by James Estep
“This is Six,” I replied. “Good job. Pass along a ‘well done’ to your hit man … break. You’ve done a day’s work. Go ahead and pack it up and start moving toward Daisy. We’ll be an hour or so behind you. Don’t forget to give Two Six a call before closing the LZ; they may be occupying it!”
After waiting in ambush another thirty to forty minutes, we too started down the mountain. Shortly after passing the point at which our new descending trail bisected the main northsouth route, we got lucky.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat! The sound of Three Six’s point man’s M-16, firing on automatic, pierced the air!
As on that first day on the mountain, everyone dived to the ground, pointing their weapons outward, doing things right. Within moments Lieutenant Halloway and 1, our RTOs in tow, were running forward, quickly closing the twenty meters or so between us and his point man, The point man was in a crouch, his weapon at the ready, looking left, right, and down the trail as he should have been. At his feet were what appeared to be two long socks, a string connecting them, filled with dry uncooked rice. These straddled the neck of a dead NVA soldier.
Three Six’s point man had evidently elevated his weapon while firing on automatic. His foe had been “zippered” through his groin, stomach, chest, neck, and skull.
Recalling Byson’s guidance, we searched the bloodied khaki-clad body thoroughly but other than personal effects found nothing. Clearing the trail, a couple of Three Six’s soldiers then heaved the body, in a one-two-three count, off the path’s embankment. It tumbled two or three meters before lodging itself against a tree. We retrieved the dead soldier’s weapon and then continued our downward movement toward Daisy.
While waiting—always waiting—for the evening log bird, I strolled over to One Six’s piece of our perimeter and congratulated their hit man on his kill. After doing so, I continued on to Three-Six’s position, arriving in time to overhear Bob Halloway’s point man describing his kill.
“It was just like Lean Man said, LT! See, I’m moving ‘long real cautious like, and all of a sudden this dink comes strutting ‘round a curve in the trail, carrying this double sock of rice over his shoulders, you know, like saddlebags. And I swear to God, sir, the fucker had his weapon slung ‘cross his back! I mean, this dude’s doing everything what they told us not to do in basic. Shit, he wasn’t even looking where the fuck he was going! Just looking at the ground, at his feet, you know, like them Ho Chi Minh sandals was the biggest thing he had going for him today. I swear, sir, I don’t think he ever saw me. I mean he’s just staring at his fucking feet when I blew him away.”
After congratulating our young point man, Bob and I talked briefly about the incident.
“What do you make of it, Bob?” I asked. “Why are they so fucking sloppy up there? Hell, these are regulars, the People’s Army of North Vietnam, supposedly one of the world’s most professional infantries.”
“Yes, sir, and they probably are when they come down here to play, you know, on our turf. But up there, well, it’s pretty obvious they think they own the mountain, regard it as their own private sanctuary, and can therefore traverse its trails with impunity. You know, just like walking the streets of Hanoi.”
“Well, they by God don’t own it no more, Robert!” I retorted, arrogantly, cockily.
“Uh … right, sir, and that’s what surprises me—I mean that they haven’t concluded their little haven of security is no longer secure.
You’d think, seeing the dead bodies we’ve been leaving around, they’d take some precautionary measures.”
After mulling this over, I responded, “I don’t know, Bob; maybe that’s not so surprising—I mean their reaction to our kills. Hell, there’s dead bodies all over this country; it’s almost the norm. Way I figure it, these people are regulars in transit, you know, just moving from point A to point B. They see some of their own laid out ‘long the way, they just chalk it up to H&I fire, aerial-delivered mines, and a stray born. in short, the fortunes of war.”
“Maybe so,” he replied, “but it’s funny they’re not using their VC brethren as guides. And why are they moving in singles, pairs, or groups of only three or four per? And where are they moving to?”
Good questions, but ones that neither Bob Halloway nor I were able to answer on that January day in 1968.
