by Eric Helm
THE FALL OF CAMP A-555
Vietnam: Ground Zero Series
Book Four
Eric Helm
Dedicated to:
PFC Eugene Taylor McCoy, Grenadier,
B Co., 2nd Bn., 12th Cav. Reg.,
1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)
United States Army.
Killed in hostile action in the Republic of Vietnam while engaging the enemy during Operation Masher, January 31, 1966.
He fought a good fight, and he was my brother.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
ALSO BY ERIC HELM
GLOSSARY
“Taylor! Wake up!” cried Clovis He felt the tears welling up in his eyes. “Come on now, buddy, wake up. Taylor, God damn you. You hear me? I ain’t gonna let you die on me, now. Not now. Not after all we been through together. What am I gonna tell your folks?”
Clovis squatted, oblivious to the fact that he might be exposing himself to more fire. “Medic!” he screamed. “Oh, Jesus, somebody get me some help over here. Medic!”
Clovis glared at the impassive elephant grass, glared at the APC still retreating from the scene of the senseless killing.
“Oh, God damn you to hell, you murderin’ bastards,” he yelled helplessly after the track.
Clovis cradled Taylor’s shattered head gently between his hands and softly rocked his friend in his lap.
“Come on, Taylor, don’t die. Please, buddy. Please. Wake up, now. Come on, Taylor, wake up.”
PROLOGUE
SOMEWHERE OVER SOUTHEASTERN CAMBODIA,
DECEMBER 19, 1965
Major David Rittenour was not a happy man.
In the past half-dozen years that he’d been ferrying assorted Very Important People around the globe, he’d always been lucky enough to draw good air and ground crews and nice, fairly new aircraft that were outfitted more like commercial airliners than military cargo transports. On the whole, it had been good duty, with just enough layovers in interesting cities to make up for all the other times spent waiting for hours on some hot concrete runway at some out-of-the-way military air base, drinking undrinkable Army, Navy or Air Force coffee from paper cups too thin to prevent burning one’s hand. During the past three years he’d been based in Maryland and had spent a lot of time flying the big boys from the Pentagon transatlantic to England, Germany and Holland. That had been plum duty. He’d even reached the point where he didn’t mind the late-night phone calls that got him out of a nice warm bed with his nice warm wife and sent him hurrying off to the base, usually in bad weather, to haul some VIP over to Europe to deal with NATO’s latest real or imagined crisis.
But nothing good lasts forever, and when the bad news came, it had been very bad indeed. Orders to a liaison outfit in Vietnam. It sounded like the kind of thing that could get a man killed.
So Rittenour had been pleasantly surprised when he’d found out that his duties would be flying VIPs around Southeast Asia, instead of serving as a forward air controller. The life expectancy of an FAC in combat was about two minutes. Rittenour knew that he was a lot less likely to get shot at chauffeuring some Saigon biggie. It could happen, but as a rule, generals and senior colonels getting ready to turn into generals didn’t much like going out to play in the war. They had much more important work to do — shuffling papers and carrying their briefcases around and playing tennis with the distinguished members of the Saigon press corps.
All in all, Rittenour couldn’t believe his luck. Until he saw the aircraft they’d assigned him. A beat-up old de Havilland Otter with a great radial-piston engine in the nose that you couldn’t see over during takeoff and landing because the damned aircraft was a tail dragger. Christ! Nobody flew tail draggers anymore. Besides, it was noisy, and when it worked, the engine had an alarming tendency to miss at unexpected moments; the goddamned machine sat up much too high, was awkward to steer on the ground and handled in the air like a pregnant sow. And to top it all off, the cursed monster wasn’t even made in America.
Rittenour nicknamed it The Antichrist.
And then they gave him this particular mission.
