Long Range Patrol: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 1)

by Dennis Foley

“No. I’m not sure I can take it this morning—”

  “It’d be no trouble. I got two teams coming in in thirty minutes for chow. We got bacon and potatoes cooking now. How ’bout some eggs with it?”

  “No, I have a chopper ride to Nha Trang. It’ll be all I can do to keep this coffee down this early. Thanks, anyway, Sergeant K.”

  Hollister looked at his watch. It was five. Time to head over to the pad. He made one final check. He had decided to put on his regular jungle fatigues. It was commonly held among the LRPs that the REMFs at higher headquarters were crazed with petty jealousy at the sight of soldiers wearing any type of not-completely-authorized uniforms. The fact that the tiger-stripe fatigues had been okayed by Hollister’s Brigade Commander wouldn’t mean much in Nha Trang. Wearing them was asking for a hassle from MP’s, staff clerks, and senior officers who would object to the special status of the LRPs.

  But even in his regular olive-drab jungle fatigues Hollister stood out. His brigade shoulder patch was topped with two distinctive arcs—one reading AIRBORNE, the other a hard-earned Ranger tab. On his chest was an embroidered Combat Infantryman’s Badge and a Senior Parachutist’s Badge. These insignia alone set him apart as one in five thousand soldiers.

  The true discriminator was the Ranger-style LRP scroll patch that was sewn to his right pocket. In 1965 there were only three provisional Long Range Patrol units in Vietnam. New as LRPs were in Vietnam, exaggerated tales of danger and skilled guerrilla fighting were already widespread among the troops. Hollister was just getting used to soldiers staring at him or whispering among themselves when they spotted the insignia. He liked the distinction.

  He patted his shirt pocket to check for his notebook with the patrol notes and the address of the officer he was to see in Nha Trang.

  He looked at the gear that he had packed and stacked on Lucas’s stripped cot. Everything Lucas owned fit into a B-4 bag and a footlocker. The issued uniforms, bedding, and combat gear were segregated to the side for the supply clerk to pick up. Easy would take care of the rest. Hollister knew when he got back there would be no sign that Lucas had ever existed, and that bothered him.

  Just to keep something around that was Lucas’s, Hollister grabbed the corner of an embroidered name tape that simply read LUCAS and ripped it off a shirt.

  There was hardly a faint glow on the horizon as Hollister walked to the chopper pad, but he could make out a slick parked on it, a standby chopper that was always available in the event a patrol made contact during the night. The crew members slept in the chopper for speed.

  “Gooooood morning, Vietnam,” a door gunner said from within the chopper.

  Closer, Hollister made out the outline of the gunner leaning up against the transmission hump. “Know anything about a chopper going to Nha Trang?” Hollister asked.

  “We’re it.”

  The other door gunner slammed the door on the far side of the chopper and walked around to Hollister’s side as he adjusted the one-piece flight suit that he had been sleeping in. “We gotta make a run to Nha Trang for parts, so we’re gonna take you there on your way back to our flight line, Lieutenant.”

  “Great. How soon are we ready?”

  “Just as soon as we load the rest of the passengers.”

  “And here we are,” another voice said out of the dark.

  Hollister turned around. Davis, Doc Norris, Camacho, Theodore, and Vinson were approaching the chopper, shoulder to shoulder.

  “This looks like trouble,” Hollister kidded.

  They stopped at the chopper, still on line. Davis saluted, half seriously announcing, “Sir, Team Two-three prepared for movement to the objective area.”

  Hollister returned the salute and laughed. “D’you suppose that Nha Trang is ready for Two-three?”

  “Let’s surprise ’em, sir. That way we can get ’em with their pants down,” Theodore said.

  “You talkin’ about the boys or the girls?” Vinson asked.

  Theodore took off his cap and made a playful swipe at Vinson.

  CHAPTER 7

  BELTED TIGHTLY INTO THE co-pilot’s seat, Hollister looked over his shoulder at the other LRPs. They were all asleep in the cargo compartment.

