Authors: Johnnie Clark
“That ain’t no platoon.” I looked at Chan. He leaned out slowly to look around the bend. He flattened back against the ravine wall.
“At least a regiment.”
“I counted twenty-one sampans,” Striker said.
I could feel sweat cooling off my body. Each head turned to the new lieutenant. Each mind thought the same thing: Is he stupid enough to try something with seventeen men? Suddenly the rattle of leaves above us replaced all our thoughts. I looked up. Swift Eagle slid down into the ravine.
“We got about twenty sampans tied up at the foot of the slope, Lieutenant, and at least that many pulled up into the trees on the opposite side of the river. I guess two companies, maybe a battalion.”
Lieutenant Lampe looked scared, but not panicky. He looked like you’d expect a Marine lieutenant to look—six feet tall, about one hundred eighty, white-sidewall haircut, pug nose, clean-shaven, acne scars under his ears and down his neck. He was an Annapolis grad, judging from his class ring, which he shouldn’t have brought into the bush. He put his head down for a moment as if to clear his mind or remember some useless bit of guidebook information. He looked up, squeezed his pug nose between thumb and forefinger, then turned to the chief. “Let’s pull back.” He turned to Sudsy. “Stick close.”
“Right on your butt, Lieutenant,” Sudsy answered.
Corporal Swift Eagle waved the platoon back. Fifty meters down the ravine we split into two columns along both walls. Swift Eagle pointed at Sam, then pointed up to the bush on Sam’s left. “I want an LP ten meters out.” Sam moved to the wall, and Corporal James gave him a boost up by the seat of the pants. Swift Eagle pointed at Striker, then to the bush flanking the other side of the ravine. Striker’s big black mole lowered an inch from the frown, but he moved without a word.
“I want the gun here,” Swift Eagle said, pointing to three large round rocks five meters in front of him. I flipped down the bipod and flattened out behind the gun with Chan at my right.
Lieutenant Lampe snatched the field phone from Sudsy, dropped to one knee, and flattened out a grid map, holding down each corner with a stone. “Alpha one … Alpha one … This is Alpha two. Over.”
“Roger, Alpha two … This is Alpha one. Over.”
“Alpha one, we’ve hit the big time at coordinates Alpha Tango Tango Hotel Foxtrot Lima Lima.” The communication went back and forth in code. Then there was a “roger.”
“Pull back!” The chief suddenly sounded excited. Couldn’t be that, I thought. Striker hustled over the edge of the ravine wall, sliding down fast. He landed on his feet and ran straight to Swift Eagle, moving past the new lieutenant and the new FO, Corporal Elbon.
“Chief! We got gooks on the flank! Lots of ’em!” Striker looked into Swift Eagle’s face, still ignoring the new lieutenant. Striker spoke quickly and too low for me to hear it all. Swift Eagle rushed over to the lieutenant.
“We got a lot of gooks on our flank, Lieutenant. They’re moving around.”
“Let’s get out of here!”
Swift Eagle didn’t wait for a point man. He led the way himself, with the lieutenant and the FO close behind. The column moved out quickly, leaving Chan and me to
bring up the rear. I hated being on the rear. I could feel myself moving faster and faster, as if I were being chased. I tried to walk backward, but the loose rocks underfoot were hard enough to walk on going forward. One hundred meters down the ravine the column stopped. Swift Eagle hustled from the front of the column, slowing for an instant in front of each man to stare into his face, then rushing to the next face until he reached Chan and me.
“Did anyone call in Sam?” he asked. His eyebrows pinched together. He looked worried.
“You mean he’s still back there?” I asked. He didn’t answer. He turned back to the column.
“Pass the word up. We left Sam. My squad up. We’re going back for him.”
Lieutenant Lampe jogged up beside Swift Eagle. “What’s up, Chief?”
“We left Sam the Blooper Man back there.”
The lieutenant’s round face grew long. He put his head down for a moment and squeezed his pug nose between his forefinger and thumb. He exhaled heavily through his nose and looked up.
“Okay, how many men in your squad?”
“Five without Sam.”
“Take them and the gun team, too. We’ll set up a perimeter here. Make it fast, Chief. We’re running out of light.”
Things were happening too fast. I hadn’t realized how late in the day it was. That made the situation more critical. A man lost or left alone in the jungle was rarely ever seen again.
