by Bing West
“No PFs, all cement go. Everyone take,” he said.
“But aren’t those VC families?” McGowan asked, pointing at the laborers. “Why no one else?”
“Two years ago we work for Viet Cong,” Trao replied. “In Phu Longs, Catholics still work for Viet Cong.”
He would not discuss the matter further, but McGowan understood what he meant. It was another reminder to the Marines of the hatred, revenge and servitude which were major ingredients of the Binh Son war. In the Phu Longs the VC Village Committee forced the anti-VC families to do the menial communal tasks, which meant time lost from the fields and fishing. In Binh Nghia it was the families of the Viet Cong who were forced to lose time from work. Yet the children of Viet Cong families were free to attend the school after it was built, and they did so.
The PFs and the Viet Cong had certain rules to their war, understandings which were kept because, and only so long as, they were mutually advantageous. What often has been called accommodation frequently has been nothing more than a precarious balance of power, perceived as such by both sides. Deterrence is a better word than accommodation to describe a situation wherein each side is unwilling to undertake certain acts while the other side retains the capability to retaliate in kind.
The Viet Cong families would be forced to lose a day’s wages because there was no way the Viet Cong could collect an equal amount from the PF families. Suong felt strong enough to put out the word that he would tax the Viet Cong families two dollars for each dollar taken from a PF family. The ultimate step in escalation—the murder or wholesale slaughter of PF families—was unlikely in Binh Nghia because the VC families acted as hostages. Suong had declared that he would kill ten of their children for each member of a PF family killed.
Vulnerability to retaliation set limits on the actions either the PFs or the Viet Cong were willing to take in the struggle for Binh Nghia. It was the elementary tribal system for keeping wars within tolerable bounds, practiced throughout history, and a cornerstone of the current theoretical strategy of nuclear warfare.
The Marines were hostages, too. They knew it and the villagers knew it. As long as they were there, the hamlets were safe from indiscriminate air and artillery attacks. Although until March of 1967 the My Hués were marked as VC on military operational maps, they were also hash-marked in red as out of bounds for harassment and interdiction artillery fire because Americans patrolled there on the ground.
23
The Tra Bong River was the major commerce route for the residents of Binh Nghia and a dozen other villages, while for the island village of Binh Thuy, adjacent to Binh Yen Noi, boats were the only means for moving supplies. Starting at first light each day, the river was cluttered with traffic. The fishermen from the My Hués habitually rose at four, and when there was just enough light so none of the lurking patrollers would shoot them, they left their houses. Since the combined unit demanded that all boats be beached each evening, the day’s first task for the fishermen was to haul their boats to water. Most could be man-handled by four men, but some took thick log rollers and the strength of six or eight. The long nights ended for patrols with the scraping sounds of water-bound boats or the soft chug of the low-powered engines as the boats slipped downstream on the Tra Bong River to the sea two miles distant.
If the Viet Cong could control the river, they could undercut the growing prestige of the PFs and force the local officials to abandon the island of Binh Thuy. This had been done in 1964. With the VC holding the Phu Longs and Binh Thuy they would have direct access to Binh Nghia.
On the sixth of May the Viet Cong set out to ambush the PFs who were stationed on Binh Thuy Island. Leaving before dawn from their base in the Phu Longs, the enemy had sculled out on a waning tide. About three hundred yards out from Binh Yen Noi near midstream squatted a small mud bank dotted with a few scraggly bushes used as warning markers by helmsmen when high tide covered the flat. Digging there was easy, and before light the Viet Cong had scooped out three fighting holes. After two marksmen had scrunched down in each hole, other Viet Cong camouflaged the tops of the holes and rowed back to the Phu Longs.
By the time the fishermen were on the river the VC were waiting. They let the fishing boats pass by. The sun rose cloudless, and in Binh Nghia two patrols straggled away from their ambush sites, all the PFs and most of the Americans stopping off at one house or another for a breakfast of steaming broth crammed with the leftovers from the heavy evening meal. The children had left for school, and the women were setting out for the fields or the markets.
