Last Man Out (14 page)

Ray Ernst also had a man in his platoon who didn’t receive mail and, like Ayers, stood in the front during each mail call. Ernst wrote to a preacher friend, who organized an Operation Alpha Company. Members of his congregation sent personal letters to men in the company, including Ayers. Bratcher was also careful to call out Ayers’s name for boxes addressed to “Anyone in Alpha Company, 1st/28th Infantry.” We were soon receiving care packages from other churches, civic organizations, and grammar school classes. We got a lot of Kool-Aid; some newspaperman somewhere must have written, “Those boys over there need Kool-Aid to win this war,” ’cause we got Kool-Aid packages by the hundred. No one ever used them.

Dunn returned from the field hospital within a month. We had a “welcome home” party for him at the bar.

We continued to widen our area of operations in November and December, sweeping farther and farther from our base camp. In late November we had returned from a battalion-size sweep when we were visited by a congressional delegation led by Sen. Jacob Javits. The officers and NCOs of the company were standing in a loose formation near the company headquarters
when the senator arrived. As he came down the line, he asked me if I needed anything or if there was anything he could do for me back home. I told him that we had a bar in our tent, but we needed a picture of a nude behind it.

“I am trying to upgrade the ambience of the place,” I added.

“A nude?” the senator asked hesitantly, as though my request was slightly uncongressional.

“Yes sir,” I said.

I did not look at Woolley or Haldane, because I knew they were glaring. Second lieutenants should not be forward with congressional delegations. Certainly they shouldn’t ask for pictures of naked women. Javits smiled and wished me well.

In late November 1965 my platoon was on patrol south of the base camp. Private De Leon and Sergeant Rome were on point. As they broke out of a bamboo thicket De Leon dropped to one knee and Rome lifted his arm in the air, stopping the platoon. Rome turned, made eye contact with me, and called in a loud whisper, “Lieutenant!”

Rome moved off to one side behind a tree and I joined him there. We looked through the jungle toward a small Vietnamese village in front of us. Off to the side of the village near an open field, several women wearing straw cone hats were sifting rice, separating it from the chaff. Several old men and a few children were moving around among the huts. Smoke from two cooking fires drifted up.

“No men,” De Leon observed. “Don’t look right.”

A chicken crowed from inside the village and then, closer to us, some pigs snorted.

I leaned against the back side of the tree, wiped my brow, and pulled a map from my side pocket. Sergeant Bratcher walked up. When he took in the scene and saw me studying the map, he turned and motioned for the platoon behind us in the thicket to get down and rest.

The village was clearly marked on my map, as was the nearby rice field where the women were working. The map indicated that a path ran from the village across our front to a road five kilometers distant to the west. On the other side of the village from us was another rice field.

We had been in Vietnam now for seven weeks. Although my men had killed the VC rice porter—and had been probed at our base camp—the platoon had not been fully engaged by the enemy. We were coming together as a unit, however, and becoming comfortable in the jungle, more sure of ourselves, as we gradually extended our patrols farther away from other friendly units. We looked jungle tough. Because we carried our weapons with us every minute we were in the field, they became extensions of our bodies. Our field uniforms and web gear were becoming faded; the coverings to our steel pots were personalized with identifying marks—girlfriend names, personal mottoes, and so on. Most of us carried our C rations in extra socks hanging off the back of our packs. Although we looked like pack mules with all of our gear, we did not clank when we walked. On patrol, every day, we moved more silently as we learned to traverse jungle obstacles, but we were tired of trudging endlessly through the jungles. We wanted to engage the Viet Cong, and we felt that we were getting closer. Newsome, my radio operator, in fact, had remarked during our last break that he felt we were being watched.

It was mid-afternoon but still hot. We heard no sounds from the women, old men, and children in the village, only the distant steady thumping of threshing rice and the whirring of nearby insects.

I reached for the handset to the PRC-25 radio. “Red Cap Twigs Alpha Six, this is Red Cap Twigs Alpha November Six, over,” I said, calling Captain Woolley in a soft voice.

There was a short pause. Then, “Yeah, November Six, this is Alpha Six, what’s your location, over?”

After giving a coordinate from the map, I turned to look at the Vietnamese people working to my front and said, “We’re near this village, and there ain’t no men that we can see. Maybe twenty women, children, old people. I think they know we’re here, but they ain’t looking this way. Just going on about their business. Don’t like it. What you want me to do, over?”

During a long pause, I stared at the back of an old man in black pajamas who was sitting in the shade of a hut, stiffly staring away from us. I sensed he was listening intently. He probably had heard the distinctive sound of the radio-breaking squelch.

“Alpha November Six, this is Alpha Six. Go on around the village; don’t go mixing it up with civilians. You’re out there looking for VC. Go on, you got another few klicks to go anyway to tie up with Alpha Mike Six before sundown. Circle the village and continue on. You copy, over?”

I acknowledged the order and handed the handset back to the RTO as I pushed myself away from the tree. Sergeant Rome had also heard the company commander’s order. He rose from his squatting position and turned to me. I motioned with my head to stay well within the jungle and pass the village to the left. As Rome and then De Leon started moving, a dog in the village began barking. I stood by the tree and watched the village as my platoon slowly filed by. The dog continued to bark loudly. The old man sitting in the shade did not move.

