by Dennis Foley
Inside the headquarters a Vietnamese soldier hurried after Pascoe who had just entered the building and was threading his way through the corridors to his office.
“Trung Ta?” he called out for Pascoe using the Vietnamese for lieutenant colonel.
Pascoe turned to find the soldier behind him stopped and standing stiffly, one hand extended to give him an envelope. Pascoe thanked the soldier and dismissed him. He looked at the careful handwriting on the envelope and wondered what it could be. Everything else in the headquarters was in multiple copies typed with old typewriters all with crooked keys and fading ribbons. The envelope was heavy stock and the handwriting was done in what looked to him like brush and ink in the Asian style.
Once inside his office he dropped his cap on his desk, sat and opened the envelope. In it he found a hand lettered invitation from General Pham’s office to a parade in Saigon where Brigadier General Duong would be installed as the new commanding general of the division.
Pascoe had wondered who would replace Minh. General Duong had been the Assistant Division Commander under Minh but had spent all of his time in Saigon handling administrative and logistical matters for the division.
Pascoe also worried about the impact on the morale and effectiveness of the division going through three division commanders in a matter of weeks. He had the same feeling of anxiety he had felt when he had heard General Pham was moving until he found out Minh would replace him. Now Duong was almost a complete unknown and Pascoe would have to make sure he quickly established a good working relationship with him to please General Devlen.
He tried to remember if Minh had said anything about Duong which might be useful in cementing good relations. He had time before the parade to do some boning up on the new general.
Scotty looked at his watch again, then at the sky. It was clear and had been for most of the day. But it was getting late. He looked at Nguyen checking the border through binoculars. Nguyen must have been thinking the same thing because Scotty saw him check his own watch.
He tried to run through all the reasons why someone hadn’t come to pull them out yet. He had ruled out weather and could only think they might be preparing a ground element to secure the area while they extracted him and Nguyen. With no radio and limited understanding of the politics in a Vietnamese infantry division he had to trust they would come and whatever the delay was it would make sense to him once they got back to the Sugar Mill.
Nguyen poked Scotty and handed him a dirty clump of cold rice—obviously the end of his rations.
Scotty took the rice and ate it in one bite. Even though it was mixed with dirt, slimy and most of its grains had been crushed into a paste, he enjoyed it. They were completely out of food—a problem in not too many more hours if they weren’t picked up. They needed the nourishment for the hours of vigilance, lack of sleep and what seemed like gallons of adrenaline they were pumping.
Scotty wiped his hands across his face and felt the stubble. He realized how dirty and nasty he was after so many days in the rotten wetlands without a shower. At his throat his fingers found the lymph nodes under his jaw line were enlarged and tender. This added to his concern. He didn’t need to get sick. He was sure they’d be back at the Sugar Mill soon and he would be able to get it looked at then.
Pascoe looked out the window at the gathering clouds, absentmindedly clicking his ballpoint pen over and over again. He heard General Devlen’s parting words the night he briefed them on the action at the border. He tried to impress on Pascoe the importance of preparing a detailed report of the combat action which would be viewed by far more people in the chain of command than a normal after action report. The increased interest would be because of the proximity to the Cambodian border and because American and South Vietnamese soldiers might not be dead. They could have been captured. The report would go to the Embassy in Saigon.
He also recalled Devlen patting him on the shoulder and saying no matter how good a job he did, the Ambassador would have heartburn. It was as if they were combat soldiers standing together against the civilian oversight of their duties.
Still, Pascoe recognized Devlen had drastically understated the problem. It would be more than heartburn. It could be the source of an international diplomatic flap. His only defense was Minh called all the shots and when Minh was killed it was Pascoe’s decision to return to the Sugar Mill. He was certain he had convinced Devlen the two on the ground were most likely prisoners of war if not dead. There had just been too much firing and too many Viet Cong soldiers in the area for them to have survived once they had left their concealment to run to the aborted chopper pickup. And once he lost contact with them a second try would have surely ended in failure and more likely the total loss of his chopper. His assessment was a downed chopper inside Cambodia was going to make a firefight gone bad into a serious international incident with the chopper as proof.
