by Bing West
But he did want the name of the contact in Binh Nghia, the man or woman who was whispering to certain women where along the bank they should hide their trading rice. Justifiably fearing beating or torture, the women from the Phu Longs told him. Trao then gave the women a choice: they could sell back the rice in the market, pocket the money and settle in Binh Nghia without their boat, or they could go to the district jail for ricerunning. The women chose jail, where they were held for two weeks and then released, a normal district sentence for small acts.
While Trao and Suong rode off in search of the VC contact, McGowan lingered on the bank, looking across toward the Phu Longs, and the three tiny scrub islands sticking up just short of mid-channel. He was thinking of mounting a private interdiction effort against the P31st. When the sergeant returned to the fort, he saw that Trao had arrested the VC contact, a man whom Trao had known for years.
The man had been beaten, but refused to talk. Trao wanted to know where the VC were crossing, and when they were next due in. Suong yelled at him, Trao screamed at him, he was slapped back and forth. Not a word. Trao drew out a pistol, cocked it, grabbed the man by his hair, jerked his head back and pushed the muzzle against the man’s nose. Still he did not speak. Why should he? Trao was not a real police chief. He was a gentle man who won real elections because people could talk honestly with him. Trao was not like Thanh. Trao would not shoot.
Trao did shoot, roaring with rage and shaking with fear, seeking to scare the man and succeeding in scaring himself, pulling the revolver aside and jerking when he meant to squeeze the trigger, intending for the bullet to miss and for the man to talk. Instead, the bullet creased the man’s cheek and tore his ear off. Blood gushing, the man stood petrified. Trao was trembling.
Suong offered to take over.
“No,” Trao said. “Get him out of here. Send him to district. It’s over. Get him out.”
26
That evening McGowan took out the first patrol, intending to wade to the nearest of the three tiny islands he had been looking at that afternoon. He asked nobody’s advice at the fort; in fact, he did not discuss it with anyone, not wishing to make a big thing out of a routine ambush which would probably prove fruitless. With Tri, Norwood and two new Americans named Loring and Moskel, McGowan left the fort quietly under a soft night sky.
The beaters at the outer gate were blabbering and clacking their bamboo sticks; none of the patrollers paid them any attention. The PF at point took the main trail through the village to the hamlet of Binh Yen Noi Number 3. The path was clearly visible, with the lamps from villagers’ homes shining like street lights under the small trees. The clatter and the smell of evening meals hung in the damp air, and practically every house had its door open and windows and sometimes a whole thatched wall raised. Music blared from dozens of transistor radios at a horrid pitch, as next-door neighbors competed to drown out each other’s stations. Children laughed and mothers scolded and old people gabbed. Some villagers glanced at the riflemen; most did not. There was no detectable change in voices as the patrol moved by. The patrol was part of the scenery on a normal evening.
When they reached the market, McGowan took point and led them down the side trail to the river bank.
“There it is,” he whispered, pointing to the islands which loomed small and black and far, far out in the glistening water. “That’s where we’re headed.”
“You’re kidding,” Moskel whispered. “We’ll drown. I’m not going.”
“The tide’s out.”
“So am I.”
“Screw you then.”
“I’ll go,” Loring whispered. “I’ve done a lot of swimming.”
“O.K. Loring and I will cut across. We’ll signal if it’s not over our heads,” McGowan whispered. “Thi—coi ao.”
“Toi so. Toi so. Dung bi bac Song Tra Bong. Ba do. Ba do.”
“Did you catch that?” McGowan asked Norwood.
“He doesn’t go for your act.”
“Thanks. I got that much without your help. But what’s bugging him? What’s this ‘Ba do’ bit?”
“You’re our leader, Mac. You figure it out.”
“Screw it. I can swim. You guys cover us. Let’s go, Loring.”
Naked, with their boots and cartridge belts draped over their shoulders, the two Marines slipped off the bank. The night had no wind and stars covered the sky, permitting those on the bank to watch the waders move outward, their vulnerable white skins steadily disappearing into the black waters as though they were being slowly sucked under.
