by Eric Meyer
They had to be out of bullets, changing ammunition drums, and he climbed to his feet, wobbled from the pain and almost fell, and ran forward. Grease Gun spitting bullets to keep their heads down, he almost made it when he realized he’d made a mistake. Realized because the gun fired again, and as he once again threw himself to the ground, he knew his mistake was fatal. He was out in the open with no cover.
How long will it take them to adjust the cumbersome barrel to aim at my exposed body? A second? No more.
He tensed, waiting for the heavy shells to slam into him.
My career in the major leagues is doomed. Never again will I pitch a ball from the mound. I’ll never hear the cheers of the crowd and enjoy the admiring glances from the girls. My future is here, on the hostile soil of South Vietnam.
Chapter Four
Signals Lieutenant Van Vu was experiencing the worst moments of his life. He’d trained hard in the college in Hanoi, and it had taken several days to work his way south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to take over communications for the 97th Battalion Headquarters. Although he should have made clear the propaganda value of the communications equipment, it wasn’t his fault they’d positioned the antenna so close to the village of An Bao that the enemy had discovered it before he’d been able to order it moved.
It wouldn’t make any difference. He’d ordered his soldiers to remove the radio equipment and the antenna to a safe place several kilometers away. If they were successful, Hanoi wouldn’t discipline him for his failure, if they were successful. If they weren’t, and the communications equipment was lost, his career would soon follow. As would his life.
“Corporal Trinh, gather every man and protect the radio.”
“Yes, Lieutenant. Sir, what about the crew on the ZSU?”
Van Vu could see the prospects of living a long life ebbing away rapidly, and he lost his temper. He snatched out the Makarov from his holster and pointed it at Trinh. “I said every man! Get them here now before I put a bullet in you myself.”
“Yessir.”
He raced first to the anti-aircraft gun, screaming orders. The gunner and loader both stared at him in amazement. “Corporal, you cannot be serious? This gun is our last chance of fighting off the American attack.”
Trinh was as desperate as his officer.
If these fools refuse to obey the order, I’ll get a bullet for their failure.
The prospect of losing a radio set personally presented by the hands of Ho Chi Minh was too terrible to contemplate. “The radio is all that matters. Go with it and protect it with your lives.”
They didn’t get far. The Bradleys had driven at high speed to the east, flanked the village, and circled in to set up a blocking position for the expected People’s Army soldiers fleeing north. Van Vu pushed out of the jungle to an open area of fields and rice paddies. On the opposite side waiting were M113s, armored tracked vehicles with mounted heavy machine guns. Too late he realized he’d made a mistake. If they’d stayed in the village, they could have hidden the radio to prevent it falling into enemy hands and defended themselves with weapons like the ZSU. Back there they were up against infantry armed with little more than assault rifles. Here they were up against something else, a formidable armored force, yet it was too late, he had too few men. A moment later everything changed as hundreds of men emerged from the jungle, where they’d been racing to relieve An Bao.
The officer, a tough-looking major, short, squat and with an angry expression on his face, glared at him. “Lieutenant, where do you think you’re going? It looks like you’re deserting in the face of the enemy.”
He explained about the radio. “Sir, I didn’t have any choice.”
“Perhaps not. How many American troops did you see at An Bao?”
“I estimated a platoon, Sir. And a runner arrived to report another platoon coming in from the east.”
“Two platoons, and you have almost one hundred men? What kind of defenses did you have in place?”
He told him about the ZSU. “But it was the radio, Sir. We had to protect it at all costs.”
He nodded. “Yes, Ho Chi Minh’s radio. I’m not sure you made the right decision, but we cannot fight those armored vehicles. We will return to the village, and we will kill these Americans.” He smiled, “We’ll give them a taste of the ZSU, Lieutenant.”
