Warzone: Nemesis: A Novel of Mars

by Morris Graham

  “The way I see it, it is the fault of the French. If they hadn’t colonized Indonesia eighty years ago, there would have been no struggle for national sovereignty. Once the Japs left it would have been business as usual. There would be no emotional fuel for communism, no Ho Chi Minh, and no Americans dying.” He paused for effect, looking to see if anyone would argue the point. None did. We’d heard it all before. Prophet wasn’t actually a prophet; he was just a student of history looking for an audience. He was a tall, dark-haired country-boy from South Carolina who seemed to hold various philosophical viewpoints, mixed with a smattering of religious references now and then. He was not unlike the plantation owners and aristocrats of the old South in his convoluted mix of politics, philosophy and religion. But, he was the closest thing we had to a sage who bothered to find some rational cause for the war. After nearly a year of being in-country, we needed someone to make this all make sense.

  I contemplated surviving one more twenty-four hour shift and going home. Prophet wasn’t through trying to get some conversation and headed to the card table.

  “Hey, Cowboy. How does it feel to be going home to a target-rich environment of round-eyed women?”

  I laughed. “Just cover my six one more shift and I’ll write you back all about it.”

  “One more shift,” he snorted. “You’re due for a sick call. Don’t tempt fate. Nobody wants the get killed on his last day in-country, especially during a withdrawal. I’ve already passed my fit rep, done my FTL flight check and have a green light to take over as FTL when you leave. Your replacement is already here to start as co-pilot of the trail bird.” The SEALs listened intently to see if I agreed with his proposal.

  “Not my style, you know that. Honor first day—honor last day—and all the days in between. Besides, if one American serviceman or friendly died the day that I faked being sick, you know I would take that to my grave. Tomorrow I start the last shift of my tour. When I’m through, I leave with no regrets.” SEAL faces broke out with approving smiles.

  But I did have regrets. We killed NVA and VC guerillas by the thousands, but the late Ho Chi Minh’s DRV continued to wage war against the South. Though the kill rate was one of ours to ten of theirs, they never quit coming. Something ate at me about how we never seemed to get to the cause of communism. It seemed like we were perpetually trying to overcome an enemy who never seemed to want to quit.

  I wasn’t one to make speeches, but I rose, lifted my beer and called for a toast, “To Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung.” You could have heard a pin drop. “May they rot in hell!”

  “Here, here,” several voices echoed while the tension left the room and the conversations returned to normal. They were all relieved that I was leaving Vietnam with the same conviction and loyalty to my country that I had on the first day here. I hunkered down at the card table to carry on my conversation with my Trail AHAC.

  “Prophet, President Nixon has assured us that the war of northern aggression is almost over. I fully expect when I get home to Louisiana that the Yankees will have all gone home.”

  Prophet loved that one. He laughed until the tears streaked down his face. I made the promotion to FTL two months earlier, still a jaygee (lieutenant, junior grade) but having the most combat hours in the seat on our shift. Ironically, my co-pilot LT Robertson outranked me but didn’t have enough hours to be trail AHAC or FTL. The FTL would take the lead and the trail AHAC would follow behind and above and to the lead bird’s starboard side, so he could see ahead and to keep out of my rotor tail wash. Hueys worked best in pairs. They weren’t the fastest birds in the sky, and the fully fueled and armed Bravo model does not hover! It’s a good thing that Solid Anchor has an airstrip, versus the old LST of Sea Float, so we can get a full fuel tank and rocket load and still lift-off. A pair of Hueys with two seasoned door gunners was a force to reckon with.

  The SEALs were getting our newbie a little drunk, and it was nearly time for phase two of his hazing. Chief Butler screamed out loudly, “Skivvie check!” to which everyone in the bar dropped his pants. Well, almost everyone. Our newbie pilot looked dazed and confused. He had a few beers in him, and I’m sure this ritual made no sense at all to him. Chief Butler approached him with a growl.

  “Skivvie Check!” Our newbie looked dumfounded. Our newbie looked dumfounded. The chief pulled his pants down, and finding brand-new, clean, white, skivvie-shorts, he ripped them straight up and off of our newbie.

  “Plumb forgot to warn that young Yankee pilot about wearing skivvies in here with the SEALs and all,” said Prophet, his face set with a Machiavellian grin.

