I write to exorcise the demons of war. I try to craft good stories of my experiences. This is one of them.
WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN?
Their names are carved on the Black Wall.
* * *
It came as a ripple of explosions followed by a hurricane of small arms fire. We dove for cover as bullets tore through the brush, showering us with shreds of vegetation.
"Get me white phosphorous, 750 meters height of burst!"
Brooks, the artillery forward observer, was already screaming into the radio. Harrison, my radio-telephone operator, was pressed hard against me.
"Tell the mortars to go into battery. Lay on 2700. One round at 500 meters."
The 81mm mortars were too heavy to carry in the jungle. We had ?liberated? a 60mm mortar from an ARVN unit, and carried it when operating dismounted. The rest of the mortar platoon carried ammo for it.
Harrison began speaking rapidly into the handset. Without waiting for him to finish, I continued, "Have First Platoon cover the Mortar Platoon, and tell Third Platoon," I glanced at the map again -- you could make no sense of the terrain in such thick jungle, "Tell Third Platoon to move off the trail to the right. Have them guide on the sound of the firing."
From behind us there was the hollow cough of the mortar. "Ask Second Platoon how that looks."
Harrison looked at me wildly. "Second Platoon isn't answering the radio!"
The shooting ahead sounded like popcorn in a popper. "We'll have to go up there. Follow me."
We crawled up the trail with our testicles drawn up, our bowels like thick liquid, pressing our faces deep into the rotting leaves as shots snapped overhead. I risked one look back at Harrison, burdened down with the PRC-77 radio. The antenna, two of its sections broken and kinked, wobbled as he crawled. Behind him came Brooks. Catlin, Brooks' radio-telephone operator, brought up the rear.
Lieutenant Duggan, the platoon leader, lay in a small depression, his filthy, sweat-darkened fatigues showing a darker stain from crotch to ankle. Wallace, the assistant platoon sergeant, had ripped away the cloth below the knee and was strapping a field dressing on the wound. We slithered into the depression beside them, and Duggan gave us the situation in terse, pain-filled sentences.
"They popped three claymores on Third Squad. Two wounded, Schmitt and Paskowski. Burns and Sims are missing. Lewis is dead." He made a painful gesture in the direction of the firing and by craning my neck I could see a dirty green bundle huddled in the trail. There were dark stains, stains that matched those on Duggan's leg. Lewis.
There was a sudden intense burst of firing as Third Platoon hit the enemy's flank. At the same time, a white flower blossomed in the sky above us.
"Too close! HE! Down 750! Add two hundred!"
"Hold it!" I pulled the microphone away from Brooks. "We've got two men in there! Add four hundred!"
"Third Platoon's stepped in xxxx, Captain! They've got two wounded!"
"Have First Platoon come up on the left. Maybe there's a soft spot."
I was sweating, not the hot sweat of exertion, but a cold, uncomfortable sweat.
THUMP! Something exploded just off the trail behind us, showering us with dirt and twigs.
"xxxx! A mortar! We got a battalion here!" I grabbed the microphone from Harrison. "Top Castle 6, Ugly Ambush 6. You on my push?"
The answer was brief and to the point. "Affirmative."
"I think we're tied into a battalion base camp. We're taking mortar fire, and lots of automatic weapons."
"I've got a FAC en route. You ready to use him?"
Ordinarily that would have been welcome news, but not now. "Negative! Negative! I've got two MIAs, both inside the base camp!"
"If it's a battalion, you're going to have to put some air on them, or they'll eat your shorts. How's your Redleg?" By that, he meant artillery.
It was falling steadily now, but a good quarter of a mile away, providing a steady bass undertone to the higher-pitched rattle of small arms.
I temporized. "We're firing blocking fires now."
I could imagine him shaking his head. "You gotta put it on 'em, Ambush. They're too strong for you."
The cold sweat was running down my face. I was drenched with it. I thought of them, Burns and Sims, probably dead, but possibly alive, somewhere in the green mass ahead of us.
I turned to Brooks. "Drop 200." As he was relaying the order to the Fire Direction Center, the Forward Air Controller came up on the command push.
"Ugly Ambush 6, this is Rapid Courier 55. What's your situation?"
"Courier, Ambush 6. In contact with an estimated battalion. I have artillery coming in from the southeast."
"Roger. I see the bursts. Can you mark your front line trace?"
"Marking front line trace now."
Without orders, Catlin threw a smoke grenade out onto the trail while Harrison passed the word to the platoons. Catlin's grenade hissed and fizzed, then produced an acrid cloud of sickly green smoke. It took a long time to filter up through the jungle while Rapid Courier 55 circled above us in his little Cessna. Finally, he came back. "I identify red smoke, with one green smoke."
Red was the color of the day for marking front line traces. "Roger. That's us. Enemy is about 100 meters to the west of the green smoke ..."
