by Eric Meyer
"Take a look in the well," Morgan said quietly. "All of you stay alert. There's some shit going on here I don't get, and I don't like it.”
I approached the well with trepidation, and as I got closer, the stench became nauseating, enough to make a man vomit. I'd yet to learn that in the hot, humid atmosphere of Vietnam, bodies decayed fast, but I was soon to find out. I glanced in the well, and immediately turned away and vomited. And vomited again, everything I’d eaten in the past twenty-four hours. I walked away trying to breathe in cleaner air. I failed. There was no cleaner air, and the stench was like a sick miasma spreading over the village. This was a place of death, of corruption and decay, and worse. Morgan approached with the reporter in tow.
"What did you see?"
“Flies, insects, thousands of them feeding on the bodies.”
“Bodies?”
"Bodies, Master Sergeant. And they’re the bodies of American soldiers. They’ve hacked them to pieces and tossed the remains down the well."
His eyes widened. "You're kidding me!"
"I wish I was. Those poor guys."
"I need to take a look. Damn, this’ll make some story.” Butcher was hurrying over, dragging a camera from one of the pockets of his bush jacket, and he reached the well before anyone could stop him and looked inside. We heard him shout, "Jesus Christ!" And then the flashbulb popped as he took a picture.
Archie Harrison, a veteran and newly promoted Sergeant under Bob Morgan, dragged him away. "Fucking ghoul, those’re our men." He pushed Butcher away, looked down the well, and his face went green. Archie had a reputation as something of a gourmet, medium height with a paunch after too many five-course dinners in classy restaurants. He didn’t look the part; he’d spent his upbringing in Pennsylvania, looking forward to a career in the blast furnace of the local steelworks. He worked there for a while before the Army conscripted him, and his face bore the pits of tiny burns where he hadn’t closed his face shield in time.
“Dear God, I don't believe it. He looked at PFC Danny Goff, our radioman. "Tell them we need help out here, fast."
"Medics?"
Goff hadn’t been close enough to hear what was going on, and Harrison shook his head. "If they can land, we need a helicopter with a graves registration unit. Those guys are beyond any help, but we need to get their names and units and prepare them to go back for a decent burial."
He warmed up the radio and fired off the message. They asked him about sending in a helicopter, and Morgan and Harrison glanced up at the jungle canopy. Their opinion was there'd be enough space for a Huey to land. Just. When they asked how many bodies needed to be removed so they could work out the number of helicopters needed. Morgan told the guy on the other end to send just the one. "It’s not so much bodies as body parts."
I'd recovered from the worst of my nausea, and there was nothing left in my belly to vomit, so I went back to the well, holding my nose against the stench. I shone my tiny penlight into the dark space, and I was able to make out a nametag on the camo jacket of the nearest body. Covered in blood, it was difficult to read, and I had to look closer to work out the letters. When it came to me, I felt cold. Cold as ice. Sarandon, Second Lieutenant Cox’s replacement. I was staring at the bodies of my platoon.
Chapter Two
MACV After Action Report – Lessons Learned
Trapdoors are utilized extensively, both at entrances and exits and inside the tunnel complex itself, concealing side tunnels and intermediate sections of a main tunnel. In many cases a trapdoor will lead to a short change of direction or change-of-level tunnel, followed by a second trapdoor, a second change-of-direction and third trapdoor opening again into the main tunnel. Trapdoors are of several types; they may be concrete covered by dirt, hardpacked dirt reinforced by wire, or a basin type consisting of a frame filled with dirt. This latter type is particularly difficult to locate in that probing will not reveal the presence of the trapdoor unless the probe strikes the outer frame. Trapdoors covering entrances or exits are generally a minimum of one hundred meters apart. Booby traps are used extensively, both inside and outside entrance or exit trapdoors. Grenades are frequently placed in trees adjacent to the exit, then activation wire to be pulled by a person underneath the trapdoor or by movement of the trapdoor itself.
