Duty and Dishonor: Author's Preferred Edition

by Dale A. Dye

  “Cain’t blame ’em for backin’ up, man. Ain’t like it was when we first come over here. Nobody wants to fight this fuckin’ war no more...’cept maybe the gooks.”

  “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar, Fowler. I’ll turn you loose on the laundry soon as we get back in.”

  “Might be too late for that, Willy Pud. If ah get killed on this hill, tell ’em don’t bother to bury me. I’m just gonna come back and haunt your ass.”

  j

  Feeling around for the pile of rocks on which he’d placed three trioxane ration heating tablets, Willy Pud shivered and hoped the fog drifting in and out of moon shadows would pause in its climb up the mountain for just 15 more minutes. It was hard to tell with the rotor noise clattering in and out of the echo chambers formed by dips and draws in the hill mass, but he figured a helo crew would sweep over their LZ in about that amount of time. They’d been searching nearby for nearly all of the full hour Willy Pud had promised himself he’d wait before giving up and climbing back up to their defensive positions.

  He shouted across the clearing to where Fowler squatted near another pile of heat-tabs. “They’re headed this way. Soon as you hear ’em, light off and get your people ready to load.” The helicopter sliced across the low winter moon and Willy Pud caught the silhouette. It was a Huey, probably the battalion commander’s bird. It would be a tight fit with ten men, a machine gun, and the mortar. As the helicopter turned in their direction, he lit a match and held it to the heat-tabs. Across the LZ, a second blue-white beacon flared.

  Rotor noise pounded at his ears and he saw the helicopter flare nose-up as the pilots slowed to drop into the zone. Willy Pud began to grab at figures in the dark and jostle his anxious people into a line for the quickest possible loading. Suddenly the Huey staggered sideways. Willy heard the throb of a heavy machine gun and saw green tracers spear up through the fog, searching for the vulnerable little helicopter. He ran to the center of the zone, waving his arms frantically, and was nearly blown off his feet as the pilots pulled pitch and screwed power onto the turbine engine.

  The helicopter dipped and dropped below the horizon, chased out of sight by a cascade of small-arms fire. He heard the solid crack of AK-47s as the enemy machine gunner lost sight of his target and lifted off the trigger switch. Gooks—a sizable number of them from the sound of the firing—were on the hill just below them. Willy Pud had just enough time to scream for Fowler and toss a handful of dirt on the blazing pile of heat-tabs when the first incoming rounds began to crack into the tough bark of nearby teak trees. There would be no rescue tonight. It would be morning before Willy Pud and his Marines got off the hill...most likely wrapped in bloody ponchos with their dogtags in their mouths.

  By the time they scrambled uphill to the line of fighting holes they’d prepared during the day, they had their first casualty. There was no telling if Fat Ass Foreman was alive or dead with AK rounds zipping low overhead. The impact of several slugs had knocked Foreman flat during the mad dash from the LZ. Since Foreman was hot on Willy Pud’s heels as they hunted for cover, his swan dive took them both to the ground. Willy Pud lay still, half-covered by Foreman’s bleeding form, waiting for a second swarm of rounds to drone overhead. When the gunners below shifted their aim, he snatched Foreman’s body, rolled it onto his shoulders, and staggered after his wildly retreating squad.

  Doc Grouse, their medical corpsman, tumbled into the hole without being called and panted out a dismal report. “Collins took one through the gourd. Dead before he bit the deck. Taggert and the Wop both took rounds, but they’re functional.”

  Willy Pud pointed at Foreman’s prostrate form and shifted position to allow the corpsman to confirm what he knew was a foregone conclusion. Fat Ass Foreman was KIA. He listened to his remaining troops banging away at targets they couldn’t possibly see and wasting ammo that they’d desperately need before long. Then he screamed the only orders he could issue over the din of gunfire echoing off the rocky escarpment at their backs. “Cease fire, goddammit! Find a hole! Pair off and break out all your Claymores and frags! Hold your fire ’til you’ve got a decent target!”

