put both name and place behind him as quickly as possible.
“Don’t even know what the word means, if it means anything. Hell, maybe it’s Viet meaning ‘forsaken,’ or French for ‘wilderness.” Or maybe it’s Katu for ‘white man’s folly.” That would be more appropriate. No, sir, don’t know why it’s called ARO, and don’t care. But I do know if those numbnuts in Nha Trang expect you all to spend a fucking year on this hill, your whole team will be ‘looney tunes’ time you rotate! Hell, we’ve only been here half that time, and ain’t none of us quite right anymore. If we had to spend a year in this shithole, if you all weren’t replacing us now, we’d go bugfuck, completely bugfuck!”
“That bad, huh?” I said, standing next to him atop a bunker in my brand-new “been-in-Vietnam-all-day” jungle fatigues, the two of us overlooking the hilltop Sergeant Scuggs had so graphically described to Chester and me two years previously.
“Yeah, that bad. Listen, sir, you got briefings on this place at Nha Trang and Danang… uh… camp’s mission, surveillance strategy, and so forth, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, don’t believe a fucking word of it! I’ll give you the real skinny. First of all, our mission is interdiction, stop the flow of troops, arms, and supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, right?”
He paused, so again I nodded.
“Well, know how many troops we’ve stopped in the past six months? One! And I’m not so sure he wasn’t just some poor Katu tribesman who got caught napping. Know how many arms and supplies we’ve quote, interdicted?”
I shook my head.
“None! Zero! Know why? ‘Cause of that fucking jungle out there. See, the concept is—and I’m sure one of Nha Trang’s little Napoleons told you this—we ‘aggressively’ patrol the area between us and the camps at Kham Duc and Ta Ko. Bullshit! If you took off overland today, you wouldn’t reach either of ’em ‘fore Christmas. You measure a day’s walking in that jungle in meters, not klicks.”
He paused, evidently collecting his thoughts, then continued, “And what about your strike force? See, the concept was to recruit the force from the indigenous Montagnard population, in our case, the Katu. Well, sir, I ain’t never seen a Katu, much less recruited one. ‘Cause the Katu, he’s not like your Rhade or Jarai ‘sign-me-up-for-a- can-of-rock-salt’ Montagnard you got down south. He don’t want nothing to do with nobody. Oh, he’s out there, out there in that jungle. We run ‘cross one of his hutches every now and then, but he’s never at home. Don’t have them tribal, you know, communitylike instincts other ‘Yards have. Usually it’s just him and his family, maybe two, three families, always on the move.”
He paused, again as if he had lost his train of thought. Then he said,
“Anyway, there’s no way we’re gonna enlist the Katu in our border surveillance program, right?”
“Suppose not,” I replied.
“so Danang’s mayor,” he went on as if not hearing me, “him having his own problems with an overpopulated prison system, says, ‘Hey, you looking for aggressive, tough young fighters for your strike force? I got ’em by the truckload.” And that, sir, is your strike force.” He motioned toward an adjacent area of the camp where several of these soldiers were moving about in the late afternoon sun, two of them engaged in a heated argument over what appeared to be a can of Del Monte peaches.
“Pickpockets, petty thieves, beggars… shit, rapists and murderers for all I know. Perfect place for ’em. They can’t desert; there’s no place to go.”
“Well, can they fight?” I asked. “I mean, are they good soldiers?”
“No on the latter, and beats the shit out of me on the former. Like I said, we ain’t seen a lot of fighting. But on the other hand, guess maybe the answer’s yes, ‘cause they shoot one another every now and then. Uh… mostly as a result of gambling arguments. They play a lot of cards—not much else to do with their pay what with there being no village, or women, or booze, or anything else ‘round here to spend it on. And you can’t let ’em go back to Danang on leave to spend it. Shit, you’d never see ’em again.”
And once again he paused, staring at the distant horizon as if hypnotized by the sun’s setting over the Laotian mountains to the west of us.
Sonofabitch! I thought to myself. Maybe he wasn’t kidding. Maybe this hilltop does play on a man’s mind.