  “I wonder if it still hurts to have new skivvies ripped off of you,” I laughed. I had first-hand knowledge of that myself, having once been the newbie. With a full belly and a few beers in me, I started getting drowsy and headed for my barracks. I needed a long, deep sleep. I wanted to be sharp for my shift and not slip up on my last day. My personal effects were already packed. I just needed to survive another shift, get some sleep, and stateside here I come. My fiancée Beth would be waiting for me when I got home. I took Beth’s picture out of my pocket and looked intently at the vision of the woman I was going to marry. She was the most beautiful woman at Louisiana College: long, thick chestnut-brown hair, warm brown eyes and the figure of a swimsuit model. Beth’s major in college was business, always the practical one. She would run the business end of my helicopter-transport service when we could scrape up enough money to start up.

  I breathed deeply of Vietnam. Vietnam had its own smells: the spicy scent of tropical flowers, sweat, river mud, aircraft fuel, fish and rotting jungle vegetation, and a touch of salt on the breeze from the Gulf of Thailand nearby. Vietnam was hotter than back home, and more humid. Having been raised in Louisiana, I was acclimated to it, somewhat. We were just about sea level here, though it rained more here than back home.

  I surveyed my bunk. All my gear was packed and at the foot of my bunk, and the only things out were my zoom bag, flight helmet, flight boots and my holster with two Colt revolvers. I’d thrown my dress whites and dress-shoes away after they’d succumbed to some sort of mold that seemed to afflict everything here. I had slightly altered my zoom bag by sewing my canvas holsters and gun belt onto it. I didn’t want to fumble around trying to put it on during a scramble. I only had to jump in my zoom bag, zip it up, buckle my gun holster, and zip up my flight boots.

  I wondered again if any of my letters from Beth were being held up in some kind of APO screw-up. I couldn’t sleep, so I afforded myself another beer from the fridge in the barracks. The excitement level was making my mind race, and I felt restless. After another beer, I was able to slow my mind down enough to fall deeply asleep. I woke up about eight hours later, to the sound of a poker game in progress. I played poker with Prophet, our copilots, our newbie and our gunners until we broke for breakfast. Afterward we resumed our game until after lunch, when it was time for my last pre-shift nap. I awoke feeling ready to finish my final tour.

  It was time. Our shift was soon to start. The men started to suit up and make it to the helo pads to greet the crew coming in from the end of their shift, refuel, reload, do a quick preflight check, and get ready for the call if it came.

  LCDR Jernigan, FTL of the first shift and OIC was putting his/my bird down on the helo pad for the shift change. They hadn’t scrambled during his shift and pretty much ran routine patrol patterns and stayed on alert. The natives were unusually quiet on his shift. I was beginning to hope that my last day in-country would be as boring and uneventful. The shift change occurred one hour before dusk, so we had a chance to do a preflight inspection in the daylight before starting our shift. Most of the enemies’ activities were at night, when Charlie could use the cover of darkness. Navy pilots were instrument trained, so we were up to the task of night flying. After relieving the first-shift crew, my gunners refueled the bird. My copilot checked the rocket tubes to make sure they were still loaded and armed while I started my preflight inspection. The Hue
y was not quite designed for being a gunship. It was an afterthought borne from necessity for Vietnam. I never knew what the designers were thinking when they set up all of the circuitry. Each weapon system had its own switches, with one master breaker. We kept all of the systems hot when ready to scramble to some hotspot in a hurry. We did this by leaving all of the system breakers hot and just throwing the main breaker when we wanted all systems up. My inspection revealed that Wild Bill hadn’t added any new gun holes, cracks, breaks or other damage to our bird. Preflight check complete, we were ready for a scramble or a patrol.

  We weren’t called to scramble. We’d take the fire team out on patrol. Scrambles were called when someone was in trouble, with us humping it on double time. The klaxon sound of oogah, oogah, and the dispatcher calling “Seawolves Scramble!” precluded the mad dash to jump into your zoom bag, zip up your flight boots, and strap on your personal close close protection. (For me was a pair of Colt forty-five revolvers which my grandfather gave me, hence the name “Cowboy” I was given by the other pilots). A scramble could bring you out of your bunk fast asleep to wide-wake and in the air in less than two minutes. (My personal best time to lift-off was one minute, forty-two seconds.) Scrambles could catch you at the mess hall eating, playing cards, in the head, wherever, but one thing was sure. Life as you knew it ceased to exist at the urgency of the scramble call. A scramble call was heart pumping, adrenaline rushing, with nerves on edge propelling us into the unknown—which was already identified as dangerous for somebody. Scrambles could be called for the support of PBR’s (Patrol River Boats), defense of a Ruff-Puff outpost at the canal crossings where we refueled and rearmed, the defense of ARVN friendly troops or American troops in the field.

