by Bing West
“Maybe she just locked her old man out for drinking too much. Damned if I can get a straight answer out of her,” Sullivan said. “Well, it’s time for some refreshment anyways.”
He pointed up the tree. She smiled and spoke to one of the barefoot boys, who half-shinnied, half-walked a full forty feet up the thick tree trunk to its crowned top, where he hacked loose and pitched down a light-brown coconut, then slid easily back to earth.
“Not bad climbing for a ten-year-old, huh?” Sullivan asked.
“Fantastic,” O’Rourke said. “Does he do that often?”
“I come by here about once a week. You know, just to get away from the fort. The old mama-san and I get along. You might say that’s my special tree. I pay a hundred piasters a coconut, and mama-san saves them all for me. You ever have coconut milk?”
“No.”
“You’ll like it. Come on.”
The old lady was inviting them inside, and they stepped from the heat into the coolness of her front room, with a hard-packed, clean-swept dirt floor, a simple table, four rickety chairs and a large wooden altar decorated with faded family pictures, cupfuls of thin, charred prayer sticks and a Chinese calendar. To the left was the kitchen, with a stove hearth, a large kettle and several pots, and a sturdy chopping table. To the right was the bedroom, consisting of a clothes closet and a large bed with tight-fitted wooden slats for a mattress. The two men sat down at the table and the boy handed Sullivan the coconut, into the side of which he had chopped a drinking hole. Sullivan drank deeply of the cool, sweet liquid and handed the fruit to O’Rourke, who sipped cautiously at first.
“Hey, that’s good,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Sullivan replied. “You know, this isn’t such a bad life. It’s kind of peaceful sitting here, not sweating, looking at the river, knowing no Cong’s sneaking up on you. I kind of like it.”
The two leaders remained at the house for several hours, passing the time in tranquil talk. Neighbors dropped by to say hello, with the old lady acting as beaming hostess, and omnipresent children gathered to sit on the door stoop and peer at the Americans. Sullivan had brought his camera and offered to take a picture of the entire family. No less than eight children gathered around the woman for the photograph. Then she insisted that Sullivan join them, which he did, with the neighbors joking that he was the father, and O’Rourke took the picture. The Marines declined an invitation to stay for dinner, but did give a boy money to buy two large beers, which they leisurely consumed before thanking the old lady for her hospitality and walking back to the fort.
That evening Suong decided to send out four close-in patrols to warn if any enemy forces were massing near the fort. Brannon hooted at the PFs as they left the fort, several of whom laughed and yelled back and gave him the finger as they walked out.
“Four patrols in Binh Yen Noi,” Brannon kidded Suong. “Never happen. Maybe they go boom-boom, huh?”
Suong had to laugh. He knew the PFs would check with their friends in the hamlet, and if the villagers had not heard Viet Cong passing by, there was a good chance one patrol would be left on guard, while the others visited their girl friends. Phuoc had told the Marines that in 1963 on the nearby island of Binh Thuy the PF platoon commander had gone over to the Viet Cong and in three years had killed fourteen of his former comrades. He knew who was sleeping with whom, and his favorite technique was to hide in a house which he suspected a PF would soon be visiting, catch his man at a disadvantage and kill him with a knife. No such incidents had occurred in Binh Nghia, although Phuoc conceded that even if they had, it would probably not have stopped each individual PF from believing it would never happen to him.
But on this night there was strict attendance to business, for the patrols had not been gone twenty minutes when the crumping sound of a grenade exploding somewhere in the hamlet carried back to the fort.
“Now that’s what I call a big boom-boom, Suong,” Brannon called out.
Suong grinned and nodded. Whatever the prior intentions of the PFs on patrol had been, both knew that now no patroller would sneak off alone to a lovers’ tryst.
No shots followed the grenade, and the listeners at the fort concluded that a patrol must have brushed near a startled guerrilla, who had thrown and run. The next two hours passed uneventfully, but shortly after ten in the evening from the direction of the marketplace drifted the muffled staccato of several weapons. One burst of firing, then another, then a few stray shots, then silence again. Another brush encounter.