"Captain!" broke in Harrison, "First Platoon reports they're being outflanked to the left!"
Brooks was already scribbling something on his map. He looked up at me and I nodded back at him. He began to give the Fire Direction Center new data. I turned to Harrison. "Tell the Mortar Platoon to form a perimeter defense. They'll have to cover our rear."
As Harrison relayed the orders, I called Rapid Courier 55. "What are you carrying?"
"I've got two Fox Fours snaking nape. We?ve got 20 mike mike." That meant the planes had the external gun pods mounted.
"Put it 50 meters to the south of my south flank. Get it in now!"
"Ambush 6, Castle 6. What's happening?"
"They're working around my south flank. I'm putting Redleg and napalm on them."
Someone came sliding down into the depression, tumbling over, his rifle held clear of his body. It was Waters, the platoon sergeant. He looked dazed.
"We gotta pull back, Captain! I'll try and hold 'em 'til you get clear, if you'll cover me!"
I crawled to the lip of the depression and saw a man in dark green fatigues step over Lewis' body. He wore a khaki-colored bandoleer covering most of his chest and carried an AK47 across his body. As I clawed for my .45, Brooks and Harrison both opened up.
The man fell, but another took his place, this one with an RPD light machine gun. Wallace, the assistant platoon sergeant, brought him down with a single shot.
Two more popped up, then disappeared before anyone could get off a shot. I grabbed the microphone, "They're all over me! Second Platoon's been penetrated!" My hand hurt, and I looked down and saw that I was squeezing the push-to-talk switch so hard that my whole hand was white.
Something thudded into the depression. A short-handled Chinese grenade. Brooks threw it back out.
Ping! "Frag out!" Wallace's grenade hit a limb and bounced down. We all ducked as it went off. Harrison threw another, letting it cook off for a couple of seconds so the enemy wouldn't have time to throw it back.
There was a howling now, growing louder, incredibly louder, as the first F4 Phantom rolled in. It seemed to force the jungle down, flattening it, by sheer sound. In a moment, the pitch changed, and we knew the Phantom was pulling out of its dive. The hollow sound of the napalm bursters registered, but we could see nothing of the effect. I keyed the microphone again.
"Rapid Courier, put that second Fox Four 100 meters to the west of the green smoke!" As I said it, I squeezed my eyes shut and told myself that I had to do it.
This time the sound of the diving jet seemed to drill though our skulls. We pressed ourselves into the spongy earth as the sound built, and as the pitch changed we all held our breath. The napalm canisters came down through the trees, splattering and burning. A hot wind swept over us, blistering hot, and looking up I saw a towering wall of fire -- red, orange, and black, boiling and seething.
"How's that look?"
I shook my head to clear it. How could he ask, ?How's that look?? Did he have any idea what it looked like, how hot it was, the smell of it? Could he hear it roaring in his ears? Could he imagine that our fatigues, magically dried on one side, were so hot that we flinched when the cloth came in contact with bare flesh? Did he know what I had done?
"Captain! Mortar Platoon's in contact!"
It took an act of will to picture the dispositions of the company. The enemy had made it around our south flank and was in our rear now. I shook my head again, trying to concentrate. I'd have to hope that the strike to our front would hold the enemy in that direction.
"I need more nape! Put it south and a little east of my line."
"Roger that. How far east?"
It would have to be close. The Mortar Platoon had moved forward, and I could hear them yelling and firing from somewhere down the trail.
"One-five zero."
"Roger. Understand you want napalm 150 meters east of the south end of your line."
Once again the planes came howling down, converting the jungle into a seething mass of fire. The jungle canopy was thinner now, blasted and burned away. We could see the silver canisters coming down as the Phantom pulled out of its dive, and a curtain of flame showered down as the tanks hit the trees.
There was a sound like a train, an old-fashioned steam locomotive, at high speed. It grew to an unbearable level and terminated in an explosion that rocked us in our depression.
"What the hell was that!"
"Jesus Christ!" yelped Brooks. "Bravo Battery has a crossed sheaf!"
The words were still hanging in the air when the train sound came again. We all ducked and a cascade of mud, decaying vegetation, splinters, and fragments rained down. A piece of metal the size of a man's fist thumped smoking into the ground in front of me. Dimly, I recognized it as the base of a 155mm howitzer shell. I realized that while I had been concentrating on the air strikes, Brooks had been walking the artillery in closer and closer.
The flames in front of us were dying down, and we were getting a few shots from that direction, but the main activity seemed to be on the left flank and in the rear. I crawled over to Sergeant Waters. "You'll have to hold this line. I'm moving the CP to the First Platoon. Don't pull back -- understand?"
He nodded, a little unsure.
"We're leaving now. Hold this position."
