A Rumor of War Read online

  “The only thing you’re ready for is the goddamned psycho ward,” said Hudson.

  “Oh, man, man. I’m cool and outfitted for the boonies. With this jungle hammock and my platoon of badasses, I am the greatest jungle-fighter in the world. Look at me, look, I’m the world’s greatest jungle-fighter.” He crept around grinning maniacally.

  “You’re the world’s greatest asshole, Mac,” Hudson said.

  McKenna whirled and sprayed the artillery officer with imaginary bullets. “Ta-da. Ta-da. Tatatatata. You’re zapped, you cannon-cockin’ Texas shitkicker, zapped by the world’s greatest jungle-fighter. I’m a killer, man, a fuckin’ killer.

  “Can you dig it? I’m a killer and I’ve got a platoon full of the baddest badasses in the Nam. We’re bad, baaaad fuckin’ killers.” He turned to Neal, who was writing the name of the town in the margins of the letter paper. He had filled up the rest of the sheet. “Look at me, skipper,” McKenna said, creeping and grinning. “I’m the world’s greatest jungle-fighter. You send us down there, me and my badasses. I’m invincible with my Special Forces hammock.”

  Without looking up from his scribbling, Neal said, “Take that silly thing off, Mister McKenna.”

  “But skipper, it’s my jungle-fighter’s hammock. It’s got everything, waterproofing, mosquito netting…”

  “I said to take it off.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And when you’ve got that done, go over to the comm bunker and check on the landline communications to Charley Hill.”

  Crestfallen, the world’s greatest jungle-fighter said, “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  Operation Harvest Moon ended during the third week of December. Flights of helicopters, unrejoicing, came bringing in the sheaves to the division hospital. There were so many wounded, a corpsman told us, that the hospital would take only emergency cases. “They were putting the dead in cold-storage reefers,” he said, “but they ran out of room, so now they’re putting the bodies in ammo crates and stacking ’em four-high in a squad tent.” Because the enemy had lost the equivalent of a battalion, all our generals agreed that the operation had been a great success.

  My platoon received a Christmas present on the 23d: we were attached to Captain Miller’s D Company, which was going to conduct a three-day operation to clear the Viet Cong out of Hoi-Vuc. That village, which had been cleared many times before, was still in enemy hands. The plan of attack was as dangerous as it was simple. My platoon was to create a diversion to cover D Company’s movement on the village, which we would do by marching down the trail on the north bank of the river, drawing as much attention as possible. Meanwhile, D Company would advance on Hoi-Vuc from the south and hit the VC from the rear. The danger lay in the fact that my platoon would have to walk five miles down that elongated minefield called Purple Heart Trail. In all likelihood, we would hit at least one big mine or fall into an ambush, and because the platoon had been reduced to just slightly more than half its original strength, we could not afford to suffer even moderate casualties.

  Nevertheless, we were all in a cheerful mood when we trudged off Charley Hill that morning. The weather had finally broken, and we welcomed the sun, whose heat we had cursed in the dry season. We also rejoiced in our temporary liberation from Captain Neal. Most of all, we were going to do something besides wait.

  The platoon crossed the rice paddy south of the outpost, snaking along its dike in what looked like a tribal dance. The river lay just ahead, winding, yellow-brown, fringed by palm and bamboo jungle. We turned onto the trail, instinctively increasing our interval to ten paces. “Line of departure. Lock and load.” The squad leaders passed the word back. “Lock and load.” There was a ragged, metallic clicking as rifle bolts slammed shut. The marines walked slowly through the jungle’s silent green twilight, some limping from the boils that covered the soles of their feet. We forded the narrow stream marking the frontier of Indian country. Allen, Lonehill, and Crowe jogged out ahead of the column, Crowe’s head turning from side to side, its movements as mechanical as the sweeps of a radar antenna.

