The first line of defense for any ambush was claymore mines, but on this ambush the thick vegetation limited placement of the mines. As a result, my team put out only two. One claymore faced the trail junction and the other was on the trail across the stream. Both mines were less than half the usual fifty feet from our position.
At 3:00 a.m. it was my turn for guard duty. I did not think I would need my M-16 in this weird ambush, so I leaned it against a bush an arm’s length away. I checked the claymore detonators and wires to make sure they weren’t mixed up. With everything in place I sat still for my two-hour shift. I got tired of eye-straining into the overcast night, so I passed the time fantasizing about home and being with my girlfriend.
My trance ended abruptly when only twenty feet away I saw movement. The misty form slowly materialized into that of a man cautiously moving toward me. When I recognized the silhouetted pork pie hat, I realized he was a VC who must have spotted the reflection of my face in the dark. He came closer, to within fifteen feet, looking long and hard. Another VC came up behind him. Both men stood silently, holding their rifles at the ready position. I didn’t dare reach for my M-16 because if they could see my face, they would surely see my hands move and probably open fire. Unsure what to do, I sat stone still, trying not to even breathe. At the same time, I cursed myself for being so stupid for leaning my rifle against that bush.
After what seemed like an eternity the first VC began to slowly retreat. Maybe he was not sure of who, or what, he was staring at. Or maybe he did know but wasn’t willing to test our strength. Whatever the reason, he motioned to his partner that they were leaving. I figured as soon as they got twenty-five feet away I could safely reach for my rifle and open fire. But before that happened, one of my men rolled over and rattled some equipment. The first VC heard the noise and in a panic ran toward the stream. I grabbed the claymore detonators and as soon as he splashed in the water, I blew the claymore. The deafening explosion shattered the eerie silence as the second VC ran off in the opposite direction. I estimated the time for him to reach the second claymore and detonated that one, too. Both blasts occurred within seconds, which caused an extra dose of mud and debris to rain down on our position.
“Two Gooks!” I yelled. “They ran off in both directions!”
Before I finished getting the words out of my mouth, the men began spraying gunfire up and down the trail. We ended the two-minute barrage with several hand grenades. Silence. We waited, and waited. And waited. We listened for sounds: rustling brush, groans, anything. There was nothing. I began to wonder if I really saw the VC. This was my first night back in the field and now I began to think it could have been just my imagination. If I gave our position away like a bone-headed Cherry because a night bird or wild animal spooked me, I would be a laughing stock. Finally, much to my relief, Silig’s position opened fire with a one-minute salvo. Whether we had a kill or not, at least the Gooks were real. The night fell silent again, but now all our ambush positions remained on 100% alert until we knew how large an enemy force we had engaged or whether the Gooks were coming back. The anxious hours before daybreak dragged slowly by. When it was finally light enough to see, the ambush team from across the stream cautiously approached our position.
“What the hell were you guys shooting at last night?” asked Stan Alcon, knowing any VC near my position must have somehow gotten by his.
“Gooks, what else?” I answered. “Two of them walked right up to me. Didn’t you find a body over there?”
“There ain’t nothing over here. The way you guys were blasting away, we had to make love to the ground. The bushes all around us were falling down. Anyone could have run past us.”
“Well, that’s all right,” I said confidently. “Silig’s position opened fire after we did. They must have a kill.”
They didn’t. After I blew the claymores, Silig alerted his team. One of the VC, either wounded or shook up from the claymore, hobbled up the trail to within fifty feet when Silig opened fire. At that range, even in the dark, they could not have missed. But in the morning there was no body, no blood, and no tracks. It looked like we were visited by Supergooks.
Allowing the VC to escape was bad enough, but when the shooting started, Petry hastily called battalion headquarters to request artillery support because he thought we were engaged in a regular battle. The problem was our new battalion commander, Colonel Dynamo, overheard the call and got so excited about the potential body count he decided to come out at first light to view the enemy remains. When the Colonel arrived we had nothing to show. Petry tried to explain the ambush scenario, but the Colonel became furious.
