by Jeff Wallace
A few seconds later, he radioed, “Keep moving on the same azimuth. I’ll spot you a new LZ.”
I took a step toward McAdams, and an RPG rocket whooshed. Expecting to see it trail after the ascending helicopter, I glimpsed it flash past level to the ground and explode. Something wet showered me. The radio man. His head and most of his torso were gone; chunks of the radio peppered the pinkish remains of his lungs. Attached was an arm whose hand held the handset, the severed accordion wire jangling up and down like an agitated monkey.
Having missed its aerial target, the NVA machine gun leveled to chop at us. Bark erupted. “Move!” I shouted. I tripped over a vine, and my outstretched left forearm slammed into a thorn. The ten-centimeter stiletto drilled through the scabbing. Never before had getting injured caused me to scream. I did now. I snapped off the spike. The wind had shifted. Yellow smoke floated from the LZ, and in its drift we were taking more hits. A soldier fell. I ran over, turned him in time to see blood and air bubble from a hole in his chest. He coughed once and his spittle settled on dead eyes.
I took his rifle.
Galloping, wheezing, my legs nearly bucking, I led them down the slope out of the yellow cloud. At the bottom, no longer under direct fire, I slipped along the line to count men. We’d left behind two dead; two more were injured, including McAdams. Blood spattered his shirt. “It’s not bad,” he said. “Pieces of the radio hit me.”
The other living casualty had suffered a bullet wound in the upper arm. Fortunately it hadn’t broken the bone. A spindly kid, eyes brown and watery, he resembled something the jungle would eat. “We’re fucked, aren’t we, sir?”
“No,” I lied. “Our helicopters are nearby. They know where we are. We can’t talk to them, but we have smoke and flares for signaling. If we can find a clearing, we can launch a flare. The choppers will pick us up. That’s our game.”
“It’s almost dark.”
“Better for us. The enemy won’t be able to see us.”
That calmed him. He didn’t ask the obvious question—how would Stobe know we weren’t already dead? I had no answer save for my odd trust in the blocky pilot. He wouldn’t abandon his men; he’d stay aloft over this sector, until sooner or later we’d find a clearing where we could launch a flare. I had to believe it.
Pushing to the front, I resumed our frantic pace. The trick now was to gain distance. Through breaks in the trees, I could see the sky full of black serrations. Thunder rumbled; lightning torched the upper canopy. Rain whacked and the drops cascaded to successive layers. The rain would obscure our trail and buy us time. The downpour accelerated to an onslaught, and the last filaments of daylight vanished.
The enemy trackers no longer could guess our intended destination. There was none. We were moving blind.
* * *
Ahead, the outlines of a village. I guessed it was abandoned—no people or lights visible. It offered shelter from the rain and therefore was the last place we should stop. From the way we reacted, the NVA had to have concluded we were PX warriors, men who’d seek the illusion of safety behind bamboo walls.
I couldn’t see the figures behind me. We hugged the descending slope, bracing against protrusions that kept us from skidding downward. The slope steepened, and it was impossible not to slide, heels dug into the loam, gripping roots that couldn’t be trusted, slicking on our butts in the flow. In a few minutes we were muddied from head to foot. At the bottom, the rain and a glutted stream unified in a cacophonous rush, the forest a gray matte beyond.
We stumbled along for another hour, crossed the stream at a spillout through a cleft of rocks. With visibility barely beyond the reach of my arms, we progressed at a fraction of the pace we’d have made in daylight. I hunted for a place to stop until dawn, doglegged from our path until I reached a cavity between a fallen tree and the hillside. Ledging from the bark, the fungus made diving boards for insects; a rotten odor spilled from where things crawled to die. In a combat zone, concealment abides discomfort, and bunching inside here made more sense than crashing blindly through the vegetation. With two men awake for security, the others could rest in turns.
Mine came. I hovered, too depleted to sleep. On the screen of rain I saw Cobris. My machinations had killed him. Simone would agree, and if she chose to enact revenge, she’d go after Tuy in Saigon.