  Turning back around, Hollister looked over the instrument panel at the sunrise. Through the headset in his flight helmet he heard the click of the intercom transmit button. “If you are going to be my co-pilot, you are going to have to quit gazing off at the view. That’s for passengers, not pilots.” The voice was Captain Pete Shelton’s—Gladiator 36.

  Although they were seated only eighteen inches apart, the chopper noise made it necessary for them to talk over the intercom.

  Shelton pointed at a small button on the deck near Hollister’s boot. “Step on that when you want to talk.”

  Hollister followed Shelton’s instructions and spoke into the lip mike. “I can see why you guys love this business. It’s gotta be the best view of this war.”

  Shelton laughed. “Yeah, it’s great cruisin’ along at fifteen hundred feet. But when you get down to treetop level it starts getting pretty nasty.”

  “Sure smells a whole lot cleaner up here.”

  “Hmmmm, and a whole lot cooler when folks aren’t shooting at you. So, what d’ya say? You want to fly it for a while?”

  “Me? Fly? Ah … sure. What do I do?”

  “Easy. Put your feet on the pedals. That’ll turn the nose left and right. Take the cyclic—the stick between your knees—in your right hand. That’ll tilt the rotor disk, letting you go where you want to. Just push or pull it. You’ll catch on real quick.”

  Hollister gingerly followed Shelton’s instructions. “What now?”

  “The collective is along the left side of your seat. It controls the basic up and down of the chopper. Since we aren’t going up or down, just don’t fuck with it till your next lesson. The most important thing is who is in control of this beast. If we get into a world of shit, I’ll take control of the ship by saying, ‘I got it.’ When you hear that, pull your hands and feet away from the controls and just let me have it. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Then you got it.” Gladiator let go of the controls, reached into the calf pocket of his flight suit and pulled out a pack of Camels.

  Surprised by how quickly Shelton released control of the chopper, Hollister tightened his grip on the cyclic and applied pressure to one pedal and then the next with a series of overcorrections. His jerky motions made the chopper fishtail, tilt forward and then back; raising the nose to the sky, then more or less straight and level. Hollister heard the door gunner kidding him over the intercom, “Oh my God … we’re all gonna die in Vietnam!”

  Overwhelmed by the responsiveness of the aircraft, Hollister tried to ignore the door gunner and get used to the controls.

  “Give it a little slack,” Shelton said. “Easy, man! You’ve got a death grip on the cyclic. Loosen up.”

  Hollister relaxed his grip and the chopper leveled out and continued on a straight ahead course.

  “Okay, now—try to make some slow and easy moves. Give it a right turn.”

  Hollister pressed the pedal and jerked the cyclic to the right. The chopper took a violent turn with the nose oversteering to the right, the tail coming around to the left. Then the chopper started losing altitude. He quickly pulled back on the cyclic and pressed the left pedal. Overcontrolling—the chopper rocked over to its left and continued to fell off its cushion of air and pick up descending airspeed.

  “Easy, easy,” Shelton said. “Don’t move the controls—think them.”

  “What?” Hollister asked, not understanding Shelton’s instructions. “Think them?”

  “Yeah, just think about pulling back on the cyclic. Just think it.”

  Hollister did what he was told. The nose of the chopper slowly came up. The airspeed fell off slightly and the chopper leveled out.

  “See. This baby will do what you want it to do with a minimum of input. You don’t have to beat th
e shit out of it.”

  The sudden feeling of control excited Hollister. “Man, is this great!” Hollister whispered, forgetting to step on the intercom button.

  Shelton reached over and pointed at a small button among a cluster of other controls on the contoured handgrip of the cyclic. “If your feet are busy, you can press this to talk.”

  Hollister nodded, looked at the button and then pressed it. “This is really, really something terrific.”

  “If you want the truth, we don’t fly for the terrific. We fly to keep from getting assigned to mud-sucking grunt jobs like yours.”

  “Don’t knock it. At least I don’t have to worry much about gravity.”

  “You do now. So … be gentle with it. It’s a powerful machine, but it don’t take a sledgehammer to fly it.”

  Getting used to the feel of the nearly five thousand pounds of flying machine, Hollister made his corrections more subtle and watched the chopper smooth out.

