hit teams up and down the trail, and then we waited.
We waited and munched on charlie rats and napped, waited and whispered of or daydreamed about home, women, the Army, the war, families, and R&R. Combat, at least combat in the Nam, is mostly waiting, I thought to myself. Waiting in ambush, waiting for mail, for chow, for dawn, for insertion or extraction helicopters, for R&R—and most of all, waiting for that magic end-of-tour date when we’d put Vietnam and all the waiting behind us.
My thoughts were interrupted by a distant but loud explosion, followed immediately by the rhythmic rat-tat- tat-tat-tat-tat of an M-60 machine gun.
“One Six got ’em!” Blair whispered, gleaming.
Anderson, sitting on my right, quietly asked, “Want me to give em a call, sir?”
“No, not yet,” I responded. “They’re busy. Let ’em sort it out.”
And again, I waited. Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes.
Anxious, then annoyed, and finally a little angry. Yeah, waiting really is the name of the game. But goddamn it, Norwalk should give me some indication of what’s happened.
We had talked of this before, and it was a problem at every level of command, because the Nam was a different kind of war. In previous wars, lines were drawn with platoons forward of companies, companies forward of battalions, and battalions forward of regiments. And commanders at each intervening level would anxiously, but usually tolerantly, await the results of any ongoing engagement, influencing its outcome with the resources they could bring to bear but relying on their subordinates to fight the battle at hand. In Vietnam, in contrast, a platoon leader frequently had every commander in the world directly over top of him in his C&C ship within moments of a single round having been fired in anger. From that vantage point, colonels and general officers too often tried to become squad leaders. Thankfully, that was rarely the case in the Cav. General Tolson, the division’s commander, believed firmly in letting his subordinates fight their own battles while ensuring that they had the entire division and all its resources behind them. Colonel Lich, a decorated veteran of our little Korean ado, who knew what it was like to fight the fight on the ground, adhered to the same philosophy.
However, commanders at all levels had one thing in common: when their soldiers got themselves into a fight, they wanted to know what was going on as soon as possible. Or as Colonel Lich had told me on the bridge,
“If you get into something, tell me. I can’t help you or prepare others to help you if you don’t. And don’t wait until you can consolidate an Infantry School-formatted situation report. Just give me what you got at the time and ‘more to follow.’” Charlie Company’s platoon leaders had been told the same.
“Six, this is One Six,” Norwalk said, his voice emanating from Anderson’s handset. “At one four two five hours local, engaged NVA at point of origin right two eight, up zero six. Three, say again three, NVA killed in action. One AK-47 and two SKS assault rifles captured in action. No friendly casualties. How copy?”
Good report. Clear, concise, and complete. Provides the who, what, where, when, and results. And the results were good, the claymore having proved once again to be the weapon of choice. Three dead, three weapons taken, none of us hurt. Good show! Bill Norwalk is a solid officer. Hell, they all are.
“This is Six,” I replied. “Good job. Pass along a ‘well done’ to your hit man… break. You’ve done a day’s work. Go ahead and pack it up and start moving toward Daisy. We’ll be an hour or so behind you. Don’t forget to give Two Six a call before closing the LZ; they may be occupying it!”
After waiting in ambush another thirty to forty minutes, we too started down the mountain. Shortly after passing the point at which our new descending trail bisected the main northsouth route, we got lucky.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat! The sound of Three Six’s point man’s M-16, firing on automatic, pierced the air!
As on that first day on the mountain, everyone dived to the ground, pointing their weapons outward, doing things right. Within moments Lieutenant Halloway and 1, our RTOs in tow, were running forward, quickly closing the twenty meters or so between us and his point man, The point man was in a crouch, his weapon at the ready, looking left, right, and down the trail as he should have been. At his feet were what appeared to be two long socks, a string connecting them, filled with dry uncooked rice. These straddled the neck of a dead NVA soldier.
Three Six’s point man had evidently elevated his weapon while firing on automatic. His foe had been “zippered” through his groin, stomach, chest, neck, and skull.
