One Very Hot Day

by David Halberstam

  Then Headquarters excused itself for a moment, came back and said that Co and the province chief said they could do nothing for them, they must stay in there, that the Americans had foolishly sent the helicopters back and the American fighter planes weren't working as usual. They must stay there and perhaps something would develop. Would they like some artillery? The province chief had checked and they were within artillery range.

  “No,” said Thuong, even more terrified, “no artillery, not now, thank the province chief.” The province chief, he thought, loves to bombard the entire countryside with artillery, and we are not dug in, and the VC are.

  “Yes,” said the CP, and excused himself again. Then he returned: the Lieutenant was to give the province chief's warm regards and personal admiration to Captain Dang, and to remind him that they had lots of artillery.

  “Fine,” said Thuong. He put another man on the radio, and then slipped out to the back of the column. The firing was still very heavy but it was not coming from the rear and that made him nervous. He took two men who were doing nothing — that was easy, they were all doing nothing — one with a grease gun, and one with a carbine, and took them to the very end of the column, and told them not to let anyone slip up on them. He didn't care what happened at the front of the column, they were not to turn around. Those were their orders, if they were stabbed to death from behind, he, Thuong, would take the responsibility and they would both be Heroes of the Republic if there were anyone left alive to recommend them. They both nodded; he was sure they would fight well in defense, or at least if there were a rush from the rear. The rest of the column would have a few minutes of warning. The rear taken care of, he started to work his way back to the center of the column.

  He was surprised that he was not more frightened. It was as if he had been expecting this particular ambush with the troops not firing back, with no one in charge. It was something he had expected to happen for a long time; if anything, his luck had been too good, too many escapes, too many other units ambushed and destroyed and his company barely scratched. It had been as if he were watching the war as a spectator, not as a participant, removed from it with no passion. Indeed his second reaction after the ambush began was a momentary thought whether he should slip over to the other side of the canal and desert. He had watched this entire operation unfold in its singularly stupid way, step by step, stupidity by stupidity. They had walked into a trap set for them, and now they were caught.

  He crawled forward toward the center of the column; the further he moved along the more he moved into the range of enemy fire and the more slowly he went. He picked out one machine gun and one BAB and assumed they had supporting lighter weapons as well. He was curious why they had not tripped the ambush with an overwhelming volley of automatic weapons fire and he wondered and worried when the full force of the ambush would begin to show. As he moved forward, he came to the area where the two enemy weapons had converged their fire and leveled his troops. He inched along now, sure that he was going to be hit any minute. He realized now that the tail end of the column had not been badly hit, but what he saw here made him sick, the bodies sprawled out ahead of him. He saw the living pressed into ridiculously thin cover, their faces showing fear and uncertainty, their eyes unwilling to meet his. Just then he heard some fire returned from the front of the column and decided that it was probably the fat American. He passed two enlisted men crouched behind a tree. He yelled out at them to begin firing, and they did not. He yelled again, shouting it as an order, and one answered back, asking where Captain Dang was.

  “I am Captain Dang,” said Thuong. He took his carbine and fired two shots about a foot above their heads and told them if they did not fire quickly, he would finish the clip on them. To emphasize the point, he fired one more shot into the ground just in front of them. They began to fire, angrily, as if, although they were pointing somewhere else, they were really aiming at him, but gradually picking up the rhythm. He was, he discovered, no longer a spectator, he was engaged; he was making decisions and he wanted to live and to kill.

