Run Between the Raindrops (26 page)

“Thought you were out of here on three Purples, dude. What happened?” Reb dumps his field gear in a corner and offers me a hit from a canteen filled with a familiar concoction of gin and grape Kool-aid.

“They wasn’t movin’ fast enough to suit me.” He retrieves the canteen and passes it to Doc Toothpick. “I had me some words with an admin worm and then whooped his ass. All on a sudden, mah paperwork disappeared. They had me burnin’ shitters which ain’t no kinda business for nobody, so I told the Sarn’t Major he might just as well send my ass up to Hue City. On the way I run into Toothpick and he said you was up in here somewheres. Longlegs brung us right to ya.”

“What happened to your dick-skinner?” Doc Toothpick, a rangy, rugged Third Class Hospital Corpsman from St. Louis, picked up my bandaged hand, gave it a sniff and grimaced. “Either you’ve been wiping your ass with that hand or it’s infected.” While he peels off the filthy bandages to take a look, Doc plucks one of his trademarks out of a pocket, pops it into his mouth and begins to chew. You can generally gauge his mood by how hard he’s working one of his ever-present toothpicks. He told me once when I was interviewing him for a story about his rescue of three wounded men under fire that his mother sent them to him by the box-full, one box for every week in The Nam.

“How’d you get caught up in this deal, Doc? Last I heard they pulled you off the line and sent you to a Regimental Aid Station.”

“You got any idea how many corpsman been blown away on this fuckin’ op?”

“Got to be a bunch…”

“You fuckin’ A, Skippy. I took one look at them snot-nosed replacements and told the Chief he better just send my ass up here where I might could do some good.” He examines my swollen hand and discolored thumb under a flashlight. “And the first thing we better do is get you over to the BAS where we can pump some antibiotics directly into this hand.” He digs around in his Unit One medical kit and tears open some fresh bandages. “Meanwhile,” he says dumping two pills out of a plastic bottle, “take these with a hit of Reb’s Purple Jesus.”

“You heard about Steve?”

Doc Toothpick pauses in his bandaging and nods. “I was helping out on the southside when they brought him in off one of the Mike Boats. We got him on a chopper right away. I expect he’s in Yokosuka by now or somewhere on the way home.”

“How did he look?”

“How the fuck does anybody look that gets hammered by a B-40, dude? He’s tore up but I’m betting he’ll keep the arm. Not so sure about the leg, but he’s out of it and headed stateside. They got good Docs back there can probably save it.” Doc Toothpick finishes the re-wrap and checks his watch. “We ain’t doing anything right now and I know a dude over at the BAS. Let’s walk over there and get you treated before this thing shrivels up and drops off your fuckin’ wrist.”

Sentries on watch at various points along the route to the BAS challenge us several times but nobody shoots anything more damaging than insults about stupid bastards wandering around in the dark. “It seems like I’m always patching your ass up, Dude.” Toothpick pushes his helmet back off his eyes and we talk about another time on another op when he spent a long afternoon picking Chicom shrapnel out of my butt and leg. “You’ve got to take better care of yourself and stop playing grunt.”

“It ain’t playing up here in Hue, Doc.”

“Ain’t it a bitch? Seems like making it through this Hue City deal is like trying to run between the raindrops without getting wet.”

“There it is, Doc. There it is.”

Senior Corpsman at the BAS volunteers to wake one of the surgeons, but Toothpick says he’ll handle what needs to be done. Under a surgical light, the two of them look at my damaged hand and make little grunting noises for a while. When they’ve seen enough and decided on a course of action Senior Corpsman swabs my hand with some kind of topical anesthetic while Toothpick prepares a syringe full of thick white fluid. “Chew on this.” He pokes one of his toothpicks in my mouth and closes in with the syringe. “This might pinch a bit.”

It feels like a thousand fire ants attacking my hand as Doc probes and injects at various places, shooting a strong antibiotic directly into the infected flesh. When it’s over and my hand is re-bandaged into an even more unwieldy mitt, we duck out of the BAS and run into Lieutenant Longlegs who is checking on some of his wounded grunts.