The Major glanced at the men crowding around him and barked a command, “Back to the village! No, wait, Lieutenant, we’ll split into two units. Your men will approach An Bao from the north. My squad will race past the village and hit them from the flank.” The smile widened, “Do not worry about them capturing the radio, Lieutenant Vu. There will be no Americans left alive.
* * *
Nothing happened. No shells smashed into him, and the shooting overhead had ceased. He raised his head, and he saw no movement.
Strange.
The M-14 was heavy, and he took a chance, left it on the ground, and swung the Grease Gun under his arm. Slowly, he got to his feet and started walking forward bent double, waiting for bullets to whistle overhead. Bo caught up with him, and side-by-side they approached the ZSU. And found it silent and still, unmanned; except for the body lying beside it, victim to Bo’s fine shooting. He bent down to check, and the guy was still breathing. Yet badly wounded, with blood pumping from a fatal wound in his chest. The bullet had entered his lung, and the wound was making sucking noises as he tried to breathe, and blood trickled from his mouth. He was no threat with little time left to live.
Buck grunted. “What do you think? There’s something not right here. Why would they abandon the gun? These things are valuable, and it takes an enormous amount of resources to bring them in from the North.”
“No idea. Why don’t we check out the huts up ahead?”
They dragged the injured North Vietnamese toward the huts, alert for the least sign of movement, but all they heard was the rest of the platoon coming up behind them. Sergeant Redman joined them as they entered the village, and they laid the dying man on the ground. There was every sign of a hasty retreat, even a stew pot abandoned, still cooking over an open fire. Clothes and personal possessions abandoned, which meant they’d left in an unusual hurry, but why?
Redman gave the order to spread out and check the surrounding jungle. A corpsman attended to Joe’s wounded arm, but when he suggested he call in a dust off, he refused. “We came here to do a job, and I don’t intend to leave until it’s done.”
A shrug. “It’s your funeral, pal. I’ve dusted the wound with antiseptics, and I’ve given you an antibiotic shot, so you should be okay until you get to a casualty station. Are sure about that dust off? Your right arm is likely to take a long time to heal.”
“I’m okay.”
Besides, I’m not likely to resume my baseball career any time soon.
He got back to his feet and continued pacing around the village, trying to work out the puzzle of why they’d left in such a hurry when they had a powerful anti-aircraft gun capable of putting up a tough defense. He noticed the injured North Vietnamese where they’d left him and strolled over to him. A medic had fastened a dressing over the catastrophic wound in his chest, but all it did was delay the inevitable. He was dying, slipping into a coma, talking to himself in his native language.
Out of curiosity Joe crouched next to him and began to work out some of his incoherent babble. Words and phrases he understood. Like Ho Chi Minh and radio. Water. He leant down and tipped his canteen to the man’s lips, and he drank gratefully. His eyes had been closed, but he opened them as he drank and grunted a word of thanks.
“You speak English, pal?”
The answer was tortured grunt. It sounded like ‘some.’
“What happened here?”
His lips moved as he struggled to get the words out, and finally he forced painful smile on his face. “Americans. You came, we left.”
He coughed, and more blood poured from his mouth. “Please, more water.”
Joe helped him sip more w
ater from the canteen, and once again he nodded his thanks. “Why are you doing this for me?”
“Because you’re hurt.”
“I’m an enemy soldier. If I’d seen you first I would have killed you.”
“You were just outta luck this time.”
“I’m dying.” He didn’t like to tell any man he had minutes left to live, and he didn’t answer, “Tell me the truth, am I dying?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. The wound is too bad.”
“Thank you for telling me the truth.” He stopped speaking and sucked in more air, his chest laboring up and down with the effort, “Did our soldiers get the radio away?”
“Radio? Why do you ask?”
He struggled to get the words out, but his eyes burned with determination, and finally he managed to speak again. “Ho Chi Minh’s radio.”
“He’s here? Ho Chi Minh?”
A chuckled, and more blood spilled out. “Not him, the radio he presented with his own hands as a gift from the people of Hanoi. Is it still here?”
