Thirty Days Has September

by James Strauss

  “Right ten feet,” I instructed myself. The gun went off again.

  Zippo took a breath and I briefly lost the scene.

  Just at that instant the heavy machine gun on the hillside opened up again, raking green fire over our heads. This time the flaming bullets raced lower than the last. The berm was not going to stop the horrid gun from killing us. Moving the machine gun up there after the last artillery barrage must have been difficult for the NVA, I knew, but I was also certain that the gunners would get in the groove soon and home in. The company had nothing of size except the 81 millimeter mortars to retaliate with, and their ammo was expended until the morning re-supply. I reached back for Fessman’s handset and wonderfully it filled my hand.

  “Fire mission, over,” I said, and called the mission in from memory, thinking about the fire I’d adjusted with the smaller hand howitzer a few seconds earlier. I set down the handset and, not waiting for the rounds to land, turned my attention back to the three humps.

  “Stop breathing,” I ordered Zippo, and then used my left eye to look through the Starlight scope at my three targets, hopefully still out there in the mud.

  They hadn’t moved. That was either good or bad I decided, with nothing yet to be done about it. The green tracers started up, but only about ten rounds came out of the heavy machine gun before the assorted forty-six-pound variety of high explosive, variable-time and concrete-busting rounds started to tear Hill 110 apart. The artillery fire went on and on. The ground shaking thunder and cracking atmospheric noise of well over a hundred rounds pouring onto the mountain drew and held every bit of attention on the battlefield. And then it was over. Distant cries of seeming protest came across the stilled misty air from the mountain. The enemy would not be destroyed by carpets of artillery fire, no matter how dense those might be, I knew. The enemy soldiers, used to being out-gunned and out-numbered in every area, were dug in deep. But anyone near the surface had paid a price, those bodies and souls still alive, but quite possibly wishing they weren’t, broadcasting some of that price.

  I thought of calling in a carpet of variable-timed white phosphorus, just to keep the underground enemy from coming up for awhile, but I had other business to conduct first.

  “Nguyen,” I whispered to Fessman, more as an order than a request for his presence.

  The small enigmatic Montagnard appeared in the dark without having to be summoned further.

  I nodded my head over in the direction where I knew the three humps of the enemy lay, glancing through the eyepiece of the Starlight to make sure nothing had changed. It hadn’t. The shapes were in the same places as when I’d looked before.

  I crawled away from Zippo’s side and Fessman crawled with me. I gripped him by the shoulder.

  “You stay close,” I said, probably whispering louder than I thought because of the gum I’d left in my ears. “I’m going out there to check them out. I’m not going to lie here all night watching through that damned scope. Stay behind me, but not too far behind, in case that fifty opens up again.”

  I drew myself slowly across the mud and reeds toward where I’d last placed the three humps. Without the scope, a flashlight or overhead illumination rounds, I couldn’t see much of anything in the dark, and none of those three choices were available. I felt Nguyen move in front, angling me off a bit to the right. I guessed the Montagnard to be a lot more capable in the dark than I was, particularly since we’d reached the base of the mountains and were fighting virtually in his back yard. I could barely see the bottoms of his boots in front of me, but that was enough. When we got closer I could see the mildest reflection of the moon’s small sliver coming over at me from the three unmoving lumps to my left. About ten feet from the leading hump, I stopped to lay down for a few seconds. Nguyen continued to crawl or slide across the mud until he was beyond the forms.

  “Are they ours?” Fessman said, from behind me.

  I eased the Colt from my holster, hoping that the mud hadn’t jammed the gun beyond use.

  “Are they wounded?” Fessman asked.

  Taking great care, I brought the .45 up to make sure the barrel pointed parallel to the mud. I held it with the butt resting lightly on the ground’s gooey surface. I fired three timed rounds, each about three seconds apart, and each into the center of mass of each hump, as best I could gauge. There was no movement.

