Guns Up!

by Johnnie Clark

  “Darn!” Chan whispered.

  “What?”

  “Watch it. This bush is full of thorns.”

  I moved two rocks out of the way, leaned back, and tried to make myself comfortable. “I’d almost forgotten just how miserable it is to sleep in the dirt.”

  “The hospital bed is but a faded memory,” Chan said.

  “What about Sanchez’s letter?”

  “It was truly inspiring. He’s in the Philadelphia Naval Hospital.”

  “How’s he getting along? Did he say anything about his legs?” I asked.

  “He’s taking it like a Marine. I almost cried when I read that letter to the chief’s squad. He said he can do just about everything except swim with his new legs.”

  “God, that’s great—” Chan slapped his hand over my mouth as he ducked lower behind the thicket. He stared toward the trail. I peeked around the bush. There, five meters away, a pith helmet silhouetted against a light gray sky moved cautiously along the trail. I strained to see the shadowy figure more clearly. The scent of fish filled the air as he plodded by. I wanted to fire, but I knew that would be stupid. Sixty seconds passed. Total silence.

  Another pith helmet. This one moving fast. Not quite running, but walking fast. Another helmet. Then another silhouetted against the darkening sky, along with the sound of many sandals and the rustle of canvas web gear. The clank of a canteen. Men breathing hard from a long, fast march. They filed by rapidly. My mouth felt too dry to swallow. I aimed the gun at the trail through the thinnest part of the thicket. They continued filing by. I tried counting. Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy. They kept rushing by. Thank God I didn’t open up! This might be a whole battalion.

  “Don’t fire,” Chan whispered, squeezing the blood out of my arm with his grip. I wanted to tell him I had no intention of firing, but my mouth felt too dry to whisper. Salty sweat began dripping into my eyes. They burned.

  Then the last pair of Ho Chi Minh sandals hustled away. Quiet. I looked at Chan. “Maybe we should have opened up.”

  “No way!”

  “Alpha one. Alpha one.…This is Alpha two.…Over.” Sudsy’s voice was low but clearly heard around the perimeter.

  “Alpha one, we need a fire mission at YC 8485NINER4. Reinforced company of NVA regulars. Do you copy?”

  “YC 8,4,8,5, NINER, 4. We copy Alpha two.”

  “Alpha two, Alpha two … this is Fire Base Alpha preparing to fire white-peter round.”

  “Fire Base Alpha … Alpha two. We copy. Fire when ready.”

  “Firing smoke.”

  “Here comes a spotter round,” I mumbled. “Chan.”

  “Yeah,” he whispered.

  “You wouldn’t believe these guys at Fire Base Alpha. They just sit around and get loaded.”

  The faint whistle of a faraway artillery round getting closer brought us up to our knees, straining to see where it would land. The white-phosphorus round would send up a mushroom cloud of white smoke. From there the explosive rounds would be zeroed in on the target. The whistle grew louder. Louder. “That’s too close!” Chan said. The whistle got shrill.

  “Get down!” a voice from the CP shouted. A low, muffled explosion erupted from the CP. I looked back as a huge mushroom cloud of thick white smoke billowed high into the night air directly over the perimeter. Agonizing screams from the CP filled the air. Three small fires lit up the CP. Men scrambled around. I could see someone rolling in the dirt, his back afire, screaming. The sulphurous-smelling smoke spread over the area like a white fog.

  “Alpha one, Alpha one, this is Alpha two, over!” Sudsy’s words ran together in his excitement.

  “Alpha two, this is Alpha one, over.”

  “Alpha one, that spotter round hit the center of our perimeter! Lieutenant’s been hit, he’s burned, we need a medevac! Tell those idiots, cease fire! Repeat! Cease fire! Tell Fire Base Alpha they are hitting Marines! Repeat, Marines!”

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABY-SAN

  The chopper lifted off grudgingly, coming back to earth once, then twice, before finally lumbering into the hot blue sky. Chan strolled back to our position. His face looked tired.

  “How is he?” I asked, gulping down a mouth full of Halazone water.

