by James Estep
“So keep it in the back of your minds and stay flexible. Just consider it one more contingency that you should be prepared for. If you receive a call from me saying I’m inbound for a long haul, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Means we’re heading north. Questions?”
“Yes, sir. If this does come about, will we be going back to Radcliff first?” the Bull asked, referring to the division’s base camp at An Khe.
“Doubt it, First Sergeant. If we get the word to pick up and move, I’ll probably extract you, along with the other companies, from wherever you’re then operating and put you down wherever the Air Force tells me to for a fixed-winged deployment. Probably Qui Nhon or Phu Cat.”
Very soon thereafter, while sitting in claymore ambush atop our mountain with Three Six, Blair passed me his handset, whispering, “Three’s on the horn, sir.”
“Comanche Six, this is Arizona Three. Inbound your location at one six hundred hours with zero, plus three, plus zero for a long haul. I say again, long haul. How copy? Over.”
“Solid copy. We’ll be standing by for pickup vicinity last night’s NDP.”
I turned to Lieutenant Halloway and said, “Okay, Bob, let’s pack it up and get off this mountain posthaste.” Then I made a quick net call, informing the other platoons to assemble at the NDP in preparation for “long haul.”
Retrieving his handset, Anderson asked, “What’s long haul mean, sir?”
“Think it means we ain’t gonna be killing no more NVA on this mountain, Andy. Think it means we’re going north to I Corps.”
“Great!” he responded, as the breeze shifted a bit. “Just hope to hell Charlie buries his dead in I Corps.”
He didn’t, of course; but on one occasion the Cav would.
Back at the NDP, we found the rest of the company in high spirits, looking forward to the long haul north. This, I suppose, is a natural phenomenon among infantrymen since they look upon routine, be it in garrison or combat, as their most hated enemy. It was not that they expected life to be easier or death less threatening in I Corps; indeed, quite the contrary proved to be the case in both instances. They merely looked forward to a change, something different.
“Yeah, I tell you, you’re a bunch of lucky shits to be going to I Corps,” Slim Brightly was saying to no one in particular and everyone in general. “You all are gonna have a great time up there. No more of these endless, fruitless searches for our elusive foe, no, sir! ‘Cause up there Charlie really is behind every rock—shit, there’s a fucking million of ‘em in I Corps. And no more of these beat-up Korean warvintage war trophies. Up there you’ll be getting bright, shiny new AKs, the ones with plastic stocks. Awards and decorations, you ask? Shit, they’ll be bringing ‘em out by the bucketful with your C&D every morning. And promotions! There’ll be all kinds of vacancies to be promoted into once you start seeing action ‘round Hue.”
For a moment, I thought of tactfully asking our young artillery lieutenant if I might have a word with him in private. Then I saw, and it should have come as no great surprise, that those listening to him were enjoying his monologue mightily. And so was I.
“Now, men,” he continued, an aura of seriousness about him, “I had hoped I could be with you as all these glories unfold. However, as you know …” A broad smile began to radiate across his face. “I just have three fucking days ‘fore I take command of my battery!”
Then, pointing to Lieutenant Moseley, our new FO, who had arrived with the C&D bird that morning, he said, “So I want you men to make sure my cannon-cocker replacement here has ample opportunity to get one of ‘em plastic-stocked AKs and his own bucket of medals.”
“Hey, LT,” Sweet Willie asked, “what you gonna be doing while your ‘placement here gets all them medals? Mean, don’t hardly seem right, what with you a being with us so long and all, that you ain’t gonna share a bit in all ‘em good things what’s gonna happen to us in I
Corps.”
“Ah, yes, Willie,” Brightly answered. “But such is the way of life, and such is the way of war. However, rest assured that while I’m sitting there in that secure fire base, in the evening, after a hot shower, Johnny Walker in hand, waiting for that doughnut dolly to make fact of my every fantasy, my thoughts will be with you of Charlie Company as you go forward to smite our ungodly foe, whenever and wherever he may be found.”
“LT,” one of those listening said, “you can have the hot and the doughnut, but how ‘bout sending the JW out to us?”
