The Vietnam Reader (64 page)

A cobra swept in, running down the whole length of a nearby hedgegrove, cutting it apart with its mini guns. The company charging through the heat took the wood line. Stumbling through the bushes, they overran it, killing everyone they found. Panting, barely able to catch his breath, the platoon’s RTO found a wounded NVA, his shoulder and thighs smashed by the mini guns. Unable to move, he lay there, his AK broken beside him. The RTO shot him through the face.

It went on like that until the troopers had cleared the line. With the gunships moving out in front they found themselves on the edge of another paddy. Beyond was a thicker tree line. The platoon’s lieutenant, keeping low, moved out ahead.

“OK, OK,” he said; “come on, let’s go.”

No one moved. The med evacs were already coming in behind them.

“Lieutenant,” the Sergeant said, “they’re waiting.”

All along the grove, troopers were stretched out, looking grimly across the open paddy.

“I know, I know,” he said, “but the gunships shook them up, and the Major wants us to go. The quicker we get at ’em the better. Don’t want them to dig in.”

“Shit,” one of the troopers mumbled.

A machine gun opened up on their left flank.

“They’ve been dug in for twenty years,” someone else volunteered disgustedly. “Why don’t we soften the fucken thing up first.”

“Let’s go,” the lieutenant said flatly. “That’s an order.”

Bitterly they got up, and the NVA let them get halfway across the field before they hit them. They had to pull back. A gunship coming in to help was hit by an RPD, scattering itself over 200 meters of Nam. Air strikes were finally called in and then, with gunships anchoring their flanks and artillery in rolling barrages, destroying the grove and cutting off any retreat, they moved out again. Another battalion was committed and then another. In the heat of it all, more choppers, flying close support, were shot down. Finally, on the second day, what was left of the 35th NVA regiment left whatever it was they had been fighting for and simply disappeared.

That afternoon the Americans, slinging their weapons, began counting bodies. The brass flew in, and to show how pleased they were, OK’d a policy of claiming a kill for every weapon found, even without a body. The exhausted troops, eighteen- and nineteen-year-old kids, ignored the congratulations and simply went on stacking the bodies, throwing them into countable piles. It was the chopper pilots, though, flying in and out of it, right through the center of an NVA regiment and losing nine choppers, who summed up the bitterness of what had happened. At dusk of that last day of fighting, they flew in a CH-47 flying crane and slung a great cargo net below it. After the counting, they helped the troopers throw the NVA bodies into the net.

They filled the net quickly, and when it was filled, the crane, blowing up great clouds of dust, rose off the flat, pock-marked paddy. When the net had cleared the ground, the crane spun slowly around its center and, carrying its dripping cargo, moved off to drop the bodies on the path of the retreating NVA.

The next morning the two platoons were flown back to the rest of their company. That first night back they were hit again—two mortar rounds. The next day on patrol near the village, the slack stepped on a buried 50-caliber bullet, driving it down on a nail and blowing off the front part of his foot. When the medic rushed to help, he tripped a pull-release bouncing betty, blowing the explosive charge up into the air. It went off behind him, the explosion and shrapnel pitching him forward onto his face. Some of the white hot metal, blowing backwards, caught the trooper coming up behind him.

The men asked to take the village, and that afternoon the company
commander, fed up himself, asked Brigade for portable strobe lights so they could section off the village and search it at night. Brigade told him there weren’t any available, so the Captain sent a squad to sweep the village before it got dark. The troopers, bitter and angry, found the village equally hostile and antagonistic. The villagers watched sullenly as the troopers, fingers on the triggers of their weapons, walked by their huts. No words were exchanged, nor any sign of recognition; the hate was palpable. Through it all the villagers had enough sense not to move; even the children stood rigidly still. Behind one of the huts, a squad found a rotting NVA medical kit. Without asking for approval they burned down the hut and waited there threateningly till it burned itself to the ground.

Half a kilometer past the village, the patrol was moving along the edge of one of the villager’s paddies, trying to shield their eyes from the low-slung sun, when their point was cut down by a burst of automatic fire. Throwing themselves down, they waited for the mortars or machine-gun fire. There wasn’t any, and a trooper, looking up, saw something move away from behind the nearest hedgegrove.

