Guns Up!

by Johnnie Clark

  “Are you finished, Chan?”

  “No, but the details are too painful to remember.”

  Before I could properly defend myself, Sam the Blooper Man pulled up a stool next to us and bought us a round of beers. He wore a smile that only his mother could love. Showing off those rotten teeth should have warned me that he was up to something.

  “Bartender! Here’s ten bucks MPC. Drinks for every Marine in the house!” Sam shouted over my shoulder. He pulled up a stool next to Mike. “Who’s your friend, John?”

  “Sam the Blooper Man meet Mike Flanagan and Benjamin Allen, our new bazooka team.”

  “3.5 rocket team,” Mike corrected.

  “So that’s your bazooka out front?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said.

  “See those five Army guys sitting over at that table by the pinball machine?” We all turned to see the Army guys and turned back to Sam. “Well, they were just out front laughin’ at the Corps over that bazooka.” Mike looked back at the table.

  “I wonder how hard they’d laugh if I tore that ‘101st’ sign off the wall and broke it over their heads.” Mike spoke dangerously loud.

  Things were beginning to look like Tijuana all over again. With twenty to thirty M16s right outside the door, a bar fight didn’t feel like a real smart idea to me.

  “Don’t worry about a thing, Mike.” I didn’t like the way Sam said that. “The Army has these new blooper rounds that I been wantin’ for months. They got all kinds of ’em. Some explode and send out hundreds of steel ball bearings and some are flares. All kinds of new stuff, and naturally the Crotch won’t see any of ’em until the next war. Bartender! Another round for every Marine in the house!”

  “Does that mean them, too?” Our overweight Army bartender pointed at four Korean Marines who were seating themselves at a table behind us at that very moment.

  “Are those ROKs?” Sam asked loudly, as though the first three beers had done the job.

  “I think so,” the beer-bellied bartender answered.

  Sam raised his glass. “Give ’em a drink!”

  “Are they White Horse Division?” Mike asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “I’ll ask ’em,” slurred Sam. He jumped off his stool, walked up to the Koreans’ table, and slapped one of them on the back like he was an old friend. A few seconds later all four stood up and walked over to us, with Sam leading the way.

  “I want you guys to meet my friends.” I wasn’t sure who Sam was talking to. As a matter of fact I wasn’t sure Sam had any friends. “This is Sergeant Kim. He speaks perfect English.”

  The short, stocky Korean bowed politely then stuck out his hand. He caught us by surprise. No one moved to shake hands with him. I reacted just as he was prepared to remove the offer.

  “Sorry. I didn’t know Koreans shook hands. My name is John Clark.”

  The sergeant bowed again then stepped aside to introduce someone else. “This is Master Dong Keun Park. He is very famous master of Tae Kwon Do. He is here to train South Vietnamese troops.” A short Korean in the center, even stockier than Kim, bowed politely. I found myself bowing back. Tae Kwon Do is a Korean version of karate.

  “American Marines very good fighters!” Master Park said then stuck out his hand. This time everyone reacted. He shook each hand. His chunky paw felt like a club covered with calluses. Master Park spoke in Korean. I couldn’t understand what he said, but it was forceful.

  Kim bowed again. “Master Park says Koreans are honored to fight beside American Marines.” He bowed again. Then all four Koreans bowed.

  During the introductions I hadn’t noticed that Sam had left the bar. He came through the door just as the Koreans bowed for the last time. He still had that evil smile stuck on his face, but I wasn’t sure what he was up to. We toasted to the Koreans, then they toasted to us so we toasted them again and they toasted us again. Things moved along rather merrily.

  “Who stole my M79 ammo!” A large, angry voice shattered the merriment. A giant in Army fatigues blocked the doorway. I leaned away from the bar to get a better view. I thought he was standing on top of something. He wasn’t. “I know it was one of you thievin’ Marines! Who was it? Who has my ammo bag?” Now I knew what Sam was up to. The giant looked impatient. The soldiers in the bar stood up, their chairs squealing against the wood floor as they pushed them aside.

  “This is the last time I go to a bar with you,” Chan said in a muffled tone. “I knew this would happen.”

