Guns Up!

by Johnnie Clark

  We acted like sailors who’d been at sea too long, each man stomping the firm ground of the oasis, shaking off the mud, and feeling for the weight of huge clinging leeches. I headed for the best shade I could find. Chan pointed to a small group of banana trees with giant, long green leaves just on the other side of what was once a well-kept hedgerow.

  The hedgerow surrounded a narrow, overgrown graveyard. Creeping tentacles of brown and yellow vines seemed to be feeding off the oval grave mounds. It looked ghoulish, but it was a perfect position for covering the right flank.

  Just as we reached an opening in the hedgerow someone shouted from behind us, “I want your gun team over here, John!” I knew the owner of the voice without looking.

  “What possible difference can it make?”

  “Just move it, Marine.”

  Chan and I looked at each other in disbelief. I wanted to tell the lieutenant that he sounded like a ten-year-old but didn’t.

  “Sanchez! I want your team over there with John.”

  Sanchez gave the lieutenant a quick thumbs up and headed toward us, with Simmons and the rest of his gun team close behind.

  Sanchez mumbled a tired “Semper fi” as we passed each other. Chan and Simmons exchanged the customary thumbs up.

  “Now aren’t you glad you came over?” Chan said as Simmons shuffled along behind Sanchez.

  “Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Simmons replied enthusiastically.

  The rest of the gun team were too tired to take their eyes off their feet.

  By the time Sanchez reached the opening in the hedgerow, Chan and I had gone twenty meters in the opposite direction. A popping explosion threw me to my stomach. I blinked my eyes clear and quickly looked behind me. Chan lay motionless, flattened to the ground. Blood trickled down the top of his camouflaged helmet, dripping over the greens and browns. I couldn’t speak. He looked dead.

  The helmet moved. He pulled his face out of the dirt, spitting a healthy portion of it at me.

  “You jerk! I thought you were dead!”

  “You don’t have to sound so disappointed. I thought so too!”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yes, how about you?”

  “I’m fine, but somebody ain’t.” I motioned toward the hedgerow. Part of it was now a large crater.

  Chan turned to look. Pieces of bloody flesh hung from the back of his flak jacket. I stood up, nudging Chan with my foot.

  “You got blood all over you,” I said.

  “I do?” Chan retorted. “You should see your back. You look like you’ve been sprayed with red paint.”

  I felt something on the back of my neck. I reached to slap it off, thinking it was a bug. It stuck to my hand. I held it out to see what it was. An unrecognizable fragment of a man dangled from my fingertips. Vomit came into my mouth. I spit it out quickly, hoping no one would see. No one did.

  Chan stood up. We started slowly toward the hedgerow. I saw Sanchez lying ten feet from the crater. The crater was exactly where I had stopped to argue with the lieutenant. I felt cold. Goose bumps swarmed over me.

  Chan looked down and shook his head. “Had to be a 155.”

  I walked over to Sanchez. He lay face down. I rolled him over. His eyes opened; he looked fully conscious. I turned to Chan. “He’s alive!”

  “Praise God,” Chan said quietly, then shouted, “Corpsman up!”

  Doc reached us quickly, with the lieutenant close behind.

  Sanchez looked up alertly. “I’m okay, Doc. Help the others. I’m okay. I’m okay. Simmons! Go check Simmons!”

  Doc began sobbing uncontrollably. He tried to remove bandages from his pack. Chan took the pack from the shaking corpsman and removed bandages and morphine. As he leaned over Sanchez to administer the morphine, my heart fell into my stomach. His legs were gone. Severed six inches below the waist. I hadn’t even noticed. Strangely enough the bleeding didn’t look too bad.

  Sanchez kept insisting he was okay. No one told him he wasn’t. He grabbed Chan’s arm with more strength than I thought possible from a man in his condition. “Find Simmons!”

  I couldn’t hold back the tears. I turned and headed for the crater to find Simmons. Arms and legs lay about the crater. “Four men missing,” a voice behind me said. I found a hand hanging from the branch of a small tree by the threads of what was once a forearm. A flak jacket held the upper torso of one man together, but the legs, head, and dog tags were gone. No one could be identified.

