15 Months in SOG (28 page)

More time passed, the pain diminished a little more every day, and the war went on. I stayed busy, and continued to count down my days left in country.

“Hey Nick! You hear the news?” One of the S-2 officers stopped me coming out of the supply warehouse, where I’d just had another lesson in Scrabble from Supply Sergeant White.

“What news?”

“Big Momma was going over to Tan An to work in the village clinic. His jeep hit a mine on the road about a mile south of here.”

“Jesus, Big Momma. He get hurt?” Big Momma Jackson was the best and kindest and most gentle man I knew in Vietnam. He was the head medic at our little camp hospital and was just about the best non–school educated doctor in the business. He was as big as a house and a solid soldier. Everybody was crazy about him. Coming from a poor family of black sharecroppers in South Carolina, he was a confirmed career soldier. His hands had magical healing powers in them. One soft touch from his big fingers, and the pain just seemed to disappear.

He had gotten the nickname Big Momma because of his motherly concern for the health of those under his care. He was warm and friendly and a genuinely beautiful human being. The Yards were as crazy about him as we Americans,
and those he treated in the village clinic owed their good health to his dedication and medical skill.

He spent a lot of his off-duty time working at the little clinic he had started in a fishing village near the far end of the bay. I have always wondered if the black medic played by Percy Rodriguez in John Wayne’s movie
The Green Berets
was patterned after Big Momma Jackson.

“Yeah, he’s got a broken leg and some other stuff. They took him over to 3d Med Hospital by chopper. He’ll probably be medevacked back to the States.”

“Damn! He’s the best medic we’ll ever have. That’s sure bad news for us.” I glared over toward the village across the shining waters of Da Nang Bay. “God damn the mutherfucker who set that mine. That’s about the fifth one someone’s hit in the last two months. We’re gonna have to get serious and kill the sneaky SOB before someone else gets hurt.”

Before that day, it had been Marines or army-supply soldiers who had hit the mines so cleverly planted by our unknown VC saboteur. But he had gotten one of ours. It was time to get serious about ending his little reign of terror.

After the word about Big Momma got out, our CO, Lieutenant Colonel Donahue, called a commanders meeting for later that evening. All of the unit officers were there. “I want some suggestions on getting the bastard who’s been putting those mines along the MSR (main supply route). Anything you think might work.” Colonel Donahue stood waiting, his jungle fatigues bright green and freshly pressed, showing just how new he was in country.

The ideas offered from his officers all revolved around using the night-vision scopes we had recently received for just that sort of thing. Everybody was fishing for some clever way to get the shooters out along the road, where they could watch with the high-tech devices.

I held up my hand. “I think I might have an idea.” The CO nodded and I went up to the map of the area hung on the wall. “Here and here,” I pointed to two fingers of forest that jutted
out toward the road, which ran smack through large fields of flat, open rice paddies. “These two fingers come down to about three hundred meters of the road. What if B Company goes out on a training mission along this area, and then moves on south about to here, near the village of Coi Hung, and RONs. The next morning, you send the camp trucks to pick us up.

“A couple of days later, we do it again, only this time, we leave a stay-behind ambush in each of these spots. The VC sappers may not be able to resist putting out a mine to get the trucks, which they will expect us to send, just like before. One or both of the stay-behind teams may have a good shot at anyone who tries to dig along the road.” I swept my hand across an area of the map. “We’ll have the road covered from here, just south of Marble Mountain, to here, near the exit to the village of Tan An.”

“What if they put out mines before the first truck convoy?” The question from Major Skelton was a good one.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. It will just be a gamble that we’ll have to take. There’s always been a time gap between the mines placed on the road. Usually long enough for the patrols to get careless or discontinued. I am hoping the VC will see the trucks come for us the first time and figure that’s what we’d do the second time. Maybe he’d get careless and go for a hit earlier than usual.”

We knocked around several other ideas, and the boss made his decision. “Okay, we go with Captain Nicholson’s plan. Start your first exercise day after tomorrow, and we’ll schedule the second for next Tuesday, providing …” he grinned wickedly at me, “providing you don’t get your ass blown away the first time.”

