Run Between the Raindrops (21 page)

Boots are thumping and grunts are shouting up the trench we’ve just used to escape the ambush. We are pulling back, apparently ceding our hard-won stretch of Citadel wall to the defenders for the time being. Company Gunny arrives and begins shoving his people down onto street level. The two dead men carried back by the squad have no objection to being unceremoniously dumped down off the wall. Windows across the street light up with muzzle flash as Charlie Company grunts fire cover for our retreating squad. We make the street and sprint across into cover among the houses on the other side dragging the dead men along like floppy pull-toys.

When I’m safely tucked in behind cover, there’s time to take a look at the machinegun team still standing out there in the middle of the street, still alive for some reason despite the NVA fire blazing around them. Grunts are shouting their names, screaming for them to back off, that everyone is safely down off the wall, but it doesn’t seem to register. The assistant gunner is still snapping belts together as the gunner continues to stand there hosing into the NVA flank. Company Gunny finally picks up a rock shard and heaves it at the team. The rock hits assistant gunner on the flak jacket and he turns to see Company Gunny waving frantically for them to pull back.

Assistant gunner jerks on his gunner’s right arm which sends a shower of red tracers in an arc over the NVA position. Gunner shrugs off the distraction and continues to fire until A-Gunner finally twists the belt of ammo to stop it feeding into the smoking gun. Gunner looks startled, even puzzled for a moment and then gets the picture. They’ve got huge grins on their dirty faces as they chug toward cover. They reach safety, chased all the way by NVA fire, only to be called idiots, assholes and dumb-shits by a laughing line of grateful grunts. Was it bravery, intense focus, or just insanity? Company Gunny says he’s not really sure but he’s going to write them up for decorations regardless.

Charlie Company assault platoons are ordered to pull back away from the street, away from the walls, to establish an outpost position. We’ll try for this stretch of walls again but not today. Company Commander wants to wait for some air support or naval gunfire to soften up the defenders.

On the way back to that outpost position, we encounter an NVA sniper who haunts us for days and becomes known among the grunts as The Dinger. He opens up on a squad chugging across a street near our new position and takes down a man with a headshot. Then he gets one of the two grunts who go out to retrieve the body. I’m peeking around a wall, watching all this when I spot a muzzle flash about 100 meters distant in a second-story window of what looks like a garage or mechanical repair shop. My shout alerts a squad leader who peers around the corner and tries to follow my pointing finger. The window is dark at this point, and we can’t see anything. “You sure you saw him?” Squad Leader thinks I might be spooked which I most definitely am but there’s no mistaking it. Some sonofabitch stuck a weapon out that window and cranked off a round at the rescue party.

Squad Leader hands me a magazine full of tracers and yells for his people to watch where I fire. With the tracer ammo loaded up, I take aim, trying to keep as much of my body behind the wall as possible. It’s a lot easier on me since I’m naturally left-handed and don’t have to expose as much as a right-handed shooter. Two rounds streak off toward the window and then there’s a blinding flash in front of my eyes that sends me reeling back to fall flat on my ass. First thing that crosses my mind is that the rifle blew up in my hands. One of those hands, the one that was wrapped around the M-16 pistol grip, is throbbing painfully. There’s a ragged burst of fire from the surrounding grunts mixed with a shout from Squad Leader who is summoning a Corpsman. Somebody’s been hit and it gradually dawns that someone is me.

Vision is gradually returning and I’m shocked to see my chest covered with blood. There’s no pain from that part of my anatomy and I reach up to seek the source. There’s a gash under my chin and I manage to pull out a sliver of black plastic embedded there. The blood on my chest is flowing from the chin which means I have not suffered the dreaded, usually fatal, sucking chest wound. That’s the good news. The bad news is that my left thumb looks like it’s hanging onto the rest of my hand by a sliver of mutilated flesh. When the Corpsman arrives, I stick the mangled digit up for him to see like a kid asking Mom to kiss his boo-boo.

