Cherries - A Vietnam War Novel - Revised Edition

by Podlaski, John

  “It doesn’t seem to be affecting those guys who’ve already finished their bottles.”

  “Aw, what the fuck! They look really good and cold. I’d probably pay ten dollars if that was the asking price.” Once again, John recalled Junior’s words of wisdom back at Kien.

  The two of them purchased the last two bottles of Coke.

  “This is fucking great!” John tilted his head back and allowed the rest of the cool, refreshing soda to run down his throat.

  “ Right on!” Larry agreed.

  By mid-afternoon, Alpha Company entered the Michelin Rubber Plantation, which was the largest plantation in all of Vietnam. Each rubber tree was evenly spaced twenty feet apart and no matter in which direction you looked, the trees stood in perfect rows for miles. Vegetation between trees was thin and sparse, rising no more than two feet above the ground. Each tree had a pail secured, collecting slowly oozing sap.

  After moving easily through the plantation, the column stopped when a farmer approached with his water buffalo-drawn cart of pails. The animal sensed something whenever Americans were around and the old man had trouble controlling the huge beast. It wheezed and stomped its feet, then dug in and tried to pull free from the villager. Finally, the old man raised a stick and swiftly whipped it twice across the animal’s snout. This had little effect. The sergeant scanning the villager’s ID was apprehensive about the beast possibly breaking away and injuring him or his fellow soldiers. He quickly returned the card and directed the villager to move on. The beast relaxed and settled down to a more docile state once it distanced itself from the soldiers.

  “I gotta hand it to that old man - all eighty pounds of him. He handled that water buffalo like I used to break them wild horses back home,” Wild Bill said in admiration.

  “There’s no way I’d try that. Goddamn thing would have stomped me to death.”

  “Yeah, Polack, it would have been all over for you, especially if you would have whipped his snout like the old man did.”

  “Wild Bill is probably the only person in this entire column who would have taken on the beast. Everyone else would have been long gone if he had broken free.”

  “There’s no doubt about that, Frenchie, and I’d be at the front of that pack and leading everybody else.” Doc continued to steal glances at the departing animal in order to convince himself that the threat of danger had passed.

  First Platoon broke off from the main column and veered to the left on an angle of forty-five degrees. They planned to walk through the plantation for another half hour and then try to find a good spot for an NDP.

  As they moved along, John looked up and could not believe what he saw in the air. “Hey guys, you better take a look up above.”

  “Holy shit!” Larry stopped abruptly, scrunching his shoulders as a chill ran down his spine.

  “They’re all over!” BJ looked upward and walked right into Larry.

  Huge spiders, suspended from webs just above their heads, were the largest these men had ever seen. Their bodies, thin and oblong, measured about five inches in length, but when taking the legs into account, these arachnids were probably over a foot long. They each sat in perfectly round webs, suspended between two rubber trees. Most were high in the air, but some almost touched the ground. The size and colors of these spiders fascinated the soldiers; shades of bright yellow, candy apple red and green, reflected the light of a setting sun.

  One of the grunts pulled and snapped on a web to get a reaction from the spider. However, the motion did not intimidate the creature, which stayed fixed in the exact center of its home.

  “Do they bite?” BJ asked.

  “Everything bites,” Scout responded.

  “Are they poisonous?”

  “Not a clue. Care to find out?”

  “No way!”

  Because of the sparse vegetation, suitable spots for a good night defensive perimeter did not exist anywhere within the plantation. Lt. Ramsey picked an area with a little more underbrush than he had seen so far and decided to set up for the night. The L-T arranged the perimeter in the shape of a square and assigned each squad a point on the compass so they could defend themselves on all four sides.

  Sixpack’s Squad set up on the north side of the perimeter. The open area did not provide any protection for the men in the event of a firefight, but at least the low underbrush would afford some concealment from prying eyes, unless somebody stood erect or walked around. It would be another night of moving around on hands and knees.

  Most of the interior of the perimeter was bare and the soft brown earth made sleeping easier for the men. They spread ponchos on the ground and covered themselves with the thin - but soft - green liner to create a sleeping position. Pillows consisted of nothing more than towels and balled up shirts. Most soldiers placed their rucksacks and extra supplies on the outer perimeter side of their makeshift beds in hopes of providing some protection if attacked.

  The men had to set up mechanical ambushes, trip flares, and manually detonated claymore mines to cover nearby trails before anyone could relax or eat dinner. In the morning, everything had to be dismantled and secured before sunrise so innocent villagers were not hurt after the curfew ended.

  “You guys have to be careful to not hurt these rubber trees. We don’t want to have to pay the tire company for any damage,” Sixpack announced.

  “You’ve got to be joking,” Larry said.

  “Nope, it’s true. This rule even goes back to when the French fought here. The deal is that if any unit is forced into combat within the plantation, the government has to reimburse the rubber company for any damages to its trees.”

  “That’s a stupid fucking rule. We’re at war, how can they justify that?”

  “Stupid or not, we have to follow it.”

  “This is unreal and gets more insane every day!”

