15 Months in SOG

by Thom Nicholson

  The sun was a welcome sight after the depressing scene in the ward. As we headed back to our camp, I discussed Sandy’s condition with Sergeant Fischer. “He’ll have to fight off the infections that he’ll come down with next,” Fischer commented.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve seen men paralyzed before. Their lungs and guts get infected real easy, since they’re lying so still on their back all the time. Yep, he’ll come down with something, you watch and see. That will be his next big hurdle.”

  The next few days were busy, and I had to put Sandy’s plight at the back of my mind. I put off going back out to see him until the weekend. I was anticipating going Sunday afternoon, but got a call Saturday morning from Lieutenant Wright, on the Repose. “Sergeant Sanderson has a pneumonia infection in his lungs. He wants to see you. Can you come out today?”

  “Sure. I’ll be there right after lunch.”

  “No, come now. He’s in bad shape. Don’t wait, please.”

  I headed out on our motorboat. The water was choppy and restless, and the low, dark clouds in the eastern sky promised a storm before the night was over. I got another corpsman to guide me down to the ward. Lieutenant Wright was as crisp and clean as before. But her eyes looked even more tired if that was possible. “Go right in,” she instructed me. “He’s waiting for you.”

  I softly hurried over to the bed where my young sergeant lay. The iron lung was still pumping away and the cardiotrace was still blipping on the screen. “Hi, Sandy. How you feelin’?” Wow, was that an original greeting.

  He had to whisper around the tube in his mouth, but I got his message. “Don’t forget your promise.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, don’t you worry. I’ll send the letters and handle everything. But you won’t need me to. The people here tell me you’re gonna be just fine. You’ve got to fight hard and lick this thing, is all.”

  Sandy whispered and I bent down until my ear was next to his mouth. It sounded as if he asked, “Can you stay with me?”

  I nodded and squeezed his arm, hoping I was helping. “Sure, Sergeant. I’ll stay with you a while. I’ve got all day. Let me bring you up to speed on what’s happening back at camp.”

  I sat beside him and started telling him about the comings and goings at CCN. I couldn’t tell if he was listening or even heard me, but it made me feel like I was doing something useful. Nurse Wright came in from time to time and looked or touched or gave him a shot of medicine through the tube dripping its contents into his arm.

  In the next bed was a burn victim. He was Vietnamese. I didn’t know if he was North or South and I didn’t want to know. It didn’t matter anyway. Two men, desperately hurt, and we were using every high-tech device available to keep them going. I could only pray the machines would do the job.

  About five, Sandy’s breathing grew markedly shallower. Lieutenant Wright was nervously beside him every few minutes, checking, fiddling, and injecting. Sandy’s hand clenched, and I grabbed it with mine. His grip was weak, but I could feel it.

  “Hang in there, soldier. You can beat this. Just hang on and fight.” Anxiously, I looked for a sign. Did he hear me?

  Sandy choked, and I felt a slight squeeze of his hand. I squeezed back, hard. The blipping monitor of his heartbeat went flat. A bell rang, and the nurse rushed to his side, followed shortly by a white-coated doctor. The doctor didn’t even acknowledge my presence, he just pushed me out of the way and started to do whatever he did when his patients quit breathing. I stepped back and stumbled to the doorway, fighting the tears that threatened to overflow. I hadn’t even had time to say so long before he was gone. White-hot rage coursed through me again, just like when Paul Potter was killed. Too many good kids were being wasted in that meat-grinder of a war.

  The bell was silent, and the doctor was putting his stethoscope away. His shoulders sort of slumped, and he said something to Lieutenant Wright. She wrote something on Sandy’s chart, and pulled the sheet over his head. Then, she walked around to the heart and lung machines. The line was flat and still. She flipped a couple of switches and shut down the lot of them. High-tech had failed Sandy, and all I could do was say, so long, as two husky corpsmen put his still form on a gurney and wheeled him down the sterile corridor.

