The Return: A Novel of Vietnam

by Charles W. Sasser

  “When men make love to woman,” Bonnie went on, “they talk, brag, make themself seem like big shoot. That what happen when Nguoi Nhai soldier come to hotel one night after TET fighting is going on. You know Nguoi Nhai, Mr. Jack Kazmarek?”

  I nodded,

  “Nguoi Nhai say he want girl, but he in big hurry to get back to base. Say he sneak off and Lt. Pete not know he gone. Winni Ho take him to room and sell short-time, Wham, bam, thank you. You understand? Nguoi Nhai say he must di di mao back to base quick, he going to be hero tomorrow. There will be big battle when Nguoi Nhai and soldiers from 9th Division attack VC at Vam Tho. I scared, for goo’ness sake. I frighten for Ca’l.

  “Winni Ho chat, chat, chat. Mouth bigger than mine. I hear her tell Mhai there be beau coup big fight at Vam Tho. Mhai not wait. I see her slip away to motorbike in early morning. I afraid she go tell Commander Minh. I afraid for Ca’l. Mhai close like sister, but Ca’l close like ... like husband.”

  Not knowing what else to do, Bonnie My raced frantically to the ARVN compound in town. The commandant happened to be a regular customer at the whorehouse. She persuaded him to let her contact Lt. Pete at Shit City over military airwaves. She warned Pete that she thought Mhai was about to betray him to Commander Minh and that he, Ensign Cochran and their entire outfit might be walking into big trouble.

  Tears filled her eyes,

  “Lt. Pete most angry. I not see Mhai no more after that day—but I know she alive and help me and help Ca’l. I not see Ca’l no more either for long, long time. He captured by guerrillas and go to prison. Lt. Pete come in night after battle and he make big bonfire in garden of mission. He burn everything belong to Mhai. And Mhai gone... and Ca’l gone... and Lt. Pete not come back no more. Orphan name Beetle Bailey, little tiny boy, cry and cry and sit in corner all day long. Many people die in Vam Tho. It all my fault because I not tell about Mhai and Commander Minh when I first know. I have carried much guilt.”

  It seemed there were enough demons for everyone to have a few.

  Cochran knelt next to Bonnie’s chair to envelope her in his long arms. His face looked old and haggard as, drawing a deep breath, he took over where his wife left off.

  “I thought I saw Mhai years later when I was a POW,” he said. He shook his head, frowning. “But it couldn’t be... It couldn’t possibly be...”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  On the afternoon before the operation against Vam Tho, Pete Brauer, Ensign C. C. Cochran and LCDR Rock Taylor hopped into Turncoat and buzzed over to the Dong Tam army base to touch up the planning on the role the local navy would play during the ops. Pete didn’t like operating with the army, especially if he wasn’t in control, and he didn’t like missions involving multiple units. Too many things could go wrong. But Captain Draper at MAAG thought it supported his slogan of “Progress Is Our Most Important Product” and ordered Pete to cooperate.

  Actually, the plan was already laid out. Captain Bruton of Bravo Company, 4/39th, 9th Div, merely outlined it and assigned responsibilities to Taylor’s Biet Hai River Rats and Pete’s and Cochran’s Nguoi Nhai. The layout was simple enough. Strategy called for an assault against the village of Vam Tho by one infantry platoon while the company’s other three platoons formed hammers-and-anvils to smash the VC between them as they fled. Taylor’s Biet Hai would provide water transportation for the Nguoi Nhai up Canal Six to reach Pete’s launch point southwest of the village. Lt. Brauer’s Viet Frogmen company, now eighty men strong, would march on the village’s right flank to drive the enemy toward Captain Bruton’s platoons.

  “I’m assigning your Viets the pud part of the mission,” Captain Bruton said to Pete. “You can expect only light contact, if any. I don’t want your ARVN involved in major fighting. ARVN units don’t do well in combat. That’s why Commander Mhinh’s Viet Cong overran that junk force base upriver.”

  Pete did a slow burn, but, other than muttering “Pompous little asshole!” underneath his breath, let it pass.

  The first time U.S. infantry marched on Vam Tho, Bruton continued, the Viet Cong pulled back out of the hamlet without offering resistance beyond mortaring one of the helicopter LZs. They were expected to retreat again. Only this time the army was coming in closer with their rings of steel to prevent the VC from scattering into the Nam Can Forest. This time, he emphasized, he would make the enemy stand up and fight—and be decimated.