From the island of Binh Thuy three long boats jammed with villagers puttered slowly downstream to the sea-mouth hamlet of Son Tra to trade rice for fish. This haggling lasted long, and it was past noon before the trading boats started back up the crowded river. The VC watched them glide slowly by. The boats looked like long, rough, leaky canoes, each holding eight to ten people squatting single file among baskets of stinking fish. There were about a dozen PFs scattered among the women, old men and young girls. Four PFs were sitting bunched in the stern of the second boat.
From a distance of thirty feet, the VC popped up and unloaded on that target. The first burst was all theirs, and three PFs were riddled. The VC were using high-velocity automatic rifles, no low-powered carbines or submachine guns. The weapons prevented a slaughter. The bullets smashed through wood and flesh at high speed, so the bodies of the victims were not pushed from the boat, causing a capsize. After the initial fusillade the helmsmen chugged away as fast as their sputtering outboards would allow. But their boats were soft, wallowing targets, and the Viet Cong still had a chance to inflict a total wipe-out and gain province-wide publicity. Set on sinking at least one boat, they jumped up from their holes and ran to the edge of the mud bank to get a better line on the panicked boats. With ricochets skimming off the water at odd angles, the traffic on the placid river was scurrying to and fro like frantic water beetles.
Villagers along the Binh Yen Noi waterfront, seeing the action, yelled at a boy to run and fetch Luong, whose house was close by. Landless and poor, Luong and his family lived in a skimpy thatched hut on a flood-prone lot near the river’s edge. He was at home asleep, after a night of rice wine. He came awake quickly and sent the boy to fetch two PFs who lived nearby while he grabbed his M-1 rifle and dashed to the water’s edge.
Luong reached the river bank on the run, stopped a moment to catch his breath, sized up the enemy position and moved laterally until he found a high mound of dirt. He could clearly see the Viet Cong on the mud bank, who had their backs to him and were shooting at a boat farther out on the river. Luong lay stomach down, raised the sights on the receiver of his rifle, dug his elbows into the loose dirt, put the stock to his cheek and sighted in.
In a shooting contest in front of the fort, Luong had once shot a bird out of the air with his M-1. Some claimed it was luck, but Luong was thirty-six years old and had fought against the French as well as the Viet Cong. That he was still alive was not luck.
He sighted and squeezed the trigger.
On the mud bank, a Viet Cong pitched forward dead, shot in the back. Forgetting the boats, the others turned to engage the unexpected enemy. The range was long and an ineffectual exchange ensued, with two more PFs joining Luong. Now time was running against the Viet Cong. On Binh Thuy Island, Mr. Minh, the hamlet chief, had frantically called district for help.
At Fort Page, a few PFs were dozing in hammocks while two village clerks pecked away on typewriters at the endless papers. Most of the Marines were scattered about the village, and in the fort were only the few late sleepers who had had guard duty the previous night. McGowan was sitting near the clerks, filling out his weekly report sheet.
When he first heard the firing from the river, he did not even listen. It was common for the PFs and Marines to take target practice or to shoot fish or birds. He stopped writing only when the firing did not stop. The continual shooting also broke the sleep of the tired Marines and dozing PFs. They came
awake reluctantly, uneasily.
“Hey, Sarge,” Brown called out, “what’s going on?”
At that moment McGowan was receiving a radio message from Lieutenant Colonel Jarvis at district.
“The VC are on the river, Mac,” he said. “They’ve nailed some PFs.”
“We’re on our way,” McGowan replied.
McGowan turned to Brown.
“How many men we got?”
“Five Marines, counting you, and three PFs.”
“That’s not much.”
“There’s always Mr. Minh and the other clerk. They have their typewriters.”
“Funny man. Grab one more Marine and a PF. Tell Minh to spread the word to get the others back to the fort. And post somebody on the .50 in case we’re getting faked out. I’ll start ahead into Binh Yen Noi to grab a boat. Meet me there.”
On the river bank Luong and the two other PFs were sniping at the Viet Cong on the island, who in turn were signaling and shouting at a passing boat. Faced with the threat of death, the helmsmen pulled over to the mud flat. McGowan reached Luong just as the five Viet Cong jumped up and ran toward the boat. Firing steadily, Luong dropped another enemy soldier as they climbed into the boat.
