A Requiem for Crows: A Novel of Vietnam

by Dennis Foley

  Nguyen nodded and smiled, something rare for him. “Oui.” He tried to copy Scotty, “Crauw.”

  “Good enough.” Scotty nodded and smiled back.

  Nguyen pointed back at a place he had made for himself under the overhang of a thatched wall which once stood upright on one of the decayed structures.

  Scotty nodded and whispered, “Okay, Dai Uy. I got it,” in answer to the unspoken request for Scotty to keep an eye on things while Nguyen got some sleep.

  Scotty spent the better part of an hour scanning the terrain in all directions—with emphasis to the west but often returned to the crow. He was entertained by the crow’s tendency to project courage. The bird failed to show any sign of fear about predators which might be around him. Still he ate while constantly looking about for threats to his survival—as Scotty had been doing. But the crow seemed much cooler about it. No, the crow had a haughtiness about him and an arrogance announcing he ruled his territory and it was his lunch time.

  The weather seemed not to be a problem for the crow either. As Scotty watched the clouds boiled up and poured for several minutes and then stopped again. Rain or not, the crow ate and held his head up with attitude.

  Once he had finished, the crow took flight and was quickly joined by a second crow Scotty had not seen before. This bothered Scotty—somewhere near the first crow and near the patrol some other motion had taken place he had not noticed. He tried to reassure himself the second crow must have been in a somewhat deeper depression or hidden behind a larger tuft of marsh grasses, but the fact remained with him—something had happened within a few hundred meters of his location and he missed it.

  He watched the pair of crows soaring, flying together but not in unison like ducks or geese. They found thermals, climbed onto them eliminating the need to flap their wings as they rose to higher altitudes searching the ground below for more food. As they circled they adjusted their direction by making ever so slight changes to the large splayed feathers at the ends of their wings and a twist of the fanlike feathers making up their tails.

  As the breezes continued out of the east the crows’ orbits moved farther and farther away until they were specks in the sky and their irritating caws were smothered up again by the return of still another rain squall over Scotty.

  As night fell, Scotty, Caruthers and Nguyen moved from their centrally located command post in the center of the cluster of crumbling hootches to positions on the south and west of the perimeter. This to add firepower and extra eyes to the job of watching the border for activity. Their assumption was any Viet Cong who had crossed the border the night before was well east of them, had been laying up during the day and would continue to infiltrate deeper into Vietnam once darkness fell again. Those they could do little about.

  But new infiltrators would cross as soon as it got dark enough for them to feel they could move without being seen. Scotty knew it would be another long night of watching and waiting. At least it was a reconnaissance patrol and they were not expected to bring back any scalps or put a major battle victory on the books before they were finished. If they could just confirm the often denied claim the Viet Cong were staging out of an assembly area only a long stone’s throw from their positions they would accomplish their mission.

  Even before it got completely dark the mosquitoes begin to feast on Scotty and the others. Scotty pulled the olive drab cravat from his neck and his bottle of bug juice out of his pocket. The cravat was actually intended to be a sling in a first aid packet in its first life. But soldiers in Vietnam had learned it made an effective and lightweight sweat rag and kept bugs and twigs from slipping into the necks of their fatigue shirts while out in the field.

  Scotty crumpled up his cravat, squirted it liberally with insect repellent and then retied it loosely around his neck. The smell of the repellent filled the air around his face and gave him some temporary relief from the insistent attackers.

  Dusk had turned into an inky darkness and the night took on a different symphony of harmonizing insects, night birds and the sounds of distant thunder. The thunder was somewhere so far off it was only a rumble now and then. Scotty periodically looked back in the direction of the Sugar Mill some thirty miles to their rear for any sign of light or evidence of approaching rain.

  If he could see the glow from the lights of the populated strip along the highway bouncing off the clouds he knew there was a high enough cloud cover to allow helicopters to fly to them if they got into serious trouble.

