A Long Way Back

by J. Everett Prewitt

  “Warfield, I’ll still need someone to stand guard. Switch off with Holland in two hours, then Frankford, Turner, Glover. If you guys hear or see anything, wake me.”

  The dream started out fine. Stinson held his wife and their child in one arm and his rifle in the other when Darlene and Jerome began to fade into a grayish mist. He called her name, but she didn’t answer. Stinson stood waiting until a barely discernible noise in the haze grew to a deafening drone. He raised his rifle as thousands of VC charged at him from where his wife and son had disappeared.

  The clatter of gunfire startled him awake. Confused and sweating, he wiped his face and shook his head to clear the fog. The noises were real. Although the salvo was more than a mile away, he could see an occasional weapon flash and hear the faint screams either of men giving orders or men crying for help. All of his soldiers gathered at the edge. Within five minutes, the shots became sporadic and the voices silent.

  Stinson wondered if those were the men they were to meet. If so, why were they so far away? And assuming it was an ambush, were they the ambushers or the ambushed?

  It was another four hours before sunrise and too soon to see anything. He assumed Fletcher and the other two men had heard it, too, and wondered what they were thinking. He looked down in their direction but saw no one.

  Stinson looked at Turner. “Anything come to mind?”

  “No, Sarge.”

  The firing stopped.

  Stinson took a deep breath. “I guess we wait.”

  The rest of the night was like the first. Nobody slept. Everyone faced the direction of the battle, peering into the darkness—not as nervous as before, but wary.

  At dawn, a sinking sensation hit Stinson as he peered into the jungle with his field glasses, trying to detect any movement. Still no contact. If the men engaged in gunfire were the soldiers Stinson’s squad was to meet up with, those men were probably in trouble, which meant he and his men were, too.

  Stinson turned away, trying to plot the next move. Minutes passed as the men waited. It had been twenty hours since they were to have rendezvoused with the 1st Cav. How were they going to get out if they had no idea where they were?

  He pulled the map to look again.

  “There’s movement, Sarge.”

  “Where?”

  “Men running.”

  “I see.”

  “Toward us.”

  “I see. I see.” Stinson caught glimpses of men moving fast through the jungle, heading toward Fletcher’s area. They’d have to cross a rice paddy to make it.

  “Take firing positions. Don’t shoot unless I say so.”

  Stinson sat on his haunches, staring through the field glasses before exhaling. “They look like ours, but be alert.”

  “More movement, Sarge,” Casper noted, pointing about six hundred yards behind the running men. “Dressed in brown and black.”

  “Charlie!” Frankford whispered.

  “Ward, Bankston. Take positions on the left. Watch the chasers,” Stinson instructed.

  The men in front approached the rice paddy. Stinson counted twelve. He needed to warn Fletcher and the other two that friendlies were nearby.

  Stinson peered over the edge of the ridge but couldn’t pinpoint Fletcher’s location. “Fletcher!” he shouted. “Fletcher!”

  The men crossed the rice paddy and headed back into the jungle toward the rendezvous area. Thirty seconds later, two shots were fired, then three more.

  “Damn!” Stinson muttered as he paced.

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  rung was elated. Eight enemies killed in the ambush and only one of her men wounded. Twelve more Americans would be dead soon. She’d sent twenty men to pursue them. What the American soldiers didn’t know was ten more were waiting on a hill across from the ridge if they tried to head south. Another ten were waiting among the trees if they tried to run east, the only two directions they could go.

  It appeared they had run south. If so, she would hear another gun battle signaling the end of those soldiers. Then she would take care of the black ones.

  Trung squatted with her men and waited.

  Stinson looked down again. Neither Fletcher and the others, or the ones being chased, were visible. The men in black stopped at the edge of the rice paddy as if waiting for a signal. They were VC. Should he wait for them to get closer or take out as many as he could?

  They were four hundred yards away. “Bankston. Ward. Shoot the ones you can see. Everybody else get down. I don’t want them to see how many we are.”

  Three shots rang out from the ridge. “One, two, three,” the two called to each other. Stinson peered out from behind a rock as two soldiers clad in black went down and then one more before the rest faded into the jungle.

  Just then, the hill across from them erupted with gunfire as the ridge wall behind the men spit red stone shrapnel.

  “Return fire!” Stinson commanded, pointing at the hill, hoping Fletcher and the other two were out of harm’s way.

  Except for Bankston and Ward, the rest of the men fired wildly at the hill. “One,” Ward counted as he fired his third shot.

  “Two, three,” Bankston answered.

  “Four, five,” Ward continued as firing from the hill slowed.

  “Cease fire,” Stinson ordered as he peered at the hill through his field glasses. He saw two bodies clad in black sprawled next to a tree, but no movement.

  Frankford pointed as one of the sprawled bodies moved. Both Bankston and Ward fired simultaneously as the body slumped to the ground. Stinson looked at the edge of the rice paddy where the other VC had stopped. He saw no one. He looked at his men and wondered if any of them had noticed he’d been unable to fire his weapon, again.

