Death in the Jungle (30 page)

I told Mr. Meston that the VC could have faked not seeing us and that he and his comrades might counter ambush us.

“Dammit,” the lieutenant whispered, then he told Dicey to be extremely alert and motioned him back to the stream. I moved back to my mossy seat, knowing in my guts that some people were going to die before we got out of there. I just hoped that all of the dead had slanted eyes.

Luckily, there was no attack from the VC and no one died during the next five hours. Instead, things got real pleasant as the clouds broke up, the sky became blue, and a waft of a breeze meandered through the leaves. Most of the mosquitos took a siesta, and I, too, drifted in and out of sleep throughout the afternoon. Occasionally, I awoke and drank some water from one of my two canteens, or I dipped a little Skoal tobacco. At 1600 hours, I ate a can of C rations, more out of a need for something to do than to satisfy my appetite.

At dusk, Mr. Meston, Flynn, McCollum, and I moved to the riverbank, relieving the others, who shifted to rear security for the night. I took the left flank while McCollum assumed the right. Flynn was next to me, with Meston positioned between him and McCollum. I sat on a dry pile of sticks that Dicey had stacked and sat upon just off the riverbank between two cycads, palmlike trees with short, thick stems. Just in front of me, growing at the edge of the stream, were several water chestnut plants, tufted and grasslike plants standing a foot and a half high. As I settled down for the night watch, I liked Dicey’s spot selection, which was high and dry, fairly comfortable, with a good view of the water.
The only negative was a slight lack of cover, which was why Dicey couldn’t reach for his machine gun when the enemy had appeared straight ahead of him. For me, that would not be a problem, as I was already being blanketed by darkness.

When the night fully descended, I could still see the outline of the opposite bank, thanks to a clear sky and a three-quarter moon. A crocodile blowed downstream to my left, then made a whistling sound, drawing air. A nearby frog answered the croc with a couple of
ribbit
s. A fish splashed in front of me in the stream, and the ripples glittered in the moonlight. The jungle was coming alive with creatures, and it was possible that humans would soon join the party of noisemakers.

Sure enough, an hour after dark I heard faint talking downstream, but only for a few seconds. I listened intently for another hour; nothing made a peep except a shrew in the brush behind me. And so went the rest of the night: quiet and uneventful.

At first light, we got our gear ready to travel and we moved upstream as soon as we could see well enough. We crossed one large stream on the way, which ticked me off because I was so enjoying being dry for a change.

After crossing the stream, we found fresh VC tracks all over the place. I had never seen so many before. With me at point, we patrolled at a snail’s pace, knowing the enemy was close. Soon I smelled the faint odor of
nuoc mam
, a strong-smelling fish sauce, on the breeze. A few steps later, I smelled smoke.

I motioned my discoveries to Mr. Meston by pointing at my nose. He sniffed a moment, then shook his head and shrugged. That was discouraging because he seemed not to believe me. To me, this episode confirmed once again that my senses of hearing and smell were extraordinary, as others couldn’t hear or smell the
inconspicuous things I could. I attributed my superior, attuned senses to my having been a country boy and a hunter. In comparison with the boys from the city, I was the one who was “practiced up.”

We ended up sneaking 250 meters closer to the enemy base camps where two more streams forked from ours. The vantage point was better, but the terrain was lower and wetter, both on the riverbank and in the bush at rear security. That promised us a watery day and night.

While Schrader, Pearson, Moses, Markel, and Dicey set up overlooking the streams, I took the first watch at the rear, positioning myself to keep my eyes on a well-worn trail behind us. I sat in mud and a few inches of water, hidden between two wild fig trees and a small bush.

The long night on the first ambush site had taken its toll on Mr. Meston, Flynn, and McCollum, who fell fast asleep a few meters from me. Their having taken Dexamil pills during the early morning hours hadn’t helped them because the short-term “high” had left behind an abnormal drowsiness. I was happy that I’d avoided the use of the drug, as I had to remain extremely alert, especially since we were camped less than three hundred yards from men who would have loved to have slit us from neck to nuts.

