13th Valley

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Thomaston and Marko secured the rope. Jax began the defensive ring. Egan stripped. He and Cherry slipped back into the water and became guides and life guards as the others crossed. Alpha’s move went quickly and no equipment was lost. On each crossing Cherry dove under and washed a bit of his body, mostly his arms. This is blessed water, he thought. On the bank Brooks caught himself staring at the two naked soldiers. He became upset with himself.

  “Fuckin gooks is aw’right,” Pop Randalph chuckled. “Look at them thangs, Sir.” Pop, Garbageman and Lt. De Barti had come to the CP with half a dozen traps.

  “I’ll be dipped in shit,” Garbageman giggled. “There got to be at least a dozen of em so far.”

  Where Alpha had emerged from the river, the bank was littered with bamboo scraps as if someone had had a small mill by the water. There were numerous footpaths leading up and down the river’s edge. 1st Plt had moved due south, 2d had gone west downstream, 3d east upriver. Fifty meters downstream 2d found the fishing camp. Then 3d Plt found the marijuana fields. Minutes later 1st found the ruins of an old village. It was like nothing any of them had ever seen before in the mountains.

  De Barti held out two of the fish-traps to Brooks. “There’s fresh tracks all over the place down there,” the platoon leader said to the company commander. “It looks like they got maybe a platoon of dan cong (civilian coolies) doing nothing but catching fish for their troops. We’ve got ten traps so far and we’ve only swept a small stretch of bank.”

  Brooks lifted one of the traps and inspected it. The trap was a cylindrical bamboo cage closed at one end and having a bamboo cone opening at the other. The traps were simple yet the workmanship was elegant. Brooks sighed. “How’s your security?” he asked.

  Before De Barti could respond El Paso interrupted them with Caldwell’s report of the marijuana field. Then fields. Two, then a third and finally a fourth. Then Paul Calhoun called from 2d Plt to report that they could not collect any more traps because they couldn’t carry them all. “We’re in their fishin grounds,” Calhoun reported. “They got enough traps here ta feed a regiment. We got a few small animal snares too.” A queer feeling ran up Garbageman’s neck to the base of his skull as the report came in. He no longer felt like giggling.

  “Destroy what you have,” Brooks directed De Barti. “Stop the search and get out of there. Mark it for arty. We’re moving south-twenty-west.” Brooks turned to his RTOs. “Cahalan, call in the report. We’re going over to 3d.”

  A quarter of Caldwell’s men were busy harvesting the crop they had found. Everyone else was on security. The four fields were in a square. Each patch was approximately 15 x 25 meters. The marijuana plants ranged from three to seven feet high. Before Brooks could inspect the fields, Thomaston radioed saying that 1st Plt had discovered the ruins of an ancient village. “It can’t be too ancient if you’re finding old thatch,” Brooks radioed.

  “It’s all rotting. Rotten,” Thomaston transmitted. “It musta been a Montegnard ville but it’s collapsed and there’s new growth over it all. Over.”

  “Any indications of it on your funny papers? Over.”

  “Negative that. There’s an abandoned ville indicated four kilos to the whiskey. Over.”

  “How many hootches? Over.”

  “Six for sure. Maybe eight. They’re just lumps on the floor. There’s a new red ball running right through the ville. Five, six feet wide with overhead cover. Beaucoup signs recent activity. Carts … doesn’t seem to go anyplace.”

  Major Hellman cut in on Alpha’s internal. “Quiet Rover Four, this is Red Rover One. Do you read? Over.”

  “Red Rover One, Four Niner,” Brooks responded. “I’ve got you lumpy chicken. Over.”

  Hellman said he had been monitoring Alpha and that he wanted the fields of marijuana cut and burned, the fishing traps collected for evacuation and the red ball monitored for enemy traffic. “UUUh,” Brooks grunted. He thought, that guy, someday he is going to get everybody killed. Brooks did not answer Hellman’s order. Hellman repeated his order and Brooks snarled into the handset, “Just how in the fuck are we going to burn a fucken half-acre of grass out here, Red Rover? It’s been raining down here for a thousand years.”

  “Rover Four Niner, do you know who this is?”

  “I am not going to compromise my position for a few fucking fishing traps and a field of dew. You got the coordinates. You want to destroy it, fine. Go ahead. Over. Out.” Brooks seethed. He rammed the handset back into El Paso’s hand and told him to get the unit moving.

