A Rumor of War (8 page)

About 2000 hours, more commonly known as eight P.M., Peterson summoned his platoon leaders and staff NCOs to , the company office for a briefing. We crowded into the small room, which was soon dense with cigarette smoke and the stench of stale sweat. The tall, boyish-looking Peterson was bent over an acetate-covered map upon which lines and arrows had been drawn in grease pencil. Copies were passed to the platoon commanders. Some of us were so ignorant of Vietnamese geography that the skipper had to begin by pointing out where Danang was. It appeared on the old French Army maps under its colonial name, Tourane.

The briefing turned out to be sketchy. The Communists, Peterson said, had launched a dry-season offensive in I Corps and the Central Highlands and threatened to cut South Vietnam in half. The ARVN had been taking heavy casualties, the equivalent of a battalion a week. South Vietnamese units now guarding vital installations had to be sent into the field, both to make good ARVN losses and to provide enough manpower for a counteroffensive. American ground troops, therefore, had to be deployed immediately to Vietnam as security forces for U.S. bases, which were in imminent danger of being attacked and overrun. At Danang, the Viet Cong were believed to be massing for a large-scale raid, like the one that had struck Pleiku. Sniping and infiltration had increased recently.

Security for the base was to be provided by the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, a task-organized unit consisting of our battalion; 3d Battalion, 9th Marines; an artillery battalion; and assorted support troops. The brigade was to stage a combined air-sea assault at such-and-such hours the next morning and then establish defensive positions around Danang. Three-Nine would make an amphibious landing north of the city, at a place called Red Beach One, move inland, and occupy Hill 327, which dominated the base from the west. One-Three would take off from Kadena on Air Force C-130s and, after landing, set up a perimeter around the airfield itself. C Company would be in the first wave. There was little else he could tell us. “Any questions?”

“Yes, sir, what kind of resistance is expected?”

“Light resistance at most, some sniping, some anti-aircraft maybe; nevertheless, you ought to be prepared for heavier opposition. Anything else? Yes, Lieutenant Lemmon?”

“Yes, sir,” Lemmon drawled. “How do I get out of this chicken-shit outfit?”

There was laughter from us and a frown from the skipper.

“Knock off the grabass, Glen. Okay, listen up. When you brief your people, make it clear that our mission is defensive only. I don’t want anyone going in there thinking he’s going to play John Wayne. We’re to provide security and that’s all. We’re not going in to fight, but to free the ARVNs to fight. It’s their war.”

That said, we went out and passed the word to our platoons. “Defensive perimeter, shee-hit,” I heard one rifleman say. “This is a grunt battalion, not a buncha gate guards.” Still, it was better than hanging around on the Rock and, on second thought, a traditional Marine Corps operation: American lives and property had to be protected, a beleaguered ally helped, and a foreign enemy taught that the United States meant business. The Marines have landed and all that.

A convoy formed up sometime later. Supplies and equipment were loaded, after which the rifle companies scrambled on board. Then, having hurried all day, we did what soldiers spend three-fourths of their time doing: we waited. Half an hour went by, an hour, two hours. I sat in a jeep near the middle of that long idle column, feeling tired and wondering if it were really me sitting there in a helmet and flak jacket, with a Colt automatic on my hip. Could it have been only a year since I was discussing the relative merits of
Tom Jones
and
Joseph Andrews
in a seminar on the English novel? Since my roommate and I were listening to Bach and Vivaldi as we studied for our graduate record exams? What a waste of time that all seemed now.

A sudden roaring of engines woke me from this reverie. Ahead, about a dozen riflemen were running to board one of the six-bys. Apparently, we had been waiting for stragglers. The convoy began to bump forward, crawling uphill toward the main gate. Colby, McCloy’s platoon sergeant, a straggler who had failed to make it back on time, stood in the street wearing a sport shirt and a silly grin. “So long, Charley Company,” he said. “Bye-bye, boys.” A marine, knowing that darkness guarantees anonymity, called down from one of the trucks, “Sergeant Colby’s missin‘ movement, hang his ass.” Colby just grinned and waved. “Bye-bye, boys.” I asked where the hell he had been all day.

“Just gettin‘ me a little poontang, lieutenant.”

“You know we’re going South?”

“Yes, sir!” He gave me a wobbly salute. “And I want you to know how much us civilians appreciate what you boys are doing for us.”

