The Village

by Bing West

With cotton stuffed in their ears, the gunners tapped the large firing buttons and with a sound like a thunderclap the guns spat flame and the shells roared through the air like express trains and exploded in the paddies, missing the Viet Cong, missing Fleming’s patrol, but shocking the battlefield into silence.

  Theilepape took advantage of the moment to sprint toward Sullivan’s room, hoping to reach a rack of LAWs stored in a small gear closet. But inside the entire room was blazing and neither Sullivan nor Phuoc was to be seen. Cradling the machine gun in his arms, Theilepape stumbled backward to his bunker again.

  Sullivan. Back at his post, Theilepape had just decided that Sullivan must have joined the PFs in the rear of the fort when he heard the sergeant yell from the front of the courtyard just opposite his machine-gun bunker. There followed a strong burst of automatic-weapons fire, punctuated by the feeble pop of a pistol. Another long burst. A pop. Another long burst. No reply from the pistol. Sullivan was dead.

  Theilepape was the only American left alive, and his machine gun was blocking the hundred-odd men waiting to storm through the main gate, annihilate the PFs and raise the Viet Cong flag. So the sappers held a huddled conference near the burnt-out tent and then they came at Theilepape again.

  From the way they started moving, Theilepape was sure he would soon die. No sapper again exposed himself by venturing into the open courtyard. Instead, they crept up the trench line past Sullivan’s body to the front of the fort, and once there they entered the section of trench which ran straight to the machine-gun bunker. While several skirmishers peppered the bunker’s sandbags with rifle bullets, a group of grenadiers with sackfuls of grenades bellied forward.

  The first grenade was short and blew off harmlessly outside the bunker. Theilepape quickly grasped their simple plan but didn’t know what to do about it. Each time he raised his head to loose a burst, he could hear the rounds crack and smack about him. To get at the grenadiers he would have to lean far out over the sandbags and he guessed he would be riddled the instant he did so. Believing the end had come, he spent his last few minutes in the bunker yelling over the radio to PF Hill. Between the booms of the recoilless rifles, he could dimly hear what he correctly thought was Fleming’s voice from somewhere in the paddies.

  “Turn it off! Turn it off!” Fleming kept shouting over and over, assuming the fort was in friendly hands and worried about being hit by the blind cannons blasting from PF Hill.

  There were other shouts. Suong was trying to get his attention, calling something about PFs in the paddies, and Theilepape was aware that Vietnamese voices up the road closer to PF Hill were shouting Marine names and nicknames too. It turned out later that the voices belonged to the PFs who had hidden in Binh Yen Noi and who, after the firing began, had gotten together and moved to help the fort, driven either by shame or fear of what Suong might do to them later.

  “Cease fire! Tell Brown to cease fire!” Theilepape screamed above the din into his radio. “There are Marines and PFs out there.”

  Then, sensing the closeness of his death, pleading, almost crying with the voice on the phone which for half an hour had been assuring him a Marine squad was on the way: “Where are they, man, where are they? Where are they?”

  His eyes were watering with tears of rage and grief and fear when the enemy found the range and the first grenade bounced in and dribbled around his feet. Unable in the dark to see to pick it up, Theilepape tried to get out. He had almost made it when the blast caught him in his legs and buttocks and picked him up and hurled him from the bunker. Badly shaken and bleeding profusely, he staggered to his feet and rolled over the parapet back into the bunker. Another grenade sailed in and he dove out into the trench, only to land on a third grenade, the force of which lifted his body right off the ground. In a state of severe shock, unable to focus his eyes, with lacerations of the foot, wrist, shoulders and head, Theilepape reeled backward into the courtyard and collapsed.

  The Marines’ fight had bought time for the PFs to organize a defense outside the main hall at the rear of the fort. Suong had only ten armed men, plus Thanh and his two policemen, with which to work. There were about a dozen other Vietnamese sleeping in the fort that night, but they were village officials and elders, mostly old, all unarmed and none a military man. Suong lost three PFs in the first five seconds of the attack. Two died when a satchel charge was pitched into the main hall, and the PF walking post had disappeared. In the first few minutes while the Marines were battling the bulk of the sapper platoon on the opposite side of the courtyard, the PFs were kept on the defensive by a smaller group of enemy who were sniping at them from the rear trench line. Assuming they, too, like the Marines, were under full assault, the PFs had blazed away with their weapons on full automatic, doing little damage to the enemy using the cover of the trench.