The walk back down the ravine felt ominous. I wondered how many times we could make this trip into an area with that many gooks without making contact. I wouldn’t have put any money on our chances of tiptoeing in and out more than once.
I expected to see the enemy around each bend. I held the gun on my hip. Boyhood imaginings of holding off
hundreds of Germans and Japs with a machine gun shot through my mind. Seven seconds. Seven seconds. What kind of fool figured out a gunner only lasted seven seconds after a firefight began? Why would they tell us the truth about something like that? Keep your burst short. Keep your burst short. Twenty rounds. Twenty rounds. Twenty rounds.
Swift Eagle stopped. Another bend in the ravine blocked our vision. We flattened against the wall as Swift Eagle poked his head around. He motioned us forward. The way was straight for twenty meters, then curved left around a huge round rock. Swift Eagle peeked around and under the rock, then jerked his head back as if he’d been stung. He looked back at us and mouthed the word I dreaded, “Gooks!” He looked left, then right. We scrambled up the embankment like scared children, stumbling and sliding back down, then clawing up again until at the same instant we organized. We helped chunky Doyle up and over. He put his rifle out and pulled the next man up, repeating the process until we were out of the ravine. Quickly we moved away. Ten meters through thick brush we reached the edge of the swiftly moving jungle river. It looked to be twenty meters wide, and deeper than I had thought. We listened for movement.
Branches cracked underfoot to our front. My heart stopped. I couldn’t feel myself breathing. Vietnamese voices drifted through the air from across the river. We all turned at once. Suddenly the sound of many men forcing their way through tangled brush to our left yanked our heads back around to a new danger on our side of the river. Swift Eagle slid noiselessly into the dark water like a snake. We followed. The cold covered me with goose bumps. The current pulled my legs downstream. I struggled to hold on to an overhanging branch with one hand and the gun with the other. The weight of my pack pulled me under as my limb sagged. I kicked my boots around in search of something solid, but the current
swept them from under me. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. Panic seized me. I started to drop the gun and reach for the branch with both hands. A strong hand grabbed me by the back of the collar of my jungle jacket, then switched the grip to my flak jacket and pulled me up. I gasped for air as quietly as I could, swallowing coughs until my eyes bulged.
We clung to the river’s edge, our helmets and weapons barely visible in the overhanging saw grass and water weeds. Something moved in the water near my right cheek. The red and black head of a snake rippled by my face, the long body weaving tiny waves of water up my nose. I shivered. Two Vietnamese laughed from the far bank. They were hidden by thick brush and leafy vines that lined the river on that side like a ten-foot green wall.
Through the saw grass and weeds the tops of small trees ten meters away moved as enemy soldiers fought their way through the thick pockets of brush. I knew we couldn’t fight from this position. The thought of being a prisoner flashed through my mind. The voice of a Vietnamese called from farther away. My grip was slipping from the limb. The shaking treetops started moving away from us, back toward the ravine.
We let a minute pass. All seemed quiet. Swift Eagle pulled himself from the water first. Chan dragged himself to solid ground. I tossed the gun to him and used the limb to pull myself out. We moved as quietly as we could. At the edge of the ravine we stopped to listen. Still quiet. Swift Eagle started to move down into the ravine again. Suddenly the sound of someone moving through the brush to our right stopped my breathing. I jerked the gun around. An American helmet poked through the brush.
“Sam!” I held my enthusiasm to a whisper. Sam’s face was flushed with anger and fear.
“You left me back there!”
“It was my fault, Sam,” Swift Eagle said.
“What am I supposed to say? It’s okay, man, don’t worry about it?” For a moment it looked like Sam was going to swing. He stared hard at the chief’s expressionless face.
“Let’s get out of here,” Chan said, breaking the tension.
“Yeah. Come on,” Doyle said nervously.
The chief turned away. “Move out.” We slid back down to the ravine.
The walk back to the platoon felt like a frightening dream that didn’t want to end. Lieutenant Lampe’s face already showed the strain of command. He barely controlled a dangerously loud laugh at the sight of Sam. He quickly regained his composure and looked around for the gunny, who stood right behind him. They exchanged a couple of words I couldn’t hear, then turned and passed the word. “Saddle up!”