His closing remarks evaporated any satisfaction I might have felt at the acceptance of my plan. But, I got the men started on the plan to run a two-day exercise starting from the camp and moving south along the road until we reached the end of the cultivated area that was about eight miles farther west of CCN.

We practiced assaults into the woods bordering the cultivated
area, marched in a column along the rice paddy berms, and showed anybody watching the typical training activities of a unit. The six big trucks that came for us at the end of the exercise must have seemed an awfully tempting target to any VC skulking around as we rode back to camp. Over a hundred men were packed into the vehicles as they lumbered slowly down the narrow dirt road to CCN.

As we reached the gate to CCN, I ordered my driver to pull over to the side of the road. I watched as the bait rolled into camp, breathing a sigh of relief. We’d made it without hitting any mines, and since I’d been in the lead vehicle, every bump had jarred my clenched buttocks like a hammer blow.

I walked over to the old grandma-san who sold cold drinks from her pushcart and bought a Coke for myself, my driver, and Lieutenant Lawrence. We sat there and enjoyed the cool refreshments while we quietly talked about the makeup of the ambush teams. I knew the next trip would make this one seem like a walk in the park.

I sipped the cool soda as I explained my plan. “I think Garrett and Sergeant Crowley will be one team, and you and I the other. We’re the best trained of any of the snipers in the company. Let ell-tees Turin, Jefferson, and First Sergeant Fischer take the rest of the company down to the RON. There are so many of them, I doubt the VC will bother them during the night, so it won’t matter that we’re not along.”

I nodded in agreement with my superior logic. “I think that will work.” I squinted into the bright sunlight. I could just make out the heavily wooded, green outline of the first finger thrusting down from the steep slopes of the mountains that surrounded Da Nang. “It won’t be fun lying quiet all day and then staying alert all night. There’s liable to be bad guys out, and there for damn sure will be more bugs than you’ll ever want to meet again. It’s a long shot at best. We’re more likely to spend a long, uncomfortable night and then go home without a hit, run, or error.”

“Yeah, but I want to do it anyway. Please,
Dai Uy.
” The plea
in Lawrence’s voice reminded me of his disappointment and guilt at missing the pipeline raid, even though it wasn’t his fault.

“Okay, we’ll do it that way. Get Garrett and Crowley over to the firing range tonight at 2200 hours. We may as well get good zeros on the starlight scopes.”

Ray grinned like a kid with a new bike for his birthday. “You betcha,
Dai Uy
. I’ll have ’em there.” He flipped his Coke bottle into the ditch, alongside mine and the driver’s, and we headed for the gate and a hot shower and some shut-eye. The old grandma-san’s young granddaughter scrambled to retrieve the cast-off bottles. They were worth money in return deposits. The old gal looked to be as poor as a church mouse and needed every penny she could get. She was a fixture along the highway, selling her drinks and smiling at all the Yankees hurrying along the road.

The army’s newest toy, the starlight scope, magnified whatever ambient light was available. In the darkest night, you could see two or three hundred yards, and even farther if there was any moon at all.

By midnight, we all were satisfied that we had a good zero on the scopes, which were mounted on Winchester hunting rifles that had been converted to army sniper rifle specifications. That meant a heavy barrel and a very senstitive trigger. We were right on target at four hundred yards and felt comfortable that if we could see anyone, we could hit him.

I reported to the CO that we were ready. “Okay,” he nodded. “You go day after tomorrow. I’ll have the pickup trucks come into camp before dark on Wednesday. If anybody’s watching, the word might get back to our little sapper friends (sapper was what we called the VC mine planters, bombers, sabotage engineers, etc.—among other more descriptive and derogatory nouns). If you see the son of a bitch, you pop his ass good, hear?”

“You got it, Colonel.” I headed back to my hootch, satisfied that all was in readiness. It was just like fishing. Cast a little bread on the water and see what comes up to get it. Sleep was a long time coming for me that night. I was definitely about to
run out my string. Every night I had to fight harder just to keep from coming down with the shakes.

