13th Valley

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Boy Asshole done it again,” they cussed. “Where we gonna move to if we hit. That coward’s fuckin us.” The hate had not been easy to sleep with.

  The sun was high and hot when 3d Plt finally moved out. Rafe Ridge-field walked point. Nahele with his M-60 was at slack. They moved out of the small gorge and onto a little used trail, perhaps an animal trail, Rafe thought. He led them southwest around behind Hill 636. Still they found no indication of the one hundred and fifty NVA. They began climbing toward the peak. Ridgefield moved slowly, cautiously, pausing for a break every ten to fifteen minutes. Various thoughts were accumulating in his head, assembling themselves into a … Da-da! DA-DA! NEW AND UPROARIOUS RADIO PROGRAM FOR ALL MY MARVELOUS LISTENERS OUT THERE IN RADIOLAND.

  Ridgefield paused in very heavy vegetation to assess how to proceed. Behind him Nahele sat down and lit a cigarette. Ridgefield studied his map and checked his compass. He climbed forward three paces and mounted the prone carcass of a thick dead teak tree. He stood on the trunk and stared into the erratic green leaf wall of the jungle with the thousand irregular black shadows under palm fronds and behind branches. The trail had completely disappeared. Rafe stared into the dark holes in the vine masses, into the pockets where all light was excluded, blocked by moist living vegetation high above and layer upon layer of dead rotting support entanglement below. Older life supporting new life, he thought. The dead supporting the living in ever increasing heights of jungle, old trees dying, smothered and strangled beneath ever newer covers of green, spreading, reaching for the sun, climbing over the decaying structure, weighing heavily upon disintegrating branches, dying and decomposing as each new layer smothered the one below until the substructure weakened and the weight increased to the point of collapse. Ridgefield stared at the vegetation. A supporting limb snapped. A slow-motion avalanche of green crashed as a section of canopy imploded. He jumped down, squatted. Behind him others sought cover. He stared into the vegetation. It shook as if the earth below had opened its jaws and eaten a huge chunk of life. Ridgefield looked into the new wall, into the new life growing from the old, and he understood it all. He laughed delighted with the revelation and he jumped back onto the tree trunk and searched the black voids and the greenness for a trail to make the climb to the peak easier. As he stared directly into one black nothingness its center flashed bluewhite, a perfect circle, a blinding muzzle flash from within the depths of the void. He never saw anything again.

  “How the fuck did a bomb get down there?” El Paso questioned.

  “How the fuck do I know?” Egan shrugged.

  “Danny, are you sure it’s a bomb?” Brooks asked breaking from his radio report to the GreenMan.

  “You fuckin guys think I’m makin it up? Fuck it. Go down and look for yourselves.”

  “What happened to the room?” Whiteboy asked.

  “I don’t fuckin know,” Egan growled.

  “Well Gawd A’mighty, a room caint just dis-ay-pear.”

  “Well the fuckin thing just dis-ay-peared.”

  “GreenMan wants us moving,” Brooks stopped the questioning. “He wants us to blow it.”

  “No way,” Egan shouted.

  “Ya caint blow mah hole,” Whiteboy protested.

  “We gotta dig it out,” Egan said. “Send three of us down to dig a room before the bomb. Then we can dig the bomb out.”

  “Ah couldint fit in thaht hole,” Whiteboy lamented. “If Ah could Ah’d go down there with ya, Eg.”

  El Paso took the hook back from Brooks. He radioed GreenMan’s RTO and explained the situation and said they had three volunteers to go back down. He explained what they wanted to do and what they believed, speculated, the tunnel would lead to. Brooks took the hook and talked to GreenMan again. He asked for a day. Denied. Six hours. Denied. Two hours. Denied.

  “Aw, they stickin it to us ah-gain,” Whiteboy grumbled walking off and kicking a burnt-out smudge pot.

  “We’re gettin fucked, L-T,” Egan complained.

  “Blow the fucker,” Brooks ordered.

  Towing a reel of wire and two cases of C-4, Egan re-entered the shaft. He was in about fifty feet when word of Ridgefield’s death reached the CP. On the ground above, 1st Plt packed up and prepared to move out. Egan and the hole were the only things keeping them from going.

  “Can’t they signal him to hurry up?” Numbnuts whined to Cherry. “We’ll be the last ones to resupply.”

