Thirty Days Has September

by James Strauss

  “Repeat,” I said into the handset, ignoring him.

  Thirty-six more rounds came screaming in. Six sets of six, barely six seconds apart. We all hugged the mud. There was no mud or debris from the blasts this time. I’d gotten it right. At near the maximum range for the howitzers, their accuracy faded away. I’d work on doing a better job in the future.

  “Shit,” the Gunny said, although with all the noise I was nearly deaf again. “You’ve gone bat shit again. Maybe it’s better when you run.”

  I crawled into my hooch and wrapped the poncho cover tightly around me. I didn’t care about the heat and the mosquitoes seemed to have relented. Maybe the artillery was too much for them. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going anywhere. It felt better to hug myself tightly and close my eyes. The Gunny left without saying another word.

  “Call in the H and I,” I ordered Fessman, checking myself over for leeches. I’d been in the mud again but apparently escaped the vicious little monsters this time around. I wondered if we would get a replacement for the Corpsman I’d had to send home. We only had two now and I was worried about getting no care if I were injured. I tried to use my wife’s go-to-sleep relaxation exercises, but I couldn’t use them without thinking about her and I just couldn’t have myself thinking about her. I clutched my letter home to my leg. The Gunny had been right in his latest lecture to me in the early morning hours. I may not be running, but I was certainly of no use to anyone. Except for the artillery. I was good at the artillery. I hadn’t cared about any of that in training at Fort Sill. My wife had been about to deliver. We had no money. The car would not run. Oklahoma was too hot and we didn’t have air-conditioning. I got through the school because General Abrams’ (the tank guy) son taught the class, loved Marines (he was Army) and thought I was gifted in map reading and working the FDC. In almost every way artillery was founded on maps and map reading: Where were the guns, exactly, and where was the fire needed, exactly?

  But things had changed a bit since Fort Sill, at least for me. Artillery was fast becoming more than a best friend. It was becoming my only friend. I rolled and felt a sharp pain in my right side. My other friends, M33s. In the morning I would find the Bong Song, no matter what, and get clean in it. My socks, my body, my boots and my .45. I imagined the Colt so filled with crud and mud that taking it out might make an enemy laugh himself to death — essentially killing him more effectively than if I shot him. I rummaged in my pack and pulled an envelope from one of my food boxes. I ripped it open with my teeth. Slippery fingers in the jungle weren’t meant to open metallic bags. Finding I had an envelope of John Wayne crackers, I laughed to myself. From his films and tough-guy reputation, you’d think John Wayne fought WWII almost by himself. In reality, he avoided fighting in the real war at all costs. I hadn’t understood his cowardice but now thought about the possibility of his good sense. I leaned out toward the mist, not hungry but eating the crackers in order to have some normality in my life.

  “This outfit have a Starlight scope?” I asked.

  “Fourth Platoon,” Stevens replied. “They use it to set up their machine guns for fields of fire. It’s too big to put on a gun so you can’t do much aiming with it. Sees great in the dark though.”

  We’d had one at O’Bannon Hall, where I’d spent five months in Basic Officer Training. The Starlight scope amplified ambient light dramatically. The inventors had been at the Hall training seminar and said that ground warfare would soon be changed forever because of the technology. Thinking about Presley O’Bannon Hall* drove a small dagger of whatever I had left for emotion up through my spine. I physically jerked before settling down. The memories of sitting in the coffee shop were so vivid, drinking hot coffee without regard for all the cream and sugar I might want. I wanted none back then. I drank it back. That was funny, too, in its way. I didn’t want black coffee anymore because I had to drink it that way.

  Star Trek had played in the Hall every afternoon, following dinner every evening and before I fell exhausted into my bunk. I wanted to be Captain Kirk. What a commanding figure he was with all the answers for every problem. I remembered the guys who wore red uniforms. They went into the transporter as helpers or assistants on difficult missions to unknown planets. Extraneous, they had no real part to play except to die. They always got killed. Ironically I hadn’t become Captain Kirk. I’d become one of the guys wearing a red uniform.

