Last Man Out

by James E. Parker, Jr.

  The huts were separated from the main part of the village along a river, and the mortar round had landed directly on top of a hut in the center. A woman and two men had been killed and several other people wounded, including some children. The dead were lying in the shade by the side of a hut when we arrived, their bloodstained night clothing only partially covering the gaping holes in their bodies. The villagers were wailing and crying. Most of the wounded had been evacuated to a hospital in town, but a few of the lesser wounded were standing around, displaying fresh bandages. Through an interpreter, we took information about the time of the accident, the number of casualties, and the exact location of the huts.

  The hit occurred at approximately the same time that an H&I round was fired by the battalion 4.2-mortar platoon at a road target near the huts. Our unit had killed the civilians. It was a mistake, and everyone was sorry.

  “Things like these happen in wars,” Bratcher said, twitching his jaw. “We just got to hang in there and learn how to do it right. War ain’t never been easy. Or error-free.”

  Two nights later to the west, near the huts we had accidentally hit with our mortar fire, several rockets were laid in wooden V wedges and ignited by a small group of people, probably Viet Cong. The rockets soared up and into our base camp and landed in Company B’s area. The west side of the perimeter was probed at about the same time.

  Within ten minutes from the time of the first rocket explosion, everything became quiet. I reported to Woolley that there was no activity in my sector, but I continued to stand in the command bunker and scan the edge of the jungle line. There was no conversation on the radio. Finally the field telephone rang. My RTO said it was Lieutenant Peterson.

  “Dunn’s wounded,” Pete said. “He’s at the aid tent.”

  I took a flashlight and made my way to the aid tent near the center of the base camp. Haldane and Allee were just coming out through the blackout curtain. Haldane said Dunn was going to be all right. Inside the tent, three men were lying on stretchers on the floor. Dunn was on the operating/examination table. He was talking fast to the battalion surgeon, Dr. Isaac Goodrich, and the corpsmen attending him.

  “Goddamn that hurts. Quit it. Goddammit. Quit it. Quit it.”

  “Lieutenant,” said Goodrich, “if you don’t shut up, we are going to quit it and leave you alone to sew up your own mess.

  Shut up.”

  Dunn had shrapnel wounds on his chest, arms, stomach, and legs, but they did not appear to be life threatening. The corpsmen were probing in the open wounds to find the shrapnel, occasionally extracted bits of metal, and dropped them in a stainless steel pan on a nearby table.

  “Owweeee,” Dunn moaned, though not very seriously. “Don’t you have some laughing gas or opium or something? Aren’t there supposed to be some female nurses around here? Owweeee.”

  “Bob,” I said, “I just talked with some of your men. They did it. Threw grenades at you. Don’t like you. Tried to kill you. They’re standing around outside, some of them, taking bets on whether you live or die. Only no one wants to take bets that you live.”

  “Owweeee, Jimmy. Ohhhhhh, Jimmy. I don’t like this. You gotta help me.”

  I took out a .45-pistol round and put it in his mouth. “Bite on this,” I said. “It’s the way they do it in the movies.”

  Dunn was flown out to the 93d Field Hospital in Bien Hoa the following day. The doctor opined that he would be back in the unit within weeks. He had lost some blood and had some nicks, but he was going to be all right.

  Shortly after Dunn left the battalion received orders to provide protection to a truck convoy traveling between Phuoc Vinh and Bien Hoa. We were deployed along the road in advance of the convoy and spent several days in relaxed platoon-size positions as the trucks sped by. We received mixed reactions from the civilians in the area. Some of the older men and women ignored us and stayed out of our way. Others, especially the children, were fascinated and watched as we approached, smiling when we smiled. Rumors circulated that we should not buy drinks from the locals because glass and poison had been found in Cokes sold by children in other areas.

  After the convoys passed we were trucked down to the edge of Bien Hoa, where we were to camp while the trucks were loaded. We expected to be in the bivouac area for several days. The day we arrived there, Pete, Duckett, and I borrowed a Jeep and went into Bien Hoa. I went to a furniture maker and placed an order for a bar for our tent at Phuoc Vinh. The furniture maker promised to have it finished by the next afternoon.