As dusk fell, Two Six departed Daisy en route to our new NDP, leaving behind a guide with each of the remaining platoons. An hour or so later, in darkness, the rest of us followed. Upon arriving at our new position, Lieutenant MacCarty quickly emplaced the company in an elongated perimeter. LPs were sent out, and we settled in for the night, each of us seeking what cover and concealment our immediate surroundings afforded. We dug no holes in this instance: security was dependent on stealth, on silence.
After C&D the following morning, we again assaulted the mountain, going about what had now become business as usual. Three Six worked the main northsouth trail, and One Six the valley floor. Two Six, accompanied by the command section, followed our newly discovered trail of the day before up and over the mountain’s crest. We wanted to see what was on the other side.
I tagged along with Two Six. Although we found little of consequence on the mountain’s western slope, I had the opportunity to observe the best of the company’s point men at work. And the company had no bad point men in the Nam. They were the best and bravest of a unit’s soldiers because the laws of jungle warfare permitted nothing less. The point man was a twentieth-century gladiator, a man who fought the war at its most personal level. And, like the gladiator, he could lose the game but once. If the pilot of a B-52 bomber was on one end of the war’s spectrum, the point man was at the other end. Unlike the B-52 pilot, who would push the buttons on his onboard computer to release his fury on an unseen enemy below, the point man was nose to nose with the enemy—man against man, with weapon in hand.
Passing Three Six’s previous day’s ambush site, we continued to climb upward toward the mountain’s summit, the trail becoming abruptly steeper, nearly perpendicular to the valley floor below. Ladderlike footsteps had been carved into the mountain’s face, and, straddling these, woven vines conveniently hung down from the heights above.
Movement was tedious, difficult, and exhausting, but the flow of adrenaline dulled the effects of exhaustion and kept us going.
“Hey, sir,” Mac whispered, momentarily turning and looking down at me.
“We’re really in Indian country now.”
“Looks like it, doesn’t it, Mac. They say there’s always good hunting in the high country.”
“Damn right we’re in Indian country,” Anderson said, behind and below me, not bothering to look up. “These ain’t wait-a-minute vines we’re hanging onto. These vines been woven by some zipperhead. Shit, sir, we’re in Charlie’s backyard!”
Looking up, I saw the mountain’s top looming before us. Concurrently, the trail leveled off slightly, still steep but no longer straight up.
Two Six’s point man was within perhaps ten meters of the mountain’s razorback crest when, suddenly, two NVA soldiers appeared on the summit and began their descent toward us. If they saw our point man before they died, it was only for a fleeting second. Because he saw them first.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
The exploding twelve-gauge shotgun shells were louder than an M-16 round, yet our point man fired the rounds so quickly that the shots sounded like an automatic weapon. He hit the first of the two enemy soldiers dead center in the chest, lifting him up and backwards for a fraction of a second before he fell, face forward, tumbling past us. The second man, struck in the chest and face, fell back across the mountain’s crest.
We searched the bodies, retrieved the weapons, and reported the contact to battalion. Then we continued on over the top of the mountain and down its other side, arriving back on the valley floor in midafternoon.
The mountain’s western slope produced no startling discoveries, just heavily traveled trails, indicating that our enemy was constantly
moving across the mountain’s face, usually in a southerly direction.
Our disappointment was lessened somewhat when a loud explosion occurred to the northeast: two unwitting NVA soldiers had fallen victim to Three Six’s claymore ambush.
That afternoon, in yet another NDP, I wandered over to Two Six’s slice of the perimeter and congratulated MacCarty’s point man on his kills.
He was a big, black street tough named Wester and, as I would later learn while lying helpless in a rice paddy, a man of great personal courage. On this occasion he was noncommittal and rather reserved, merely thanking me.
Later that evening, after the log bird had departed and the company had messed, Lieutenant MacCarty dropped by my CP for a little after-dinner conversation.
“Well, what do you think of my man Wester, sir?” he asked.
“Hell of a good shot,” I responded.
“Yeah, best point man in the company, maybe the division. Cool under fire, like ice. Kind of guy you want around in a firefight.”
