The Village (26 page)

On August 13 the combined unit again arbitrarily extended its patrol boundaries to take care of what they considered to be a village responsibility. That afternoon Suong had asked McGowan to look after things for the evening; he, Trao, Lee and most of the other village officials were going to a big card game in Nuoc Man—a kilometer south from Binh Nghia across the paddies. Nuoc Man was a twisted congestion of ramshackle wooden, thatch and tin huts flung up on either side of Highway One. Stocked by the Koreans, it was a typical boomtown which catered to the American units. Business was brisk and boondock prices high: cold Cokes were 75 cents, bundles of laundry $1.50, girls $3. The Marines from Fort Page were charged the same prices as were the line units, an equality which they deeply resented, and out of hurt pride they shunned dealings with the town. Not by accident, the squatter town had sprung up at the bottom of a hill holding a U.S. battalion, and conditions within its dusty, claptrap borders were deemed so safe that soldiers on liberty were not allowed to carry rifles. MPs sauntered from bar-girl shack to bar-girl shack during the day to keep the peace. Although the town had been receiving desultory night sniper fire for a week, no one had paid much attention. Things were so comfortable many store owners had stopped giving a cut of their earnings to the VC.

That night McGowan had sent out his usual three patrols and, finding it too muggy indoors, had climbed on the roof of the machine-gun bunker to sleep. It was near midnight and he had just dozed off when Nuoc Man exploded.

The first fusillade came full and sharp in steady volume. Its lack of raggedness or swelling crescendo told McGowan a surprise attack had been pulled on the little PF outpost at the town. Next a few rounds smacked into the sandbags beneath him, and he ducked inside the bunker as Marines and PFs lurched from their sleeping quarters, expecting attack. The sentries strained to spot movement on the flat paddy lands to their west.

“It's just stray incoming,” the radio sentry said. “They must be attacking the ville itself. Man, look at that.”

The horizon above Nuoc Man was dancing with fire as from all directions the Viet Cong lit and hurled kerosene-soaked rags into the timber town. Homemade gasoline bombs were bursting successively, their cascades of sparks and darts of flame mixing in the blackness with the trails of fire left by the streaming rags.

“Monitor battalion,” McGowan said, referring to the radio channel for the Army unit on the hill behind Nuoc Man.

“No traffic, Sarge,” the radio operator reported.

“What the hell! Try company.”

An infantry company sat on another hill east of the town, with one platoon outposting PF Hill. Still picking up no traffic, the sergeant broke radio silence and asked the company what was going on. Company replied that they didn't know but were trying to find out.

Out of patience, McGowan grabbed the handset and yelled, “Don't find out. Send people in there—those PFs need help.”

“Wait—out,” came the reply.

McGowan waited ten minutes while battalion and company talked undecidedly back and forth—then he broke in again.

“Captain,” he said, “if you're not going to do anything, I'll take some men in. Those are my people in there. They need help—now.”

“Get off our net, Lima Six,” came the reply. “You have the wrong freq. That fight is outside your AO. I don't have time to gab with you. Out.”

McGowan changed channels to the PF frequency and called the district headquarters at Binh Son, two miles down the road from Nuoc Man. He spoke to Volentine.

“Sir, Trao and Suong and half the honchos of Binh Nghia are in Nuoc Man. If they're lost, it's all over. Someone has to do something.”

“How many men do you have?”

“Enough.”

There were in the fort at that moment six Americans and eight PFs.

“Mac, we've lost touch with Nuoc Man,” Volentine said. “You go ahead and act on your best judgment. I'll back you up.”

Most of the Marines were clamoring to go in. There was a firefight, and most of them liked to shoot. It wasn't a time for stealth and movement; it was a time for firepower and rifle marksmanship. McGowan selected four Marines and two PFs. He dared not take more men lest one of the unit's own patrols in Binh Nghia run into trouble and need a reaction force from the fort.

He radioed to the Army platoon on PF Hill.

“We're coming west, around your hill in two minutes. Don't shoot us. Out.”

Each man was carrying the combination weapon of the M-16 and grenade launcher, fifteen to twenty magazines, and four to eight grenades. They were ready to move as soon as McGowan put down the phone. The seven dogtrotted the quarter-mile down the road past PF Hill, talking loudly so they wouldn't be shot. Still at a lope, they cut across the paddy dikes until they neared Highway One.

Everyone at the fort had agreed that the Viet Cong would set ambushes astride the road north and south of the town. So rather than run that gauntlet, the seven stopped short of the road, slid off the dikes and waded through the paddies parallel to the road until they were abreast of the center of the town. There they turned in, cut through a few backyards and stopped in the shadows at the edge of the main street.

