Show of Force (13 page)

The watch had been relieved for breakfast. The crew was now completely awake, ready for another tedious day after the excitement of the previous night. The ship's PA system clicked on. "This is the Captain speaking again. First, my sincere, personal thanks for the contribution each of you made. You made
Bagley
a ship of war to reckon with again, years after a lot of people would have junked her. Ships are important, but the Navy can never replace the men who sail them.

"Of course, I have received a message from the Admiral that I will have distributed in each compartment. But even more important is the message that was handed to me a few minutes ago. It's addressed to
Bagley, Bartlett, Payne,
and
Kerns,
and the helos and fixed-wing squadrons that worked with us. It is from our Commander in Chief, Mr. Kennedy, and says, 'My congratulations to all units of Task Force Alpha and especially those of you who participated in the surfacing of the Russian Foxtrot submarine on the nights of October twenty-three and twenty-four. Though I personally reviewed your units with admiration last year, I can now truly say you have served your country more than your loved ones at home will know for some time to come. And today, I say with pride I was a sailor, too.'

“I want each of you to hear that now,” Carter added. “This operation is classified, and you will be unable to relate your accomplishments to anyone when we finally return home. But, we can all have confidence in our ship and our Navy in the future, for we will have that sailor at the helm of our country for many years to come.” There was a long moment of silence throughout the ship after Carter switched off the PA and returned to the open bridge.

C
aptain Carter told me yesterday that I'd make a fine officer some day. Coming from him, that's the finest compliment I guess I'll ever hear. I've been watching him pretty closely, trying to learn how he commands a ship. Now I'm beginning to think it just comes naturally and you have to be like that from the beginning. Maybe if he feels I can be a good officer, I'll be able to command like he does.

I'm pretty sure that last night the United States came about as close to a major war as it has for a long time. Even Sam Carter was scared, enough so that he was ready to take some chances to keep it from happening. The captain of the
Bartlett
must be some kind of nut or else the Navy's making some big mistakes with some of its CD's. The man really wanted to fire torpedoes at the Russian submarine. I don't think he was really concerned about what would have happened on a national scale. He just wanted to kill a sub, maybe to show someone how tough he was. But Sam Carter talked him out of it and used our ship to do it. It was taking a big chance, but I know today that the odds were worth it. Captain Carter's making me an expert in hindsight, but maybe that's the way you train ensigns.

Last night was also a good lesson in seapower. That was something they pounded into our heads for four years, and maybe you have to see it to understand it. If that's true, it's too bad they didn't have all the politicians around to watch it, too. The captain was right in telling me to look at that sub closely. It was black, dented, slippery like ours, and pretty damn lonely out there by itself being forced to wallow in a sea it really wasn't built to ride on top of. The sub was supposed to be in the Caribbean for a reason, to protect their shipping to the Cuban bases, I imagine. It was a projection of seapower by the Russians, but they sent that sorry son of a bitch halfway around the world almost by himself. He had no access to food or fuel or ammunition unless he either went into Cuba, where they really aren't equipped to help submarines, or else used those cows they send over to service their boats. But Carter was right again. I went up to the radio shack and looked at the fleet scheds, and every one of their cows is being escorted by a destroyer, sometimes even by a couple in case a submarine tries to show up at a meeting place on the ocean.

So that poor submarine was helpless. He couldn't project the power they'd sent him here for because the Russians just aren't ready to do that yet. I think that if they were going to the trouble of bringing missiles all the way over here, they should either have been able to protect them or else made up their mind to fire them if we challenged. It doesn't make any sense to do something like this halfway and then be made a fool of. Now I know why we spent so much time reading Mahan and some of those other military strategists. What he had to say seems to be ageless, as long as we keep 'the size of the world and the new weapons in mind. Someone's still got to be in charge.

Captain Carter got me to thinking about the CO of that sub, too. He really probably isn't a hell of a lot older than me, and I imagine he's going to be in a lot of hot water when he gets back. The Russians are pretty tough when someone makes a fool out of them, although Captain Carter's right. That captain wasn't really a- fool. He tried almost everything he could to get away, and he almost made it once or twice. Carter said that anyone that can keep all those destroyers and aircraft so busy for most of a night must be pretty damn smart. And that sub was sick. Frank Welles said the sounds coming out of that sonar were something else, and that if our engineering plant sounded like that, Carter'd have Donovan living in the reduction gears until he figured out what was wrong. But a sub that's being chased has a pretty Tough time finding spare parts or getting to the surface for air so the crew can even breathe.

I hope the Russians don't send that sub captain to the salt mines, or whatever they do to them there. I wish there was some way we could meet him and find out what really happened. I learned a lot yesterday, but getting the other guy's side must be a good way to learn, too.