  Alpha continued their three pronged formation moving south away from the river 100 meters then arching southwest and finally west. There were signs of enemy activity everywhere. The North Vietnamese seemed to have an almost endless series of well engineered dirt roads and trails snaking south from the valley center toward the mountains. All routes had overhead cover. Egan was more apprehensive than he had ever been. Every step put them on a potential ambush site. They crossed from brush to elephant grass again as they descended. Egan stayed off the established trails except for crossing them. Then he approached slowly, stopped, observed and crossed quickly. At one point Egan thought 3d Plt was crowding 1st on the left flank. Nahele was at point there. Egan paused, brought Cherry up, radioed Kinderly. “I can hear you assholes,” Egan whispered. “Aint no way,” Kinderly answered. 3d was 100 meters back. Egan squatted and called a general halt.

  Recon’s airlift to reinforce Delta was completed. Bravo, three klicks northeast of Alpha, was resupplying. Those pilots, Egan thought. They do incredible things. We should have a LOH on station. Jax had moved past Egan. Egan sat with Cherry. He called Brooks. “Feeling. Trail watchers to sierra.” They sat soundlessly. Whiteboy and 3d Sqd advanced to point. The column rose. Egan stopped Whiteboy and led off again himself, the big squad leader at slack, then Cherry. While they sat Cherry had plucked pieces of grass and stuck them into his helmet cover and ruck to break up the smooth lines of the radio and his head. Others had watched him and copied. Behind Cherry 3d Sqd followed, then the Co and Plt CPs, 2d Sqd and 1st now at drag. The other columns advanced also. All three were being watched.

  A disconnected thought vision came to Cherry. Disconnected from Nam. He did not know why or how the thought began. Perhaps the grass or being able to see the hills again triggered it or perhaps the sense of power he had from the morning artillery raid or perhaps the cleansing action of the river water. The triggering stimulus made no difference to him, but the meaning of the vision seemed all important. As he walked, Cherry saw himself gliding above a rugged stretch of California coast. The sun was out. It was a magnificent day, his second day as a soarer, a hang glider. Cherry had never attempted hang-gliding, had never been to California, had indeed no knowledge of soaring at all, yet in the vision every detail was perfect. He could see himself above the bluffs before the Pacific, could feel the cool ocean breeze. Three days earlier he had been to the doctor. He knew the history in the vision without having to see it or think it. Somehow, he had strained himself very badly and he had ignored it for a long time. Finally he had gone to see a specialist and the doctor told him he had poisoned his system. The condition is irreversible, the doctor explained. You will be dead within five days. Cherry, the man in the vision, had fallen into deep depression. Before he had met with the specialist he had known what the man would say. The depression seeped from the vision to the soldier on the valley floor in Vietnam. Cherry felt very sad. Yet physically he felt strong. His muscles were in fine shape. The doctor had acknowledged that. Cherry decided to become a soarer as his last earthly feat. He also decided this would be the best way to end his life. He told no one.

  On his first day of soaring he was an excellent student. His instructor was a wing salesman and Cherry had the latest gear. It gave the soarer an incredible amount of control. They practiced, the salesman instructed and Cherry learned. Day two found them on the cliffs and bluffs just south of Mendocino. Perhaps Cherry had seen a TV special. How could he know these
things? How could it be so real? It was a beautiful day with a crisp September wind gusting in crystal blue sky. Off Cherry leaped and then returned. He was ready now. His secret plan was to marry his physical being with the Pacific coastline—that exact spot where it is neither land nor sea but sometimes either and sometimes both. A wavewashed rocksand beach.

  He soared, first a bit awkwardly, then more and more gracefully. First just a bit above the bluff and then higher and higher over the ocean. Into dives then out to barrel rolls and loops. The new wing was more maneuverable than any earlier design. Higher. The wing was incredible. From three hundred feet over the bluff he could see the coast for one hundred miles and the endless ocean. Freedom, elation, higher.

  It is time, he said to himself. Cherry looked straight down. It was late afternoon. He had been in the air for three hours. Slowly he nosed over and folded the wing back into a missile, gravity shooting him ever faster toward the earth. The speed was terrific. The pressure of the wind on his eyes seemed to be ripping them apart. Tears squished out and shot across his face and temples and lost themselves in the wind. Faster. Darting to the coastline. I don’t want it, Cherry thought. I can’t do it.

