by Scott Ely
“Alabama, you’re the only one in this whole battalion who believes that shit,” Labouf said.
They reached the crest of the mountain and started down the side. This was the first time the battalion had been on the move at night. Jackson kept tripping over vines and walking into limbs, and he wished he had Tom Light to lead him through the jungle. Soon Jackson began to hear the faint sound of drums and gongs along with shouts and chanting. From Hale’s briefings Jackson knew there was a Montagnard village at the foot of the mountain. The people of the village served as porters for the NVA and grew food for them.
“Goddamn funeral the Yards are having will distract the enemy,” Hale said to a lieutenant. “Maybe the dinks’ll be drunk on rice wine too. Most of them will be fucking base camp soldiers. Gone soft. Easy pickings.”
“They’ll be waiting for us,” Labouf whispered to Jackson.
Then Labouf went out to scout ahead of the battalion.
Where was Tom Light? Jackson wondered.
Hale’s plan of attack was to advance between the village on their right and the paddy fields on their left across the valley of scrub and grass. A creek ran down the center of the mile-wide valley. The larger bunkers were located on the far side at the foot of the mountain, but there were small bunkers and trenches scattered through the scrub between the creek and the mountain. According to intelligence, most of the NVA were across the border in Vietnam. Hale wanted very much to capture the general who made his headquarters at the base camp.
“Most of ’em are still up on the mountain looking for us,” Hale said. “We lost ’em in the dark. The rest are tied up with those two platoons from Alpha. Had it planned that way all along.”
The battalion slowly moved into a position at the foot of the mountain and waited for dawn. From a few yards in front of where Jackson lay next to Hale came the sound of falling water which Jackson supposed was a small waterfall made by a stream running off the mountain. Except for an occasional shout, the village had been silent for several hours. Then it stopped raining, the trees still dripping on them. A water buffalo bellowed, a rooster crowed.
Sounds just like home, Jackson thought.
The sky began to lighten.
“It’ll clear. We’ll have air support,” Jackson heard Hale whisper to a lieutenant.
Jackson watched Hale take the silver eagles out of his ruck.
“Put ’em on for me, Jackson,” Hale said.
Jackson started to pin the first one, but Hale’s fatigues were rotten and the cloth disintegrated beneath Jackson’s fingers. Finally he found a spot that held and attached the eagle. Then he pinned on the other one.
“One battle away from these,” Hale said.
Hale had Jackson put on the whip. After several unsuccessful attempts, Hale managed to make contact with a Forward Air Control plane. The one battery they had left was getting weak. Air control promised Phantoms if the cloud cover over the valley lifted and, later, helicopter gunships and medevacs. Hale had Jackson radio this news to all his commanders.
As it grew light, Jackson saw the waterfall was water from three six-inch-thick bamboo pipes the Montagnards had driven into the hillside, the water falling into a large pool which had formed below. Around the pool the grass had been cropped short by the hill people’s livestock. Jackson held a flare and waited for Hale’s order.
Jackson pressed his face down into the leaves, smelling that Tom Light stink. Hale tapped him on the shoulder, and Jackson raised his head.
“Get ready,” Hale whispered in his ear.
Then Jackson saw a figure at the pool, a young Montagnard woman. She wore a piece of shiny black cloth wrapped around her from her breasts to her ankles and carried a small baby on her back. The woman took the baby out of the sling and placed him on the grass. Then she unwound the cloth and taking the baby in her arms stepped into the pool.
Hale was looking at his watch. Jackson wished he had the starlight so he could know if he was going to live. Light knew. Where was he?
The young Montagnard woman bathed the child who began to cry as she splashed water on him. Then she bent over and placed him on her back. The baby lay his head to one side and stretched out his arms to cling to her. Keeping the child balanced on her back, she began to bathe herself. Just then the sun cleared the mountains and through a break in the clouds fell on the pool, the light shining off a brass ring the baby wore around one ankle.
Loretta, Jackson thought.
He imagined how it would feel to hold her again, and he felt himself grow hard.
“Do it now,” Hale whispered.
