“Comanche, this is Arizona Three. I’m inbound with twelve, plus zero, plus two in zero seven. Got enemy on a hill up the coast and gonna put you on top of them. It’s a ‘needlepoint,’ so be prepared for insert on a two-ship LZ. Once you go green, I’ll have charlie rats, water, and any class V you need en route. Get your class V wants to your trains soonest if you’ve not already done so. How copy?”
“This is Comanche Six. Good copy… uh… poor timing, but good copy. We’ll be ready for pickup. Over.”
“Roger, Comanche. They told us there’d be days like this, but they never said they’d come like bananas, huh? And I’m light on the skids, inbound in seven. Out.”
First Sgt. Bull Sullivan was pissed… really pissed!
“Goddamn it, sir. What do they want from us? How many times we moved today? Shit, up last night with the probe, hit the villages first thing this morning, linked up with tracks, back up here to the mountain! How many fucking chinks we killed today?”
Yes, he’s really pissed, I thought to myself. When he slips into his Korean-vintage referral to the enemy as chinks, you know he’s pissed!
“Fourteen, sixteen? I tell you, Six, the troops are tired! The troops are beat! Didn’t have C&D this morning, ain’t gonna have a hot tonight—and they’ll forget to send the fucking mail out with the charlie rats, just wait and see! I mean, what the fuck they want out of us?”
“Take it easy, Top,” I said rather sternly, but I hoped also compassionately. “I know how you feel, but nothing we can say or do is gonna change it. And, Top, you and me been ‘round long enough to know that, right? And we’ve also been ‘round long enough to know something big is happening right now. So how about whipping us up a quick air-movement order, cause we’ve already wasted two of our seven minutes in getting out of here.”
He stared at me fixedly, almost rebelliously, for a brief moment. Then, suddenly smiling, he said, “Shit, you’re right, Six. Hell, let’s go see some of the country!”
Turning from me, he yelled, “Okay, drop your cocks and grab your socks. We’re moving! Want to see my platoon sergeants up here, now!”
Concurrently, I called the platoon leaders forward and passed on Byson’s warning order, emphasizing that we were all going in aboard slicks on a two-ship LZ. Five minutes later, with the last rays of sunlight disappearing over the western horizon, we were on our way to another of Binh Dinh’s mountains.
Our flight of twelve Hueys orbited the mountain’s pinnacle in a wide circle and then, flying in trail, prepared to land on our needlepoint LZ. Because there were other friendly forces in the area, many of them on the mountain or at its base, Major Byson had decided against an artillery prep. However, this did not prohibit our accompanying Cobra gunships, suddenly roaring by us as we sped toward the LZ, from plastering the hilltop with aerial rockets and 40-mm grenades.
Whoom! Whoom! Whoom!
With the wind of the Huey’s backwash in our faces, we watched the oncoming LZ explode in brilliant orange-and-red flashes, each immediately followed by an erupting pillow of black-and-white smoke intermingled with dust, dirt, and bits of foliage and rock, all of which was thrown asunder into Vietnam’s darkening sky.
The lead Huey slowed, assuming a nose-up attitude, as we quickly maneuvered ourselves onto its skids. We leaped just before they touched the LZ’ s rocky surface. Two at a time the other Hueys followed us in, discharging their soldiers in a matter of seconds; then, nose down and gaining airspeed, they were away. The LZ, as usual—and thank God for it—was green.
But Charlie was here, hidden among the hill’s crevices and rocks with his defenses oriented downhill. Within a matter of minutes we would find him.
As the whump, whump of the Hueys faded in the distance, we moved off the mountain’s peak down a long, loosely vegetated ridge with One Six on the left, Three Six on the right, and Two Six straddling the ridge a bit in front of the other two platoons. The headquarters section followed Two Six. Moments later there was the abrupt crack of an AK-47 round on Two Six’s right flank, followed by an immediate fusillade of M-16 and M-60 machine-gun fire.
“We got one, sir!” O’Brien yelled excitedly, looking over his left shoulder toward us. “No, I think two! And a weapon—got us an AK!”
“Great!” I yelled back. “Let’s see what…”
Suddenly, two blurry figures flashed across our front, between us in the headquarters section and O’Brien’s platoon. They had obviously been well concealed but, like frightened quail in a cornfield, had been unnerved by the sudden exchange of gunfire. Their decision to flee was not a wise one. It was an especially unfortunate choice for the one who carried an explosive satchel charge strapped to his chest.
Still, they nearly made good their escape. Neither we nor the soldiers of Two Six could bring weapons to bear on the fleeing figures for fear of hitting each other. Then our attached Kit Carson screamed, “Chu Hoi!” One of the two evading enemy fell to the ground, placing his hands behind his neck.
The other enemy soldier, running down the ridge to our left toward One Six, quickly scrambled into a thicket of bamboo. It offered little protection. While the Kit Carson picked our new captive up from the ground, Two Six and the headquarters section began tearing the bamboo thicket apart with automatic-weapons fire.
Suddenly, our elusive quarry exploded! Pieces of bamboo intermingled with bits of cloth and flesh fell about us.
“Jesus H. Christ!” someone said after a moment’s silence. “Must’ve had a charge on him.”
“He did. I saw it! Had a yeller or khaki like satchel charge on his chest!” Sweet Willie said, his M-16 still pointed toward the bamboo thicket. “It was one of our rounds that hit it and sent old Charlie there to Ho Chi Minh heaven.”
“I doubt it, Willie,” the Bull said. “Ain’t no M-16 round gonna detonate a satchel charge. More likely he self-destructed.” He paused and then said to no one in particular, “You know, I’m getting short, and this is only the second time in this fucking war I’ve had a chance to shoot at somebody—and I rather like it, especially today. I feel like shooting somebody today! Shit, thought I saw our S-3 running into that clump of bamboo.”
“Well, Top, glad we could make your day.”
That was to be all of Charlie we’d find on the hilltop. Once it was secured, the company wasted no time in establishing its defensive perimeter. It was getting dark.
The Bull and I listened in as our Kit Carson conducted an informal interrogation of our NVA captive, who might have been sixteen years old but looked younger. Perhaps four feet nine or ten inches tall and weighing under a hundred pounds, he did not appear to be a formidable foe; he looked more like a frightened child.
The Kit Carson offered the NVA a drink of water from his canteen. He refused it. The Kit Carson then drank from his canteen and again offered it to the NVA “boy” soldier, who gingerly accepted it and drank as if he’d had been without water for days.
Blair offered the captive a cigarette, which he accepted, after staring at it hesitantly a moment, flashing Blair a brief smile. And I found myself unexpectedly thinking, I hope this young man, this boy in uniform, makes it through this mess. I hope he lives to return to his family.
“Someone give him a can of charlie rats,” I said.
Blair pulled a can of ham and lima beans from the leg pocket of his jungle fatigues, opening it with the can opener he kept attached to his dog-tag chain.
“Who’s got a clean spoon?” he asked, passing the can of beans to our startled prisoner.
Dubray pulled a plastic, cellophane-wrapped Cration spoon from one of his pockets and handed it to the boy. Our captive looked at it a moment, apparently fascinated by the cellophane wrapping, and then stuck it into his can of limas.