Still, they nearly made good their escape. Neither we nor the soldiers of Two Six could bring weapons to bear on the fleeing figures for fear of hitting each other. Then our attached Kit Carson screamed, “Chu Hoi!” One of the two evading enemy fell to the ground, placing his hands behind his neck.
The other enemy soldier, running down the ridge to our left toward One Six, quickly scrambled into a thicket of bamboo. It offered little protection. While the Kit Carson picked our new captive up from the ground, Two Six and the headquarters section began tearing the bamboo thicket apart with automatic-weapons fire.
Suddenly, our elusive quarry exploded! Pieces of bamboo intermingled with bits of cloth and flesh fell about us.
“Jesus H. Christ!” someone said after a moment’s silence. “Must’ve had a charge on him.”
“He did. I saw it! Had a yeller or khaki like satchel charge on his chest!” Sweet Willie said, his M-16 still pointed toward the bamboo thicket. “It was one of our rounds that hit it and sent old Charlie there to Ho Chi Minh heaven.”
“I doubt it, Willie,” the Bull said. “Ain’t no M-16 round gonna detonate a satchel charge. More likely he self- destructed.” He paused and then said to no one in particular, “You know, I’m getting short, and this is only the second time in this fucking war I’ve had a chance to shoot at somebody—and I rather like it, especially today. I feel like shooting somebody today! Shit, thought I saw our S-3 running into that clump of bamboo.”
“Well, Top, glad we could make your day.”
That was to be all of Charlie we’d find on the hilltop. Once it was secured, the company wasted no time in establishing its defensive perimeter. It was getting dark.
The Bull and I listened in as our Kit Carson conducted an informal interrogation of our NVA captive, who might have been sixteen years old but looked younger. Perhaps four feet nine or ten inches tall and weighing under a hundred pounds, he did not appear to be a formidable foe; he looked more like a frightened child.
The Kit Carson offered the NVA a drink of water from his canteen. He refused it. The Kit Carson then drank from his canteen and again offered it to the NVA “boy” soldier, who gingerly accepted it and drank as if he’d had been without water for days.
Blair offered the captive a cigarette, which he accepted, after staring at it hesitantly a moment, flashing Blair a brief smile. And I found myself unexpectedly thinking, I hope this young man, this boy in uniform, makes it through this mess. I hope he lives to return to his family.
“Someone give him a can of charlie rats,” I said.
Blair pulled a can of ham and lima beans from the leg pocket of his jungle fatigues, opening it with the can opener he kept attached to his dog-tag chain.
“Who’s got a clean spoon?” he asked, passing the can of beans to our startled prisoner.
Dubray pulled a plastic, cellophane-wrapped Cration spoon from one of his pockets and handed it to the boy. Our captive looked at it a moment, apparently fascinated by the cellophane wrapping, and then stuck it into his can of limas.
“Not like that, asshole!” Dubray said, grabbing the spoon and removing its wrapping.
“Gawd, look at him go at them limas!” Anderson said. “Anyone can eat cold ham and limas gotta be starved.”
“To him, it’s probably a gourmet delight,” Blair responded and then, turning back to our prisoner, said, “Just another of America’s delicacies, my newfound friend, prepared for those of truly distinguished tastes in some of our country’s finest dog-food-producing facilities.”
By now, in between bites, boy soldier was smiling, talking freely, and sometimes even laughing at something his ex-NVA compatriot, our Kit Carson, said.
A short time later the evening log bird landed on our needlepoint LZ, dropping off ammo, water, more C rations—and the company’s mail. The battalion S-2, accompanying the log bird, picked up boy soldier and flew him away.
A half hour or so after they had departed, Major Byson called, passed along another well done, and, tongue in cheek, said he had decided to leave us where we were for the night. I thanked him profusely.
The first day of the 1968 Tet offensive had ended for Charlie Company.
18. Second Day of the Tet Offensive: 31 January
At first light, Charlie Company descended the mountain, searching for remnants of its evasive foe on the way down. We found nothing other than a few enemy corpses that would later be tabulated into a “we-they” body count ratio at echelons far above ours.
Upon reaching the valley floor, we set up a hasty perimeter and awaited the morning log bird, hoping it would have aboard it a substantial C&D—a mermite of coffee would be especially welcome. In the meantime, the less optimistic broke out their heat tabs and charlie rats. They were premature in doing so. Minutes later the log bird landed, bringing with it an assortment of fresh fruit, scrambled eggs, bread, SOS, milk, and, of course, hot coffee. We were enjoying this breakfast feast when Blair passed me his handset, reciting his familiar, “Three’s on the horn, sir.”
“Comanche, this is Arizona Three inbound your location to parley. See you on the ground in ‘bout one zero.”
The Bull and I met the battalion C&C when it landed in a paddy a short distance from our perimeter ten minutes later.
“How’s it going, Jim, First Sergeant?” Major Byson said, more as a greeting than a question. “Got us a hell of a war going now, don’t we?”
“Yes, sir,” Sullivan and I said in unison.
“Well, listen, I want to pass on what we know of the situation, so you all can get the word down to your troops before they read ‘bout it in Stars and Stripes. And I gotta be frank with you. We still don’t know a hell of an awful lot. Still real sketchy. Anyway, seems to be a general offensive going on throughout the country. As you know, Charlie hit Binh Dinh night before last. Think the situation here’s pretty well stabilized; however, last night enemy struck big time both north and south of us, again mostly in the populated areas. They hit Hue! They hit Saigon! They attacked Tan Son Nhut. Last we heard Charlie was in the U.S. embassy! Believe that? Our goddamn embassy in downtown Saigon!”
He paused momentarily to allow us an opportunity to appreciate the gravity of his words. He needn’t have. We both knew that if the enemy had captured our embassy (they had not, by the way), the situation was serious indeed.
“From what we gather—and again, info’s still real sketchy—there’s a hell of a fight going on in and around Saigon. President Thieu will probably declare martial law ‘fore the day is out, if he hasn’t already. One of the problems, of course, is that we had no combat troops in the city. Hell, they’re using cooks, clerks, and jerks trying to defend the air base.”
“Super!” the Bull interrupted, grinning broadly. “That should keep them off the golf course for a day or two!”
“Uh… private joke, sir. Please continue,” I said soberly, as Major Byson looked at the Bull, baffled by his remark.
“Right. Well, that’s really about all we know right now. Intelligence thinks Charlie may have screwed up here in Binh Dinh. Got his dates mixed up and hit us a day early, either that or hit last night’s targets a day late. But from what we hear coming out of Saigon, it didn’t make a lot of difference. Our folk were still caught with their pants down.
Anyway, the point you all should stress to your men is that the enemy, so far, hasn’t done a goddamn thing except piss the population off and lose an awful lot of his soldiers. I mean, yesterday’s numbers are phenomenal! Here we been waiting years for Charlie to surface and fight, and now he’s doing just that—and getting his clock cleaned! Good chance he’ll never recover from it. Stacking up to be a great tactical error on his part.”
Again he paused as Sullivan and I continued to jot notes.
“Appreciate the info, sir,” I said, “and we’ll pass it along. Been getting some questions, but to tell you the truth, it’s pretty much been business as usual for us out here. ‘Course, like Sergeant Sullivan said, it was a hell of
