by Dennis Foley
Hollister had been in the company area for less than two days, and he was already sitting in the front row of the briefing room, receiving a warning order from Master Sergeant Caulter, the operations NCO. Hollister watched as the master parachutist-Ranger announced the few patrol elements he had in his briefing notes. Though Hollister already knew the details, he took meticulous notes, since he would lead the patrol.
Caulter had a good-old-boy, redneck way about him. He stood tall and hardly ever cracked a smile. Hollister had known Caulter—from a distance—when they were both instructors in the Ranger Department. Caulter was a hand-to-hand combat instructor, while Hollister taught patrolling.
He had heard the story around Benning about how Caulter got the ugly red scar running from his earlobe into the neck opening of his T-shirt. It was a mark of firsthand experience in hand-to-hand combat on an earlier tour in Vietnam.
Next to Hollister sat Private First Class Estlin; Lieutenant Fass; Captain Thomas; Specialist 7 Meadows, the senior medic; and Specialist 5 Loomis, the operations radio operator. Those would be his team members—all headquarters personnel. They would go on J Company’s first shakedown patrol.
“Y’all’ll be leavin’ here by ground transport the day after tomorrow at zero six hundred hours. You will be taken to the Hundred Forty-fifth Aviation Battalion over to the other side of Bien Hoa where you’ll link up with the lift package that’ll insert you into your LZ,” Caulter said, pointing to the grease-pencil circle around the landing zone on the map.
“So y’all’ll lift off the One Forty-fifth’s pad, with gunships, command and control chopper, and lift slicks at ’leven hundred hours the same day.
“Your mission’ll be to set up an ambush along a trail located here.” Caulter tapped the easel-mounted map at a point north and west of the 25th Division base camp at Cu Chi. “Intelligence has reports of a resupply party frequently traveling that trail to bring batteries and commo equipment to a VC signal unit that’s supposed ta be located somewheres in the tunnels in the Cu Chi area.”
“Not a prisoner snatch?” Thomas asked.
“No, sir. Field force thinks these guys are just regular replacement gomers who’re carryin’ extra crap into the country as they pass through the western part of Three Corps. If they have anything of value, you can pick it off them after you hit ’em. They don’t want to risk a Ranger looking to tackle a cherry Commie,” Caulter said.
“I can go for that,” Private First Class Estlin said.
“Your mission is a four-day. You’ll be pulled on the morning of the fifth. As it stands, you’re the only team to be pulled that day. So, first-light extraction should be possible.
“There’s little else in the area of operations at this time other than there’re no friendly units operating there, and there ain’t no plans to put any in the AO during your mission.
“Indigenous personnel in the area are known to be VC sympathizers, but the rules of engagement prohibit firing on them unless you ID them with weapons and or enemy equipment. So be advised.”
There was a universal groan among the patrol members. Rules of engagement always seemed to favor the other guys and usually meant trouble for U.S. units. Still, it was their country, and Hollister knew it did little to argue the point.
“I’ve got some aerial photos, and we’ve laid on a leader’s recon flight for fourteen hundred this afternoon, if it’s okay with you, Captain,” Caulter said, nodding to Hollister.
“You tell me. I’m patrol leader on this one, not the company commander. Captain Browning is in temporary command of Juliet Rangers effective immediately. When’s the patrol order?”
“Straight up, sir—twelve hun’erd hours.”
Between the warning order and the patrol order, Hollister had more meetings with the company staff, platoon leaders, and some new faces who wanted to join the Rangers. In a moment of calm between meetings, he walked out of his office into Easy’s.
“I hope you have some idea where we are. I’m catching myself in more than one place at a time.”
Easy smiled. “Cap’n, need I remind you of the simpler days when you were a mere platoon leader of a fairly sharp group of Airborne soldiers, and we seemed to have some idea what the fuck we were doing over here?”
Hollister returned the smile. “Yeah, Top. Now and then, remind me there were days like that.”
At the patrol order, Caulter gave the details of the patrol—times, locations, frequencies, weather, enemy and friendly situations, adjacent units, supporting units—the list went on. Every member of the patrol made precise notes on Caulter’s words; the briefing from the intelligence NCO, Sergeant First Class Young, and Captain Dale Tennant—the air mission commander.
Hollister was impressed with the operations section and the pilots attached to J Company. But he reminded himself all those folks were lifers and were motivated to do a good job. Still, it was not enough for him. He wanted a company full of Caulters, Easys, and Tennants. He flipped a page in his notebook and made a couple of side notes about things he wanted done while he was out in the bush.
The aerial recon lifted off on time, but Hollister wasn’t happy with the weather. A freak storm had blown in off the South China Sea and was tailing the chopper on the way to the insert LZ.
“We’re gonna get our young asses wet,” Tennant said over the intercom.
Looking back behind the chopper, Hollister could see the large gray loaf of a cloud layer that extended from the treetops to over two thousand feet “That fucker’s faster than you are, Dale,” he replied into the mike on his flight helmet.
“I can fly through mud and rocks if necessary,” Tennant kidded.
“I hope it won’t be necessary,” Hollister said. Just then he noticed the door gunner fastening the top button on his Nomex flight suit against the quickly dropping temperature.
