Comanche Six: Company Commander in Vietnam

by James Estep

  Of course, we weren’t serving in the British army and thus weren’t authorized a “batman” at taxpayers’ expense. So once Willie proved to us—and more importantly, to himself—that he could do one thing really well, the first sergeant had Blair and Anderson begin teaching him radio telephone procedures. Within a short time, Sweet Willie became a capable RTO. If his voice transmissions weren’t always procedurally perfect, they were always colorful!

  But, as we soon learned, Sweet Willie’s real forte lay in the field of logistics. A couple weeks into his probationary month he approached me with a suggestion for resolving our uniform quandary. And, indeed, it was a problem. In the boonies, one did not have his own uniforms; our laundered jungle fatigues came to us weekly on the evening log bird. All sizes were intermingled, and it was every man for himself.

  You might end up with size small faded trousers, and a brand-new extra-large jacket.

  “See, sir,” Sweet Willie drawled, as we sat sharing a cup of his coffee, watching the sky darken, “this uniform thing’s pissing everybody off, and hell, I don’t see no reason for it. I mean, ain’t no reason for us to dive into a bundle of jungles like we be a bunch of porkers at swill time.”

  “I know, Willie,” I responded. “And the problem is high on my list of priorities. However, there are … uh … other priorities. But if you have a suggestion, I’m all ears.”

  He brightened. “Well, sir, I’ve been a doing a little figuring here, and what with I knowing ‘bout the size of every swinging dick … uh …

  Richard in the company …” He grinned at what he had just said. “As you know, one time or ‘nother, I been assigned to most of it. Uh … anyway, way I figure it, you take the extras, you know, the extra smalls and extra large, and put ‘em aside. I mean, fuck, ain’t that many of ‘em anyway, and them what needs ‘em, we can order special like of something. Then it’s kind of simple like. You just have the smalls, mediums, and larges.”

  “Okay, Willie,” I said, not knowing what else to say. Because I had no earthly idea what he was talking about.

  “Yes, sir, then you have trains break out the company uniform dump into four bundles. That there’s the three line platoons and one bundle what’s for us in headquarters and Four Six. In each of them bundles, they put the uniforms what fit the guys in that platoon. Like in Two Six, I figure we need six smalls, twelve mediums, and nine large.”

  “Yeah, but Willie,” I interrupted him, “those sizes are changing constantly. I mean, we have soldiers rotating in and out of the company on nearly a daily basis.”

  “Yes, sir, but that don’t matter none. Mean, we ‘port our foxhole strength for issue of charlie rats. Ain’t no reason can’t do the same for uniforms. Hell, it be even simpler, seeing we’d only be a doing it once a week ‘stead of everyday like we do the foxhole.”

  “Okay,” I somewhat warily replied, still not comprehending the mechanics of his proposal.

  Dubray, interpreting my “okay” as approval, handed me a dirty piece of notebook paper, at the top of which was scribbled “WEAKLY UNIFORM RPT.”

  Then, with increased enthusiasm, he said, “See, sir. Can’t nothing be more simple. Just send this here uniform report in to trains each week, telling ‘em the sizes what fit the guys in each platoon by line. Hell, I could handle it myself, sir. Just check with the platoon sergeants every week ‘fore the uniform dump.”

  Unable to think of a single reason why his proposal wouldn’t work, I said, “Willie, you’re a goddamn genius! Do it! You’re in charge. Use my name freely.”

  He did, and the following evening I got a call from my executive officer at company trains.

  “Comanche Six, this is Comanche Five. We got some sort of request back here to break out uniforms by subunit and sizes. Think it came from Two Six’s chapter case. Anyway, it’s just impossible to do that—just takes too much time. Six, it’s ‘bout all we can do to get you the right number and a good assortment of sizes. Uh … what’s your guidance on this thing?”

  “This is Comanche Six. Be advised that the individual to whom you so callously refer as ‘Two Six’s chapter case’ is my field logistics NCO, and when he speaks it is as if I had spoken. How copy that, Five?”

  “This is Comanche Five … uh … Roger, good copy. Wilco.”

