“Life’s a chance, son,” Pete said.
Lump whipped the Jeep around the mine crater and stomped the gas feed.
“Anyhow,” Pete prompted, “what happened to your most important product?”
Lump sighed and shook his head. “Activity in our AO has really picked up lately. The North Vietnamese Army is moving in a hardcore battalion to put more pressure on the army’s 9th Div at Dong Tam. What we got down around the river and in the Nam Can Forest is the 514th VC Battalion under a gung-ho Hanoi-trained leader called Commander Minh. This fucking Minh is knocking a real crimp in our skivvies. Smoke?”
He offered Pete a pack of Marlboros. The SEAL tapped out two cigarettes, stuck both between his lips and bent low behind the windscreen to light them. He handed one back to the driver.
“That bastard Minh seems to know every fucking move we make,” Lump went on. “I swear he’s got spies in our shithouses. I’ll give him this: Minh’s the best goddamned Viet Cong field commander I’ve ever run up against. My Biet Hai have locked horns with him several times—and we’ve come out dragging our tails more than once. Minh sunk one of my riverboats in an ambush two weeks ago.
Lt. Brauer idly shifted the carbine across his knees to cover a string of Vietnamese walking alongside the road. You never knew where the enemy might be in this kind of war.
“Minh’s the reason you’re here, I reckon,” Lump said. “Minh sent Mr. Lundgren, your predecessor, out in a body bag. No reflection on Mr. Lundgren, but he wasn’t much of a commander. Ensign Cochran, your executive officer, tries, but he’s young and he’s green. Cochran is having trouble getting the Frogs to even leave base camp, and the ARVN in Saigon can’t get a Viet officer to come out here and stay. Minh would have kicked Cochran’s ass hard if he ever got him in the right situation. Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. Brauer; your Nguoi Nhai are all intercoursed up.”
“I was told they were having a few problems,” Pete acknowledged.
“Pete, a few problems is a gross understatement.”
Saigon was a modern city with tall buildings, pastel-colored shops, sidewalk cafes, traffic jams, and a bustling commerce. Other than the burgeoning slums filled with peasant refugees on the outskirts, there was little indication of the guerrilla war raging in the surrounding countryside.
Pete reported to Military Assistance Advisory Group headquarters for in-processing. MAAG was located on Tu Do Street in one of the business buildings, former offices for the French rubber industry. The senior naval officer was a chunky captain named Draper. Captain Draper would have looked more at home in the boardroom of General Electric or GMC. Signs plastered on the walls of his office proclaimed Progress Is Our Most important Product. Pete cast a sardonic look at Lump. Lump shrugged.
Captain Draper delivered a canned welcoming speech. Lt. Brauer had some big shoes to fill in replacing Lt. Lundgren, but he, Captain Draper, was sure Lt. Brauer was up to it. He clapped Pete on the back.
“I do hope you enjoy your tour of duty in South Vietnam,” he concluded, sounding like a travel guide. Then he added, with no sense of irony, “Now go out there, Lieutenant, and help bring God and Western progress to Vietnam. I’m certain you’ll prove a match for this... this uh...”
“Commander Minh,” Lump supplied.
“Yes. Yes. This peasant Viet Cong leader.”
Lump headed for Ton Son Nhut Airport on the outskirts where he left his Jeep with an Air Force quartermaster friend—“We’ll pick it up in a week or so”—and they hitched a ride on an army Huey from the 9th Division’s 247th Medical Helicopter Detachment. It flew out to Dong Tam at an altitude of six thousand feet to avoid enemy ground fire. The air at altitude was rarified and a welcome relief from the superheated humidity at sea level. Pete used the opportunity to get reacquainted with the country. He leaned forward in the web seating and gazed out the open door past an army medic napping against the engine firewall.
Terrain south and west of Saigon was flat and green-squared with rice paddies and dikes, through which cut numerous muddy streams and canals bordered by lush swamp growth. Many of the bridges along Highway 4 had been blown up overnight and were being repaired by U.S. Army engineers. A swarm of helicopters in the distance circled a patch of jungle while A-4 Skyhawk fast-movers screamed in low and dumped napalm. The bombs made bright flashes of fire in long runners when they exploded. Somebody on the ground was catching hell.