I sat huddled on the ground, watching as they loaded the bodies on the helicopter. The pilot was Jamie Erskine, who’d been Mickey’s co-pilot. Another CW2, and we chatted for a few moments about Mickey while they finished loading. A somber meeting, but somehow it felt good to see a familiar face, as if he was carrying the torch for Mickey Ellis. He didn’t invite me for another pleasure flight.
When the Huey took off, I finally got to my feet and walked over to Morgan, who was supervising the search of the village. They left me alone, respecting my feelings, and I’d had time to work it through in my mind.
I found Sergeant Morgan. “Sarge, the VC unit that did this, what if they’re still nearby, hiding in a tunnel? Isn’t that why we’re here, to search for the tunnels?”
Right then, I was boiling with rage at the Communists who’d caused the death of Gracie’s brother, Mickey Ellis, as well as his door gunner. Boiling with rage at the guerrillas who’d shot up the platoon next to the paddy field. And now this, the inhuman beasts who’d carried out such a slaughter. If they’d invited me to nuke Vietnam right then, I’d have been glad to volunteer to press the button.
He gave me a sympathetic look. “Carl, I understand how you feel. They were your friends, but…”
“Dammit, I served with those men. Got to know them and they became friends. They didn’t deserve to wind up like that. If the VC cadre who ordered his men to do this is still around, we need to find the guy and put a few rounds into his Commie ass. Show him what happens when they treat our soldiers like that. It’s against all the rules of war. We need to piss all over him and anyone who helped mutilate our soldiers.”
He sat thinking for a few moments and finally nodded slowly. “We’ll continue our patrol, but the chances of finding the bastard who did this isn’t good. Sure, we may strike lucky and locate a tunnel, in which case we can send Jesse down to do his thing. But he’ll be long gone, Yeager. Long gone.”
I didn’t have any choice but to accept what he said, and when we finished searching the village and found nothing, we continued our patrol through the jungle. I still didn’t know why I was here. Except that it must be fate. Fate that had taken me away from my platoon and brought me back to the place of their brutal execution. What remained was to bring the bastard responsible, the man who’d given the order, to justice. Provided that justice meant the bastard ended up dead.
We found nothing. No tunnels, no VC, and apart from a close encounter with a booby trap, a shallow pit lined with Punji stakes which I avoided at the last second after a warning shout from Jesse Coles, we returned to Tan Son Nhut with nothing to report. Except the murder of my platoon, and there was plenty of anger and saber rattling inside the air base, but I didn’t hear anyone suggest they went after the perpetrators.
We were due to move to Cu Chi Base Camp the next day, up close to the Triangle, and I had a vision of stumbling across a VC tunnel system, finding the guys who murdered my friends, and sending down enough HE to blow them all the way to Hanoi. The trick was to find them first. At least at Cu Chi, home to the 25th Infantry, I’d be able to look. General Westmoreland wanted to kill every gook inside the Iron Triangle, and I wanted to kill a single unit. We were reading off the same page. He just had a bigger book.
I was sitting outside our hut, sipping a mug of coffee that tasted of aviation fuel. The entire base tasted of aviation fuel. Nearby, a radio was playing ‘Soul Man’ by Sam and Dave. I downed the Java in a single gulp, trying to ignore the bitter taste, when an ARVN soldier in tiger stripe camos strolled toward me. He was like most ARVN, short and slender, and his camos were too big for him, which along with the oversized helmet made him look like a kid playing soldiers. I pitied him, for he l
ooked somewhat effeminate, and I suspected the guys in his unit gave him a rough time. As a girl he’d have been a great success, with a slim, oval face, flawless skin with deep-set sloe eyes. But he wasn’t a girl. He was a guy.
“Private Yeager? Carl Yeager?”
He wore a lieutenant’s bars on his rank tab, and I slowly got to my feet. “Who’s asking?”
“My name is Lieutenant Tam Bao. I heard your former platoon was killed at Bong Trang, I’m very sorry.”
Another minus was his voice, a bit too soft and gentle for a soldier. The guy looked and spoke like a fashion designer, and I could imagine him showing the latest Paris fashions to wealthy Vietnamese females.