“Well, Mac, why is he still a Pfc? Sounds like NCO material to me.”
“Yes, sir, and his spec-four stripe should be coming down any day now.
Uh … sergeant may be a bit more difficult. See, fortunately, I have the best point man and the best platoon sergeant in the company.
Unfortunately, the two of them don’t always see eye to eye. Know what I mean?”
I don’t … No.”
“Well, Wester’s the new breed—here to do a job, great combat soldier, but not all that enthused ‘bout some of the other more … uh … subtle aspects of soldiering. Sergeant Naple, on the other hand, is the typical hard-core infantry platoon sergeant. You know—right way, wrong way, and the Army way. And, ‘course, the Army way is always the right way.”
“Okay, understand.”
“But they’re both super soldiers,” he continued, “and I think both realize the other is good at what he’s responsible for doing.”
“Well, in any event, Wester is deadly with that shotgun,” I remarked. “I mean, goddamn, it sounded like an automatic weapon.”
“You bet it did, sir! Hey, every time the platoon gets a cherry in, Wester bets him he can empty that pump action faster than the cherry can fire a twentyround magazine on full automatic. He hasn’t lost a bet yet!” He paused, smiling, and added, “See that bronze Cav patch he has embedded in the stock?”
I nodded. Changing the subject, I asked, “What about you, Mac? You’re ‘bout ready to leave us, aren’t you?”
“One more week, mon capitan! Seven more days and I start migrating toward my freedom bird, back to the land of the living.” Then, a bit despondently, almost angrily, he said, “I’ll miss the men. I won’t miss another fucking thing about this whole stinking, chaotic, fucked-up mess, but I’ll miss my men.”
“Sure you will, only natural. And they’ll miss you. Uh … what’s your plan, Mac? Staying in?”
“No! I’m not sure what I’m gonna do, but the Army won’t be a part of it. I figure I’ve paid my dues, and now it’s time to get on with my life. And quite frankly, sir, I don’t see the profession of arms as being part of that life. I mean, I’m not having that much fun right now, and if I stayed in, I’d be right back over here in, what? A year? Two years? Mean, shit, sir, you’re career, and this is your third trip, right?”
“Right on both counts,” I answered. “Yeah, you’d probably be back over here in a year or so. I mean, you’re infantry and, like our first sergeant says, till this thing’s over, you’re either gonna be in Vietnam, preparing to go to Vietnam, or recuperating from having been in Vietnam. Infantry officers can just forget about touring Europe for a while.”
Recalling the gist of an Infantry Branch orientation at Fort Benning shortly before my departure, I added, “In fact, Branch told us they’d assigned only two infantry captains to all of Seventh Army! Think about it, Mac. Our nation’s commitment to NATO and traditionally our largest field army, and only two infantry captains assigned! And get this, Mac, one of ‘em is an amputee!”
Laughing, he replied, “Well, we heard that infantry lieutenants were getting a lot of company command time in Germany. Guess it’s true.”
After a moment’s silence, MacCarty continued in a more serious vein.
“But you see, sir, I really don’t care how many infantry captains we have in Seventh Army—you do. You do ‘cause you’re career, and it’s all part of this military profession you and others like you hold so dear. And please don’t misunderstand me, sir; I respect you all for it. But I’m not career, and I’m not part of it and don’t want to be.”
“I guess we’re just different in that respect. I’ve often wondered why.”
“You know what I think, sir?” he asked rhetorically. “And I’ve thought about this from time to time, watching and working with you and Byson and other careerists. I think it’s World War II. I think it’s the environment you all grew up in.”
“What?” I asked, wondering what the hell he was talking about.
“What I mean, sir … well how old are you?”
“I’m twenty-nine, no, thirty now, and tonight I feel it, but what the hell’s my age got to do with careers—yours or mine? Or the war? Or World War II? I mean I sure as hell wasn’t involved in that one! Shit, I was only three, four years old when we got into it.”