“It’s on for tomorrow,” he tells us, the big push into the Imperial Palace area. We’ll get a detailed briefing in the morning but the broad brush puts us on the left of the Vietnamese Marines sweeping due south until we hit the palace grounds. And this time the battalion CO is taking a page from the NVA playbook. We’ll be moving under cover of our own shooters positioned on rooftops and upper levels of buildings all along the way.

By the time we get back to the squad, the South Vietnamese are once again loudly begging their northern cousins to give it up, be reasonable and rally to the Saigon side. Reb has polished off the Purple Jesus so there’s nothing to do but try to sleep while the propaganda echoes up and down the streets of the Citadel. Hopefully, it’s as hard on the NVA as it is on us.

King Nguyen’s Court

When the push starts at dawn, we move steadily south block to block along what the map says is Dinh Bo Linh Street, a string-straight north-south avenue that leads to the Thuong Tu Gate in the southern walls. We need to cross about nine or ten east-west streets along the way and the first several intersections are covered by 1/5 shooters up on rooftops or in the second floor windows of buildings. They go into action when our sweeps force stay-behinds out into the streets or alleys. None of the gooks we’ve encountered so far seem anxious to do much beyond fire a few rounds to slow us down and then split for a new position. It’s by far the easiest time we’ve had on a northside sweep, and I’m starting to hear some trash-talking from the grunts who speculate that we’ve finally got this thing licked. I’m not buying it and neither is Reb or Toothpick. We’ve all been lured and lulled into NVA traps before and this is no time to be getting over-confident.

On the other side of our assigned block is the eastern perimeter of the Imperial Palace. My guys are moving on the right flank of Delta’s advance which puts us closest to the palace perimeter and in spotty contact with some Vietnamese Marines moving in the same direction. Every once in a while we spot an American officer wearing their distinctive tiger-stripe camouflage and he gives us a wave. We can tell he’s a round-eye because he towers over the little VN Marines humping along beside him carrying radios.

It’s a slow process, but we expected that. We hold up at every intersection while the Company Commanders send teams ahead of us to take high observation positions. We don’t move on until word is passed that the cover teams are in position. I’m keeping an eye on the new guys, but it’s easier now with Reb and Toothpick helping keep them in order and out of trouble. It gives me some time to think about the battalion briefing which contained conflicting information. That’s got me wondering and worrying about this light resistance.

An intelligence officer from MACV and an English-speaking ARVN officer briefed the command group saying they had reliable reports that a good number of surviving NVA have pulled out of the city toward the northwest where recently deployed units of the Army’s 1
^st
Cavalry Division are moving to block them. On the other hand, the ARVN officer related, they have radio intercepts in which NVA commanders in Hue asked for permission to withdraw; pleas which Hanoi promptly denied with orders to hold and die in place if necessary. So which is it? Are they running or are they dug in somewhere for a last stand? Everyone has a guess but no one has an answer.

It’s just before noon when we got our first close-up look at the Imperial Palace. We hold in place near the northeast corner of the complex and just stare at the manicured gardens, moats and winding pathways that all lead to an ornate building that must be something like an Imperial court or throne room. Reb takes the opportunity to empty his runny guts into a nearby alleyway. The Purple Jesus has done a job on him and he’s been running off to shit nearly every time we stop. Alpha Company on our left gets into a serious fight and we are ordered to freeze while they got the situation sorted. My guys spread out along a perimeter wall and just stare into the palace complex. It doesn’t look like anything has been disturbed or damaged.

Reb joins me looking into the heart of the palace complex. There’s not a gook in sight. It’s just 50 meters or so to that structure and there’s a little path that leads right to it over an arched bridge. I’m so tempted to just jump the low wall and trot over there to get a look at what this whole deal has been all about that I can’t stand it. “Suppose they’s gooks in that building?” Reb is snapping pictures with a little Instamatic camera and that gives me a very stupid idea.

Dropping my pack, I find my own camera and unwrap it from the plastic. If we’re going to do what I’m planning, it requires something more reliable than an Instamatic. Doc Toothpick sidles up beside us and I tell him to keep an eye on the squad. We’ll be back in 15 minutes.

“Where the fuck you goin’?” He eyes my camera suspiciously, “We been told to hold up right here.”

“Listen, man; I was here once before all the shit started. I’m pretty sure the emperor’s throne is just inside that building over there. I want a picture of me sitting on it.”

