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part 1 of the story

You’ll Be Sorry

Charles Hayes

    After passing over the coastal mountains along the South China Sea we went into a sudden dive, sending my stomach up to my throat. Out the small bulkhead window I saw the jungle and bamboo villages suddenly grow larger until, just as suddenly, we pulled up. Palm trees flashed by just below the wings. I checked my crotch for wetness and watched the palm trees quickly give way to black tarmac. We landed hard and slowed just enough to quickly exit the runway and taxi to a large metal hanger. As if this was all completely normal, a colorfully dressed stewardess appeared at the front of the cabin and welcomed us to the busiest airport in the world, Da Nang, Vietnam.

    I came from one of the many sweeps for poor white trash and blacks conducted throughout Southern Appalachia to feed the Vietnam war. Having no clout nor any real means to get out of the poverty of the hills or avoid the draft, I was easy prey for the “Uncle Sam Wants You” roughriders at my local draft board.
    I reported for induction into the Army and the sergeant in charge told me that the Marines were short on men. He said that if I agreed to join them for 3 years I wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam. Otherwise, the sergeant said that I would be beating the Vietnam bush within 3 months. I fell for the spiel, beginning a journey that still quickly took me to Vietnam. Taking a last look back at the pretty stewardess standing in the exit doorway I said my goodbyes to the world.
    The first thing I noticed after that goodbye was the heat coming from all directions as it poured down and was reflected back by everything it touched. Everyone seemed to be in motion as if the sun demanded it in order to avoid being cooked dry by its wash.
    My group was quickly met by a gunnery sergeant as he hopped out of a jeep, gathered us together, and herded us toward our next staging area. All along the hot tarmac I could see camouflaged jets landing and taking off. The same for helicopters. It was one big beehive of sweat, flashing afterburners and noise.
    Soon we passed another group of marines peering at us through a chain link fence just off one side of the tarmac. Looking very much out of place amongst all the purposeful activity and uniform dress, they wore jungle fatigues and floppy bush hats. With their jungle boots scuffed tan from wear and never having seen any polish, their gaunt yellowish faces, colored by the anti-malaria pills, they looked out from masses of long hair and mustaches. But it was their eyes and demeanor that really set them apart and belied their youth as they amused themselves, watching the new guys as if watching their favorite animals at the zoo. Pressed up against the links in the fence, like some band of detainees curtained off from the more respectable lots of society, their looks unsettled me in a way that’s hard to explain. Like I was part of some exhibition of the condemned. I wanted to ignore them but couldn’t help staring back. Reviewing their faces, I saw that most seemed to be there just for the sake of being there. No particular reason or motivation registered on their visages, just that they were there and accounted for, to hell with anything more definitive than that. That was until I met the eyes of one a little taller and dirtier than the rest. With no amusement reflected in his dark eyes, he sang out in a clear lilting voice without a hint of comedy, “You’ll........ be...... sor......ry.” The others along the fence only stared on as if the tone of his prediction rang with an air that some things just were ...and not a one of them doubted it.
    We eventually got parked in a huge hanger and over the next few hours were in turn sent out over Vietnam far and wide to replace those who were going home, or who had been killed or wounded. When it came to my turn I was sent only a few miles southwest of the air strip.

    I was very much welcomed when my jeep arrived at my new unit. No predictions of sorrow were heard for me who had come to freshen up this unit. Fresh newbies generally meant a little less hazard for those trying to get out of the Nam someway other than a crate or a hospital plane. Making it through that year and getting the hell out of there was what it was all about. Not complicated at all I soon figured as I settled in and started ticking the days until I could get back to the world. Nor was it complicated or long before I got my first taste of the war, that cherry from the hillbilly country of West Virginia.