  “Me! I don’t have anything to do with this,” I said.

  The giant walked over to us like he just got off a horse. I quickly debated in my mind the pros and cons of turning Sam in. Couldn’t do it, not to the Army.

  “He’s even larger than the Mexican!” Chan whispered. “We’ll need a bigger chair!”

  The giant stood between us and the Koreans. He looked down at each of us, then suddenly reached to his right, grabbed Sam by the throat, and started squeezing him purple. Mike jumped off the stool to help. The giant shoved him down with one hand. Just as quickly the giant’s right leg buckled and he fell to one knee. Master Park snapped his foot back from the giant’s knee, then without lowering it to the ground snapped off a second kick to the side of the giant’s head. His huge head bent sideways from the force of the Korean’s tiny, spit-shined combat boot. The giant dropped over like a fallen redwood. For an instant I thought his neck had snapped. The other three Koreans formed a half-circle, each in a different fighting posture, facing the remaining Army men still standing on the other side of the bar, all with shocked expressions. No one moved. One Army man sat down. Then another. Finally everyone. Master Park knelt on one knee and put his ear to the giant’s chest. “He is not dead.”

  “Wow! That was great!” I said.

  “Did you see that kick?” Sam put in.

  The door of the bar opened wide, bringing in more light than I wanted to see. Sudsy poked his face through columns of dust and light. “Hey! Any Marines in here from Alpha 1/5?”

  “Yeah! Come on in, Suds!” Sam shouted.

  “Saddle up! We got choppers waiting on us right now!”

  “What?”

  “We’re comin’ in on a hot LZ! Prepare to fire as soon as we disembark!” Lieutenant Campbell shouted over the noisy, twin-rotor CH-46 assault choppers. From cozy bar to hot LZ, it felt like a bad dream. The rear end of the chopper opened up like the tailgate of a pickup as we neared the LZ. “Don’t forget, we’re here to rescue those useless Green Berets, not shoot ’em!”

  I faked a laugh. My stomach turned inside out. I looked at Chan for reassurance. His face looked like my stomach felt. The chopper dropped quickly. My stomach felt worse. I peeked out of one of the round portholes in the side of the chopper. Yellow smoke swirled up from a muddy rice paddy wedged tightly between two steep mountains.

  A bullet smacked through the helicopter. The pilot leveled off fifteen feet above the paddy.

  “Look out!”

  “Get out! Jump out! This is it! Disembark!” the copilot screamed at the top of his lungs. Somebody gave me a shove toward the open tailgate. I stumbled forward under the weight of my gear. The chopper swung left, throwing me flat on my stomach. I looked up. The chopper was empty. I scrambled for the opening, carrying the gun under my right arm. I could feel the chopper pulling away. I held my breath. I jumped. The fall felt endless. Bits of blue sky and green trees shot past me. I could hear the cracking of AKs around me, then I hit. My helmet smashed into my head. Blood streamed down my face. A sharp pain ripped up my spine. I didn’t know if I could move. I wiped the blood from my eyes and looked down. I was in mud up to my thighs that smelled like a sewer. Bullets hit the mud around me with a sucking sound. It felt like quicksand. I dropped the gun and rolled back and forth, then crawled and pulled myself free. Marines returned fire from the edge of the paddy behind the cover of five small trees at the foot of a mountain on my left. I grabbed the gun and ran for the trees. Suddenly I realized I was al
one in the middle of the paddy. I ran faster. The mud grabbed at my boots. Chan called from the trees. Five yards from the trees I dove and rolled behind a small mound of dirt. The firing stopped.

  Lieutenant Campbell shouted us into squads. Miraculously our only casualty was some corporal’s canteen. An AK round tore it right off his cartridge belt. Ten minutes later all three squads swept up the steep mountain. An hour later we reached the top. We found nothing.

  “All right, let’s check that other mountain!” The gunny’s command made my feet ache.

  Five hours and two mountains later Sudsy got word over the PRC-25 that the Green Berets were safe at home with no casualties. The enemy had disappeared too. The men were incensed. Some of the best swears I’d ever heard ricocheted up and down the column. Most swore to deck the first person they caught in one of those stupid green hats. It was all new to me. First chopper assault on a hot LZ. First rescue of Green Berets. Evidently it wasn’t the first time for the salts in the platoon.

