by Bing West
The marketplace was a loose collection of a dozen wooden sheds without walls, jammed with women trading and selling rice and piglets and chickens and fish and fly-encrusted pork. Brannon and Lummis sat down at a food stall to practice their Vietnamese by ordering breakfast while Sueter was engulfed by a wave of potential patients. The three Americans stayed in the hamlet for several hours.
Such contacts between the villagers and the Marines were not unusual. During the daytime the Americans liked to get away from the confines of the fort and stroll in the Binh Yen Noi hamlets, which were considered relatively safe in full light. But at night no hamlet was safe and for the villagers there was the constant danger of being caught in the middle of a firefight in the dark. When they heard a night patrol passing, many mothers gathered up their families and went to sleep in their bomb shelters.
On the tenth day and the fortieth night patrol after the Marines’ arrival, Corporal Leland Riley, a slender young man with pale, sharp eyes, was leading a four-man defensive patrol across the paddies in front of the fort. From the villagers, the PFs had heard that a large enemy force planned to attack that night. Beebe had sent Riley out to provide advance warning.
Riley was walking point along a low paddy bank with his men strung out behind him when he saw a group of figures moving toward him from his right.
“Down,” he hissed, sliding down into the shallow water amidst the rice stalks so that only his head, shoulders and rifle showed above the bank.
The shadowy figures also stopped moving and started murmuring to each other in soft Vietnamese.
“VC,” Riley said, and loosed a long burst from his M-14 automatic rifle. The Viet Cong sought the cover of another paddy dike and swiftly returned fire.
From the flashes of the weapons and the colors of the tracers—those of the Marines showed as red and the Viet Cong’s white—the watchers from the fort could judge exactly where the lines were.
“Riley, hold your position,” Beebe radioed. “I’ll get artie. You just hold where you are.”
Beebe called an artillery battery four miles away. He was specific.
“I have about thirty VC in the rice paddies at coordinates 589973. My patrol is one hundred meters east, so be careful.”
A few minutes later, Beebe received the message, “Round on the way.”
This was followed by the familiar banging sound of a shell impacting, but none of the Americans or Vietnamese in the fort saw any explosive flash in the paddies.
Beebe looked at Lam, who shook his head worriedly.
“Cease fire, cease fire. We lost your round,” Beebe yelled into the radio.
“Watch it,” came the reply. “There’s a second one already on the way.”
Crr-ump. A white flash followed by a shower of sparks burst from the dark treeline behind the fort.
“You stupid bastards,” Beebe yelled. “You’re three hundred yards short.”
The firefight in the paddies sputtered out, as the Viet Cong, knowing their position was exposed, pulled off. But from the treeline behind the fort came the glow of a fire, and Lam took six PFs and ran to the spot.
Hit by one of the artillery rounds, a thatched hut was blazing. Of the family of five, three had survived, although wounded. The mother and her daughter had been killed. Beebe called in a helicopter to evacuate the father and his two boys. Lam told the villagers that he had been standing next to the Americans when they had called for artillery, and that he would have done the same. The error had not been made at the fort. But two women were dead because of firepower gone awry, and the black ashes of the house could be seen by patrols coming and going from the fort, a constant reminder which for seventeen months affected, if it did not actually determine, the American style of fighting in the village of Binh Nghia. The Marines saw too much of the villagers, and lived too closely with them, not to be affected by their personal grief. Besides, the Americans had to patrol with the PFs, whose own families were scattered throughout the hamlets and who were naturally concerned about the use of any weapon which might injure their relatives. The rifle—not the cannon or the jet—was to be the primary weapon of the Americans in Binh Nghia.
The morning after the artillery accident, Beebe was ordered to Marine headquarters at Chulai airfield to testify before an investigating board about the tragedy. When he returned to the fort, he saw a large crowd of PFs and Marines gathered outside the main room. He asked what was going on.