  In front of him was the center of the column where most of the dying had taken place. There was still a soft undercurrent of moans, like background music to the Vietcong weapons and the spasmodic return fire. He saw six young men sprawled out in front, some of them he knew, and some of them he did not. One of them was the soldier he had teased earlier in the day about the medical kit. He knew immediately that if they made it back to My Tho, it would be one of those awful nights when they returned and found that the underground telegraph had sounded and the medical building would be obscured by the great crowd of wives come to be widows, come to wail and claim their dead, and wail even if their men weren't dead. Most of them would be standing there with their children, five and six children perhaps, waiting noisily but patiently outside. They would wait through the night and the next morning they would still be there, outside the battalion commander's office, waiting to have their future explained, what would happen to them, where they should go, how they should live. It was a job which Dang very willingly surrendered to him, and Thuong would explain, interrupting himself for their frequent tears and their breakdowns, that there was no real plan, that they must go home, that there was some money; but if he was to be honest with them, it was sometimes a little late in arriving, knowing that by the time it arrived, it would be so little that it would have all disappeared into debts anyway. The merchants would know which were the wives and the widows and would know just how much credit could be extended. The merchants had been through all this before, and had a good eye for it all.

  To the side, as he crawled forward, were three men, still alive, perhaps wounded, but sitting there paralyzed by shock.

  “Start firing,” he shouted, “start firing now or you'll change places with these others. These were your friends. Don't you care? Don't you care? What are you?”

  Ahead of him was the fat American captain kneeling by what must be the young American's body. On his way forward Thuong had been slightly reassured by the sound of firing. The American had at least gotten them to fire a little. But when he saw the Captain, his confidence disappeared. Sweat was pouring down the Captain's face, and his eyes were hard and seemed to be without flex. The Captain's voice was harsh and high, and he was shouting at Thuong.

  Thuong let the Captain shout at him for what seemed like several minutes (the sons of bitches won't fire back; can't you do anything about these sons of bitches; can't you get your damn people to fight; that goddamn Dang has run away, goddamn Army, goddamn country) before he broke in, trying to calm the man who was after all more or less in charge. He tried to reassure Beaupre about the men and make him forget about Dang.

  “I am sorry, Captain,” he said, “but I do not think there will be the help for us. I think we are on the own.”

  The recon patrol came bumbling down the canal path. Ahead there was a small clearing. Out into the clearing they stepped, first one, then two, then finally all eight men. They walked happily across the clearing until they were almost on the other side and about to disappear into the bush again, when the Vietcong, who had been waiting so patiently for the others, finally opened up. The fire was murderous, designed for a much larger party, three machine guns with supplemental BARs, for they had been ready to destroy an entire company and instead they got a squad. Five men were killed instantly, one was wounded, and two were completely stunned, kneeling there, half in the open, not even taking full cover until the Vietcong assault party slipped out of the bushes (this took several minutes because the Vietcong commander at first refused to give the order to clean up the ambush, sensing that it might be a trap and fearing a counterambush). Finally he gave the order, and they came out from the canal itself, close enough that if they had missed on their timing, they would have been annihilated themselves. They stripped the dead men, stripped and killed the wounded men, and took the two prisoners with them. They collected the weapons. They were already gossiping with the two prisoners as the
y left the field. They did not get any automatic weapons.

  Along the small canal, Beaupre heard for a brief moment a lull and waver in the Vietcong firing, and then a new outbreak so vicious and violent that he feared that the full waves of the attack were finally about to begin, that it was all over. He saw Thuong quiver; then they both realized that the firing was not there, that it was some distance away on the main canal, and that the recon patrol was being hit. It was very heavy fire, and there did not appear to be any answering fire; then there was a sharp and complete end to it, and they both assumed that all eight men were dead, they had to be dead. In that moment Thuong saw Beaupre as more than just a frightened old man in the wrong country and showed him a look of respect. He wanted to say something about the detour, about its giving them a chance, but found he could not.

  Suddenly the Lieutenant began to shout something in Vietnamese, angrily, standing up, he was taking risks; Beaupre was sure he would see the man die right in front of him, and for a second thought, don't stand, you'll pull their fire toward us, toward me, but the Lieutenant stood, and then moved, shouting angrily at his men, and with a ferocity that Beaupre had never seen from an Arvin officer, steel words coming out of his mouth, like a drill sergeant. They began to fire. A burst came near the Lieutenant, but he only went down momentarily; he was standing again, shaking his fist at two soldiers, screaming. Then as the return fire began to mount, the voice of the Lieutenant began to drop. Goddamn, Beaupre thought, the man is a pistol, we can make it. He was lucky, Beaupre thought, to have a good lieutenant. Three weeks ago Crawford had been with one who had refused to speak English the moment the firing began.