  “That’s better. With some serious work we could probably make a real aviator out of you. But we’d have to get on the job before all your time on the ground causes permanent brain damage,” Shelton said, kidding Hollister.

  “I could get to like this,” Hollister said as he gently rolled the chopper, heading back toward the coastline. As he did, he noticed that the sun had turned into a large orange ball rising out of the near black water.

  “So, you going to Nha Trang to rape and pillage with your guys?”

  “No, sir, I got a command performance. I’ve been called up to Field Force Headquarters to talk to some CID people about the ambush the other night. I haven’t got a clue why.”

  “I’ll bet it has something to do with that ville that got leveled.”

  “Whatville?” Hollister asked, surprised.

  “Hell, didn’t you hear it happen? Bad guys walked into the valley and wiped out an entire hamlet and everyone in it a couple hours before you guys waxed those gooks. Might even be the same VC.”

  “Hear it? Hell, I couldn’t hear anything in that rain. This is all news to me.”

  “Well, I didn’t get the whole story, but there’s some bad shit in the wind,” Shelton said. “So, keep your head down.”

  “My experience tells me to dodge everything in country.”

  “Amen on that,” said one of the door gunners over the intercom.

  The airfield at Nha Trang cut diagonally through the center of the coastal city. Rows of choppers dotted its apron, and vintage Vietnamese Air Force prop-driven Al-E fighter bombers were lined up in front of their hangars.

  The two well-used runways were rice paddies that had been graded and covered with pierced steel planking to make serviceable landing surfaces. The amount of airplane traffic was evident in the absence of grass or weeds growing through the three-inch holes in the PSP.

  Somewhat cramped, Hollister sat in the front seat of the pedal-powdered cyclo as it threaded along the outside of the airfield’s barbed wire.

  The aging Vietnamese cyclo driver wore only threadbare shorts and a scrap of filthy cloth around his neck, which he used to wipe the road grime from his face. Hollister watched the old man as he held his chin up and pumped the pedals with a labored pace, trying not to lose the forward momentum that he had gained. To Hollister, the man was one of the images of Vietnam that he would long remember. He represented the thousands of poor Vietnamese who were trying to hold things together by sheer determination in face of the growing war.

  Children played along the roadside, stopping long enough to pelt the passing Americans with pleas for money and candy and offers of prostitution, soft drinks, and fresh fruit.

  Put out by their behavior, the old man spoke harshly to the children. They hurled insults at him and quickly returned to their play. Hollister assumed that he was really unhappy with what the war and the Americans had done to all of them.

  Nha Trang could have been a city in France if the temperature were cooler. Much of the architecture was French, and the streets frequently converged in traffic circles rather than blunt intersections. The roads were clogged with bicycles, cyclos, motorbikes, three-wheel minitrucks, and endless convoys of military vehicles.

  Standing on a box in the center of one circle was a Vietnamese traffic policeman wearing a splendid khaki uniform with white leggings, gloves, and a hat that was large for his small head. Though he took his job very seriously, not one driver paid attention to the policeman’s whistle blasts or exaggerated hand signals.

  As the cyclo turned onto the beach road, Hollister motioned for the old man to pull over. Then he got out of the cyclo and paid up.

  Straightening the skirt of his jungle fatigue shirt, Hollister automatically checked to see that all his buttons were fastened. It was a habit learned at the Seventh Army NCO Academy in Germany that had become automatic.

  Fairly confident, he started toward the headquarters building entrance. Walking past two sentries, Hollister returned the salutes of the starched, pressed, and spit-shined American soldiers in the sandbagged shack outside what had once been a fine French hotel.

  As he climbed the steep flight of steps, Hollister looked back across the boulevard at the narrow ribbon of blinding white sand that edged the blue-green waters of the coastline less than fifty yards away. As beautiful as the town was, no one living there had ever seen it without troops. Before the Americans, there had been the French, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Cambodians, and on and on back into the history of the country. He realized how lucky Americans were to have spent a hundred years since the last bloody battles of their own civil war.

  The words GRAND HOTEL had been carved into the masonry over the large entrance, but the freshly painted wooden sign that hung above it read: HEADQUARTERS, I FIELD FORCE, VIETNAM.

