One Very Hot Day

by David Halberstam

  Almost instantly, perhaps because of the last question, Dang broke the conversation off. But now the old man wanted to talk: he was glad to welcome people like Dang here, Dang must have tea with him, a man who has killed as many Frenchmen as Dang must pay him honor to share tea. Dang, irritated, said no, they had work ahead of them. Ah, many of this new enemy to kill, said the old man, this new enemy with the strange language. The old man seemed to wink at Dang; and Dang said yes, that was it, they would come back another time to drink the tea. Beaupre had been amused by the entire conversation at first, but he was a little worried now, afraid that it would embarrass Dang and make it more difficult for him to take the slight detour Beaupre wanted.

  chapter seven

  They were about to leave the village when Dang sought Beaupre out. “I have decided to play games with the Communist Vietcong,” he said. “We will set a trap for him.”

  Beaupre listened; he suspected that this meant Dang had decided to follow his advice, to swing the main party off the prescribed route to a subsidiary canal at the last minute and to send a recon element along the main route.

  “I have decided we will go here,” said Dang, pointing to the subsidiary canal, parallel and less than a half mile from the main canal. “Then if the Communist Vietcong are on the Dong Thien canal, they will attack our patrol, and we will swing around and [there was a pause] I will destroy him.” He banged his fist into his hand. “If he is along the smaller canal, I will destroy him there too.”

  You miserable little sonofabitch, Beaupre thought, and smiled, relieved, his hand reaching up to touch Dang's shoulder. He praised the plan, it was typical, he said, of the many things that Captain Dang had taught him about this war. The enemy would be off balance, thanks to Captain Dang, and the enemy would pay for this. You miserable little sonofabitch, he thought.

  Then they began to work out details of the plan. The decoy patrol would have eight men, and at least one automatic weapon. They would make as much noise as possible, they would carry transistor radios and play them and they could talk in the ranks. They would file out of Ap Thanh along with the rest of the unit, but once outside, the rest of the unit would slip off and make the detour, and the recon patrol would keep going straight down the main canal. It was not a bad plan, and they agreed quickly; but later as they were breaking from the village, Beaupre checked the weapons of the recon patrol. My God, he thought, they're as happy and unperturbed as if they were going to Saigon on a weekend pass. He looked at them and wondered if he would ever understand these people; he knew that American troops would be tense and bitter in a situation like this; he was not sure if it were American troops he would even dare to have a decoy patrol. He found only carbines and M-1s.

  “Captain, there seems to be some mistake,” Beaupre told Dang. “There is no automatic weapon among the recon patrol.”

  “I do not think there is any mistake, Captain Bopay,” Dang said. “I do not think there will be any problem.”

  “But these men may need an automatic weapon. If they get ambushed, they'll need time until you can swing around and reach them, Captain Dang. I know you'll be coming very fast, but they'll need help.”

  “I do not think they will have any trouble with the Communist Vietcong,” Dang said. “I do not think any mistake has been made. Perhaps you do not understand.”

  Oh, I understand all right, Beaupre thought, I've been in this country long enough and that's one of the things I've learned to understand. Saigon would not like losing a BAR; it was one thing an officer could not lie about; he could lie about the number of dead troops but not an automatic weapon. He looked at Dang for a long minute and felt a little sick, and for a brief moment he wished he had not thought of the detours and decoys.

