by Eric Meyer
Coles shouted, "It’s an artillery barrage."
“They know our guys are on the surface, so why would they shell this area?"
"Search me. I keep asking myself why we’re fighting this crazy war."
"I thought it was to stop the Commies taking over."
"Yeah, right."
We huddled in the darkness, arms over our heads, waiting for the cave-in that would kill us. I was tempted to use that last bullet now, and forestall the terrible choking asphyxiation that awaited us, but I waited. And waited. I’d said we needed a miracle, and I wondered if this was the right miracle. The kind I had in mind was a rescue from this nightmare tunnel, not an underground cave-in while artillery shells burst overhead. More shells pounded overhead, and I heard screams and shouts out in the main tunnel. Charlie was afraid, men’s voices filled with terror. Good, they liked to play their party tricks and terrorize the locals, robbing and killing, so it wasn't so bad they were getting some payback. I just wished we weren’t around to see or hear it.
A final barrage of shells fell even closer, and the screams stopped. A low rumble sounded from somewhere close, and I didn't need Coles to tell me what had happened. The main tunnel had just caved in, and the Vietcong who’d been trying to kill us were buried beneath thousands of tons of earth.
Tough shit.
I looked at Coles. “Are we next?"
"Probably."
He still seemed calm, and maybe he had the right attitude, not panicking. We were going to die in this place, no question. So we may as well take it like men. We were soldiers, warriors, come here to fight and die. We were also shit scared.
The barrage continued for almost an hour, although the artillery had shifted their aim, and I began to think we weren't about to be buried by hundreds of tons of earth. But we wouldn’t be spared a long, agonizing and choking death. We were still trapped. The main tunnel had collapsed, and we'd spend the rest of what remained of our lives gasping for air as we slowly died of asphyxiation. That bullet looked awful tempting.
I glanced at Coles. "This is where we die, and it’s gonna be long and hard.”
The master of the single word conversation said, "Wait."
We waited, and we waited. The earth still shook, but the shells were striking the ground at least a kilometer away, and I wished they'd decide to give the area over our heads another pasting. If it were going to end like this, a direct hit from a heavy shell would be the best way to go, the quickest way to go. A few seconds of searing agony and terror and perpetual darkness.
I murmured, "A pity they're not hitting this area again."
I met his eyes. He'd left his flashlight on so we wouldn’t spend our last moments on earth in darkness. "Yeager, I said wait."
"Wait for what?"
He didn’t reply, and I guessed he had an idea of the way these things worked. The next fall of shot slammed into the ground, and this time it was directly overhead. For some unknown reason they'd decided to rake over the rubble. Maybe some tactic to fool the VC into thinking it was safe to come up into the open and hit them when they were most vulnerable. Or maybe they were just lousy shots. Whatever the reason, our nightmare became worse, and my wish to die quickly and easily in this place looked about to become reality. A final salvo smashed into the earth, and it happened. The roof bulged and started to collapse, chunks of mud and pieces of rock cascaded down over us. I put my Colt to my head and made sure my finger was on the trigger, the barrel pointed at my brain. The earth trembled and more rubble cascaded down, and I glanced at Coles. "This is it, so long."
Before I could shoot, more debris crashed down over our heads, almost knocking Coles unconscious. It knocked me unconscious. I had no helmet. Helmets were useless in a tunnel, and all I had to protect me was my arms held over my head. A chunk of rock smashed into my arm and knocked the gun away, but I took aim again and said a brief prayer. Started to take up first pressure on the trigger, but a hand came up and pushed my gun hand away. "No."
I glanced at Coles, and like me he was buried almost up to his waist in mud and earth. I was about to ask him why not, anything was better than dying in this stinking chamber. He didn't reply, just pointed up, and there was something there. Light, the merest pinpoint; in the corner of the room a shaft of sunlight was shining through from the outside. I scrabbled to push away the earth that had come close to entombing us. Even come close to succeeding, and I crawled over to look up at the sky. It was blue, which at the time struck me as odd, the most amazing sight imaginable. Blue sky, something I’d never expected to see again.