“Just a single passenger, old boy. Very important, very hush-hush. Better if you don’t know who, exactly. We want you to fly him over to Phnom Penh for us. Some important business to conduct there. Very important. Very hush-hush. Better if you don’t know what, exactly. Just be out at the airport ready to go at 2100 hours tonight. You’ll be there two or three days. Think of it as a little R and R. We’ve booked a room for you at the Continental. You’ll be called when he’s ready to come back. Oh, one more thing, old boy. Be in the plane when he gets there — he doesn’t like to be kept waiting. And just mind you keep the cockpit curtain pulled, will you? Better if you don’t actually see whom you’re carrying. Safer all the way around that way.”
Jesus! You’d have thought they were a goddamned bunch of British secret agents the way they’d carried on!
But Rittenour knew how to follow orders, so he’d gone out to Tan Son Nhut at the designated time and met his copilot, a captain called Jones. Jones, indeed. His captain’s bars were just a little too new and shiny for Rittenour’s liking, and his hair seemed a bit too long to meet military regulations. Besides, the man appeared a shade unconcerned about what was going on. But what really took the cake, as far as Rittenour was concerned, was Jones’s apparent unfamiliarity with the Otter, especially when Rittenour learned that Jones was supposed to have been flying one for as long as he said he had.
Rittenour thought the whole thing smelled just a bit, but that was okay with him. They could play their damned spy games if they wanted to and carry on like a bunch of junior-grade James Bonds for all he cared. He was just an airplane jockey. Besides, it was a chance to see Phnom Penh, although what he’d do there for two or three days he couldn’t imagine. Maybe the mysterious Captain Jones would know of a few good night spots there. He looked the type.
At any rate, right on time a jeepful of men in uniforms, with stark-white helmet liners and armbands that alleged they were MPs, pulled up and surrounded the airplane. One of them, wearing new lieutenant’s bars, came aboard to make sure that they were ready to go and that the cockpit curtain was pulled.
“The general doesn’t like to be disturbed,” he told Rittenour. “Just stay in the cockpit and follow your orders. You’ll be met at the other end.” And then he left.
Five minutes later a closed Army van pulled onto the field, and a man carrying a briefcase and wearing an Army raincoat, in spite of the heat and the fact that there wasn’t a sign of a cloud in the sky, got out of the back. He wore his hat low over his eyes, and Rittenour couldn’t see his face clearly, although he could see the scrambled eggs on the bill of the hat.
The man shook hands briefly with another figure who remained in the van, invisible and with the MP lieutenant. Then the man in the raincoat
climbed aboard. The lieutenant closed the door and made a cranking gesture with his hand. At this the MPs all got back into their jeep and drove away, followed by the van.
The flight to Phnom Penh was uneventful, and the enigmatic Captain Jones uninformative. Rittenour had to pry conversation out of the man, who exhibited an uncanny knack for answering everything in grunts and monosyllables.
When they landed, a carbon copy of the closed van and escort jeep was waiting for them, and their mysterious passenger was whisked away before Rittenour had completed the shutdown checklist.
As they exited the aircraft, Rittenour made one last attempt to crack Jones’s cold shell.
“Well, Captain,” said Rittenour, “I guess that’s it for the next forty-eight hours or so. What say we check into the hotel and go have ourselves a couple of Scotches on the rocks?”
“Sorry, Major, but you’ll have to excuse me,” Jones replied. “I’m not billeted with you.”
Jones turned and walked a short distance to where a yellow Toyota sedan was parked next to a hangar. There was a Cambodian dressed in civilian clothes behind the wheel. Jones got into the back, and the Cambodian drove off, leaving Rittenour standing beneath the wing of the aircraft holding his flight bag.
CHAPTER 1
UNNAMED VILLAGE NEAR AN KHE, REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM,
JANUARY 31, 1966
“Hey, Taylor! You got any idea where the fuck we are?” asked Clovis, shifting the heavy M-60 machine gun on its padded shoulder sling. The fifty-round short belt of disintegrating metal links and 7.62mm cartridges, every fifth round a tracer, clinked slightly against the side of the machine gun’s receiver. Clovis ignored the A-gunner and ammo bearer humping through the thick, tall elephant grass with him. They were green meat, less than a week and a half in-country. You couldn’t expect a couple of FNGs to know anything.