Lump tapped Pete on the shoulder and pointed toward a wide stream the color of creamy milk chocolate that seemed to ooze into and out of jungle and bamboo thickets.
“The My Tho River,” he said.
The land beyond was greener and flatter than before, if possible, with fewer hamlets and farms. It was veined with streams and canals and appeared to be more water than land. The Mekong Delta, stretching all the way south past the Mekong and Bassac Rivers. These three major rivers drained a vast area not long risen in geological time out of the South China Sea. It was definitely what a SEAL might define as a maritime environment. But then, to a SEAL, any environment containing as much as a half-canteen of water was considered a maritime environment.
Lump pointed again. Dong Tam.
Dong Tam meant “united hearts and minds” in the language of the Vietnamese. Until a year or so earlier the camp had been a six hundred-acre swamp. Soil dredged from the My Tho flowing to the south had been used to fill in the swamp and level it out. As the medical helicopter dropped lower to fly over the now-sprawling U.S. Army base, Pete saw it was surrounded by a high dried-mud berm, barbed and concertina wire, and fields of fire from which all cover and concealment had been cleared. Two-story barracks and other buildings stretched row after row inside the berm walls. Everything looked neat and orderly, like a stateside military post.
Outside the main gate, as at every major military post in-country, lay a hooch city filled with whorehouses, souvenir shops, laundries and Coca-Cola and beer stands.
The Huey skimmed over the base and headed toward a second cleared area stuck to the muddy north bank of the My Tho River—U.S. Navy base camp for Lt. Lump Adkins’ Biet Hai River Assault Force and Lt. Pete Brauer’s new command, the Lien Doc Nguoi Nhai, Vietnamese Frogmen, “Soldiers Who Fight Under The Sea.” The outpost was built in a triangle configuration with the apex pointing toward the Army’s 9th Division and the wide base snugging against a river harbor. From higher up, everything looked orderly. Sandbagged bunkers, mortar pits, machine gun posts, concrete-and-ply board buildings. Even the boats at the piers—sleek, high-prowed PBRs; low-riding, wide-bodied Viet junks; boxy, square-bowed LCM landing craft left over from WWII—were dress-right-dress in sharp military lines.
Nearer, appearances changed. Everything turned into varying shades of the same brown. The defoliated area was only a tint lighter than the river. Dust and rust lent a dung-like cast to tents and corrugated metal roofs. The boats in the small, sheltered harbor were brown.
As the chopper bled altitude and spiraled toward a metal-plated helipad in the middle of the camp, the place turned into a junk pile littered with the debris of a war that seemed to continue indefinitely. Everywhere were ordinance and equipment boxes, crates, rusted fifty five-gallon fuel drums, sagging ply board huts, drooping tents, wooden pallets piled and stacked about. Trash spilled out from everywhere upon the ground. Laundry sagged from stretched lines and hung drying on concertina wire. Some Viets wearing brown shorts and shower thongs from the army PX squatted around an open fire roasting a large snake on a spit.
The helicopter set down in a ground clutter of rotor wash. Lump scrambled out into the muggy afternoon heat. Pete followed with his parachute bag. He looked around as the chopper’s blades yanked it back into the air. Viets in varying stages of sloppy undress began drifting over. A tall, skinny American kid wearing tiger stripes came running up.
“Welcome to Shit City, Mr Brauer!” Ensign C.C. Cochran greeted.
CHAPTER SIX
There was a cloudless sky the next morning and a sun hot and white from
the instant it popped up to watch Lt. Brauer assume formal command as “advisor” of his Lien Doc Nguoi Nhai. Lump Adkins found the prospect of entertainment too enticing to resist. He stopped at the mess tent for a canteen cup of coffee. Pol Pots, the chubby Viet cook, cast a worried glance toward the Team House where the Americans stayed. A kerosene lamp had burned there most of the night; neither of the SEALs had showed up for breakfast.
Lump grinned expectantly as he took his coffee and sat on an old upended ammo crate to one side of the “parade field.” Some thirty or so of the sixty Viet Frogmen assigned to the company’s roster dribbled out of their hooches. Most wore only remnants of uniforms. Some were barefooted or clopped around in shower shoes. Their equipment appeared in equally poor shape. Rusted, un-maintained M16s and .30-caliber carbines. Some had lost their weapons, forgotten to bring them or perhaps sold them to the VC. One flat-faced man with no shirt and a perpetual grin carried a live goose under one arm. The Viets giggled and held hands, clearly nervous at meeting the new American.