  In each of his different wars Beaupre had always had visions of death, but they had all been quite different and separate. In World War II the vision had been of a shell, a giant shell from a tank or cannon coming on him before he could hear it, so there was no real listening for it, with only enough noise in the final split second to confirm all his fears, splashing his body in all different directions, his arms and legs coming off, his body scrambled. In Korea the vision had differed. It was more theatrical, crossing the lines, and then betrayed by a double agent, captured in some freezing little hut, then two days of questioning without food so that his strength ebbed by the minute in the cold, until finally it didn't matter or not whether he lived; and a bullet in the head, no one to rescue him because no one even knew that he needed to be rescued. In Vietnam it had been different, an idea less persistent because the thought of death had not been so persistent. He was not pursued by it here as he had been in Korea, here it was more creative, the idea evolving slowly, sniper bullet, just one — a chance bullet really because they were such bad shots — then dying slowly and warmly for a period of an hour because no one could get him to a medic, a process made all the more terrible, the very slowness of it, by his ability to study and watch and record his own death. The whole thing would be judged a mistake later, would be doubly regretted, that the sniper had actually hit him, that the medic had not arrived, for afterward the wound would be judged an easy one to treat, it would all be a mistake, his death would be more cause for cursing the impotence of the country. Others would do the cursing.

  He was on the radio now, talking carefully in their code, asking for air support to be ready. The CP was obviously amused, and the surprise came over the radio. Beaupre, after all, was the leading Air Force baiter at the bar, he hated the Air Force, mocked the zoomies, they were clean sheets men, he referred to them as the movie stars; they had, he would say, his voice mocking, the handsomest colonels and generals of any branch of service, even better-looking than the Marines, their generals looked like lieutenants with gray sprinkled in their hair, their skins still soft and young. Over the radio he could hear the CP's surprise and amusement, you want the zoomies. Through the code Beaupre was able to tell that the T-28s were not ready at the moment. “Tomorrow isn't good enough,” Beaupre said.

  “You're not the only one we've got,” the CP said. “You haven't even been shot at.”

  “We're about to have that remedied,” Beaupre said.

  “I can't promise anything,” said the CP.

  “Try for before nightfall,” said Beaupre. “For old times' sake.”

  “Look,” said the CP, “you don't have cause to talk like that with me. It isn't my fault. I don't do the requisitioning around here. I had 'em, you'd get them, but I don't have them. I'm doing the best I can. Soon as I get 'em, you'll be the first to know. Can't give you what I don't have. It's not so easy being here. You think you have all the problems.”

  “That's right,” said Beaupre, “I think I have all the problems.”

  Beaupre turned back to the troops: they were moving well, and they were keeping the silence demanded of them; for once he was relatively pleased with them. For once they seemed serious. Maybe they were thinking about death as much as he was; maybe they didn't want to die any more than he did. He was near the point, and he was nervous as they moved into relatively open country.

  The first burst hit behind Beaupre and killed fifteen men. The first thing Beaupre knew was that it had happened, and then that he was still alive. He heard screams from behind him and then another burst, this one very long as if the gunner's finger had gotten stuck in the trigger and he couldn't stop. Beaupre was down, not returning the fire, simply down and alive and trying to find out what had happened, trying to catch his breath and trying to stay alive. It had happened so quickly, even though he knew it might happen and had almost expected it, that he did not even remember what the scene had looked like before the burst. They had been moving along the canal, and were still short of a junction. There was some thick foliage to the right of them and the canal was to the left. He looked behind him and could tell from the way the bodies were sprawled out that there were a lot of dead. The other troops, the living, seemed hopelessly disorganized, and he wondered why
there seemed to be so much confusion. Why wasn't someone in charge, he thought. Someone should be in charge. He looked at the way the troops were sprawled out and decided the VC must have hit the midsection of the column and not the point because they wanted a government officer and Arvin officers were rarely at the point. Because of that, he was alive.

  The main weapon, or at least what seemed to be the main weapon, opened up again. It was to the left, on the other side of the canal, perhaps fifty yards away, perhaps closer. There was still no answering fire. He looked further down the column and realized that there must have been two simultaneous bursts. There was a second pocket of sprawled bodies, and Beaupre had the terrible feeling one of them was an American.

  His first job was to mark the weapons. One he was sure now was a light machine gun. He listened to see if there were another machine gun, and finally decided it was a BAR up ahead of him somewhere. The machine gunner was firing off long bursts and Beaupre's first reaction was that it was unusual for them to throw ammo around like that, they must be cocky. Usually they were like instructors at the range, firing off short bursts, never wasting ammunition.