  I tightened the shoulder straps of my pack, heavily loaded with signal flares, smoke grenades, dry socks, a poncho, and three days’ rations. An entrenching tool and machete were lashed to its sides. In my pockets, I carried a map, compass, hand grenades, more flares, halizone tablets, malaria pills, and a spare magazine for my carbine. A pistol, two clips of ammunition, knife, first-aid kit, and two full canteens hung from my belt. My steel helmet and flak jacket added twenty pounds to the load. The gear probably weighed over forty pounds altogether, but I felt a wonderful, soaring lightness in my limbs. I felt good all over, better than I had felt in months. Even Neal, who was not inclined to hand out compliments, had praised my gung-ho enthusiasm before the platoon left base camp. A sudden and mysterious recovery from the virus of fear had caused the change in mood. I didn’t know why. I only knew I had ceased to be afraid of dying. It was not a feeling of invincibility; indifference, rather. I had ceased to fear death because I had ceased to care about it. Certainly I had no illusions that my death, if it came, would be a sacrifice. It would merely be a death, and not a good one either. A good death involved a certain amount of choice, ritual, and style. There were no good deaths in the war.

  But the manner of dying no longer mattered. I didn’t care how death came so long as it came quickly and painlessly. I would die as casually as a beetle is crushed under a boot heel, and perhaps it was the recognition of my insect-like pettiness that had made me stop caring. I was a beetle. We were all beetles, scratching for survival in the wilderness. Those who had lost the struggle had not changed anything by dying. The deaths of Levy, Simpson, Sullivan, and the others had not made any difference. Thousands of people died each week in the war, and the sum of all their deaths did not make any difference. The war went on without them, and as it went on without them, so would it go on without me. My death would not alter a thing. Walking down the trail, I could not remember having felt an emotion more sublime or liberating than that indifference toward my own death.

  The platoon marched all morning and into the afternoon. Gently, almost imperceptibly, the trail climbed toward the high country. The Song Tuy Loan had become narrower. Twigs and debris sailed on its surging current. For a distance nearly as straight as a canal, the river curved sharply, eddying where it curved, then vanished into the scrub jungle ahead. A quarter-mile short of our objective, Hoi-Vuc, we turned onto a track that circled through dense jungle and rejoined the main trail where the river made a horseshoe-bend around the village. It took a long time to hack our way through the bush. Crowe and I took turns with the machete. Leeches dropped off the dripping leaves and fastened on our necks. We splashed across another stream. Underbrush had dammed it into a series of stagnant pools. But the jungle was not as dense on the other side, and we had easy walking through a deep-shaded bamboo forest. Strands of sunlight fell through the still, delicate leaves of the bamboo. Allen’s fire-team moved out well ahead of the column. They were probably the three best scouts in the business. Months in the bush had changed them from fairly ordinary young men into skilled manhunters; Allen, a gaunt midwesterner who smiled, when he smiled, with all the humor of a skull; Crowe, short and stocky, an expert with the sawed-off twelve-gauge he carried; Lonehill, a full-blooded Comanche from Oklahoma, a crack shot who stood six feet two and looked at you with a stare that made you choose your words carefully when you spoke to him. They padded soundlessly down the muddy track. We could hear only the slim, deadly kraits slithering in the brush, the bumping of distant shellfire and the querulous rushing of the river ahead.

  The rifleman in front of me dropped suddenly to one knee, holding up his right hand to signal a halt. He pointed to his collar (platoon leader up) then joined the palm of his left hand to the fingertips of his right, forming a T (enemy ahead). I relayed the signals to the marine behind me and moved up the trail in a crouch. In the hush, my waterlogged boots seemed to make a great deal of noise
. The woods ended in a small clearing. Coming out of the woods, I blinked in the hard, bright light of the clearing. Allen’s fire-team was across it, squatting in a thicket at the river’s edge. Crowe and Lonehill had their weapons aimed at something on the far side of the river, where the huts of the village showed as dun-colored patches through the trees and hedgerows. Allen was facing me, his face smudged by sweat-streaked camouflage paint and wreathed by the green sprigs stuck in the band of his mottled helmet-cover. He signaled me to get down and come forward. I did, crawling on my elbows and belly with the carbine cradled in my crooked arms. Crawling, I could see the river shining in the light of the late-afternoon sun, the hedgerows on the opposite bank, the gray walls and tile roof of a wrecked shrine several yards behind them, and, near the shrine, part of the figure of a man wearing a khaki uniform. Allen motioned for me to stop, and crawled out to meet me in the middle of the clearing. Crowe and Lonehill remained in the thicket. They crouched, as fixed as statues, Crowe with his shotgun poised, Lonehill sighting down the length of his automatic M-14.