  For the Navy SEALs, we offered insertions, extractions, and fire support when needed. Last but not least and the most urgent was the defense of our own base from where we operate. The scramble on the latter was extremely urgent because our choppers were the enemies’ number one priority targets in a base attack. Our birds on the helo pad were at their most vulnerable state. The best defense of both them and the base was to get them in the air, and hunting. Charlie launched an attack of some kind on Solid Anchor every night.

  On my last shift I didn’t want to get in some hairy firefight that could get me killed, but I still wanted to see some action.

  My senior mechanic and right door gunner, ADJ1 (mechanic, first class) Chief “Crazy Mike” Thornton had the kind of pinpoint accuracy that made our crew quite effective. When he needed practice with the M-60, he would shoot seagulls in the air. I never saw him miss—he always got the bird by the second tracer.

  There was no urgency to get airborn quickly. LT Robertson and I snapped on our flotation LPU’s, put on our helmets, strapped on our seat harnesses and sat on our chicken plates. The chicken plates were bullet-proof vests. Since we were usually shot at from below, it made more sense to sit on them than wear them.

  My senior gunner grabbed the fire bottle and got seated and gave me a thumbs up. My second gunner untied the rotor blade that held the tail boom and held onto the rotor blade while I hit the starter. He maintained his hold against building engine pressure until there was enough for acceleration without the danger of the rotor blades striking the tail boom or the deck, then he released it. He took his place in his seat. When we got about six inches off the ground, I checked power and gave a thumbs up to my trail AHAC. We took off down the runway until we could get enough rpms up for transitional lift. Previously when we had to take off from an LST (our floating base), we had to be real careful how we lifted off. Bravo model Hueys didn’t have any real hover capabilities, and lift-off from an LST was a little hairy at times.

  The U Minh was unusually quiet tonight, and our patrol was uneventful. Too quiet to me was as unnerving as too hostile. We put our birds back down at the helo pads, refueled, ran though the safety checklist, tied down the rotor to the tail boom, and headed back to the mess hall. SEAL Chief Butler had advised us earlier that they were doing a snatch-and-grab operation tonight and were being inserted by one of our mike boats. He gave me his radio frequency for the op and his call sign, code name Sour Mash, just in case. If all went well, the mike boat should pick them up just before dawn with their prisoner, a notable VC tax collector. This was a very bad man, who worked his way across the delta and extracted taxes of rice, fish, and money from the scared peasants.

  We ate with the SEALs, and they shoved off. Then we retired to our barracks and got a couple hours of shut-eye in anticipation that we may have to scramble later. The stars were out at about twenty-three hundred when I awoke. My det mates had a poker game going on, so I joined them. This was my last shift on alert in-country. I invited each of my brother Seawolves to come see me in Louisiana when they were stateside.

  About zero three hundred the klaxon sounded, oogah, oogah, and the 1-MC announced, “Now scramble, Seawolves!” My adrenaline started pumping and transformed me from a care-free poker player into a Seawolf pilot. I put on my zoom bag and boots in record time and got the details from the dispatcher. The mike boat that was to extract the SEALs was under mortar fire and couldn’t make the pick-up. Det Five was being scrambled to assist the mike boat, and we were to extract the SEALs, who were now reporting they were under intense fire.

  The SEALs were only fifteen minutes away, and one of our birds would have to do the extraction. My engine was brand-new and had more lift potential than Seawolf One-Two. We needed to have our max gross weight down to pick up a six-man SEAL team and hostage, so we pumped some of the fuel out of my bird until we were down to seven hundred pounds. However, I needed to clear a landing zone in the triple-thick Mangrove forest, so we loaded all fourteen rocket tubes with fourteen-pound HE rockets. This made us a bit heavy, but I’d be expending all of the rockets before the pick-up. The SEALs had informed the dispatcher that they didn’t have enough C-4 and det cord to finish clearing a proper landing zone. We needed a clear runway so we could overcome our dead-man zone fully loaded down and lift-off. My trail AHAC would leave his fuel tank full and “loaded for bear,” in case more time was needed to cover the team or us. I estimated we needed to be about thirty minutes from flameout with our rocket tubes empty and jettisoned, and most of our ammo expended to get our gross weight down enough for the pick-up.