  “I’m sorry about your friend, Captain.” The white-suited nurse was standing beside me. Her voice reflected the weariness and loss she felt. “He was terribly paralyzed. He would have never moved a muscle in his body below his chest for the rest of his life. Maybe it was better this way.”

  “Maybe, I don’t know. All I know is that he had a lot to live for. Now his daughter will never know her father.”

  I stood on the deck of the USS Repose. I don’t even know how I got there. I leaned against the railing and looked down at the water below. I fought to keep my guts from spewing out. Revelation washed over me in thunderous waves. Cause and effect are curious comrades. I’d seen worse, done worse, maybe even felt worse, but a tidal wave of comprehension flooded my brain. I finally admitted it to myself. We weren’t going to win the war.

  Like fog blown away by wind to reveal the sun, bright and shining, I knew. That was it for me. I wasn’t going back there, no goddamned way, no siree. A little ol’ back-assed country was gonna whip us, as sure as I was standing on a boat in the water. I would resign my commission rather than return again. I was the fifth generation of my family to wear the uniform of our country, and the first to lose, unless you counted my great-granddad on the Confederate side. My relief at the decision was so profound that I knew it was the right choice.

  Slowly, I drove the motorboat back to CCN. The shock of losing Sandy and the realization of what I had decided made the trip seem long and slow. I wasn’t happy with my vow, just satisfied that for me it was the right thing to do.

  I didn’t have much of a problem with the antiwar protesters, as long as they fought to influence the politicians to end the war. They made a choice, I made a choice. That was what America was all about. I didn’t want them on my case because I chose to honor my oath of allegiance. I knew I’d bop the first one who insulted me when I returned. I had to fulfill my own sense of honor and could not worry about theirs. It was just that I had come to know the war was wrong for me. I couldn’t be a part of its continuance any longer. My passion, which at first had been just as fiery in favor of the war as the anti’s was against it, had been quenched in the hotter flames of fire and death. It cost too much to fight for no purpose, with no clear goals or vision as to what we wanted to accomplish, no understanding of the price being paid by those doing the dirty work. The butcher’s bill was too dear.

  Sergeant White helped me pull the boat up on the trailer we had made to haul it back and forth to the supply shed. “How’s Sergeant Sanderson, Dai Uy?”

  “He’s dead. Died about thirty minutes ago, just like that.” I snapped my fingers. “We lost a fine kid. The machines couldn’t keep him alive. Just another high-tech failure in this goddamned high-tech war.”

  “That’s too bad. He was a nice guy. Say, they’re serving fresh ice cream at the mess hall tonight. We’d better get our ass in gear, or it’ll be all gone before we get there.”

  20

  Marble Mountain Graveyard

  or

  Time to Go Home

  My long-awaited DEROS was getting so close I could almost reach out and touch it. Only two weeks and a day left in country. I decided to celebrate a little early, so on the first Monday in December I took all my company officers to see the Bob Hope show at the big outdoor amphitheater over at the Da Nang Air Base. It was quite a spectacle and gave me a chance to show off a little. I had met Bob and his wife, Delores, on my previous tour in 1966.

  Bluffing one of the MPs into believing I was an old friend, I conned my way past the guards to the trailer the performers were using as a dressing room. Bob was real nice and friendly, even though I’m certain he really did not remember me at all, but his wife did.

  Delores Hope was a sweet jew
el of a person and as natural as spring rain. She acted as a hostess while Bob got ready and then introduced my officers to Bob. Then she arranged for us to sit right in front, right behind the wounded men in wheelchairs from the local hospitals. That was as close to the stage as anyone healthy could get. After the show, we got to talk with Ann-Margret, Rosey Grier, and some of the Gold-diggers, a dance group of beautiful young women who performed on several of the popular TV shows back home. My guys were impressed with me! They thought I could do the impossible.

  We returned to camp quite enchanted with the afternoon’s entertainment, and I was now elevated to the highest level of esteem by my young officers. It meant as much to them that I had gotten them a handshake with a pretty girl as it would have if I had gotten them back from Indian country in one piece.