  I turned to Stevens, trying to shake off the thought. “Go to the Fourth Platoon and see if you can survey the damage done by the artillery strike.”

  “Why?” he said without a sir, and in a tone that told me he would evaluate whether it was a good idea to go, and if it involved too much risk.

  Anger exploded inside me, but it was too dark for him to read the homicidal thoughts I entertained at that instant. I knew I couldn’t threaten to kill him, or really threaten anyone in any way. Provoking such a terminal reaction would be disastrous, to be avoided at all costs. But that didn’t make resisting the temptation any easier. … Close your eyes, I told myself. Breathe in and out. Think about nothing…

  “Lieutenant,” I heard a voice say. I looked up to see Fessman standing there.

  “Did you take your malaria tablet, sir?” he asked.

  I understood the basis of his question. Fessman was alluding to the few seconds I’d faded away, trying to get control of myself. “I’m fine,” I said. And I actually did need to take my malaria tablet. The awful medication, required to be taken twice daily, gave cramps and diarrhea, and made some people dizzy as hell at times.

  “The Starlight,” I said. “I’ll need two compass points. One from the center of the impact caldera and one from the top of Hill 110.” A hint of moon broke through the gravid clouds above, briefly illuminating the landscape — enough for a calculation. With my own bearing from my position combined with what would be brought back, we might survive the night.

  “I’ll go,” Stevens finally decided, with no further hesitation. Before I could respond he headed off toward the hill, Nguyen at his side.

  They looked like some sort of dark native ghosts, silent but dangerous as hell. But then, what wasn’t dangerous in this cursed place I’d found myself?

  I thought about the calculations I’d need to make when they got back. I needed the bearing on the beaten zone the shells had made in order to have a physical registration point in the real world. Given the position I’d called in, and adjusting for the hundred and fifty meters up, or away from what was supposed to be my position, but wasn’t really, was vital to calling more artillery. I could adjust from the real registration point because basically the area I’d hit was the only likely area to be used by the NVA in the coming attack. It was dangerous as hell to call artillery from a fake position because the FDC would assume the adjustments were to be made from the “real” announced position. A misplaced “battery of six” would kill or maim everyone in the company, bar none, if delivered to the wrong point. It would be complete lunacy to direct fire on the move from the fake position. Hence the known point to be used as of a deviancy from that “real” position.

  I was a fake company commander, operating as a real artillery forward observer, using a fake position to adjust real fire on God knew who or what might happen to come along.

  “Fessman, follow them and pace off the distance,” I ordered. I would need the exact point Stevens made his observation from to complete my calculations.

  “Yes, sir,” Fessman responded, distinctly taking long strides when he left. I would be without a radio until he returned but I wasn’t planning on calling in artillery until he got back, and there was never any chatter on the combat net. That told me that there was another frequency I wasn’t being brought in on yet, but I would have to worry about that at a later time.

  Waiting in the darkness, mist and silence that followed, I took out one of the nasty little anti-malarial pills. I wondered if they really worked.
The pill was bitter as hell so I gobbled down my remaining John Wayne crackers. When I got to the bottom of the tin foil back I found another little bag, heavier than it should be. I used my teeth to tear it open only to discover a cheese spread for the crackers I’d already eaten. Cheese Whiz. I sucked it down in one big gulp. It tasted awful but felt like home.

  The moon broke through the clouds. It was half full. I wondered if my wife could see it where she was in San Francisco, which I calculated to be seven thousand six hundred and forty-two miles from where I lay. It would be daylight there. Sometimes the moon was visible in daylight but it would be unlikely that she’d be looking up at it in the mid-afternoon hours. I knew I wasn’t a hero and not much of a patriot at that moment because I would have accepted a bad conduct discharge from the Marine Corps if I could have shot up to that moon and then back down to the street just outside of our apartment in Daly City, only a mile or two from the Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore at the Haight and Ashbury Street intersection. The Corps could process my paperwork while I waited, seated just inside the Red Victorian Café.