“We need something to dig with," I said to him.
The surface looked to be no more than two meters above our heads, and with a metal implement we could dig away at the earth until the hole was big enough to climb out. We didn't have a metal implement to do any digging, until Coles pointed to the muzzle of a weapon half buried in the debris. The first VC who'd crawled through, and taken my bullet for his pains, had dropped his assault rifle. I dragged the AK-47 out of the earth and used it as a pry bar to chisel and wrench at the earth, ripping away chunks of mud and stone. Slowly, the hole widened.
When we climbed out into the open, we'd climbed into a scene from a post-apocalyptic hell. The trees were gone, the undergrowth and the jungle vanished. In its place all that remained were piles of earth and palm fronds, ripped up foliage, and silence. No artillery shells, no bombs falling, no napalm scorching a blazing trail through the jungle. There was nothing except wreckage. A broken hell, an Apocalypse, and I took a few minutes to suck in in the wonderful taste of air, ignoring the stink of high-explosive that always accompanied an area hit by artillery shells. I didn't care. Those artillery shells had saved my life, saved both our lives. And then I thought about the others.
"What happened to Morgan and the guys?”
I’d asked a stupid question, and I didn't want to hear the obvious answer. The chances of them surviving were remote. I started to look around, knowing at best all I’d find was find was bodies chewed up by high-explosive; shredded flesh, bones, and the remnants of uniforms. We quartered the area searching everywhere and found nothing. Just devastation.
"Is it possible they got away?"
He didn’t answer, and I knew I’d asked another stupid question. They couldn’t have survived. Impossible.
"Private Yeager!"
I spun around, and the voice was familiar. A high-pitched voice, too high for a guy, but not for a woman. Especially this woman, dressed in Vietnamese tiger-stripe camos, and pretending to be her brother.
"Lieutenant Tam, you're alive!”
I ran to the diminutive figure. She was covered in dirt and grime, blackened like a commando on a night raid. I stopped myself from flinging my arms around her in sheer relief. That would have been too much to explain. "How did you avoid the artillery shells?"
She grinned. “We were searching for more tunnel entrances, and we found a shallow shaft just as the first shells started to land. The Communists dug them to protect them from American artillery, so Sergeant Morgan suggested we do the same. We dropped down below ground and waited it out."
"They're alive?"
"All of them. Look."
They were crawling out from the hole, pushing aside fallen leaves and broken branches, and when they saw us they cheered. Morgan started walking toward us, staggering slightly, and he almost tripped on a fallen branch. "I thought you guys were goners. How come you survived?"
I told him what had happened. “When we heard that barrage coming in, we thought we were about to buy the farm, but the VC took the hit. One salvo collapsed the tunnel over their heads while they were about to shoot the crap out of us.”
“You were lucky.”
“You should see the other guys. Damn, that was close."
They were all there, Morgan, Goff, Byrd, still clutching his baby, the M-60, and I'd never been so pleased to see anyone in my life. Neither had I ever been so glad to breathe air, no matter how stinking and pollut
ed.
"Where’s Murray?"
Morgan jerked his thumb over his head. “He’s on the way out now."
I looked around as a head popped out of the earth. I was about to call a greeting when something jarred, and alarms began to ring like cathedral bells, only louder. It wasn't Murray. It was a Vietnamese, a VC, pulling himself out of the earth where the tunnel had partially collapsed. He was dazed and shell-shocked, but so was I, so were we all. When I saw the AK-47, I reacted on instinct and popped two bullets into him. It was long-range for a handgun, maybe fifty meters, but one bullet smashed into his chest, and he crumpled with a cry.
“Nice shooting," Coles murmured.
But not everyone was impressed.
"I saw that, dammit!" Mark Butcher, a man I'd have been more than pleased to see fall victim to the artillery barrage, and yet he was one of those guys who seemed to have a charmed life. I reckon it would have taken a direct hit from an atomic bomb to take him out. Morgan and the others were covered in dust and grime, but somehow Butcher looked almost immaculate, his khakis unstained, and even his hair was neatly combed, "That man was trying to surrender and you killed him!"