Down narrow roads the convoy rolled, past cane fields silver-green in the moonlight, past empty beaches stormed long ago by another generation in another war. It was a jolting, rocking ride to the Marine airbase at Futema, our final staging point before going on to Kadena. Bodies and equipment bounced on the steel beds of the trucks or were slammed against the wooden guardrails, but the knocking around did not affect the marines’ high spirits. They whooped and hollered, shattering the early morning stillness of the villages along the way. Lights winked on in some of the squat, cement-block huts. Once, an angry woman appeared in a doorway and yelled something. We did not understand the words, but her meaning was clear. A rifleman responded in pidgin Japanese, “Hey, mamasan, GI okay, joto okay. Number-one skivvy honcho, tachsameo.”

The happy warriors. They all sounded as if they were a little drunk. And they were, though it was on the excitement of the event rather than on alcohol. Their battalion had accomplished no mean feat. Without warning or preparation, it had made itself ready for a major combat operation in less than eight hours. Now that that was done, they were free to enjoy the adventure, the sense of release from the petty rules and routines that had governed their lives until now. It was intoxicating to be racing through the darkness toward the unknown, toward a war in a far-off, exotic country. They were done with drills, inspections, and training exercises. Something important and dramatic was about to happen to them.

We had another long delay at Futema. The troops dismounted and stacked arms on a field next to the runway. Sitting back to back or lying with their heads on their packs, they rested on the grass. Cigarettes glowed in the predawn darkness. Battalion HQ had temporarily set up shop in the base operations room. Having nothing else to do, I went in for a Coke. Bedlam reigned. Phones rang, staff officers and clerks bustled around with messages in their hands. Colonel Bain, a big man whose flak jacket made him look as bulky as an NFL tackle, said to someone on the telephone, “Well, they’d better let us know if we’re going or not.” Christ, I thought, don’t tell me it’s just another flap. A captain whom I had not seen before came up to me and asked if I was doing anything. I made the mistake of telling him I wasn’t.

“Good. This is a vehicle manifest, and this,” he said— unnecessarily, I thought—“is a piece of chalk. I want you to find these vehicles and mark their centers of gravity with the chalk. Make a cross and put a
CG
under it.”

“Yes, sir. But how’m I supposed to know where the center of gravity is?”

“It’s marked
CG
in yellow paint. You’ll find it.”

I considered asking the next logical question: why did I have to mark the centers of gravity when they were already marked? But I had been in long enough to know a peremptory order when I heard one.

I had just started this weighty assignment when the by now familiar command to mount up echoed across the field. The centers of gravity would have to remain unmarked. I ran back to my jeep, only to find it occupied by a staff major. The exalted one handed me my pack, with an expression that seemed to say, “Rank hath its privileges, brown-bar.” I found room on a six-by with Gonzalez’s squad, who responded cheerfully to the democratic leveling of their platoon commander. “Hey, the lieutenant’s comin‘ along with us enlisted scum,” one said. “Make a hole for the lieutenant.” They cleared a path through the maze of gear. I moved to the front and flopped down against the rear of the cab. There was the smell of rifle oil, sweat, boot leather, and canvas. The truck engines started again. “Hot damn, movin’ out,” said Gonzalez, whose left foot would soon be mangled by a land mine.

A big buck sergeant strode past our truck and called out, “Hey, second goddamn platoon, you all ready for them Veet-Cong?”

“Fuckin‘ A.”

“Yeah, watchya gonna do to ‘em?”

“Kick ass and take names!”

“Shee-hit,” came the sergeant’s reply. He was a vigorous, powerfully built man, and in June a sniper’s bullet would smash into his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down.

But that was yet to come. For the moment, riding with Gonzalez’s squad, sharing the bone-jarring discomfort, listening to their harsh jokes and laughter, I felt a rush of affection, such as I had never felt for any men. The invisible threads that bound this battalion together pulled at me. For the first time, I thought of it as my battalion, and of myself as one who belonged to it.

We continued for another hour or so, a sinuous column of men and machines rumbling beneath a predawn sky. There is an awesome, elemental quality about an army on the move. It seems to possess its own momentum, a force that cannot be controlled by the men who are its parts, nor even by the men whose orders set it in motion. Inexorably, as if borne upon the current of some powerful river, we were carried closer to the planes that would take us to Vietnam and war.