Doc tells me I’m clearly out of my motherfucking mind but he’s talking to my back as I vault a low garden wall with Reb following close behind. We make it to a line of ornate pillars that I remember from the earlier visit with Tom Young as tour guide. Just inside those pillars is a long hallway leading to a lushly decorated room flanked by ornate urns. At the end of that corridor is the raised throne where the ancient mandarin emperor held court before his kingdom fell to internecine squabbles.

Something wild and uncontrollable has hold of me now. I can’t turn back without getting another look at that throne and if we don’t get killed doing it, I plan to have Reb take my picture perched on it. There’s not a soul in sight as we run down the dark corridor but I’m expecting to be cut down any moment. The adrenaline is overpowering and the sheer audacity of what we are doing is a thrill I’ll always remember—assuming I survive. It occurs to me as we reach the throne room unmolested that if there are gooks defending the Imperial Palace, they’ll be doing it from out on the perimeter. No one with an ounce of military savvy would expect a couple of broke-dick Marines to come charging into the heart of the complex carrying nothing much more threatening than a camera.

And then we are staring at the ornate throne with brass chi-chi dogs on each arm as hand rests for his imperial majesty. I’m looking for Reb to take the camera as I climb up the steps leading to the throne but he’s off somewhere in the shadows. “Come on, man. Get the flick and let’s get out of here.” But Reb has his trousers dropped around his ankles and he’s squatted over one of the porcelain urns at the side of the dais. I can hear his mess squirting loudly into the receptacle and can’t stop an onset of nerve-jangled giggles. For Christ’s sake, we are in the throne room of the Imperial Palace with gooks all around us and Reb is dumping a watery load into an ancient artifact. This caper is way off the steep end of the stupid scale.

He uses a piece of a brocaded wall-hanging to wipe his butt and then leaps off the urn with his Instamatic in hand. Maneuvering him up onto the throne, I snap a couple of flicks with his cheap camera that I’m fairly confident won’t develop into anything memorable but he deserves the effort just for going along with me on this deal. Setting my own camera to handle the low light, I rack the focus to best guess and hand it to him. Then I’m sitting up there on the throne of the ancient emperors with my knees crossed and a big grin on my face. He hits the shutter button a time or two and that’s it. No matter what else happens in Hue, I’m immortalized as having been deep in the belly of the beast. Before we make a dash for daylight, I unscrew the right hand rest and stuck it in my cargo pocket. If I live through this, that brass rampant dog is an all-expenses paid binge at anybody’s VFW Post.

Toothpick is waving at us to hurry as we sprint back across the little arched bridge and out of the palace compound. Delta has been ordered to pivot left and sweep over a disputed section of the eastern walls. The ARVN are in trouble and we are in for another session of climbing the walls and killing the gooks.

Last Gasps

Mortars and artillery are gouging clumps out of a broad sector of the Citadel walls as we pull back from the Imperial Palace complex and turn to get back up on the high ground. It’s mid-afternoon when they lift the preparatory fire and Lieutenant Longlegs pushes us up one of the damage ramps onto the wall and headed south. The ARVN have been taking serious flanking fire from this area and we are ordered to eliminate that. We spread out and begin walking slowly amidst the rubble and detritus scattered in our path. The walls are thick in this area—nearly 100 meters at some points—and undulating with folds and swells that provide great cover for defenders we have been sent to eliminate.

Philly Dog is up on point with the rest of us spread out in a wedge behind him. So far there’s been no resistance, nothing to see except scattered piles of trash and debris. Dog holds up a meaty fist to signal a halt and then begins to poke around a rubble pile with the muzzle of his rifle. We watch him reach around his cartridge belt and snatch at his bayonet. Dog is just snapping it onto the end of his rifle when a gook hidden in the rubble at his feet pumps a burst into the big man’s crotch. Dog drops his rifle and staggers backward trying to stay on his feet as the gook raises his sights and drives him to the ground with a second burst.

Willis screams and charges forward to the rescue but he’s cut down before he take three steps. Suddenly we are facing a wall of fire that extends all across our front from the outer edge of the wall to the inner edge with NVA gunners firing from deep and well-concealed bunker positions. Most of those positions are skillfully dug in or around the innocent-looking trash piles that dot the area to our front.