It was a simple story. Lam had gone out that morning to take his usual stroll through the hamlet in order to pick up pieces of information about enemy movement during the night. Upon being told that there were some Marines having breakfast at the marketplace, he had decided to walk that way and join them. He wasn’t paying particular attention to his immediate surroundings. Suddenly a woman yelled to him to look out. Instinctively, he ducked just as a carbine cracked behind him. The bullet passed by his head, missing by inches. The sniper was crouched in a doorway only a few feet away, and as he tried to get off a second shot, his carbine jammed. Lam was on him in the same instant, pistol-whipping him to the ground and knocking him out. Lam had then carried the man to the fort and was now questioning him.
Inside, the hall which had been jammed with sleeping men the night before was now empty, except for a desk, several chairs, a table and two benches. At the desk sat Lam, his thin face so pale it seemed rubbed with chalk, and on the floor to his right sat a small man with a wispy mustache, clothed in faded black shorts and a black shirt. He looked like a meek and tired old farmer. His arms were bound behind him and there was a purple and red welt on his forehead and he was plaintively explaining something to Lam, who seemed to be concentrating all his attention on the fiberglass tube of a LAW which had been fired. As the prisoner babbled on, Lam picked up a knife, hacked off the front and rear sights of the LAW, then gently turned the smooth tube in his hands. Satisfied with how it felt, he bonked the prisoner over the head, almost playfully, as a teacher might rap an unruly seventh-grader over the knuckles.
The prisoner looked up apprehensively. Lam asked a question. The prisoner started to give a querulous reply. Wham. Without even looking down, Thanh smashed the man across his shoulder blades. The man stopped talking. Thanh repeated his question. The man started over again with his pat explanation. Wham. Wham. The tube smashed down again and again. The interrogation had begun.
Ho Chi watched the proceedings for several minutes, walked over to the group of gawking Marines and shook his head.
“Too tough,” he said. “That man will not talk.”
After beating the man for two hours, Lam came to the same conclusion. All he could tell the Marines was that he was sure the man was a long-time member of the Viet Cong Secret Security Section.
The man would admit nothing. Late in the afternoon, he was taken out of the village by four policemen. They didn’t say where they were going.
Lam was worried. It was not just that someone had tried to kill him. That had happened frequently. What bothered him was his lack of information. The enemy appeared active and aggressive in the village, unafraid of the combined unit. Lam wanted to know what the VC leaders were telling their men, what their plan was for keeping control of the village, what sort of attacks he could expect.
5
Lam knew the man who could find out such information. He was Tran Quoc Phuoc, the district leader for the government pacification program. A natural politician, he was just the sort of man to hear and catalogue every rumor floating around the district. Phuoc wanted to run in the August election for representatives to the National Assembly in Saigon and was making a determined effort to get around the district and drum up support for his candidacy in the rural hamlets. But his travels were hampered by a lack of security.
Lam suggested to Phuoc that Binh Nghia, with its five thousand inhabitants, would make a better political base than the district town. Phuoc’s wife and daughter lived in Binh Yen Noi and he could see them every day. He would have Marine or polic
e protection if he wanted to visit dangerous hamlets like My Hué. In return, Lam was interested only in what Phuoc might learn about the Viet Cong.
Attracted by the prospect of votes, Phuoc agreed to come. He brought with him twenty RDs, or Revolutionary Development workers. According to a government theory, the RDs were to help the villagers in their daily work tasks while convincing them that they should be openly loyal to the GVN and uncooperative with the VC. Although the RDs carried weapons, their task was not to beat the enemy by force. They were supposed to show the villagers that the Saigon government cared for them and that the Viet Cong were to be shunned. The theory called for the PFs to protect the RDs.
Within a few days it was apparent that the RDs were of little use. Few of them were from the village, many were in their teens and none was married. In trying to direct their efforts, Phuoc frequently looked like an exasperated Boy Scout master with a high-spirited troop. Send the RDs to work in the fields, and he would find them trying to coax the girls into the bushes. Set them on their knees in the hamlet to plant small vegetable gardens, and they would sneak off to an abandoned hut to drink beer. Scatter them at night in four-man teams among the houses of Binh Yen Noi to trap VC, and, if they felt it safe, they would cluster together, light a lantern and play cards. If they heard a suspicious noise, they would blow out the light and remain huddled together, inviting a grenade. Good-natured young men by day; frightened children by night.
