by Dennis Foley
A LRP had to put up with all this while trying to talk himself through it. Don’t panic. Watch your step. Head up, crouch low. Carry your weapon at the ready. Watch for puffs of smoke. Remember that you probably won’t hear any shooting until you are away from the chopper. Run faster! Run lots faster!
Hollister’s dash to friendlies was complicated by his efforts to carry his rifle and a PRC-77 radio. He was no more than four long steps from the chopper when he lost his grip on the handset. It fell and went under the surface of the paddy water, bouncing back out as the coiled cord jerked it
Picking it up broke his stride and almost caused him to lose his footing. He promised to remember the difficulty of the unruly handset and cord and tie it down next time. He was just glad it was encased in a plastic battery bag. He guessed it would have a fairly good chance of surviving the dunking.
By the time he was halfway to the team, the C&C chopper had cleared the trees at the end of the landing zone and was climbing away, its blade and turbine noise fading rapidly.
The feeling of being naked came back to Hollister as he regained his stride, the handset secured.
The team had four effectives and two men who were totally wiped out by something that had turned them into pathetic victims. They had both suffered recurring bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, profuse sweating, nausea, and extreme weakness. One of the unaffected members was the team medic. He had talked to the medics back at Cu Chi, and they all had decided it was some type of food poisoning and what they needed was plenty of fluids until they could be taken out.
Both were asked about being medevaced, and they asked not to be taken out unless they got worse. By the time Hollister got to them, they were better than they had been and were at least conversational.
“We’re in a bad spot. The downed chopper near us is a registration point for anybody with a rusty mortar, and no one can resist the temptation of coming our way to strip it out,” Hollister reported to Sangean over a weak radio link.
“Well, I’ve got some more bad news for you.”
“Okay?”
“They can’t tear loose a Chinook to come out there and pick up that chopper before dark. You’ll have to stay the night and keep an eye on it. All—I guess we have about half an hour till dark. So you have work to do. Let me know if you need anything, and I’ll have someone fly it out.”
“If we get hit?”
“We’ve organized a reaction force using all of three and four element. They’ll be spending the night locked and cocked on the pad. You get a rustle in the weeds, and we’ll send ’em,” Sangean said.
“You gonna walk ’em out?”
“No, I raised enough hell that they gave me back the guns you released. When they broke the news about the Chinook, they coughed the slicks back up. They’ll be parked here, too.”
“That’s good. I’d like some more work done on finding out what got these folks so sick out here. We don’t need the whole outfit coming down with this crap.”
“Roger. We’re on it. Let me know what else you need.”
Hollister had to treat the position as if it were a normal RON location and not the training site they had planned on leaving well before dark. He first took the time to find out what each man had brought and redistributed the two sick LRPs’ equipment and ammo to the others. Then he got on the radio and plotted artillery and flares to be on call in the event they made contact that night.
Just after dark Hollister sent two of the team members out to the chopper to pick up the machine guns. They brought them back, set them up at the two most likely avenues of approach to the team position, and then went back for the long belts of ammo.
As a final measure, they set up a claymore mine under the fuel cell on the chopper. In the event they had to E&E they would want to blow and burn as much of the chopper as they could. Since they had not come in with any other explosives, they had to rely on the claymore.
After setting up for the night, Hollister made a second check of each man and then went back and made sure that PFC Curtis, the assistant patrol leader, had the radios working and enough batteries to get them through the night.
It only took half an hour for the temperature to drop enough for Hollister to feel the chill in his wet uniform. He had brought nothing with him to ward off the cold night air. He was also less than pleased that he had only brought six magazines of M16 ammo, which had to last him the whole night.
He made one more commo check and sent a SITREP back to Operations.
He began to shiver.
Chapter 14
CURTIS TUGGED ON HOLLISTER’S sleeve and pulled him back from a netherworld of distorted images and thoughts. He wasn’t really asleep. He was in that margin where consciousness was on one side and sleep on the other. He tried to shake off the fog.
“We got movement on the other side of the paddies,” Curtis whispered directly into Hollister’s ear.
Shit, Hollister thought. He sat up and automatically tried to look more alert than he was. His chest hurt from too many cigarettes, and his joints ached from the damp ground. He looked in the direction of the trees on the far side of the downed chopper. His view was obscured by the brush that concealed him, and he had to move to a better vantage point.
Just eight feet from his original position, he was able to see across the paddies and beyond the chopper.
“We been pickin’ up movement, but nothin’ definite. Could be anything,” Curtis said.
Hollister took the Starlight scope from Curtis and pointed it in the direction of the movement. He put his eye up to the eyepiece and steadied his hold on the clumsy night-vision device.
The green-on-green world of the Starlight scope was marred by the random spots of light that filled the sky and the ground all around them. Ambient light was necessary for the Starlight to have something to amplify. But when it picked up a source of light, it was amplified to the point where it washed out the fainter images that were painted in low light.
He handed the Starlight back to Curtis. “No use.” He rolled over, leaned back to his original position, and pulled his binoculars out of the claymore bag that he carried things in.
Back in position, he looked at the trees again. He could make out shapes and trees and voids in the trees and lumps that could have been anything—even VC soldiers. “Handset,” he whispered to Curtis.
“Houston, this is Three. Fire mission. Over.”
“This is Houston. Send your mission. Over.”
“Fire mission. Request illumination at five one niner, one one eight. Direction zero zero five degrees. Target troops in the open. Over.”
“Roger, good copy, stand by,” Base replied.
There was no telling who would be firing the mission since none of the artillery units in the area were tasked to be in direct support of the LRP mission. Operations would have to make the request and find out if the unit wanted to handle the fire mission by speaking directly with Hollister or through Operations.
Hollister had asked for a fire-support team to be attached to the company in his request to Major Fowler, but still hadn’t received an answer. He was living the reason—coordination is communication, and communication is understanding.
“Standing by,” Hollister replied, then turned to Curtis. “Tell everyone to get flat and check their camouflage again. If we get illum, it will give us away as fast as it will give the VC away.”
Curtis simply balled up his fist and tapped Hollister’s arm to let him know he understood and would follow through.
Pulling back his cuff, Hollister looked at the time. It was just after midnight. Inside he groaned. That meant there were far too many hours until dawn. He really didn’t want to make contact at night and have to call in a reaction force that would have to link up in the dark.
Impatiently, Hollister cupped his hand around the mouthpiece of the handset and pushed the press-to-talk button. “Houston, Three. What’s the holdup on the flares?”
“This is Houston. They’re c
hecking the availability of a flare ship. Over.”
“Negative, negative. I don’t want a flare ship. If I need one, I’ll need one for more hours than it can stay on station. Just get me some redleg light, and it’ll do for now.”
“Roger … negative on flare ship. Stand by,” Sergeant Kurzikowski replied from Cu Chi.
One of the LRPs made a slight noise with his weapon. Hollister turned to Curtis and pulled him close by tugging on his shirt collar. “You tell every man to ease back. We got as much chance of this being civilians looking to steal chopper parts as not. You got it?”
“Yessir,” Curtis said. He then crawled to the first man and whispered the message to him.
The squelch broke on the handset. “Three, illumination on the way.”
“On the way, wait,” Hollister replied.
They heard the report of the howitzer that fired the flare round a split second before they heard the round slice through the sky near them and burst. The canister broke clear of the parachute flare as the flare blossomed and the parachute inflated. The canister made a woo-wooing sound as it tumbled toward the ground somewhere, hundreds of meters away.
The intense illumination of the flare round poured bright white light down on everything beneath it. The shadows it cast danced back and forth as the flare wobbled under the unstable parachute.
Before the flare reached its fullest brightness, Hollister made sure to shield his eyes in order not to lose his night vision. He closed one eye completely and held his hand over the brow of the other.
Raising his binoculars, he quickly scanned the trees for any movement. He thought he saw movement, but the flare quickly drifted toward him and made it harder to see the trees. He picked up the handset and whispered, “Houston, add two hundred, fire one. Over.”
“Houston—roger, add two zero zero, fire one. Wait.”
The first flare was getting very close to the ground and had already drifted over the top of the LRPs when it suddenly flared up a bit and then burned out. The flare’s smoking remains drifted into a paddy behind Hollister’s position, dropping sparks. It hit the water, making a hissing sound.
The second flare burst two hundred meters upwind and silhouetted the tree line that Hollister was trying to see. He raised his binos again and scanned the entire tree line. There were two lumps in it, about four hundred meters from him. They could be VC, civilians crouched down, or nothing. He looked at Curtis and handed him the binos.
Curtis took a look, dropped the binos, and leaned back toward Hollister. “Could be anything.” He raised the handset again and spoke softly. “End of mission. Out.”
“Okay, gimme your M79,” Hollister said.
Curtis handed him his grenade launcher and took Hollister’s M16.
“What’s in it?’
“HE,” Curtis answered.
“Good, give me a second round, and let the others know I’m going out toward the chopper. Disarm the claymore out there.”
“What’s up?” Curtis asked, unsure of Hollister’s moves.
“Gonna lob one near the lumps in the trees. Don’t want to kill ’em, just spook ’em—in case they are civilians,” Hollister whispered.
“Why out there?”
“I don’t want to give our position away if they are VC and don’t already know our location. So cover my ass.”
Curtis pulled a second HE round out of his grenade pouch and handed it to Hollister. “Wait zero two until I tell the others and unhook the claymore,” he said.
While the second flare burned out and Curtis made contact with each man to let him know the plan, Hollister slipped the cravat from around his neck and tied the M79 round to its center. He then retied the cravat so that the round rode in the hollow of his throat and wouldn’t be likely to get wet on the way out to the chopper.
He then dumped his gear, his map, and his hat. He handed the radio handset to Curtis and moved out of the tight LRP perimeter.
He half floated and half crawled in the water until he reached a point that placed the suspected VC on the far side of the chopper and concealed his movements from them.
He rolled over on his side and looked up to make sure he knew where the chopper blades were.