  We gathered the pieces together and placed them in a poncho. By the time the medevac chopper arrived, Sanchez was numbed with morphine. The rest of us were numb with hate.

  The Doc and Chan lifted Sanchez into the chopper. He was pale but still awake and still asking for Simmons. The chopper lifted off grudgingly, its engine straining with the weight. As it floated out of sight Chan sat beside me and pressed the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb. He slumped forward. He looked the way I felt. I handed him a canteen.

  “No thank you,” he said without looking up.

  “Go ahead. It’s that Kool-Aid sent in the last care package.”

  “No thanks.”

  “It’s grape.”

  He peered at me with one frosty Chinese eye, then broke into his Snoopy-like grin. He dropped his chin to his chest and stuck out his hand palm up. “Give me the canteen.” He snatched it and took a big swig.

  “Will he make it?” I asked.

  “I think so. The hot shrapnel cauterized the vessels, causing minimal blood loss.” Chan looked up, his eyes fighting back tears. “I feel so frustrated I can’t stand it.”

  “So do I, but we’ll catch ’em, Chan. When we do, it’ll be pay-back time.”

  “Pay back is a medevac.” Chan’s tone was low and serious.

  “That’s right, buddy, and they’re in a world of it when we find ’em.”

  Chan held out his hand and gave the M60 two pats like it was a pet dog, then turned his hand palm up.

  “Give me five on it, bro.”

  I slapped his hand like a black man and it felt good. The threats gave us momentary relief, but not enough.

  Corporal Swift Eagle walked by with harder steps than usual. He looked more Indian, more intense. His face was darker red than normal. He halted a few feet from us and shouted, “Saddle up!”

  “Wonderful! Just wonderful. Let’s go see how many booby traps we can find today.”

  I didn’t see who said it but found out by following the chief’s glare. It was Private Doyle. His M16 sat in front of him disassembled for cleaning.

  “Shut up and get that rifle together! We’re moving out. Now!” Swift Eagle sounded like he looked—mad.

  “This Marine—” Doyle tried to file one last complaint. It ended abruptly. The big Indian glided several feet and with one hand lifted Doyle by the lapel from a sitting to a standing position. Then he released him and walked away. There were no more comments.

  I spent the next four hours enjoying the scenic beauty of the armpit of the world. No one talked. Every ounce of energy became vital as the day grew hotter. Just before I decided to faint, the column stopped. The man in front of me turned and said, “Five minutes,” then collapsed to the ground with the rest of the platoon.

  I passed the word to Chan and stumbled forward to get some salt tablets from Doc. Sudsy sat next to the doc, fondling his radio as usual and listening to another platoon’s transmission.

  “That’s a roger, Alpha One, single medevac, over.”

  “Who got hit, Suds?” I asked.

  He looked up with a frown. “Lieutenant Hawthorn, Third Platoon. He got ticked at the point man when he refused to go into an area that looked booby-trapped. Sounded like he took the point himself. Tripped a 155. Cut him clean in half.”

  I took the salt tablets and the bad news back to Chan. A couple of swigs of water and someone said, “Saddle up!” I didn’t know where we were heading, but for the first time all day I started caring.

&nbs
p; At dusk we set up an ambush in a dried-up area known as the Arizona Territory, four miles northwest of the An Hoa combat base. The night drifted by to the customary serenade of distant artillery fire, but still no contact with the enemy. The next day started like the day before.

  “Saddle up! We got fifteen klicks to go today!” Swift Eagle’s command started my feet talking to me. Obscenity after obscenity.

  Chan handed me the rest of his coffee. “You emit the odor of a rice paddy,” he snickered.

  “You ain’t no bloody rose yourself,” I replied.

  Chan gave my boot a nudge with his. “How’s the foot doing?”

  “It’s killing me.”

  “You’re going to lose that foot to jungle rot if you don’t stop the infection.”

  “Why don’t you write me a prescription, young Dr. Chan, and I’ll drive on down to the drugstore and get it filled. Maybe I better call in sick today.”

  Chan looked at me, rolled his eyes toward heaven, and raised one hand. “Lord, help me communicate with the mentally ill.”

