by Dennis Foley
THE CHAPLAIN’S WORDS WERE not registering on Hollister. He stood there with his head bowed, hands loosely clasped in front of him, and said his own prayer for the dead soldiers.
The memorial ceremony had been put off once—long enough to add the two recent deaths to the list of the soldiers being remembered.
The chaplain’s prayer ended and Captain Michaelson called the detachment to attention and barked out the command to present arms. Unarmed, each man saluted. On a nearby berm a firing squad raised their rifles to their shoulders and fired the first volley of blanks to salute the lost warriors.
Standing out in front of his platoon, Hollister looked at the rifles, stuck bayonet down into the dirt. In front of each rifle was a pair of shined, laced-up jungle boots. And on the tops of the rifle butts were floppy hats—all except one. It had a flight helmet in place of the LRP headgear.
Each rifle represented a soldier lost since the last memorial ceremony. Hollister thought it was a nice gesture to include the death of Mr. Patterson in the ceremony and to invite the chopper crews.
After the last volley, Michaelson ended the salute and dismissed the detachment. Hollister didn’t leave for his hooch. He was drawn by the emotion of the ceremony to remember the faces of the men he had lost. He could picture every one of them—including those from his rifle platoon before he came to the LRPs. But he remembered them alive, not in the moments after their deaths. The dark mood, a feeling of helplessness, came over him and brought him down even lower than the ceremony had.
He turned and started to his hooch, unable to get the deaths out of his mind. He wondered if this was temporary or if it was going to dog him for the rest of his tour. He was very aware of the fact that he was getting short, and it was normal for everyone around him to watch him for any signs of a short-timer’s attitude. He had seen his share of soldiers, NCOs, and officers who had reached that point in their tours where they started to get distracted by the nearness to their departure date.
They would get spooky, nervous, overly cautious, gun-shy, and even stupid. That often led to mistakes that got people killed.
Sure, he wanted to go home. He wanted it all to go away. But he knew that he had to keep his feelings to himself. If his troops picked up what he was feeling, they would suffer. Hollister knew that one of the fastest ways to bottom out the combat effectiveness of a unit was to let them start to feel sorry for themselves. He knew that there was no such thing as a good platoon with a platoon leader who was short and showing it. He also knew that he didn’t want to be a cartoonlike cheerleader, but it was his job to keep his fingers on the attitude pulse of his platoon. He clenched his jaw, put it out of his mind and cautioned himself to suck it up and stay tough.
Hollister amended his running list of resolutions to include not getting crazy about getting short.
Weeks went by with a good mix of successful ambush patrols and dry holes. For Hollister the best part about it was that there were no more losses, with the exception of a sergeant from Team 2-2. He was evacuated as a nonbattle casualty when a smoke grenade hanging on his rucksack accidentally ignited and burned his neck and shoulder blade. They got word that he was evacuated to the States for some skin grafting work, but that he would be okay.
During those weeks, Hollister had stolen every minute that wasn’t devoted to actual patrols to conduct team training. He had convinced himself that many of the ills of the unit and problems in the field could be overcome by hard training.
He went back over every After Action Report and all of the debriefing notes since the detachment was activated to find problems—that could be fixed by training.
The troops were not happy to lose the time off, but to a man they understood that every hour they spent sharpening their skills would increase the chances of coming back from patrols—alive.
Still, there were other losses. Malaria, dengue fever, boils, jungle rot, and dysentery took their toll. New faces came from somewhere. There never seemed to be a shortage of volunteers to join the detachment. But every new face meant a step back in the overall training level in the detachment.
It just seemed like a never-ending cycle for Hollister. But it also meant crowded hours—hours that he spent getting the job done and getting the training done. It meant less time to think about how he felt, what he feared, and what it all meant to him. It was a kind of escape for him.
So, although Hollister lost more weight and began to look exhausted, he felt like he was doing the right thing. To him, working harder to prepare the troops for the field was proof that he was not stacking arms.