By midnight all patrols were back in, none having observed or heard from the villagers any evidence of main-force activity, but two reporting that some small enemy groups were definitely within the hamlet.
“Let’s wait a couple of hours for those guerrillas to settle down,” O’Rourke said, “and then go out after them.”
According to the PFs, there were about thirty armed and active guerrillas operating in the village. Some had secret hiding places there, but most had moved across to the Phu Longs and came back only at night. Almost every one of them could be recognized on sight by the PFs, with whom they had grown up. Over a period of time the police had pieced together a thick book listing Viet Cong known to be working in or near the village. When translated, the book provided close-up portraits of the enemy soldiers.
The enemy was well organized. Across the river, a man named Pham Van Hoi, alias Lien, was responsible for providing food and shelter for the guerrillas who could no longer stay in Binh Nghia twenty-four hours a day. Hoi, forty-two years old and with a ninth-grade education, had joined the Viet Minh in 1945 and had risen to village chief by 1953. But the next year he was expelled from the Communist Party for getting a girl pregnant and went back to work in his home hamlet as a farmer. Fear of arrest by Diem’s police soon drove him to regroup to North Vietnam, where he received finance training and worked as a tax collector before infiltrating back to Binh Son district in 1962. Hoi managed the logistics in the Phu Longs, supplying both displaced guerrillas and itinerant main forces.
Although Hoi set the rice tax to be collected in Binh Nghia, it was doubtful if he would ever risk setting foot in that village while the combined unit was there. The combat tasks were left to the guerrillas and local force company, commanded by Nguyen Thi Son, described in government files as “about 45 years old, widower, no children, atheist, poor farmer, has a primary education. He is tall, large build, strong, active…is in habit of speaking quickly and after each sentence he clears his throat, lack of high serving spirit, quick-tempered, used to thunder out against people, local residents don’t like him.” Son attended to military matters, while Nguyen Suyen was “responsible for the Political Section” and for relations with the villagers. Prisoners questioned by government interrogators had described Suyen as “about 35 years old, married and has one child…is a poor farmer and an atheist. He is thin, slope-shouldered, looks down when walking. He is quiet, high-spirited, self-possessed and polite. All local residents like him. He has been a member of the Communist Party since 1950 and was arrested for a year in 1957. He can suffer all hardships and difficulties.”
In his intelligence file, Thanh also had listed nonfighting members of the Viet Cong organization who still resided in the village, former members of front committees who were temporarily inactive, but who still might occasionally help the Viet Cong either because of threats or promises of reward, or out of loyalty. These were the little fish Thanh frequently arrested, beat and sent to short jail terms at district.
In contrast, the village also harbored a few true, dedicated, dangerous stay-behind agents, members of the Viet Cong Security Section. No one in the village, including the guerrillas, knew who they were. They would not be found participating in a random firefight; that was the chancy job of the guerrillas, whose persistent presence was a constant reminder to the people that the struggle for the village was still undecided.
At two in the morning a rover patrol set out to seek the guerrillas. O’Rourke thought enoug
h time had elapsed to lull the enemy into a feeling of safety. If there was no action in Binh Yen Noi, he planned to strike out for the My Hués. So it was a large patrol which left the gate—six Marines in all, including Sullivan. As the Marines filed out, Luong, the ex–Viet Minh, rolled off the sandbags where he had been dozing and fell into line behind his friend Brannon. He didn’t say anything, just grinned meanly and strutted along, his M-1 rifle, overly long for him, slung upside down beneath his right armpit. His presence changed the tone of the group. He only went on those patrols which he thought would make contact. With Luong in their midst, the Marines tried harder to make less noise.
Riley had point, and O’Rourke gave him his head, the patrol having no set route or destination. For two hours they roamed at a slow, slow pace, avoiding the main trails, using children’s paths, slipping through backyards, Luong stopping by houses where low lights still burned to listen to the talk from inside. There was no wind and the patrollers kept moving to avoid the mosquitoes. In the warm air all soon were thoroughly soaked with their own sweat. First the point took them north toward the sand dunes, then east toward the market and the river, then south toward the cemetery, and northeast toward the dunes again.
