Authors: Thom Nicholson
I checked out from the arms room a couple of .22-caliber Huntsman automatic target pistols with silencers. The deadly little handguns would be ideal if we got close to some bad guys and wanted to snuff them without alerting any others close by. Besides, I wanted to try the silenced weapons on the enemy. The sound they made when fired was hardly louder than a skeeter’s cough. Of course, when the silenced pistol was added to all my “normal” gear, I could barely hoist my ass onto the helicopter for the ride out to Charlie country.
Lieutenant McMurray was with me as the assigned platoon officer. Lieutenant Cable was off on R & R for a week,
and I didn’t want to command the unit myself, just go along as the “superboss.” Little Pete was always ready for a romp in the brush, so I wasn’t losing anything by having him in the backup role. I liked Mac better than any other American soldier in my command, although I considered myself blessed because I liked all my men. Command of B Company had been a wonderful experience to that point.
“Ready to go?” I queried my friend and XO as we climbed onto a black-painted whirlybird that was trembling as if the iron monster was impatient to get back into the air.
“You betcha,
Dai Uy,
” McMurray answered. “I got a good feeling on this one. We’re gonna strike gold.”
“Sounds good to me.” I waved at the inquisitive face of the pilot, and he turned back to his controls and got us airborne.
Once again, we banked hard over the rice paddies that surrounded Da Nang, then headed west toward the blue-green haze of Laos. The recon team that had spotted the troop movements was waiting at the selected LZ, so we had the luxury of going into a landing area we knew was probably clear of waiting NVA soldiers.
The chopper flared into the waist-high grass, and we piled off, heading for the edge of the tiny clearing in the middle of the Laotian jungle. The other three birds dropped their loads and roared away, leaving the usual ominous silence in their wake. As we moved away from the LZ, my tension level soared skyward. We were in Indian country again, and over there, on that side of the border, the game was for real.
The slight nausea of vulnerability I always felt right after the choppers left us was gnawing at my gut. I never did get used to that “abandoned” feeling, not once in two years of combat. I was always ready to go out, but watching those choppers headed away, without me, did bad things to my nervous system.
We moved a couple of hundred meters away from the LZ and went into a defensive perimeter while Mac and I discussed the situation with the recon team leader, Sergeant
First Class Boker. He was so well camouflaged in stripes, war paint, and brush that even out in the open he was hard to see.
“What’s the drill?” I asked the grimy, sweat-streaked NCO, who was unfolding the map he carried and smoothing it out on the ground at my feet.
“We ran into a series of heavily traveled trails right here.” He pointed to the 1:50,000 map, carefully tracing his grimy finger along a ridgeline. “That’s over to the west about five klicks. We can ease down there tomorrow and set up ambush sites for the next morning. The way foot traffic has been going on ’em lately, we should have contact before the day’s done.”
I marked the spot on my map. “Looks good. What numbers have they been traveling in?”
Boker scratched his black-and-green-painted cheek. “So far, pretty big. We’ve not seen anything less than a company-size unit. A hundred-plus in each party. That’s why we didn’t take a chance on going after one ourselves.”
“Shit, man. We’re not big enough to take on a company. I only brought thirty-six men.”
“I know,
Dai Uy
, but sooner or later there’s gotta be some stragglers or somethin’ headin’ south. We’ll just have to find a place where we can see the road without them seeing us. Then, it’s just a matter of gettin’ lucky.”
I nodded. “I guess so. Okay, lead us to a good spot for an RON. I wanna be on the trail at daybreak tomorrow. The quicker we get to the road, the quicker we can get an ambush set up.”
For that mission, we had to bring several boxes of Italian Green along. The heavy boxes of booby-trapped mortar ammunition were supposed to be left near ammo dumps or troop bivouac spots. As soon as Mac and I were satisfied we had all the poop we were gonna get from Sergeant Boker, I signaled for the men to gather their gear and get ready to move.
“The first trail we come to,” I whispered to Mac, “we’re dropping this crap. We’ll make our own ammo dump.” It
wasn’t too long before we crossed a tiny little path, and we quickly put a pile of mortar rounds out in the middle of it. If I had to guess, I’d say the stuff is still there, molding away in the jungle. The idea might have sounded good at headquarters, but the pukes who thought it up never had to hump eighty-pound boxes of booby-trapped 82mm mortar rounds through steaming hot jungle. As I mentioned earlier, I had a real heartburn with the concept.