“Uh, no, we haven’t seen it.”
He sagged, as if he’d just been staying alive for long enough to hear that piece of information. His breathing became more labored, and his eyes began to glaze over. Joe leaned closer. He had seconds left.
“Why is the radio so important?”
He spoke in a hoarse whisper, and he had to put his ear almost next to the guy’s mouth to hear what he said. “Father Ho presented it with his own hands, and to mark the occasion there is an engraved brass plate screwed to the front. To lose it would be a disaster, a personal insult to Father Ho. Any man who allows it to fall into enemy hands will likely face execution. But they got away, for which I thank the spirits of my ancestors.” He was failing fast, and with a last superhuman effort he summoned up his remaining reserves of energy. “You will not get it, American. Never.”
His body went still, and his eyes stared across the clearing into the jungle, the jungle he’d never see again. Joe put a finger on each eyelid and closed it, laid the man down, and got to his feet, thinking about what he’d heard. Before he could make sense of it, a line of men marched in from the west. First Platoon had arrived. The platoon commander, Lieutenant David Dempsey was an earnest young Princeton graduate who worked hard to overcome his lack of height. The five feet one inch Dempsey was chatting to Redman. Probably trying to make sense of why they’d abandoned An Bao, an important local headquarters, and fled north into the impenetrable jungle.
He walked over to them, and Redman frowned when he saw his arm hanging down. “That don’t look good, Private Walker. Why are you still here?”
“I’ll stay until we’re done, Sarge. I wanted to run something past you. The North Vietnamese Bo took down, he just died.”
Lieutenant Dempsey shrugged. “What’s so important? Men die, shit happens. We’re fighting a war.”
“I asked him why they took off so fast, and what he said sounded interesting.”
He repeated what the dying soldier had told him, and as he was talking, it occurred to him he hadn’t asked him his name.
What a way to die, abandoned by your unit, and when he breathed his last, he was with an American soldier who didn’t even know who he was.
“It’s the radio that’s so important. It means a lot to them, an important symbol.”
Dempsey looked dubious. “A radio? Don’t they have lots of radios?”
“Not personally presented by Ho Chi Minh.”
“You think that’s important?”
“Lieutenant, they think it’s important. That’s what counts.”
He thought for a few seconds and nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go after ‘em.”
He turned to give the order to move out, but Redman was already looking north, and he shook his head. “Too late, Lieutenant. They’ve come to us.”
Communist soldiers were flitting through the jungle, and as they got closer, the shooting started. Men dived for cover, except Bo, who hit the deck but immediately started crawling forward to recce the enemy. A few minutes later, he crawled back to report to Redman, keeping his head below the streams of gunfire chewing into their positions. His face was grim.
“There’re a lot of them, Sergeant.”
“How many?”
“More than you can shake a stick at. Two, three hundred.”
Redman looked at Dempsey, who wore an incredulous look on his face. Like a man who’d just been sucker punched. “Lieutenant, it looks like we have a fight on our hands.”
“Shit.”
Chapter Five
They were trapped, pinned down by incoming fire so heavy it was like being caught in a rainstorm. A rainstorm of lead, and Dempsey frantically made preparations to withdraw to where the 1st Battalion of the 69th Armored waited with the formidable M48 Patton tanks. “We can’t hold them here. We don’t stand a chance. Start heading back, men. We’re out of here.”
Hardly had the words left his mouth when a renewed burst of firing hacked through the jungle from their flank, and every man understood the new danger. There’d be no retreat, no falling back to the protection of the M48 Pattons. They were faced with overwhelming numbers, and they had a single choice. To fight like they’d never fought in their lives before.
“We need air support,” Dempsey shouted, “Radioman, get over here.”
“He’s dead, Sir,” a voice shouted.
“Just get me the radio!”
“The burst that killed him took out the radio, Sir.”
“Shit. Sergeant Redman, does your platoon have a radio?”