  Arriving at the SEALs’ extraction point, I raised them on the radio. “Sour Mash, this is Seawolf One-One. What’s your status?”

  “Cowboy, I hope you got your spurs on. We got the package. Doc Peavey’s been wounded, but can walk with assistance. Charlie has a regiment so close to us that we can smell the fish on their breath. We need out now!”

  “Roger that, Sour Mash. Pop some smoke so we can see you.” The SEALs hand-held M-79 mortar gun delivered a smoke grenade just above the mangrove canopy about one click due northeast of our position. “Sour Mash, I see your smoke. Where’s Charlie?”

  “Charlie is about one hundred meters due northeast of where we popped smoke. Hurry! There’s a whole NVA regiment on our six!”

  “Hold on, Sour Mash, we’re going to lay down some suppressive fire on Charlie while you back up southwest. We need you as far back as you can get before we blast a landing zone.”

  “Roger that, One-One.”

  We started a run on the VC position with guns only, no rockets. I wanted to back the VC up a little while the SEALs were backing up so we could get a safety margin before clearing a landing zone. The visibility on the ground was zero because of the triple-thick mangrove canopy, but we opened fire with the minigun in front, and both door gunners giving it all they had. We had the capability of firing a combined total of five thousand rounds per minute, but the minigun only had fifteen hundred rounds loaded in the tray, and the door gunners had about the same amount. We moved over the deck above the VC, and the door gunners fired continuously through the trees while my copilot fired three second bursts through the thinnest part of the foliage. A three-second burst could deliver six hundred rounds. We move
d around behind my Trail AHAC, and he delivered the same to the area. We lined up for our rocket run as soon as Prophet broke right and moved to our aft while my copilot reloaded his minigun tray.

  “Sour Mash, we’re ready for our approach.”

  “One-One, we’re clear and still moving. Hurry every chance you get!”

  “Roger, coming in.”

  We came in for our rocket run at the highest altitude we could manage, keeping us high enough for safety and the rocket spread right. The gunners retreated inside the bird to keep from getting hurt by the molten slag and sparks from the rockets. I ripple-fired the entire load of fourteen HE warhead rockets at the mangrove forest below, and sat back to watch the show. I’d never seen an explosion of this magnitude, except for a couple times we’d destroyed enemy ammo bunkers and a fuel depot. I broke off the rocket run and rolled right into a two hundred and seventy degree turn, and exposed my right door gunner to hose the area down with fire while my trail bird began his rocket run. Prophet unloaded all of his rockets save his two fleshettes (nails). This significantly expanded the clearing and providing a larger landing zone. Once my AHAC was through with his run and had ascended out of the dead-man zone to one thousand feet, we broke off our gun circle and ascended to a safe altitude.

  Having expended all of the HE rockets of both birds, we made one more pass, this time with our minigun and two door guns blazing away into the north edge of the clearing. It sounded like mayhem with the engine noise and all three guns firing. I broke off the attack and rolled left and maintained a gun circle with my left door gunner spraying the forest down. We were just above the mangrove canopy while our trail bird repeated our run.

  The plan was now to get into formation again, with the trail bird in front. Prophet would go low and keep the area hosed down while I dropped down and attempted to pick up all seven SEALs and one prisoner. My gunners ejected the rocket tubes and deep-sixed anything loose we could part with into the Song Cua Lon. We needed to get our gross weight down, so lift-off was possible when we picked up the SEALs. The only thing we hadn’t thrown overboard was our ammo, med kits, spare gun barrels, and wrenches to change the gunner’s barrels. We didn’t have a spare wrench or anything not bolted down that we hadn’t already pitched overboard. Prophet started the last run and flew dangerously low in the north opening of the landing zone site, just above treetop level. They sprayed into the mangrove forest with all three guns, jinking the bird up and down to theoretically make a harder target to hit. I hated that he was in that position. This was too much like a fair fight.