With less than sixty days to go, Hollister was smothered in the last minute details of getting ready to return to the States. He and Susan had finally decided upon a civil ceremony in New York followed by some leave time in Kansas. And Hollister was given the additional task of training his second replacement—Lieutenant Matthews.
Matthews came to the LRPs after finishing five months in the 4.2-inch mortar platoon in Hollister’s old battalion. Matthews was a Citadel graduate, a Ranger and Jungle Warfare School graduate.
Hollister liked Matthews, but was concerned that his field skills might need some polishing since he had spent his time in battalion fire bases and reinforced company perimeters. Matthews agreed with Hollister, and they laid out a plan for Matthews to go on every mission that the second platoon sent out until just before Hollister’s departure.
After three weeks of letting Matthews hump with the teams, Sergeant Davis let it slip to Hollister that Matthews was getting high marks from the troops.
It was met with mixed emotions by Hollister. He was pleased to find out that Matthews was measuring up. Inside he knew that he would be angry if he turned the platoon over to someone who they didn’t accept or who might get them killed. Still, he would like to think that he couldn’t be replaced. He wrote it off to ego and kept it to himself.
During those same weeks, the problems with the province chief had still not been resolved. Michaelson had been given some lip service by the Brigade Executive officer that the entire matter was under investigation and that the LRPs had better toe the line. If it turned out that they were even the slightest bit at fault, or if their claims were wrong, it could reflect poorly on the Brigade.
It sounded to Michaelson and Hollister like the whole thing was being swept under the rug to avoid a confrontation and to keep from creating more friction with the Vietnamese.
Hollister was asleep when the phone rang in his hooch. He fumbled through the darkness and pressed the receiver to his face. “Hollister, sir.”
“Sir, this is Sergeant Marrietta. The Old Man wanted me to get you over to the mess hall ASAP. He’s mounting a mission on an agent report. Your folks have to be ready to go in an hour.”
“An hour?! What time is it?”
“Sir, it’s 0240.”
Hollister sat up and reached for his cigarettes. “Okay. Give me a minute to find my trousers.”
One of the new soldiers poured coffee from a stainless steel pitcher into the cups in front of Hollister, Sergeant Marrietta, Captain Shaw, Lieutenant Perry, and Sergeant Davis. Just as the heat from the coffee reached Hollister’s face, someone yelled, “A’tench-hut!”
They all stood and saluted as Captain Michaelson and the first sergeant entered the mess hall. Michaelson returned the salutes, took a cup of coffee, and motioned for everyone to take their seats.
The captain waited till the scraping of the chairs stopped, took a sip of his coffee, looked at his watch, and lit one of his cigars. “Sorry about the hour. I know this is going to be particularly bad on the first sergeant’s beauty sleep.”
Everyone laughed as the first sergeant blustered in protest to the humor at his expense.
“We got a mission that Brigade wants to mount right now. Lieutenant Hollister, your platoon has the standby team. Right?”
“Yessir. Sergeant Camacho’s team is locked and loaded,” Hollister said, looking over at Davis, who nodded his head in c
onfirmation.
“Well then, he’s gonna be it,” Michaelson said. “Is he at full strength?”
“Yessir,” Davis said. “Camacho, Sergeant Gerhart, Vinson, Wyman, and Doc Briskin. Wyman is still pretty cherry, but he’ll be okay.”
“The Provincial Recon Unit grabbed a VC messenger last night who they say puked his guts up all over their S-2 shop about his unit’s operations.”
“Bet he wet his pants first,” Marrietta said under his breath.
Michaelson ignored the comment on the Vietnamese interrogation techniques and looked at the slip of paper in his hand. “According to the VC, there’s a paymaster coming to his unit tonight to pay the VC guerrillas operating in the western part of the valley.”
Michaelson took a drag off his cigar and then blew the smoke skyward. “If this is true, and we can snatch this guy—we can get the name of every friggin VC in the province. On the other hand, if it ain’t true, we can run a dry hole and risk a team.”
