by Bing West
O’Rourke next awoke Thanh and Phuoc, and told them of his brush with the strange and well-armed patrol. They promised to investigate and O’Rourke went off to sleep. By noon the heat and the noise inside the fort had dragged him reluctantly awake, and he listened drowsily to the police reports. Several villagers had given a similar report: an enemy main-force unit had come across the river from the Phu Longs and entered Binh Yen Noi. One housewife swore they spoke with North Vietnamese accents.
The rumor upset the PFs, who were not sure how they should react to the news. Even Luong seemed uncertain and looked to the Marines for tactical advice. The Marines were less concerned because they had fought against North Vietnamese units several times before coming to the village and all were convinced that the Viet Cong made the more dangerous adversary on patrols in the hamlets. The North Vietnamese moved and fought in platoon-, company- and battalion-sized units, unsuited for the village war because they could easily be detected. The Marines doubted that the North Vietnamese would risk crossing from the Phu Longs in larger than squad size, since they would have to risk being trapped against the river with no route of retreat if they were spotted and a large U.S. unit was called in.
O’Rourke was particularly determined to persist in small-unit patrolling, despite the lingering doubts of some PFs and some Americans. Fielder, Sullivan’s dependable second-in-command, shared O’Rourke’s outlook and volunteered to take the first patrol out the next night. Fielder asked Suong to select two PFs who needed training to accompany him. He took only one other American—Combat Culver, who constantly gambled away his pay and tried to duck out of routine garrison chores, but who seemed afraid of nothing. Culver’s trouble was that once he became engaged, he grew so absorbed in the battle that he forgot to think and had no feeling for when he was overmatched and it was time to withdraw. So Fielder put him at rear guard, posted a PF at point and left the fort slightly before nine in the evening.
The night was heavily overcast, with a rain falling so softly that the drops on the leaves did not interfere with the hearing of the patrollers. The low clouds shrouded the hamlet in dark gloom, and only years of familiarity with the trails permitted the PF at point to walk at a steady pace. Fielder, as second man, followed by keeping close enough to listen to the hoarse breathing of the PF, who seemed to require more air to breathe the deeper they moved into the hamlet. Culver, listening rearward at each dozen steps, kept falling behind and losing contact, then groping his way forward like a blind man until he bumped into the others. After being momentarily left behind for the third time, Culver’s temper snapped and he broke the silence.
“Tell that damn point to slow it down,” he hissed. “We’re not trying to set any track records.”
The request had the opposite effect. Noting that the Marines were tense, the point man became more fearful and sped off at a fast walk, as if he thought he could outrun the blackness which encloaked him. Not a light from a house shone as they hurried on, and the early evening chatter which usually floated from the homes was missing. The patrollers moved through a black and silent hamlet, sure sign that the enemy had come that way before them and that the villagers, anticipating a firefight, had all scrambled into their family bunkers—large, thick mounds of earth with a hollow center found beside or within each house in the village.
Suddenly the point stopped so quickly that Fielder bumped up against him. The path in front of them was piled high with dry brush, thorns and vines, a flimsy barricade blocking the path, with no way to step through or remove the tangle without making enough noise to alert anyone waiting on the other side.
“VC…VC,” the PF at point kept insisting, “VC.”
The blocked trail was a standard means the Viet Cong had of signaling that they were in the hamlet and did not want to be disturbed. Assuming PF compliance, it was a means whereby the enemy could avoid an unwanted engagement. Unsure of the situation, Fielder looked to the PFs.
“No go…no go,” they said. “Beaucoup VC…beaucoup VC.”
The brush could have been thrown across the trail by two local guerrillas who wanted to visit their wives, or it could be a challenge to lure the Marines into bulling their way ahead to where a main-force ambush waited.
“Let’s go on,” Culver whispered. “We don’t need them.”
Fielder was not so sure. One of the few Marines who was married, he had a wife and baby waiting at home for him. He exercised a high degree of common sense which had won him the respect of the more reckless Marines.
