A Rumor of War (39 page)

But we did not die, because the enemy did not have us bracketed. Instead, he walked the shells into the landing zone. The scene there was almost a battle portrait. The last helicopters were taking off, climbing nose down, banking sharply as they climbed, with the dark-green mountains in the background. Marines were fanning out across the rice paddies, some in extended skirmish lines, some in serried, staggered ranks, the mortar shells bursting among them. An enemy automatic rifle tack-tacked from a row of grassy mounds west of the landing zone. The bullets spurted in the light-green paddies, and one of our white-phosphorus shells flashed near a clump of palms atop one of the mounds, the orange-white streamers arcing over the graceful trees. A line of riflemen were breasting a flooded field, weapons held over their heads; they had just begun to climb onto a dike when they vanished in a cloud of shell smoke. One of the marines flew into the air, dropping sideways as he fell, the tiny stick that was his rifle sailing off in the opposite direction.

A heavy shell banged into the paddies between my platoon and the tree line. Behind us, a knot of marines were running in the crouched position men adopt under fire. Several were carrying radios, and the tall, waving antennae made an obvious target. As loudly as I could, I yelled at them to spread it out. They kept moving in a closely packed crowd, and one of my marines said, “That’s battalion headquarters. Fuckin‘ pogues don’t know enough to stay out of the rain.” I hollered at them again, but they could not hear or simply ignored me. I was about to yell a third time, when they were all engulfed in smoke and clouds of pulverized earth, the shells going
crump-crump-crump
and bodies falling or flying out of the smoke. Faint with distance, the cry “Corpsman! corpsman!” drifted across the field. It was battalion headquarters, and it had almost been wiped out. The operations chief, a master sergeant with three wars behind him, lay in the muck with one of his legs blown off. The operations officer had been hit in the groin. The artillery officer had been badly wounded in the face and head. Altogether, HQ lost eight officers and a number of enlisted men. Only Colonel Hatch escaped serious injury. And the mortars kept coming in and the small arms crackling.

We heard a hollow cough, then another. Several seconds later, two 60-millimeters exploded nearby. “I heard ‘em that time,” a corporal said. “I heard ’em.”

“Are they in the tree line? It sounded like the tree line to me.”

“Good a place as any to put mortars, lieutenant, but I dunno.”

I was drenched with sweat and my mouth felt as if it were full of steel wool. Battalion HQ had been nearly wiped out. D Company was suffering casualties, and ours was pinned down. My platoon was supposed to hold the ridge until ordered to do otherwise, but I felt compelled to take some sort of action. I called Neal on the radio and asked if the 4.2-inch mortar battery supporting the battalion could shell the tree line. I wasn’t sure if the enemy mortars were in there—the Viet Cong were maintaining their usual invisibility—but the four-deuces would at least suppress the VC rifle fire. Neal replied that our mortars were unable to fire, and, because we were far out of range of the artillery at Danang, he had decided to call in an air strike.

The planes came in several minutes later. Three Sky-hawks, flying low, streaked over us. “Bound Charley Two,” the flight leader said over the radio, “this is Playboy. Mark your positions with air panels, target with willy-peter.” We set out the orange, iridescent panels and fired a white-phosphorus round into the tree line. The first of the squat, dull-gray planes banked around and knifed toward that column of white smoke, Viet Cong machine-gunners firing at it wildly. Two bombs tumbled end over end from its wings. The first was a dud, but the second exploded with a blast that made the earth lurch beneath us. The platoon cheered, but the enemy mortars continued to fall in the landing zone. The second Skyhawk made a pass, dropping two more bombs into the pillar of black smoke rising from where the first had struck. One of the two-hundred-and-fifty-pounders fell on the village behind the tree line. There was a tremendous eruption of smoke, dirt, roof tiles, chunks of concrete, burning thatch, and tree branches. “Playboy, Playboy,” I said, “this is Bound Charley Two. You were over on that last one. Put it in the tree line.”

“Roger,” the pilot answered, and I felt a giddy sense of power. I was controlling those machines.

The third plane came in, skimming the treetops, engine screeching. Two napalm canisters spun down from the Skyhawk’s bomb rack into the tree line, and the plane pulled into a barrel-rolling climb as the red-orange napalm bloomed like an enormous poppy.

“Beautiful! Beautiful!” I said excitedly. “They were right on ‘em.”

The napalm rolled and boiled up out of the trees, dirty smoke cresting the ball of flame. The enemy mortar fire stopped. Just then, three Viet Cong broke out of the tree line. They ran one behind another down a dike, making for the cover of another tree line nearby. “Get ‘em! Get those people. Kill ’em!” I yelled at my machine-gunners, firing my carbine at the running, dark-uniformed figures two hundred yards away. The gunners opened up, walking their fire toward the VC. The bullets made a line of spurts in the rice paddy, then were splattering all around the first enemy soldier, who fell to his knees. Letting out a war whoop, I swung my carbine toward the second man just as a stream of machine-gun tracers slammed into him. I saw him crumple as the first Viet Cong, still on his knees, toppled stiffly over the dike, behind which the third man had taken cover. We could see only the top of his back as he crawled behind the dike. What happened next happened very quickly, but in memory I see it happening with an agonizing slowness. It is a ballet of death between a lone, naked man and a remorseless machine. We are ranging in on the enemy soldier, but cease firing when one of the Skyhawks comes in to strafe the tree line. The nose of the plane is pointing down at a slight angle and there is an orange twinkling as it fires its mini-gun, an aerial cannon that fires explosive 20-mm bullets so rapidly that it sounds like a buzz saw. The rounds, smashing into the tree line and the rice paddy at the incredible rate of one hundred per second, raise a translucent curtain of smoke and spraying water. Through this curtain, we see the Viet Cong behind the dike sitting up with his arms outstretched, in the pose of a man beseeching God. He seems to be pleading for mercy from the screaming mass of technology that is flying no more than one hundred feet above him. But the plane swoops down on him, fires its cannon once more, and blasts him to shreds. As the plane climbs away, I look at the dead men through my binoculars. All that remains of the third Viet Cong are a few scattered piles of bloody rags.

After the fight in the landing zone, C and D Companies started to advance through the valley, driving on the blocking position B Company had set up several miles away. We slogged across the paddies beneath an unforgiving sun. There was no enemy resistance, but that did not last for long. In the midafternoon, Charley Company was ordered to search Ha Na, one of the large villages that fronted the Vu Gia River. It proved a hellish task because the village was crisscrossed by thorny hedgerows as cruel and unyielding as barbed wire fences. We had to hack through them with machetes or blow holes in them with grenades, and when we couldn’t cut or blast our way through, we would circle around them, only to run into more. The result was the division of the company into small groups of confused men who bumped into each other, cursing each other as they cursed the thorns that slashed their skin and tore their uniforms.

Sergeant Pryor’s squad uncovered a large cache of rice, medical supplies, and uniforms. It was stored in a poorly camouflaged pit, the rice in tins, the medical supplies in metal chests, the uniforms tied in bundles. Altogether, the food and equipment amounted to a ton. Calling Neal on the radio, I asked if we could get a helicopter to haul it out. No, he said, there wasn’t time for that. The operation was running behind schedule. The company had to be at its first objective, Hill 52, by such and such a time. Get moving.

“Get moving,” I said to Pryor, “we can’t get a chopper.”

The sergeant, his trousers in tatters, turned to me with rage on his sunburned face. “You mean leave this stuff? No way I’m going to leave this stuff for Charlie, sir. What the fuck’d they make us search this ville for?”

“All right. Destroy it in place and then get your people moving.” I handed him two white-phosphorus grenades.

He threw them into the cache, which began to burn. So did a nearby house, as the chunks of bursting phosphorus landed on its thatch roof. Flames engulfed the house in a matter of seconds, and the sparks from the blaze flew into a neighboring hut, setting it afire. Four women ran out, screaming. Above their cries, I heard the team of engineers attached to the company yelling “Fire in the hole!” They had found a complex of concrete bunkers at the edge of the village and were about to blow it with TNT charges. Terrified, the women threw themselves on the ground and covered their ears as the charges went off. They screamed again when a second charge shook the ground and brought a cascade of dirt and powdered concrete down on their heads.

Sniper fire started to lash at us from the cane fields flanking the village, the crack of bullets almost indistinguishable from the sound made by the bursting bamboo frames of the burning huts. Six or seven houses were blazing now, and flames were licking at the tops of the trees. Coursey’s and McKenna’s platoons pushed ahead. Mine went on with the search. A corporal, his face blackened with soot, came up to me. He was holding a Vietnamese man at gunpoint.

“We found this son of a bitch trying to get away,” the corporal said. “What should we do with him?”

The man, who looked to be about forty, was dressed in a khaki shirt and dark trousers. “Teach school. No VC,” he said.

“I’ll bet you do. Tie him up and bring him to the skipper,” I said to the corporal. I did not like the look in the marine’s eyes and added: “Alive. You get him to the skipper alive.”

“Yes, sir,” the corporal said. He pulled the man’s shirt down and tied his hands with the sleeves. The schoolteacher, who turned out to be the political officer for the local Viet Cong battalion, was built like a flyweight wrestler.

“No VC. Teach school,” he repeated as the marine led him away, both of them choking in the smoke.

The heat inside the village was terrific, a blast-furnace heat that seared our lungs. Pryor shoved two hysterical young women toward me.

“Lieutenant, let’s take these two in. I felt their hands. They’re soft. Not a callus on ‘em. They sure as hell aren’t peasant girls.”

Before I could answer, the engineers again yelled “Fire in the hole!” We ducked down. There was another jarring blast. The girls fell, screaming and rolling in the dust. Pryor pulled them up, grabbing one in each hand, and shook them roughly. “Stop that,” he said. “Stop that goddamned screaming.” Then to me: “What should we do with ‘em, lieutenant?”

“Let them go, for Chrissake.”

“But sir…”

“
I said to let them go, sergeant
.”

He pushed the two girls away. “Yes,
sir”
he sneered. “Yes,
sir
.” I could feel myself losing control of him and the platoon. The marines were still overwrought from the earlier fighting, and with the heat, the hedgerows, the sniping, the wailing villagers, and the noise of the spreading fire they were on the verge of losing what little emotional balance they had left.

Machine-gun and rifle fire broke out up front. Bullets were smacking into the trees around us. I learned from Neal that Coursey’s platoon had opened up on a squad of Viet Cong attempting to cross the river in a boat, and enemy riflemen on the opposite side of the river, covering their comrades in the boat, had opened up on the platoon.

Several minutes later, a fighter-bomber came in to strafe the Viet Cong positions on the far side of the Vu Gia. It dove down firing rockets and cannon. Maddened by the noise, several water buffalo broke out of their pen, stampeding through the village, red-eyed and bellowing, hooking with their curved horns. One of the infuriated beasts gored a marine in Coursey’s platoon and was then cut down with an automatic rifle.

Half of Ha Na was in flames by this time, the flames leaping from house to house, the fire creating its own wind. Gagging, I ran through the smoke trying to reorganize the platoon. The hedgerows and the blaze had broken it up into bands of two or three men each. “Get your people together and move on Hill 52,” I said whenever I found an NCO. “Get your people together.” The marines stumbled half blind through the black clouds, trying to get away from the fire. Sergeants and corporals bawled “Get on line! Tie in on your right and left. Where’s Smith’s fire-team? Tie in on your right. Guide is right. Where’s Baum? Baum! Where the fuck are you?” Sniper bullets whined in from the cane field.

Then D Company, three hundred yards away on our left flank, met heavy resistance. We could hear it above the sniping and the exploding bamboo, a sound like that of a huge piece of canvas being torn in half. Heavy mortars started crashing somewhere in front of us. Neal called me on the radio: Miller’s company had run into a nest of enemy machine guns and had lost thirteen men. They were now pinned down and shelling the Viet Cong positions with four-deuces. C Company
had
to get to Hill 52 quickly. Get your people moving. Yes, sir. Right away, sir. “SECOND PLATOON ON LINE! MOVE!” After shouting ourselves hoarse and filling our lungs with smoke, the NCOs and I managed to form something that resembled a line. It was still a mess. Some of McKenna’s men were mixed in with mine, mine with his. The platoon drove toward the hill, pressed by the fire roaring behind them, pressed by the NCOs’ constant cries of “stay on line, tie in your right, guide is right.” The village was a long one, sprawling beside the riverbank for a quarter of a mile. There seemed to be a hedgerow every ten yards, or a pangee trap or a ditch with crisscrossed bamboo stakes in it. There was another tearing-canvas noise in the fields beyond the canebrake. Neal again called me on the radio: D Company had advanced on the machine guns behind the mortar barrage, but the four-deuces had had no effect on the heavily reinforced VC bunkers. Miller had lost seventeen men in the assault and fallen back to call in air strikes. My platoon was not moving fast enough. We were not keeping abreast of Coursey’s men. I handed the receiver back to Jones. Yelling at the men and kicking them, I pushed them forward. Jets came in to bomb and strafe the enemy machine-gun bunkers. The planes shrieked directly over our heads, deafening us. The two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bombs made the ground tremble, and the trees and houses shimmied in front of our eyes. More planes came over, strafing with their cannon, the cannon making that buzz-saw sound. Then the first flight, circling around, flew over again and dropped more bombs. Huge columns of brown smoke jetted upward, but the VC machine guns kept hammering. “Move it out, people,” the squad leaders yelled, trying to make themselves heard above the noise. “Guide is right. Don’t bunch up in the center.” Behind us was the advancing wall of flame from the burning village. We smashed through another hedgerow, flushed a Viet Cong from a concrete building, captured him, and then blew up the building with a satchel charge. Lunging through the sulfur-stinking smoke of the blast, dust and bits of cement raining down on them, the marines leaped into a traversed trench line. I tried to reform them there, but it was enfiladed by a sniper in the cane field.
Crack-crack-crack
. The rounds narrowly missed us, and we clambered out of the trench to pour rifle fire into the field. A Viet Cong came running out of the yellow-green cane. At a range of nearly four hundred yards, Lonehill put a bullet at the man’s feet, adjusted the elevation knob of his rifle, and coolly fired again, the enemy soldier falling hard. The planes came in for another bombing run. There was a great roar, and the forms of the men in front of me blurred for an instant, as if a filmy, wavering curtain had dropped between us. While the planes bombed, we clawed our way through hedgerows and smoke toward the hill whose serene, pale-green crest we could see rising from the trees ahead. We had advanced a few hundred yards, but the hill did not look any closer. The noise of the battle was constant and maddening, as maddening as the barbed hedges and the heat of the fire raging just behind us.