The sun was fading over Vietnam’s western horizon when we touched down, one ship at a time, on our second needlepoint LZ. Within moments of jumping from the lead Huey, I radioed Byson that our LZ was green.
“Well, we sure as hell ain’t gonna NDP here tonight!” First Sergeant Sullivan said as the last of our twelve slicks lifted off. And he was right. The mountain peaked so abruptly that there was virtually no room for the company to stand atop it, much less defend it.
“Maybe it’ll level off some when we reach Charlie’s bunker complex,” I replied. “And we better be getting a move on down the hill; it’ll be dark in thirty minutes.”
Assembling quickly, we began our movement down the mountain’s steep slope toward the Arclight site, Three Six leading. Upon entering the cratered, rearranged jungle of the strike area, we discovered that our bunker complex had been an underground hospital. Various medical supplies were scattered about, some of Chinese and Czechoslovakian origin, some of French and U.S. origin. None of it was produced in North Vietnam.
We counted the dead, many of them still wearing battle dressings on wounds previously suffered, conducted our bomb damage assessment, and moved through the area as quickly as possible—which wasn’t very quickly. Movement at night through a forested jungle was always difficult; but now, after the Arclight, movement was at a snail’s pace and exhausting: over the fallen and shattered palms, through the interwoven wait-a-minute secondary foliage, under the giant teak, down into the bomb crater, through its knee-deep water, up the other side—where there were more fallen trees. But we had no choice other than to continue our trek downward. The mountain’s face was simply too steep to establish an NDP unless we intended to sleep standing up.
In the early morning of February 1, after four or five hours of this torture, we found ourselves nearing the valley floor. Our jungle began opening up somewhat, and the mountain’s face started to level off.
Suddenly, the soldiers in front of me were silhouetted against the darkened early morning sky by the flashes of the point man’s M-16 and, a split second later, the lead machine-gun team’s M-60. Bob Halloway and I charged forward.
“Got both of ’em, Lieutenant!” Three Six’s point man said, a little nervously. “Uh… one of them’s a girl. But, shit, I didn’t know that, and she had a weapon. Hell, don’t even know what it is. Never saw one like it before.”
I looked at the submachine gun. “French piece. MAT-49—don’t see many of ’em around anymore.”
The girl, shot several times in the face and upper torso, was perhaps seventeen and wore the familiar black garb of the Vietnamese peasant. A khaki pith helmet lay next to her head. The other lifeless body was clad in the customary khaki uniform of the NVA regular.
“Must’ve been VC,” Halloway said. “I mean, the way she’s dressed and the frog weapon and all.”
“Yeah,” I responded, “probably a local guide. Could’ve been taking her northern friend here up to the nonexistent hospital. Hell, maybe they were supposed to conduct a bomb damage assessment for Charlie. Well, anyway, you did a good job, Point. Now let’s get it moving again. Think we’re nearing the floor.”
Soon afterward, we descended into one of the valley’s rice paddies and a short time later found a suitable NDP in which to spend the few remaining hours of darkness.
19. Third Day of the Tet Offensive: 1 February
A few hours later, with February’s first day of blistering heat well under way, we found ourselves again feasting on a full breakfast. As I ate, I looked up to see a concerned Lieutenant Halloway standing in front of me.
“Problems, Bob?”
“Uh… not really, sir. Just wondered if you might talk to ‘Hard Times’ Crumbley, that is. He was the point man last night. Seems to be pretty upset about the girl. You know, the men were ribbing him ‘bout it. I put a stop to that, but hell, I don’t know, maybe it’s ‘cause none of us ever killed a female before.”
“You talk to him?” I asked.
“Of course!” he replied somewhat indignantly. I suppose I should have realized that he had.
“Well, sure, Bob, I’ll talk to him, but I really don’t know what to tell him. I mean, I don’t see where gender comes into play when you have two armed soldiers run into one another.”
“That’s what I told him, sir. But it didn’t seem to make any great impression.”
Crumbley was an eighteen-year-old draftee, and he cared very little about talking to me or anyone else. I sensed that he wanted to be left alone, to reconcile in his own mind what he had done.
“Crumbley, Lieutenant Halloway tells me you’re a little upset ‘bout last night’s action,” I said. He sat on the paddy dike beside me, the two of us nursing cups of battalion’s fresh-brewed coffee.
“Naw, sir, that ain’t it. I mean, the guys are pumping me a bit about it, but, shit, she had a gun! Could’ve greased me quick as I did her, right?”
“Absolutely!”
Following a long pause, he said, “Shit, sir, it’s just that I ain’t never shot no female before. Hell, I ain’t never shot nobody before!”
He was visibly shaken, and why not? He had just killed two human beings in a war he hadn’t asked to come to and probably knew little about.
Nothing I could say would change that.
“Well, listen, Hard Times. That’s what they call you, right? Hard Times?”
“Yes, sir, don’t really know why.” He smiled fleetingly and then said,
“Well, yeah I do. Seems I’m the guy what always gets the porksausage patties in the charlie rats and the kents in the comfort packs. Always ended up with the buffalo trousers and the smallest jacket in the uniform dump ‘fore Willie got it straightened out. Only man in the company to miss his R&R flight going out of the country.”
Hell, I’m sorry I asked! I really don’t have time for an open-door complaint session. But maybe he just feels better talking around last night’s incident.
“Last time in Bong Son, you know, on LZ English stand down… that’s ‘fore you got here, sir. I was the next guy in line, looking out in case the LT comes back, ‘cause we had a whore… uh… well, anyway, that’s when the LT comes back. Don’t guess I ought to be telling you some of this, huh, sir?”
I merely smiled.
“But, shit, sir, none of that means anything. Don’t mean nothing and don’t bother me none. But the girl… well, I figure I might be seeing her a lying there like that for a long time.”
“Well, Hard Times… Crumbley, I don’t know what I can tell you or do to make you feel better about what happened last night. I mean, our country’s at war, and you and I are part of it. And a big part of it is killing the enemy.”
That’s all true, but it sounds so goddamn trite and obviously does little to console this eighteen-year-old sitting beside me. Ought to be more forceful. Ought to just lay it on the line!
“Listen, Crumbley, the girl was an enemy soldier with a red star on her helmet and a submachine gun in her hand. If she had been a better soldier and had seen you first she’d now be evading us in the weeds of that mountain, and you’d very probably be lying wrapped in a poncho just feet from where we now sit, waiting for the C&D bird to backhaul you out of here ‘long with the mermites and water cans. And tonight, I’d have to draft a letter that would do very damn little to console your family.
Now, goddamn it, you did a good job this morning. You met the enemy face to face and defeated him. And that’s the only thing you should ever remember for the rest of your life! Shit, if you hadn’t been quicker than them, there might be a bunch of the rest of us dead! You understand what I’m saying, Crumbley?”