“We’d get lost in there in a minute,” he replied to Culver. “And it’s for sure the PFs won’t go with us. Let’s go back. It’s not worth it.”
“O.K.”
With obvious relief, the PFs hastened back to the fort. The Marines dawdled, knowing they had to face Sullivan. They arrived at the fort several minutes after the PFs.
“What do you mean you thought you’d get lost?” Sullivan yelled. “We have to show these people there is no place we won’t go. No place. If they think there are Cong out there, then we go out—especially if the PFs want to come in.”
“We don’t go with people too scared to shoot, Sergeant,” O’Rourke interrupted. “Fielder was right in coming in. Now let’s take some shooters and get back out there.”
Within ten minutes, a new patrol left the gate. Riley had point, followed by Fielder, O’Rourke and Sullivan, with Garcia at rear guard. They moved back toward the barricaded path at a snail’s pace, taking an hour to cover a quarter of a mile. When they were almost to the barricade, the clouds opened without warning. One moment there was a slight mist, and the next the rain was falling in thick, heavy sheets and the dirt path swelled into a small stream and the rush of the falling rain made it necessary for O’Rourke to talk to Riley in a normal voice.
“In this stuff we don’t have to sweat our noise,” he said, “so move out and let’s get up that blocked path before it stops.”
Within a few minutes they were at the spot where the previous patrol had turned back, and already the waters had washed away the flimsy brush barricade. The patrol did not stop, but moved on up the trail, each man straining to see in the dark and hear in the rain. Not one seeing or hearing anything. Too quickly, it seemed, they were through the hamlet and out on the open sands.
“If they were in there,” Garcia said, “I bet they ducked into a house. I don’t think they think we’d come back a second time in this stuff.”
“Let’s head for the front of the ville,” Sullivan suggested. “We may catch them going back across the river.”
The patrollers cut due east, moving quickly under cover of the rain, relying on Riley’s eyes to alert them against any enemy traveling toward them. Within fifteen minutes they had covered a half-mile, stopping briefly when they hit the main trail just below the marketplace.
“Straight ahead to Top’s house,” Sullivan said, “then hang a right and follow the river bank to the big coconut tree.”
As they moved forward, the rain slackened and soon petered out altogether, passing as quickly as it had started. The patrollers walked across the paddy dike in front of Missy Top’s, their boots sticking in the mud and giving off a slurping sound with each step. While on the dike they could see each other plainly, but once on the other side, the small bush-lined path between the houses was black and they had to grope their way forward. They knew the area well, however, and none had trouble. The sounds of the suction between boots and mud being broken kept each patroller informed of the whereabouts of the others. Slurp, slurp, slurp, they went up the trail. In contrast to the tension and silence of the earlier part of the evening, the sound struck Fielder as comical, and he started to giggle. From the houses came subdued chattering and chinks of light. Evidently the villagers had no reason to believe the Viet Cong were in their section of the hamlet. In nervous relief, Garcia joined Fielder in giggling. Slurp, slurp, slurp. Next, amusement at the absurdity of the evening spread to Sullivan, then to O’Rourke, and soon all four were gi
ggling. Back from point slurped an annoyed Riley.
“Will you guys knock it off?” he whispered. “It’s bad enough up front without a bunch of girls behind me.”
“Sorry, Rile,” O’Rourke whispered.
“The Cong aren’t around here, Rile,” Fielder whispered. “Look at the houses. And God knows if they’re here, they’ve sure as hell heard us coming.”
“We’re here anyway,” Sullivan whispered. “Let’s set in on the river edge of the clearing.”
Cautiously they moved across a small clearing about thirty feet wide and marked by a tall coconut tree on the river bank. Out of habit, they checked around the houses on either side of the clearing. One house seemed normal. But as they approached the other, a small dog tethered to the front door started yapping, only to be screeched into silence by a sharp tug on the rope around his neck as an occupant of the house opened the door and dragged him inside. Probing around the house, Garcia nearly stumbled over a man sleeping in a pile of wet hay next to the water’s edge. He was snoring quite loudly. Garcia walked over and stood looking down at him. He was soon joined by the outer patrollers.
