by Bing West
11
A few nights later, O’Rourke was again engaged. It was a short patrol designed to set up an early-evening ambush along the river in an effort to catch the enemy when they first entered the village. With the lieutenant were Garcia, Brannon and PFC John Glasser, a thin, bespectacled young man who handled the supply job for the combined unit. Choosing a likely vantage point on the river bank, O’Rourke placed Garcia and Brannon on the flanks, keeping Glasser, who had less experience, with him. The sky was overcast and visibility limited. There was little wind. When they did not make contact in the first hour, O’Rourke judged it unlikely that any Viet Cong would be crossing near them, so he decided to tutor Glasser on the different night sounds they were hearing. When Glasser showed keen interest and whispered question after question, O’Rourke became absorbed in responding and neglected to keep close watch on the river.
After an hour of conversation, O’Rourke decided to abandon the ambush and shift farther up the bank, so he moved away from Glasser to signal to his flankers. That done, he crawled back to his original position to take one final look around. What he saw made him grasp Glasser’s arm.
“Look,” he whispered, “two of them.”
“Where?”
“Right there, right in front of us.”
Almost directly to their front, down the bank near the water loomed two figures, their outlines just barely visible against the background of the water.
“There?” Glasser whispered.
“Yes, can’t you see with those glasses? Lie flat. I’ll take them. Just don’t move.”
O’Rourke could hear Brannon and Garcia coming up behind him. He knew he should wait so that they could all fire together, but he was furious with himself for breaking the cardinal rule of strict attention when on patrol.
“Screw it,” he thought. “I’ll drop both of them myself.”
As Glasser watched in amazement, O’Rourke lined his automatic rifle up on the crouching enemy and squeezed the trigger, hugging the rifle to his shoulder to hold down the recoil. The red tracers streamed forward in a blast of light and sound, struck their targets full on and ricocheted skyward in a screaming cascade of white and red.
O’Rourke had poured twenty bullets into two rocks.
Silence. The sound of embarrassment while O’Rourke realized what had happened. As he had talked, the tide had dropped, exposing the two enemy stones to his refocused attention and angry fire. Now Glasser was looking at him as Sancho Panza must often have looked at Don Quixote.
Predictably, Brannon was the first to speak: “Sure looked pretty, Lieutenant.”
Then Garcia: “That was still some damn fine shooting.”
Brannon again: “Yeh, and those rocks would have fooled me. It’s like you keep telling us: play it safe.”
Garcia turned to Glasser.
“You were lucky to be here, Glasser. That’s some of the finest shooting you’ll ever see. You remember that for your next patrol.”
For a week O’Rourke lived with the fear that he would be forever nicknamed “The Rock,” but the incident was never mentioned. Brannon and Garcia were looking after him.
In mid-August the frequency of contacts started to drop off, and the PFs heard from the villagers that the Viet Cong were starting to move by side trails to avoid contact with the combined-unit patrols. Then one day Thanh received information that a favorite enemy route was the narrow track upon which Larry Page had been killed two months earlier. That morning the police chief had arrested a short, muscular man garbed in tattered farmer’s clothes who claimed to own a half-hectare of paddy just north of My Hué. He was not on the census rolls of the village, recently updated by the industrious Phuoc, and since Thanh was not in the habit of arresting every male he saw, it was apparent someone had informed the police that the farmer was not who he said he was.
Between them, Thanh and Phuoc broke down the man’s cover in half an hour. Not a trained agent, he was unused to deceit and once he was convinced his arrest was no accident, he acknowledged what Thanh already knew: he was an assistant platoon leader in the P31st District Force Company, sent by Le Quan Viet, the one-armed VC district chief, to contact some local guerrillas and to confirm their reports concerning the tactics and habits of the combined unit. Quan Viet had become leery of casual incursions into the village and had just about abandoned the idea that the combined unit could be intimidated into ceasing its patrols. The prisoner was to determine if there were routes which could be used for rice takeouts or for the passage of main-force units without bumping into a patrol. The hamlet guerrillas claimed there were, but Quan Viet was no longer taking their word for conditions in the village.
The prisoner gave many answers in refutation of assertions by Thanh, who responded to the man’s defiance by knocking him down several times. But each time he struggled back to his feet, despite his arms being bound behind him, and stood at attention, with his heels locked together. The man had courage, and Thanh did not seem to resent his attempted spying the way he did the activities of the Viet Cong Security Section. When the questioning was finished, the PFs wiped the blood from the man’s face and arranged for a guarded sampan to take him to district. Thanh did not go along, and it was reasonable for the Americans to assume that the spy, who was happier (and probably better) as a soldier, arrived safely at district.
Hearing that the safest guerrilla route was the track where Page had been killed, all the Americans clamored to be included on the next ambush sent there. Suong, however, advised that only a few could go without making too much noise, and he singled out as a guide a PF who disliked patrolling but whose family lived next to the path being used by the guerrillas. The PF would not go without taking a friend, so O’Rourke made the decision that he would go and take just one other Marine. That way each American would be paired with a Vietnamese who knew the village. If the track was as obscure and overgrown as it was described, they would only get a head-on shot at the Viet Cong anyway. For his steadiness, Fielder was chosen to accompany O’Rourke.