  Sometimes the glow gave him reassurance. Other times during the night he could see no sign of light meaning the ceiling had dropped enough to isolate them and keep help from coming should they need it.

  With nothing he could do about the division’s ability to respond to contact, Scotty decided to dismiss it and focus on the task at hand. To do anything else would just make him more anxious with no way to change things.

  He strained to see anything moving out in the flatland to his front. Simply distinguishing the sky from the ground was nearly impossible because it was so dark. He raised his binoculars to his face knowing they sometimes helped make the darkness only slightly easier to see through because of the optics’ ability to intensify ambient light and detect movement. He scanned the terrain to the front and then swung around to the right—the west.

  As he did a streak of light slashed across his binoculars’ field of view in the opposite direction. Not sure what he had seen, Scotty slowly retraced the arc until the slash appeared again. He steadied his elbows, took a breath and slowly let half of it out to eliminate as much binocular movement as he could then scanned back to the west, again.

  Bingo! He found it. It was a light. A single, weak and distant light. Scotty quickly pulled his rifle from its place next to his elbow and laid it on the ground pointing exactly in the direction of the light. He needed some reference point to help him find the same spot to watch should the light go out.

  Back inside the narrow field of view set by the limits of his binoculars, Scotty found the light again. It appeared to be a single gas lamp or candle, but he was sure if it was beyond the border. Still he couldn’t be sure at all how far away it was. With nothing to compare it to and no knowledge of the size of the flame, his guess could be from three to five hundred meters. Not useful for much except the inherent fact there was life where there was a light. And the life was most likely Viet Cong. He felt his pulse begin to quicken.

  By the time Scotty got to Nguyen’s position it had started raining hard again. All he could do was tell the captain what he saw and wait for him to call it in to Division Operations. Neither of them could see the light through the downpour even if it was still burning out in the downpour.

  Around midnight the rain let up again. Scotty pulled his binoculars from inside his shirt where he had been trying to keep it dry to prevent condensation from forming inside the lens barrels. He reached out and found the short section of bamboo pole he brought back to his position from Nguyen’s. He had replaced his rifle with the bamboo and trained his binoculars in the direction the stick was pointing hoping to find the light again.

  No luck. It was dark in the lenses of his binoculars even though the air between him and the original source of the light was clear and free of fog. He searched for twenty minutes and then rested his eyes before trying again.

  Scotty wondered how many VC had been able to slip by the patrol under the cover of darkness helped by the curtain the rain had been placing between them. He began to wonder if they would be able to see anything at all. The patrol was scheduled to stay in the abandoned hamlet for two nights and three days. Any longer would just increase the chances they would be compromised and become a target for the Viet Cong. He knew the chances on success rested on the weather. If the rain continued they would have no more success in the remaining night of the patrol than they had the on the first night. Visibility was everything.

  Suddenly, Scotty heard movement to his front. Sloshing, someone or something was moving through the
tangle of weeds and low brush. He looked to his left and could see the Vietnamese soldier next to him had also heard the noise.

  They waited. And the noise continued—who or whatever was making it moved slowly and deliberately. Scotty turned to move to Nguyen’s position to tell him of the noise and found him already crawling his way on his hands and knees.

  Scotty and Nguyen continued to watch, seeing nothing, they continued to listen as the noise got farther and farther away—headed in the direction of Saigon.

  Nguyen cupped the handset to his radio to his mouth to reduce the chance of being heard as he called for artillery support. While they couldn’t fire an explosive round far enough to kill or injure whoever was moving through the marshland they could light up the night.

  In a matter of minutes the night air was cut by the ripping arc of an artillery flare shell which burst high over the marshland and several miles east of the patrol’s position.

  The flare wobbled under a small parachute which extended its time of descent and allowed Scotty and Nguyen to see more clearly the terrain in front of them. They searched it first for anyone else moving toward them and then turned to look in the direction they guessed the trespasser had gone.

