Under Fire

by Eric Meyer

  “Forget the howitzer, what about the VC? They’ll be here in a few minutes, and all we have to fight with are handguns.”

  “Then we’ll fight them with handguns. We don’t have any choice. If we try to go back the way we came, especially pulling an unconscious prisoner along, we won’t make it back.”

  What he meant was if we stayed we were fucked, and if we moved we were fucked. Some choice. I looked around wildly. There had to be something. Maybe they’d left several AK-47s tucked away somewhere, but the room yielded nothing, just the components of the howitzer, the carriage, the barrel, the armored shield, and the breech mechanism. There were shells, racks of shells, and I counted forty in all, enough to do a world of damage.

  “If we could rig the shells to detonate, maybe we could bring the roof down on them before they get here.”

  “Not gonna happen, Yeager. We’d need detonators or some means of firing them without blowing ourselves up.”

  “There has to be a way.”

  He shook his head. “Nope, there isn’t. If we were experienced armorers or demolition experts, maybe we’d have a better idea, but we haven’t. Only one way to fire a shell is from a gun, so forget it.”

  I shone the flashlight on the metal components of the howitzer.

  Why not?’ Sure, it’s a crazy idea, the craziest. Just not as crazy as dying.

  “We could assemble the gun and use it to fire a shell.”

  He almost choked. “You’re kidding, right? Assemble a 105mm howitzer underground and fire it underground?” He shook his head in disbelief, “First, I doubt if it would work. Second, we’re just as likely to blow ourselves up as do any harm to the enemy. Third, they’ll be here real soon. We’re almost out of time. Forget it, it’s not gonna happen.”

  “We have the handguns,” I persisted, “Sarge, take all the guns and magazines and try to hold them off while me and Goff get this thing together. When it’s done, we just point the barrel down the tunnel and figure out a way to fire it.”

  “Even if it was possible, which I doubt, the explosion is sure to bring down the roof, and we’ll be buried.”

  “Not if we use the ramp to get out. It has to lead to the surface.”

  He stared at the ramp. “Dammit, the ramp, of course. Yeager, it’s worth a try. Gimme your guns, and I’ll hold them off while you get that thing assembled.” He paused, “Although I doubt it’ll work.”

  “Better to die trying.”

  “Get to it.”

  We dragged the still unconscious Madame Vo close to the ramp where we could keep an eye on her and went to work. I used the flashlight to identify each component, and we began by fitting the shield to the carriage and then the breech mechanism, which weighed a ton. The barrel was just as heavy, and we slipped and stumbled in the gloom to mate it to the breechblock. After that, the going became easier, at least in terms of weight, but we had other difficulties. It was a question of attaching the trigger mechanism to the breech, but after much trial and error we finally got it done.

  The firing had started when Morgan sighted on the first VC crawling around the last bend before the cavern, and when he was three meters away, he popped him with a single bullet. Which left the body plugging the tunnel like a cork, and although they fired repeatedly, the dead VC prevented most of the bullets from reaching us. After several minutes, he managed to kill another enemy, and now two bodies plugged the tunnel.

  “I’m holding them,” he called to us, “How’re you doing?”

  “It’s going well. Five minutes, ten at most, and we should be ready to try to fire this thing.

  “Yeager, be aware that sooner or later they’ll find a way around and come at us from behind. Forget ten, I doubt we have five minutes. They’re mighty keen to get to us.”

  “No shit.”

  We tightened everything up, found a shell, and loaded it into the breech. I tied our string to the trigger mechanism, and I started up the ramp to find the way out. After climbing twenty feet I reached the top, and above me was a twisted mat of vines and leaves supported by a framework of bamboo poles. I pushed it aside, and I was staring at the clearing where we’d discovered the parts of the howitzer. I was also staring at the night sky. Breathing fresh, clean air, or at least as clean as it gets in Vietnam, and I lowered the mat and hurried back down the slope.

