by Eric Meyer
I’ll be like a general. They have aides, don’t they? And when Madame Vo returns, I’ll have a man to blame if things go wrong.
The thought of the deadly Madame Vo sent shivers down his spine. She was so beautiful, so unattainable, her sexuality dangled in front of the men like irresistible bait. He wasn’t tempted. He’d seen her at work. She even gave bestial brutality a bad name.
“Do it, Minh. And fast, there are rumors of a new offensive in the region, so you’ll have to work quickly. We have little time left.”
“Yes, Commissar. Would tomorrow be suitable?”
He grinned. “Eminently suitable.”
* * *
I felt like a fool. I hadn’t seen a tunnel, and as far as I was aware, hadn’t even come close. Yet because of that skirmish I’d been involved in, they seem to regard me as something of an expert. When my platoon had finished grilling me, I strolled out for a walk and to get away from their probing questions. It wasn’t every day a private soldier got interrogated by a General officer.
I almost ran into Mickey Ellis, close to the helipad where ground crews were busy serving the UH-1s.
“Carl, did you come to take me up on that offer?”
I nodded a greeting. “Offer?”
“Yeah, sure, they’ve finished a major service on my slick, and me and the boys are about to take it up for a test flight. You fancy coming along? It’ll be fun.”
I said yes without thinking, and minutes later I was sitting in the cabin of the Huey, complete with helmet and flak jacket and clutching my rifle that Mickey told me I wouldn’t need.
“Like I said, this is a test flight, you won’t see any shooting.”
I had a feeling that General Custer told his men they were about for a peaceful afternoon ride on that fateful day. “I’ll take the rifle.”
We took off, and the slick was noisy as hell. Like riding in a Mac truck but squeezed under the hood next to the engine. They’d loaned me a headset, and his voice came into my earpieces.
“We’re heading over the Triangle, you ever seen it from the air?”
“No.”
“Well okay, this is your chance. You’ll find this interesting.”
The edge of the Triangle was a short flight from Tan Son Nhut, and soon we were flying over a dense area of jungle. So dense it made me understand how hard it would be to root out the enemy in such a place. Until I saw the destruction. Whole swathes of jungle had turned brown, dying.
“Agent Orange,” Mickey said cheerfully, “Plays hell with the environment. Look down, we’re flying over a recent napalm strike.”
I crouched next to the starboard door gunner, who was watching the ground rush past with an intensity that suggested he wasn’t expecting a pleasure flight. Smoke spread upward from a huge area of what had once been jungle, and below all that remained were twisted tree trunks, scorched and blackened into charcoal. I swept my gaze further across the Triangle.
“Mickey, they’ll need a lot of Agent Orange and napalm to cover it all.”
“Sure, that’s what I told them, but they wouldn’t listen to a simple Irish boy. I guess the idea is to give them a demonstration of what will happen if they don’t give up and hike back to the North.”
“You think they will?”
“Nope. I doubt they’ll…shit! Incoming, enemy dead ahead three hundred meters.”
He went into a tight maneuver, climbing higher and bringing the Huey broadside onto a group of around fifteen hostiles firing up at us with their AKs. The port gunner had a clear shot, and the M-60 hammered, spewing out bullets as the ammo belt raced through the breech and coiled on the floor of the cabin like a snake. He kept firing until Mickey abruptly turned to bring the starboard gunner into the action, and his gun roared as the port gunner laced in a fresh belt of cartridges.
We were still climbing, and the bullets pursued us across the sky. Several penetrated the cabin floor, and I cringed away as they came close to hitting me in the groin. Gracie would never forgive me. I moved next to the door gunner, but he shoved me away. “Forget it, you won’t hit anything with that popgun. Don’t worry, we’re safe up here, too high for them to target.”
A moment later he cried out as several rounds chewed into his chest. The range was long enough for the flak jacket to protect him, but not from the bullet that smashed into his neck, and he fell back, choking on blood and struggling to breathe. I did my best, putting a dressing over the wound to stop the bleeding, but the bullet had done too much damage, and he died several seconds later. I heard Mickey’s voice in my headset.