Day 18
__________
I awoke in the pre-dawn. The mud coating had become a glutinous slime that made every twitch loathsome, and I wanted nothing more than to submerge in oblivion. Pain yields selfishness, and in war, selfishness equals cowardice. A leader thinks about others first.
Who was I kidding?
Birds made a hullabaloo in the canopy. One cawed the syllables “checkout, checkout, checkout” like an insistent command. As if obedient, I examined the two wounded men. Overnight their wounds had inflamed. I applied fresh first-aid wraps. We didn’t have enough dressings for my forearms. The scabs had dissolved, exposing the raw abrasions. The left throbbed where the thorn had broken off, ballooning so I couldn’t make a fist. The stitches in my legs had stayed intact, but left untreated in the wetness and filth, these and the other injuries would yield tissue necrosis.
We took an hour to ascend out of the valley. I hoped to come across a clearing big enough to land a chopper, but so far the trees and undergrowth were too thick. The map showed a washboard of minor ridges. Along these, the forest should thin out. The sun soared. So did the temperature. The jungle reverted to a steam bath. At a murky steam, I ordered the soldiers to fill their canteens and drink water. By the foresight of their unit’s SOP, the pouches on their canteen holders stored little bottles of iodine tablets that they used for the first time.
Luck belonged to the seven us of who’d survived. Yet the adrenaline that had borne us this far had burned out. Nobody had rations, and we’d not eaten for at least eighteen hours. By the time we reached the midpoint of the first slope, we treaded listlessly, heads down, alertness fleeing.
I wondered where our pursuers had gone.
Surely they’d not given up the chase. Nothing shivered a soldier’s spine more than to comprehend his enemy’s fearsome determination. Throughout the French and the American wars, our foe had evinced tenacity, sublime understanding of the terrain, and the almost superhuman ability to operate at night. This was not from communism or culture. The enemy simply had competent leaders. Not far away, a determined young NVA officer was studying his map with as much intensity as I squinted at mine, both of us seeking a decisive course of action. He wouldn’t relent any more than I would.
As if to echo my thoughts, shots kicked up the ground around us.
Everybody took cover behind trees. The blunt cracks of AK47s, distinct from the M16’s sizzle, originated from the opposite slope. The fire was sporadic—I guessed there were only two shooters. The foliage obscured them. On the map, this ridge bumped laterally into a larger hill mass, a ladder leaned against a barn. To our sides ran other ridges; I guessed that the enemy was maneuvering along one of these. The shooting from behind was meant to buy time for the flanking unit to get above and block the ladder from the top.
I had to get us off the ridge. But which way? The maneuvering NVAs must be well along; the stay-behind gunners would have waited until the moving element had cleared the line of fire. Shifting laterally, we might slide beneath their tail. A gamble. If my narcotic-buzzed logic proved wrong, we’d get no second chances. We didn’t have the combat power to survive a direct confrontation.
I gathered the squad and scaled higher. Our displacement might lead the shooters to conclude that I was following their game plan. Fifty meters up, under dense canopy, I swerved. The rifle fire plunged erratically. One of the men fell. McAdams was alongside him immediately. Blood trickled from a scrape on the side of his face.
McAdams said, “He needs a dressing on that cut.”
“Later. Keep moving.”
We bottomed out in a scree bed and scrambled up the opposite slope. The g
unfire blunted itself against the now-vacant hillside behind. Nearing the crest, I slinked. If the maneuvering element was close by, our survival hinged on spotting them first and going to ground. Seeing no one, I arced over and dropped into a ravine.
Rumbling in the distance. Thunder? The noise was too cadenced; it had to be an artillery barrage. I aimed my compass at where it seemed to originate, plotted the azimuth on the map, and traced my finger across the green to concentric ovals more than a kilometer away.
Over my shoulder, McAdams stared at the whorl. “That sounds like a place we don’t want to be.”
“It’s exactly where we want to be,” I said. “The barrage is a signal from Stobe. He’s telling us the way to our pickup site.”