  Violently he forced the bars to expand the wing. He was still crashing. I can’t do it to myself, he screamed. The wing grabbed a tiny fluff of rising air and whipped, thrashed, and a few vertical feet from the coast leveled and began ascending.

  Then the vision was gone. Cherry thought about it. He smiled. That’s like saying I can’t kill myself, he thought. He felt very happy. The vision seemed to have taken only a minute. Cherry looked forward smiling broadly. Goddamn, he thought, Egan sure is moving slow this time. He had not advanced twenty steps during the dream. Dream? It seemed so real.

  Suddenly the air erupts—Egan opens up with his 16 and falls flat—Whiteboy’s 60 barkbuzzes through a hundred rounds—four men jump from vegetation to the left—Cherry lunges forward—Hill jumps over him—Egan is up firing again. He fires a burst which cuts one man in half. AK fire is coming from their front, left and right. All of 3d Sqd charges the ambush. Whiteboy is standing, machine-gunning from the waist, firing his ass off. Cherry runs into the fire with the surging boonierats—he is spraying rounds to the right. He falls sprawled flat believing for a moment he is still upright sprinting—MOVE! MOVE! MOVE! Thomaston screaming—Cherry’s legs pumping though he is prone then he is up sprinting—rifles crackbarking popping, grenade explosion—Rover Five, Rover Four, they’re breaking your way, El Paso—Cherry doesn’t realize he is up. He sprints forward hurtling bushes and prone reloading boonierats. The NVA are running, retreating. Cherry heaves a grenade then another without consciously aiming. Behind him Egan blasts a wounded NVA. More NVA open up from down the trail. Harley, Frye, Mullen reloading, Cherry still charging—BOOM—more explosions. Tracers zing up through the grass and brush. A fireball erupts to Cherry’s left, the concussion knocks him down—a wounded enemy soldier lifts an AK toward Cherry’s head—Cherry spinning bringing his 16 around—the soldier’s eyes flaring open with amazement or fear—Egan has unloaded six rounds into his chest—no cry of pain—amazement—the eyes rolling up the body sagging, collapsing. They fucked up, Egan thinking laughing. They blew it too early. Grenade! Brooks screams—he is in the middle firing with them, he leaps away—Egan down reloading—the noise incredible—the grenade has landed behind, at Egan’s feet. He is unaware. Cherry sees it smack, splatting in the mud. He shouts but no sound leaves his throat. He lunges for the handbomb, a swimmer’s dive thrusting out flat with both legs, arms stretched forward, eyes on the grenade. He grabs it, his body still in the air, squeezing it in his hand his body crashing in the mud rolling like a shortstop and throwing the grenade back toward the enemy, the bomb exploding in the air. Whiteboy sees enemy in brush uptrail. He drills one. The body caves in. Marko up. Chops brush to debris with his 60. In back Numbnuts is flat on the ground. He hasn’t raised his head since the first volley erupted. He hasn’t fired. Egan grabs Cherry’s radio to call Armageddon, the firebase artillery. FO is already calling in support.

  The firing decreases. The NVA retreated left and right. 2d and 3d Plts had maneuvered to the flanks of 1st. Shots and explosions came first from 3d’s position then from 2d’s. Denhardt and Lairds slit the throats of five NVA insuring they were dead. Alpha regrouped almost instantly, three prongs turning south. The action had exploded suddenly, flashed like powder and died in less than two minutes. One NVA soldier had made a slight last movement as his unit, having followed 1st Plt’s approach, setup a hasty L-shaped ambush. Egan had seen him and surprised the ambushers a moment before they were ready. 1st Plt killed five at the ambush site. 3d Plt caught three fleeing and killed them. 2d gunned down one. Whiteboy received Alpha’s only wound, a piece of grass slit his eyelid. The grudge stake for the Khe Ta Laou was being raised.

  “How many do you think got away?” Brooks asked the group.

  Alpha was now set up together on an earthen swell at the base of the south escarpment. They had moved very quickly not allowing the NVA time to reorganize. “Them raggedy-ass mothafuckas neva knew what was comin down,” Harley whispered to Whiteboy.