    As the pop flare drifted to earth a ghostly light was cast over the green wet terrain beyond the perimeter of the 1st support battalion, 1st Marines. Those along the bunker line facing the base of Hill 821 peered through the misty monsoon rains from underneath ponchos and anything else that might help them find a little comfort in the muddy trench. Assigned to the communications section of H&S Company, I was catching more than my share of perimeter duty. Since I was the cherry of the outfit that was nothing unusual in the Nam but it sure as hell had little to do with repairing radios which was my MOS or military occupational specialty. After scanning the dark perimeter I sloshed a couple of steps along the trench and entered a bagged and roofed bunker where I had unloaded the PRC-25 radio pack at midnight. A couple of waterlogged grunts or infantrymen from security platoon were wrapped in their ponchos and setting on ammo crates trying to stay dry and avoid the chill of the monsoon season. I felt no pity for them, I was cold and soaked too.
    “How come you guys aren’t in position?”
    “Aw hell, give us a break corporal, there ain’t nothing out there but maybe a rock ape or two,” one of them said, “you ain’t been here long enough to know.”
    “I been here long enough to know that if you two don’t get back to your positions you’ll find out that you’re not as short as you think you are.”
    If it’s anything most marines try to avoid it’s having to stay in Vietnam past their rotation date on a legal hold because of some personal screw up. So both grunts reluctantly picked up their gear and went back down the bunker line to their positions.
    I knew I had a lot to learn and I hated to push seasoned grunts but I had to make a situation report and how the hell could I do that with two posts vacant.
    I picked up the radio handset, keyed it, and quietly said, “Yankee one, yankee 3, sit-rep all secure, over.”
    “Three, one, roger, out,” came the reply.
    Back outside the bunker under the constant rain I resumed my watch and tried to shelter my M-16 rifle as much as possible. Rifles could be tricky enough about jamming even when in good condition but so far I had not had any trouble with mine. It appeared that the government had finally gotten the problem fixed after lots of young men had died and were found with a jammed rifle in their hands. Even then there was no hurry it seemed, just another poor dumb son of a bitch dying for his country as General Patton so eloquently once put it.
    As the descending flare was about to hit the ground and die I reached into my cargo pocket, removed another one and slammed the base of it with the heel of my hand. A whooshing sound traveled skyward followed by the loud pop of the illumination chute and again the barren kill zone beyond the concertina wire lit up. Scanning the kill zone for movement, I wondered what was really going on in Vietnam. What I was seeing was not jiving with what I had heard.
    Ducking down in the trench, I lit a cigarette, cupped my hand around the glowing ash, and smoked. My watch told me that soon my shift would be over and I could make chow before hitting the rack. The patrol should be on its way back by now according to the checkpoints that I heard over the radio. Looking in the direction from which I knew they would come, I could see the wooden poles used to open the wire and the glowing eyes of the sentry dog staked out there, but not much else. Suddenly, about 200 meters in that same direction I heard the ack-ack-ack and saw the green tracers of enemy AK-47 fire immediately followed by the rapid burst and red tracers of several M-16s returning fire. The booms of the 12 gauge double ought bush gun could also be heard from the return fire. From the listening posts the radio net came alive with contact reports and as soon as I could log in I, now with the radio on my back, rushed down the bunker line and passed the word to the grunts who were already standing by. After another burst of M-16 fire mixed with M-79 grenade launcher explosions there was a lull in the action. Everyone on the radio net was instructed to remain in place and wait for further word.
    As the siren atop the COC or Commanding Officer’s Communication bunker in the rear sounded the trench line began to fill up with marines. In the distance I could hear the funny sounding alarm of the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) 155 Howitzers and knew that they too were bee hiving and lowering the big guns. The once dark sky was now full of the sound and illumination of what seemed like a hundred pop flares going off as we all waited, staring out at that cleared ground beyond the wire.