  The tinny spang of outgoing M-16 began to taper off and Willy Pud forced himself to think. The wink and flash of muzzles in the copse of trees surrounding the LZ below told him there was a good size gook unit preparing to assault the hilltop. Below his hole, about halfway between the perimeter and the tree line, was a rocky berm. They’d assemble there for the final rush. If only they had a radio! Artillery or an air strike would hold the gooks at bay until they could either get off the back side of this hill or find another LZ for a rescue helicopter.

  But there was no radio, no support, and damn little firepower available in his cut-up squad to make the gooks think once much less twice about waltzing up the hill at their leisure and killing them all. Dawn was at least six hours away. Willy Pud knew he would never see it, but the realization didn’t bother him and that was a mental jolt. There’s an insight, he thought. I’m gonna die and I don’t give a fuck.

  “Foreman’s gone, Willy Pud. One of them rounds must have tore him up inside.” Doc Grouse shoved the body aside and peeked over the edge of the hole. There was nothing to see, so he gathered the dead man’s ammo and grenades just to stay busy. Willy watched him work, thinking about all the other dead men he’d seen. Here’s poor dead Foreman, fat even on bush rations and full of shit about being an All-State tackle in his high school days. And there was Albritton, another draftee, dead by dumb-ass mistake when he wandered off to take a leak and stepped on one of their own landmines. And Sullivan, who wanted to be an optometrist, shot through the right eye in that shitty little hill fight last week. Then Smitty, gut-shot and bled to death when they sent us up the same fucking hill two days later. So many, so many…guys he knew well, some he loved and all men he’d led into combat. What was it? Fifteen or twenty in ’67. Triple that in ’68 and this shit goes on and on and on…

  “Willy Pud! You OK? Fowler’s yelling for you...back by the mortar hole...” Doc shook him sharply by the shoulder and Willy Pud spun to face him. He felt high, tight and springy, the way you feel when you drop a heavy pack after a long hump. No use thinking about anything other than fighting and surviving at this point. Willy Pud knew how to do that.

  “Police up all the wounded and dead, Doc. Put ’em in one hole and get ready to move.” Willy Pud vaulted out of Foreman’s grave and sprinted upslope toward the middle of the perimeter where they’d dug the deep emplacement for the mortar. The NVA in the tree line below triggered probing bursts as he dashed through the dark. They’d be moving forward on their bellies soon, flowing with the fog that crawled up the hill from the jungle below, maneuvering to cut off any possible escape route. There was very little time left.

  Fowler snatched at his leg and tripped Willy Pud into cover just as a long burst of AK fire spattered off the rocks behind the hole. Martinez was crouched near a pack board full of mortar rounds, using his web belt to stem the blood flowing from two bullet holes in his thigh. Fowler was wide-eyed and shaking, but his voice was under control.

  “Ain’t no fuckin’ question anymore, Willy Pud. We gotta get off this goddamn hill, man.”

  “There it is. I got Doc in a hole down below rounding up all the bodies. We’re gonna have to hump some dead weight. When I give the word, you pull everybody together and slip down through that cut—the one we was gonna cover with the machine gun. Don’t stop for shit until you reach the low ground. Hold ’em in place and keep ’em quiet. Choppers will be back at dawn and you can find a way to signal.”

  Fowler had been set to crawl out of the hole and begin the muster when the implication of Willy Pud’s plan hit him. “What about you, man? You ain’t thinking about staying up here...”

  Willy Pud snatched him by the collar and pulled him close. He voice was a whisper but carried the tone of command. “It’s my decision, Gordo—and it’s the way it’s gotta be. Don’t argue with me on this. You
gotta keep these guys alive. Everybody takes a rifle and four or five magazines. Leave all the frags, extra ammo, the machine gun, and the mortar. Don’t take anything that might slow you down.”

  Willy Pud shoved Fowler out of the hole and stared down-slope where the drifting fog was glowing in pale moonlight. Something moving from side to side caught his eye, a greenish glow like a lightning bug. He’d seen it before, a signal used by the NVA, who would now be pushing a recon element up close to the berm. They’d come over the top soon, very soon, and Fowler needed more time to assemble the survivors and get them on the move in the other direction.

