Run Between the Raindrops (24 page)

On the right we pass an ornate structure that houses a line of ancient brass cannons. It looks like a battery of muzzle-loaders that Citadel builders included to fend off attacking infantry as the cannons all point outward through a slot in the exterior wall. On the left side there is what looks like an ARVN motor pool with a couple of six-by trucks sitting inside a chain-link fence. ARVN sentries in pegged uniform trousers and ill-fitting helmets walk around them with M-16s slung on their shoulders. Somewhere on the other side of that motor pool a fight starts. We hear it but no rounds hit in our sector.

In response, Staff Sergeant Hawk Nose orders a turn to the left, pivoting on Moon Man’s squad. We are in the process of making that move when the gooks hit us hard from a section of wall near those brass cannons. Two or three Marines go down immediately in the ambush. Everyone else scrambles for cover in nearby houses or behind the walls that surround a few close yards. New Guy Baker is faster than everyone else in finding cover. He’s not a grunt but he’s also not stupid. The incoming is hot and includes a regular spray of RPGs that sizzle overhead to crack into nearby structures and shower us all with stinging concrete shards.

Hardest hit is the right flank closest to the gook position along the western wall and I’m worried about Steve and AP Reporter over there. We can hear Ma Deuce on the truck crank into action but the thudding stops after a few bursts as the gooks nail the gunner. The truck driver is wheeling hard to get out of the line of fire but his vehicle is riddled. He bumps his way into a driveway between houses, locks the brakes and kicks open his door. Truck Driver is climbing up over the cab to see about his buddy when a long burst of NVA fire nearly cuts him in half.

Staff Sergeant Hawk Nose is trying to organize people to help the wounded laying out in the street and move them toward the truck. Moon Man gets the drift and organizes a firing line of grunts with LAAWs to blast away and provide some cover for the medevac effort. New Guy Baker fumbles with a LAAW passed up from the rear but I nix that idea and put him to work with his M-16. The salvo of rockets takes an edge off the NVA fire and we can see three or four people dragging wounded Marines out of the line of fire. AP Reporter and Steve are paired up carrying a casualty in a shambling run toward the truck. They make the tailgate and I’m just about to head in that direction, when an RPG smacks into the rear of the truck. Bodies are flying in all directions. It’s a bloody mess over there.

By the time I reach the area, it’s clear that at least three of the rescuers are dead. AP Reporter is wounded and has dragged Steve to the other side of the truck. He’s in bad shape. Rounds are still cracking into the truck body as I try to get a look at just how bad. Hard to tell in his contorted posture, blast twisted him around violently, but I’m afraid to do much bending or twisting on his two bloody limbs. Looks like the left arm shattered at the elbow and left leg torn from thigh to knee by a large shrapnel slice. Bone is shining through pulsing blood in both wounds. Steve is out of it and turning pale rapidly.

AP Reporter is in better shape and helps me wrap battle dressings around the wounds. We manage to stop the leg bleeding with a tourniquet wrapped tightly around the thigh up near his crotch but there’s no telling how long that will last. He’s going into shock and needs a quick trip to the BAS. I know where that is and I can damn sure drive a truck but this one is going nowhere.

Remembering the ARVN motor pool we passed on the way, I snatch New Guy Baker from out of cover and tug him along at a dead run up the street. Poor dip-shit probably thinks I’m saving his ass but he’s along as gun guard once I borrow a set of ARVN wheels.

There’s a lock on the gate to the compound containing the trucks, but a couple of rounds from my .45 cracks that in a hurry. We swing the gates wide and head for the first truck in line. It’s a standard U.S. six-by and I’ve driven enough of them to know the drill. If it’s got fuel, we’re set. Tossing my rifle and bandolier to New Guy Baker I hoist him up in the back with orders to open fire when we reach the ambush site and keep firing until we’ve got the casualties loaded. He doesn’t have much to say but the ARVN sentries do.

Two of them come running out of a little shack waving their rifles just as I get the engine cranked up and roaring. They’re screaming something I can’t understand but they get the intent of my pistol which I point at them through the driver’s side window. “Di-di, motherfuckers! I’m taking this truck!” One of them moves to raise his weapon but both of them hit the road on the run when I fire a couple of rounds over their heads.