Lt. Brauer walked briskly from the team hooch where he had been going over the company’s training and combat records overnight. Ensign Cochran, whip-thin and blond with hardly a beard, followed in the manner of a sailor who had just been properly flogged. Both Americans wore full-uniform combat tiger stripes including battle harnesses, patrol caps and holstered .45 Colt pistols. Pete’s step faltered a hardly-noticeable half-beat when he spotted his ragtag command. He quickly recovered to execute a sharp right face in front of the company, which had more or less formed ranks by platoons.
A wiry young NCO of less than one hundred pounds in weight stepped smartly forward and saluted. He had a hawk-like face as wizened and wise as an emperor’s monkey and tiny red-rimmed eyes. He held the salute. Ensign Cochran leaned toward Pete and whispered, “Technically, he’s in command of the company since we can’t get an officer. We ‘advise’ him.”
Pete glared at the little NCO before returning the salute.
“You speak English?” he demanded.
“Beau coup Englis’. Wery goot Englis’, Dai-uy.”
“What’s your name, Sergeant?”
“Piss Hole, Dai-uy.”
“Piss Hole?”
Ensign Cochran leaned over. “It’s his eyes, Skipper. They look like piss holes.”
Lump snickered into his coffee. Pete sighed. “Sergeant Piss Hole, call this... this rabble to the position of attention.”
Piss Hole did an about face in his ragged sneakers. He shouted, “Ten-hoot!”
The ranks straightened slightly. Some of the Viets stopped whispering and holding hands. The live goose struggled, thrust its head far out on the end of its neck and honked like a Lambretta in a traffic jam. The Viet soldiers giggled.
“Fuck” Pete exclaimed under his breath. “Putting this bunch in the bush to chase VC is like sending out goats to catch tigers. Ensign Cochran?”
“Yes, sir, skipper.”
“First thing I want is for these men to look like soldiers. Why aren’t they in uniform?”
“Sir, we keep requisitioning through the ARVN quartermaster, but it’s like pulling goose teeth, if you’ll excuse the reference, to get anything.”
“Goose teeth?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ensign Cochran, I want them properly equipped with boots and uniforms by the end of next week. Is that clear?”
“Sir, like I explained, I’ve been requisitioning—“
Pete cut him off. He pointed. “What’s over there?”
“Sir? It’s the army base...”
“I know for a fact the division quartermaster keeps small-sized uniforms. He doesn’t need them. We do. You’re a SEAL, right? Use your imagination, son. Get me those goddamned uniforms.”
The goose kept honking. Pete looked at it and slowly drew his pistol. The troops went suddenly quiet and watched him cautiously. He took a sidestep to clear his field of fire. Then in one blurred movement he whipped up the .45 and blasted off the goose’s head.
Blood exploded, splashing the company’s ranks. The goose’s owner dropped the dying bird and jumped back like it had turned into a snake. Its death throes sprayed blood and further scattered ranks. A half-dozen Viets grabbed their heads and fell to the ground. Ensign Cochran’s mouth opened and closed in soundless imitation of a fish. Lump Adkins spilled his coffee laughing.
“Now we don’t have to pull goose’s teeth,” Lt. Brauer said, calmly holstering the smoking pistol. “Sergeant Piss Hole? Now call this rabble to attention.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Although Pete Brauer had organized, trained and led American SEAL teams in combat, this, this, was an entirely different matter. The outfit couldn’t even swim well enough to conduct basic underwater work. As for tactics, the Nguoi Nhai would have had trouble sneaking up on a blind and deaf elephant. Pete had to start from the ground up before he dared infiltrate his little South Vietnamese Frogmen into the muddy waters of the Mekong Delta to meet ghost rider Minh. “This is a diving mask. These are fins. This is an M-79 grenade launcher.” He drew up a training schedule, starting with the basics of the art and science of warfare. Physical conditioning. Swimming exercises. SCUBA diving. Boat handling. Demolitions. Small unit tactics. Leadership team building. Any Frog who failed to attend training or who showed up late had his pay docked. That took care of truancies.