  “This is Comanche Six. Great! And, by the way, I want you to get my field logistics NCO promoted to Pfc forthwith. Any questions? Over.”

  He had none, and overnight Sweet Willie went from company idiot to company idol, loved by all who from that point on wore uniforms that actually fit.

  Willie later assumed other logistic responsibilities, accomplishing them without ever missing a beat. He was serving his country and his fellow soldiers well, but more importantly, the war was serving him well. And no one could ever take that away from Willie.

  The sun was fading over Vietnam’s western horizon when we touched down, one ship at a time, on our second needlepoint LZ. Within moments of jumping from the lead Huey, I radioed Byson that our LZ was green.

  “Well, we sure as hell ain’t gonna NDP here tonight!” First Sergeant Sullivan said as the last of our twelve slicks lifted off. And he was right. The mountain peaked so abruptly that there was virtually no room for the company to stand atop it, much less defend it.

  “Maybe it’ll level off some when we reach Charlie’s bunker complex,” I replied. “And we better be getting a move on down the hill; it’ll be dark in thirty minutes.”

  Assembling quickly, we began our movement down the mountain’s steep slope toward the Arclight site, Three Six leading. Upon entering the cratered, rearranged jungle of the strike area, we discovered that our bunker complex had been an underground hospital. Various medical supplies were scattered about, some of Chinese and Czechoslovakian origin, some of French and U.S. origin. None of it was produced in North Vietnam.

  We counted the dead, many of them still wearing battle dressings on wounds previously suffered, conducted our bomb damage assessment, and moved through the area as quickly as possible—which wasn’t very quickly. Movement at night through a forested jungle was always difficult; but now, after the Arclight, movement was at a snail’s pace and exhausting: over the fallen and shattered palms, through the interwoven wait-a-minute secondary foliage, under the giant teak, down into the bomb crater, through its knee-deep water, up the other side—where there were more fallen trees. But we had no choice other than to continue our trek downward. The mountain’s face was simply too steep to establish an NDP unless we intended to sleep standing up.

  In the early morning of February 1, after four or five hours of this torture, we found ourselves nearing the valley floor. Our jungle began opening up somewhat, and the mountain’s face started to level off.

  Suddenly, the soldiers in front of me were silhouetted against the darkened early morning sky by the flashes of the point man’s M-16 and, a split second later, the lead machine-gun team’s M-60. Bob Halloway and I charged forward.

  “Got both of ‘em, Lieutenant!” Three Six’s point man said, a little nervously. “Uh … one of them’s a girl. But, shit, I didn’t know that, and she had a weapon. Hell, don’t even know what it is. Never saw one like it before.”

  I looked at the submachine gun. “French piece. MAT-49—don’t see many of ‘em around anymore.”

  The girl, shot several times in the face and upper torso, was perhaps seventeen and wore the familiar black garb of the Vietnamese peasant. A khaki pith helmet lay next to her head. The other lifeless body was clad in the customary khaki uniform of the NVA regular.

  “Must’ve been VC,” Halloway said. “I mean, the way she’s dressed and the frog weapon and all.”

  “Yeah,” I responded, “probably a local guide. Could’ve been taking her northern friend here up to the nonexistent hospital. Hell, maybe they were supposed to conduct a bomb damage assessment for Charlie. Well, anyway, you did a good job, Point. Now let’s get it moving again. Think we’re nearing the floor.”


  Soon afterward, we descended into one of the valley’s rice paddies and a short time later found a suitable NDP in which to spend the few remaining hours of darkness.

  19. Third Day of the Tet Offensive: 1 February

  A few hours later, with February’s first day of blistering heat well under way, we found ourselves again feasting on a full breakfast. As I ate, I looked up to see a concerned Lieutenant Halloway standing in front of me.

  “Problems, Bob?”

  “Uh … not really, sir. Just wondered if you might talk to ‘Hard Times’ Crumbley, that is. He was the point man last night. Seems to be pretty upset about the girl. You know, the men were ribbing him ‘bout it. I put a stop to that, but hell, I don’t know, maybe it’s ‘cause none of us ever killed a female before.”

  “You talk to him?” I asked.