  “They’re the enemy,” I said, answering Fessman and re-holstering the empty Colt.” And they’re not wounded.”

  I rolled to one side on the muddy surface and turned around to begin crawling back to our original position. I had another magazine for the Colt buried in one of my back pockets. Only five rounds in that magazine. I eased over the mud, moving as fast as I could. I had to get out of the open area and back to some semblance of cover before reloading the Colt. For a few moments, getting the Colt reloaded was the only thing on my mind.

  Somehow, Nguyen was already back when I slithered up to the raised mound we’d departed from. Fessman came behind. I reloaded carefully, slowly and quietly. I’d killed my first three men in combat. I felt nothing at all. I tried to think about caring but couldn’t. All that mattered was to have the Colt ready again, as quickly as possible, and then adjust fire onto the hill when and if the hill demanded to be struck again.

  Zippo lay where I’d left him, still pointing at the unmoving forms with the heavy Starlight scope stretched across his back.

  “Can I breathe now?” he asked.

  I realized he was making a joke, and also that it wasn’t a bad one, but I couldn’t smile, much less laugh out loud.

  “You can breathe, and then mount that thing on top of a pack or something so we can scan the area until it’s light. Do we have extra batteries, and how long can we keep it on without burning them up?”

  “Rittenhouse thinks of everything, sir,” Fessman replied. “I’ve got the batteries with my extra radio ones. They’re not heavy and they last for about twenty hours if you leave the thing on.”

  “Were those guys from my old platoon?” Zippo asked, working in the dark to fold something to rest the scope on.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Likely we’ll know everything when the sun comes up.”

  I’d lay two more zone adjustments down on Hill 110 before that dawn. Once again, I had no recollection of sleeping, although I experienced moments, or even longer periods of time, where I wasn’t fully conscious. The battlefield grew quiet before the coming of that dawn, to the point where the four of us decided to move slowly back to where we’d located our hooches. If Nguyen hadn’t been a part of our team, we’d have needed the scope for the return trip.

  I laid down on my dry poncho liner to wait for the dawn. My hand slipped down to the hump resting uncomfortably in my right thigh pocket. I prayed there would be no wounded requiring that kind of pain-relieving morphine between now and then. I thought about meeting the re-supply chopper, mailing my letter home and counting the bodies when the time came. There was little doubt in my mind as to what kind of enemy I’d been forced to make my first kills in combat, and I didn’t want to add any more. I worked the small wads I’d fashioned for ear plugs out of my ears. I’d need to be able to hear in order to listen to both the Gunny and Sugar Daddy after the sun came up. I didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that there would be plenty of recriminations in the morning. I lay with my right hand caressing my reloaded Colt, my left squeezing my letter to be mailed home for all it was worth.

  twenty-three

  The Sixth Day

  Full dawn would not come. I lay there, looking at my little Fessman-dug moat. The mist had stayed all night, which I now knew to be the precursor to the monsoon season. It could get worse. It would get worse. Just how in hell God would figure out a way to make it worse, I didn’t know. Only that it would definitely get worse. If I hadn’t lost my sense of humor I would have laughed. How about keeping every little bit of “Dante�
��s Inferno” the way it was written while adding pouring rain for twenty-four hours a day? I’d read in college that the highest suicide rate ever experienced fully by any organized body of humans occurred in India after the British took over the tea plantations up north there. It had rained for two hundred and twelve days and nights straight. Fifteen percent of the entire occupying British force committed suicide before the rain let up. Many of the dead were the wives of the English officers.

