Four Fires (95 page)

a parody.

He doesn't seem to notice and sort of touches the peak of his cap real lazy. 'Welcome, nice to have you with us,' he says and shakes my hand. Jesus, what's goin' on here? 'Follow me please, Mister Maloney,' he's even got my name right off without consulting a piece of paper or having it shouted out by the RSM!

Then he leads me into the command post. It's not hard to see there's something going on and that his staff are dealing with an emergency. Most command headquarters are about the same. It doesn't take long to figure it out, the shit's hit the fan and they're running around like chooks with their heads cut off. People always think command headquarters are quiet with everyone going about their business calm and dispassionate. Not true, they're in the war same as us all.

They may not be frontline, but they're still fighting men. It's not like those Pommie movies where everyone's sucking on pipes and thinking before they speak. Those days are long over, that is if they ever existed in the first place.

The C.O. briefs me. A company patrol of Vietnamese CIDG (short for Civil Irregular Defence Group) from the Special Forces outpost of Tran Xa is in trouble. It seems they were expecting to find some local Viet Cong and, instead, have run into some North Vietnamese regulars, well-trained soldiers. The company is taking a hiding.

'My Nung reaction force is already deployed, along with most of my advisers, so I can't send them. I've got a Montagnard company just in from training camp at Hoa Cam. They don't have much experience,' he says, then not too convincingly adds, 'but they should be okay.' He pauses and looks straight at me, 'Warrant Officer Maloney, I want you to join them.'

Shit, haven't seen too much combat myself. Chasing a few CTs around in the Malayan jungle isn't exactly going into battle with weapons blazing. But, as Morrie would say, 'My boy, stay stumm, what you don't say, they don't know about you already.'Jesus, I haven't even had time to have proper jetlag. My stomach starts to churn and my is dry.

It doesn't take them long to decide. The bastards up and leave, and the advisers get down and man the machine guns, holding the Viet Cong off on their own, though they're now vastly outnumbered and it's only a matter of time, they think.

The Viet Cong allow the territorials to walk about three clicks down the road before they pounce and shoot the shit out of them. Those who survive hot-foot it back to the battalion, frightened and embarrassed, and soon they're manning the bunkers and going at it hell for leather. The next day the Viet Cong mount an all-out attack and after a pretty fierce battle they
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are sent packing.

I mentioned before how you never know who the enemy is. He can be right there amongst you, serving you a Coke or offering to polish your boots in the hotel foyer in Saigon. There is the true story of Bluey Stewart who runs the platoon commander's course for the Ranger battalions over at Due My. It's called the Jungle, Swamp & Mountain School and he's very good at what he does.

Anyway, Bluey's got forty Ranger lieutenants there and he's putting them through their paces, each student acting out a turn as platoon commander and learning how to respond, with Bluey close behind, watching, correcting and getting them up to scratch. He's eating with them, sharing a hutchie (tent) and he knows the lingo so they're all great mates.

Finally it comes to graduation day when the soldiers parade and get their passing-out certificates. It's an occasion the young Ranger officers take very seriously and in which they take great pride. Bluey goes down to his letter box first thing in the morning and finds a note from one of the graduates, thanking him for the great course and apologising profusely that he can't attend the passing-out parade and ceremony but he's been urgently recalled to his Viet Cong unit.

There's another apparently true story of a Yank adviser at Hiep Khanh, only difference is that he received a letter from the whole company, thanking him for the course and regretting that they had to go under the wire as the Viet Cong needed them up north a bit to pass on their knowledge as instructors.

Of course, I don't know any of this at the time. What I do know is that I've been in the country five minutes and haven't even unpacked

my suitcase and I'm off to war with a company of indigenous mountain people who've had little training or operational experience. That I'm under the command of a Yank captain who's from 29 Palms, a military base in Northern California that's so dry it's only got twenty-nine palm trees.

I think about how I was after three months' basic training and the answer I tell myself is that there would have been no way I could have gone into the jungle as an effective soldier. These blokes haven't done anything like three months.

I get to the Da Nang airstrip and the whole place is buzzing. My company of Montagnard soldiers in various states of preparedness are being bundled into UH-1B helicopters. There's an American airforce sergeant supervising their loading and he's pushing them in like sardines in a can, yelling and cussing, and I'm positive he's overloading the chopper, pushing them in one side and they're falling out the other.

I find Captain Jones, who turns out to be a big black bloke, very white teeth, or maybe it's just because his face is very dark.

I salute him, and he responds properly, then says 'Combustible Jones', sticking out a hand big as a West Indian fast bowler's.

'Mole Maloney.' I'm relieved to see he's a US Special Forces officer. Whether he's jungle-trained or not, he'll be a damn good soldier.

He grins. 'Some day I'll tell you how I got my name if you'll tell me how you got yours, Warrant Officer. Meanwhile, let's get the show on the road, hey, brother Mole.'

He tells me the first three choppers are my responsibility, my platoon, he'll follow in one of the six others flying out. He's looking a bit harassed, but then I guess so am I. I'm wearing US

combat greens and

equipment and I'm equipped with an Ml6. I'm not too fussed, it's a good rifle and I've fired one before. I guess when you know how to shoot, it's only a question of adapting, making minor adjustments.

I'm jammed into a chopper so tight I can't get my arms loose from my sides and the whole place has got this smell of fish that's bloody overwhelming. Later I'll learn it's the fish sauce nuoc mam, which the Vietnamese use on everything they eat.

The chopper gains altitude and fortunately I can see out and there's a strip of beach bordering
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the blue ocean, then the rice paddy

fields glistening in the sun, stretching inwards forever. We turn slightly and start to fly towards the backdrop of a great green mountain range. In flight, with the air coming in, the smell of fish sauce all but disappears. I think to myself, bloody good thing the Viet Cong also use the stuff or they'd be able to smell us a mile before they reach us. I also wonder if a white bloke might not smell an ambush before he's caught

in one.

Soon the mountains loom larger as we approach. Now, with

nothing much to do but wait for the landing, the true absurdity of my situation hits me, I'm in an overloaded helicopter with troops 1 haven't even met, much less trained, going in to fight a battle I know bugger-all about. No briefing, no knowledge of the country or terrain, can't speak to my troops as there's no interpreter, or if there is, he's in one of the other helicopters and 1

haven't met him yet.

A radio-set handpiece is thrust at me by a brown arm pushed between soldiers' bodies. 'Lancer, this is Knife Edge, do you hear me, over?' It is Combustible Jones speaking from one of the following helicopters. He's got a slow drawling voice like he's got all the time in the world, but I realise that's just how he talks because he was the same at Da Nang airstrip.

'Lancer, loud and clear, over.'

Jones tells me the situation on the ground has worsened. There are quite a few casualties, including one of the two US Special Forces advisers, which is the one they know about. The other Special Forces adviser with the company is missing and that's just about the ball game, there ain't no others and the troops appear to have damn all leadership among themselves. As I'm first to land, I'm in charge the moment I hit the ground until he gets there. I confirm: 'Lancer, Roger, out.' I tell myself I'd rather be in charge than taking directions from an officer who's never seen the jungle. Though, of course, I don't know this for sure. Weeks later, we're having a beer and he tells me how he

got his name.

It seems Combustible Jones was born in Chicago, in New Town, it is a black part of town. His daddy's done the deed and left, and his pregnant mother is living in one room with a single-bar heater in the middle of a Chicago winter, which I gather is pretty awesome. When she's about eight months pregnant, she wakes up in the middle of the night to find the bedclothes alight. She's resourceful enough to get the fire under control, whereupon she goes down on her knees to thank the Lord for her deliverance. But the shock is a bit much and the baby starts coming and a neighbour calls the ambulance and she gets her true deliverance in the ambulance. Ever after, his mother insists, the Lord told her to name her son 'Elijah Combustible Jones'. The 'Elijah' is because of the burning bush in the Bible and the 'Combustible', because of her personal burning bed which God woke her up in time to save her life and her baby's. I've got to admit, it's a much better story than me being called Mole.

Now the door gunner sitting close to me with his machine gun sticking out of the helicopter hands me his earphones and shouts up that the pilot wants a word.

'Eight o'clock your side, two Vietnamese Air Force A-l Skyraiders, looks like they're going in to attack the spurline, can you see them?'

I look down and see the aircraft swoop through an iridescent stream of green tracer bullets coming up from the jungle to meet them. Then, in front of my eyes, the jungle erupts in bright flashes and billowing smoke as bombs explode. I watch as the two aircraft pull up and turn slightly to line up for another run over the target. This time I can't quite believe what I see, a great fireball engulfs the jungle. I've never seen it in action but I know instantly it's napalm, a mixture of petrol and some sort of jellying agent. We've been briefed on napalm, it burns with the same heat as a Red Steer in a bushfire, over 3500 degrees F. It will instantly kill anyone exposed to it, even if they're in underground bunkers. If the bunkers are under the fireball, they'll
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be asphyxiated. I can't believe how much it looks like the fireball I saw rise out of the eucalyptus growth, the day John Crowe and Whacka

Morrissey died.

The pilot then draws my attention to a helicopter taking off from a clearing about half a click from the enemy position, That's the dustoff taking out our wounded,' he explains. Then says,

'We're going in to land. Good luck.' I hand the earphones back to the door gunner, thinking this time, Mole Maloney, you're going to need all the luck you've ever had bundled up into one. I can't even take the spoon out of

the sink before the tap is turned on because the tap's already running and the spoon's there and the shit is hitting the fan overtime, if that's not mixing my metaphors.

We arrive over the clearing, or LZ as it is known in army parlance, and quickly descend. The downdraft from the chopper blades flattens the grass and stirs up the dust. The noses of the choppers rise slightly as they no longer move forward although the skids barely touch the ground. It's standard practice for the pilots to keep the blades whirring at a speed so they can take off instantly should the need arise.

The troops secure their hats in their webbing or under their shirts. This is because otherwise the updraught would suck them off their heads into the rotors. With the dust blinding us, we jump and make for the edge of the clearing. There's a mighty explosion not too far off but I can't see anything because of the trees.

The Hueys totter for a moment as they build up power and then rise into the air to an even bigger cloud of dust. It's amazing how quickly a chopper can empty its load and be off, they're gone before you can scratch your bum, banking away against the trees, engines screaming for quick altitude.

Then the handset is thrust into my hands again. This is Knife Edge, over.'

'Lancer, over,' I reply.

That explosion you no doubt heard, that's a mortar bomb landed four hundred yards to your south-east. It's coming from the valley and it looks like it's targeting the LZ. We'll watch for the primary and organise an air strike. Meanwhile the pilot says no more choppers to land. You're on your ownsome so don't be lonesome, over,' Combustible says.

'Lancer, Roger, out,' I reply, short and sweet, there ain't nothing clever I can think to say and I don't have time to shit my pants.

Another mortar round lands, but it's a little further away, which is a good sign. With the choppers gone, the enemy may have lost their line to the target. Maybe I'll have a few minutes to organise things. I look around me, there's bunches of Vietnamese Civil Irregulars huddled around the LZ with no sign of anyone in command. I speak almost no Vietnamese, only the very little we've learned in training back in Oz and I'm hoping someone speaks a bit of English.

'Who's in command?' I shout. 'Who's senior?' The faces stare blankly back at me. Then a soldier comes up to me. The Hong, in-ter-plet-ta!' He grabs me by the shirt and I can see he's panicking.

'Trung si, trung sil Uc Da Loi dai uy maybe dead,' he points down the ridge.

I get the 'maybe dead' bit and I reckon he's not going to be saying it for one of his own kind, he must mean the other US Special Forces adviser, the Australian.

He confirms this, 'Captain!'and he points again down the ridge.

Then I'm saved. One of the Montagnard soldiers from my own platoon comes up and he speaks a bit of English, maybe not a lot more than the overexcited Hong, but he's calmer and more importantly he's the platoon commander. I talk to him and he seems to understand, nodding his head. I tell him we're going in to reconnoitre the battle area and try to recover the 'maybe dead'