“Fuck it,” he screamed, the last of his adolescent control gone. In a sudden fury he ripped off his Webb gear. Even before it hit the ground he was up and running. He hit the hedgegrove on a dead Iowa run, barely keeping his balance as he burst through it. The rest of the squad was running after him. Carrying their M-16’s and M-79’s, they raced through the line and out onto the flat behind it. For Nam it was an incredibly abandoned affair. Helmetless, webb gear and flack vests thrown away, these bareheaded Negro and freckle-faced kids, heads down, arms pumping, their boots barely touching the ground, ran on through the shimmering heat, stumbling over the uneven ground. Just past the next grove they caught them—a girl and two men. They caught them out in the open and killed them, shooting them down as they ran. Afterward, they stood around the sprawled bodies, chests heaving, staring in bewilderment at each other. Then they stripped the girl, cut off her nose and ears, and left her there with the other two for the villagers.

That night, a starlight scope picked up movement near the village a few minutes before three rockets hit their lager. The next morning
another patrol was sent out. Halfway to the village, one of the troopers stepped on a pressure-release land mine. They were still close enough to carry him back to the base camp. A little before noon, a squad found three of the village water buffalo out grazing. The machine gunner set up his M-60, carefully adjusted the sights, and while the rest of the patrol stood around him, calmly killed each buffalo in turn.

The following day a huge food cache was found buried in the area. The CO asked for a sectioning off and company-size sweep of the village and surrounding area. Brigade sent down a lieutenant colonel. He looked at the size of the food cache, the paths leading to it from the village, listened to the stories about booby traps and injuries, and OK’d a sweep for the next morning.

It was still dark when the men were shaken awake. “I want that fucken village locked in,” the CO told the platoon leaders. “I don’t want a mouse to get out, and I want every one of those huts searched. I want every floorboard pulled up, every wall knocked open. I want that village clean when we leave it. Is that understood? Clean.” They filed out of the lager and waited until it was just light enough to see each other and then closed in. No one was smoking; no one said a word. There wasn’t a sound except the soft footfalls of 112 troopers walking silently through the grass.

The Killing Zone
F
REDERICK
D
OWNS
1978

2 November 1967

Our battalion had been ordered into the mountains west of the highway. We were to be relieved today by the 198th Brigade, fresh from the States. Bridge duty was relatively easy and it was thought that the green troops, “new” to Vietnam, should be broken in on the bridges before becoming bloodied in the jungles. The procedure for relieving us would be the same as before, only now, some weeks later, I would be the critical old-timer, scrutinizing the soldiers new to Vietnam.

But with one night remaining for us, there was time for a last mission. The platoon relieving us in the afternoon would allow me to use my complete platoon in an operation Captain Sells and I had been planning for days.

Intelligence had word that the village directly to the east about half a klick had nightly visits from the Cong, coming to see their families and draft new recruits. My platoon would work a coordinated attack by closing the village off on three sides after midnight. The east side, which abutted a large lake, would be covered by gunships in case any of the guerrillas tried to escape by boat. The frosting on the operation would be an MI (Military Intelligence) team, with a Chou-Hoi. The team would fly in at daybreak with an intelligence expert whom I would get to know in the future on other jobs. The man with him would be a dink named Fouel. Fouel had been a guerrilla for many
years but, for unknown reasons, he had become a Chou-Hoi. A Chou-Hoi was an enemy who turned himself, and hopefully his weapons, into the hands of the ARVNs or the Americans.

Our air force dropped millions of yellow leaflets urging the enemy to give up by waving the yellow papers at us. When the distraught enemy soldier gave himself up, he would be welcomed by smiling South Vietnamese soldiers into the fold. At least, the Chou-Hoi leaflets showed smiling South Vietnamese soldiers welcoming the enemy soldier. Somewhere there are records which show how many Chou-Hoi came in. I was always skeptical of their effectiveness, but they did work to some extent. If the enemy were getting beat pretty bad, they were more likely to turn themselves in. We never wholely trusted the Chou-Hois. There were many rumors circulating among the American soldiers stating that many Chou-Hois came in only to get information for their commanders in the field. After gaining the trust of the ARVNs or Americans, they would be issued an M-16 and assigned to a unit. When the fighting started, they would bug out back to their side with their new weapons, plenty of ammo, and good intelligence as to what kind, how many, and the disposition of the troops they had just left. True or not, we never trusted Chou-Hois.

