Guns Up! (11 page)

Thirty meters from the Schwinn the sharp single crack of an AK47 ripped through leaves and branches and splintered into a proud old oak tree on my left and just above my head. The column dropped to one knee, scanning the canopy of tall trees in front and above.

“Why me? Why’s the little scumbag takin’ a potshot at me?” I was talking to myself as much as to Chan.

“You take things too personally,” said Chan, staring at the treetops above. “If you’d give the gun to someone else, they’d probably be more than happy to shoot at him. I don’t know what you’re worrying about anyway. The little scumbags, as you’ve aptly named the enemy, couldn’t hit a barn from the inside. If they aim at you, I’m the one who’s in trouble.”

“You’re probably right. I feel much better now.”

Chan turned his head away, then looked back at me suspiciously out of the corner of one eye. Every twenty to forty meters up the trail another sniper round slapped through the leaves nearby. By the third round no one bothered to duck. The trail led around the mountainside to a heavily wooded overhanging cliff. A picturesque waterfall cascaded from above, smashing into a beautiful small round lake three hundred feet below. The trail skirted into a natural indentation in the mountains, allowing us to avoid the plummeting waterfall, then descended into a valley and back up another steep mountainside.

At a point where the trail leveled off, we entered a tiny village of four grass huts. Inside the first, Sam found three half-empty bottles of Vietnamese beer and three bowls of rice. The second hut held two tons of rice, thousands of rounds of AK47 ammo, and enough C-4 plastique explosive to blow up a major portion of Da Nang. The third was empty, but in the fourth was the big surprise of the day.

The fourth hut was a shelter over a dirt stairway that led down and into the side of the mountain. Candles were burning, providing the only light in the damp underground room, which looked to be about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide. It was furnished with ten bloodstained, six-foot-long wooden tables. Chan found a small wooden box filled with medical instruments, morphine, and bandages.

“It would give me immense pleasure for my premed
class at Tennessee to see this!” Chan fingered the instruments as if he’d found gold.

“Okay, let’s get out,” Lieutenant Campbell said. “We’re going to blow it!”

We continued to search the area while the demolitions were set. Fifty meters from the underground hospital we stumbled across another incredible find. Built across a small ravine was a replica of Truoi Bridge, with every bunker, including some concertina wire to practice crawling through. The setup was detailed. I wondered how many months they must have practiced the attack on the bridge.

We destroyed what we found and, to everyone’s relief, headed back down the trail and out of the mountains. Part of me wanted to stick around under the cool shade of the giant trees, but my sane half realized we had probably come upon a battalion headquarters. I couldn’t figure out why we were there, or what sixteen Marines were supposed to do if we did find that many NVA. I had heard Sudsy talking to B Company so I knew they too were roaming about out here somewhere, but what good would they do us in this kind of terrain? We could kiss it goodbye before help found us.

By 1500 hours we had crossed the same river for the fourth time and reached an area of rolling, rock-strewn hills with no trees in sight. The temperature zoomed well over 110 degrees, with not a single cloud to slow the merciless rays.

A faraway whistle stuck in my ear. I felt groggy from the heat. At first I thought I was hearing things, but it quickly grew louder, too loud to be my imagination. It became shrill, like a dog whistle. Whatever it was, it was coming fast, bewilderingly fast. The column stopped. We looked up, all eyes gazing in dread, all mouths gawking in disbelief. I pulled my shoulders up, trying to cover my head as my knees started to bend instinctively with the approaching whistle. Then I actually saw them. Three
small black objects blurring by twenty feet overhead, forcing air out of their way like tiny jets. The sight froze us in place. Then like a rocket burning out, the sound stopped and a ripping explosion followed.

“Hit the dirt!”

Shrapnel whished by. I clutched the shuddering earth. Rocks landed all around. More whistles. I could hear someone cursing. Sudsy. Then the lieutenant. Someone tugged on my foot. I pulled my face out of the dirt and looked back. Chan’s face was spotted with bits of loam that were sticking to his sweat. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah!” I answered. “I didn’t know you could see artillery rounds.”

“I didn’t either. But it’s logical, presuming your position in proximity—”

“The people who see ’em probably don’t get to tell anybody,” I interrupted.

“Precisely.”

I heard the closing whistle of another artillery round. I held on to my helmet and started praying. A shuddering explosion ripped into the earth thirty meters away. Then another. A rock the size of a bowling ball crashed into the ground beside me with a back-breaking thud. I prayed faster. The explosions stopped.

“You stupid son of a—! You’re shelling Alpha Company!” Lieutenant Campbell’s curse could have been heard in Phu Bai without the aid of Sudsy’s radio.

It was over. Someone cursed the Marine Corps. Someone else cursed Vietnam. Shots echoed through the steaming heat. I saw flashes on the crest of a barren hill one hundred meters to the left.

“Guns up! Guns up! Guns up!”

I grabbed the gun and ran zigzagging toward the voice as little clouds of dust spit out of the ground around me. Then I heard the gun. “That’s an M60!” I dove to the ground, flipped the bipod legs down, and took aim at a wavering stream of orange tracers floating my way.
Chan slammed to the earth beside me, knocking a solid grunt of air out of him. I opened up. Chan linked up a belt of ammo like a pro, holding it out of the dirt with his left hand and firing his M16 with his right. The enemy tracers stopped. I kept firing in twenty-round bursts.

“We got ’em ducking!” Chan shouted as he linked up another belt.

“Get ’em, Johnnie!” someone screamed nearby, then yelped like a cowboy. “Blow ’em off that hill!”

“Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fire! It’s B Company! They’re Marines!” Sudsy screamed. I released my sweaty grip on the gun, and my insides churned in panic.

“Did I kill any Marines?” I shouted as I jumped to my feet and ran at Sudsy. He kept talking into the radio. “Are they hit?” I grabbed him by the shoulder. “What’s going on, Sudsy?”

“They thought we were gooks!” He turned from me and spoke into the field phone again. “No, that is negative. No one was hit in Alpha Company.” He looked back at me, pulling the phone away from his mouth. “They thought we were gooks! They called in arty and opened up!”

“That’s brilliant! Just brilliant!”

“Saddle up!” Lieutenant Campbell shouted, his grimacing face red with anger. He jerked the field phone out of Sudsy’s hands, turned Sudsy around with a push, and pulled the antenna on the PRC-25, strapped to Sudsy’s back, all the way out. “Alpha one, Alpha one, this is Alpha two … over!”

We started off again. This time back toward the mountains. I was beginning to feel like a dusty green yoyo. If we crossed that river one more time, I would know for sure that everyone had lost their minds. Dusk, the time of the day I was learning to hate, crept up on us before we reached the river. The column stopped. The silhouette of Jackson turned its head and covered its mouth.

“Psst. We’re setting up a perimeter.”

Before I turned to give the word to Chan, an automatic burst of AK fire sent us diving for the ground. Fiery green tracers sputtered out of the darkness ahead. I started to move into position to return fire. Bullets pounded the earth around me. I froze stiff waiting for the pain. Hot whining lead sucked the air near my right ear, and dirt stung my face. It sounded like hundreds of bullets whistling and flattening into the earth around me. I covered my helmet with my hands and waited for the bullet that would scream through my skull. I didn’t want to die like this. At least I wanted to be shooting back. I looked up from the dirt. A tracer round hit close to my face. The sizzling phosphorescent tip broke from the lead and fried into my flesh. It felt like someone had put a cigarette out on my cheek. I started to move again. Chan grabbed my pack and shoved me down. Then silence. It was over. A painful moan came from the front of the column.

“Corpsman!”

“Corpsman up! We got wounded up here!”

“Okay, let’s get in a perimeter!” I looked up to see who was barking orders. Swift Eagle stood over me.

“Chief, who got hit?”

“Thomas.”

“Who?”

“The point man.”

“Is it bad?”

“Don’t know. Sam said two in the belly.”

“He’s the only one hit out of all that?”

“Looks that way. I want the gun facing the direction they fired from. I think we walked into the flank squad of a large unit.”

Somewhere to my right I could hear Sudsy calling for a medevac chopper. Twenty minutes later helicopter rotors whirred overhead. The gunny popped a green flare, lighting up a landing zone for the chopper.

“We should just carry a portable neon sign to mark our exact location,” Chan murmured.

He had a point, but Thomas was a dead man if we didn’t get him to a hospital unit. His chances didn’t sound good even with a medevac. I didn’t know him very well. Chan thought he was married. The moment the chopper touched ground three men gently lifted the wounded Marine in. Gunny stomped out the flare. My night vision was gone. I was totally dependent upon my hearing. I didn’t like it.