In keeping with a cover plan, they left the fort just after dark as part of a combined patrol of twelve men and followed the main trail into Binh Yen Noi. The night was clear, with a bit of light lingering from the sunset, and even in the shadows of the hamlet each man could see the outline of the patroller in front of him. It was a patrol designed to be a shade too early and a footstep too big. From most houses they passed, they could hear supper plates rattling, and several homes, trying to catch a slight breeze on a warm evening, had not yet closed their doors in keeping with the light curfew. Some children were still playing in their front yards, and a few men, home late from the fields or the sea, were stooped over washbasins alongside their houses. Fragments of conversation, with each word clearly distinguishable, floated by the patrol. Once there were the excited screams of children and a ball sailed over a hedge and bounced by the patrollers, with a little girl in fast pursuit. Retrieving the ball, she scooted back inside her yard without once looking directly at the armed men. At least two dozen villagers saw the patrollers passing. None called out, or waved, or in any way acknowledged what they saw, lest a watching neighbor interpret the action as active commitment to the GVN cause and denounce the waver to the Viet Cong.
That was the way of it. Anyone branded as an active helper or spy for either side could not sleep in his own house at night but had to seek the protection of the armed camp which he supported. So the schoolteacher and the hamlet elders slept at the fort, while most of the hamlet guerrillas slept across the river in the Phu Longs. But when armed Viet Cong did slip into the hamlet, they would ask at certain sympathetic doors whether a patrol had passed and, with the shroud of night guaranteeing the informers anonymity, they would pick up information, just as the PFs did using the same technique at different doors. In case the Viet Cong were already in the hamlet, they would be informed that a large patrol had passed through, headed in the direction of the My Hués.
The patrol moved according to
plan, paced by a point man who dallied so that they cleared the northern end of Binh Yen Noi under conditions of full darkness—minus four men. O’Rourke’s party had dropped off in a patch of deep shadows and waited for several minutes for the main patrol to move well away. Then they were up and picking their way through the weeds and brambles, the PF guide in front following no path but just a general direction which took them toward the rear of the hamlet. As they went, the houses seemed to close in on them and they passed from backyard to backyard at turtle speed. It was like walking down an apartment corridor hoping no one would open his door and look out. There was no breeze and the air hung heavy with kitchen smells, and the four men were edging around the sides of houses so closely connected it sounded as though the conversation of one family would interfere with that of another.
In an hour they covered about three hundred yards, and on a map their route could best be duplicated by the doodlings of a two-year-old. Then in what seemed like just another in an endless series of backyards, the guide stopped, beckoned the Marines forward, and pointed toward the front of the house, where a square of light from the front room spilled onto the ground outside.
“There?” O’Rourke whispered incredulously.
“Hi—hi,” the PF nodded in reply.
O’Rourke dared not risk further conversation, but he was plainly not enthusiastic about lying in ambush within fifteen feet of some stranger’s house. He looked at Fielder and shrugged. Fielder shrugged back. So they started forward, O’Rourke in the lead, poking ahead with the toe of his boot, tamping the ground ever so slightly for twigs, nudging aside mats of decaying leaves, putting the heel down, shifting the body weight to balance on the forward foot, easing the rear leg out in front, and repeating the process again. The act required balance, strong thigh muscles and patience. One step a minute was good time.
They came to the patch of light which filled a small open space between the house and a bamboo thicket through which it would have been impossible to move in silence. O’Rourke handed his rifle to Fielder, squatted on his haunches and cocked his head sideways, squinting up into the open window, watching the bobbing head and shoulders of a woman appear and disappear as she went about some household cleaning task. He waited until she was turning away from the window and then, hunched over, scooted across the six feet of light. The next time she turned away Fielder handed over both rifles. The time after that Fielder crossed over.
They waited for the PFs to copy the procedure. Like two boys being encouraged to enter deep water for the first time in their lives, the PFs would crawl to the light’s edge, peer anxiously across at the vigorously gesturing Marines, glance up at the window and scoot back deeper into the shadows at each approach of the housewife. It was a clever act. O’Rourke knew they were not frightened of the woman. They did not want to cross because they dreaded being trapped alongside the Americans in a lopsided firefight with no escape except across a patch of glaring light.
After several minutes, the Marines gave up their pantomimed entreaties and swiveled around to check out their new surroundings. They had the house behind them, and directly in front of them ran a large ditch which held only a few inches of stagnant water and stank from garbage and defecation. A single board spanned the ditch, the sides of which were scantily decorated with hardy shrubs. By poking and peering at different angles, O’Rourke was able to see a slight track leading away from the board on the far side. By lying in wait at the corner of the house with the patch of light just behind their feet, they could fire at anyone crossing the plank.