Their leader was different. Phuoc was in his thirties, a pleasant, intelligent man who knew the people and the Viet Cong. Tactics and fighting did not interest him. The second day he was in the village, he suggested that his men be combined with the PFs under the leadership of the Marines. Phuoc’s talents lay in talking and listening, a business to which he devoted most of each day. He believed he could outthink the Viet Cong, and that the people would warn him of their approach. So, like Lam, he would stroll around the hamlet in the early morning, talking with the farmers on their way to the fields and stopping by the market to gossip among hundreds of women who congregated there. Unlike Lam, he carried no weapon.
The night patrols remained the responsibility of the Marines and PFs, and Beebe usually let the patrol leader choose his own men. It was generally agreed that Brannon’s patrol group was the best, because it had Luong. Nguyen Van Luong did not look impressive. He had a flat face, slightly protruding teeth and a squat body scarcely taller than his M-1 rifle. He was middle-aged and had fought for the Viet Minh against both the Japanese and the French. He drank too much and hated to farm or fish. But he could worm his way through a dry thicket without breaking a twig and he could spot a Viet Cong on nights so dark other patrollers could not see the man in front of them. Luong loved to play jokes, and that was what attracted him to Brannon. In turn, Luong’s reputation attracted followers among the PFs. In particular, the younger of two brothers named Khoi attached himself to Luong. Khoi was a pleasant, unobtrusive youth and Luong didn’t mind his company.
About four nights after the arrival of Phuoc and the RDs, Brannon’s group was slated for a short patrol through Binh Yen Noi. Beebe had decided to go with them. While waiting to get started, Brannon was, as usual, clowning with Luong. This annoyed Beebe, who was phoning in the patrol route to company headquarters.
“Brannon,” Beebe yelled, “why don’t you and Luong get out of here? Go play in a paddy or something.”
Unfazed, Brannon replied, “O.K., we’ll start heading toward the ville. You and the others can catch up. Let’s di-di, Luong.”
The two best shots in the combined unit left, and Beebe leisurely finished sending in his list of map coordinates. Brannon and Luong had been gone fully five minutes before Beebe took Khoi and started out after them.
Wanting to overtake Brannon before he reached the shadows of the hamlet treeline, Beebe moved at a fast clip, with Khoi lagging behind. It was cloudy, but there was enough light to see about fifty yards out into the paddies. Beebe was not worrying about security, since Brannon was somewhere on the road out in front.
Brannon and Luong had walked away from the fort side by side, wisecracking and goosing each other with their rifle barrels. Both came alert as they neared the dark treeline. To their left were paddies, the trees were in front of them, and the cemetery marked by grass lumps and white tombs lay to their right.
“Dung lai,” Luong said.
Brannon stopped. Luong was backing up. No lights and no sounds were coming from the hamlet. It was too early for such quiet. Luong saw movement behind a gravestone.
Squatting, he fired. Brannon flopped down on the trail beside him, and brought his automatic rifle in line to follow Luong’s tracers. The rounds pinged off the tombstones and clattered skyward. Panicking, a man left the shelter of a tombstone and stood erect to run. The bullets drove him down dead. A weak return fire rattled harmlessly back from among the graves. They heard Beebe coming up behind them at a run.
“Let’s move in,” Brannon yelled. “There are only a couple of them.”
The three patrollers started into the cemetery, alternately dashing forward, flopping down and firing. Fire from the graveyard had stopped. Concentrating on where they had last seen the flash of a weapon, they ran right by an enemy soldier lying flat in the weeds.
Khoi was late coming up, and he didn’t know what to do. He stood there, all alone in the road, listening to the bursts of fire and the shouting of his companions. Unintentionally, he was blocking the escape route of the enemy soldier. So the soldier shot him three times in the back.