McGowan and Luong spent several minutes corralling a boat of their own, they too threatening a helmsman when cajolery did not move him. The fisherman did not want himself and his boat mixed up in any gunfight chase across the water, but he was given no choice. Brown had arrived with two others, and the seven armed men arranged themselves single file in the narrow boat and putted off in pursuit. They nosed up to the mud bank, with Brown hopping out to check the two men shot by Luong.
“Both dead, Sarge,” he shouted. “They got two M-14s. Should I scoop them up?”
“God, no,” McGowan shouted back. “We’re overloaded now. Those Cong can’t use them. Leave the rifles. Let’s go.”
Its freeboards less than three inches from the flat water, the boat plowed out into midstream with the helmsman nervously jabbering at Luong, who ignored him. On a straight line between the mud bank and the Phu Longs sat a small island, at most sixty yards long and shrub-grown. When the pursuers had left the mud bank, the Viet Cong had been pulling up to the island. Now rounds were zipping over the Marines and bouncing off the water. In the bow, Brown was firing back with his M-79 grenade launcher, plunking grenade after grenade into the bushes. The PFs were giggling nervously. The boatman had folded down behind Luong, who looked at McGowan.
“We’re too close to turn back,” McGowan yelled. “We’re going in.”
“Great,” Brown muttered.
The boat hit the island bank at its flank speed of four knots, the bow cracking and the boat twisting. The seven men spilled out and scrambled toward the bushes, shouting, shooting, stumbling forward, knowing they might live if they could get close to the enemy. They crashed through the bushes quickly and were across the dot of an island before they realized they hadn’t been shot at. They looked toward the Phu Longs.
There went the Viet Cong. The enemy had gotten off on the mud-bank side of the island, run across it and hailed a passing boat at rifle point. Then a few of them had scrambled back to send a desultory fire against their pursuers before the five set out for the Phu Longs.
Luong was the first to react. He turned and ran back to bring their boat around. It was not on shore. After the pursuers had clambered from it, the boatman had poled off the bank, restarted his outboard and headed back toward Binh Nghia. When Luong saw him, he was seventy-five yards out into the current, steering with one hand while bailing frantically with the other to stay ahead of the leak in the bow. Luong shouted, screamed, shot his rifle in the air, cursed, threatened, pleaded, reasoned and begged—all to no avail. The boatman hunched his back lower, looked fixedly toward Binh Nghia and pretended he heard not a word or a shot.
Brown and a PF had in the meanwhile trotted to the upstream tip of the island and there were waving in a fisherman who, in steering a wide arc to skirt the boat with the Viet Cong, had drifted within hailing distance of the island. The pursuers ran to his boat.
“Dau?” the fisherman asked. “Binh Yen Noi?”
“Di Phu Longs Viet Cong,” Brown replied.
“Xin ong noi di Binh Yen Noi!” the fisherman screamed.
“Guess I sort of misled him,” Brown said. “I saw Luong wasn’t having much luck his way so I told this guy we wanted to go back home. What the hell. We’ll pay him a hundred piasters when we get back.”
“Right. When we get back,” another Marine echoed sarcastically.
Having opened up a lead of two hundred yards, the Viet Cong were almost to the other side of the river before the fisherman started his engine. His outboard was new and powerful, however, and the gap had closed to one hundred yards before the enemy soldiers gained the shore and splashed into the shelter of the mangrove swamp at the edge of the Phu Longs. Their boatman, freed from his impressed service, headed back toward mainstream, gesturing sympathetically to the fearful fisherman as the boats passed.
The pursuers landed at the same spot, Luong leaving a PF to hold the boat until their return. They advanced slowly, not knowing whether the enemy had been reinforced. Rounds started cracking past them.
“They’re trying to keep us off them,” McGowan yelled, guessing the enemy were still few.
“Or sucker us into the mangroves,” replied Brown, guessing the opposite.
The fire was coming mainly from an area two hundred yards inland where the roots of several dead mangroves had been smashed and thrown together by bombs or artillery shells. With rounds snapping closer, the pursuers sought tree cover and returned fire at the unseen enemy. This continued for several minutes, until a Viet Cong popped up from behind the deadfall, stood looking at the Marines for several seconds, then darted into a clump of bushes. Every few seconds he would poke his head up or wave.