No one in the room commented on Michaelson’s assessment. They knew that he was right on the mark. Getting a pay roster of the VC infrastructure would go a long way toward upsetting the Communist control of the An Hoa area. Not to mention the negative morale impact of the pay not coming through.
“I don’t know if the intel is good or just bullshit. But we’re going to send a team in as a stay-behind, with the mission of snatching this gook if possible,” Michaelson added.
There was a collective groan at the words “stay-behind.” Every man in the room knew that it usually meant meeting up with a maneuver unit and walking into the area in question only to be left behind. They all hated working with regular units because they were clumsy, loud, and, in the minds of some, more dangerous.
Michaelson raised his hand. “Hold on. Hold on. I know how you feel. Our problem is time and method of infiltration. If we don’t do it as a stay-behind, we’ll be forced to insert the team much too close to the snatch location to make it workable.”
They all knew he was right. They trusted him to be right.
Michaelson smiled as if he knew a private joke and continued. “The snatch team will depart here by chopper as soon as we can get them ready, and fly to the southern end of the valley, where they’ll link up with C Company, First of the 511th.”
Hearing the unit, Hollister perked up. “All right! My old company!”
“Right,” Michaelson said. “Make you feel any better about this?”
“Yessir. Cobra Company is the only infantry company in Vietnam I’d trust with our people,” Hollister said, smiling.
“Okay then, the deal is that C Company will sweep through the snatch area as if they’re doin’ a routine search-and-destroy operation. But they aren’t gonna stay long. They’ll keep on going till they’re well north of the area we’re interested in and then be choppered out by late afternoon. And they’ll make sure that everyone knows they’re gone.
“As they pass through our objective area, they’ll simply drop off the snatch team.” Michaelson paused. “Everybody with me?”
They all nodded.
“Okay. This will be a one-night operation for our folks. If Mr. Big Piasters doesn’t show by daylight tomorrow, we’ll go ahead and plan on pulling the team out by noon.”
Taking the pen from the corner of his mouth, Hollister interrupted. “And if they do get the guy?”
“We’ll pull ’em at first flyable light,” Michaelson replied. “Your folks can just hold on to him until the sun comes up. I don’t want to send in a chopper in the dark just to pull a pay officer.
“I don’t have all the details yet. I’ll feed ’em to you as I get them. I think that you want to get that team cranking right now. Captain Shaw will issue the op order in an hour and we’ll try to get a briefback from Sergeant Camacho an hour after that. That a problem for anyone?” Michaelson asked.
Several hands went up.
“Hold it! Hold it. I know. I mean real problems.”
The hands went down.
Michaelson called Davis, Hollister, and Camacho into the Operations tent to sit in on a surprise visit from Colonel Baird, the angry province senior advisor. He told Michaelson that he wanted to come to the LRPs to make sure they had all the facts straight on the upcoming snatch operation. He felt that they should know the details of the prisoner interrogation that had generated the snatch mission.
It was a crock. Hollister watched the charade that Baird put on. It was obvious to him that Baird had been on the receiving end of some ass chewings because of the flap between the LRPs and the province chief. The visit was all for show. Baird could care less if the LRPs knew anything. It was Hollister’s guess that Baird just feared losing his soft job at Province.
The rifle company was in a perimeter just a little smaller than a football field. Every man was rigged to move out, but relaxing till the LRP link-up happened.
Davis and Hollister came in the C&C, and Camacho’s team landed in a second slick. They waited till the choppers cleared, and walked toward the company command post in the center of the squared perimeter that encompassed a tiny hamlet and several rice paddies.
A voice rang out. “Hollister, you rear echelon motherfucker, you!”
Looking up, Hollister spotted First Lieutenant Andy Martinson. He was company commander of C Company. When Hollister had last seen him, they were both platoon leaders. “Well, you old boonie rat!” Hollister said, exchanging salutes and shaking hands with Martinson. The sight of his old friend was reassuring. Hollister knew that Martinson was a good man and could be trusted not to screw over his LRPs.