“We do. Bennett, get over here right now.”
Dempsey seized the handset from the radioman and made the call to Captain Lynch, the Company Commander. The news wasn’t good. “The Bradleys are holding position to the north as requested, but they can’t get to you, not in the short-term. The ground is either rice paddies or thick jungle. They can get through, but it’ll take time.”
“What about the Pattons?”
“They’re in an even worse position. Their orders were to block any movement by the enemy to the south. You know what the jungle’s like. It’ll take them even longer to get to you. I’ll give the order, and your best chance is the Bradleys, but in the meantime you’re on your own. Good luck, Lieutenant.”
He ended the call, and Walker happened to be standing close, chatting quietly to Buck. He looked at Redman. “Sarge, if we can get through the enemy lines, we can guide those Bradleys and get them here a whole lot quicker.”
He looked at the officer, who glared at him. “How in hell can you do that, Private?”
“Because Private Buck is the best woodsman in the country. He has an eye for terrain you wouldn’t believe, and if there’s any way to get them through the worst of the jungle, he’ll find it.”
“And you? That arm looks injured.”
“I still have the left arm, Sir. It’ll be enough to cover his back.”
He grunted at Redman. “I guess we have nothing to lose. Okay, go for it.”
He looked at Bo, who nodded. “Let’s do it.”
They crawled the first few hundred meters, and Buck traced an unerring path through the thickest of jungle, yet he always seemed to find the game trails, the tunnels that threaded through the thick undergrowth, and avoided the enemy. At least, they almost avoided the enemy. The noise was incredible, bullets flying from all sides, and one thing they didn’t have to fear was being heard. A burst of firing from nearby made them flatten on the ground, and Bo signaled he was going forward to check it out.
Joe waited, with the Grease Gun in his hand to cover him, and it was as well he waited. He got a few meters away when two Viets detached themselves from a dark patch of jungle, throwing their rifles to their shoulders ready to open fire. He got there first and let loose a short burst from the M3 Grease Gun that pitched them to the jungle floor. Bo glanced back, nodded an acknowledgement, and crept on. A few minutes later he was back.
> “There’s a dozen men crouched around a wooden case, and they’re doing nothing, just protecting it. I couldn’t see what’s inside.”
“Ho Chi Minh’s radio.”
“I guess it has to be. Getting past them won’t be easy.”
Joe nodded, but he was thinking fast. That radio was a symbol of the Communist President in the North. It was like a talisman, a magic object they had to guard at all costs. If it fell into enemy hands, it would be a major catastrophe, and they’d see it as a heavy defeat. “We need the radio. Bo, we have to capture the radio, and I’ll get it back. You reach the Bradleys and guide them by the quickest route to An Bao.”
He gaped. “Joe, even if we could knock out those Viets, how could you get it back? You have one good arm, and it needs two men at least to carry something that heavy.”
“I’ll get help.”
“Who from?”
“The People’s Army. Now get those Bradleys moving.”
He slid away, and Joe slotted a fresh magazine into the Grease Gun, tucked it under his left arm, and crawled closer to the NVA position. They’d chosen a hiding place in a deep thicket of bamboo, clustered around the radio like it was a long lost treasure. Talking to each other in low tones, the last thing they expected was a sudden attack. He slid forward and stopped. Two armed NVA suddenly appeared, and it looked as if they’d been checking the surrounding area for hostiles. As checks went it was worthless, more of a cursory glance by two men who thought they were wasting their time.
They spoke to an officer, a lieutenant who’d been inspecting the radio inside the wooden crate, probably checking for damage. He didn’t like whatever they told him, and he snarled an order to the men. They picked up their AK-47s and surrounded the crate, guns pointing outward.
Joe estimated the range, and it was way too far. Maybe thirty meters, yet if he tried to get any closer, they’d see him approaching and start shooting.
I’ve been meaning to use the left arm for a long time. I guess now is the time to see if it’s any good.