“Thank you.” I kept my voice cold and uninterested. The guy gave me the creeps. He just didn’t look anything like the soldier should look like.
“I think I can help track down the VC unit responsible. I come from a village close to Bong Trang, and I could offer to help you search the area. Your Master Sergeant told me you thought they were hiding in the tunnels.”
I was surprised. “You talked to Morgan?”
“He talked to me. He went looking for anyone who had knowledge of the area, and my name came up. He said for me to speak to you.”
I’d been wrong. People were taking an interest. At least, Morgan was. “How can you help?”
A shrug. “I know the game trails, the caves and gullies,” he grinned, “In fact, I played there as a kid, and if there’s anywhere to hide, you can bet we always found it.”
“You’re talking about above ground, that’s not the tunnels. And the tunnels are likely to be where they’re hiding.”
“Digging tunnels means disturbing natural features, and that’s where I believe I can help.”
He looked unlike any army officer I’d ever seen, but this was Vietnam, and the ARVN maybe had different recruiting policies than the U.S. Army. I still wasn’t sure about this guy. Bao looked more like one of those male prostitutes selling their wares in the Saigon backstreets, and I wouldn’t back him to fight his way out of a paper sack. Although if he possessed the local knowledge he claimed, he could be an asset. If Master Sergeant Morgan thought it was worthwhile, that was good enough for me. This was the Army, and if your squad leader said jump, you jumped.
“It sounds worthwhile. You’ve talked to Morgan, so do you have an idea of where we could start?”
His reply came straight back, and I felt the hairs rising on my back. “Bong Trang.”
“You think they’re still there?”
A shrug. “Why not? The tunnels run for several kilometers under the entire area. That’s where they operate from. Slip out at night, attack our troops, and coerce the villagers into giving them food and support. At dawn they disappear underground.”
“Tell me about the tunnels.”
He nodded. “The Viet Minh, as they were known, began digging them during the French Indochina war in the late 1940s. Since then they’ve expanded them, and they extend in a vast underground network from the outskirts of Saigon to the border of Cambodia.”
I stared at him, hardly believing what I was hearing. “How many of them?”
“Over two hundred kilometers of tunnels, most of them interconnected. Enough to hide an army, and they provide sleeping quarters, kitchens, even medical facilities and schools to educate soldiers. About Communism, naturally.”
By educate I took it to mean ‘indoctrinate.’ Forget education, if there was anything to learn about Communism, it could be written on a sheet of paper and used to wipe your backside. I talked to Bao for a while longer, building up a picture of what we were up against, and the more we talked, the more I became convinced this officer could make all the difference.
“Nice talking to you, Lieutenant. I’ll go see Master Sergeant Morgan, tell him what we discussed, and find out what time we’re due to leave for Cu Chi Base Camp.”
He nodded and smiled and slipped away. I wished he looked a bit tougher. Where we were going, we’d need hard bastards who could shoot straight and put down an enemy face-to-face. The jungle was a nightmare of impenetrable trees, vines, and bushes. Filled with every nasty creature known to man, apart from the Vietcong, who were the nastiest. Rattlesnakes, poisonous insects and spiders, and of course the constant fear of booby traps. When the enemy placed a trap, they made sure they were almost impossible to pick out before you ran into them. We’d lost more than a few men to them, and they had an added effect, of making men nervous.
I walked into the cafeteria and noticed Morgan sitting across the room surrounded by his squad. Sergeant Archie Harrison, Corporal Martin Byrd, PFC Andy Murray, and PFC Danny Goff, the radioman. Specialist Jesse Coles was seated at a nearby table, alone. When anyone came close, his scowl was enough to make it clear that was the way he liked it. I took a coffee from the counter and stood there sipping it for a few minutes, then wandered over to them. They were deep in conversation, as were most of the soldiers crowded into the room. Everybody knew something big was going down, the kind of thing that encourages deep conversation.
Someone was playing a transistor radio, and the music of the Rolling Stones provided a backdrop to the mass of sweating men. A low buzz of conversation, and it was different than before. As I walked past a table, I picked up a thread, and it was about the bodies we’d found in the well.