  “Lieutenant, there’s three of ’em, three regulars standin’ by that pagoda,” Allen whispered hurriedly. “No more’n fifty yards away, standin’ at sling arms. There’s maybe ten, fifteen more around the bend in the river. They’re takin’ baths or somethin’. We could hear ’em talkin’ and splashin’ around. If you can get the platoon up, we can waste all of ’em. Fish in a barrel, sir.”

  “All right. You people hold your fire unless they spot you. I’ll try to get the platoon on line, but it’s going to take a long time to move quietly in that bush back there. Just make sure you hold your fire unless they spot you.”

  “Yes, sir.” He started back.

  Still on my belly, I turned around as slowly as I could, afraid the Viet Cong could hear the beating of my heart.

  Sixteen

  The worn white soldiers in Khaki dress,

  Who tramped through the jungle and camped in the byre,

  Who died in the swamp and were tombed in the mire.

  —Rudyard Kipling

  “The Ballad of Boh Da Thone”

  Creeping through the stunted grass, I seemed to be making as much racket as a man stumbling through piles of dry leaves. Please don’t let them hear me or see me, I prayed silently. Please let everything go right. Let me get them, all of them. Guilt washed over me because I was asking God to help me kill. I felt guilty, but I prayed anyway. Let me get them, all of them. I want all of them. The edge of the clearing was less than ten yards away, but it seemed I would never get there. It kept receding, like a mirage. My heartbeat sounded like a kettle-drum pounding in a tunnel. I was certain the Viet Cong could hear it or the sound of my breathing.

  The rifle shot was deafening compared to the dead silence that had preceded it. The bullet kicked up dust a few yards from my face, and I whirled around on my stomach like a crab. Crowe and Allen were down and rolling over—the round had passed right between them—rolling over to fire while Lonehill, on one knee, sent a long, ecstatic burst into the hedgerows across the river. One of the Viet Cong threw up his arms and seemed to rise several inches off the ground before he fell heavily on his back, his rifle twirling through the air like a majorette’s baton. It was as if an invisible giant had picked him up, then slammed him to the earth. I could not see the VC’s body; one of his comrades must have pulled him into the underbrush as I was getting to my feet. The third Viet Cong had taken cover behind the shrine. I hadn’t seen him, but instinct told me he was there. Lonehill was firing into the hedgerows, Crowe blasting away with his twelve-gauge, although the shot-pattern was too wide to be lethal at that range. I began running toward them, realized I still had to get the rest of the platoon, pivoted to run back into the woods, and went down when a line of bullets chewed the earth beside me. Staggering to my feet, I went down again as the VC behind the shrine fired a second time with his BAR or machine gun—I couldn’t tell which. Lying in a shallow dip in the ground, I made love to the earth. The Viet Cong around the river bend had opened up, so that, on the peninsula of land formed by the horseshoe bend, the four of us were caught in a cross fire. I tried once more to make it to the edge of the clearing but was struck in the face by spraying dust as soon as I lifted my head to run. The experience of being under heavy fire is like suffocating; air suddenly becomes as lethal as a poison gas, its very molecules seem to be composed of pieces of lead flying at two thousand miles an hour. The bullets hissed and cracked over my head, and I yelled—no, screamed—“Allen! I’m pinned down. Pour it on ’em, goddamnit. Your right front, around the bend. POUR IT ON ’EM GODDAMNIT.” The three marines managed to sound like a small army, with Crowe’s shotgun roaring loudly. Then came the flat, dull blasts of 40-millimeters as Allen laid down a barrage with his grenade launcher.