“By the time I’m through with them,” Pete promised, “these little cocksuckers are going to be more afraid of me than they ever will be of Commander Minh.”
Ensign Cochran believed him.
“You will be ass-kicking, tiger-baiting, shark-riding, VC-throat cutting, bad, badass motherfucking VC killers!” Lt. Brauer shouted at his company. “No more holding hands.”
Initial training turned slapstick in a comedy of errors. One of the little men pulled the pin from a frag and then let the grenade drop from nervous fingers. Pete dived for it. He grabbed it, fuse sputtering, rolled and hurled it toward the river. It exploded with an underwater Crump! and a slimy belch in the muddy water. Stunned and dead fish rolled to the surface, exposing white bellies to the sunlight
Pete slowly got up and dusted himself off. He stuck out his chin and stalked over to the offending Frogman. He glared into the Viet’s eyes while he took out another grenade and pulled the pin. He thrust it into the frightened Viet’s hand.
“Throw!”
The grenade sailed high out over the river and detonated in the water. The other Frogs giggled, as Asians were wont to do when nervous or uncertain.
“Sgt. Piss Hole, translate this!” Pete growled. “The next man who drops a live grenade, I’m gonna take it, stuff it up his ass and pull the pin.”
The Frogs believed him.
Ensign Cochran caught another soldier dragging a log with a length of detonating cord. Pete strapped the det cord around the base of a palm and ignited it. It cut through the tree, toppling it.
“That’s what could have happened to your arm,” Pete admonished the shaken Viet.
After the first full day of training, Lump Adkins used his Biet Hai as drivers to motor a couple of six-by trucks out to the training area to transport the Nguoi Nhai company back to Shit City before nightfall. Nights belonged to the Viet Cong, right up to the berms of American and South Vietnamese strongholds.
Lump got out of his truck and laughed as he watched Brauer and Ensign Cochran leading the Frogs through a session of hand-to-hand combat. The little Viets were swatting at each other and jumping all over the place, for all the world like a pond full of agitated amphibians, while Pete shouted at them: “You are badass! You are mean! You are killers!”
The Frogs started loading into the six-bys for the four-mile ride back to Shit City. Pete jumped into them with both feet.
“Out! Out! Get out of those goddamned trucks. You don’t deserve to ride. Follow me and don’t still be out here after nightfall.”
He took off down the road in a wind sprint. Ensign Cochran glanced at Lump, shrugged, a
nd started out after his skipper. Vietnamese soldiers, huffing and wheezing, were soon strung out for two miles along the road past the Dong Tam army base. The empty trucks followed slowly behind. Wearing a determined look on his wizened face, Piss Hole kept pace with the Americans until the last half-mile when he faltered and fell behind. He looked at the foreigners, especially at Lt. Brauer who was old enough to be his father, with new open respect when the run ended.
“Ohmja Nguoi, Nhai!” he declared. “The Old Frog, him numbah one!”
“What the hell was Lundgren doing out here anyhow?” Pete cried in exasperation at his troops’ sorry state of readiness. “He damned sure wasn’t training and fighting his company.”
“That’s what got his sorry ass killed, God rest the bastard’s soul,” Lump replied. “From the After Action reports Lundgren submitted, you’d have thought he was winning the war single handedly. At least MAAG thought he was. Cap’n Draper put him in twice for a Bronze Star. You don’t have to fight the war, Pete. You just have to make sure you keep the paperwork flowing. Lundgren started believing his own paperwork after awhile and tried to live up to it. He went out and stumbled into some of Minh’s boys and they waxed his ass.”
Pete drove the company relentlessly to transform it into an effective fighting unit. He ran the Viets mile after mile in the mud and sand on the riverbank to get them into battle condition. They swam the width of the river, then swam laps across it, They burned up ammo on the range until even the sorriest marksman could drill a man-target nine times out of ten at four hundred meters. They practiced day-and-night patrolling and immediate action drills in the relatively secure areas adjacent to the river base and the main army post.
One morning Ensign Cochran feigned urgent business and took a day off from training. That afternoon when the troops came jogging home to Shit City, they found Cochran sitting cross-legged like a happy skinny Buddha on the hood of a six-by loaded with new uniforms and boots. Frogs swarmed over the booty like orphans at their first Christmas.
The Return: A Novel of Vietnam Page 3