At the same time, the sentries at the fort started firing at shadows and Brannon and Luong spent several minutes shouting in their respective languages back to the fort for a cease-fire. During that time Khoi’s ambusher slipped off. He made a run of it straight across the paddies, and despite the barking of several weapons he got safely away. It was not until the firing had ended that Luong found Khoi sprawled on the road.
Marine headquarters was concerned about the incident because the division’s intelligence section had translated some enemy documents which singled out the combined unit in Binh Nghia as the principal target for attack by VC district forces. In addition, the village guerrillas were ordered to seek contact against the Marine night patrols. This order went contrary to established Viet Cong doctrine, which was to avoid fights with strong forces and not to use guerrillas in steady combat. The enemy documents thus explained why the Marine night patrols were shooting or being shot at every night; they also indicated that the combined unit was weak, and could be destroyed piecemeal outside the fort.
Phuoc had more information. He had listened to what the villagers were saying after the death of Khoi and, putting that together with what Lam had picked up, concluded that the Viet Cong had marked Binh Nghia for a special effort. The reasons, he told the Marines, were personal as well as military. Binh Nghia bordered the Tra Bong River, which the enemy used regularly to transport rice and other materials. The Marine patrols were threatening this supply route. Perhaps more importantly, the presence of Lam and the Americans had enraged the Viet Cong district committee. In May, Lam had to sneak into the village. In June, he could casually stroll through the central marketplace. And all he had for backing was a ragtag outfit which included a handful of Americans. The entire force scarcely outnumbered the Binh Nghia guerrillas, and directly across the river the Viet Cong kept a main-force battalion. The situation was intolerable. A dozen Americans could not just move in and live among thousands of Vietnamese and call a village pacified. The district committee had to defeat the attempt and disprove the theory that a few Americans could work among many Vietnamese. They had to strike at the fledgling government effort in Binh Nghia lest it become the first in a series. The Americans had to be forced out. The combined unit had to be destroyed.
Phuoc said the local Viet Cong were tough and well led. The VC district chief was Le Quan Viet, a curt, hard man with one arm who for a decade had ruled an area across the river called the Phu Longs. In 1964,
Quan Viet’s name had become known throughout the district when he captured the final five government-supporting hamlet chiefs on his side of the river. For a week he displayed his captives in a series of hamlets, and then one noon in the main marketplace of the Phu Longs he beheaded all five. In Phuoc’s opinion, if Quan Viet and his council were determined not to lose control of Binh Nghia, then the death of Khoi was but the first of many. Phuoc was to be proven correct.
On June 20, Lummis drew the early-evening patrol. With him, he took two PFs, plus Combat Culver and Larry Page, who usually patrolled under Beebe’s personal guidance. It was to be a short patrol, due back before midnight. At dusk, the patrol crossed the moat at the front of the courtyard (the fort’s only entrance and exit), and cut back along a narrow paddy dike to enter the treeline immediately behind the fort. Taking a side trail, the five men moved slowly until they reached a spot where two paths crossed. There they spread out in a semicircle and settled down to wait. To see better, most sat up. Page was considered luckier than the others; he had a coconut tree against which he could prop his back.
It was a quiet evening and they were close to the fort. The hours passed dully. Lummis dozed off a few times, each time jerking himself awake, aware that if he were slipping off to sleep, the others were too.
Perhaps they were asleep, or perhaps those awake could not hear the bare feet in the hard-packed dirt of the trail. None saw the enemy soldiers. Yet suddenly they were there in the midst of the patrollers. Lummis came alive first, giving a startled grunt and swinging his rifle upward at a figure standing next to him. The enemy leaped backward with a yelp, and for a few seconds the chaos was total as a dozen rifles exploded in a circle not twenty feet wide, with the patrollers firing up and the Viet Cong shooting down and some enemy soldier screaming at his men and Lummis yelling, “Stay down! Stay down and fire high!”