“Goddamn right!” Lieutenant Brightly replied, now serious indeed.
“If the Six here would permit it, I’d have a fucking case of the stuff on every log bird flying!”
What he didn’t say—but I guess he did, in his way—was that he was going to miss the men with whom he had served and suffered for the past six months.
Arriving on time, the hooks picked us up and then ferried us northeast to a newly constructed airstrip not far from the coastal city of Phu Cat. Upon landing we were met by one of Major Byson’s menials, who told us to set up adjacent to the runway and prepare for an early morning departure via C-130s. Our destination was to be the city of Quang Tri, a province capital thirty miles north of Hue.
We rigged our poncho shelters on a muddy embankment beside the runway and settled in for the night. Shortly after dark, as I sat atop an empty mermite enjoying the first of my two cans of beer, First Sergeant Sullivan joined me for our evening parley.
“Pull up a mermite and pop a beer, Top.”
As he was doing so, I asked, “And what is the state of the command tonight, First Sergeant?”
“State of the command is good, Six. Troops are still in the fucking mud, still sleeping under ponchos, and still need a shower, but morale is high ‘cause battalion sent ‘em their mail and two cans of beer per, and ‘cause they’re going to I Corps tomorrow. And though none of em know what the fuck that means, they know it ain’t Binh Dinh, and they’re fed up with Binh Dinh.”
“Great. Your assessment of the command’s state parallels mine to a tee.”
“They’re also in high spirits ‘cause I … uh … perhaps prematurely lifted the two-beer limit tonight. I hope you concur in my decision to do so.”
“Well, I can hardly countermand it now, can I?” I retorted, annoyed at him for not having come to me first. After a brief, somewhat awkward pause, I said, “Aw, shit, it was a good call, Top. They deserve a blast, and no one’s gonna bother us here tonight.”
“Should’ve talked to you first, sir. Sorry.”
“Forget it. But where are they getting the beer? Make a run on the Air Force club ‘cross the way there?”
“Naw, villagers have a stand set up outside the gate. Sergeant Marvel rented’ himself a jeep somewhere and is running a shuttle service. Some of our snuffies did ask if they could visit the Air Force’s establishment, you know, ‘just to have a quiet beer and watch the go-go girls a bit, Top.” Well, I gave a firm and final no on that one. Wouldn’t be in that club ten minutes ‘fore our boys in blue thought they were in the second Tet offensive, if indeed they saw anything of the first.”
“Well, I support you on that call.”
“Yeah, they’ll be fine right here tonight,” he continued. “Bunch of ‘em will end up with a little buzz, some of ‘em will get laid, but all of ‘em will be fit to travel at first light. And that’s ‘cause they’re young. Youth recoups a lot quicker than us old.”
“Laid!” I said, interrupting him. “Who? Where? How?”
“Huh? Oh. Well, you saw them villagers assembling ‘round the outer fence ‘cross the field there just before dark, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“Well, Six, them girls ain’t selling ice cream. They’re probably working their way through the wire right now. Shit, I saw it at English; them whores can penetrate wire barriers that’d stop a VC sapper cold!”
“Yeah, but shouldn’t we try to stop our soldiers …”
“And, Six, the best thing to do about it is just
look the other way. I mean, if snuffie can smell it, he’ll find a way to get at it, and ain’t nothing we can do to stop him ‘cept maybe look like fools trying to.”
He was right, of course.
“Okay, Top. Tonight it’s see no evil, hear no evil. But you better tell Doc Heard to prepare himself for several cases of ‘lower urinary tract infection of an unknown origin’.”
He smiled and said, “Not to worry, Boss.”
We sat in silence for a while, listening to the faint rumblings of what was probably a locally hired rock-and-roll band coming from the base’s club in the distance. The base, in the light of day, appeared to be little more than a couple of tented maintenance facilities, several sandbagged POL (petroleum, oil, lubricants) points, some communications vans, and a bunch of tents with wooded and screened sidings.
“See, that’s what I mean, goddamn it!” the Bull exploded, ending our repose. “Here we sit on a fucking mermite, in the fucking mud, while those goddamn Air Force wimps over there are drinking their booze, eating their barbecued steaks, and diddling their maids. And they won’t even let us use their goddamn shower facilities!”