McGowan had no way of knowing if he could reach the island without swimming, and he inched his way out, scuffing with his feet to follow the trace of the sand bars. It was a trial-and-error process, with many slips off the bars into twenty feet of water, his rifle serving as a life stick by which Loring could drag him back after each slip. In this bobbing manner, it took them half an hour to make two hundred yards. Their zigzag course had taken them to within fifty yards of the island when the water level rose from their chests to their necks and the bar narrowed so that it was like walking a railroad track.
So intent was McGowan on gaining the island that he did not notice the stirring of the water directly in front of him. From the channel close by his side it happened again—he distinctly felt the waters part and rush together again at once, as if they had been disturbed by the passage of a very large fish. McGowan turned to Loring, but before he could say anything Loring hissed: “Let’s get out of here.”
Both had seen sharks in the river. In the nets downstream at the river’s mouth a thirteen-foot hammerhead had been caught the previous week.
McGowan pressed forward and again the fish passed close by. He felt like he was walking the dotted white line on a freeway while cars hurtled by within inches. He knew all he had to do to test his wildly racing imagination was veer off the bar and plunge into the deep water once more. His toes gripping like hands, he treaded his way forward.
A few more yards and it was over. The bar widened and tilted upward, the water fell to his chest, his waist, his knees—he was on the island, cold from the warm waters. A step behind him came Loring.
“Spread out,” McGowan whispered.
The island was less than thirty yards long, and they concluded their search for a Viet Cong sentry or small boat team in a few minutes.
“Loring,” McGowan asked, “do you think we have company out there?”
“I don’t know. I sort of felt there was something. Now I’m not as sure. What do you think?”
“I thought so, too, but I guess you’re right. It was probably just some trick current or something. I’ll signal the others.”
He took a flashlight from his cartridge belt and blinked it on and off a few times. Then he and Loring sat down to watch for traffic on the river. After what seemed to them almost an hour, Tri, Moskel and Norwood floundered onto the island.
“Man,” Moskel said, “that’s too hairy. Do you know what’s out there?”
“Maybe,” McGowan said. “But how could we have lived with the PFs this long and not know there were sharks here? The PFs go swimming all the time.”
“They don’t swim out here,” Loring said.
“I think they thought you’d check with them, Sergeant,” Norwood said sarcastically, “before you pulled a stunt like this. I have a feeling we’re going to find out Tri was saying ‘Shark! Shark!’ back there on the bank.”
“Let’s get into position,” McGowan replied, ending the conversation.
They walked the few yards to the southern tip of the island and settled in to wait for any traffic crossing downstream. McGowan set the patrollers in among the scrub growth so that they covered both shorelines as well as directly downriver. At midnight a dull light began dancing along the far shore opposite My Hué.
“They’re moving,” Norwood whispered.
In the black, McGowan could hear careless splashes but see nothing. Then came a lucky break. A few miles to the south, artille
ry illumination blossomed out and etched the surface of the water like a mirror catching the sun’s rays. In the clear reflection McGowan saw six sampans two hundred yards downstream, moving in column toward Binh Nghia. Each held two men standing erect to pole. McGowan’s guess was right; the Viet Cong were crossing to pick up the food their wives could not bring them.
“Bunch in,” McGowan said. “We all fire at once. Start right and swing left. Tri—tay phai. Re tay trai.”
A pause.
“Ready? Now.”
The line opened up from the prone position with four M-16s and an automatic carbine. The weapons fired almost all tracers. The first bursts knocked the two men out of the lead sampan, and the line shifted to the next target.
For a moment the boats lay dead in the water, their rowers having dug in their paddles and backwatered when the tracers started whipping in front of them. The five ambushers swiftly changed magazines and poured their fire into the second boat, the streams of red dots bursting on the boat like flicks of flame.
The dull clacking of magazines. Fresh rounds. Onto the third sampan. Only now the boats were moving with the speed of terror, surging forward under frantic strokes, scattering out and splashing away.