“Lieutenant Petry!” he shouted, for everyone to hear. “What the hell were your people doing out here last night? You had VC walking into your ambush positions, practically begging to get shot, and your men blew the opportunity!”
“Colonel,” Petry nervously began, “it was an overcast night, making it especially hard to detect movement, the scrub brush…”
“I don’t want to hear any goddamn excuses!” the Colonel yelled, cutting Petry off. “Based on what I’ve seen here, your people couldn’t shoot a one-legged grandmother in a wheelchair. But if you’re so sure you hit something last night, then I want your men to re-search the entire area. Except this time have them look under every bush, in every ditch and under every rock. And I don’t care if it takes all day.”
We thought the Colonel was overdoing it because no one ever went through such detailed interrogation over a bungled ambush. The body count must have been getting more attention than we thought. We searched area for several hours and found nothing. The Colonel questioned each ambush team in greater detail to determine how things had gone wrong. Somehow, the finger of incompetence was pointed at me.
“Sergeant Wiknik,” the Colonel began patronizingly, “you just came back from three weeks of convalescence in the rear, and on your first night back initiated an ambush that yielded nothing. I would say that you had lost your edge. You were not combat ready.”
“Sir,” I explained, “when I saw the Gooks, they took off in different directions, so I had to choose my targets carefully. When I figured they were close to the claymores, I detonated them.”
“Why didn’t you fire your M-16 at them?”
“Because I didn’t know how many there were and I didn’t want to give my position away,” I sheepishly answered, not daring to tell him my rifle was leaning against a bush.
“Well Sergeant,” he said, pointing at the hole in the ground left by the claymore. “It’s obvious that your claymore was located too close to the trail. When the VC ran past you, he must have knocked it over. When you detonated it, the blast simply went into the mud.”
“Possibly sir, but the other claymore did some damage because Silig’s position saw a VC hobbling toward them.”
“For all we know, that hobbling VC had a birth defect,” the Colonel sneered, looking back at Petry and Krol. “I don’t know who laid out this ambush, but the only way the VC got anywhere near Sergeant Wiknik was because they walked past one of the other positions. That means you had people who were not alert, maybe even asleep. Anyone want to confess?”
No one denied or admitted anything.
In retribution for our ineptitude, Colonel Dynamo decided to shake up the platoon with several personnel changes. Sergeant Krol, who we hated and were glad to see go, was transferred to Echo Company to be with his buddy Lieutenant Pizzuto. Sergeant Wakefield, who had been groomed by Krol and Pizzuto, was promoted to Platoon Sergeant. Lieutenant Petry, the first officer who actually listened to us old-timers, would be sent to another platoon as soon as a replacement officer became available.
My heart sunk, however, when the Colonel offered Howard Siner a job in the rear writing articles for the brigade newspaper. Howard was no dummy, and he accepted without hesitation.
Siner was the only one I missed. Besides being the most common sense guy we had, he had also become my best friend, as well as Silig’s. Silig and I knew we would have no problem relying on each other, but without Siner’s cool head, things would surely be different.
PFC Brian Thompson, a redheaded, freckle-faced GI from Indiana, replaced Howard Siner. Unlike the typical Cherry who came to us scared out of his wits and afraid to speak with anyone, Thompson was quite personable, inquisitive, and learned fast. I felt fortunate to have a Grunt with such potential in my squad. It took several weeks for Thompson’s mail to catch up with him. When it did, his letters were addressed to SSG Brian Thompson, not PFC Brian Thompson.
“Hey Thompson, you’ve got mail but it’s addressed to a Staff Sergeant. They sure move you new guys up fast,” I joked, treating it as a mistake.
“Uh…yes,” he answered nervously. “I told some of my friends that I was a sergeant so they would think I was a bad-ass hero. It’s only a joke. Heh, heh.”
“Well, I don’t know if the Army will laugh. They’ve got regulations against just about everything else, so there’s probably one against this. You better tell your friends the truth before you get into trouble.”
Thompson didn’t answer. He just nodded as he noticed the guys staring at him, wondering why he would tell his hometown friends he was something other than a PFC. As the weeks went by, more mail came addressed to SSG Thompson. One day I jokingly yelled, “Mail for Sergeant Thompson!” and he quickly came forward, as if comfortable with the title.
