by Dennis Foley
Pauley called out to the enemy prisoner, “Bui, come over here.”
Bui turned and was surprised to see he was being watched—and by the LRPs who were there for the interviews. He stood and tried unsuccessfully to straighten out his bad leg. He put the spoon in his shirt pocket and walked toward the four Americans.
No one spoke as they watched him take one regular step and then one halting step on the crooked leg that wouldn’t lock at the knee. His stride was a one-sided waddle.
Under his breath, Hollister whispered, “It doesn’t bother me. Walking is not what I want him for.”
By dusk the trio was packed and waiting on the headquarters chopper pad. Bui was with them, wide-eyed and uncharacteristically quiet.
The chopper that landed was from the 145th Aviation Battalion in Bien Hoa. One slick platoon had been assigned to support all of the LRP operations. As they got into the chopper, the pilot, a warrant officer named Norton, told Sangean that the remainder of the platoon would be displacing to Cu Chi within twenty-four hours. This brought the second big smile that Hollister had seen on Sangean’s face in as many days.
The chopper came to a hover check, then Bui watched the ground move about under the chopper. He still seemed shocked by the course his life had taken in a few short hours. He tightly gripped the edge of the bench seat and pressed his back to the transmission wall as Norton maneuvered the hover into a takeoff up and over the nearby one-story latrine that separated the chopper pad from the perimeter wire and the row of matching guard towers.
The sun was just setting when the chopper finally left the Bien Hoa traffic control space, headed for Cu Chi. Hollister, Vance, and Sangean were satisfied that they had accomplished much in their short stay in Long Binh. And Bui was still trying to get used to the phenomenon of flight.
The night was clear, and the thousands of tiny lights that marked life in the fields and paddies twinkled as Norton whisked the LRPs westward.
Not even close to Cu Chi, Hollister began making lists in his head of the myriad things he had to do. Full operational status was rushing up to meet him faster than he had guessed it could. He had endless lists of training objectives that he might not get done before the first teams were on the ground. And he had to add to his lists the coordinated training of the new support elements. The burden would be to find the time, schedule the training in the right sequence, and make sure the right people got to the right training.
As he thought of the training requirements, he could feel the back of his neck tighten up. Sure that he would never get it all done, he knew he would have to settle for getting as much of it done as he could. It would mean little sleep and virtually no wasted motion.
Vance and the pilot got into a conversation over the intercom about the chopper support’s routine. Vance’s theory was that an organization as large as the 145th Aviation Battalion would have a large number of flights as well as ground-supported trips to make on any given day to support its own aircraft and crews scattered throughout the III Corps area. His suspicion was that he might be able to take advantage of those missions when possible and help increase the flexibility and response of Juliet Company’s administrative and logistical needs and solutions.
As the Juliet Company executive officer, Vance would not only be in charge of administration, but logistical and supply needs and requests. He knew it would do little good for him to requisition things for the company if he didn’t have a backup net of sources to move supplies when the supply system itself bogged down with too much demand. One thing that was for sure in Vietnam was that there was no shortage of supplies—just difficulty getting them from where they arrived in-country to where they needed to be to get the job done. Vance was not going to pass up any opportunities.
It was almost two in the morning when Hollister got to his hooch. He was exhausted, still a little rubbery from the effects of the drinking and brawl the night before, and he still had plenty to do before he could get to sleep.
Washing up in the dark at the outdoor shower point allowed him to watch the sky. As he lathered up he felt, as always, a little vulnerable—naked while choppers flew to and from missions, H&I fires went out to the margins of the division’s AO, and soldiers stood watch on the perimeter bunkers less than a hundred meters from his shivering body.
He opened the spigot for a second time and let the cold water flush the soapy film from his skin. For a moment he let himself miss the hot showers he and Susan often took together. They would frequently use up all the hot water in the small water heater in their quarters at Fort Benning. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly four in the afternoon in New York. She would probably be getting ready to knock off work. He hoped her day had been wonderful and she was not as worried about the months ahead as he was.
His mind switched from thoughts of Susan to worries about his responsibilities. He tried to tell himself that he was up to it, but he had done enough LRP work in Vietnam to know that every day turned out to be a surprise, no matter how hard he prepared for it. He knew that in training and planning he had to emphasize flexibility to adapt to the changes in the situation. Failing that meant filling body bags. He never wanted to see another one.
But he knew that was an impossible wish.
“We now have fourteen teams, full strength and deployable. We will be integrating the new Kit Carson Scouts after they finish company training and get some time to familiarize themselves with the teams,” Sangean said to the mess hall full of LRPs, pilots, and artillerymen.
“They will not be brought into the company area until we finish the training. And even then, Lieutenant Potter—our new Intelligence officer, for those of you who haven’t met him—will be setting some off-limits areas for them.
“But now we need to get on to operational matters. We have received orders to deploy LRP teams all along the Cambodian border from this point.” He tapped the map taped on the wall behind him. “To this point.” He tapped it again, at a point near the Plain of Reeds. He then held his hands up to stop any comments before they began.