Around 1400 hours the platoon relieving us arrived on deuce-and-a-halfs. I quickly briefed Lieutenant Lorbieki, the platoon leader, and went back to planning my operation. The skies were heavily overcast, boding a wet, miserable night; with luck, the rain would hold off. The operation would start from my bridge after dark.

I stood on the bridge facing east toward the village we would attack, seven hundred meters away. The villagers were coming home from their everyday chores. I thought of the many patrols we had conducted through that village in the last two or three weeks; we had found nothing. At night, we took fire from the direction of all the villages and I was slightly wounded.

We gave our equipment a last check. This operation called for web gear only. It meant we would carry only weapons, ammo, canteen, and first-aid packets. All the men had been briefed. The platoon would leave after dark in a single file, going directly across the open rice paddies toward the village. Fifty meters from the village, one
squad with Spagg’s machine gun would go around to the north and spread itself in a line to the lake, cutting escape to the north. I would stay at the west end with one squad spread in a line across the west end of the village, preventing escape. The third squad, with Indian’s M-60, would spread to the south in a line to the lake. We would lie in wait all night until dawn, when the MI team would land by chopper to take us into the village. There was only one blind spot that was not covered, but it couldn’t be helped. Starting at the edge of the lake, coming straight out into the rice paddies for two hundred meters, was a string of hills no more than fifty meters high. The village was built along the north side, out to where the hills ended. Some of the villagers had built up into the hills, which were heavily grown over. My squad on the south had those hills between them and the village. We believed the guerrillas would hide in the hills, but since the hills were small we would sweep them out fairly easily.

Lt. Lorbieki’s platoon had completed taking over our old positions on the three bridges. My platoon had gathered at my bridge (now Lorbieki’s bridge), where the relief men would guard our packs until we returned the next day.

It was dark. Lorbieki wished me luck.

“Saddle up!” I called. Then I gave the order to the point to move out and we filed into the darkness. The point was zigzagging through the paddies, following the small paddy dikes so we could stay in the dry paddies.

The flare was totally unexpected. One second we were dark ghosts drifting through the night; the next second our bodies stood out in stark relief, our shadows sifted into the knee-deep rice. “Down,” our voices rasped to each other, needlessly. Our bodies had responded the instant the light flared into existence. I was terrified that we had triggered an ambush. My body and mind prepared to respond to the sound of bullets and explosions. In the next second, however, I realized the light was coming from the sky to the south. We all lay hidden in the rice fields watching the pyrotechnic show.
Puff is working,
we suddenly realized, as two solid red lines reached from the sky to etch the earth. This explained the flares. Above Puff was a flare ship. They were far enough away so their sound didn’t carry to us, only the sight
of flares and the red lines of tracers. We didn’t dare move because the flares would point us out to the guerrillas in the village, who were undoubtedly also watching the show. The RTO had gotten the captain for me and handed the receiver over.

“This is One-six. What the hell is going on? We were caught out in the middle of this rice paddy and almost gave ourselves away! Over.”

“This is Delta-Six. Dragon Six said that one of the new units is being attacked by a battalion of dinks. I don’t believe it, but their Dragon Six got Puff called in anyway. Just lie low until the show is over, then get into position before any of those guerrillas escape, out.”

“Those assholes down the road there are going to get us killed,” I whispered to the men around me. The word was passed to let the men know what was happening. I informed the point to move out as soon as the flares quit and those flyboys went home. “Puff the Magic Dragon” was a C-47 loaded with thousands of rounds of ammo with mini-guns or gatling guns bolted to the side door. It was said that a ten-second burst would cover every square foot of a football field. The twin red lines we saw were tracer rounds, every fifth round in a belt of machine gun ammo. Puff was firing so fast that the tracers were two solid lines in the sky. It was a pretty sight, but hardly conducive to our plans.