  First Platoon remained within the plantation for the next several days. Squad-sized patrols were dispatched daily to check ID’s of nearby workers and to investigate any suspicious-looking trails. Every afternoon at about 1500 hours, the platoon packed it up and moved to a different - but similar - site between the trees. The deployment of defensive measures after curfew, and then securing them before daybreak, had become routine.

  During their fourth night there, odd noises occurred around their perimeter; the distinct sound of leaves stirring, twigs breaking, and unfamiliar grunting sounds were alarming. Sixpack scanned the surrounding area with a Starlight scope, seeing only the trees standing silently and nothing else. Most of the soldiers, spooked by this ongoing disruption, remained awake and alert through the night.

  There was a break in their routine when the person on watch spotted flashlights out in the field at about ten o’clock at night. The guard woke Lt. Ramsey, and then moved to Sixpack, shaking him out of his slumber. “L-T needs you over by the CP.” Sixpack grabbed his weapon and moved over to join the lieutenant.

  “What’s up, L-T?” Sixpack rubbed the sleep from his eyes and waited for his vision to adjust.

  “Night guard spotted flashlights in the fields outside of the plantation. Can’t see much, but if you look closely,” he placed a hand on the sergeant’s shoulder and pointed out toward the flickering lights, “I make out at least six of them.”

  “I see them, L-T, and don’t remember a village in that particular area. But I do recall that field; heavy jungle borders it on the left and at the far end.”

  “I’ll call in a fire mission and we can check it out in the morning.” The two men referenced the map and agreed on the coordinates for the first salvo.

  Lt. Ramsey called Battalion HQ and waited almost a half hour to obtain clearance for the fire mission. By that time, the lights had long disappeared, but he knew the artillery barrage was still necessary.

  Many of the sleeping men were awakened by the commotion around the CP, so when the explosions finally occurred in the clearing about five hundred yards away, few of them were surprised. The L-T called for ten more round
s to impact within that general vicinity.

  Two hours later, some of the men heard a motorcycle moving across the open field toward the same area where they saw the flashlights earlier. The sound was deceiving and it was very difficult to pinpoint its exact location as it echoed through the trees. The remainder of the night was quiet and uneventful.

  In the morning, Captain Fowler ordered the First Platoon to move out of the plantation and investigate the area that exhibited all the activity during the night.

  When the platoon reached the clearing, the men formed up into two columns while crossing the open area.

  “It looks like we’re walking through an old rice paddy.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Scout pointed to the right and left, and said, “Look over there, do you see the raised ground? Those are old paddy dikes that kept the water in and allowed the villagers to move through the fields.”

  “Why do you think it’s not being used anymore?”

  “Look around, BJ, do you see anybody around?”

  “I haven’t seen anybody since leaving the plantation. In fact, I don’t even see any villages nearby.”

  “This is really old. If there was a village around here, they packed it up and moved out a long time ago.”

  “This is still a no-fire zone so stay on your toes.”

  The men soon reached the area where the artillery barrage had hit during the night. Here, the L-T had the platoon form into a single line, so they could sweep through the area and look for signs of the enemy having been there.

  The ten small artillery craters were in an area one-half the size of a football field. Fresh, black dirt coated the ground and nearby vegetation. There were no trees in this open area, but the hot steel projectiles shred much of the foliage surrounding each crater. The grunts collected several pieces of jagged steel, no larger than a pack of cigarettes, as souvenirs.

  “Man, if there was somebody out here last night, you’d think they couldn’t have survived. Just look at all this devastation.” John said, sweeping his arm in a half-circle arc.

  “It’s too weird. I haven’t seen any flashlights on the ground or traces of blood anywhere in over an hour that we’ve been looking.”

  “If we haven’t seen anything yet, then it’s unlikely we’ll find anything at all, Polack. It’s hard to judge distance at night, and I can’t guarantee this is exactly where the L-T and I saw those flashlights.”

  “Yeah, Sixpack, but didn’t you say earlier that the lights were long gone before the fire mission? They probably weren’t anywhere near this area when the rounds came in.”

  “That’s what I think too, but we had to try anyway.”

  “We’re not too far from the edge of the jungle over there,” Larry pointed out to the dense vegetation only two-hundred feet away. “Maybe we should just keep walking until we reach it and poke around over there.”

  “I don’t know. I’m already nervous about being out in the open so close to that tree line; it’s the perfect spot for an ambush. Just hang loose and keep looking around here and I’ll check with the L-T to see what his plans are.” Sixpack walked over to where Lt. Ramsey was standing with his RTO, Bob.

  “What are your thoughts about that tree line, L-T?”

  “I’ve been tossing that around myself, Sixpack. We have most of the day left to patrol the area and find a place for the night. Might as well get out of this sun and go take a look.”

  “When do you want to leave?”

  “Instead of all of us going together, I want your squad to recon the area first. Once you’ve got it secured, the rest of us will come up and join you.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll gather them up and we’ll leave in five.”

  “Good luck!”

  The platoon set up an NDP just inside the jungle and next to a well-used trail; Sixpack’s Squad had discovered it during their recon of the area. The six-foot wide trail skirted the jungle and continued westerly into the dense thicket, away from the rubber plantation.

