Getting to his feet, he noticed he was nearly ankle deep in water.
“Well, shit we may be seeing you before that. I’m fucking soaked, and ain’t nobody can sleep soaked.”
The Bull wandered off toward his piece of the Nam. Sixty-three days and a wake-up. I’ll really miss him, I thought to myself. I’ve learned a lot from him, and it’ll be difficult, uncomfortable, bringing a new first on board. And I would miss him, but not in the context I then thought. Because, although I had no way of knowing it, I only had three days and a wakeup before leaving the Nam.
“Six! Six! This is Two Six! Got a man hit! Got a man down. Over.”
“Roger, Two Six,” I replied, speaking into Andy’s handset. “How bad? Do you need dust off?”
“This is Two Six. Yeah, think so. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Doc’s working on him now. Stomach… uh… chest wound. Bleeding badly. Over.”
“This is Six. We’ll get a dust off en route. Hold tight! Out.”
Quickly changing handsets between Andy and Blair, I called for a medevac.
“Arizona Three, this is Comanche Six. Need a dust off. Got a WIA. Got friendly wounded on the ground at our objective. Serious. LZ is… will be green. How copy? Over.”
Arizona acknowledged the request, promising to have a medevac en route within minutes.
Up to that point the attack on Thon Can Nhi had gone as planned. But now, just minutes after leaving the LZ, approaching the outskirts of the village, Two Six was obviously in trouble. Moreover, since the village’s periphery was a maze of hedgerows and stick fences, intermingled here and there with an occasional mud hutch, we couldn’t see O’Brien and had little idea where the contact had occurred.
Moving with Four Six, we were nearly on line with, and between, the two attacking platoons. As I passed the handset back to Blair, I noted that One Six’s soldiers on our left were continuing to push forward, while Two Six on the right had evidently stopped in place. Turning to Andy, I once again changed handsets.
“One Six, this is Six. Need a quick sitrep. Over.”
“This One Six, Roger. We’re moving into the ville now. No contact.”
“Uh… monitored Two Six’s transmission.”
“This is Six. Okay. Two Six appears to be stopped in place. Want you to do the same till we can get their man out.”
“This is One Six. Wilco.”
“This is Six, ROger. Out… break. Two Six, this is Six. Dust off en route. Have you got an LZ, and are you green at this time? Over.”
“This is Two Six. Roger on the green. Must have been a sniper, single burst of AK fire. Stand by on the LZ… wait. Roger, we’ll bring it on the paddy to our rear. Over.”
After our injured soldier had been evacuated, we moved on through Thon Can Nhi, discovering nothing of any consequence except for a wounded child about seven or eight years old. Although no interpreter or Kit Carson accompanied us, it was obvious from the villagers’ gestures that the young boy had been hit by a stray piece of shrapnel during Blue Max’s prep of our LZ. The wound was serious but not life threatening.
Doc Heard patched it up, assuring the young boy’s hysterical mother that her son would be okay. I hoped he was right. Civilian casualties distressed me. Wounded children sickened me.
That night we set up our NDP in a cemetery on the far side of the village. After the log bird had departed and a wet, watery meal had been consumed, the Bull opened our nightly ritual by saying, “Sir, I know you don’t believe in omens, so I ain’t gonna say it. But today was a bad…”
“Don’t say it, Top! As you just pointed out, I don’t believe in omens.”
“Okay, but our wounded man was a bad… sign.”
We spent the next couple of wet and dreary days working the area east of Highway One in the vicinity of Thon Can Nhi. Then, on the evening of 8 March, Byson sent a warning order informing us we would air-assault the village of Xom Dong My the following morning. Locating the encoded coordinates on our maps, we discovered the village was nearly midway between Highway One and the coast of the South China Sea—right in the middle of Fall’s “street.” With this bit of information in hand, we found ourselves anticipating the attack with a certain relish, feeling that we would finally find I Corps’ elusive enemy.
As we were discussing the operation, the sun suddenly emerged from the overcast sky, preparing to set over the Annamese cordillera to the west of us. In silence, almost reverence, we looked up into its fading, warming rays.
Ah, this is a good omen, I said to myself.
But it wasn’t.
That early March morning began like so many mornings before it. We stood to at first light, fired a short but violent mad minute, washed and shaved, emptied our helmets of the pint of water needed to accomplish both these toilets, and then awaited the C&D bird. It arrived an hour or so after dawn, off-loaded several cases of C rations and some ammunition, and picked up our rucks, water cans, and mermites.
But on this occasion it unexplainably failed to bring us our customary C&D.
As might be expected, this caused some grumbling among Charlie Company’s rank and file. This quickly subsided, however. By now, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that life in I Corps wasn’t going to be as pleasant as it had been on Bong Son’s plain; and it really wasn’t any cup of tea on the plain.
Some of the men ate a quick charlie rat or a portion thereof, while others decided to wait for a hot that night—a mistake on their part, since there was to be no hot that night. I had a can of fruit cocktail with peanut butter and crackers.
Shortly after the log bird departed, Blair passed me his handset, saying, “And he’s on the horn, sir.”
“Tall Comanche, this is Arizona Three. Inbound your location with four, plus two, plus two in zero six. How copy? Over.”
“This is Comanche Six. Solid copy and standing by for pickup.”
After passing word to saddle up, I watched as the company prepared to board the incoming helicopters. C rations were hurriedly discarded, holes covered, shoulder harnesses and pistol belts donned and adjusted, weapons readied, and a final radio check conducted. Troops then formed into liftoff sticks.
As was customary in an extraction, the hooks landed first, picking up One Six, Three Six, and Four Six. When these double-rotary-bladed giants lifted off, the remainder of us, Two Six and the headquarters, quickly folded our defensive perimeter and ran toward the four Hueys that set down just as the hooks took off. The orbiting Cobras covered our extraction.
Our formation of eight helicopters initially flew in a westerly direction, away from the street, so as to gain altitude and allow Major Byson time to set up his artillery prep of the LZ. In a few minutes, however, we began a gradual easterly turn and then flew back across Highway One, en route to what would be my last combat air assault of the war.
Others were not so lucky. They would be dead before the sun set that evening.
As we had hoped the night before, the day had dawned without a cloud in the sky. A bright, beautiful sunny day, so very different from those of the seemingly endless northeastern monsoon, with its surreal darkness and continuous drizzle. It felt good to be warm and dry again and about to engage the enemy on what we felt would be our terms, beating him as we had always done on the plain. We had had enough of those cold wet nights penned up inside Camp Evans waiting for a nameless, faceless enemy to loose his rockets upon us. We had had enough of those meaningless, fruitless searches for an enemy we could not find in the villages straddling Highway One. It was time to take the offensive, time to teach Charlie here in I Corps what his friends on the plain knew only too well—you don’t fuck with the Cav. No, sir!
Sitting on the floor of the doorless, seatless helicopter with my legs dangling outside, I was momentarily distracted by the funny fluttering waves the aircraft’s slipstream was making in my jungle fatigues as we clipped along at ninety knots. I looked down at the landscape slipping past us and was suddenly impressed with its simple beauty.
Composed primarily of rice paddies, it was the most vivid green I could ever recall seeing and, with the exception of an occasional water-filled bomb crater, seemingly untouched by the war. I noticed the peasant farmers working these paddies behind their water buffaloes.
Hell, they were doing the same thing yesterday, and the day before, and the day I first arrived in this country back in 1962, and, for that matter, for five centuries before that. And regardless of what happens at Xom Dong My today, they’ll be working these paddies in the same medieval fashion tomorrow, oblivious to or not caring
