with Caruthers and the others.

  The rain came and went again in the same pattern it had been demonstrating for almost a week. The sky was dark with clouds and the sun finally cooled behind the passing clouds as it dove for the horizon off in the direction of Cambodia. The four prepared for another uncomfortable night in the marsh.

  As the sun was setting Nguyen elbowed Scotty. They both heard it. A metallic clunk, then another.

  How far off was hard to tell with the rain falling slowly and steadily. The sounds gripped Scotty’s chest like a huge claw sending even more demanding messages through his system. They all signaled him to ratchet up his vigilance one more notch. The sounds meant people and that meant enemy troops close, maybe within rifle range.

  Then the sounds stopped as quickly as they started. Scotty turned to look at Nguyen to see if he might be hearing anything Scotty was missing. He found an equally puzzled look on Nguyen’s face.

  Without warning the night went from silent to a series of loud metallic thunks. Four, then five, then six thunks. These were followed immediately by the equally unmistakable sounds of outgoing mortar rounds. Each sliced through the coming night air over the four men huddled near the stream bed.

  Scotty spun around to look in the direction of the hamlet and held his breath for what he knew was inevitable: The first four, then the fifth and then the sixth mortar round hit the hamlet with ear-popping crack-thump explosions visible as dark smoke and large sprays of water.

  As quickly as the mortars stopped detonating at the hamlet intense automatic small arms fire broke out. Scotty got up on his knees and could see the exchange of green Viet Cong AK-47 tracers and Vietnamese red tracers. The streaks of color skimmed along hugging the ground and either burned out, went into the mud or ricocheted into the sky in wild and unpredictable angles and arcs.

  It was clear to Scotty Caruthers’ perimeter had been spotted. They’d been targeted and now they’d been attacked by an enemy force Scotty estimated to be greater than fifteen riflemen and three machine guns. Scotty’s heart pounded as his first impulse was to get up and run in their direction. Before he did he heard his radio come to life. He stuck a finger in his free ear to drown out the shooting sounds and pressed the headset to the other. It was Caruthers’ voice speaking to the Tactical Operations Center back at the Sugar Mill.

  He was remarkably calm but concise and clear. “Contact! Contact! Incoming mortars and ground attack. Estimate platoon, maybe company size assault. I’ve got wounded. Lots of wounded. Need help. Now! Over.”

  There was no answer on the other end.

  Caruthers voice came back on the radio. Not as calm. “Is anybody fucking awake back there, goddammit? We are under attack and I have wounded. I need gunships and I need MEDEVAC now!”

  A timid voice with a heavy Vietnamese accent replied, “Roger. Stand-by.”

  Scotty leaned over and whispered into Nguyen’s ear to tell him what he had heard on the radio and then asked what his orders were.

  Nguyen shook his head. “We stay. Cannot help.”

  The words cut through Scotty’s belly. He knew the captain was right. The only way they could get there in time to help with four more rifles was if they ran. And if they ran they would surely be spotted and cut down before they got close. So far it didn’t appear the Viet Cong knew there was a smaller patrol detached from the patrol base they were attacking.

  “Gunships?” Pascoe asked.

  “They come from Tay Ninh,” General Minh answered as he lifted his chopper off the helipad at the Sugar Mill.

  Pascoe looked out over the wall surrounding the compound at the final traces of sunset throwing a very pale pink glow over the landscap
e. He tried to calm his anxieties as Minh turned the chopper west toward the encircled troops in the hamlet.

  Pascoe’s mouth felt dry and his gut began to cramp up. He had been in Vietnam for months, and with the exception of incoming fire at the compound, he had never been near an actual firefight nor had he been in a chopper taking enemy fire. He knew that was about to change. His eyes drifted to the altimeter as if encouraging Minh to hurry up and get the chopper to a safer altitude outside the effective range of most small arms fire.

  He looked over his left and right shoulders outside the chopper. “General, where are the extraction ships?”

  “We meet them there,” Minh replied nodding his head in the direction of the beleaguered hamlet.

  The two were interrupted by Caruthers’ voice in their helmet headsets. His voice was raspy and the strain was obvious. In the background they could both hear the continuing gunfire as Caruthers’ spoke trying to be distinct: “… six KIA, five seriously wounded and need immediate evacuation. Can you give me an ETA on the MEDEVAC?”

