The Tunnels of Cu Chi (34 page)

Rat Six was supported by one or two sergeants. Sergeant Robert Batten was assigned to the rats from the outset and then volunteered for two extra tours of duty, staying in Vietnam for three years. Universally known as Batman, he was the most
feared and respected of the tunnel rats. He was from New Jersey, a red-haired man in his mid twenties. It was he, not the officers, who was credited with the elite reputation that the rat squad came to enjoy. During his time, the team could boast a body count of over a hundred enemy dead. Like Captain Herbert Thornton before him, he was on the Viet Cong's “ten most wanted” list, after the well-known generals, and was the only NCO on that list. Interrogated Viet Cong prisoners knew his name.

Batten was prejudiced against blacks and would allow none to be appointed a tunnel rat; so none volunteered. There were many Hispanics, though; one officer called them Napoleon types. Most of the men had months of experience in Vietnam before volunteering for the rat squad, and would serve only a year in total. The officers rotated even more frequently; the average Rat Six served four months. The team was about seven or eight men strong, except for the short period in 1969 when there were two tunnel rat teams. The men received an extra fifty dollars a month as hazardous-duty pay. Each team had its own medic and radio operator, and there were two long-serving Kit Carson scouts, Tiep and Hien. Both were teenagers who had experience in the tunnels when they were with the Viet Cong. They were given a limited amount of trust, but never allowed to “go point,” or be first man in the tunnel. The rats wore distinctive jungle-fighters' bush hats to distinguish them from their steel-helmeted comrades-in-arms. They were on fifteen-minute standby at Lai Khe base to be helicoptered out to explore any tunnel discovered in the field by one of the division's battalions. The men were trained to “rapell,” or slide down ropes from the helicopters. At night they would normally return to Lai Khe base. Even though many tunnel rat missions were cold—there was no contact with the enemy—they were usually justified by the haul of rice, ammunition, explosives, weapons, and documents that were captured from the Viet Cong.

Their most successful operation was from 9 to 11 August 1968. The 11th Armored Cavalry under Colonel George Patton III (son of the World War II general) and the 5th ARVN Division had sealed off the neighboring villages of Bung Dia, Chanh Long, and Bou Dai—all known to be under Viet Cong control. The tunnel rat team was requested. It arrived, commanded only
by its sergeant, Robert Batten, Batman. The tunnels were hot. Five guerrillas were flushed out on the first day at Bung Dia and captured by the ARVN. The next day at Chang Long, seven VC were discovered; three were killed in an underground firefight and the rest captured. Fifteen more surrendered when the rats discovered their hiding places in compartments underneath beds and living quarters, and, in one instance, under a manure pile in a pig pen. On the same operation a day later, Batman and his men probed into a tunnel leading from the village of Bau Dai. An enormous number of Viet Cong, 150 in all, filed one by one into captivity as they backed out of the tunnel. Underground contact had been heavy, and three of the rats were wounded. All of them were awarded the Bronze Star, the Batman his third Purple Heart (for a wound received in action). He was wounded going point but continued forward until he collapsed. The other rats pressed forward, forcing the guerrillas backward out of the complex and into the ARVN's guns.

Lieutenant Jack Flowers was Rat Six from February to August 1969. He was a college dropout from Indiana who had been drafted. He was short, tough, and spiky, with an aggressive crewcut and a prominent, jutting lower jaw. Antiwar by temperament, he became obsessed as a student about others getting killed on his behalf, especially his own father, who was in the Reserves. One of his girl friends was a Danish Communist, and he spent a year in Denmark with her. On his return he was called up. Once in the army, he was sent to Officer Candidate School and, after a few short assignments in the United States, he went to Vietnam as a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. He was assigned as a platoon leader to the 1st Engineer Battalion at Lai Khe. This base, a few miles northeast of Ben Cat, was known as rocket city, after the local Viet Cong's propensity for lobbing rockets into it; at one point in 1967 they averaged over a hundred a day.