  We wandered from the furniture maker’s shop down to a strip of bars and noticed that we were dirtier than most of the U.S. soldiers we passed, who we assumed worked at the Bien Hoa logistic command.

  “It’s like the Wild West movies, you know,” Pete said. “These here are townies and we’re just in from the range, covered with trail dust.”

  An Armed Forces Radio station was on in the bar we finally entered, reporting on an upcoming Bob Hope concert. We envied the way the local GIs seemed to know their way around the bar, playing darts and talking with the girls. One of the soldiers came up to Duckett and asked if he had any souvenirs for sale. “Beg your pardon?” Duckett said.

  “Viet Cong stuff, flags, AK-47s, hats,” the soldier clarified. “Big price for it at Bien Hoa, though they make VC flags in some of the shops better than the real thing.”

  “Nope, we ain’t got none of that,” Duckett said as McCoy came in the bar and joined us.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “This is the way to do the war—inside work, light lifting, air conditioners, bars, girls, cold beer.”

  “You’re going candy ass, George?” I said.

  “Ah, the romance has gone out of being in the infantry,” George said. “A little logistic command assignment, two or three months down here—I could do that.”

  We noticed a drunk soldier, with pressed fatigues and shined boots, groping at a bar girl.

  “Well, I don’t know,” George said. “Maybe it is better out in the boonies. The beer tasted better when you could get it cold. You’re thirstier, you know what I mean? Didn’t have to worry about dressing up for any Bob Hope concert.”

  The next day I commandeered an empty deuce-and-a-half truck and, with Manuel driving, returned to the furniture maker. The bar was everything I had expected. Nicely curved on one end with adjustable shelves behind. A water-resistant top. We took it back to our bivouac area and put ponchos over it, more for protection against the possibility of rain than to hide it. When the convoy was assembled the following day, I located a driver who was taking supplies to our battalion, and he agreed to put the bar on top of his load. I assigned Manuel as the bar guard and told him to ride in the back and protect that bar with his life.

  I was standing by Woolley as the convoy passed. Manuel was on the back of one of the first vehicles. The bar, obvious to me because of its shape, was under wraps. I waved to Manuel. Woolley put his head to one side as he looked at me, quizzically.

  Manuel had the bar in our tent when we finally arrived three days later. Woolley came in and asked where it came from.

  “Damned if I know, but it sure is pretty,” I said. “Something to come home to from those long camping trips we take around here.”

  An hour later Colonel Haldane and Major William E. Panton, the battalion G-3 (operations officer), walked into the tent, looked at the bar, then at me, and walked out without comment.

  I wrote to several liquor companies at the addresses on their bottles and asked for bar accessories, napkins, shot glasses, anything to give our bar a professional touch. Within weeks I began to get packages. Each liquor company responded and was generous with gifts. Our bar soon had all the machinery of a first-rate neighborhood gin mill.

  Mail call was the most important part of the day to most of the soldiers. Late in the afternoon Bratcher picked up the platoon’s mail from the company clerk. He called the men into the company street and yelled out the names on the packages and letters. Ayers was alway
s in the front, but he never seemed to get any mail. Bratcher said that it was painful for him, when he had to tell Ayers that he got no mail; the big lug always looked so hurt. It wasn’t that Ayers didn’t write to anyone. Every couple of days he gave the company clerk a painfully addressed letter to someone in the Midwest. As far as we knew, no one ever responded.

  Ray Ernst also had a man in his platoon who didn’t receive mail and, like Ayers, stood in the front during each mail call. Ernst wrote to a preacher friend, who organized an Operation Alpha Company. Members of his congregation sent personal letters to men in the company, including Ayers. Bratcher was also careful to call out Ayers’s name for boxes addressed to “Anyone in Alpha Company, 1st/28th Infantry.” We were soon receiving care packages from other churches, civic organizations, and grammar school classes. We got a lot of Kool-Aid; some newspaperman somewhere must have written, “Those boys over there need Kool-Aid to win this war,” ’cause we got Kool-Aid packages by the hundred. No one ever used them.

