15 Months in SOG

by Thom Nicholson

  Major Angle, our briefing officer, passed out some high-altitude infrared photographs of a spot in the jungle. Barely visible was a small cluster of huts outlined by the fires burning inside them.

  “The air force sent these over this morning. They were made last night. Look at the circled spots. The small ones are the hot engines of wheeled vehicles. The bigger ones are hootches. The flyboys think it’s a motor park, with some assigned mechanics or guards living nearby in the hootches. This may be the road running up to the place.”

  I struggled to see what he was describing, but wasn’t sure about it. I would have to take the photointerpretation boys’ word for it. I passed the pictures around to the rest of my people as Major A continued.

  “The bad weather has given the NVA a chance to push truck traffic south, and there have been several possible sightings to the north of this location in the last forty-eight hours. I want to put a platoon of your troops in at dusk, somewhere about here, north of this park. You’ll report any trucks that you spot coming down the road tonight, and sweep the village tomorrow morning. The air force will hit the place at first light tomorrow, and you can check the results. Pick up samples of what the trucks are carrying if you can, and of course, bring back any POWs you happen to come across. Study the map and be at the heliport at 1700 for pickup.”

  I was concerned about the weather and asked for a three-day forecast. “It’s gonna be cloudy, and maybe some rain, but not heavy,” the weather NCO from the S-3 shop said. “You’ll be able to get in and out if you don’t stay too long.”

  Lieutenant Lawrence, Sergeant Garrett, and myself spent the remainder of the day reviewing the mission and studying the map of the area, which was just southwest of Base Area 910. That’s where I spent some time on the ground a couple of months earlier, looking for a suspected bulldozer making a road. I concluded the NVA must have finished the project.

  “By God, I’d sure like to get some trucks, wouldn’t you, Dai Uy?” Garrett was almost beaming at the thought.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “They might be chock-full of NVA, as mean as junkyard dogs. I wouldn’t care too much for that with only thirty people to back me up.”

  “Naw,” Garrett airily replied. “The NVA soldier walks to work. Trucks will have ammo and supplies, not troops inside.”

  “I sure hope you’re right.” I pointed at a spot about five klicks north of the suspected truck park. This looks like a good place to land. What do you think, Ray?”

  “Looks fine to me, Dai Uy.”

  We picked a reasonable-looking LZ, made our plans, and headed back to the company area to get the men ready. Promptly at 1800 hours, only an hour late, we were on our way. The setting sun outlined the dark clouds above the western horizon in brilliant shades of red and gold. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” I mumbled to myself as we leaped from the hovering choppers and headed into the bush. It didn’t take long for the moisture-covered brush to soak us. Because of the higher altitudes in the mountains of eastern Laos, I knew it was going to be a long and uncomfortable night.

  It got cooler, and we all grew more miserable as we thrashed our way in the direction of the unseen road. I was watching the point man in the fading light when he held up his hand and motioned me forward. There it was, a muddy one-laner, carved out of the hillside we were descending, and well hidden by the high trees overhead. Alongside the road was a footpath, and it showed evidence of heavy use, although there weren’t any tracks since the last rain, which had probably been the night before.

  I put the men in a linear ambush covering about two hundred meters of the road and moved out to check the area for myself. There were no fresh tracks on the road, but that didn’t mean much. Certainly, it had been used in the recent past. All we could do was hope that some trucks would come by our ambush that night. I would allow the trucks to pass if there were more than three, and the air force could hit them at the truck park. If three or less, we would ambush them ourselves.

  We were in an excellent spot for a hit. The road was cut along the side of a hill too steep for any escape except up or down the road. If we had to fight, they would have to come uphill, and I had the recent memory of the advantage that meant for a defender.

  We settled in and tried to stay as dry as possible and warm, both feats impossible for even the best woodsmen among us. As high as we were, the temperature dropped into the low sixties at night. For someone just off the beach at Da Nang, that was cold. All we could do was wrap ourselves up in our ponchos and try to stay dry and warm.