“So,” he said abruptly, as if coming out of a trance. “Uh… let’s see, I’ve briefed you on your mission and the troops you have available to accomplish your mission. Now, let’s talk of logistics and how we resupply those troops as they go about failing to accomplish their impossible mission. See, the concept was to build an airstrip and then airland everything you needed to keep the camp going. You know, a little Dien Bien Phu. So Danang airdropped a bulldozer and road grader in and built us an airstrip.” He gestured to our front at the dirt runway that ran the length of the camp from east to west.
“Know how many planes we’ve had land on it, Lieutenant?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head.
“One! Know how many planes have taken off from it?”
“One?”
“Nope, none!” he answered, directing my attention to a heavily sandbagged bunker, protruding from one end of which was the nose section of a two-engine CV-2B Caribou. Above the aircraft’s windshield, affixed to the sandbagged roof covering the wingless, tailless fuselage, was a neatly painted sign: HAMMOND HOUSE Presented to the United States of America by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia. “See, Lieutenant, only trouble with our airstrip is it ain’t very long, and, since they tried to cut it out of the top of the hill here, it’s eight or ten feet lower on each end than it is in the middle. Air Force came out, surveyed it, and said, ‘Hell no, we ain’t gonna land no fixed-wing on it.” Which, when you think of it, I guess is understandable. Our pilots are a bit leery of landing fixed-wing aircraft on runways with a fucking hill in the middle of ’em!”
Then, smiling a bit peculiarly, he said, “Not so with the Aussies. Hell, no! If you don’t know it yet, Lieutenant—and you don’t—you’ll learn it very damn soon ‘cause you got two of ’em attached to your team here. Anything an American can’t do, an Australian can. And anything we can do, they can do better. Uh… think, they’ve never forgiven us for saving their cookies in World War II.”
He paused and then, a bit sheepishly, apologetically said, “Hell, shouldn’t talk like that. Both our Aussies are with the Special Air Service, super soldiers and likable people, kind of folk you like to have around you in a place like this. Like I say, I’ve just been out here too fucking long.”
I nodded understandingly.
“Anyway,” he continued, “the Australians have an aviation contingent flying out of Danang. So they come out here after the Air Force survey and say, ‘Sure, mate, we can put a Caribou in here in a flash. Nothing to it.” Well, couple days later, we’re all sitting out here waiting for the first plane to land at ARO. And ‘course our two Aussies ain’t missing this opportunity to rub our noses in the dirt a little.”
He started laughing. “Damn, I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Plane comes in from the east, circles the camp a couple times, then approaches the strip from the west. And the ‘Kipper’—he’s one of your attached Aussies—says ‘Now you Yanks gonna see a bit of flying skill.’
And we did. Plane hits perfectly, looks like it’s slowing, but then goes over that hill in the middle of the runway, and, shit, all of a sudden it’s airborne again! Comes back down on the far side, bounces a couple times, and then just keeps on going… off the end of the strip, through the wire, and into the fucking jungle, shedding pieces of itself ‘long the way. Didn’t phase the ‘Kip’ at all! Plane finally comes to a stop, and he says, ‘What say, mates? You ever saw a Yank what could land a plane and clear fields of fire at the same time?’” We both laughed, he in recalling the incident, and I in envisioning it.
“Pilot’s name was Hammond,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “He and the crew walked away from their Caribou laughing. Said they wanted to do their takeoff in a helicopter. So now it’s our alternate command post, leastways the fuselage is. Used the wings and tail sections for revetment.
“Well, sir,” he said soberly, “that about wraps up my orientation of your new home for the next year. I’m sure my boss is giving your boss a similar pitch, ‘though I’ll bet it’s not quite so… uh… open minded. Now you’ll probably want to be getting with our XO so as to figure up a fair price for the team rations we have on hand.”
He strolled off toward the team house, undoubtedly having more important tasks to perform than explaining the pitfalls of ARO to a “butter-bar” lieutenant. I remained atop the bunker, spending a few additional minutes in the fading light, assessing our new home.