“You better suck yourself back into the chopper back there and hold on to something,” Tennant said.
But before Hollister could even reply, the rain hit the chopper. It came down so hard that within seconds, he could barely make out the ground from the two thousand feet. He looked up between the two pilot’s seats at the altimeter. It read four thousand feet, then zero, then six hundred feet, then a thousand again. “Jesus! How much air do we have below us?”
“Don’t pay any attention to that. Gotta remember that it’s a barometric gizmo, and we just had a drop in the pressure that’d suck a submarine to the bottom. We’re still around fifteen hundred feet—or fifteen thousand,” he added, kidding.
Hollister looked up to see if Tennant was laughing. “Can you see anything up there?”
“My side of the Plexiglas, and I’m not too sure about that.”
“I hope the hell we don’t run into something,” Hollister said.
“Yeah, I’m real glad there’s only about one mountain between here and Cambodia,” Tennant replied, trying to hold the chopper, which was bucking wildly in the turbulence.
“Are we supposed to be flying in weather like this?” Hollister asked.
“No, not like this. We’re supposed to stop flying in weather not nearly as bad as this.”
Tennant wrestled with the controls, trying to keep the chopper straight and level. He gave away his concern when he slid the small Plexiglas window in his door open so he could look out of it instead of through the torrential downpour splashing against the windscreen.
The water began blowing into the cargo compartment—sideways. Hollister soon found himself soaking as what had been spray turned to sheets of rain hitting him full on. “Shit.”
“Hey, things could be a lot worse,” Tennant said over the intercom, still struggling with the controls to keep the chopper on course and away from any ground hazards.
“I sure don’t see how,” Hollister yelled over the intercom, unsure if he could be heard.
“We could be standing on the ground next to this bird waiting for someone to come pick us up.”
“I see what you mean.
You think this will blow by us?”
“If it doesn’t eat us first.”
“What do we do ’til then? Can we take much more than this?” Hollister asked.
“This is nothing. Wait ’til you get a load of what’s next,” Tennant said.
Hollister turned to see what he was talking about and a terrible noise began to bang in his headset. Just as quickly, he realized it was not in his headset. It was the sound of the blades cracking small hailstones into ice pebbles.
He saw the hailstones piling up inside the chopper. They rolled wildly across the corrugated decking inside the compartment, while some bounced off of the nylon seats.
Hollister and Fass moved as near to the center of the chopper as they could. Just then a larger hailstone crashed through the copilot’s windscreen and landed in his lap.
“Holy shit,” the peter pilot yelled over the intercom as he looked down at the golfball-sized stone rolling around on the floor of the cockpit.
“We in real trouble?” Hollister asked.
“Just hold on back there. If I can keep this bronco in control for a little while longer, we ought to break out of this without much more damage,” Tennant said.
“Why not put it down?”
“I would if I had any fucking idea where the ground was. Flying on instruments is pretty much wishful thinking in this kind of weather. We’re better off flying than trying to land in this turbulence on ground we aren’t sure of.”
“Oh, that’s real reassuring.”
“You think I’m not doing all I can to get us through this flight in one piece?”
“No, I’m sure you want to hit your rotation date on time.” Hollister remembered he hadn’t told anyone about their situation. He wondered if they would even know the chopper was in trouble. “S’pose I can reach base from here—in this weather?”
“We already reported our position and situation to my battalion operations. We asked them to call the Rangers landline with the same data.”
“Great. Good thinking,” Hollister said. The hail stopped as fast as it started, and the winds calmed.
In less than ten more seconds, the sun broke through the large dark cloud disappearing out in front of the chopper—still heading west.
The rest of the flight to the objective area was beautiful. Hollister realized how different the country could look. In just a matter of minutes it went from dark, cold, and dangerous to bright, squeaky-clean, green, and still dangerous.
He pulled out his map to orient on the major rivers in the area. He recognized his old stomping grounds as he triangulated the chopper’s position between the red laterite of Cu Chi, the Sugar Mill, and the Dong Nai River. It hadn’t changed since he last flew over the same area some twenty months before. There were a few thousand more bomb craters. But it looked the same to him.
He turned to Fass and yelled to the lieutenant, who didn’t have a headset, “You know where we are, Ranger?”
Fass slipped his own map off his lap, folded it for a tight grip against the wind, and stabbed his index finger at a point on it. He then pointed down at the same terrain feature on the ground—a bridge.
“Good call,” Hollister said with a smile.
He had plans to put lots of questions to the others on his patrol to make sure he was satisfied with their grasp of the situation. He knew he was unlikely to get a second chance to spend any time with them on the ground again. He wanted to be sure they were up to the job.
“We’re about there,” Tennant announced over the intercom.
It was a mangrove swamp in the middle of a thickly wooded area with wide dikes through it.
“Where’s the trail?” Tennant asked.
Putting his field glasses to his face, Hollister scanned the trees. He caught the reflection of the water between the tree trunks and groaned. It was going to be a very wet ambush.
“It’s running northwest to southeast, right near those three bomb craters making a Ballantine symbol in the water.”