    Shortly, a helicopter gun ship showed up and mini gunned the area with a curtain of lead that looked like one big red screen descending to the ground from the dark sky above the flares. We called them spooky gunships and they could put a round into every square foot of a football field sized area in less than 30 seconds. Nothing above ground could withstand such withering fire. An eerie quietness took hold, broken only by the zipping sound of the spooky mini guns as the terrain was raked with lead. Earthbound marines looked skyward as if it were Zeus or some other God practicing his art from above.
    When the chopper ceased fire and left, dawn broke so quickly it was almost like waking up from a dream. Colonel Blevins, the battalion CO, was now on the line and I could hear his operator, another com section marine named Tim, relaying orders for the patrol to break cover, reconnoiter for killed and wounded, and come in.
    Usually no higher than a sergeant led patrols but it was Lt. Stansworth, the security platoon CO, leading this time and apparently he had been wounded by the first volley of AK fire. Word was that it was only superficial, having grazed his shoulder. Stansworth, a former force recon marine, was about as gung ho as they came and it was typical that he would be in the front during a firefight. That little action would later get him his captain’s bars.
     After a bit the patrol radioed that they had two confirmed kills and were bringing them in. All eyes were on the gate in the wire when the patrol appeared, half carrying, half dragging two body laden ponchos. The Colonel left the trench and met Lt. Stansworth just in front of my position near a little bridge over the trench where they dropped the bodies. A small crowd began to gather, mostly officers but a few enlisted as well. They were snapping pictures as Tim and I stood off to the side and eyed the lumpy ponchos.
    After rolling up the bloody sleeve of the L T’s jungle blouse and examining the dressing Col. Blevins asked to see the bodies.
    The larger one was opened first, exposing a young Vietnamese male dressed in khaki shorts, a black long sleeve shirt, and sandals made from rubber tires. It was hard to recognize any features of the face which were now just a pair of cloudy dark eyes set in a ripped and bloody mass. It looked as if the double ought had done a thorough job clear through. From the open back of the skull there were parts of reddish grey matter spread on the poncho. Only a dark hole existed where an ear had been cleanly severed. The rest of the body was not in much better shape as evidenced by pools of half clotted blood that were starting to darken the mud around the edges of the poncho. But for the clothes, what lay there could have been the half finished job of a butcher suddenly called away from the back of his shop. Except for the occasional whirring sound of a camera advancing film it was utterly quiet as the Colonel pointed to the other smaller body and nodded for it to be exposed.
    A large conical hat covered the head with the rest of the body in remarkably better shape than the first. Dressed in black silk pants and shirt and wearing the same kind of sandals, known as Ho Chi Minhs, it appeared from the large patch of blood on the shirt that this Vietnamese had been hit only in the upper torso. When the Colonel reached down and lifted the hat covering the head, a long stream of silky black hair that was caught in the chin strap cascaded down to frame the face of a lovely Vietnamese girl of perhaps sixteen. Her eyes were closed and except for the bloody shirt she might have been asleep. Everyone, including the Colonel, stared in open amazement. Not a camera shutter was launched nor a word said. A scene which no mere camera could capture lay before us and it was something that only we who experienced it could realize. Something that was and forever would be present to us youngsters of war standing there in shock. Always present in its absence, for it was our girlfriend, our sister or our buddy’s sister, the dream girl we wanted to go home to, or the one we hoped to find when we got there. It was a piece of us that lay there dead. Without another word the Colonel quickly placed the hat back over the girl’s face and left. There was no weapon found.