DEAR DAVID,

I can't tell you how thrilled we were to receive your recent letter and at last get some word of where you are. The letter took almost three weeks to get here and, of course, everything has quieted down where you are now. When everything suddenly happened, the worst thing was not knowing where you were. We knew you had gone down to the Caribbean for those exercises, from your letter early in October, and we had expected to hear from you when the
Bagley
returned.

You can't imagine the shock when President Kennedy announced on television about the Russian missiles in Cuba and how the Navy was already in position to set up a blockade. You know we have never experienced anything like this since the Korean War (you were only twelve then), but the real fear was that it was happening in our own backyard. And when we think of blockades, your father said there hasn't been anything like that in this country since the Civil War. The whole country really lived in a state of terror for three days before we were a little more sure that there would be no missiles fired or bombs dropped. And we can all imagine what Mr. Kennedy must have been going through.

Since you have been at sea all this time and probably haven't seen a paper, I'm enclosing some clippings you all might like to see of what it was like back here. One of the most frightening things to us here is seeing the pictures from down south where the marines and paratroops are walking around the streets in fatigues and battle dress. Apparently they didn't have time to pack before they were flown down south to be in position. Again, we just haven't seen anything like that in this country for so long.

Another clipping that I hope you'll especially like is one that your father wrote that's going to appear in the local paper after Thanksgiving. It's about the meaning of Christmas, and they asked some of the local business leaders to write what they thought was most important after we were so close to war. I'll tell you the parts I like the best:

Most of us ... take for granted the air we breathe, the water we drink, the friends we cherish, the delightful countryside we live in.
It
is only when we are faced with the specter, however tenuous, of our separation from such things or their very loss that the realization is brought home to us that many-other items heretofore high on our list of “wishes” are really quite inconsequential. And so it may be with what, we fervently hope, may be referred to by the time this appears in print as “the recent Cuban Incident.” If it has served to remind us that material assets, however desirable in normal life, are as nothing when weighed against those that really matter, it will not have happened in vain. If it has prompted us to give thanks that the blessings of peace are still ours, it will not have been without profit. And if it has brought home to us anew that there are those principles we hold so tightly that we are willing to exchange even the priceless boon of peace for them— because without them there can be no peace—then it will have served some constructive purpose.

He goes on to say some nice things about Christmas and fellowship and the things you'd normally expect to read about at Christmas, but I thought you might understand better how everyone at home felt while you boys were out there. Knowing where you are and what you're doing, I guess, would have made us all feel a lot better.

We have sent you a separate package with the sports section out of the Sunday
New York Times,
as you asked in your letter, and we'll send anything else you need if you'll let us know. Perhaps this will all be over soon and you can be here at Christmas. As soon as you get into port anywhere, please call us, and make it a collect call. We want very much to hear from you.

We do hope the
Bagley
has been far away from any trouble and that you haven't been Involved in anything dangerous. Again, please call collect as soon as you can.

Love from all of us, Mom

Y
ou're not really going to write yourself orders to go there?" It was a question asked with a tone of incredulity, backed by a facial expression of absolute disbelief.

“You bet your ass I am.”

“Hell, David, you won't have one left to bet. Some little yellow man in black pajamas is going to blow it off for you.” The speaker was a young, happy-looking lieutenant with a brush cut, about David's age, looking freshly pressed in his tropical whites. But he also looked somewhat undressed to many of his companions. He lacked the colorful chest ribbons displayed by the many returning Vietnam vets.

“Well, they didn't last time, and they're not going to have any better chances this time either. Look outside,” he gestured toward the windows that looked out on the crowded streets. “Saigon can't be any hotter than Washington this time of year. And I'd much rather be cruising on one of those Swift boats than commuting to Virginia in that damned traffic.” His friend gazed back at him uncomprehendingly.

“I'll tell you what,” David Charles continued, “I'll cut some orders for you right now. We can go over together, be in the same squadron together. Think of the extra combat skins, the leaves in Bangkok, Taipei, Hong Kong, Sydney,” he waved his arm toward the other. “You're just going to waste away here chasing secretaries and drinking too much and wishing you could have some excitement. You can't say no.”

“No.” It was emphatic.

“Okay. It's your choice. Right here,” he pointed at some papers on his desk, “right here, I've picked out my billet. XO of a riverboat squadron. I know the CO from my last tour, and we had a great time there. As a matter of fact, that's who convinced me to go. Old Phil Mezey called me a few weeks ago, 'cause he remembered I'd gotten orders to Bupers, and asked if I could fix him up with a riverboat squadron. When I found one and called him back, that's when he asked me if I'd like to be his XO. Boy, was he happy to be going back over.”

“Who the hell is this other crazy man?”

“He was one of the officers-in-charge with me during my last tour in the FT boat squadron. Nastys they were called. We bought them from the Norwegians. Phil and I used to race them up and down the ”coast after these junks that used to smuggle weapons, people, anything they could get their hands on."

