Fields of Fire

by James Webb

They remained in the treeline as the sun crawled over them, watching the Broncos work out, in awe of the sheer numbers of enemy soldiers who were still fleeing the sweep. There were now literally hundreds of North Vietnamese soldiers crossing the paddies from west to east in large droves. They did not flee toward the company again. They had begun moving in a large circle, unbeknownst to the Marines. They moved south until they were almost in range of the company. They moved east until they were almost in range of the other blocking companies. They moved north to the far fringe of the valley. Then they moved back to the west, escaping through a crease in the sweeping battalion's coverage caused by thick foliage. Even in their fleeing there was order. Later, with eight Marine companies converged haphazardly in the eastern section of the valley, they would attack, choosing their own targets. They had taken casualties determining the location of the blocking companies. They were taking continual casualties from artillery and air strikes. But they had already broken out.

  For two hours aircraft zoomed and dove, artillery made continuous eruptions in the dirt and air, and the tanks pressed east. Finally the targets were gone. The regimental commander, somewhere back in An Hoa (sitting on top of his command bunker in a lawn chair, sipping on a highball, watching it all through field glasses, maintained Bagger) then ordered all companies to sweep northward immediately. Consolidate. We Swept East, the logic ran. They Fled The Sweep. Somewhere Between The Sweep And Block There's Got To Be A Regiment.

  The company was the furthest unit south. They left the treeline in a wide, sweeping line, moving cautiously across the open paddy. They waded through waist-high, brushy grass, then stepped into wet, green fields where fresh hectares of rice had recently sprouted. The mud soaked their boots. The low dikes tripped them. They were exhausted.

  They reached the group that had fled toward their blocking position. The dead soldiers lay in no particular order on the glistening mud, some weighted with large packs, some carrying only weapons, some dressed in uniforms and some in villagers’ clothes. They checked the bodies quickly, with little excitement now. The weapons were taken, unwillingly due to their weight. Some Marines souvenired packs from the dead North Vietnamese soldiers: NVA packs were the most comfortable of all varieties carried. Ornaments from uniforms were quickly pocketed, lest the men be required to surrender them to Battalion Intelligence for scrutiny—and unearned souvenirs.

  CANNONBALL walked listlessly, weighted by his pack and by nearly a hundred blooper rounds that he carried strapped to his thigh in a large bag, at almost a pound apiece. Ah need me a target, he thought mournfully. Ah need to shoot off 'bout half these things. They give me all this ammo, we see all these damn gooks—never seen so many damn gooks in all my life, an’ Ah only shoot about ten rounds all day. Ten damn rounds.

  In front of him, behind a low dike, was a sprawled body, dressed in black. Cannonball squinted, awakening from his numbness. Hmmmph. Ah got this one. He's mine. Mebbe Ah'll get me a pack. Or one o’ them SKS rifles. This one's mine.

  He squinted again. The sprawling body's rifle pointed straight at him. He walked closer, to perhaps five meters away. The eyes behind the rifle were open, glaring hotly, feverishly, into his. Cannonball halted quickly, sucking a lungful of wind through clenched teeth.

  The rifle erupted, its rounds so close that he was sure he felt them pass near his head. Automatically, without deciding, he braced himself and popped off a blooper round. Thunk. The round dug deeply into the dirt just next to the hotly staring figure. It was spin-armed, and had to travel several yards before it would go off. Cannonball was too close to his target.

  The two men stared quietly at each other, separated by what seemed only inches, two strides and the distance of the paddy dike. The man in black watched Cannonball with animal intensity, like a cornered fox that faces certain death in the only manner his instincts will allow, prepared to fight all overwhelming comers because his senses inform him there is no other exit but to die clawing. Cannonball stared back, waiting for the next blast from the rifle that pointed toward his innards, aware that his own weapon was a single-shot type that had to be broken open in order to be reloaded, and realizing that his first move to break the weapon would summon the burst from the pointed rifle, knowing also that he would have to search his packed blooper bag for a buckshot round, the only type of ammunition he carried that would kill his adversary from that distance. Both men sensing they were doomed, and yet neither having the wherewithal to prevent his own destruction. Or, as it turned out, the means to bring about the other's death.