  Around 0200, we heard the sound of trucks approaching. Around the bend from the north came four vehicles, driving very slowly, with only a tiny beam of light emitting from heavily masked headlamps to illuminate the way. As they passed us by, I could see the driver and his shotgun rider, both straining to see the road through the dark, misty gloom. When they disappeared around the far curve, I called in the news to Prairie Fire Control. “Looks good for your raid tomorrow. Four juicy trucks just went by, headed for the truck park.”

  “Roger, Sneaky Six. We’ll drop at 0600 tomorrow. Thanks. PF Control out.”

  I wiggled back into the relative comfort of my poncho, assuming the rest of the night would be quiet, and we’d head out at first light to sweep the bombed-out truck park. I was wrong again.

  Around five, just before I gave the “Move out” command, we heard the sound of more trucks headed our way. I strained to see through the gray mist of the foggy, early-morning light. These trucks would never make the truck park before the air raid. I waited, debating what to do. I called Lawrence, with the first squad at the far front of my line of troops. “Ray, can you make out how many?”

  “I think it’s just four, Dai Uy. They must be trying to make it to the truck park before it gets daylight.”

  “Okay,” I decided. “Sergeant Garrett will hit the lead truck with an M-72.” That was the army’s shoulder-fired antitank rocket. It would hammer the crap out of a thin-skinned vehicle like a truck. “As soon as he does, you take out the last truck. We’ll have them trapped on the side of this hill, and maybe can get them all. You copy, Garrett?”

  “Got it, Dai Uy. I’ll take out the lead as soon as he gets even with me. Give ’em hell.”

  As I watched the lead truck go by, it started to rain. The enemy truck was a fairly new, Russian-made, 2½-ton cargo carrier, almost an exact copy of the 1944 Lend-Lease GMC trucks we sent to the Soviet Union by the thousands. The trip south hadn’t been easy; the body was mud-spattered and scratched. The two men in the cab were both concentrating on the road as it was too light for headlights, yet still plenty difficult to see any distance. They never even looked our way.

  The first truck rumbled past and then the second. It was just ahead of my location when the lead truck was hit by Garrett’s rocket. The impact nearly obliterated the truck’s passenger compartment, and the drivers were reduced to hamburger by the hot shrapnel. Lieutenant Lawrence’s men blasted the last two trucks, shattering windshields and punching holes in the metal cabs with their rifle fire, but nobody seemed to be shooting at the second truck in line. It drove on, almost as if the driver was so shocked by the carnage going on that he froze.

  Swiftly, I took quick aim with my little M-79 Thumper and fired the 40mm grenade at the rear of the truck. It flew inside the canvas-covered cargo area and kerblam! the whole truck disappeared in a mushroom of smoke and fire. My target had been filled with 82mm mortar ammunition and 122mm rocket warheads. The explosion ripped through the countryside, scattering dirt and truck for what seemed like miles. The concussion pushed me against the ground like a hard wind slaps paper against a brick wall. Unexploded rounds rained down around us, adding to the general hazard.

  The truck was a mangled mass of smoking metal. Greasy black smoke fought upward against the falling rain. I had hoped that the rain would muffle the sound of our attack from the enemy down the road, but the noise of the truck exploding was so loud I was uncertain that could be pos
sible. It was something to behold. We were lucky we were well protected by the trees around us. Shredded scrap from what once had been a truck was flung about everywhere. In the silence, I got to my knees and looked around. The first truck had rammed into the side of the hill, completely blocking the road to any further travel. The second truck was almost gone, the third truck was sitting where it had first been hit, and the last truck in line had run off the road and turned over on its side.

  I signaled the men forward. A hasty look ensured that all the occupants of the destroyed vehicles were dead, and none of the trucks would ever carry supplies again. Unfortunately, none of the drivers carried a map showing where their final destination was or where they planned to lay over for the day. That would have been quite a coup to bring back to CCN.

  The first truck contained medical supplies, the third was filled with small-arms ammo, and the last truck held spare truck parts, including several new tires and a complete truck engine lying among the jumble of items strewn around the cargo area. The second truck was completely destroyed but for some unexploded mortar rounds strewn about.

