“What do you think?” the Gunny said, not looking at me or the two former commanders.
“I’m not the C.O. here, but then they know that,” I said, although my curiosity was piqued.
“So what is it?”
“What do we do?” Jurgens broke in.
I noted that he didn’t use the name Junior in talking to me, plus the tone of his voice was actually almost polite.
“What do I get?” I asked, almost enjoying myself, not really expecting an answer.
Jurgens and Sugar Daddy looked at one another for a few seconds, and then both looked at the Gunny, as did I.
“They’ve been to the A Shau before,” the Gunny said. “A number of times, like me.”
“Yes, I’ve heard,” was all I could think to respond.
“We’re going to get hit tonight,” Jurgens said, his voice quiet and low. “They’re going to hit us from the west on the ground while the arty shit comes pouring into the landing zone in the east. We got nowhere to go except maybe down into the broken valleys on both sides, and they’ve probably mined those years back.”
“Why would they hit us tonight?” I asked.
“Ask your ‘yard’ over there,” Sugar Daddy said, pointing at Nguyen, who squatted just beyond our circle. Nguyen allowed no expression to cross his facial features. I looked at him, and he blinked.
“Okay, so we know that,” I agreed, part of my mind already beginning to design a plan to handle the expected attack.
“You’re right in the middle here,” Jurgens pointed out. “When they hit, you’ll be among the first to go down.”
I looked at the man, wondering why he’d terrified me for so many days and nights. He didn’t look terrifying. He looked like a tough kid on a high school playground, which he was not long from being on.
“So, for this warning you want something,” I stated, flatly. “What in hell am I supposed to do?”
“The Gunny said you did that Chesty trick,” Jurgens said, looking down at nothing in front of him. “We need a trick like that to get through, and we want to be the leaders of our platoons again. Breaking up the platoons won’t work. The guys won’t do it, and there’ll be nobody to fight the NVA tonight.”
I massaged both thighs with my hands. They weren’t shaking but I didn’t want to take a chance of showing weakness in front of the two dangerous predators. My left hand clutched my two letters home and my right the deadly morphine packet. I had to come up with something but I had nothing. I was now more of a nobody officer in the company than I had been before. With Rittenhouse writing the daily report, added on to by the three real officers, I was likely to end up in Leavenworth if I somehow lived through my tour. I thought of the magnificent cliff I’d stood next to once again and how far down the cliff face extended. A kernel of inspiration ignited in my brain, fanning itself into a fire, the more focus I gave it.
“Okay, here’s what you get back,” I said, clearing the bracken in front of me until I had a small section of flat mud to work on. I smoothed it with my hands, and then reached in my pocket for my cheap government pen. I didn’t click it to allow the point to be exposed.
“First, you two go back to your platoons and ignore the captain’s orders,” I instructed. “Run your platoons just like before. If the new lieutenants show up, you ignore them. You’re good at doing that to new officers. What are they going to do, make you go down into the A Shau?” I thought about the rest of my developing plan for a moment.
“Well, what about the attack?” the Gunny asked, as if reading from my special script.
“We’ll use the King Kamehameha plan,” I said, quickly leaning forward and making a drawing on the mud in front of me. I drew an elongated oval around the landing zone, then a rectangular box running back and forth across the swell of mountain edge we were currently on. Finally, I drew arrows running outside and back and forth from and to the rectangle, reserving one giant arrow for the incoming sweep of the NVA that would attack from the jungle toward the landing zone.
“Soon to be King Kamehameha used this to capture Oahu and become the King of the Hawaiian Islands. He had his troops make believe that they were trapped between his bigger enemy and a giant cliff edge. The enemy thought they had him. But in the daytime Kamehameha allowed his forces to sneak away to each side and when the enemy attacked right up the center of where they thought his forces were, Kamehameha had his men drive them over the edge of the cliff.”
I looked up and pulled back from my diagram with obvious enthusiasm.
