by Robin Moore
3
Lieutenant Dant was adviser to the first company of Rangers and Captain Paul advised the second company. Major Scharne and I walked between the two companies, at the tail end of A Company and the head of B Company. A radio man, his PRC-10 strapped to his back, preceded us. Beside Scharne was his counterpart, Major Lim, commander of the Vietnamese Ranger Training Center at Duc Phung. In theory, by the time Scharne had completed his year’s tour, Major Lim would have absorbed his American adviser’s years of experience gained in combat in World War II, Korea, Laos, and Vietnam.
The student Rangers marched out of their camp, heading north. The sun, just risen, silhouetted the men and their shouldered weapons to any observers who might be in the hills watching the training camp. Scharne, a wry smile on his face, glanced up at the hills ahead of us through which we would soon be marching. It would be bright daylight before the last of B Company, clearly telegraphing the direction of march, entered the protective cover of the jungle.
“It is too bad your officers couldn’t get the men into the jungle earlier,” Scharne remarked to Major Lim.
Lim made no answer. It was rude of the American officer to so pointedly refer to a simple error in timing. As the march toward the hills ahead progressed, men kept falling out of ranks to defecate, their friends holding up the column to wait for them.
“If this was an American column I’d make them shit in their pants and walk in it all day,” Scharne growled loudly. He looked at the rising sun. “Not even the point man in Company A made it into the jungle before daylight.” Then he glanced at me and shrugged.
The sun was just beginning to glare in my eyes uncomfortably when we entered the green jungle cover. To our left we could hear a river burbling, occasionally catching glimpses of its shimmering surface as the path took us closer to its banks.
Hills rose to our left and right. Although there was no indication of them, it was reassuring to know that on both sides of us there was a company of Special Forces—trained and—led guerrilla fighters paralleling our course along the ridge lines above. The Ranger companies put out flank security to the right and left to guard against an ambush, and the main column walked along on the jungle floor, following the trail due north.
Every hour we stopped for a ten-minute break that lengthened to fifteen and twenty minutes by noontime. We all wore the same jungle camouflage fatigues and soft-caps and carried combat packs with three-days’ rations and two canteens. It was hot in the jungle and a man needed plenty of drinking water to keep going. We took salt pills about every two hours.
Scharne carried his favorite jungle weapon, a folding-stock automatic carbine. Major Lim had his pack carried by a Ranger. His only encumbrances were two canteens and a pistol on his web belt. The American, officers as well as enlisted men, carried all their own equipment.
During the noon break for chow, Scharne had the radio man follow him to the river where there was a clearing. He called De Grasso and O’Malley, giving them the coordinates of our position. This was unnecessary, the Special Forces men radioed back; they had us under observation most of the time. Besides, our noise discipline was so poor they could follow us without having to see us. There was no reported sighting of enemy forces. Scharne said he would make radio contact again at 1500 hours, at which time we’d be on the plain three kilometers south of the east-west road running through the tea plantation.
The march continued, and the 200 men, shambling along, spread out farther and farther until they became an elongated line, the flankers crashing through the jungle about thirty yards out on both sides.
Scharne shook his head. “This is the worst bunch of dickheads I’ve seen yet. It’s funny how some classes are number one and others number ten thousand.”
At 1500 hours we could see the end of the hills and knew the plain was ahead. Major Scharne suggested to Major Lim that the two companies hold at the edge of the jungle before proceeding onto the plain. Lim agreed and on the radio Scharne called Lieutenant Dant ahead of him and Captain Paul behind, asking them to hold up and come to his position. Then he contacted captains O’Malley and De Grasso. They were watching us, and once in the open we would be covered at all times with their 81-mm. mortars.
Dant and Paul arrived at Scharne’s position. “Make your men stay together from now on,” Scharne told his officers. “There’s too damned much high bush between here and the tea plantation. A VC battalion could easily be lying in wait right now and we’d never know until we were hit.”