Flowers's first tasks were supervising the cutting-down of trees and the clearing of landing zones, and similar duties. A few weeks in, he was bitterly stung to be called a “REMF” by a helicopter pilot he had kept waiting, and who taunted him: “I've got to pick up some guys who've been fighting all day.” What was a REMF? Another officer explained: a rear-echelon motherfucker, and Flowers knew it applied to him. That was
the (usually welcome) fate of the great majority of Americans who served in Vietnam—to be part of the huge tail of logistics and support units that kept a relatively small number of unfortunate grunts in actual combat. Flowers was planning to become a total REMF, an information officer at divisional headquarters at Di An, when unexpectedly he was invited to volunteer to become Rat Six—in his words, “the worst and most dangerous job in the battalion” for an officer. He suddenly saw the war anew. He remembered seeing a dead grunt being dragged messily out of a tunnel two weeks before and felt a surge of militancy. He was being asked to join the war. No one would ever call him a REMF again. To his own amazement, he accepted.

That night he ate dinner with the battalion S-2, or intelligence officer, a captain. Flowers recalled the very words of the briefing: “You're only going to have one problem, Jack, and that's Batman.” “Batman? I thought he was the whole key to the rats.” “He is. That's the problem. He knows it, too. If he weren't in the army, he'd probably be in jail someplace. On the surface he's like any other NCO, pretty good-natured, keeps his men straight, respects rank and everything else. But he's mean inside. Nobody in his right mind should love being a tunnel rat, but he does. Your biggest job is going to be to learn everything he knows and yet still be in charge. There's a rule with the rats: There is no rank underground. Don't try to be a hero. They know what has to be done, and Batman is very proud of the fact that none of the rats has ever been killed.” “How many have been wounded?” The captain laughed. “I think he's proud of that fact, too. Everybody's been wounded at least once.”

The next day Flowers was introduced to the formidable Batman, the man who had voluntarily stayed in Vietnam three times longer than necessary. Flowers remembered their conversation, too: Why had the sergeant stayed in-country for so long? “Because I love getting those gooks out of there. They think they have it made down in those holes. Well, they've got it made like a rat's ass when Batman comes after 'em.” Wasn't two years of war enough for anybody? “Not if it's the only one you've got.” He looked knowingly at the lieutenant. “We'll get along just fine if you stay out of my way. If you don't, I might be dragging you out feet first. Strange things can happen down
there. People have been known to be accidentally shot in the back.”

“Fragging” was the murder of officers or NCOs by their soldiers, usually a fragmentation grenade rolled into a hut. If a leader was thought dangerously incompetent, the grunts would sometimes get rid of him, especially after 1969, when the decisions of the newly elected President Nixon to withdraw the American troops sapped their morale. Batman's warning to Flowers was no joke. But for Flowers it was less of a threat than a challenge. Flowers had to accept that he knew nothing about tunnels and would at first be utterly reliant on Batman's unrivaled expertise. But unlike some of his predecessors, this Rat Six wanted to lead his squad underground himself, and never ask an enlisted man to do anything he would not do. In other words, he intended to command the tunnel rats in fact as well as theory, to take over the role that had hitherto been Sergeant Batten's. He decided that Batman could remain the indisputed leader of the squad for the next thirty days only. After that, Flowers would have learned enough to take over.

Flowers's relationship with Batman was at the core of his performance as Rat Six. Batman was a decorated hero and a natural tunnel rat—mean, aggressive, as sharp as his wily opponents, at home in the subterranean theater of war where the slightest error could be fatal and battle was reduced to individual combat. He was a tough character, contemptuous of Flowers's college background and pretensions as a drafted junior officer. In Flowers's view, Batman reveled unhealthily in a necessary but unpleasant job, but was at the same time a hardened warrior whom he could only respect and admire. He needed Batman's approval; it was fear of his sergeant's adverse judgment that made Flowers drive himself to succeed in the unpopular task he had volunteered for.

Then he met the rats. They wore clean, pressed uniforms and well-shined boots. Above their breast pockets they wore the tunnel rat badge with its nonsense Latin motto, “Not worth a rat's ass.” Flowers was given one of the badges on the strength of having been in a tunnel once since he had been in Vietnam. For most grunts the Vietnam War was an uncomfortable and indecisive business of counting the days of one's year in-country. Flowers sensed immediately that the rats were different. Volunteers for a hazardous assignment, they were well-motivated
professionals with codes and rules of their own, which Flowers would have to honor.