Jackson rolled over on his side and, aiming the flare at a thin place in the tree cover, started to hit the bottom of the tube with his palm. But he hesitated, glancing at the woman who was still in the pool. She had begun to sing, her voice soft.
“Now!” Hale said.
Jackson hit the tube, the star cluster going off with a pop, the flare ripping through the leaves, taking forever to clear the trees. But finally it did, and with another pop the parachute opened, and the red flare began to burn. As Jackson scrambled to his feet, he saw the woman with the baby in her arms staring up at the flare. The baby looked at the flare and laughed. She started to scream, her mouth opening wide, but he heard no sound coming out because the shooting had started—frags, automatic rifles, machine guns drowned out the woman’s screams. Leander’s mortar squad began to fire at the bunkers.
They were all up and running. Jackson’s legs were not working right, for it seemed to him that it took minutes instead of seconds for him to run past the woman who crouched with her screaming child by the side of the pool, the mother trying to wrap the piece of cloth back around her body. Her breasts, big with milk, swayed as she tugged at the cloth. The baby reached for her, one tiny hand clutching a breast. Finally they were past the woman and her baby, Jackson looking for cover as they ran into the village, but forced to go where Hale went because Hale had the handset in his hand.
Then enemy mortar rounds began to drop on them. Hale yelled orders into the handset, calling on platoons that no longer existed and commanders who were dead.
Good cover over there in that ditch, Jackson thought. Hide behind that bamboo. We’re fucking exposed.
Jackson wanted to turn around and run back into the jungle. Find Light. Go to the city.
But Jackson had no other choice but to follow Hale past the huts. One was on fire. Suddenly two soldiers only an arm’s length in front of them were cut down by a burst of AK-47 fire. Jackson could see the bullets hit, the impacts spraying water off the men’s uniforms and the sun forming rainbows in the spray for a brief instant. Then they were in a ditch, Hale lying beside him. Jackson gasped for breath and raised his head to watch, but all he could see was a burning hut and a dead American soldier lying on his side curled up like he had lain down to sleep in the sun. Most of the soldier’s back was missing, the muscles and ribs visible.
I’ll look like that, Jackson thought and tried to force the thought of his own death out of his mind.
Jackson began to shake and gulp air.
Why not me? Jackson thought. Tom Light’s not here. Luck. Nothing but fucking luck.
“Goddammit, keep ’em moving,” Hale shouted into the handset to a platoon from Alpha that was still trapped back up on the mountain. “Keep ’em spread out. Don’t bunch up.”
“They’re up on the mountain,” a lieutenant said.
“Why aren’t they down here? They’ll all get a court martial!” Hale screamed.
Someone silenced the enemy rifleman with a grenade launcher.
“Not much resistance,” Hale said to a sergeant. “Few strays in the village getting some Yard pussy.”
They passed the village, the battalion spread out through the scrub. So far the resistance they had met was not that of soft base camp troops. Even single men had stood and fought until they were killed. And the battalion was taking casualties.
Then a pair of Phantoms appeared, dropping
down into the valley with a great roar. For an instant they seemed frozen over the valley as Jackson looked at their markings and the pilots under their canopies. The ground shook from the impact of 250-pound bombs, and Jackson pressed his body close to the earth. Suddenly they were gone, kicking in their afterburners with a roar and climbing almost straight up into some scattered patches of cloud that were beginning to move in. They made three passes, dropping bombs and napalm in the field and at the foot of the mountain where the main bunkers were located. Jackson was close enough to the napalm drop to feel the heat from it. Everyone cheered. Jackson yelled too. He wanted the Phantoms to cover the valley with napalm, fry the dinks.
Hale talked to the pilots on the radio. They complained that the NVA had placed the bunkers at a place against the mountain that made it difficult for the planes to negotiate the narrow valley and drop bombs on them. They made a final run and were gone.
Under the cover of the airstrike, they pressed on to the creek and forded it. Jackson had been wondering when the helicopter gunships would show up and a medevac for the wounded, but now blue-black storm clouds had blocked out the sun, and pieces of cloud had dropped down into the valley. Soon they would be fighting in the rain. He imagined flying out of the valley on a chopper. If only one came, Hale would end up on it and he would go too as Hale’s RTO.