  Timing by all participating units was critical, surprise essential. Discussions continued as to times, fire support, armaments, coordination, phase lines... Contingencies were discussed to cover weaknesses.

  There were weaknesses. To begin with, units would be choppered in and traveling too fast to carry along 81mm mortars for contiguous fire support. Besides, since the tubes would have to be set up inside enemy country within three thousand meters of potential targets, a platoon of infantry would be wasted providing security for them. There was no platoon available. Instead, fire support would come from a battery of heavy 155 Howitzers at FSB Savage, 4th Battalion’s base camp. The U.S. Air Force was furnishing a flight of fast movers to assist Black Hawk gunships in air cover and support.

  “Whose clusterfuck idea was this?” Pete finally demanded.

  Captain Bruton stiffened. He was a soft-looking, rather pudgy man with a narrow chest and broad hips. How he had earned his nickname “Crouton,” pronounced in two distinct syllables, Cru-ton, to rhyme with Bru-ton, had reached Shit City. Put him in hot soup, it was said, and, like a crouton hard on going in, he would immediately dissolve.

  The reputation might be undeserved. After all, he had never been tested in a real battle. For months now, Bravo’s boonirats had slogged the AO trying to corner Charlie and make him fight. It seemed to Pete that the captain was now simply too eager to prove himself. Over-zealous men in combat made deadly mistakes.

  Pete got up and stabbed a thick forefinger at a map stretched on the wall.

  “Don’t the army read its own intel reports?” he growled. “NVA and VC regional force units, hard-core types with the latest commie-block equipment, have been moving into the AO for TET. Their objective is to control everything this side of the My Tho River from here to Saigon. This operation calls for a battalion, not a company.”

  “The rest of 4th Battalion has its own objectives,” Bruton countered, thrusting out his jaw in defiance. “They will tie up enemy forces and draw them away from us.”

  “Second thing,” Pete said, pulling down another finger. “Vam Tho is on the outer edge of the 155s’ range. That means your own platoons may be maneuvering out from under artillery protection. My men are going to be moving through VC-controlled areas most of the time without fire support—“

  “—We’ll have the Air Force and gunships from the Black Hawks.”

  “I don’t like the idea of roaming around out there for any great length of time once Charlie knows we’re visiting. After contact, my men will have to pull all the way back to the My Tho for Rock here to pick us up. It’d be suicide for him to wait for us on the canal. That means that for most of the time in and out we’ll be out of range of fire support.”

  Captain Bruton’s lips twisted with disdain. “There won’t be enough VC left after we’re finished with them to cause anybody a problem.”

  “Anybody’s a fucking idiot who underestimates Commander Minh,” Pete flared. “I’ve been fighting him for months—and the score is about tied in the third quarter.”

  “My men are spoiling for a fight,” the army captain came back, pacing angrily across the room. “We are shit-tired of humping our asses off out there and getting picked off by toe poppers, punji pits and farmers armed with 50-cal Chicom rifles. We want a fight. Aren’t you overestimating the enemy, Lt. Brauer? How many men did you have at the hotel in Dong Tam when you stopped the VC cold?”

  “Minh was in my back yard then. Junk Base 35 was in his—and we’ll be in his again this time. I’m telling you, this thing stinks. No telling how many men the VC have got out there now.”
>
  “Look, if the navy is too chickenshit—“

  Ensign Cochran quickly stepped between the two commanders. The scar on Pete’s lip turned scarlet. His gray-blue eyes blazed with fury. Between clenched teeth, he challenged, “Captain, you have your dogfaces where they’re supposed to be. My Frogs will be there.”

  On the way out of the briefing, Pete muttered, “Shitbird!” loud enough that Captain Bruton would be sure to hear.

  The mission was starting off soured.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  It was a short night at Shit City. Pete was up at 0300, Cochran a few minutes later. LCDR Rock Taylor was already down at the piers getting his boats ready to shove off. Pete immediately stepped outside the hooch to look at the weather. A few low clouds scuttled across the starred sky.

  “Rain?” Cochran said.

