by Eric Meyer
He slung the Grease Gun over his shoulder and unsnapped a single grenade. He checked and double-checked to make sure there wasn’t a wayward branch or palm frond in the way that would cause the grenade to fly off course. He found plenty of branches and palm fronds, as well as the stalks of bamboo that surrounded the Viets.
It would’ve been a difficult pitch with my right hand, but with my left? I don’t know.
He psyched himself up and gazed at the distant target. There was a narrow tunnel for him to toss the grenade, and if it veered off course, it would explode harmlessly before it reached them. They’d either scatter or come out shooting. Either way, his plan would fail. He calmed the butterflies in his stomach, controlled his breathing, and locked his gaze on the distant target, through that narrow tunnel. His breathing was still too labored, and he forced himself to relax. He was on a sunlit baseball diamond, and instead of being the most important pitch of his life, one that would decide life or death of a platoon, he persuaded himself it was nothing more than a practice throw.
He felt his breathing slow, and his heartbeat no longer thumped in his chest. He could feel the familiar tightening of the muscles in his arm, a different arm. Felt the adrenaline start to pump, and he was ready, as ready as he would ever be.
He climbed slowly to his feet, wound his left arm back, keeping his gaze focused, as if his eye and those Viets were joined, were as one. Linked by an invisible thread, and that thread was death.
He pitched. He would afterward claim it was the best he’d ever done with either arm. The grenade flew true, straight into the clump of bamboo. A second later it detonated, sending up a roar of smoke and flame. Men screamed, and he was already running, Grease Gun held ready to fire. He closed the thirty meters in a few seconds, and he was in amongst wounded, dead, and terrified North Vietnamese soldiers. They’d had a huge shock. Death had visited their hiding place, and now an American soldier was racing in amongst them. He held a submachine gun, and if they were in any doubt he intended to use it, one soldier who’d been lying on the ground suddenly leapt to his feet and started to run. Joe squirted several .30 caliber slugs into him, and the rest of them froze.
There were now five soldiers still alive, either unwounded or slightly wounded. One was an officer, wearing the rank and signature of a lieutenant.
“You speak English?” The man hesitated, and he knew he was about to pretend incomprehension, “If you understand me, I might let you live.”
“I understand.”
“Tell your men to pick up the radio. We’re going back to An Bao.”
“The radio?” A shrug, “It is of no value. I doubt it even works.”
I doubt it works after that grenade detonated, but I don’t plan on making polite conversation with Ho Chi Minh over the airwaves.
“Lieutenant, I know about the radio. Tell your men to drop their weapons and pick it up, or I’ll shoot you dead.”
He snapped an order in Vietnamese, and they obeyed with alacrity. The officer gave him a questioning glance, and Joe pointed the direction they needed to take. South. They started to walk out of the bamboo thicket, in the direction where he knew more of their soldiers would be lying in wait, and he stopped them. “Not so fast. Get on the ground and crawl. I’ll point out the way.”
The lieutenant gave him an evil glance. “You won’t get through. We have hundreds of men close by, and they’ll see us the moment we start moving.”
“I have one man, a Tennessean who happens to know how to sneak up on a deer before it even catches his scent. He found the way in, and that’s the way we’re going out, Lieutenant.”
They crawled, struggling to pull the heavy wooden crate along. He stayed right behind them with the M3 ready to open fire if they changed their minds about co-operating. Several times they glanced behind them, and all they saw was the muzzle of the Grease Gun. It was a long, slow journey, over an hour to cover less than one klick to An Bao. Just before they reached the village, he released the lieutenant to rejoin his men. They crawled into the village, crisscrossed by automatic and assault rifle fire, and Walker breathed a sigh of relief when they made it.
Redman glanced at the prisoners and the wooden chest. “Is this it?”
“It is. Touched by the hands of Father Ho. When they know we’ve got it, they’re gonna be pissed. And I mean really pissed.”
“How will they know we’ve got it?”
“Because I let one of them go, an officer, and by now he’ll have told them.”
He winced. “They could redouble their efforts to take the village and attempt to kill us all.”
“That’s what I’m counting on, Sarge.” He hadn’t explained every part of his plan, because he didn’t think they could pull it off, “They’ll focus on the village, and my guess is they’ll hit us with a human wave attack. They won’t dare use mortars or artillery, in case they hit the radio. So any moment we can expect a few hundred North Vietnamese soldiers as mad as hornets trying to reach us.”
Lieutenant Dempsey wandered up to them and frowned. “That’s it? That’s the plan?”
“Not quite all, Lt. I’m counting on giving them something of a surprise.”
“They’re coming!” a soldier shouted, “Jesus Christ, there’re hundreds of them.”
“Lock and load, people!” Redman shouted, “It’s time to earn our pay.”