“Which one?”
“Any one. Just fire.”
McGowan’s wet rifle jammed on the fifth magazine. As he knelt to clear it, he heard the roar of engines and looked up as three helicopter gunships bore down on his position. The helicopters had been flying a Firefly mission, designed to rove the rivers at night, with one helicopter every so often flashing huge spotlights while his rocket-laden brothers hung off the side waiting to strike. Attracted by the tracers, the Hueys were on top of the Marines before they knew it. McGowan was scared that the Hueys would chop them up if they couldn’t identify themselves, and Norwood’s radio was out, the batteries soaked.
The blinding lights went on, pinning the patrol to the earth. McGowan ripped the tape from a hand flare and fired a green starcluster, the symbol for a friendly unit. One Huey dropped lower. McGowan stood up and waved frantically, pointing downriver. The helicopter hovered for several seconds not twenty feet over his head as the crew looked over the naked, waving man and his four naked companions.
Then, fully satisfied that the figures on the ground were some sort of Americans, the Huey fell off and swooped downriver. Over the spot where the boats had been a few minutes earlier, the light helicopter dropped flares and swept back and forth with his searchlights. After a few seconds, he fastened on a sampan farther downriver and one of his companions pounced with machine guns and rockets. The other gunship was diving on some object beyond the ambushers’ vision at the edge of the flare light near the Phu Long shore. The ambushers couldn’t see the helicopter, only steady streaks of red slanting like rain toward the river.
The Hueys buzzed back and forth over the river like angry hornets but found no more target after their first runs, although they hovered and dropped flares and skimmed so low McGowan thought their wheels were in the water. After fifteen minutes they tired or sickened of the scene. One after another made a final machine-gun run on the wreckage and flew upriver. As they passed near McGowan’s island, one Huey winked with its searchlights.
After the roar had faded, the ambushers waited to hear a splash or see any moving object, but there were just bits of flotsam on the calm surface of the water.
“I think that’s it,” McGowan said. “Let’s go back in.”
“What about him?” Norwood asked, gesturing at the water which lay between them and shore.
“I’ll bet that was just a fluke. Besides, he won’t bother us as long as we’re on the bar.”
McGowan’s guess proved correct. They were not bothered by any inquisitive shark on their wade to shore.
27
By summer the mood of the village had changed. The perceptions of the chief protagonists—the villagers, the PFs, the Marines, the guerrillas and the enemy main forces—had altered. In July of 1967, Binh Nghia was no longer the scene of nightly battles, with the forces of both sides struggling for local suzerainty. The enemy, clearly dominant in the spring of 1966, had tried to keep control of the village both by contesting with his guerrillas the passage of each small patrol and by assaulting with main forces the source of the patrols. He did better with his large-scale efforts and twice had almost forced the Americans out (and with them the PFs), once in September of 1966 when the fort was overrun and once in March of 1967 when it was nearly abandoned. Despite tactical victories, the enemy had to cope with the capacity of the combined unit to endure, to stick after making mistakes. By the summer of 1967 the enemy had accepted the persistence of the unit, whereas his own determination to defend Binh Nghia had waned.
Suong claimed that many Viet Cong still visited the village, and that the potential for violence remained high. Any respite was only temporary.
Trao felt differently. He believed the strength of the local guerrillas and Party members had been sapped in the many firefights. Their losses meant fewer articulate voices to argue in intervillage and district meetings for more outside help. For almost a year Binh Nghia had been a focal point of fighting in the district. Yet it was but one of seventeen villages, eleven of which by mid-1967 had PF platoons and five of which had combined units. The Viet Cong district leaders had other problems besides Binh Nghia, and other Viet Cong village chapters were requesting aid.