Off to the left Taylor shrugged, breaking open his M-79 blooper and ramming a 40mm high-explosive grenade into the chamber. He snapped the action of the grenade launcher shut, double-checked the safety, then fiddled momentarily with the sights. Like Clovis, he was a pro, having spent five weeks in-country. And he’d been involved in three firefights.
“Lookin’ for Charlie, Clovis, just like always. Lookin’ for Charlie and tryin’ to find them before they find us.”
“I meant geographically speaking,” said Clovis.
Taylor flashed Clovis a smile and gestured expansively with his hand. “In the Nam, Clovis, in the Nam. Land of eternal summer. Land of eternal rain. Land of eternal steaming jungle and freezing mountain top. Fragrant land of feces-fertilized rice paddy and endless reeded plain.”
“Shee-it! Man, there you go waxin’ poetic on me again, when all I want is a simple answer to a simple question, like where the fuck are we. We’re goin’ into a ville what ain’t got no name on the lootenant’s map, and when I ask the only guy in the squad’s got any sense of di-rection if he’s got any idea where the fuck we are, you go to waxin’ poetic on me.”
“The lieutenant letting you interpret his maps for him now, is he?” asked Taylor, still grinning.
“Shee-it!” said Clovis again, shrugging and spitting into the elephant grass over his right shoulder, barely missing the ammo bearer. Both the ammo bearer and the A-gunner looked at Clovis and Taylor as if they were dinky dau. They’d been in Vietnam long enough to know what that meant.
“Hell, Clovis,” said Taylor, finally serious. “What difference does it make? Don’t matter if it’s Moc Phuc or Bebop. It’s a ville, just like all the other villes. It’s got people in it, and we’re gonna go see if they’re friendly or hostile, just like we do with all the other people.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I reckon we’re about ten klicks east of An Khe. I think that puts us in Binh Dinh Province, if I remember the map they showed us at Fort Polk right. Wherever we are, we’re with the Twelfth of the First, and that puts us in a world of shit. Right?”
“Right!” chuckled Clovis. “The man is right. Hey, Taylor, if you was any more right, you’d be Barry Goldwater, I reckon.”
Taylor grinned back at the lanky machine gunner from the bluegrass hills of Kentucky. “Now that, Clovis, is not a bad idea. Not at all. Because if I was Barry Goldwater, I sure as hell wouldn’t be out here in the boonies with you.”
Clovis laughed. “Barry, baby, take me with you when you go.”
“Back to that horse-breeding farm in Kentucky your folks got?”
“Nah, man. I wanna go to Iowa with ya, see one of them hog- and cattle-breedin’ farms. Your folks got a farm, Taylor?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Clovis. My folks live in town. Dad works for the post office.”
“Clovis, just how old are you and Taylor?” asked the A-gunner.
“Nineteen. Nineteen and a half. Grandpappy Taylor over there’s pushin’ twenty-one.”
The A-gunner looked blank, then stared at the ammo bearer, who scrunched up his shoulders and gave him an oh-well look.
“Christ! I’m nineteen. Conrad’s nearly nineteen. We figured you guys were a lot older than that.”
Clovis wondered for a moment who Conrad was, then remembered that was the name of the new ammo bearer. “Give it a month and a half, uh, Malizuski.” He’d had to search for the name of the A-gunner, as well. “After a month or two in the Nam, even green meat like you will start lookin’ old.”
Malizuski couldn’t decide if he’d been complimented or insulted. He started to ask, but Clovis hushed him.
“You boys keep quiet now, and stay alert. We’re gettin’ close to the ville.”
“You think there’ll be VC in the village, Clovis?” It was a stupid thing to ask, but Malizuski couldn’t help it. It was his first patrol, and he was scared.
