Ghosts and Shadows

by Phil Ball

  Chico’s radioman walked behind me, and then my fire team and Holt’s team, minus Holt. Holt got slack from Knight because he was as short as Chico. This finger was almost like a ridge line, with steep slopes on either side. We were confined to the trail in the middle on the high ground, not the best place to be with so many NVA still in the area. We could be seen easily from any direction. The majority of the trees were burned off or blown away from previous fighting and the ground was scorched to a blackened crisp.

  I was just telling the guys behind me to spread out when a commotion broke out ahead. Mike’s team had spotted an enemy soldier off the left side of the trail and everybody started yelling. I went to one knee and shouldered my M-16, then I saw him, too. Scrambling around like a scared rabbit not 10 meters from me, it was clear he wasn’t armed. Wearing nothing but a pair of ragged old skivvies and covered head to toe with black soot and mud, this guy was obviously in bad shape. Instead of putting up his hands and surrendering to us, though, he attempted to get away, perhaps acting more out of fear than anything else. Like a gang of farm boys on a summer afternoon, we all surrounded the NVA soldier and captured him like a greased pig, eventually wrestling him to the ground and lashing his elbows together with a belt tied behind his back.

  No shots were fired and no one was hurt. 3-Alpha caught their very first POW and we were proud of it. He had no visible wounds except for the obvious overexposure and an apparent lack of nutrition. He was scraped and bruised all over, but not very seriously. I was impressed by his survival skills and found myself wanting to learn what made him tick. He spoke no English and I spoke no Vietnamese, so the only communication we had was through eye contact. I could see that he wasn’t nearly as scared as I think I would have been if the roles were reversed, but maybe he sensed somehow that we weren’t going to kill him on the spot and a POW camp might have sounded pretty good after what he’d been through on Mutter’s Ridge. In fact, he became downright cocky after a couple of minutes, talking a mile a minute in tones that were aggressive and abusive. Of course we couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but the message seemed to be one of severe hatred and threats. Before long, he tried the patience of everyone in the squad and he ended up with a decent butt-kicking before we turned him over to the captain. By then it was too dark to finish our patrol so we went back to our perimeter positions and settled in for a long night.

  It was so steep, and the mud so slick on our side of the perimeter, that there was constant danger of slipping and sliding off the mountain. The fighting holes were half full of water with a lot of trash floating on top. The wind kicked up and it started raining so hard most of us didn’t attempt to build any kind of shelter; we simply wrapped up in a wet poncho and slept in the mud. I didn’t get much sleep, not only because of the steady stream of cold rain water, but also because I kept sliding down the hill. There was no tree to anchor myself to, nor ground variations of any kind, just a steep, slick slope where gravity alone pulled me down the side. I dug in my heels and closed my eyes for a few hours and called it a night.

  We stayed around Hill 461 two or three days, fully expecting something out of the NVA, but nothing happened. 3-Alpha was credited with another POW, a day or two after the first one. We were ordered to make another squad-size patrol, this time around the base of Hill 461. We did not go down the finger like before. Instead, we took the same trail we originally came up, slipping and sliding the whole way. We found a small creek at the bottom and began to follow it upstream. It was really quite a beautiful spot. The trees and thick jungle canopy formed a natural shelter, protecting us from the elements and creating an eerie, very quiet, sort of serene atmosphere for us.

  Chico and Holt sat this one out again, and Atwood and I were in charge. Shorty walked point, Frick and Frack followed him, then me, Atwood, and the radioman. His team and the rest brought up the rear. We hadn’t gone too far when we saw a gook taking a bath in the stream. He was cleaning a bloody leg wound and, like the other POW, was stripped to his shorts. At first he looked like he was going to make a run for it, so I fired a single shot at him, but barely missed. I guess it was close enough though to make him think twice about bolting. The young Vietnamese man raised his hands straight up and began repeating the word “Chu hoy, POW, chu hoy, POW.” He was obviously ready to surrender.