  It was a good way to finish off my tour, alive, unhurt, and admired. Of the five captains I had met on the plane trip from America, over a year past, I was the only one still around. One was KIA, one badly hurt in a jeep accident, and the others medevacked out with combat wounds. All I had was a small scar in my back and an even smaller one on my calf to show for all of Charlie’s effort to get me. I took Major Skelton to the club for a beer and got a tacit assurance that I wouldn’t go back into the field unless it was the most dire of emergencies. I began to relax and coast home, so to speak. Once again, I was asking too much of Lady Luck. She had one more little hurdle for me to clear before I headed home across the pond to the land of the big PX.

  Major Buelher, the S-1, or personnel staff officer, called me to his office and passed the word that a new captain was being assigned to command B Company the following week. I would take a couple of days to turn over the unit and get him broken in. Then I could sit around as a supernumerary until my orders to DEROS arrived. Just like my friend Paul Potter had been doing when I arrived so long ago.

  The new officer transferred up from CCC (Command and Control Center), our sister unit to the south. They did their work in Cambodia, as we did in Laos and North Vietnam. He had extended to get a command assignment, but because CCC didn’t have a slot available he came north to us. He appeared to be a top-notch officer, and I felt confident giving up B Company to him. He was shorter than me, but solid, and had plenty of self-confidence. He was a Citadel graduate and was ramrod straight about soldiering. He was already in shape for the demands of leadership and anxious to take charge. I was happy my company was getting such a good officer.

  We started the cycle of inventorying company property and signing over the unit’s accountable items from me to the new CO. I sold my jeep for three hundred dollars and some of the nifty toys that I had so painfully accumulated for three hundred more, so I had money for a first-class vacation when I got home. I gave away to my officers and NCOs what I didn’t sell until all I had left was my rifle and the Buck knife I’d carried the entire time I was in country.

  The day after, we had the change of command ceremony, and I surrendered my precious B Company to its new commander. Afterward, the CO called me in his office and pinned a couple of medals on me for my scrapbook. Then gave me a surprise I wasn’t expecting.

  “Nick, we’re gonna put a hit on the VC in Marble Mountain. It goes tomorrow at 0800. A and B companies will be air-landed on top, and the troops will work their way down to the ground.” The massive mountain, about four hundred meters to the south of our camp, was honeycombed with caves from the marble quarrying that had occurred there before the war. VC were in there all the time, and occasionally took a pot shot at us or the 3d Marine Amtrac Battalion on the far side. Fortunately, for the most part, they stayed quiet, and in return, so did we. When they got too aggressive, we would shoot at the side of the hill or mine the approaches to the place. That was usually enough to keep the occupants of the mountain quiet. There were rumors that the VC had a hospital, resupply storage, and even R & R barracks inside the place.

  I never wanted to know bad enough to go find out if the rumors were true or not, and felt like saying so, when Colonel Donahue continued.

  “The 3d Marine Amtrac Battalion will surround the base of the mountain and police up anybody that tries to get away. Since you’re not tied up with anything, I want you to go over and be my liaison with the Gyrenes. It should be a piece of cake. We’ll have four hundred men on the mountain and six hundred surrounding it.”

  I accepted his casual confidence in the coming operation and left him visualizing the coming glory the little battle would bring. He never got a chance to go over the border so the coming operation would probably be the only combat action he would have a chance to get in on his entire tour.

  I’d looked at Marble Mountain many a long hour when I passed the hours as night shift OD (officer of the day). Ten times what we were putting on the mountain wouldn’t be enough to cover the numerous cave and cutaway areas of the forbidding rock massif. The mission would probably be a first-class cluster fuck, in my opinion. Suppressing a shudder, I looked up at Marble Mountain as I walked back to my room. I knew I’d have another long and sleepless night in store for me.

  I reported to the headquarters of the 3d Amtrac Marines the next morning at 0600 hours. All I had was a pistol, water, and a knife. My intention was to stay well back of the action and simply report by radio to Colonel Donahue what the Marines were up to. I didn’t even check out a rifle, since I figured a pistol would be more than enough for what I was going to do. I took old Houmg with me to be my radio operator; the new B Company CO had the services of my old team of bodyguards and radio carriers. Houmg was armed, as always, with a well-used M-16 and his Montagnard knife.