  Grab a sample from each truck,” I called to Lawrence. “Then booby-trap the works. I want to get out of here before anybody comes to investigate the sound of the explosion.”

  We put trip-wired explosives throughout the cargo of ammo and the truck parts. We used the five-gallon cans of gasoline for the medical supplies. The person who tried to unload anything would set off a bonfire of epic proportions. The booby traps would ensure that none of the supplies would ever be used against us as well as cause major hurts among any salvagers. We left the area satisfied it was a job well done.

  A point to note: The trucks were Russian, the ammo was from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, and the medical supplies were Chinese and Swedish. The truck parts were from China, and the rockets were Russian. I wished the suppliers themselves had been driving the trucks instead of hapless conscripts from some village in North Vietnam.

  We headed back into the woods and turned south toward the truck park, five or more miles away. As we made our way through the wet brush, the distant noise of the air strike rumbled through the rainy air. The ground shook as five-hundred-pound bombs impacted. The roaring thunder of the jets pulling up from a bomb run was music to our ears. We were in a good mood as we slipped and thrashed our way toward the air strike.

  By the time we reached our destination, the planes were gone, and all was still. I looked through the trees at the small cluster of huts and the trucks we had seen the night before. The flyboys had done a good job. The four trucks were all smashed, smoking ruins, and most of the huts were flattened heaps of straw and wood.

  We moved cautiously toward the huts, our rifles ready and senses alert. It was all quiet. We found six men, all quite dead, and obviously North Vietnamese in origin. The trucks were burned and shredded, but we didn’t get too close. The air force had used CBUs (cluster bombs) to start their little show, scattering numerous little softball-size bomblets about the truck park. When the CBU releases its several hundred bomblets, some do not explode on first contact with the ground. They lie there as sensitive as baby rattlesnakes. The slightest movement could set one off.

  The rest of the drivers and the NVA soldiers stationed at the truck park had cut out for parts unknown. I told Lieutenant Lawrence to make a quick search of the hootches, and we’d get out, too, before they brought someone back. While he did that, I called in our findings to Prairie Fire Control and alerted them that we would be calling for extraction as soon as we found a suitable place to make our LZ. The answer was music to my ears. “Roger, Sneaky Six. Good job. Prairie Fire Control standing by to vector in extraction choppers on your orders.”

  Lieutenant Lawrence came running up to me, excitement all over his face. He grabbed my arm, pulling me in the direction he wanted me to go. “Captain Nick, come quick. We found a woman hiding in a dugout behind that hootch over there.” He pulled my arm to hurry me along. “Houmg talked to her. She’s the wife of one of the dead men. He was a mechanic, and she came down to be with him. Captain, she’s gonna have a baby.”

  “Probably why she didn’t run with the others,” I said. “That would have been a sight to see, wouldn’t it? A pregnant VC trying to outrun a jet laying five hundred pounds of hurt on her head.”

  “No, Dai Uy,” Lawrence interrupted. “I mean she’s having a baby right now. That’s why she didn’t run. We gotta help her.”

  We reached the only hut still standing. A young woman was lying on a filthy, cloth mattress, gasping as the contractions hit her. She was dirty, scared, and obviously just minutes away from delivering the little VC she’d been carrying for nine months. It flashed through my mind that she had no business there, the shape she was in. But then maybe she wasn’t pregnant when she had arrived.

  “Shit. What the hell can we do? We’ve got to get outta here. The NVA will have someone coming here mach schnell to see what happened.”

  “We just can’t leave her, Captain. We can’t.”

  Ray Lawrence was determined to repay fate for his action on the road, and I knew that, short of our physically carrying him away, he was going to help that enemy woman.

  “All right, I’ll see what we can do. Do you know anything about helpin’ a woman have a baby?”

  “Jeeze, Captain. I’m not even married.” Lawrence’s face grew white at the thought. “You got two kids, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t deliver ’em. I just watched, and even then all I looked at was my wife’s face, not what was going on down below.”