“Rile,” O’Rourke whispered, “head outside. We’ll take a break on the dunes.”
To go out on the dunes, or to come from the dunes into the hamlet, one had to pass through a large, groaning gate, one of seven official entrances in the mile of bamboo fence the Revolutionary Development workers had insisted the villagers build around the hamlets. Theoretically, it kept out the Viet Cong, who in reality could cut their way in at almost any point. Phuoc wasn’t exactly sure why his RDs had to erect that fence; but it was one of the ninety-eight tasks his men had to complete according to Saigon regulations before the Binh Yen Noi area could be labeled pacified, and Phuoc, running hard for election to the National Assembly, was not about to cross some higher-ranking officials over something as trivial as a fence. Yet he was a shrewd enough politician to promise the people that he would, if elected, speak to the Ministry of Rural Reconstruction in Saigon about their silly fence-building project which took time away from planting rice and catching fish.
The PFs argued that there was some military value in the fence, for often the Viet Cong were too pressed for time or just too lazy to break down part of the fence, which was a noisy operation in any case, and so instead they would come through the gates. Even if the gate beaters did not sound the alarm at such times, sooner or later the information would drift back in rumor form to the fort.
This was not the hamlet’s first experience with a fence. Once before, in 1962, a fence had gone up, after Binh Yen Noi had been designated a Strategic Hamlet. Then the PFs had learned to approach fence gates with caution, since twice they had lost men in the procedure. Once the Viet Cong were waiting in ambush on the other side of the gate and riddled the point man when he walked through; the other time two guerrillas hid beneath the platform where the beaters sat and silently garroted the rear guard of a PF patrol, the sounds of his death being blotted out by the creak of the gate being shut by the beaters.
As Riley approached the gate to the dunes, Luong cut out of line and overtook him, grasping him by the shoulder and gesturing to the Marine to stay put while he went ahead. The beaters’ all-clear signal—the wooden tap-tap-tapping—was a familiar background noise which followed the Marines through the hamlet on every patrol. It was so familiar that Luong had disappeared into the darkness before Riley realized he had heard no tapping from the post to their front.
The patrollers waited for Luong to make his stalk. Several minutes passed with only the usual night sounds: a dog somewhere yapping, a few crickets chirping, the slight scuffing of the restive Marines, a hacking night cough from a nearby house, a water buffalo with the patrollers’ scent in his nostrils stamping and snorting. Then the Marines were jarred by Luong’s deep-voiced roar, followed by panicked, breathless gasps and a thrashing in the underbrush. As one man, the six Americans charged forward, covering the thirty yards to the gate in a few seconds, coming with muzzles leveled, only to see three beaters cowering on their low bamboo platform and Luong furiously chopping with his machete at a thick bamboo plant. “Asleep” was all he said in explanation as he shoved past the dumbfounded Americans and began whacking at the beaters with his heavy switch. He stopped only when his arm grew tired, then shouted at one of the bruised beaters, who scrambled off his perch and swiftly pulled open the gate. Next Luong took and shoved him out the gate, so that he would draw first fire in case an ambush waited. Satisfied all was clear, Luong walked out onto the desert.
Several hundred yards out on the white dunes, O’Rourke called a halt. The open desert was the safest place to take a fifteen-minute rest. The men collapsed and lay breathing through dry mouths. They had left their canteens behind because they sloshed back and forth when half empty. During the day the temperature had risen to 109 degrees and the night was not much cooler. On the dunes with nothing but cactus and small bramblebushes and ridge after ridge of sand there seemed no escape from the thirst and the heat which had caked the dry spittle to the roofs of their mouths and had each man silently damning a climate which left him cold and wet and shivering one night and thirsty and hot and sweating the next.