  Willy Pud felt around the bottom of the hole and located four fragmentation grenades. There was a loaded magazine in his rifle but he’d have his hands too full to deal with the weapon if he got caught out there near the berm. He stuffed the frags in his trouser pockets, jacked a round into the chamber of his .45 pistol, and thumbed the safety on. There was an entrenching tool embedded in the earth outside the hole and he decided to take it along in case the pistol was not enough to deal with what he might encounter as he tried to buy his men a little time to get off the hill.

  “You tell Fowler to haul ass as soon as he hears the grenades go. Got that, Martinez?”

  Martinez just stared at him and nodded as he collected his gear for the escape. “Before you go, unpack as many of those sixty rounds as you can.” It was probably useless make-work, but Willy Pud wanted any and all firepower advantage he could muster. And it would keep Martinez out of the line of fire for a while. He wanted no more deaths among his surviving men. His own didn’t count. Not anymore.

  He let gravity do most of the work as he half crawled, half slid down the slope toward the berm where he knew the NVA had advanced a recon element. No telling how many that might encompass, but he could hear the wheeze of heavy breathing and a few guttural murmurs from the other side of the rise. He planned to toss the grenades just as he reached the berm: two short, two long, and then scramble back up the hill if he didn’t get killed first. The grenades might cause a little delay, maybe just buy Fowler enough time to pack up the dead and wounded and start down the back of the hill.

  Willy Pud rolled onto his back and dug the frags out of his pocket. He could almost feel the presence of at least two or three NVA troopers just on the other side of the berm. He pulled the pins on two of the grenades, let the safety levers fly, and popped them both over the top of the berm. Rolling over onto his belly, he had the other two grenades ready to fly as the first pair cracked and lit up the gloom. He was flash-blinded and shrapnel-pelted, but he rose to a knee and heaved the second pair long past the berm and into the trees.

  He got a foot under himself and started to run when he saw the two figures loom out of the fog that had filtered between the berm and the perimeter. There was a stab of yellow light as if the two men had snapped on powerful flashlights and Willy Pud’s right leg collapsed beneath him. He rolled and dug at his waist for the pistol as dirt from another burst blew into his face. He snapped forward into a sitting position and fired twice before he could blink away the debris in his eyes. When his vision cleared, there was only one gook standing between him and the perimeter.

  As the man hauled back on the trigger of his AK-47, Willy Pud snap-rolled to his left and emptied the pistol into the muzzle flash. His right leg felt like some sadistic bastard was reaming the thigh muscle with a white-hot poker. Still he was alive and facing another NVA approaching at a trot from out of the mists to his left. The man was cutting his eyes from left to right but he couldn’t see through the fog any better than Willy could. To make it back to the perimeter at the top of the hill and cover his squad’s escape he’d have to deal with that man and a few others he could hear approaching from the opposite direction.

  At his back Willy Pud heard equipment rattle and the swish of wet grass against cloth. There was at least one enemy approaching from the front and more from the rear. Willy Pud tried to stand, but his right leg wouldn’t bear weight. He crumpled to the ground and stared into the fog where several dark specters were moving through the darkness. His pistol was empty and he cursed himself for an idiot who left his rifle behind. He groped around on the ground hoping to find an AK dropped by one of the men he shot, but he couldn’t feel anything but wet grass. Then he felt the entrenching tool he’d brought with him. Maybe he knew then that something like this was bound to happen. He unfolded the blade into an axe shape and tightened the nut at the throat of the little shovel. It was not much but it was at hand.

  He struggled to a knee to meet the rush of two NVA troopers who spotted him and began running in his direction. As the nearest man was shouldering his rifle, Willy Pud swung hard and felt the edge of the short shovel bite flesh. The man he hit grunted and lurched sideways into his partner. Jerking the spade free, Willy Pud drove it into the wide eyes showing beneath the second NVA’s Soviet-style helmet. Then he spun painfully on his wounded leg and spotted another NVA approaching from the opposite direction. The man was cautiously stepping through the ground fog when he suddenly turned to fire a long, scything burst uphill toward the silhouettes of Willy Pud’s squad disappearing over a dark skyline. That gave Willy Pud enough time to retrieve one of the weapons dropped by the men he’d felled with his entrenching tool.

