Death Valley (8 page)

The April operation had solidified Dowd’s standing in the battalion. It had much the same result for Captain Fagan of Delta Company. He had taken over only weeks earlier from a steely and effective commander, but by the time D Company walked out of the Arizona, he had won the trust of his men and the first of his Bronze Star recommendations. The harshest review of commanders comes from the grunts on the firing line, but most echoed the appraisal of Lieutenant Peters and Corporal Cominos. They thought Fagan was the absolute best; he was a concerned man with a dry wit who, most importantly, had mastered tactics and supporting arms.

Fagan was twenty-five years old. He was from Warren, Ohio, one of seven children of an insurance salesman whom the WWII draft had sent to Patton’s army and who came home with a battlefield commission. Fagan went Navy ROTC in college and received his gold bars and degree the same day in 1963. He married right out of Basic School and took his wife to Hawaii for his first duty station. In the spring of 65, his
unit deployed to Da Nang as part of the buildup. He completed that tour as a battalion staff officer with the 4th Marines and, in 1967, was prepared to leave the Marine Corps. He had a wife and three children and had already lined up a civil engineer position; but for reasons he could not fully articulate, Fagan turned down the job and stayed in the Corps. He was training the new lieutenants at Quantico when he made the decision, and everything in his upbringing told him his place was really with the young Marines in combat. To temper such idealism with the cynicism of Vietnam, he should have felt alienated from the rest of the war effort. Unfortunately for the novelists, Fagan happened to be an exceptional leader with compassion for his men who also believed in the cause. His only complaints were those typical of hawks.

Captain Fagan had a good company in a good battalion. Still, there were occasional problems. Marijuana had been an unknown his first tour. It was not apparent in Delta Company, but occasionally the company gunnery sergeant would report that a man was not ready to go on an operation. They’d leave him in the rear and only later would Fagan hear that the man’s buddies had caught him smoking grass and refused to have him along. Fagan had Delta for six months and they were in the bush for five and a half; he volunteered to keep them out precisely because he didn’t want them exposed to the corruptions of the rear. The grunts bitched about his enthusiasm for the field and, if he’d been a marginal performer, there might have been problems. As it was, most grunts seemed proud of their reputation. It was a matter of risking death in combat but having a common goal versus disintegrating in rear-area squabbles. A third of Delta Company was draftees, but Fagan couldn’t tell them from the volunteers. They did their best and he tried to do his best by them. They were youngsters, he thought, unlettered kids, tough, humorous, sarcastic, faithful, and loyal to each other. And vulnerable. He’d seen men cry with hurt and frustration after the frenzied efforts to patch up and medevac a grunt who’d just lost his leg to a booby trap; then they’d pick up their rifles and keep going.

LCpl John G. Bradley, of Charlie Company, was the eternal kid Marine: skinny, red from the sun, impatient with the boredom and sweat of humping, exhilarated in a way, though, with the unshakable feeling of adventure.

Bradley grew up in Marysville, Washington, living off and on between
his divorced parents and graduating from high school as a Boy Scout and the All American Boy. In 1968 when he graduated, the counterculture hadn’t yet made an impact on his hometown, and his reactions to the campus protesters on television were traditional. He had no sympathy for the messages on the placards held by his peers, and all he saw was anarchy. All in all, though, the war seemed very distant until that summer after graduation when a local boy was killed. Bradley was a supporter of the war but, most of all, he was young and curious; two months out of school, his mother signed the papers so he could enlist at age seventeen.

He volunteered for Vietnam and reported to C Company in February 1969; it was still an adolescent adventure at first and, although mortars hit the battalion rear his first night, excitement overrode fear. His first firefight was an adrenaline high. Such spirit was soon rubbed raw in the unglamorous sweat and dust of the repetitious patrolling and ambushing. Fatigue became the byword. Bradley made his first kill in April; walking point for his squad down a paddy trail as they returned from a night patrol, he saw something hunched over the path in the dawn light. He shouted to halt, then pumped his M16 into the figure when it bolted. He approached the body, rushing with the thrill of getting a confirmed kill; then he almost vomitted when he saw it was an unarmed mamasan. They found a booby trap on the trail, which they blew in place, and Bradley’s mind flashed between excitement and revulsion, finally clearing the slate with the thought: fuck it, if we’d gotten here fifteen minutes later, the bitch would have blown my legs off.

He never told his parents the truth about the kill.

There was only one saving grace out in the mud—the professionalism and camaraderie of his squad. Harvey Peay, the squad leader, was sharp. A tough Kentucky boy, he ignored rules and regs and talked mostly about going home, buying a GTO, and marrying his girl friend. He also seemed to thrive in the bush. Mouse Cullen, his fire team leader, was saving his money so he could go to college. Schaffer was a big guy who loved good times and, deciding that Australia beat Vietnam, never came back from R and R. Dutch Sterling, a grenadier, was a mustached kid from California who loved to bullshit about surfing and who had a peace medallion around his neck (taped to his dog tags so it wouldn’t jingle on patrol). Buttons just wanted to finish his tour and get back to the farm.

They were a little world unto themselves, bound together, as far as Bradley was concerned, by an unspoken sense of friendship and dedication
as Marines. They never discussed the war. Between patrols, they played cards in the dirt and talked of hunting trips; past contacts; some lifer who pissed them off; and girls—those they’d screwed, those they wanted to screw, those they wanted their buddies to think they’d screwed. Just plain old good guys, Bradley thought. They were typical of all Marines, he reckoned, their ambitions honed to a few essentials: killing gooks in the bush and, in the rear, figuring ways to sneak into the ville to get laid.

The new operation was more of the same—hot and plodding. Lance Corporal Bradley made cryptic notes in his diary, an eighteen year old’s view of the Arizona Territory:

Lance Corporal Bradley saw living North Vietnamese only once during the operation, near the end of July. He’d been walking point that day, leading the platoon down a narrow trail in a thick tree line. They stopped for a break and Bradley gave his camera to Peay and posed, leaning against a boulder, sweaty blond hair on his forehead, cigarette dangling, sweat towel and undershirt soaked under his flak jacket, his M16 resting on his thigh in one hand, his helmet in the other. No sooner had Peay snapped the photo than Bradley surged with adrenaline—four NVA, in fatigues and bush hats and toting AKs, walked unaware from the bamboo. They were right over Peay’s shoulder, maybe seventy yards away, and Bradley shouted and opened fire the same time Dutch Sterling did. Peay instantly spun and fired too, as one of the NVA fell heavily in the brush. Two comrades grabbed him under the arms and ran back into the tree line as Bradley, Peay, and Dutch sprinted after them. It was incredible, Bradley unable to describe it: heart pounding, sweat glistening on his arms as he fired on the run, and the NVA running, right there in the open on the trail, bobbing in his gun sights. Dutch halted long enough to drop two M79 rounds amid the fleeing NVA; the explosions were on target but they disappeared into some thick vegetation around a bend. The Marines halted, wary of an ambush, and were suddenly exhausted, coming down from the adrenaline. The rest of the platoon jogged up, asking what the hell was going on, and they checked out the only signs that the North Vietnamese had even been there—a splash of blood and a dropped canteen where the first man had fallen.

In the seven weeks that 2dLt Lawrence H. Orefice commanded a platoon of Mike Company, 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, three of his men were killed and six wounded. All the casualties came from booby traps.

That’s how it was in the An Hoa Basin. It could change a man. Orefice learned that on his first night patrol. His platoon had palace guard for the regiment on Hill 55 when movement was detected; it appeared that a mortar tube was being set up in the tree line near the local ville. They reconned by fire from the bunker line; then Orefice
took out a squad. They found nothing. The squad leader entered the nearest hootch and dragged out a young papasan, shaking him by his shirt front, slapping him, shouting questions in his face. The Vietnamese did not resist, nor did he whimper. He just kept repeating, “No VC, no VC.” Orefice shouted to stop it. The young corporal did, then said simply and without sarcasm, “We gotta do this, lieutenant. They’re all a bunch of VC sympathizers out to get our ass. And if we don’t get rough with them, they’re not going to do anything for us.”

The corporal was a good Marine and Orefice looked at the stoic papasan. He knows, Orefice thought with a burning frustration that would become a daily pill; this gook knows exactly who was here and he won’t tell us!

Lieutenant Orefice had few answers.

Orefice had come to the Marines out of Windsor, Connecticut, for the same reasons many of his generation joined the Peace Corps: the patriotic challenge evoked by JFK, the desire to help. He went to Vietnam, though, with doubts, not about the validity of that country’s goals, but about the realism of attaining them. Can the ARVN carry the ball? Such thoughts evaporated once he joined his platoon. He was now directly responsible for thirty lives and the daily pressures of that allowed for little reflection. He thought his company commander, Captain Stanat, was good, as was his platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Hebert, as were the grunts. His total allegiance was to them.

If Orefice never stopped feeling sympathy for the plight of the common villager, he also grew to view them all as potential threats. One of his sergeants carried a few Chinese Communist grenades in his pack in case they accidentally killed an unarmed Vietnamese; place the grenades on the body, radio in a confirmed kill, avoid a hassle. They never had occasion to do this, but it seemed judicious.

The enemy was all around and invisible.

In July, they evacuated the Chau Son Village and resettled the people in a controlled zone near Hill 55. Without the support of the populace, coerced or voluntary, the local VC would dry up. It sounded good on paper. An Army captain from civil affairs, a gangly fellow with glasses, was put in charge of the project. Orefice’s platoon was teamed with the captain’s Vietnamese militia to do the legwork. They cordoned off each hamlet and marched the people to Hill 55. The villagers carried
what they could, showing no emotion. They’re pawns, Orefice thought, they have to go whichever way the wind is blowing; and today we’re the wind. The resettlement ville was surrounded by wire and guarded by the captain’s militia; every morning, the people were allowed to return to their fields under the watch of the Marines. This was all well and good, except for the local VC who relied on their nighttime visits to hamlets for food and shelter. One night, finally, a VC sapper squad crept expertly into the resettlement ville; the men wore only loincloths and carried only wire cutters and sacks of U.S. M26 grenades. They sprinted through, tossing grenades into the hootches, and in the time it took Orefice and a squad to rush down and link up with the militiamen, everything was over. All that was left was to call the medevacs. Orefice walked among the smoking huts. It had been a slaughter. About ten people were dead; others with limbs shattered or blown off stared in shock. The survivors were wailing, crying, staring in hate. Orefice could almost smell the anger: the Marines had put them in such a position and then not defended them.