Scharne turned to Captain Paul. “You’re senior adviser if I get it. And Dant, if Paul is hit you take over. Just try to make them keep in a tight group and keep up a high rate of fire if we’re attacked. Before you run out of ammo, and that’s just what the VC will be waiting for you to do, four heavily armed strike companies will zap them.”
“My counterpart doesn’t want any advice, sir,” Lieutenant Dant complained.
“He will when the shooting starts. You’ll probably have to take over. We’ve got the worst officer students yet. It’ll be a hairy one, I can promise you that.” He turned from them with a sharp, “Let’s go!”
The two companies slowly proceeded across the scrub-dotted plains, ignoring such teaching points as noise discipline and keeping weapons always at the ready. This is a tiring way to carry a rifle on a long march, but in enemy territory it is a must for fast reaction to an ambush or sudden attack. About three miles ahead the tall loft towers of the tea plantation could be seen clearly. The Rangers were obviously expecting nothing but an easy, combat-free patrol. They knew that this was VC-free territory and within the area protected by the ARVN division. Their obvious appearance of unpreparedness was just what Scharne wanted, however. He surveyed the fields around us tensely. The hill line was now about a mile and a half on either side, the long oval-shaped valley stretching out in front of the advancing Rangers.
Scharne paused, pulled a pair of field glasses from their case, and studied the French tea plantation. Here, he was convinced, was an outright VC sanctuary. If they could ever get permission to search the lofts they’d probably find a rich cache of VC weapons under the tea leaves. Both Captain De Grasso and Captain O’Malley were certain the VC had long-range radio equipment operating out of the plantation, and that hard-core Communist officers actually lived in the several square miles that made up the property.
As we approached the tea plantation, the valley widened until the hills were almost two miles away—putting us out of effective range of the strike-force 81-mm. mortars covering us from the edge of the jungle.
Scharne seemed to be having doubts. He had anticipated the attack before this. We were less than a mile from the tea plantation.
“Maybe Huyot decided to go back to Denise,” I suggested facetiously.
Scharne didn’t bother to reply. It wasn’t necessary. The deep-throated static of BAR’s pumping rounds into the column sounded ahead. Lieutenant Dant’s A Company took the opening gambit of the attack. The enemy fire spewing out of the bush in front of them transformed these Vietnamese infantrymen who had volunteered to become Rangers into disciplined fighting men. They returned a heavy volume of fire, and in orderly fashion pulled back, the men on the point hurling grenades at the enemy automatic-rifle positions.
The first burst of fire killed or wounded several men, their comrades dragging them back as they retreated. The Rangers in A Company carrying elephant guns, as the M-79 grenade launchers had been dubbed, turned loose carefully aimed anti-personnel rounds on the clumps of scrub trees and bush from which spurted the enemy fire. These 40-mm. shells will kill anything within a radius of twenty-five yards of their impact point. The VC shooting dwindled as the grenades sailed in and burst among the Communists. With an effective range of well over two hundred yards the lead company could continue pulling back and still lay in grenades on the enemy.
Scharne grabbed the radio handset and talked urgently into it. As he talked B Company closed ranks, pushing in toward Scharne’s position in t
he center, which was the command post now.
For a few moments all enemy fire ceased, and then came another, vastly unsettling, sound. The sharp, stinging notes of a bugle blared across the valley.
Responding immediately to the bugle call, black-clad men ran out of the central positions up ahead and moved down our flanks staying just out of easy range of our light weapons. As we watched, the two VC sections, one on either side of our column, began a pincer movement on A Company, closing in from both flanks to snip the company in half.
A hundred men closed in on either side of A Company, attacking a small area of the column. The Rangers poured fire back at the Communists, and with grenades and automatic weapons desperately strove to keep the two points of the VC pincers from cutting off the forward section of the company. Even as the Rangers fought off the first encirclement, another two platoons of VC, again precisely on signal from the weird-sounding bugle, leaped up from the heavy underbrush on our flanks and started a second pincer movement, the two points aimed at Scharne’s position. Incoming rounds screamed in on us and whined overhead.