  “Gawd A’mighty Sweet Jesus,” Whiteboy whispered back. “Ya ken say that fer me too. Sure as shit stinks.”

  “You en Little Boy was doin a J-O-B,” Egan chuckled. “We shoulda had the photogs here today.”

  “Fuckin God,” Frye said. “Ever since the dinks stole that 60 from Delta I been expectin ta walk inta an ambush where they’d be usin the likes a Little Boy on us.”

  “Hey,” Brooks called softly. “One meeting, huh?”

  “I’d estimate there were fifteen at most,” Thomaston said.

  “We know at least two got by us,” De Barti added.

  “None escaped through 3d,” Caldwell said.

  Brooks leaned forward then rocked back. He was sitting cross-legged, a topo map on his lap, his rifle beneath it. Close about him were his platoon leaders and advisers. They were well concealed in a briar thicket. Alpha’s perimeter circled the CP at a ten to fifteen meter radius. The men were still excited. And happy. They had hit the enemy behind his own lines, hit him hard, then run. Now Brooks had to figure a way to get them back down there, even deeper in, without being ambushed. The NVA won’t make that mistake again, he thought. And we better not use the trifork formation again. They’ll be onto it. Brooks rocked back and forth slowly, studying the map, pondering his situation, mentally moving his unit and the enemy and trying to perceive the outcome. Each time the NVA had hit Alpha, Alpha had been moving toward the center of the valley. When they were moving either toward the mountains or beyond the valley center toward the open plain to the west, the NVA had not touched them. Was that a matter of coincidence?

  On the perimeter Cherry was jubilant. He had reacted well and he knew it. It had been his first experience of the freedom of a firefight, the anything goes rage of a battle. He felt young and strong. He had been free to perform. He could have laid in the muck like Numbnuts or a few of the others who said they were pinned down, but he hadn’t. He was ebullient. He had been able to protect himself, to save Egan and to be saved by Egan. Goddamn, we carry a vicious personal arsenal, he thought. Had it lasted longer, I could have called in artillery, Cobras, the fast movers. Cherry sat smug, snug, buried in foliage. The heft of his M-16 felt good in his hands. He was so happy. They all had reacted well, he decided. This was man-to-man friendship. A gutsy bond. Combat camaraderie. They shared discomfort and death and victory. If you get killed, he told himself, that’s not so bad. Didn’t El Paso say it right? Everybody has to die sometime. It’s if you get maimed, that’s when it’s bad. That would suck. Going home maimed would be rotten. Wounded, he thought, wounded but not badly wounded, that would be okay. That’d pass. Getting killed’d pass too. Really, the only bad part about getting killed would be not having gotten to do all those things I always wanted to do. I got places to go, girls to know. Hell, I aint tired of livin this life yet. Cherry lo
oked into the field before him. He was aware of his responsibility, ability, to kill anything out there that moved. I am a mangod, he said to himself. Every man is part god; every man who knows his soul belongs only to himself.

  It was up there again. High over the valley. The music, the PsyOps bird with its loudspeakers blaring. Minh looked up but he could not see the bird. It is probably above the range of .51 cals, he thought. Minh did not like hearing the music. He tried to shut it out. The PsyOps people were playing the same tape they had played on the first and second days of the operation. The bird descended slowly, spiralling down, playing the music first near the firebase then over the north escarpment, now over the valley center. Minh could not help but listen. The sorrowful funeral music brought back many memories, memories of a war that had rocked his land all his life and much more. Minh had heard the music played for brothers and cousins and friends. He remembered how his cousin’s body had been delivered to his family in 1965. The body came in an opaque black plastic bag. When the bag was opened the family found the body just as it had been at the moment of death. Minh’s cousin was still in uniform. The blood was still sticky on the newly cold flesh. Above the valley the tune changed. Minh knew the new song also. It was said to be a popular song in the North. A girl sang woefully of her first lover who was far away. A metal drum beat the melancholy rhythm. When the song was over a third began. This one Minh found very saddening also for it was about a young boy who had left his love and gone off to combat. The melody began slowly. A lonely soldier sang the words. The PsyOps bird was directly over Alpha. The mist and fog had thinned but the helicopter was so high it could not be seen from the ground. With it two Cobras could be heard. Then all sounds of the birds left. Minh and Doc were seated just outside the CP circle.