  “We’re good to go,” I said to Goff, “It’s time to point this thing down the tunnel and get the hell out of here. When we fire the shell, I don’t want to be anywhere close.”

  He didn’t answer. He was staring at a body lying on the bare earth, Sergeant Morgan, and he was still. I raced over to the body and examined him, but there was nothing that could be done. He’d taken a bullet straight through the head. I wanted to shout and rage at the injustice of it all. We’d fought our way across the Triangle, and we were so close to getting out, only for this to happen.

  I picked up the two Colts he’d dropped. They were still loaded, and I pointed them into the tunnel he’d been defending and fired until they were empty. I had the satisfaction of one answering scream, but killing one man when there could have been fifty more back there was like spitting into the sea to raise the level of the water. But I had another idea.

  “Goff, lend me a hand. We’ll turn the gun and point it down the shaft. Then we go up the ramp with the Dragon Lady, get out, and pull the trigger.”

  “He was a good guy.”

  It was the only obituary Morgan would get that day, and I nodded. “He was a good guy. The best.”

  We heaved the gun around and lowered the elevation of the barrel so it was pointing down the tunnel. We started to move away when we heard voices coming from the other side, from the wrong tunnel.

  “The gun, turn it around, quick!”

  Goff looked at me stupidly for a second before he joined me to heave it around, both of us conscious that each second the VC were getting closer. Closer than we’d thought, and we didn’t make it. The barrel was pointed in the right direction, but the elevation was too high. What we needed was to crank it down until pointed in the right direction. That was the theory, but theory didn’t allow for a rampaging band of bloodthirsty VC hurtling toward us, and we ran out of time.

  I grabbed Goff’s arm and pointed at the ramp. “Get out of here, now!”

  “But, the gun…”

  “We’ll be okay. Just get up that ramp.”

  He was ahead of me, and I paused for a second as my boot touched the ramp. My plan was to fire the gun anyway, and hope it would bring down the roof. Whether the shell exploded and blasted them into fragments, or it slammed into the roof and buried them beneath several hundred tons of earth was all the same to me. We’d be alive, and they’d be dead, but when we turned the gun, the string had become detached, and we had no way to fire it. Except the way they’d designed it, and that would mean standing next to it.

  “Goff, keep running!”

  I didn’t stop to check, just ran to the gun, pulled the firing lever, and raced toward the ramp like I was being pursued by a pack of angry wolves. It wasn’t angry wolves that pursued me but a massive blast as the shell exploded. A shockwave slammed into my back and pushed me down to the ground. As dirt, dust, and debris showered down over me, I tried to crawl forward. Every movement was hard, and I heard the rumble of a tunnel collapse. My last recollection was we’d left Madame Vo close to the gun. She’d be buried for eternity beneath the soil of her beloved Commie paradise. The Vietnam she’d worked so cruelly to unite under Ho Chi Minh’s banner, and I wondered if she would take any pleasure from knowing she’d never leave this place.

  A secondary blast brought more earth down over my head, which meant at least one of the shells stored in that underground room had detonated sympathetically. Earth collapsed on my head. I was dying, joining Madame Vo in a stinking, rat infested burial chamber. As the earth buried me, the story of my life flowed through my mind like a long, unending filmstrip, except there was an end. Here, in Cu Chi.

  Cha
pter Eleven

  MACV After Action Report – Lessons Learned

  Operations against tunnel complexes: A representative equipment list for a tunnel team is shown below:

  Protective masks one per individual.

  TA-1 telephone - two each.

  One half-mile field wire on doughnut roll.

  Compass- two each.

  Sealed beam 12-volt flashlights- two each

  Small-caliber pistols - two each.

  Probing rods - twelve inches and thirty-six inches.

  Bayonets - two each.

  Nine. Mity Mite Portable Blower.

  M7A2 CS grenades - twelve each

  Powdered CS-1 - as required.

  Colored smoke grenades - four each.

  Insect repellent and spray - four cans.

  Entrenching tool - two each.

  Cargo packs on pack board - three each.