A few minutes later someone on my left whispered, “Saddle up.” I couldn’t believe my ears.

“We’ll be stumbling around like blind men out there.”

“Let’s write LBJ,” Chan said.

“Okay by me.”

The perimeter turned into a column, and we plodded into the blackness ahead. Mosquitoes were tearing me up. I wanted to splash some bug juice on but didn’t dare put the gun on my shoulder. I was scared, and I wanted to be able to pull that trigger fast. Somehow, Jackson, the new point man, stumbled onto a trail. We followed it up a large rocky hill, down the other side, and halfway up another that was overgrown with scrubby bushes. At that point, it leveled off and skirted around the hill. We followed it for fifty meters and stopped.

“Set up a perimeter on the side of the hill,” whispered a voice. I was too tired to care. No one had had any real sleep in days. I was exhausted.

Swift Eagle grabbed my arm. “Put the gun down there.” He pointed to a large bush ten meters on the downhill side of the trail. “We’re ambushing this trail, but the flank is all yours.”

Chan and I set the gun up behind the large bush facing downhill. Within ten minutes we were sound asleep. I knew it was wrong, and so did Chan, but staying awake felt impossible. The moment I leaned back against the
hillside, a heavy dreamless sleep fell over me like a powerful drug.

“All right, listen up!” It was Corporal Swift Eagle. “The Lieutenant’s ticked off today. People fell asleep on line last night.”

“Did you fall asleep, too, Chief?” I asked naively. His piercing black eyes were harsher than the answer I didn’t get. He turned and started to walk back up the hill then stopped and turned back to us.

“Prepare to saddle up.”

Chan slapped me on the helmet.

“You’re insinuating the Warrior could fall asleep on line.”

“Saddle up! We’re moving out right now!”

“Somebody sounds overly anxious this morning,” mused Chan.

Two hours later that statement haunted us. We force-marched farther and faster than we ever had before. I felt a sense of urgency in our pace. We finally reached an area with a flat terrain and small patches of trees that looked like undernourished pines. There I saw the first signs of civilization I’d seen in seventeen days: four grass huts huddled together. Two hundred meters beyond the huts we passed what appeared to be a Buddhist shrine, then we reached a rarely used dirt road that seemed to snake off to nowhere.

Chan tapped me from behind. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah! Now I do. What is it?”

“Sounds like a tank.”

Around the first bend in the dusty road, parked behind and under a clump of trees, sat two huge American tanks. One already had its engine rumbling.

“Now that’s the life,” Chan said enviously. “Why didn’t we get into tanks?”

“The tour guide said we’d see the country better on foot.”

“These guys go out once every six months whether they have to or not.”

“Hurry up! Saddle up!” Lieutenant Campbell shouted. “Get aboard!”

“No thanks,” Striker said louder than he meant to.

“Move it, Marine!”

Sam the Blooper Man pulled me up and onto the nearest steel monster. I pulled Chan up. A moment later the ride began. It was exhilarating. It was the first time in my life I’d ever been on a tank. Two hundred meters down the road two more of the big machines pulled out in front of us, kicking up thick clouds of dust that turned us all beige.

“Wow, man!” Sam hit me with a sharp elbow. “This looks big. You might get your first confirmed today.”

“Do you grunts have any idea just how bad you smell?” the baby-faced tanker shouted over the rumbling diesel. “How long have you been in the bush?”

“Seventeen days!” I shouted back.

“It becomes less repugnant after a couple of weeks!” Chan added.

The tanker looked at Chan questioningly. “They told me you guys stay in the bush two months at a shot.”

“So they say,” I replied.

“Made any contact?”

“We made contact every single day.”

The young tanker turned completely around inside the turret hatch, banging his elbow on his .50-caliber machine gun. He winced, then cursed.

“I must bang myself on this thing ten times a day.” He rubbed his elbow. “Did you say you made contact for seventeen days straight?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Wow! I haven’t seen a Charlie yet.”

I suddenly felt rather salty. Downright pleased with myself. Another cloud of dust from the two tanks ahead settled on us like a brown fog. It stuck to our sweaty faces and turned instantly into mud. I felt like I was in World War II, racing toward Rommel over the desert for a tank battle.