Authors: Thom Nicholson
Somehow or another, the Montagnards forgave us our fallibility and fought their hearts out for us, even though we didn’t deserve their sacrifice. It sickens me to think that we abandoned them to face the victorious NVA’s reprisals when we cut and ran from Vietnam in 1972. I suppose the vast majority of them were slaughtered shortly thereafter.
The trail the point squad was hacking through the heavy growth was mostly southwest, at least when the terrain allowed it. This forced us to go up and down the sharp ridges as well as through the brush. At least we were moving away from the pipeline, toward our LZ and extraction out of this green hell. On the map, the spot was a good choice, high and apparently flat on top. That meant easy access for the choppers to land in and pick us up for the ride home.
I kept humping through the brush, scarcely noticing the passage of time. Suddenly, I realized that the day was almost over, and we weren’t anywhere near where we were supposed to rendezvous with Pete and his platoon. I cursed myself for deciding to separate my command. I had meant for the two halves to stay close together, but the terrain and circumstances had forced them much too far apart. We were not going to make the LZ location in time for pickup tonight. That meant that we’d have to sit it out until tomorrow. If the NVA were close, we were in for a long night.
As if to punctuate my dilemma, the solitary shot of an AK-47 proclaimed to the world that our unshakable trackers were still behind us. I motioned for the radiophone from my new operator, a tall Yard a few years older than Pham.
“Sneaky Five, this is Six, over.” I talked quietly, hoping only Pete could hear me.
“This is Five, over.” Lieutenant Mac was right there on the phone. “You getting close to the LZ?”
“Negative, Five. We’re a long way yet. How ’bout you?”
“This is Five. We’re almost there. Charlie still on your tail?”
“Roger, Five. He’s right behind me, like a shadow. He’s shooting his rifle about every ten minutes now.”
“Okay, Six. You want me to call in the extraction choppers?”
“This is Six. You’d better not. We’re gonna be late. If I’m gonna spend the night there with bad guys all around me, I want you right there at my side. You get to the LZ first, you start setting up fighting positions. We’ll hustle along and be there as soon as possible.”
“Six, this is Sneaky Five. We’re almost there. I’ll be waiting. Get your ass here, pronto. All of a sudden, I’ve got a funny feeling about this place.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I muttered to myself. The day was flying past. I do believe it was one of the shortest days in recorded history. We were in a race against the sun, and it won. It was just at the far horizon when Sergeant Crowley came back to me from the front of the column.
“We’re close,
Dai Uy
. I can hear someone choppin’ trees ahead. It has to be the 3d Platoon.”
I nodded in agreement. “Hustle it up. I’ll call Ell-tee Mac and tell him we’re on our way in.” Now that I had stopped walking, I could hear the sound as well. McMurray had his men cutting trees down to clear a landing zone and to open fields of fire. “I got a feeling we’re gonna need defensive positions before this day’s done,” I remarked to Sergeant Crowley.
I grabbed the radiophone again. “Sneaky Five, this is Six. We’re coming up the hill now. Hold your fire. Warn your people not to hose us down.”
“Roger, Six. Tell me, where did I go on R & R last month?” Pete was no dummy. He was making sure I was who I said I
was, and not some English-speaking NVA trying to sneak in close.
“Taipei, you little fucker. And on my ticket.”
“In a million years, your ticket! Come on in. Even Charlie couldn’t guess the answer to that one.”
We headed for the top of the hill. We had made a lucky choice. The hilltop was nice and flat and shaped like an oval. The sharp ridge leading up to the flattop made it impossible for more than a few soldiers to come at us from the side, and the back of the hill was so steep that nobody could approach from our rear undetected. That meant if the enemy came at us, it would have to be up the steep slope to the front.
Pete had cleared away almost all the trees, and we had a flat surface 150 feet by 30 feet, at its widest, to defend.
“Hi,
Dai Uy.
” He watched me clamber over the brush and debris at the front edge of the hilltop. “Not a bad spot to defend, is it?”