They sat and talked a little business and did a little catching up. Martinson called Sergeant Lawrence, Hollister’s old platoon sergeant, to the CP to say hello. It was good for Hollister to see him, but Lawrence had plenty of bad news about losses of good troops after Hollister left the platoon. Even Hollister’s replacement had been killed.
The information took the joy out of seeing a few of the friendly faces that were still in Cobra Company.
The sweep went well. Hollister took a little pride in the way his old company moved through the area. The hump took him back to the days when he honchoed a rifle platoon with Sergeant Lawrence.
Lawrence had taught him much in six months with a platoon about leading troops. Hollister was glad that Lawrence was running his old platoon.
The sweep itself was nothing new for Hollister. He had done it many times when he was with C Company. For a platoon leader, sweeping an area looked very casual, but was really a walking nightmare. He worried about booby traps, mines, snipers. He had to make the decisions about where to sweep—trails were dangerous, paddy dikes were trouble, but walking through the paddies slowed them down and put people into the most open areas.
And once they got into the villages and hamlets, it was a whole new list of problems on top of the others. The structures made it difficult to cover the movements of all the troops with effective fire. Worries about the safety of the villagers were tempered by the suspicion that they might be VC or VC sympathizers. And the treatment of the villagers was always a concern for the platoon leader.
Hollister remembered the first time he walked a platoon into a hamlet and searched it for VC, weapons, food caches, and other contraband. He was amazed at the living conditions of the villagers and the total lack of young men.
They went from thatched hut to thatched hut, invading the homes of the frightened children and old people. The fear in the villagers’ eyes was something Hollister would never forget. He never spent a day in a village where he was comfortable with his decisions.
After an hour on the march, the company swept through a wooded area that flanked the trail the VC paymaster was supposed to use later that night. Lieutenant Martinson gave the word to drop off the LRP team and continue to move, as if nothing had changed.
Hollister wished Camacho and the team a quick good luck before he and Davis moved on with the rifle company. As they walked away, the last man in the patrol wa
s Theodore. He had volunteered to go out as tail gunner for Camacho when it was decided that the snatch would go with a six-man team. Hollister thought that it was Theodore’s way of proving to himself and everyone else that he had gotten over his spookiness. He had been making a big deal out of how many patrols he’d been racking up.
Everyone at the LRP compound was at supper when the truck dropped Hollister and Davis off. They had spent the rest of the day walking in the hot sun with C Company and watching huge billowing clouds gather to the north.
Hollister sent Davis to check out the orderly room for any messages for the platoon, while he went to Operations to see if there had been any activity with Team 2-3.
In Operations, Hollister found that the team had been laying up without any problems in a thick stand of bamboo two hundred yards from the trail they hoped the VC paymaster might use. But they were concerned by their proximity to the hamlets in the area. The trail was getting plenty of foot traffic, as the farmers used it to get to the nearby roadway leading to the market in An Hoa city.
Hollister left Operations with instructions to find him the minute the team called in any activity.
The coffee in the bottom of Hollister’s cup started to taste bitter.
He finished it and decided to walk over to the mess hall to get a refill and some fresh air. He had been sitting by the radios in Operations since sundown, and the clock was showing that it was just about quarter after nine.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Hollister said to Sergeant Tillotson.
“Take your time, sir. I don’t think we’re going to get very lucky tonight.”
Tillotson laughed. “S’pose the guy went AWOL with the money and he’s in the ville spending it on good-time girls and booze?”
Reaching the door, Hollister stopped, thought about it for a second, and turned to Tillotson. “What’d you do?”
Tillotson laughed again. “You gotta ask?”
Hollister raised his empty cup. “You want some?”
“No, sir. If I had one more cup of coffee, I might not get to sleep when I get back to the World.”