  Scotty trained his binoculars on the marshland now rendered spooky by the artificial light hanging above it but saw nothing.

  Nguyen tapped Scotty on the arm and directed his attention to a point back toward the border.

  There, illuminated by the flare, were the faces of three Viet Cong soldiers spaced nearly fifty meters apart, down on their bellies in the swampy water for security but unable to resist looking around themselves for any sign of South Vietnamese soldiers.

  They were more evidence of infiltration. Scotty looked down at the stick he had placed on the ground to orient himself on where he had last seen the lamp. The stick pointed almost directly at the distant infiltrators.

  Chapter 18

  SCOTTY COULD TELL IT was not going to be good news when he saw Caruthers crawling toward him. “What’s up, Sarge?”

  Caruthers stopped crawling and got up on one elbow to pull his map out of his pocket. “Got some new marchin’ orders from the Sugar Mill.”

  Scotty picked up the handset to his radio, pressed it to his ear and pressed the press-to-talk switch a couple of times. “Didn’t hear it on mine.”

  Caruthers squirted a wire-like stream of chewing tobacco into a nearby clump of grass and shook his head. “I wouldn’t count on hearing much with that antenna.” He was referring to the difference in antenna lengths between his radio and Scotty’s. The second radio with Scotty could be counted on to talk to Caruthers’ radio but not the Sugar Mill’s.

  “So what’s up?” Scotty asked.

  “Well, Colonel Pascoe got me out of a good dream to tell me to pass on a change of mission to you and Nguyen, like I’m some kinda’ fuckin’ messenger boy.”

  It was obvious to Scotty Caruthers still wasn’t convinced Pascoe deserved a promotion by the sarcasm he attached to Pascoe’s title. “What’s he want?”

  “He ain’t happy. Ain’t happy about the VC what slipped by us. Ain’t happy we haven’t been able to find Ho Chi Minh’s whole fuckin’ headquarters out here and he ain’t happy he couldn’t get you on the radio.”

  “Shit!” Scotty replied. “Give me better equipment and I could talk to Saigon!”

  “Get’s worse, Caruthers added.

  “How so?”

  “Seems he convinced General Minh to tell Dai Uy Nguyen to send out a small detail to see what’s what over there.” He pointed toward the border. Toward where they had seen the three infiltrators and where he had seen the light.

  He thought of the crows. “What? There’s no way to keep from being spotted moving out there if you’re over a foot tall. Hell the only tree stands are hundreds of meters apart where there aren’t even any between us and that location.”

  Caruthers tapped a spot on his map where the two countries met. “Yeah, it may be, but he wants a small recon party to sneak on out after dark and move closer to the bad guys.”

  “That’s damn near suicide!” Scotty said, trying to keep his voice hushed.

  “I’ll go out with ’em. We’ll be okay,” Caruthers said, tucking his map back into his pocket and spitting more tobacco into the marsh.

  “No. I’m Nguyen’s counterpart now. You’re too short. If you got shot up out there —”

  Caruthers interrupted Scotty. “One condition. If you go with Nguyen’s party I want ta’ reorganize the stay behinds back here as a reaction force, jus’ in case y’all make contact.”

  “I can’t imagine Nguyen would have a problem with that.”

  “Good,” was all Caruthers said before scooping up his rifle, spitting again, spinning on his stomach and crawling back toward the command post.

  Later, back at the command post in the center of the perimeter, Scotty, Caruthers and Captain Nguyen stretched out on their bellies, heads only inches apart under a poncho. With the poncho keeping the light from the red filtered flashlight being visible in the night, they all looked at the map on the group between them. Nguyen took a grease pencil and drew a black loop from the hamlet to a point right at the Cambodian border and back to the hamlet.

  Not coming back by the same way they went out needed no discussion between them. They all knew it was the fastest way to get ambushed.

  “Good, Dai Uy,” Scotty said, even though he wished there were some kind of terrain features to conceal their movement—hills, ditches, treelines—anything but two foot high reeds sticking out of stagnant marsh water.