Gauges indicate the truck has fuel and I manage to find a workable gear as we wheel out of the compound and bend it around to the left heading for the ambush site. Through the rearview I can see New Guy Baker hanging onto the top of the cab with one hand. He’s got a rifle in the other hand so it looks like he’ll be some help. Over the roar of the engine, I can hear the rattle of gunfire and the thump of grenades. My plan, if I ever had one, is to pull up on the other side of the wrecked truck and use it for cover while we get the casualties loaded. If New Guy Baker puts out some rounds and if there’s anybody left in Alpha to help me with the load-out, we might make it. According to the map in my head, the BAS is only about ten minutes away.

Diesel is wound up tight in one gear or another as we near the area where Alpha is trading fire with the NVA along the wall to our right. Rounds shatter the passenger side windshield and a few blow holes in the hood but nothing seems fatally damaged as I pull up next to the wreck, slam it into neutral and yank on the handbrake. Moon Man and a couple of his guys break cover and run over to help load the wounded. There’s about five of them including Steve and AP Reporter. There’s no time to check on their condition. With New Guy Baker steadily cranking out rounds over my head I get back in the cab, find a gear and wheel around headed up the street away from the fight. Rounds smack into the truck chassis with tinny little clangs and an RPG swooshes close by on the driver’s side as I hit third gear and head for the BAS.

Some idiot bastard tries to flag me down at an intersection roadblock, but I grab a lower gear and nose on through the barricade. Up ahead I can see the playground outside the BAS with a clutch of civilian vehicles parked around it. Corpsmen come running toward us as I shut down the engine and jump out of the cab. At the rear of the truck, there’s blood dripping down the tailgate and I’m a little unnerved to see that New Guy Baker has become one of the casualties. He’s hugging a bloody forearm as he hops down to the ground. Steve is still alive and one of the corpsmen helps me get him off the truck. Ignoring Senior Corpsman and all the triage business, I hustle him directly inside to the docs. The surgeon and his assistants take over and one of the corpsmen pushes me outside. He promises to let me know what’s happening with Steve soon as he knows.

A terribly long, frustrating hour passes while I sit outside the BAS with my back against a musty wall, trying to rescue as many prayers as I can find in the flood of emotion washing over me. Beyond the obvious, there are lots of reasons why this never should have happened.
Code of the Grunt:
You will do something stupid every day of your miserable life. If you cannot find something stupid to do on your own, you will be ordered to do something stupid.

Examined coldly and critically, we brought it on ourselves. We had an official exit stamp, a ticket to ride any time we wanted out of it. But we’ve been swallowed up by something bigger than ourselves—and at a time like this, something harder to understand. We admire the grunts, celebrate them in the stories we write and the pictures we take but there’s that crucial distance. It’s easy enough—and certainly safer for body and soul—to participate as required from that little critical distance. And yet it’s hard to maintain the gap between observers and observed. It closes rapidly when you’re shoulder-to-shoulder in deep shit. We don’t need to, it isn’t in the mandate or job description, but we have become grunts by osmosis. And there it is. There it is with all the ugly brutality on the outside and all the roiling emotions on the inside. There it is.

I’m sitting in the same place surrounded by a pile of butts when the Doctor finds me. He squats and helps himself to one of my smokes with a bloody hand. “We just put your buddy on a medevac. He’s headed across the river right now. There’s never any guarantees but I think he’s gonna make it OK. He took a lot of damage to the arm and leg but I’m guessing he’ll be able to keep both.”

“The corpsman said he’d let me know before they took him away…”

“We doped him up pretty strong. He wouldn’t have known you were here.”

Let’s Twist Again

Back with Delta on a drizzly dawn in some central sector of the Citadel. Mulling over word passed at a battalion briefing that kept me up most of a chilly night fending off nightmares and finally forcing me to share a half-bottle of putrid Mekong Whiskey with Philly Dog and Willis. Swill helped with a case of recently-acquired sniffles but it did nothing to make me forget what the Intel wonks had to say. There was a question from one of the company commanders about how come we keep running into gooks everywhere we go. Ain’t we killing any of them? How many can be left in the 6
^th
NVA Regiment after all this time and effort?