“Pushed them over the cliff?” the Gunny asked, skeptically. “The NVA have AK-47s, not spears.”
“Oh that,” I said. “Their artillery’s going to open up and then walk itself right into where they think we are. But we’ll be holding them there from the sides. We’ll force them right into their own artillery barrage since it’s not likely they have a forward observer with a radio that’ll reach out that far. Finally, we come in right behind them with our own artillery. It’s perfect.”
I waited as everyone present sat thinking. I had no idea of when or even if the NVA would use their artillery. I also had no idea about whether we would be attacked from the exposed western flank located at our front. Finally, it was a complete toss up about how the new officers would react to being told to go screw themselves. That last part forced a grim smile out of me.
“You heard the man,” the Gunny instructed, rising to his feet and snapping his cigarette into the bush. “Junior has a plan.”
In seconds the only Marines left at my hooch opening were Fessman, Nguyen, and the Gunny.
“Get the hooches moved,” I ordered Fessman. “We want to be a bit down that northern slope before the fun begins.”
Fessman went to work, while the Gunny finished cleaning out his canteen holder.
“What were you thinking there, when you smiled?” he asked me, quietly. “About Rittenhouse?”
I didn’t answer his question, as there was no point. My mind was already on the other problem I knew I was going to have before sundown. Captain Casey wasn’t going to like implementing any plan that wasn’t his own, and his two officer lackeys might become difficult to deal with. “Flank security. Part of the price is that these two clowns send out patrols to find out what’s down there, where we have to go,” I said. “If it’s mined, we have to know.”
“They’re not going to like that,” the Gunny replied. “Who are they supposed to send?”
“FNGs, of course,” I said, flinching inside, but not letting the Gunny know.
“And what was that Kamehameha shit?” the Gunny came back. “Does he even exist, and if he did, then did he really do that?
“The place is called the Pali,” I replied. “He existed. What he did up at that pass is anybody’s guess.”
“Again,” the Gunny whispered, before moving back into the jungle.
I sat on my poncho cover and reflected on the simple fact that I was in the rotten position of having to hope that the enemy hit us.
forty-six
The Tenth Day : Third Part
I lay in my hooch, dug into the side of the hill through the effort of using Fessman’s entrenching tool. The hill was too slanted to lay against without a step being carved into its side. Fessman was just down from me, while Stevens and Zippo were over to my right. How the scouts had managed to get away from being under the direct eyeballs of the new officers I had no idea, and I wasn’t going to ask. I felt a depth of rotten care toward the new officers. Rotten because I knew I would trade their survival for my own in a heartbeat.
I knew that was not right. Not just very few months before I’d gone through Basic School with men just like them. I’d liked them better back then. A lot better than they’d liked me. I smirked at the thought. At least I didn’t have that problem now. But I knew there was going to be trouble from them, and more trouble from Jurgens a
nd Sugar Daddy. Men like them did not take coming to anyone like a mafia godfather, with their hats almost literally in their hands. There would be a price, and it would be one I could not want or be able to afford. I realized, shifting around on my poncho uncomfortably, that I didn’t want to kill them. But I did want to kill them. Not kill them exactly. Just make them gone away to somewhere else. I didn’t care where.
I took out my pen and doodled on the back of my map. I liked my Kamehameha plan. It was simple. I knew the 122s would come in at some point. The enemy battery had to be holding its fire, waiting for the tattered outfit we’d tangled with before to get ready for their attack. Again. So that part of the plan should work, depending on timing, which I had no control over. There had to be some guy on the other lip of the valley staring through his own lenses at our position, waiting. He’d walk the artillery fire inland once he confirmed that the battery was dead on target with the registration point. That part was simple logic, unless the hard scrabble band of Vietnamese was too beaten to counter-attack. If I was a laughing man anymore, I would have laughed. The NVA were tough as French snails, and about as prolific too. They were everywhere. They’d come. My own use of Cunningham Firebase to drop rounds behind the attacking force was simple too.