  “So what?” Cherry said. He was very tense. Numbnuts’ whine irritated him.

  “So what?!” Numbnuts cried. “We’ll get all the leftovers. Them others’ll go through all the Cs and take all the good meals. We’ll be stuck with Ham and Lima Beans.”

  “Wow, Dude! Here a man from the company gets wasted and all you think about is lima beans.”

  Egan’s progress was slowed by the encumbrance of the explosives. He crawled forward, tired of the tunnel now that it would be blown, caved in, never excavated, its secrets never revealed. Now it was just a hole in the ground. He casually searched the sides for sealed junctions and found none. When he reached 170 feet the bomb stopped him again. He scraped and dug about it and packed both cases of explosives in pockets between the bomb and the dirt. He implanted two electrical blasting caps, wired them and unreeled as he backed out. At the top he was greeted by Brooks who told him about Ridgefield. No matter how many times it happened the death of a boonierat seized his stomach and twisted it. “Fuck it,” he whispered. “Don’t mean nothin.”

  2d Plt had reached and secured the LZ. The first resupply helicopter was landing on the peak only 150 meters west. Brooks, Whiteboy and Egan ran the wire across 1st Plt’s NDP and up the ridge. Moneski and the 2d Sqd had already begun the hump west, uphill, toward the LZ when the demolition trio shouted, “Fire-in-the-hole. Fire-in-the-hole. Fire-in-the-ho …” Egan squeezed the claquer firing device. The C-4 exploded muffled. The earth shook violently. It was impossible to tell if the bomb exploded. The earth continued to rumble sending tremors through-out 636, then a 20 x 25 foot rectangular area of surface, including a section of the trail they had ascended yesterday and defended last night, collapsed, sunk straight down twelve feet, filling a subterranean room almost eighty feet below the surface.

  Normally resupply day was a skate, a day the command cut the boonierats some slack. Resupply day meant mail and packages and news items and time to relax and reorganize. Normally there was time to prepare a meal and eat something other than cold C-rations, time to clean up and possibly change clothes, time—between helicopter comings and goings—to be noisy. There had been times when Old Zarno, the battalion sergeant major, had come out to the field with an entire kitchen force and the boonierats of Alpha were served a hot meal on the LZ. One time, up by Firebase Maureen, the resupply after Lt. Kamamara DEROSed, the old forward observer had sent out six cases of ice cream cups packed in dry ice. That was an exceptional resupply. Then there was the resupply during the monsoon operation in the southern A Shau, when no helicopters could fly for seven days because of dense fog and Alpha was totally out of food. No extras arrived. Just food and batteries kicked out the back of a C-130 cargo plane and parachuted down. The boonierats had had to search the jungle for the pallets for twelve hours. It was torture but life was at stake and resupply was blessed and life saving. The resupply on the 16th of August was neither a skate nor an emergency.

  2d Plt had arrived at the summit of Hill 636 after a short hump from their NDP. Immediately they set to work, one squad cutting and clearing the LZ while the other two squads provided security. Small trees, brush and bamboo were hacked apart with machetes, and these, along with the loose branches and shattered debris from blowing down the larger trees with C-4 the day before, were hauled off the peak and away from the LZ to insure they would not be swept up into the helicopter rotors. Tree trunks and heavy limbs were tugged aside. The security squads busied themselves clearing fields of fire about the perimeter. Hands blistered. The sun peaked. The temperature rose. The sun baked down on the c
leared hilltop and the exposed earth dried and became dusty. Boonierats shed their shirts and continued working. The first two log birds arrived, one behind the other. The boonierats unloaded seventy cases of C-rations, batteries for the company’s fifteen radios and heavy loads of M-60 belts, fragmentation grenades and new M-16 magazines and cartridges. No mail. “Shee-it,” Alex Mohnsen cussed. The supplies were stacked beside the landing zone and the clearing squad became the breakdown squad. Quickly they resupplied, confiscating extra canned fruit and meat slices and tins of pound cake. Grudgingly they broke down and arranged distribution of the supplies. The temperature continued to climb.

  3d Plt arrived after having carried Ridgefield’s body and gear up the south slope of 636. A detail from 3d brought the body and extra ruck and weapon to the edge of the LZ. The body was wrapped in a poncho and the legs from the knees down hung out. “That ol mothafucker,” Nahele said lamely to Snell and McQueen, “he sure’s hell heavy.” “The fucker’d a done the same for you,” Snell babbled back. Ridgefield’s detail became 3d Plt’s breakdown squad. The others expanded and secured the perimeter.