“And you really want to go back?” The other officer, Dan Mundy, leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, the same quizzical look of disbelief in his eyes. “You lifers are all the same. You don't know how to relax.” Then he looked over at David more seriously. “You know, things are a hell of a lot different than when you first went over there. That was 1965 when everyone wanted to get there before the war was over. Remember, you had to go get a little combat under your belt if you were going to stay in. Now, you know, there's more people getting killed in a week than got killed in six months when you were there.”

“That's the chance you got to take if you're going to make CNO in this man's navy,” David grinned. “You would have loved it if you'd been on those Nastys. Damn,” he emphasized, “we could wind those things up to forty-five knots. Just skip over the surface. Get up a little sea, and you could just about leap all eighty-five tons of them out of the water at full speed if you hit a swell right. We figured those little yellow people used to fill their pants seeing us coming in at them. Of course, that was part of the idea, according to our squadron commander. Psychological warfare, he called it. He said it would scare them enough so that we'd control those waters and cut off all the arms shipments from up north.”

“And did it?”

“Nope. Not really.” He folded his arms. “You know we caught an awful lot of them. But I think even more of them got through, 'cause we never heard of gooks running .out of ammunition. Those little mothers were always well armed, and they knew how to use those things. It makes me awful glad I'm not a marine,” he finished.

“Jesus Christ. That's just what I'm saying, David. That's a real war over there. You seem to think it's just another firelight. Do you realize you'll have to go back through combat training again for six weeks, just like a goddamn marine. Because that's what you're going to get into. Didn't you see in that ALNAV the other day that they're going to name one of those new
Knox-
class frigates after some lieutenant who got himself killed in those riverboats? Do you want to have your mother break a bottle of champagne over the bow of the one they name after you?” As an afterthought, he said, “I'd much rather drink it if it's all the same to you.”

David's face became more serious. “I know you're right, Dan. But I think I really belong there. And like you said, I'm a lifer. This is my career, and I don't want anything else. I'm still single. And I guess there's really a hell of a lot I've got to learn over there.” He thought for a moment back to the days when he and Phil were racing their PT boats up and down the coast, burning diesel fuel like it was water. Christ, he thought, we figured we were just like the cavalry charging in there to break up all those Indians. And that's just the way it is, he said to himself. Not so long ago we were chasing the Indians, and now we're chasing the gooks out of their own country.

“I guess you're right, Dan. I wouldn't want you to go with us. You could get hurt, and there's probably no reason for you to take the chance.” He stretched and smiled. “But I don't have much choice, even if I didn't want to go. Hell,” he grinned again, “that's why I conned myself into this cushy detailing job—so I could write my own orders! Do you know what I mean?”

The other man was suddenly more serious too. “Yeah, I suppose so. That's why the hell I want to get out after this tour. I extended to get to D.C. And I want to make sure none of this rubs off on me before I get out. You guys are so serious sometimes, I feel like I ought to see a shrink and find out why I don't care to duck bullets. Then I remember. I went to a normal college, a civilian one—not the Baltimore Boat and Barge Company.”

“Wrong town,” David said, amused. “You mean Annapolis, not Baltimore.”

“Like hell I do. I mean Baltimore. In my last wardroom we decided Baltimore was the shiftiest place any of us ever saw, and we decided anyone who went through four years of that shit you did must have thought they were in Baltimore. Hey, I shit you not. I was just over there to see a chick a couple of weeks ago, and it was so bad, I thought I'd taken a wrong turn into the Academy.” He stopped. “Hey, David, what am I into this for? You are-writing those orders, aren't you?” He looked at the papers on the desk.

“Right here.” David waved some papers at him. “But first I'm going to give myself a week back home, and then three weeks of sin in San Francisco. Followed by those six weeks with the marines, and then off to dear old Saigon in time to help them celebrate their New Year, and in sixteen months I'll be back here with a chest full of fruit salad. And by then, I will have gotten another stripe and be Lieutenant Commander Charles, and our esteemed boss, Captain Kehs, will have written me orders to go out to Monterey, and you take it from there, my friend.”

“Okay, my friend. If that's the way you want it. I will look forward to the day when we can sip martinis and celebrate your still being alive.” He paused and thought for a minute. “Did you say you're going to be there in time for their New Year—parties and all that stuff?”

“Yup. They call it Tet.”

Mundy had been right. Thank God he's not here. I can just see that “I'm always right” look of his, thought David, looking at the water and mud. It wasn't a normal rain compared to what anyone back in the States would call normal. It was a cloudburst, with the exception that it had been raining just as hard since the previous night.