Either way, he couldn’t pull them out if he could no longer find them. But he certainly would have continued to try in spite of the withering enemy fire he faced and the border issue.
All he had to do was keep his story straight on paper. He leaned back over the lined pad on his desk and began writing.
It was almost dark and Scotty couldn’t believe they had not heard any aircraft all day. He kept searching his mind for a reason no one had come to get them. He finally gave up, spun on his stomach and moved up alongside Nguyen who had been watching in the opposite direction. He whispered to Nguyen, “No choppers.”
Nguyen nodded. “We have trouble.”
“What?” Scotty asked, thinking it had to do with their water or ammo. Instead he saw Nguyen’s reach out and point toward the most distant clump of trees.
Scotty looked hard for something. But before he saw anything he heard voices. High pitched and somewhat excited, someone was yelling directions in Vietnamese. It took Scotty no time to figure out what it meant. Any enemy force concealed by darkness and comfortable about making noise was convinced they had a superior force to whatever they might encounter and not worried about giving away their position. He had to assume they knew only two of them were still hiding somewhere in the area.
Nguyen pointed off in a slightly different direction at a small light. A flashlight. It was in the abandoned hamlet once occupied by Caruthers and the rest of the patrol before they were attacked then evacuated. The Viet Cong were searching the hamlet.
Scotty heard the first shot. AK-47 fire. Then another. They were shooting first before looking in any place in the hamlet where someone could be hiding. There was some nervous laughter and the sound of hollow metal objects clanking together. They must have found some empty canteens or ammo cans left behind.
Nguyen and Scotty remained motionless. Their tree stand offered them concealment but no protection if the enemy soldiers started firing on them.
The light turned on and off and moved out of the hamlet—closer to the two in hiding. The shooting continued sporadically and got louder—closer.
Scotty took both his hands and shielded his eyes from the slightly brighter night sky to see something to their front. He first saw the white reflection of water splashed up by a soldier walking nearly two hundred meters away.
He strained to focus and was then able to see there were nine of them, all about ten meters apart walking toward Scotty and Nguyen. Scotty touched Nguyen and pointed in the direction of the oncoming squad to make sure he too had seen them.
Nguyen nodded.
“Do they know we are here?” Scotty whispered.
“Maybe yes. Maybe no. We wait.”
The soldiers keep moving toward the two in the thicket. But as they had done in the hamlet, they began shooting again. They didn’t pass up the chance to shoot into anything else which just might conceal someone. They would approach a bush or a large clump of saw grasses and fire a few rounds into it. Getting no return fire they moved on to the next. They did this to eliminate one potential hiding place after another.
Scotty and Ngu
yen didn’t need to be told what was happening. An old technique used to flush out hidden enemy, reconnaissance by fire—shooting to get a response from a possible enemy in hiding. If they received returned fire they would all concentrate their rifle fire on the spot to kill whoever might be in hiding.
Scotty and Nguyen couldn’t move. The enemy squad was headed in their direction and closing. Within the next few minutes their hiding spot would be the target of one of the approaching soldiers. There was vegetation to conceal them but no cover to protect them. The ground inside the thicket offered no fault or fold to shield them from incoming small arms fire. And there was no way they could overpower the approaching Viet Cong soldiers with two rifles and limited ammunition. All they could do was stay low, remain perfectly still and hope for the best. Scotty knew hope was surely not an approved infantry technique, but they had no options. They had to hope the approaching Viet Cong would change directions, overlook their thicket or just get lazy and miss them.
It took the approaching squad ten minutes to get to a point where Scotty and Nguyen’s hiding place might be their next target. Scotty knew if he had a move he’d feel a whole lot better. Even if the odds were awful they’d still be odds. His felt his gut tighten even more. Scotty raised his rifle and took aim on one of the soldiers.