We scrambled out of the depression and ran across the trail. Where there had been thick vegetation before, there was now a clutter of blasted trees and branches. We drew some fire, and artillery fragments sang around us -- Bravo battery had taken the offending gun out of action, but was still hammering the edge of the company position.
We found Lieutenant Farris trying to close a gap between his First Platoon and the Mortar Platoon. Someone had pushed an RPD machine gun into the gap and was successfully holding it open.
"Rapid Courier, Ambush 6. I have a point target. What have you got?"
"Twenty mike-mike. That's all we've got left. Can you pop smoke?"
I unhooked a smoke grenade and threw it toward the clump of splintered trees that marked the machine gun position. In a moment a violet cloud spread, masking the clump from our sight.
"I have violet smoke."
"That's us. Target is about 100 meters south of the smoke."
The little Cessna made a low pass, and green tracers reached up for it.
"I see little people! You've got little people all over you!"
In a moment the first of the two Phantoms came howling in, seemingly headed straight for us. The aircraft loomed larger and larger, then suddenly stopped and hung motionless, its speed dramatically reduced by the recoil of the 20mm Gatling gun in its externally mounted pod. RIIIIPPPPPPPPPPP! like an outrageous fart. There was an insane impulse to laugh at the ridiculous noise as the shells showered down into the trees ahead of us.
The two planes made three passes each, and as the last one rolled out, we went in under it, firing and moving, working our way across the gap between the two platoons. It was almost dark when we finally closed that gap, and I went across the Mortar Platoon's little perimeter and met Lieutenant Shindler, Third Platoon, on the other flank. We had a reasonably tight perimeter now, but it was almost midnight before the wounded were collected, ammunition redistributed, and an inner perimeter formed. The artillery fell without stopping, switching from one side of the perimeter to the other as new attacks developed and were beaten off.
* * *
Dawn came, and with it another pair of howling Phantoms.
The landscape was unrecognizable, blasted and burned, a nightmare of twisted, blackened splinters and stumps. A wet ground fog covered everything, clinging to the charred skeletons of trees and the hair on the backs of our hands. Each drop seemed to contain a tiny speck of soot.
With the growing light, there was the throb of rotor blades as the Medivac choppers came in. I looked back and saw men hobbling toward them, others being carried, the bearers bent low under the blades.
Somewhere beyond, John Langston's Charlie Company and Dave Porreca's Bravo Company were being air lifted into position. I pulled in the perimeter and sent the Third Platoon through the lines of the exhausted Second Platoon. They moved like dimly seen ghosts.
As we approached the edge of the first burn area, we saw the corpses -- strangely shrunk, no bigger than a child, crouching with blackened fists raised in a boxing stance. If you touched them, charred hunks would flake off. Beyond the first burn, there was a flurry of shooting, the thump! of a grenade, as some determined defender was isolated, surrounded, and finally overwhelmed.
On the edge of the second burn were more of the little boxers, their regular positioning suggesting that they had been in reserve, awaiting word to move forward when the planes struck. Someone called out to me, waving through the mist.
"Over this way, Captain."
Harrison and I made our way through the blackened tangle. The man was standing next to one of the charred boxers. There was a twisted mass of metal that I recognized as the remains of an American M60 machine gun.
We looked down soberly at the figure. The head was a featureless, black knob. There was no clothing, no dog tags. We found the helmet a few feet away, but it was burned out. No hope of finding a name written on the sweatband. Harrison looked at me, and I could tell we were both thinking the same thing -- Sims carried an M60.
"Give me a casualty report."
He silently handed me the pad of 3X5 forms and I filled one out, taking Sims' full name and service number from my pocket notebook. I checked the block marked 'Positive identification,' then signed it. Someone came up and wrapped the figure -- it was surprisingly light -- in a poncho. I tore off the form and tied it to one of the poncho's corner grommets.
Twenty feet farther was a small island of green, a little patch of brush that had somehow escaped the violence of the previous day and night. Lying in the middle was Burns, in a puddle of long-coagulated blood. One side of his face was distorted by the pressure of the ground. His eyes were open, and there was dirt on his eyeballs.
I pulled off his web gear and Harrison opened his fatigue shirt. There was a tiny hole, no bigger than a match head, just above the left hip bone. There was no exit hole. He had bled out. Harrison handed me the pad of casualty reports, avoiding my eyes as I avoided his.
The throb of rotor blades came again, the Log Bird coming in. They kicked off boxes of ammunition and rations. The platoon sergeants took charge of the supplies. We put the three bodies on the chopper. The crew chief complained because they weren?t in body bags.
Piss on him.
As the Log Bird lifted off, there was the sound of distant firing, and a gabble of radio transmissions revealed that Langston's C company had ambushed one of the fleeing enemy elements. We set out in that direction with relief, leaning into the harness and hurrying the pursuit with long-legged strides.