  On most days we could have had a good chuckle. Some said we laughed an inordinate amount. Others thought a Section 8 was in order. Laughing kept me from panicking. The mood was different this time. I couldn’t fake a laugh. A quiet storm raged inside the platoon, with no way out. The faces around me were slowly turning to granite.

  We marched all day, stopping for one meal. I spent that time burning off leeches. The pace quickened in the afternoon. The Vietnamese called us elephants because we hacked through the bush making a lot of noise, but I thought we looked more like a caterpillar. Today the caterpillar shifted into fourth gear. No one talked. I felt an odd hint of excitement.

  Boredom returned a few miles later. The sun felt closer. My helmet made an excellent frying pan, and my brain was reaching over-easy. The mind escapes boiling by fantasizing. We called it “world dreaming.” Sometimes it was air conditioning or driving a car again. Sometimes strawberry shortcake and ice cream. My fantasies usually had long legs; chocolate ice cream was always optional.

  Fantasies had to be tempered with caution. It was wise to always be aware of where your foot was about to land or of the dark spot in the tree fifty meters ahead.

  With dusk the mountains came closer and closer. They finally swallowed the sun from view. We stopped as we reached the last rice paddy at the foot of the ominous, haze-covered mountains. An arm up ahead motioned us forward and into a circle. A peculiar and dangerous procedure. We gathered around the lieutenant. It felt like a huddle. A rifle butt stuck me in the ribs as we crowded in closer to hear him.

  “All right, listen up. Intelligence says we got a major group of VC and NVA comin’ between those two mountains and possibly across this coordinate tonight. I know these things are usually screwed up, but this one looks legit.”

  The lieutenant’s tone induced enthusiasm. I went quickly from excited to scared and back to excited again.

  Sam mumbled. “We’re takin’ names.” The old gunny joined in with a subdued “Semper fi.” Suddenly I felt a different kind of fear—the fear that they wouldn’t come our way.

  “All right, listen up.” The lieutenant knelt on one knee and began drawing a primitive map in the dirt. “We’re going to use an L-shaped ambush, with the gun on the left flank.” He looked around the huddle of faces until he found the chief’s. “Swift Eagle, I want the gun team and two riflemen set up over there.” He pointed to a small tree and shrubs on the left of the rice paddy directly in front of us. “We can’t lose the gun. It’s the only heavy fire we got left, so let’s keep the heat off the gun. I want the rest of the men behind this tree line with five meters between each position, two men to a position. Any questions?” No one spoke.

  We waited until the sun disappeared before moving into ambush position. The dark, menacing mountains, blanketed with lush jungle foliage thick enough to hide the entire North Vietnamese Army, watched every move we made. The riflemen positioned themselves behind the tree line two hundred meters from where the bottom of the mountains melted into the flat paddy fields. We set the gun up one hundred and fifty meters from the mountains and to the left of the riflemen.

  It would be a textbook L-shaped ambush, just like we practiced in North Carolina. Looked great on paper. Just one small problem. If the gooks came from the wrong direction, we might get turned into fertilizer. I started saying my prayers. Explaining to God all the wonderful contributions to society I could make if I weren’t fertilizer took imagination and a lot of gall. My prayer had plenty of both. God must not have been impressed.

  Swift Eagle appeared from somewhere, cutting the prayer short. “Murph and McQueen are gonna be on your left for cover fire. Don’t open up until we get ’em in the middle of the paddy.” The chief turned away, vanishing into the darkness as silently as he came.

  Murph and McQueen acted nervous. It was considered a “crap detail” to get stuck near the gun. They moved a few feet away and settled in without a word. A few minutes later they moved a little farther away. We didn’t take it personally. It was common knowledge: The gun would be the first target, because its tracers would make it the only visible target.

  “Chan,” I whispered. “I hate these tracers!”

  He looked into my face and tilted his head. “But why, John?” He then proceeded comically with his memorized version of the Marine Corps handbook. “Tracer rounds are a necessary evil. They pinpoint enemy targets for riflemen and point out enemy positions to fighter pilots or helicopters viewing a battle from above.”

  “Oh. I feel much better now. If only the tracers didn’t form a bright golden arrow pointing right at lovable little me.”

