Last Man Out

by James E. Parker, Jr.

  “Not many spare parts around here for a Stateside rabbit gun,” Bratcher said.

  I threw the shotgun and the parts into the minefield, then went back to the company armorer and drew an M-16. I tried to like it, but the more I handled it the cheaper it felt. Where was the wood, the weight? Sure, we could carry three times more ammo, but everyone would fire the thing on full automatic and no one would aim. It was not a woodsman’s gun.

  And the magazines? The guns might be high-tech, but those magazines were mass produced and cheap. The spring wires were smaller than coat hangers. I could bend them with my finger.

  I raged against those M-16s and the magazines, but no one listened seriously.

  So I resigned myself to life with the M-16. Like everyone else, I put twenty rounds in each magazine, as we had been told to do, and then one more for Mother. If we squeezed down tight on that thin wire spring, we could get twenty-one rounds in. For many people that last bullet was a tragic mistake because the springs in the early-version magazines rusted together. Also, because they were so light, men taped two, sometimes three magazines together so they would be at the ready in a firefight. This extra weight on the light latch that held in the magazines caused the magazines to droop just enough to cause misfires. Plus, the guns were not hardy and would not function with any dirt in the workings. And there was a lot of dirt in the jungle. We had to give up the durable M-14 and got a light, faster, cheaper replacement. Initially we certainly suffered more from its disadvantages than we gained from its lighter weight and higher speed.

  At about that time, Mother and Daddy sent me wire spectacles and a commode seat. I had asked for the latter item because the company latrine had uncomfortable holes cut in flat wood. I took great pride in my ass, I told my friends. The civilized man looked after his toilet facilities. It was what separated us from the animals that crapped in the jungle. Woolley said he wondered about me sometimes—the bar, the toilet seat. He wondered if I was queer.

  I kept the toilet seat near the bar and took it with me on each visit to the latrine. No one made any catcalls. That might have been because I usually carried the toilet seat in one hand and a .45 in the other.

  One day I was walking down the company street toward the latrine with the commode seat. I saw Spencer sitting in front of his tent. He looked at me and the seat and then smiled. I tried to look ahead and ignore him. I was wishing I had my .45. As I walked in front of Spencer, he followed me with his smile. I passed by.

  “I can’t think of a damned thing to say, Lieutenant. Goddamned I’m trying hard and I can’t.”

  Just before Christmas, Jim Newsome, my RTO since Fort Riley days, rotated back to the States. I went down to his tent to say good-bye. I picked up his PRC-25 radio and walked over to Spencer. Bratcher, Castro, and Rome were standing by the entrance to the tent.

  “No sir, goddamned, no sir, goddammit, no. I ain’t carrying no fucking radio. I ain’t. I don’t have to.” He appealed to Bratcher, “Tell him, Platoon Sergeant.”

  “I don’t care what you think about this thing, Spencer. Get the freqs and call signs you need from Newsome before he leaves.” I had a half smile on my face, but my eyes were serious.

  Spencer looked at me and said, “Ah, shit.”

  Initially I had thought about making De Leon my RTO, but as we became more experienced in the field it became apparent that Spencer, in addition to being bright, was very cool under fire. And, I could not explain it, this black youngster from a northern ghetto, and I, a white man from a small southern town, were in sync together in the jungle. Bratcher and I had uncommonly good rapport, but he was usually at the rear of the platoon file during operations. Beck and Spencer were, for whatever reason, always near me when things were happening. Beck’s attitude was to go get ’em. Don’t matter ’bout nothing. Get’ em. Spencer had just as much courage, but he was more deliberate. He would always hesitate a moment before acting. For all of my initial concern that he would be disruptive and hard to control, he was effective in combat. Plus, he was smart and I liked him. So he was my RTO.

  Woolley initially questioned this selection because often the RTO spoke for the platoon leader, and Spencer was known to be irascible. Plus his thick inner-city diction was initially hard for most of the other white college-boy RTOs to understand. But in short order Woolley, and the other RTOs, realized that Spencer always knew what he was talking about. And when he spoke for me, he always got it right.