We went into our RON perimeter a few hours later, alongside a footpath that appeared to be heavily used. I set up the classic L-shaped ambush, and we settled in for the night. Like all trips into the bush, we had to suffer through the unceasing assaults of bloodthirsty mosquitoes and no-see-ums. The first night was always the hardest. Bugs and nerves made sure nobody slept, and the dawn always seemed a long time coming. In my case, the bugs’ absolute rapture over the taste of my blood made worrying about the enemy a distant problem. We didn’t take insect repellant on operations because of its distinct odor, one that Charlie would recognize. All I could do was roll down my sleeves, pull a mosquito net over my face, and suffer.
Like every morning before or since, dawn finally came, and we moved out toward the waiting rendezvous with the enemy. He was close; everyone could sense it, so we moved slow and careful.
We headed for a spot I had picked on the map that seemed ideal for an ambush site. It was about six klicks according to the map, maybe eight klicks’ actual travel distance from where we were. But, it took us all day. That’s how thick the jungle was. We came to a particularly tangled section of jungle and slowly penetrated into its dank interior. Suddenly, the column came to a halt. “What the hell’s the matter?” I hissed up the line toward the front. “Get moving, the day’s almost over.”
“The point’s stuck,” came back down in reply. “We’re gonna have to back out.”
“Hold it right there,” I commanded. “I’m coming up to the
point. Pete, you take charge of the main body. I’ll kick some ass and get us started again.”
I moved up, fighting my way around the file of immobile soldiers jammed up like commuters in a freeway pileup. I finally inched my way to the front of the column. We were completely surrounded by a gigantic growth of wait-a-minute vines. These were famous throughout Vietnam as the toughest, thorniest, nastiest bushes ever grown by the devil. The thorns were sharp and long and resisted any movement once some poor soldier got caught in one, hence the name.
I’d never seen such an abundance of wait-a-minutes in one spot before. The area to the front and side was one impenetrable barrier of pain-giving thorn branches, some several inches thick, twisted and tangled together. “Goddamn,” I exclaimed to the point squad leader, Sergeant Garrett. “How did you get in this mess?”
“Fuck me like a virgin if I know,
Dai Uy,
” he answered, gasping for breath from the exertion necessary to cut a path through the thorny impasse. “We just sort of got in and couldn’t get out. Now it’s so thick all around us that we can’t go any way but back the way we came from.”
He was right. There just wasn’t any way to go ahead, or even sideways. I carefully worked my way back to the rear of the column, and we backtracked until we could see a way to circumvent the hazard. We had to circle several hundred meters to clear the worst of the stuff. By the time we made it to a spot I liked on the map, it was well after sundown. I pulled everyone back into a good location to RON, and we spent another night slaking the thirst of the insects.
Just before we turned in, I gathered all the Americans around me, and we went over the next day’s plans.
“We’ll use the bramble bush as our rally point if we get hit and have to bug out,” I told them. “Get back in there and hole up. We’ll not have to worry about any VC coming up on us without our knowing it.”
“Damn right about that,” Sergeant Garrett, the first squad
leader, mumbled. “Pull a couple of branches over our trail, and Charlie will never know we was there.”
“Sergeant Boker, how far to our objective?” I looked at the recon team leader.
“ ’Bout three hundred meters ahead. Just on the other side of this hill. I scouted it just before you got here. It’s perfect for an ambush. There’s a walkin’ trail built along the far side of this big hill, with a steep drop-off to a creek at the bottom. We can get in position above the trail, in good cover, and still be close to it.”
I nodded. “Okay, first thing tomorrow, we’ll sneak in slow and easy, set up the ambush, and see who comes along. I don’t want any firing, and for sure don’t let your men move around once we get in position. I’ll start the shindig with my trusty little ol’ silenced pistol, and we’ll see how it goes from there. Now, get some sleep, if you can.”
I spent another night fighting a war against the bloodsuckers, losing it badly. The morning sun was a welcome visitor. “I’m gonna be bled dry before we even get a chance at a snatch, the way these bugs are after me,” I grumbled to McMurray.