  “Of course!” he replied somewhat indignantly. I suppose I should have realized that he had.

  “Well, sure, Bob, I’ll talk to him, but I really don’t know what to tell him. I mean, I don’t see where gender comes into play when you have two armed soldiers run into one another.”

  “That’s what I told him, sir. But it didn’t seem to make any great impression.”

  Crumbley was an eighteen-year-old draftee, and he cared very little about talking to me or anyone else. I sensed that he wanted to be left alone, to reconcile in his own mind what he had done.

  “Crumbley, Lieutenant Halloway tells me you’re a little upset ‘bout last night’s action,” I said. He sat on the paddy dike beside me, the two of us nursing cups of battalion’s fresh-brewed coffee.

  “Naw, sir, that ain’t it. I mean, the guys are pumping me a bit about it, but, shit, she had a gun! Could’ve greased me quick as I did her, right?”

  “Absolutely!”

  Following a long pause, he said, “Shit, sir, it’s just that I ain’t never shot no female before. Hell, I ain’t never shot nobody before!”

  He was visibly shaken, and why not? He had just killed two human beings in a war he hadn’t asked to come to and probably knew little about.

  Nothing I could say would change that.

  “Well, listen, Hard Times. That’s what they call you, right? Hard Times?”

  “Yes, sir, don’t really know why.” He smiled fleetingly and then said,

  “Well, yeah I do. Seems I’m the guy what always gets the porksausage patties in the charlie rats and the kents in the comfort packs. Always ended up with the buffalo trousers and the smallest jacket in the uniform dump ‘fore Willie got it straightened out. Only man in the company to miss his R&R flight going out of the country.”

  Hell, I’m sorry I asked! I really don’t have time for an open-door complaint session. But maybe he just feels better talking around last night’s incident.

  “Last time in Bong Son, you know, on LZ English stand down … that’s ‘fore you got here, sir. I was the next guy in line, looking out in case the LT comes back, ‘cause we had a whore … uh … well, anyway, that’s when the LT comes back. Don’t guess I ought to be telling you some of this, huh, sir?”

  I merely smiled.

  “But, shit, sir, none of that means anything. Don’t mean nothing and don’t bother me none. But the girl … well, I figure I might be seeing her a lying there like that for a long time.”

  “Well, Hard Times … Crumbley, I don’t know what I can tell you or do to make you feel better about what happened last night. I mean, our country’s at war, and you and I are part of it. And a big part of it is killing the enemy.”

  That’s all true, but it sounds so goddamn trite and obviously does little to console this eighteen-year-old sitting beside me. Ought to be more forceful. Ought to just lay it on the line!

  “Listen, Crumbley, the girl was an enemy soldier with a red star on her helmet and a submachine gun in her hand. If she had been a better soldier and had seen you first she’d now be evading us in the weeds of that mountain, and you’d very probably be lying wrapped in a poncho just feet from where we now sit, waiting for the C&D bird to backhaul you out of here ‘long with the mermites and water cans. And tonight, I’d have to draft a letter that would do very damn little to console your family.

  Now, goddamn it, you did a good job this morning. You met the enemy face to face and defeated him. And that’s the only thing you should ever remember for the rest of your life! Shit, if you hadn’t been quicker than them, there might be a bunch of the rest of us dead! You understand what I’m saying, Crumbley?”

  “Uh … yes, sir, I do. The LT told me all that.”

  Oh!

  “Sir, can I go back to my platoon now?”

  “Yes, of course. And you should be proud of what you did on that trail. It was the right thing to do.”

  A short time later, as we were waiting for Byson’s inbound flight of slicks to fly us to other parts of Binh Dinh, Lieutenant Halloway cornered me and asked, “Hey, sir, you get a chance to talk to Crumbley?”

  “Yes, I did, but it didn’t seem to make any great impression.”

  Byson set us down on Daisy, and within an hour or so we were once again confronted with the stench of our mountain. We need not have endured it, since this last day of General Giap’s three-day offensive was to be a day without sunshine for Charlie Company. We retreated from the high country that evening scoreless. By evening of that third day, the ‘68 Tet offensive was pretty much over in Binh Dinh Province. But there would be little respite for us. Although Giap’s great gambit had ended in utter failure throughout most of the country, his troops were still firmly entrenched in the ancient imperial capital at Hue—in I Corps.