Nguyen reached over and put his hand across the receiver of Scotty’s carbine to make sure they were in agreement. They wouldn’t fire unless they absolutely had to. Firing before their lives were really at risk would surely give them away.
The soldiers kept coming, kept shooting and kept talking nervously as they approached.
Scotty felt sweat dripping from his face to his chin and ultimately dropping off onto the back of his hand firmly gripping the small of his rifle stock.
The enemy soldiers got close enough for Scotty to see the expressions on their faces. Their voices were clear. They displayed no fear of discovery by a larger unit. They were not worried about being ambushed or facing sniper fire. They showed their lack of concern for security in their recklessness—walking in the open and making so much noise.
Scotty hoped for the only chance he thought they had. Soldiers are soldiers. They tend to take the path of least resistance and do the minimum to get the job done. If they were being well commanded they would carefully search the area rather than taking the lazy way out—reconning by fire. Maybe their laziness would save Scotty and Nguyen. It was a crap shoot.
Scotty held his breath as they got even closer. The nearest enemy soldier was not more than a hundred feet away. He swung his rifle to his left and casually fired a shot from the hip at a clump of bushes twenty meters or more from Scotty’s thicket. Getting no reaction out of the target he scanned the area in front of him for something else to shoot at.
Scotty was sure they would be next. It only made sense the soldier would fire at the next thing in front of him and that meant the thicket hiding Scotty and Nguyen.
The soldier swung his rifle to the front and Scotty found himself looking directly into the barrel of an AK-47 not more than sixty feet in front on him. His heart pounded and his chest tightened. He felt his finger take up the slack on his trigger while his brain kept saying: Hold it. Steady. Hold it.
The soldier tried to fire but his magazine was empty. He dropped the empty one from his rifle’s receiver, replaced it with a full magazine and took aim again.
Scotty found himself looking directly at the business end of the VC’s rifle again. He was sure he couldn’t be lucky again. Then, one of the soldiers on the other end of the line hollered something. Scotty didn’t understand it, but there was excitement in the enemy soldier’s voice.
The other soldiers looked at the excited soldier. The soldier in front of Nguyen and Scotty was also distracted from his next target and looked away—to his right—away from Scotty and Nguyen.
Nguyen leaned over and whispered into Scotty’s ear. “Boat.”
Scotty got it. They had found a boat. One of the boats the patrol had hidden the night they setup in the hamlet. The soldier who alerted the others about the boat must have told them to come to his location—nearly two hundred meters from Scotty’s position.
Scotty watched as the soldier whose rifle had been pointed at their thicket changed directions to follow orders. Scotty wanted to scream, “Yes! Yes. Go. Go look at that boat. Go. Enjoy yourself.” He held his breath then noticed the soldier hesitate. Something wasn’t right for the soldier. Something told him not to turn his back on the thicket in front of him. As if it were almost an afterthought, the soldier, now even closer, swung his rifle back toward the thicket again.
Scotty heard the click the rifle as the soldier switched from single shot to automatic mode. Then without any real point of aim, the soldier fired off a burst of six rounds into the thicket.
The bullets cut through the brush above and on both sides of where Scotty was pressed to the muddy ground. Each one snapped by with a frightening crack seeming even closer than it actually was. Scotty held on and hoped to be spared. Small pieces of twigs and leaves fell inside the thicket—each severed from its branch, ripped from its own source of sustenance. It was over as fast as it started. Scotty searched his senses for any alarms telling him he had been hit and felt nothing. He raised his head and looked at the Viet Cong soldier.
The soldier hesitated waiting for something to happen. When he saw nothing he threw his rifle up onto his hip and turned to join the others. His bare feet sunk into the mud and came loose with a sucking sound with each step he took toward the others and away from Scotty and Nguyen.