Where had I heard this before?
“Hey, Top, we’ll be at Camp Evans by noon. Should be able to get everybody showered tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but still.” he grunted in response.
After another brief pause, he asked what I thought we’d be doing in I Corps.
“Beats the shit out of me, Top. Guess same thing we’ve been doing in Binh Dinh—looking for Charlie and killing him when we find him.
‘Course, really don’t know how accurate Brightly’s assessment is regarding our greater opportunity of doing that in I Corps.”
“Think we’ll be going into Hue, Six?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Come on, Top, you know as much about what the powers have planned for us as I do.”
“Yeah, guess so. Just wish the fucking Marines would finish up in Hue so we could put this whole Tet thing behind us. Tired of reading about it. Mean, the fucking papers, Stars and Stripes and those coming through the mail, ain’t printing a fucking thing ‘bout Byson’s great victory—it’s all gloom and doom.”
“Yeah, Top, but …”
“And now,” he continued angrily, ignoring me, “when we should be going for Uncle Ho’s jugular, I read that our senators, Morse and Fulbright at their helm, are ‘probing’ the goddamn Maddox incident! Well, shit! What the hell’s that got to do with where we are today? I mean, goddamn, sir, these are the people who sent us over here, and now that we’re finally kicking the shit out of Charlie—and dying in the process—they’re probing the fucking Maddox!”
I nodded but said nothing. He really didn’t expect me to. Besides, he was right.
“Why don’t they probe the fucking Maine?” he said, now really steamed.
“I mean, there’s probably a hell of a lot fewer Spanish War veterans to piss off, and them that are still around sure as hell ain’t gonna be fighting in Cuba while their senators are conducting their probe. Fuck it!”
“Take it easy, Top. You worry too much about the small shit. We can kick Charlie’s ass with or without the support of Senators Morse and Fulbright, or any of the rest of those Washington wimps.”
But I was dead wrong about that.
“And I hope you’re right, sir. I just got a gut feeling, you know, reading the papers and so forth, that this whole thing’s turning sour. And if it does, it’s gonna be a dirty rotten shame, and somebody ought to pay for it. By God, we’ve paid!”
After a short lull, he said, “Well, anyway, right or wrong, good or bad, for better or worse, looks like Tet’s pretty much history now—I mean except for Hue. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it’s written up. Right, Six?”
“Guess so, Top.”
Later, lying wrapped in my poncho liner, mindlessly listening to the faint sounds of the rock band, I found myself mulling over Sergeant Sullivan’s comments. What did he mean by “turning sour”? Why worry about a bunch of mindless politicians? Shit, we’ve turned the corner; Charlie has finally come out to play and is sorely sorry for having done so! We’re tearing him apart!
After pondering these tactical realities, I dismissed my first sergeant’s concerns as but another example of his tendency to overreact to misinterpret the facts. I was remiss in doing so. The Bull was far more politically astute than his commander. A short time later, while lying in a hospital bed in Silver Springs, Maryland, I would find myself utterly bewildered by what my country had done to its soldiers, its allies, and itself in the afternath of the 1968 Tet offensive. Indeed, I remain just as bewildered now, over twenty years later.
21. Camp Evans, I Corps
“Damn, it’s cold!” Dubray said as we disembarked our C-130s on the southern end of Quang Trio’s airstrip.
“Monsoon, Willie,” Sergeant Sullivan said. “I Corps’s in the middle of the winter monsoon now.”
It was cold, at least compared to the blistering heat we were accustomed to on Bong Son’s plain. Although it wasn’t really raining, the darkened gray overcast sky emitted a steady drizzle, the kind that in time penetrates every fiber of your clothing, chilling you to the bone.
And the weather’s gloom was only heightened upon our learning that, due to a mix-up in flight scheduling, the trucks that were to take us to Evans had not yet arrived.