“I don’t know,” answered the sixty gunner. “Maybe, maybe not. You and Conrad just stick close and keep your heads. Taylor and me will look out for ya.”
They pushed on through the tall grass, feeling the sweat running down their bodies as the sun blazed high in the late-morning sky. The only sounds now were the clank and tinkle of equipment belts and weapons and the steady swish-swish of men pushing through the elephant grass.
There was a sharp metallic clank, and Clovis glanced over toward Taylor in time to see him stuffing a big, flat, black pistol back into the waistband of his fatigue trousers behind his equipment belt. Clovis knew it was a Star 9mm, a copy of the Army-issue Colt 1911A1, but with a flatter grip because it took the smaller parabellum rounds instead of the big .45s.
Taylor had brought it with him when he came back from leave, Clovis remembered now, just before they shipped over together from the States. It was illegal under Army regulations, but Taylor had smuggled it over in a shaving kit. He’d taken the contents out of the kit, replacing them with the pistol, a couple of spare magazines and two fifty-round boxes of ammunition. Clovis had tried to talk him out of bringing it when they’d left Fort Ord, afraid his buddy would get caught with it and get into trouble. They’d been together since basic at Fort Leonard Wood.
“Hell, Clovis, what they going to do to me?” Taylor had asked him. “Send me to Vietnam?”
“Army’s got plenty of guns. They’ll give you one. You don’t need another,” Clovis had argued. But that first night in-country at the Long Binh Repo Depot when the Viet Cong had mortared the transient barracks, Clovis had been mighty glad Taylor had brought the pistol, even if it did turn out they hadn’t actually needed it. Because they were being mortared, and it was the only friggin’ gun in the entire barracks because the friggin’ Army hadn’t seen fit to issue them rifles yet.
The next morning, as they stood in line waiting for their assignments, they heard the administrative specialist sitting behind the desk asking each man if he could type. The administrative specialist was getting a lot of noes and blank stares for answers.
“Hey, Taylor, you reckon we oughtta tell him we can type?” Clovis whispered.
“Can you?”
“Sure. I ain’t fast, but I reckon thirty-five
, forty, words a minute. You?”
“About the same, I guess.”
“You reckon we oughtta tell him, then?”
“I don’t know, Clovis. I don’t think I’m going to. You do whatever you think is right.”
“Not going to? Why not? Don’t you want a cushy job? These puds probably get every other weekend off and go down to Saigon and chase poon.”
“Yeah, I know. But do you really want to go back home to Kentucky and tell your girl and folks that all you did in the war was type out forms and chase poon around Saigon?”
“Can either of you guys type?” asked the administrative specialist as they stepped up to the desk.
“Not me,” said Taylor. “What’s a typewriter? All they taught us at AIT was weapons and tactics. Didn’t say anything about needing to type.”
“Yeah,” echoed Clovis. He tapped the infantry badge pinned to his chest. “See, man, we’re ground pounders. All we know how to do is kill Commies and Charlie.”
The administrative specialist, a spec five with thick, Army-issue glasses and a bad case of acne, laid down his black plastic Army-issue pen and stared up at them.
“A couple of smart asses, huh?” said the spec five. “Well, smart asses, I’m going to fix your smart asses for you. I’m going to send you up to the First Air Cav at An Khe. What do you think of that?”
“What’s An Khe?” asked Clovis.
The spec five looked at them. He smiled. “It’s a meat grinder.”
The spec five had been right.
When Clovis and Taylor arrived at An Khe Combat Base aboard the big CH-47 Chinook helicopter, First Air Cav’s Third Brigade was still licking its wounds from the bloody battle for control of the Ia Drang Valley in late October and November and Second Brigade was picking up the slack. Something big was in the works. Second Brigade was being pumped up for it while Division did its best to rebuild the Third, and Clovis and Taylor both got posted to Bravo Company, Second Battalion, of Second Brigade’s Twelfth Regiment, which was light because it had taken what Saigon and the Pentagon called moderate casualties the week before.