  “He’ll be okay.” Chan fingered the fifteen straight black hairs that he fancied made a mustache. “He has some pretty bad burns though. He might go home.” He slumped down beside me, leaned back, and pulled his helmet over his eyes.

  I handed him the canteen with a nudge. “How come that chopper had so much trouble getting off?”

  “It had six stiffs on board.”

  “From Alpha?”

  “No. Delta Company really hit it last night. The door gunner said they made contact with a battalion.”

  “Battalion! What are we doing out here running around in six-man squads while the gooks send in fresh battalions?”

  “Interesting question.” Chan sat up and pushed his helmet back. “It’s obvious, actually. They don’t want public opinion down on them for sending any more troops over. They’re trying to fight divisions of NVA with regiments of Marines.” He leaned back, looking pleased, as if he’d just won a debate.

  “They got to be running out of people soon. We’re killin’ these suckers at ten to one.”

  “They’ll send in the women and children first.”

  “Heard any more about the peace talks?” I asked.

  “Yes. They can’t decide what shape the table should be.”

  Just then Striker jogged over to us. He dropped to one knee beside Chan.

  “We got a new lieutenant,” he said.

  “I hope he’s not some gung-ho moron,” I said. “What’s his name?”

  “Lampe,” Striker answered. He looked at Chan. “He’s got a cross on, painted black.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah. Does that mean he’s a Christian?”

  Chan looked up, then looked at me. His eyebrows went up, as if Striker had struck a chord.

  “No. Not necessarily.” He pulled a can of beef and rocks out of his pack, grimaced, and shoved it back in.

  “What’s he got it on for?” Striker asked.

  Chan stopped searching his pack and gave Striker a fixed stare. “Are you really interested, or are you feeding me a line of bull?”

  Striker looked around nonchalantly, tilted his head back, then shrugged his shoulders, “Yeah. Sorta.” He picked a blade of grass and chewed on it nervously. “How do you do it? I mean, what do you do if you want to be one? Put it in writing or something?”

  Chan pulled a piece of writing paper out of his pack. He looked at me. “Let me have our pen.” I pulled our battered Bic out of a side pocket in my NVA pack and handed it to him. “You got the Gideon they gave you?”

  “No. I threw it away,” Striker mumbled.

  “Here.” Chan handed him his tiny Gideon. “Look up these verses.” Chan spoke as he wrote. “Look those up and we’ll talk about it.” Chan handed him the paper. Striker snatched it and shoved it into his breast pocket as if he didn’t want anyone to see.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head as if he were nervous. “Okay.”

  “Striker,” I said. He turned back. “Who’s the dude who rates camouflage?”

  “He’s a forward observer. Joe Elbon. An old buddy of mine from ITR. Calls in the big stuff.” He turned and walked back to his position. For the first time since I’d met him, Striker didn’t seem like such a jerk.

  The hump started again, through jungle, fields, hills, and ravines.

  I wondered about our new lieutenant. It felt as if he had decided to take a tour of the countryside with no specific direction in mind. I pitied the poor suckers with Columbus, sailing and sailing for the end of the earth.

  We climbed up an embankment so steep that huge ancient oak trees lay about, fallen because their roots could no longer take the angle. We reached the top and worked our way down the other side, which slid into a wide rocky ravine
. Now I could see the point man. It was Striker. I missed Jackson. The winding ravine looked like a dried up riverbed, but during the monsoon anything can be a river. Striker disappeared around a bend up ahead, then he darted back again and flattened against a rock wall. He waved his hand to get down. The small column dropped like dominoes to one knee. Heads began to turn and whisper. I already knew.

  “Guns up!”

  “Guns up!”

  We were up and moving forward before the word reached us. I unwrapped the fifty-round rip belt from the stock as I ran forward.

  Lieutenant Lampe knelt beside Striker and Sudsy. I dropped to one knee in front of them. Chan came in beside me. I removed my helmet and peeked around the bend. A network of dirt bunkers stretched out for twenty-five yards at the mouth of the ravine. Brush was scattered about to camouflage the bunker system from the air. Three grass huts sat huddled together in a group of tall trees just beyond the bunkers. At least twenty NVA soldiers milled about near the grass hootches. I could see many more moving deeper in the trees and bush behind the hootches. To the right, down a grassy slope was a small, fast-moving river. A long line of small wooden sampans were tied to the water’s edge. They banged against one another as the swift current rushed toward us. I pulled my head back and took a long worried breath.