    Those first weeks in Vietnam saw me trying to carry out the duty that had been placed before me but as far as technical radio repair was concerned there was not much that I could do. We had neither the parts nor the equipment necessary to perform such operations. If we couldn’t cannibalize from radio to radio we simply shipped it up to the regiment for repair. Because of that techs like me usually ended up working down into the radio operator, or wire stringer jobs.
    From Sgt. down rank was not a big deal in the com section which ran the COC bunker, the hub for all communications coming in or out of the battalion, and also monitored the nets of some nearby units.
    The 1st, along with a few other units, was responsible for protecting the approaches to the Da Nang airstrip throughout that area immediately south of Hill 821. It was a large area that began at the east end of a valley that ran many kilometers into the countryside between lush green mountains. A pretty land dotted with rice paddies and small villages, crisscrossed by meandering streams. To stand atop one of those mountains under a sunny tropical sky and look out over that broad expanse of beauty one would think it one of the most peaceful places on earth. But from that same spot in the dead of night one would see red and yellow explosions along with the red and green tracers of small arms fire decorating the sky in many spots that had appeared so pretty and peaceful during the day. It was said that the Viet Cong owned the night. It was then that they showed just how jealous they were of their property.
    All these things I was beginning to acknowledge. Things that one had to see to understand since they previously had not been fairly described by the drum beaters back in America. I was able to see that the gung ho marine and unit cohesion usually held up as an example in the states was almost non existent there in Vietnam. Nobody was unhappy when someone’s rotation date came, for to get out of there was the big prize, though the melancholy of being left behind was hard to avoid too.
    When I first got there I tried to get along with everybody and quickly got to know several of the young men in my section. But probably more because I had grown up that way than because of the different timelines everybody was on, I didn’t get very close to many. Also, as I would later learn, getting close to someone complicated the dismissiveness necessary to keep the hurt and shame at bay when people died or the fear got too big. But just the situation we found ourselves in, fighting a war that was unnecessary and much too one sided, seemed to provide enough glue to hold us together to some extent.
    Since I was a quick corporal I had the privilege of sharing half a hooch, a plywood structure with a GI tin roof, with two other corporals, Amos Rooter and Charlie Roderno. Charlie had come in country only a couple of weeks after me but Rooter was already half way through his tour. The other half of the hooch was partitioned off for the two sergeants in the section, Bob Winsonsky and Alan Blume. Because of that and our shared NCO status I got to know these individuals a little better than the others of lesser rank who all shared one large hooch.
    One commodity that was never in short supply unless you were in the field was beer. Every evening after chow the club would open and it was there at the crowded tables that most social activity took place over countless beers served by pretty Vietnamese girls wearing ao dais. An ao dais was a beautiful combination of a dress split up the sides worn over long silk pants. The beer was paid for with MPC or military payment currency which was as good as real money and even preferred to the national currency which was the piastre.
    When it came to the military culture there were quite a few more divisions than one would find stateside. Racial divisions in the war zone were more pronounced than in America because in Vietnam everybody had a gun. Vietnam was a white man’s war but the blacks, being easier to draft, got caught up in it disproportionately. Black soldiers took far more of the casualties than the whites, which along with the age old discriminatory practices of American racial prejudice caused considerable resentment and sometimes even rebellion. It was not unheard of to have actual firefights between the races although that was rare. But because in America it was usually only “the man” who had a gun and in the Nam everyone had a gun, suppression of the black race was far harder to accomplish. That led to a milieu where blacks and whites went their own ways absent the authority of the white cop with the only gun. However these segregated conditions did not exist in the bush where all were green and most interracial friendships were forged. But once back inside the wire the old standards and separations quickly reappeared, even among close friends.
    Another divide could be found between those who used marijuana and those who didn’t. I had of course heard of pot and while in California had even known some marines who used it. I had tried it a couple of times before I went in the marines but didn’t experience any effects from it and considered it a waste of time when I could be drinking beer. Consequently I could always be found with the mostly white “juicers.” At least that was the way it was before Corporal Rooter turned me on.