  “You can do it, Dai Uy. I know you can. What do you want me to do?”

  Well, I’d seen enough movies in my time to know the answer to that one. “You get the men out in a defensive perimeter. Put lookouts up and down the road. Then boil me lots of water. I saw a couple of pots out there; the stream is behind the hootch. And send me Houmg. He’s older, and probably has several kids of his own. Get to it, Ell-tee. We don’t have all day.”

  Ray rushed out, eager to be helpful. I could hear him shouting instructions to his soldiers. Houmg stepped through the doorway, clearly doleful about his special assignment. If I’d had left it up to him, he would have slit her throat and beat feet for the LZ. The Montagnards were very practical people.

  I went to the side of the girl, who appeared to be barely out of her teens. She was painfully thin and her swollen stomach seemed ready to burst. Her navel was distended, her tummy was so big. Her eyes were red and teary. She was gulping air as fast as she could swallow. Her fear was almost palpable. Who could blame her? She was completely at our mercy. And, a good dose of hate was there, overriding all other emotions. She didn’t want me there, but didn’t have a clue as to how to get rid of me. I felt like telling her the feeling was mutual, but to what avail?

  “Ask her if the water has broken,” I instructed Houmg. He rattled off several questions in Vietnamese, faster than I could follow. The woman shook her head, but didn’t say anything. Houmg grabbed her arm and asked again, shaking her hard, to emphasize his demands.

  She mumbled something and then dissolved in tears at the agony of her contraction.

  “She lose water when planes come, Dai Uy.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna take a look at her. Make sure she holds still.” I moved between her legs and pushed up the dirty smocklike gown she was wearing. Gulping, I looked at her genital area. I didn’t see any sign of the baby’s head yet. I looked up at the woman. Houmg had his big knife pressed against her throat, just daring her to kick me or something. Except for her panting, she was quiet.

  One of the Yards brought in the first pot of warm water. It was far from boiling, but was all I had. I took the soap bar from my pack and washed my hands and then, using my handkerchief, washed her stomach and bottom.

  I had just finished and looked up, when she let out a yell and some blood trickled from her vagina. I saw the first wet, curly, black hairs of the baby’s head as it pushed through
the little opening into its new world, like it or not. A world where the inhabitants spent their days fighting one another.

  The woman took a couple of deep breaths, and I cupped my hands to catch the head. The next contraction did it. The little head, misshapen and as soft as putty, squirted out. The little face was covered in a white, chalky film. I struggled to keep my stomach down. The shoulders were next. The little body was sort of sideways as it exited the womb. With a squirt of blood and clear fluid, the baby popped into my hands.

  I took the wet hankie and wiped his nose and eyes. The little rascal was a junior VC. I held him up by his heels and slapped his bottom. The result was a tiny scream of indignity and rage. Seeing the spot he and his mom were in, I couldn’t blame him.

  I laid the tiny body, still covered with the white mucus from the womb, on the belly of his mother and tied his umbilical cord with a piece of my bootlace. I cut his link with his mother with my Buck killing knife, whose blade was as sharp as any scalpel. That was the last thing the maker had intended for the steel blade. I remembered how the doctor had rubbed my wife’s stomach after the baby came out. It was supposed to help expel the afterbirth. It worked, faster than I expected. The placenta glopped all over my thigh as it squished out. I took my poncho liner and wrapped the little squirt in it. My job done, I gave him to his mother.

  She was about half conscious. Her body was drenched with sweat from the exhausting effort of giving birth to the little VC recruit. I wiped her face with the last of the water and looked at the face of my enemy. Her eyes met mine. She didn’t look so dangerous and she was already starting to recover from her exertions. I wondered what she would think of the only American that she probably ever saw up close. He had killed her man and delivered their baby. How would the two actions stack up in her opinion of me? For an instant, I think I saw a slight smile in her eyes, but I may have been mistaken.

  I gave her my best John Wayne. “Well, little lady. I’ve gotta git now. Your folks will be along soon. Good luck to you and little junior here.” I got to my feet. “Come on, Houmg. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”