“Yeah, but I’ll bet you remember it, the war years and all. You know—the rationing, paper and scrap-metal drives, and so forth.”
“Well, yeah, I do,” I said, smiling as I recalled those long-ago “good war” years. “And I remember the milkweed pod drives.”
“What?” Mac asked. “Milkweed pods? What the hell did the Army need milkweed pods for?”
“Beats the shit out of me, Mac. But my second-grade class must’ve picked a ton of ‘em. I think they used them in life vests on troopships or something.”
“Bet you remember the day it was all over, too, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Sure do. V-J day. Big parade down Main Street; everybody went a little crazy. My dad, just back from the Big Red One in Europe, set me up on a fire truck so as I could ring its bell. Big kick for a seven-or eight-year-old. But I still don’t see what you’re getting at, Mac. What’s any of this got to do with the price of rice in China?”
“Well, you see, sir, while you and Byson and the old man were doing those paper drives and ringing those fire-engine bells, the rest of us in the company here weren’t even lecherous gleams in our fathers’ eyes.
I mean, these were your formative years, and it was all good against evil, right against wrong, God’s on the side of the pure of heart, and so forth. And it was the country’s military that made the world ‘safe for democracy.” Hell, it’s only natural that you see the profession of arms as a higher calling. And, for the same reasons, it’s only natural you all can’t conceive of losing this, or for that matter, any other war.
“But you see, sir, the rest of us didn’t grow up in that environment. Hell, I can’t even remember Korea, and we really didn’t win that one.”
I didn’t like the direction our conversation was taking, and I still didn’t know what the fuck Mac was talking about. What the hell’s environment or the “goodness” of World War II got to do with the Nam?
Suddenly, suspecting I might know the genesis of his remarks, I asked,
“Hey, Mac, what was your major in college?”
“Philosophy, with a minor in international relations.”
Bingo!
“What about you, sir?”
“Never went to college,” I answered. “Came out of the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, with a clean set of underwear and ten dollars in my pocket, and joined the ‘regular’ Army. And the regular Army, by the way, tells me I’d better be getting some education pretty damn soon if I want to remain part of the regular Army. But that’s neither here nor there. Mac, career aspirations aside, you can’t seriously question whether or not we’re gonna win this thing? Shit, look at the r
ecord. How long have we been here? I mean our ground forces, the infantry, ‘queen of battle.” Two years? And in that two years, we’ve done nothing but kick ass! From la Drang in ‘65 till right now while we’re talking, we’ve beaten Charlie every single time he’s come out to play! It’s just a question of time till he’s gonna have to throw in the towel. Hell, we’re bleeding him white, Mac. You can’t question that.”
“No, sir, I don’t. But they’re still fighting; they’re still in there kicking. I mean if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here, right?”
“Well, yeah, but.”
“And I’m afraid they may continue kicking longer than we, and I mean the folks back home, can put up with it.”
This was heresy! One of us was out of touch with reality, and I figured it had to be Mac. I couldn’t even fathom what he, somewhat less than subtly, was alluding to—losing!
“Uh … don’t get me wrong, sir,” he quickly added, perhaps noting the bewildered, agitated look on my face. “I hope and pray we do win; we’ve already paid a hell of a price. And I know we have the wherewithal to do it. I just question whether or not we have the guts to continue the fight at this pace. You know, sir, there’s a very vocal minority back in the States right now that would like to see us out of here; and daily they’re becoming more vocal and less of a minority. Look Sir, all I’m saying is I think we’re in a race against time on the thing$ and I don’t believe our leadership, from LBJ on down, realizes it.”
“Well, Mac, you’re wrong. We’re gonna win this sucker, even at this pace, and ten years from now South Vietnam will be another Korea, an up-and-coming economic power in the Pacific. And twenty years from now, it’ll be competing with Japan. It never fails: wherever we go and whenever we win—and, Mac, we always win—good times follow.”
He nodded, but without conviction. So I continued. “Well, economics aside, you can’t actually conceive of North Vietnam simply overrunning the country, can you, Mac?”