I kept watch until 1115 hours, drowning a half dozen more ants to pass the time, when McCollum woke up and took over. That was when I could finally let go and relax. The stress of playing hide-and-seek in the VC’s backyard had worn me out. I propped the M-16/ XM-148 against a fig tree, hung my head, and took a few long, slow breaths. Before I knew it, I was asleep.

When I awoke three hours later, I discovered a dozen red ants crawling on me. Three of them were on my face. Quickly, I started brushing the little monsters off. Before I got them all, one of them bit my neck. That
pissed me off, and I took revenge by catching the culprit and tearing him in two. I discarded the pieces and immediately felt much better.

For the next three hours, I daydreamed and catnapped while Flynn had watch. At dusk, Mr. Meston signaled for us to relieve the front line. The four of us at the rear moved to the stream. As we approached our teammates, only Mr. Schrader and Moses desired replacement. Pearson, Dicey, and Markel asked permission from Mr. Meston to stay on during the night. Meston granted their request. This gave us seven men on ambush and two at rear security.

I sat down in the mud and water on left flank, to Dicey’s left. Darkness dropped, but the moon was unobstructed and bright. I was easily able to see across the thirty-five-meter-wide stream. No way could a sampan slip by unseen.

At 2100 hours, the tide came in. I was forced to stand up as the water rose to chest level. A few minutes later, I heard an airplane coming. As it drew closer, a voice resounded over a loudspeaker from the sky, telling the VC in the Vietnamese language that they were losing the war and should give themselves up. The voice spoke of the humanitarian things the South Vietnamese forces were doing to help the people. Then it said, “Number one, number one.” This went on for two hours as the plane flew back and forth over the T-10 area.

I was glad when the plane finally left, as I had been unable to concentrate on listening for faint noises while the recordings had blared. Now that all was quiet again, I felt like I was back in control of the night. Mamma-san Nature, however, had her input on the situation, and she raised the water up to my neck. Then she lowered the temperature to the sixties, which was awful cold for one who was acclimated to eighties, nineties, and above.

I remained in water until the tide began to recede at 0330 hours. Even though the water level dropped, my clothes were soaked and I was freezing. My teeth were chattering; my face was numb. I thought of Funkhouser, back at the base in bed, and I suddenly wished I could trade places with him, even if only for ten minutes.

About 0400 hours, Mr. Meston used the radio to let the boat support personnel know we wanted to extract at 0600. Only two more hours of shaking like a leaf, I told myself as a pep talk. Two more hours. At the same time, I couldn’t quite believe we’d spent the past twenty hours just one long golf shot from Victor Charlie, and he hadn’t poked his nose out of the clubhouse. What the hell was he doing? Where was he? I cursed through tap-dancing teeth. Hell, he was staying warm next to his brown-eyed lady while I was clutching the most frigid Bad Girl the jungle had ever known. Dammit, anyway!

But Victor Charlie didn’t let me down. He must’ve finished with his woman at 0500 hours, because at 0515 I heard his paddle smack the side of his sampan outside of our right flank position. I tugged the communication line between Dicey and me two times. He answered right back. Then I listened hard, anticipating the telltale
splash
of a paddle. Several seconds dragged by, then I heard a splash, followed by many more in a perfect rowing rhythm.

I jerked the line three times: “the enemy is here!” Raising the M-16/XM-148, I saw the sampan passing through the middle of our kill zone, coming toward me on the left flank. With my finger on the M-16 trigger, I anxiously waited for Mr. Meston to initiate the ambush. Precious seconds went by, and nothing happened. The sampan was now in front of Dicey to my right, and I could clearly see the figures of three men in the boat. Three seconds later, they were in front of me and leaving the ambush site.

“Shit!” I barked, then I squeezed the trigger. All I heard was a loud click. The hair stood up on the back of my neck at the hollow sound of the dud round.

Dicey and Flynn, upon hearing my attempt at commencing the ambush, suddenly opened up with the Stoner machine gun and the M-60. I slipped my finger onto the XM-148 trigger and fired a 40mm canister round at the sampan. I then extracted and ejected the dud 5.56mm round, recharged the chamber with a fresh cartridge and shot an entire 30-round magazine at the three VC. My rapid fire was joined by all of my teammates to my right as we collectively sent close to a thousand bullets over the stream.

