We had moved perhaps fifty meters, less than a third of the way up the hill, when we ran into—no, over—Charlie. The enemy had dug himself into the hill’s side, underneath its tall, thick, grassy covering, but in so doing had postured himself to hide, not fight. The track to our immediate right ran over the first of these positions, and as it did so an NVA soldier popped from his place of hiding and quickly pointed a rocket propelled grenade at the rear of the vehicle.
“RPG!” yelled one of our riflemen as he fired his M-16, killing his opponent before he could loose the grenade.
Moments later we heard an exchange of gunfire fifty or sixty meters to our left, where another of the tracks had uncovered a similar position.
That’s it! I said to myself. Enemy’s here, he’s got RPGS, and there ain’t no reason for Charlie Company to be riding atop these tin coffins.
I tapped Captain Rogers on the shoulder, pulled his helmeted headset aside, and said, “I’m dismounting my people, now!”
He gave me a thumbs up and signaled his tracks to stop momentarily, while we quickly dismounted. Then, after forming up behind the APCS, we continued up the hill afoot.
It turned out to be a very successful engagement. On our initial sweep, we netted ten or twelve of the enemy; on our return trip down the hill we killed another two or three. Finally, a horizontal sweep across the hill’s face, with us once again mounted, turned up nothing.
Upon completion of this maneuver, Rogers assembled his tracks in a relatively flat area at the base of the hill, circling them into a “covered-wagon” defensive perimeter. We broke for lunch while awaiting new orders; and they were not long in coming.
“Comanche Six, this is Arizona Three inbound with four, plus two, plus two in one five. Gonna put you into your old stomping grounds.
Getting reports of movement there. Looks like Charlie’s using that general area as one of his routes of regress… break. Good show with Schooner, Over Trail Six passes ‘well done.” As do we. You are now detached from Schooner. I’ll see you on the ground in about one five. How copy? Over.”
“This is Comanche Six. Solid. Standing by.”
After quickly passing the gist of Byson’s conversation to the platoon leaders and designating Bob Halloway’s Three Six as our assault element, I turned over the business of moving the company to Bull Sullivan. Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in the Huey’s door frame, basking in the coolness of its ninety-knot backwash.
One of the fringe benefits of being in the assault element, I thought to myself. For a few brief moments aboard your doorless slick you can escape Vietnam’s torrid heat while the rest of the company, following in the hooks, continues to sweat. Of course, if the LZ turns out to be “red,” you may find yourself getting your clock cleaned while the rest of the company orbits above, sweating in safety. Is there a moral here?
No, I don’t think so. It merely means that in the Nam, the smallest of luxuries are often but a matter of chance and usually costless. But on occasion, suddenly and unknowingly, they are purchased at the price of life itself. Or, as the Bull would say, “Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you!”
I put my philosophical wanderings aside as we touched down on a green LZ a short distance from Daisy.
Attempting to cover as much of the area as possible in interdicting the enemy’s withdrawal from Binh Dinh’s populated areas, we kept two of our rifle platoons on the valley floor, sweeping the plain’s approach routes into the mountains. One Six moved due north while Three Six, accompanied by the headquarters section, moved south. The 3d Platoon, Two Six, charged straight up the mountain to the west of us, accessing it by means of the same trail we had first discovered upon departing the Bong Son bridge two months before—the trail from which we had evacuated our nearly dead captive strapped to a jungle penetrator.
Neither of the valley platoons found Charlie, though both ran across evidence, hoofprints and so forth, that he had been traveling the area recently and extensively. In the process of making these discoveries, Lieutenant Norwalk found a suitable NDP site, and by 1500 hours One Six and Three Six had converged at this location.
Lieutenant O’Brien, MacCarty’s replacement, remained on the mountain with Two Six. But not as long as he should have.
Within minutes of joining forces with Norwalk, we heard an abrupt explosive blast of automatic-weapons fire intermingled with the detonation of 40-mm grenades. O’Brien was evidently in contact!
Concerned at not having heard a claymore explosion precede the sudden outbreak of small-arms fire, I took Anderson’s handset from him and attempted to contact O’Brien.
“Two Six, this is Six. Give me a sitrep. Over.”
Silence. No response from O’Brien, and the firing had stopped as suddenly as it began.
“Two Six, Two Six, this is Six. Over.”
“This is Two Six. Uh… Roger, ran into something big. Think a large enemy force. We’ve succeeded in breaking contact and are now regressing down the hill. Looking forward to marrying up with you in about two zero.”
You only think you’re looking forward to marrying up with me, Lieutenant. Regressing, indeed!
“This is Six. Do you need dust off? Red leg? Over?”
“This is Two Six. Negative. Over.”
“Okay, Two Six, I’ll see you on the floor in two zero. Out.”
I wanted to give our new platoon leader every benefit of the doubt, but the doubts were surely there. They’d been nagging at me since his arrival and Mac’s departure two days previously. Of course, snap judgments based on first impressions are dangerous and often faulty, but I made them routinely. And although I hardly expected a platoon leader to report in with a bayonet between his teeth screaming, “Can do, Sir!”
O’Brien thus far impressed me as someone who would really rather be anywhere else, involved in anything else, and doing it with anyone else. I missed Mac.
I didn’t know what had happened on the mountain minutes before (and never would); however there were several unsettling adjuncts to the incident: Why had O’Brien broken contact? Where were the casualties? His or Charlie’s? Why no request for fire support? Or assistance from us down here below? In a matter of far less than twenty minutes, Two Six entered our perimeter. Taking Lieutenant O’Brien aside, I asked, not unkindly, “You got any wounded? We need a dust off down here?”
“No, real lucky there, sir. All of us are okay, but it was close, real close!”
“Okay,” I replied. “Well, tell me about it, Dick. I mean in your own words, what happened?”
“Well, see, sir… uh… don’t know exactly what happened. Mean, I was pretty far back in the formation… not really far, but, you know,… ‘bout midway, where I could best influence the outcome of any encounter… uh… like they taught us at Benning. But, anyway, shortly after we hit that main trail paralleling the mountain, all hell broke loose up front, and since we were in a draw, obviously at a tactical disadvantage, I thought it prudent to withdraw before we got someone hurt.”
“Okay,” I said—my initial response to his account of the encounter on the mountain, our mountain! And then, perhaps because it had been a long day—and the day wasn’t over yet—I lost my temper.
“Now listen and listen closely, Lieutenant,” I said as calmly as I could. “I don’t know what you may think they taught you at Benning, but let me assure you, you can best influence the outcome of any encounter by being as close as possible to that encounter when it happens! And if you’re in Europe conducting a reconnaissance in force, perhaps midway in your formation is an appropriate place to be. But we ain’t in Europe. And if you’re conducting a retrograde movement, the rear of your platoon is where you should be. But we don’t do retrogrades in Charlie Company! In this environment, in this war, things happen from the front! And that’s where you should always be, always! And, goddamn it, if you can’t see your point man, always see your point man in front of you, you’re shirking your duties, and I won’t tolerate it!”