  “That ain’t no platoon.” I looked at Chan. He leaned out slowly to look around the bend. He flattened back against the ravine wall.

  “At least a regiment.”

  “I counted twenty-one sampans,” Striker said.

  I could feel sweat cooling off my body. Each head turned to the new lieutenant. Each mind thought the same thing: Is he stupid enough to try something with seventeen men? Suddenly the rattle of leaves above us replaced all our thoughts. I looked up. Swift Eagle slid down into the ravine.

  “We got about twenty sampans tied up at the foot of the slope, Lieutenant, and at least that many pulled up into the trees on the opposite side of the river. I guess two companies, maybe a battalion.”

  Lieutenant Lampe looked scared, but not panicky. He looked like you’d expect a Marine lieutenant to look—six feet tall, about one hundred eighty, white-sidewall haircut, pug nose, clean-shaven, acne scars under his ears and down his neck. He was an Annapolis grad, judging from his class ring, which he shouldn’t have brought into the bush. He put his head down for a moment as if to clear his mind or remember some useless bit of guidebook information. He looked up, squeezed his pug nose between thumb and forefinger, then turned to the chief. “Let’s pull back.” He turned to Sudsy. “Stick close.”

  “Right on your butt, Lieutenant,” Sudsy answered.

  Corporal Swift Eagle waved the platoon back. Fifty meters down the ravine we split into two columns along both walls. Swift Eagle pointed at Sam, then pointed up to the bush on Sam’s left. “I want an LP ten meters out.” Sam moved to the wall, and Corporal James gave him a boost up by the seat of the pants. Swift Eagle pointed at Striker, then to the bush flanking the other side of the ravine. Striker’s big black mole lowered an inch from the frown, but he moved without a word.

  “I want the gun here,” Swift Eagle said, pointing to three large round rocks five meters in front of him. I flipped down the bipod and flattened out behind the gun with Chan at my right.

  Lieutenant Lampe snatched the field phone from Sudsy, dropped to one knee, and flattened out a grid map, holding down each corner with a stone. “Alpha one … Alpha one … This is Alpha two. Over.”

  “Roger, Alpha two … This is Alpha one. Over.”

  “Alpha one, we’ve hit the big time at coordinates Alpha Tango Tango Hotel Foxtrot Lima Lima.” The communication went back and forth in code. Then there was a “roger.”

  “Pull back!” The chief suddenly sounded excited. Couldn’t be that, I thought. Striker hustled over the edge of the ravine wall, sliding down fast. He landed on his feet and ran straight to Swift Eagle, moving past the new lieutenant and the new FO, Corporal Elbon.

  “Chief! We got gooks on the flank! Lots of ’em!” Striker looked into Swift Eagle’s face, still ignoring the new lieutenant. Striker spoke quickly and too low for me to hear it all. Swift Eagle rushed over to the lieutenant.

  “We got a lot of gooks on our flank, Lieutenant. They’re moving around.”

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  Swift Eagle didn’t wait for a point man. He led the way himself, with the lieutenant and the FO close behind. The column moved out quickly, leaving Chan and me to bring up the rear. I hated being on the rear. I could feel myself moving faster and faster, as if I were being chased. I tried to walk backward, but the loose rocks underfoot were hard enough to walk on going forward. One hundred meters down the ravine the column stopped. Swift Eagle hustled from the front of the column, slowing for an instant in front of each man to stare into his face, then rushing to the next face until he reached Chan and me.

  “Did anyone call in Sam?” he asked. His eyebrows pinched together. He looked worried.

  “You mean he’s still back there?” I asked. He didn’t answer. He turned back to the column.

  “Pass the word up. We left Sam. My squad up. We’re going back for him.”

  Lieutenant Lampe jogged up beside Swift Eagle. “What’s up, Chief?”

  “We left Sam the Blooper Man back there.”