In the moonlight, I could see the shape of the sampan. No human silhouettes were visible in the boat any longer. Still, we continued blasting the sampan and the water around it for several more seconds.

As the shooting died down, Mr. Meston lifted a hand parachute flare above his head and pointed it at the sky over the sampan. Once he was sure he could fire it through the canopy of trees above us, he slammed the base of the flare with his right palm and set it off. The thrust was so powerful that the twelve-inch cylindrical casing slipped over Meston’s muddy hand and came back and hit him squarely in the mouth, splitting his lower lip completely in two and knocking out several teeth.

The para flare rocketed to a height of about one hundred feet, then the parachute opened and the illuminating charge caught fire and lit up the stream below. It was suddenly “daylight in the swamp.”

I easily spotted the sampan drifting toward the opposite side of the stream. The three VC were nowhere to be seen. Quickly, I fired two 40mm HE rounds over the sampan and into the trees on the bank, just in case one
of the enemy had made it that far. The grenades blew branches and debris into the air.

I looked at Mr. Meston, who had his hands cupped over his mouth. Blood was oozing between his fingers.

In a muffled voice, I heard Meston say, “Pearson, take over! Take charge!”

Pearson wasted no time in telling me to swim after the sampan. I handed my weapon to Dicey and began pulling my duck fins over my coral booties. As I finished, I heard Pearson calling for the Boston Whalers to “get us out of here!” I seconded the motion in my mind, remembering all too well that there were hundreds of VC in easy hailing distance, and we sure as hell had hailed them.

I entered the cool water with my K-bar knife in hand as the para flare started to flicker and die out. Using underwater strokes in order to keep a low profile, I swam without making splashes or lots of ripples beneath the light of the flare and the moon. Unfortunately for me, the flare quickly extinguished, and I couldn’t see anything but the water directly under my nose. My night vision was lost.

I continued swimming in the direction of the opposite bank, trusting that one of my teammates would send up another flare. My nose was barely out of the water as I went, and my nostrils burned with the smell of blood; someone had crawled out of bed too early for his own good in the Rung Sat Special Zone.

I blinked my eyes hard a few times in an attempt to regain my vision, but things got even darker as I swam into the shadows of the trees lining the shoreline. I tightly grasped my knife in my right hand, aware of the fact that I could bump into a gook at any moment. And no matter if he was still alive or already dead, I planned to stick him twice before I inquired as to his well-being.

Suddenly, a flare ignited high over my head, and in
the bright light I saw the sampan hung up next to the riverbank. I swam to it, and as I reached for the bow I saw a gook lying on his back inside the boat. His knees were up and his arms grotesquely pointed skyward. Bullet holes were evident from his head to his feet. His heart protruded halfway out of his chest.

I also noted that there was a large water jug sitting in the middle of the sampan, full of bullet holes but still standing upright. The sampan, too, was bullet-riddled. I grabbed the two and towed my catch back to my teammates as the para flare extinguished above me.

When I made it across the stream, Pearson extended a hand and helped me out of the water. I hung onto the bow and pulled the sampan partway out of the water with me. Pearson explored the sampan and discovered some papers and a Chicom SKS semiautomatic rifle underneath the dead man. He salvaged the loot, then together we turned over the sampan and dumped the lifeless body into the stream. Under the circumstances, it was the closest we could come to an honorable burial at sea for the misfortunate fellow.

As the body floated away and quickly disappeared below the surface of the water, Pearson told me that he had seen a second body rise up and then sink in the middle of the stream as I had been towing the sampan. That gave us two confirmed KIAs. The third VC’s whereabouts was officially unknown, but unofficially I’d have bet my Bad Girl that he’d smiled his last smile.

Speaking of smiles, Mr. Meston wouldn’t have much of one for quite a while, I thought to myself as I gathered my gear and waited uneasily for extraction. In the moonlight, I watched him dabbing his mouth with a handkerchief. He had to be disgusted, as a self-inflicted punch in the mouth was no SEAL’s
But what was done was done, and at least Mr. Meston still had a heart, unlike a couple of gooks I’d run into shortly before.

A minute later, I thanked God when I heard the power props of the Boston Whalers whirring downstream. Some of the bravest men in the world were brazenly entering this hellhole to save our butts from an inevitable counterattack.