Last Man Out (15 page)

During the next battalion operation, Pete’s first as recon platoon leader, we went across a large river to the west of our base camp and broke down into platoon-size units. Battalion staff officers, assigned to spotter helicopters, looked for signs of VC fleeing in front of the platoons.

From their elevated vantage the spotters could not see men moving on the ground as well as they could see trails, villages, and clearings. They had never served on the ground themselves and did not realize how difficult it was to move through the jungle. Sometimes we faced swamps and deep crevices beneath the jungle canopies, so the observers often miscalculated the time it would take us to move through a particular area.

“Okay, Red Cap Twigs Alpha November Six, you, ah, you, ah,
are where? Throw smoke?” Pause. “Okay, I got it. What are you doing there, you’re supposed to be another klick ahead. They’re waiting on you up there.”

Down below, Bratcher would say, “I think I am going to shoot that REMF, next chance. Next opportunity I have at that clean, good-smelling, staff shithead, he’s dead.”

Ayers and Beck, stinking from their sweat, would be out of breath from breaking trail in the dense jungle, and we’d hear the helicopter way off in the distance. The staff officer would come back on the radio telling us to double-time to meet up with the other men. Once Moubry told Duckett’s unit that they were off line. Duckett ignored him and soon thereafter called Woolley with a request to stop for the night. His men were exhausted. He invited Moubry to come down with some supplies, such as cold beer.

For the most part we were not successful in initiating contact with the VC during that operation. We did have one encounter, however, when Bratcher was at the head of our column. The platoon was walking down a trail. We often avoided trails because of the chance of mines and ambushes. Breaking new trails through the jungle was safer, but we had been beside the path earlier in the day and we were not going to stay on it for long. As he was looking down for trip lines, Bratcher almost ran into a couple of VC who were coming in our direction around a bend in the trail. He dropped to one knee, but by the time he got his rifle to his shoulder and fired, the VC were gone. Beck was running after them when I ordered him back.

Although we were unsuccessful in finding the VC during the day, they came at us at night, probing our positions. As we lay in a tight perimeter, tired and wanting to sleep, they crawled in and threw grenades or sniped at us. They also tried to steal our claymore mines; however, we planted trip flares around them so if a VC slipped in to steal them, the flares went off. One night a work detail of VC crawled along the perimeter, figured out how the trip flares were planted, and stole the flares and the mines. The next night, McCoy planted flares beneath the claymores. At midnight he heard movement out by the claymores just moments before a flare went off. One of his men squeezed off the detonator. In the
morning McCoy guessed that there had been three VC, but it was hard to tell from the bits of flesh blown over the area.

My platoon suffered no casualties in the operation. Duckett was not so lucky.

Duckett was a stern taskmaster. He told his men he expected them to get out there and fight. He pushed hard at the enemy whenever we had contact, and he was the last platoon leader to call in dust-offs (medevacs) for his wounded. That was different from some of the other platoon leaders. When we took casualties, some platoon leaders stopped everything to look after their wounded; Duckett’s first job always was to kill VC. Duckett did not wear socks or underwear, so his early weeks in Vietnam were painful. But after a short time his feet and crotch toughened up and he felt no discomfort from the lack of underclothing. He also wore a flak jacket he had picked up from a cavalry friend. Because he was Duckett, people did not question this. Most of us would not have worn a flak jacket if they were available; they were heavy and wore down the body. But Duckett got used to his flak jacket and never left base camp without it. Eventually it saved his life.

Early in the operation he and his platoon deployed some distance from the company in an area north of a village thought to be sympathetic to the VC. After dark he posted a two-man listening post (LP) among some rubber trees halfway between the village and the thicket where the platoon had dug in. Soon the listening post reported hearing movement to their right. In a low whisper, they suggested that a small group of people might be moving from the village toward Duckett’s position. Duckett alerted the platoon, and everyone waited quietly.

A light rain began to fall. Suddenly out of the dark, a shot zinged in.

As the men tensed, Duckett’s platoon sergeant hissed loudly, “Don’t fire.” He thought that other VC might be waiting in front for the muzzle flashes to give away their positions.

