“Son of a bitch!” Frenchie commented, his face showing concern. “What in the hell are NVA doing this far south?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“Frenchie, what do you mean by NVA?”
“There are two kinds of enemy soldiers in the Nam, Larry. The Viet Cong, or VC, generally operate in this part of the country; they either snipe at us or spring a fast ambush before running away. Most of them are nearby villagers. The North Vietnamese Army, or NVA, on the other hand, are hardcore motherfuckers who go to army training like us. They do not run like the VC. Instead, they dig in and fight your ass, even if it means fighting to the last man.”
“That doesn’t sound good at all. Do you think this cache belongs to them?”
“You can bet your ass on that, Larry.”
“What’s going to happen now?” John asked.
“I’m curious as hell to find out what else is down there,” Lt. Ramsey replied. “But we just have to wait patiently for the right people to do that job.”
Suddenly, a Huey helicopter appeared overhead. The Brigade Commander had received word of the find and was circling for a view from above.
“Look at that cocksucker flying around up there. Probably never humped the bush since he’s been here,” Zeke stated when he saw the C&C (Command & Control) Huey overhead.
“Hey, L-T,” Bob called, “there’s a bird on the way with a couple of teams and a tracker dog. They’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“Okay, people, you heard the man. Set up some kind of a perimeter. We don’t want any dinks walking up on us,” the L-T ordered.
When the team arrived, they went right to work. A dog handler and two other men descended into the silo, while two intelligence officers who arrived with them remained above ground. One of them took pictures of the cache from every angle as the other looked over the L-T’s list of contents.
Along the hasty perimeter, the men stole glances at two officers as they sifted through the treasure, acting like a couple of kids in a toy store. Both officers were frenzied in their investigation, closely looking over each item before returning it to one of the piles.
After forty-five minutes, one of the tunnel rats emerged from the hole.
“You guys really came onto something big,” he stated to Lt. Ramsey, before turning to address one of the captains from the intelligence team. “Sir, it appears to be an underground staging area and hospital. We found two operating rooms, complete with enough medical equipment to perform major surgery. The place is loaded with documents and is unbelievably spotless.”
Their faces lit up at the news, jubilant at the significant discovery. The same reaction would have been exhibited by the troops around the perimeter had they suddenly been informed that the war had just ended.
A One-Star General and his entourage finally arrived at the location. After a few words with the officer holding the camera, he headed to one of the piles of captured enemy supplies. Placing a foot upon an ammo crate, he picked up one of the AK-47 rifles and held it proudly in front of him, smiling while the photographer snapped away.
“Isn’t this a crock of shit?” Zeke declared. “We find the fucking thing, and it’s the General who gets his picture taken, just like he stumbled upon it himself.”
“Why do you let shit like this get to you, Zeke? It’s not the first time this happened here, and it won’t be the last. If the Division General was around, his ass would be out here taking credit and posing for pictures, too,” Doc pointed out.
“Fuck those lifer motherfuckers!
“Lieutenant,” a major from the General's staff called to the First Platoon leader, “please assign a squad to go down into the tunnel with the demo team, so they won’t have to watch over their shoulders while setting the charges.”
“Fuck them!” Zeke blurted. “They took the credit for the find. Let them provide security and blow the bitch themselves.”
Fortunately, for Zeke, the General and his staff did not hear his outburst - or if they did, they chose to ignore it. Nevertheless, Sixpack strolled over and led the upset soldier away from the tunnel entrance. “Come on, Zeke, cool it, man. You’re going home in three weeks and don’t need to do anything stupid to blow it for yourself now. Just let him get his nuts off.”
“This is bullshit, Sixpack! It’s been like this since I got here. Every time something like this happens, the brass comes in and takes all the credit. We get dirty, they get to pose and smile. What’s wrong with all of us posing with them? I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but they've never even asked us.”
“Zeke, I saw the same thing during my last tour. I guess it depends on the individual. The colonel we had used to involve everybody in the picture and then have articles written in the Stars and Stripes newspaper. They’re not all the same. Just let it go. It don’t mean nothin’.”
The two intelligence officers entered the hole to join the dog, his handler, and the two tunnel rats as they made their way into the complex. They needed to be thorough and to be certain not to overlook anything during their exploration.
Fifteen minutes later, the demo team touched down with the explosives. First Squad drew the shortest straw, so they would escort the demo team and provide security underground. Together, they had to move three hundred pounds of plastic explosive, dozens of blasting caps, a few hundred feet of detonation cord, and several electronic gadgets into the complex.
Sixpack led his squad of eight men down into the silo. Upon reaching the entrance, each man crawled into the tunnel, either pulling or pushing his cargo until exiting through the trap door and into the bright hallway of the underground complex. Everyone stood in awe, admiring the unbelievable sight before them.
"How in the hell does somebody create something like this underground?” John asked incredulously, taking it all in.
“These people have been fighting wars in this country for decades. Since World War 2, it’s been the Japanese, then the French, and now us”, reminded Doc. “There’s no telling how long this place has been here.”