  As I drove around the dark mass of the mountain, I prayed the VC would let us come and go in peaceful ignorance. I was damned shaky about the whole scheme and grateful I didn’t have to lead the men due to land on top in two hours. The first problem was the size of the chopper force; only five choppers were going to be lifting our troops to the top so it would require several hops to transport everyone there. The element of surprise would be long gone before any action against the enemy commenced.

  They would have plenty of time to get ready for us. Any contact on the way down would be initiated by the VC. Just maybe, the VC would fade away and let us thrash around a while. We couldn’t stay long, so they could hide out a bit, then walk back in and take over after we left. That’s what I crossed my fingers would happen.

  Houmg and I reported in to the Marine battalion HQ for briefing by their S-3. Their whole operation rested on the assumption that CCN’s landing on top would cause some reaction by the VC inside the mountain. Then the Marines would react to the VC action. Otherwise, squads of men would have to be sent to search the numerous caves and corridors cut throughout the interior of the mountain.

  “I don’t know, Major,” I noted to the Marine staff officer. “Those folks have been using that place for years. It’ll be damn hairy, and we’ll be at their mercy. At best, they’ll just move out and let us blunder around chasing shadows. If they want to be contrary, they’ll suck us in, then kick our butts.”

  The Marine briefing officer countered my objections. “We’ve covered that in our plans. Our men will have CS grenades and gas masks with them. If the VC hit us, the troops’ll pop some tear gas and withdraw. Then we’ll flood the area with long-lasting nausea gas. Charlie will be sorry he ever fucked with us, believe me.” The confident Marine was too clean and well organized to be anything more than a professional staff office. That in itself was a red flag.

  To tell the truth, I’d heard BS like that before, and mostly from the staff desk-warriors who never heard a round crack close by their ear. Charlie was smart, tough, and mean. I doubted whether a little tear gas was going to do him a trick. But, I’d learned the folly of arguing with a determined senior officer; that was like pounding my head against a rock, so I shut up and nodded my seeming acceptance of the current wisdom.

  “Whatever you say, Major. I’ll join one of your rifle companies during the operation. My orders are to p
ass on information from our people as they proceed down the mountain.” I hurried out of the S-3 shop and fell in with one of the Marine units slowly trudging out of the compound and taking up positions along both sides of the dirt road. At the wave of their commander’s hand, they started walking toward the dark mountain, which was just then becoming visible in the early morning light.

  The Marine grunts were old hands at that sort of stuff and spoke little while staying ten yards apart as the unit snaked its way down the road. Most of the men carried M-16s, and all had two or three CS grenades hooked somewhere on their web gear. Neither Houmg nor I had brought gas masks since we never anticipated using them. If the Marines did start using the antiriot grenades, we would have to get away as fast as possible or accept the consequences.

  We finally reached the base of the mountain and took up positions around the old marble quarry entrance, a cavelike opening many meters across and high. Several trucks could have driven inside the hill at the same time. I stayed well away from the opening and waited for the airborne phase of the operation to start. It was almost 0800, and according to the voice on the radio, the first load of troops was airborne.

  I watched as an empty chopper flared off the top of the mountain and rolled right, heading back toward CCN. The first men were on the ground, far above me. I could imagine their anxiety as they waited for the arrival of their comrades. Then a second and a third, until all five choppers had lifted away and rolled overhead, returning to the CCN chopper pad for another load of human cargo. It took over an hour before I was informed that everyone was on the ground and the troops were starting down. So far, they had seen no sign of the enemy. I reported that to the Marine lieutenant colonel who was in charge down at the bottom of the hill. He nodded and returned to his radio, talking to one of the other company commanders among the three Marine units surrounding the base of the mountain. He seemed to be a more field-oriented Marine, with the steadiness of years of command behind him. In his fighting gear, with his helmet and sunglasses on, he was the picture of a fighting Marine officer.