“Get on that fucking gun and start shooting.”
I left the dead body of the gunner, grabbed the butt of the M-60, and looked for a target. They were out in the open, brazen, assuming a single Huey wasn’t much of a threat, and I hosed them down with a long burst, keeping the trigger depressed until I’d run out of ammo.
“Good shooting, Carl, you hit some of those bastards. That’ll teach ‘em to take potshots at my helicopter. Wait, what the hell! They got something down there. It’s…”
I heard the scream, the lurch as the Huey lost control, and I thought we were goners. Someone took the controls, our plunge to earth ceased, and the aircraft steadied on an even course. We were heading away, heading out of trouble pursued by a stream of machine gun fire. The voice from the cockpit said they had a 12.7mm anti-aircraft gun down there. The equivalent of our .50 cal, and they were bad news for a helicopter flying low and slow.
“How’s Vincent?”
He meant the door gunner, John Vincent. “Vincent’s dead.”
“Shit. You know about Mickey?”
“What about him?”
“He just took a burst from that gun. He’s dead.”
I didn’t know what to say. Gracie’s older brother, my brother-in-law, dead, the guy who loved playing the Irishman, easy-going, always ready to crack a joke, even in the face of so much death.
What was I going to tell her? I’d have to call and give her the news, better than coming from some anonymous officer. We flew back to Tan Son Nhut, and nobody said anything. We’d set out with a crew of four, as well as me along for the ride. Two crewmen were dead, Mickey and the gunner, and faced with giving Gracie the bad news, I almost wished I was dead as well.
I had to do it, and I went forward into the cockpit to view the body. He didn’t look much different in death, except the smile had vanished, and his eyes, which were open, expressed great surprise. I closed the eyelids and tried to arrange him in a way that would show some respect, and I felt like weeping. The co-pilot, Jamie Erskine, gave me a sympathetic glance. He was a good-looking guy, the kind who always seemed to look happy. The kind who always gets laid, the quarterback, the one the girls gravitate to at a party. Unruly blonde hair, he refused to shave to conform with Army regulations, and warm, blue eyes and a wide, ready smile betraying perfect, white teeth. The kind of man it would be easy to dislike, if it wasn’t for the fact he was so likeable.
“We all loved that guy. He was one of the best. He’ll be sorely missed.”
More than you’d think. I have that call to make when we get back, and I’m dreading it.
It was worse than I could have believed. She descended into floods of tears and convinced herself that I was next.
“You’ll never come back from that place, I know it.”
“Gracie, it’s not like that. This was just bad luck. It could have happened to anyone.”
“Except anyone doesn’t fly a Huey over the Iron Triangle, with the Vietcong doing their level best to kill you.”
She had a point, and I didn’t argue with her, although I told her I’d be back, period. She didn’t believe me. When I ended the call, she was still sobbing quietly, and I felt useless, awkward, not knowing what to say and how to make things any better. I reported back to my platoon, and there was a message for me. Because of my so-called expertise in tunnels, they were transferring me to a small recon unit, six men, all experienced infantrym
en and veterans of the war, which meant they’d been in country for at least a year and were on their second tour. I said goodbye to the men who’d become my friends in such a short time, and they told me that had a new officer assigned to the platoon, Second Lieutenant Sarandon. I left them to make the acquaintance of my new posting. Which in fact meant moving one hundred and fifty meters to a new accommodation hut.
The men in my new unit had the battle scars to prove they’d seen plenty of action. I was still a rookie, despite the big deal they’d made about my one and only experience of battle. Ignoring the fact I’d never even seen a tunnel, but Westmorland was desperate for anyone who’d come close to one of the elusive Vietcong tunnels, and I was it. While we were getting acquainted, another man arrived, another American soldier who was small and wiry. He didn’t introduce himself.