Cunningham had proven its worth. If they had about sixty High Explosive rounds laying around, then bringing the fire down and walking it into the rear of the attacking force would be child’s play, with my guidance. That left only where the NVA could go. And that was my weak point in the plan. They could only come down the slopes in either one direction or the other, or both. If the company was properly set up, with two lines of machine gun arrangements, then it would be a slaughter house if the NVA advanced down either side. If the Marines in the company believed me enough to be really on guard and ready. If the blacks and whites, and god knew whatever else we had, could get their shit together long enough to act like a real Marine company. I knew how unlikely that eventuality might be. I could only do so much, though. I laid down, with the backs of my hands crossed over my forehead. The sun was penetrating through the double canopy of trees but there was still a little wind making its way through the bracken close to the ground. The wind held the mosquitoes off and provided some cooling.
“Sir,” Zippo whispered from near my right shoulder, just as I heard footsteps squishing through the jungle muck near my feet. I sat up and rubbed my face to clear my head. One of the first lieutenant’s stood, like he was some sort of Civil War statue, one hand behind him at parade rest and the other holding out my binoculars.
“The captain says these are junk and would like the real ones,” the lieutenant said, before tossing the binoculars into the mud near the left edge of my poncho liner. I retrieved the binoculars and tried to brush the mud from the lenses, before setting then down to pay attention to the man in front of me.
“Jappo specials that don’t focus properly, the captain says.”
“We don’t have any real ones,” I replied, wanting to defend my Japanese binoculars, but figuring it wasn’t worth it.
I could see the man’s name, printed in black over his left breast. “Keating,” it said, in big, black letters printed in bold. Against the bright green, gold, and brown of his new utility blouse the name looked like a perfect aiming point. I thought about being at a distance and holding the front sight of my .45 just above the line of letters. Perfect.
“What’s going on with the company?” Keating asked, looking around nervously. “Why is everyone down here and not up on the high ground. You don’t look like Marines,” he said outward in a loud voice. “You look like a load of tacos stuck into the side of a hill.”
Fessman started to laugh, and than tried to stifle his giggles with a fake coughing fit when Keating glared over at him.
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“I’m a first lieutenant, Keating replied, instantly. “You don’t call me sir.”
I just stared up at him, wondering what he would do if I said “Yes, asshole.” I shook my head. “Never give warning” was becoming an applied mantra in almost every situation I was living through.
“We’re going to get hit on the high ground tonight, Mr. Keating,” I said, as patiently as I could. “The company’s set in on both sides of the high ground because the landing zone is going to be alive with enemy cannon fire walking itself west while I’m going to be bringing in artillery east behind the NVA and driving them into their own falling rounds. Or our own. They can take their pick.”
“But the command post is encamped on that high ground,” Keating said, showing a bit of fear in his eyes.
“That’s probably a bad idea,” I replied, and then waited.
“You know all this because you’re Svengali, or what?” Keating demanded, getting control of himself by becoming aggressive.
“Is he an officer?” I asked, innocently.
“Who?” Keating said, his voice almost cracking.
“Svengali,” I said patiently. But I didn’t give him a chance to answer because I was bone tired and didn’t want to banter further.
“The captain wants to see you,” Keating said.
I stretched and clasped my hands behind my head.
“Ask him when he wants to come down and see me,” I replied.
“I don’t know who you think you are or who you think you’re dealing with,” Keating fumed. “Casey’s going to chew you up and spit you out when I tell him what you said.”
I breathed deeply in and out a few times and closed my eyes, hoping the irritating lieutenant would be gone when I reopened them. But he wasn’t.
“At least I know where I am, Keating,” I said, softly. “I’m about four hundred meters from the edge of the A Shau Valley. Marines who’ve gone in there call it the Valley of No Return. The reason it’s called the Valley of No Return is because the man who goes in is not the one who comes out. Tonight you’re going to experience your first full contact combat. You don’t seem afraid, and that’s to your credit. Tomorrow morning I’ll come find you and if you’re not huddled in a puddle of terror then it’ll be because you’re dead.”