  We stayed in the base camp from shortly before Christmas through New Year’s. Each night different platoons were sent out on ambush patrols. Woolley told Arthur that he had the patrol for Christmas Eve night.

  I told the captain how much I appreciated that. “I’ll be able to spend Christmas in camp, probably because I’m your favorite, been around the longest.”

  “Nope,” Woolley said. “It’s because I want you on patrol New Year’s Eve. If there is any man I want out away from the base camp New Year’s Eve parties, it is Red Cap Twigs Alpha November Six, the proprietor of the Company A bar.”

  Christmas was pleasant. The company cook made a wonderful holiday meal. We cut down a small shrub for a Christmas tree and put homemade ornaments on it. On Christmas Eve, Peterson, McCoy, Dunn, and I opened presents together. Just like home, we opened them in turn, one at a time, so that we could comment on each gift and stretch out the evening.

  On New Year’s Eve, I was lying on my belly in the jungle by a bridge south of town. Around midnight the soldiers on the perimeter of the base camp behind us began firing tracers in the air. I started singing “Auld Lang Syne” softly and the men on both sides of me joined in. With the tracers still going off in the distance our voices carried over the water and into the village on the other side. The locals must have wondered.

  Ten days later, Colonel Haldane and his staff went to division headquarters to receive new operational orders. They left in the morning and we expected them back by early afternoon; the trip had never taken more than a couple of hours. They didn’t return until after sundown, and all officers and top NCOs were called to the operations tent at 2100.

  Colonel Haldane began by saying that during the twelve weeks we had been in-country, we had learned how to fight in the jungle, had engaged elements of every VC unit operating north of Saigon, and disrupted their ability to control the territory. We had also taken casualties, and we had lost men to disease and through termination of service. Only 50 percent of the men who had left Fort Riley for Vietnam were still with us, but we had received replacements. We were still an effective fighting organization.

  “Operation Crimp will launch in three days. It will test our ability to live up to the 1st Infantry Division tradition,” Haldane said. “We are going to attack an area the VC and North Vietnamese have controlled for decades. It is the Ho Bo woods north of the town of Cu Chi. It is where the Ho Chi Minh trail ends inside South Vietnam. We will be up against hard-core Viet Cong combat units supported by local villagers. The VC own this territory. The only significant South Vietnamese military presence in the area is inside the town of Cu Chi. Turn the first bend in the road west of town and you are in territory of the VC’s 7th Cu Chi Battalion, a unit that has never lost a battle. We know from the French that their tactics are to bend away from frontal attacks but slap back on the sides and attack from the rear. They do not run away. They fight. Our mission is to attack the center of the area, secure a base, and clear it from the inside out. Once we have pacified the area, the 25th Division, presently en route to Vietnam, will move in and control it.”

  The plan was to move by Caribou airplanes from our base camp to Phu Loi, a staging area some distance east of the operational zone. On 7 January 1966, we would conduct a helicopter assault into Landing Zone (LZ) Jack in the middle of the Ho Bo woods. The landing zone area would be prepped by artillery and then Air Force fast movers (jet airplanes) and finally Air Force prop-driven slow movers. Leading the troop-carrying helicopters (“slicks”) would be helicopter gunships. 1st/16th
Battalion would go in first. We would be in the second wave. My platoon was to be in the third, fourth, and fifth helicopters of the second lift into the LZ.

  The briefing went on until midnight. We picked up new map sheets on the way out.

  As we walked back to the company area, Bratcher said, “It looks like we got ourselves an operation here. We’re going to get after them Commie bastards, rather than just hanging out the way we been doing, acting a lot like bait. You want to do business, go where the customers are. Am I right or what?”

  The following morning we loaded onto the ugly Caribous for the short flight to the staging area. Dunn’s company had already arrived there and had set up poncho shelters at the end of the runway, near where Alpha Company was assigned. The next day more units came in. Helicopters and planes were flying overhead constantly. Round rubber bladders of aviation fuel were positioned at the end of the runway. Fresh ammunition, medical supplies, and batteries arrived. The whole assembly area was alive with activity.

