the ready, they moved across the killing zone, cautiously, silently, with the cold and sure confidence of men who knew they were good at what they had been called upon to do.
These men are professionals! I thought. These eighteen-and nineteen-year-old draftees are professional soldiers who can outfight and outfox the North Vietnamese regulars! The image of those soldiers at that moment remains as clear in my mind today as it was then, nearly a quarter of a century ago. I was very proud of them at that moment, proud to be one of them.
Our kill was an NVA lieutenant in his early twenties who, having been shot several times in the mouth, was without much of his skull.
Searching him, we found some documents and a photograph of him in an austere NVA dress uniform standing next to a rather plain young woman holding a small child. We laid him out neatly, compassionately, on a paddy dike and folded his arms across his chest. Then one of our soldiers placed a black-and-gold Cavalry patch in the center of the NVA’s chest.
Meanwhile, one of MacCarty’s squads was pursuing the two more fortunate enemy soldiers, at least one of whom had been wounded.
Regrettably, the blood trail soon petered out, and the squad returned empty handed.
I queried our machine gunner as to why he had opened fire before the claymores were detonated, as their detonation was to initiate the ambush, and learned he had had little choice in the matter. Having located himself in dense shrubbery on the southern left flank of the ambush, he was little more than five feet from where the NVA lieutenant met his maker. While our man waited, hoping that the other two enemy soldiers would step into the killing zone, the NVA lieutenant stooped to pick a pack of Cration cigarettes up and, in doing so, just happened to look directly into the muzzle of the machine gunner’s M-60. The instant the doomed man opened his mouth to shout a warning, or scream in terror, snuffie squeezed the machine gun’s trigger.
Later that day we rejoined the company in our new area of operations astride Route 506. The following morning, after an uneventful night, we were airlifted from this location and inserted into yet another AO known throughout the division as “Happy Valley.”
That evening, our first in Happy Valley, I reflected back on our four days in the boonies, trying in the process to evaluate the company’s performance. With four confirmed “hard” kills to our credit and suffering not as much as a scratch in return, we had done rather well, I concluded. Of course, the demise of four NVA soldiers would have little impact on the war’s outcome; however, it was the method by which these soldiers had been dispatched that counted right now. For these were not red-leg (artillery) or air-strike body counts; these were good, clean, warrior-to-warrior infantry kills. Even the company’s most doubtful soldier now knew he was every bit as good as the enemy he opposed. In little more than seventy-two hours, we had all gained enormous confidence.
Shortly after dusk, as I sat pondering all of this, the Bull strolled over for his nightly parley.
“Hell of a good score today, sir. First time I ever saw a false extract work without helicopters.
He paused momentarily, introspectively, and then added, “First time I ever saw a false extract work, period. Snuffle loves the shit out of it. Morale soars tonight, boss!”
“That’s my sounding, Top,” I replied. “And, Top, you ought to have seen ’em! I’ve never seen a better ambush laid in. Never seen soldiers do things more right than ours did today.”
“Well, shit, sir, I could’ve told you that. Like I said, we’ve just had some bad luck lately. But today was a good omen.”
“And like I said, Top,” I responded, smiling, “I don’t believe in luck or omens.”
He smiled in return, and after a short lull, I asked him why Happy Valley was called Happy Valley.
“Beats the shit out of me, sir. There sure as hell ain’t anything happy about it!”
5. Happy Valley to Binh Loc
No, Happy Valley wasn’t a very happy place at all. In fact, its few inhabitants seemed to be some of the unhappiest people on earth. In every village, there was always a faint but discernible fright in the eyes of those we met, as if at any moment they expected the next ax to fall, the next unfortunate turn in their lives to occur. This wariness on their part was well founded, for the people of Happy Valley were “twilight people.”
Most areas of Vietnam were actually relatively stable: the daily routine of living, of nurturing families, and so forth was rarely interrupted by the war. For example, in and around the larger cities and provincial capitals, as well as throughout much of the country’s coastal plain and, by 1967, most of the Mekong Delta, the people were only sporadically disturbed by enemy intrusions. And in much of the country’s hinterland—previously the Viet Minh’s and now the Viet Cong’s stronghold—life was interrupted only infrequently by aerial bombings or, at times, by allied incursions. Happy Valley and much of Binh Dinh Province, in contrast, rested in a twilight area between these two extremes, with neither the republic nor the Viet Cong able to fully and consistently exercise control over the population therein. The area’s strategic location, midway between the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and the southern tip of the Cau Mau Peninsula, meant that both sides continued to fight over it.
This back-and-forth battle for the hearts and minds—and taxes, recruits, porters, laborers, rice, cattle, and so forth—of the valley’s people had been going on since 1946, twenty years before. As we worked the valley, we could imagine what it must be like to live in such a life-threatening political milieu. Currently, the republic, thanks to U.S. intervention in the form of the First Air Cavalry, had the upper hand.
But when the First Cav departed, as of course we did following the Tet offensive, the Viet Cong would return. And there would be reprisals against the people of Happy Valley.
We had been working the valley for about a week with little to show for our efforts. We were therefore anxious to return to the mountains above Daisy, where we felt the hunting was better. One late afternoon, as we were somewhat lethargically searching for an NDP, Blair passed me his handset.
“Three’s on the horn, sir.”
“Hey, Tall Comanche,” Major Byson said, a touch of excitement in his voice, “we got a big fight going on farther up the valley. I’m inbound for pickup and short hop insert in one zero with four, plus two, plus two. Will brief you en route. How copy? Over.”
“This is Comanche Six, solid copy,” I replied. “We’ll be standing by with smoke.”
Passing the handset back to Blair, I asked Anderson to give the platoon leaders a call-up and, once they were assembled, quickly relayed to them the gist of Byson’s message. Then I turned the whole affair over to the Bull, telling him only that One Six was to conduct the assault.
Donning one of the Huey’s headsets as we lifted off, I listened to Major Byson’s description of what we were getting into: “Gotta be brief, Comanche, touchdown in zero five. LZ green, no prep. Got a large enemy force bottled up in Binh Loc four… uh… least a company, might be a battalion. Red leg, Blue Max, and the fast movers been working the area for thirty minutes or so. Got ‘little people’ to the north of the village and just inserted Ridge Runner [Bravo Company] on the west side.
They’ll tie… hey, are you copying this? I mean really copying it, ‘cause it gets sort of detailed. Over.”
“This is Comanche Six. Roger, taking notes. Over.” And I was, while sitting in the door of a Huey traveling at ninety knots!
“This is Arizona Three. Okay… Ridge Runner will tie in with the little people on the north. I’ll be putting you in to the south.
Want you to tie into Ridge Runner on your left and then string your men as far east as you can, all the way to the river that runs along the east side of the village, if possible. How copy so far? Over.”
“This is Comanche Six. Good copy… little people to the north, Ridge Runner to the west, we’re on the south. I tie in with Ridge Runner on my left and the river on my right. Over.”
“Roger, solid copy, Comanche. Now I know that’s a lot of territory to cover, but I may not be able to get Lean Apache [Alpha Company] in before dark, and we want to seal the damn village before then…”
Byson signed off, and Anderson passed word to One Six that we were going in green.
Once on the ground, and after the Chinooks had off-loaded the rest of the company, I contacted Bravo Company’s commander and, in doing so, discovered we had nearly four hundred meters of frontage between his right flank and the river on the village’s eastern side. Far too much terrain to cover at night, and day’s light was quickly fading.
