“I don’t fuckin’ care!” Doolittle repeated as they were digging in. “I mean, we’ve done our bit, haven’t we? Time for a bit of friggin’ S and S.”
“What’s that?” D’Lupo asked, not really caring.
“Sex and sex!” Doolittle said. “I wanted to say something to the captain ‘fore they carted us off from Disney — wanted you to back me up, eh? And what ‘appens? D’Lupo can’t find his tongue and Martinez — well, you’re a great fucking disappointment, you are, Martinez. ‘Yes, sir, no, sir, three fucking bags full, sir. We’d love to go to Dien Bien Fuck.’ “
“Well, you’re here now, Doolittle, so make the best of it. B’sides, it’s pretty important.”
“That’s right,” D’Lupo echoed.
“Yeah, ‘course,” Doolittle said. “They’re all bloody important, especially when you might buy it!”
“The French lost here,” Martinez said.
“Oh,” Doolittle said. “I get the picture. Wherever the frogs get beat we ‘ave to go in an’ put it right. That the story?”
“Nah,” Martinez answered. “You know, I mean — it’s important politically.”
“Oh,” Doolittle said, taking a rest from digging a shooting bay. “I see. Now we’ve got Henry fucking Kissinger here. Since when did you give a shit about politicians, Marty?”
“I dunno. I thought about runnin’ for Congress sometime.”
“Oh, Gawd protect us — Congressman Marty!”
“Doolittle,” D’Lupo said, “why don’t you shut up and dig?”
“All right, all right.” He started filling sandbags again. “ ‘Course, y’know — Christ, there’s a lot of noise going on ‘round here.”
“It’s called artillery, Doolittle. Our guys and their guys, remember?”
“Yeah, well, you know where they’re gonna hit us? Across the fuckin’ river — on our left flank. All this rain — everybody figures they won’t try to cross.”
D’Lupo tossed up another bag as flashes of artillery outlined his arm like a broken tree. “They’ll hit us from all directions at once.”
“Of course, everyone knows that. I know where I’d hit em.
“Where?” Martinez asked.
“Behind their latrines.”
“Bullshit—”
“Nope — that’s the truth, mate. PLA never post enough guards near their latrines.”
“No wonder,” D’Lupo said, “if they smell bad as you.”
“Oh, very droll,” Doolittle commented.
“You guys want some coffee?” It was a young Airborne corporal.
“I’d kill for coffee,” Doolittle said.
“Well, you might have to if those gooks have a crack at us in the morning.”
They took the coffee quietly and gratefully. The mist was still heavy in the valley, and they knew, as did everyone in the thousand-man defense force spread out from the DEF’s inner triangle to the outer gun ports of the half-mile-wide circle, that as dawn approached, when it was most difficult to distinguish the shape of a man from the shape of a tree, an attack must surely come. General Wang was no doubt just as determined that Dien Bien Phu should fall as was Freeman that it should not.
When the first salvo of Chinese 105mm and 155mm artillery hit the circle, the earth shook violently and a machine-gun emplacement was gone, two men dead and several more injured as everyone hit the deck, hugging the dirt in the trenches. The din was earsplitting. Within fifty seconds American 105s were answering the flashes, and soon the artillery bombardment fell off.
Within thirty seconds Wang’s first wave of sappers hit the wire with everything from explosive charges strapped to their waists to satchel charges ready to penetrate the perimeter’s defenses and wipe out command bunkers and strongpoints. There were explosions, fountains of red earth, screaming all around, and shadows to the west coming through the mist, rubber boats full of PLA on the river, the boats now in a hail of mortar fire, with one direct hit flinging bodies skyward before they fell back and were swept away, some clinging to the boats’ remains. Mortars still rained down, giant spumes of water erupting amid the multiple spouts caused by the Americans pouring in M-60 fire as well.
The initial shock of the sappers’ wave was now over, and though many more explosions were heard along the wire, the sappers were paying a terrible price for their initial attack. Their bodies and bits of them were strewn all along the wire, the holes they’d opened already being breached by the second assault, this one by PLA
“Beat the bastards!” one of the Airborne proudly announced. “There must be forty, fifty dead chinks out there!”
“Terrific,” Martinez said. “That only leaves ‘bout five thousand!”
In fact, Wang’s forces, including porters and underground engineers, were twice that number, and what had depressed Martinez, Doolittle, and D’Lupo, as well as Berry’s Special Forces contingent, was the enemy’s morale. There had been absolutely no hesitation at the wire. Even from DEF’s triangle it had been at once impressive — at least from a strictly military point of view — and frightening to see how many of the sapper wave were suicidal.
Berry was anxious for the mist to lift so a striker force of fighter-bombers from
“Wang has a measure of us now,” Leigh-Hastings commented from his bunker at the northern tip of the DEF triangle. He had punched in me numbers on his PRC-77 so the message couldn’t be intercepted.
“Of our outer ring,” Berry replied, “but they’re not ‘our boys.’ I don’t mean any disrespect toward the Airborne, they’re doing a great job, but—”
Leigh-Hastings cut in. “But our chaps are best at offensive operations.”
“You think I should be using them now?’ Berry asked.
“Not necessarily. I understand your strategy of the strong control defense, but each of our DEF chaps has a starlight scope, and the met report from Freeman’s HQ is that the mist and low fog will abate later today. Tonight it’ll be a VC moon — just enough light for Wang to attack by, but not enough for us to see them.” Leigh-Hastings also pointed out that starlight scopes, which Freeman’s G-2 had confirmed the PLA did not have, at least not in any substantial numbers, would allow the Special Forces troopers to play havoc with the PLA in the dark.
“I’ll take your suggestion under advisement,” Berry responded. “I’ll request more starlight scopes — for the Airborne.”
“Good show. I think—”
“Incoming!” Berry shouted, and the next moment Leigh-Hastings was thrown to the floor of his bunker, his radio flying out of his hands and hitting one of the wooden cross beams., He heard the high whistle of more artillery.
“They’re at the wire!” someone shouted, and the outer circle defenders opened up with everything they had. At least thirty to forty PLA were inside the outer wire, some of them having played dead outside the wire from the first attack. It was chaotic, a satchel charge detonating midair, killing more PLA than Americans; a screaming bayonet charge by PLA into one of the trenches, American and British fighting PLA hand-to-hand in the trenches.
An M-60 jammed, its quick-charge barrel glove lost and both machine gunner and assistant killed within seconds. But the HK automatic grenade launcher was proving its worth as Airborne gunners sprayed the breakthrough points with three-to five-round bursts, creating in effect a wall of small-arms artillery, the fragmentation grenades cutting the Chinese down as narrow breakthrough points forced them to cluster at the