  Before dusk Dunn and I went over to an old building built by French plantation owners. A basketball hoop was attached to the back of the building and someone had found a basketball. We joined a half-court game and wore our fatigue pants, combat boots, and T-shirts. Dunn played basketball the same way his father had probably played no-faceguard football for the Green Bay Packers. Very tough. One guy, who was much quicker than Dunn, was driving around him when Dunn hooked him around the neck, throwing him to the ground. He was angry and getting up in a hurry when Bob pushed him down again. Dunn moved quickly to stand over him and said, “Get up, asshole, and I’ll knock your fucking head off.”

  I grabbed Dunn and said, “Hey man, save it for tomorrow. That’s a good guy. You gotta know the difference. This is just a game.”

  EIGHT

  Tunnel to Hell

  The following morning we were up before sunrise. The mess units flew in hot breakfast. After eating, we were standing in groups of ten along the runway when we heard the first rounds of artillery fire in the distance. Not long after the sun came up we watched a large formation of helicopters, seven groups of ten helicopters each, heading our way carrying the first wave of the 1st/16th. Ahead and below them were the gunships.

  As the helicopters came closer, I followed them through my binoculars. Crammed on board were soldiers in olive drab. Some were sitting with their legs hanging out, and most were clutching their M-16s in both hands. Artillery fire increased as the helicopters passed. We heard the jets before we saw them, streaking by toward the west. The artillery stopped, and the jets began working the area. More explosions came from the west, then the ground shook as B-52s bombed the fringes of the operational zone.

  We figured it would take twenty minutes for the helicopters to fly from our area to the LZ. In forty minutes they should be back to pick us up. I was anxious to get started. The waiting reminded me of the ride on the landing craft when we arrived in-country. This time we would not be greeted by a brass band. The lead gunships came back first. Two moved off to the bladders of fuel. Others landed at the end of the airstrip and picked up more ammunition. Shortly, the first lift of ten transport helicopters came in low over the tree line.

  I got the men up and in line. My platoon would be boarding the second group of helicopters.

  Only seven came in. Where were the other three? I had not imagined that some of the helicopters would not return. Maintaining their original positions, the helicopters landed. The third, ninth, and tenth helicopters were missing. I had been standing at the head of the line to board the third helicopter, but it wasn’t there. Unsure of what to do but anxious to get going, I told Spencer to follow me and went to the fourth helicopter, telling two riflemen there to get off.

  As we crawled into the helicopter, I noticed bullet holes in its side. The pilots sat in front of the controls and looked forward, shaking with the vibration of the blades, their faces impassive behind their helmet visors.

  When the helicopter lifted off the ground I got Woolley on the radio and reported what he already knew about the missing helicopters. A third of my platoon was still at the airstrip.

  The helicopters stayed low. Some distance to the front we could see jets strafing the ground. Clouds of smoke drifted up from an area on the horizon and gnatlike gunships moved in and out of it. As we got closer we saw bombs falling from diving planes. The napalm tanks tumbled and exploded into fireballs when they hit the jungle.

  As the large, open LZ finally came into view, the gunners on both sides of the slicks began firing into the jungle. I had the impulse to sit on my M-16 to give me an extra measure of protection from bullets that might come up through the floor.

  In the field ahead I saw soldiers moving around. Several downed helicopters were lying on their side. Fires were burning in the nearby jungle. I felt myself breathing faster. I tightened my grip on my M-16, and retightened it.

  Get on the ground. Get on the ground! Why are we moving so goddamned slow? I thought angrily.

  The helicopter finally flared out to brake its forward speed and settled down in the field. Everyone in the platoon knew we would be landing south to north and that we had to move to secure an area along the wood line to the east. As the helicopter settled to the ground I was looking for a point of trees extending out in the field that was to be the platoon rallying point. I did not see the litter detail standing on the ground until the helicopter touched down. Adrenaline pumping, we barely avoided the soldiers carrying the stretchers as we jumped to the ground. Some of the men on the stretchers were dead.