  I didn’t die. A hand reached down to grab my wrist, Danny Goff’s hand. He’d heard the rumble of the roof collapse, and he stopped to help me. The high humidity inside the tunnel meant we were both slippery with sweat, and his hand slipped on my wrist. He gripped me with the other hand, and at first he made no headway, dragging me out from the weight of earth that had half buried me. But he wasn’t giving up, and he refused to let me go, holding me while more earth fell on top of me, but finally the collapse ended.

  “Carl, are you conscious?”

  “Just about.”

  “Hang in there, buddy. We can do this.”

  He kept hold of me with one hand while he used the other hand to scoop away earth from around my neck. Then I managed to get a hand free, so I was able to help him push more earth away. With agonizing slowness, we kept digging until I got my other hand free, and then it was just a matter of time. I was struggling to remain conscious, but the terror of being buried alive does things to a man. Like making him determined to do whatever it takes to climb back out of the grave.

  At last I had a leg free, and then another, and between us we pushed and pulled until I was out of the suffocating earth and climbed to the top of the ramp and outside. The jungle was no less rank and stinking. There were just as many poisonous creatures waiting to bite a man in the balls, but I was alive and it felt good. I lay on my back, breathing the air, and right then I didn’t give a damn if a regiment of VC turned up. These few precious moments of life were worth more than anything.

  “Did we get them all?”

  I nodded weakly. “They were all down there when it collapsed.”

  “Madame Vo?”

  “Her, too.”

  “She was pretty.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, but neither could I work out why whichever God was up there had allowed someone so beautiful as her to be so poisonous inside.

  “Not anymore she isn’t.”

  He gave me a somber nod. “We’ve done what we can. We should get back to the others. I’ve been thinking about the direction we took along the tunnel, and I reckon we need to go that way.”

  “Give me a minute, and I’ll be fine.”

  We started walking, and I’d no idea whether he was right or wrong. It was all I could do to keep putting one boot in front of the other, but we did have one thing in our favor. For some unexplained reason the shelling had stopped, the bombing had ceased, and everything had gone quiet. When we reached the broken and destroyed ground they’d used as an artillery target, Goff was convinced we were in the right place. I looked around and I had to agree, although most of the Vietnamese jungle looked pretty much the same. Smelled pretty much the same.

  “They’re not here.”

  I was about to reply when I heard the ‘snick’ of a gun being cocked. “Down!”

  We hit the deck, and I heard a low chuckle. “It’s me. Jesse Coles.”

  It took me a few seconds to still the thumping in my heart, and we found him lying inside a clump of bushes. He was pointing a small automatic at me. A Makarov he would have picked up from a dead VC, and his hand was shaking. The guy was in a bad way.

  “Where are they?”

  “They…they…”

  He didn’t get anything else out. Instead, he collapsed into unconsciousness. That last act of cocking the gun had been all he could manage in his weakened state, and he was bleeding badly from his head wound. I dressed the wound, and we waited for him to come round. The guy needed medical treatment, but I had to know where the others were. I kept an eye on him, and there was little I could do other than wait. The VC who’d slammed the rifle butt over his head had done a number on his skull, a skull that would know what happened to Erskine and Tam.

  We stayed deep in the thick foliage, and there wasn’t much danger of the enemy coming across us. But there was still plenty around, and several walked past a few meters away. We stayed silent and they didn’t bother us. Eventually, Jesse started to recover his senses, and I gave him sips of water from my canteen.

  “Can you talk?”

  “It was Trinh.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They came out of nowhere, him and about thirty VCs. I was beneath the bush, out of sight, so they didn’t notice me.”

  “You saw him?”

  He nodded his head in the affirmative and closed his eyes for a second in obvious pain. “I heard him talking. Gloating would be more like it, and they took Tamm and Erskine prisoner.”

  “You don’t know where they went?”

  “I heard him say Bong Trang.”

  “Bong Trang.” It was like a jolt of electricity had surged through my body, “Where it all started.”

  “Yep.”