  The night grew black. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. The air felt thick. I hated not being able to see.

  A rare, pleasant breeze bounced off my sweaty face. Suddenly the moon popped out of a cloud, lighting the landscape. I could see all the way to the mountains. I’m ready, I thought.

  Chan started linking up ammunition and stacking it on my pack to keep it out of the dirt. He gave his M16 the once-over, put his magazines within arm’s reach, and began straightening grenade pins. It reminded me to do the same.

  The first two hours of the beautiful moonlit night went by as monotonously as always. Ants and mosquitoes were using me as a midnight snack. The quarter moon drifted through small transparent clouds, illuminating the vast flat paddy. The mountain peaks looked black, sinister against the dark blue sky.

  Chan rolled toward me with his canteen out. “How about some Halazone Kool-Aid?” he whispered.

  Before I managed a reply Chan stiffened like a dog ready to bite. His eyes opened wide. Tension sliced through the boredom like a silent alarm. The backache I was going to complain about dissolved. The mosquitoes that were sucking me dry vanished. My body tightened.

  I strained to see what Chan was now aiming at in the direction of the mountains. A barely discernible piece of darkness began to move. Another shape appeared from the trees just behind the first. They looked to be one hundred twenty meters to our left and twenty to our front.

  A third shadowy figure emerged. Then a fourth. My stomach churned. A muscle cramp hit me in the rear end. I rolled over to straighten my leg.

  “Chan, check the ammo, quick.” He lowered his rifle and made sure there were no kinks in the ammo belts.

  Drops of sweat trickled from my forehead to my chin faster than I could wipe them away. Chan’s face glittered with tiny moon balls of perspiration. He started piling the grenades in front of us. He covered his mouth and whispered.

  “Still see ’em?”

  “Yes. Hope those jerks beside us see ’em.” I shielded my mouth on the side facing the rice paddy, leaned toward the riflemen on our left, and called as quietly as possible, “Psst, you see ’em?” A few seconds passed. No reply. “Chan, those morons are asleep!”

  A few more seconds passed. Silence. Not even a snore.

  “Yeah, we see ’em now!”

&
nbsp; I sighed. Chan looked at me, rolled his eyes, and exhaled heavily.

  “No screaming-eagle crap.”

  Sweat dripped off my palms. I tried unbuttoning the holster of my .45-caliber pistol. My hands felt shaky, almost spastic.

  Chan nudged me and squinted. “You don’t think they’re getting that close?”

  “I sure hope not. I don’t think this sucker works.”

  We gave each other a quick hard look. The realization of what we just said sank in. I said a quick, open-eyed prayer.

  The four shadows turned into four men fifty meters away and closing. I followed the lead man with my gun sights, making sure my finger stayed off the trigger. One early finger could get us all killed.

  From the corner of my eye more movement. More shadows. Stinging salt sweat penetrated my eyes. The line of shadows grew longer. My bladder felt like exploding. The column of shadows grew longer and closer. Ain’t no way I’m wetting my pants, I thought.

  Twenty meters in front, crouching and looking in all directions, the four gooks walking point crept by like they were stepping on unbroken eggs. The moon silhouetted their safari helmets. NVA regulars. As they crept by us I couldn’t breathe. I started gasping for air. I stuck my face into my arm to suffocate quietly. I’ve been holding my breath, God how stupid. Chan nudged me without speaking. I let him know I was all right with a thumbs up, but I wanted to admit being stupid.

  More shadows. The moon bathed the landscape in an eerie blue light. I felt hot and cold and sweaty all at the same time. Chan held the first fifteen inches of the ammo belt in his left hand with his M16 rammed into his right shoulder. His forearm started twitching like a muscle spasm was getting him. I didn’t like it. An early round could get us overrun.

  The four NVA walking point were within twenty meters of our line of riflemen, and the column was still filing out of the brush at the foot of the mountains. The usual chatter of the jungle insects vanished. I could hear my heart trying to push blood out of my ears.

  Chan released his rifle and reached into one of his huge trouser pockets, producing a small can of oil. He began squeezing it onto the barrel of the M60 as he whispered so low I only heard two words: “… whole company.”