  Nguyen circled a small blue dashed symbol on the map. It signified an intermittent stream. They could only tell if it was a good enough stream or not by going to take a look at it. “Maybe rain,” he added.

  Scotty raised his hand and twisted his fingers together. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” he said, also hoping for some advantage the rain would give them to keep from being spotted.

  Nguyen looked at his hand and then back to Scotty, puzzled.

  “Oh, it means you hope for good luck.”

  Nguyen nodded. “Yes. Custom?”

  “Yes,” Scotty said, feeling a little foolish.

  The next day was spent like the earlier ones—re-rigging gear, getting some rest and checking ammo, weapons and radios.

  It was almost nine p.m. of the second night in the abandoned hamlet when they finally left the perimeter. Scotty, Nguyen, Sergeant Tran—the medic and a soldier named Khoi. They carried only weapons and ammo, no headgear or rucksacks as the crawled forward into the stream bed nearest the perimeter. The rain had swelled it enough to be a source of concealment and a way to move more quietly than slogging through the mud.

  Scotty followed Nguyen into the stream bed not much wider than his shoulders. The two-foot deep water hardly moved as it followed the stream’s channel meandering in easy turns with no abrupt changes in direction. He held his rifle up out of the water with one hand while half crawling, half floating along the stream bed.

  The four moved for not more than thirty minutes before Nguyen held them up to listen. It was so dark they all knew unless they stumbled upon an enemy ambush set for them they would be more likely to hear a threat moving in the dark marsh than see it.

  While they were listening, Scotty checked his compass to make sure he knew where the perimeter was in case they had to escape contact and run back to where the others still remained in the hamlet. He raised his head and looked back in the direction of the hamlet but could not make it out in the darkness. His guess was they had moved about four hundred meters to the west which put them within a few hundred meters from actually being inside Cambodia. Knowing exactly where the border was was not possible. It wasn’t like it was marked. On one side it was swampy marshy Vietnam and on the other side it was the same swampy marshy terrain.

  Once Nguyen was satisfied it was safe to move on, he led the four onward by simply moving out, letting the other three follow. Their moveme
nt was slow and the water was beginning to chill the small patrol.

  Captain Nguyen stopped them after another thirty minutes of very deliberate movement. He moved back to Scotty and pointed off to the west and then touched his ear. He had heard something.

  Scotty strained to hear something, anything. It began to rain lightly. The sounds of the patter on their wet uniforms created even more ambient noise to complicate hearing something far off. Hearing nothing, he simply shook his head to let Nguyen know.

  The captain pulled out his own compass, took a reading to help orient himself and then got up to his knees on the stream’s bottom and looked around in all directions. He looked back to Scotty. “We stay here.”

  Scotty pulled the radio handset from inside his shirt where it had been traveling wrapped tightly in a plastic bag which once held the radio’s battery. He put the handset to his ear and without speaking pressed the transmit key four times to send the prearranged signal back to Caruthers and the rest of the patrol in the hamlet they were stopped at their observation point and all was still okay.

  After a few seconds he got a single voice response transmission from Caruthers, “Roger. Understand you have reached objective and your SITREP is negative. If that is correct reply with two squelch breaks.”

  Scotty squeezed the press-to-talk button on the handset twice causing the constant hissing of the rushing noise in the earpiece of the handset to be interrupted by silence twice at each end.

  Caruthers took the initiative to end the transmission. “Roger that. Out.”

  The four climbed up the slick bank of the stream bed to get out of the running water for what was left the night even if only to trade it for muddy, marshy grasses next to the bank. They positioned themselves in a star-like pattern covering all four cardinal directions of the compass, their feet nearly touching in the middle. Scotty found himself facing the border.

  They would spend the night not moving, not making any noise if they could avoid it while they watched and listened. It was silent beyond the night creatures and the rain which sometimes slacked but never really stopped.