"Bullshit," Morgan growled, “He could have taken all us in a single burst from his AK. We nearly died, Butcher, and that includes you. Yeager saved us.”
"I saw his hands and he’d had enough. You should have taken him prisoner, and instead Yeager murdered him." He rounded on me. "You're a war criminal, Yeager, and I'm gonna report this and write it up in my paper."
He was staring at me like I was the brother of Ho Chi Minh, the devil incarnate. His chin stuck out in an aggressive posture, and he was waiting for me to reply. Probably to say something that would incriminate me even more.
I gave him what seemed like an appropriate reply. "Go screw yourself, Butcher."
“I’ll nail you!" he shouted.
Morgan intervened when I was about to plant one on his jutting chin. It seemed too good a target to miss. "That's enough. We're moving on."
"Where to?" Butcher growled, "We should head back right now. I need to call in my report.”
“Fuck your report. We're standing on a suspected network of VC tunnels, and before we head back and call it in, we’ll try to locate other entrances. We’ll cover a one-kilometer square.”
Butcher didn't like it, and he cursed and swore at Morgan, telling him he was putting the lives of all his men in danger. He’d be sure to add it to his report when he got back and he’d be screwed, but the Sergeant ignored him, and we began to explore the area.
We found five more tunnel entrances, and opinion was we’d pushed our luck to the limit. Even Coles agreed. We’d come close to death, close enough to reach out and shake its hand, and death isn't something you want to roll the dice with. Not too often.
We started back, and once again Morgan refused to call in a Huey to pick us up. The return journey wasn’t easy, and somehow we missed the correct path. Instead of taking the direct route back to Cu Chi Base Camp, we found ourselves wandering along a trail in the middle of nowhere. The trail ended when we came across a paddy field we hadn't seen before. That made us suspicious. The enemy was keen to grow food for their men, and forced the natives to plant and harvest the crop. Even the VC had to eat.
Lieutenant Tam frowned. "This shouldn't be here. This land used to belong to a friend of my father. There was no paddy field.”
"Then why is it here?"
She shrugged. "Vietcong. They've sequestered the land to grow rice to feed their troops."
There were a dozen people working the paddy, picking rice, and I gestured to them. "You mean these people are VC?” The others glanced up, fingers tightening on triggers, but before shooting started she shouted quickly, "No, no. They will have forced them to harvest the rice. They have no alternative if they want to live."
"You mean like they're slaves?"
"That's right. Slaves."
"I have to call it in," Morgan said, "They may be innocents, but if they’re supplying food to the enemy, it has to stop."
He told Goff to contact Base Camp, and he spoke for several minutes. "They're sending in aircraft to dump napalm on the field.” He grinned, “They’d better like their rice toasted and smelling of gasoline. Lieutenant Tam, warn those people to get out, and I mean fast. I'd say they have ten minutes, tops."
She ran toward the toiling workers, shouting at the top of the voice, and Morgan glanced at me. "Damn, he sounds just like a woman. Weird."
"Yeah, ain't it?"
The peasants finally got the message and started to run. Most of them made it, although a couple were either too slow or more stubborn than the others, and instead of running, they walked. They were still on the edge of the paddy field when the Phantoms swooped low, wing pylons loaded with ordnance. The canisters fell and exploded on impact, and they performed a flashy wingover before coming in for a second pass. The first napalm exploded in a shattering gout of flame, a thunderous roar, and suddenly the paddy field was no longer a source of foodstuffs for the Communists. It had become a sea of flame, and across the other side I saw the two peasants consumed by the flames. Their bodies writhed in agony, as they became burning torches until finally they fell into the water, where they disappeared beneath the surface. A surface which was no longer a paddy field, but a sea of flames that was like a living thing, black roiling smoke coiling upward like some monstrous snake. The heat was so bad we had to take cover until it subsided.