  Dunn returned from the field hospital within a month. We had a “welcome home” party for him at the bar.

  We continued to widen our area of operations in November and December, sweeping farther and farther from our base camp. In late November we had returned from a battalion-size sweep when we were visited by a congressional delegation led by Sen. Jacob Javits. The officers and NCOs of the company were standing in a loose formation near the company headquarters when the senator arrived. As he came down the line, he asked me if I needed anything or if there was anything he could do for me back home. I told him that we had a bar in our tent, but we needed a picture of a nude behind it.

  “I am trying to upgrade the ambience of the place,” I added.

  “A nude?” the senator asked hesitantly, as though my request was slightly uncongressional.

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  I did not look at Woolley or Haldane, because I knew they were glaring. Second lieutenants should not be forward with congressional delegations. Certainly they shouldn’t ask for pictures of naked women. Javits smiled and wished me well.

  In late November 1965 my platoon was on patrol south of the base camp. Private De Leon and Sergeant Rome were on point. As they broke out of a bamboo thicket De Leon dropped to one knee and Rome lifted his arm in the air, stopping the platoon. Rome turned, made eye contact with me, and called in a loud whisper, “Lieutenant!”

  Rome moved off to one side behind a tree and I joined him there. We looked through the jungle toward a small Vietnamese village in front of us. Off to the side of the village near an open field, several women wearing straw cone hats were sifting rice, separating it from the chaff. Several old men and a few children were moving around among the huts. Smoke from two cooking fires drifted up.

  “No men,” De Leon observed. “Don’t look right.”

  A chicken crowed from inside the village and then, closer to us, some pigs snorted.

  I leaned against the back side of the tree, wiped my brow, and pulled a map from my side pocket. Sergeant Bratcher walked up. When he took in the scene and saw me studying the map, he turned and motioned for the platoon behind us in the thicket to get down and rest.

  The village was clearly marked on my map, as was the nearby rice field where the women were working. The map indicated that a path ran from the village across our front to a road five kilometers distant to the west. On the other side of the village from us was another rice field.

  We had been in Vietnam now for seven weeks. Although my men had killed the VC rice porter—and had been probed at our base camp—the platoon had not been fully engaged by the enemy. We were coming together as a unit, however, and becoming comfortable in the jungle, more sure of ourselves, as we gradually extended our patrols farther away from other friendly units. We looked jungle tough. Because we carried our weapons with us every minute we were in the field, they became extensions of our bodies. Our field uniforms and web gear were becoming faded; the coverings to our steel pots were personalized with identifying marks—girlfriend names, personal mottoes, and so on. Most of us carried our C rations in extra socks hanging off the back of our packs. Although we looked like pack mules with all of our gear, we did not clank when we walked. On patrol, every day, we moved more silently as we learned to traverse jungle obstacles, but we were tired of trudging endlessly through the jungles. We wanted to engage the Viet Cong, and we felt that we were getting closer. Newsome, my radio operator, in fact, had remarked during our last break that he felt we were being watched.

  It was mid-afternoon but still hot. We heard no sounds from the women, old men, and children in the village, only the distant steady thumping of threshing rice and the whirring of nearby insects.

  I reached for the handset to the PRC-25 radio. “Red Cap Twigs Alpha Six, this is Red Cap Twigs Alpha November Six, over,” I said, calling Captain Woolley in a soft voice.

  There was a short pause. Then, “Yeah, November Six, this is Alpha Six, what’s your location, over?”

  After giving a coordinate from the map, I turned to look at the Vietnamese people working to my front and said, “We’re near this village, and there ain’t no men that we can see. Maybe twenty women, children, old people. I think they know we’re here, but they ain’t looking this way. Just going on about their business. Don’t like it. What you want me to do, over?”

  During a long pause, I stared at the back of an old man in black pajamas who was sitting in the shade of a hut, stiffly staring away from us. I sensed he was listening intently. He probably had heard the distinctive sound of the radio-breaking squelch.