    Rooter, one of the corporals whom I had shared a hooch with, had been transferred to the marine air wing at Chu Lai but had literally dropped in aboard a chopper for a quick visit at the 1st while on some kind of temporary duty in the Da Nang area. As luck would have it or Rooter already knew, probably the latter, there happened to be a USO show at the club that evening. Almost always these shows would consist of a bare bones plywood stage and a Korean band with at least a couple of pretty girls in short skirts. They danced and sang American songs for the beer drinking, hooting jar heads gathered there. Laughter, macho jokes and too much to drink were standard fare at these events so Rooter and I quickly squeezed into the little club for some fun and beer.
    After the show we returned to the hooch and were rapping about life down in Chu Lai when Rooter suddenly asked, “You want to get high?”
    “What do you mean,” I replied, “we just drank all that beer?”
    Rooter smiled and rolled his eyes.
    “Yeah, but that was beer, I got some really fine Chu Lai weed. You ever try any weed?”
    “Yeah I tried it a couple of times, it doesn’t do anything for me, can’t see what all the hoopla is about.”
    Rooter eyed me skeptically.
    “Yeah, where did you ever smoke any pot?”
    “Back in the world, West Virginia,” I said. I was about to elaborate but Rooter burst out laughing before I could go on..
    “West Virginia! You mean you never smoked any Nam weed? You really are a cherry. Come on let’s go outside and smoke a couple of joints. Then you can tell me it doesn’t do anything for you.”
    “Are you crazy,” I said, “you mean you’re packing around marijuana?”
    “Hey take it easy, you’d be surprised at the number of heads around here. It’s cool. Come on new guy, I’m going to show you what’s happening.”
    Once outside the hooch behind some refrigeration units Rooter pulled up the bloused leg of his jungle trousers and pulled a little cellophane package of pre-rolled joints out of his sock and fired one up. After inhaling deeply and holding the smoke in he passed the joint to me and exhaled.
    “Take a big drag and hold it in.”
    I did as instructed and as I drew on the joint the pot seeds compacted in it would sometimes explode in a small shower of sparks that for a split second would light up the darkness around us. Back and forth we passed the joint until it was too short to smoke and Rooter ate it. Neither of us said anything for a while. We just sat on the ground looking at the sky.
    Rooter finally asked, “Man, how you doing, good weed huh?”
    “I don’t feel a thing. Just a little bloated from the beer.”
    “You’re shitting me,” Rooter exclaimed as he went back into his sock, produced another joint, lit it, and passed it directly to me. I took the joint and after a long drag offered it back to Rooter.
    “Hell no, not for me. I’m totally wasted,” he said, “wow, man, not getting off.....you smoke that one by yourself.”
    “OK, but this shit don’t affect me, I tell you.”
    We sat there for several minutes, Rooter quietly looking around at the night as I puffed on the joint, holding it in and then exhaling. When I had smoked about half of it a sudden rush overtook me. Nothing like the change overtime brought on by alcohol. This was like one moment the world was one way and the next it was different in the extreme. Suddenly I felt incapacitated and no matter how hard I tried I remained that way. Time took on aspects that were foreign to me and I lost track of how long we had been there but it must have been some while for when I looked down I saw the half smoked joint dead in my hand. I looked over at Rooter who was staring at me with a big shit eating grin on his face. Reaching the joint toward him and in the most serious voice I said, “You can have this back now.”
    “Did you get your ass kicked, cherry,” Rooter laughingly said, “still don’t affect you, huh?”
    I now definitely knew better than that.
    “Lord have mercy, I am smashed. What the hell am I going to do. I can’t hardly move.”
    Laughing, Rooter stood up, reached down, and grabbed me by the upper arm to help me stand.
    “Come on, let’s get back inside the hooch, you look like you’re ready for the rack.”
    After Rooter got me to my rack he left, never to be seen again, just off into the night or back to Chu Lai or some other unit. He wasn’t even carrying a weapon. Just that ass kicking Chu Lai weed like some vagabond who had quit the war and was now just touring the places he had been.
    I laid there half on and half off the rack, almost blinded by the brightness of the overhead bare bulb. I felt as if I had been planted there and could only with time grow out of it. It still must have been early because I could hear some coming and going around me so I tried to act like I was just relaxing. It seemed so long ago that I was outside with Rooter but every indication was that it had only been a few minutes.
    One thing was for sure, I was not immune to pot and for the first time in my life I was stoned. Fully dressed with not even my boots off, I was held up by the rack, and felt like I was made of stone. No longer would I consider such a feeling ridiculous. The section chief, a very tall thin black Ssgt. walked in, took one look at me peering up through the glare of the overhead light and knowingly smiled. Slowly shaking his head and wagging his pointing finger, he knew I was stoned. And I knew that he knew but not a word was said, then or afterward. The chief just quietly turned around and left. He was to rotate out soon and that was enough to keep him quite no doubt. Besides, we had known each other before he had made staff and became the section chief. Although I didn’t know for sure, I figured that he had had a few puffs himself over the past year.
    In the beginning I didn’t smoke often but when I did I was amazed at the number of guys I knew who also smoked. The next time I decided to indulge I and Charlie Roderno, my remaining hooch mate after the transfer of Rooter, ended up in a remote ditch between the club and the wire. It was completely dark but the ditch was full of people and when the matches and Zippos were struck to keep the joints going I recognized half the com section. I also found out why not many blacks came to the club. Most of them were out in the ditch doing pot instead.

