Guns Up! (21 page)

I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Someone yelled. Sam fired the blooper. Three uniformed NVA were running away from us forty yards ahead. The sharp, white explosion of a blooper round hit the trailing man square. He flipped forward and landed on his back.

“Guns up! Guns up!”

I ran forward, firing from the hip. The other two NVA
ducked down and disappeared into the elephant grass. I stopped, stood still, and fired the M60 from the shoulder at the area where I’d last seen them. I ceased fire.

“There they are!” Rodgers shouted.

They popped up from the tall grass a good thirty yards closer to the tree line. I let loose another twenty-round burst just as they disappeared again. The entire platoon ran forward.

“Guns up! Guns up!” Lieutenant Campbell screamed as he ran forward. The two NVA were half carrying, half dragging the third, his arms draped over the shoulders of his comrades. They dove behind the tree line.

The lieutenant screamed, “Halt! Guns up!”

I ran forward, with Rodgers close behind. A second later Chan and his A-gunner, the pig farmer, ran up beside us.

“Recon that tree line!” The lieutenant’s voice sounded unusually high-pitched. We both opened up, firing from the hip. Pieces of the trees spit in all directions as we raked the area where we had last seen the NVA.

“Cease fire! Move out!” Lieutenant Campbell shouted.

“Quick! Throw in some ammo, Rodgers!” I shouted. Rodgers tore off a belt from around his shoulders. I pulled up the feed cover. He fumbled with the ammo. “Hurry up!” He slapped it in, and I closed the feed cover and started forward again. An M16 opened up to my left.

“Cease fire! Guns up! Guns up!”

We reached the tree line. The NVA were gone. Just on the other side of the trees was a graveyard. Chan opened up. I followed his tracers with my eyes. The NVA were struggling to drag their limp comrade behind a grass hootch fifty yards away at the edge of a thick dark jungle.

“Fire on that hootch!” Lieutenant Campbell shouted.

I ran forward ten yards to the first round grave mound of dirt and opened up. Orange tracers ripped through the
wood and grass hootch, streaming into the dark jungle behind it.

“Cease fire!” Lieutenant Campbell shouted from the trees behind me.

“Get back behind the trees!” Rodgers shouted. I turned to see him crouching beside the lieutenant, who was standing. I ran back to the tree cover, gasping for air but too hyped up to calm down and breathe normally.

“Swift Eagle! Take a squad and sweep to that hootch!” Lieutenant Campbell grabbed Sudsy by the shoulder. “Tell First and Third Platoon to move up to the rice paddy one hundred meters to my left! Weapons Platoon too! Chan!”

“Here!” Chan answered as he ran forward.

“You cover Swift Eagle’s squad from the left flank! John!”

“Yeah!”

“Take your gun down to that end of the tree line and cover Swift Eagle from the right flank! Hurry!”

“Let’s go, Rodgers!”

I ran as fast as I could. Sudsy’s transmission rang clear as we went: “Alpha One, Alpha One, this is Alpha Two. We have a shoot-out in Dodge City.…” A cold chill sent a violent shiver up my neck.

Others were running in the same direction. They dropped off, taking positions at five- and ten-yard intervals. Daylight was going fast. Huge clouds blotted out what was left of the afternoon sun. We finally reached our end of the tree line, a good seventy yards from the lieutenant’s end. Thunder echoed from the sinister clouds. Death felt near, as if it were riding the cold damp wind.

Three riflemen from Corporal James’s squad ran by me, scattering into positions on my right flank. A welcome sight. I didn’t like being stuck out on the end by myself. I set the gun up behind the last tree and took aim at the hootch on the other side of the graveyard slightly to my left. Rodgers slid in beside me, breathing heavily.
He looked pale. It started raining. Swift Eagle’s squad was already twenty meters into the open graveyard and sweeping on line toward the hootch.

“Link up some ammo!” I barked. Rodgers stared into the graveyard.

Without warning the darkening graveyard lit up with the green tracers of enemy machine guns crisscrossing Swift Eagle’s squad. One fired from a position twenty meters to the right of the hootch and nearly straight across from me. The other fired from twenty meters on the other side of the hootch. Then a third gun opened up from just to the right of the hootch, raking back and forth and sending tracer rounds whining in every direction. The dark jungle behind the hootch erupted with muzzle flashes. The lead Marine lifted up and flew backward from the blast of two streams of machine-gun tracers hitting him from the right and left. Fifty yards away a helmeted NVA stood up beside the hootch and side-armed a canvas satchel charge into the graveyard. The squad dove behind the oval Vietnamese grave mounds.