  Lieutenant Caldwell watched and directed his platoon’s detail as he talked cheerfully to the civilian correspondent, Caribski, and the PIO escort officer, Lt. Carrie. “Ah, you know,” Caldwell said officially, “it’s a terrible thing when one of your men gets zapped.” Carrie pretended to listen but actually he was concentrating on four men standing about fifteen feet behind and to one side of Caldwell. They were Lamonte, George, the dog handler and McQueen. Lamonte seemed to be helping the dog handler prepare a letter or some documents. “They’re good men,” Caldwell said. “Sometimes they can’t always see the reasoning behind command decisions but they’re a good bunch.”

  Caribski also paid Caldwell only partial attention. Several of the soldiers from 2d Plt’s detail were wisecracking about his muttonchop sideburns and his hair which was long and completely covered his ears. He was a large man, heavier than most boonierats. He looked strong. Most soldiers considered civilian journalists to be a weird lot. So few went to the field they were always an object of curiosity. For many, flying from Saigon to Camp Eagle was going to the boonies. Very seldom did a civilian actually stay in the bush for days and of those who did only a small percent sat and listened. Most journalists had strong political leanings and tended to lead conversations, tended to get the boonierats to say what they themselves wanted to hear. Caribski was different. He was a cross of both worlds. He was an ex-GI, ex-Viet Vet. He had humped a ruck before. There was a romantic aura about him and about what he was doing. Some soldiers despised him for My Lai but in Alpha he earned general respect. He had talked and listened and humped. When the third log bird came in with clothes from the company fund and sundry materials but still no mail and then left with Lt. Carrie and Caribski and Ridgefield’s body, the disgust thickened.

  1st Plt and the company CP reached the LZ on 636 by mid-afternoon, hot, sluggish, disgusted like the rest. They had one hour to resupply before the back bird, the helicopter which would come to remove all the unused and returnable items, came in and resupply was over. Hastily they removed C-ration meals from cases then cans from boxes. They sorted through the meals grabbing ten then discarding those disliked if a suitable replacement could be found. “Ham and Limas! Ham and Limas!” Numbnuts shouted. “I hate ham and lima beans. Hey, Cherry, I’ll trade ya three ham and limas for one can of fruit. Aw, come on. How bout … oh, Man, just give me somethin other than mothers en beans … Aw, no, I a’ready got three meatballs en beans.”

  The company fund clothes had been picked over too before 1st Plt arrived. Only forty sets had come out and all forty sets, clean though worn, had been distributed. Forty sets of filthy fatigues lay piled ready for back bird withdrawal. The supply teams had not sent out any clean socks.

  Egan secluded himself on one side of the LZ. He had rummaged through the filthy fatigues and removed an untorn set about the right size. Anything was better than his CS crystal-infested clothes from the tunnel. His skin burned in hundreds of places. Egan changed quickly, powdered his feet, put on a clean pair of socks he had had in his ruck, sat back and pulled out the letter he had been writing to Stephanie.

  8-16—I’m going to have to give this to the doorgunner in half an hour so I’ll be brief. You’ve been on my mind a lot. I’m due to leave here in twenty-two days and can realistically expect to be out of the army in three or four more. I want to see you. I never knew how deeply you touched me, how much you’d come to mean to me until now. The thought of seeing you again is driving me mad. We had a lot of good times and some bad. I don’t know why I always had to be leaving but I think my desire to wander has been satiated by my time here. I feel funny writing you now, again, after so long, but how could I have written before when I didn’t know how long it would be before I was out. Stephanie, if you can, please say I may come to see you.

  All my love,

  Daniel

  Egan folded the letter, slid it into the envelope, sealed it, addressed it and wrote FREE on the stamp corner. He strode toward 1st Plt’s CP, found Cherry and said, “Hey, when the bird comes in, go up and see if we got any mail. Get the mail for 1st Plt. And, ah, give this to the doorgunner with the outgoing mail, okay?”

  “Why yo ask the man ta do that fo?” Jax said from behind Egan. “Of all us wid interest, aint none got mo interest then yo. Yo the platoon sergeant, yo fine. Maybe she wrote yo, this time.” Egan pulled the letter back from Cherry and walked away. “Problem wid that man,” Jax said to Cherry, “wid his woman, he doan know where he stan.”