I noticed Butcher take a picture and start making notes on a small pad. There was something in his eyes that was unclean. He was gloating over the misfortune of those peasants while he collected material for his story, although some would call it dirt. His eyes shone bright with a feral glint of pleasure at seeing those people burn in order to push him on the road to a Pulitzer. I had to turn away, even looking at him made me feel unclean.
What is he? Reporter or ghoul?
Morgan signaled for us to move off. I was glad to head back, glad to know the worst was behind me. I knew nothing, for it wasn’t behind me. The worst was yet to come.
Chapter Six
MACV After Action Report – Lessons Learned
Another tunnel characteristic of note is the use of air or water locks which act as firewalls, preventing blasts, fragments, or gas from passing from one section of the tunnel complex to another.
Two burly MPs dragged me out of my tent at dawn and force-marched me to the office of the Deputy Base Commander. He didn’t look happy. For Lieutenant Colonel Edgar Harris had a lot on his plate. A tough, broad-shouldered, square-jawed infantry veteran with short, steel gray hair, he’d earned enough medals for any man during his service in Korea as a young recruit. Fighting his way up through the ranks, he’d made it to lieutenant colonel, was in the running for full colonel, and the word was he’d get his first star within the next two years.
“Private Yeager.”
“Sir.” I was standing rigidly at attention, not thinking straight, or maybe I’d have tried to be more conciliatory.
“You know why you’re here?”
“Because I failed to nail the ass of that Commie bastard who wiped out my platoon. Commissar Trinh Tac is still out there. Colonel, we were close, and if you send in more men, there’s a good chance we can get him. I’d be happy to show them the way to where we believe he’s hiding out. That bastard is a threat to the morale of the United States Army in Vietnam.”
He didn’t even blink. “Wrong. The reason you’re here is because of a complaint about you killing an innocent prisoner.”
Butcher. He’s developing his story, starting by carving up my reputation like a joint of Sunday roast.
“That’s bullshit, Sir.”
“All the same I have to take notice of the complaint. Is it true you shot a VC when he was trying to surrender?"
I had to fight back my anger. "I popped a guy when he emerged from a spider hole, but he had a gun pointed in our direction, and I assumed he was about to start shooting
."
"Is there any possibility he was trying to surrender?"
I thought about that for a few moments, but there was no way. "None. But why don't you ask the guys who were with me? They saw it happen, and they know enough about Butcher to understand he'll say anything to enhance his career." I thought about it again and gave him an emphatic shake of the head, "Sir, he wasn’t trying to surrender. Period."
The phone on his desk rang, and he signaled for me to wait while he answered. He listened for a minute, and an argument seemed to ensue. Eventually, he slammed the phone down and gave me a regretful look. "I’m sorry, Yeager, that was a call from MACV headquarters in Saigon. They say I’m to place you under arrest while we investigate. They're shit scared about this story appearing in the newspapers back home and making the military look bad."
"What does that mean, you’re putting me in a cell for killing the enemy? Why don’t you put the entire Army in cells?”
He pondered for a few moments. "It's in my power to make an open arrest, so consider yourself confined to Cu Chi Base Camp until this thing is resolved. I’ll take statements from the other guys in your unit, and I believe you had an ARVN officer along, is that correct?"
"Lieutenant Tam, that's correct, Sir."
"I’ll see what he has to say. That's all, Yeager. You're dismissed. When I’ve heard the others’ version of events, I’ll consider what they have to say. Until then," and he gave me a small grin, "As they used to say in the Old West, don't leave town."
“Nossir.”
I saluted, spun on my heel, and walked out into the chaos of the base. Cedar Falls was running at a fast rate; helicopters taking off and landing, fighter-bombers zooming overhead, some heading west to unload their ordnance on the enemy, or maybe on patches of empty jungle. Others were returning, their wing pylons empty to refuel and rearm. A kaleidoscope of noise and movement, of shouting men, the scream of jet engines, and in the distance, the ‘crump’ of exploding bombs and artillery. Or it could have been napalm. I didn’t care. As long as some of it fell on top of wherever Trinh was hiding. A forlorn hope, the guy was a survivor. He’d take a lot of killing, and I intended to do a lot of killing when I caught up with the bastard.