  Trung sensed the chase hadn’t gone well. The last weapons fired were American. But they didn’t belong to the soldiers they’d ambushed. It was the black soldiers. Out of the din of gunfire, she’d heard the same rifles that had killed the tiger. Among the noise of battle, it was the sound of their rifles and the steady, unrushed firing that gave them away.

  She balled her fist in rage. She would remember those sounds when the Americans were surrounded and begging for their lives.

  “We need to get off this ridge,” Stinson said to Casper. “There’s only one way up and one way down. I’m not sure how many Charlies are out there, but if they find the entrance, they could keep us holed up here until we run out of ammo.”

  Casper looked at the jungle below. “I agree with you, Sarge.”

  Stinson glanced at Turner. Turner nodded, too. It wasn’t an epiphany this time. It just made good sense.

  “Sarge?”

  Stinson didn’t like the sound of Sampson’s voice.

  “Sarge?”

  Stinson rushed past the men moving down from the ridge, almost tripping over Somner’s sprawled body, his hand still clutching his weapon.

  A burning sensation like a tracer round shot through his chest. “What happened?”

  “He was laying there when I got here,” Sampson explained.

  “You see anybody else?” Stinson asked, stripping Somner of his dog tag, ammo, grenades, canteen, and rifle.

  “No.”

  “He must have tried to join us.” The burning inside Stinson intensified, fearing Fletcher and Matthews had met the same fate.

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  here was no activity on the ridge. Trung figured they would come off it. Her heart pumped furiously as she ran with her men to catch the black soldiers before they descended.

  She didn’t hesitate as they reached the edge of the rice paddy and began to run across—a mistake she would never have made if she hadn’t been so eager. The soldiers who’d fled from her trap fired on them. Her soldiers veered to the right and to the left as two fell.

  The gunfire near the rice paddy told Stinson what he needed to know. They were coming his way. Based on the amount of gunfire, Stinson figured the Americans being chased were the ones shootin
g.

  It took a second before he decided. “How many grenades we got? The men raised one or two fingers. Follow me,” he directed as he sprinted through the jungle.

  Stinson’s thoughts were clear. If they came up the opposite side of the hill, they’d hook up with the runners and take out the remaining VC. There couldn’t be more than four or five enemies left. And if they seized the hill, they would have an advantage over the VC charging south.

  It was obvious the other Americans were on their own. By this time, there should have been air support, artillery, something. The ambushed soldiers must not have had radio contact either.

  The foot of the hill was four hundred yards away. Stinson heard the grunts and puffing behind him as they sprinted down a path he had spotted from the ridge. When they got within 100 yards, he led them off the path, moving as fast as possible through the trees, bushes, and vines parallel to it.

  The firing had stopped. Stinson could only guess what was next. He stayed at a point twenty yards ahead of his men as they approached. He motioned them to spread out and be prepared as they advanced. Thirty yards from the base of the hill, Stinson and his men stopped, looking and listening. They remained that way for two minutes before they moved forward.

  Blood trails, an abandoned M1 carbine, a rubber sandal, footprints, and grooves in the ground where a body had been dragged away gave Stinson a moment of relief. “Turner!” he whispered.

  “Yeah, Sarge?”

  “What you think?”

  “I…I don’t. Nothing, Sarge.”

  “Okay. No problem. Just checking.”

  The foot of the hill was twenty yards away. Stinson stopped every other step. There were enough shrubs and trees to cover an enemy, and it only took one VC, one bullet, to change things.

  Stinson motioned for the men to get down. “Ward, Bankston, cover me as best you can,” he instructed the two as he continued to crawl forward.

  It didn’t sound as if the gunfire was that close, but he felt a hammerlike punch in his left shoulder and leg. A boiling-oil-like pain followed. He rolled behind a tree as the firing continued.

  “Sarge is hit,” Stinson heard someone say as he lay listening to another salvo of fire and the explosion of grenades. Then the hill was silent. Stinson’s mind told him he could carry on. His body told him different. Casper pulled Stinson behind a tree at the bottom of the hill where Warfield cleaned and dressed the wounds.

  “We need to get to the top,” Stinson whispered.

  “We are, Sarge.”

  “We…”

  “There were five Charlies left,” Casper reported. “We got them; we got the hill.”

  “Good.” Stinson tried to stand but fell. “Make sure they…where’s Fletcher and Matthews? Where are the other Americans?”

  “Don’t know, Sarge, but I know you need to stay down,” Casper said.

  “You the sergeant now?” Stinson shot back.

  “No, Sarge,” Casper responded, “but you are too weak to stand.”

  Stinson glared at Casper and stood. “Make sure the men are in place. The rest of the VC will be coming soon. I’ll cover this area.”

  “You want someone with you?”

  “No,” Stinson said, waving Casper off as he took a position behind a tree, collapsing, before regaining his balance, then looking around to see if anyone saw it.

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  rung reassembled her men, upset she hadn’t been able to get to the black soldiers before they left the ridge. But now everybody was together. She couldn’t have wished for a better gift.

  By the time the sun had risen to its greatest height, so would her status as a fighter.