The actions of the villagers displayed their belief that the time of the peak fighting had passed. In the hamlets no longer did a family sleep in the stale blackness of the household bunker. Lights could burn all night and the fishermen broke morning curfew habitually and noisily, so a lurking ambush would let them pass. Not one PF had deserted from the combined unit, although there were French leaves. The PFs would go anywhere in the village at almost any time. The only times they tried to avoid patrolling were when the Army sent over a new Western movie. The unit would then give the villagers an hour’s notice at dusk that a Western was being shown and the marketplace at Binh Yen Noi would be packed by the thousands. The second largest drawing card was color comedies filmed in the United States. The villagers would demand reruns of shots of the skyscrapers of New York City. On the few times that there would be a shot of the Hollywood version of a typical modern American kitchen, the women would shout until the projectionist gave them a second and a third look.
The Americans in the combined unit loafed in the sun in the summer and thought of home and guzzled beer and went for boat rides. But at night they set out to kill, and even during the day they carried their rifles because they knew the price of becoming cocky or lazy or stupid. Although Binh Nghia was quiet, they heard the stories from other places, such as the hamlet of Son Tra, at the mouth of the river. In May district had wanted to start a combined unit there and McGowan was asked to recommend a leader. He enthusiastically endorsed Colucci, second only to Luong in tactics, adept at Vietnamese, well liked by the villagers and respected by the Marines. He had risen from boot camp to sergeant in fifteen months. Colucci went to Son Tra, drawing a few Americans and PFs from each of the established combined units.
First reports indicated everything was going well, then an incident happened which shook Fort Page from its summer complacency. One of the Marines sent to Son Tra did not pan out. He was more interested in drinking and whoring than in patrolling. His surliness finally ended in a fist-fight with a PF, after which Colucci threw him out of the unit. While awaiting orders to Da Nang, the man was temporarily kept at another combined unit, just north of Fort Page and directly across the river from Son Tra. One afternoon after several beers, he decided to revisit Son Tra and hitched a ride to the other side of the river. Colucci saw him and put him back on board a boat, telling the helmsman to drop him off near the other fort. This was done, but instead of returning to the fort, the Marine sat in the sand drinking a bottle of the local rice wine. About dusk he passed out.
He was not missed that night, since each unit believed he w
as staying with the other. When the man awoke at dawn, his rifle was still at his side. Missing were his boots, grenades and magazines. It was assumed that the man had learned a lesson at a cheap price.
Incredibly he hadn’t. Shortly thereafter he repeated the idiocy, drinking alone on the beach in the afternoon. The Viet Cong took him without a struggle and he was led off to the Phu Longs. He was stripped naked and for four days he was displayed in a succession of hamlets. Through rumors from villagers a special U.S. prisoner recovery team was able to follow his passage, but always too late. He was seen in Ton My, in Dong Le, in Phu Long, in Nam Yen. At each place the story was the same. His captors were from the Phu Longs, and in the hamlets they made him stand naked in the sun with his arms bound behind him while they urged the people to hit him with sticks. His captors would speak of the day when they would kill all the Americans in the combined units. Then they would lead him away by tugging on a rope attached to a bamboo stick which had been jammed through both cheeks. The man’s mouth was black with flies. He was given no water.
The villagers said he died on the fifth day after his capture.
So even on the quietest summer day each American in Binh Nghia lugged his rifle with him wherever he went. Often the Marines went out with the fishermen, who thus could chug by U.S. Navy patrol boats without stopping for inspection and beat competitors to the better fishing grounds. Although no one dove overboard near the river’s mouth where the big fish and predators ran, farther upstream there were deep pools into which the Marines could jackknife from the bank and escape the stark sun.
The Army ran a river patrol with two thirteen-foot fiberglass Boston Whalers, mounted with 50-horsepower Mercury outboards. In return for local gossip about traffic in and out of the Phu Longs, the Marines used the boats during lunch and dinner hours, racing to the river’s mouth, trading their hot beers for cold ones from the crews of the Navy Swift boats, then skimming back upriver, shirtless, beer cans in hand, grinning. Alfano wanted to take up a collection to buy water skis, but the idea was quashed for fear some general flying overhead would not appreciate water skiing in a war zone.