  I rubbed my face with both hands, the repellent oil now a part of my skin structure so it felt like rubbing a soft lubricated pumpkin. I knew why morbid thoughts dominated my mind. I’d just killed three men up close. I hadn’t seen their faces, but guessed they were black Marines sent on a mission to kill me. They’d crawled across the mud flat, probably scared to death, and they’d died the way they feared they might. Killed by an insanely frightened lieutenant who didn’t know, or couldn’t figure out, what else to do. The fact that I didn’t care enough also concerned me. I couldn’t reach any center of my soul where guilt, sorrow or contrition should be. It reminded me of being a kid again after confession at the Catholic Church. As soon as I’d confessed my sins, then repeated the appropriate Our Fathers and Hail Marys, that was it. Done. Sins forgotten. I knew I should feel bad. Now there was no confession. No forgiving Catholic priest smiling wisely down upon me, assigning punishment prayers. Just me, the bugs, the mud and my .45.

  “Fuck,” I whispered to myself.

  Tomorrow, if it would only come, would probably be the last time I saw the light of day. I doubted even the Gunny could save me from the two opposing factions, both now committed to making sure my existence on the planet was over. I tossed and turned about killing the men and whatever feelings I should have had, but didn’t. When I stopped thrashing about, my thoughts congealed back into my own personal world of terror. Thoughts of what discoveries the morning would certainly bring faded to backstage as a plan began to hatch itself in my mind. I grabbed my flashlight with it’s little hole cover in place, took my one-to-twenty-five-thousand photo map from my pocket and crawled out of my hooch.

  The Gunny slept. I laid down next to him in the mist, guarding my paper-holed flashlight and map. I marveled at the man’s ability to seemingly sleep so comfortably. I waited, staring, my unending patience fueled by terror. My hands did not shake, however, and for that I was thankful. Maybe I’d been there long enough to get used to it — a thought as awful as the terror itself.

  The Gunny’s eyes opened. Through the darkness I could only make out the whites of his eyes, blinking rapidly. His head turned fully to look at me, only inches away. He said something but I couldn’t understand him.

  “Shit,” I intoned, “The gum.” I stuck my flashlight and map under the Gunny’s poncho while I worked my fingers in and out of both ears. I still had the chewing gum embedded from last night.

  “What in hell do you people want?” he whispered, sticking his head out into the mist.

  People? I wondered, before hearing little sounds I hadn’t been able to pick up with the gum stuck in my ears. I turned to take in Fessman at my right shoulder, Zippo and Stevens just beyond my left, and Nguyen barely visible behind them. I turned back to the Gunny, not having any better idea of what the others were doing there than he did.

  “I’ve got a plan,” I said, my voice soft, as I unfolded and spread out my map on a part of his dry poncho liner. “They have to know we’re pulling out of here. They have to figure that we’ll either head back into the Go Noi or we’ll climb up into the mountains overlooking the A Shau. Because of the river, there’s only two ways out. By now they’ll have mined and booby-trapped both of our options.”

  I used my black grease pencil to roughly outline the depression we’d be forced to follow up into the A Shau after sunrise.

  “Fifteen clicks,” I pointed out. “Fifteen thousand meters, divided by five hundred meter increments. I adjust one round onto the path every five hundred meters, which will take about a hundred rounds from the battery to perform, given adjusting fire.”

  I stopped and looked the Gunny in the eyes.

  “Yeah, so?” he answered.

  “Sympathetic detonation,” I said, sounding enthusiastic, I hoped. “One forty-six-pound round will go off on the path and the blast wave, using a concrete-piercing fuse, will set off any booby trap or mine within fifty meters. All the way up the path.”

  “Like a mine-clearing operation using explosives,” the Gunny mused, leaning further forward to study the map. “Like they use with those long lines of explosives on the tanks. Okay, sounds good. Why are you telling me now?”

  “There were some casualties during the night and tempers are probably going to run high,” I said, folding up my map and turning the flashlight off.

  “That was your Colt firing last night?” the Gunny asked, although I knew it wasn’t a question.

  Although it had only been six days, I’d become pretty adept at identifying every weapon fired by its distinct sound. The .45 made a very distinctive barking sound when it went off, not like the crack of a 16 or the longer thunder of a .50. The Gunny could not have missed the different sound in the night from such a close position.

  “There’s likely to be trouble,” I replied, avoiding answering his question directly.

