Unconventional Warfare

by Chris Lynch

  Until right now.

  * * *

  “Henry!” Col. Macias shouts down the line to his trusty radioman, who is caught up in returning whatever fire he can. Between the M79 grenade launcher on his arm and the monstrous radio pack on his back, Henry is carrying a lot more than his own weight in gear.

  And his name isn’t even Henry. Macias just gave all the Meo guys English names off the top of his head, and stuck with those.

  “Henry!” the colonel yells for the second time. He never, ever has to yell anything twice, so we know we are already deep into uncharted territory.

  He didn’t even need the second shout, since dogged Henry is there, elbows-and-kneesing to within a foot of the boss. Macias grabs the radio while Henry collapses next to him like a tortoise caught crossing the highway.

  “We need an extraction! We need an extraction right away!” the boss barks. There’s a lot of frantic crackling in response. “Yes, I know they’re almost here. But that’s the air strike. We need an airlift, pronto. These guys are loaded for bear, and there are more arriving every second. If we don’t get a lift, we don’t have a chance.”

  There’s much more frantic crackling, then an exchange of coordinates and instructions, before Col. Macias slams the radio receiver heavily into poor Henry’s tortoiseshell and begins snapping off orders. “Let’s go, men,” he says, gesturing up the steep hill amidst the heavy canopy behind us. “The landing zone for the pickup is a quarter mile that way.”

  As we scramble and claw our way up, following our leader, every enemy warrior on the trail tries to blast us off the face of the earth. Missiles of one kind or another thump into the earth all around us, shaking the ground and causing all the ancient trees to tremble like they are going to give up any second. At the same time, the even scarier thunder of the Huey gunships come thwack-thwacking over our heads. They are swooping down in the opposite direction to bear down on the enemy and hopefully get them off of our tails, while we still have tails.

  * * *

  All the time we are climbing and crawling and hacking our way through the world’s craziest vertical jungle toward the pickup point, the battle that we started rages on in a way my dad would call “screaming bloody murder.” It sounds like the mighty US gunships are getting it as good as they are giving. The North Vietnamese have even managed to scramble some of those antiaircraft guns into action, because we hear the unmistakable pop and screech of their shells cutting through the air. And about that time we hear the gradual withdrawal of the gunship attack.

  They, like us, are not supposed to be here. If one of those choppers goes down, then that crew has disappeared into never-never-never land. America will disclaim any knowledge of the event, the operation, the people …

  I cannot imagine. If I went down in such an operation and my dad could never even be told about it?

  “Where are you?” Col. Macias says into Henry’s loyal back as we all huddle around like a mama bear and her cubs. Garvine is groaning as Cabot, our Meo medic, packs his shoulder wound with antiseptic and bandages it. The bullet went right through his shoulder and out the other side, which is good. He’s lucky to get away with only a flesh wound, and we as a team are lucky to get away without any other major injuries.

  Except for the two who were killed, that is.

  “Pop smoke,” comes the response, which we can all hear clearly because we’re huddled so closely.

  Lodge, our other remaining Meo teammate, hears the call and leaps right to it, as he’s the man with the smoke flares.

  “Popping smoke,” he says as he loads and shoots into the sky through the narrow clearing of trees. “Popping smoke, blue,” he says, just as we all see the pretty blue explosion in the sky.

  “No!” Col. Macias snaps, reaching out and smacking Lodge’s pith helmet down over his eyes. “No, no …”

  The beautiful blue arc of our smoke signal is almost instantly joined in the sky by another, maybe a half mile away. And then by another in the opposite direction. Then, seconds later, by the sound of a heavy mortar round being fired from down the hill where we came from. Within seconds, the mortar shell passes overhead and then explodes in the thick jungle beyond us.

  “Charlie monitors everything we say on these frequencies!” Macias snarls. “You don’t call the color! You never call the color!”

  The radio crackles back to life, our first incoming call that we had not initiated first. “Pop smoke. Pop smoke once more. Do not, repeat, do not call color.”