The scene before them was one of chaos and terror. Many of the shacks which lined the road were blazing and the fire bathed the street in weird, flickering light. The alleyways and the walls of the buildings seemed to catch and echo the din of the screams and cries of people fleeing amidst the crash of timber, the furious crackling of the flames and the pop-pop-pop of small-arms ammunition cooking off. The families of the prostitutes, barkeepers and store owners were pouring past the seven riflemen, who could see the Viet Cong off to their left about a hundred yards down the road pitching torches and darting in and out of shacks.

At first the people kept running right by McGowan's men, as though they didn't—couldn't—exist. Then an old lady stopped and pointed back down the street toward the Viet Cong and yelled something at them, the tone of which was: “Don't just stand there gawking, do something!” Almost instantly the riflemen were surrounded by people, all pointing toward the Viet Cong and shouting, some pushing at the Marines, urging them into battle against the men who were burning their homes and businesses. Still McGowan hesitated, seeking assurance that he would not be trapped from the rear, finding it when Ho Chi, the Binh Nghia schoolteacher, elbowed his way through the crowd to say that all the Viet Cong were at the southern end of town.

McGowan's men stepped out into the glare and stood abreast looking down the street. The crowd which had been around them a minute earlier was gone, having ducked into the alleys to avoid what they knew was coming. Intent on their torch work, the Viet Cong never looked back, probably under the reasonable assumption that they would not be attacked without warning from the center of the burning town.

The seven riflemen fired together, first with the grenade launchers, then with their rifles. The first volley was all theirs and they made the most of the surprise, firing as fast as they could change magazines. McGowan's men had the initiative and they went in, moving by bounds to cover one another and firing their rifles in long bursts. They drew abreast of the cement house of Mr. Bun, a contractor working for the Army and, seeing two five-gallon gasoline cans sitting on the front porch, promptly broke into a run before the explosions went off. With the shacks blazing and crumbling on both sides of the road, the heat seared their faces and they ran faster, closing on the enemy.

The Viet Cong had a huge edge in numbers, but the flames kept them from spreading out and those who could shoot, being closest to the seven riflemen, were outmatched in firepower. Their return fire was scattered and ill-coordinated since their leader had to cope with uncertainty. Was he fighting just seven men, or was the rest of the American battalion drawing near, perhaps encircling him?

The Viet Cong pulled off, their main body plunging into the brush south of town while two stayed to hold back the attackers. But McGowan's men were rolling with the momentum of battle, past an enemy soldier sprawled in the street, past yet another, and the two rear guards loosed but a few desultory bursts before the seven riflemen were on them, too, passing them, outflanking them, killing them and running on, plunging into the bush, and there in front of them, crossing a twisted railroad track, went the Viet Cong company. McGowan had the fleeting impression that he was looking at more than fifty in one bunch, but he had no time to count or shoot as the enemy stopped and turned, like a bear harried by a pack of small hounds, and McGowan and his men were falling flat with the bullets whipping around them. The seven of them lay there, panting for breath, knowing they were safe as long as they didn't raise their heads high, knowing too that the enemy were scampering safely away, scattering bullets behind them like fistfuls of sand.

When the firing sputtered out, they turned around and walked to the tiny PF outpost at the edge of the town. They weren't about to enter a dark ravine in pursuit of an enemy company, and without a radio they had no means of calling an artillery mission. Once the enemy were out of the town and away from the PF fort, McGowan's men had no more interest in them.

Their concern was for their friends in the fort. The Viet Cong had surprised the PFs, most of whose leaders were drinking and playing high-stake poker at the bimonthly gathering. The enemy had surged through the wire and carried the fight into the bunkers. Mr. Lee, the census grievance taker, was killed by the blast from a hand grenade, his body shielding Trao, who was crouched beside him, and saving his life. Two PFs were killed and four wounded. The others had formed and held a ragged perimeter but had been unable to help the villagers, twelve of whom were killed.

McGowan found the Nuoc Man PF leader in critical condition, his buttocks ripped off. With his shirt the sergeant bound the massive wound, then grabbed the PF radio and called Binh Son. Captain Volentine in turn wasted no time calling the Army, and soon a platoon came trotting down the road to help.

The lieutenant in charge set about in a brusque manner to organize a defense when McGowan brought him up short by saying: “I don't need you—now—Lieutenant; I need a medevac for this man. Where is it?”

The lieutenant took one look at the PF leader and hastily called his battalion.