Recalling Byson’s guidance, we searched the bloodied khaki-clad body thoroughly but other than personal effects found nothing. Clearing the trail, a couple of Three Six’s soldiers then heaved the body, in a one-two-three count, off the path’s embankment. It tumbled two or three meters before lodging itself against a tree. We retrieved the dead soldier’s weapon and then continued our downward movement toward Daisy.
While waiting—always waiting—for the evening log bird, I strolled over to One Six’s piece of our perimeter and congratulated their hit man on his kill. After doing so, I continued on to Three-Six’s position, arriving in time to overhear Bob Halloway’s point man describing his kill.
“It was just like Lean Man said, LT! See, I’m moving ‘long real cautious like, and all of a sudden this dink comes strutting ‘round a curve in the trail, carrying this double sock of rice over his shoulders, you know, like saddlebags. And I swear to God, sir, the fucker had his weapon slung ‘cross his back! I mean, this dude’s doing everything what they told us not to do in basic. Shit, he wasn’t even looking where the fuck he was going! Just looking at the ground, at his feet, you know, like them Ho Chi Minh sandals was the biggest thing he had going for him today. I swear, sir, I don’t think he ever saw me. I mean he’s just staring at his fucking feet when I blew him away.”
After congratulating our young point man, Bob and I talked briefly about the incident.
“What do you make of it, Bob?” I asked. “Why are they so fucking sloppy up there? Hell, these are regulars, the People’s Army of North Vietnam, supposedly one of the world’s most professional infantries.”
“Yes, sir, and they probably are when they come down here to play, you know, on our turf. But up there, well, it’s pretty obvious they think they own the mountain, regard it as their own private sanctuary, and can therefore traverse its trails with impunity. You know, just like walking the streets of Hanoi.”
“Well, they by God don’t own it no more, Robert!” I retorted, arrogantly, cockily.
“Uh… right, sir, and that’s what surprises me—I mean that they haven’t concluded their little haven of security is no longer secure.
You’d think, seeing the dead bodies we’ve been leaving around, they’d take some precautionary measures.”
After mulling this over, I responded, “I don’t know, Bob; maybe that’s not so surprising—I mean their reaction to our kills. Hell, there’s dead bodies all over this country; it’s almost the norm. Way I figure it, these people are regulars in transit, you know, just moving from point A to point B. They see some of their own laid out ‘long the way, they just chalk it up to H&I fire, aerial-delivered mines, and a stray born. in short, the fortunes of war.”
“Maybe so,” he replied, “but it’s funny they’re not using their VC brethren as guides. And why are they moving in singles, pairs, or groups of only three or four per? And where are they moving to?”
Good questions, but ones that neither Bob Halloway nor I were able to answer on that January day in 1968.
As dusk fell, Two Six departed Daisy en route to our new NDP, leaving behind a guide with each of the remaining platoons. An hour or so later, in darkness, the rest of us followed. Upon arriving at our new position, Lieutenant MacCarty quickly emplaced the company in an elongated perimeter. LPs were sent out, and we settled in for the night, each of us seeking what cover and concealment our immediate surroundings afforded. We dug no holes in this instance: security was dependent on stealth, on silence.
After C&D the following morning, we again assaulted the mountain, going about what had now become business as usual. Three Six worked the main north-south trail, and One Six the valley floor. Two Six, accompanied by the command section, followed our newly discovered trail of the day before up and over the mountain’s crest. We wanted to see what was on the other side.
I tagged along with Two Six. Although we found little of consequence on the mountain’s western slope, I had the opportunity to observe the best of the company’s point men at work. And the company had no bad point men in the Nam. They were the best and bravest of a unit’s soldiers because the laws of jungle warfare permitted nothing less. The point man was a twentieth-century gladiator, a man who fought the war at its most personal level. And, like the gladiator, he could lose the game but once. If the pilot of a B-52 bomber was on one end of the