“I mean, those brutal bastards are prepared to go all the way. Is there nothing they won’t do to fight this war? They’re losing, they must know that, so why mutilate our men.”
“I don’t know about you, Bobby, but next time they want to send a patrol into that area, I’m going to see the doctor. Tell him I’m sick.”
I heard similar conversations until I reached Morgan and the others. They looked up and nodded a greeting, and I pulled up a chair.
“Lieutenant Tam talked to me. We could be onto something.”
“The tunnels, yeah, I heard. He could make all the difference, and if we find one, we’ll send Jesse down to take care of the bastards.”
“How long has he been in your unit?”
Archie Harrison chuckled. “Pal, you don’t get it. We’re in his unit. He’s the reason we carry out this assignment, period. Our job is to get him to the target, that’s the tunnel entrance, and watch his back when he’s inside. Once he goes down there, they call it the ‘Black Echo,’ and it’s all up to him. We stay above ground and look out for the enemy. Sometimes they pop out of other entrances or spider holes and start shooting before you know they’re there.”
“Spider holes?”
He nodded. “Just a hole in the ground, enough to conceal one man. They camouflage them with foliage, and they’re almost impossible to spot. Then there’re the booby traps, and you know about those.”
“I know. How many has he killed?”
“Who can tell? All we do know is when he goes down into a tunnel, he either kills everyone he finds, or he doesn’t come back. So far, he’s always come back. Which means he’s left behind a few bodies.”
“Not an easy chore.”
Morgan swiveled his head to look at me. “Not easy? Fella, that’s the toughest job in Vietnam. I knew Jesse before he took it on, and he was a regular guy. Now he’s like he is.” He glanced his gaze toward him, “Hardly talks, don’t want to know anybody. Just does his job. Down into the Black Echo looking for the enemy to kill, and each time he comes back, he’s different again. Like he’s still looking for men to kill, and sometimes I wonder if he’ll explode and go crazy, killing anyone and everyone in sight.” He shuddered. “Man, that’s one helluva job. And if it isn’t Charlie waiting in the darkness to kill you, it’s a poisonous centipede or a scorpion trying to bite your ass.”
“You ever been into a tunnel.”
A shadow crossed his face. “Once.”
“You find anything?”
“Yes.” His voice had dropped to a whisper, “I found something. A girl, a VC, and I killed her when she came out of nowhere and popped a shot at me. She missed. I di
dn’t.”
“Tough, uh?”
He didn’t reply, and I didn’t ask again. I got the picture, and it was the stuff of nightmares. I chatted to Danny Goff, a native of Portland, Oregon, where he’d been planning a career as a motor mechanic before he joined up. He told me the tunnels were bad for the enemy as well.
“Living in those tunnels is worse than you can imagine. Lots of the VC die from snakebites, poisonous insects, and roof falls, especially when the Air Force unloads a few tons of bombs over their heads. They say they’re suffering from all kinds of diseases, especially intestinal problems, and because they never see daylight, they get scurvy, stuff like that. Then there’s malaria, which is endemic. Shit, those places are the Devil’s asshole.”
“Pretty tough.”
“Tough? They store rice down there, and it gets damp and goes moldy. You ever smelled a rotting corpse?”
I recalled finding that well, and I nearly vomited. That memory would last a lifetime. “I have.”
“Rotting rice is worse, especially when it’s all they have to eat. Friend or foe, they’re bad places. The worst.”
I tried to get to sleep that night, and all I could think of was venomous spiders crawling up the legs of my pants, and after a restless hour of tossing and turning, I tied string around the cuffs. Just in case. I woke early, feeling tired and groggy. Halfway through the night I checked under my cot to make sure a serpent wasn’t lurking there, waiting to slide under the blanket and bite me in the balls. There wasn’t, but it didn’t make for a restful night. Especially when I had to check the floor at the side of my cot for scorpions. I felt stupid afterward, clutching a Colt M1911 and waiting to line up a shot. I guessed there were better ways to deal with them.