  It was only in the full lull before the enemy’s final assault on the machine gun that Suong was able to sort out the pattern of the attack and calm his men down. Suong could clearly hear the enemy yelling back and forth from the paddies to the fort.

  “Now?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Well, hurry up.”

  Suong told his men that when the machine gun went out, the enemy outside was coming in. He tried calling to Theilepape to tell him to get out of the bunker and join them, but Theilepape hadn’t understood, and even if he had, his actions indicated that he was determined to stay there until the end. The PFs saw the bunker buckle under explosions. They saw Theilepape reel, stumble and finally sprawl face down in the mud.

  Bac Si Khoi went after him. Khoi, the older brother of the PF who had been killed in June, was the self-taught medic for the Vietnamese. He looked fifteen years old and he usually had a shy smile on his face when he talked. Leaving his carbine behind, Khoi moved swiftly. He was out of the small PF perimeter at a full run, into the courtyard bright under the harsh, colorless light of artillery flares, and beside the fallen Theilepape before the enemy reacted. As the bullets started to whip about him, Suong called on his men to use what was practically the last of their ammunition to discourage the aim of the sappers. Under cover of the PF fire, Khoi dragged Theilepape behind the fort to the garbage pit, which was piled high with empty C-ration cartons and cans. In the belief that he and the other PFs could not hold out, Khoi rolled the unconscious Theilepape into the pit and heaped litter over the body, hoping the enemy would not find him.

  The efforts of the PFs to protect Khoi and Theilepape displayed a surprising pocket of strength and checked the momentum the enemy had gained from silencing the machine gun. The sappers fell back to their stronghold, that portion of the trench directly behind the still flickering tent. They had been on the attack for half an hour, more often crawling than moving erect. They, too, were low on ammunition, short of breath, sweat-soaked, uncertain whether reinforcements for the defenders might arrive before their own did. Once forced back, the pressure and the excitement abated, and the sappers collapsed. Suong could hear their leaders exhorting them to get out of the trench and to keep firing at the PFs. But when only a few desultory rounds followed, the PF commander assumed he would have the respite of a few minutes while the sappers rested before resuming the attack.

  In the lull, Suong set out to find more ammunition. But as Theilepape had been, he, too, was driven back from the storeroom by the flames licking at that side of the building. He went around to try the rear and encountered flames there also, so he was heading back down the rear trench when he saw Phuoc’s body draped over a loose mound of sandbags. A man was kneeling beside the body and with a short knife was hacking the head away from the trunk. The man was absorbed in his task and Suong was standing above him before he looked up, just in time to see the blow which killed him. Suong swung his carbine like a baseball bat, smashing the man full in his upturned face, the man jerking backward over his own heels and Suong stepping forward, striking with the butt of his carbine again and again.

  Suong dragged the mutilated corpse of Phuoc back to the
PF position, where the PFs were watching the sappers scurrying up the trench line opposite them. It was apparent that the enemy, rather than charging across the open courtyard, would crawl around by the front of the fort past the machine-gun bunker and attack down the trench line toward them, using the grenading tactic which had worked against Theilepape. Luong scrambled up onto the sloping roof of the adobe building and lay facing the front of the fort. There was only one break in the square trench line around the fort, and that was at the front gate. In getting across, each enemy soldier would have to expose himself to the bright flares for at least two seconds. Luong waited for someone to try.

  Behind him Theilepape had regained consciousness and pawed his way from the garbage pit. Hiding in a corner, Minh, the village chief clerk, saw him and called to Khoi. Theilepape could hear yelling in Vietnamese but no shooting, and with his mind not clear, his only thought was to rejoin the Marines. He stumbled around the back of the building, past the Viet Cong with the crushed skull, up the west side of the fort to the smoldering tent, to the bodies of Sueter and Fielder. He knelt by his fallen friends for a moment, remembrance coming back, then on his hands and knees he crawled forward to where Brannon lay.