  A blast rang out from Cannonball's right. The man in black slumped to his side, dead. Bagger jogged up to the body, pumped a half-dozen more bullets into it, then knelt next to it. He looked up to Cannonball, who was breathing rapidly now, shaken by the standoff.

  “Goddamn, Cannonball. You scared the shit outa me.”

  “Outa you? Hey. That man had me cold. Why din’ he pull the trigger?”

  “Because he liked you. And besides, he was outa ammo.” Bagger broke off the magazine from the AK-47 and showed Cannonball. “He was prob'ly too weak to change magazines. Or too gone to think about it.”

  Cannonball strode over the dike and knelt next to the body. The soldier lay in a huge bloodpool, having been shot through the lower waist several hours earlier. Cannonball shook his head. “Ha-a-ard core, what Ah mean.”

  They searched the body. The man was older, perhaps forty. Inside his pack there was a letter. Cannonball showed it to Snake, who brought it to Hodges. Hodges called Captain Crazy and asked for the interpreter, Sergeant Thuan. Thuan strode over to the platoon, and dutifully translated the letter in his nasal, academic English. He would read a paragraph, then look up to the cluster of Marines, smiling fraternally to all of them, seeking their approval.

  “He is same-same Gunny.” The men brightened. “He write letter to North Vietnam, to—how you say, same-same Congressman.” Collective “no shits.” “He say, he fight French, then he fight in South for four years now, he want to go home. He say, he been in Army since 1949, time to get out. Say he got five babysans, time to go home.”

  Sergeant Thuan beamed, nodding graciously, and returned to the company command group with the letter.

  Bagger stared at the riddled body. “Well. We got ourselves a Gunny. A lifer. No shit.”

  Snake shrugged the dead soldier off. “Hey, man. They are all lifers.”

  THEY swept through open fields, intermittent villages and treelines, past hundreds of bodies littered randomly, as if sown across the valley floor like seeds by some Great Hand. Finally they reached the tank. It rested humbly in a paddy, between two lush treelines, a great dragon felled by a slingshot: a shoulder-fired B-40 rocket had blown one of the treads off. A platoon from Second Battalion departed immediately when the company arrived, anxious to catch up with its own company, which had swept northward. The company had been ordered to provide security for the tank until repair parts arrived.

  The company set up in a hasty perimeter around the tank. Hodges joined the conference with the tank commander, who was talking with Captain Crazy. The tank commander was a Gunny. He was very thick, with rolls of fat around his bare midsection, faded tattoos on both arms, and folds of loose skin on his face and neck. He kicked the tank and looked fearfully at the treeline in front of it.

  “This ain't no goddamn place for a tank is all. I been driving tanks for eighteen years, I know where tanks should be. And this ain't no place for tanks.” He turned to Captain Crazy. “I'll be honest with you, Captain. I'm surprised we made it this far. Yup. I'm damned surprised. You take these choppy little fields, all these damn hedgerows. No damn roads. And the treelines—hell, there's only certain places we can make it through those damn treelines. Shit, Captain, it was just a matter of time is all. They were waiting for us. Yessir, they were just sitting there waiting. We were lucky it was the tread.” He eyed the Skipper tentatively. “Anyway, we'll be here all damn night, I guess. We can't get parts in till tomorrow. I called.
They'll have the part out to Marble Mountain first thing. Yup.” He surveyed the shadowed treelines that loomed in all directions, near and far, like bleak promises. “This ain't no place at all.”

  It was midafternoon. The sky descended again, as the day before, turning white and then gray as the rain formed spontaneously without the ceremony of threatening clouds. The rain fell in shivering sheets, catching them hot and sweating with its suddenness. A helicopter powered through the wet air, moving lazily toward them. It descended inside their exhausted perimeter, pausing for one moment as it discharged its cargo, then powered off, whipping them with wet wind.

  Hodges peered at its leavings. The battalion commander, new to Vietnam, had jumped a portion of his command post in from Liberty Bridge. He stood in the wet mud with three radiomen, a Major who was his operations officer, and a scowling, jowly First Lieutenant.

  Kersey.