They threw themselves behind cover and began to open fire. The enemy was coming in a solid, maddened wave, oblivious to the casualties they were taking as the M-14s fired repeatedly, and the M-60s of Third and First Platoons roared out an awesome message of defiance. Bodies fell everywhere, and those who survived were behind thick tree trunks, or crawling over rough ground, below the line of fire. Joe used the Grease Gun, emptying magazine after magazine, and each time he was slow reloading one-handed. But somehow he managed it, and the hurricane of lead tore huge gaps in the enemy attack.
Yet still they came, and there were too many of them. One hundred, even more, one hundred and fifty People’s Army soldiers lay in bloody heaps on the jungle floor, and still more fell over the bodies. Some sheltered behind the corpses, sending streams of automatic fire into the village, and several Air Cav troopers went down. Redman was crouched next to Walker, and he flinched as a bullet almost took off his left ear.
“Private Walker, I can’t imagine why in hell you encouraged them to attack. We can’t hold them. There’s too many of them.”
Maybe he’d made a mistake, but it was too late now. There were too many of them, and there was no sign of the Bradleys. All they could do was keep firing, and he kept firing. Until he realized he’d used the last magazine for the M3, and he saw an M-14 lying where a casualty had dropped it, scooped it up, and fired until it was empty. He had more bullets for the M-14 he’d abandoned and reloaded, but it took forever, and in the meantime the enemy were getting closer. And closer. Two more troopers went down, and it was close to the end. Bo Buck hadn’t made it, and in less than a minute they’d be overrun.
He glanced at the wooden crate containing Ho Chi Minh’s radio lying nearby, took out a grenade, and crawled across to it. Maybe they could beat them, but screw them if they thought they were going to get it back. He had to use his teeth to pull out the pin, and he held the lever to prevent a detonation before he was ready. He saw Lieutenant Dempsey take a bullet to the leg and fall, and Corpsman Andy Tyson slid over to check the wound. He was winding a dressing around it to prevent further blood loss when the shooting stopped.
Joe looked out into the jungle, and it was the end. They’d gathered in a mass formation, almost shoulder to shoulder, and when they came spitting bullets and hatred, there’d be no stopping them. He considered the grenade, should he toss it at the enemy and kill a few more, or keep to his plan and destroy the radio. He decided on the radio. It would hurt them a damn sight more than a few Communist corpses rotting in the jungle. The radio meant everything to them, the lives of their men less than nothing.
He held the grena
de over the open top of the wooden crate and glanced down at the radio set inside. He could see the brass plate screwed to the front, with Vietnamese writing, and that would commemorate the presentation by the Communist leader.
Well, okay, I can’t do anything about Ho, but his radio is something different.
He started to open his hand to let the lever fly, and at the last split second paused. He’d heard a new noise from somewhere ahead of them, the clatter and growl of tracks, the snarl of engines fitted inside armored personnel carriers. APCs like the Bradley M113, and what happened was like a conjurer’s trick. A lethal conjurer’s trick, a huge jet of flame ripped out from inside the jungle, as the nose of the leading Bradley appeared pushing through the trees.
The machine they called a Zippo, equipped with a flamethrower, and it fired a long jet flame like a living breathing thing reaching through the jungle. As if the devil himself had appeared from the depths, breathing smoke and fire, and he reached out a jet of flame and roiling smoke that tore into the People’s Army soldiers. He felt like he was peering into a vision of hell. Into Dante’s inferno, where those condemned writhed and twisted in paroxysms of awful agony. The flames didn’t stop, but whoever was directing the flamethrower played it around the rest of the Viets, and they died in droves. A few of the lucky ones ran into the jungle, some screaming from terrible burns, and everything changed. Certain defeat had turned into an absolute victory.
With care he managed to move his injured arm enough to pick up the pin and insert it back into the grenade. He looked down at Ho’s radio and thanked his lucky stars. They’d take it back to base in triumph, and maybe put it on display in Central Saigon. A message to Ho. “Screw you, pal.”
More Bradleys appeared pushing through the jungle, and on top of one of them rode Bo Buck, grinning from ear to ear as he jumped down and ran to Joe. “We did it.”
“Yeah, we did it.”
“What about the radio? Does it still work?”
“Why don’t we see?”
Between them they lifted it out of the crate and set it on the ground. The dry batteries were still in place, and he switched it on, waiting several minutes for the valves to warm. Russian valves weren’t the quickest on the market. Through the loudspeaker they heard a voice shouting something. Maybe he was ordering his men to pull back. Too late, most of them weren’t going anywhere. Walker fiddled with the tuning dial until he found the music, and he turned up the volume, listening to the distant rock ‘n’ roll station playing the current hit.
I am the God of Hell fire and I bring you…Fire, I'll take you to burn. Fire, I'll take you to learn. I'll see you burn.
Joe nodded. “Ain’t that the truth.”