That summer calm was shattered, as if someone had pitched a rock into a hornet's nest.
Alarms rang, and troops began doubling here and there.
Two men had Ho Chi Minh by the arms, and were hurrying him to the shelter of a cave.
I have no idea where the snipers were.
But someone had to do something.
I slid my LAW off my chest, remembering its total unreliability, pulled the pin and slid the tube forward. The iron sight flipped up automatically, and I aimed.
I squeezed down on the firing mechanism, and nothing happened.
The sights were off that small man, only a few meters from safety. I started to correct, and the goddamned LAW fired.
The rocket, wisping smoke, shot out and down, passing over Ho Chi Minh's head by at least two meters, and struck a commo truck thirty meters distant. It exploded, and the truck bucked and burst into flames, just as Ho Chi Minh and his entourage vanished into safety.
I was staring down, almost in tears at my miss, and so I didn't see Westmoreland's helicopter sweep overhead, not one hundred meters off the deck, no doubt drawn by the smoke which the pilot might have thought was our ordered marker.
Some people said it was an SA-2 missile that was launched, which I doubt, given its range requirements for arming. More likely it was a heavy machine gun or maybe even a lucky shot with an RPG.
Whatever, something took the big Sikorsky through the canopy, and exploded. The helicopter bucked, rolled on its side, and dropped. About ten meters above the ground, an explosion boiled through its fuselage, then it struck, and another explosion sent bits of aluminum and… other things… through the air.
Simons, quicker than us all, was on his feet.
"All right," he shouted, and I think his voice carried across the nearby border. "India Alpha. Shoot their dicks off, then we're moving out. By teams!"
Down below, a pair of PT76s rumbled into life.
Three LAWS spat from the flank, hitting them in their lightly armored sides. Two exploded, the other boiled smoke, and spun to a halt.
We fell back, down the hill.
"To the road," Simons shouted. "The hell with being careful!"
We obeyed, shooting as we moved. We were undoubtedly doomed, but the reflexes of our training took over.
We went down the road, almost to that hamlet of Ha Quang.
Mortars thudded, and people went down. If they still moved, someone had them back on their feet, and carried them. Medics tried to treat them as we moved.
If they were dead, they were abandoned, with sometimes a grenade, its pin out, tucked under them as a hasty boobytrap.
Just before the village, Simons was standing at the junction of that almost road.
"Down this way," he ordered.
I stopped my reaction force there, spread them out.
"Goddamit, Richardson-"
"Move your ass, sir," I shouted. "I've got my orders."
A momentary grin came and went, then he grabbed his handpiece, was calling for our lift ships.
I counted twenty-five men running past me, leapfrogging their way. There were ten men with me.
Babyface and Mad Dog Shriver hurtled past, behind their Montagnards.
A solid wave of infantry boiled down the road, and machine gunners opened up. One of the gunners grunted, flopped over, and I had his RPD.
The Viet infantry was hesitating.
M79s thunked, and grenades exploded in their midst.
I put a drum from the RPD into the mass, and they broke and ran.
Then we were moving, following the others toward safety.
Artillery slammed in somewhere, obviously being fired blind.
A mortar team came around a bend, spotted us, and ducked into cover.
One of the 60 gunners dropped four mortar rounds on top of them, and that was something we didn't have to worry about.
We were moving fast, but not fast enough.
The Viets were closing, and now their mortars were killing and wounding men around me.
Simons was shouting something on the radio, and a mortar thunked in, I swear next to him. Simons flung his hands up, fell, and my heart stopped. If he was dead…
One of his radiomen was down as well, and then Simons, drooling blood from his limp arm and shrapnel wounds on his face, staggered to his feet.
Dick Meadows was there, and somehow had the enormous Bull over his shoulder, and the main column was moving back.
We held as long as we could, men going down, wounded men barely able to stand shooting back, then we retreated.
Shriver was beside me, a bloodstained grin on his face.
"Gonna be a hell of a last stand, won't it, sir?"
I hoped I managed a smile back, then a round spanged into my RPD, and it was dead.
I grabbed an M16, saw a pair of Viets no more than a hundred meters away, shot them down.
I heard Shriver shouting to me, and saw him, with his Montagnards, crouched around a pile of logs, an ideal position.
There were ten of us who stumbled to the position.
Viets came up the road, and were shot down.
A wave of them came out of the brush, and were gunned down.
I called for us to fall back again, and we were up.
A machine gun chattered, and two of the 'Yards dropped. Bob Howard grinned, waved at me, moved back, after the others.
Then there was a shouting mass of Viets on us, and I had my Randall in one hand, my pistol in the other.
I slashed one Viet's throat, pushed him into another, shot him in the chest.
I saw Jerry Shriver snap-shoot two men, then he went down. A moment later, a grinning, shouting Viet stood, holding his blood-dripping head.
I shot him in the face, and then one of the Montagnards chattered an RPD burst into the knot, somehow missing his fellows and us.
We were moving again, and I was throwing grenades.
A bullet hit me in the upper chest, but I could still run.
Time blurred, and I cursed my pistol for being empty, threw it at an oncoming Viet, and someone else shot him.
Then there wasn't anybody to shoot, and behind me I heard the roar of helicopters.
Our Jolly Greens, against orders, didn't come in at the LZ near Tra Linh and wait, but came looking for us.
Then the birds were on the ground, and Jenkins was helping me aboard and we were airborne.
Twenty-four of us made it back to Hanoi, all of us wounded.
It was the greatest disaster in Special Forces history.
We mourned our dead, while the rest of the Army mourned Westmoreland, and America mourned Connolly and Nixon.
For a time, the operation was an utter secret, and various lies were told about how the commander of all forces in Vietnam had gotten killed.
But Senator Teddy Kennedy, who'd never been thought of as the soldier's friend, stood tall in the Senate, demanding an explanation and medals for what he called "America's finest warriors."
I don't know about myself, but I knew damned well he spoke the truth about the others.
More Congressional Medals of Honor, sixteen, were hastily given out than in any other battle in American history. Bull Simons, Dick Meadows, Bob Howard and others got theirs at the White House. Babysan Davidson, Mad Dog Shriver and others received theirs posthumously.
I also got one, which I again felt I didn't deserve.
But this time, I accepted the award.
The war dragged on.
Ho Chi Minh died that fall, mostly of old age, and it made our mission seem senseless, since Vo Nguyen Giap and Pham Van Dong replaced him with never a lost step.
Our mission was an utter catastrophe.
Study and Observations Group never recovered from the loss, and was broken up. Nor did Special Forces ever really recover, in my opinion.
But I'll never be able to remember that day without hearing a whisper from Shakespeare: