15 Months in SOG (25 page)

And there was one watching.

Looking back, it seemed easy to understand. Suddenly, there were American scout teams snooping around where we’d never been before, close to a certain pipeline built through the jungle. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where nine chopperloads of the NVA’s most hated enemy troops were probably headed.

After the last chopper had lumbered away from the LZ, I gathered my leaders around me. Another sign of the bad luck I was suffering: The chopper that had turned back earlier carried Lieutenant Turin and his radio operator. The 1st Platoon was leaderless.

“Mac, I’ll take the 1st Platoon. Move off four or five hundred meters to the west and then turn due north. I’ll parallel you from right here.”

We knew we had landed south of the pipeline. I hoped that by splitting up, we would have a better chance of finding it in the heavy brush. Separated by only five hundred meters, we could still support each other.

“Roger,
Dai Uy,
” he grinned. “We’ll race you to the damned thing. First platoon there gets free drinks from the loser when we get back.”

“Okay, Pete. Be careful. Move out and call me as soon as you make the turn north.” I watched as Pete and his men eased off through the heavy underbrush. I motioned to the American platoon sergeant assigned to the 1st Platoon, Sergeant Crowley.

“I’ll take the point squad with Pham. You bring up the rear. Keep your eyes open for trackers. Sergeant Margier, you stay in the middle with the second squad.”

Margier was the company medic, who didn’t have any assignment but to care for the wounded. He could run a platoon in an emergency, as could any SF soldier in CCN, but I didn’t want him worrying about it as long as Crowley was available. He was a medium-built kid, with medium brown hair, medium height, medium looks, medium …, you get the picture. He even wore medium-size glasses. I didn’t think of him as a fighting soldier, but he was as courageous as any soldier I had.

The NVA always operated the same when they didn’t have a good fix on our units. They’d put out trackers until they crossed our trail, and then they would follow along behind, firing a single shot every fifteen minutes or so. The other NVA units would listen, get an idea of our location and direction, and try to get in front of us. Then they would set up the inevitable ambush and wait for us to walk into it. It was obvious why we hated the trackers; cats hate dogs.

I got Pete’s call in about thirty minutes. He had made his turn north, so I immediately got everyone under way. We headed due north, right against the lay of the terrain, which favored east-west movement. It was tough going and slow. We were constantly climbing up or down sharp ridges, forcing our way across country covered with almost impenetrable undergrowth.

The plan had been for us to reach the area of the pipeline around dusk. That way, we could follow or blow it, whichever seemed the best idea, then disappear into the darkness.

Dark came way too fast. I hadn’t seen hide or hair of any man-made object, and neither had Pete.

“Hole up for the night,” I ordered him. “We’ll stop right here, and start off at first light. Stay in deep cover. You know Charlie’s bound to be out lookin’ for us.”

“Roger, Six. This is Five saying nighty-night.”

The night slowly passed, and we were ready to go just as soon as it was light enough to see. We thrashed on, fighting our way across endless ridges, through brush-choked gullies. Sweat and energy were expended in copious quantities, and still no pipeline.

Suddenly, a shot sounded somewhere to our rear. “Oh, shit,” I groaned. “Somebody just got lucky, and it wasn’t us.” I got on the horn to McMurray. “Pete, you hear that?”

“Roger, Six. It was from your direction, I think.”

“Sounded like it to me, too. Pick up the pace before they get us triangulated. I’m gonna turn on ’em and see if they fall for it.”

“Roger, Six. We’ll keep on going straight. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the damn thing soon.”

I took my platoon in a right-angle turn and headed east. Why I didn’t go west, toward McMurray, I’ll never know. I just didn’t think. The going was easier, and when we heard the next shot from our diligent tracker, he was quite a bit farther behind us. Still, I had to go north to find the target, so I eventually turned again and headed in the original direction.

We put out a dozen M-14 toe-poppers, hoping the tracker would step on one and blow his damn foot off. No luck, because it wasn’t long before we heard his next shot. He was still with us. He would have died from embarrassment had he heard all the nasty things I called his sorry ass in the next two minutes. The next time we turned, I stopped the men and set up an ambush, hoping to draw him into killing range. No luck there, either. He just stayed out there, about half a mile, watching and waiting.

“Sneaky Six, this is Five, over.” Mac wanted me on the radio.

“This is Six, over.”

“We found it,
Dai Uy
. We found the damn thing.” His voice was fairly shaking with excitement.

“Good job, Pete. Where are you?”

Pete read his coordinates to me over the radio. He was about a kilometer to the west and two to the north of me. In this jungle, I’d be two hours getting to him. I had to let him make the decision: blow it, or follow it. “Pete, it’s your call. I’m too far away. I’ll start in your direction now, but you decide. Blow it away or follow it. Over.”

“Six, this is Five. I’m worried about that dink following you. I say I’m gonna blow the SOB and hightail it to LZ Blue. The damn thing’s built right along a mountainside. We’d have hell following it. I can’t even get there from here without using ropes. I’ll blow it and scoot. You start now for the LZ and get a defensive position built. I have a feeling we’ll need it before we get picked up. Over.”

I agreed. “Roger, Five. Blast it to smithereens. We’re boogying outta here right now for LZ Blue. See you there.”

“Roger, Six. Look for the fire. Charlie’s gas line is going up in smoke in one-five. This is Sneaky Five, out.”

LZ Blue was a high, flattopped hill three klicks behind us. We’d picked it out the day before as one of several possible LZs to return to when it was time to go home.

Disappointed that I’d come all this way and not even seen the famous pipeline, I turned my platoon back to the south. But I wasn’t about to keep going ahead. We now had three trackers shadowing us, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before we would be boxed in good. I was plenty nervous and well on my way to being damned scared.

We slowly worked our way toward the rendezvous, accompanied by tracking shots every quarter-hour. The single
crack!
in the humid afternoon air bode ill for us, but I didn’t know what else I could do. We had tried everything I could think of to discourage our pursuers and still hadn’t shaken them off our trail. These boys were damned good.

Unexpectedly, we came to a large clearing in the jungle. A
fire had burned there some time ago, and the trees hadn’t recovered yet. I made a hasty decision.

“We go straight across,” I told the point squad. “Pham, you and the bodyguards stay with me. We’ll set some more toe-poppers just beyond the tree line. Maybe we can get the trackers as they come out of the forest.”

Pham gathered up a dozen of the small antipersonnel mines from the strikers who were carrying them, and we planted them across our trail, which was obvious in the six-foot-high saw grass. Carefully, we camouflaged them and crossed our fingers the enemy trackers would step on one, or more.

Then, we hotfooted it after the rest of the platoon. As we reached the far side, we got behind cover, just at the edge of the heavy growth of jungle. The trail was slightly uphill, so we had a clear view of the far side.

We waited, silent and sweaty, while the sounds of the rest of my men faded into the distance. I could see how a skilled tracker could avoid our turnaround ambushes. He would just have to stay far enough behind to barely hear us, and when we stopped and things grew silent, simply stop where he was until we gave up and started out again. He had the advantage on us. We had to get somewhere; he didn’t.

The time dragged on, and I made a fatal mistake. Growing impatient, and afraid to let the main body get too far ahead of me, I gave up waiting and stood up. “Let’s go, dammit. The sumbitches either are too far back, or we’ve finally lost them.”

Just the opposite was true. The little slimeballs were across the clearing, watching, waiting.

Pham stood beside me, worried at my carelessness in exposing myself. “
Dai Uy
 …”

I turned my head at his address, and the bullet cracked past my cheek, so close I could feel the displaced air from its passing. It hit Pham right in the mouth, puffing out his cheeks and snapping back his head. Blood sprayed in tiny red droplets like fine mist, splashing against the brush behind him.
My brave radio operator and friend dropped hard, wheezing like an old man with emphysema.

“Pham, Jesus, Pham. Over there! Open fire, Godammit! Fire! You son of a bitches. I’ll kill you all, God damn you.”

The other Yards fired their weapons at the place I was pointing, while I scrambled to Pham’s side. He was hit bad, the bullet having gone out the back of his neck, just below the hairline. My friend had been shot with a bullet meant for me. I prayed we could save him from dying.

I wiped at the hot tears flooding my eyes. My hand came away red. I was bleeding around my mouth. I poked at the spot with my finger, and felt a prick of pain. It was a piece of one of Pham’s teeth, sharp as a razor. It had stuck in my upper lip.

“Pham, hang on, buddy. You’ll be okay. Just hang on.” I grabbed the radio and called for Sergeant Margier, the medic. “Get back here with everyone, ASAP. Pham’s been hit.”

“Roger, Six. We’re on our way. Be there in five. Out.”

I put Pham’s knapsack under his head and stripped the radio from him. Looking up, I asked the other two soldiers if they’d seen or hit anything. They both shook their heads, and looked morbidly at my wounded comrade.

“Hang on, Pham;
bac si
’s (Vietnamese for medic) on the way.” The young soldier just looked at me, trying to say something with his shattered jaw. I was busy trying to put a compress bandage on the gaping exit wound. Pham tried again to say something to me, but it came out as a frothy red gurgle. He held onto my arm with his hand, his eyes questioning. Then a vague sort of surprise filled his face, and he fell slack, the heavy, last breath spraying my hands and arm with red mist. Pham, son of the chief of Bon Hai, died in my arms. He wasn’t yet eighteen.

The others burst out of the underbrush, and Margier rushed to my fallen friend. “He’s dead,
Dai Uy,
” he uselessly informed me. I knew it. I was there when it happened.

Sergeant Crowley came up to me. “What do you wanna do, Captain?”

I glared across the opening at the place where the shot had come from. “Get over there and see if we got the mutherfuckin’ SOBs,” I snarled.

“Captain, we need to get going. The day’s going fast, and we’re a long way from the LZ yet.”

“Do what I said, goddammit. I’m not going until I see if we got the sumbitches who shot Pham. The sooner you go, the sooner you get back. We put toe-poppers on the trail, so circle around.”

Reluctantly, Crowley moved the men across the clearing and disappeared into the woods on the far side. I knelt down by my faithful Pham. He’d been at my side since I took over the company, never flinching, and cheerfully carrying the heavy PRC-25 radio, no matter how rugged and impassable the terrain. I couldn’t think. All I could do was grieve for him and curse the ones who killed him.

Crowley showed up. “No luck, Captain. They got clean away. Now they’re probably trying to get around our flanks. We gotta get goin’. You hear me, sir?”

I dumped a lungful of pent-up air. “Okay, I hear you. You’re right. Saddle up. Let’s get outta here.”

“What about his body? You wanna try and take it with us?” The tone of his voice told me what he thought.

“No, we can’t do that.” I looked down, grief-stricken, at my friend. “Sorry, Pham, old buddy. We’ve gotta leave you, dammit to hell.” I pointed off to the side at a big tree surrounded by thick brush. “Drag him over there in that thicket. Maybe the gooks will miss him in the chase.” We were on the run, so Pham’s body would hold us up too much. As much as I hated to, I had to leave him behind.

We headed on toward the hill where Pete and the others were going to meet us. I looked back, just once. The place where we left Pham would haunt my memory forever. Dark, green, dank, foreboding, alone. I gave the radio to one of the
other men and pushed on through the brush. My loyal young friend, Pham, stayed behind. He rested in the place he now owned forever.

Suddenly, the solitary
crack!
of a tracker’s rifle shot shattered the jungle stillness. They were still back there, Goddamn their eyes.

“What’s wrong,
Dai Uy?
” Sergeant Crowley panted as he struggled to talk and walk at the same time. In the tangled brush we were forcing our way through, that was some accomplishment. My face must have reflected my profound grief and guilt.

“I should have brought out Pham’s body,” I mumbled in both sorrow and self-pity. “I wish I’d never left him behind. He deserved better. I should have brought him out.”

“It’s too late now, sir,” the square-jawed NCO beside me panted. “We can’t go back. I’m not even sure we could find it if we wanted to. Besides, the damned trackers are right on our ass as it is. We got to get to the LZ before dark. A stiff would only slow us down. You know that.”

“I know, I know.” I wasn’t about to debate my feelings with him. “I just know we shouldn’t have left him back there. We would never have done it if it had been an American.”

The sweating NCO remained silent. He knew that was true. We busted chops to bring the American bodies in. What right did we have to abandon the Yard bodies like so much roadside trash?

I was hurting inside. It burned in my gut that leaving Pham was a bad decision, and I felt a lot of guilt. It was standard policy to bring out the American dead, no matter the risk. Yet, we regularly left the Montagnard bodies behind if it was inconvenient or risky to the Americans. Looking back, I’m surprised that they put up with our infidelity. And even more
bewildering, they also risked their lives with us when we went after American bodies. Their trust and devotion to us were a wonder to behold. Simple and loyal, the Yards were a lot like a beloved old dog from my childhood. He never gave up on me. No matter how badly I mistreated him or took him for granted, his devotion remained unwavering.