“I remember seeing old war movies that showed the POWs building tunnels from their barracks so they could escape. It seemed like it took them months to complete them,” Larry chimed in.
“Yeah, but you got to remember that those POWs had to scrounge for material. The VC, on the other hand, had supplies brought in by the truck load. Now, add a few hundred workers to the plan, and they can dig out complexes like this in no time.”
Wood planking braced the six-foot high walls; packed closely together, the earth behind barely showed. As the squad proceeded along the dirt floor of the corridor, they noticed a dozen portable lights hanging from the walls at ten-foot intervals. They also found several side rooms in the complex; most were small, measuring less than one-hundred fifty square feet. Four of them must have been for recovering patients, containing cots and footlockers in each of them. Two others were larger - almost twice the size of the single rooms – and had wooden floors and bright reflective lights hanging from the seven foot ceiling. Various trays of operating instruments rested upon rolling carts in a corner near small sterilizing units. The dried blood spatter on the floor - most likely from a recent surgery - stood out among the well-scrubbed and maintained walls.
The furthest room from the entrance had a small generator and air pump supplying oxygen into the complex via bamboo tube ducting, which was why they had not found breathing tubes on the surface.
Across the aisle was an office and communication center. The two intelligence officers spent most of their time in there gathering various documents. Much of their findings consisted of patient files, medical supply request forms, and reconnaissance reports about nearby American and ARVN activity. A large map hung from the wall with arrows pointing in different directions, apparently signifying troop movements. The location of Firebase Kien and several other military compounds were circled and highlighted.
Earlier, the officers had found a PRC-25 radio, six extra batteries, and
a couple of U.S. code books. The frequencies had been set to the same as Alpha Company, which might have accounted for their quick getaway. The enemy departed in such haste that they failed to take many important documents and supplies with them. Escaping with their very lives was the priority.
When Doc, Zeke, and Frenchie entered one of the rooms, they found it empty and bare, which was curious, as every other room contained either equipment or supplies. Doc leaned against a wall and suddenly lost his balance as it gave way and swiveled inward.
“What the hell?” Zeke commented when he noticed the medic sprawled on the floor. “Doc, you okay?”
“The fucking wall moved.” Doc said soberly. He was slow to rise, but managed to get to his feet when helped by John and Larry.
Frenchie left to notify the others.
Zeke approached the small section of the wall and pushed it open. “Shit, this is nothing but wood and dry mud, and there’s a stairway leading up.”
Sixpack and the others entered the room after hearing of the new discovery.
“Wild Bill, go topside and let the L-T know we’ve found another exit. Tell him we’re coming up, and to pass the word on to the rest of the company so they don’t shoot our asses up,” Sixpack ordered.
When Wild Bill returned several minutes later, Sixpack and the others observed the dog and his handler cautiously ascending the steps and approaching the camouflaged exit, which was a small trap door, barely large enough for the handler and his charge to squeeze through. He returned after a few minutes.
“You guys aren’t going to believe this. Come take a look for yourself.”
One by one, they climbed the stairway and exited the tunnel complex, only to find themselves standing within a twenty-foot thick clump of bamboo with a small crawlspace cut through the thicket. Scout crawled through the thorny vegetation first and succeeded in dislodging the ‘bamboo plug’ used to camouflage the entrance.
“Get a load of this!” he proclaimed from the other side.
Each of them had similar reactions upon exiting the thicket.
“Well, kiss my ass!”
“Holy shit!”
“Do you fucking believe this shit?”
An awkward and surprising sight greeted them. Members of the Fourth Platoon milled around the same bamboo thicket, guarding the company’s rucksacks, until their owners returned. In fact, the First Squad’s rucksacks were only a few feet away from the camouflaged opening to the tunnel complex.
Both groups of men simply stood there staring at each other and trying to process the fact that they had been sitting on top of the compound for the last few hours, never having a clue that it existed below.
“Now I know where Charlie took off to after their encounter with Charlie Company. They just slipped back into the ground like snakes.”
“You’re right, Zeke, but it doesn’t look like they took the missing soldiers into the hole as we didn’t see any evidence of them down below.”
“They moved the bodies before Charlie Company came back to nose around the area. They needed to protect their complex and did what was necessary to prevent its discovery.”
“It looks like they wasted their time, Sixpack, since we found it anyway.”
“Yeah, but it looks like they expected us to find it. Otherwise they would have stuck around and put up a fight.”
“If they left through this exit, wouldn’t the Fourth Platoon have seen them?” Scout asked.
“Who said they left from this entrance? You saw how we stumbled upon it. Well actually, Doc did.” Some laughter ensued. “There are probably more hidden exits that we didn’t find and most likely that’s how they escaped.”
“Anything’s possible, Zeke, maybe they just bugged out before we even got here,” Sixpack replied.
“We’ll never know the answer. It’ll be buried with the rest of the complex and supplies.”
It took almost two hours to set the charges in the complex. Zeke and Frenchie were the explosive experts in the platoon, so they assisted the demo team with the setting and wiring of the explosives. After they finished, everyone returned topside.