  I didn’t want to do it. I’d had enough of this place, the Vietcong, booby traps, bombs, shells, and beautiful but murderous women. But I owed it to those guys whose bodies I’d found in the well. “Goff, stay with Jesse. I’m going after them.”

  He stared at me in astonishment. “You’re kidding. You heard what he said, thirty VCs, and what do you think one man can do?”

  “Kill Trinh. Too many have died trying to nail that bastard, and I reckon one man could get close enough to finish him.”

  “You won’t get near him.”

  “I have to.”

  “For Tam?”

  I was getting tired of them automatically assuming I had something going with the Vietnamese girl masquerading as her brother. Sure, she was pretty, although not in the league of Madame Vo. Then again she had one thing going for her. Her height.

  “Too many have died trying to get him. Morgan, Byrd, Murray, and I’ve just about had a gutsful of him. The bastard thinks he’s the murder king of Cu Chi, and I’m going to show him he’s nothing more than a common felon.”

  “You’re going to your death.”

  “Maybe. But I’m betting he goes down first.” I handed Jesse his Colt. “This is yours. You may need it.” I took out the tiny PSM, “I managed to pick up a gun while I was underground.”

  He stared at the tiny gun. “You’re not planning to kill anyone with that thing?”

  “I took it off Madame Vo. She managed okay, so I shouldn’t have any problems. So long, guys.”

  I must have been crazy, out of my mind, and maybe it was the influence of the tunnels, dark and claustrophobic. Down there a man felt close to the underworld, to his grave. Yet I felt different. I no longer feared the tunnels. I’d been through too much, and spent time fighting the subterranean war. My mindset had changed, and I knew I was going to die.

  Now I understand the philosophy of the tunnel rats. When a man goes down there he expects to die. I’m already dead. What was their motto? Non Gratus Anus Rodentum. Not worth a rat's ass.

  That was the value I attached to my life. Not worth a rat's ass. Maybe up it was the oxygen going to my head, but I’d had enough of all of them. Of tunnels, Trinh, of the VC, of bombs, bullets and shells, punji traps, grenades waiting to tear a man into shreds.

  Fuck ‘em all. The rat is heading for the endgame.

  I started walking along the track that
would take me in the general direction of Bong Trang. It was a measure of how crazy I felt, walking out in the open through enemy territory. Making no attempt to move silently, to creep through the foliage or even keep an eye out for the enemy.

  The man stepped out before I made it halfway, and I almost put a bullet in him before I recognized the profile of an American soldier. A man I knew.

  “Sergeant LeBlanc.”

  “Private Yeager. I thought they’d have caught and arrested you by now and sent you back to the States.”

  “Not yet. I have unfinished business in the Triangle.”

  “Trinh? You’re still after him?”

  “It’s not just him. He took two prisoners. One of them is Jamie Erskine, the Huey pilot.”

  “Jamie?” He glanced to the side of the track and spoke to another man who was out of sight. “It’s okay, you’re safe. I know this guy. It’s Private Yeager.”

  A man stepped out onto the track, and I could hardly believe my eyes. “Butcher!”

  His expression was sour, and he didn’t smile. “Who’d you expect, Ho Chi Minh?”

  “Now you mention it there is a resemblance.”

  “Funnee.” He looked at LeBlanc. “We were supposed to be getting out. I don’t know why you brought me here in the first place.”

  I could think of a dozen reasons to bring Mark Butcher into the middle of a major battle where he could get killed. I’d no doubt LeBlanc had something similar in mind, but the problem if Butcher survived, he’d write everything down and use it to destroy a man’s life. And he wasn’t that choosy about who he destroyed. The Ranger ignored him and focused his gaze on me. “Where did they take them?”

  “Bong Trang.”

  He nodded slowly. “Isn’t that where your outfit got chopped into pieces?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What about Sergeant Morgan and the others?”

  “All dead, except for Danny Goff and Jesse Coles, who’s injured. What’re you doing out here with a reporter?”