  With the wounded loaded quickly the helicopters took off behind us, and as the bat-bat-bat of their rotary blades began to fade we heard the popping of automatic fire to the north and to our front. Rounds zinged over our heads. Rockets landed among us.

  High-stepping through the tall grass, we finally made it to the wood line and then to our rally point. Once established, I sat down behind a tree and contacted Woolley. Bratcher took a head count. Twenty-one men had made it. We had not seen anyone hit in the field. The missing men must have been left behind in the staging area. Woolley told me to hold my position until the remaining men arrived.

  Taking a deep breath, I stood up to light a cigarette. Rome yelled at me as I had the match halfway to my cigarette. I dropped it and fell to the ground.

  “Napalm! You’re standing in some napalm that didn’t ignite,” he said. I looked down. Napalm jelly was on my fatigues and all around on the bushes. My match was still smoking on top of a glob and I quickly stepped on it.

  By late afternoon all of my platoon had come in. Most of the fighting to secure the 1st/28th’s part of the LZ had been done by Dunn’s platoon north of the field. My platoon had no contact with Viet Cong ground forces that afternoon or that night.

  At first light the next morning we moved into the jungle. Duckett’s platoon, commanded by the platoon sergeant, was on my left. Woolley was with Arthur’s platoon in the rear. We were heading toward our TAOR, a two-day movement through the jungle, and hoped to reach a midway point near a small village by nightfall.

  Duckett’s platoon began to receive sniper fire from its left front during the late morning. I yelled out to its platoon sergeant that I was maneuvering my men around to his front. We soon saw enemy small-arms fire coming from a clump of trees. Manuel fired a long burst into the trees and the enemy stopped firing. We slowly walked into the stand of trees as we reconned by fire.

  No one was there. Strange. I had seen the firing. We would have noticed anyone leaving the thicket.

  Beck found two spider holes close to the forward edge of the thicket, partially covered by debris. Each opening was smaller than a basketball rim, barely large enough for a man to squeeze out. A cool, earthy smell emanated from them.

  “Are the VC at the bottom of these holes, or do these go back to some room or tunnel?” I asked Bratcher as Woolley came up.

  I sent men out to the front as security and looked back at the spider holes. Spencer stuck a lon
g bamboo pole down one. It hit bottom after about five feet and then, when Spencer pushed, it went down another four feet. We shined a flashlight down the holes. Both holes curved out of sight to our front.

  Yelling “Fire in the hole,” we threw in grenades and ducked behind trees. The explosions were muffled and only a small amount of dust came out and blew away. We walked carefully back to the holes and looked down. I said, “Damn. We either send someone down or we leave and keep on toward our TAOR.”

  Woolley told me to send someone down. I called one of the Puerto Ricans, PFC Fernandez-Lopez, the smallest man in the platoon, and told him to take off his web gear because he was going on a little trip. He looked around at us, shrugged, dropped his gear, and started walking toward the hole barehanded.

  “Hold it,” I said. I gave him my .45 and Woolley’s radio operator gave him a flashlight. We told him to just go to the bottom of the first hole, see what was there, and come back. He said something in half-Spanish and half-English that I couldn’t understand, but it was a question. He looked at me for an answer. I asked him to repeat it, but I still didn’t understand. Finally he put his hands over his head like he was diving. “Yes,” I said, “head first. We’ll hold your feet.”

  Fernandez crawled on his stomach to the nearest hole and stuck the flashlight over the side. He looked down for what seemed like a long time. Then he turned around, said something to Castro in Spanish, crossed himself, and crawled over the edge. The .45 and the flashlight were in front of him. Bratcher grabbed his feet and began pushing him. Yelling “Slow, amigo,” Bratcher gradually pushed him down until his feet were the only part of him out of the hole.