“Yo, sir,” Lieutenant O’Brien yelled, running toward me as I stood talking to Lieutenant Norwalk and the first sergeant, the three of us discussing what to do next. “The air-transport officer says we ought to dig in right here on the southern end of the runway. Says the North Vietnamese have the northern end ranged all the way from the fucking DMZ!”
“Okay, fellows, you heard the man,” I said. “Let’s get ‘em into a hasty perimeter. Looks sandy, easy digging, so may as well play the game and scratch out prone shelters just in case we do receive incoming.”
I wondered if the enemy really did have the strip ranged all the way from the DMZ, or if some disgruntled and bored Air Force captain might have just seized the moment to vent his frustrations on our newly assigned second lieutenant. How far are we from the Z? I asked myself. Eighteen, twenty miles? Shit, guess it’s possible, but don’t think we have red leg that’ll reach that far. Not unless it’s mounted atop a battleship.
So we sat in the wet sand beside Quang Trios airstrip, ponchos about our shoulders, warming our coffee on heat tabs and complaining about the weather and battalion’s failure to have transportation awaiting us upon deplaning. And we wondered what the future might hold for US.
It held very little that was good.
By midafternoon we were defending a portion of Camp Evans’ northern perimeter, which, as it turned out, was one of the safer places to be at Evans. When darkness settled over the camp, most of the company had already showered, and some of us had even managed to get a haircut.
In the days that followed, as the constant soaking drizzle continued, interrupted only by brief rain showers, we spent most of our time filling sandbags and reinforcing our bunkers. We approached this task with a bit more enthusiasm than we had on the bridge, since Evans, unlike Bong Son’s bridge, was vulnerable to rocket attack. Of course, these duties did not preclude the men of Charlie Company from doing some of those things they had been unable to do in the boonies: things such as visit the PX, mail packages home, take a steam bath, drink something a little more potent than 3.2 beer, and perhaps take in an open-air movie while sitting on an empty ammo crate, in the mud, in the rain.
Had the sun been shining, Camp Evans would still have been a pretty depressing piece of real estate. An Khe, though we rarely saw it, had a sense of order and tidiness about it. Its hardened streets and wooden troop billets provided a semblance of semipermanence. Most of the camp’s division staff had been housed in prim, neatly aligned mobile homes, while the division commander and his major subordinates occupied splendid brick cottages atop a small hill adjacent to an elaborate und
erground TOC. It was a “1965” camp constructed for the long haul in a war that had not yet gone haywire. At An Khe, one rarely heard a round fired in anger.
Camp Evans, in contrast, had a distinct sense of disorder and untidiness about it. It was for the most part a hodgepodge of tents, bunkers, trenches, wire barriers, and sandbags, set atop a lowlying hill on the western side of Highway One south of Quang Tri and north of Hue.
Supplies were stacked or thrown helter skelter, either by design or as a result of the most recent rocket attack. Everyone slept underground or in a posture that permitted them to go underground at a moment’s notice, because at Evans hearing rounds fired in anger was the norm.
“Incoming!” someone screamed shortly after nightfall on our second day in I Corps.
Whish! Whish!
We dove into our trenches and then, looking up, gazed at the rockets’ orange trails as they sped across the darkened overcast sky before falling within the camp’s perimeter. Transfixed, we watched the second or third round land squarely on a supply-laden truck; silhouetted against the rocket’s fiery explosion we saw boxes, debris, and what appeared to be a man blown high in the air.
“Mama, sweet Mama,” Dubray moaned, “Binh Dinh weren’t never like this!”
“Battalion wants an azimuth, sir!” Blair yelled from across the trench.
“Wants to know if we can give ‘em an azimuth for counterfire!”
“Roger!” I shouted back and quickly pulled out my compass, only to see that our new forward observer, Lieutenant Moseley, was already tracking the incoming rockets.
“Coming from the northwest. Looks to be … oh, say, 5200 mills.”
As he sent this azimuth through his fire-control channels, I did the same via the battalion’s command net. You’re right indeed, Willie. Binh Dinh was never like this.
A few days later we were relieved of our defensive responsibilities at Evans in order to start working the boonies of I Corps. Our initial operational area was a stretch of coastal plain referred to as the “street.”