“It ain’t as bad as it looks.” Corpsman goes to work with antiseptic and bandages. The thumb needs stitches—maybe even a few in the chin—and he’ll tag me to get it all repaired back at the BAS. Still trying to figure out exactly what happened when Squad Leader arrives holding what’s left of the M-16 used to fire tracers at the sniper hide. “That motherfucker’s a dinger. I’ll give him that much.” Squad Leader hands me the weapon which looks like it’s been carved into by a hack-saw. Most of the plastic stock and forearm is shattered and there’s a huge gouge in the receiver just above the magazine well. “He was aiming at your gourd and hit the rifle looks like.” Squad Leader pulls the magazine of tracers out of the mangled weapon, inspects it and jams it into a pouch.

Corpsman takes a moment from bandaging to look at what’s left of the rifle. “I’m guessing the impact of the round shattered all that plastic. You took a piece of it in the chin and the pistol grip blew up in your hand—which accounts for this.” He points at my left mitt which now looks like a boxing glove wrapped in bandages. “Damn sure could have been a lot worse, my man. You’re one of the lucky ones.”

Wall Hangers and Gang Bangers

Steve arrives at dawn saying he wants to be sure I get to the BAS for the required stitches. On the way we mumble about my taking the tag and letting them send me to the rear. We’ve both got a bunch of notes that would turn into good stories. And we both know we won’t be leaving Hue to write them, at least not until the fight is decided. Unlike any other time that either of us can remember from our relatively extensive time in The Nam, we are attached here, emotionally pinned to the people we’ve been watching in this surreal fight. To leave—even in the understandable line of official duty—would be abandonment verging on cowardice, a mortal sin that neither of us could bear on our conscience. None of that is said naturally. We don’t have those kinds of conversations. Such words just sound cheesy and overwrought. But there’s no need to vocalize. He knows, I know and it’s just accepted. We’re here for the duration, a wound bad enough to merit immediate evacuation or a trip out on the Body Bag Express, whichever comes first. There it is.

Waiting for the sutures takes a couple of hours and talking Senior Corpsman out of tagging me for evacuation occupies a little extra time while Steve searches out the battalion CP and tries to get a line on what happens next. By the time he returns I’m standing outside with the Docs and corpsmen watching a magnificent air show. Marine Skyhawks and Navy Crusaders from the bird farms out in the Tonkin Gulf are striking long sections of the Citadel walls. The roiling napalm strikes are luridly spectacular in the muggy air over Hue.

It’s on for tomorrow morning, Steve reports. ARVN Rangers and Marines are arriving in the city to support a general advance with two objectives in mind. We push in a southerly direction, clearing NVA along the route and sweeping them off the walls. And while we’re handling that risky chore, the ARVN will advance with the aim of surrounding the Imperial Palace at the heart of the Citadel complex. On the way back to the battalion, we spot Marines and sailors carrying huge radios and optics to direct naval gunfire as required during the push. Apparently, MACV is through fucking around with the stubborn gooks in Hue.

There’s not much to do back at Delta Company. Most of the grunts are resting, re-fitting, and re-packing for the big push. There’s some time to check my notebooks and ask around about a few follow-up interviews with some of the guys I’d noted for possible stories. About half of them are dead or evacuated. The remainder doesn’t feel much like talking. Spend a few hours obtaining a new rifle and fumbling around trying to clean it with a bandaged hand. Steve digs around in his pack for spices and cooks up a tasty C-ration meal that we share in little tastes and bites like an old married couple.

Spitting rain at dawn as the grunts go through the familiar ritual of donning their gear, testing its fit and feel. There will be little time for adjustments when the word comes to move. We watch small clutches of enlisted leaders being briefed and try to decide who might be best to accompany when the order comes. It won’t be long. We are hearing the weird Doppler shuffle of naval gunfire rounds headed for targets on the walls. We pull on two-piece rain suits and shimmy into our own gear. A flip of a Vietnamese coin decides the attachment issue. Steve will go with the first unit that moves, whatever that may be. I follow with the next one in trace.

Radios squawk and orders are barked: Time to get out there on the street and form up the assault line. Steve shuffles out into the misty air with the lead squad of the first platoon. By the time I move with a following unit, he’s nowhere in sight. At an intersection, my outfit makes a hard right which tells me we are headed for the walls. We are on line as they come into view and it’s heartening to see white phosphorous rounds—what everyone calls Willy Pete—impacting ahead of us, sending huge smoking, sparkling spears of burning chemical into the damp air. The assault line slows measurably as the shells crump and crack into long sections of the walls. We are walking on the gun-target line and everyone knows big shells from big guns have been known to fall short.
Code of the Grunt.
When it comes to fire support, more is always better…until some of that shit falls short…at which point none is best.