  Col. Macias reaches over toward Lodge—who right now I am both furious and sympathetic with—and does three things. He smacks the visor of his pith helmet again. He pulls another smoke canister out of his pack and sticks it in his hands. Then he smacks the pith helmet again.

  Lodge looks to me like he might want to cry, as he solemnly works the canister into his launcher. He then aims for the sky, and for hope, and for better days, and blasts a red rocket up, up, and away into the atmosphere.

  “Seeing red, over. Seeing red and coming in …” comes the most welcome voice on the radio.

  “Affirmative,” Macias responds. “And seeing the bird now …” he adds as we get up and run like mad toward the awesome green bird coming in to land and extract us from Death’s big fat mouth.

  I had gained a deep appreciation for the chopper pilots of this war a long time ago, but moments like this just boost my respect for them even more. It is just getting dark as the helicopter appears, flying furiously at treetop level, the sound of hacking and smashing branches almost as loud as the engines and rotors themselves. The clearing they have chosen for our pickup zone is barely wider in circumference than the width of the bird’s big blades.

  Despite the ruckus that’s still not finished at the bottom of the trail, somebody, or a few somebodies down there, have the spare time to turn their attention to our rescuers up here. An antiaircraft round whistles through the air, passing over the top of the chopper as it drops roughly through the opening in the canopy and bumps a hard landing on its skids right in front of us.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” the copilot bellows out the side door of the chopper as the pilot feathers the skids inches above the ground.

  “Go on, go on, go on,” Col. Macias hollers, giving each one of us a shove in the back like a football coach pushing players into the game.

  In reality, we’re being pushed out of the game. This is most apparent after Lopez, then me, then Henry, Cabot, and Lodge all have flopped into the chopper and are rolling around the floor. We look back to see Col. Macias running as fast as I ever did on my fastest day—but with the added handicap of a semiconscious Garvine on his arm—and making it look like some kind of ghoulish, bloody, three-legged race.

  Macias throws Garvine up onto the deck like a big fish and then dives on himself, as out of somewhere, the trees start spraying our helicopter with rifle and machine gun fire.

  We are all flattened to the deck as the copilot jumps into his seat, the pilot pulls up on the stick, and we roar out of there to the ping-ping music of bullets bouncing off of every part of the Huey. Except for the parts that the bullets shoot clean through.

  Which are many. Hueys don’t have a lot of armor because armor is heavy. As I feel us jump up into the sky, I agree that I’d rather be lightly dressed and up here than fully plated and still stuck on the ground.

  “You sure dodged a bullet there … almost,” I say from the side of Garvine’s bed. We’re in the hospital on the air base at Da Nang, which feels like practically the center of everything going on in this part of the world. This is the base from which the Barrel Roll and Steel Tiger bombers take off when they come over to our neighborhood to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It’s also where very recently the first official American ground troops of the war hit the ground.

  “Does it hurt bad?” I ask.

  “Nah, nothing. Just a flesh wound.”

  “You’re lucky you’re so fleshy,” I say, even though he’s only got a little more meat on
him than most of us.

  “And you’re just lucky I’m sedated. Read me the letter, Bug.”

  Garvine loves my dad, despite never having met him. I have, selectively, shown him some of my father’s letters to me. I don’t share the overly sentimental stuff, of course. The stuff that makes me angry or melancholy. That leaves out a lot of the letters, in the end. But with Garvine being laid up in the hospital, and what with him having passed up a chance to be rotated out of here in order to stick with us guys … well, I’d have to be some kind of rat to deny him anything right now.

  He loves these letters, especially since nobody ever sends him any of his own, as far as I can tell. He loves the wording, the spirit, the heart, and the calligraphy.

  As a special treat, as well as a supreme act of foolishness, I bring the letter to Garvine’s bedside sight unseen. I make a big play of breaking the seal on the envelope right in front of my wounded warrior comrade. He whoops and claps, hurts his shoulder in the effort, and we both laugh.