  And Charlie Company was on its way to I Corps.

  20. Back to I Corps: February 1968

  We spent most of the next week or so in the vicinity of Daisy doing what we did best, catching a still unsuspecting foe in our claymore ambushes. And our enemy body count climbed while we remained unscratched. But that would soon change.

  One early February morning, Major Byson visited our NDP to tell us of what was then felt to be the probable outcome of Giap’s great gamble. I suppose other operation officers and their commanders were doing the same thing throughout Vietnam; it was a time “to keep the troops informed.” He was all smiles as he spoke to the Bull and me, our platoon leaders, and several of their platoon sergeants.

  “Hell, probably the greatest tactical defeat ever suffered by an army in the field in the annals of modern warfare. Numbers are still being tabulated, but it appears he lost nearly five thousand of his folk in the first two days of the offensive, while our dead in the same period were under three hundred. Course, that’s a hell of a lot more than we normally lose in two days’ fighting, and it’s not setting very well in the Stateside press right now. But, shit, look at the kill ratio—nearly seventeen to one!”

  Byson was right on both counts. We had kicked Charlie’s ass royally and were continuing to do so, but the whole affair would be viewed as anything but a triumph by America’s news media.

  “And that’s only a small part of it. See, it appears, you know, from what we’ve learned from captured documents, prisoners, and so forth that General Giap had called for a general uprising among the country’s population. Well, that’s falling on deaf ears. Fact, it looks like just the opposite’s happening. Those that had been straddling the fence are now rallying to the side of the government.”

  History would prove Byson correct on this point also. After the Tet offensive, the country’s populace did indeed rally to the republic’s cause—in droves!

  “Moreover—and this is really significant, guys—it appears North Vietnam, you know, to bring about this general uprising, ordered their Viet Cong henchmen to surface countrywide. So this elusive foe we’ve been searching for, hell, for nearly two, three years now suddenly comes out into the open to do battle—and he’s being torn to shreds! He’ll never recover from it, never. His infrastructure is being destroyed from the bottom up.”

  Again Byson would be proved correct.
After the general’s great gamble, the Viet Cong would no longer be a prominent participant in the war. As it turned out, perhaps by design, he would also find himself left out of the peace that followed.

  Major Byson’s optimistic, upbeat appraisal of the war was understandably contagious. We had fought the day-in, day-out battle so long without seeing any tangible results. It was extraordinarily uplifting to hear that a corner had now been turned, that something decisive had finally occurred.

  “You mean it’s over?” Lieutenant O’Brien asked, straight faced.

  “Hell, I just got here.” Then, turning to me, he asked, “Was I here long enough to qualify for my combat infantryman’s badge, sir?”

  “You’ll get your CIB, Dick,” I replied as we laughed, collectively and somewhat nervously, at his comment.

  “No, it’s far from over, guys,” Byson said. “Country’s in a hell of a mess right now, and there’s a lot of mopping up to do. Fighting a big battle up in I Corps, and Hue’s still firmly occupied by the NVA. But what I’m saying is we’re winning big time! Charlie’s getting his ass kicked from the seventeenth parallel to the Cau Mau Peninsula. And I think I can safely say, without fear of future contradiction, that this will prove to be the turning point of the war.”

  Unfortunately, he was right again.

  Ending his discourse on this high note, Major Byson pulled the Bull and me aside while the others returned to their platoons.

  “Listen, fellows, what I mentioned about I Corps and Hue isn’t any joke. Our Marine friends are having a hell of a time up there, and there’s a rumor floating about that we may be pulled out of Binh Dinh and join the rest of the division in I Corps. I mention this ‘cause if it should happen, it’ll probably happen quick—you know, like everything else around here.”

  Sergeant Sullivan and I nodded in agreement. Things did indeed happen quickly in the Cav. The tempo of our operations since the start of General Giap’s little ado amply demonstrated that!