  Behind him the Vietnamese were simply lying down. They were also, he realized, looking at him as if it were for him to tell them where and when they would die, right there where they lay or perhaps a few yards forward, right now or in ten minutes. He sensed somehow that he was now the unofficial commander; he did not know whether Dang was dead or not, but it probably made little difference. Dang could give no commands now. He crawled a few yards toward better cover, took a grenade, pulled the pin and threw it. It fell on the other side of the canal, hopelessly short, but at least it was fire returned. He took his Armalite, aimed it where the light machine gun was and fired off his own short burst, then slipped back to better cover. An answering burst, much longer, much surer, than his, came right back. He felt that the Viets were still watching him and waiting. He wanted to yell at them to fire, but he did not know the Vietnamese word for fire. Perhaps if he fought, they would finally, reluctantly, fight too. Behind him he could still hear the sounds of the Viets dying, though the sounds were lower and softer by the minute. When he first came to the country, he had been told the Vietnamese were not like Americans, they died silently, but it was wrong, they died like everyone else. He could not see Dang or the young Vietnamese lieutenant, but he was sure that the silence confirmed Anderson's death. Anderson, if nothing else, was ferociously aggressive; he would have emptied several clips by now, he would be rallying troops, his voice, that voice so distinctly West Point even when he spoke Vietnamese, would have been loud and clear. Beaupre fired another burst and signaled to one of the Viets behind him with a grease gun to come forward. He noticed that even though they were hugging the ground and not firing, they were watching him intently. They want to live too, we all want to live, he thought, and they will do what I want. Miraculously the Viet crawled forward. There was a long burst from the side machine gun, but it fell short.

  He did not speak the language so he used his hands. He signaled to the soldier that he wanted to talk with Captain Dang, that he would return — that was the important part, that he would return — but that the Viet must keep firing until he got back. He caught the eye of another one, motioned him to a tree a few yards back and told him to fire. He used his hands, and when the Viet took up a position, Beaupre nodded his approval, and the Viet grinned. Good God, Beaupre thought, they grin even here. The Viet began to fire. Beaupre started to crawl back and again, a miracle, both Vietnamese began to cover him. He moved back conscious of his own fear, and strangely enough, his sanity. He sensed for the first time that because the VC had taken such good cover on the other side of the canal they lacked the elevation for their field of fire, and therefore it was possible to crawl. They had made that one mistake. God bless, he thought, they were not perfect, they were like us too, they did not want to die.

  He heard the exchange of fire as he moved back and reached the site of the first burst. There was a trail of dead Vietnamese. They were scattered in all directions, as if someone with a giant hand had rolled them out like dice. He realized that he did not recognize them or know their names. One of them had been sucking on a sugarcane stalk and the cane was still in his mouth. Beside him was another man with part of his face shot away, he had been caught in the chin and neck. The first burst, Beaupre thought, had obviously been a little high or it might have been worse. Another lay toppled over on his side, with his palm outstretched as if he had been praying; another lay sprawled down, his eyes closed, completely silent, but his transistor radio on, either he had switched it on when he was dying, or else he had violated the noise blackout, the radio was playing their damn singsong music. Beaupre saw a tiny little man with a BAR lying next to him — they always gave the biggest weapons to their smallest people — and wrestled the weapon out of his hands and continued to crawl. He saw three Viets still alive, not even holding their weapons, their faces turned away from the enemy. He motioned for them to fire, but they were not ready. He cursed them bitterly, racially, fight, you goddamn gooks, he said. They refused to understand or heed his curses. He crawled toward one, grabbed a weapon, and jammed the stump of it into the man's stomach. The soldier reluctantly accepted the weapon, and then the others too, slowly, so very slowly, moved to pick up their weapons. He turned and fired a burst himself, received another in return, and then finally the three soldiers began to fire.