  Here goes.

  Dear Son,

  I do not like it. This thing that they’re not calling a war, but which is looking very much like a war, is getting to the point of really worrying me. The marines have landed. Up until this point in my life that statement has always instilled hope, confidence, and optimism in the hearts of all Americans. Right now, as I hear the report on the radio, it does none of those things for me. It has me feeling sick, in fact.

  I don’t suppose it was news to you when three thousand, five hundred marines arrived at Da Nang. It might be no big deal to the thousands of “advisers” like yourself already stationed over there, but I can tell you, Danny, it is a very big deal to people here.

  If you did know beforehand that the Marines were coming, what else did you know? What else do you know, that you cannot tell me?

  I do not like it, Daniel. I’m sorry to repeat myself, sorry to add anything to your burden, if that’s what I am doing. But I do not like this uneasy feeling, do not like not knowing.

  It’s official now. It is a war, whether the government chooses to call it that or not.

  You should figure out a way to get out of there before this business gets totally out of hand. You were always adept at getting out of things, so this would appear to be a good time to put that skill to good use.

  I have to sign off now. But since I’ve gone on about what I do not like, it’s only fair that I should say what I do like before I end. The photos you sent last time were so wonderful they almost made me happy.

  You know why I cannot quite manage to be happy just now. But your pictures are miraculous. The one of the elephant was the most beautiful image I can recall ever seeing. I think you may have found your gift there, my son. That would be one positive thing to come out of this situation.

  Having found that gift, be sure to bring it home.

  Love,

  Dad

  “Ah, come on, Bug,” Garvine says, laughing nervously at me. “You’re not getting weepy on me here, are ya? Man, I got shot and I took it better than that.”

  He takes a weak swipe at grabbing the letter off of me, but I pull it away with one hand. With the other I wipe some sweat, and only sweat, out of my eyes.

  “Y’know, Garvine, for a guy in a hospital bed, you sound an awful lot like someone who wants to be punched in the head.”

  “Ha. Sure, go on and punch me. I bet you’ll still be cryin’ more than I—”

  Bam.

  “What is wrong with you, Bug? I mean, really, is there something out of whack in your brain or something?” Garvine asks as he furiously rubs the spot above his temple where I rapped him. Gently. With no more than three of my knuckles.

  “Shush,” I say. Quickly and silently, I reread the letter to myself.

  “Hey,” Lopez says, slapping my back as he steps up to Garvine’s bedside. “How’s it going?”

  “He punched me in the head,” Garvine says.

  “He did what?”

  “Shush,” I say, rereading the part where my father worries about what I know and cannot or will not tell him.

  “Why would you punch a guy in a hospital bed, Bug? That’s sick.”

  “Shush.”

  “It’s because I made fun of him a little bit for crying over his dad’s letter.”

  “Why would you make fun of a guy for crying over his dad’s letter? That’s sick.”

  “I did not cry,” I growl, staggering my way once more to the end of the letter.

  “Sure you did,” Lopez says, and they’re both laughing at this point. “You’re cryin’ right now, for cryin’ out loud.”

  Now I’m really furious. I look up from the letter, crush it in my fist, and am about to give Lopez his own well-earned smack …

  When it becomes obvious that the only real option is to laugh along with them. And to wipe away more sweat from my eyes.

  “Hey, don’t do that,” Lopez says, prying the letter out of my hand and smoothing it out against his thigh. “These things are art.”

  I sit on the bed next to Garvine and place my hand on the punch site.

  “Sorry, man,” I say. “Force of habit.”

  He removes my hand like it’s radioactive. “Yeah, well, save those habits for the bad guys.”

  “Ha,” Lopez laughs, reading the letter now. “ ‘… always adept at getting out of things.’ Boy, do I love hearing from your father.”

  “You are not hearing from my father,” I say, snatching my letter back. “I am hearing from my father. You’re just butting in.”

  Garvine reaches out his hand and I pass him the letter.

  “Hey, what’s so special about him?” Lopez says.

  “Him got himself shot. Go get yourself shot and I’ll let you read my mail.”

  “Sounds fair,” Lopez says. “I’ll try to get myself shot, then.”

  “Don’t get yourself shot, Lopez,” Col. Macias says as he strides up to the other side of Garvine’s bed.

  “No, sir,” Lopez says.

  “How are you, son?” Macias says. He stands rigidly over Garvine, with his hands on his hips and a fatherly smile on his face.

  “Feeling good, Colonel, thank you. I could probably get up and out of here any time now.”

  “That’s good, because any time is now.”

  Demonstrating once more the level of toughness and/or stupidity I didn’t know he had before, Garvine starts climbing out of bed. Col. Macias steps up and places two flat palms on the boy’s chest, gently easing him back onto the bed.

  “Whoa there, big fella,” Macias says. Talking to him like he’s a horse might be the smartest way to communicate with ol’ Garvine, I think. “By now, I mean it could be any time now … not right now.”

  Garvine swings his big horsey head in my direction.

  “I think he means soon,” I say. “But you’ll get some kind of advance notice. Isn’t that right, Colonel?”

  “Right. We’re going to be reinserted into our area of operation by the same fly guys who brought us here. Possibly tomorrow, but more likely the day after. By then we should all be well rested and ready for action. Even you, Garvine, right?” He slaps our wounded comrade on the leg.

  “Honestly, sir,” he responds, “I’m ready now.”

  “Well, our ride is not, so you keep resting until I tell you to get up. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We going right back to the trail, Colonel?” Lopez asks.

  “Not only are we going right back to the trail,” Col. Macias responds, “we’re going right back to the very same point on the trail we just came out of.”

  Lopez, Garvine, and I all let out low groans at the same time.

  “Why do we need to go back there, sir?” I ask. “I thought we did our job.”

  “We did,” Macias says. “But, as is usually the way, Charlie is doing his job pretty well at the same time. Reports are that that very piece of real estate is being rebuilt and reclaimed, right down to the artillery pieces being
pulled from those craters we so carefully blasted. Soon enough, the Vietcong will have them all right back in the game.”

  I cannot help but sigh, deep and long.

  What are we doing? All that work, that patience, was for nothing. What are we doing with our time, after all?

  What would I tell my dad, even if I could tell him anything?

  * * *

  “Either of you guys seen the CID Kids?” Col. Macias asks Lopez and me as we cross the compound from the hospital to the mess.

  He calls them the CID Kids because the local tribespeople who work with us come from a program called the CIDG—Civilian Irregular Defense Group.

  “Last I saw, they were just walking around the camp, checking it out,” Lopez says. “Henry and Lodge said they did some ranger training here a couple years ago, so I guess it was kind of old times for them.”

  “Hnn,” Macias grunts. He doesn’t need to say anything more.

  The colonel is no hater; I know that for a fact. I know from dealing with him back home, in school, through military training, and now combat here in the most foreign part of the whole big foreign world. He speaks Spanish, French, German, Italian, some Arabic and Chinese. I’ve heard him on more than one occasion work his way through conversations with indigenous peoples on either side of the Laos-Vietnam border, and on various sides of the invisible mountain-lowland borders that separate folks around here. I’ve seen him at it, and the thing is, he really makes the effort. He tries, and he cares.

  But, at the same time, he refuses to ever completely give over his trust to the local people of Southeast Asia, no matter what team they seem to be playing for.

  His reasoning is complicated enough to keep a person awake every night until we finally go home. And at the same time it’s pretty simple: “I wouldn’t trust us, if I were them,” he says, whenever the subject comes up.

  Nothing gives you the feeling of being part of the action, while simultaneously being above it, like doing recon from one of the Army helicopters. Usually these birds run supplies and transport personnel in and out of operations, wherever and whatever those missions require.