They looked at me like I was a corpse in waiting. I was so inexperienced they knew it was just a matter of time before the Vietcong killed me. Perhaps because they didn’t expect our acquaintance to last long, they were less than welcoming. The jungles of Vietnam are not the friendliest of places, as I’d discovered during the ambush alongside the rice paddies. Surviving them would require a deal of toughness.
If the other soldiers had little to say, they were positively talkative compared to the quiet American who didn’t seem to fit. He was around five three, slim and lithe, and one characteristic was the way he walked. Silent, his footsteps making no sound, and from the beginning he gave me the creeps. Specialist Jesse Coles would stand at a distance from the others staring into space, and I couldn’t help but wonder what was on his mind. Until the Master Sergeant who ran the unit, Bob Morgan, unwound and explained about Coles. He’d been warning me about another man not present. A man I may yet run into, a civilian, Mark Butcher, a reporter who’d been sniffing around. He represented the Boston Globe, and he had something of a reputation. Not a good reputation.
“They call him the Butcher of Boston. He butchers men’s reputations, twists the facts to make a good story, and he doesn’t give a shit who he destroys in the process. One piece of advice, keep him away from Jesse Coles.”
“Coles? What’s with him?”
He pointed at the undistinguished, short man. “You don’t know? He’s a tunnel rat, assigned to us from an engineer unit. One of those guys they send into a Vietcong tunnel armed with a pistol, a flashlight, a knife, and a length of string.”
“String?”
“Sure, they can get lost in those labyrinths. They unwind the string as they go, so they can find a way back. Unless the enemy get to them first, and they can use the string to pull out the body.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bundle of fun.”
He shrugged. “You know their motto? No Gratus Anus Rodentum, and that means not worth a rat’s ass. That’s how much their lives are worth when they go down.
“Yet he still does it.”
A shrug, “Coles knows his business, and he’s a good man to have on your side. But after spending time down in those tunnels, with poisonous scorpions trying to bite your ass and VCs trying to blow your head off, having to avoid the traps like Punji stakes dipped in shit, it’s enough to drive a man a little bit crazy.”
“Corporal Coles is crazy?”
He paused. “Kind of, but that’s what it takes to be a killer in those places. He’ll kill anything that moves, and anything that doesn’t move. Anything he perceives as a threat, and he’ll react. If he believes Mark Butcher is a threat, well…”
“He’d kill him, kill a reporter?”
He cracked a smile. “You haven’t met Mark Butcher yet. When you do, you may understand a bit better.”
* * *
Corporal Eriksson was uneasy. They’d assigned a newly minted second lieutenant to lead the platoon on a routine patrol, a village by the name of Bong Trang. American and ARVN troops had visited the place several times in the past and found nothing. Sure, they knew the Communists relied on the village for supplies and occasional manpower, but that was SOP for the Triangle. On this day there was no reason to think anything had changed. Just a routine patrol, they passed through the village by day, and the VC by night. A cozy arrangement, and everyone knew what was going on. But nobody got killed. Yet.
The Lieutenant wanted things to stay that way, they all did. Yet the Bradley was impractical for the narrow paths that threaded through the creepers and vines. The trees grew so close to the path it was almost impassable, and so it was back to basics. The infantryman’s regular mode of transport. Boots on the ground. Each footstep sinking a couple of inches into the soft undergrowth, and each time the stink of decay came up to assault their nostrils. Gases trapped underfoot by dead foliage that rotted and turned to methane, or sometimes something worse than dead foliage.
“Close up,” the Lieutenant murmured. His voice was low, as if the enemy could be hiding behind the next tree. Maybe they were. He sounded nervous, to the point of being scared. Second Lieutenant Neville Sarandon had been in country less than two weeks. A native of Richmond, Virginia, with smooth college boy looks, curly blonde hair, he was a throwback to his Scandinavian ancestors, with a slim athletic body which had propelled him to success on the running track. He’d volunteered for service in the Army, and his college degree got him entry to officer training. The spit-shined officer arrived in Vietnam with his shiny new lieutenant’s bars on his shoulder tabs, his hair cut neat, and his boots as shiny as his eager eyes. He was yet to learn things weren’t what they told him. This wasn’t a clean war of carefully worked out plans and the enemy obligingly putting themselves where the brass expected them. They hid in holes and behind trees. Came out and took pot shots at you without warning. Sneaky bastards.
