Blood in the Hills

by Charles W. Sasser

He had cut the Dragon Lady’s hand the rest of the way off. “I didn’t want to mess up the ring,” he explained.

  “You crazy sonofabitch! Don’t let anybody else see that. Get rid of it.”

  Having regained his wind, he concentrated on carefully sawing off the finger to remove and pocket the silver dragon. He returned my knife, stood up, and flung the hand and loose finger into the brush. I watched the delicate hand tumble in seemingly slow motion through the air before it crashed to earth like a wounded bird.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Skinny Dipping

  Patrols ventured farther and farther out from our hill redoubts to seek confirmation that the enemy had indeed vacated the area and that the Marines had won the game.

  “Don’t let down your guard,” Gunny Janzen cautioned. “That’s when you get a haymaker from way out of left field.”

  None of our other recons found fresh signs of NVA presence, not even footprints in the soft soil along streams the gooks would have to cross. Birds and monkeys moved back in. One patrol even spotted a tiger. Animals seemed to know that the human fighting was over.

  On an exceptionally hot afternoon’s patrol when even insect activity receded to a soft, sleepy hum, 1st Squad’s Faithful Indian Companion Ramirez called a sudden halt. We had skirted low around 881S and dropped unexpectedly into a little hidden valley shaded from the sun by growths of giant trees. The temperature seemed much cooler as gentle golden rays of cathedral sunlight penetrated the forest canopy. Monkeys and parrots chittered up in the lofts.

  A sudden halt normally meant “bring the gun up.” Tony and I dutifully pushed forward with the Pig and PFC Taylor while the rest of the squad assumed a tactical knee by the trail. I noted a peculiar scent in the air as we arrived forward and took to ground to cut down our profile. The fragrance in the air was surprisingly pleasant unlike the by-now-familiar stench of death that clung to these hills. I thought of the mingled innocent scents of girls together at one of the slumber parties my little sister used to throw.

  Ramirez pointed to his nose and shrugged quizzically. Yeah, I smelled it. The four of us—Ramirez, Tony, the Pig, and me—edged on up through thick foliage toward the sound of running water while PFC Taylor and other Marines covered.

  Drawing near the sound, we cautiously parted patches of ferns and peered into a spectacle like an idyllic scene encapsulated inside one of those little toy crystal globes sold as vacation souvenirs. I caught my breath in wonder at all the glory of the tropics displayed in one marvelous hidden setting.

  A sparkling waterfall cascaded into a deep pool so clear that pebbles on the bottom glistened like gold nuggets. A terrarium of ferns and lianas and every manner of wide-leafed plant festooned the scene. Butterflies in an equal variety of hues and sizes performed ballets among the orchids.

  Ramirez summoned the patrol to come forward. Curious Marines crept up and, as our advance group had done before, beheld the scene in bated-breath wonder. A monkey peeped silently from the recesses of a jungle behemoth. My green parrot—I chose to believe it was my parrot—led a flight of his buddies through the upper terraces of the forest, circled darting through the branches and landed with them all in a row on a branch overhanging the pool.

  “Please don’t shit in the water,” Tony pleaded.

  Clearly, this miniature paradise had remained untouched by the war, hidden away as it was in this remote corner, visited only by local residents of fur and feather. My parrot cocked his head and looked at us as though to say, “So? What are you waiting for?”

  Smiles broke out one by one as young Marine faces turned into reserved but joyous laughter. I looked at Taylor from beneath a questioning eyebrow. Was he thinking the same thing I was? It had been weeks since any of us had had a bath. We smelled like a pen full of pigs, no offense to the Pig.

  Most of us were teenagers, the rest not much beyond twenty. Hurriedly, as though by common consent, we began to strip. The entire patrol would have dived in together except for the memory of how we had twice surprised gooks out here and killed them while they were either napping or sucking up to a female soldier. PFC Taylor dispatched half the patrol as sentries to keep watch while the other half went swimming. Then we switched off.

  For that one brief time in the war we reverted to being kids again. Like skinny dipping with my cousins in an Oklahoma creek, running and laughing with all the abandon that kids are capable of. That had not been so long ago either—but after these hills I feared I would never be a kid again. I might not even become fully human again.