The medevac was refused because the area was called “insecure.” So McGowan called Fort Page and Bac Si Khoi ran the full mile, bringing a bottle of intravenous fluid which he injected into the PF, but his condition did not improve. Khoi recommended they carry him to Fort Page, where he could care for him better. So those who had come from Binh Nghia returned that way.

Passing through the smoldering village, McGowan saw a girl who sold Cokes and other things to the soldiers standing outside her untouched hut. Those shacks on both sides of hers lay in ashes. In response to McGowan's question, she said she had to make a living and stay alive, so she just paid her taxes to the VC regularly.

When the portaging party arrived at Fort Page, Khoi used two more bottles of fluid to keep the PF leader alive. At dawn a helicopter came in and lifted him out.

By then McGowan was in serious trouble. His temper rubbed raw by the night's events, his messages to battalion from Fort Page in the early morning hours had been framed in ill-concealed disgust. The helicopter had not been dispatched during the night because Binh Nghia was not considered secure either—and because the wounded man was not an American.

The next morning the battalion commander went to the division commander and requested McGowan's immediate relief for insubordination and refusal to obey orders, to wit: entering Nuoc Man after permission to do so had been denied. The division commander listened to the story, then blasted the colonel for his failure to act. The general said McGowan had been right and he wrong.

The battalion commander left Task Force headquarters and drove to Binh Nghia, bringing with him a case of cold beer. Taking McGowan aside, he apologized for his inaction the previous night. He thanked the sergeant “for pulling a slight victory out of what otherwise would have been defeat.”

Still peeved by the situation, McGowan asked why the colonel hadn't acted. The officer replied he didn't really know—the country and the people seemed strange and he wasn't sure what his men could do, or would know how to do, in a situation like that. That answer McGowan could understand from his own days in an infantry battalion.

The seven riflemen from Fort Page had gone into Nuoc Man for Trao and Suong. They had had no use for the town or its people, who cheated and overcharged them. The town rebuilt quickly and was soon back to its normal corrupt practices. But afterward the PFs and Marines from Fort Page could not buy a Coke or a beer.

“There is no charge,” the merchants would say.

The end came quietly in October of 1967, after two and a half months without a firefight or even a sighting of a Viet Cong within the confines of Binh Nghia. Although the village officials insisted the enemy still skulked in the shadows after midnight, the savage struggle for Binh Nghia was over. The PFs were patrolling in the My Hués in teams of two, like cops on a beat. The enemy had placed his priorities and his manpower elsewhere. The Marines were no longer needed; the PFs could do as well. It was time for the Americans to leave.

District and Marine headquarters had agreed that McGowan's men should be transferred to Binh Thuy Island, three hundred yards out in the river from Binh Yen Noi, a world away from Binh Nghia. Trao and the village council vehemently disagreed. District's arguments that the shift was for the greater common good of the war effort fell on deaf ears. These Americans belonged to Binh Nghia; let Binh Thuy find their own Americans.

McGowan's men were of two minds. The newer ones were anxious to go to a place where the Viet Cong came in every night, and the PFs were afraid to leave their fort. The older ones had seen all that; Binh Nghia was their village. They wanted to stay. So did McGowan. But when in September Lieutenant General Robert E. Cushman, who had replaced Walt as commander of Marine forces in Vietnam, had asked him if the PFs could stand alone, he had felt obliged to say they could. That reply had marked the Marines' remaining time in the village. The last few days his men were at the fort, villagers kept coming up to them and urgently, desperately insisting that the Viet Cong would come back if they left. McGowan believed them. He considered it preordained that the PFs would be tested. He was betting they would hold.

Seventeen months after they had arrived, the Americans left the Vietnamese village of Binh Nghia. There was a flurry of good-byes, and the dozen Marines climbed into the boats from Binh Thuy and paddled away.

McGowan lingered after the others had departed, searching for Suong, who had not come to the fort that morning. All the others had been there—Trao, Bac Si Khoi, Luong, Tri, Missy Top, even Mr. Buu—all except Suong. It was no use looking for the PF leader when he did not want to be found. Nevertheless, McGowan tried, going to his house, going to the marketplace, sending boys out looking for him, making an effort before admitting it was useless. At last he headed toward the river bank, shaking hands one last time with the throng of villagers walking with him, stopping and turning around for one final look when he reached the boat. And there was Suong, pushing his way through the crowd.

McGowan looked at him.

“I have to go, Suong,” he said. “The Americans have to go.”

“I know,” Suong replied.

They shook hands, strongly. No smiles. No playful shoves.

“Chao, Suong.”

“Chao, McGowan.”