All except Luong, who stood for a moment looking down at his prostrate companions, and then gestured to them to follow him. Unquestioning, they trudged after their new guide, fighting their way through loose sand ankle-deep up a steep slope and down the other side, following the course of a wash around two more ridges before coming to a flat space about the size of a football field, surrounded by dunes. There they saw the crumbled sides of what once had been a stone house, while a few feet away stood a stone well, and perched on the well’s edge a rusty bucket trailing a short piece of frayed rope. Luong laid down his rifle, took off his crossed bandoliers of ammunition, stepped out of his sandals, rolled up his trousers, grasped the rope in his teeth, placed the bucket behind his back and climbed down the side of the well, disappearing into the blackness. A few moments later the delighted Marines could hear the bucket being dunked, and when Luong appeared, he was grasping a gallon of water. Twice he repeated the procedure, slaking the thirst of every Marine. Afterward they lingered longer than the originally allotted time, reluctant once their mouths were again wet to leave the soft and comfortable sands, to stop looking up at the stars, to walk away from a place which had brought peace and succor to them.
“It’s four-thirty,” O’Rourke said. “The hell with My Hué tonight. It’ll be getting light in another hour. Let’s go back in.”
Reluctantly the men got to their feet, their sweat now dried and caked in white crusts on their shirts, their calf muscles cramped. In their first tentative steps back toward the hamlet they looked like tottering old men. As they entered the clammy dark of the hamlet’s foliage, the patrollers revived almost despite themselves, instinct overriding fatigue. They avoided the main trails when they could, twisting their way laboriously through the backyards, often just guessing where they were, not especially concerned about directional errors because they were the only patrol out, resigned to enduring until light.
They had almost reached the back side of the marketplace when Riley halted suddenly. The patrol jerked up short and for several minutes nobody moved. Riley walked silently back to O’Rourke and whispered: “I thought I heard something on the path to our right. Did you?”
“I’m not sure,” O’Rourke whispered. “We were still moving when you stopped. Go ahead, but take it slow.”
They proceeded at a creep for a few minutes, when again Riley halted, this time going down on his knees, placing his rifle on the ground and flattening out. His head pointed toward a path six feet away. The other members of the patrol quietly lay down about ten feet apart and faced in the same direction. O’Rourke crawled to Riley’s side.
“I know for sure I hear someone behind us. They’re coming up this path,” Riley whisp
ered.
“Do you think they’ve heard us?” O’Rourke asked.
“No—too far away.”
O’Rourke scooted back and warned the others. Sullivan and Fielder pivoted about to protect the rear and right flank of the patrol. Riley, O’Rourke, Brannon, Lummis and Luong faced the path and waited, having slipped off their safeties.
They heard the enemy approaching, not the steady noises of careless footsteps but the intermittent crunches and snaps of people walking cautiously but not cautiously enough. The middle of the path was obscured in dark shadows. The ambushers could not see any figures approaching; they could only gauge the distance by ear. O’Rourke thought he saw a man pass by him, but he could not be sure. He heard another man getting close.
Not one of the Marines could remember who sprang the ambush. All were agreed that the seven rifles opened up within the same second. Swinging his weapon back and forth, each patroller fired until he had emptied a magazine. It was strictly area fire at sounds. Not one Marine could actually see a target or be sure that he had hit anything. Then O’Rourke and Riley rose to their knees and heaved two grenades back down the trail in the direction from which the Viet Cong had come.
“Cease fire!” O’Rourke yelled. “Riley, block for us to the front. A couple of you guys search the area.”
The action had lasted eight seconds.
Lummis and Brannon stepped out of the bushes, peering at the ground in front of them.
“One,” Lummis said.
“Blown away?” O’Rourke asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Luong walked forward and struck a match in front of the faces of the two men. He grunted once but said nothing.
“Get their rifles,” O’Rourke said. “We’ll head in by the main trail. Make sure you have fresh mags in those weapons. Fielder, take point.”
It was growing light when they arrived back at the fort. Thanh was waiting, having heard the firing. Luong spoke to him, identifying one of the dead guerrillas by name. Thanh took out the book in which were recorded the name and affiliations of every adult in the village, with a special roster of those who had joined the Viet Cong. It contained about two hundred names. Thanh drew a neat line through one of them.