  We looked around for weapons and other NVA, but found nothing. The radioman was already replying to Lieutenant Knight’s question; having heard the gunshot he wanted to know what was going on. The prisoner had a broken leg, a compound fracture with the splintered bone protruding through the skin. I could not get him to walk, and realizing that we might have to carry him up the hill, I told the radioman to tell them that the gook was almost dead.’” Tell ’em the little bastard can’t walk and we’d have to carry him up if they wanna keep him.”

  Knight must have told the captain what we had, because after a brief pause we were instructed to “get the POW to the company CP ASAP, whatever it takes.” We did not want to hear that. We knew it was going to be a very difficult climb carrying just ourselves up the slippery mountain, but hauling this wounded prisoner would be nearly impossible. Then the CO got on the horn personally, with a distinct tone of adamancy in his order to “make damn sure my POW is alive when he gets here.”

  If it hadn’t been for that last order I think we might have killed the prisoner and left him where he was. We were all angry as hell, not only because we did not believe in taking prisoners (due in part to the fact the NVA didn’t, either), but also because of this impossible climb we had to look forward to.

  We did deliver the injured POW to the captain, but only after everyone in the squad got in a few punches and kicks as we slipped and fell all the way up the trail. He was given some first aid by the head corpsman and then medevaced. We later learned he was indeed a member of the 64th Regiment, NVA 320th Division, as was the first one we captured earlier. The unit had fled to the north, the big, three-pronged offensive canceled.

  Later on that night when I was alone with my thoughts, I couldn’t believe how insanely angry I had gotten with the POW; wanting to kill him so badly caused me alarm. I felt that I had crossed that very fragile line between sanity and mental illness we all tried desperately to stay away from. I was constantly aware of and always concerned with what effect it might have on the rest of my life if I did survive Vietnam. At the inexperienced age of 18, I didn’t know anything about psychology but I had seen other grunts snap and more or less lose their minds. I certainly didn’t want that happening to me, and I tried to take steps to protect myself against it. Perhaps my greatest survival technique was denial; I worked very hard at not letting the terrible things get to me.

  Our prolonged exposure to all the wind and rain was beginning to take its toll. Our skin was wrinkled and soft and we all had various degrees of jungle rot. I had a two-week-old scratch on my arm that should have long since heeled, but it was infected and just kept getting bigger. Trench foot or immersion foot was a big problem from constantly wearing wet boots and socks. I had a spare pair of socks but they were never dry. The best I could do was keep them warm by wearing them under my shirt close to my body. I insisted on sleeping with my boots on in case we were hit in the middle of the night. I took them off only during daylight hours when I had a break. It felt so good to air out my withered, sore feet, but because it was so painful to put the boots back on, a lot of guys didn’t bother to take them off.

  As the battalion continued moving northwest, closer to Laos and deeper into the DMZ, Operation Lancaster II turned into Operation Trousedale North on September 18, 1968. We had chased the NVA as far as we were allowed, and the North Vietnam border was clearly in sight. We grunts began to feel a renewed sense of dedication with the enemy’s own backyard clearly in our sight. We wanted to continue on to Hanoi and get this war over with, but of course that was out of the question. Our government didn’t seem to want the war to end just yet, and I didn’t clearly understand that, but that’s how a
lot of us felt.

  For Chico and Holt the war was nearly over. They left the bush on the 18th and went to Quang Tri to wait for their rotation dates. Saying goodbye to the old salts was tough, but I was happy for them and they were obviously overjoyed themselves. I asked Chico, “What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when you get home.”

  Chico had a lot of friends back home, but it was his family he missed most. He spoke mostly of his brother and his father and looked forward to spending a lot of time with them. I know he had a sister, too, whom he loved dearly. He missed the old neighborhood and the guys and girls he grew up with. He often spoke of hanging out at the “square,” drinking a little wine and doing the things teenagers do.

  Corporal Mike Atwood took over 3-Alpha when Chico left and assigned me as his assistant. We dug in together at night, a three-man position with the radioman. It was short-lived for me, though; on the night of September 20, 1968, Mike and I had just finished digging our hole and were admiring the view from our tall peak. It was one of the highest mountains in the region and just before dark we could see clearly to North Vietnam. A river meandered its way through the immense valley below and we both were very impressed with the stunning beauty of this country. There weren’t too many times in Nam when we had time to stop and smell the roses, but this was definitely one of those occasions. Something about this place struck us as odd. There didn’t seem to be any enemies around for miles.