I walked around the top with him. He was right. The sun was going down fast, so I gathered all the Americans together. “We’ll sit it out here tonight. Lieutenant McMurray will take the right, and I’ll take the left. Each platoon will send out a three-man listening post. If they get pushed in, they’ll become the platoon reserve and will dig in behind the front of their platoon’s perimeter. Pete, you keep a sharp eye on the ridge approach on your right. Not many could come that way, but a few might get real close before you see ’em. I’ll set up there, by that big tree stump behind the 1st Platoon. You NCOs put two men to a hole, all along the front rim of the hilltop.”
By the time we had everyone spotted, it was almost completely dark. I felt good about our position on the flattopped hill. We had cover from the enemy’s direct fire and were on the high ground. Best of all, we wouldn’t have to fight any direction except to our front. Unless, and the thought kept nagging at me, the enemy sneaked up along the ridge to the far right. I crossed my fingers that Pete would keep a sharp eye
on that avenue of approach and went back to the hole my bodyguards had dug for me beside a dead tree stump. I jumped in with my radio operator, the other two men of my personal entourage on the other side of the stump in their own hole. We would be the reaction reserve if any enemy assault broke through the outer line of defense to the front.
It was going to be a dark night, hardly any moon showing in the clouded sky. I had just wiggled into a comfortable position and called for a first-light extraction the next morning, when it dawned on me that I hadn’t even asked about the damned pipeline, the reason for this whole operation.
I clicked the squelch button on the radiophone, causing a soft static burst in Pete’s phone. He was about twenty-five meters to my right, in his hole.
“You call,
Dai Uy?
” he answered.
“Yeah,” I whispered back. “I forgot to ask. What happened when you blew the pipeline?” From where we were, I hadn’t seen a thing when Pete’s men blasted the line.
“Shit, Captain. The son of a bitch was dry as a bone. All we got was some dust. I don’t think the damned thing was ever even used.”
“Well, I’ll be double-damned. We came all this way for a dry hole. Wouldn’t you know it would be that way? And it cost me Pham.”
“I heard. Sorry about that, Captain. I know he was a special friend to you.”
“The worst thing was leaving him behind. I wish I’d insisted on bringing him with us. If I’d have known we were gonna be too late getting here to get out tonight, I’d have made the effort.”
Suddenly Pete’s voice dropped an octave. “
Dai Uy
, my outpost just came in. I’ll go see what’s up and call you back. Five out.”
I gave the phone to my radio carrier and listened hard. Something was up to the front. I could hear a commotion as the outpost soldiers scrambled through the brush we had
piled in front of our position. I hurried over to where Sergeant Crowley was sharing a hole with the medic, Sergeant Margier. “What happened, Sarge?”
“The outpost just pulled back. Says there’s a lot of activity at the bottom of the hill.” He whispered a name, and a Yard scooted over to us.
“What you see?” I questioned him in the pidgin English we used with the Yards even though many could speak and understand the Queen’s own.
The man’s face reflected the fear I could hear in his voice. “Many VC,
Dai Uy
. All around.” He pointed to the front, the only way anyone was going to come up the hill. “I not see, but hear many voices and men moving this way.”
“I’ll call for some air support right now. Sergeant Crowley, put these men at the far end of the line. Make sure they know to watch the approach up the spine of the ridge. Got it?” I stood to go. I whispered low, “They’re coming, fellows. We can’t go anywhere, so you gotta stop them. Stay alert.”
I headed back to my hole and told Pete what I’d learned. His men had confirmed the report. Many NVA were working their way toward us through the dark jungle. Shit was gonna hit the fan.
I called for Prairie Fire airborne control and requested air cover. I listened to the calm voice of the controller, flying high above me somewhere in the endless circle of their patrol route. It brought back the memory of the days I’d spent doing the same thing a couple of months earlier. The stress levels from where I was then to where I was now couldn’t have been any farther apart.
“Roger, Sneaky Six. I’ve got a Spooky on patrol about three-zero minutes from you. I’ll send him over. His call sign is Lima Two-six. You got a strobe for him to access on?”
“That’s a big roger, Prairie Fire Control. I’ll have a strobe out at the center of my position. Tell Spooky that the bad guys are in a 180 around me from nine o’clock to three o’clock, with twelve at due north. You copy?”
“Roger, Sneaky Six. I’ll pass it on. Stay on this frequency. Good luck. Prairie Fire Control, out.”