* * *
I hoped the sideways scoot over the ridges had scraped the NVAs off our tail. For a while it seemed that it had, and we advanced in quiet save for the occasional chopper above the canopy. Four hundred meters from the plotted hilltop, we came under fire again, and the only choice was to carom ahead, abandoning caution and hoping the enemy hadn’t maneuvered an ambush in front of us. Bullets cracked through the branches. Our pursuers must have guessed where we were going. The fire missed widely, but accuracy didn’t matter, they were simply trying to disrupt our progress so they could close within killing range. Coarse and effective, the tactics demonstrated a well-led and disciplined force pressing its advantages.
One of the soldiers fired back.
I’d been wrong to assume the NVAs were following our trail as a hunter tracks a deer. They were smarter than that. Understanding the terrain, they’d set up watchers to pinpoint our line of march. The NVA leader had organized his unit into teams that now would converge on us.
Another of the soldiers went down, shot in the lower leg. Without a word, the men slung him in a poncho they gripped along its slippery edges and occasionally dropped as we staggered ahead. I feared that the hilltop was going to turn out like the last extraction site, a hornets’ nest of machine-gun bullets.
I’d managed to get us all killed.
A break in the trees. I could distinguish a wall of green, a grassy hillside. My hopes diminished further. We couldn’t hide on that exposed slope. Visible for the first time since we’d dropped off the plateau at Simone’s plantation, men in mustard uniforms shot at us from one hundred meters away. A bullet zinged past my ear. I took aim and fired. An NVA fell. Gunfire from our left flank; the bullets slapped the leaves overhead.
Picking up the wounded soldier from the poncho, I worked him over my shoulder. The slope loomed. “Run!”
An NVA raised a rifle-grenade launcher and fired. I followed the trajectory of the black projectile heading straight toward me. Leaning forward, I tried to sprint, but with a man on my back, it wasn’t working.
* * *
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
TO: COMMANDER, 3RD BATTALION, 22ND INFANTRY
FROM: TASK FORCE FLYCASTER, 3/22 INFANTRY
SUBJECT: AFTER-ACTION REPORT OF CONTACT WITH ENEMY NEAR HILL 165, FISHHOOK AREA, CAMBODIA, 11 MAY 1970
1. At 1100 hours on 11 May, Task Force Flycaster conducted an air insertion at landing zone ‘Tackle Box’ (see sketch, attachment A). Upon assembly, I secured the LZ with one platoon and the mortar and recoilless rifle elements. In accord with my mission to attempt to locate and, if possible, rescue an isolated squad of aviation soldiers, I ordered two platoons to move westward toward the adjacent valley. The lead platoon’s point man was Sergeant Haines Jefferson.
2. At 1157 hours, having traversed approximately 400 meters, I heard gunfire to the west. I moved to the head of the column, where Sergeant Jefferson estimated that the fire had originated from approximately three hundred meters forward of us and downhill.
3. At approximately 1215, I again heard rifle shots. This time, the fire was close enough to identify as originating from AK47s and a few M16s. I assumed that the M16s belonged to the missing squad of aviation soldiers. From the AK47s’ heavier volume, I judged that the squad was outnumbered and at risk of being overrun and destroyed.
4. Immediately I increased our speed, hoping to reach a vantage point from which I could spot the isolated squad. Considering the unknown size of the enemy force, I requested helicopter-gunship support and received notice that the gunships were en route with an ETA of 1250.
5. At approximately 1230, an explosion occurred to our southwest. Taking Sergeant Jefferson, the RTO, and two soldiers for security, I conducted a leader’s reconnaissance, moving until I was able to see down the reverse slope. I spotted a group of figures climbing the grassy hillside in a direction that would have crossed the ridge approximately one hundred meters beyond my position. The lead figure bore a man across his back in a fireman’s carry. The party was taking fire from several directions, and some of it was striking close to my recon position.
6. It was at this moment that Sergeant Jefferson, without orders, ran ten paces down the slope and removed his helmet. This entirely voluntary act on his part exposed him to enemy fire. To summon the aviation soldiers to our location, he could think of no better way than to show himself as a Negro, which he believed would erase any doubt in their minds that he was an American. Vindicating his risk, the soldiers, upon seeing him, immediately shifted toward him. The one carrying the soldier shouted, “We’ve got thirty NVAs on our ass.” Immediately I ordered 1st platoon forward into a hasty ambush position at site B (see sketch, attachment B).