  Pascoe knew Caruthers had probably taken control of the defense of the hamlet since the senior Vietnamese soldier was a sergeant who only spoke Vietnamese and in Caruthers’ opinion was ill equipped to take charge. He had complained about the soldier often in training.

  “Where the hell are the MEDEVAC choppers?” Caruthers asked.

  Pascoe pressed the transmit button on the floor of the chopper with the toe of his boot. “They’re coming. Stand-by…” He looked over at Minh who pointed to the north with his gloved index finger.

  Just then the headset came alive again with another voice. “This is Dustoff 25, over.” The MEDVAC choppers were trying to contact Caruthers’

  Caruthers answered using his radio callsign. “Dustoff, this is Sample Pirate 9, over.” He seemed to be yelling over the voices of at least two Vietnamese soldiers speaking excitedly in the background.

  “Pirate, this is Dustoff,” the MEDEVAC pilot somewhere in the night replied. “We are inbound to your location with an ETA of fifteen minutes. Can you bring me up to speed?”

  Looking through his windscreen, Pascoe spotted the rotating beacons of the two MEDEVAC choppers approaching from the northeast.

  He kept his eyes on them as they crossed the sky in front of Minh’s chopper and approached the firefight on the ground. Pascoe was watching the beginning of a ballet which would be played out thousands of times before the Vietnam War would end—soldiers on the ground trying to guide air ambulances to their location to pickup gravely wounded comrades while also trying to suppress incoming enemy fire enough long enough for the choppers to land safely and evacuate the wounded.

  As Minh’s chopper got close to the firefight site Caruthers gave the information to the MEDEVAC pilot as two heavily laden gunships called hogs for their ungainly appearance flew by racing to the aid of the soldiers on the ground.

  Pascoe finally saw the smoke. For all the noise and excited voices over the radio the small spot on the flat marshland appeared to be no more than something fairly small burning from fifteen hundred feet up and a mile away.

  The gunships began coordinating with Caruthers and the MEDEVAC to determine the source and direction of the enemy fire and the greatest threat to the first MEDEVAC chopper. As they spoke, the first MEDEVAC chopper was already lining up half a mile out for an approach most likely to achieve success and draw the least amount of enemy fire.

  Minh spoke to Pascoe over his chopper’s intercom: “Why do we hear Caruthers? Was your new sergeant—ah, Hayes Captain Nguyen’s advisor on this patrol?”

  Pascoe stumbled over his answer quickly coming up with some excuse to explain why Hayes wasn’t responding from the middle of the frantic firefight below them. “Ah… He might be helping with the wounded. I think he has more medical training than Caruthers.”

  Minh reached down on the console between them and checked the radio frequency dialed in. “I will try to get Nguyen on the other radio and find out.”

  The firefight went on for more than forty minutes while Scotty and the small detached party could only wait and watch the night light up with angry tracers and grenade explosions.

  Scotty felt helpless, too far away to do any good but close enough to hear the fight and see the shooting. He kept the radio handset pressed to his ear and monitored the few hurried exchanges between Caruthers and the division radio operators. From what he heard Caruthers was told to wait for gunships to help him overcome the enemy fire and MEDEVAC choppers to pick up his wounded. That didn’t satisfy Caruthers who kept calling for help every couple of minutes.

  Scotty watched from the bog barely concealing the four members of his small detached party. With darkness painting away the daylight the night and the oncoming rain squall were all that hid them from the nearby enemy.

  He realized they could not go to the aid of the embattled occupants of the hamlet and their own survival depended entirely on being able to stay low in the water hoping that none of the enemy in the area discovered them. And that their own choppers didn’t mistake them for VC.

  The choppers quickly clustered and assumed their roles without added radio chatter. Minh’s chopper took up a counterclockwise circular track in the sky as if on unseen rails. From it they would oversee the operation.

  The gunships zeroed in on the enemy firing positions with pass after firing pass, raining down machinegun bullets and rockets with each run.

  The first MEDEVAC ship started bleeding off altitude as it slowed its approach to spot in the hamlet sure to draw the attention of everyone for two miles around and the fire from any Viet Cong within range.