Rolling into Kadena, the convoy bounced across a broad, dirt field, splitting from single file into several smaller columns abreast. The trucks threw up a gagging dustcloud as they made their sharp turns, charged across the field, then came to a sudden stop at the edge of the runway. Ahead, the C-130s hulked in the gray dawn. A brief period of commotion followed. Heavily laden marines leaped clumsily to the ground. Squad leaders and platoon sergeants stood with upraised arms, shouting commands. “Fall in on me, second…”

“Charley Company over here… Alpha on the right…” The jostling mass quickly composed itself into orderly ranks. We marched, by companies, toward the waiting aircraft. Platoons split off and clattered up the rear ramps into the yawning jaws of their assigned planes. The impression was that of dwarfs being swallowed by winged monsters.

My forty-odd men and I had to share space with several large crates and a communications jeep. Moored by a web of chains, the cargo kept us confined to a narrow corridor between it and the fuselage. Some exhausted men collapsed atop the crates, the rest tried to sleep on the deck, using each other as pillows. Thus, we endured yet another wait, one that took us well beyond the scheduled departure time. Rumors of a cancellation circulated. Finally, the crew came on board, passed the usual instructions, and raised the ramp. It locked into place with a metallic clink that reminded me of a cell door closing. Then the plane lumbered noisily down the runway and took off, headed south over the China Sea.

We rested as best we could during the five-hour flight. I retain an image of bodies, weapons, and equipment tangled together; of a young marine smoking and seemingly lost in private thoughts; of another curled up in the fetal position with his flak jacket thrown over him as a blanket against the high-altitude chill; of James Bryce lying utterly still, his mouth half-open, in a prefiguration of the death that would be his six months later.

A warning light flashed. The C-130 lurched into a steep assault-dive to avoid anti-aircraft fire, touched down, and taxied to a stop. “Saddle up, Second,” Campbell said. “End of the line.” Hoisting their packs, the platoon stood on stiffened legs as the ramp went down. Then, awkward as medieval knights in their armored jackets and shorts, they disembarked and fell in near a drab, metal-sided hangar. The afternoon was hot, damp, and cloudy. At the south end of the field, a few hundred yards away, I could see a group of miniaturized marines erecting a squad tent. Helicopters ferrying supplies from Three-Nine’s beachhead flitted around the smooth crest of Hill 327, a geological freak rising abruptly from the rice paddies west of the airbase. The greenish-black wall of the Annamese Cordillera loomed in the distance, its peaks obscured by scudding clouds.

The remaining two companies began to land, the big transports angling out of the lowering sky. Lines of green-clad figures emerged from the planes, then fanned out toward the perimeter. I listened for the sound of gunfire, but heard none. I wasn’t sure if I should feel encouraged or disappointed. A young lieutenant in a motley uniform— khaki shirt and green utility trousers—walked up to me and introduced himself. From D Company, he was the landing liaison officer. He asked what outfit I was from.

“That’s Charley over there.” He pointed to where the squad tent was going up, then shook my hand and said, “Welcome to Danang,” as if I were a visiting conventioneer. In a column of twos, we trudged past a warehouse and a squadron of parked H-34 helicopters. The pilots stood watching us with an air of veteran insouciance. They were got up in Terry and the Pirates costumes: camouflage uniforms, rakish bush hats, low-slung revolvers. I gathered that one of the advantages of being in Vietnam was the freedom more or less to dress as you pleased. A little farther on, we received an object lesson in some of Vietnam’s disadvantages. One of the planes had been hit by light anti-aircraft fire. There were several jagged holes in one of its wings. The expressions on some faces seemed to ask, “If that’s what bullets do to airplanes, what would they do to me?” The answer was provided by a forklift off-loading supplies nearby. It carried a stack of aluminum boxes that resembled huge tool chests. They were coffins.

The company was digging in alongside a dirt road, with Lemmon’s platoon on the right, Tester’s on the left. Mine filled the center. Some of Lemmon’s men were talking excitedly; their plane had been the one with the bullet holes in it. They had been
shot at
, their landing had been opposed. A few rounds admittedly was not much opposition, but at least we had been spared the humiliation suffered by Three-Nine. Their entrance into the war zone had been the stuff of which comic operas are made. Like the marines in World War II newsreels, they had charged up the beach and were met, not by machine guns and shells, but by the mayor of Danang and a crowd of schoolgirls. The mayor made a brief welcoming speech and the girls placed flowered wreaths around the marines’ necks. Garlanded like ancient heroes, they then marched off to seize Hill 327, which turned out to be occupied only by rock apes—gorillas instead of guerrillas, as the joke went—who did not contest the intrusion of their upright and heavily armed cousins.