  “And this is your plan to take care of that?” he went on. “Without you to call in this shit tomorrow, the company suffers from booby-trap casualties. So everyone needs you.”

  “Something like that,” I agreed, surprised he’d caught on so fast.

  “Might work,” he said, after almost a full minute to think. “But what are you going to do when we get to the A Shau tomorrow night?”

  “Tomorrow night,” I repeated flatly, without adding anything more.

  Another full minute went by. I felt my scout team behind me, totally silent but totally all there, waiting. I wondered if the Gunny had modified what he was saying to me because of their presence, although I’d never know the answer.

  “Bird-in-the-hand kind of a thing, or tit-for-tat or something,” the Gunny said.

  I didn’t respond, except for getting my stuff together to crawl back to my own hooch. When I got back out into the mist, the Gunny called out once more from behind me.

  “How many?” he asked.

  “How many what?” I threw back over my shoulder, moving away.

  “God damn it,” he said, but he let it go.

  Back under my own poncho I asked Stevens, “Who’s on the scope?”

  The three of them knelt a few inches out from my moat, dawn not far off. I shivered at the thought.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Nobody coming now,” Stevens finally replied. “Too late in the morning, so we quit watching to save the batteries. They will only sneak around in the night.”

  “We all sneak around in the night, if you haven’t noticed, sergeant,” I answered. “Go do what you guys do before we move out. You make up your mind,” I finished, pointing at Stevens.

  “About what?” he asked, in a tone of complete surprise.

  “You know damn well what,” I replied, wondering what I might do with a scout sergeant who wouldn’t back me. But I couldn’t think about it further. I had to get my mind ready for Sugar Daddy, Jurgens, the Gunny, the complex artillery fire I’d have to put together under the most difficult of terrain, and the rest of what was likely to come. I hadn’t mentioned to the Gunny that we were running out from under our supporting firebase. The 155 battery could reach all the way into the A Shau but not very far into it. By the time we got to the top of the ridge overlooking the valley, we’d be just beyond safe 105 range, even at maximum charge for those howitzers. And the rapid response multiple-round-firing 105s meant just about everything to my staying alive. The Marines around me only whispered when they spoke of the A Shau, like it was some sort of special hell compared to the regular hell we
were already in.

  I laid on my back in my hooch and my mind went blank for what I thought was a few seconds, but when I opened my eyes there was light. Morning had opened at the first light, as the song lyrics went. I reached my hand inside my front pocket to squeeze my letter home. It was there, but I wouldn’t breath easier until I turned it over.

  Sugar Daddy and several of the men from Fourth Platoon already squatted by the side of the muddy path that ran between the Gunny’s and my hooch. I hadn’t heard them come up, or noticed The Gunny leave. Only Fessman sat nearby, waiting for me to arise.

  My right hand moved slightly to glide over the comforting outside edges of the .45’s butt.

  “Truce,” Sugar Daddy said, extending one hand out toward me, the other gripping a canteen holder, as if the three of them had simply been passing through and stopped to heat up some coffee.

  I had five rounds. I knew a single round in the center of mass, from close range, would take down the largest of humans, even if only for a few seconds or moments. The other two would take side torso shots but that would leave me with only two rounds left, and that wasn’t enough for the three finishing head shots I would need.

  I got to my knees, leaving my hand on the butt of the .45, and then crawled forward to the edge of my poncho cover. I estimated the Marines to be ten feet away. If I got closer, I could take them all with head shots and have two more extra rounds left over. I liked that thought. I rose up and walked to where they squatted before squatting down a little distance off. They all had their hands occupied with canteen holders held over burning composition B explosive chunks.

  Advantage in, I thought, my hand on the butt of my Colt. The automatic was off of safe with a full magazine, but no round in the chamber. I regretted that I had not been paranoid enough to properly reload when I’d gotten back to my hooch. I’d never make that mistake again, I knew.