Assiduous training then followed for the young officer. One skill to be learned, in a specially constructed culvert, was hand-to-hand fighting on hands and knees. There were rules about operating in tunnels. You would never fire off more than three shots from your revolver in the darkness; fire off six and an enemy would know you were out of ammunition. When you came out of a tunnel you whistled “Dixie” all the way; American troops on the surface were apt to assume muddy figures emerging from tunnels were hostile, and shoot them. Week by week, Flowers began to chalk up tunnel missions and experience. Most were cold; some were hot, necessitating setting demolition charges and entombing (as the rats assumed) the Viet Cong inside.

By March 1969 the enemy was back in the Iron Triangle, and on the twenty-sixth, the tunnel rats were called out again by Colonel George Patton. North Vietnamese army soldiers had been spotted disappearing into a tunnel complex after a fierce battle beside the Saigon River. One of Patton's tank commanders followed them into the tunnel and was immediately killed by a booby trap. When Flowers and the team arrived, Batman took one man with him into the tunnel. Flowers heard shots and grenade explosions down below, and minutes later Batman appeared at the bottom of the entrance shaft, announcing that the other rat was wounded. They dragged the man, bleeding from shrapnel wounds in his arms and legs, up to the surface. Then Batman's head peered out. “The pricks have got us cold,” he reported. “They're sitting on top of a trapdoor.” Flowers asked the sergeant what he advised, and Batman said they should go back after the NVA. To Batman's slight surprise, Flowers himself insisted on coming down; Batman, in Flowers's view, had won enough medals already, and it was one of Flowers's men who had been wounded.

Flowers entered the tunnel, and followed Batman to the first sealed trapdoor in the roof. Smoke and fumes hung in the air from the grenade that had wounded the first tunnel rat. Batman cautiously pushed the trapdoor upward, then quickly fired three shots into the blackness. Then he took his lamp and put his head through the hole. “Give me your pistol,” he commanded Flowers. Flowers passed it up and started reloading Batman's.
One NVA soldier hiding in the tunnel had retreated; it could turn into a long pursuit. Batman went ahead and soon came across another trapdoor leading downward. Flowers followed a few yards behind, the distance beyond which a grenade explosion would not be lethal. Batman approached the new trapdoor in the same way. He lifted it and started firing. Suddenly an automatic weapon lashed out from underneath. Dirt flew everywhere. Batman fell backward. Flowers assumed that he'd been hit. He crawled up to the sergeant. Batman was unhurt, but dirt had been thrown into his face and gone into his eyes. Flowers crawled up to him and Batman indicated the small twelve-by-twelve-inch opening. “Shoot in there,” he said. Flowers fired three shots and reloaded as Batman sat rubbing his eyes, talking to himself, psyching himself up for the continued pursuit. “Those pricks. Here they are, trying to kill me again.” He tried to move past Flowers. “You've had your two trapdoors,” said the lieutenant. (The rule was that the point man would be changed after two trapdoors, so great was the stress and tension.) Batman looked at him groggily, six inches from his face, and conceded. Flowers edged past Batman, and went down through the trapdoor.

He fired three more shots as he crawled down to the lower level, and three more from Batman's pistol as he approached a curve in the tunnel on his knees, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other. Batman came down behind him. The tunnel straightened out then went another ten yards and stopped at a wall. A little dirt fell from the ceiling at the end, betraying the existence of a rectangular trapdoor to another level up. Flowers held his lamp steadily on the door.

The NVA soldier was evidently lying just over the trapdoor. Batman moved up beside Flowers and made to push upward on it. But Flowers prevented him. Flowers was Rat Six, and the point man; he insisted upon dealing with the situation by himself. Batman crawled back a few yards. Flowers tensed in apprehension; sweat was running into his eyes. He edged up to the wall and sat under the trapdoor about twelve inches above his head. He placed a lamp between his legs, shining upward. Then he put his hand under the door and exerted a small amount of pressure. Batman cocked his pistol; Flowers gripped his. Flowers took a deep breath of the dank air and pushed up on the door. It yielded. He twisted it and set it down crosswise
on its beveled frame. Then he paused, planning to slide it away and start firing into the void.