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  “I don't give a damn what your Lieutenant said, I said move your holes out! When battalion CP is in your perimeter, it controls it. Now, don't give me a bunch of your wise-ass shit, Corporal. Move your holes out.”

  Snake stood on the traveled paddy dike that was the village's edge, looking out into the open field. He had set his squad in behind the dike, where it would have a natural abutment, impenetrable by even B-40 rockets. A position in the paddy itself would be mercilessly exposed to the treeline that ran in front of the lines. He remembered the last time he had caved in to Kersey's demands, when Speedy's team was destroyed at Liberty Bridge.

  “There ain't no way, Lieutenant. That's stupid.”

  Kersey was enraged. “Listen, you little shit. This perimeter is so goddamned screwed up there's only one family hootch inside it—”

  “We didn't ask to set up in a paddy around no goddamn tank.”

  “—and the Colonel's gonna have that hootch!” Family hootches were highly prized by staffs. There were the bunkers when mortars fell. There was the thatch when it rained. The hootch was just down from Snake's hole, right on the edge of the lines. “And that means you're going to move your lines out to protect it.”

  Snake suppressed a grin as he stared back into Kersey's hating eyes. What are you gonna do if I say no, Lieutenant? Cut my hair off and send me to Vietnam? He remembered earlier battles with Kersey, ten and eleven months before, when Wild Man Number One had finally run out of patience and ended Kersey's bush tenure with a bullet in each of his legs. Before, every day, it was like this. The nonsensical battles, the jockeying for status inside the platoon and between Kersey and the other platoon commanders. This dude, mused Snake again, is a sick puppy.

  “I ain't doing it unless my Lieutenant tells me to.”

  Kersey's lips went tight. “All right. Go get him.”

  Snake stared deep into Kersey's face. The rain poured down from his helmet, in front of it, like a veil. Snake pointed. “He's setting up a platoon CP, if you wanna talk with him. Sir.”

  “I gave you a direct order to go get him.” Kersey paused, as if remembering. “But before you do, there's another thing. And this can't wait. The Major saw three gooks running down that treeline about five minutes ago. Get a team and go check it out. Now.”

  Snake peered into the treeline. It merged with the perimeter just down from his squad lines. The company had set up in the paddy, around the tank, with one small section of lines in the village. The treeline was the continuation of the village. It was a natural avenue of attack. Snake and Hodges had already decided to place a listening post inside it after dark. It was thick and gloomy, ominous under wet, shadowed skies. Kersey's right, Snake decided. We better check that out, put an OP in it.

  “All right. Sir.”

  “And then go get your Lieutenant.”

  Snake nodded, heading toward Goodrich. Yeah. I'll go get my Lieutenant. And after I tell him what you got in mind he's gonna personally take a bite outa your ass. And if you want somebody in that paddy, you're gonna have to go out there yourself.

  He reached Goodrich. “Senator.” Goodrich was asleep, totally exhausted. His face was uncovered as he lay on his back, oblivious to the rain that washed it. “Hey, Senator. Wake up.” Snake booted Goodrich in the chest.

  “Get your team together. Hurry up.”

  Goodrich lay, his head back in wet weeds, trying to awaken. Rain pattered on his face but instead of a cold irritant it was a lullaby. He felt his dull mind drifting back toward sleep's warm escape and then was stunned by the sharp jolt of a hard, rough hand. He sat up quickly, suddenly chilled and angry.

  “You didn't have to hit me!”

  “I'm sorry. I forgot to set your snooze alarm. Now wake the fuck up. We got movement. Get your team. We need an OP out there in that treeline, right now.”

  “I thought you said we had the LP tonight.”

  “Change of plans. Take the OP, and I'll have Cat Man's team take the LP tonight. They're digging in. You can have their fighting holes. Now, get going. Take your team and check the treeline out, maybe a hundred meters down it. Be careful. We seen some gooners in there just a minute ago. Then drop back a little and set in. Let us know where you are, and Cat Man can relieve you just before dark.”

  Goodrich searched out his team, rubbing the parts of his skin that were becoming numb from the wetness. He measured it out, trying to concentrate through the dull fear that fogged his logic. An outpost was better than a listening post. After what had happened on the Bridge, and after his visit to Regimental Legal, he dreaded the thought of spending a night in front of his own lines. Too easy for accidents, he mused. It's bad enough when you have to worry about what's in front of you.