Lieutenant Petry became suspicious and placed a call to battalion headquarters inquiring about “Private” Thompson. The next day we received word that Thompson was indeed a Staff Sergeant. When confronted with the truth, Thompson admitted to the masquerade, explaining his bizarre behavior.
“I graduated from NCO school with high marks, earning a promotion to Staff Sergeant. During the second phase of my schooling at an advanced infantry training unit, a jealous Vietnam Veteran who made NCO the hard way threatened me. He claimed to know which unit in Vietnam I would be assigned to, and vowed to have his buddies kill me. I believed him because I had heard rumors about Instant NCOs having a short life expectancy, often dying at the hands of their own men. I got scared. So to increase my chances of survival, I passed myself off as a PFC, hoping to gain some combat experience before I was discovered.”
Everyone stared at Thompson with a feeling of shock and anger. Though his disguise was understandable, what he did was wrong. He was specially trained and paid as a Staff Sergeant but was performing the work of a Private and the men resented him for it. Even I toughed it out as a Cherry NCO, so there was no reason for him not to have done so as well.
Lieutenant Petry recognizing right off that it would be a long time before Thompson would earn the respect of our platoon. He wisely had him transferred to another unit. We never saw Thompson again, but the episode left us with a permanent reminder of how monumental the task of being accepted was.
Our next assignment took us to the mountains near the A Shau Valley to provide roving security for a firebase that was being dismantled by Army engineers. Our entire company would saturate the surrounding jungle in ten-man ambush teams to keep the NVA from taking pot shots at the construction crew. Although this would be a short mission of one to two weeks duration, no one wanted any part of the A Shau because the NVA were still a dangerous force in the area.
While waiting for our assignments, one GI, who vowed to never enter the A Shau again, was so desperate to get out he shot himself. Using an M-16 at point blank range, he fired a single round into his lower leg muscle. As carefully a placed shot as it was, the slug left a gaping void, removing a large chunk of flesh. As he writhed in agony, no one other than a medic rushed to his aid. As the medic went to work, GIs turned their backs on the soldier because we did not feel sorry for him. We were scared of the A Shau too, but only cowards stooped so low. The GI would surely get out of the field and probably the Army as well. But the price was too great to pay. The stigma of a self-inflicted wound would haunt him forever.
My ambush team was assigned the task of guarding a section of the American-built Route 547, a winding dirt road linking Camp Eagle, our division base camp, with the A Shau. The roadside terrain was a mix of bulldozed slopes and thick hilltop jungle patches. We spent most of our time tucked in the bushes playing cards, writing letters, and catching up on sleep. Although we were taking it easy, we didn’t want to give the NVA a chance to sneak up on us by being too relaxed, so we stayed hidden by maintaining a 24-hour guard duty and noise control.
Our vigilance soon paid off when Alcon alerted us to some noise from deep in the jungle. We instinctively dropped everything and positioned ourselves behind rocks and logs in preparation for battle. After a ten-minute wait with no activity, everyone relaxed and started to return to their original positions.
“Stay put!” Alcon commanded. “They’re still moving in our direction.” No one else had heard any noise, but we waited just the same.
Living in the field for extended periods under life-threatening situations made everyone survival oriented. Some GIs, extra conscious of the changing environment, developed the fantastic ability to sense danger by becoming totally absorbed with their surroundings. Alcon possessed this keen sensitivity. Soon everyone heard the noise: twigs snapping and leaves rustling. As the commotion moved toward our position, each man silently clicked his the safety off readied their hand grenades. Only two hundred feet away, we could now see bushes and small trees wiggle.
“It’s finally our turn to surprise the NVA,” someone whispered. “They’re going to run right into us.”
Suddenly Silig stood up with his arms stretched skyward. “Monkeys!” he groaned. “Goddamn monkeys! We just got aped!”
We were in the path of a horde of three-feet-tall rock apes foraging through the jungle. They spotted us and retreated to the tall trees faster than they had come. If the enemy really had been out there, only Alcon was paying close attention. After that incident, we took guard duty more seriously.