I hurried to put my little strobe light out in the center of the hill. It had a long sleeve that allowed it to be seen only from above and not from the side. Spooky would see its blinking white flash in the dark jungle like a beacon in the desert. I began to feel a whole lot better.
A Spooky was a converted World War II–era C-47 cargo carrier which had been converted to a deadly, flying gun platform. It had a pair of six-thousand-rounds-per-minute 20mm Gatling guns sticking out the side. The pilot could fly over and deliver a bullet every square foot in a zone one hundred feet wide by as long as he held down the trigger. The old carriers were death-dealing SOBs, and those of us who received fire support from them loved them.
I called Pete and passed on the news and sent one of my bodyquards to tell Sergeant Crowley. I signed off the radio by quipping, “All we have to do is be lucky for thirty minutes, and Charlie’s ass is grass.” I surely should have kept my mouth shut. The gods of war overheard me.
Only minutes after I spoke, the NVA started firing RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) at us from below. Most went over our heads without exploding and then tore up the woods well to our rear. Some did hit the ground below the edge of the hilltop, showering the men in the front holes with dirt and some with hot shrapnel.
Then, the probing NVA soldiers opened up with everything they had. Bullets were cracking overhead or thumping into the tree trunks and dirt. I saw the green tracer bullets from East Germany mixed with the orange ones from Czechoslovakia zipping past, and heard the
krump!
of the Chinese grenades. Even as I cowered in my hole, I thought to myself, “I wish those bleeding hearts back home could see the help the North Vietnamese are getting from their Commie friends. They wouldn’t be so quick to claim the NVA is fighting us alone. I wish they were with me right now.”
Most of the stuff they shot at us was going too high, and my troops were firing back down the hill. It sounded like there was a bunch of them, but we were keeping them back. Then an intense outburst of firing and grenades went off to my far right, where Pete’s men were located. I saw movement. Someone was crawling my way. I couldn’t tell who it was. The flashes of gunfire and tracers gave a ghastly illumination to the dark shapes.
An RPG round whizzed overhead. From the glow of its exhaust, I saw the distinctive shape of the pith helmet of an NVA soldier.
“NVA,” I screamed and opened fire, as did the other three men with me. The running figure turned to fire at my voice, but his head snapped back and he fell in a sliding heap right beside my hole. I could have reached out and touched him if I had wanted to.
Lieutenant McMurray was urgently calling for me on the radio. “Captain, they broke through from the side. Some got past me. They’re coming your way. Jesus, here come some more.” He stopped talking and started shooting again.
I jumped from my hole. “Come on,” I called to my three bodyguards and headed for Pete’s location. We saw two more dark shapes running our way and cut them down in a blaze of automatic rifle fire. I could only hope they were NVA instead of my troops.
We reached Pete’s hole, and I squatted down beside him, safe from the snapping bullets flying overhead. “What’s up?” I gasped, trying to swallow the wad of cotton that had suddenly lodged itself in my throat.
McMurray pointed with his rifle. “They came out from the finger of the ridge, just like you said. My right squad is gone, either run off or dead. Some NVA headed your way.”
“I know. We got three. Any more?”
“I’m not sure. I got a couple and some headed toward the front of the hill. I’ll go make a check. What do you want me to do?”
I thought for a second. It was hard to decide. When you’re in a firefight, the adrenaline seems to take over and you run on pure instinct. Thinking is tough. I pointed toward the center of the hilltop.
“Pull back the rest of your people toward my men. Bend them around so you block more of the right flank. Dig in and hold on. Spooky will be here soon, and we’ll be all right then. Try to get me a count of what men you have left. I’m going to Crowley’s hole and then back to mine. Meet me there in a few minutes.” I sent my two bodyguards back to their hole and headed for Sergeant Crowley’s position.
The old NCO (he was nearly forty!) didn’t stop firing his weapon as I crawled up beside his hole. He had a good spot, with a large tree limb overhead to protect him from airbursts. He was grimacing, and his face was streaked with sweat and grime. I shouted in his ear. “Everything okay?”
He nodded, his faced highlighted by the muzzle flash from his rifle. “We stopped ’em cold. Musta kilt a dozen or more right out in front. Did some get in behind us?”
“Yeah, a few. I think we took care of them all. You got any casualties?”
“Not sure, I’ll go check as soon as I silence the last of these mutherfuckers shooting at me.”