  Scotty raised his binoculars to his face and peered over the vegetation on the bank of the stream concealing him. He found himself holding his breath as the chopper emblazoned with a huge red cross on its nose turned on its landing light, flared a few feet short of the touchdown point, slowed even more and settled into the marsh grasses.

  In the last few feet of its descent enemy fire shifted from the beleaguered patrol in the hamlet to the chopper in an attempt to bring it down.

  The chopper disappeared behind some of the small trees in the hamlet and Scotty held his breath, as if doing so would increase the chances of getting the wounded out before the chopper got blown out of the sky.

  As he watched he heard General Minh’s voice in the headset he held to his ear. He didn’t understand what he was saying in Vietnamese so he stretched his arm out and passed the handset to Captain Nguyen also watching for some sign the chopper was loaded with wounded and coming out of the hamlet safely.

  Nguyen listened for a moment and then started talking hurriedly, clearly irritated. At the same time the chopper’s blades reappeared over the trees hiding them and its bulky fuselage soon followed.

  Scotty started talking to himself, urging the pilots on. Coaching them out of ear shot: “Come on. Come on. You can do it.”

  Enemy fire and occasional tracers reached up from the marshes to knock the bird from the sky. A section of the plexiglass chin bubble in front of the pilot’s pedals in the right seat shattered and rained chunks of plastic as the chopper climbed and came in the direction of Scotty’s four-man patrol huddled in the stream bed.

  As the chopper screamed over Scotty’s head a second MEDEVAC chopper entered the hamlet landing on the spot vacated by the first. From what Scotty could see it too was taking on wounded and a half mile behind it a third chopper was lining up to land as soon as the bird on the ground cleared the trees.

  From his position on the ground, there was no way for Scotty to know Sergeant Caruthers was one of the seriously wounded being loaded onto the MEDEVAC chopper, enemy bullets having found his leg in the opening seconds of the firefight.

  Inside Minh’s orbiting chopper Pascoe watched the three choppers conducting the medical evacuation—one in the air, one on the ground and one lift ship getting ready to land to pick up more. He couldn’t help but overhear the heated conversation between Minh and Capta
in Nguyen on the ground.

  Minh ended his transmission to Nguyen and turned to Pascoe to do something Vietnamese rarely did by custom—he looked Pascoe directly in the eyes. “Did you tell Nguyen to take small party closer to border?”

  Pascoe stuttered. “Ah, no.” Panic gripped him. He decided to just play dumb. “I mean… I thought you had instructed them to go. I ah… just assumed when I talked to Caruthers about it you had given instructions. But I didn’t direct them to do anything.” He wasn’t sure if Minh could tell he was lying or not.

  Minh didn’t reply. Instead, he started speaking rapidly into his mouthpiece to the other pilots and to Nguyen on the ground.

  Finished, he came back on the intercom and told Pascoe: “The gunships have been successful. Enemy fire has stopped.” He pointed down at another chopper passing beneath them landing where the third chopper had just lifted off and continued, “He will pick up other soldiers in the hamlet.”

  Pascoe knew that the other four soldiers on the ground a thousand meters away were still there, still at risk and now more vulnerable than ever. “What about Nguyen’s party?”

  Minh watched the fourth chopper take on the remaining troops and then replied. “I sent my gunships back to rearm and refuel. When they return we will pull out Nguyen and the others.”

  As fast as the chaos had occurred it calmed. Scotty looked around at Nguyen. His face was red and he was as aggravated as Scotty had ever seen him. He asked already knowing the captain had lost many of his soldiers, was not with them during the fight and was stranded on the ground with three others. “What is it, Dai Uy?”

  “When gunships come again, we go.”

  “They’re going to extract us?” Scotty asked for clarification.

  Nguyen nodded yes and turned to tell Tran and Khoi to get ready.

  Scotty looked up at the solo copper circling the area somewhere around two thousand feet above them—Minh’s chopper. He felt like he should be doing something. But the others were gone, many dead and wounded and the four of them just had to wait and hope they weren’t discovered before the next pickup chopper got to them or took effective enemy fire lifting off with them inside.