The VC strategy was now, finally, apparent. A series of pincer attacks would cut up the two companies into about 40-man sections, which could be crushed one by one at will, permitting not a single man to escape annihilation.
“Dant!” Scharne called into the radio. “Do you read?”
“Roger, sir.”
“Hold up front. Don’t pull back any further. Can you hold?”
“Yes, sir.”
“OK. Hold and throw yellow smoke grenades into the main force in front of us. We’ll move up on you.”
Scharne paused, took a low crouching position, and holding the radio handset with one hand pointed his carbine out at the charging pincer point of the screaming, shooting VC’s coming directly into us. “Paul,” he cried into the radio, “do you read?”
“Clear, sir.”
“Move up tight and watch your flanks. We’ve got to hold this column together.”
“Moving up, sir. We haven’t been hit back here yet.”
“You’ll get it. Close up fast!”
Acrid cordite smoke rose from the rifles and machine guns as the Rangers stood off the closing pincer points. One Ranger stood up, carefully aimed his elephant gun, and fired. Eighty yards off our right flank there was an explosion and three men in black crumpled and fell. Other grenade launchers were turned on the attacking VC with devastating effect.
“Move forward,” Scharne cried. “Close up to the front.” He repeated the command in Vietnamese.
We moved forward, and the men at the head of B Company behind us found themselves where we had been, fighting off the two VC fingers fanatically trying to slice the column.
Over the firing, the bugle sounded again and pincers began to spread open as the VC on the two points of the fingers pulled back just out of lethal firing range. The VC kept up their fire from a safe distance on our flanks.
“Keep moving forward on A Company,” Scharne cried.
Major Lim, taking occasional ineffective shots with his pistol at the VC, seemed incapable of giving orders.
Ahead, yellow smoke was billowing up, marking the main enemy position still firing into the front of A Company.
Scharne watched the smoke curling up and grinned wickedly. In the slight lull he cried to me, “They think they have us. They don’t want to get too many of their men killed when they can cut us up and finish us off at leisure as our ammo runs out.”
With field glasses to his eyes Scharne searched the two edges of the valley and then grunted with satisfaction. “In about four more minutes Monsieur Huyot is going to get a surprise that will kill him.”
Fire continued to rip into the column from all directions. Scharne was so absorbed in his strategy that he didn’t seem to realize how close we all were to taking our death round through the hide.
From up ahead we heard the crump, crump, crump of VC mortar rounds. Then the clatter of incoming 60-mm. rounds overhead sent us burrowing into the earth. A shattering series of explosions straddled the column, and then the screams of a man in agony came from in front of us.
Slowly the wounded man’s cries subsided. Scharne raised his head and then pulled himself to a crouching position looking to both sides of the column. There was another lull and then, off in the distance first to the east and then the west, came the distant reports of our covering 81-mm. mortar shells exploding out of the tubes. This was the most welcome sound we had heard all day.
A series of much-closer explosions let us know we were in for another shower of enemy shells.
“Those will be their last,” Scharne called out exuberantly, before flattening himself into the valley floor. The bursting mortar rounds shook the ground. They were right on target. Shrapnel flew above us. Several of the Rangers were hit.
Ahead of A Company a tremendous string of explosions blasted the VC main positions so clearly marked with yellow smoke. The 81-mm. rounds from the Special Forces—led strike force were supporting us at last. Scharne jumped to his feet, looking north. He grabbed his radio handset from the carrier’s back.
“Able, Able, this is Sierra,” Scharne called. “How close did our mortars come to the target?”
“Sierra, this is Able. Tell them to keep it up. They’re right on target.”
Scharne reached for the radio pack, changed frequencies, and contacted the strike-force leaders, calling for continued mortar fire. The Communists’ 60-mm. mortars hadn’t spoken since the blast.