“I know,” he said. “It’s like a fucking wet pool table out there. But it’s where they want us and where we will work for now.”
Even though silent, most of the men assembled exchanged knowing glances. They knew about the undesirability of the AO assigned to the teams.
“The patrols will be configured, inserted, and extracted to give them the maximum opportunity to survive without being compromised and to be able to bring the max smoke on enemy elements and positions in our AO. That means heavy with ammo and light on rations. In general that means the teams will take M60 machine guns and Starlights and stay in no longer than five days per mission.”
Some of the LRPs nodded their approval at the mention of M60s.
“The G-2 has it that small parties are continuing to terminate their march from North Vietnam along the southern end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail complex and cross into South Vietnam in our sector.”
Sangean paused and looked around the room for any questions or reactions.
A sergeant in the back raised his hand. “Will these be just interdiction missions, sir?”
“We will conduct combat patrols to eliminate infiltration where we find it, destroy roads, bridges, fords, and way stations. We’ll direct artillery and air onto any encampments, training areas, or tunnel complexes we might turn up—on either side of the border. And we’ll try for an occasional prisoner snatch where we can.”
There were generally supportive grunts and noises from many in the room. They didn’t like the AO, but they did like taking the initiative. Many had been misused before on patrols that were poorly supported because their mission was only reconnaissance. Somehow, when teams were sent into an area to look for something and report it, supporting headquarters failed to think about their making contact. It was as if they assumed teams that were just looking could avoid contact at their whim. That translated into little, very late, or no support when contact was made.
“We’ll go in loaded for bear. We’ll be full strength on air, choppers, and commo support, too. So we should be in good shape despite the unsatisfactory cover and concealment.”
Sangean turned the briefing over to Lieutenant Potter, who introduced himself.
“I am here from the ARVN District Headquarters at Hiep Hoa. I’ve been in-country for ten months and have spent all of that time trying to get out of Hiep Hoa.”
His comments got a laugh out of everyone in the room. They all knew how worthless the District Headquarters was in the small town between Cu Chi and the Cambodian border. They would send troops out in the daytime only to come up dry every time. One of the reasons was that they never left the highway. Each night they would pull back inside the wire at the District compound and wait for another day.
Potter had to have been a real standout in an ARVN unit. He stood six-foot-three and weighed in at about two hundred pounds. He had a large voice and a face full of teeth that flashed with his quick smile. Still, he was kind of a strange bird. He had been an infantry officer and an aviator, but he had developed a high-frequency hearing loss in one ear, and a flight surgeon had grounded him. Infantry Branch had wanted to profile him and restrict his assignments about the same time Military Intelligence Branch was desperately looking for quality officers to fill its ranks.
With a little salesmanship and lots of enthusiasm, Potter and MI convinced each other it was a marriage made in heaven, and he was branch-transferred into MI. So, though he wore the compass rose of MI on his collar, he also wore a CIB, with flight and parachute wings below them. The only dark spot in his transfer to MI was his eventual assignment to Hiep Hoa. That had been the end of the honeymoon.
Hollister remembered Potter from Ranger School. He had been a good student and an exemplary patrol leader. When Sangean had told him he was lobbying to get Potter from MACV, Hollister agreed that he would be an asset to Juliet Company.
Potter gave a thorough briefing, though he candidly disagreed about the size of the threat the higher command had suggested existed beyond the invisible border in the fields.
His assessment was that the infiltration was in fact taking place and being supported from way stations in the Ba Thu Corridor—inside the Parrot’s Beak—and way stations inside western III Corps.
He felt the ARVN paranoia about another attack on Saigon made them overemphasize the need for interdiction along the routes from the end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the suburbs of Saigon.
Still, he did not want to play down the real danger to teams caught out in the AO. It would take very little for a team to be wiped out if it made contact with a lightly armed platoon-sized enemy unit—or if it was hit by a single RPG grenadier.
His briefing was solid and made plenty of sense. It was his first introduction to the company, and most felt that he inspired confidence in his judgment in spite of the bad reputation the Military Intelligence community had among the troops.
Potter’s portion of the briefing was followed by Hollister’s. He gave a general description of the schedule of deployments, the length of the patrols, and the priorities that would be in effect concerning contact and teams compromised in the AO. He finished with a reemphasis on the training that would take place before and between missions.
Captain Chris Edmonds followed Hollister and introduced himself. Edmonds was the platoon leader of the slick platoon, which would be with Juliet Company. His eight slicks, pilots, crew, mechanics, and ground-support personnel had displaced from Bien Hoa to Cu Chi and were busily refurbishing the old billets they were given.
“You know who we are. We’re the guys who are trying to take those piece-of-shit barracks you-all gave us and turn them into a bit of heaven. When we’re finished, you-all will be welcome to come down and spend some of your jump pay in our club. But—only after you have bathed. I’ve picked up LRP teams before.” He made a face and got plenty of catcalls in return.