  He went further back. He could see Anderson now. He had been hit and spun around, and was lying face to the sky with his mouth still open. He had been hit in the neck and chest. Beaupre looked for Captain Dang but could not see him. Goddamn, he thought, he was supposed to be here near the center. He looked again, finally spotting Dang a few yards away, apparently hit in the legs but quite obviously suffering more from shock, sitting there motionless. Beaupre suddenly needed the young Vietnamese Lieutenant Thuong, that was his name. He looked around and cursed the Lieutenant. Bugged out too, not surprising, they all do. He decided to wait there a minute or two, and then if necessary, go after him. Just then he saw Thuong moving slowly toward him.

  He told Thuong that Anderson was dead. “Captain Dang is as good as dead, too,” he added.

  The Lieutenant said gently that Captain Dang had been fighting the war for a long time. The response coming then, so soft, with both of them under fire and flattened out on the ground, moved him.

  The Lieutenant added, “I am sorry, Captain, but I do not think there will be any help for us.” Beaupre took Anderson's radio and called the CP. The CP had already heard reports of the ambush from the Viets and had assumed that both Anderson and Beaupre were dead.

  “I'm still alive,” said Beaupre.

  “We're all damn glad about that,” the CP said. “You stay in there, hear, we'll get some help to you soon.”

  “What can you give me right now? We need it now!” said Beaupre.

  “The choppers went back to Soc Trang thirty minutes ago,” the CP said. “There isn't much chance of their coming back. Most of the reserve force is already committed and Co is afraid of an even bigger ambush. He's very edgy,” the CP said.

  “Stuff Co,” Beaupre said.

  “How big is it?” asked the CP.

  “I don't know,” Beaupre said. “Yes, it's big, I'm big. For God's sake, can't you send me something? What about the T-28s?”

  The CP said that one of them had engine trouble so they both had gone back to Bien Hoa.

  “Send one of them,” Beaupre said.

  “They like to fly in pairs,” the CP said. “They don't like it alone. Air Force is touchy about that.”

  “I'm touchy, too,” Beaupre said.

  There was a moment of silence, and then the CP asked: “You going to make it?”

  “I'll let you know later,” Beaupre said.

  “Look,” the CP said, “if I said anything earlier too smart, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I know how it is out there. Okay?”

  “Okay,” sa
id Beaupre, “I know.” Jesus, he thought, they must really be giving me up; doesn't want any angry words hanging on his conscience.

  Beaupre listened for a moment and heard only the sounds of Communist automatic weapons. Tell them to return the goddamn fire, he screamed at the Lieutenant. Can't you make them do even that? What the hell kind of people are they? He might be wrong, but he thought he detected a look of sympathy on the Lieutenant's face; perhaps his own fear showed too clearly.

  “I don't want to die here either, Captain,” said the Lieutenant.

  Thuong had been near the tail end of the column when the ambush began. He rolled over behind a clump of trees not knowing at first whether or not it was cover, but wanting to get down, not knowing where the fire was coming from. He sensed that the attack was coming from the front of the column, and so he slowly began to work his way toward its head. He came by the radio man. The radio was still on but the operator was slumped down. Thuong crawled to it, picked it up, and moved to his left toward cover as a burst came near.

  “We are hit, we are hit,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” the Headquarters said.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice calm, “I am sure. We are hit, heavy casualties.”

  His voice sounded too calm and almost indifferent. The CP did not recognize it, for he rarely went on the radio himself.

  “Where is Nguyen?” Headquarters asked, giving the name of the radio man.

  “Nguyen is dead,” he answered, perhaps lying, because he had not even checked the pulse.

  The radio came back with a coded password which confused Thuong at first. He did not use the radio often and he had forgotten the password; finally he remembered, gave it, and told the Headquarters: “We are not VC. We are not VC, but we are hit.”

  “We wanted to be sure,” the Headquarters said.