  “One of these days those suckers in their fag hats are gonna get all of us killed!”

  I was so tired I almost paid no attention to the gripe walking up behind me in the column. It certainly wasn’t the first one of the day, but when the voice swore something in a strange language I looked over my shoulder to see who it was.

  “Swift Eagle? What’d you just say?” I asked, surprised at his rare show of emotion.

  “Nothing important,” he answered without looking.

  “How many times has this happened?”

  “A couple.”

  “Why’s everybody so ticked off?” I asked as he moved up beside me.

  “It’s a setup.” His piercing black eyes seemed to stare straight through me. “The gooks throw a few mortars into a Green Beret outpost, let them scream for help, then ambush the help. It’s the oldest trick in Nam, but they never learn.”

  “I thought they were pretty good, for Army.”

  “Ah. they’re good troopers, but they keep putting these clowns out here by themselves where they don’t do a bit of good and get everybody else killed tryin’ to save ’em.”

  Now I understood. If the chief said it and was even willing to talk about it, then it must be fact.

  “Chief, what’d you think of that fight in the bar?”

  He nodded. “The Koreans are great.”

  “Have you ever been on an operation with those guys?”

  “No. Once, on my first tour in country, my platoon came across nine dead gooks. None of the gooks had been shot, and they looked all beat up. A couple of knife wounds here and there but no bullet wounds. We started searching the stiffs and these eight Koreans came out of the bush.”

  “How’d you know they were Koreans?”

  “One of ’em shouted to us first so we wouldn’t blow ’em away. He spoke perfect English. Anyway they killed ’em all with Tae Kwon Do and knives. They take less casualties that way than with guns. The gooks don’t stand a chance going hand-to-hand with those guys.”

  I had a few thousand questions for the chief now that I had him talking, but we reached the spot for the chopper pickup. We set up a quick perimeter around it. Fifteen minutes later two CH-46s started circling the LZ. Green smoke covered me as the first chopper settled down. Twelve Marines hurriedly filed into the rear of the helicopter. I held my breath, waiting for that first AK to open up from the surrounding mountains. The painfully slow helicopter finally lifted off. Still no fire.

  Our chopper landed thirty seconds after the first was airborne. Still no fire. I ran up the small ramp, cringing, waiting for that first shot. I collided with Chan as I lunged for my place on the six-man bench attached to the inside wall of the helicopter. The chopper lifted off. Twelve of us sat facing each other. Each face was strained, anxious to get out of range.

  Once we were above the mountains, relief swept over the tired faces in front of me. A bright afternoon sun streaked through the round portholes. I leaned back and looked at Chan.

  “Boy, I really hurt my back when I jumped out of this thing.”

  “Is that how you cut your forehead?” Chan asked. He leaned back, looking exhausted.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s odd that you didn’t fracture something. I’d like to find out who that pilot was,” Chan said.

  I leaned back and closed my eyes. When I opened them we were landing in Phu Bai. My stomach growled.

  “I’m starving!” I said.

  “Eat some C-rats,” Chan said.

  “I’m saving my stomach for real food in Phu Bai.”

  “Yes. Let us make an effort to reach the chow hall instead of a bar this time.”

  “Right.”

  We walked off the chopper and found ourselves facing a big, snub-nosed, camouflaged C-130 cargo plane. At least one hundred Marines were filing into the rear of the big plane.

  “All right, I want you men to get in that line over there!” The lieutenant pointed to the C-130. “The regiment is moving to An Hoa!” he shouted over the helicopter engines still idling behind us.

  I dipped into my pack and pulled out a can of beans ‘n’ franks.

  PAY BACK

  The Fifth Marines had moved to An Hoa Valley on April 1, 1968. We’d been there for two weeks now. It was like getting used to a new neighborhood. After being up around the DMZ, I thought we would catch some slack, but every day was the same, humping all day in one hundred or more degrees of heat and setting up ambushes at night.