“I don’t believe it,” O’Rourke said. “How dumb does he think we are? He likes to sleep in the rain and he can’t hear me standing right above him, right? Garcia, talk to him.”
“What’ll I say?”
“Ask him what he’s doing here.”
“He’ll say he’s sleeping.”
Fielder and Sullivan chuckled.
“Every time we pick up some villager by ourselves we screw up, Lieutenant,” Sullivan said. “The PFs or Thanh can do it, but we just end up pissing off some innocent farmer.”
So they left the supposedly sleeping man and turned to watching the river, setting a simple ambush, with O’Rourke and Sullivan sitting under the tree peering at the water, Riley on one flank and Garcia on the other. Having the watch to the rear, Fielder looked for a spot from which to cover the ambush and noticed that in the center of the clearing lay a large log. Against this he snuggled, lying on his stomach in the mud, his body hidden in the log’s shadow, his automatic rifle on its bipod pointing across the clearing at the trail they had just come down.
For an hour the five held their positions without stirring. A slight wind came up, just enough to push wavelets against the bank and smack spray on Sullivan and O’Rourke, just enough to rustle the bushes and blow odd smatterings of water off the leaves, just enough to push the wet clothes coldly against the bodies of the patrollers and keep them shivering, just enough to blow away the mosquitoes and gnats, and for that the Marines were grateful. They would rather be chilled than eaten. The cold also drove off sleep, and O’Rourke sensed they could hold the ambush until dawn if their shivering did not become too acute.
At a little past one in the morning, all the patrollers became aware of a shift in the night sounds. Since the rain, the frogs in the paddies had been contentedly croaking, here and there, off and on, following no set pattern. Then the croaking changed to complaining, in a swelling chorus of indignation that started from the south and, to the listeners, seemed to travel up the main trail to the marketplace, where it petered out.
Hearing the frogs, Fielder listened harder, knowing O’Rourke was counting on him to give first alarm from the rear. For several minutes nothing untoward entered his straining consciousness. Then he heard a sound unmistakably human.
Slurp.
His safety was off and his cheek along the rifle stock and he waited. The others could not move. Riley tried and came the closest to swiveling around, but he couldn’t pull his rifle barrel through the foliage without telltale scratching sounds. Garcia was too far distant on the other flank to hear the footfall. Sullivan and O’Rourke heard it, and in their exposed position all they could do was slide slowly down the trunk of the tree and leave it to Fielder to take the shot.
Fielder was trying, but several minutes had passed since he had heard the foot in the mud. The noise had not been repeated. The enemy scout seemed to have stopped moving. Fielder knew better than to let himself believe that. So he reasoned the man had left the trail for firmer ground and was working his way forward among the houses. Directly in front of Fielder, on the side of the clearing, stood a thatched house whose small front yard was paved with flat flint rocks and enclosed by a patch of brambles trimmed like a hedge. If the scout was from the area, Fielder felt he would make for that yard, since from there he could scan potential ambush points along the river without making noise each time he shifted his position.
A few minutes later Fielder thought he heard branches rustling along the side of the house. He could not be sure it was not the wind. But he was sure of what he no longer heard, and that was voices from the house. Peering up at the brambles from across twenty feet, he thought he saw for a second a blob against the skyline. He waited, unsure, unwilling to fire prematurely and give away his position. He heard a twig break. Still, he hesitated. But he was primed, his body taut, ears attuned, finger resting lightly on the trigger, waiting, waiting for the next sound to fix the scout. A bush rustled as its branches were slightly parted.
Fielder fired, the strong recoil pounding the butt into his shoulder while he kept squeezing the trigger, trying to pick up the line of tracers and bring the bullets on target.
“There he goes!” yelled Riley.