The General was getting irritated because the complex was causing such a delay. He sensed the enemy nearby, and wasting time here was depriving him of a body count.
While Alpha Company awaited word to move out, the Radio Telephone Operators (RTO’s) in the CP started chattering among themselves. Bob left the group and hurried toward First Platoon.
“Charlie Company found their missing guys about a half a click away from here,” he said somberly. “They were all dead and found together in a shallow grave. Two bamboo poles marked the site; each had a severed head mounted on top. Now get this, there was a sign hanging from one of them that said, ‘Wolfhounds leave Vietnam, or you will end up like your comrades’.”
“Holy Jesus!” Larry was visibly shaken by the news.
“Bitch!” Zeke could only muster.
“Rotten motherfuckers,” Wild Bill added.
“Wait, there’s more,” Bob interrupted. “They were naked and each of the bodies was missing his dick.”
A highly agitated Sixpack began to pace. He seemed to be muttering to himself while kicking at the dirt. “Now, see what happens when you leave somebody behind? I would bet that only a couple of them were dead when moved from the area. The VC probably enjoyed torturing the rest of them before they finally died.” He bowed his head to disguise his weeping. “If we are ever on patrol and I get hit, so help me God as my witness, I’ll blow away the first of you that turns tail and runs.”
“That goes double for me.” Frenchie shed some tears as evidenced by the streaks running down his dirty face.
“Sixpack, I hate to interrupt, but we gotta get moving, and get as far away from here as possible before it gets dark!” Zeke exclaimed, bringing everyone back to reality. “You had better let the L-T know the complex is ready to blow. He may also want to ask the General if he wants to push down the plunger. If so, make sure he brings his cameraman”, he added bitterly.
"Too late, they already bugged out. Probably got too hot for them out here in the bush,” Wild Bill volunteered.
All but Sixpack laughed at the comment.
After returning from his conference with the L-T, Sixpack informed the soldiers, “The company is moving out, and we’re staying back to provide security until the complex is blown. Afterwards, we'll escort the demo team to a nearby LZ where the rest of the company will be waiting for us.”
“It’s gonna be a loud son of a bitch and will feel like an earthquake,” Frenchie stated.
“I agree,” Sixpack said, “Zeke, Frenchie, Scout, and Nung, you guys stick close to the demo guys. The rest of us will take your gear and wait for you down the trail.”
The two groups split up. The demolition team moved toward the silo while the remaining men headed in the opposite direction, carrying a rucksack on each shoulder. The packs, light without their full ration of food and water, were easy to carry. However, that would only last until the following day, with a resupply scheduled at the firebase.
Sixpack’s group paced five-hundred feet down the trail, stopping to wait for the expected explosion.
Meanwhile, the demolition team made their final preparations. The chief demo specialist took a roll of wire, splicing both ends onto the two wires leading up from the hole.
“Come on, guys, let’s unreel this and move back where it’ll be safer.”
Nung took the point and led the group toward the trail that they would soon be traveling. Frenchie and Zeke followed them; staying about thirty feet back to ensure that nobody would sneak up on them or cut the wire.
“I think this is far enough,” the leader announced, dropping to one knee. “Give me the plunger.”
He unscrewed the two nuts on the poles of the small black box and wrapped a wire around each one. After reattaching the nuts securely, he pulled the plunger up until he heard a click.
“It’s ready to go.”
Scout removed the metal cap from the top of a twelve-inch long by one-inch round cylinder, fitting it over the metal on the opposite end. He held the cylinder tightly in his left hand and pointed it into the air, then raised his right arm to strike the cap underneath with the heel of his hand. There was a loud popping sound as a star cluster flare shot into the sky like a Fourth of July firework.
Upon seeing the signal, RTO’s relayed a warning over their radios: “Fire in the hole!”
The demo team leader counted off, “One, two, three, ready, now!” He instantly twisted the handle on the black detonator box to fire the charge.
The ground erupted with such force it lifted everyone within close proximity into the air, the tremendous explosion temporarily deafening them. Stones, dirt, and vegetation rained from the sky, and a giant dust cloud formed, soon engulfing the men.
Fifteen minutes later, the platoon was back together and moving toward the LZ with the demolition team.
“That fucking place isn’t going to hide any more VC,” Frenchie informed those around him. “All that’s left of that complex is a huge hole in the ground.”
“What happened to all the stuff we took out of that place?” John asked.
“Fourth Platoon loaded most of it onto choppers while we were wiring the place. The rest was burned,” Sixpack replied.
“One of those pistols is mine,” Frenchie said proudly.
“How do you figure that?” Zeke asked.
“The L-T had me tag it with my name and send it back to the rear on one of the birds.”
“Shit, Frenchie, that gun is already tucked away in somebody’s personal belongings back in Cu Chi. That tag is probably sitting at the bottom of a shit can in one of the latrines on the base,” Zeke blurted.
Cherries - A Vietnam War Novel - Revised Edition Page 14