  An Hoa Valley made a natural supply route for the NVA coming off the Ho Chi Minh Trail and across the Laotian border. The Laos-Vietnam border region consisted of mountains and jungle as rugged as any in the world. The thick jungle canopy blacked out the sky in some areas. The valley was just as miserable or worse. Knee-deep mud, leech-infested rice paddies, fields of waist-level elephant grass, and small rolling hills. Every inch of it dangerous.

  The enemy’s main target in I Corps Tactical Zone was Da Nang. An Hoa Valley happened to be the most accessible attack route. The enemy had taken a pretty good beating up north around the DMZ, and they were shifting their main effort to the central provinces, with Da Nang as the ultimate target.

  The valley was a maze of booby traps. My paranoia of going home without legs grew more intense each day. Dying seemed almost easier. Rarely did forty-eight hours go by without someone tripping a grenade. Even worse were the booby-trapped artillery rounds. Every artillery barrage has some rounds that don’t detonate. The Viet Cong would find them and booby trap them.

  We changed the point man regularly so no one would have to play human mine sweeper too often. The best point man was Jackson. A keener sense of direction didn’t exist.

  Lieutenant Campbell stood up in the center of the perimeter and spit out some coffee. It started raining. Two bad signs, I thought. I wanted to eat something before we started out again, but my stomach wasn’t up to lima beans. I settled for water; nothing like the taste of Halazone water to start off a day. Halazone tablets were supposed to purify the water. If I put a couple in my canteen, I didn’t get dysentery, but I remained very close to sick. Sometimes dysentery ignored the Halazone. There’s no feeling that compares with crapping your way through a fifteen-mile hike in the bush. My cramping stomach told me it was going to be one of those days.

  “Saddle up! Take the point, Jackson.” The lieutenant’s command was echoed around the perimeter by Corporal Swift Eagle.

  Jackson stood up, gave me a mischievous wink and a nod toward a new boot replacement named Buford Unerstute. A chopper had dropped Unerstute off a week before, but I hadn’t met the guy yet. Sudsy said he was totally spooked and a real hick. Jackson stretched and yawned and called for the lieutenant, making sure that Private Unerstute could hear him clearly. I nudged Chan so he wouldn’t miss anything.

  “ ’bout how long does a man live after a bamboo viper gets him?” Jackson asked sincerely.

  “How long would you say, Gunny?” Lieutenant Campbell asked, rubbing the four-day growth on his c
hin.

  “I’ve seen ’em go awful quick.” The gunny stuffed in a mouthful of chew. “Staff Sergeant Morey saw a Marine in China die in ten minutes. I’ve seen ’em chase a man fifty yards through the bush.”

  “How about that gunner in Third Platoon?” Sudsy added. “They couldn’t pry that snake off after it bit him.”

  A moment later a green flash shot across the perimeter and then back again. On the second pass I spotted the reason for Private Unerstute’s amazing speed. Jackson’s pet green rubber snake was clamped by its fake bloody teeth to the seat of Unerstute’s trousers, which were two sizes too big. Unerstute was doing his best to run right out of them. He started running in circles with his stomach pressed forward and shoulders bent backward to keep the snake’s bite from reaching skin. He high-stepped in circles like a drum major, with his mouth open but no sounds coming out. Finally Jackson caught up with him and yanked the snake off. I laughed until my eyes filled with tears. I looked at Chan. Huge happy tears ran down his face too. It felt so good I wanted to thank all the participants individually, but there wasn’t time, and now the laugh was over.

  I turned my attention to the painful matters at hand. Getting my mind and body up for a morning romp through the mud was a chore. The Bataan death march was probably worse, but around the fifteenth mile I started having my doubts.

  The night rain had me itching from head to toe. I moved around like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz. My back hurt, my feet were rotting away, and I had dysentery. In other words, it was a normal morning with the U.S. Marines in the armpit of the world, Vietnam.

  We headed in the direction of the base camp at An Hoa. A thousand meters later the sharp explosion of a grenade at the head of the column brought us to a halt. I knew it was Jackson, but I hoped it wasn’t. I’d always liked him. He smiled so much he’d been accused of being my black twin. We’d been nicknamed the “White Teeth Brothers.”