“I got it,” Tennant said. He kicked the chopper into a spiral, up and away from the trail so as not to give away what they were looking at.
Hollister rechecked his map to make sure he had the right trail. “Okay, let’s find a place to insert.”
He leaned toward Fass. “Pick an LZ.” He then watched while Fass looked, checked his map, and looked again. After a few wide orbits over the area, everyone was getting edgy about spending too much time circling.
Fass yelled at Hollister, “It’s gonna have to be one of those dike roads.”
Hollister smiled. He was right. There wasn’t anyplace remotely useful as a landing zone. And while the roads were not the best, they were a lot better than trying to land outside the swamp and having to walk in.
He made a few notes on his map to remind him of the nearest features that might be trouble. There was a lone stand of trees—separate from the mangrove swamp, but large enough to hide an enemy element capable of putting indirect fire on a Ranger team or shooting at insert choppers.
There was also a canal leading from the wooded terrain to the northwest of the swampy area.
“You got any trouble with landing on that dirt road?” Hollister asked Tennant.
Tennant laid the chopper over in a left turn and looked out his door at the possible landing zone. “It’s long enough, a bit narrow, and it’ll be easy for your Rangers to get into the tree line. But if we go in there and find out someone’s waiting for us, we might be in big trouble because they’ll be at a point-blank range. Not much chance someone could fire at a chopper from the trees on either side of the road and miss it.”
“Yeah. Well, it’s the best we got. I don’t want to land way the hell out in the paddies and have to walk in,” Hollister said.
“We bring in some good gunship cover, and we’ll probably be okay.”
“Hope you’re right.”
It was cool inside his BOQ room back at Bien Hoa. The rain had taken the heat out of the billets, and the winds had blown the moisture away.
Hollister turned the light on and realized, again, there was no mail waiting for him. There was a tug in his chest as he allowed himself a moment to think about Susan and how he was missing her.
He took off his shirt and spread his notes out on the table. He would have to break down the endless details to issue his own patrol order to his team.
He began at the top of a GI writing pad and went through the list of details. With each entry, he made side notes on who would have what responsibilities. He suddenly felt the need for a drink. He knew better, and toughed it out.
He tried to refocus on the order and go into the specific duties of each team member, emergency-action plans, coordinating instructions, and a schedule of rehearsals, weapons tests, and inspections.
He stopped, lit a cigarette, and looked back over what he had done. He realized how long it had been since he had prepared a patrol order. He worried he might be rusty when his intent was to set the example for the others. Dropping his beat-up Zippo onto his pack of cigarettes, next to his notes, he realized he had to just do it—no hesitation.
Once he had finished, he went over it all again—cross-checking against his original patrol order notes he took from Caulter.
He looked at his watch and entered the times in for the brief-back, rehearsals, and the inspection, since the time for the order itself had already been announced.
He dropped his pen onto the lined pad and let his mind wander a minute. What had he forgotten? He was nervous about the patrol. All of them were nervous, but he was the company commander, and there was no room for mistakes or oversights. Not if he wanted to set the example.
Later, Hollister met with the XO, the operations officer, and Captain Tennant. In Tennant’s capacity as the platoon leader of the helicopter platoon supporting Juliet Company, he spent the better part of two hours briefing Hollister on what they had and hadn’t done since Major Simonson had assumed command.
The others added their summaries. T
he stories were not surprising, but they still aggravated Hollister—that such a fine company could be driven so far down in combat readiness by its commander. It reminded him how much pressure there was on him to make the fixes and make them fast.
They had little positive to tell about training. More than fifty percent of the aviation company had come from other units drawn down to be sent back to the States as part of the administration’s Vietnamization of the war. While they had some combat experience, there had been nothing in the way of training in patrolling techniques, communications, rappelling, chopper loading and unloading, map reading, escape and evasion, fire support, combat first aid, weapons training, or immediate-action drills.
They would have to start from scratch.
He gave Thomas the task of putting together a county-fair-type training schedule to allow the troops to cycle through stations of training taught by the most experienced among them. He told Tennant he wanted all the chopper crews to attend the same training.
By dawn the next day, all but the patrol rehearsals and inspections had been completed by Hollister’s team. He wanted to spend most of the day on those things, weapons testing, and rest for the team. He might not have been on a patrol in some time, but he was keenly aware of the exhausting demands it placed on ambushers. Sleep would be in short supply in the mangrove swamp.
After breakfast, he had the team run through immediate-action drills—over and over again. It was uncomfortably hot and muggy for all, but each man knew they all had to learn to move like a team if they had to take immediate steps to avoid enemy contact.
Hollister kept them at it for almost an hour and a half, and then swapped positions with Lieutenant Fass. In the event Hollister were to become a casualty, Fass would assume the duties as patrol leader. As in Ranger School, rank was not taken into consideration when assigning responsibilities. He knew if he gave the job to someone senior to Fass, then Fass would be denied the experience he would need as a platoon leader.
DeSantis was just coming out of his hootch when Hollister spotted him. “Hey, just the man I’m looking for.”
The lanky platoon sergeant stopped and snapped Hollister an old-fashioned Airborne salute. “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”