Falling in near the end of the patrol, I walked alongside PFC Joaquin S. Cipriano for several minutes, although my attention was still on the village we were passing. Cipriano had not been feeling well lately. “I’m sick,” he said. “Stomach, plus I’m hacking up some crud. Feel like I got bugs or worms or something. Really, I ain’t making this up.”

I heard him, but my focus was to our right. Finally I looked in his direction and we made eye contact.

Cipriano smiled. “Back home, feeling the way I do, my momma would make me some soup.”

Smiling at him, I made no comment and moved up the patrol line to fall in near Newsome with the radio. Ahead, De Leon and Rome cautiously came to the path leading across our front to the village. De Leon stuck his head out into the pathway, looked both ways, and took three quick steps to the other side. Rome followed and then a few more soldiers. I crossed the path, and one by one, the rest of the platoon began to cross. Up ahead, De Leon was approaching the second rice field, and I strained to see if there was anyone working in the field.

With fearful suddenness, a sharp sound cracked through the air. For a second, an enormously loud blast consumed us. Shrapnel shredded the foliage around us, and everyone hit the ground.

“Owweeee,” someone in great pain yelled immediately. De Leon began firing his M-14 on full automatic. I fell to my knees
behind an anthill, but couldn’t see anyone between us and the rice field.

“What the hell’s happening, De Leon?” I yelled.

Behind me, near the path, I heard again, “Iiioooooowwwwweeeeee,” and then, “Oh Mother of Mercy, oh God, oh God, oh God, I’m dying. Iiiiooooooowwwweeee.”

“Nothing just yet, but I ain’t letting no one come up on me,” De Leon answered. Behind at the path, more screaming. “Medic, medic, medic! God, where’s the medic?”

Quickly moving back, I saw Cipriano lying facedown at the side of the path. He had a large, bloody wound in his back, above his pack, near his neck. He kept yelling for the medic. Nearby on the path was a hole surrounded by fresh dirt blown away by a mine. Two wires sticking out of the hole led back toward the village. Someone had touched off the mine as Cipriano passed. A patrol member applied a bandage to the wound. I told Cipriano to be still and it would be all right.

Crazed with fear and pain, he kept looking around as he said, “I’m dying, Doc. I can’t feel nothing. I can’t feel my legs or my arms or nothing, Doc. And goddamn it hurts. Don’t let me die. Please don’t let me die.”

Newsome had followed me back to the path. He had called in a medevac helicopter, and I took the radio to report to the company commander. As I finished, the air ambulance chopper was arriving; it must have been very close by. I sent men to surround a nearby clearing and throw purple smoke into the field. Within minutes, possibly less than fifteen after the mine had exploded, Cipriano was on the chopper heading for a hospital. He was still conscious, but he had bled a great deal and bloody bandages covered his back. Lying on his stomach in the back of the helicopter, he looked in our direction with eyes glazed in pain. As the helicopter rose out of the field, the corpsman on board was clearing Cipriano’s weapon. Helicopter gunships buzzed the tree lines on either side.

Then it was quiet again, and we went into the village.

I sent some of the men to the far side, and they herded the women from their rice chores back into the center of the village while the rest of the platoon searched the huts. Shortly, all the villagers were collected near me in front of one of the cooking
fires. There were no young men—just women, old people, and children standing in a huddle as they fearfully looked around at us. But I knew that one of them had set off the mine that had wounded my man, or perhaps killed him or maimed him for life. Or, if one of them had not set off the mine, they were hiding the person who did.

Rome, Bratcher, De Leon, and the others had stopped their noisy search of the small village and gathered around to look at the Vietnamese. The loud dog, beaten off by one of my soldiers, continued to bark at the side of a hut.

To let the Vietnamese go free would certainly mean that they would shield attacks on other Americans patrolling their countryside, looking for their Viet Cong brothers, fathers, and sons. Allowing them to go without punishment would not further our ends or vindicate the attack on Cipriano. They were the enemy—directly or indirectly. I felt something needed to be done.

None of us in the platoon spoke their language. We could not threaten or interrogate them or make them understand why we were here. What could we do?

De Leon walked up with a VC flag he had found in a tree on the edge of the village.

Beck picked up the old man who had sat silently in the shade of the hut and shook him. The old man did not show fear, and I told Beck to release him.

A few moments later I ordered the men to move out, and we left the villagers alone, unhurt. It is not pleasant to be the conventional force in a guerrilla war—maintaining high moral standards of conduct when the enemy is engaged in total war. It is a hard war to win.

  SEVEN  

Peterson was transferred out of the company to take over the battalion reconnaissance (recon) platoon when we returned from the field. Expected to be the eyes and ears of the battalion, roaming in the front and on the flanks during conventional field operations, the recon platoon had been heretofore in Vietnam no more than battalion staff security, and the colonel wanted more aggressive leadership. I hated to see Pete go. He was my best friend and I wanted him at my side in battle. Pete, however, was eager to get out of the mortars and into a maneuver element. Plus he wanted to work directly for Colonel Haldane. So I was happy for him, but sad to see him go. I thought about the insurance policy, remembering that I hadn’t ever sent in the change-of-beneficiary form. I looked for it, couldn’t find it, and then let it go. Helping Pete move his gear over to battalion, I started to mention the insurance, but I was embarrassed and told myself I just had to find the form or write the company for another.