Brilliant flashes of light were followed by clouds of smoke and mud. A ChiCom exploded. Then another satchel charge overwhelmed the smallish ChiCom explosion. Then three more ChiComs, one right after another.

Our riflemen couldn’t fire, for fear of hitting the pinned-down squad between us and the enemy. I jumped to my feet, ran twenty meters into the open graveyard, and stood on top of one of the round grave mounds. Now I could fire without hitting the squad. Before I pulled the trigger, Chan opened up from the other end of the tree line. His orange tracers pinpointed him. Immediately all three enemy guns shifted their fire from the squad to Chan. Firing from the hip, I opened up on the closest stream of green tracers. The constant recoil of the long burst of fire supported the barrel of the M60 with little
help from me. The incredible weapon was perfectly balanced. I guided my tracers into the nearest enemy machine gun. His green tracers shot up, high into the dark rainy sky, then ceased. A hit! I knew it. I saw tracers sweeping toward me. My gun stopped. “Ammo!” I screamed and looked around for Rodgers. He was still behind the trees. Suddenly my feet kicked out from under me. I was laying on my face. I felt stunned but I knew I wasn’t hit. A moment later someone pulled me by my feet back behind the mound. Rodgers! I started to thank him but didn’t. It was his fault I was out of ammo.

Bullets thudded into the small mound. More bullets churned up mud on both sides of us. We huddled against the grave and each other trying to pull in arms and legs behind the precious dirt. The graves were made in the shape of a woman’s womb, because the Vietnamese figure that’s where you start so that’s where you finish. I wanted to crawl back in right now.

The firing stopped. We waited a few seconds. I peeked over the mound. Small clouds of sulphurous gunpowder hovered above, but no flashes.

“Let’s go!” I grabbed the gun and darted for the cover of the tree line. Rodgers ran past me like I was standing still. My foot felt odd but I didn’t dare look down. We dove behind the end tree. I checked my right boot.

“Look at that!” I said, and I pointed at the sole. The heel had a bullet hole clean through.

“Are you hit?”

“No.”

“Man, you’re lucky you still have a foot!”

The sound of a blooper gun echoed from our right flank. Two quick explosions cracked behind us like lightning, followed immediately by two more much closer. Another
bloop
. Ten yards behind us mud and shrapnel shot out of the ground.

“Incoming!” a voice on our right screamed. “The gook’s got a blooper!”

I turned right with the M60. Three Marines were in my field of fire, already shooting into the bush to our right.

“Ammo!” I shouted at Rodgers, angry that he hadn’t already started loading the gun and wishing for Chan.

“Pull back! Pull back!”

“Did you hear that?” Rodgers tugged on my shoulder. The monsoon rain started pelting us like drops of cement. The Marines firing at the blooper vanished in the deluge.

“Pull back!” Someone was pulling at my pack. I looked up. Corporal James shouted down, “Pull back! Pull back to the lieutenant!” The rain pounded loudly into the ground, nearly smothering his shouts.

“We got three men over there!” I shouted back. “Pull back! I’ll go get ’em!” He ran toward the three Marines. A few seconds later he reappeared, with the Marines following. Halfway back to the lieutenant the rain eased up enough for me to hear someone shouting.

“Hold it! Do you hear that?” I said. We stopped and stood still. “I heard someone screaming.”

“Help us! We got Marines out here! Help! Barnes is hit!” Now the scream echoed from the dark graveyard with frightening clarity. The rain picked up again. I ran to the edge of the tree line with Corporal James.

“I can’t see a thing!” James said.

“We got to help ’em!” I said.

“We have to tell the lieutenant! Come on!” He pulled on my arm. I followed him. We ran through the mud as fast as we could. I kept thinking of Barnes, so eager to see war. A vision of the Marine being blown backward by the machine-gun fire flashed through my mind. It had been him. Barnes.

“Lieutenant!” James shouted.

“Here! Over here!” The voice came from the darkness ahead. Now I could see him. The rain was so thick he looked gray.

“Lieutenant! We still have men out there!” James shouted.