  I noticed a small work detail clearing brush from the fire zone next to us. Three or four grunts wrestled a tree out of the way, down the slope to our left. They must have been FNGs because I didn’t recognize any of them. Then, all of a sudden, without warning, whoosh boom! An enemy 82-mm mortar round hit and exploded in the very middle of the work detail, not more than 15 meters from where we stood. The blast was tremendous; I felt the powerful concussion against the front of my body and a sharp pain low on my stomach.

  The blast knocked us back into the hole as several more rounds fell somewhere else on the perimeter. I did not want to believe what I had just seen; that first explosion appeared to have blown the new grunts to pieces. My mind tried hard to think of something else, but there was no getting around what my eyes saw. I thought for sure they had to be dead, but then we heard someone screaming for help and knew someone had survived. Mike jumped out of the hole and was first to go to their aid. Without hesitation he scrambled down the hillside, farther away from our position and the safety it provided than I was comfortable with. I told the radioman to call Doc and tell him we had casualties, then I followed Mike to assist.

  One of the FNGs was literally blown to pieces, the magnitude of his injuries impossible to comprehend. He must have taken a direct hit. I couldn’t bear to look. Instead, I focused on the living two men who were screaming bloody murder, who were actually hurt the least. The last grunt was alive, but silent, in shock I think. He was missing a leg and it looked like his arms were both broken at the shoulder. He was ghostly white, yet still breathing normally, with both eyes open and fixed.

  Mike and I were the first on the scene because we were the closest. Within seconds, the hillside was crawling with grunts wanting to help, including two or three corpsmen. We got the men up to the CP, where an LZ was still being cleared, then hurried back to our hole on the perimeter, fully expecting a ground attack possibly supported by more incoming mortar fire.

  The attack didn’t come. Darkness fell by the time a lone, CH-46 medevac chopper arrived on location, but when it attempted to land all hell broke loose. The NVA opened up with a murderous volume of small-arms and machine-gun fire. A hail of green tracers crisscrossed the dark sky in what looked like an impenetrable wall of fire and the chopper had to pull up and move away, leaving our WIAs and KIA lying on the LZ.

  The Marine pilots had agreed to attempt the medevac in the dark as long as they could find us so far out in the boonies, but they had not been told anything of a hot LZ. I believe these missions at night were voluntary, and they could have called it off at any time, but they stayed, attempting two or three more landings with the same results.

  The enemy would love to shoot down a chopper, especially if they could drop it right on top of a company of Marines. They seemed more resolved than ever to stick around and make sure the pilots did not have an easy time of it. Due to the steep slope of the hillside and the placement of our fighting holes, we were unable to get a clear shot of the NVA, who were hugging the side of the mountain about 50 meters down. The gunners in the chopper could see the enemy, but no one else. When one last attempt at the landing was to be made, we were all ordered to stand up as much as we could and start shooting down the slope toward the NVA. Hopefully, our fire would encourage the NVA to stay down long enough for the medevac to be completed.

  The plan worked. There was little or no enemy fire and the medevac was headed back to Dong Ha. After the adrenaline ebbed and I started to calm down from the excitement, I felt that sharp pain in my stomach again. Squatting in the fighting hole for over an hour, it felt like my belt buckle or something was poking me. I felt around with my hand and discovered that I was bleeding. I also felt a hole, like a knot, hard and firm. I’d been hit with a small piece of shrapnel from that first mortar round, the same round that had killed one and wounded three.

  Doc came down and looked at it; he said I would get medevaced first thing in the morning. “Halle-fucking-luia.” I couldn’t have been more pleased with the news that I was going to the rear for a few days. Something told me this operation was going to be bad luck. I’d been very worried about it, feeling lately that my number was just about up.