He was right. The VC in front, soon tired of waiting, began firing at the platoon. Duckett called for mortar flares as his men returned the fire. Illumination rounds burst over the rubber trees and the VC pulled back. Within minutes the listening post reported the VC running back toward the village.

Everything was quiet until early morning when the two men at the listening post reported hearing movement all around—the VC had returned. Duckett told them to calm down; it could be the rain dripping off the trees. They did not acknowledge his call but quickly, breathlessly reported seeing men maneuvering directly at their position. Before Duckett could answer, he heard small-arms fire to his front. The listening post yelled into the radio that they were pulling back to the platoon.

Duckett called down the line to his men, “Get ready, the LP is coming in. VC in the front. Be careful, don’t shoot the LP!”

The men lay silently in their holes as they scanned the jungle toward the rubber trees. Duckett, who shared a foxhole with his RTO, ducked into the hole, called for more flares over the radio, and drew his .45-caliber pistol. As he came back up, he aimed it over the top and took a deep breath. Woolley came on the radio and asked about the situation. Duckett bent down into the hole again to talk with Woolley.

The RTO saw movement in the front. He pulled the pin on his grenade. Footfalls came closer in the dark. Forms began to take shape into men, running headlong toward them. The RTO pulled back his arm to throw the grenade, then he saw the distinctive steel pots on the heads of the men and yelled down the line, “LP coming in. Don’t fire! Don’t fire!”

The men from the LP were running as fast as they could in the dark.

A shot ran out behind them, the round whistling over their heads. Another round zinged through the jungle. The men lunged toward the hole as Duckett came up after talking with Woolley. He barely avoided a head-on collision.

The radio operator, the grenade still in his hand, ducked into the hole. As more rounds from the pursuing VC passed overhead, the two men landed on top of the RTO, the grenade was knocked from his hand, and it fell into the hole. The radio operator tried to get out of the hole and became frantic, but the LP men forced him downward as they desperately sought cover from the enemy fire. The two men, also excited, continued to worm their way into the hole.

Duckett was trapped on the side of the hole. As the three men wrestled beside him, he fired his .45 into the dark, toward the VC.

And the grenade went off.

The radio operator and one of the men from the LP were blown apart. The other man from the LP had shrapnel wounds over most of his body. Duckett was covered with bits of clothing, web gear, and flesh, but his flak jacket had protected him. Although he was not wounded, he was blinded by the blast and could not hear anything except a ringing in his ears. By morning he had regained his sight but had lost the hearing in his right ear.

Duckett and the wounded LP man were evacuated, along with the remains of the other two men. After a night at the field clearing station, Duckett was sent to a U.S. Army hospital in Japan.

When we returned from the operation, Sp4. Burke, who carried one of Colonel Haldane’s radios, sought me out. He said that he had heard, although he could not confirm it firsthand, that an oil painting of a nude had arrived at division headquarters in Di An. It was from Senator Javits’s office in Washington, D.C., and was addressed to the unidentified 1st Infantry Division field officer who had built a bar in the jungle. A division support officer, an REMF, had it in his office, but he was not, as far as Burke knew, making any effort to find the intended owner. I thanked Burke and went looking for Captain Woolley, who had not been pleased when I asked Senator Javits for the painting. He might not approve any effort on my part to retrieve it. I found Woolley behind his desk in the company headquarters tent and asked him for a day’s leave to go down to Di An on a personal matter of some importance. He smiled. I smiled.

“And?” he asked.

“And what, sir?” I replied.

“What is the personal matter?” he asked, not smiling as much as he had.

“I’d rather not say, sir, exactly, other than to say it is important to me.”

Woolley gazed intently at me for a moment or two and then said, “Okay, but this better not have any blow-back. You understand me?”

At Di An I first went to the post office and talked with the NCOIC (noncommissioned officer in charge), who remembered
the package. He’d sent it to G-4 (logistics). The NCOIC was there, in fact, when the officer opened it. “Damned nice piece of work,” he told me.