  Beaupre went back on the radio, and the CP was friendly and solicitous: “We gonna get something, don't you worry, you stay in there, old buddy, something's gonna be on the way. We just talked to Bien Hoa, and we gonna do it for you, don't you worry.”

  Beaupre pushed him and was reproved.

  “We can't send it any faster than we got it, old buddy. It's all yours, your name on the ticket. Ain't any question of that, it's comin', and now you just stay in there. Get a couple of them for us.”

  The firing continued around them but the Viets were answering now. The Lieutenant, calmer now, came back and told him that the mortar team had been killed with the first burst.

  “Mortars no damn good here, anyway,” Beaupre said. He crawled back to the center of death scrounging for weapons, until he found one of the new grenade launchers and decided he wanted it; he hated gimmicks — hated helicopters — but he picked it up and decided it might help. He had trouble at first unwinding it from the limp Asian body. He gathered as many shells as he could for it, picked up another carbine and crawled back to the Lieutenant. He gave the Lieutenant a carbine and a BAR. He asked Thuong to find him one good man. The emphasis was on good. Thuong signaled to a heavy-set corporal with a mustache, some kind of tribesman or Cambodian, Beaupre thought. Then Beaupre explained what he wanted: there were two known positions, the machine gun post across the canal and a secondary position somewhere ahead on their side. He wanted the Lieutenant and a few men to keep up a heavy fire until he could work his way back to the head of the column. After that they would keep up the fire and then the Lieutenant would take one or two men, slip further back across the canal, and work the other side: he goddamn well did not want to get caught by another undiscovered position on the far side of the canal.

  “The canal,” the Lieutenant said, “we will drop some grenades into the canal before we start if it is all right with you. Sometimes they hide in there and we can kill them like the fish.”

  Beaupre nodded, pleased.

  Beaupre took the mustached Viet and began to move slowly, so very slowly, toward the point. He was halfway to the point, a long arduous crawl, around bodies, in blood and slime, when the machine gun opened with a long burst. It sounded so close that Beaupre was sure it was going to hit him, but it missed. It was a few feet behind him, and he turned in time to see it hit the Viet. The man seemed to bounce; he was hit and seemed to stop and hang for a minute, and then he came on. A damn good man, Beaupre thought. They both continued to crawl to the point. Beaupre asked with hand signals if the leg was all right, and the Viet began to laugh. When Beaupre finally reached the point, he realized how exposed he was, and froze again. The smile turned to bewilderment on the face of the Corporal, and it woke Beaupre up. The man was wondering what they were doing there, they were counting on him, and Beaupre remembered again that he was not to freeze, he was to lead. He reached for the grenade launcher.

  Thuong turned from Beaupre and began to work his way toward some cover where he could organize his party. On the way he passed Anderson. He crawled a few more yards, and then, turning slowly, and even though he was moving to a less protected spot, moved back toward the dead American. Among the dead, Anderson looked somehow like an adult among children. For a moment Thuong looked at the body and felt no sadness, only justice, let them pay too, let theirs die too. Then he caught himself, and was ashamed, and reached over and closed the eyes of the American, and then to his own surprise, started an old Buddhist prayer for the dead; the American, after all, had wanted so badly to be a part of things in this country, he had wanted to share, this was the final sharing. Then he crawled back to a better position and started firing again at the Vietcong.