  He pumped four rounds into the NVA trooper, watched him fall and then dropped prone to begin his crawl back up the hill. He’d have to make the slow, painful journey dealing with intense pain in his leg, but he’d bought enough time to make the trip. He’d dealt with the NVA point or reconnaissance element, and the enemy bunched lower down in the trees would be delayed, hopefully long enough for him to make the hilltop and set up what he knew would be his last stand.

  There was some scattered reconnaissance by fire from the NVA mustered in the treeline as Willy struggled uphill, but the rounds were not aimed, merely probes to determine what sort of return fire they could elicit. The NVA were savvy infantrymen with no particular death-wish. With their reconnaissance element out of the picture, they wanted to know what they might be facing as they climbed the hill and took over the strategic position.

  When he located the M-60 in the second hole he investigated, Willy Pud took stock and figured he might live another hour or two at the outside. He tied a hasty tourniquet above an oozing hole in his right thigh and maneuvered himself behind the M-60, where he could sweep the slope below him by simply shifting his shoulders. There was very little else to do until the gooks decided to make their rush. Fowler and the rest of his squad were nowhere in sight, but they’d snapped together all the available machine gun ammo and a fair-sized pile of grenades. Below him in the moonlight, Willy Pud could see the mist was still flowing up toward his hole like a shimmering blanket. It was a perfect situation for NVA veterans on practiced feet to get close before they rushed in to finish their plan for taking this hill.

  They’d be cautious until they discovered the defense they were facing was very limited. There was nothing to do but wait for it and hope for the best at the end. Willy briefly considered trying to follow his men down the back of the hill but that was stupid. He could barely walk and moving in that direction would just let the NVA know where to look for survivors. He snuggled up against the cold metal stock of the machine gun and stared into the fog. They would come when they would come—and Willy Pud would deal with it best he could.

  From behind a fold in the ground below his hole, he saw a pair of arms whip up through the fog and heard the plop as the stick grenades landed just outside his hole. He ducked behind the machine gun but he was a little slow. As the grenades detonated, a spray of hot shrapnel lanced into his left arm. He heard the snarl and rattle of AKs and crawled up to shoulder the machine gun. This should be it, he thought. This is all she wrote...right here, right now.

  But the firefight was elsewhere. Off to his left rear, down the slope in the heavy bush below the hilltop. Willy Pud knew what it was all about, even as he reached for the first grenade
and tried to create a diversion. It was too late...too late for Fowler and the others. The NVA had caught them trying to escape.

  When his barrage of grenades blew away some of the mist, Willy Pud saw them coming in his direction. Below him on the near side of the rocky berm, a line of grim-faced men were trotting up the hill in a staggered line. He put his cheek onto the knuckles of his left hand and squeezed on the trigger of the machine gun.

  NVA infantrymen in that assault line began to reel, stagger, and fall like wobbly bowling pins. They were slower now but still coming his way when Willy burned through all the available M-60 ammo. He pulled the butt-stock off the gun and scattered parts into the dark. No sense leaving a function weapon for them, he thought. Now he had to reach the mortar position where Fowler and others had assembled the rest of the weapons and ammo they left behind.

  As he crawled up the hill toward the mortar pit, Willy Pud wished the gooks would just make one big rush and get it over with. The outcome was inevitable now, and delaying it seemed pointless and painful beyond his capacity to endure for the few more minutes he had left. He thought about just standing up and roaring out some kind of defiance as he flopped into the hole. They’d drill him for sure if he did that, but he could feel his heart still pumping hard in his chest and that seemed to give him a little jolt of strength. He scrabbled around the hole as best he could and took inventory. He had weapons, grenades—and maybe still enough fight left. If he went down for good on this stupid fucking hill, he’d go down hard and he’d take a bunch of the bastards with him.

  j

  It was nearing midnight by the luminous dial of Willy’s watch, and he was amazed to be alive. The NVA were still coming but it was in fits and starts now. They’d given up on the bold rushes that Willy Pud had managed to mangle over the past…what? Four hours or so, he guessed. There was a pool of blood below his knees. He felt the sticky mess and wondered how he could have lost that much blood and still continued to function. Yet his heart still thumped behind his ribs, and the pain in his arm and leg had muted to a dull ache.