7. I wish to emphasize that TF Flycaster’s rescue of the aviation squad developed as a consequence of the valorous actions of Sergeant Jefferson, subject of my recommendation (see attachment C) for award of the Bronze Star.
T.J. NELKEY
CAPTAIN, INFANTRY
COMMANDING
* * *
To the black soldier who’d appeared out of nowhere atop the slope, I managed to rasp something. I reached his outstretched hand, and he tugged me up into other soldiers who helped remove the wounded man from my back.
“Get down!” one of them said.
I found myself next to a captain who spoke urgently into a radio handset: “Quebec one-three, this is India one-niner. Close on me at full speed. Your entire element. Bring the medic. Over.”
The handset crackled. “One-three, moving.”
His soldiers were spreading in a hasty ambush position along the crest. Flanked by M60 machine guns, they formed a line of shooters fifty meters wide. Beside the captain, I gazed down the slope at the NVA force ascending toward us in the knee-high grass. An officer urged them on. He looked as young and determined as I’d imagined him to be, encouraging his men, leading from the front where they could see him. They climbed eagerly, bounding to their feet when they slipped, pulling their comrades up.
They’d have caught us in minutes.
The U.S. military in Vietnam held a single indisputable advantage—raw firepower. For each bullet the enemy expended, we fired thousands. A rifle in the ambush line barked, and beside the NVA officer, a man’s head whiplashed in a cloud of blood. Then the American line erupted in full, and I saw the NVAs falling in the murderous barrage from the top. Launched grenades detonated among them. The NVA officer must have realized he’d run into a unit more formidable than the little group he was chasing. Signaling retreat, he waved his arm until a bullet clipped off his fingers. Still he extended the bloody stump, shouting so loud I heard his voice above the din. The NVAs ran, staggered, collapsed in the avalanche of bullets that sprayed blood over the grass. Defiantly the officer raised his rifle with one arm and shot at the top of the hill. A bullet whacked into his thigh, another struck his hip and spun him, a third hit between his shoulder blades. He sank into the grass and was lost to sight.
The gunfire ceased. I scanned the slope. The captain surveyed the scene for a minute through his binoculars, then he turned, took in the mudded insignia on my collar.
“You all right, Major?”
“Yeah,” I wheezed. I read the nametag on his sweat-soaked uniform. Nelkey
. I hoped I’d remember it.
In the dissipating smoke, nothing moved but the blades lightly swaying.
Day 19
__________
General Abrams stared at me across his desk.
I’d had the chance to shower and rest in my BOQ room overnight. The pre-monsoons had billowed the plastic taped over my broken window. My scraped forearms kept bleeding through the new gauze the medics had applied. They’d pulled out the thorn tip, and the swelling had subsided enough so that, this morning, I’d managed to ease on the sleeves of a starched uniform, fumbling the buttons with my ballooned fingers. In the mirror, a scarecrow with blackened eyes had stared back. It was in this condition that I sat in front of the commanding general, flanked by two staff officers, to deliver my report.
I’d paid attention to stories about General Creighton Abrams because we were both western-Massachusetts men; his boyhood home in Springfield was less than twenty miles from mine at Tanner’s Woods. A photograph showed him as a young lieutenant in his riding breeches and Sam Browne belt with the cross strap—the style of uniform vanished, the mentality of the cavalryman intact. In World War II, General Patton had called him the best tank commander in the Army. Across the desk he hulked, his cropped hair bristling over eyes steely and empathetic at the same time.
I told him the unadorned truth from beginning to end. Showed him the documents from my leather pouch I’d recovered from Hollis: the hand receipt, repair slip, the aircraft incident report; the photographs of the chopper hanging in the tree; the morgue shot; the dancer’s marquee. I penciled a sketch of the rocket attack that had killed André. Finally, I described the deal that I’d cut with Cobris and the letters I’d written to Simone and Gribley.