  Beaupre still felt frightened; then the Vietcong opened with another burst and having survived that, he recovered his nerve again. Below him he heard the firing of the Arvin, steady and surprisingly consistent now. He looked at the grenade launcher and wished now that he had not talked so much against gimmickry, and had shut his mouth and learned to fire the weapon. Raulston had liked it and said it was like a shotgun. He reached down and broke it open like a shotgun. So far so good, he thought. He remembered one thing Raulston had said: don't shoot for them directly, better to shoot in front to get a real effect on the target, and let the scattering take care of itself. He laid eight shells out in front of him, grenades looking like long bullets. He decided that because of the ambush they needed an element of counter-surprise, and he decided to try and make it seem like a semi-automatic weapon. He was sure the VC had never seen one in action. The launchers were new in the country, and he counted on the psychological effect; it was, he was sure now, a small ambush, otherwise they would have been overrun long ago. He was sure they had run into the wings of the main ambush set up to prevent flanking movements. He sighted some trees to the side and in front of the place where he had located the machine gun. He sighted in his own mind the target, so that when he finally aimed, he would be able to fire by instinct and not waste time. He rose with the launcher, fired slightly in front of the target; then, what seemed like clumsy minutes later, his fingers oafish with the tangible effects of his fear, fired again, and hearing the grenades go off, was more confident, firing this time slightly to the right of the pocket. Behind him now as he fired he heard more noise (Were they making more noise, or was he simply hearing it better?) and sensed that the Viets were rallying. He felt some of his fear ebb, and his hands were surer and he pumped two more shells into the pocket. He felt more of his fear ebb and he thanked technology and McNamara.

  He knew he had been lucky; the grenades had exploded roughly where he wanted them. He was sure that he had done some damage, but he was just as sure there were some of them still alive, and they could probably still man the weapon. He pumped one more shell in there, in case they were trying to get up. He was sure they had not really come to fight: they had come to ambush, to kill, for a free killing. They were like everyone else, they wanted something for nothing: if there were a new and dangerous weapon used against them they would be very careful. Behind him the Viets were firing now, regularly, almost incautiously. There was no more question of panic.

  He heard no more firing from the machine gun position. While he was pumping shells in, it had still been firing, but now it was silent. There was still some firing from the forward position but Beaupre
was becoming surer now; he knew the BAR position would hear the silence of the machine gun and he knew it would affect their decisions. He was still not exactly sure where the BAR was. Ahead of him the canal, which was to his left, began to bend to the right. That meant, he thought, that the enemy would not want to be too close to the canal. He did not think they would want the canal as an escape route, it was too easy to dump grenades into the water. They would want to withdraw by land at first, he thought. He and the mustached Viet moved forward, and he began to estimate a place where they might be. About fifty yards ahead was a large clump of bushes. The terrain was too tough, he thought, to ambush the ambushers; perhaps if he had American troops, he might be able to do it, but not with these. He fired a grenade to each side of the clump and listened to the explosions. He thought the second sounded slightly different, more muffled, and then for an instant he thought he heard a muffled human sound, like a man screaming in to himself instead of out to the world. He fired one more to the right of the clump. Then he put down the launcher and picked up a grease gun and a cluster of grenades. He signaled to the mustached Viet and they began to crawl toward the tree clump. The Viet was to the left of him and forward a few yards and Beaupre kept firing to cover them both. It was slow hard work and he was tired now, feeling the tension and the pressure, feeling how incredibly dry he was, dry not like he had been earlier from the heat — he had forgotten about the heat — but dry from fear. He was tired and sick of the whole business. He thought for a moment of standing up and charging the clump. But it would be stupid John Wayne soldiering and he continued to crawl. There was no fire coming from the clump, and when they got within twenty yards, he signaled to the Viet to stop and he lobbed a grenade. He waited, and then because he was an old man and afraid, he lobbed one more. Then he and the Viet slowly rose and walked toward the clump. There they found no men, no weapons, only one tiny patch of blood. Beaupre left the Viet there and walked on a little further; he moved about ten yards ahead and parted some brush and suddenly looked up and saw the enemy, one soldier, wearing black shorts, bare-chested. They looked at each other in total surprise. They were only fifteen yards apart, and in that instant Beaupre saw the carbine at the man's side, saw that his leg was badly wounded, torn up, saw how thin and pitiful and wretched he looked — these are the bastards who do it, he thought, these scrawny goddamn bastards — saw the fear coming on the enemy's face, picked up his weapon and emptied his entire clip into the enemy.