Scharne turned his field glasses toward the east and then the west. After a few moments he handed them to me and pointed eastwards. I could make out the two strike-force companies moving up through the brush behind the unsuspecting VC who were firing into the entire length of our column. The same happy sight greeted my eyes as I swung the glasses to the west.
Then, in the Communist positions ahead, whistles shrilled and bugles blew. The black pajama—clad VC guerrillas on our flanks started moving in on us again. With our unexpected mortar support the cowboy probably decided to finish us off and get away.
The Rangers, back to back, fired everything they had, as once again the VC sought to cut the column with pincer attacks on both flanks at once.
Suddenly heavy automatic-rifle and machine-gun fire raked the advancing black-uniformed men from the rear. The Rangers cheered as the Communists fell, torn and bloody, to the ground. They were catching intense fire from both sides and we stayed low so as not to get hit by friendly rounds.
In front of us the Communist main positions were shaken by new blasts of 81-mm. mortar rounds. All fire from the VC ahead ceased. A series of desperate bugle calls and shrill whistling sounded from the Communist CP. In instant answer to these signals the VC on our flanks withdrew. But the strike-force companies were upon them before they could even start back for their main positions.
Demoralized, the Communists who minutes before thought they were about to destroy us were trapped between their intended victims and heavily-armed companies that had appeared from nowhere. Their only chance of escape was to the south, away from the remainder of their battalion. Turning in this direction and running, they were raked by fire from B Company. Few survivors of Scharne’s carefully laid trap were left to escape into the mountainous jungles from which we had come that morning.
Scharne was holding the radio handset to his ear, listening intently, blocking the other ear against the noise of the skirmishing.
“Go after them!” I heard him call into the instrument. He jammed the handset into its place on the radio.
“Huyot and his VC’s are making it to the north,” Scharne said turning to me. “Now’s the time to get him.”
The Rangers of Company A, led by their lieutenant with Dant beside him, got into a low crouch and started toward the Communist positions ahead, spraying machine-gun fire and tossing grenades before them.
The sporadic answering fire showed how surprised, demoralized, and hurt the VC were. With the strike fo
rce battling the two companies of VC that had been on our flanks, the Rangers charged the VC positions that had first opened fire on us. VC bodies littering the ground testified to the hasty and disordered withdrawal of what was left of the battalion.
Less than a half a mile ahead of us another fire-fight broke out almost at the gates of the tea plantation. “That’s O’Malley,” Fritz cried. “He said he wanted to cover that French plantation.”
Scharne and the Rangers ran toward the firing. More faltering bugle calls sounded. Then 80 to 100 VC who had been heading for sanctuary in the tea plantation wheeled away from O’Malley and his strikers ranged in front of it and headed east for the jungles and hills.
Scharne turned to the right on a course that would cut them off before they could escape. As we bore down on them, Scharne, now leading the two Ranger companies, pointed. At the head of the fleeing Communists was a tall, bare-chested Caucasian wearing a cowboy hat, Levi’s, and boots, and carrying a light submachine gun. He was fast closing on the safety of the mountainous jungle.
The Rangers fired as they ran headlong after the frantic VC’s. Black pajamas were dropping in limp heaps as bullets from both the Rangers and O’Malley’s pursuing strikers made hits.
As the Rangers chased the Communists, Scharne, looking around, suddenly reached out and collared a Ranger. Together they fell out of the pursuing column. I halted beside them.
The Ranger had been carrying an M-79 grenade launcher. Scharne snatched the elephant gun, which looks like a king-size single-barrel shotgun, and broke open the breech. He took a 40-mm. grenade shell from the Ranger and inserted it in the barrel. Snapping the weapon shut he adjusted the sights for maximum range. We were still close to three hundred yards away from the cowboy, who had nearly reached the jungle’s edge. Scharne took careful aim and pressed the trigger. Without waiting to watch the trajectory of the shell, he took a second one, reloaded, aimed and fired. He kept on as fast as he could reload, the Ranger alertly slapping rounds into Scharne’s outstretched hand.