  A wraith appeared out of the dark, moving smoothly by, leaning as he passed.

  “Where is everyone?” the Gunny asked, slowing to a stop.

  “Needed some bearings,” I replied, knowing the answer would sound idiotic under the circumstances.

  “Hope we don’t get hit until they come back,” the Gunny replied, putting one knee down on the exposed wet portion of the poncho cover. He wore his own poncho, which covered all of his upper body but made him sparkling visible in the night.

  I didn’t reply, wanting to ask questions about where he would position himself in order to command the defense. Why I wasn’t allowed to hear what transpired over the combat net. Was he doing something about my upcoming date with death from First Platoon. But I kept my silence.

  “You just stay here and stay down,” he said, before rising to his feet. “If they hit us, and they have to hit us before dawn, then depend on the machine guns and what you can drop on their heads with the artillery. We’re down on sixty millimeters ammo so the mortars aren’t going to do much in return fire. I’ll come get you when it’s over, or at dawn if they come through clean.”

  “Anything you want me to do?” I asked, wondering why I asked as soon as the words were out.

  “Don’t get hit,” he said, with a fake laugh, “and pray. Pray for no joy in the valley tonight.” And then he was gone.

  I waited, taking another cigarette out to supposedly ward off the mosquitoes, although the mosquitoes hadn’t come back. I’d seen plenty of amulets on the men. Special pins, bracelets and necklaces. I’d majored in anthropology, the cultural park. The amulets were for luck or to influence the gods. It was common in lower social orders for the men going on the hunt or into combat to gird themselves with everything at their disposal before the actual event or challenge. All I had was my cigarette.

  My team came back silently, the only noise of their approach being a slight squishing of the mud out from under their boots. I would prepare a simple artillery defense based upon complex but very effective calculations. I puffed on the cigarette to keep the fake mosquitoes away and I silently prayed that there would be no joy in the valley this night.

  eleven

  The Third Night : Third Part

  They came before dawn. How they came was impossible to imagine. An entire reinforced Marine company, dug into low scrub with marginal cover, waited for them just where they hit. The company used the Starlight scope. The base of fire predicted to be launched from Hill 110 itself, beyond the marshy land on the right flank, was never proven to have occurred. But it didn’t matter much because the firing outward from the Marine perimeter was so overwhelming that nothing could be heard or seen anyway.

  I was not terrified. Not in the beginning. I was analytical. Stevens and Nguyen ran back and forth from and to the nearby perimeter giving short verbal reports after each trip. Fessman wanted to know why I didn’t move close to the perimeter to be able to direct fire by sight, but I ignored him. Directing fire was extremely difficult when you were dead, but I didn’t say that. If someone had put a gun to my head I still wouldn’t have gone into that maelstrom of flashes, painful explosions and obvious physical carnage. The Gunny had been right. I wasn’t running but I wasn’t exactly functional communication-wise either.

  I called in night defensive coordinates on any presumed bases of fire on Hill 110. The sound of 155mm rounds slamming into the muck and then heaving great chunks of it into the air overrode the shattering staccato blasts from nearby machine guns and grenade explosions. I called for a variety of fuse detonations. Super quick high explosive, radar sensing variable time, and even some time delay bunker busting stuff. The H.E. provided penetrating blast waves and ground shrapnel, the variable time rained shrapnel down from above, and the busters served to cave in any and all tunnels dug under the cloying mud. The 155s went to work on the right flank to my preset coordinates while I used Stevens and Nguyen as my quasi-forward observers to guide the 105 fire back on and across the devastated lowland spread of the presumed attack area.

  There was no real organization to it all. I could not make out artillery from grenade blasts. The illumination rounds acted like strobe lights to make the whole scene of combat seem like a weird Hollywood horror set. Flashes on and off everywhere from every direction, deafening sounds making hearing anything almost impossible, debris, condensed mist and micro-fragments of mud raining down on everything. I pushed backwards, ever deeper into the crease of my poncho cover, Fessman jammed into the same space with me.