  Pete shrugged, but clearly it concerned him. The two SEAL officers went back inside and checked their gear—boots, LBE harnesses, canteens, knives, compasses, rifles... Pete carried Lump Adkins’ Stoner and Cochran selected a lighter M-1 carbine over his M16. Piss Hole, who had been making his rounds seeing to the guard and pulling reveille on the troops, joined them outside the team house, They walked in silence to the mess hut, shivering slightly in the cool, damp night air and trying to shake the grip of their brief hours of sleep. Piss Hole also glanced at the sky.

  Pete pushed the mosquito netting aside and went into the kerosene-lighted “dining facility,” as Captain Draper called it when he paid his first and only visit to the camp. Yawning, Piss Hole poured coffee for both Americans while Cochran took more clips of ammunition from boxes of it kept in the tent. Nguoi Nhai started drifting in. They stood around drinking coffee, waiting for Pol Pots to get his two-pound flapjacks off the griddle. Unlike the Americans who downed their brew black and scalding, the Vietnamese preferred a mixture that was half coffee, half milk, with lots of sugar added. Combat gear littered the folding tables and lay piled on the floor. A shotgun-like M-79 grenade launcher hung by its sling from the back of a chair. A pouch of frag grenades had been left on the serving line table.

  They hadn’t even departed Shit City and, for some reason, Cochran already felt homesick for it. Long hours lay ahead of rice paddies, slogging mud, leech-infested canals and single-pole monkey bridges with inevitable plunges off into the water. In comparison, this mud-floored hut with its thatched and sand-bagged walls, lanterns burning on the tables and shelves containing moldy boxes of Post Ten cereals and carefully arranged OD-colored cans from salvaged C-rations offered all the conveniences of home.

  They were halfway through flapjacks when Dih-Dah, the radioman who had been with them in the fight at the hotel, entered the hooch in such a hurry that he became entangled in the mosquito netting. He fought to free himself, all the time calling out, “Ohmja Nguoi Nhai? Ohmja Nguoi Nhai?” He carried a PRC-10 radio by its straps in one hand. With the other hand he all but thrust the handset into Lt. Brauer’s face.

  “Crazy woman on it,” he exclaimed. “Crazy Vietnamese woman!”

  Ensign Cochran overheard enough to recognize the female voice streaming excitedly in broken English from the PRC-10. It was Bonnie My! He couldn’t understand what she was saying, as Pete held the telephone-like handset hard against his ear. The one-sided conversation revealed little.

  “How long has she been gone...? Do you know where she went ...? Motorbike? What motorbike...? How did she find out... ?”

  He handed the set back to Dih-Dah and looked at Cochran. His face was pale and grim and seething. Barely-controlled rage made his scar stand out in livid red. The unspoken question in Cochran’s eyes made him flinch away from the truth he was being forced to confront.

  “One of the Frogs was in town last night after our mission briefing,” He explained curtly, “and doing some out-of-school talking to a whore. Minh may know about the operation.”

  “Who... ?” Cochran asked.

  “Tinh.”

  “You want me to have Piss Hole throw him in the stockade?”

  “No. If we get hit, I want the little sonofabitch up front. I want him to know why it’s happening.”

  There was more to it than that. Cochran saw it in Pete’s face. “Maybe Minh doesn’t know...”

  Pete drew a breath both deep and painful, “Bonnie My thinks Mhai has gone to Vam Tho to warn Minh,” he said and left it at that. “It’s too late to call off the mission. We’re committed. Besides, we can’t be sure that’s where she went.”

  He picked up his Stoner and checked it. He reached for his patrol cap, jerked it on tight and took a last look around to see if there was anything left to do.

  “Sgt. Piss Hole, combat formation in ten minutes. I want Tinh walking point,” he shouted, then all but ripped the mosquito netting off the doorway as he stalked outside into a night already cloudy except for occasional stars shining through breaks in the cover.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Pete took the precaution of relaying a radio message to Captain Bruton advising him the enemy may have been tipped off about the operation. He omitted the source of the intelligence. The army captain’s response clearly suggested he thought Pete was trying to waffle out of the mission.

  “Screw the arrogant bastard!” Pete snapped.

  Although Bonnie My’s warning increased pressure on both Pete and his executive officer, it never occurred to Ensign Cochran to question his leader’s judgment in proceeding with the ops. After all, Pete had led the company in combat for over four months without its sustaining a single serious casualty. Quite in contrast to the previous leadership under Lt. Lundgren, who had himself gone home in a body bag after suffering a number of other KlAs in the company.