After settling the crowd back down, Edmonds wasted no time convincing all that he and his pilots were very pleased to be with Juliet Company and to be able to get a chance to know the people that they supported. They had several months of experience in what he called “bus driving.” They were all tired of missed communications, wrong coordinates, bad messages, unhappy ground troops, and abused crews.
When Edmonds was finished, everyone was sure he meant business and was committed to Juliet Company.
The briefing went on for another hour as the FAC, the artillery forward observer, and the 25th Division liaison officer all spoke.
It soon became apparent to the leaders of Juliet Company that the company was coming together and that there was a consistent effort to coordinate support, reduce the time to get it, and let the parties involved get to know one another.
As the new Signal officer, Captain Newman, took his turn, Hollister looked over at Major Sangean. The confidence coming from the briefing was showing in a slight relaxation in the tension in his face. Hollister wouldn’t have described Sangean as worried, but he might have used the words “seriously concerned” to describe him earlier.
Newman explained the post of commo officer and the duties of the company’s Commo Section. The extended distances involved—border to Cu Chi and Cu Chi to Long Binh—brought the company several radio communications problems. Hollister’s efforts to convince enough people of the need for constant and reliable communications had resulted in the creation and staffing of a commo element in Juliet Company. In a nutshell Operations was going to help them shoot, aviation was going to help them move, and Newman was going to allow them to communicate.
That brought a smile to every face in the room. To the man they all knew that survivability rested in the ability to tell people what they needed, and without reliable communications they were at great risk on the ground.
While training and mission prep continued for the next few days, Hollister, Sangean, and Potter made flight after flight out to the border area to get a better look at it. They tried to make the missions deceptive by flying in patterns that would indicate they were looking at things on the near side of the border, closer to Hiep Hoa than to the actual border. They brought binoculars, and while the choppers circled the Hiep Hoa area, they inspected the vegetation, trail patterns, old and new enemy position reports, and flight conditions at various times of the day.
Hollister was able to mix up the air support for the recons by getting rides with the air force FAC, Lieutenant MacNaughton. Mac was an F-4 pilot by training, but had been assigned to the forward air controller job after a hundred missions at the controls of a jet. During their flights along the border, Hollister learned more about the FAC business than he might ever have learned in normal infantry jobs in a twenty-year career. And the flights gave him a better perspective on what MacNaughton needed from a team to put in an effective and accurate close air strike.
Things seemed to be getting better and more complicated at the same time. Hollister’s doubts about being able to direct the orchestration effectively nagged at him, and he spent longer hours poring over plans, maps, notes, and Intelligence Summaries. He spent a lot of time talking to his new source of information—Sergeant Bui. The officers had decided to make Bui an acting sergeant to give him some status with the Americans and the other Kit Carson Scouts.
Bui was as forthcoming as Hollister could have wished. He told Hollister about the AO, about the kind of guerrilla operations that had gone on there for years, and what he thought the Americans could expect.
Hollister listened and absorbed all he could, but kept in mind that Bui was a fast talker who might be handing Hollister a line of shit just to stay out of the prison and keep his job.
Bui’s home was in the same type of terrain, although miles north of the AO that Juliet Company would be operating in. Hollister decided to ask Bui about his home area and not give away the actual area of interest for fear that he might go over the wire with the information and compromise the operations.
Two nights before the f
irst team was to go in, Sangean dropped by Hollister’s hooch with a bottle of bourbon and some last-minute questions.
Within an hour the others drifted in. By midnight an informal meeting of the company and support staffs had filled Hollister and Vance’s small hooch.
The bourbon flowed freely, but there was a pregame anxiety in the air. Sangean said little, but the others talked about the operation like a football team on its way to a game. There were wide differences of opinion as to what they thought the enemy reaction would be to the deployment of several teams in their front yard. The vote went from avoidance to hell-bent destruction of the invaders.
By two A.M. the conversation had loosened up to cars, women, stereo equipment, and cameras.
Hollister liked his new team and didn’t want to accept the fact that all of the same faces would not be around at the end of his tour. He had been at this war long enough to know that the casualties would happen and that he would make and lose more friends. The pull on his gut made him reach for another cupful of bourbon. Though it was not his favorite drink, it was what he started the evening with, and he subscribed to the taboo about not mixing drinks.
It made little difference. The morning run was just as difficult and his stomach was just as unsettled as if he had mixed bourbon, Scotch, and vodka, which some of those in his hooch had done.
The formation was much bigger now that the company was getting up to full strength, and they had embarrassed the pilots, air force, and artillerymen into joining them on the morning runs.
As Juliet Company ran through the narrow streets of the base camp, the thunder of their voices singing Airborne Jody cadences provoked insults from unseen soldiers still in their bunks. It was the kind of thing LRPs lived for—to embarrass the legs in their racks.
Running by the Division MP Company, Hollister recalled his morning runs on his first tour, in which the rivalry between his LRP detachment and the Brigade MPs was long-standing. He remembered some of the faces—and the morning was just as dark, and the day held just as many surprises. Not much had changed—except the losses and the pain.