  I worked the radio back and forth to 2/11, Battery D — my battery. Russ was the commo officer at the FDC dedicated to the company’s little battle. Russ and I had been together in the Basic School back at Presley O’Bannon Hall, in Quantico. His last name wasn’t close to mine so, among two-hundred and fifty-eight men in the class, we didn’t bunk together or really get to know one another. He was new in country like me, but, apparently, hadn’t pissed off the commanding general on his first night. Russ was a bright and caring kind of guy, or at least I got that impression from our radio traffic. He kept asking how I really was. I never answered but kept trying to sound better, wondering what it was about my radio transmissions that made him ask. After a directing a couple of hundred rounds at my instructions, he said something that told me how smart he was, as well.

  “From our calculations it appears that your own position isn’t where you’ve registered it to be.”

  Fessman looked at me. His big round eyes got bigger and rounder, standing out in the dark from his mud-blackened face. I hit the transmit button.

  “We’re right where I say we are,” I sent back. If the battery check-fired, or stopped firing, for the safety of the Marines in our unit then the whole unit could be lost.

  There appeared to be a full scale attack going on, although I could see nothing. If our position was in question, even our precarious condition would be ignored and the battery would stop firing until the FDC could confirm the proper position of our unit.

  “This may be a check-fire situation,” Russ said, and then, “Sorry.”

  “Sorry?” I transmitted back, my hand almost crushing the green plastic of the handset. “You tell those assholes in the FDC that if they check fire and I’m still alive, I’m slogging twelve thousand meters back there and I’m going to kill every fucking one of them.”

  The radio remained silent for several seconds.

  “The artillery net is no place for foul language,” Russ sent back. “The six actual is on site at the battery. And he knows where you are.”

  I couldn’t believe the words coming into one of my bad ears. I held the handset out away from me like it had somehow become the handset to a child’s toy phone. I pushed the button. “Please tell the six actual for me, on behalf of the whole company, to go fuck himself!” I screamed. Would it reall
y be any worse if the six actual fired artillery at us because I’d threatened them? I rested the handset down on my poncho cover for a few seconds. I tried my wife’s breathing exercises but I could not get myself back under control. I hadn’t made the threat lightly, and maybe Russ hadn’t either. I would go back there and shoot the bastards if they let the company die out here in the wet misery and mud.

  “Did we lose fire support?” Fessman said, leaning so close to me that our foreheads almost touched.

  I snapped out of my towering anger and back into the aching misery of our situation. Fessman was right. Screw the emotion. Screw the battery and the FDC. Fuck the six actual at the battery. Did we still have life-saving artillery support?

  “Fire mission, over” I said, pushing the arty transmit button down.

  “Fire mission, over,” came right back.

  “You still there Russ?” I asked, in relief. We had artillery.

  “You still there?” he asked back, emphasizing the “you.” We were going to be okay, maybe.

  I went on, laying fire back and forth across the beaten area of the attack grounds, adjusting without observation the 155s, marginally out and around from the registration points I’d had them fire on. The 155 FDC officer didn’t seem to care where we were or our situation. The 155s simply fired where they were called to fire. Maybe it was because they were so far away, I thought later. If I was in deep shit again, I’d use the 155s if they were in range. The trouble with artillery was range.

  Once we moved beyond Hill 110 into the A Shau Valley, the VOSOD (valley of the shadow of death), we’d have no artillery at all. Only air, and air was fast, inaccurate as hell and could only stay on station for short periods of time. There also wasn’t enough of it to go around. When you needed air everybody around needed it, too. And then there was the resentment. The air crews were up there in the cool rushing air in almost complete safety, while we were dying in heated misery a few thousand feet below them. Hating air was automatic, except for the Hueys and the crews in them. They were okay — all that according to Stevens and Fessman. I couldn’t seem to catch up with anything as we sat waiting for the dawn. It was like history going too fast and only being able to catch a snippet here and snippet there.