  Rock Taylor at the helm of the lead boat appeared stalwart and heroic, like he was playing himself in a movie, as he guided his little fleet of troop-loaded PBRs upriver and then up Canal Six to near the point where Lump Adkins had picked up the ambush party following Mhai’s capture. To proceed further toward Vam Tho in boats was to tempt destruction by grenade traps laid near the surface of the water.

  Dawn was still nearly two hours away when Pete and Cochran and their company of Nguoi Nhai scrambled ashore opposite the bank on which Vam Tho resided and about eight kilometers short of it. Cloud cover had thickened noticeably, but it was still flying weather, marginally, The Frog company had plenty of time to maneuver into position to catch the enemy when he fled his village stronghold. Ensign Cochran and Sgt. Piss Hole quietly formed the march column underneath the foliage. Dih-Dah and Sparky, the other RTO, re-checked their two radios, a main and a spare. Tinh was given point. Pete let him know that it was because of his big mouth. If they were hit, he would be among the first to go. Tinh licked loose lips so dry they almost crackled. Certainly he was now regretting last night’s indiscretion.

  “Kick ass and take names, Mister Brauer,” LCDR Taylor encouraged as the column melted silently into the darkness. “The water taxis will be waiting for the call to pick you up. Fuck Minh up again the way we did at the hotel.”

  “Yeah,” Pete muttered.

  Cochran experienced a sudden flush of isolation, almost of abandonment. He blamed it on mission jitters and on the disturbing news about Mhai. He glanced back at Pete, but could not make out his face in the darkness. Pete must feel rotten about it, Cochran knew how he would react if Bonnie My were the traitor. But hadn’t Lump cautioned Pete that you couldn’t trust a VC, chieu hoi or not?

  The column moved away from the trails that paralleled main Canal Six. Chances were they would be booby-trapped near the ville. The march became a single file plodding as quietly as possible through thigh-deep rice paddy water. Several times halts were called in order for the leaders to check the map and confer on the route before moving on again.

  Smaller canals veined the area to provide irrigation for the rice fields during the dry season and to drain off the swamps during the wet. Rice grew in isolated patches separated by near impenetrable jungle, an attempt by the enemy to protect his fo
od sources from compromise and defoliation sprayings. In blind darkness men slid down muddy inclines on their rears and waded up to their armpits in the canals. They climbed up the opposite banks and scraped leeches off exposed skin with their knives.

  They came upon a spiked fence made of brush and sharpened bamboo stakes. Nearby loomed a mound of packed mud about five feet high, used as a firing position by the VC. This was a semi-defensive line in what Charlie considered his territory. Beyond were well-traveled trails, the ones the enemy himself used and which were therefore unlikely to be booby-trapped. Pete checked his watch and glanced at the lightening sky. Colonel Hackman’s Hardcore Battalion should be airborne, with Bravo Company beating balls to encircle Vam Tho,

  They passed darkened hooches off the trail. Dogs barked, then followed along. Three or four seemed to emerge from every hut to send their cacophony of warnings to curs in the next hut. Piss Hole halted briefly near a relatively large hooch with a front sun awning made of wooden planks. He came back grinning.

  “I tell old man in house we VC, ask him have he saw ARVN troops. He tell me guv’ment soldier not dare come in Commander Minh’s territory. I ask him if our brother VC have come by. He say large unit pass yesterday afternoon. That all he know. He VC sympathizer. Mebbe so I take him’s ears by and by.”

  The invaders passed through banana groves into fields of twisted brush, reeds and the skeletons of dead trees. Muted light showed through the clouds in the east. Suddenly, it was daylight. Pete looked more relaxed now. Perhaps Mhai hadn’t betrayed him after all. He checked his map. They were within four klicks of Vam Tho and in position to block off Charlie’s retreat in this direction. They had circled back toward the village and were now once again within sight of Canal Six. Trees on the far side of a rice paddy blocked the hamlet from their sight,

  The faint tattering of distant rifle fire marked the beginning of the operation with the army’s initial assault on Vam Tho. Radio silence was automatically lifted. Pete signaled for Dih Dah to bring up the PRC-10. He took the handset from the little Vietnamese, who turned his back so Pete could work the controls, and handed his Stoner to Ensign Cochran. Setting the radio freq required at least three hands.