  An eerie sense of calm came over me. My mind was working with a speed and clarity I would have found remarkable if I had had the time to reflect upon it. I knew what I was going to do. The platoon could not assault across the deep, fast river, but it could pour a withering fire into the Viet Cong. If that did not kill all of them, it would at least kill some and drive the rest out of the village. But first, I had to bring up a machine gun to suppress the fire coming from around the river bend, and a rocket launcher to knock out the enemy automatic weapon in place behind the cement-walled shrine. That had to be done before the platoon could be deployed safely. They would bunch up in the small clearing and a lot of them would be hit if the enemy fire wasn’t suppressed first. And it had to be done quickly, before the Viet Cong recovered from their surprise and started to fire more accurately. The whole plan of attack flashed through my mind in a matter of seconds. At the same time, my body was tensing itself to spring. Quite separate from my thoughts or will, it was concentrating itself to make a rush for the tree line. And that intense concentration of physical energy was born of fear. I could not remain in the hollow for longer than a few more seconds. After that, the Viet Cong would range in on me, a stationery target in an exposed position. I had to move, to face and overcome the danger. I understood then why a cornered animal is so dangerous; he is terrified and every instinct in him focuses on a single end: destroying the thing that frightens him.

  Without a command from my conscious mind, I lunged into the woods and crashed down the trail, calling for a machine gun and a 3.5-inch rocket team. They came up, stumbling beneath their heavy weapons, and sprinted across the clearing to where Allen’s men were still firing. The three-five’s backblast made an ear-splitting crack an instant before its armor-piercing shell slammed into the shrine and bits of concrete and tile spiraled up out of the smoke. The machine gun sprayed the hedgerows, the casings of the long, slim 7.62-mm bullets clanging as they flew rapidly out of the gun’s ejection port. Elated, I emptied my carbine into the hole the rocket launcher had made in the shrine’s wall. Then a second three-five shell went off and there was no more firing from the enemy gun.

  “First and third squads up!” I shouted, running back toward the woods. “First and third up, on line. Second watch our rear.”

  Led by big Sergeant Wehr, the platoon guide, the marines broke out of the jungle at a run. Wehr, who had just arrived in Vietnam, seemed a little bewildered by the invisible things crackling in the air.

  “On line, I said! On line here. First on the left, third squad on the right. On line and start putting rapid fire into the ville.”

  Bent low beneath the enemy fire, the marines quickly shook themselves into a skirmish line, wheeling like skaters playing crack-the-whip, extending their front along one leg of the river bend. Then the line surged across the clearing, the men firing short, spasmodic bursts from the hip and the whole line going down when it reached the riverbank, going down and opening up with an unrestrained rapid fire. I could not hear any individual shots, just a loud, continuous tearing noise. The hedgerows fifty yards away shook as if struck by a violent wind, and a hut flew apart when it was hit by a three-five shell. Pieces of bamboo and thatch wer
e tossed up by the blast and then tumbled down, the thatch flaming as it fell.

  I scrambled along the line on my hands and knees, shouting myself hoarse to control the platoon’s fire. The marines were in a frenzy, pouring volley after volley into the village, some yelling unintelligibly, some screaming obscenities. Allen ran up to me. His blue eyes looked crazed. He said he had seen some of the Viet Cong pulling out and one of them falling, hit by machine-gun fire. A bullet smacked into the earth between us and we went rolling over and came rolling back up again, me laughing hysterically, Allen looking even more crazed as he pumped 40-millimeters into the village. A few moments later, Miller called on the radio and confirmed that we had driven the VC out of Hoi-Vuc; a sniper in his company had seen a squad of them fleeing down a trail, and had killed two.

  There was still some enemy fire coming at us, but it was ragged and badly aimed. I passed the word that the Viet Cong were on the run and that D Company had killed two more. The platoon became as excited as a predator that sees the back of its fleeing prey; a few marines slid down the bank and started shooting from the water’s edge. I could feel the whole line wanting to charge across the river. The platoon was one thing, one being poised to spring and smash the life out of whatever stood in its way. I could feel it, and, feeling it, sent Lance Corporal Labiak’s fire-team downstream to look for a ford. If we could get across the river, we could finish the job. I wanted to get across the river in the worst way. I wanted to level the village and kill the rest of the Viet Cong in close combat. I wanted us to tear their guts out with bayonets.