A blur of black by the corner of the house, a brief, frenzied snapping and bending of bushes, and the enemy scout was gone.
“Damnit all to hell,” yelled Fielder.
He had fired twenty bullets in one excited burst, yet missed because he had used a magazine which contained no tracers. Unable to see his fire, he had failed to lead properly when the scout ducked around the corner of the house.
“You had good position, too,” O’Rourke chided him. “Now they know exactly where we are. Rainstorm or not, they followed us here. That means they think they can take us. So it’s not just a few guerrillas out there.”
“What’ll we do?” Garcia asked.
“Nothing. Let them make the first move,” O’Rourke replied. “If we don’t try to bug out of here, they have to come in after us. We’ll play it by ear when they do. In the meantime, hold tight and listen up.”
The Marines lay down in a small semicircle with their backs to the river and waited. Fifteen minutes, twenty, thirty, forty. One hour.
“Listen,” Riley hissed, “the frogs.”
The frogs were croaking that a force was walking south along the main trail. At a distance of about two hundred yards, the croaking drew abreast of the patrollers’ position, then drifted by to the left before petering out. Several minutes later, two carbine shots rang out on their left, followed by two answering shots from the market off to their right. Then, simultaneously, from both directions the frogs started complaining.
“They’ve got us boxed and now they’re moving in,” Sullivan said.
Without a radio, the patrol was to use a red hand flare to signal for help. But in the heavy overcast it would not be seen by the fort. And once heavy firing broke out, illumination flares would be a mixed blessing if the patrollers were caught on the open river bank.
“We better get the hell out of here,” O’Rourke said. “We’ll go up the middle.”
“Huh?”
“They’re moving in from our flanks. The one place that scout has told them to avoid is the trail right out in front, because that’s where he almost got blasted. As they come in, we go out that trail.”
“What if that’s what they’re trying to get us to do?”
“Look, we’re going across open paddies. If you were a Cong commander, would you figure us for the paddy route, or that we’d try to stay in this cover along the bank? And let me tell you, if they have enough troops to cover the left, the right and the front, we’ve had it anyways.”
O’Rourke stood up and started down the dark trail they had come in, the others following. Slurp, slurp. Only now the frog cries were getting closer and the noise of their mu
d passage did not sound as acute. They moved swiftly back to Missy Top’s house and in a tight bunch crouched together in its shadow. Between them and the main trail back to the fort stretched the open paddy. They waited until the croaking was behind them, the noise drifting steadily closer to their old position at the coconut tree.
“O.K.,” O’Rourke whispered. “Let’s get across. Riley and I will go first. Once we’re off the dike, the rest of you follow. Get your ass in gear going across. There’s no place you can hide out there if we’re spotted.”
O’Rourke went first. He started from a runner’s crouch, hit the dike at a fast clip, and scampered across with the jerky motions of a drunk trying to walk a straight line. Riley tried to follow the act at the same pace and midway over slipped in the slickness of the mud and splashed bottom first into the paddy. The unmistakable sound made the waiting patrollers wince, but Riley was already scrambling up the dike and running on. Then Garcia, Fielder and Sullivan were crouching and running, each expecting at any moment the bullets to snap at them, none quite believing it when one after another they tumbled safely off the dike and into the ditch by the main trail.
“We did it,” gasped Fielder. “You called it right, Lieutenant.”
A few moments later rain started falling again, and in the downpour the patrollers walked back to the fort unmolested, leaving the enemy force to beat the bushes.
10
Early the next day Thanh and his police were at the marketplace trying to gather information on the enemy force which had prowled the hamlet the previous night. At the fort, Sullivan woke O’Rourke and asked him if he wished to go back to the spot where they had seen the man supposedly sleeping in the wet hay. Sullivan had something to show the lieutenant.
When they arrived, the old lady who owned the house where they had seen the sleeping man came out to meet them, followed by several shy children. She greeted Sullivan warmly but laughed off his questions about the sleeper. After a while he gave up asking.