Keating stood wavering a bit in front of me, maybe from the slight wind I thought. He didn’t say anything but he didn’t leave either.
“You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy, so trot on back and inform Casey that he needs to haul ass off of the high ground if wants to avoid getting a Purple Heart and being bagged up in the morning. Seeing me is the least of his problems.”
I closed my eyes again and wished the lieutenant gone. Keating waited for a full minute before moving. “Thanks for the advice,” he whispered out in such a tone of sincerity that my eyes snapped open. And then he was gone.
“Shit,” I said to myself. I didn’t want to feel sorry for the man, or worse yet, like him. But his last comment made him sound like a twelve-year-old, and a twelve-year-old in trouble. His tone had taken me backward ten days in an instant.
I wasn’t the Gunny. I had no time or inclination to teach an FNG officer on how to survive under conditions I wasn’t really doing very well surviving in either, except on a wing and a prayer. Besides, Keating was too tall, too good looking and too much of what passed for a real Marine officer, while I was none of those things. I didn’t think much of myself for thinking that, either.
“That was pretty tough, sir,” Fessman said, from down below me.
I knew he was right but there was no response I could come up with that made sense.
I sat up again. I knew I was not going to be able to avoid the captain for long. Even though we were all tired, down to our very cores, I had to get cleaned up. We had extra water, and if we were headed down into what I’d seen of the A Shau it wasn’t likely we would get resupplied for some time.
“Zippo, get a bottle of water,” I ordered, getting to my feet after scrounging inside my pack for a crummy little bar of white surgical soap. I
stripped down a bit away from where I was dug into the hill, making sure the five gallons of water poured over my head would not run into anyone else’s hooch. Zippo was perfect, being big and strong enough to hold the bottle firm in the air, even while I took a few moments to lather up. When it was done, I looked at my miserable combat gear. The only good thing about it was that it blended in with everything around me. I dressed, wearing the same socks for the third day and night. I was trying to get three days to a pair because when I was done the socks were too. If you washed your governmental issue socks in Vietnam, you had nothing but filmy threads left when you were done. I laced up my boots and felt a whole lot better, until I saw the safari headed my way.
An entourage appeared out of the bush, with the three new officers in the lead. All three carried M-16s, which I thought uncommon, but certainly allowed if they wanted to add that weight and bulk to their loads. Except they didn’t have any loads. There were five enlisted Marines carrying all of their stuff. No matter how I felt about their near childish naïve behavior so far, I had to admit that they had enough leadership ability to at least get some of the company to do their bidding.
The three approached, with Pilson just behind the C.O., and felt nearly as much trepidation as I had when the door opened in the back of the armored personnel carrier ten days ago. I stayed where I was, thinking about how trepidation wasn’t nearly as bad as the terror I was accustomed to. I realized that I didn’t know where the Gunny was and that bothered me a bit. I’d seen him earlier, carrying a whole box of the mosquito repellent. I presumed that the nasty little monsters would be much worse an affliction down in the valley. The men started digging into the side of the hill nearby. I let my breath out slowly, as it came to me. The officers were coming down to stay where I was.
Pilson dropped his radio and went to work digging his own clam shell hole into the side of the mountain. I watched him work, liking the fact that, for the first time I’d been dropped out of the sky, the company was actually digging in. Underground was protection from so much, including the RPGs the enemy would have any stray rounds from either artillery battery. He didn’t make much headway before the captain stepped close and talked to him. Pilson put down his entrenching tool, strapped on his radio and headed in my direction. That he put on his radio first, before traveling only a few yards impressed me. I realized that a lot of the Marines in the company had learned and applied good survival skills and practical field experience.
Thirty Days Has September Page 39