  THEY stood in a weathered huddle at the edge of the treeline, peering into it, searching for chimeras. The rain had soaked them so thoroughly, was such a part of them and so inescapable, that they were no longer even conscious of it. They feared the shadowed caverns of the treeline, though, and were conscious of every menace, each clump or bend that threatened them.

  Goodrich searched the gloom before them on the trail. He was so tired that his mind felt numb. He was nonetheless petrified of the treeline, especially following the morning's revelations, and the hump to the tank. They're really out there, he thought numbly. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them, waiting to kill us. He looked at the uncomprehending faces of his fire team, made up entirely of new arrivals. How can they understand? It's still like TV to them. They don't know what can be in that treeline. Uh-uh.

  The rain was now so loud on their helmets that Goodrich almost had to shout to be heard. “That's a badass treeline. We could get hit from five feet away in there.” The team stared naively at him, awaiting his logic.

  Next to the treeline, a thin cemetery ran the length of the trees. The cemetery was in a field bordered on three sides by similar thicks of trees and hootches, the open end toward where they stood. Goodrich pointed toward the cemetery. “Let's move through the cemetery and check out the treeline from inside the mounds. We could see into the trees, and we'll have good cover. We won't get ambushed in there.”

  JoJo, tall and thin, wiped rain off his nose with a huge black hand. “Snake say put it in the treeline, man. He goan’ get on yo’ case if he knows we in the cemetery.”

  Goodrich was mildly rankled, no longer in awe of Snake. “You let me worry about that. We'll let 'em know where we are when we get set in. If they don't like it, they can come out here and change us.”

  They walked across high wet grass and moved inside the mounds, paralleling the treeline, peering into it from thirty yards away. Halfway through the cemetery Rodeo grabbed Goodrich, his eyes scrutinizing a clump of bushes inside the trees. “I saw movement in there! No bullshit! Something moved, man!”

  They knelt behind the mounds, silently watching. Three minutes. No movement. They moved cautiously along the mounds now, watching the treeline carefully.

  Finally they reached the end of it. The treeline they were watching met another one that passed in front of the mounds until it joined ye
t another treeline that paralleled the other side, like a great, upside-down U at the end of the cemetery.

  Goodrich was spooked. The whole sky hovered, gray and ominous, weeping on them. The treelines loomed, thick with vegetation, each inch holding promise of some unseen danger. And they cowered insignificantly among the mounds, inches from the forever dead of the valley. Goodrich shuddered, then turned. “Let's get out of here. Let's move on back to the other end of the cemetery.”

  New Mac was frozen behind the end mound, watching carefully to his front. “Wait a minute! Something moved, man! Right out there!”

  In a fraction of a second, a whole hour of events occurred. Goodrich spun around to see New Mac shoulder his weapon behind the mound, aiming in on a target. He peered across the wet grass and noticed that the target was a babysan, a little girl perhaps seven years old. The girl waved happily, smiling to New Mac's rifle.

  The instinctive reaction, brought on by months of frustration, of fighting with himself and the others over just such predicaments, exerted itself before Goodrich could even comprehend his own movements. Lunging, seemingly so slowly, in that slow motion which adrenaline causes minds to assimilate lightning acts. Pushing New Mac's rifle down, even as Mac's finger slowly pulled the trigger with a jerk that would have seemed rapid to the uninvolved observer. Falling facedown next to the mound, beyond periphery, three feet outside the cemetery. Standing quickly, intent on New Mac, not the girl, New Mac leaning to help him, then aware that New Mac was watching the babysan with wide, horror-filled eyes, but not seeing the girl himself, seeing only Mac's eyes as they widened terribly at the sight of something they had only nightmared about. Then watching the center of Mac's face erupt gently with the entry of the bullet, even noticing the back of Mac's head fly apart, pieces of red and gray dripping from the back end of Mac's helmet before Goodrich finally realized that he had erred, that the babysan had dropped into a ditch, disappeared, that the roar he heard was not his own heart pumping blood madly in fear, but a cacophony of weapons aiming at him and the others from three sides, devouring them as they waited deep inside the U.