We moved out early the next morning. I took out one hundred twenty men so I felt confident that nobody would spot the six men in the stay-behind teams. Each team had a Yard radio operator along as well as four modified rifles with bulky, blackened starlight scopes in padded bags.

The men were in good spirits. They hadn’t a clue as to what the real reason was for the exercise and thought it was just another field exercise, away from the endless details that are the plague of every soldier in garrison.

We marched here and there, and then we lined up and assaulted the first finger about a mile south of camp. We came back out of the woods and continued on toward the second spot I had picked for an ambush site. These two spots were just far enough apart that a person could split the difference and be safe from either of the two teams, but he would have to be awfully lucky in his choice of location.

In about an hour, we were at the second spot and moved into the trees. When the unit came out on the other side and continued on, Lieutenant Lawrence, myself, and our radio operator stayed in the dense brush, about a hundred yards above the location I had in mind.

“Get comfortable,” I whispered. “We’ll stay here in the deep cover until dark. Then, we’ll move down to the very edge of the tree line.” Crawling under a thick bush, I hid the entrance hole I had made. The other two wormed in close by, and we settled down to wait out the day. Soon, the forest animals grew accustomed to us and started up their night melodies. I even dozed a little.

Around dusk, First Sergeant Fischer checked in. He had the rest of the company bivouacked on the outskirts of Coi Hung, about a mile south of where my team was hiding, and everything appeared secure for the night. I whispered my final instructions and clicked off. It was almost time. We
wanted to be in position after sundown, but before it got so black that we couldn’t locate a good spot to watch the road.

I signaled my comrades, and we slipped out of our cover and sneaked toward the edge of the tree line. There was what I wanted: a downed tree, lying so we could use its trunk for a gun rest and its branches for cover. “Over here. Ray, you set up here. I’ll be right beside you. No moving once you get settled. None. Piss where you are. Savvy?”

“Gotcha,
Dai Uy.
” The young officer grinned at me, confident excitement all over his face. I nodded my head and moved to the spot I’d chosen, about ten feet to his left. Youth! There I was, an old man of twenty-eight, shaking my head at the antics of a twenty-three-year-old kid. One aged quickly in Vietnam.

The night grew quiet as we watched and waited. “Ray,” I whispered. “Look through your scope, straight ahead. Do you see that mound just off the road?”

I sensed him looking where I had directed. “Got it,
Dai Uy,
” he whispered. “Looks like an old honey pot.” The farmers used human waste from their toilets to fertilize their fields. They kept the stuff in big earthen jars we called honey pots. The rumor was that on a night attack, an American soldier dashed across a field and fell headfirst into a filled honey pot and drowned. No matter how many times I heard the story, which was probably as much bullshit as most war stories are, I still shuddered at the thought of such a malodorous death.

“You watch to the right of the pot, and I’ll watch to the left. No talking unless you see something.”

Ray was smart enough not to even answer, but I could make out his movement as he swung the starlight scope up and down his assigned sector of responsibility. I slowly moved my scope from the field back to the left, toward the lights of Da Nang. The magnified intensity of the scope gave me a tremendous view. The objects were cast in a greenish glow but with an incredible sharpness. If the VC sapper came down to plant his mines in our area, we had him.

All night we watched the road, fighting the desire to sleep and the ever-present bugs that thirsted for our blood. But no VC sapper showed up. I was disappointed, but it was a long shot at best.

As dawn turned our world gray, I whispered over to Ray to get back up the hill to where we had hidden the day before. After dividing up the daylight hours into sentry watches, we settled in and tried to sleep through the hot, humid daylight. The coming night would be our last chance. The trucks would arrive the following morning.

After sundown, we again crept down to our tree location. Lieutenant Turin reported that he’d worked the company all day in assault training and patrol techniques and would stay at a crossroads about four miles from where I was. He had seen nothing of the enemy, which was good; I didn’t want my company in a fight and me stuck a couple of miles away from it. The other sniper team had also seen nothing the previous night, and would resume its vigil after dark.