  In battle, silence is as scary as noise, Stinson thought, trying to keep his mind off the burning pain in his leg and shoulder. A sound to the left startled him as he jerked his head around. Men were running. Stinson pulled out a grenade, pointed one of his weapons toward the noise, and lay prone, waiting.

  Bursting through the jungle in front of him were eight men—eight Americans. Stinson had never been so happy to see white faces in his life.

  He started to signal them when gunfire erupted. Two fell, then two more as the others took cover. There was protective fire from his men on the hill before the silence, broken seconds later by the thrashing of men running through the jungle in the distance. There was more gunfire in the direction the men had run, then silence again. Stinson pounded the dirt with his fist, wondering if any had survived.

  Suddenly, another burst of gunfire commenced from the top of the hill. Screams of pain preceded more firing before it slacked off with intermittent shooting, then increased in volume and intensity again. Stinson rolled over as someone approached him from the rear.

  “Sarge?” Frankford whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here. There are too many of ’em,” he gasped. “And we’re running out of ammo.”

  “Where are they?”

  “On the other side. They tried to come around the east side of the hill, chasing some American soldiers, but we beat them back.”

  “You get any of their weapons and ammo?”

  “Yeah. Three AKs and a couple of bandoliers.”

  “Everybody okay?”

  Frankford shook his head. “Sampson.”

  Stinson sighed. Sampson was another one of the good ones. In spite of his outburst with Robinson, it was too soon in his life to find whether God existed or not. He looked around, trying to gather his thoughts. “Okay. Tell the men to come past me and move south.”

  Stinson took a deep breath. How many more were going to die before it was over?

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  rung had underestimated the black soldiers. They had proven to be fighters. Moving to the ridge was smart. Getting off the ridge was even smarter. Now they would try to hold the hill, but it would only delay the inevitable. The men had been in the jungle for four days. They had to be tired, hungry, and running out of ammunition.

  Trung ordered two of her men to recon the hill with caution. She’d already lost twelve. They took twenty minutes to return. The hill, they reported, was vacated. Where’d they go so fast?

  Casper bent to pick up Stinson as the men trotted past him.

  “Leave me. I’ll slow you down.”

  “No way, Sarge,” Casper replied, grunting as he heaved Stinson onto his back. Stinson winced, not at the pain, but at the thought he might be the cause of his men being killed. He looked around after Casper had run about thirty yards, pushed himself off Casper’s back and rolled into a bank covered by bushes. “Get the fuck out of here,” he demanded a bewildered Casper. “Go. I know what I’m doing. Tell the men if any of them try to come back for me, I will shoot them.”

  “This here,” he hissed at Casper, waving to the surrounding area, “is now a free-fire zone.” Stinson drew his right hand palm down across his throat.

  Casper was so startled by the fierceness in Stinson’s raspy voice, he could only stare. Then he ran, looking back once more.

  Stinson held up his hand, his fingers spread, then brought them together in a fist.

  Casper nodded and did the same before disappearing into the jungle.

  As he settled into the brush behind a fallen tree, Stinson’s mind wandered as he thought of the series of circumstances that had gotten him to a place where there was but one conclusion. There were no more choices.

  He should have been angry, but he wasn’t. Stinson shrugged as calm descended upon him like a warm blanket. Death wasn’t as terrifying when you accepted its inevitability.

  Stinson looked around, at last appreciating what the place could be without men with guns. He marveled at the majesty of the trees; the beauty of the red, yellow, and purple flowers; and the varied greens of the grass and bushes. Where they were foreboding to him in the past, their lushness now brought a sense of serenity.

  Satisfied he’d at least come to terms with a jungle that had caused
so much agony and grief, he grimaced in pain as he pulled out his grenades and pointed the two rifles. The hands that shook minutes ago were now steady as he awaited the approaching footsteps. The snake within never stirred.

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  xhausted from their mad dash for safety, the nine men slowed to a walk when they realized no one was following them. As they were running, they heard the gunfire and grenades, then silence.

  “Where’s Sarge?” Warfield asked Casper.

  “He pushed off me, rolled into the bushes, and told me if we tried to come get him he would shoot us,” Casper said, still attempting to catch his breath.

  “What?” Robinson asked, stopping. “You left him?”

  “He didn’t give me a choice!”

  Robinson looked at the other men who had bunched together listening.

  “S-sounds like Sarge,” Holland said.

  The others nodded in agreement. Robinson stared at Casper as if trying to read his mind. Tears welled up, then he sobbed. Others wiped their eyes as they reached an open field and double-timed across.

  A crashing sound in the jungle to their right caused the men to hit the ground and raise their weapons. The soldiers braced until Warfield who had taken the point position whispered, “They’re ours!”

  Fletcher and Matthews burst through the foliage almost tripping over Warfield. Fletcher raised his weapon until he saw Warfield’s face. “Jesus Christ! I almost took you out.”

  “Yeah? Well, I almost took you out, too. Where were you guys?” Glover asked.

  “We didn’t know who was running toward us back there, so we fired a few shots then split. A few seconds later, a battle began. We didn’t look back.”

  Casper glared at Fletcher. “Those were our soldiers you were shooting at.”