Taking Dubray’s handset from him and signaling Norwalk’s RTO, who was standing but a few feet from me, to disregard, I made a net call to assemble the troops.
That afternoon’s assault on the village of Thon Truong Tho and its aftermath were uneventful. Byson set us down in the lowlying foothills along the river Khe on the western side of the village. As the hooks ascended, we received a couple of sniper rounds fired by a very poor marksman; that was all we heard from Charlie that day. The villagers of Thon Truong Tho looked more like lost souls than the enemy. In fact, they looked very much like the villagers of Happy Valley, with that surreal aura of fear about them as if the ax were about to fall. Perhaps it already had, during General Giap’s recent offensive.
After moving through the village, we continued northeast for a kilometer or so and then set up our NDP next to a cemetery, a short distance from the republic’s little-used railway. Cemeteries were often the best defensive setting in paddy country, since they were usually higher and dryer than the surrounding terrain. Of course, one had to use care in digging his foxhole.
“And how is morale tonight?” I asked, opening our regular planning parley.
“Lower than whale shit, sir,” the Bull said gloomily.
“And that’s at the bottom of the ocean,” Halloway remarked, completing Sullivan’s assessment.
“Not to worry, men. The one thing you can count on is that nothing stays the same. If the sun’s shining, sooner or later it’s gonna rain. And if it’s raining, sooner or later…”
My remark brought forth little more than dutiful, strained smiles.
The weather and lack of contact were not setting well with Charlie Company’s rank and file. There was little I could do about either.
“Well, anyway, turning to tomorrow’s op, we’ll be doing ‘bout the same thing we did today—most of the day, that is, disregarding our little Thon Truong Tho excursion. But let’s flip-flop—One Six works the western side of the highway, Two Six the eastern. Okay?”
Norwalk and O’Brien nodded.
Turning to Lieutenant Halloway, I said, “And, Bob, your folk can nap the day away here—after trick-or-treating the highway tonight, of course.”
“Of course,” he replied, smiling.
“And where are our trick or treats tonight?” Lieutenant Moseley asked, unfolding his map.
Later, while waiting for a log bird that would never come, Sergeant Sullivan and I talked briefly.
“How was your day, Top?”
“Wet. Yours?”
“Ditto.”
“Tagged along with Two Six today,” he said. “And, sir, you might want to spend some time with that young platoon leader of yours, O’Brien.”
“Why is that, Top?”
“Hell, I don’t know what it is about him. It’s not that he don’t want to do well or ain’t trying. It’s just that… that he’s so goddamn young or something. Naples running the platoon while his boss is asking everything but telling nobody to do anything.”
“Well, hell, Top, we were all young once. And asking’s the best way to learn. He’ll come along; just give him time,” I said, echoing Norwalk’s advice.
“Yeah, guess so. But damn, he’s so… so young! So goddamn gullible.”
Smiling, he added, “Know what he kind of reminds me of, Six? Kind of reminds me of an earlier Willie Dubray in officer’s clothing.”
I laughed softly.
“Know what he told me today?”
I shook my head.
“Told me he didn’t like this place. Well, of course, I was surprised—hell, shocked—to hear that. Can you believe it, sir? He doesn’t like this place! So I asked him why on earth not, and he says ‘cause it’s not what he expected.” And I asked him what it was that he expected.”
He paused and started to laugh. “Know what he says? Says, ‘Well,… uh… kind of thought it’d be more like camping.” Camping! You know, where’s the campfire, and when are we gonna sing ‘On top of Old Smoky’?”
“Okay, Top, I get the message,” I said, unable to control my laughter, I’ll tag along with Two Six tomorrow.”
“Hey, Six,” the Bull said after a brief lull, “you like this place? I mean, are you enjoying your command here, even in I Corps’ dark and dreary mist?”
“Hell, yes! Like you say, I’d much rather be here than on that golf course, Top.”
“Well, that’s good,” he said in a serious tone. “Ought to enjoy it; it’ll probably be the last one you’ll ever have.”
I was startled by his remark. “What do you mean, Top? You know something I don’t? Did my court-martial papers come down with last night’s mail?”
Smiling, he said, “Naw, nothing like that. You’ll go on to be Six at other echelons, but you’ll never again be commanding soldiers. You’ll be commanding other commanders, and their soldiers through them. Company command is the first and, in many ways, the last real command an officer gets, especially in the infantry. Ought to enjoy it.”
And, I would discover in years to come, that, as usual, the Bull was right.
The following morning I, along with Blair, Anderson, and Lieutenant Moseley and his recon sergeant, accompanied Two Six on its sally east of Highway One. The platoon was to make a large circular sweep of an area south of the one that One Six had worked the day before. Around midday, we came across a couple of deserted hutches virtually hidden by a small grove of bamboo and tropical foliage. In the process of clearing the area, one of Two Six’s soldiers discovered a five-hundred-pound bomb under a rice bin, haphazardly covered by some matting and rice straw.
Second It. Richard O’Brien felt we should destroy the bomb in place.
“Let’s blow it, sir,” he said.
“And just how,” I asked, “do you propose to do that, Dick?” We carried no explosives, detonators, or time fuse for that sort of thing.
“Well, we can put a claymore up against it, or maybe tie a couple grenades to it, see. Then we tie a long piece of string or maybe some commo wire to the pins, move over there behind that paddy dike, give the wire a tug, and watch the fireworks! What do you think?”
What I thought was can you really be this naive? Do you have any idea of the lethal radius of a five-hundred-pound bomb? My first sergeant is right. You’re not learning the trade quickly enough. Then I noted Blair and Anderson, staring at the ground, to conceal the smirks on their faces, and I said, “I don’t think so, Dick. For reasons that we’ll talk about another time.”
“Well, hell, maybe if we fell back a ways and hit it with a LAW,” he said, now seeing the fallacies of his proposal, but, observing the faces of those around him, not wanting to admit his mistake.
“No!”
“Could work,” Moseley said, tongue in cheek, as O’Brien strolled back toward the rice bin. “Might I suggest we move downrange a klick or so and leave your young lieutenant here holding the string.”
I didn’t smile.
“Want me to call battalion, sir?” Blair asked. “See if they can get a demolitions team in to us?”
“No, not yet.”
Lieutenant O’Brien did have a point. Charlie was obviously the new owner of this piece of Uncle Sam’s ordnance, and if we ignored it, it would eventually be used against us. However, if I called a demolitions team forward, it would take hours.
Talking it over with Lieutenant Moseley, we decided to keep moving and then to hit the hutches with an artillery strike after we were out of harm’s way. This might detonate the bomb or at least sensitize it so it would explode prematurely when Charlie tried to move it—in which case we’d kill four or five of his men while ensuring the thing was not used against us.
Twenty minutes or so later, Moseley requested his mission. We stopped in place briefly and watched the rounds impact, hoping for a secondary explosion. There was none.