  We had done all the killing we could stand. I held my breath and sank in the water toward the gold pebble-nuggets on the bottom, shutting out the rest of the world. It was almost like being baptized. The clear, clean water washed off the grime of war. I felt young with revived hope that one day I might become the human I once had been.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Picnic

  Colonel Pappy Delong’s BLT 2/3 walked out of the hills on a morning when the green parrot was flying, the sun shone, soft fog lay close in the lowlands, and nobody was shooting at us. The date was 12 May 1967—a day, I supposed, when the colored pin markers with their maps declared the Hill Fights officially over and won. Dien Bien Phu II had been avoided. So sorry about that, Uncle Ho.

  Unlike the Walking Dead of the 9th Marines, who fled Hill 861 carrying their dead in bloody ponchos, the 3rd withdrew in triumph, having soundly defeated a much larger force. With a little help, of course, from our friends. Yet, most of us felt no triumph. I felt nothing.

  Less than three weeks ago, what seemed an eternity now, we had arrived at Khe Sanh fresh and green, barely out of USMC training, and, before that, for many of us, not long graduated from high school. I had been nineteen years old; I was now one hundred years old, ancient and wiser and more cynical than a young man ought to be. I would never view the world the same way again.

  It was like I was empty inside, beaten emotionally and psychologically, exhausted, craving nothing so much as a real bunk to rack out in, hot chow, and time to decompress.

  “Good morning, Vietnam!” contained all the enthusiasm of a worn-out old boot when Tony and I stood right out in the open in front of God and everybody and, hopefully, took our last piss on 881N. There would be time later to confront personal demons that we had relegated to our foot lockers aboard ship in the rear while we struggled day by day, hour by hour, sometimes moment by moment just to stay alive in these blood-soaked hills.

  “Piss on her,” Tony said, long-faced and with a tinge of bitterness. Peggy again.

  “Piss on the world,” I echoed.

  War-weary, battered and filthy, eyes hollow in the thousand-yard stare, cheeks thorny and hollow, 2/3 Marines slogged back downhill using the same trails as before when we climbed up to Hill 361 and encountered Bravo 1/9 bearing their lifeless burdens in ponchos coming down. As per orders, we had refrained from speaking to them. They appeared then like we must have looked now; they probably wouldn’t have talked to us anyhow.

  I was astonished at how near we had been to the Combat Base all this time. The airfield and the big birds that could have lifted us out of here had seemed a million miles away while we were up there. They were actually only a day’s march from any one of the Three Wicked Sisters. Colonel Delong and his command element met us in the forest to walk with us the rest of the way where Sea Knights and crews waited to lift the battalion directly to our little three-ship armada from which we had launched so enthusiastically against Red Beach. No longer were we the eager cavalry boasting of saving the day, kicking gook ass, and winning the war by Christmas.

  Not all of us who had walked up 861 walked back down. You could have put the surviving original members of some squads and platoons into a phone booth. Body counts, of course, were used to tally up the final stats: 168 Marines and Navy KIA, 443 wounded, two missing, including Robert J. Todd, whose body plummeted to earth
from the helicopter’s open door.

  The enemy lost 940 confirmed KIA, which meant we slaughtered them on a ratio of about seven to one. I assumed that disparity signified a huge victory, body count–wise. Somewhere in the rear, at the Pentagon or the White House Situation Room, REMFs—Rear Echelon motherfuckers with their colored pins—were pushing back wearily from their maps and desks and sighing. It had been a tough fight and they were worn out. But they and President LBJ had so far lived up to their vow that Khe Sanh would not become another Dien Bien Phu.

  Later in the year, President Johnson would send Vice President Happy Hubie Humphrey to Da Nang to present a Presidential Unit Citation to Commanding General Bruno A. Hochmuth of the 3rd Marine Division. A copy of the citation went into the personnel file of every 3rd Marine who fought in the hills or in other Vietnam campaigns since March 1965 and the landing at Da Nang.

