by Bob Mayer
Kane is a very different man from the one who’d experienced his first combat that day. Physically, the change is startling. He’s lost weight that hadn’t been apparent he could lose. He has practically no body fat, his body is all lean muscle. But it’s in his mind that he’s changed the most and the window into it, his eyes, are deep and withdrawn.
As Carter heads one way, Kane goes to the other end of the platoon. He kneels between two men. “Canteens full?”
Both young soldiers nervously nod, eyes wide.
Kane looks over their gear. Both are FNG, fucking new guys. Kane doubts either of them even shave. He inspects their weapons. “Listen to your squad leader. He’ll take care of you. Do what he says and you’ll be fine.”
The FNGs nod.
Kane moves down the line dispensing advice and as much encouragement as he can muster which is almost nonexistent.
Why are they taking this fucking hill?
Because it’s where the enemy is.
Fierce fighting ahead has been going on for an hour at the head of Alpha company. They’d been going uphill behind Charlie and Delta which have been engaged for even longer. Kane’s platoon has not made contact yet. But that changes in an instant.
Kane hears bugles behind them and instantly knows what that means.
It’s a trap.
The sound of the firing intensifies. Kane recognizes the sound of B-40 rockets and recoilless rifle fire, which means the NVA are dug in. Jets scream overhead, dropping heavy bombs on Hill 875. Artillery fills the gaps between air strikes.
Kane is behind a log, firing his M-16 on semi-automatic, actually aiming. He sees the enemy occasionally, a rarity. Khaki figures flit among the undergrowth and broken jungle. He implicitly understands they can also see him, but he’s always known they can see him. It is usually their advantage having the Americans blundering into them. But now they’re attacking.
He hits some of those figures, but it’s not something to spend a moment on in the heat of battle.
Keep shooting. Issue orders. Hold it together.
Kane glances left and right, checking his men. Two soldiers are fetaled in their hole, not firing. “Carter!” Kane yells, getting his platoon sergeant’s attention. He points at the two.
Carter slithers through the mud and undergrowth to the hole.
Kane can barely hear the radio over the sound of battle; the new company commander is calling in fire. Danger close. ‘Grab them by the belt buckle’. That’s the NVA’s tactic to reduce the American’s artillery and air power superiority. Get so close to the Americans it can’t be used.
Except in the direst of circumstances.
NVA pour out of tunnels and advance through the jungle.
This isn’t the Sky Soldier plan.
This is the NVA plan, long prepared, waiting for the Americans to blunder into the trap. They’re in the midst of tunnels and bunkers and long-planned fields of fire. Surrounded. Charlie Beckwith would be swearing up a storm at the stupidity.
The NVA charge, some of them screaming, some insanely laughing, firing their AKs. To the left, a platoon CP, command post, is overrun, all the Americans killed at close range.
The company commander is standing, firing his pistol into the air to keep men from running; to prevent a complete rout.
Kane drops a magazine, slams another home. Eighteen rounds, he thinks as he starts firing, one part of his brain counting rounds, most of it considering diminishing tactical options. The perimeter is dissolving, men fading uphill toward Charlie and Delta.
“Hold the line!” Kane screams, but his voice withers beneath the screaming of bullets, artillery and jets.
There are too many NVA.
An M60 machinegun is firing nonstop thirty yards away, further down the trail at the location of the OP. It’s the only thing saving Alpha from being completely overrun. Someone is making a stand.
For the moment.
“Hold the line!” Kane yells.
The handset jerks out of Kane’s hand. He turns to see the cause. Blood is pumping from the bloody, gaping hole in the center of what used to be the RTO’s face.
The RTO’s wound saves Kane’s life as a round snaps underneath the front lip of his helmet and plows along the right side of his head and punches a hole through the rear of the helmet.
Stars explode in Kane’s brain and he’s knocked off his feet, steel pot flying.
Kane falls on top of his RTO. Kane is barely conscious, his head ringing. Although his ear is only inches from the soldier’s mouth, he can’t hear the man’s desperate, whispered prayers. He does feel the RTO’s final breath.
Kane’s blood mixes with the RTO’s.
Kane looks up. Jungle, a tiny patch of sky, the canopy shredded by the artillery. Blue sky. A bird flies past. Kane envies it. He can’t get his body to respond. His head has a fire alarm ringing in it.
The sky is blocked by a brown face leaning over him. Strangely, the Vietnamese smiles, revealing a gold tooth in the center. The Vietnamese says something but Kane can’t hear him. He can only see the lips moving.