An officer in a nearby tent had died two nights after he arrived in country. A grenade rolled into his tent in the middle of the night, and they spent many hours searching for an enemy infiltrator. Although the veterans knew long before they were wasting their time. The dead officer, a captain, had a reputation as a medal hunter. Leading his men into risky missions and inevitably returning with heavy casualties. Enlisted men had discovered a solution for such officers, and they called it fragging. Rolling a fragmentation grenade into the sleeping man’s tent and disappearing into the night.
It was Second Lieutenant Sarandon’s first experience of the raw reality of the war in Vietnam, and he had yet to see the enemy. The patrol into Bong Trang was his second experience, and he wasn’t looking forward to swapping bullets with Charlie.
Corporal Eriksson was on point, and he held up a hand for them to stop. “I think I heard something.”
He walked back to Sarandon, who’d signaled for his radioman, Clarence Chambers, to join him. “What is it? What did you hear?”
Eriksson hesitated for a second before he spoke. “Lt, it wasn’t so much what I heard as what I didn’t hear.”
“What the hell are you talking about? If you didn’t hear anything that’s good, isn’t it?”
Chambers grinned at the typical townie response. He was brought up on a farm in rural Mississippi and understood the meaning of the sounds animals and birds made in the wilds. And what it meant when they made no sound. “It means they’re up ahead, Lieutenant.”
He looked from Chambers to Ericsson. “Who’s up ahead?”
A shrug. “Could be some villagers out hunting game, or maybe women doing the washing in the stream. On the other hand, it could be the enemy.”
His eyes widened. “You think they’re here?”
Corporal Eriksson heard the nervous tremor in his voice, and he thought back to the ambush they’d narrowly escaped. On that occasion the lieutenant and platoon sergeant died, so maybe Sarandon was right to be nervous. “It’s possible, yeah, they could be up ahead. Maybe we should head back.”
His eyebrows rose several inches. “Are you serious? No way are we going back. They gave me the assignment to search the village, and that’s what we’re gonna do. Is that clear?” Chambers and Eriksson looked b
ack at him, and neither replied. Sarandon reddened, “I asked you men a question. Is that clear? Answer me, damn you.”
They stared back at him in silence, and he hesitated for several seconds, undecided how to handle the insubordination. Finally, he racked a round into his rifle and pushed them to one side. “If you’re too scared to enter that village, I’ll do it myself.” He looked down the path at the rest of his men, who were crouched down, watching the disagreement with interest. “You men follow me. Corporal Eriksson, Private Chambers, you’ll be in serious trouble when we get back.”
He walked on, his guts churning with fear, and the rest of the platoon were following, albeit slowly and at a distance. He rounded a bend, and the crude huts and stone houses were several hundred meters ahead. There was no sign of the enemy, and he stilled his beating heart. For a moment he’d wondered if those two men were right, but clearly, they weren’t. He walked faster, his stomach filled with acid, and he was anxious to reach the objective before he was physically sick. He was almost there, maybe one hundred meters from the first hut when they attacked, and his world dissolved into terror.
It wasn’t like any attack he’d ever read about in the textbooks he’d studied at college, or in the military manuals he read during officer training. One moment the jungle was empty, just part of the endless, dark, and humid Vietnamese interior, and the next it came alive. Literally came alive, the jungle boiled with movement, with men charging out into the open. Racing toward him and his platoon. Firing from the hip, screaming and shouting incomprehensible war cries, and he went down almost immediately with a bullet in the belly. The pain was agonizing, and further back he heard weapons firing and men screaming in pain, shouting the defiance as they tried to fight off the attackers. Tried and failed, the ambush had been so sudden, and he’d been woefully unprepared.