  For extraordinary heroism and outstanding performance of duty in action against North Vietnamese Army and insurgent communist “Viet Cong” forces in the Republic of Vietnam from 8 March 1965 to 15 September 1967. Throughout this period the 3rd Marine Division, Reinforced, successfully executed a three-fold mission of occupying and defending key terrain around the Da Nang, Chu Lai, Hue, Phu Bai, and Dong Ha airbases, seeking out and destroying the enemy while also carrying on an intensive pacification program in areas already under its control. . . . The 3rd Marine Division, Reinforced, successfully executed 80 major combat operations in addition to more than 125,000 offensive actions, ranging from squad patrols and ambushes to company size search and destroy missions conducted in both the coastal rice lands and in the jungled, mountainous area . . . [that] denied [the enemy] access to his source of food supply, restricted his freedom of movement and removed his influence from the heavy populated, coast areas. . . . Through the period ending on 15 September 1967, the 3rd Marine Division, utilizing courageous ground and helicopter borne assaults, complemented by intense and accurate air, artillery and naval gunfire support, undeterred by heavy hostile automatic weapons and highly effective artillery and mortar fire, extremely difficult terrain, intense heat and incessant monsoon rains, inflicted serious casualties on the enemy forces. . . .

  All right! Semper fucking fi!

  The three ships upon which BLT 2/3 set sail from Okinawa—USS Ogden, USS Monticello, and the Princeton—stood offshore in the South China Sea prepared to welcome us back aboard. From the air, I looked down upon a vast expanse of shimmering blue water that extended seemingly forever to the horizon, and beyond that to Okinawa and California, and, somewhere out there, to Tulsa and Linda and my Mom.

  Sea Knights touched down gently one by one on the helicopter deck of LPH Princeton to disgorge the weary troops of 2/3. Tony and I, together with the Pig as always, dragged ourselves and our gear off our chopper with other battalion Marines. We stumbled bent over away from the rotor blast with our heads down.

  First thing I saw when I looked up again was every sailor of the ship’s company lining the deck wearing dress blues. They snapped to attention and saluted us. I felt my eyes watering. None of us expected this.

  The entire battalion stank of mud and jungle and mildew and BO, and of death. Our utilities were blood-stained, ripped, and impregnated with the red dirt of Vietnam. Large metal containers, like trash bins, lined one side of the deck. A Navy lieutenant stood on an upside-down bucket and waved his arms.

  “Attention, Marines! You all did a hell of a job out there. Now, we’re going to clean you up. These bins are all marked. Strip down and put all your clothing in this bin, empty magazines in this one, grenades and other gear in this one. . . . Keep your weapons, helmets, and boots. You’re all familiar with the ship. Showers and shaving equipment are below.”

  A shave, a hot shower! Every man stripped in place in record time. No one wore skivvies, so we all broke for the showers buck naked while Navy work parties held their noses and sorted through discarded equipment. Our utilities were rotted and unsalvageable; they were tossed overboard. Sailors petitioned us for war stories and battle souvenirs. Some offered as much as a month’s pay for gook items like the communist helmet band I confiscated, and even more than that, a lot more, for an AK-47 or for Tony’s Dragon Lady ring. Sailors gathered around him to ogle the treasure and question how he obtained it.

  Tony managed a fatigued version of his Buddy Hackett: “I’d have to kill you if I told you.”

  I tried to avoid the hullabaloo and get to the showers.

  “Pretty tough out there, huh?” a Navy petty officer commented.

  The look I gave him, the hollow combat look, must have unnerved him. He stepped away.

  I cast a tired look back toward the thin strip of land that was Vietnam on the near horizon. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

  Colonel Pappy threw a picnic for the battalion at China Beach, an area secured by American forces around Da Nang and used as a troop recreation area. White sand against warm blue waters stretched for several miles on a spit of land extending into the South China Sea. What was left of the battalion, now about the size of two companies since we had not yet received replacements for recent losses, loaded aboard AMTRACs and chugged ashore. Mess cooks preceded us to whip up steaks on a grill and prepare all the trimmings. I mean, French fries, beans not out of a C-rat can, real bread . . . cold beer that Ted West brought to the beach on a trailer behind a Jeep. Nobody asked how he got it.