It occurred to him as he crawled out in the slippery paddy that he could fire the M79 grenade and hit the blade only a few feet from him. He knew it was a long shot, but he didn’t like the odds regardless of what they were.
Able to distinguish the blades from the sky, he rolled back and twisted himself into a seated position. Aware that his breathing was labored, he tried to take a few deep breaths and get himself back to a normal rate. It took long enough to aggravate him. He thought about giving up smoking again. He then remembered he had a pack of cigarettes in his water-filled shirt pocket. To him this was a sure sign he had become a REMF—wet cigarettes.
Settled, he raised the M79 to his shoulder and took up a good firing position. He spot-welded the thumb around the stock to his right cheekbone and reminded himself to control his breathing. Using a peculiar tree formation as a reference point, he took aim at a point near the lumps in the tree line. The area he was aiming for was farther away than the bursting radius of the HE round, and on his side of the lumps. He hoped the burst would flush or scatter them.
He took a deep breath, let half of it out, and repeated to himself, “Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze” until the M79 jerked comfortably and hurled the grenade out its barrel. Hollister didn’t wait to see where it hit. He broke the barrel of the launcher, pulled out the expended canister, and loaded the other round.
The grenade took its lazy lob and landed just outside the trees in the water. On impact it detonated with a small flash, plenty of water, and a loud explosion.
Hollister raised the launcher and fired again. The second round landed twenty-five meters right and ten meters short of the first round. As it impacted, Hollister was already moving back toward the team position. With each move forward, he strained to listen for any reaction from the other tree line. There was no return fire, and little else could have been heard over his splashing and labored breathing.
Curtis reached to help Hollister up out of the paddy water onto the slightly drier ground. As Hollister then stood, turned, and flopped down, Curtis grabbed him. “Shssh! Listen.”
It was all Hollister could do to hold his breath and listen without crying out for air. His lungs burned, and water and mucus were running from his nose. But then he heard it, too. A motorbike! Someone had started a motorbike on the far side of the trees where the lumps were.
He grabbed the binoculars from Curtis and scanned the tree line. He couldn’t find the lumps. They might have still been in the area, but he had enough confidence in the light level to know they had at least moved.
The motorbike’s engine revved two times, putted, and then revved again. “Look!” Curtis said, pointing to a break in the trees.
Hollister swung the binoculars to the point and saw what Curtis saw—a headlight painting the dirt road behind and beyond the trees. He dropped the binoculars and let out his air to gasp for more. “Okay, okay. They’re gone.”
By three A.M. Hollister could hardly control his shivering. He decided to sit up and move around a little to generate some heat. He rubbed his arms and legs and looked around at the others.
The moon had reached a point almost straight up, and the others’ features were easy to see. Though he was cold and very uncomfortable, Hollister was pleased to see that the four LRPs who were tagged to be alert and on watch were doing just that. The team leader and the other soldier who had been sick earlier were better, but sapped of all their strength.
Hollister had been impressed with Curtis’s plan, which took the load off them, and he collected extra water from the others to try to rehydrate the two who had lost so much.
He might have drifted off or not, but the sounds were unmistakable. They were mortars. Hollister had to wonder if he was imagining them. He tried to clear his head. He was sure. Mortars! No dou
bt! He had heard the thunking of six mortar rounds leaving their tubes through the humming of the bugs and the mosquitoes and the frog opera that filled the night. “Incoming!” he yelled in a stage whisper.
The others didn’t need to be told. The noise was close enough and clear enough that they all knew what was next.
The first round landed at least four hundred meters south of the team’s position. It was a sixty-millimeter mortar. In rapid order the other five landed in a hundred-meter circle near the first. All were long, since the apparent location of the mortar tubes was somewhere to the north.
The handset pressed to his face, Hollister yelled into it, “Incoming! We are taking incoming. Gimme that flare ship now, and stand by for redleg request.”
“Roger. Do you have ground contact?”
“Negative. SITREP in five. Out.” He dropped the handset into his lap and listened, holding his breath, ready for any sound that would tell him the next move.
Shit, he thought. Again!
The first round of the second volley landed out in the paddy behind the chopper—just north of the team. They were bracketed! Someone was adjusting the fire—someone close enough to see the impacting rounds and sure enough to know where the team was.
The second and third rounds landed closer. The fourth and fifth landed on their position. One detonated in the trees and sprayed the team with shrapnel. Hollister felt something strike his head and at the same moment he heard someone cry out. It might have been him.
The last round landed in the paddy on the other side of their position and threw mud and water up and over the nearest team members.
He shrugged off the impact of what he was sure was only flying debris—rocks, twigs, or something. He began to crawl toward Curtis and the others when he realized he couldn’t see out of his right eye. He was sure it was just mud and wiped his face with his sleeve. For a moment his vision cleared, then it blurred again.
He reached up with his hand and tried to make a better wipe when he realized the fluid was hot and thick—it was his blood. For a second he resisted the urge to try to feel where it was coming from. What if it was serious? What if he had really taken a serious head shot? He remembered all the crap he had heard about the brain not feeling any pain and chastised himself just to do it!