    I didn’t do the communal pot thing much after that. Most of the time I only smoked with guys from my own section and to my knowledge, just as with beer, it never happened outside the wire. Usually I and another section member would sit out late at night, share a joint, and talk about the war and what we were going to do when we got out of it, spending an hour just rapping and watching the pop flares shoot up into the sky and slowly drop back to earth, we felt removed for a little while.
    Christmas and New Years Eve I was hidden away in the night watching the tracers fill the sky as marines all around hill 821 turned their guns to the air. These little gigs were a slim hold on the world across the sea. It all evaporated quickly once Christmas and New Years had come and gone but when my mother sent me a small box of cheeses for the holidays that little box went a long way as it was shared a little at a time among the section. That Christmas of 1968 and many of those that followed would always be associated with that gaily packaged box of cheeses resting under a hanging M-16 rifle and a couple of Christmas cards. I took a picture of it for my personal Christmas card that I eventually gave to my step kids many years later. That was before they and their mother left me, not having been with me even a year.

    There are places and times in people’s lives that seem to take on a significance that one looking on might find odd. But for me, as meager and poor as it was in a war zone, that Christmas of 1968, along with the yuletide cheeses, became the last Christmas with any meaning. At that point in my tour I was still struggling to get along and remain a part of the World which I considered to be the USA. But my grip was not as tight as it had once been. Now instead of an angel atop my Xmas centerpiece there was a gun. Things had changed.
    Time inside the wire was slow and that meant time to try and fill the empty feelings that nagged. But when I stepped beyond the concertina I was as full up of bone and blood as I could stand. The 1st had people a few clicks out into the bush every night on patrols and listening posts. And then there was the observation post beyond that. I had been on them all, humping the radio because the grunts had a hard time keeping anyone who could operate the radio, change batteries, and keep track of the different callsigns and frequencies. Long hours spent in the COC bunker assured that a marine from com section was up on all that stuff.
    LPs or listening posts were the worst. Three guys with rifles, grenade launcher, starlight scope, and a radio were sent a couple of hundred meters out and a little ways up hill 821. They would find a spot, settle in and try to see what was going on, reporting every hour on the situation. No digging in or any of that defensive stuff. Just quietly hunkering down and trying to freeze in place for hours on end. The joke was that you listened until you heard them coming, reported it, and hoped they passed you by without knowing it. However it rarely worked out that way. In reality a listening post was fodder, no more, no less, and if you were unlucky enough to be there when Victor Charlie came you were unlikely to survive any fight from such an exposed position. But it would eliminate the element of surprise. Everybody hated listening posts and knew that it was a throwaway job with a posthumous purple heart as its only reward. Once when I thought I heard someone creeping through the bush my heart pounded so loud that I had to listen between heart beats. Peering in the direction of the sound for a couple of minutes I discovered it was just an insect moving among the weeds a few feet from my ear.
    There were definitely other people out there in that darkness. Other LPs and at least one patrol. The fuzzy green mess seen through a starlight scope was almost useless at being able to define which was which. Back in the COC bunker the watch commander had a map and was supposed to keep track of everyone’s position. I knew that was not really effective because I had been humping on some patrols where the grunt sergeant in charge would tell us to just lay down and sleep. Consequently our location was not accurate.
    I had almost killed some of my own men when I was on net control in the COC bunker because of that kind of bull shit. One of the LPs was reporting movement at a place where there was not supposed to be anyone. With the watch commander asleep in another section of the bunker, and not wanting to wake him, I took it upon myself to order grenades launched. Soon as I heard the explosions the screaming on the radio began.
    “Stop that Goddamned shit right now!!”
    Nobody was wounded but when they came in at dawn I was outside the COC bunker watching them pass. Although nothing was said, some very hard looks were exchanged. The watch commander never even knew it happened or if he did it was never mentioned. Just another example of some dumb son of a bitch dying for his country..... almost.