  The hard packed surface, with its recent activity, intrigued Lt. Ramsey, especially after not seeing anybody in this area during the entire day. The captain agreed that it was suspicious and ordered the L-T to set up an ambush on the trail.

  The men placed two mechanicals across the trail - one further west of their position and the other to the east. With trip flares and claymore mines in place, and guard rotation organized, the stage was set for the night.

  As BJ had the last watch of the night, he was to wake everyone at 0545; this allowed the men fifteen minutes to dismantle the mechanicals before the curfew ended at 0600.

  The Army had issued a prime directive to all field units that mechanical ambushes or trip mechanisms could not remain armed in no-fire zones after the end of curfew; the penalty for failing to comply could result in court martial.

  In the morning, BJ did not wake the platoon at the designated time. Instead, a large explosion and dirt raining onto them roused them from their sleep. The time was 0630 hours.

  “You dumb shit - you fell asleep!” Sixpack berated the new recruit. BJ, completely disorientated, did not know what to do or what to say. He leaned back against a tree, still holding the handset of the radio in his right hand.

  “Our shit’s in the wind now!” Sixpack looked out to the trail. “Scout, Frenchie and Nung, get out there and check that eastern ambush.” He then looked to BJ. “Pray to God that some poor villager didn’t stumble into it.”

  The colonel was already on the radio reviling the captain because he did not have an answer regarding the explosion from the vicinity of his First Platoon’s NDP.

  Lt. Ramsey switched to the company radio frequency and called the captain to inform him of their predicament. He was just about to apprise him that the last person on watch had fallen asleep when he was interrupted by sudden bursts of gunfire; rounds ricocheted through the perimeter, sending everyone to the ground for cover.

  Suddenly, the three men came crashing back into the perimeter, guns still smoking from firing on the run.

  “There’s VC on the trail!” Scout hollered. “Don’t know how many, but the mechanical didn’t get them all. They started shooting at us before we even saw them.”

  Not another word was necessary before the men bolted into action. The grunts lying closest to the trail began firing out to their front and along the trail to their right. They also triggered two claymore mines, which exploded near the aggressive enemy.

  The remaining squads on the other side of the perimeter hunkered down and held their fire, waiting for a clear target to materialize.

  After just a few moments, the return fire became sporadic, then finally stopped. Sixpack was already on his feet gathering his squad to go and investigate. The Third Squad moved further east through the dense bush with plans of exiting onto the trail just above the ambush site.

  Scout and Nung led the way with Frenchie following close behind. They cautiously stepped out onto the trail and found themselves about seventy-five feet from the blown ambush site.

  “Remember, we still have a live mechanical on the trail behind us. Should we disarm it before moving up to check out the other one?”

  “No, leave it be, Wild Bill. If we caught the VC in this one while moving west, it may protect us if reinforcements try to come out of the jungle from that direction. We’ll get to it later.”

  The eight men crouched down and ran in single file across the trail, moving further into the elephant grass and away from the jungle. When they were parallel to the ambush site, the grunts spread out and tried to keep five feet between themselves as they proceeded on line toward the trail.

  The smell greeted them even before they saw the seven bodies spread along the trail. The first two in the column, having taken the full blast of the single mine ambush, had missing appendages and their torsos were cut to shreds. The other five lay in contorted positions, blood still leaking from bullet holes in their bodies.

  Each of the seven corps
es were dressed alike and carrying a rucksack, ammo pouch, and AK-47 rifle. Steel pith helmets with a single red star lay strewn about the area. The rucksacks were full and bulging. A mortar tube and base plate lay in the middle of the line of dead enemy soldiers.

  “Oh man, these are hardcore NVA soldiers. No wonder they held their ground and shot back at us,” Frenchie said while scanning the corpses, his face showing deep concern.

  “Looks like they were part of a supply train,” Scout volunteered.

  “Polack, go back and let the L-T know what we found. Then bring him and the others back here with you.” Sixpack prodded at the bodies with his boot, watching for a reaction.

  “I’m sure the L-T will be relieved,” Scout mentioned.

  “No doubt about it. Now all he has to do is to convince the colonel that this was planned so BJ doesn’t have to go to the stockade.”

  Just then, Third Squad stepped out of the jungle and approached the ambush site from the east.

  “Looks like we just hit the jackpot,” the black squad leader announced when spotting the corpses on the trail.

  “Yeah, but those are NVA dudes,” a tall, blond former surfer from California stated. “I hope none of their buddies are hangin’ out nearby.”

  “Me too!” Frenchie continued to watch the open field with Wild Bill while the others searched over the bodies.

  A rustling from the jungle startled the Third Squad members before they saw John exit with the L-T and the Second Squad. They all gathered along the trail and then crowded around the corpses for a closer look. Some exhibited relief, some moved quickly to the side of the trail and vomited, while others - mostly the old timers - showed concern.

  “Sixpack, let’s get some people out on security. We don’t need anybody walking up on us while we’re all together on this trail celebrating,” Lt. Ramsey ordered.

  Sgt. Holmes conferred with the other squad leaders, then dispatched ten men into various directions. Each of the two-man observation posts (OP’s) would set up about two-hundred feet away and monitor the approaches into the area.