And Mundy had been even more right about another thing. He had received all that marine training because that's what they were doing—acting like marines! The main effort since they'd been there was to protect their added squadrons of Swift boats and river-patrol boats by building a fortress around the base. They laid minefields around the perimeter, dug trenches, built fortifications, went on patrols to cleanse the area, and on and on and on. And when they weren't doing that, they were cleaning weapons and practicing maneuvers in the river. But they were definitely not going out on missions, at least not the type that David had dreamed they would. Their weapons were rifles, grenades, .50-caliber machine guns, mortars—just like marines.

And the worst part was that they looked like marines, right down to the fatigues, flak jackets, and helmets. The sailors in the squadron looked like marines with hair, and he suspected some of them were even beginning to act that way.

Nothing had been like he expected. Their welcome was already in progress when they managed to land at Ton Son Hut shortly after the Tet Offensive began, the New Year's party that had amused Mundy. As they came in low for their approach, he could see sections of Saigon burning. The only information they had was the pilot's comment over the speaker that there was fighting near the airport and there was a possibility they might come under fire on their final leg of the approach, but he hadn't seemed concerned. He was probably a marine, too, David thought.

The moment the door to their plane opened, he knew they had arrived at the war. There was the smell of smoke in the air, and artillery explosions in the distance. Closer to the airport, they could hear small-arms fire, occasional shots for a few seconds, followed by rapid fire from a number of weapons. Well, he said to himself, I cut my own orders, so there's no one to blame but myself.

Inside the main building in the reception area it had been business as usual. Military and civilian personnel, both American and Vietnamese, went about their business seemingly unaware of what was going on outside. His processing was similar to landing at Kennedy after a European vacation, slow, methodical, disinterested—no one cared that Lieutenant David Charles had returned once again, this time as second in command of a riverine squadron.

There was no time for sightseeing. They were expected to report immediately to the base camp on the Mekong, where their headquarters were located. As David learned later, the Navy planned reliefs very tightly, and there were two officers very much looking forward to their arrival. When one was that short in Vietnam, after twelve months of surviving, they wanted to be relieved immediately, if not sooner, and turnover of command required a day or two of familiarization.

Once the Navy agreed that they really were who they said they were, a helicopter took them to their base camp, north and west of Saigon, well up the Mekong toward Cambodia. They flew over lush, green tropical forests, perfectly laid-out rice paddies that sometimes extended for miles, and little clearings that signified villages. This was the part he had rarely seen during his last tour. Previously he had been on the ocean, always returning to the coast, but rarely inland unless they had a few days off. And, then, they usually went no farther than downtown Saigon. Now, he realized, he would see the real Vietnam.

But up until now, he'd seen very little of the country. He had spent his time assisting Lieutenant Commander Mezey in setting up the camp as he wanted it run, which was one eighty out from the way the previous officer had set it up. The new CO figured that the Vietcong would know almost immediately that new management had come in and they would try a few night attacks to see how they were doing. Mezey simply didn't want his defenses set up the same way, since he assumed the Communists had probably memorized them. The second night after they relieved, the attack came. He had been right.

First came the mortars. Those were always the first warning of an attack. There was no noise until the first shell landed within the compound. Then all hell broke loose. Mortars from half a dozen different sites came roaring in, followed by the flares to illuminate the compound. Then, accompanied by the chatter of small-arms fire, the VC came running up the free paths between the mines they had previously charted. And the thing that saved the compound from much damage that night was that Mezey had made sure the first change was the location of the mines. Half a dozen mines were tripped, cutting through the attackers and stopping the second wave in mid-charge. Mezey, unfortunately, had been in the latrine at the time of the attack, and one of the early mortar rounds had landed nearby, close enough to jam the door. He began to rock the wooden structure to attract attention to his plight. Finally, it tipped over on top of its door. He later pointed out, to David's amusement, that the mortar shell had cleaned him out for at least a week, but it was a hard way to solve a problem. The attack was over as fast as it had begun. There were few casualties to the defenders and part of their luck, as Mezey had commented, was that they acted just like marines.

Each day they made a point of changing the defenses. It was just enough so the VC knew there were safer places to attack, and within a couple of weeks they decided they had a secure base. In the meantime, while the weather still held, they spent hour after hour learning their boats and running through exercises, until they finally passed the boring stage and became automatic.

Now he was staring out through the screening around their tent, watching the cloudburst that wouldn't stop. The monsoons had begun, and the dust turned to mud in no time. The only saving grace here was that even though they acted like marines, they really weren't. And he wouldn't change places with those poor bastards sitting in muddy trenches or slogging through inches of mud on another of their incessant patrols.

The rains continued, and with them the tedium. VC movements were limited, and the Americans were just as happy to spend more of their time patrolling the river and searching native craft for weapons, or anything else that might be smuggled.

Their PER riverboats added little to personal comfort, since they were essentially open to the rain. They were developed for high-speed combat in shallow waters. They had fiberglass-reinforced plastic hulls and ceramic armor, and carried a 60-mm.