We moved back down to the mouth of the winding ravine at a quick-time pace. The yellow sun was turning orange as it dropped. No more than fifteen minutes of daylight left, I thought. We climbed to the top of a small barren hill. Lieutenant Lampe relayed a message to Alpha one, then turned the show over to Corporal Elbon, the new forward observer.
Soon the faint whistle of a big 1.55 spotter round could be heard overhead, pushing air out of its way. A moment later a white mushroom cloud peeked above the treetops in the distance.
“Right on! Fire for effect! Repeat. Fire for effect!” Corporal Elbon’s voice carried across the tiny perimeter. Soon the whistles of 1.55s filled the air above us. Loud cracks followed by thunderous explosions lit up the darkening jungle at the other end of the ravine. A chorus of faraway screams sifted through the artillery explosions.
“Fire for effect! Keep firing! Fire for effect!” Elbon shouted from the center of the perimeter.
“Saddle up!” Gunny shouted.
“Fire for effect!” Elbon repeated.
An artillery round landed at the foot of our small hill. I jumped.
“Short round,” Chan said calmly.
A minute later the column moved down the mountain with 1.55s still whistling overhead. An hour later we set up a perimeter on the bank of a river and spent the night fighting off mosquitoes. By morning I felt like a victim of Dracula. The sight of green smoke made me forget my swollen, mosquito-bitten face.
“Saddle up!” someone shouted from the CP. “Choppers!”
“It would appear we’re going for a ride, Baby-san,” Chan said.
The chopper ride back to An Hoa took no time at all. I wondered if the pilots could ever imagine just how miserable the same distance on foot was. We spent the night in a tent near the tubes. Our tent smelled like the inside of a urinal. I guess they didn’t want us to get too comfortable. The whole company had been brought in. A bad sign.
The next morning started with a predawn company formation. Some jerk pogue camouflaged from head to toe passed out gas masks to everyone. Another bad sign. I couldn’t imagine fighting in the darn things. There was no peripheral vision and very little frontal. We tried the gas masks on while some skinny captain told us we’d be landing in a hot LZ that would be hit with tear gas first. We marched to a long row of waiting assault choppers and began filing on, one squad at a time. I still couldn’t believe it. Some of the men were getting openly hostile about the idea, screaming out loud that they wouldn’t fight in masks. Two black riflemen in Third Platoon threw their masks in the dirt and refused to enter the chopper next to the one Chan and I were filing into. Sergeant Mooney of Third Platoon ran toward the two
with his M16 rifle ready. Just then the ramp hatch of our chopper closed. A few seconds later we were airborne.
My heart pounded blood into my face until it felt flush. Chan helped me strap the gas mask on tightly, then I helped him. His eyes told me he couldn’t believe this either. The supposedly clear plastic I was to see through was yellowed, scratched, and battered. It would be a miracle to spot a charging battalion at five meters. After a twenty-minute ride we started circling. I could see two more choppers circling behind us, then three, then five. Finally we began circling down. Chan held out his hand. I shook it. We gave each other a thumbs up.
The chopper hit the ground with a slight bounce. The hatch fell open. We ran out. We found ourselves in an open field. Pockets of smoke hid whole areas like a fog. I could taste the bitter tear gas through my mask. Other choppers were landing and taking off around the field, their rotors blowing the gas in all directions like giant fans. Marines ran toward a tree line to our left. I could barely see other figures running in another direction. AKs opened up on the left from the tree line. M16s opened up on our right. I couldn’t see what was going on. My scratchy yellow vision frustrated me. I started to rip it off, then wondered for an instant if it was really tear gas. AKs started firing from behind me. Gas or bullets, what’s the difference! I ripped the mask off, threw it to the ground, and cursed the Marine Corps as I ran toward the tree line. I could feel a strong wind hitting me in the face as I ran. My eyes burned. I began coughing. I spotted a smokeless area to my right. I ran for it, holding my breath until I reached it, then gasping for the clean air between biting coughs. Mucus poured from my nose and water from my eyes.
“Second Platoon!” someone shouted from the fog. “Second Platoon! Over here!” The voice sounded close.
“First Platoon! Mount up! Over here!”
“Hey!” Someone grabbed my shoulder. “This First Platoon?”
I turned to see who was talking to me. It was a black Marine, his eyes swollen, watering, and red. He started coughing.
“I’m Second Platoon. I think I heard First Platoon over there.” I pointed to our left. He headed that way.