“That very bad, trung si,” Luong said to McGowan. “Viet Cong bay. Nghia Quan bi chet.”
“Look, Sarge,” Brown said, “if Luong thinks that guy’s a decoy, this could be a messed-up show. Let me fix that cat and then let’s hat out.”
“He’s yours,” McGowan replied.
Brown put down his M-79 and tugged a LAW off his back. He pulled its pins and extended the tubing. Crouching behind a tree, he placed the rocket launcher on his shoulder, sighting in.
“Don’t scare him off,” he said.
The Marines and PFs stopped shooting. The enemy poked his head up. Brown squeezed. With a bang which clapped the ears of the pursuers, the rocket took off and burst against the roots which had protected the Viet Cong from bullets. His body pitched, then slumped broken among the broken roots.
The swamp fell silent, both sides momentarily stunned by the quick way in which life had left the man who tried to lure others to their deaths. Then the firing resumed, gradually growing in volume although harmless in effect. The long afternoon shadows were darkening the swamp, and no participant in the battle was indulging in any further display of bravado exposure. Unwilling to advance farther, the pursuers decided to get out of the Phu Longs before they were outflanked. McGowan radioed his decision to district, where Colonel Jarvis swiftly concurred.
The decision delighted the fisherman, and the packed boat was several hundred yards from shore before the fast enemy snipers had cautiously advanced to the bank. All the Viet Cong could do then was send a few resentful bullets across the water.
When McGowan arrived at Binh Nghia, he saw that Colucci, who had been left without a radio, had the entire unit assembled beside six boats. They had intended to go into the Phu Longs if the pursuers had not returned by dusk. The fisherman refused payment. He wanted to take his pay in the prestige his participation in the chase would win him among the villagers. So, too, did the boatman with the broken prow, who even came up and joked with Luong.
Mr. Minh, the hamlet chief of the island of Binh Thuy, sent a boat to Binh Yen Noi to pick up the pursuers. They were ferried to the isl
and and in the waning twilight were taken to the marketplace, where Minh and hundreds of villagers were gathered. The bodies of the three militiamen killed in the trading boat had been removed in preparation for burial, but the bodies of the two Viet Cong killed on the mud bank by Luong lay on display with their rifles at their sides. They would await claiming by villagers from the Phu Longs the next day.
Minh gave a short public speech, thanking especially Luong for his actions. He told McGowan that the VC rarely attacked his PFs in force on land. It had been primarily by means of river ambushes that the Viet Cong in 1964 had forced him and the other hamlet officials off the island. The Viet Cong had not employed the ambush on a daily basis. They did not have to; instead, they had struck just often enough to instill a high level of uncertainty about death into the normal actions of normal people. They had set traps along the river, and killed the militia one and two at a time, until no one associated with the government could get into a boat with other villagers. The villagers did not want to be killed themselves or have their boats sunk. The PFs were cut off from the people, even from travel with their own families. The VC then were free to tax all who used the river, while the PFs lost face among the people.
That afternoon when the trading boats had wallowed in half sunk with the dead PFs and the wounded and the screaming villagers, Minh had feared 1964 all over again. But because of the seven pursuers, the Viet Cong could not claim a victory. They had suffered equal losses. The people had seen the bodies and the boat race.
Three PFs. Three VC. A small incident on a warm spring afternoon on a flat river full of boats. A one-line entry in the I Corps daily situation report. Nothing but a few added statistics at the Saigon level.
On May 7, trading boats again set out from Binh Thuy, carrying PFs and villagers alike.
24
The PFs and the Marines were often seen in each other’s company during off-duty hours—a PF hitchhiking with a Marine to Quang Ngai City, a Marine sitting behind a PF on a motor scooter, a PF handing a Marine a family shopping list for the PX, a Marine drinking hot tea in a PF’s home on a lazy afternoon. The disagreements which arose were generally those one expects among men who share cramped quarters for a year: a blaring radio when someone else wants to sleep; a tasteless practical joke; neglect in returning an article loaned; selfishness in the use of commonly shared items such as rifle-cleaning materials.