The recon team took off, and we settled in to await their signal to move up. In about an hour we got the call. “I’ve found a great spot,” Sergeant Boker called back. “Head out at a direct 180 from the RON, and we’ll pick you up just before you reach the trail.”
“Roger,” I whispered back. “Any activity on the road?”
“Negative. All quiet.”
I got the platoon going and stayed up front with Lieutenant McMurray. “We’ll run into the recon team just ahead. Don’t get trigger-happy,” I cautioned.
“Gotcha,
Dai Uy,
” was all he said. Mac knew his business, but it made me feel better to remind him.
Sergeant Boker suddenly stepped out of the bushes with one of his Yards. His unexpected appearance almost made me forget my own advice. The brush was as thick around there as
anyplace I ever saw in South Vietnam; fighting would have to be at extremely close range. That meant it would be easy to lose anybody after us, as well.
“We found a great spot,
Dai Uy,
” he reported. “Follow me.” He headed off to the right, down the steep hill.
Sure enough, it was a great spot for an ambush. The trail followed the side of the huge hill, and the far side was a steep drop-off, covered in heavy brush. Two small ridges came down almost to the edge of the trail, giving a perfect spot for the snatch team—McMurray, Pham, and three Montagnard soldiers. Sergeant Garrett had the rest of the platoon on the second ridge, where he could cover the snatch and our retreat up the hillside. To watch our backs, I put Sergeant Boker and his recon team on top of the hill above me. It was tactically sound, and it got him away from the trail. I certainly didn’t want him or his men, instead of my platoon, grabbing a POW. Once everyone was situated, we settled down to wait for some poor schmuck to come diddy-bopping down the trail. My plan was that I’d shoot him in the leg with the silenced pistol, grab his ass, and beat feet to the pickup point. Then, fame, fortune, and a fabulous time would all be mine. I silently hummed a tune as I waited for my gold mine to arrive.
By the end of the day, I was all out of tunes, and we hadn’t seen a soul, except for high-flying fighter-bombers headed somewhere along the myriad of trails that comprised the Ho Chi Minh trail complex.
At dusk, I pulled the men back to the place where we’d spent the previous night. The men had laid at the ambush site all day, and biological functions had to be attended to. Besides, we couldn’t do any good after dark since the enemy would probably lay up until morning. We really needed daylight to snatch and run.
“So, we were unlucky,” I said to McMurray after we settled in for another night. “Maybe tomorrow. The only thing is, I may be dead from loss of blood. What is it about me that these damn mosquitoes love so?”
“Shit,
Dai Uy,
” Sergeant Garrett laughed as he listened to me complain. “These Vietnam bugs are smart. They know better than to get after us dust-grubbin’ foot soldiers when there’s blue-blooded officers around to gnaw on.”
He chuckled smugly, and settled in the little spot he’d made for the night, his head and rifle pointed away from the center of the camp, the way we always slept, ready to take on any unexpected enemy assault.
“If I thought these bloodthirsty bastards had that much savvy, I’d field promote you to general, my good Sergeant,” I grumbled as I tried to make myself as inconspicuous and comfortable as possible.
The next day was as unproductive as the one before. We spent it lying quietly, suffering the sun and bugs, without any sign of foot traffic. “I wonder if the NVA has quit sending troops south?” I complained that night. “Maybe the war is over, and they forgot to tell us?”
I scratched in the dirt while describing my next bright move. “Let’s split up tomorrow. I’ll stay here with ten men, Pete, you and Sergeant Boker each take ten and cover the next two trails to the west. If anybody snatches or gets hit, we all pull back to the extraction LZ together. We’ll put up a stand there if there’s a bunch of ’em. Sound all right to you?”
They all agreed it was as good as any other plan they could think up, so we settled in for another night battling the bugs.
The next morning, we split up, and I took my bunch back to the same place we had spent the last two days. By mid-morning, the other two teams were in place along smaller trails to the west, and we sweated out the hours.
About two, I thought I heard the faint popping of gunfire. My men did as well, and their eyes turned to Pham, who was waiting by the radio. “Snatch Six, this is Five. Over.” It was Pete McMurray.
I grabbed the radiophone and whispered a reply, “This is Six. Go ahead. Over.”