Well, see…that’s the thing, the Intel weenie grins and scratches his head. We thought it was just the 6
^th
NVA Regiment in here but documents and prisoners tell us a different story. Turns out we are up against the 5
^th
NVA Regiment, the 90
^th
Regiment of the 324B Division plus the 29
^th
Regiment of the 325C Division. So, contrary to popular belief, there are more gooks in a shit-pot full than originally estimated.

As if that isn’t bad enough, it turns out many of the troopers from those NVA regiments have been slipping into the Citadel through various tunnels, alleys, sewers and side-streets and a lot of them are now behind us in areas previously cleared. The up-shot is that 1/5 is required to sweep backwards while the Vietnamese Marines—who have finally showed up in strength—sweep forward with a steady eye on laying siege to the Imperial Palace.

It all means doodley-squat to Dying Delta which was known as Deadly Delta before Hue. Beyond a welcome pause in the grind while the battalion reorients and receives replacements, it’s the same shit, different day. One of the replacements is a pisser of a lieutenant who takes over Philly Dog’s under-strength platoon which might just muster two full rifle squads if they get the required ration of new meat. Lieutenant Longlegs knows me. He’s one of the guys who wrote me up for a decoration as a result of my involvement in something stupid and potentially fatal on an earlier operation with his outfit up close to the DMZ.

“Can’t tell you how glad I am to see you here,” he says flopping down and snatching one of my smokes. “God knows, we need experienced hands.”

“Can’t tell you how unhappy I am, Lieutenant.” He pushes away the bandaged hand waved under his nose. “And I regret that I have only one hand to give for my country.”

“Sergeant,” Longlegs says as he sucks on my smoke, “there comes a time when we all need to bear in mind that every Marine is a rifleman—first, last and always.”

“Mister Longlegs, I am painfully aware of that. First and always…OK. It’s the last part that’s got me worried.”

“I could damn sure use your help with the new people, and I know you pack the gear. Can I count on you?” Longlegs just stares at me. What he means to ask is if I’ve got the balls to disregard the duty Mother Corps assigned me and do what his platoon needs me to do. He is a hard man to jive. Lieutenant Longlegs is what’s known as a Mustang, an officer who came to his commission through the enlisted ranks.

“He be a motherfucker in a fight, Lootenant.” Philly Dog drops his dime in the game. “I seen this dude do some shit” Longlegs just nods and continues to stare at me with a wry grin on his face. Help out or get out. Defecate or get off the receptacle, he’ll wait for the decision he wants.

“To the best of my limited and suspect ability, Lieutenant, I’ll do what you want me to do.” That’s what he wants to hear, of course, and it occurs to me that I am now well and truly screwed with the odds of surviving the ass-end of the great big fight in Hue City rapidly decreasing toward zip-point-shit.

“Consider yourself my third squad leader.” Longlegs gets up to deal with the incoming replacements. “I’ll try to give you some colorful people who will make good copy.” It’s osmosis, guilt by association, aiding and abetting, wrong place at the wrong time, but here I am—and there it is.
Code of the Grunt:
Don’t draw with a stranger if he’s faster than you. You’ve fought your last fight if you do.

By sundown, the ARVN are broadcasting surrender appeals to the NVA over loudspeakers and I am surrounded by six new Marines, the saltiest of which has been in country for one month as a runway guard at the Danang airfield. Try not to do anything stupid. Stick with a vet if you can. Look up around buildings and don’t run out of frags. Climb the walls or clear the buildings and kill the gooks. It’s about the best tactical advice to be had and they seem to accept it stoically. Some are grunts by designation, some are not, but they all get the drift. Regardless of the numbers on their records designating a military job, they know the drill. Every Marine is a rifleman. It’s a little off-putting for the admin clerk and a couple of heavy equipment mechanics in the bunch, but—begging everyone’s pardon—no one promised them a rose garden.

There’s not a lot more to say as I lead them under shelter on the porch of a nearby house. The bad news is that we begin a northerly push tomorrow with one flank on the eastern walls and the other running parallel to the Imperial Palace perimeter and tied in with the Vietnamese Marines. The good news is that rummaging through the house to the rear of the porch yields a full bottle of VSOP Cognac. Sleep comes easy despite a raging firefight that occurs just a block away from where I’m wrapped up in a poncho-liner.