With a few hand signals, they reached agreement on the plan and prepared for a long wait. Taking positions side by side so that a whisper could be passed mouth to ear, they gently extended the bipods on their rifles and set them down, muzzles toward the track. Next they set down their other equipment. O’Rourke carried in one sack a dozen magazines, each separated from the other by a burlap wrap. He placed the sack beside his rifle, and from the eight pockets of his dark-green utilities pulled and placed next to the sack three antipersonnel grenades, one illumination grenade, two hand flares and a flashlight. Fielder wore a camouflage jacket tailored to include a dozen separate pouches. When loaded, it weighed over twenty pounds. He slipped the jacket off and placed it beside his rifle. In a green T-shirt, tanned arms and a face black with grease paint, he still blended with the shadows.
Both lay down on their stomachs and waited. The hamlet was quieting down as most of the children in nearby houses fell asleep. But in the house beside which they were lying the housewife was shrieking in such a shrill voice that neither Marine feared he would doze off as long as she was awake and talking. The stink from the ditch made breathing unpleasant, and even as they lay quite still, beads of sweat rolled off their faces. The sweat washed away their foul-smelling insect repellant, and the mosquitoes soon found them and came in droves from the ditch, humming around their ears, taunting them before biting. Rather than slap them with a human sound which carried for several yards, the Marines tried to brush them off or catch and squeeze them in their hands, accepting bites on their palms and fingers for the pleasure of killing some of their tormentors. The shrill housewife added to their discomfort by pitching a bowl of water out the window, the fright from the sudden splash jerking the tense bodies of the men with the force of electricity. After a while their elbows and forearms, bone-bruised from previous patrols, ached too much and they stretched their arms straight out, letting their jaws dig into a ground prickly with tiny pebbles and allowing the weight of their upper bodies to sag against their rib cages. But, after a time their chests ached too much and twitching could not defend against the merciless mosquitoes and it would be back up on their elbows, with hands pawing at the insect-filled air. For four hours they endured the bites, and the nagging wife who just wouldn’t turn out the light and go to bed, and the fetid air, and the pain of an immobile body on an unyielding surface. They endured, sustained by the vision of their enemies walking across the ditch.
Shortly after midnight the crack of a branch alerted O’Rourke, who grabbed Fielder by the wrist and gestured with his head in the direction of the sound. Both listened intently and both caught the next sound, the unmistakable clank of metal on metal, as though a man with a rifle had stopped short and the next armed man in the column had bumped into him, their rifles briefly touching. Totally motionless, the Marines waited for the next move, O’Rourke slowly breathing through his mouth so that he could hear better.
Instead, they saw a man, or rather they saw where he had been. Across the ditch the bushes appeared darker than the gloom of the night around them, and yet one of the lighter patches between the bushes turned dark for an instant as a figure filled the space, then lightened again as he moved out of sight behind another bush. He was coming softly, and he was coming alone, a suspicious point man with courage and skill, sensing something wrong and dangerous yet not quite sure what or where it was, as skittish as a deer approaching some undergrowth where he had once been attacked by a tiger. O’Rourke was sure he was barefoot, for he seemed to flow along, as though he were skating rather than walking, sure of what was underfoot and concerned only with what lay on the other side of the ditch.
Once at the plank, the man stopped and just stood there, unaware that death lay ten yards away and that once he crossed the ditch his life would end. Yet something was gnawing at him, holding him back. For over a minute he stood debating with himself, then turned and walked back the way he had come, making a few careless noises, as if the unseen danger at the ditch were the less for having been briefly faced.
O’Rourke and Fielder silently slipped off their safeties and wriggled slightly behind their weapons to gain better firing positions, convinced the point was going back to bring up the main body and they might be able to cut down three or four of the enemy in their first burst. Then if the odds looked bad, they could run away while the Viet Cong were seeking cover and trying to regroup. They lost sight of the man, but a few moments later th
ey heard faint whispers and they listened for the footfalls or slight rattle of equipment which would indicate the column was moving toward them. Instead, the whispering continued, became louder, more sibilant, the paradoxical sound of an argument in whispers.
Finally silence, and the point man gliding toward them again. Again at the plank and again the balk, a whisper from the dark to prod him on, the foot on the plank, the fingers on the triggers. Then abruptly he was gone, back once again down the track, a shadow among shadows, a blot among the bushes. And this time there was a murmur of voices, insistence against flat defiance, followed by a slight shuffling at a receding tempo, and nothing more except the usual night sounds. It was over.
“Nuts,” hissed Fielder, in an expulsion of breath and anger.
“Umph!” came a gasp through the open window behind them, followed by the sound of a chair falling and a sharp puff of breath extinguishing the light inside the house. Despite themselves, both Marines let out snorts of laughter.
“Sorry,” Fielder whispered.
“No harm done. No way that point man was coming back here,” O’Rourke replied. “Let’s find the PFs.”
That did not prove to be an easy task. The Marines tried whispering the Vietnamese word for PF: “Nghia Quan? Nghia Quan?” No answer from the PFs. They tried tapping on their rifle stocks. No answer. Finally in exasperation they called out in low voices, “Nghia Quan?” No answer. The Marines were alone.
“They bugged out,” Fielder said.
“They’re probably at the fort,” O’Rourke replied. “Let’s go home.”