“This is Six,” I replied. “Good job. Pass along a ‘well done’ to your hit man… break. You’ve done a day’s work. Go ahead and pack it up and start moving toward Daisy. We’ll be an hour or so behind you. Don’t forget to give Two Six a call before closing the LZ; they may be occupying it!”
After waiting in ambush another thirty to forty minutes, we too started down the mountain. Shortly after passing the point at which our new descending trail bisected the main northsouth route, we got lucky.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat! The sound of Three Six’s point man’s M-16, firing on automatic, pierced the air!
As on that first day on the mountain, everyone dived to the ground, pointing their weapons outward, doing things right. Within moments Lieutenant Halloway and 1, our RTOs in tow, were running forward, quickly closing the twenty meters or so between us and his point man, The point man was in a crouch, his weapon at the ready, looking left, right, and down the trail as he should have been. At his feet were what appeared to be two long socks, a string connecting them, filled with dry uncooked rice. These straddled the neck of a dead NVA soldier.
Three Six’s point man had evidently elevated his weapon while firing on automatic. His foe had been “zippered” through his groin, stomach, chest, neck, and skull.
Recalling Byson’s guidance, we searched the bloodied khaki-clad body thoroughly but other than personal effects found nothing. Clearing the trail, a couple of Three Six’s soldiers then heaved the body, in a one-two-three count, off the path’s embankment. It tumbled two or three meters before lodging itself against a tree. We retrieved the dead soldier’s weapon and then continued our downward movement toward Daisy.
While waiting—always waiting—for the evening log bird, I strolled over to One Six’s piece of our perimeter and congratulated their hit man on his kill. After doing so, I continued on to Three-Six’s position, arriving in time to overhear Bob Halloway’s point man describing his kill.
“It was just like Lean Man said, LT! See, I’m moving ‘long real cautious like, and all of a sudden this dink comes strutting ‘round a curve in the trail, carrying this double sock of rice over his shoulders, you know, like saddlebags. And I swear to God, sir, the fucker had his weapon slung ‘cross his back! I mean, this dude’s doing everything what they told us not to do in basic. Shit, he wasn’t even looking where the fuck he was going! Just looking at the ground, at his feet, you know, like them Ho Chi Minh sandals was the biggest thing he had going for him today. I swear, sir, I don’t think he ever saw me. I mean he’s just staring at his fucking feet when I blew him away.”
After congratulating our young point man, Bob and I talked briefly about the incident.
“What do you make of it, Bob?” I asked. “Why are they so fucking sloppy up there? Hell, these are regulars, the People’s Army of North Vietnam, supposedly one of the world’s most professional infantries.”
“Yes, sir, and they probably are when they come down here to play, you know, on our turf. But up there, well, it’s pretty obvious they think they own the mountain, regard it as their own private sanctuary, and can therefore traverse its trails with impunity. You know, just like walking the streets of Hanoi.”
“Well, they by God don’t own it no more, Robert!” I retorted, arrogantly, cockily.
“Uh… right, sir, and that’s what surprises me—I mean that they haven’t concluded their little haven of security is no longer secure.
You’d think, seeing the dead bodies we’ve been leaving around, they’d take some precautionary measures.”
After mulling this over, I responded, “I don’t know, Bob; maybe that’s not so surprising—I mean their reaction to our kills. Hell, there’s dead bodies all over this country; it’s almost the norm. Way I figure it, these people are regulars in transit, you know, just moving from point A to point B. They see some of their own laid out ‘long the way, they just chalk it up to H&I fire, aerial-delivered mines, and a stray born. in short, the fortunes of war.”
“Maybe so,” he replied, “but it’s funny they’re not using their VC brethren as guides. And why are they moving in singles, pairs, or groups of only three or four per? And where are they moving to?”
Good questions, but ones that neither Bob Halloway nor I were able to answer on that January day in 1968.
As dusk fell, Two Six departed Daisy en route to our new NDP, leaving behind a guide with each of the remaining platoons. An hour or so later, in darkness, the rest of us followed. Upon arriving at our new position, Lieutenant MacCarty quickly emplaced the company in an elongated perimeter. LPs were sent out, and we settled in for the night, each of us seeking what cover and concealment our immediate surroundings afforded. We dug no holes in this instance: security was dependent on stealth, on silence.
After C&D the following morning, we again assaulted the mountain, going about what had now become business as usual. Three Six worked the main north-south trail, and One Six the valley floor. Two Six, accompanied by the command section, followed our newly discovered trail of the day before up and over the mountain’s crest. We wanted to see what was on the other side.
I tagged along with Two Six. Although we found little of consequence on the mountain’s western slope, I had the opportunity to observe the best of the company’s point men at work. And the company had no bad point men in the Nam. They were the best and bravest of a unit’s soldiers because the laws of jungle warfare permitted nothing less. The point man was a twentieth-century gladiator, a man who fought the war at its most personal level. And, like the gladiator, he could lose the game but once. If the pilot of a B-52 bomber was on one end of the war’s spectrum, the point man was at the other end. Unlike the B-52 pilot, who would push the buttons on his on-board computer to release his fury on an unseen enemy below, the point man was nose to nose with the enemy—man against man, with weapon in hand.
Passing Three Six’s previous day’s ambush site, we continued to climb upward toward the mountain’s summit, the trail becoming abruptly steeper, nearly perpendicular to the valley floor below. Ladder-like footsteps had been carved into the mountain’s face, and, straddling these, woven vines conveniently hung down from the heights above.
Movement was tedious, difficult, and exhausting, but the flow of adrenaline dulled the effects of exhaustion and kept us going.
“Hey, sir,” Mac whispered, momentarily turning and looking down at me.
“We’re really in Indian country now.”
“Looks like it, doesn’t it, Mac. They say there’s always good hunting in the high country.”
“Damn right we’re in Indian country,” Anderson said, behind and below me, not bothering to look up. “These ain’t wait-a-minute vines we’re hanging onto. These vines been woven by some zipperhead. Shit, sir, we’re in Charlie’s backyard!”
Looking up, I saw the mountain’s top looming before us. Concurrently, the trail leveled off slightly, still steep but no longer straight up.
Two Six’s point man was within perhaps ten meters of the mountain’s razorback crest when, suddenly, two NVA soldiers appeared on the summit and began their descent toward us. If they saw our point man before they died, it was only for a fleeting second. Because he saw them first.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
The exploding twelve-gauge shotgun shells were louder than an M-16 round, yet our point man fired the rounds so quickly that the shots sounded like an automatic weapon. He hit the first of the two enemy soldiers dead center in the chest, lifting him up and backwards for a fraction of a second before he fell, face forward, tumbling past us. The second man, struck in the chest and face, fell back across the mountain’s crest.