  Guys stuffed themselves, grabbing hot steaks right off the flames and plopping down in the sand to gnaw on them like starving dogs while guzzling cans of iced beer.

  “Heaven! I’ve been killed and didn’t know it and went to Heaven!”

  “But the babes! Where are the women?”

  “Women don’t go to Heaven,” Tony said, sotto-voce with his mouth full. Peggy again.

  “If they ain’t going,” Kilgore declared, “then I ain’t going either.”

  The beach sported an Air Force lifeguard in a little tower. He went ape shit when Marines began stripping and darting naked into the surf. He came running, tooting his little whistle. A hell of a way to spend a war, a tough job but somebody had to do it. He had the misfortune to latch onto Gunny Janzen.

  “You Marines can’t swim naked on this beach. Candy stripers and nurses from the hospital come down here.”

  “Go pound sand up your ass,” Gunny advised.

  A few minutes later the lifeguard returned with an Air Force butter bar lieutenant in a Jeep. This time Colonel Delong handled it.

  “What’s the problem?” he demanded.

  “We have a complaint that your Marines are naked, sir.”

  Nodding, Pappy glanced down toward the beach. “Sure enough,” he agreed. “They sure do look naked to me.”

  “Sir, we have women who come down here,” the butter bar persisted.

  “I’m sure my guys won’t mind.”

  “Sir—!”

  Pappy’s voice hardened. “Look, lieutenant. We don’t have swim suits. We just came from the Hill Fights—and if my boys want to go swimming, they’re going swimming. You can take your candy stripers and nurses and . . .” He smiled. “. . . pen them up down the beach about a mile away where they won’t offend my men.”

  Lifeguards blocked off the Marine portion of the beach and reserved another sector of it out of sight for women. Kilgore, Tony, and I lay au naturel on the warm sand with waves lapping at our feet and the sun and beer making us drowsy. Tony gnawed on a steak from one hand, burped loudly—“Excuse the fuck out of me, I intended to fart instead”—and shook his beer can to see if it was empty.

  “Maras,” he said, “you remember the feeling I had when they yanked us up out of Bo Diddley and landed us at Khe Sanh?”

  “You say lots of things. I don’t half-listen.”

  Kilgore tittered. He was about half-soused. “Amen,” he agreed.

  “You have to remember I was rig
ht though,” Tony continued after another burp. “Something bad happens every time the Marine Corps feeds us this good.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Along the DMZ

  Again, Tony’s “feeling” was right on target. “Partying” aboard ship and at China Beach lasted four days before warning orders came down from on high. BLT 2/3, now replenished in those four days by fresh troops from Okinawa and back to its full complement of thirteen hundred men, received orders to cavalry-up for Operation Hickory. On 21 May 1967, Sea Knight pilots airlifted the entire battalion to the northern edge of Leatherneck Square near the Ben Hai River, the first time US forces had officially moved into the DMZ.

  The 1954 Geneva Agreement had established what was described as an inviolable five-mile-wide buffer zone along the 17th parallel between North and South Vietnam—which, of course, the North Vietnamese communists violated. To stop the incursions, Marines occupied a series of combat bases along Route 9—Khe Sanh, the Rockpile, Camp Carroll, Cam Lo, and Dong Ha. The NVA pulled sieges against the line beginning with Khe Sanh in the spring. It was through and around these forts that most of the fighting occurred in 1967.

  As early as 1965, the Pentagon, led by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, had given serious consideration to occupying the DMZ with several US divisions to block infiltration. McNamara’s proposal was to build the “McNamara Line,” a fence of barbed wire seeded with ingenious little explosive devices and booby traps disguised as dog shit, bed bugs, gravel, and so forth, to discourage the NVA from crossing the border. Building that first experimental stretch of fence was one of the missions assigned Marines of Operation Hickory.

  A secondary mission included clearing out all people living on or near the DMZ, some thirteen thousand of them, to facilitate unrestricted bombing of NVA positions. The previous July, the Joint Chiefs of Staff permitted bombardment of the DMZ and limited “search and destroy” missions up to the 17th parallel as long as no public disclosure of it was made. JCS authorized return fire across the DMZ in December 1966, followed in February 1967 with authority to conduct preemptive air strikes.