  The lieutenant’s round face grew long. He put his head down for a moment and squeezed his pug nose between his forefinger and thumb. He exhaled heavily through his nose and looked up.

  “Okay, how many men in your squad?”

  “Five without Sam.”

  “Take them and the gun team, too. We’ll set up a perimeter here. Make it fast, Chief. We’re running out of light.”

  Things were happening too fast. I hadn’t realized how late in the day it was. That made the situation more critical. A man lost or left alone in the jungle was rarely ever seen again.

  The walk back down the ravine felt ominous. I wondered how many times we could make this trip into an area with that many gooks without making contact. I wouldn’t have put any money on our chances of tiptoeing in and out more than once.

  I expected to see the enemy around each bend. I held the gun on my hip. Boyhood imaginings of holding off hundreds of Germans and Japs with a machine gun shot through my mind. Seven seconds. Seven seconds. What kind of fool figured out a gunner only lasted seven seconds after a firefight began? Why would they tell us the truth about something like that? Keep your burst short. Keep your burst short. Twenty rounds. Twenty rounds. Twenty rounds.

  Swift Eagle stopped. Another bend in the ravine blocked our vision. We flattened against the wall as Swift Eagle poked his head around. He motioned us forward. The way was straight for twenty meters, then curved left around a huge round rock. Swift Eagle peeked around and under the rock, then jerked his head back as if he’d been stung. He looked back at us and mouthed the word I dreaded, “Gooks!” He looked left, then right. We scrambled up the embankment like scared children, stumbling and sliding back down, then clawing up again until at the same instant we organized. We helped chunky Doyle up and over. He put his rifle out and pulled the next man up, repeating the process until we were out of the ravine. Quickly we moved away. Ten meters through thick brush we reached the edge of the swiftly moving jungle river. It looked to be twenty meters wide, and deeper than I had thought. We listened for movement.

  Branches cracked underfoot to our front. My heart stopped. I couldn’t feel myself breathing. Vietnamese voices drifted through the air from across the river. We all turned at once. Suddenly the sound of many men forcing their way through tangled brush to our left yanked our heads back around to a new danger on our side of the river. Swift Eagle slid noiselessly into the dark water like a snake. We followed. The cold covered me with goose bumps. The current pulled my legs downstream. I struggled to hold on to an overhanging branch with one hand and the gun with the other. The weight of my pack pulled me under as my limb sagged. I kicked my boots around in search of some
thing solid, but the current swept them from under me. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. Panic seized me. I started to drop the gun and reach for the branch with both hands. A strong hand grabbed me by the back of the collar of my jungle jacket, then switched the grip to my flak jacket and pulled me up. I gasped for air as quietly as I could, swallowing coughs until my eyes bulged.

  We clung to the river’s edge, our helmets and weapons barely visible in the overhanging saw grass and water weeds. Something moved in the water near my right cheek. The red and black head of a snake rippled by my face, the long body weaving tiny waves of water up my nose. I shivered. Two Vietnamese laughed from the far bank. They were hidden by thick brush and leafy vines that lined the river on that side like a ten-foot green wall.

  Through the saw grass and weeds the tops of small trees ten meters away moved as enemy soldiers fought their way through the thick pockets of brush. I knew we couldn’t fight from this position. The thought of being a prisoner flashed through my mind. The voice of a Vietnamese called from farther away. My grip was slipping from the limb. The shaking treetops started moving away from us, back toward the ravine.

  We let a minute pass. All seemed quiet. Swift Eagle pulled himself from the water first. Chan dragged himself to solid ground. I tossed the gun to him and used the limb to pull myself out. We moved as quietly as we could. At the edge of the ravine we stopped to listen. Still quiet. Swift Eagle started to move down into the ravine again. Suddenly the sound of someone moving through the brush to our right stopped my breathing. I jerked the gun around. An American helmet poked through the brush.

  “Sam!” I held my enthusiasm to a whisper. Sam’s face was flushed with anger and fear.

  “You left me back there!”

  “It was my fault, Sam,” Swift Eagle said.

  “What am I supposed to say? It’s okay, man, don’t worry about it?” For a moment it looked like Sam was going to swing. He stared hard at the chief’s expressionless face.