Scotty held his breath and silently commanded the soldier in his head: Keep going. Don’t stop. Go over with the others. Go. Hurry. He found himself mentally trying to help the soldier place each foot forward and pull the trailing one out of the capturing mud to hasten the soldier’s departure. He watched anxiously as the soldier’s image got smaller and harder to distinguish in the night.
It took the squad of Viet Cong soldiers only moments to clear the area in front of the thicket. It seemed much, much longer for Scotty. Once they were gone he assumed they were searching the area where they had found the boat for anything else they might find.
He relaxed his grip on his rifle and turned to Nguyen to share an almost joyful expression of relief. But what he found was not Nguyen equally frozen over his rifle. Instead he found Nguyen sitting up, bending over holding his hands low across his midsection.
Scotty could make out Nguyen doubled up but not moving. He heard Nguyen’s breathing. It was extremely labored. He had been hit by the enemy fire and was trying not to make noise or alert the departed enemy squad.
Scotty searched the muddy ground for the medic’s aid kit and found himself silently praying the wound was superficial and not life threatening for Nguyen.
Chapter 20
EILEEN SAT QUIETLY IN THE EXAMINING room while Doctor Gordon looked skyward, listening to Kitty’s lungs through the stethoscope. He moved its bell from place to place on her small back. “You getting enough rest?”
“That’s about all I do,” Kitty replied.
Eileen made eye contact with the doctor and gave him and almost imperceptible head shake contradicting Kitty’s words.
“Why don’t I believe you, Kitty Hayes?”
“Because you’re just a man and beautiful women intimidate you,” Kitty said, trying to lighten the moment.
“Well, you’re going to be in charge of this disease, Kitty. What you do to keep it under control is going to have far more influence on your condition than the pills or me. So I don’t want to hear it if things get worse and you aren’t taking care of Kitty.”
Kitty rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay… You are worse than having a nagging husband, Doc.”
“I’m not sure a man in your life wouldn’t be a good thing right now. At least he could force you to take better care of yourself and make you get more rest.”
“He’d play hell trying,” Kitty said.
“Well, I’
m going to deputize Eileen here to keep a closer eye on you because I’m afraid you’re showing some signs of complications.”
“What? Is something else wrong?” Eileen asked.
Doctor Gordon took off his glasses and surrounded Kitty’s hands in his. He looked at her but spoke to both of them. “One of the problems with this disease is it won’t stay put. It isn’t just a disease confined to the lungs. It has affected your heart. One of the chambers of your heart is enlarged and this is not good.”
“Hell, Doc… I’m tougher than that,” Kitty said, not convincing Eileen. “I can handle it.”
The doctor released her hands and pulled his pen from the pocket of his lab coat. He scribbled a prescription on a pad he plucked from the other pocket and ripped it off. “Well, as tough as you think you are, this might help a bit.” He handed the piece of paper to Eileen and said, “You see to it she takes these every day.” He continued to speak as if Kitty were not in the room. “If she doesn’t, remind her that I’ll put her in the hospital and I’m sure she won’t be happy about that.”
Pascoe finished his first scotch while drying off after his shower. He threw his wet towel over a hook on the wall and put on a clean dry pair of GI boxer shorts.
He needed the liquor to temper his mood. He filled his tumbler with two more fingers of scotch and sat down at his makeshift desk. It was the first moment he had really had to collect his thoughts. His mind had been racing since Minh had taken their chopper into the enemy fire. He was now more sure than ever he would have died too had he not acted quickly and pulled the chopper out of the landing zone. There was strong justification for his actions he simply couldn’t reveal. But he knew.
Pascoe was sorry Minh was dead, but he thought the decision Minh had made was reckless and he was even a bit angry Minh had risked both their lives to save two soldiers on the ground. They probably would not have been able to make it to the chopper anyway with all the enemy fire directed at them and the chopper. Minh should have waited for the gunships to return. Even if it meant leaving the two out there in hiding for another night or until the weather cleared.