Word comes from the Naval Gunfire Party controlling the barrage: Rounds complete. We begin to spread out on line but the advance is held up by a firefight that breaks out on the left flank. A platoon moving parallel has hit a nest of NVA in some houses. We hold on a knee, leaning on our rifles, soaking in a warm, mild mist and staring at the walls now about a block away at the end of our street. Over on my right, Delta Six is going over a sketchy plan with Company Gunny and a clutch of platoon leaders.

“We’re now the right flank of the assault line.” He jabs a grimy finger at a drawing he’s made and covered against the wet with plastic from a radio battery. “We sweep and clear all the houses along this line then form up for a move on the southeast sector of the wall. ARVN Rangers are to our rear moving in the other direction. There’s supposed to be some Vietnamese Marines arriving on our right but nobody’s seen anything of them yet. Don’t let your people get hung up in the houses. Sweep through that shit and get ’em on line ASAP. We want a section of the eastern wall for leverage. Once we’ve got that, we hold and reorganize. On order, we push for the tower over this gate area right here.”

It’s called the Dong Ba Tower but “this gate area right here” will do for the grunts that have to take it. What most of them want to do is head south toward the Imperial Palace where the NVA flag flaps and taunts over the Citadel. It’s still up there, listlessly sagging, wet and ripped by bullets from anyone close enough to take a shot at it. Word is that symbolic mission will go to the Vietnamese who are supposedly somewhere with us inside the walls. The CO mentioned that in his briefing but it was fairly clear to all involved that if we just happened to get near enough and if the situation arises, he wants that flag replaced with ours. If 2/5 got away with it on the southside, there’s no reason 1/5 can’t get the Stars and Stripes flying over the Imperial Palace—at least for a while so everyone can see it before the ARVN haul it down and replace it with their own colors. Everyone gets the hint, but that objective lies to the south of us and we’ve got to deal with a pocket of hard-core defenders along the eastern stretch of the walls first. That’s the plan with Bravo Company closing from one direction and Delta from another.

What interested me most was the arithmetic. The Intelligence Officer related that there was still a major portion of the 6
^th
NVA Regiment operating on the northside of Hue. Scratch a couple of battalions blown away on the southside. Figure the better part of at least two battalions still scrambling around over here; that comes to around 800 or so minus the ones we’ve killed so far—and nobody knows for sure how many that is. Draw a line, carry the two—best estimate is about a shit-pot full. And most of them are waiting for us somewhere up ahead.

While we wait for word on the Vietnamese Marines, the Navy sends a few more flights of aircraft to drop Snake Eye bombs followed by napalm canisters along a line to our front. It’s turning into a fire-support circus; the greatest show on earth unless you’re the geek that has to stick his head in the lion’s mouth. There’s a whole sector of the wall to our front full of roiling napalm flames. Some desultory cheers and get-somes from nervous grunts. Saltier guys with more time in The Nam just watch silently. They’ve seen gooks pop up after Arc Light strikes from high-flying B-52s. Gooks are veteran survivors. They’ve been doing that shit for 20 years.

“Stand by on the line…don’t be eyeballin’!” Company Gunny moves past me to alert the leading elements. There’s a flight of two Skyraiders inbound and ready to drop some really heavy ordnance in hopes of blowing a few chunks out of the walls. If they can do that, we will have a lot more ramps available to get up and into the fight. The prop-planes appear with a groaning buzz and make a dummy pass perpendicular to our line of advance. Despite being told to keep their heads down, everyone is rubber-necking to see if the big black shapes hung under the belly of the aircraft will do any helpful damage.

The next pass is the real deal. The Skyraiders dive with piston engines snarling. There’s a shattering roar and several of the closest grunts have their helmets blown off by the shock-wave. Windows in surrounding houses shatter, sending shards of glass flying everywhere. That gets our attention and everyone has stopped eye-balling by the time the second aircraft makes its pass.