“Hold off,” he said softly to himself. “Give us two hours.”
Forward Air Control called and told Hale they would have to withdraw the fighters because of the bad weather that was moving in. No choppers would be coming unless the weather improved.
Jackson wondered how it would be if Tom Light could really do it. Light walking about after the battle, raising dead soldiers with a touch of his hand. Crazy, Jackson thought. Fucking crazy. You’ve been lucky so far. Maybe it was never Tom Light at all. Just luck.
Then they met their first real resistance. At least a platoon of NVA were dug in. Leander brought his mortars in on them but as soon as the rounds stopped, the guns out of ammunition, the enemy was firing again. The NVA mortars at the bunkers were now getting their range.
Under the direction of the lieutenants they sidestepped the pocket of resistance. Now instead of standing and fighting until they were killed, the enemy began to fall back.
“Goddamn they’re falling apart,” Hale shouted into the handset. “Try to take that fucking general alive.”
Jackson had never seen Hale so excited. But Hale was careful to direct the battle from the safety of a ruined bunker, the overhead cover blown off by a 250-pound bomb leaving only a pit, the grass around it burned black from a napalm strike. Part of a sandbag wall was still in place. The charred bodies of the dead NVA had been frozen by the napalm in the positions they had died and looked like grotesque mannequins. The smell was very bad. Troops directly to their front began firing LAWs at the bunkers.
“Kill ’em, kill ’em, kill ’em,” Jackson repeated over and over.
Suddenly they began taking light machine gun fire from both flanks. The gunners were in no hurry. They took their time, making sure every inch of the field was covered. Mortars followed. Jackson crouched against the clay wall of the pit while he listened to Hale scream at his commanders.
No one will ever find our bodies, Jackson thought. The jungle will eat us. We’ll rot. In a week there’ll be nothing left. Light! Where the fuck are you?
Now the rain fell harder and thicker clouds moved in, making it impossible for Jackson to see more than a few feet. Figures ran up out of the clouds, and a lieutenant dropped into the bunker beside them.
“Goddamn double envelopment,” the lieutenant said. “Center collapsed and sucked us in. Trick’s older than the fucking world. There’s a goddamn brigade in here. We need an air strike so we can break out.”
Hale got back on the radio and began trying to contact Charlie and Alpha. But he received no reply.
“Dead, wasted,” the lieutenant said.
Then one by one and in small groups the remainder of the battalion found their way to the pit and formed a perimeter around it. The man with the frag wrapped in green tape was there, the frag now almost the size of a softball from the extra tape wrapped around it. Then Labouf and Reynolds & Raymond jumped into the pit. Short-timer still rode on Raymond’s shoulder. Everyone else had dropped their ruck, but Labouf still wore his.
Labouf looked quickly around him and said, “Alabama, let’s get out of here.”
“How? They got us surrounded,” Jackson said, willing to listen to anyone’s plan for escape, no matter how crazy.
“They won’t get my money,” Labouf said.
Jackson then knew Labouf had no plan.
“All the money man’s got is money,” Raymond said.
Leander jumped into the pit beside Hale.
“Where’s your fucking battalion, Major?” Leander asked, the pith helmet strapped tight under his chin.
Hale had lost one of his silver eagles. He sat in the mud at the bottom of the pit with his back to the wall.
“You better get rid of that dink helmet before somebody shoots you by mistake,” Hale said.
“Fucking Major Hale. Got my men wasted so he could make colonel.”
But Hale had stopped listening to Leander. He was looking at his map.
Instead of firing his M-16, Reynolds played it and sang, “I want to take you home, I won’t do you no harm/You’ve got to be all mine. Foxy Lady.”
Leander loaded a new magazine into his M-16 and began to fire over the side of the bunker.
“Come on, Major! We gotta fight. Ain’t no use looking at a map!” Leander shouted.
Jackson stood up and began to fire off into the rain and clouds.