  That was where Khoi caught up to him. He grabbed Theilepape by the shoulder and shook him.

  “VC. VC,” he said, pointing to the front trench line, a dozen yards in front of them.

  Theilepape looked at him dully, reached out and picked up Brannon’s automatic rifle, and followed Khoi back around the rear of the fort.

  Luong watched them crawl from the courtyard. If the Viet Cong had seen them, they gave no sign of it, so Luong assumed the enemy’s attention was riveted on the open spot in front of them.

  The first sapper to emerge from the dark trench into the light by the front gate did not dash across. Once fully erect and exposed, he hesitated, uncertain, reluctant, like a bather at the edge of frigid waters. With one shot at a distance of less than twenty yards, Luong dropped the enemy soldier, his shot spinning him back into the trench. The other sappers quickly fired at the building, their rounds ricocheting harmlessly off slate roof. Luong had dropped out of sight on the back side of the roof and the next sapper could have scurried safely across the opening, but none tried.

  Instead, the enemy set up a great clamor, shouting at the assault party still waiting in the paddies, yelling for them to come in. And the PFs took up the shouting, jeering at their enemies, cursing, daring them to come on. All were speaking the same language, all except the North Vietnamese having the same accent and using identical slang expressions and invectives, their voices drowning each other out. From the paddies farther from the fort the PFs from the Binh Yen Noi patrol were yelling to Suong while Fleming and Learch were bellowing in English. In the midst of this bedlam the leader of the enemy assault party was screaming for clarification, for just one voice to speak, obviously too confused or too reluctant to commit his men, knowing that the recoilless rifles on the nearby hill were loaded and looking for a target now that the flares had come, and believing that somewhere some Marines were moving, raising the specter that he might get into the fort but not back out again. Finally, he decided and yelled for the sappers to pull out and that he would cover them while they did.

  Suong and Luong and Khoi and the other PFs and the village officials heard the shouted orders at the same time as did the sappers and set up a cheer. The sappers responded with curses and threats but few bullets, both sides being almost out of ammunition, Luong having fired the last of his clips to demonstrate to the sappers that the PFs were well stocked. As the sappers withdrew, a Viet Cong and an overly enthusiastic PF, darting forward too close, collided. Neither had a bullet left and they settled for an exchange of kicks before each fled back to his own ranks. The sappers, carrying their wounded and five dead, went out the same way they had come in, in plain and slow view as they crossed the moat, but in no danger from the PFs, who were throwing rocks. In the hands of an unsteady Theilepape who refused to lie down, Brannon’s rifle supplied the last six shots at the enemy.

  * * *

  An hour after it had begun, the fight was over. By two in the morning the enemy was clear of the fort. They split into three groups when leaving. The main body cut south across the rice paddies to the Tra Bong River, where boats were drawn up to carry them to the Phu Longs. Once there, they would disperse and be in their wooded base camps before dawn. To protect the boats, a small group lingered behind on the edge of the mangroves and kept up a desultory fire on the fort and on Fleming and Learch. The third unit, a propaganda squad, scattered dozens of leaflets, some in English and some in Vietnamese, before leaving the fort. The English message ran: “Stop raping our women and butchering our babies, leave our country, refuse to fight, protest the war.” The names of two U.S. senators to whom the Marines should write were given. The Vietnamese message stressed that the GVN was going to lose the war, so it would be better for the people to join the victors—the Viet Cong—while they still could. Distribution of the leaflets was not limited to the fort. The propaganda team left the area by passing through Binh Yen Noi, where they dropped leaflets on the main trail and laughed loudly to ensure that the villagers, huddled in their bomb shelters, heard the sounds of their unchallenged passage.

  After the Viet Cong had left the fort and the firing had died away, the Marine squad from PF Hill entered the fort, claiming they had been held up by a sniper hiding in the schoolhouse at the foot of their hill. It was nearly three in the morning. The battle was over. Occasional rounds still sang through the night, but nobody paid them much notice. Six wounded PFs were bandaged, defensive positions were assigned the new troops, and Theilepape waited for the helicopter which would fly him out. The Marine radio operator from the reaction squad was nervous and unsure of his location, so Theilepape grabbed the radio and called in his own medical evacuation, as well as that of the wounded PFs. At three-thirty, the wounded were lifted out by helicopter. Theilepape’s last impression of the fort was glimpsing the little dog, Boots, sitting by Sullivan’s body, whimpering.

  Book IV

  “Work Very Hard—Never Look Tired”

  14

  Theilepape would recover from his wounds, but five Americans—Brannon, Glasser, Sueter, Fielder and Sullivan—were dead, as were six Vietnamese defenders, including Phuoc. At first light, General Lowell English, commander of the 1st Marine Division, entered the smoldering fort and called aside the six surviving Marines who had been out on patrol during the night. Speaking softly, he said they had a choice. They could stay or they could go. Perhaps what was needed was a full Marine platoon operating as Marine platoons regularly did. The combined platoon might be too light for the job, and too exposed. They may have been overmatched from the start. Delicately, the general was telling them that he was considering pulling them out.

  The survivors couldn’t understand that.

  “The general was a nice guy,” Fleming said in an interview a month later. “He was trying to give us an out. But we couldn’t leave. What would we have said to the PFs after the way we pushed them to fight the Cong? We had to stay. There wasn’t one of us who wanted to leave.

  “The only people we wanted out was that worthless reaction squad that didn’t get to the fort until after it was overrun.”

  With a small smile and a firm handshake for each of them, General English left, promising that the six replacements for the combined unit would be first-class volunteers and that the strange Marines and other Americans milling around the fort would be gone by the next day.

  As the general flew out, a helicopter from corps headquarters carrying a special police interrogation team landed, having been called by Thanh, who suspected that the PF walking post had been killed by an inside agent. The interrogation team worked all day, with Thanh assisting, and questioned every Vietnamese who had had extensive dealings at the fort. One PF was questioned closely, but only for purposes of regular military intelligence. He had identified by voice his brother as
being among the sappers. But no one suggested any collusion between the two; his efforts to kill his brother had been too genuine.

  The investigators, however, brought back for re-examination a second and then a third time a wealthy village official who slept at the fort but was not there the night of the attack. The Americans could not cope with the quick-flowing dialogue, but the third time the man was questioned, a group of PFs were called on to listen. When they vigorously denied what he was saying, the special police took him away.

  Later that week Thanh learned that the man bribed some of his captors and was set free without further questioning. He never came back to the village; instead, he moved to Saigon. There was talk for a while about taking up a collection to send an assassin to Saigon to track the man down, but it came to nothing because Thanh, the only person among the parochial village militia capable of finding the man in the sprawling city, did not think he could get away with it.

  The American investigation team with General English attributed the success of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese commandos to the work of “a fifth columnist” and recommended Sergeant Sullivan for the Silver Star, the only medal for courage ever to be given to a Marine at Fort Page. But the Marines in the combined unit never believed conspiracy had caused their defeat; complacency had. A summer of growing success had spoiled them. They had been too cocky, too sure. Once they had learned how to patrol, they had not thought of how the enemy might be forced to change. They had let down for the sake of sleep. And every new member of the combined unit, be he Vietnamese or American, was told the tale of that night before he was posted to guard duty.

  On the afternoon of September 15, 1966, funeral services were held for the six Vietnamese and the five Americans in the small pagoda next to the marketplace in the hamlet of Binh Yen Noi. The Buddhist monks came to the fort and asked the combined-unit Marines to come with them, and the Vietnamese and the Americans walked side by side through the village in the massive funeral procession, with the cymbals clanging and the women wailing and the sky heavy with rain. When the prayers were said to Buddha, the monks mentioned the fallen Americans by name. The Marines thanked the villagers for their sorrow and for their prayers. In the drizzle of evening, they walked slowly back to the fort, where they found Sergeant James White waiting for them.