  On the other side of the LZ Doc and El Paso were listening to Lamonte and George describe their day with 3d Plt. “I can see why they call him Boy Asshole,” Lamonte said. “Man, he wouldn’t even let the dog handler go up an put the dog out of its misery.”

  “I think they shoulda had a medevac come in for it,” George said.

  “He’s a fucker, Man,” Lamonte continued. “You guys better watch out for him.”

  “He do Rafe?” Doc asked intensely.

  “Naw, I don’t think that was his fault,” Lamonte answered. “Kinderly said Ridgefield was on the wrong trail. Got crossed up someplace. White wanted ta have a bird come in with a hoist so we wouldn’t have ta carry him but Boy Asshole wouldn’t even request one. He just turned the platoon around just like he did when the dog got it and he had us runnin away. I thought Nahele’d blow his ass off.”

  “He’s an asshole, Man,” George said. “I think you’re goina have trouble ever gettin another scout dog team ta work with this company.”

  Brooks came over to the group, excused himself and very apologetically told Lamonte he had to confiscate his film. “L-T, I already gave it to Lt. Carrie,” Lamonte said. Brooks pursed his lips. “I know Sir, it wasn’t your doing. That 3d Brigade commander, he sure’s got his head up his ass.”

  Brooks shook his head slowly, shrugged his shoulders and winked, “Doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “Hey, both of you. Thanks very much for coming out with us. It makes a lot of us feel good to have you here.”

  When Brooks returned to the CP Lamonte said, “He’s one in a million. That man’s got his shit together.”

  “Right on, Bro,” El Paso said. “Where you going now?”

  “I don’t know,” Lamonte said. “We’ll be in for two days to write our stories then maybe we’ll go out with 2d of the three-two-seventh.”

  “You really give the film to Carrie?” George asked Lamonte.

  “Fuck no! I told him you gave it to the L-T.”

  Cherry, Egan and Thomaston grouped together with Brooks and his RTOs and FO to discuss the afternoon move. There would be three hours of light remaining after the back bird left and the GreenMan was repeating his shrill order: “Get down there and hurt those little people.”

  “We aint walkin inta the middle a that valley in the middle of the fucken night,” Egan warned flatly.

  “No,” Brooks agreed. “We won’t m
ove down there yet. I think we should set up some ambushes up here. Move out and leave some ambush teams. Can we get some volunteers?”

  “Give us ten,” Thomaston answered. He and Egan rose and circled the peak asking for ambush team volunteers. Cherry sat by the CP listening as the others prepared for the continuing move. He brushed a mosquito from his face and felt a small sore bump. He rubbed his fingers over his forehead and down by the side of his nose. “Oh God,” he muttered. “Pimples!” Cherry checked and examined his body. His face had broken out and had several cuts, his arms were cut and bruised and the burns he had received on the CA were sore and oozing. His back and leg muscles were sore and his shoulders hurt from where the rucksack straps cut. Now he had a full ruck again and the straps would cut deeper. He slipped a hand under his shirt and felt his shoulders. There too the skin was breaking out. Just like being thirteen again, he thought. He sat forward and felt the cloth of his pants tighten against his crotch. He was sore there also. His pants, the dirt and sweat, and the night mist were combining to irritate his inner thigh skin. Cherry got up, found Egan. “Hey,” he asked, “is the ambush team goina have ta hump very far?”

  “Negative,” Egan replied.

  “Are they goina need an RTO?” Cherry asked.

  “That’s affirm,” Egan smiled. Oh to get rid of this dude for a day, he thought.

  “Could I volunteer?” Cherry persisted expecting Egan to say no.

  “Right on,” Egan beamed.

  When the back bird came in, Egan grabbed Cherry and pulled him toward the LZ. “Come on,” he shouted. “I got somethin for ya.” The bird set down, Egan ran forward, gave the doorgunner his letter and spoke to him for several seconds. Then he ran back to Cherry. The detail from 2d Plt loaded the material being sent back. “Scream,” Egan shouted into the noise of the rotorslap and engineroar. Cherry looked at him incredulously. “Yeah, SCREAM,” Egan yelled and he screamed as loud as he could. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaa … Try it.”