side—of which they cleared fields of fire, set out trip flares, and, between the trip flares and fighting positions, emplaced command-detonated claymore mines. In addition to manning this defensive trace encompassing one- third of the company’s perimeter, each of the platoons normally established a listening post (LP) on the enemy’s side of the trip flares and a squad or fire-team ambush astride a likely enemy avenue of approach at some greater distance. In the Cav these ambushes were traditionally, and quasi officially, referred to as “trick-or-treat” sites.
Weapons Platoon located itself centrally within our defensive circle, manning their guns (one or two 81-mm mortars) when we opted to bring them forward on the evening log bird, acting as the company’s reserve when we did not.
We in the headquarters section would usually collocate ourselves with Weapons Platoon or one of the line platoon’s command posts (CPs).
Viewing the company’s perimeter from above, it rarely depicted a circle; more commonly it looked like an irregular, deflated football.
The nature of the terrain we defended, of course, mainly determined the perimeter’s outline.
After we established our defensive positions for the night and while we waited for the log bird to bring in our rucks (rucksacks) and a “hot” (meal), the talk turned to the day’s action on the mountain. Two Six’s point man related his “kill” to anyone willing to listen, and, as killing the enemy was a somewhat unique experience in Charlie Company, virtually everyone was willing to listen.
“Yeah, man, oughta seen ’em rounds hit the dink. Ping! Ping! Ping! I mean blew him away! See, he’s just bopping along like he owns the fucking mountain, and ‘barn!” I put a hole in his chest what you can see daylight through. Dink looks at me, sorta surprised like, and…”
“Shit, we know you waxed him, Lean Man,” one of the point man’s onlooking listeners said, interrupting him, “but if you hit him all that good, why the fuck you have to chase him a mile or so up the trail ‘fore you found him ‘bout to bury himself, huh?”
The point man, smiling, responded by comparing his kill to a species of snake indigenous to his native Georgia mountains. “Well, see, these dinks, they different from us. They sorta like them timber rattlers back home. You can cut the heads off of ’em, but they keep on wiggling and crawling ‘cause they don’t die till the sun sets. These dinks here, they the same way. Fuck, they so used to doing things at night, they ain’t never learned how to die ‘cept in the dark.”
“Bullshit!”
“Ain’t no bullshit, man! No matter how many caps you pop, gotta chase Chuck till sundown. ‘Cause they night people. Why you think their eyes look like.”
But it was no joking matter. I was concerned about our enemy’s ability to elude us after suffering such a serious, indeed, mortal, gunshot wound—a wound that would have stopped most of us dead in our tracks.
And this man was not atypical. Recalling previous experiences with our foe and countless accounts from other combat participants, it seemed to me you had to literally shoot his legs out from under him to stop him in place. After thinking about this for a while, I decided that the claymore mine was perhaps the weapon to do just that.
But I was also concerned about the manner in which we had initiated the engagement, in effect by just running into our enemy. Moving up and down such a well-traveled trail seeking Charlie seemed to make little sense, and it could be dangerous. Inasmuch as we could access the main northsouth trail from any of several ascending routes on the valley floor, it seemed wiser to interdict it in ambush at different points and wait for our enemy to come to us.
With these thoughts in mind, I assembled Charlie Company’s platoon leaders to discuss the next day’s operation. The offshoot of this parley was that Two Six, having had its moment of glory, would man the company’s base, conducting screening patrols around its perimeter, while Three Six worked the valley floor in a broad sweep looking for signs of enemy movement between the sparsely populated plain and supposedly uninhabited mountains to the west. One Six would return to the mountain and test our daylight trick-or-treat concept.
Shortly after breaking up our little war conference, the evening log bird arrived and off-loaded ammunition and water.
Tactical situation and weather permitting, deployed Cav units were resupplied nightly, ammunition being the first priority of resupply, water the second, rations the third, and comfort items (our rucks) the last.
Normally the evening log bird flew two sorties, carrying ammo and water on the first and next day’s C rations, a hot meal (A or B rations), and sling-loaded rucksacks on the second. The rucks were backhauled to battalion trains each morning, relieving us of the requirement of carrying them during the day, which in turn put us pretty much on an even par with our lightly encumbered and highly mobile enemy. Lacking the airmobile assets organic to the Cav, other U.S. infantry divisions could ill afford to embrace this policy; hence, their soldiers were normally burdened with forty-to sixty-pound rucksacks, day and night.
Such loads restricted foot mobility, frequently produced heat casualties, and could limit fighting effectiveness in a fast-moving tactical encounter.
However, there were many nights in the Cav that the log bird didn’t fly because of adverse weather or other higher priority airmobile contingencies. On these occasions we usually spent a cold and hungry night in our NDP.
As darkness approached, Sergeant Sullivan moseyed over to where I sat nursing a final cup of battalion’s fresh coffee, a brew that was ever so much better than the standard Cration instant issue. Pulling up a discarded mermite can (a small field food container) and sitting upon it, he said, “Let’s parley, sir.”
“Good idea, First Sergeant. We really didn’t have a chance to do a lot of talking on the bridge. Uh… my fault. I apologize.”
“No problem, sir. Hell, we were both busy back there, but… me and the outgoing Six, we always tried to find a few minutes each evening to sorta rehash what happened that day and what’s on tap for the next.”
“Sounds like a solid policy to me, Top… uh… First Sergeant. Let’s continue it.”
“Okay. And you can call me Top, sir. That’s what snuffie calls me, ‘less I’m on his ass, then it’s First Sergeant. Behind my back, he calls me the Bull, or worse.”
The Bull spoke briefly of what he perceived to be his responsibilities in the boonies, which in the main related to the company’s administrative and logistical requirements. He also saw himself as the final enlisted authority on recommendations for awards, promotions, and disciplinary actions and, since he was the company’s senior NCO, felt that any NCO-related problem should go through him before it was brought to my attention. Finally, he monitored troop morale and oversaw the distribution of our mail. In sum, he was the unit’s field XO (executive officer) and, as I was soon to discover, a damn good one.
Agreeing with everything he said, I reminded him that he was also, as of that morning, the company air- movement officer.
He gazed at me with a perplexed look for a moment, then smiled and said,
“Oh, yeah, air-movement officer. And, sir…” he continued, a wily look in his eyes, “as you’ll probably soon learn, that’s the very least taxing of my many company chores.”
There was a brief lull in our conversation as I tried to discern some hidden meaning behind his remark. I was unable to do so.
Changing the subject, he commented, “That was a good hit on the mountain today. Company needed it.”
“Yeah, talked to Lieutenant Brightly first night on the bridge—or to be more accurate, he talked to me—and he said you’ve had some rotten luck lately.”
“Sir, I don’t believe in luck, but yeah, we’ve had some rotten luck lately! It ain’t snuffie’s fault, and I don’t give a simple fuck what the old man might think—it wasn’t the outgoing Six’s fault neither.
Just seems we were always in the wrong place at the right time or right place at the—shit, you know.”
He paused briefly, then added, “But even though I don’t believe in luck, the hit today was a good omen. Maybe it’s payback time for Charlie Company.”
“Hope so, Top, but like I told Brightly, I don’t believe in luck or omens.”
But perhaps I should have. I would later find my first sergeant possessed an uncanny ability to predict the company’s future based upon the outcome of events such as our encounter on the mountain that day.
“Understand you’re a mustang… uh… used to wear stripes,” he said, again redirecting the conversation’s