  Hollister entered.

  “Can I help you, Lieutenant?” asked a sharply dressed MP standing at a reception desk.

  “Yes, I’m looking for, ah …” Hollister pulled his notebook from his pocket and checked. “Captain Wasco.”

  “Yessir. Captain Wasco is down in the basement—Room Eleven.” The MP pointed to the stairs and Hollister took them.

  Just inside the doorway to Room 11 a pretty Vietnamese woman in her early thirties sat at a desk in her tightly fitted traditional ao dai. “Good morning, Trung-Uy,” she said as she stood up.

  “Oh, hi … good morning.” Hollister smiled and snatched his hat from his head. “I’m Lieutenant Hollis—”

  “Trung-Uy Hollister. I know. Captain Wasco is expecting you. You will wait, please?” She stepped away from her desk and went into another room. Hollister tried to be subtle about watching her trim little behind as she shifted around the typing table next to her desk and walked away.

  Wasco was a truck of a man. In his late thirties, he was balding and addicted to cheap White Owl cigars. His uniform was heavily starched, but with none of the fading that a field soldier’s gets. The branch insignia on his collar indicated that he was a Military Intelligence officer—a spook. He sat across the table from Hollister while another American in cotton slacks and a short-sleeved shirt flipped through several pieces of paper in a folder that had a classified document cover sheet on it. The warning on the cover read: SECRET—NOFORN. He placed the folder on the table and opened the maroon book next to it to a marked passage.

  “Lieutenant, my name is Mr. Elliott. I’m from Criminal Investigation Division. Let me start by telling you that it is my duty to read you your rights under the provisions of Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

  Hollister straightened in shock.

  Elliott continued, “Article 31 of the UCMJ specifies that no person subject to this code shall compel any person to make any statement or answer any questions without first being advised that any statement made by him can and will be used against him in a trial by courts-martial—”

  “Hold it! Just what’s going on here?”

  “Sit down, Hollister,” Wasco said. “You’re not being charged with anything
, but we have to advise you of your rights before we question you.”

  “Question me about what? I know my rights. I know them by heart. You don’t need to read them to me.” He sat back down. “Just tell me what’s going on. I’ll tell you both right now that I have nothing to hide.”

  Wasco and Elliott exchanged glances. Elliott closed the red book and leaned forward on the desk. “Six South Viet families were executed in the An Hoa valley only a few miles from where you had an ambush set up.

  “Vietnamese Army units searched the area next morning and found that the people were killed with American weapons. And U.S. equipment was found at the site. They’re suggesting that an American unit did it, and they’re pissed.”

  Hollister was baffled. “Is this a supporting-fires thing? Somebody think I dropped artillery on those people or rolled gunships in on them? ’Cause if that’s what you’re getting to—”

  “Wait, hold it. Just relax, Lieutenant,” Wasco said. “Let’s go through this by the numbers. Elliott and I want to get to the bottom of this. We have to give Saigon some answers, and right away. Now, you are the closest thing we have to any information about the incident, and we want to hear everything you know.”

  “Me?”

  Wasco slid a map out from under a pile of papers and tapped it with his fingers. The map had U.S. and Vietnamese unit locations marked on it. “You just about owned the valley that night. The nearest allied unit was over thirteen klicks away.”

  “Okay … what do you want to know?”

  “We want you to tell us the whole story from the time you got the patrol warning order till you got back.”

  “Sure, yessir. I can do that. But I don’t know anything about—”

  “Just tell us what you do know,” Wasco said. “We’ll try not to ask you what you don’t know.”

  Using his notebook, for the next two hours Hollister recounted the minute details of the ambush patrol. The questioning went on an additional hour after that. They stopped only to read back dates, times, and grid coordinates for accuracy.

  While they did, Hollister pulled the stack of black and white photographs they had been looking at to his side of the table and spread them out. Each photo was marked with the date, time, and compass direction of the photo. He was horrified by what he saw. Children were burned and crushed by the weight of their collapsing houses. Several of the old people were photographed in death with their arms around each other and around what Hollister assumed had been their grandchildren. And the remains of assorted livestock littered what was left of My Phu.