  “Alpha November Six, this is Alpha Six. Go on around the village; don’t go mixing it up with civilians. You’re out there looking for VC. Go on, you got another few klicks to go anyway to tie up with Alpha Mike Six before sundown. Circle the village and continue on. You copy, over?”

  I acknowledged the order and handed the handset back to the RTO as I pushed myself away from the tree. Sergeant Rome had also heard the company commander’s order. He rose from his squatting position and turned to me. I motioned with my head to stay well within the jungle and pass the village to the left. As Rome and then De Leon started moving, a dog in the village began barking. I stood by the tree and watched the village as my platoon slowly filed by. The dog continued to bark loudly. The old man sitting in the shade did not move.

  Falling in near the end of the patrol, I walked alongside PFC Joaquin S. Cipriano for several minutes, although my attention was still on the village we were passing. Cipriano had not been feeling well lately. “I’m sick,” he said. “Stomach, plus I’m hacking up some crud. Feel like I got bugs or worms or something. Really, I ain’t making this up.”

  I heard him, but my focus was to our right. Finally I looked in his direction and we made eye contact.

  Cipriano smiled. “Back home, feeling the way I do, my momma would make me some soup.”

  Smiling at him, I made no comment and moved up the patrol line to fall in near Newsome with the radio. Ahead, De Leon and Rome cautiously came to the path leading across our front to the village. De Leon stuck his head out into the pathway, looked both ways, and took three quick steps to the other side. Rome followed and then a few more soldiers. I crossed the path, and one by one, the rest of the platoon began to cross. Up ahead, De Leon was approaching the second rice field, and I strained to see if there was anyone working in the field.

  With fearful suddenness, a sharp sound cracked through the air. For a second, an enormously loud blast consumed us. Shrapnel shredded the foliage around us, and everyone hit the ground.

  “Owweeee,” someone in great pain yelled immediately. De Leon began firing his M-14 on full automatic. I fell to my knees behind an anthill, but couldn’t see anyone between us and the rice field.

  “What the hell’s happening, De Leon?” I yelled.

  Behind me, near the path, I heard again, “Iiioooooowwwwweeeeee,” and then, “Oh Mother of Mercy, oh God, oh God, oh God, I’m dying. Iiiiooo
oooowwwweeee.”

  “Nothing just yet, but I ain’t letting no one come up on me,” De Leon answered. Behind at the path, more screaming. “Medic, medic, medic! God, where’s the medic?”

  Quickly moving back, I saw Cipriano lying facedown at the side of the path. He had a large, bloody wound in his back, above his pack, near his neck. He kept yelling for the medic. Nearby on the path was a hole surrounded by fresh dirt blown away by a mine. Two wires sticking out of the hole led back toward the village. Someone had touched off the mine as Cipriano passed. A patrol member applied a bandage to the wound. I told Cipriano to be still and it would be all right.

  Crazed with fear and pain, he kept looking around as he said, “I’m dying, Doc. I can’t feel nothing. I can’t feel my legs or my arms or nothing, Doc. And goddamn it hurts. Don’t let me die. Please don’t let me die.”

  Newsome had followed me back to the path. He had called in a medevac helicopter, and I took the radio to report to the company commander. As I finished, the air ambulance chopper was arriving; it must have been very close by. I sent men to surround a nearby clearing and throw purple smoke into the field. Within minutes, possibly less than fifteen after the mine had exploded, Cipriano was on the chopper heading for a hospital. He was still conscious, but he had bled a great deal and bloody bandages covered his back. Lying on his stomach in the back of the helicopter, he looked in our direction with eyes glazed in pain. As the helicopter rose out of the field, the corpsman on board was clearing Cipriano’s weapon. Helicopter gunships buzzed the tree lines on either side.

  Then it was quiet again, and we went into the village.

  I sent some of the men to the far side, and they herded the women from their rice chores back into the center of the village while the rest of the platoon searched the huts. Shortly, all the villagers were collected near me in front of one of the cooking fires. There were no young men—just women, old people, and children standing in a huddle as they fearfully looked around at us. But I knew that one of them had set off the mine that had wounded my man, or perhaps killed him or maimed him for life. Or, if one of them had not set off the mine, they were hiding the person who did.