Suddenly Leander sat down, his helmet spinning off his head into the mud. He fell backward and hit with a splash in the water that had begun to collect in the pit, lying face down in the mud. The helmet now had two bullet holes in it.
That’ll be me. That’ll be all of us, Jackson thought.
“Come on, Alabama, let’s get out of here,” Labouf said as he stood up. “We can make it.”
“No, don’t go,” Jackson said.
Labouf scrambled up the side of the pit. Jackson tried to stop him, but Labouf pushed him away. Then Jackson slipped in the mud and fell. Jackson got up in time to see Labouf run a few steps and jump into a bomb crater occupied by the man with the frag wrapped in tape. Mortars began to drop in on them, and just as Jackson put his head down, he saw Labouf and the soldier disappear in a cloud of smoke. When he looked up again, individual bills floated down like rain, and bundles still wrapped in plastic bobbed in the water at the bottom of the pit.
“Money man lost his money again,” Raymond said.
Reynolds & Raymond began to scramble to pick up the money.
“Goddamn dinks!” Jackson shouted.
Jackson sucked in great gulps of air and fired his M-16 off into the clouds.
The lieutenant left the pit to take command of the men on the perimeter, taking everyone except Reynolds & Raymond and Jackson with him. The NVA were squeezing them, closing the circle.
Raymond said, “We’ll send Short-timer out, Major. He’ll kill the dinks.”
Short-timer’s bones had almost completely faded away. Raymond straightened out the pins on two frags so Short-timer would have an easy time pulling them out. Then he placed the frags in Short-timer’s vest.
“Go get ’em, Short-timer,” Raymond said.
Short-timer was speeding again. He turned a couple of flips and chattered. Then he pulled the vest over his head and dropped it in the water. Short-timer jumped out of the pit and disappeared in the grass.
“Hey, you fucking deserter! Come back!” Raymond yelled and fired off a burst after him.
“No need for a fight, Major. We’ll buy ’em off,” Raymond said to Hale.
Hale sat in the mud at the bottom of the bunker, and covered his face with his hands. He pulled off his remaining silver eagle and dropped it in the puddle of mu
ddy water at his feet.
“Fucking conscript army. Professional troops would’ve taken those bunkers,” Hale said.
Jackson grabbed Hale by the front of his fatigue jacket and shook him. Then he shoved the handset in Hale’s hand, but Hale refused to take it.
“Get us out of here. Call in choppers. Get the Phantoms back,” Jackson said.
Hale said, “No use. They won’t come.” Then he paused and continued. “Who would want to live in a fucking country where it rains all the time?”
Jackson called the Forward Air Control plane.
“Negative, Freight Train,” a calm voice said, the only one Jackson had heard all morning. “Hold your position. Wait for the weather—”
But the last of the man’s words were lost in a buzz of static. The battery was almost gone.
“We can’t hold. Goddamn, drop it on our position,” Jackson said.
“We can’t copy. Say again,” the controller said.
“On our position,” Jackson said.
Jackson picked up Hale’s map out of the mud and gave the controller a set of coordinates.
“We do not copy. Say again,” the voice said, this time very faint.
Jackson threw the radio into the water.
“Tom Light! We had a goddamn deal!” Jackson shouted.
“Where’s Tom Light?” Hale asked.
Jackson said nothing.
Hale shouted, “I’ll have his ass court martialed. He’ll learn to wear a uniform.”
“Light ain’t here, Major,” Raymond said. “We’ll get us out of here.”
“Be decorations. Soldiers like you. Backbone of the army. Professionals,” Hale said, talking very fast, running the words together.
Reynolds & Raymond gathered up more bundles of money and climbed out of the bunker.
“Hey you fucking dinks,” Raymond yelled. “Buy yourselves some Cadillacs. Buy a new tank for mama-san. Case of frags for baby-san.”
Reynolds & Raymond began to throw bundles of money off into the grass. A burst of automatic rifle fire came from the grass. Raymond went down. Then Reynolds. Jackson fired off an entire magazine on automatic in the direction of the fire.