  Doc cleaned the wound and put a sterile dressing over it. He said that I would be okay. “Just be careful, don’t move around too much and get it to bleeding again. You’ve got a piece of steel in you about two or three inches deep. If you start spitting up blood, or having a lot of pain, come up and see me. Otherwise you’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  That was certainly a major relief, and as long as I could make it through the night without getting myself killed, I had a nice little vacation to look forward to tomorrow.

  I think I stayed cramped up in that hole all night, feeling certain that the NVA were going to attack. I could see another Foxtrot Ridge in the making, and I wanted to be ready if it started. But no attack came. The sun rose on a clear blue sky, and before I knew it I was on a chopper. The pain had grown quite severe and I was too stiff to straighten up. I could barely walk, but I managed. Nothing in the world could stop me from boarding that chopper.

  Third Med was the group of tents and wooden structures in the rear with the big red crosses on the roofs. Surgery was performed here and then serious cases were shipped somewhere else, like Da Nang or one of the hospital ships anchored in the South China Sea off the coast. It was a very busy place with casualties coming and going constantly. The infamous Graves Section, or morgue, was also located here. This was a dreary group of tents and buildings that I hated to even look at.

  I remember hearing the surgeon ask me if I wanted to keep the .22-caliber-size piece of shrapnel as a souvenir, as it hit the stainless steel bowl next to my head. Since I only required a local anesthetic, I was wide awake the whole time and could hear excited conversations of doctors and nurses all around me in this big operating room. Patients were wheeled in and out on gurneys in what seemed to me a revolving-door operation. There were a lot of casualties coming in from a Marine unit that had been engaged with the enemy somewhere else; the medical staff had been waiting for them most of the night.

  I recovered quickly in my own rear area not far from 3rd Med, having to return several times for a change of dressing and more pain relievers. Percodan and codeine were easily obtained from the doctor, and when taken with a few beers they really did the trick. I loved the euphoric feeling I got from the combination of drugs and alcohol. In a time of fear and terror in my life it offered a sense of well-being and peace with the world.

  I had a no-duty chit from
the doctor that said I was to perform absolutely no work at all for five beautiful days. Having been in the rear in August with malaria, and having learned how to skate from Atwood, I placed the number “1” in front of the “5” and bought myself 10 more days.

  My 19th birthday came and went on September 24 without notice. Chico and Holt were still in the rear waiting on their paperwork to come through, but I elected not to celebrate it at this time. I guess I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, feeling that by remaining as inconspicuous as possible, I could somehow remain alive.

  Phil Ball with a birthday package received in the Cam Lo River Basin.

  Mike Atwood showed up in the rear around the 25th and then the real partying began. He got medevaced for night blindness this time, a condition that cannot be tolerated in the field. Mike was the only grunt I knew that could pull off an excuse like this. It bought him some time in the rear, and once again we raised some hell. Out in the bush it was difficult to get to know someone very well because you are really too preoccupied with survival. The rear area is where friendships were reinforced, where you could drop your guard a little. Mike and I had long conversations about life, happiness, and all the things we still wanted to do with our lives. We talked about our experiences, our hopes and dreams, and we learned that we were so similar we were almost psychic. We knew what the other was thinking a lot of the times, and found it hilarious that we could relate so well. I’d never had a friend as close as that, and I don’t think Mike had either, so we quickly learned to appreciate each other and depend on that relationship to help us out.

  Chico and Holt went home the first week in October and I never saw or heard from either of them again. As promised, after he was home a few days, Chico called my folks to tell them I was okay. I know they appreciated hearing from my squad leader.

  Atwood and I rejoined the battalion on the DMZ around October 14, but Operation Trousedale North had ended. We all came off the DMZ on the 20th, never to return. We went to the Rockpile to stand perimeter watch for three days, before heading out to the small village of Mai Loc and kicking off Operation Dragon. While I was at the Rockpile, I received a belated birthday present from my sister. As requested, she had sent me a bottle of whiskey, but not just any whiskey, a fifth of Crown Royal. I shared a drink with almost every man in 3rd Platoon that night, including Lieutenant Knight and Staff Sergeant Hamilton. I wound up falling into a trench and sleeping where I landed.