Bullets snap overhead. Artillery thunders. Kane hears that distantly, on another stage. The M-60 is still burning rounds, a last stand.
He’s going to die. He knows it. The Vietnamese staring at him is going to kill him, just like Ted. He pulls his West Point ring off. Drops it into the blood and piss-soaked mud.
The brown face disappears and Kane feels a tug on his LBE. He’s being dragged. Uphill.
He realizes the Vietnamese is a Montagnard CIDG. Kane tries to help, to push with his feet, but his body isn’t working.
The M-60 goes silent.
“Friendly!” the Vietnamese is calling out and Kane finally hears the word.
They’re passing bodies. American corpses litter the trail that runs uphill toward Charlie and Delta.
“You not too heavy,” his savior says, pauses, smiles once more. He raises his voice. “Friendly!”
Bullets going in both directions crack past Americans running, retreating. Alpha has fallen apart.
Kane wants to stand, to issue orders, save his platoon, save the company. Save his men. He can’t get to his feet.
He’s pulled once more. Through the mud, broken vegetation. Over an eviscerated body smearing blood and gore.
“Friendly!”
They pass between two wide-eyed, frightened paratroopers. They’re pointing their M-16s downhill. The perimeter of Charlie and Delta.
Another five meters. Stops. The brown face is in front of him again. Grabs him by the shoulders and sits him against a tree, facing uphill. Fingers probe the side of his head. He can barely feel them.
“My arm! My arm!” someone is screaming close by. “Where’s my arm?”
Artillery. Bombs explode, the earth shakes.
What circle of hell is this?
“Mom. Mom. Mom.” The voice is insistent.
Kane wishes it would stop. His right eye is full of blood. He can barely see out his left. The casualty collection point is thirty feet away, near the company CP. Too many bodies. Too many.
Father Watters pulls a paratrooper to the collection point. Someone tries to get him to stop, to make him get down, but Watters shrugs him off and heads back to the perimeter.
“Dai Yu?”
Kane focuses on the CIDG.
The man taps his chest. “I’m Thao.”
“Thao,” Kane whispers.
Thao points at the wound. “Lot of blood, but head strong. You be okay.”
“’Okay’?” Kane repeats.
A chopper flits overhead, cases of ammo and medical supplies tossed out, and its away fast, bullets following, tattooing the metal.
Kane puts one hand against the tree. Tries to get to his feet, collapses.
Thao points to the casualty collection point. “I get bandages. You stay. Okay?”
“Right.” Kane’s not sure he actually says the word. Everything is echoing.
Thao scampers off, dodging w
ounded, empty ammo cases, the dead, broken tree trunks, discarded helmets and other debris of war.
His men need him. Kane has to get back in the fight. He tries to wipe the blood out of his right eye but his hand has little strength.
Thao is back. “Easy, Dai Yu.” He wets a piece of cloth with his canteen and wipes Kane’s face, surprisingly gentle amidst all the violence.
Thao has a syringe of morphine.
“No,” Kane tries to wave it off. He has to stay alert. Lead his men.
He doesn’t feel it when Thao hits his thigh with the morphine.
Thao clears Kane’s right eye of blood. Father Watters is on his knees fifteen meters away, cradling a dying soldier in his arms, his head next to the man’s ear, whispering Extreme Unction.
A jet screams by, angled across the axis of the hill, drops its bomb.
Danger close.
The ground convulses. More screams.
“Weapon,” Kane says to Thao. “My weapon.”
Thao smiles. “Many weapons here. Wait, Dai Yu.” He doesn’t have to go far. He returns with a blood smeared M-16.
Thao points toward the sound of the bugles and the AKs and the screams. “I go get more wounded.”
How can anyone be alive there?
How can anyone be alive here?
Kane grasps the M-16, uses it as a crutch to get to his feet. He sees officers gathering near the casualty collection point, coordinating the defense. He takes a step in that direction. Feels a whisper of something. Stops and looks up.
A jet is inbound. But it’s coming from the wrong direction, along the axis of the ridge instead of across like the others.
The last thing Kane sees, silhouetted against the flash of the exploding bomb, is Father Watters making the sign of the cross over a dying soldier.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
New York Minute by Bob Mayer
COPYRIGHT © 2019 by Bob Mayer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author (Bob Mayer) except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
ISBN: 9781621253341
