“On the way!” Another 90mm canister round swept over the tree line, catching one of the enemy RPG teams.
Hearn’s voice came over the intercom: “Watch out for the grunts, they’re assaulting the tree line. Use the thirty!” He meant the .30-caliber machine gun.
I followed with one more “On the way!” and let fly another canister round that pruned the trees a little more, instantly eliminating twigs and branches. I heard Hearn open up with the .50, though I couldn’t see what he was shooting at. Suddenly his gun stopped and the turret was taken out of my control. The tank commander had grabbed his override handle and was turning the turret to the left. I could only watch as scenery slid by my sights.
“The gooks are running into a temple!” he yelled as he gave me back control of the turret after I yelled, “Identified!”
I saw what he was talking about—a small stone structure with kind of a red brick roof. Three NVA with their distinctive pith helmets ran into the structure. I turned to the loader and yelled, “Gimme an HE on delay!”
It took him a few seconds to set the fuse on the High Explosive round. The breech slammed shut. “Up!” he yelled.
“On the way!” I replied as I squeezed the electric triggers again. The main gun kicked back and dropped another hot shell casing on the turret floor. I watched the red tracer on the back of the projectile as it punched its way right into the temple.
Because of the short delay we put on the projectile’s fuse, it didn’t detonate against the stone wall, as it would normally have. Instead, the ensuing explosion took place inside the temple, making it far more effective. The roof went straight up, and the walls blew out. Stones, mortar, and body parts flew in all directions. Yet, still standing where the temple once stood was a gook, AK-47 in hand. He spun around on wobbly legs like he was drunk until he keeled over. We had just gotten our first sure kills!
The two tanks overwhelmed the enemy fire, and the grunts were able to advance against the enemy position. The fight was over, just as the other road-sweep team arrived from the opposite direction. The grunts policed the area of weapons, equipment, ammunition, and bodies—theirs and ours. The loader threw out the huge brass shells that had piled up on the turret floor while I kept sweeping the turret back and forth, peering into the tree line, looking for any signs of Charlie. But things had pretty much quieted down.
The air inside the turret was thick with fumes from the expended shells and the smoke from the machine gun. I felt like I had been down there all morning and thought I would go crazy without a breath of fresh air. I begged Hearn to let me take a breather for just a few minutes, and he said, “Okay.”
I stood up, halfway out of the loader’s hatch, grateful for the fresh air. I could have sworn it was afternoon. But when I looked at my watch, only fifteen minutes had elapsed! It was my first firefight, but as I stood there, sucking in deep breaths, I was about to get another first-ever sight.
Every FNG arrived in-country with some trepidation of how he would react under fire, and a morbid curiosity to see his first enemy dead. I had been trained to kill the enemy, but no one prepared me for the sight of my first dead and wounded Marines.
Coming toward our tank were four grunts, each holding one corner of a rain poncho, carrying one of their own to the truck at the rear of the column. As they drew closer, I couldn’t help but stare. The boy lay face-up, his head hanging over the poncho’s edge and bobbing with each stride of his bearers. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open, as if frozen in a yawn. With his bright blond hair, almost like a surfer’s and far too long for any Marine I had ever seen, he seemed especially young. The only hint of his demise was a trickle of blood that ran down his cheek. Had it not been for his uniform, I could have imagined him straight off a farm in Kansas, a teenager dressed in Army clothes, playing at war. He looked too young to be here, too young to be dead—and then it suddenly hit me. We were all teenagers, and this was no training exercise. I had just gone through the real thing. For the first time in my life, targets had shot back!
The all-too-real, short little firefight was the difference between living the war vicariously through news reports and returning veterans stories, and having actually participated in it. Even now, I’m amazed at how naive I was. Of course I knew we would suffer casualties, but the finality of death on display sent a chill down my back. As one of the the poncho bearers walked past, he looked up at me and made eye contact. He had caught me watching. I quickly turned my head; I felt as if I had broken some unwritten law.
I never recalled that boy’s face, only his blond hair waving like wheat in a gentle summer breeze. My eyes welled up for this total stranger, alive only seconds earlier. I never learned his name.
Trailing behind the four bearers, a corpsman helped a wounded Marine along. They brought him up to sit on the back of our tank. Where his cheek should have been was a hole about the size of a quarter. Blood flowed freely from his mouth, and within the wound. I could make out his teeth and jawbone. I had seen enough. I slid back down into the turret and got back in my seat. I no longer felt the heat; a chill went through me that lasted quite some time.
I rested my head against the gunner’s sight. Its narrow field of vision had shielded me from the reality of the outside world, which was now catching up to me. The hot minutes of the firefight had seemed more like a drill with no consequences—no different than the thirteen months of practice war games back in The World at Camp Pendleton. The twinkling lights in the tree line looked exactly the same as the blanks fired at us in mock ambushes in California. Only these weren’t blanks.
I came up for another breath of air. Our loader was helping some of the grunts—whose truck had been blown up—climb up on our tank. Now we would provide their transportation. Glancing around, I spotted several grunts out by the tree line, dragging dead NVA by their ankles. The sight of these dead bodies was deeply satisfying. We hated the inhuman little bastards. No Marine I ever met turned away from looking at dead North Vietnamese.
One of the grunts came up on the tank carrying an NVA pith helmet and pack. Going through the pack, he came across the photograph of a young woman. Charlie had a girlfriend? I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly Mr. Charles seemed a little more human—but not nearly enough.
Adrenaline from the ambush was still pumping through our veins when we got back to the bridge. All of us agreed: That morning’s firefight had been exhilarating. Even though I would witness more ambushes over the coming year it was satisfying to have that first one behind me. I performed my job and was still among the living! Every new guy, in the back of his mind, harbored doubts about his performance under fire. Now, at least a few of mine were laid to rest.
Shortly after the engagement, we all suffered from the same malady—the shakes. As we discussed the day’s events, sharing our perspective of the firefight, the reality of it all began to sink in. That morning’s fight had been strictly the kind of mindless, knee-jerk reaction embedded in us by our training back at Pendleton. Fear showed itself only when we had time to realize what we had just gone through and how close we might have come to being hit.
Cigarettes shook from our lips as we tried to light them. Shaking hands kept chasing the moving cigarettes. We were now combat-veteran Marines.