“I know. At least three. The rest are all right. Is that everyone from that end?”

“Yes.”

“Is Chan okay?” I asked.

“Yes. Follow me. The company is about seventy-five meters this way.”

Twenty meters later Swift Eagle emerged from the rain like a ghost. We huddled around him as the lieutenant spoke. “Did you find out who’s missing?”

“Barnes, Striker, and Unerstute.”

“I can’t call in arty with them out there. Let’s get back to the rest of the company and see what the CO says.”

“We better hurry. The captain already has the mortars set up.”

Lieutenant Campbell started running toward the company with the rest of us on his heels.

“Where are you? Barnes is hit bad!” Striker screamed angrily from the graveyard. I couldn’t believe he was screaming. He had to know the gooks could hear him as well as us.

“Help! Barnes is hit! He can’t move!” His voice sounded panicky. I couldn’t stand it. His screams pierced through the driving storm. We had to help.

“Help!” The shout sounded shrill.

I could see men up ahead. Lieutenant Campbell turned back to Swift Eagle. “Show them where the platoon is. I have to see the captain. I’ll be there in a minute.”

We turned right and followed the chief along a line of Marines lying behind a rice paddy dike that flanked the graveyard. Their helmets were sticking above the dike; their bodies were half under water.

Another forlorn call echoed from the darkness ahead. We finally reached the Second Platoon, all the way at the end of the line of Marines.

“Set up the gun here.” Swift Eagle pointed to a spot
between two Marines. I hung the M60 over the dike and sank into the muck behind it.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“The hootch is straight ahead,” Swift Eagle said. He turned to lead the other men to their positions.

A loud metallic thump echoed through the crashing rain. A bright flash from an enemy mortar tube lit up their position just behind the grass hootch seventy-five meters straight ahead. I took aim at the flash and waited for another one.

“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Lieutenant Campbell ran behind the long row of prone Marines, whispering loud enough to be heard by us but not the enemy. Another thump and flash. For an instant the enemy mortar men were easy targets for the gun. A mortar round exploded one hundred meters to our rear, quickly followed by a second.

“What are we waiting for, Chief?” I whispered. “I got these suckers. They’re dead meat. Let me open up!”

“Don’t fire!” Lieutenant Campbell ran up behind me. Three more quick flashes and thumps in succession strobe-lighted the enemy mortar men.

“I could hit ’em blindfolded!”

“Shut up! We got Marines between us and them!”

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He turned to repeat the order. “Don’t anyone fire!”

I turned back to the front. Another series of mortar flashes lit up three separate enemy mortar crews. I could see the mortar men turn away from the tube, covering their ears from the blast.

“I’m gonna open up!” I said aloud.

“Don’t!” Rodgers grabbed my shoulder. “You can’t!”

“This is chicken, Rodgers! We got guys out there blown away and sitting ducks right in front …” A series of mortar blasts behind us drowned me out.

“They think we’re back there! If you open up they’ll know right where we are!”

“Not if I blow ’em away!” Another series of flashes and the twanging hollow thumps of mortar rounds leaving the tubes reverberated through the air around us. “This sucks of chicken, man!”

“Look!” Rodgers pointed toward another series of flashes from the enemy mortars. Then I saw what he was pointing at. A man silhouetted against the flash, bent over, carrying a rifle and coming our way twenty meters ahead and to our left. I took aim, waiting for another flashing mortar barrage to show me the target. Rodgers aimed his M16. I turned to the Marine on my left to pass the word. He was already aiming. A nightmarish vision of a screaming human-wave assault went through my mind. I shivered. I shook my head to clear the fear and resumed aiming. Another flashing mortar barrage. I tensed, put my finger on the trigger. There, fifteen meters ahead, the silhouetted man.

Suddenly a mortar round exploded close behind us. The light of the explosion revealed the silhouette for a fraction of a second.

“An American helmet!” Rodgers whispered excitedly.

“Don’t fire! Marine comin’ in!” a voice from the silhouette shouted.

“Over here! Get in here!” someone shouted back.

“Hold your fire! It’s a Marine!” another voice called.

The silhouette ran forward, sloshing water as he came. Then he was upon me, stumbling over the paddy dike, kicking my helmet off, and falling face first with a loud splash behind me. He turned and crawled back beside me, bracing himself against the dike.

“John!”

“Striker! Are you okay?”