I thanked him and went to the logistics Quonset hut. I was clearly aware of the difference in my appearance from that of the staff people whom I encountered along the way. My fatigues were worn, and I had a strange tan—my forehead was white from wearing my steel pot, but my cheeks were ruddy and showed briar scratches.

As I made my way toward the rear of the Quonset hut, I looked into each office as I went, sometimes interrupting conversations and work activities. Finally, in a major’s office I spied an oil painting of a nude woman, looking out a window from behind a curtain, as if she were waiting for someone to come home. I was staring at the painting when the major looked up from his paperwork at me, then at the painting and back at me.

“Senator Javits?” I asked.

“I beg your pardon,” the major said.

“Did that painting come from Senator Javits to an unidentified 1st Infantry Division field officer?” I asked as I walked into the room.

“Who are you?” asked the major.

“That officer,” I said.

There was a pause. Then the major asked, “How am I supposed to know that?”

“I just told you, that’s how you know. Last month, Senator Javits visited our position at Phuoc Vinh—I’m with the 1st of the 28th—and I asked him for a picture of a nude. That one. So I’m here to pick it up.”

“No, you’re not,” said the major, leaning back in his chair. “You are going to have to get me some proof from your battalion commander or someone who can verify the fact that Senator Javits was sending you a painting. How am I supposed to know this is actually meant for you? Maybe you’ve just heard it’s here and are trying to talk me out of it. I’ve got a responsibility here.”

My first thought was that I didn’t know how Woolley or Haldane would react. But then I thought, that isn’t the point; this REMF major is a horse’s ass, sitting here in an air-conditioned office with my painting hanging on his wall.

“Major,” I said, “I don’t know about your responsibilities, but I know that’s my painting and that I’ve only got one day down here. I’m a little hurt you don’t want to help me with this.”

The major continued to lean back in his chair; I wasn’t going to win any war of words. Without thinking it through, I changed tone and said, “So listen here. I’m just going to take
my
painting off
your
fucking wall and if you so much as touch me, I’m going to hurt you. And I’m still going to take it.”

With that, I walked over, took the painting off the wall, and left. The major did, in fact, file a report which eventually reached Woolley, saying that I had threatened him and stolen a painting off the wall of his office. By the time the letter arrived, the painting was a fixture behind our bar and the story of how it came to be there was part of Alpha Company folklore. Woolley destroyed the letter.

Ernst returned from an operation in December with what was diagnosed as dengue fever. Over the next few days he became gaunt and tired easily, but he did not go on sick call. Some “dingy fever” wasn’t manly enough to call him out of the field. He’d leave if the medic said he had
typhoid
fever—but not “dingy.” “Get outa here,” he said. “It’s just Jimbo and me to help the good captain.” Peterson and Duckett were both gone.

He had in his platoon a young man who never stopped talking. And he was funny. Shortly after picking up the dengue bug, Ernst and his platoon were on patrol south of Phuoc Vinh. He and the comic were walking close together when the platoon was ambushed. A bullet hit Ray in the hand. The young man was splattered with shrapnel. They had to be moved several kilometers to a clearing for a medevac. Wounded in dozens of places, the young man walked most of the way out. He was lying by a tree when the medevac helicopter arrived. A corpsman walked up with a bandage in his hand but paused because the man had so many wounds. “Just put a bandage on me anywhere,” the young man said. “You’re bound to cover a wound.” As the corpsman worked, the youngster borrowed a cigarette from someone standing by and lit it himself. Exhaling, he asked the corpsman, “You know the names of any nurses in the hospital where we’re going?”

Ernst, on the other hand, had to be carried on a makeshift
stretcher all the way from the ambush site to the open field. He was in great pain. Eyes sunken from the dengue fever, his hand torn open, he looked like a corpse. He was a good man, popular with his men. They knew that he was leaving them, and they feared he would have to have his hand amputated. As the corpsmen were carrying Ernst to the helicopter, several of his men grabbed the sides of the stretcher. When they lifted the stretcher to put him inside the helicopter, it came apart and Ernst fell through it to the ground. He landed on his head.