    The 1st must have gotten some intelligence that indicated a threat to the observation post which was about 6 kilometers out. It was decided to pull an ambush on the far side of the hill that it occupied. Security platoon sent word that they needed a radio operator for the ambush but most of the lower ranks of the com section were already manning various radio posts and that left only a few NCOs and an officer. Officers, even within grunt units, never packed the radio so I, being the junior NCO, volunteered when the others firmly declined. A lieutenant that I had never seen was leading the ambush and that in itself was unusual. Plus a scout dog and handler were also going. Who was ambushing who, and why was a scout dog going on an ambush? I just chalked it up to Vietnam, the major American debacle where nothing seemed right. Altogether there were only eight of us who gathered at motor-t to board the truck that would take us out. The LT, me, and a corpsman plus five grunts, an M60 machine gunner, grenade launcher, dog handler, claymore man, and a rifleman. When we got on the truck one young black grunt was bitterly complaining, almost to the point of tears. He had only 9 days left on his tour and thought that it wasn’t fair to send him out when he was so short. He got no sympathy as the others ignored him and accepted the assignment as just another task to get through the best way they could. There was no joking around or any conversation as the LT rode in the cab and the rest of us rode in the back out the dirt road to the OP track. Black striped faces were serious, and except for the gear and black grease, we could have been a bunch of strangers sitting in a waiting room to see our doctor back in the world. Once we got to the little track leading up to the OP the truck dumped us and returned to base.
    As the sun was setting and a tropical bluish green dusk was fast coloring our world we humped up the track to the OP and gathered around a burn barrel to receive our final briefing. Suddenly a loud metallic sound interrupted the briefing. It took but an instant for us to see the live M79 grenade bouncing on the ground by the burn barrel. We scattered in all directions. The dumb shit carrying the grenade launcher had accidentally discharged his weapon but since the round traveled less than six feet before slamming into the barrel the safety mechanism had kept it from exploding. When we realized that everyone calmed down and the LT told us what we should have already known.
    “Don’t load your weapons until we leave the perimeter.”
    Not even an ass chewing for stupidity took place, probably because it wouldn’t have made any difference. Plus there could be much more stuff to come very shortly. Why put down one of the few men you had to fight it with? Nam was different from the gung ho bull shit back in the states. People actually got killed ...and not always by enemy fire.
    The LT made sure that my radio worked, the claymores were ready to deploy, and that there was sufficient ammunition before leading us through the wire. Once outside he told us to lock and load our weapons. The handler and his dog walked point, stringing us out a little. The LT and I were in the middle going down the rocky foot trail toward the valley floor. It was almost completely dark but the monsoon season had passed so we had the stars and a small moon to see by.
    I had never been off the road in that territory and didn’t know the terrain so I just followed the LT and hoped that he had read the map correctly. On a day trip out to the OP I had seen Vietnamese carrying loads on shoulder sticks so I knew there were people around there. But now the road was long gone. We wound around and up and down small hills, putting considerable distance between ourselves and the OP. The terrain was not bad and with the extra adrenaline the pace seemed easy but visibility was not good as we passed through tropical bush with no clear vision of anything but the person ahead. It was no wonder that we saw no sign of any human presence.
    The narrow path resembled some sort of game trail that meandered through the undergrowth. Only the tops of palm trees could be seen, dark shapes outlined against the night sky. Eventually we left the trail and cut across a wide grassy corridor, the first place that I could see ahead to the the dog handler and the front of the patrol. The dog was obscured by the grass but in the faint light there was everyone else, strung out across the thigh high tropical meadow. Word was passed back to hold up because the dog had alerted on something. Everybody froze while the handler checked it out. I wondered what in the world could there be to check out in that darkness. The dog had alerted, something was wrong. How could one know any more than that. I was not used to the scout dogs because they usually came in and went out on helicopters—far out, all over the Nam to the grunt units who lived in the bush. We were flanked by a small bushy hill on one side and a stretch of palm trees with the same dense undergrowth that we had just come through on the other. Realizing that we were very exposed I went from being anxious to just plain scared. When I returned my attention to the point I saw the muzzle flashes and heard the AK-47 fire coming from beneath the palms to the front. Almost simultaneously another series of flashes and sound came from the same tree line nearby. I dropped to the earth as the LT screamed to return fire. Hugging the earth but still managing to get my rifle raised I emptied my magazine in the direction of the tree line as the others laid down what fire power they had. Three magazines I went through in a couple of minutes, blindly, by rote, not thinking or wishing for anything but to please not die. I lived only within the all encompassing sound of the fire. Desperately trying to get more ammo from the bandoliers tangled around my chest, I began to discriminate the sounds of grenades from the launcher as they hit along the tree line. I thanked God for that dumb son of a bitch that almost blew us all up back at the burn barrel. Not to mention the M60 machine gunner I could hear firing furiously.

See the next issue of cc&d (2/21) for the 2nd part of this story!

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